I once went to a talk at a book festival and the Icelandic crime writer I saw was talking about how funny it is that there are so many Icelandic crime writers writing about brutal murders when they have so few real murders. She joked that some of her books had more murders in their story than her entire country had in a year.
okay i complained abt damien darhk being the one that makes ray n nora leave the ship but i have to come in with the bullshit-o-meter like. the whole thing of 5x06 is nora asserting that she’s her own person, that she doesn’t need her dad controlling her life anymore n lashing out when she doesn’t do what she wants. only for him to go to ray and be like ‘hey. u guys should leave the team actually. for HER happiness’
like ik she and ray talks about it but it’s not like she’s upset with being on the ship? it just feels some misogynistic transfer of power, the idea that nora needs some man to take care of her. plus the whole “oh now i’m too mature to be living with my friends” bullshit of the idea of nuclear family
i think if ray hadn’t talked to damien abt it and that be his inciting incident, it would piss me off less. like ray seems like the kind of guy who’d want that life without any megalomaniac father in law telling him that he needs to 'take care’ of his daughter, who’d just want to settle down n start a life with nora bc he wants a more calm life
tldr: damien darhk bein involved just made the whole thing worse
It would have made way more sense to have Ray leave the Legends because he and Nora barely got to spend any time together and it wasn’t like she could quit.
Although it also would have made more sense for Damien to take on the curse and become the fairy godfather to give Nora the normal life she was denied, rather than him dying (did Nora even find out he offed himself?!) then Nora and Ray decide to leave for a regular life because they’d previously thought they couldn’t have one.
The choice of Miguel as an antagonist for Miles is fucking fascinating because if you look at Miguel’s backstory (which, hey, maybe they changed it for the movies but whatever, the wording is purposefully vague whenever it comes up) he wasn’t actually trying to become Spider-Man. He is only Spider-Man because a jealous co-worker sabotaged his attempt to rewrite his DNA back to normal. The only other person who was put through this kind of modification was turned into a monster and died.
Miguel is a scientific anomaly inadvertently created by Alphamax.
Like Alphamax inadvertently turned Miles into Spider-Man by bringing a spider across from another dimension.
I’m really into the meta-narrative of Across the Spider-Verse. They could’ve come up with a different name for canon events, like Stable Dimension Events or some other made up nonsense, but the term canon events really paints it this as a conversation about adaptations on Spider-Man and his various off shoots. Hell, it could apply to comics and adaptations as a whole. Is it still Spider-Man if he doesn’t get Uncle Ben or some equivalent killed? Is it really Batman if he doesn’t vow to never kill? Even if it looks like Ultron, is it still Ultron if it’s origin and personality are different?
And it’s kinda the perfect subject matter to be tackled by Miles, the Spider-Man who gets to be his own Spider-Man. Look at the vast majority of the named spider people in this movie. They’re either based on existing people in Spider-Man’s story or they’re some permutation of Peter Parker. Miles isn’t another Peter nor is he a ‘what if this character was bit instead of Peter’. Miles exists purely to be the next Spider-Man after his Spider-Man died. There aren’t any expectations to play out the same story as Peter, because Peter’s story was already played out in his world. He has every right to make his own story, play by his own rules, go through adventures no other Spider has gone through. Every Peter has Uncle Ben die, but Miles’ call to action is never consistent. Ultimate comics had his mom die, Into the Spider-Verse had his uncle, and PS4 Spider-Man had his dad. Miles’ story is fluid in a way no other Spider’s is because he’s ironically not running in Peter’s shadow and established story. He’s an anomaly because every universe has runs on one Spider logic except his.
Which is also why Miguel’s such a fascinating choice as the antagonist. Because, a lot of what I can say about Miles could be said about Miguel. Traditionally, the Spider-Man of the year 2099 isn’t an alternate dimension Spider, he’s just a Spider-Man from a time after the original’s run. He is, just like Miles, the second Spider-Man who exists after Peter’s demise. And just like Miles, he doesn’t have to play by Peter’s rules, having a vastly different tone and manifestation of powers. So it’s also perfect that Miguel’s positioned against Miles specifically because he’s tried going against the flow, going against ‘canon’ and has suffered for it.
So the narrative is about two Spider-Men who can write their own story, fighting over whether or not they can deviate from the template set by the original story and if their story could survive it. Into the Spider-Verse said anyone can be Spider-Man. Across the Spider-Verse asks if Spider-Man is allowed to be anyone other than the Spider-Man.
Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.
have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.
and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.
black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.
if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you’ve ever met. it doesn’t have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don’t know much, look it up and learn about it together.
This is Juneteenth.
white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.
when layla was like “you know, dear husband, you could’ve just told me you have a cute soft nerd alternate personality with a funny accent, like, that’s not a downside for me.”
just absolutely hilarious that layla was like “yeah i’m into you as a narcoleptic english dork too” and instead of being like “oh I have a lot to offer and she loves aspects of me that I struggle to face, wow this is great i’m so lucky” he got so jealous he punched himself in the face i love him
I know there’s actual stuff happening in this chapter, but one of the first things I noticed is that it looks like Touya now has his hand on his dad’s back in the low detail Todofam panel. They’re hugging!
remember how we thought black widow (2021) was going to be the darkest mcu movie, but then after the really well-done opening credits montage, the movie stopped being dark, and then two years later, a silly little Guardians of the Galaxymovie ended up being the movie where every person I’ve talked to said that they were deeply upset by it and they cried 6 times and that it was the most beautiful marvel movie in years and 100% the darkest movie that the mcu has ever made and was surprisingly gory and had the mcu’s first f-bomb and i even openly wept in a movie theater for the first time since avengers: endgame and there were points where i could just hear everyone crying and
knows martial arts and how to ride a horse; immortal and highly learned; soft spoken wife guy. …crime lord who has an international army of mercenaries and started training his son to be an assassin before he turned ten. tried to unleash an ancient evil b/c it said it was his dead wife.
Hannibal Propaganda
Hannibal Lecter styles himself after a modern high society gentleman, with sophisticated tastes in music, art, entertainment, and food. It’s just too bad that food includes so many human ingredients. Oh, well… at least his taste in art carries over to the way he arranges his victims.
ALT
