rjmhereunderprotest

[rjmhereunderprotest]

There's No Power Greater than X: Rebuilding My Xbox Library

This wasn't the post I intended to come back with, but it's a recent enough experience of my that I felt like documenting. I'm still working on something else that's more substantial but I just feel like talking about this.

Recently, I've been trying to write more Text Let's Plays as a means of keeping myself writing, creatively active and enabling to use my love of gaming to do so. I'd be remiss if I also didn't say I was inspired by a good friend of mine who writes hilarious recreations of his playthroughs. Mostly horror games, he subjects himself to that a lot.

I decided to do the same and my latest choice was to return to my golden age of console game playing. Namely the Original Xbox where I started more regularly playing video games and buying them outright. The reason was simple enough, I played "Halo: Combat Evolved" and I've gotten every Xbox ever since. I've wanted an excuse to revisit the console and this was it. I thought it would be a simple enough process, but it turned out to be... much more complicated.

So this is my short, as possible, look into what started as wanting to replay an old game I loved and share it with my friends online, into a sudden nostalgia trip that reconnected me with some old gaming memories and a desire to rebuild what was once forgotten, my Original Xbox Library.

Dragoons Improvise

I think it's best to start with what game I chose to highlight for the Text LP that started all this, MechAssault.

One year post its launch, Xbox got an upgrade, Xbox Live which would change online gaming forever, for better and... well, a lot of worse if the screaming racist Twelve-Year-Olds on "Call Of Duty" are any indication. MechAssault was among the first games to be heavily advertised as compatible with the service.

I've never cared about multiplayer to any major extent. I don't have good experience playing with complete strangers online. I'm just not good with social interaction in general and competitive play brings out the worst in me. So, it's just never been something I've been able to stick with. MechAssault appealed to me for only one reason, giant freaking robots! I was casually aware of the BattleTech universe but it was so impenetrable on PC, MechAssault promised an easier way to play around in these cool walking tanks and I had a lot of fun with the game when it first came out.

My choice to play MechAssault for the text Let's Play was easy enough on this grounds, I could even do its sequel right after. But I quickly ran into some complications. First and foremost, I can't play MechAssault on any modern console.

Here's the rub, MechAssault was successful in pushing units, and so was its sequel to a moderate degree, but not enough to continue the franchise. Despite owning the IP and studio in charge of it, Microsoft never released a third game in the MechAssault series for consoles or PC. And even though the game was an Xbox Exclusive, its never been made backwards compatible. Its sequel is, but only for the Xbox 360. So even that has complications.

For some people this is a problem, because they probably chucked the old Xbox out the door a long time ago. Not me, I've of course kept mine. Well, I've kept the replacement I got when the original Xbox we got suffered some sort of power surge that caused its output port for the power cable to melt. After that, the thing just never worked again and any attempt to turn it on makes it start smelling of burning rubber and plastic. Not ideal. Suffice to say, I'm glad I still have the replacement Xbox that has held up much better over the years.

So I have the console I need to play MechAssault, what I don't have is a TV that's really compatible with it. The Original Xbox uses a different AV Input than most modern TVs, known as a composite, something that took me a lot of time to figure out actually. It's entirely different from Component wires and of substantially lower quality.

Here's where the real problem kicks in. While I CAN make the Xbox's composite cords work on a modern Flatscreen, as all I need to do is plug the yellow input into the green component output, that forces me to unplug the Xbox 360's component cords. Which is a pain in the ass to do for my TV, not to mention awkward. I attempted to see if I could finagle things a little. I got myself a composite cord switch box, thinking I could make the issue less of a hassle and maybe even re-hook up my old Playstation 2 console in the process, since it also has a composite cord.

Yeah that didn't work, the switch box is fine... but it doesn't read being plugged into the the green component output so great. There's also another problem associated with the composite cord in general, it needed to be reset constantly. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be able to properly register that the green component output is compatible with the yellow composite input. It goes to a blue screen as if the connection has been lost. Replugging it in returns the video, but again, this is a hassle I don't care to deal with constantly.

However, I can at least play the Original Xbox Console so I can still do the Text LP while I wait to figure out a solution to these problems, right? All I had to do was put the MechAssault Game Disc in when I was ready to start my Text LP and we'd be off to the races. Now I hadn't played MechAssault during the time I was waiting because I wanted to come back into the game with fresh eyes, no prior playthrough, no figuring out the controls again, just as blind as I can make it. Surely this is not a recipe for disaster!

The game won't start. It will not start. I can put it in a dozen different times, close and reclose the disc tray, clean the thing off so there is no fingerprints or whatever. The disc will not play. I try out several other games at this point, concerned this is a console problem. Nope, they all work. They more often than not require me to pull the damn Yellow Video cord out and place back in, but the games all work! After a lot of trial and error and consulting threads online, almost ripping open the old Xbox and even contemplating getting a new one, I come to the very simple obvious conclusion. It's the MechAssault disc! It's borked! Something is wrong with it!

The nearest I can tell, upon closer examination, the inner part of the disc, near the hole, has some damage on it. Damage that is not consistent with other games in my collection. It's been scratched off or something. At some point the game was damaged to an irreparable degree. It can't be played because it can't be read. You cannot believe how absolutely devastating this was.

So where do I go from here? Simple, I take advice from one of the Characters of the MechAssault game itself though. Because the game opens with you crash landing, losing a ton of your mechs and being stuck behind enemy lines with no back up, the first thing your commanding officer tells you is to suck it up, "Dragoons Improvise." And that's what I decide to do.

I find out there is a way to upgrade your Original Xbox, and even your Playstation 2, to Component Compatible cables. You can also make both consoles and the Xbox 360 HD Port compatible, but those ports are being used by other consoles right now so, that's not a viable option at the moment. The point is, I can make all three of these older consoles work with my flatscreen. All I need to do is get some compatible cables for them and I find plenty online for decent prices.

The next step is a decent switch box, and thankfully there are a ton I can use. I'm hopeful it will be more successful this go around at least, the last time I tried something like this the HDMI switcher wasn't compatible with either of my Nintendo Mini Consoles. This one is more analog though and its dealing with component cables, so no digital screw ups. It's also a bit more high end than that one was, so I was more confident it would work especially after checking reviews for the thing.

I pass the time waiting for the items to arrive playing the one Xbox Game that doesn't seem to be affected by the blue screen issue that requires me to unplug and replug the Yellow Video Input from the green component outlet.

"Heroes of the Pacific" is one of many World War 2 Air Combat games that exist in the ether. It is... average in many respects. It hosts a decent list of planes, but its mechanics aren't the best and frankly "Secret Weapons Over Normandy", which released two years prior, is superior to it in everyway. From the gaming mechanics, the upgrade system for the planes, the plethora of aircraft you can pick and especially the voice acting. HotP has some of the most phoned in voice acting ever, let me tell you. But its at least functional and I managed to beat all of its levels on the highest difficulty setting while playing the thing again. So I feel like I've more than proven my capability in powering through a frankly just okay by even its era's standards.

Once my items arrived, I hooked everything up, switching out cords and fixing up the various systems, a lot of tedious stuff frankly. The end result was excellent though. The switch box worked perfectly. No blue screen when starting up games, no black and white picture, no loss of sound, all the problems I encountered just trying to get the various wires and outputs to work with each other were gone. And now, all my older consoles were hooked up to the same component connection. Everything seemed good to go.

I am now only waiting on one thing, my replacement copy of MechAssault. Which is not as hard to come across as I fear it will be. Sure, it's not on Amazon at a decent price or at all like I hoped... but it is on EBay, in a Platinum case in fact. I'm wary though, I haven't used EBay in a long time. I tried selling stuff there and rarely got any takers. And you're mostly dealing with third party people miles away and not directly with the company itself. It can be a crapshoot. However, I have little choice.

The MechAssault game does arrive though, a little later than I hoped it would, but it does show up and it does work, confirming that my console wasn't at fault. However, this experience sorta sparked something in my mind. I replaced my damaged copy of a game I loved relatively easily and for less than what most games cost today. And in the time waiting for the new copy to come, I was looking more and more into the Original Xbox's library, remembering a bunch of games I had used to play but only ever rented, if at all.

And I thought to myself, why don't I have these games? A lot of them I either enjoyed or were up my alley! Was I still so caught up on renting back in the day I didn't consider just... owning the damn thing?

It wouldn't be the first time I bought an older game for the Original Xbox online long after they stopped making them. In response to my revulsion at what had been done to the Wolfenstein games by Bethesda, destroying the lore of the series and ruining the character of the greatest Nazi-Killing Hero that ever lived, BJ Blakowicz, I had wanted to replay my favorite game of the series, Return to Castle Wolfenstein. But my desktop had given up the ghost and and my laptop is not suitable for gaming off of steam. So I looked to find the console port of the same game and realized it worked on the Xbox 360! Awesome! I could play my favorite game again!

I never considered I could probably find more old games that I loved. I had recently gotten "The Simpsons Game" for the Xbox 360 on Amazon, but the prices on EBay tend to be little less harmful to my wallet. So... why not fill out my library a little while I'm at all this? Watching a bunch of old commercials for the Xbox's life cycle of games sorta convinced me to at least give it a shot. So I started to assemble a list of games I was interested in reconnecting with. A project I called "Rebuilding the Library" concerning all the old games that I felt were missing.

Target Rich Environment

The thing about EBay is that you can find almost anything you want... and that's the problem sometimes. You really have to sort out which things are worth going after in the end and which, honestly are just wastes of your time. Not to mention some thing might not be what you're after and you should really pay attention to what the descriptions and titles say.

Let's just say that a lot of people were selling game cases without the games inside them. Or they were just selling manuals, or they were just selling the game sans all of that. You'd think that last one means you're getting a bargain, nope. Sometimes they can cost just as much as a complete in box entry, at least when you factor in shipping.

That's also what kept me off EBay so much. The sellers can sometimes SEEM like they're giving you a great deal, but their shipping costs can run into insane amounts. I find it hard to believe at times that shipping can honestly cost more than the game you're shipping itself.

Let's be fair, a lot of these people aren't Amazon, they don't have the option to ship for low prices and still make a profit. I just sometimes wonder about the justification for the shipping prices at times. Especially if they offer little benefits for how much they're asking.

Which, I sometimes ended up ignoring through my own ignorance which might have made some of these headaches a little less of one. A number of the sellers offer tracking for your items if you pay more in shipping. I did not see this on my first go around with a lot of these. So I was kinda left in the lurch for a number of them just hoping they'd show up. Most of them did. I probably could've avoided one of problems I encountered had I been more thoughtful about tracking.

I don't think I would've paid more for tracking for most of the items in the end though. I might have just decided to go to Amazon if that was the case as they tend to provide tracking when one of the third-party sellers leaves the shipping up to one of their resource centers. EBay is for when you're trying to get a decent enough bargain after all. That's the whole point of the auction system, which I wasn't using for this to be clear.

I decided early on to not get anything outside of Canada if I could help it. By the end of things I think I ordered something every single province. So I can definitively say my collection is the accumulation of every corner of the Great White North.

However, I quickly decided to be picky about which games I ultimately got. There were some I intended to get from the outset, but others I eventually decided weren't worth the expenditure. These usually fell into a few categories that got them excluded.

First: Too Expensive, at least two of these games were simply asking too much even for me and I found them ultimately in a cheap capacity on steam. As much as I would've wanted to have "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" on Xbox, I was able to get it for dirt cheap on steam and it probably works better there anyway. The other is... well it's a bit more adult I think and I don't think I just want that hanging out in the open. Besides the PC version isn't censored.

Second: I already have it on Playstation 2, this is redundant. That's what got Scarface kicked off the list. While I was okay with getting a game I already had on the computer, getting it for a console that, as I explained, I now had access to again as a result of my other purchases, seemed completely pointless. The same was true of another game that I do have for the PC that is simply not good enough on the console anyway.

Third: They're just not well reviewed or interesting. That's what got Predator: Concrete Jungle kicked at least. As much as I love the idea of playing the Predator in any aspect, I remembered too much of not being impressed with the game to buy into it this go around. It also was too expensive. Shadow Ops: Red Mercury just ended up feeling too mediocre to bother with.

Fourth: It belonged to a Genre I wasn't into. Every sport game got knocked off the list more or less as a result. Even the iconic DOA Volleyball game. If I want softcore porn of those characters, I have the internet. I can get that for free.

Fifth: They're available on Xbox's digital store front and there's no sense in wasting money on something I can probably get for cheap and with easier access to later one.

In the end I was looking mainly for inexpensive titles that were iconic, had cult acclaim, I had played before but did not own or at least seemed interesting to me regardless of anything else. Now there was an ultimate to exception to this basic rule of thumb concerning price, but that was only because it was apparent after a while I had no choice. A few of them also came from Amazon when I found them at a more affordable price.

In any case, with my reasoning for what didn't end up in getting picked up I think it's time to get to the point of all this. Keep in mind, a lot of these are of the shooter variety, but they're not all the as atypical as you might think. And even still, I like to think I got a wide range of titles all the same. So let us take a look.

The Haul

Yeah, it's a fair amount. 27 titles, maybe that sounds like a lot, but I got some of these for a bit of a steal honestly. A good number of these have always been on my radar in one form or another. It's just I finally got around to reacquiring them. If you want call some of these impulse buys, I won't dispute it, but they are more or less games I felt I missed or had missed out on. Each of them is a little piece of the history of the Xbox and Gaming overall. So, let's look over them in no particular order.

"Whacked!" was one of two games on my list from the start. One of the first games Xbox used to promote the Live Service. A party game centered around a twisted cartoon world's game show with contestants who centered their personalities around the seven deadly sins. The game is probably most known for Lucy, the lovely lady in blue on the cover who runs around most of the game naked save for censorship bars over her private bits. Yeah she's not in that outfit you see for very long.

Oddly enough though I didn't pick her as my main, my favorite character is a little off to her lower right, Eugene, the green penguin/duck with the goggles and trapper hat. He's a Canadian, he's my favorite color and he's a total nerd. It's like he was made for me. He also represents the Sin of Envy, constantly coveting what others have and secretly hating those who belittle him. Hmm, perhaps I should reconsider why I feel he's so relatable then.

As you can see in this audition tape that doubled as one of the game's trailers, this game relies heavily on madcap Looney Tunes humor. It's emphasized in a ton of the commercials that would play between rounds of the game show as well as other cutscenes where the characters interact. Whacked!'s gameplay isn't terrible though, it's rather varied from simple death matches to collecting stars, king of the hill and even dodgeball. However, it wasn't well advertised. I only probably ran into it because stuff like this was what I was drawn to. The concept of a Looney Tunes-like world that was centered towards older audiences just intrigued me... oh yeah and Lucy was hot so that's probably what got me to at least rent it out. But I actually enjoyed the humor and the game enough to keep playing it back in the day. It's still popular enough in some circles and it's even backwards compatible with the 360, but it's still a cult hit.

This was the second game that got on my radar. Bloodwake is boat combat based action title. Similar to something like Twisted Metal, but on the water and there's a more involved storyline besides a demolition derby of death. You play as a pirate in a South China Sea-like setting where you are trying to get revenge on the man who sunk your previous ship. No spoilers, but it's your brother because that's how these games go. I played this way back in the day as it was part of the second wave of titles released post the Xbox's launch. It was different and fun to play. I guess it just didn't get the numbers needed for a sequel, if any were planned. But the game showed the power of the Xbox for the time as its water effects were a standout in the graphical department. I got this because it was one of the best early experiences I had with the Xbox that wasn't centered around Halo.

It's a racing game, I'm not big on racing games. I didn't get it for the cars. Hell I didn't even really want this game in general. But I had no choice. I had to get this game in order to buy...

Jet Set Radio Future, in a era where Skateboarding was king on video game consoles, this game dared to focus on rollerblading... and graffiti... and jamming tunes! While I am not the best at extreme sports games, I had enough good memories of briefly playing the demo and a big enough desire to own this damn thing at last that I decided to finally fork in. I would've gotten it on Xbox 360's marketplace... if it hadn't technically been delisted from there. Actually, I think it was the original title anyway, not this game which is its sequel. So... yeah, it is what it is. Hopefully this game isn't too different from some other extreme sports games I played back in the day, but at least now I own it so if the itch to commit vandalism against corporate cops and their tanks hits me, it's right there.

Grand Theft Auto's original console outings always had a problem for me in one area, targeting. I could never make its lock-on system feel comfortable back in the day. When IV came out with a more traditional aiming system, it was far easier to get into. I think, however, I will be able to better adjust this go around. The real reason I got this double pack though is simple enough. Yes, I could get the remaster. Yes they've probably fixed it since its terrible launch. I don't care though, they took out some songs and I want the full V-Rock list when I'm riding around Vice City, plain and simple. Of course this brings us to a bit of a detour.

Well I can't just get these two games and not pick up San Andreas! That makes no sense. I could've gotten the Original Xbox version as well and even played it on my Xbox One. But it just would've downloaded the 360 version anyway from what I hear. So, this is cutting out the middle man in my eyes. Either way, no cuts to the radio's choice of songs. That's alright with me.

These two are the most expensive games on the list by far. Godzilla's fighting games were some of the best kaiju brawling one could find on any console. Destroy All Monsters Melee actually is from the states as I could not find it being sold in Canada anywhere. This thing is just that expensive and that coveted. The box is damaged so that's probably why they cut down the price just a little. As a major Godzilla fan, I was determined to finally own these and given I was already spending a good deal by this point, I just stopped caring and gave in. Whatever. I can finally beat down Gigan as Rodan, that's a win in my book.

By the by, did you know that ATARI logo is sort of a lie? Infrogrames bought the Atari license back in the day. Then they changed their name to Atari! They're still in business today even. But these games have been out of print forever, explaining their high price tag. There's just not many people willing to sell them at this point.

I probably could've gotten the sorta remake/sequel for the 360, two games for the price of one, but everyone only cares about Butcher Bay anyway. Starring Vin Diesel himself as everyone's favorite see in the dark career criminal, Riddick has to escape the absolute worst prison in existence. Playing this game was an experience back in the day in brutality. First person melee fighting is always tricky to pull off, but this game accomplished it. It also helped that it was fairly competent stealth game. I just generally like sneaking up on people neck snap them.

My connection with the game runs deeper than my initial playthrough. You see, the people who made Butcher Bay, some of them went on to found another studio entirely. The studio that made the terrible Wolfenstein reboots. In fact, I recognized their handiwork in the Concentration Camp level. To the point I felt like the game was less Wolfenstein and more just a reskin of this game. Down to the overly flowerly in-game narration. Which is fine for Riddick, just not for Blazkowicz. I think that's why I got the game, to remind myself of when I didn't have bad memories of this sort of playstyle.

I have a lot of 007 games. I just really like me some fun spy action and no one does it better than Bond in my opinion. From Russia With Love was the game that harkened back to classic era of the franchise, with Sean Connery himself! The game even has a jetpack to fly around in! None of the newer games gave you a jetpack! This one had been in my Amazon Wishlist for a while, I just finally decided I had an excuse to get it.

Another Rockstar game, but based on a cult classic film this time. I could've sworn I had this for the Playstation, but it's not on there in any of my memory cards. I might have deleted it or maybe I only ever rented it. I don't know, I could just be mistaken. This one caused me some trouble getting though. The first buyer from Amazon gave me the entirely wrong game! I had to return it to get my money back, which was a pain in the ass to do because of a garbage ass courier service. However, I think it worked it out. This copy came from a nice person off EBay who was trying to pay off some vet bills. That kinda made me happy to know I had helped someone out in the end.

I have the Evil Dead game for modern consoles, but I've always wanted/preferred the single player experience. These two games are highly different from each other in play style, but all I knew was that I wanted to finally play as Ash and kill Deadites without having to do it with other people. As a major fan of the Evil Dead franchise, I couldn't ignore these titles anymore than the Godzilla ones at the end of the day.

This was Free Radical's other less successful game IP besides Timesplitters. Second Sight had you play as amnesiac who wakes up in a research center of some kind with a lot of people want to kill him and psychic powers as his only real defense. It's not their typical run and gun shooter you expect from Free Radical, it's certainly more original. Sadly the game didn't sell well, shame too. You know there was a short period of time when psychic powers were all the rage in gaming mechanics. It looked like it would be the next big thing too.

Now this was a creepy as hell game. You play as a prisoner on death row who unfortunately arrives on the day a hellmouth just opens up under the prison. There's all these crazy cool monsters that are based off of various executions and ways people can die in prison. And there's a morality system that determines what ending you get that reveals how guilty you actually are. It was an awesomely scary game and I'm glad to own it again.

I have a huge affinity towards the Weird West subgenre. Just something about the mix of setting and tropes associated with it works wonders. And getting to fight vampires and other monsters in the wild west is a friggin awesome concept they should honestly do more of. I have no idea why I missed out on playing this game when I enjoyed the demo well enough. Especially knowing this was the start of High Moon Studios, the guys who made my favorite Transformers games. Although hearing it from them, that was sorta the problem. No one wanted to invest in Darkwatch, even after it reviewed well and sold decently. Before you knew it, Activision buys up High Moon, forces them to work on franchise only IPs, the original founders leave and soon after they produce Deadpool, they're all shoved into the CoD mines! Honestly, I'm noticing a pattern with a lot of these games at this point, are you?

Brute Force is a squad-based shooter where you can switch between four characters with unique abilities that are suitable for a variety of encounters and enemies you run into while playing. But the truth is, I played it because it had a crocodile man and I wanted to play as the crocodile man and that's really all that anyone cared about in the end I think. It has a crocodile man.

Mace Griffin is an ex-Space Ranger who was framed for a crime he didn't commit, was dishonorably discharged, imprisoned and when he came out all he could do was find Bounty Hunting work. The game is all about you clearing his name. For me I just felt it was cheap enough to get and, well, I like bounty hunter games. It's a cool enough concept to overcome some average scores. I think it will be fun enough for me at the very least.

I remember when conspiracy theory nonsense was just that, nonsense. Alien abductions and Area 51 used to be quaint little silly things to use in sci-fi. Now conspiracy nuts are considerably more racist and insanely dangerous. Maybe they always were. Area 51 was another of Midway's arcade games they translated to consoles. It used to be a lightgun on-rails shooter about aliens attacking the infamous secret military base. Now it's an FPS about that, but starring David Duchovny. That's right, Fox Mulder himself! I've never been into alien conspiracy garbage, but at least not I can laugh at the concept of Mulder fighting aliens on a fake Moon soundstage. Oh don't worry, we still went to the moon, but what we found there was too terrifying for any human eyes to see so we just faked the broadcast instead. OOOOOoOOOooHhhhhH! Spooky! See? It's dumb but at least it's not bigoted!

I have the two other games in the series, I bought this for completionism sake. We never got to see the end of this series, the proper end, with Bastogne and heading into Germany and all that. Instead Gearbox dumped all their money into Borderlands, left Aliens out to dry and impotently tried to save Duke Nukem. Thanks Randy. Thanks a ton. Oh well, at least now I have every entry in a once promising franchise.

The top-down squad-based strategic stealth game for PCs, becomes the action-stealth FPS game for consoles. I'll sum up why I have this succinctly enough. I enjoy taking down Fascists in video games, simple as that. Let me shoot at Nazis and I'm golden more or less. Not all the time, you need to at least make it fun and good, but killing Nazis is a good baseline.

I actually have this for the PC, but again my Desktop died so this is basically once again trying to play the game again more easily. I know people have a lot of thoughts about depicting this historical event, but for me I just try to view it as game depicting said historical event. No more, no less. It's best not to try and take your politics from video games. Especially when they don't have the time to examine all the complex context surrounding the mission gone wrong in question.

Speaking of controversial sources, Tom Clancy! Look, the guy wrote books to appease a very certain demographic, everyone right of center specifically, but there's no deny that his game studio didn't put out great hits. The Ghost Recon series is one of those and collecting the entire series as it started on consoles was a major goal for me as I've been a fan of the series for a long time. You have your standard locales for our titular Special Forces to visit, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Kazakhstan, all the good hotspots for bad guys wanting to destroy America. If you want an action thriller movie to play around in, Ghost Recon is always your go to. And with these guys, I now basically have them all.

On the other side of the spectrum, Rainbow Six 3. Ghost Recon deals with special operations behind enemy lines. Rainbow is all about reactive counter-terrorism in mostly urban environments and indoors. Where things are more tense, closer and personal. They're very good tactical squad-based games. I've never been into Rainbow Six as much as Ghost Recon, but it's one of the central pillars of the Tom Clancy gaming library, next to Splinter Cell as the third column. So yeah, I picked it up because I already have all the Splinter Cells for the Xbox, might as well not leave Rainbow out of things.

Retro-active Final Thoughts

This all started because I just wanted to play one game, but then I guess I realized I wanted to play a lot of games. Games I had missed out on or just plain missed. I haven't had my Original Xbox hooked up in years and I guess prospect of being able to more regularly play it now just hit me hard enough to shake loose whatever else was holding me back from collecting these old favorites and curiosities.

The Xbox in general has been a huge part of my life and I suppose this journey was about making my library of games feel more whole. And the best part is, it's not really over. I still have to play through all these at some point and the prospect of that is exciting all the same. I know it's nostalgia fueled, but I did learn a lot about these games and the console as I looked them up. There was a lot of variety on the old Xbox. Even within a single genre. It's hard to look back to that moment of time and then to now when gaming feels so... different.

I'm not sure if this little expose has truly been as interesting or worthwhile to write as I believe it is. But I'm happy I got my thoughts down on it. And I do hope that, maybe like it did for me, it brought back some memories for you. I don't know if all of these games will hold up as well as I want them too, but it just feels nice to look forward to playing these games again all the same. And I enjoyed hunting for them, even if some aspects of it were frustrating.

Well, that's all for now. Next time I'll probably have something more substantial for you all. Until then, keep on gaming. Whatever console your passion is, I hope it's bringing you hours of fun. Who knows, maybe one day you'll step back into it like I have and discover some things you didn't know you were looking for.

#xbox #video games #retro gaming #collection #nostalgia

[rjmhereunderprotest]

This is why I came to dislike Gwenpool being turned into a mutant. She was easily ignored by everyone in charge of the X-Office and Marvel itself. There are just too many mutants, too many big names, too many characters both A-list and cult favorites to ever truly focus on all of them! Gwenpool as a result has gotten lost in the crowd, literally, as her biggest X-Books appearances have ALL been cameos or background shots. It was just easier to force her into limbo by making her a mutant. "We didn't kill her off or get rid of her," Marvel can say. "She's just a mutant now! And we got plenty of popular mutants, so we don't have to use her."

Now Kamala is facing the same problem, the same threat of being lost in the crowd and forgotten. Once everyone has absorbed the initial mutant shock, she'll fade into the background amid the mass of mutants that the X-Stans care more about than her anyway. They only wanted Kamala initially because they hated the Inhumans and wanted to claim her. Now the Inhumans are all but extinct in the Marvel Universe, and no one is rushing to save them it seems.

At the very least, Kamala will have company with Gwen when she's shuffled into the background as just another mutant among their multitudes. They can share FanFics off-panel, at least until someone comes to their senses and retcons all of this stupid crap. Maybe they finally get the team-up book they deserve.

Hey, I have to have some kind of positive outlook here!

One of the many things that suck about Kamala becoming a mutant is the fact that I don't really trust most of the current regime of writers doing X books right now to write Kamala well. Though it doesn't matter who writes her cause once she's a mutant and the whole resurrection thing is done she'll get maybe 6 months to a year of focus as the hot new mutant in the club before Marvel goes back to focusing on the A list mutants they always focus on and Kamala goes back to being given nothing and this whole death/resurrection just to anger fans is just going to look even worse than it already does

#kamala khan #ms. marvel #gwenpool #gwen poole #gwendolyn poole #marvel #marvel comics #marvel mutants #x-men #this is a terrible idea #Zeb Wells and Nick Lowe are hacks!

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Danny Chase is Still Dead: Why You Should Care That Death in Comics Doesn't Matter

Recent events have forced me to break my attempt at positivity for the moment to address something to a number of you. Specifically, the people who are using this line to try and soften/deride people's outrage over the leaks that have revealed the death of Ms. Marvel in a book that isn't even her own.

"It's Comic Books, she'll be back in six months to a year."

Yeah... shut up, that's exactly the fucking problem and also not the fucking point.

Death in comics being a revolving door is not a reason to calm down on one's outrage. Because it's the exact fucking problem plaguing comics. A symptom of a wider issue infecting the industry: Apathy. A lack of care. And when you use that line it's you saying "Stop caring about this, it's just a dumb disposable story." And in a world where comics struggle to sell, that's the worst message you can send. And it encourages the comic companies to keep doing this.

Death not mattering in a story is the single biggest death knell to any serious writing endeavor. Because if there are no consequences then none of this matters. If the story does not matter, there's no reason to be invested in it. The story dies because no one cares enough about it. Because the characters within become nothing more than chess pieces to move about the board and sacrifice when need be. There's no attachment, no emotion, no thought, no care, no reason. Just kill them. Kill them and do it so willy-nilly that people just shrug and don't even bother.

And when someone actually shows they care, who is outraged, who is invested, because they love comics, telling them "It will be fixed later" does NOTHING to solve the problem. It actively says you agree with the reasoning behind it, that none of these characters matter. That their stories don't matter. And that the companies in charge of both are given carte blanche to continue marching along in their abject apathetic corporate bullshit.

Death in comics is NOT a right of passage for characters, it is a desperate lazy method of trying to generate interest because you are creatively bankrupt. It has been that way for a very, very long time since Superman was killed off for no other reason than they had to delay their big marriage to Lois Lane storyline a full year because of a TV Show.

That's real! That's the truth! That's the reason "Death of Superman" exists. That's the reason we got stuck with Doomsday in the third act of BvS! Because "Lois and Clark" was on TV and they wanted to wait to do their big marriage issue to line up with the episode they got married in. They may have worked emotion into it, they may have tried to make it meaningful. Doesn't matter, it was done purely for corporate reasons.

And it's still ten times worse with Kamala Khan now. It is a bold-faced cynical attempt by a writer to boost sales in their much-maligned book. Using a character that has had 12 pages worth of appearances in 25 issues! Meaning, she probably was only put into the book to set up her death and they didn't even bother to properly utilize her.

Not to mention how clearly racist and misogynistic it is. Kill your prominent Muslim Women character of South Asian descent, at the end of AAPI Month, to forward the story of Peter Parker by giving him more fucking angst over a character he barely interacts with at all! She doesn't even get to headlight her death in her own fucking book, she gets killed in some other character's story she wasn't even involved in! At least if she died in Captain Marvel it would've fucking mattered because Carol has been on several adventures with Kamala at this point and is deeply protective of her! Even then it would still be shit, but not this level of shit!

It's degrading, to both the character and her fans. And it is such a plainly obvious attempt at creating MCU Synergy that no fan wants! No one wants her to be resurrected as a Mutant with those dumb energy powers! That is the one thing about MCU Kamala that everyone pretty much agrees is stupid. And frankly, it's kinda making me hate Krakoa more because forcing every character to become a mutant is not really helping anyone, it's only oversaturating the goddamn line that is already bloated with too many teenagers that most people can't keep track of anyway.

This is why people don't like this move, not because they think it's forever, but because it is so callously cynically meaningless! Because it is being done for lazy, creatively bankrupt reasons! Because it shows how little Marvel cares anymore! Pardon me for saying this, but this exact thing is why I have been disappointed with how Marvel has treated Gwenpool and why I've been so critical of their usage of her. And now, this apathy is infecting Ms. Marvel. Friding her without any semblance of thought for the sole purpose of corporate brand synergy and shock value collectors' sales boosts!

It's disgusting. And giving into this mentality of "She'll be back soon" does nothing but embolden this attitude. It encourages Marvel and other companies to continue being apathetic and treat characters as disposable. How long before they decide to kill off Miles Morales super casually? Or Moon Girl? Or America Chavez? Or Kate Bishop? Or, my greatest fear, Gwenpool? Fridge them for no good reason and declare retroactively that you were doing them a favor by making people miss them. An absolutely disgusting mindset that I am frankly appalled by.

And before you say anything in an attempt to placate me with the usual line "Well they'll still come back anyway, at least there's that." And that's why I decided to title this post the way I did. Echoing Lewis Lovhaug's own statement about death in comics and why he hates it when it is done so flippantly and without purpose.

Danny Chase is Still Dead.

Danny Chase was a member of the Teen Titans, he was an abrasive character that got on a lot of fans' nerves for being just what he was. A snot-nosed, arrogant little brat with superpowers who was a total asshole. The Quentin Quire of DC of his Time. He died to save Raven's home world Azarath. And despite some brief appearances as an undead zombie here and there he has remained dead. Why? Because people didn't like him alive... and no one cares enough to want to bring him back.

Not every character returns from the grave in comics. Gwen Stacey, the original one, remains dead. The original Captain Marvel remains dead. And a lot of ancillary secondary-tier characters do not get to return either. Kamala Khan has a good chance of coming back to life, but how good are your favorite hero's chances? Especially the lesser valued ones within the big two? Why? Because they don't care. And they don't care because we've stopped caring. Because they've gotten lazy and complacent and they've decided this is an easy method of doing business. It promotes sexist tropes, it promotes bad writing and it promotes a lack of creativity. Allowing to persist helps no one.

Do not buy ASM #26. Do not buy anything written by Nick Lowe or Zeb Wells. They've shown they don't care and we'd be better off telling them that we don't care for their apathy. Don't send death threats, and don't wish them ill. Don't harass or bully or dox or stalk. Be angry, be critical, tell them off for their behavior and lack of talent. But do not give them reasons to dismiss you by threatening them. And hit them where it actually hurts; their wallets. Show Marvel that you're not going to keep letting this go on. I know any compulsion I had to own any copies of the Spider-Man run where Felicia and Peter are canon has just been completely demolished. I have no interest in single or collected issues of this... thing anymore.

The fact is, Death being a revolving door is the problem with comics. We shouldn't dismiss it as just a thing, because it's bad storytelling. And Kamala Khan deserves better than this utter travesty of a situation. To be killed off so Peter Parker's man-pain can be justified. And then promptly forgotten, as he fights Doctor Octopus the very next month. To be murdered just so as to be brought back as another dime-a-dozen mutant with lame powers to promote a movie, that will probably be hurt by this story more than helped. To be fridged with the most sexist of tropes, in the most racist of ways, just for corporate brand synergy and to boost the sales of a badly written story no one even likes to begin with.

You can probably say I'm just angry because I sorta defended Zeb Wells recently and feel betrayed. Well, to be honest, I wasn't defending Wells, I was defending the ship his poor writing was damaging in the crossfire. SpiderCat wasn't worth throwing MJ under the bus and it most certainly isn't worth the death of a beloved comic book character that had no business being there.

This run will not be remembered fondly, Nick Lowe's tenure as editor of the Spider-Man books won't be remembered fondly, and Zeb Wells as its chief writer will not be remembered fondly. Their apathy and lack of care will stain their reputations forever as a result.

Anyway, hopefully, next time I'll have less negative things to say talking about something I actually like instead of hate. Bye for now.

#ms marvel #kamala khan #marvel #comics #spider-man #bad writing #fridging #Death in Comics #Danny Chase #dc comics

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Addendum for my SpiderCat stuff In Lieu of Recent Events

I'm still a SpiderCat Shipper, still glad they're canon for now. Not at all happy in the slightest about what is apparently going to happen in the near future in the main Spidey Book. Really, actually, kinda horribly angry. For a number of reasons, not just the obvious ones. I'm just... really enraged. Really fucking angry right now that Marvel is pulling this shit and that Zeb Wells is responsible for this. I'm never buying a book in this run so long as he's on Spider-Man. I don't care how steamy the SpiderCat stuff gets... this is appalling. Absolutely fucking disgusting that they can do this so casually for such absolutely fucking awful reasons. I am absolutely fucking incensed by this, I really fucking am.

This changes nothing about my overall opinions, I already said I felt Wells wasn't doing a good job executing SpiderCat as canon because it was at MJ's expense. But now... fucking now he's done worse than write badly, he's written abysmally. He's locked onto the worst of tropes on several fucking bullshit signals and it's not even entirely his idea because this reeks of fucking corporate mandate! I am absolutely fucking enraged at that simple reality!

If you don't know what's going on, just take a look around here or the web at large concerning leaks and spoilers for the upcoming "The Amazing Spider-Man #26", this is going to go down as the worst Spider-Man issue in fucking years. I do not even think that the book will recover from this. And I suspect, Zeb Wells will not be at any conventions for the remainder of his tenure on the book. Possibly even beyond that. And it isn't even all his fault, but he's played a role and he's as guilty as Marvel is in pulling this crap for the frankly worst of bullshit corporate reasons utilizing the worst of fucking tropes to basically RUIN a character entirely just to match stupid shit in an upcoming movie that no one there agrees with either. No one wants that in the comics, we were angry about the possibility of that happening! And you're making it happen for the dumbest of fucking reasons!

So yeah, still love SpiderCat, still like that they're together... I now hate this run like everyone else does. So... don't ask me about it, it's the last thing I need right now. I'm just going to write a bunch of fanfiction right now... because I really, REALLY am disappointed with Marvel on a whole other level for their lack of fucking care.

#Marvel #zeb wells #Spider-Man #Black Cat #SpiderCat #Kamala Khan #Ms Marvel #Fridging #Brand Synergy #Corporate Bullshit

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Evergreen Evermore

"Sometimes you do get everything you want." Beast Boy says in the opening issue of the "Technis Imperative." A miniseries advertising a fight between the Teen Titans and Justice League, was actually a story reaffirming that the Titans overall are a family. A found family of friends united in the cause of heroism. If there were ever two characters who best emphasized this element of their mythos, it's been Garfield Logan and Raven.

Beast Boy came from a broken family of fellow freaks that even he couldn't find a place in. Raven escaped a destiny thrust on her by an abusive father. And through the Titans they found their true selves, where they belonged among friends and, eventually, found each other.

Beast Boy and Raven are the most popular Teen Titans ship out there. They didn't start out that way, they didn't always love each other, but in the past few decades, that's changed real fast. These two characters found the most unlikely of romances with another, against every sort of odd placed against them. From rival ships to shifting writing teams, but now they're as cemented as Gambit and Rogue or Lois and Clark. And as a person who has been with them since the ship truly took off, it's been a journey. And want you to join me on looking back on it. This is how, if you wait long enough, sometimes... you can get everything you ever wanted.

Origins

Beast Boy and Raven met when Raven first formed the New Teen Titans, the seminal George Perez & Marv Wolfman run that kicked off the golden era/standard of the Teen Titans. Raven formed the Teen Titans to defeat her father, the Demon Lord Trigon. Through a harrowing series of events, battling the evil Hive, facing down Deathstroke, recovering from the betrayal of Terra, the Titans eventually triumphed against Raven's father.

It was a tumultuous period for the team, but for Raven and Beast Boy, it was more about personal affirmation and growth within themselves. There's very little to go on concerning romantic entanglements between the two. The most one can glean is Raven's distrust of Terra as possible jealousy, but that's a stretch. Raven was not ready for such a relationship, she fear her own emotions too much to commit to anyone. Garfield mostly tried to pester her to give in to those emotions, but he could come off as an annoying little brother more often than not.

What's important here is establishing what both were going through at the time. For Beast Boy, it was mostly about becoming comfortable in his own skin around others. For a very long time, his class clown routine was hiding a very sensitive kid, one that tried to keep himself guarded with humor. Gar was very prone to emotional reactions more than anyone as a result. It was why Terra's betrayal in "Judas Contract" hurt him so much, he truly did love her and she felt nothing for him, less than nothing, she secretly hated him.

And yet she has a statue in their hall of fame despite being a psychotic murdering monster, go figure.

Raven, however, was very guarded in that she didn't show anything. Garfield wore his heart on his sleeve, Raven kept it locked up tight, fearing what it do to those around her if she let it loose. When Raven was free of her father's influence, becoming Raven the White as I call her, she tried desperately to engage with those emotions for the first time but was clearly confused about how to react to all of them. For a time she believed she was in love with Dick Grayson, Nightwing, but she was confusing her platonic affection for a friend with romance, which she had felt before now. Raven's struggle has always been trying to connect to those emotions, trying to properly understand them for herself as much as she can for others, being an Empath. So at the time, she was not fully formed into her own sense of self, only being able to explore so late in life.

At this stage, as said before, you can only mostly see Raven and Beast Boy as siblings. However they are not devoid of connection to each other. Raven remained close with all the Titans and relied on Garfield as much as anyone, entrusting him in fact with a part of her soul self during another bout of the Evil Influence of her Daddy. However, the Wolfman/Perez era ends with Beast Boy and Raven as merely that, friends and subsequent eras saw Raven either separated from her body entirely or Beast Boy not on the Teen Titans proper anyway.

And not many people gave it a second thought honestly. Raven wasn't looking for love, Beast Boy was hung up on Terra, she was a bit older than him, he was an immature kid. The Goth and Class Clown, that's all they were in the Teen Titans' little Breakfast Club.

What changed?

Everything.

The Spark Ignites

The Teen Titans cartoon of the early 2000s was where the ball really got rolling. With DC Animation on a roll, the decision to create an anime-influenced show aimed at younger kids to compliment their ongoing made-for-older kids fair, Teen Titans catapulted the team and the characters into an entirely new era. And with it came new dynamics between everyone, Beast Boy and Raven included.

Raven became less shut off, embracing the sarcastic goth element of her archetype. Beast Boy became even more of a comic relief character, emphasizing his funny quirks and silly attitude even greater than the comics had. Raven was, of course, the greatest departure, her powers being upgraded and her relationship with the other members of the team being more reserved, closed off and restrained. Episodes around her focused on her coming out of her shell and interacting, getting to know her new friends, and accepting her emotions. Beast Boy's were generally more comedic outings, suiting his voice actor, Greg Cipes, comedic sensibilities. Not to say he didn't get serious episodes, he did, plenty. But the emphasis on both characters was obvious, they were directly opposed opposites more than ever.

And as a result they kept getting paired off, often in those episodes that allowed Beast Boy to act outside his comedic comfort zone. But outside of those, both characters became an eternal straight/funny man duo. And it was some of the best banter on the show.

Beast Boy seemed to make it his mission to make Raven crack a smile, to laugh at one of his jokes, to find him funny. Raven of course resisted, chastising his frankly childish behavior as just that. A silly distraction she couldn't afford. She could be scary at times in her responses to his antics and yet Beast Boy didn't give up, he kept trying to make a connection with her.

And this was where I came in.

Their interactions on the show were so much fun and so flirtatious coded I couldn't help but see them as romantic partners. And I sought out a community of like-minded individuals who felt the same on an online forum. There we shared our thoughts on the series, how the characters were evolving, and how much they seemed to truly care for each other even as they got on each other's nerves. And in time we sorta formed a little family of our own, as communities often do when they share common interests online. And we had a lot to be interested in because, throughout the years, Beast Boy and Raven always seemed like the highlight of any episode, even if wasn't about either of them.

To go over every moment of the series would get old fast and this would just become one of countless "proof of canon" lists. But I do feel there are specific episodes that helped cement Beast Boy and Raven as romantic interests, more so than others. "Nevermore" is one, where Beast Boy and Cyborg enter Raven's mind and discover just how guarded her emotional state is. Her emotions are in fact split into various personalities within her mindscape, compartmentalized to an extreme degree to keep them under control.

Beast Boy has felt routinely ignored and belittled by Raven since the show started and just can't seem to get her, thinking she just likes being mean to him. But that is far from the case. In fact, we learn from Happy Raven (Pictured above) that she actually DOES find Beast Boy funny. In fact, all of Raven's emotions reveal that she does actually value her friends and cares about their opinions of her, as Sad Raven seems to suggest. That she loves being a hero and saving lives, Brave Raven. But she keeps it all locked away for her own protection as well as others. A fight with Anger Raven, who has gone out of control, actually enables Beast Boy to not only reach a point of understanding with Raven but also allow her to realize she doesn't have to do all this self-care alone anymore. It's the first time both Raven and Beast Boy actually reach common ground and can confidently be viewed as friends.

"Spellbound" is a test for Raven in actually utilizing her emotions and exploring them, but realizing people can and will take advantage of her. She allows a mysterious magic user trapped in one of her books, Malchior, to teach her his knowledge. And while Raven grows happier and more accustomed to her emotions, she also starts growing apart from her friends, cutting them off more and more as she envelops herself in this new relationship. Only realizing when it's too late that Malchior is not only a Dark Magic user, but also not the wizard from the story. He's the dragon and Raven just accidentally freed him.

After the battle atop Titans Tower concludes with the miserable lying dragon locked away again, Beast Boy comes to check on Raven. He's actually been the most concerned about how she's been acting lately. And was a lot more concerned about Raven when Malchior escaped, than the others were initially.

Raven is still feeling hurt, but while the source of her change was bad, Beast Boy doesn't want her to shut down again. Yes, Raven is creepy, but that doesn't mean Beast Boy and the Titans want her to remain in her room locked away. Raven isn't as alone in things as she believes she is. And the Titans, Beast Boy in particular, are there for her. Raven exits her room and hugs Beast Boy in response. The moment is ruined by Cyborg's stankball, but Raven actually participates in the game she earlier derided in the episode. It's obviously a big moment for Raven, allowing her a chance to connect with Beast Boy and show affection and gratitude.

Raven returns the favor actually a few episodes later in "Beast Within", where Beast Boy's animal-shifting abilities suddenly become more feral when he is doused with a chemical. It makes him more violent and angry. Eventually, he turns into a werewolf creature of sorts. At first, it's feared he attacks Raven and kidnaps her, but that's not the case. A villain, Adonis, got doused with similar chemicals and became an identical-looking monster. Beast Boy defended Raven when he attacked the tower and her.

While things are cleared up, Beast Boy is clearly shaken about what was inside of him and how it came out. Raven, possibly recognizing that for once Beast Boy has more in common with her than she thought, tries to comfort him.

Reminding Beast Boy that while that thing is inside him, he controls it. More importantly, even as that monster he still protected her. Learning to control when to let it out is what makes Beast Boy a man, not a monster. He almost ruins the moment himself this time with a joke, but there's still a clear connection forged here. Beast Boy and Raven do understand one another better by this point. Moreso than ever.

That connection would be tested by more than just villains but also rivals of the ship itself. Terra's Introduction to the Series was a major roadblock for some. Unlike her comic counterpart, she was more sympathetic and likable and did not hate the Titans. Her apparent "death" being petrified always presented an out that she could return. Season 4 chose Robin to be Raven's anchor throughout the arc as she battled her demons at last in the face of Trigon's return. This was probably more because they used Slade to be Trigon's herald and Robin and him were archenemies more so than any other Titan. But the idea in many people's minds was that Robin and Raven were the theoretical endgame. Their platonic partnership reads as romantic to some.

This happens a lot honestly, people read things into moments and interactions than what is actually there. They see patterns and they recognize personal preferences. And it always leads to ship wars. BBRae vs RobRae was frankly bigger than BBT, although the latter was persistent and often times aligned with the former rival. It stayed that way for most of season 4 and even after. Frankly, it was somewhat annoying to see Robin seemingly taking over a storyline to a degree that should've been Raven's, just because his archenemy was suddenly the minion of the new one. Even weirder still was seeing a bunch of the build-up concerning Robin and Starfire's relationship put on hold for this season. All the while they tried to insist on this connection with Robin that, had largely, gone ignored until now in favor of bonding with Beast Boy.

However, it was obvious enough in hindsight that we probably had nothing to actually concern ourselves with. It was always going to be Robin and Starfire in the end, there was no doubt. They had invested too much in creating that romance subplot to just abandon it. In fact, sadly that was the actual problem for BBRae in the show, strangely enough. Every romantic possibility was secondary to RobStar in the eyes of the creative team. They didn't discourage other ships, but they didn't see the connections to the same degree others had. To them, Beast Boy and Raven were a sibling dynamic, despite the connection being far from platonic in many people's eyes. But no, Robin and Starfire were the primary romantic concern for the showrunners, they were the teen love story on the series and there was no room for a second.

As for Terra, her connection with Beast Boy was cut off entirely at the show's finale, "Things Change." Terra came back and she didn't seem to remember or want to remember her time with the Titans and Beast Boy didn't understand why she wouldn't. He kept trying to convince her to come back, but she was adamant, that wasn't her life anymore. It never would be. Beast Boy had to accept that, as the final lesson any teenager has to learn, growing up and accepting change. However, fans didn't appreciate the lesson, mostly we were just annoyed everything got cut off in a fade to white before the weird monster the Titans were fighting could be defeated.

It was frustrating, to say the least, to have to deal with the fallout of the finale. BBT shippers were resurgent for a few months, trying to fix things so Terra would be forced to return. One guy did not get the message and repeatedly kept writing stories to force things to go back to how he wanted them. He turned Beast Boy into a rip-off of a Paper Mario villain who almost destroyed reality because his Ex didn't want to get back with him. Yeah, strangely enough not many people found the depiction very sympathetic.

We had our laughs with it, but mostly I was just tired of it all. I wanted to focus on Beast Boy and Raven, but with Terra still around in the background, it always gave ammunition to the what-if scenario. That maybe she could come back.

However, the show was over, and that was beyond all of us now. We had to move forward and accept that. Thankfully, we had other content because while the TV Show's writers weren't interested in any other romance subplot but Starfire and Robin... the comics had started to come around.

Meanwhile, In Another Universe...

Geoff John's run on Teen Titans started around the same time the TV Show did and essentially recreated the same cast you saw there with a few introductions to the team from Young Justice, fresh off the appalling Graduation Day special that basically scuttled their book and the previous Teen Titans series. The run has its ups and downs, I'm not here to claim otherwise, but it is still highly regarded and loved. Especially among BBRae shippers, because it opened the door for them to be comics canon. And this is where our story REALLY begins.

John's first story was in fact about the resurrection of Raven into a new body, younger, more powerful, and in line with what was being planned out for the cartoon. The changes to her powerset and age were clearly an attempt at synergy, but the results were self-evident.

Beast Boy is actually among the first of the Titans to see Raven in her new body and as a result snaps her out of being ensnared by Brother Blood's control. She returns to her friends, the Titans, now truly reborn and free of her father's influence once and for all. While she remains guarded, dark, and goth as ever she isn't nearly as cut off from her emotions. And over the coming issues, it becomes pretty apparent she and Beast Boy were becoming much closer.

And then came issue 30 of the run and this page...

This shook every shipper in the fandom. Geoff Johns just made our ship canon, we honestly couldn't believe it. We felt like we were being listened to, specifically catered to. This was also around the time the show was ending, so the prospect that we could still continue... well it suddenly brought new life to things. From a creative staff on a show that didn't care to the comics suddenly confirming things, to say it was wild to be right there in the thick of it when it happened... it was a weird feeling.

We probably got a bit egotistical, thinking we had willed this into being by how popular the ship was on the show. Truth is Johns had already decided on this well in advance. Comic runs are planned out years ahead of publication. Johns has apparently stated he wanted a romance for young and old fans. Said young fans got Cassie Sandsmark, Wonder Girl, and Connor Kent, Superboy. As holdovers from Young Justice, the fans of which had migrated now to Teen Titans, it just made sense. And while Starfire was on the team, Dick Grayson was not, so Raven and Beast Boy became the natural fit. But at this point, a canon connection, a romantic one, had been established between the two.

However, there's further context to this story and it's not all happy. This page was taking place during a storyline that revealed the gates to the Afterlife had just been left open, allowing a lot of dead people to just come back. Raven and Beast Boy, after this kiss, manage to travel to the underworld and close it back up. Raven is somewhat guarded over the whole kiss thing, but it is confirmed they start up a romance. It is unfortunately not long-lived, because this storyline was the precursor to a much bigger event, Infinite Crisis, because Superboy Prime punching reality caused the door to crack open. Infinite Crisis was also written by Geoff Johns, and the events of that story would lead into One Year Later. That was a line-wide promotion where every comic book jumped one year into the future in-universe. And in that one year of time... Beast Boy and Raven broke up.

The reason took a while to be revealed, but essentially, Beast Boy's attempts at leading the Teen Titans put a strain on their relationship and sadly they ended things after a disastrous mission got a lot of Titans killed. Not Beast Boy's fault mind you, DC kills Teen Titans like it's going out of style. They were fighting Black Adam, it was inevitable.

For a good amount of time, Beast Boy and Raven were off the Titans and it was up in the air that their romance would ever continue considering it ended just as suddenly as it started.

Judd Winick took over a new Titans book a few years later, starring mostly the same team from the cartoon with some additions. But Beast Boy and Raven were back on the same team and that held promise for the couple. The opening storyline once again featured another plot by Trigon, or more accurately his spawn, to complete the apocalypse Raven wimped out on. Raven was understandably very disturbed by the prospect her Pops was back and Beast Boy was more than a little concerned. That storyline ended with her evil self once again being purged, but with Raven fearing her innate evilness could arise again. Beast Boy and Raven continued to interact heavily though. At one point, he even held her hair back while she was puking in a toilet. Only someone who really loves you is going to go that far for you, honestly.

Raven, however, seemed reluctant to return Beast Boy's advances, again because she feared what could happen if she allowed her emotions free reign. So it was the TV Show dynamic all over again but with a more overtly romantic tone. It was obvious Raven had unresolved feelings for Beast Boy, but was reluctant to actually give in to them. That was until issue 100 of "Teen Titans" proper though, when Raven finally confronts why she's been avoiding admitting her feelings for Gar.

A touching moment, the culmination of a whole run of comics dealing with Raven's emotional safeguards and Beast Boy trying to break through them. It took forever, but at last, they were back together. Just like we all wanted!

Too bad this was the final issue before Flashpoint happened and then the New 52 showed up! Because Dan Didio really, REALLY wanted to do that reboot and scuttle the whole damn project! So Flash almost destroys the world through time travel only to sorta save it by kinda fixing it, but actually creating a whole new continuity for everything! Thus, Erasing all this progress with Beast Boy and Raven practically overnight. You win some, you lose some. The two kissing in this final issue was basically a consolation prize. Here's your ship, losers, now enjoy our new gritty reboot! It was kind of a gut punch and the prospect of starting all over again did not feel good.

But there's a benefit to starting fresh... less baggage, a better understanding of what worked and what didn't. And while the writers and editorial weren't ready to go all in on them, Beast Boy and Raven wouldn't be kept apart forever. The question was, what would they become in this new world?

Back to Square One?

It took a long time for Beast Boy and Raven to actually find each other again in the New 52, which was frankly not a good time for any of the Titans. Starfire was written to be a sexual goldfish fantasy palling around with Jason Todd and a Trucker Hat-wearing Roy Harper. Rose Wilson had been outright reverted into a villain. The new Teen Titans team had none of the characters we were familiar with save for maybe Robin but he was Tim Drake, not Dick Grayson. And all of the teen heroes were wrapped up in the stupidity that was Harvest, a dumb-as-rocks villain with confusing motives and goals. It was a shit show that no Titans fan was into but was forced to watch.

As you can see, Garfield was now red, to tie him closer with "The Red" the mystic force counter to "The Green.' The latter controls all plant life whereas the former concerns animals, so if Beast Boy is all about animals and "The Red" is all about animals, then Beast Boy is now red. It didn't last because no one really liked it. The New 52 had an aversion to most colors that weren't edgy like black and red, even Nightwing was infected by it. Eventually they got over the phase though.

Raven herself was on Trigon's side in this continuity, because the New 52 seemed to be big on making more heroes into villains than actually doing anything interesting with the characters they owned. She mind-controlled Beast Boy in this encounter, not exactly a good start to things, but eventually, she did her proper heel-face turn and freed Gar of his mind control.

And this is where things get... weird for the ship. Because strangely enough, despite their rocky start, Beast Boy and Raven remained close. In fact, they're practically joined at the hip. In contrast to their original depiction as friends but fairly distant, they're close friends from the start in this continuity. It is clear at this point that the dynamic has shifted, the universe might be rebooted, but Raven and Beast Boy still care deeply for each other. They're not romantic, but they're basically best friends.

In fact, I'd argue that they're even closer as Raven doesn't hide her feelings around Gar like she used to. Their time together, him encouraging her, caring about her, insisting she isn't alone anymore, has fostered a deep bond. Raven even LAUGHS at his jokes now... openly. They go on missions together, back each other up, he even checks in on her mid-battle! It's kinda insane to see them so in sync so early on in their relationship in this continuity... but it's there.

This continues, Raven and Beast Boy are constantly there for one another. No matter how many twists and turns towards the stupid "The New 52" and later "Rebirth" Era take, Beast Boy is there for Raven and Raven is there for Beast Boy. Saving each other's lives, coaching them through really traumatic situations, and just plain hanging out or texting. They're basically a couple already, they're just not making out, even the other characters start to take notice.

There were attempts to give Raven someone else as a boyfriend. During Damian Wayne's stint as leader of the Titans, more accurately Starfire but let's not sweat details, they tried to set her up with Kid Flash, the new one. That did not last at all, it was rejected by fans and ended around the time Heroes in Crisis basically fucked over the Flash Family in general. It was an experiment that simply did not work and felt more like an attempt to give the New Kid Flash legs because he wasn't connecting as well with the fanbase, especially with the pre-New 52 Wally back.

In fact, I barely remembered it until I started writing this little project, that's how little impact it had on me. That was the problem with a lot of "The New 52's" additions to the canon. They were made with good intentions but with no practical ideas on how to actually make them work. I don't even know if anyone is really that big of a fan of the New Wally West. This isn't to deride the character, it's just... Wally with Raven was so nothing. The precedent was Raven, way back in the Wolfman/Perez days, originally made the first Wally West think he was in love with her using her empathic abilities. This was to get him to join the Titans and it was pretty skeevy of her. Why bring that back in? The point is, it just never rang true and was quickly gone and forgotten once that run on the Titans ended.

By Titans Academy, the dynamic between Gar and Raven takes its next most logical step. With both of them becoming instructors at the school for teen heroes, their relationship basically fosters into a more paternal one, and when you're taking care of kids together...

They've stopped time in this story to have a date with each other... yeah at this point they've stopped kidding themselves. Need I remind you this is over several books, various writers, changes in editorial management, narrative directions, and a ton of events just dropping in to disrupt the ever-chaotic status quo of the DC Universe... and yet NOTHING walks this back. No one is trying to separate them as friends and attempts to stick Raven with someone else do not stick for long. The comics repeatedly insist, despite their differences, they are close and remain close no matter how strange things get.

By this point, even before they start actively dating again, they're canon... again!

How? How did this happen? Despite "The New 52" erasing several decades worth of comic book continuity and history, years separated from one another before they even met, they are basically set up as girlfriend and boyfriend in everything but name! Their dynamic might not be entirely the same, but the relationship has survived the reboot and survived every single new writer and editor and line-wide shakeup thrown at them. And the lone attempt to throw a monkey wrench in the potential romance? Promptly forgotten after being utterly rejected by fans.

The simplest explanation is obvious, the people who grew up with the TV Show in their teens are now in charge and that dynamic stuck with them. It made sense to put these two diametrically opposed characters together and see how it works. And arguably, it's probably the healthiest, most positive relationship in the entire reboot era, which has been saturated with DC screwing the pooch on a lot of popular ships since day one. (Even after Lois got back with Clark, they still kept her bitch personality. Let's not even start with how they handled Batman and Catwoman for a while.)

If it was just the comics though it wouldn't mean much but fans finally upgrading to official writers and making their ship fics real. There is more to this and for that, we have to look to a corner of the fandom that is somewhat... maligned.

Dare to be Stupid

Teen Titans Go! is a show fraught with baggage. The fandom of Teen Titans still remains somewhat split on things. It's the old cast from the original show, voicing the same characters and everything. But now they're no longer doing the serious superhero stories. Now every episode is basically one of the filler one-offs that took time off from the big seasonal arcs. Specifically, the goofy ones that Beast Boy took the lead on. Nothing is taken seriously, the characters have been Flanderized to their hyper-comedic personas, and any semblance of a seasonal arc or overarching narrative is gone in favor of episodic adventures full of silly goofball stuff.

For a time, I did not like the show. Frankly, it somewhat strained things with a good friend of mine. He hadn't been a fan of the original show, he preferred the comics. I was confused why he was so into this new clearly more childish show, but he claimed it was because it was indeed funny and because BBRae was actually canon this time.

I was not initially convinced, saying something to the effect that he was being roped in because of his shipping preferences. He took offense to that and frankly, I was wrong to do so. It wasn't fair. Thankfully it didn't ruin our friendship, mostly because I actually changed my opinion on the show when I saw a clip from its April Fool's episode's ending. In it, they all seemed to conclude their various character arcs. Gar and Raven became engaged, Cyborg planned to leave for the Justice League, Robin became Nightwing and was about to kiss Starfire... and then April Fools!

At that moment, I understood... this show does not care what I think of it. It simply does not care if I think it is stupid or juvenile or dumb. It doesn't give a single shit about my nostalgia or my demands upon it. It is perfectly happy with being itself and what itself... is a silly superhero show for children. And they are having fun making it, all of them... and I realized that hating it for being true to itself was... dumb of me. I can't make the show what I want to be because of what I want. It wouldn't be their show if that's how it went down. My problem wasn't with this show existing, it was the lack of serious superhero cartoons to balance it out, but that wasn't its fault. This team was never gonna make that show, they already made that show. In fact, when I got that show I thought I wanted when Young Justice returned, I ended up hating it because it took itself even more seriously than any superhero show should. Hating TTG! for being what it wants to be is like hating the MCU for making superheroes fun and accessible to everyone. And the last thing I want to be is like one of those MCU haters.

This segways nicely into our main question: But why here? What makes this stupid show something where BBRae can happen, but the in the more serious-minded original cartoon it's ignored despite the chemistry? Simple, it's been long enough that both the writers have realized where the REAL romantic intrigue was with the original cast... and TTG! makes it easier to come to fruition.

I don't watch the show, even if I no longer hate it. The series is just not for me. I'm not sure its style of humor, reminiscent of Spongebob and similar episodic kids' series, works with me as well as it might have back when I was a kid. I'm older now, and my humor preferences have changed. That doesn't make it not funny, it's just not something I'm particularly going to find funny. The point is, this style of humor allows Raven to be a lot less closed off. Now that everyone has shifted somewhat in personality to be more exaggerated, they are more in line with Beast Boy who has not really changed. And as a result Raven, who in the original show had a strong connection to Beast Boy, even if it was platonic, is less sheltered and closed-off. She gets involved more, she laughs more, and she does more weird insane things. It's easier for her to not take things seriously. Therefore, it's easier for her to be with Beast Boy because all the walls are already down.

Similar to what eventually happened in the New 52. The closeness, the similarities, the familiarity, the friendship, the work... it had already been finished! Not in the same sense, but in the general essence of that slow development. Strangely enough, because the show no longer took itself so seriously, Raven had even more in common with Beast Boy than ever despite retaining her differences.

Weirdly enough, it was now Robin and Starfire who became more at odds because Robin's insistence on being cool, mature, and badass has made it harder for him to see Starfire's obvious affection for him. At the same time, he's not in a place to return it despite clearly liking her. Beast Boy is not concerned with that and Raven is not nearly as against the idea as she was in the original show. When Trigon is no longer evil incarnate, but just another asshole animated dad that pops in to create a problem of the week, the dangers of Raven's "unchecked emotions" becomes just another gag.

When everything is a joke stakes don't matter and, as I pointed out, this show is actively against creating real stakes. The Titans in this series regularly fight Santa Claus... he's their biggest villain. Not Slade, Not Trigon, Santa! And from what I can gather it's mostly because he won't give them presents because they are on the naughty list for obvious reasons. None of this can be taken seriously! Raven collects Pony Plushes as a nod to Tara Strong playing Twilight Sparkle around the same time. Beast Boy spends an entire episode with Cyborg only saying the word "Waffle." This is not a series that really cares that much about anything other than having a laugh. Raven's biggest hang-up, being the anti-christ, is no longer a major issue because this series DEFIES the concept of taking anything Superhero related as seriously.

So in that context, when everything is already a joke, what's stopping her from being with Beast Boy, the biggest jokester in the group? Especially when she clearly likes having fun and making jokes as much as the rest of the group? The answer: Nothing! She can be open with her feelings and Beast Boy's immaturity isn't as big of a turn-off because she's just as immature and silly. And time and distance have proven their chemistry was more compelling, so the relationship becoming canon is easier to slot in here than anywhere!

So comics readers and kids now have two versions of this relationship that are canon. But during this push in both mediums, the tidal wave was already building... until the dam just broke completely.

Green and Purple Everywhere!

It wasn't very long until it seemed Beast Boy and Raven were everywhere as a couple. And DC wasn't just letting it happen, they actively encouraged it. Popping up in skins in Fortnite as a promotional stunt is one thing, being introduced together, as romantically involved, was essentially a stamp of approval. A statement that these characters were inexplicably linked. And it was not the only thing they were doing, they were recruiting outright shippers and fans of them into the creative process.

DC pushed a YA Graphic Novel with art by Gabriel Picolo, best known for drawing the Titans as real-world teenagers. Especially BB and Raven... together... constantly. DC at this point clearly considers that these two as a couple is a profitable arrangement. That there is simply enough love for it and engagement with it that it only makes sense to go with it and make money off of it. You do not sell a book like this if you don't think there's an audience for it. Marvel has made bank by teasing people about Peter and MJ's epic love story despite not wanting them to be officially together in the comics... for years now!

And to top it all off... they became a meme! A very ridiculous meme where Raven demands Beast Boy turn into animals for hanky panky, but a meme nonetheless. Once you get to that point the ship is firmly ingrained in pop culture.

Even when they aren't together as a couple, they are together as a dynamic. The live-action Titans show maintained the two as very close friends. While the show never went the extra mile, it was obvious that the chemistry was there and the showrunners wanted to maintain it. Keeping them as close friends and connected together in their sub-plots. The first few episodes basically have him bringing her home to his weird family, The Doom Patrol, and having dinner with them. It goes a bit south from there as I understand, but not from anything Gar does. Beast Boy is presented as Raven's anchor throughout the series an important one that keeps her sane and tethered to the people who care and value her. And apparently, that very close friendship even outlasted Dick and Kory being a thing on this show. Which ended abruptly between seasons because it feels like DC told them to do it more than anything.

I can't say why they didn't just make them romantically linked, especially given that they were becoming canon everywhere else. Perhaps the creative team wanted to show a sorely needed platonic boy-girl friendship uncomplicated by romance. Let's be honest, those are in low supply these days. However, the fact remains they kept them close and, from everything I've read and heard, they are adorable together. So even if they aren't romantic on the show they have been part of why it succeeded so much as one of its more stand-out elements among fans.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that projects that didn't make Raven and Beast Boy close friends at the very least failed more or less. The Reboot of Young Justice didn't even have Raven in it and Beast Boy was dating some princess for a while. That show never retained enough interest in fans and was canceled, again. The Teen Titans animated movies in the New 52 Verse that came out on Blu-Ray and DVD? They tried hooking Raven up with Damian Wayne and they only got together when they basically killed off the whole Animated New 52-Verse completely. Now, in the comics, Damian is dating some skeleton-make-up chick who literally stole his heart from his chest. He got better. The point is he's nowhere near to dating Raven in the comics who is depicted as much older than him by now. There is no push for them to be together. The RobinRaven ship has completely sunk to the bottom at this point.

Hell, Terra didn't even get together with Beast Boy in Young Justice's reboot, and they were doing the whole "Judas Contract" thing with her there too! How do you do "Judas Contract" without Beast Boy getting his heart ripped out by the betrayal of Terra? It's insanity!

The point is... no romance for these two sticks unless they're with each other! DC has all but given up on trying to do anything else. The collective voice of fans, inside and outside of the industry, has made it clear who their OTP is. Maybe it started off in the comics as a lark, and maybe the cartoon never was serious about it, but it doesn't matter in either case! At this point the ship is just synonymous with the Titans, maybe more so than even RobStar. DC has seemingly retired that romantic pairing from service despite the clear equally as huge love for it because they want to consolidate Dick's relationships within the Batfamily. Meaning he has to be with Barabara Gordon. Starfire can never be a part of the Batfamily in their eyes, so she can't be with Dick.

But Garfield and Raven? They have no other ties but the Titans, so here is where they remain, forever together, as their saying goes. Why bother trying to do anything else with them when it's very clear that it's the only romance the fans will ever accept? I mean you could try bringing Terra back as NOT completely evil, but why? It's like resurrecting Gwen Stacey to be with Peter again, it's the most boring choice you could make and everyone has moved on to either the Red Head or Sexy Cat Thief. There are a few who like the Blonde Fighter Ace with the power of the Sun at her fingertips, but I digress. Gushing over Carol Danvers is for another post and we're getting off-topic.

The point is, you don't break up Sue and Reed Richards to stick Sue with Namor, and Beast Boy and Raven are in a far healthier relationship than that marriage will ever be. Why ruin a good thing for something that was never meant to last in either the comics or the cartoon? Raven has been with Garfield longer than Terra EVER was, especially in this new continuity which, thanks to some more events, is basically the old continuity kinda sorta not really. There's no practical reason to break them up at this point when they've proven their longevity.

Reflection

I have to admit, I was cynical for a good portion of this stuff. I was barely paying attention to "The New 52" so a lot of the stuff I pointed out in it went unnoticed. Look it was a bad reboot, you can't completely blame me. But looking back on it all, it was clear that more and more people in the industry saw the same thing fans did. It took time for them to figure it out, plus one misstep with a Kid Flash variant that made no sense and was over with that run, but there it is. Plain to see for everyone, the heart and soul of the Titans is the fact they are family, they love each other and that love is best exemplified by Beast Boy and Raven. So much so it's the cornerstone of the upcoming Titans comic... where they've been living together for a good while now!

They're clearly banging... there's no way they aren't. I'm not sure if he's turning into a horse for it, but they're doing it. There's no room for denial here!

The creative team for the series has even stated the run revolves around this romance, and that there are big plans involving it. Excited to explore their dynamic, calling their relationship the core of the Titans as a team and a book.

It's self-evident now, this is the romance that defines this series. This is a ship reaching Evergreen Tier, on the same scale as Gambit and Rogue or Lois and Clark. You can ship Raven and Beast Boy with anyone else all you want, but it doesn't change what DC Comics has decided is the default... and this is it.

None of this is to gloat though, this hasn't been an attempt to declare victory, although it's hard not to. This is the win, but that's not nearly as important as everything else. This is the culmination of a lot of things, both as a fan and personally. It was through Beast Boy and Raven that I forged friendships with people I wouldn't trade for anything, even if they weren't canon. I've come to know so many wonderful amazing people. People who have been there for me in my bad times and laughed with me in the good, who have helped me grow immensely. And it was because of these two that I found them.

So seeing this, all of this, and taking it into account... really looking at it, it's more than the memory of a goth girl and a class clown with superpowers. It's a huge chunk of my life that, isn't just validated but... immensely emotionally impactful. I would not be the person I am today without BBRae, that's true regardless of how canon it is.

It's true what Beast Boy said, sometimes you can get everything you want. But I'm not talking about a ship, I'm talking about a family of friends, who are irreplaceable in your life. And in so many ways, that's what the Titans have always been, a family of true friends, in both the best and worst ways, but there's no denying that the best of that is Beast Boy and Raven. The truest expression of what the Titans mean to me and so many others. I won so much more than a ship, I won people who care. And that's worth more than anything in my eyes.

So thank you, Beast Boy and Raven, thank you for everything. I look forward to your future together. An evergreen horizon evermore. It was a long road, it was bumpy, it was heartbreaking at times, and even more than a little fraught with drama, but it was an amazing ride. And I can't wait to see what's around the corner next.

#beast boy #Raven #bbrae #garfield logan #rachel roth #DC Comics #Teen Titans #Shipping #Retrospective #It goes without saying that none of the fanart in this post is from me

[rjmhereunderprotest]

So... Twitter just logged me out and I can't log back in. I checked, and my account isn't suspended or anything, still there, not gone. I looked into it. Seems like I'm not the only one. It's down for a lot of people, like suddenly jumped up as a problem in the last couple of minutes, but was steadily an issue for a few hours for folks now.

You see! You see why I'm here! That place is fucking disintegrating! All the Tumblr Nonsense in the world is ten times less aggravating than dealing with that!

#Twitter sucks #Fuck You Musk

[rjmhereunderprotest]

I do like responding to folks when they offer their own insight, so forgive me for the reblog, but I just can't ignore this. I desire dialogue, it's just who I am.

Yes, that is a good point that reinforces my main thesis. Peter doesn't do this for everyone. But because he thinks Felicia is worth so much more than what she's doing with her life, he keeps trying. Maybe because they used to be a thing, maybe because she's not nearly as violent as the others, but besides Harry, Felicia is the one he'll chase after to set straight. That's probably why the Felicia as Mon Boss era really stung, Peter didn't do enough to fix their relationship like he would under any other circumstance. It didn't ring true for him and added to the offensive "Bitch Be Crazy" feeling the whole arc resonated with.

I didn't really bring up Peter's potential to actually be a father because that was a little outside the scope, but I generally agree with this. We've seen Peter as a father many times, it is not in dispute that he'd be any worse at it than any other parent with a difficult job.

Peter's connection with Teen Heroes was also outside the scope of this but it does bear mentioning that he's routinely tried to act as a mentor to more than a few kids who remind him of himself or have similar powers. Felicia herself has sorta been mentored in a different way, I don't see her objecting to this continuing honestly. If anything, yeah, she could be a co-mentor. I'd add I don't think she'd be opposed to raising a child with him at some point. But probably not right now as, like Dianna, I don't see Felicia wanting that sort of responsibility. Felicia as a hero, as I've said, is selfishly selfless, she would need to give herself a really good excuse to want to either have a child or raise one, even if it was with Peter.

I didn't mean to imply that Felicia and Cindy weren't friends, again Felicia's relations with other spider-people were outside my scope. I don't doubt that Silk would be supportive. She doesn't strike me as someone who would get in the way. And it seems her pheromone stuff has been reduced to a degree since her introduction. Which I am all for honestly, it got icky.

Ditto with Kaine, who is currently, somehow the sane Clone because of contrived stupid stuff that has turned Ben into as big a blithering psycho as Felicia was in her Queenpin Phase. Maybe this is the reason Zeb Wells is not being well-received. He keeps screwing over fan favorites and it feels very vindictive.

The tendency of MJ to be the worry wart in the relationship, seemingly wanting Peter to give being Spider-Man for her own sanity, is probably the main factor in why the marriage won't come back even if the deal is undone with Mephisto. That dynamic just doesn't work anymore. Even with other spider-people running around, Peter can't stop being Spider-Man, obviously, Felicia is fully supportive of that and in fact willing to tag along. Unless they give MJ powers like in Renew Your Vows, she can't do the same. So it's either return to MJ staying at home being worried or give Spider-Man a partner who understands both of his lives. And as I showed, Felicia does and has for years despite claims to the contrary.

I feel the need to also state that I do not want MJ to be fridged either. While it seems like we're headed for that, I'd rather she be in a relationship she feels stable in, especially if they can't be bothered to change how she and Peter act with each other. I have no idea what a SpiderCat wedding would be like... a legitimate one I mean. I guess technically that wedding that was a ruse to pull off a heist recently in Felicia's solo series was on the books, but it hasn't been treated as a real wedding outside of legality. Felicia probably would want her wedding to be Heist-themed though. Specifically Ocean's 11 or a film of a similar vein. The guest list would be chaotic. The honeymoon would be in Las Vegas and probably involve an actual heist as foreplay and Peter would be wondering if he made a mistake the whole time until they're back in their room.

The truth is he has... the best mistake he's ever made.

Thanks for the nice reblog, Dianna and I appreciate your comments.

Crossed Paths & Tangled Webs: Why I Ship SpiderCat

This is gonna be a controversial one through no fault of my own... but also it's all my own damn fault. A confusing contradicting statement to be sure, but when you're talking about Peter Parker and Felicia Hardy, that statement seems to ring the most true. Two people who are as perfect for each other as they are imperfect. In love through no fault of their own... and completely at fault for being so.

My poll for another ship to cover picked this... I'm more than happy to talk about it but we're dealing with volatile stuff right now. As I write this, Spider-Man and Black Cat actually ARE in a relationship with each other. Peter has recently stated that he no longer feels romantically for his long-time love-interest, Mary Jane, calling her more akin to a sister. MJ was apparently stuck in some post-apocalyptic Narnia situation where enough time passed for her to have kids with another guy. And if that wasn't enough... Mary Jane may be about to join Gwen Stacey in the fridge, if you get my meaning. As Zeb Wells is teasing the most shocking Spider-Man story since Gwen Stacey's death and the solicits for the story afterwards say Spider-Man is about to suffer a terrible loss. Felicia is on the covers of at least one of those issues. So unless it's a complete fake out and Wells is going to kill off a relationship he has stated he both prefers and spent a ton of time setting up at the expense of the preferred romance among fans... yeah it's not looking good for MJ. I mean he might kill off Aunt May again, but... well there's no guarantees in comics... ever.

This is a strange time period to be a long suffering SpiderCat shipper. I have held a torch for these two for such a long time it feels like almost second nature. I see Felicia, I want to see her with Peter. No one else, man or woman, will do. (Yes she's Bi, shut up, it's canon) Yet right now, a SpiderCat shipper is now writing the Spider-Man books and everyone seems to absolutely hate Zeb Wells' execution of it all. I've gotten what I wanted, at last, but fans are outright rejecting it. Not so much for Felicia and Peter being together mind you, as much as they're annoyed MJ is being thrown under the bus.

Which I get actually, I may have wanted this ship over Peter/MJ, but not at her expense. I don't want her DEAD or badly written. And given how Marvel has basically treated MJ and Peter over the years, it's hard to argue that these reactions are anything but justified. Even decades later, One More Day's shadow still looms large. Marvel has constantly teased and poked and prodded and snickered about the possibility of Mary Jane and Peter Parker becoming an item again. If not married, at the very least dating. But Marvel seems insistent on this point. "The Marriage was a mistake, we're never going back to it. And anything that is even remotely similar to that status quo is not allowed. Ever." The inability of Marvel's Spidey writers to craft a compelling happy marriage between Peter and MJ has been an albatross around the neck of the ship forever! Even when they did it in an ongoing, it had to be a different universe! One where the Civil War comics event wasn't a thing, so that was also a plus. And MJ had to get Spider Powers too in order to smooth over the whole thing for writers.

So, yeah, MJ's been blamed for making Spider-Books dull and kept at arms length from Peter as much as possible. Because if Spider-Man is EVER TOO HAPPY that can only spell DOOM for the character. His world must always revolve around misery. Linkara of AT4W has said it time and again, in the eyes of Marvel, Spider-Man can never be allowed to be happy.

And yet, despite all that, I still hold true to this maxim, Peter Parker and Felicia Hardy are made for each other. If I ever had an OTP, if I ever had a ship I'd die for, if there was ever any romance I was forever evergreen invested in... it was SpiderCat. Despite whatever the world says, that it can't work, that it's a bad idea, that they don't need each other, that it will never be the way Peter/MJ were once... I don't care. I reject all of that and state proudly, without shame, every time that Spider-Man and the Black Cat are and always shall be perfect for each other.

So Let's Talk about Why that is...

Usually I'm inclined to give brief synopsis points about both characters in separate sections. But Spider-Man is so well known and Black Cat so simply explained in their initial set ups it feels almost... pointless. When you can describe at least one half of the shipping dynamic with a theme song from a sixties cartoon it's hard to honestly come up with anything new or original.

So yeah, Peter Parker, nerdy wimp who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, doesn't get cancer from this, but super powers. Thinks about using these great powers to enrich his life, but after letting a criminal get away because it's "not his problem" he learns a harsh lesson about responsibility. His uncle dies at the hands of said criminal, it's all his fault, and Peter proclaims that as long as he has these powers he will use them to help people.

And as a result, Spider-Man is the hero that always gets up because he has to, he needs to. Because people, strangers and loved ones, depend on him. This comes at the cost of a great deal of things that would make him personally happy. Because if Spider-Man is about anything, it's about personal sacrifice and responsibility. It has been a running theme since his first comic and will continue until the heat death of the universe. If you know nothing else of Spider-Man, this is the most important fact about him going forward for the rest of this essay. Spider-Man is Responsibility and Self-Sacrifice Personified. Whenever he doesn't live up to either aspect of himself, bad things happen, to him, to the people he cares about and New York City at large.

On the other side of that coin, Felicia Hardy, aka the Black Cat. Infamous thief. While her origins are more fluid throughout her incarnations, her general story is pretty much the same. Felicia is a thrill seeking thief, who lives for the daredevil rush only a well-executed heist can accomplish. The Black Cat persona is that of a femme fatale thief of the highest order. There's no question that she shares more than a few similarities to Catwoman of Batman fame. Save for the fact she might possess a slight passive power that causes bad luck to her opponents.

Different character of course, but that's just to establish that it is a superpower. Felicia uses it mainly to steal whatever she wants and get away scot-free. She, in general, tries to avoid personal consequences for these actions. While her motives may vary from one story or universe to the next, ultimately her purpose in life is the same. To live for herself, for her needs and how she wants. The Black Cat persona is just that, a means to indulge in her wants and desires to the fullest extent. She is, inherently, self-serving and selfish whereas Spider-Man is selfless.

On the surface this presents a dynamic akin to oil and water. Spider-Man is an avatar of personal responsibility. The Black Cat is the personification of independent self-interest. They are such opposites, such contradictions, that they should just not work. They should be enemies... and that is how they started.

Amazing Spider-Man #194, Black Cat's first appearance where she and Spidey come to blows over her illicit activities. Felicia has contracted a crew for a job to spring her terminally ill father from prison. Spider-Man tries to stop her, only to end up buried under the rubble of the exploding prison wall. Black Cat flees the scene with a quip about crossing her path and Spidey with a bad arm post-fight. The next issue sees Spidey deduce Felicia's real identity and that Felicia only broke her father out so he could spend his dying hours with his wife and her mother. Spidey and Cat come to blows outside arguing over the merits of what she's done. However in the struggle Black Cat starts to fall off a roof into a surging river below. Spidey catches her with his bad arm, trying to stop her fall... but can't hold on as Felicia seemingly falls to her death. He tries to return to the Hardy residence, only to see Felicia's mother in grief over the death of her husband. Not wanting to add to it... Spidey leaves.

Of course, this isn't the end for Felicia, issue #204 sees the Black Cat return. She's actually been watching him it seems, taking photos of him swinging around town. They get reacquainted at the museum where Cat manages to slip away again after another fight with Spider-Man. Felicia is annoyed though that he keeps fighting her, not understanding why she's doing this. And by the next issue it's revealed, the art pieces Felicia stole were meant to symbolize what she thinks of Spidey. Namely, that she has developed a crush on him. No doubt because, despite trouncing him almost every time they've fought, she's clearly enjoyed all of it. And Spidey hasn't exactly helped in that regard as he has routinely flirted with her. He can't help it, she is hot. Felicia claims she wants to leave thieving behind, at the behest of her mother and she would like Spider-Man to help her reform. Seeing a similarity to a current situation with a girl he's instructing, and that Felicia might be suffering a bit of a mental break as a result of her father's death, he promises to get her help.

These introductory stories set the stage for Felicia and Peter's on again off again relationship for years to come. Felicia is self-servingly selfish, desiring things that aren't hers. Yet her motives are more complicated than pure greed, it is always based somewhat around her emotional state. Her need to give her father and mother some closure before she passes, her desire for Spider-Man to lead her out of a life of crime, as per her mother's wishes. She isn't evil, she has noble intent, she just goes about it in very self-centered ways. Spidey, in the meantime, is selfless to a fault. He'll keep chasing her down, he'll keep trying to set her straight, keep trying to stop her crime sprees. He is drawn to her by his selflessness and sense of responsibility to prevent her from just getting away with whatever she wants. But he does genuinely want to help her and he will not take advantage of her fragile emotional state, even if he himself is somewhat into her. Hell, the first thing he thinks about when he first sees her is that he hopes she isn't a criminal because he'd like to ask her out. He is clearly drawn to Felicia, even if it only starts out as pure infatuation, but he will not take advantage of her interest in him because he knows better than to try to exploit that for his own self-interest.

Of course it's a lie, well partially. Felicia faked being crazy to more easily escape a psychiatric hospital than a prison. But she is indeed in love with him. After her escape, she invites Spidey to a masquerade ball via a sky writer. Ultimately revealing that she lied to him about her mental breakdown in a selfish bid to escape consequences for her actions. But she wants to make up for it now, because this masquerade ball is being hosted by mafioso she stole from and says Spidey can now arrest them all! Crime is too easy she thinks, superheroing is her next thrill seeking adventure and she wants to do it with him. And despite being tricked and more than a little bribed into this, Spider-Man decides ultimately why not give it a try? If she really does want to go straight for him... isn't the responsible thing to do with her to help her out even if her motives are a tiny bit selfish?

This is how their romance starts and sets up the ultimate tug of war dynamic. Spider-Man does want Black Cat, but is wary of her desire to push him into a more selfish mindset. Black Cat actually desires Spider-Man, but can't get over her compulsive selfishness. In this story alone she has to sort of trick Spider-Man into coming to a date that's actually a mafioso party that he can break up. It's a highly manipulative plan that appeals to her selfish infatuation and Spider-Man's selfless heroism. It is a constant push and pull between them at multiple points. By all accounts, they should not work and a good deal of comics past this point go on and on about why they can't work.

I could cover the lengthy relationship between both characters throughout the 80s, Spidey was actually dating Felicia for a long time during the Black Suit days, even after he gave up the Symbiote. And for the most part this dynamic does not entirely change. Peter wants to help Black Cat be a better person before he can truly commit to her. Felicia wants to be a better person and make things work with Spider-Man, but she has a hard time wrapping her head around selfless action over selfish indulgence. It's the roadblock between them truly working as a couple. And there are a ton of moments during this time period I could talk about, but frankly, they are ALL before my time.

None of them really prove my point either, all I've done is just explain why their dynamic as a couple is riveting. It's not exactly like Batman and Catwoman's, but its of a similar vein. The key difference is Spider-Man, being who he is, isn't as opposed to the idea at first as Bruce is with Selina. Catwoman plays a lot harder to get for a lot longer than Black Cat, she also doesn't become Batman's superhero partner. Felicia and Peter by contrast are much younger though, so their reasoning is frankly more in line with their age demographic. They're just quicker to jump in than most people. The only thing holding them back is Black Cat and Spidey's diametrically opposed ideologies, even though we'll see those two viewpoints somewhat crisscross soon enough.

If you want to know however where I actually came in on this, we need to hop over to another universe. The one firmly positioned in the decade that defines the pop cultural wasteland... the 90s.

In an effort to compete with DC's Batman cartoon, Marvel fast tracked a Spider-Man show into production. While not on the same technical/narrative level as the landmark Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-Man: The Animated Series still did a tremendous job at capturing the essence of the character and is still a good series in its own. Even on a recent rewatch, I was surprised to see how well-thought out and true to form the series was. Yes, it's overuse of repeated animation and various other shortcuts was annoying, it certainly wasn't perfect, even by 90s standards, but it deserves recognition where it counts. Part of that was, in my opinion, the dynamic between Felicia and Peter Parker/Black Cat and Spider-Man. It certainly wasn't a slamdunk, I'm going to talk about where the writers fumbled it, but when it worked it worked and I think those parts where it worked so well were what cemented the idea in my head that this relationship, fraught as it was, COULD become something everlasting.

There's no hiding that Felicia's story is completely different from the comics. She actually knows Peter to begin with before she even becomes the Black Cat. They actually date for a while and despite the fact Peter is poorer than dirt, she is clearly interested in him and remains so for a good portion of season one. Peter's first kiss in the series is Felicia in fact. Even when MJ is in the picture, Peter is still torn between her and Felicia.

You might think we're dealing with a Betty and Veronica situation, but it never really materializes as such. Felicia and MJ never really meet this early and Felicia herself isn't really the rich girl stereotype. She's not particularly girlish or whinny. She doesn't really look down on anyone for their status. In fact she more often than not tries to rebel against the stereotype. She does a lot of charity work, she shows concern for the good of New York's citizens and she gives credit to those who deserve it, not just because they flatter her. She also gives Peter a lot of chances despite seemingly screwing up with her. She is reluctant at first to go out with him, but is not embarassed to be seen with him. The issue that arises is, from her perspective, Peter is never around when she gets in major trouble... but Spider-Man is. This become important later, but the thing to note is she is still close friends with Peter for a good amount of time and shows an interest in hm.

The only reason Felicia doesn't get with Peter is, again, Peter's terrible luck as a result of his responsibilities as Spider-Man. He accidentally stands Felicia up one too many times and she... ugh... ends up falling for Michael Morbius. Yes... that Morbius. No, we're not doing the meme. I only bring it up here because its one of the flaws in the show, Morbius as Felicia's love interest feels so incredibly out of place. It exists purely to prevent Felicia and Peter from getting together because nothing about it works. Morbius is hardly charming, he's somewhat of a creep, he's rude, abrasive and his petty rivalry with Peter just makes him unlikable. Its this petty bullshit rivalry, in fact, that causes Morbius' transformation into a Vampire monster in this continuity. Peter tries to claim responsibility for it because it was caused with his radioactive blood, but Morbius was an asshole and did it to himself. He's at fault and he sucks... pun not intended, not entirely. But because he's doing all this to stop a plague in his home country, and he saves Felicia this one time when Peter doesn't show, we're supposed to buy that she's smitten with him. And I do not buy it. In fact, I'd argue the show's writers didn't even buy it and were somewhat forced to do this so they wouldn't step on the iconic romance with Peter and MJ.

Morbius' subsequent flight into exile, as he basically becomes a mutant bat monster, starts an ongoing subplot with Felicia, the fact she has seemingly terrible luck with men. Early on, after Morbius has left her life, Felicia begins to develop a crush on Spider-Man, as at this point he's been there for her more than most other men in her life, saving her or her mother. Spider-Man, as a result, has become a very huge constant staple in her life, more so than any other man as far she can see. Peter, despite his messy love life, does care for Felicia, and is very quick to jump in to help her whenever she is in trouble. Partially because of his connection to her, partly because he still blames himself for Morbius' transformation. So Peter is spending a lot of time as Spider-Man with Felicia at this point, more so than MJ even who is dating Harry Osborn for a while. As far as Felicia is concerned, Spider-Man has become something akin to a knight in shining armor who is always there for her. She can't help but fall for him.

She reveals this by suddenly kissing him on the balcony, pulling up the mask half-way and everything. Peter, however, says he can't reciprocate, as much as he probably still has feelings for Felicia. He says he can't have a girlfriend though because it would put her in danger. It's bunk of course, he's still trying to be with MJ even though she's currently with Harry, but I imagine it plants an idea in Felicia's head. Regardless, for now she's crestfallen and this leads her into the arms of another man, Jason Phillips Macendale, a rich well to do playboy-type. Even still, she retains her feelings Spider-Man throughout their relationship. There is a scene at a carnival where Jason wins a stuffed Spider for her, which she remarks she finds spiders cute while he acts rather annoyed and jealous over it. Despite the fact she very clearly still wants Spidey to be with her, Felicia does agree to marry Jason when he proposes.

At the engagement party, which Peter attends with MJ as she has dumped Harry at this point, he changes into Spider-Man to spy on the Kingpin and Osborn over some business with the Hobgoblin. Annoyed he has to leave MJ to deal with this problem, he's interrupted by Felicia.

She asks if he's here to wish her good luck and Peter fumbles his words in saying as much. Which leads to this exchange:

Spidey: Do you really love this Jason Phillips guy?

Felicia: And why should you care about that? Unless you got a better offer?

Spidey: (Thoughts) This is crazy, I can't have one girlfriend as Peter Parker and another as Spider-Man! (Speaking) No, I don't... I just want you to be happy.

As Spidey swings away, Felicia mournfully says "So do I." It's a very clear statement, she's settling. Jason is rich and powerful and the person she's expected to marry due to who she is, but she's not really sure about it, or happy. Because the man she wants is currently swinging away. It's obvious that, in Felicia's eyes, she's missing something in her life that makes her happy and Spider-Man seems to be that something. Likewise, Peter, the paragon of self-responsibility, knows he can't abuse his secret identity to cheat on MJ, even though he seems very tempted to admit that he still has feelings for Felicia. But in the end, all he cares about is her happiness and if she can find it in this Jason dude, who is he to ruin that?

Well, he doesn't have to ruin it. Because we find out, shock of all shocks, Jason is the Hobgoblin and the revelation shakes Felicia to her core. The fact that this person she was dating, this man who she decided on because she couldn't have Spider-Man was a fraud, a criminal, a liar... it's a terrible thing to realize how poor your judgment is. Almost reaffirming that this was the wrong choice from the start.

Spidey of course once again comes swinging to her rescue and defeats the Hobgoblin. But Felicia has questions for her former fiancé. Jason relents that he used crime to create everything he is and get everything he has, including her. She's just another possession to him. What she deep down probably feared going into this, why her heart wasn't in this, why she wanted Spider-Man to give her a way out and save her again.

Felicia: I have to know, did you ever really love me?

Jason: I don't know. I love things about you. Your wealth, your beauty, your refinement.

Felicia: That's not love! I've experienced true love... and it's nothing like that.

And we don't get a flashback to Morbius, as this show constantly does because it's very not subtle, we don't see her talk about bat boy at all. She looks directly at Spider-Man as she says this and the camera zooms in on him as she speaks those words. This overtly informs the audience what love means in Felicia's mind. Love in Felicia's mind is being there for someone, who Spider-Man has been for a long time now. And more importantly, it's about wanting that person to be happy, which was all Spider-Man said he ever wanted. Spidey never asked anything of Felicia, he was just there for her and perhaps, in Felicia's mind, the reason he can't return it is because she can't be there in the same way. She is after all a damsel who he needs to keep saving and Spider-Man made it an issue that they can't be together because she'd be in danger.

In fact, this incident has given Felicia a complex that alludes to her future. "Every time I give my heart to someone, disaster strikes!" She sobs to Spider-Man. "I'm like a Black Cat spreading bad luck to everyone who crosses my path! Including my own."

By the next season things have taken a turn for the tragic, Mary Jane has vanished into realms unknown after mirroring Gwen Stacey's fall from a bridge into an interdimensional portal. As far as Peter knows though she's just gone, maybe forever. They can't say dead on this show, you know how it is.

This would probably leave the door back open for Felicia, but Peter is in no mental condition for another relationship right now and Felicia is smitten with Spider-Man, not Peter. Although he does wonder if she could help him with his grief as he swings over to her apartment. Not to say she doesn't care for Peter, but her heart belongs to his masked vigilante persona. In fact, so much so that she proclaims that Spider-Man is the only good thing in her life during that same visit. (Granted this is after an attack by Doctor Octopus, but the point stands) It's obvious that Felicia is now clinging to Spider-Man as one of the few constants in her life at this point, what with repeatedly being placed in danger by monsters and maniacs. The lack of control and helplessness is eating at her terribly.

However, this does lead into what we've all been waiting for, Felicia's transformation into the Black Cat and the start of the multi-episode season storyline, "Partners in Danger."

Felicia's father isn't just a cat burglar anymore. It turns out he got a peek at the formula for the Super Soldier serum back in WW2. He was almost tricked into giving it to the Nazis but managed to evade them. He was a kid at the time and was on the run for several decades. He's been in SHIELD custody for the past few years, until now when the Chameleon breaks him out only to hand him over to the Kingpin. Soon after, Doctor Octopus kidnaps Felicia and brings him to Fisk to reunite her with her father. And basically blackmail her into performing crimes for Fisk to test out the Super Soldier formula.

Yes, the Black Cat in the 90s Animated Series is basically a super soldier thief. It is suggested its not a complete process, but it grants Felicia more capability than she used to have. As the Black Cat she's now stronger, faster, more agile, versatile and has heightened senses. She's basically a mini-Captain America sans shield and a less patriotic aesthetic. Also, the Serum allows her to completely alter herself, her hair turns white and grows longer, while she also becomes more ripped and taller. This is so people won't really recognize her, an important detail for later.

While it's obvious Felicia hates being forced to go along with this to protect her father, she doesn't hate the new powers she's been granted and seeks to use them to eventually turn the tables on Fisk and save her dad. However, for the time being she gets in more than a few scrapes with Spider-Man, one of which leaves him knocked out in front of her. She considers pulling off his mask, but decides against it, preferring him to do it for her himself. She does plant a kiss though, the first of many as the Black Cat. The sequence is clear, Felicia is no longer the damsel but Spider-Man's equal and she hopes that this means things can change.

True, Felicia still gets into trouble and Spider-Man has to save her before the episode is out, but they actually do come together as partners by the end and effectively work together to defeat Fisk and save her father. Sadly, he has to return to SHIELD custody, of his own free will, to prevent the secrets he knows from ever getting out. I'd kinda like to to think they would give him a more witness protection situation than imprisonment for the guy, even if he did become a thief. It's SHIELD though, it's kinda expected they don't always do the sensible thing.

However this sets up the dynamic for the next few episodes as Black Cat and Spider-Man work together more and more. Spider-Man is reluctant at first, still mourning Mary Jane, but Black Cat manages to shake him out of that stupor. Reminding him not to close himself off in his grief. And Spidey himself remarks, as he and Black Cat work together, that he's actually having fun for once as Spider-Man. This is something to keep in mind, Black Cat actually challenges Spider-Man more often than not throughout their time together. Pushing him to remember why he does this job, stopping his pity parties cold, reminding him to not see his power as a burden that he so often does and as a gift he uses to help people. Even if she's not the same self-serving Felicia from the comics, as the Black Cat she embraces the liberated self her persona grants her. She's finally being able to do the things that her position as a rich socialite kept from her. Her stance is that Spider-Man can afford to think about what he wants and what makes him happy as much as his own responsibilities.

Frankly, it gets through to Peter. As time goes on, Spider-Man becomes more receptive to the idea that he should move on from MJ and be with Black Cat, a fellow crime fighter, on his level who can look after herself as much as him. This has been the problem Spider-Man has faced for a while, being able to protect the people he cares about despite his powers seemingly always getting in the way. In the same vein, Felicia's newfound abilities enable her to be Spidey's equal. Allowing her the opportunity to see him as a person and not just the superhero who saves her. This gives her the ability to challenge, as well as compliment him, as pointed out.

Their dynamic frankly rings more true and honest as a relationship. Even MJ never pushed Peter in the same way Black Cat pushes Spidey to be better. That's not to say MJ was a bad girlfriend, but on the show... she frankly resembled the comics version of Gwen Stacey personality wise. Black Cat may have been in love with Spider-Man, but that never stopped her from telling him off when he got something wrong. She had her own opinions and views on how this relationship worked and despite clashing with Spidey, they always seemed to be getting closer and more intimate every time she crossed his path.

That is until the goddamn Vampire comes back and ruins it all, because Felicia still has feelings for Morbius, I guess. In fact, he comes back so soon and suddenly, just as Peter is thinking of committing to Black Cat as Spider-Man, that it again feels like a mandate from on high. They're getting too close to each other, we can't have that, break them up by making Morbius a thing again. And quite frankly it feels forced because the only thing that seemingly prevents Spidey and Cat from sealing the deal is that neither of them have guessed at who the other is.

This is despite the fact that the Black Cat is obviously Felicia, given her very close relationship with Felicia's father that she doesn't even try to hide at all during her introductory episode. But Spidey has been consistently dense when it comes to secret identities, he couldn't even figure out Matt Murdock and Daredevil were the same person under similar circumstances. Using excuses THAT HE HIMSELF USES to cover his ass as Spider-Man. For being so smart, Peter is incredibly slow on the uptake when it comes to guessing Black Cat's identity despite how damn obvious it is. Not that Felicia is honestly much better, as both before and after this there are a number of clues to Spidey's true identity. Like... she kissed Peter AS Peter, she should know that mouth!

But the fact is, and this is where the forced editorial mandate thing comes in, that if they ever found out who the other was... that would be the end for any possible Peter and MJ relationship at this point. Felicia would finally realize why Peter seemed to never be around when she was in trouble, it's because he was Spider-Man. And given that Felicia's reasoning for being in love with Spider-Man is, again, the fact she feels he's always been there for her, she'd realize her most long standing intimate REAL relationship was with Peter all along! Peter in turn would realize that Felicia, the girl he first had a crush on, the one he was most conflicted about getting with before MJ vanished, a person he still has strong feelings for, is also the person who taught him to love again after MJ vanished. A friend he cares about who is now on his level and has also been there for him! There would be no way they couldn't get together at that point, or at the very least it would be very hard for Peter to decide between her and MJ from then on.

But no, the adventure with the returned Morbius leads to Felicia deciding to go with the creep Mutant Vampire and Blade to hunt other vampires and leave Spider-Man behind, just as he was about to be with her. Of course, Peter doesn't put two and two together that Cat is leaving with Morbius because as established he's an idiot when it comes to this stuff. If he was smarter, he'd have figured it out right now and probably revealed himself to her, and that would create a conflict and probably make her question this frankly boneheaded and nonsensical decision. So no, Felicia and Peter never find out each other's secret identities and she goes off with Morbius leaving Peter alone for no really good reason other than this felt like the fastest way to break them up so MJ could slide back in.

And MJ does slide back in, not long after this episode in fact and Spider-Man quickly fast tracks to proposing to her, revealing his secret identity, the works. However, Felicia isn't out of his life as MJ still keeps getting into trouble, constantly. At the wedding, Black Cat returns to make sure Peter's big day doesn't get ruined, because she does care about Peter even if she isn't with him. She does this again when MJ is seemingly kidnapped, first comforting Peter as Felicia reassuring him during a moment of hopelessness and then becoming Black Cat again to track down MJ for Peter.

And she admits aloud that she's doing this because she doesn't think she made the right call to follow Morbius and Blade, she still has feelings for Spidey, even though he's loyal and committed to MJ. Again, Felicia does not put two and two together given how gung-ho Spidey is for finding MJ. This also marks the only time MJ and the Black Cat meet, it's very quick, Peter has to answer a few obvious questions. After all that, Felicia decides to head back to Transylvania and once again Peter doesn't put two and two together that Felicia and Black Cat are back in town right at the same time. Because he's stupid like that.

What's important to note is that Felicia will drop everything for Peter, which suggests to me, on some subconscious level, she knows who Spider-Man is. And the fact she's still playing mental support coach to Peter, even outside of their secret identities, speaks volumes for their bond and connection. Even outside of the Black Cat persona and without directly knowing it, Felicia is there for Spider-Man when he needs her, just as much as he was for her.

But of course, all of this is for naught concerning Mary Jane's fate. Because... this is not Mary Jane. This hasn't been Mary Jane since she returned at the end of last season and conclusion of "Partners in Danger." Because we've been doing a random ass Clone Saga deal this whole time! This MJ, the one Peter married, shared his secrets with, probably most likely banged... wasn't his MJ. She was a clone created by Miles Warren who can use frickin water powers like Hydro Man because Hydro Man is an asshole ex who is obsessed with MJ and wanted his own version of her. But she wandered off, blah blah blah, point is her clone stability is breaking down and she's gonna evaporate. Cue one of the most gut wrenching screams in animation history.

So yeah, Peter never got the real Mary Jane back, only to be set up for heartache all over again. One could argue he probably loved this Mary Jane more. Sure he thought she was the original, but everything he experienced with her were steps he was unwilling to take with the real one. Similar to how Felicia has been feeling conflicted, one has to imagine Peter is even more so at this point on several other levels. Not that he has much time to mourn though. Madame Web has returned after a long absence from the series and she has war for him to fight, a Secret War.

In a very loose adaptation of the original Marvel Comics Event, Spider-Man is tasked by the Beyonder to lead a team of superheroes to liberate a planet that has fallen to villains he's plucked from Earth. This becomes a bit of a crossover between pretty much every Fox Entertainment Marvel Cartoon running at the time. From X-Men to Iron Man to the Fantastic Four, not Hulk though, Hulk rights are always a problem. But even after he's picked all the heroes he can afford to recruit, like any Gamer he can't resist modding shit to give him more stuff. And of all the heroes and allies he could pick to increase his ranks... he chooses the Black Cat.

It's a fairly odd choice honestly. Spidey has worked with a lot of heroes, maybe not as extensively as the Black Cat, but he's fought beside Doctor Strange, he knows other X-Men who are on Storm's level or at least just as capable. But he picks Black Cat. He picks her despite knowing that Madame Web knows the Real Mary Jane's location and promises it as a reward if he helps her. He picks Black Cat, despite knowing she is currently with Morbius and Blade. Makes one wonder... why?

Felicia isn't happy with this herself, because she just got pulled away in the middle of a vampire slaying fight. Don't worry, they're fine. It's Blade he'll manage without her.

...

What? Oh Morbius, yeah I guess he'll survive too just by being in close proximity to Blade. Have I mentioned I hate Morbius?

Anyway, the point is Black Cat is none too happy get pulled into Spidey's adventures against her will, like he can just do that on a whim. She's kinda right to be angry at him and she is for a good portion of the episode. When Spidey explains he picked her because he needs her support and they work good as a team, Felicia rightly says that he can't just rip her away from things because he needs to hold her hand. She'll be more than willing to do so on her own, he doesn't need to ask, he just shouldn't force her. It's a surprising role reversal, with Spider-Man being a bit more selfish than usual and Black Cat outwardly demanding to know when Spider-Man is gonna grow up. A question many comics fans wonder themselves to this day.

Spider-Man's ultimate ulterior motives are a bit more obvious though when he gets pretty jealous over Captain America and Black Cat bonding over her having the super soldier serum. And it doesn't help that Cap keeps kinda outshining him constantly when he saves Felicia a few times. But to be fair, Steve Rogers does that with everyone.

After the mission that topples the Red Skull ends, Spidey does apologize for taking Felicia against her will into this war. But she's no longer angry. Taking part in a mission bigger than even vampire slaying is important, a big deal, and if there is one thing Felicia has wanted its to not be left out of a fight for something bigger than herself. Plus, she get's to do it beside the greatest hero of all time. Spidey thinks she means Cap, but she corrects him, she's talking about the Web Head. Despite not being as perfect as Captain America, Spider-Man did prove himself out there as a leader to her and she admits she wouldn't want to miss this action with him for anything. Despite not wanting to be here initially, Felicia ultimately can't get over the fact Spider-Man wanted HER here with him. And given their last meeting had him coldly rejecting her advances, it says to Felicia that Spidey still feels for her and she clearly does too. Black Cat then kisses Spider-Man... and it's the last kiss he'll ever receive in the series. That's right, Peter's first and last kisses on this show come from Felicia. How do you not expect anyone to read into that?

No matter what lame line Morbius tries to give at the end of the episode, Felicia's heart doesn't really belong to him. It is very evident, crystal clear, painfully obvious, to anyone paying attention, that Felicia and Peter, on this series at the very least, were specially connected. Maybe not at first, but Felicia became someone who could match Spider-Man, physically and mentally, in many ways. And it's undeniable that, regardless of anything else, Peter held feelings for both Felicia and her Super Thief persona. Their banter was perfect, their partnership was top notch, the chemistry was amazing. The only thing keeping them apart was a story writing mandate from on high that they could not be endgame. Even though the writers took every chance they could nab to put them together. To shove Felicia back into Peter's life, even after she went off Slaying it up with Morbius. When I rewatched the series, it became painfully obvious who the writers seemed to prefer Peter with. None of this is to knock MJ as a character, on this show or in the comics, but it's hard for me to buy that there wasn't some kind of bias towards Felicia given everything that happens in this show.

Or maybe they just wanted an excuse to keep bringing Jennifer Hale back, I don't know! But I still choose to think that someone on that writing staff wanted a different endgame. It's been known to happen, creative teams aren't immune to shipping. Avatar the Last Airbender apparently had an ongoing tug of war between the executive producers and some of the writers over whether Katara would pick Zuko or Aang. It honestly feels like something similar happened here and as a result it comes across as the best evidence in my mind that this relationship could work. And the insane reality that less than a decade after Spider-Man TAS concluded, a show that did everything to ensure Spider-Man never got with the Black Cat because Peter/MJ were too iconic to not happen... One More Day drops and Peter has barely been with MJ for more than a single run out of several writers since. Said single writer being Nick Spencer, the Hydra Cap guy! Possibly in an effort to redeem himself from being the Hydra Cap Guy.

But I digress, as one can plainly see concerning this short retrospective of the series above, the 90s Cartoon has been over for a long time. Next year, it will be thirty years old. I can point out how it could've worked in that show, but that does nothing to prove Felicia and Peter ever have a chance now. All it shows is that I have a nostalgic attachment to this pairing because of an animated series. One with a highly different set of canonical circumstances between Spidey and the Black Cat that were crafted uniquely for this show alone. Circumstances that are worlds apart from the comics.

And that's because, as loathe as I am to admit it, Peter and Felicia's relationship has always had roadblocks in every piece of media involving them before and since. And I would be remiss if I didn't address any of those before I can start proving its viability now. If I don't I'll just have to do it later anyway. We'll look at how SpiderCat appears in other works as we go through this, but we need to head back to comic book land if we're really going to lay down what's actually keeping these two apart, and it's not the very weak contrivances preventing them from figuring out the obvious like in the 90s cartoon. No, it goes deeper than that. As you can see here.

90s Felicia wanted Spidey to unmask for her, but Comics!Felicia has had a hang up about that for a long while. This is the crux, the problem, with their relationship. The thing that always comes up when SpiderCat shippers argue for it. Comics!Black Cat loves Spider-Man... not Peter Parker. And mixing the two is too much for her to bare. This is what put strain on their relationship, Felicia didn't want her fantasy ruined by knowing the man behind the mask. Peter being an ordinary guy shatters her illusions about his prowess and ability. The phrase "Anyone can wear the mask" comes to mind and as long as Peter wears it for the Black Cat that is true. Take it off and Peter's normality leaks into things.

As a result, the main problem is Felicia can't love a man like Peter, who has a normal life outside of his superheroing. Felicia doesn't want normal, she likes what she is, who she is, doesn't want to go back to it. She wants to be the Black Cat because as the Cat she can do and get whatever she wants. Peter is, again, weighed down by responsibilities. While Felicia, once again, desires her independence from everything, including responsibility. Felicia would rather Spider-Man give up being Peter and just be the hero who swept her off her feet full time. To forever chase her across the rooftops and do what they want whenever they want. She's fine if that means fighting bad guys... so long as they're not tied down to normality. But Peter can't do that, he can never do that, not as long as he has ties to his life as Peter. And that's probably why Wells is considering severing a pretty big tie to that in order to make sure SpiderCat can't be reversed so easily. Can't really blame him for that though, given how comics are in constant flux. (Remember This)

This sort of issue is constantly reinforced. In the Spider-Man 2 video game, based off the Sam Raimi sequel, The "Spidey's loss of his powers" sub-plot is replaced by Black Cat trying to seduce him away into forever crime-fighting as his relationship with Mary Jane becomes strained due to her upcoming marriage to Jonah Jameson's son. Their dynamic matches the comics pretty well... and that means Spidey eventually breaks it off with her, saying he can't abandon his real life to forever play superhero with her. He needs a balance and that means he can't see her anymore. She leaves amicably, but it's sad to see happen.

In the Spider-Man: Web of Shadows game, Black Cat is revealed to still have feelings for Spider-Man and wants to be back together with him. This is pretty bad timing given the symbiote invasion going on. As the game is using the then popular trend of multiple choice endings there is one where you can have Black Cat be with Spider-Man at the end. It requires you basically healing her after a fight with your black suit, turning her into a Venomized version of herself. You can still pick the good ending after this where you defeat the Symbiotes, but all you know for sure is that MJ and him are on quits. You only see Felicia again if you pick the bad ending where Spider-Man breaks bad fully and decides to lead a symbiote army with Felicia by his side. Further emphasizing the idea that Peter can't pick being with Felicia without abandoning everything that makes him who he is.

There's also Spectacular Spider-Man, the other beloved Spider-Man animated series. Shorter-lived, but just as impactful. Where Spidey and Black Cat seem to hit it off during the start of Peter's whole symbiote storyline. Their banter is great, the chemistry fits, Felicia and Pete seem destined to be star-crossed opposite sides of the law lovers. However, when they meet up again Felicia is breaking her father out as she usually does... but the twist this time is Felicia's father is the one who shot Uncle Ben.

Naturally this completely wrecks any goodwill concerning Black Cat and Spidey's second meeting. As from here on out he's adamant Felicia's dad is not getting out. While it turns out Dad doesn't want to leave either and he decides to sacrifice his chance at freedom to stop a mass jailbreak of supervillains, that changes little. Spider-Man does not forgive Felicia's father and Felicia blames Spider-Man for infecting her dad with sentimentality. Even knowing he took an innocent life, all Felicia sees is her dad rotting away in jail. She declares she'll never forgive Spider-Man for this and rushes off in anger. The series ended shortly thereafter and this was never resolved. Greg Weisman, the show's creator, says if it had continued the relationship would've been "fraught." And once again this is the typical line concerning the fact Felicia's selfish desires run up against Spider-Man's heroic responsibility. And letting a criminal get away, especially one that killed his Uncle, is just something he can't do.

And I could go on, there are a ton of examples of this very problematic element of the relationship. It's the thing Marvel has consistently used to explain why Peter and Felicia aren't the right fit. Any romance would require either character to make sacrifices they are incapable of. Namely Felicia's independence and Peter's Responsibilities. Marvel itself decided to set this in stone to a degree with the usual question they ask... "What If?"

"What if... Spider-Man Married the Black Cat?" is the second part of a longer What If storyline answering what would happen if Peter and MJ did not get married. (HA! After OMD, one cannot help but laugh!) And as much as that cover paints wedded bliss... it's anything but. Felicia and Peter come to blows repeatedly, unable to reconcile their differences. Their goals are far too distant from each other overall and they just can't find common ground. By the end of the issue, Felicia lies dead, Spider-Man heart broken and the grim reality that this romance could never work is cemented in stone it seems. "What Ifs" aren't definitive statements about the only possible outcomes for the Marvel universe. But they are definitive statements from Marvel itself, a decree from on high that the current continuity, for all its faults, could be so much worse and we should be happy for what we have. And while the issue is loaded with nice panels that any SpiderCat fan would adore, the end result is still plain as day. Felicia and Peter are too oil and water to ever mix. And the end result would be the destruction of one or both.

How do you overcome the dreadful reality that you ship is declared doomed forever by the very company that in some sense set it in motion? Not just because Spider-Man can never be happy, but because the Black Cat is just too toxic a girlfriend to ever truly make him happy. Everyone argued that MJ and Peter's marriage was boring but they didn't want him to get with the next best option either because they think it's non-compatible, that they're just too different and of opposing thought to ever reach common ground.

And Marvel has tried to permanently set that in stone in canon once. To forever place SpiderCat as beyond possible, to sever their connection as decades long allies... and all because of an octopus in the brain.

The image above is not that of Peter Parker fighting the Black Cat. This is Doctor Otto Octavius, piloting Peter's body after jacking his mind. This is the Superior Spider-Man, and he does not care about Peter's past infatuations. He's here to prove he's the better Spider-Man and that means apprehending all criminals. In an otherwise re-affirming storyline that proves Peter Parker is the true Superior Spider-Man, Otto failing to live up to his lofty ambitious boasts, this scene... this one bloody scene, leads to the absolute low point period for all SpiderCat Fans. I call it the "Bitch Be Crazy" Era, an offensive title for a frankly offensively disgusting sub-plot in the Spider Run post-Superior.

Peter Parker informs all his Superhero buddies that Doc Ock had taken over his body for a long time, explaining his shitty behavior for the past year or so. Most everyone's response is "Oh, yeah, that's obvious in hindsight." Not Felicia.

The tables have turned, now Felicia has broke bad, but for real. And there is no way to describe what she becomes but extremely out of character. She doesn't accept Spider-Man's explanation, she doesn't even care. She is now obsessed with becoming the next Kingpin of Crime, a murderous, merciless mob boss who pulls the strings of supervillains, all in a bid to destroy Spider-Man and all he holds dear and it's absolutely, completely, stupidly, idiotically terrible. No matter how selfish Felicia can be, this is NOT her. Felicia has never shown any desire to be a crime boss, to be feared. Her desires have always been thrill seeking, shiny things and not being told what she can and can't do. She might be violent, but she is not a cold-blooded killer. She might be cynical, but she is not this petty. Every element of this terrible subplot makes no sense unless she's absolutely lost her mind or been replaced by a Skrull.

The only fun thing in this whole mess, was that Gwenpool's first in-universe story took place during this sub-plot and she crossed paths with her. And then did this.

I guess that justifies putting a Gwenpool tag below somewhere. Win for me!

Suffice to say, no one liked this change. Everyone hated it, even more than Superior Spider-Man. People came around on that, no one liked Felicia the Big Black Cat of Crime. Dan Slott could never justify it because it made no sense that Felicia would care this much about street cred because Spider-Man beat her up. As if there isn't a single crook in New York at this point who can claim Spider-Man hasn't knocked out one of their teeth. Others tried to explain it, to give it a more sensible face. There was an explanation in the Silk comic, but it didn't really stick as something that would drive her to this extreme. Regardless, it was a dark time for SpiderCat Shipping Fandom. And it took way longer than it should've to fix it all.

But it did get fixed and that brings me the counter to ALL of this stuff that stands in Peter and Felicia's way. And that is that no matter how much things stay the same, comics always inevitably change and so do the characters in them. We like to pretend that the way we see a lot of the characters in comics now has just always been them. But no, they're not. Batman used to carry a gun in his early days, Superman didn't always fly, Captain America, a WW2 Veteran, claimed he never killed anyone for a short time, Deadpool didn't always break the 4th Wall and Starlord used to be a lot more of a straight edged serious space hero and not a rock music lovin' dancin' fool of a rogue Han Solo. Tastes change, writers change, people change... and so has Felicia.

Felicia hasn't always been honest with Peter, she's tricked him into chasing her, played him to get away with a score, gotten superpowers from Kingpin in an effort to keep up with him which led to their first break up, she even dated Flash Thompson trying to make him jealous. But if one thing has been consistent, it's that Felicia can't help but cross back into Peter's life. And in the process, because she cares, even loves him, there are things she's had to accept, to admit to. And chief among them is Peter Parker is Spider-Man and Peter Parker's life is as if not more important to him than just being Spider-Man. She hasn't only loved Spider-Man for years at this point, for a long time. She loves both. and she is willing to accept both. If there is any problem, it's Peter accepting Felicia for who she is... which is a better person than even she gives herself credit for.

Spider-Man wouldn't be partnering up with Felicia so often if he didn't believe there was more to her than just a shallow thief. And the influence has affected Felicia, she's admitted as much. Maybe her shift to doing good was set off by a crush, but she owned that change and she kept pushing herself. She'll never have a strict moral compass, but she does know what the right choice is at the end of the day, what feels right. And when Spider-Man needs an ally, he can call on her as much as anyone. Spider-Man being in her life has only been a net positive for Felicia, Peter being with her has only been a net positive. And that brings us back to her time as a lame crime boss and how they fixed her. Because there's a better, deeper, actually meaningful reason for their schism besides Felicia's loss of street cred.

She forgot the man she loved and changed for.

Yep, we're factoring One More Day into this thing proper like. After an adventure with Venom and Spidey, dealing with some symbiote nonsense, Felicia is convinced to hash it out with the Wall Crawler. And she admits to him that she lost something, his face. When Spider-Man made the world forget who he was under the mask it affected Felicia too. All her memories, all the time spent with Peter post reveal, everything that she knew about the man behind the mask... it was either gone or in a fog. She can't remember all those times that Peter trusted her with who he was and it has been eating her up inside for years! And Spider-Man never thought about how that would affect her, a person he's loved, been intimate with, and at least now cares about. That was an important time in her life and it's just gone now. And it may be selfish to want all of it back and even demand it back... but she's right. Those memories were hers and Spidey took them away. And Spider-Man, being selfless as he is, can't just let that stand anymore.

Everyone says Felicia only loves Spider-Man, but that's not true. She may love the Spider... but she changed for the Man. She cherishes that time she had with that Man. And it's hard to believe that she doesn't love the Man as much as the Spider because, ultimately, they are the same person. That's the other difference between this and Bruce/Selina. Bruce Wayne is the mask for the boy who died in that alleyway, Batman is who he's been since that day. Peter and Spider-Man are the same person, it's why he can't leave either persona behind. And Felicia has long since accepted that, and that has never changed how she feels about him until she lost who he was beneath the mask. Now it's all back, the highs and lows of that tumultuous time in her life when she fell for a Spider and came to love the Man. It doesn't heal everything, but it repairs the bond that was broken so long ago and so unintentionally.

There is, however, another argument being floated around these days I have to address. That even if Felicia can accept the man beneath the mask, do either really NEED each other? I'd point to all the stuff above that shows how that's simply not true, but there's more to it than that. Love isn't always about what you need, it's just as much about what you want. And I'm not talking about a person or thing, not something material. What does Felicia want? What does Peter want?

Felicia wants to be more than what she is, always has been. She wants thrills, she wants to be her true self and I feel Spider-Man brings out those qualities more than any of her other boy or girlfriends, especially since he started her path to change and growth. She stops being selfish and reacts more selfless. His influence on her is undeniable and she knows as much as anyone. She'll never be a good girl, but she'll at least be a better one than she is without him in her life.

Peter wants to be at peace, to be happy with who he is, to not always feel burdened. Felicia has always been one of the ways he's released that burden, he's been happy with her. Sure he's been happy with others, but Felicia has met him on a level that none of them could, she's been able to be in the thick of it with him. She's been able to share the burden. She's been able to be an active participant. With her around, Peter's world as a superhero doesn't feel so lonely. And maybe, if Felicia could accept the man as much as it seems she has, so too could she accept Peter's regular life.

In Taylor Swift's song, Anti-Hero, she reflects on how exhausting for her it's been that she hasn't seemed to learn anything and keeps making the same mistakes over and over. And if you pay attention to the lyics enough, they start describing Felicia Hardy pretty well.

I should not be left to my own devices They come with prices and vices I end up in crisis (tale as old as time) I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I'll watch as you're leaving 'Cause you got tired of my scheming (For the last time)

However, just as much of it can sorta apply to Spider-Man as well. His heroic selflessness is frankly a very long depressing slog of him being unable to forgive himself for letting down Uncle Ben, placing all the blame on his shoulders and then repeating that process whenever his great power can never live up to his great responsibility.

Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time) I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I'll watch as you're leaving And life will lose all its meaning (For the last time)

When it comes to Spider-Man and the Black Cat, a lot of the things that make them unhappy are self-inflicted. Lewis Lovhaug of "Atop the Fourth Wall" Fame has argued that the problem with Spider-Man in a lot of modern stories is that he never learns from anything. He hasn't done enough to improve himself as Spider-Man or as Peter Parker, he just keeps feeling sorry for himself that one gets in the way of the other. And frankly, the same curse has affected Felicia. Because a lot of what has prevented her from being with Spider-Man has been herself. Ultimately both will, as the song says, always look towards the bright sun of what they think they want, but never in the mirror. They'll hurt themselves, never realizing that they're the source of their own dissatisfaction with how their lives are. It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero, especially when its yourself.

Maybe Peter and Felicia don't need each other, but they do need someone to set them straight and get them to stop believing their own bullshit. To make them stare away from the sun and into the mirror. Because they are each exactly the kind of person who would do that for the other, in fact they've been doing it for as long as they've been together. Their bond is stronger than people give it credit for.

Early on in their relationship, Black Cat was badly injured and has to be rushed to a hospital. Helpless to really do anything, Peter could only stand by her bedside and hope she'd be okay again. For all his power, once more, he can't do anything but just stay with her. And actually, that's enough.

But come now, would Felicia ever do the same for Peter you ask? Well... during a recent story event, Spider-Man was badly injured and slips into a coma. But there was one person constantly by his side throughout it.

This isn't derogatory, Felicia is clearly lamenting the fact that someone so good who does everything so selflessly despite no thanks or praise, is so constantly placed into situations like this. It's unfair to her. It's why she's here now, like he was for her. And just like before...

It's Felicia who gets the first response out of him. Claim all you want that Felicia doesn't need Peter, that she's moved past him, that Peter and MJ are too perfect for each other, that the Black Cat can't ever settle down like Peter probably wants or that Peter can never really be there for Felicia in the way she wants. But I don't buy it. And stuff like this is why.

No matter how much bad luck she is, Spider-Man wants and in some ways needs the Black Cat is in his life. And no matter how much she can try and say she's over it, The Black Cat will always find a way to cross paths with her Spider.

In the recent PS4 Spider-Man game, Felicia came back after a stint of going straight to prepare for a major strike back against Hammerhead and the Maggia families. She coerces Spider-Man into another of her games where she steals $50 Million worth of stuff and forces him to chase her around the city to find it all. She leaves the loot behind though, because it was all trick to break into the police evidence lockup and snag her old gear. But she did leave Peter a cool new suit, a reference to the time when Felicia made a new black suit for Peter after giving up his symbiote. You know, so they match.

Felicia's little game comes to fruition when "The Heist" DLC comes out. Felicia strings Spidey along, pretending Hammerhead has her son, strongly implying its his. Ultimately this is revealed to have been a lie of course, another game. Because this, to Felicia, is basically the perfect date night. Spider-Man chases her, they team up, she gets what she wants and runs off into the night. In this case the entire wealth of the Maggia after double crossing Hammerhead. This gets a target on her back instantly. Spider calls her to warn her, leaving Felicia more than a little surprised.

Felicia: I just conned you and here you are trying to save me. How can you be so damn nice all the time?

Spidey: It's not about being nice, it's about doing the right thing! You have so many talents, I wish you'd use them to help someone other than yourself.

Felicia: Yeah well, you should know by now that's not how I roll.

Spidey: People can change, Felicia.

Felicia: Love you, Spider. I'll miss you.

Felicia's penthouse explodes and she appears to die. But eagle eyed players would notice the puff smoke just before the bomb goes off. The Black Cat fakes her death more than Doctor Doom uses robots. Felicia got away, scot-free, with all the money she could ever need or want. She conned Spider-Man, Hammerhead and everyone. She won hands down and can do whatever she wants from now on. No one will be looking for her. Hammerhead's plans to utilize weapons of war to take over the city isn't her problem.

And yet...

Felicia comes back to help Spider-Man, knowing it will basically put her on the radar again given everything she's stolen. She doesn't stay, but she saves him and gives him the means to take Hammerhead down. No matter what anyone thinks of Felicia, especially herself, she is not nearly as incapable of being selfless as one thinks. And this is true of most of her incarnations. Perhaps because the Black Cat will do anything to get what she wants, even if it means turning over a new leaf for her Spider. It's how this all started after all. Selfish Selflessness, it's probably the best middle ground Peter can hope for. But at least it means he can count on her, to be selfish. And that's why she'll always be there for him. Felicia doesn't like to lose the things she has.

I think it also says a lot that many players felt that Peter and Felicia's chemistry was loads more interesting and compelling than his relationship with the estranged version of MJ Spidey has to deal with. And frankly, Felicia being in those stealth sequences would've made a million times more sense. There are some who have even speculated, with no real proof mind you, that Felicia was lying about lying about having a son. That she DOES have one, he just wasn't in danger. But of course, that's unlikely. For the same reason Peter remains hung up on Mary Jane in this game despite the fact most players seem apathetic to them getting back together. Spider-Man being a father out of wedlock is something that Marvel is not really prepared to sign off on. Just as much as they resist him being with someone other than MJ in other media, despite not wanting him to be with her in the comics.

It all seems so arbitrary to me, that they just can't be together because of the iconography of Peter and MJ. Or because she can't love the man the Spider is, which isn't true. Or Spider-Man can't change her or trust her, which also isn't true. If there has ever been a more consistent, sustainable, supportive and bonded character to Peter Parker it has been Felicia Hardy. Romantically or platonically, Felicia has dropped things to be there for Peter. And the idea that they are toxic for each other has never rung true. People can change, and this romance proves it. They just need to be given the chance to do so, and have the right person along for the ride. And the forced separation feels more arbitrary when you take into consideration, that Marvel has kept MJ and Peter apart for over a decades worth of comics and has never bit the bullet on simply just letting Felicia and Peter be together until now.

Some have claimed the new romance is out of the blue, that Spencer was setting things up to undo OMD, that Wells just pulled this off out of nowhere. Well... no. Because those scenes where Felicia brought Peter out of his coma, the re-unmasking, the re-entry into his life through a number of adventures... Spencer wrote those himself. People have confirmation bias, I'm no different, I don't claim to be. However, everyone has wanted OMD to be undone since the storyline first concluded. Marvel has played with fans' heartstrings that it will do so and it has prevented Peter from moving on because if he's not in a committed sustainable relationship, there's always hope that Mephisto's deal will be undone! And it has not helped anyone in the slightest to keep buying that horse crap.

The fact is I'm honestly sick of this "will they won't they" garbage from Marvel on undoing One More Day and I think more people should be by this point. Let me make this perfectly clear, even if they undo the deal... they're not getting remarried. Marvel simply is not interested in going down that road for Spider-Man again. Even with the new Spider-Verse movie showing Peter B. with a kid. Because the problem has never been they won't let Peter be married to MJ. The problem is they won't let Peter grow. The problem is they won't let him move on and change. They stick him in a misery spin cycle and just never let him out.

Why not just end the charade? Let Peter grow. Let Felicia grow. They both already want to. They both already desire to. And they both have already done so for the other. Felicia has been there to challenge and push him, while also protecting and supporting him. And Peter has undeniably changed Felicia as a person. She may never have the same moral compass, but she's no longer as lost as she once was. Her selfish cynicism is kept in check when it comes to Peter. And his selfless self-destruction is held back thanks to Felicia. Why deny them the chance to both be truly happy? Especially when they make each other better people. Why deny chemistry that is so perfectly balanced in its contradiction?

I don't begrudge people for preferring Mary Jane over Spider-Man. I'm more or less at peace with the reality that some pairings are just thought of as the default and nothing is really gonna change that. I prefer Rogue with Deadpool, that doesn't change the fact she'll always be with Gambit. What I wanted to stress with this isn't so much an argument to ship it so much as the ultimate reason I simply can't let these two go. For me, SpiderCat speaks on some primal level, more than wish fulfillment, but the idea of growth. That love can hold you up in your worst moments, or change you for the better. That it can make you look in the mirror and ask who do you want to be, what to you want. What is worth changing for? Felicia found her answer, a nerdy, selfless, eternally tormented wall-crawler, who should know better than to go chasing her trying to save her from herself... but does it anyway. How could she not return the favor and be there for him? It's hard to say whether he caught her in his web, or if she just loves walking across his path. What is certain is they are bonded to each other, in one way or another. And that's the only thing about either character that I don't think can ever truly change.

Well this was a long one, and probably a lot more introspective and personally relatable than I thought. I think now have a better understanding of what has always drawn me to these two. And also now think I have discovered the song that describes them both so... thanks Taylor Swift! Whatever future this rekindled romance holds in the comics, we'll see how it shakes out. But I can enjoy the ride even if some of it has been rocky. Not the first time I've had to deal with that.

If you're still here, congrats, you've made it to the end. And I hope I didn't completely bore you all with this fairly overly comprehensive look at a pairing spanning various mediums and continuities. But I like to be thorough. So I hope you can appreciate the amount of work I put into this whole thing for you all. If I ever do this again I can only hope it won't be so... all encompassing. But I make no promises.

One thing I know though, I'm probably gonna be riding and dying these two forever. The Cat and her Spider, the Self and Selfless. Beautiful in the mess they are apart and the whole they are together.

#spidercat #spider-man #black cat #marvel #felicia hardy #peter parker #spiderman x black cat #peterfel #comics #shipping

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Jesus, why is she so damn pretty!? She deserves only the best!

mina ashido || BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA 6th SEASON

[rjmhereunderprotest]

I'm Going to the DekuBowl!

Hey, can we just talk a bit about the fact Izuku Midoriya is basically a Harem Protagonist in a non-Harem show? Because if you ignored canon and just went entirely on AO3 alone, you'd get the impression that this is a show about a neurotic little shy boy who every girl (and sometimes boys) wants to have hot sweat make out sessions with. And sometimes they hold hands, the lewdest of all activities according to the internet.

My Hero Academia's fandom is... strange in many aspects. It freely creates dynamics out of very little, spanning entire random headcanons based on very little but the basic possible concept. To the point that said concepts are, arguably, more popular than the IP itself. Case in point and a subject for another day, the BakuSquad, where people have grouped Bakugo with a specific "friend" group based entirely around a few things, his few interactions with them and the fact they're all kinda stupider than him thus sticking him with them is funny. Like, very funny, the most funny. It could honestly be a spinoff series given the fanon canon built up around BakuSquad.

But while the BakuSquad is the most well-known fanon element of MHA, Deku the Harem Protag is the slightly saucier less acknowledged but just as present sibling. Milling in the corner, trying not to be noticed as they read their "High School DxD" Manga in peace at the family gathering. Innocent but not so innocent, born out of a desire that Izuku is an adorable, charming, affable shy boy cinnamon roll who would do anything to make his significant other happy... so why not share him?

And because I'm currently thinking about fanon perception over canon definitiveness, and the fact I noticed that Izuku is apparently Nejire's most chosen partner on AO3 over Tamaki by a not insignificant margin despite their very limited interaction I am left once more to ponder the question... why? As I have often asked myself. What makes Izuku Midoriya so special as a chosen Harem protag? Why does he have so many ships and why is it so prolific? Well, let's see for ourselves.

What Makes a Harem Protagonist?

Harem Protagonists have a general perception in media and it's not entirely untrue. A lot of Harem Animes and Mangas have very stock bland fairly generic personalities. They are built so a generally male viewer can insert themselves into that role. They are plentiful and everywhere and they are interchangeably boring. Their most common trait is that are titular "Nice Guys", with the sole admirable trait that they do not take advantage of the fact there are several women (although not always exclusively so, as reverse harems do exist along a similar dynamic) trying to get in their pants. This is because Harem Manga and Anime are primarily situational comedies and they aren't actually depicting polyamorous relationships truly. They are depicting an extended season of the Bachelor with more hijinks and less eliminations. The usual endgame involves dissolving the harem because the protagonist will pick one of the girls and that's it, she wins, game over. True harems, where the central figure and the significant other AGREE to share in a consensual polyamorous relationship are rare. Because that usually resolves any and all problems and isn't as funny.

There is humor to be found in a polyamorous relationship of course, I've seen it. But it's not the same kind you find in a typical harem comedy, where the protagonist isn't sure they want this and doesn't want to look like a pervert but they do and they end up somehow falling into the tsundere's boobs by some strange stupid accident and get slapped for it. Love Hime was the quintessential Harem Anime for this reason and it's why everyone hates it today because it's so much the atypical pattern NOW that it looks trite, cliché and bland as all hell even more so than when it was new.

Therefore these days, because there are so many Harem anime and manga stories out there, the idea of trying to stand out has become more prominent. If you want to avoid being called simple wish fulfillment, your harem protagonist has to have something many lack... namely their own goddamn brain. It's the same as the video game silent protagonist debate in many respects. Do you want your hero to be their own person or do want them to be an avatar for the audience? And a lot of the better Harem Animes and Manga have found success in the wider community because they allow their central protagonists to have a personality. It's not the only factor, but it helps in separating the wheat from the chaff.

Izuku Midoriya is special in this regard. He plays as both a self-insert but is more structurally defined than many protagonists of his kind. This is because, he's a superhero, MHA is a superhero story and superhero stories are themselves a form of power fantasy. The fantasy of I can go out and defend my community from bad people with flashy powers and cool gadgets and make a discernable difference in said community. Izuku is very much of this sort of kind of character. He is a powerless young boy who wants to be a superhero and help people. He is the prototypical self-insert. But he has a very clear, well defined personality. He's not just any nerd, he's a very specific characterized individual, with goals and aspirations of his own.

He's generous, kind, caring, lovable but also a massive worry wart. He's constantly over-thinking things. He places enormous burdens on himself. He is almost self-destructive in his desire to help people. Like literally. It's his whole damn character arc. We can insert ourselves into Izuku, but we can also see where we end and he begins. He has as many discernable flaws as he does positives. And this is probably because Kohei Horikoshi based him on a combination of the Naruto character Rock Lee's color scheme and aesthetic and Marvel's Spider-Man, specifically Miles Morales variant who inherited the Spider-Man moniker through a quirk (heh) of fate. I don't think Izuku is exactly like Miles, but he does share a number of traits with him. He also shares, as previously discussed at length, Spider-Man overwhelming propensity to damage himself for the sake of others. That's true of many Spider-Man variants honestly.

Izuku is unique among Shonen protagonists in this regard, he is not of the same self-assured caliber as a Naruto or Goku. He is not a brash hothead like Ichigo or Urumeshi. He's certainly not a goofball like Luffy from when he started out. No Izuku is the most human of all these because he begins as powerless. People like Bakugo or Shoto are usually the stars of these sorts of shows. Brash arrogant hotheads or reserved loners with dark tragic pasts. Izuku's more humble origins as just a kid who wanted to be a hero makes him the kind of character we can root for as well as empathize with. Because we'd all like to think, if we were Izuku, we'd try to do the best with what we were given.

So we can insert ourselves more easily into Izuku's character without completely erasing his personality because he has one. Izuku in this sense has all the makings of a harem protagonist, without the harem. And that brings us to the other side of this dynamic and why it's probably so prolific with Izuku himself.

Who Are the Girls in a Harem?

Let's be VERY clear here... Horikoshi might have problems capitalizing on all the characters he's created, the women especially, but there is no denying that they have had an impact all the same. In Class 1-A alone, Horikoshi has created a perfectly diverse group of personalities. You have the best friend, Ochako Uraraka, the blunt truth-sayer, Tsuyu Asui, the tomboy quasi-goth, Kyoka Jiro, the demure polite girl, Momo Yaoyorozu, the dtizy genki girl, Toru Hagakure, and my favorite, the bubbly party girl, Mina Ashido. These six alone make up a diverse enough personality range that any harem anime or manga is required to have. If the girls are all too similar then there is no conflict or clash of personalities. They're all just copy pasted from one another.

The 1-A Girls are all friends of course, as close as anyone else in Class 1-A, because Horikoshi has made them all extremely likable. They have flaws of course, they can be rude, stupid, selfish or lacking in confidence, but they are individually appealing and endearing. Which is why it is so hard to name a definitive best girl, because they're all really good people that you can see being friends with. And that diversity of personalities holds true outside of this classroom. It also holds true for the dudes as well. They all have some trait that highlights their likability. Even Bakugo... maybe not Mineta but you can't win'em all.

It's this high bar of quantity of archetypes combined with quality of their execution that makes a lot of MHA's characters well-loved. Even smaller players among the cast have their sizable fandoms. You may argue they don't get the screentime they deserve and I'll agree with you on many points, but that just feeds the Izuku Harem Phenomenon in my eyes. A diverse range of personalities that a lot of people like and think are regularly compatible with Izuku himself.

Ochako is easy, she's the best friend, the first girl Izuku talks to and meets, they're cute together if vanilla. Momo is a taller, gorgeous looking girl, who matches Izuku in her kind polite demeanor as well as intelligence. Tsu is a lot more forward and honest than Izuku is, but their early dynamic chemistry was plain enough for a lot of fans to see. Toru cheery personality contrasts nicely with Izuku's own, even if he is standoffish, which also highlights the contrast between Toru's powers and her personality alongside Midoriya's. Kyoka's a studious notetaker on par with Izuku, they both take their passions seriously and their shared desire to be heroes despite the obstacles in their way gives them added weight. And Mina Ashido has shown she has Izuku's own tendency to run into danger, her feet moving before her brain, as well as her own shared mindset of trying to resolve conflict with a smile, much like Izuku.

There is more to each of these dynamics and individually they all have sizable shipping fandoms. Each of these also says nothing of the wide assortment of characters Izuku has been shipped with, boys included, this is just a sampling to keep this thing short because we'd be here all day otherwise. All you need to know is that when people are spoiled for choices when it comes to great character potential, and they feel some of that potential is being squandered, the results are inevitable.

Rest assured, it is increasingly difficult to find solo romances of Izuku on AO3 these days. Just trying to find IzuMina stuff on its own, alone, no other pairings involved in the romantic entanglement, is an arduous process. This is because Izuku has such great dynamic chemistry with a lot of people he partners with. It's part of the reason to Shoto/Deku pairing is so big, because of their chemistry during the tournament arc and afterwards. Human beings create connections, we see patterns and we match those patterns to our personal preferences. And if people see a lot of links between certain characters, they're going to connect them. And if they like enough of the characters, if they want to see them more involved in the main story, if they honestly can't decide which pairing they prefer more... the tendency among a lot of MHA fans is to simply not choose.

Izuku is a generous, kind, caring person who is not one to take advantage of people. If anyone could handle a polyamorous relationship, in the eyes of many, Izuku could. I mean, doesn't he always say he wants to make as many people as happy as possible? And isn't that the point of polyamory anyway? To make everyone involved in it happy?

Choosing Fandom Over Canon

The Izuku Harem phenomenon is born out of an inherent prolific desire, ultimately, among the MHA fandom to substitute stated canon with their own. Let's be honest with ourselves, Shonen Anime and Manga are extremely formulaic in tone, narrative and style. My Hero Academia is no different. It was obvious from day one that Ochako and Izuku were going to be endgame and nothing anyone said was going to change that. Writers have the right to tell their stories their way. But the limitations of canon, by either writing conventions or accepted societal norms, have always come up against fanon. Getting back to the Bakusquad for a second, it is highly unlikely that fans who choose to support the friendship unit as a thing actually believe it to be a real thing in the series at this point. What they like, what they see, what attracts them to it is the possibility, the opportunity, the chance for it to be real. And they disregard canon's opposing view in favor of it because letting the chance to tell that story slip away is not acceptable.

In the same vein, Izuku being a harem protagonist is too good an opportunity for some to indulge in to let go. The chance to see Izuku try to manage a complicated relationship between several girls, or boys, or a combination of both, is simply a tantalizing proposition. Why let it go to waste and not explore the potential dynamics of Izuku with all these characters with dynamic, interesting and compelling personalities? Especially when it feels like, to many, the chances for him to connect with these fellow heroes has been neglected in favor of Shonen writing conventions.

People sometimes complain that the MCU and superhero movies in general, have gotten stale, they all feel the same, they don't do enough different, when they do it doesn't match what is expected, whatever. The ultimate problem there I find is that films don't give a person enough time or opportunity to spend with these characters. We get 90 minutes to two hours and that's it. A series gives us more, especially a manga or comic book, but there's always something we miss. Something we don't see when the character is not on screen or we skip a chunk of time or it's a minor adventure that's not covered. And while some people would tell these stories, there's always the risk that it will be labelled as filler and therefore derided as such. Even though filler isn't inherently bad.

This is where Fanon comes in, filling in gaps or providing opportunities for fans to spend more time with their beloved characters. Izuku being in a Harem enables a lot of characters to better contribute to his story and for him to contribute to theirs. And rather than pick and choose who gets the chance to have adventures with Izuku, why not just give as many characters as possible the chance? And considering that Izuku is effectively a self-insertable viewpoint as well as his own dynamic character, the resulting Harem overload of fanfiction was not completely unforeseen. I think that Izuku Midoriya's position as a fanon Harem Protag is evocative of the MHA Fandom at large. A collective decision that where the canon fall short, the fans will be there to fill things in, improve them or speak through it. Which is true of fandom in general, but MHA feels special because it doesn't read like a fixfic or vindictive, not always anyway.

It honestly reads as people seeing more opportunities in a story than canon allows. And frankly that should be supported. I don't want to make the claim that it's all good or has no downsides. But a lot of this stuff is clearly highly personal, deeply meaningful and prolific. It would be wrong to claim it's mere wish fulfillment, when its obvious that it's struck a chord. There would be so much of it out there if there wasn't something resonating with people. That Izuku could make all of these girls (or boys) happy and that they could be happy with them and things would only improve from there.

If you take anything away from this, it's that fanon should be embraced to a degree. We should celebrate the opportunity and willingness to tell stories that don't always line up with what canon says. Be willing to break free a little, to explore, to take chances with things that the source material can't or won't and always speak your truth more than anything else. And if that truth is Izuku is the kind of guy who could make a polyamorous relationship work? Go for it I say. So long as you acknowledge that it IS fanon, that is your personal view, an Alternate View of an Alternate Version of Canon, there is no harm in it.

But please, AO3, can you make it easier for me to actually, you know... find IzuMina solo fics, that would be appreciated.

#my hero acedamia #mha #mha headcanons #izuku midoriya #harem #shipping #ochako uraraka #tsuyu asui #momo yaoyozoru #toru hakagure #kyoka jiro #mina ashido #fanfiction #canon vs fanon #story conventions #Seriously #send me IzuMina content

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Crossed Paths & Tangled Webs: Why I Ship SpiderCat

This is gonna be a controversial one through no fault of my own... but also it's all my own damn fault. A confusing contradicting statement to be sure, but when you're talking about Peter Parker and Felicia Hardy, that statement seems to ring the most true. Two people who are as perfect for each other as they are imperfect. In love through no fault of their own... and completely at fault for being so.

My poll for another ship to cover picked this... I'm more than happy to talk about it but we're dealing with volatile stuff right now. As I write this, Spider-Man and Black Cat actually ARE in a relationship with each other. Peter has recently stated that he no longer feels romantically for his long-time love-interest, Mary Jane, calling her more akin to a sister. MJ was apparently stuck in some post-apocalyptic Narnia situation where enough time passed for her to have kids with another guy. And if that wasn't enough... Mary Jane may be about to join Gwen Stacey in the fridge, if you get my meaning. As Zeb Wells is teasing the most shocking Spider-Man story since Gwen Stacey's death and the solicits for the story afterwards say Spider-Man is about to suffer a terrible loss. Felicia is on the covers of at least one of those issues. So unless it's a complete fake out and Wells is going to kill off a relationship he has stated he both prefers and spent a ton of time setting up at the expense of the preferred romance among fans... yeah it's not looking good for MJ. I mean he might kill off Aunt May again, but... well there's no guarantees in comics... ever.

This is a strange time period to be a long suffering SpiderCat shipper. I have held a torch for these two for such a long time it feels like almost second nature. I see Felicia, I want to see her with Peter. No one else, man or woman, will do. (Yes she's Bi, shut up, it's canon) Yet right now, a SpiderCat shipper is now writing the Spider-Man books and everyone seems to absolutely hate Zeb Wells' execution of it all. I've gotten what I wanted, at last, but fans are outright rejecting it. Not so much for Felicia and Peter being together mind you, as much as they're annoyed MJ is being thrown under the bus.

Which I get actually, I may have wanted this ship over Peter/MJ, but not at her expense. I don't want her DEAD or badly written. And given how Marvel has basically treated MJ and Peter over the years, it's hard to argue that these reactions are anything but justified. Even decades later, One More Day's shadow still looms large. Marvel has constantly teased and poked and prodded and snickered about the possibility of Mary Jane and Peter Parker becoming an item again. If not married, at the very least dating. But Marvel seems insistent on this point. "The Marriage was a mistake, we're never going back to it. And anything that is even remotely similar to that status quo is not allowed. Ever." The inability of Marvel's Spidey writers to craft a compelling happy marriage between Peter and MJ has been an albatross around the neck of the ship forever! Even when they did it in an ongoing, it had to be a different universe! One where the Civil War comics event wasn't a thing, so that was also a plus. And MJ had to get Spider Powers too in order to smooth over the whole thing for writers.

So, yeah, MJ's been blamed for making Spider-Books dull and kept at arms length from Peter as much as possible. Because if Spider-Man is EVER TOO HAPPY that can only spell DOOM for the character. His world must always revolve around misery. Linkara of AT4W has said it time and again, in the eyes of Marvel, Spider-Man can never be allowed to be happy.

And yet, despite all that, I still hold true to this maxim, Peter Parker and Felicia Hardy are made for each other. If I ever had an OTP, if I ever had a ship I'd die for, if there was ever any romance I was forever evergreen invested in... it was SpiderCat. Despite whatever the world says, that it can't work, that it's a bad idea, that they don't need each other, that it will never be the way Peter/MJ were once... I don't care. I reject all of that and state proudly, without shame, every time that Spider-Man and the Black Cat are and always shall be perfect for each other.

So Let's Talk about Why that is...

Usually I'm inclined to give brief synopsis points about both characters in separate sections. But Spider-Man is so well known and Black Cat so simply explained in their initial set ups it feels almost... pointless. When you can describe at least one half of the shipping dynamic with a theme song from a sixties cartoon it's hard to honestly come up with anything new or original.

So yeah, Peter Parker, nerdy wimp who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, doesn't get cancer from this, but super powers. Thinks about using these great powers to enrich his life, but after letting a criminal get away because it's "not his problem" he learns a harsh lesson about responsibility. His uncle dies at the hands of said criminal, it's all his fault, and Peter proclaims that as long as he has these powers he will use them to help people.

And as a result, Spider-Man is the hero that always gets up because he has to, he needs to. Because people, strangers and loved ones, depend on him. This comes at the cost of a great deal of things that would make him personally happy. Because if Spider-Man is about anything, it's about personal sacrifice and responsibility. It has been a running theme since his first comic and will continue until the heat death of the universe. If you know nothing else of Spider-Man, this is the most important fact about him going forward for the rest of this essay. Spider-Man is Responsibility and Self-Sacrifice Personified. Whenever he doesn't live up to either aspect of himself, bad things happen, to him, to the people he cares about and New York City at large.

On the other side of that coin, Felicia Hardy, aka the Black Cat. Infamous thief. While her origins are more fluid throughout her incarnations, her general story is pretty much the same. Felicia is a thrill seeking thief, who lives for the daredevil rush only a well-executed heist can accomplish. The Black Cat persona is that of a femme fatale thief of the highest order. There's no question that she shares more than a few similarities to Catwoman of Batman fame. Save for the fact she might possess a slight passive power that causes bad luck to her opponents.

Different character of course, but that's just to establish that it is a superpower. Felicia uses it mainly to steal whatever she wants and get away scot-free. She, in general, tries to avoid personal consequences for these actions. While her motives may vary from one story or universe to the next, ultimately her purpose in life is the same. To live for herself, for her needs and how she wants. The Black Cat persona is just that, a means to indulge in her wants and desires to the fullest extent. She is, inherently, self-serving and selfish whereas Spider-Man is selfless.

On the surface this presents a dynamic akin to oil and water. Spider-Man is an avatar of personal responsibility. The Black Cat is the personification of independent self-interest. They are such opposites, such contradictions, that they should just not work. They should be enemies... and that is how they started.

Amazing Spider-Man #194, Black Cat's first appearance where she and Spidey come to blows over her illicit activities. Felicia has contracted a crew for a job to spring her terminally ill father from prison. Spider-Man tries to stop her, only to end up buried under the rubble of the exploding prison wall. Black Cat flees the scene with a quip about crossing her path and Spidey with a bad arm post-fight. The next issue sees Spidey deduce Felicia's real identity and that Felicia only broke her father out so he could spend his dying hours with his wife and her mother. Spidey and Cat come to blows outside arguing over the merits of what she's done. However in the struggle Black Cat starts to fall off a roof into a surging river below. Spidey catches her with his bad arm, trying to stop her fall... but can't hold on as Felicia seemingly falls to her death. He tries to return to the Hardy residence, only to see Felicia's mother in grief over the death of her husband. Not wanting to add to it... Spidey leaves.

Of course, this isn't the end for Felicia, issue #204 sees the Black Cat return. She's actually been watching him it seems, taking photos of him swinging around town. They get reacquainted at the museum where Cat manages to slip away again after another fight with Spider-Man. Felicia is annoyed though that he keeps fighting her, not understanding why she's doing this. And by the next issue it's revealed, the art pieces Felicia stole were meant to symbolize what she thinks of Spidey. Namely, that she has developed a crush on him. No doubt because, despite trouncing him almost every time they've fought, she's clearly enjoyed all of it. And Spidey hasn't exactly helped in that regard as he has routinely flirted with her. He can't help it, she is hot. Felicia claims she wants to leave thieving behind, at the behest of her mother and she would like Spider-Man to help her reform. Seeing a similarity to a current situation with a girl he's instructing, and that Felicia might be suffering a bit of a mental break as a result of her father's death, he promises to get her help.

These introductory stories set the stage for Felicia and Peter's on again off again relationship for years to come. Felicia is self-servingly selfish, desiring things that aren't hers. Yet her motives are more complicated than pure greed, it is always based somewhat around her emotional state. Her need to give her father and mother some closure before she passes, her desire for Spider-Man to lead her out of a life of crime, as per her mother's wishes. She isn't evil, she has noble intent, she just goes about it in very self-centered ways. Spidey, in the meantime, is selfless to a fault. He'll keep chasing her down, he'll keep trying to set her straight, keep trying to stop her crime sprees. He is drawn to her by his selflessness and sense of responsibility to prevent her from just getting away with whatever she wants. But he does genuinely want to help her and he will not take advantage of her fragile emotional state, even if he himself is somewhat into her. Hell, the first thing he thinks about when he first sees her is that he hopes she isn't a criminal because he'd like to ask her out. He is clearly drawn to Felicia, even if it only starts out as pure infatuation, but he will not take advantage of her interest in him because he knows better than to try to exploit that for his own self-interest.

Of course it's a lie, well partially. Felicia faked being crazy to more easily escape a psychiatric hospital than a prison. But she is indeed in love with him. After her escape, she invites Spidey to a masquerade ball via a sky writer. Ultimately revealing that she lied to him about her mental breakdown in a selfish bid to escape consequences for her actions. But she wants to make up for it now, because this masquerade ball is being hosted by mafioso she stole from and says Spidey can now arrest them all! Crime is too easy she thinks, superheroing is her next thrill seeking adventure and she wants to do it with him. And despite being tricked and more than a little bribed into this, Spider-Man decides ultimately why not give it a try? If she really does want to go straight for him... isn't the responsible thing to do with her to help her out even if her motives are a tiny bit selfish?

This is how their romance starts and sets up the ultimate tug of war dynamic. Spider-Man does want Black Cat, but is wary of her desire to push him into a more selfish mindset. Black Cat actually desires Spider-Man, but can't get over her compulsive selfishness. In this story alone she has to sort of trick Spider-Man into coming to a date that's actually a mafioso party that he can break up. It's a highly manipulative plan that appeals to her selfish infatuation and Spider-Man's selfless heroism. It is a constant push and pull between them at multiple points. By all accounts, they should not work and a good deal of comics past this point go on and on about why they can't work.

I could cover the lengthy relationship between both characters throughout the 80s, Spidey was actually dating Felicia for a long time during the Black Suit days, even after he gave up the Symbiote. And for the most part this dynamic does not entirely change. Peter wants to help Black Cat be a better person before he can truly commit to her. Felicia wants to be a better person and make things work with Spider-Man, but she has a hard time wrapping her head around selfless action over selfish indulgence. It's the roadblock between them truly working as a couple. And there are a ton of moments during this time period I could talk about, but frankly, they are ALL before my time.

None of them really prove my point either, all I've done is just explain why their dynamic as a couple is riveting. It's not exactly like Batman and Catwoman's, but its of a similar vein. The key difference is Spider-Man, being who he is, isn't as opposed to the idea at first as Bruce is with Selina. Catwoman plays a lot harder to get for a lot longer than Black Cat, she also doesn't become Batman's superhero partner. Felicia and Peter by contrast are much younger though, so their reasoning is frankly more in line with their age demographic. They're just quicker to jump in than most people. The only thing holding them back is Black Cat and Spidey's diametrically opposed ideologies, even though we'll see those two viewpoints somewhat crisscross soon enough.

If you want to know however where I actually came in on this, we need to hop over to another universe. The one firmly positioned in the decade that defines the pop cultural wasteland... the 90s.

In an effort to compete with DC's Batman cartoon, Marvel fast tracked a Spider-Man show into production. While not on the same technical/narrative level as the landmark Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-Man: The Animated Series still did a tremendous job at capturing the essence of the character and is still a good series in its own. Even on a recent rewatch, I was surprised to see how well-thought out and true to form the series was. Yes, it's overuse of repeated animation and various other shortcuts was annoying, it certainly wasn't perfect, even by 90s standards, but it deserves recognition where it counts. Part of that was, in my opinion, the dynamic between Felicia and Peter Parker/Black Cat and Spider-Man. It certainly wasn't a slamdunk, I'm going to talk about where the writers fumbled it, but when it worked it worked and I think those parts where it worked so well were what cemented the idea in my head that this relationship, fraught as it was, COULD become something everlasting.

There's no hiding that Felicia's story is completely different from the comics. She actually knows Peter to begin with before she even becomes the Black Cat. They actually date for a while and despite the fact Peter is poorer than dirt, she is clearly interested in him and remains so for a good portion of season one. Peter's first kiss in the series is Felicia in fact. Even when MJ is in the picture, Peter is still torn between her and Felicia.

You might think we're dealing with a Betty and Veronica situation, but it never really materializes as such. Felicia and MJ never really meet this early and Felicia herself isn't really the rich girl stereotype. She's not particularly girlish or whinny. She doesn't really look down on anyone for their status. In fact she more often than not tries to rebel against the stereotype. She does a lot of charity work, she shows concern for the good of New York's citizens and she gives credit to those who deserve it, not just because they flatter her. She also gives Peter a lot of chances despite seemingly screwing up with her. She is reluctant at first to go out with him, but is not embarassed to be seen with him. The issue that arises is, from her perspective, Peter is never around when she gets in major trouble... but Spider-Man is. This become important later, but the thing to note is she is still close friends with Peter for a good amount of time and shows an interest in hm.

The only reason Felicia doesn't get with Peter is, again, Peter's terrible luck as a result of his responsibilities as Spider-Man. He accidentally stands Felicia up one too many times and she... ugh... ends up falling for Michael Morbius. Yes... that Morbius. No, we're not doing the meme. I only bring it up here because its one of the flaws in the show, Morbius as Felicia's love interest feels so incredibly out of place. It exists purely to prevent Felicia and Peter from getting together because nothing about it works. Morbius is hardly charming, he's somewhat of a creep, he's rude, abrasive and his petty rivalry with Peter just makes him unlikable. Its this petty bullshit rivalry, in fact, that causes Morbius' transformation into a Vampire monster in this continuity. Peter tries to claim responsibility for it because it was caused with his radioactive blood, but Morbius was an asshole and did it to himself. He's at fault and he sucks... pun not intended, not entirely. But because he's doing all this to stop a plague in his home country, and he saves Felicia this one time when Peter doesn't show, we're supposed to buy that she's smitten with him. And I do not buy it. In fact, I'd argue the show's writers didn't even buy it and were somewhat forced to do this so they wouldn't step on the iconic romance with Peter and MJ.

Morbius' subsequent flight into exile, as he basically becomes a mutant bat monster, starts an ongoing subplot with Felicia, the fact she has seemingly terrible luck with men. Early on, after Morbius has left her life, Felicia begins to develop a crush on Spider-Man, as at this point he's been there for her more than most other men in her life, saving her or her mother. Spider-Man, as a result, has become a very huge constant staple in her life, more so than any other man as far she can see. Peter, despite his messy love life, does care for Felicia, and is very quick to jump in to help her whenever she is in trouble. Partially because of his connection to her, partly because he still blames himself for Morbius' transformation. So Peter is spending a lot of time as Spider-Man with Felicia at this point, more so than MJ even who is dating Harry Osborn for a while. As far as Felicia is concerned, Spider-Man has become something akin to a knight in shining armor who is always there for her. She can't help but fall for him.

She reveals this by suddenly kissing him on the balcony, pulling up the mask half-way and everything. Peter, however, says he can't reciprocate, as much as he probably still has feelings for Felicia. He says he can't have a girlfriend though because it would put her in danger. It's bunk of course, he's still trying to be with MJ even though she's currently with Harry, but I imagine it plants an idea in Felicia's head. Regardless, for now she's crestfallen and this leads her into the arms of another man, Jason Phillips Macendale, a rich well to do playboy-type. Even still, she retains her feelings Spider-Man throughout their relationship. There is a scene at a carnival where Jason wins a stuffed Spider for her, which she remarks she finds spiders cute while he acts rather annoyed and jealous over it. Despite the fact she very clearly still wants Spidey to be with her, Felicia does agree to marry Jason when he proposes.

At the engagement party, which Peter attends with MJ as she has dumped Harry at this point, he changes into Spider-Man to spy on the Kingpin and Osborn over some business with the Hobgoblin. Annoyed he has to leave MJ to deal with this problem, he's interrupted by Felicia.

She asks if he's here to wish her good luck and Peter fumbles his words in saying as much. Which leads to this exchange:

Spidey: Do you really love this Jason Phillips guy?

Felicia: And why should you care about that? Unless you got a better offer?

Spidey: (Thoughts) This is crazy, I can't have one girlfriend as Peter Parker and another as Spider-Man! (Speaking) No, I don't... I just want you to be happy.

As Spidey swings away, Felicia mournfully says "So do I." It's a very clear statement, she's settling. Jason is rich and powerful and the person she's expected to marry due to who she is, but she's not really sure about it, or happy. Because the man she wants is currently swinging away. It's obvious that, in Felicia's eyes, she's missing something in her life that makes her happy and Spider-Man seems to be that something. Likewise, Peter, the paragon of self-responsibility, knows he can't abuse his secret identity to cheat on MJ, even though he seems very tempted to admit that he still has feelings for Felicia. But in the end, all he cares about is her happiness and if she can find it in this Jason dude, who is he to ruin that?

Well, he doesn't have to ruin it. Because we find out, shock of all shocks, Jason is the Hobgoblin and the revelation shakes Felicia to her core. The fact that this person she was dating, this man who she decided on because she couldn't have Spider-Man was a fraud, a criminal, a liar... it's a terrible thing to realize how poor your judgment is. Almost reaffirming that this was the wrong choice from the start.

Spidey of course once again comes swinging to her rescue and defeats the Hobgoblin. But Felicia has questions for her former fiancé. Jason relents that he used crime to create everything he is and get everything he has, including her. She's just another possession to him. What she deep down probably feared going into this, why her heart wasn't in this, why she wanted Spider-Man to give her a way out and save her again.

Felicia: I have to know, did you ever really love me?

Jason: I don't know. I love things about you. Your wealth, your beauty, your refinement.

Felicia: That's not love! I've experienced true love... and it's nothing like that.

And we don't get a flashback to Morbius, as this show constantly does because it's very not subtle, we don't see her talk about bat boy at all. She looks directly at Spider-Man as she says this and the camera zooms in on him as she speaks those words. This overtly informs the audience what love means in Felicia's mind. Love in Felicia's mind is being there for someone, who Spider-Man has been for a long time now. And more importantly, it's about wanting that person to be happy, which was all Spider-Man said he ever wanted. Spidey never asked anything of Felicia, he was just there for her and perhaps, in Felicia's mind, the reason he can't return it is because she can't be there in the same way. She is after all a damsel who he needs to keep saving and Spider-Man made it an issue that they can't be together because she'd be in danger.

In fact, this incident has given Felicia a complex that alludes to her future. "Every time I give my heart to someone, disaster strikes!" She sobs to Spider-Man. "I'm like a Black Cat spreading bad luck to everyone who crosses my path! Including my own."

By the next season things have taken a turn for the tragic, Mary Jane has vanished into realms unknown after mirroring Gwen Stacey's fall from a bridge into an interdimensional portal. As far as Peter knows though she's just gone, maybe forever. They can't say dead on this show, you know how it is.

This would probably leave the door back open for Felicia, but Peter is in no mental condition for another relationship right now and Felicia is smitten with Spider-Man, not Peter. Although he does wonder if she could help him with his grief as he swings over to her apartment. Not to say she doesn't care for Peter, but her heart belongs to his masked vigilante persona. In fact, so much so that she proclaims that Spider-Man is the only good thing in her life during that same visit. (Granted this is after an attack by Doctor Octopus, but the point stands) It's obvious that Felicia is now clinging to Spider-Man as one of the few constants in her life at this point, what with repeatedly being placed in danger by monsters and maniacs. The lack of control and helplessness is eating at her terribly.

However, this does lead into what we've all been waiting for, Felicia's transformation into the Black Cat and the start of the multi-episode season storyline, "Partners in Danger."

Felicia's father isn't just a cat burglar anymore. It turns out he got a peek at the formula for the Super Soldier serum back in WW2. He was almost tricked into giving it to the Nazis but managed to evade them. He was a kid at the time and was on the run for several decades. He's been in SHIELD custody for the past few years, until now when the Chameleon breaks him out only to hand him over to the Kingpin. Soon after, Doctor Octopus kidnaps Felicia and brings him to Fisk to reunite her with her father. And basically blackmail her into performing crimes for Fisk to test out the Super Soldier formula.

Yes, the Black Cat in the 90s Animated Series is basically a super soldier thief. It is suggested its not a complete process, but it grants Felicia more capability than she used to have. As the Black Cat she's now stronger, faster, more agile, versatile and has heightened senses. She's basically a mini-Captain America sans shield and a less patriotic aesthetic. Also, the Serum allows her to completely alter herself, her hair turns white and grows longer, while she also becomes more ripped and taller. This is so people won't really recognize her, an important detail for later.

While it's obvious Felicia hates being forced to go along with this to protect her father, she doesn't hate the new powers she's been granted and seeks to use them to eventually turn the tables on Fisk and save her dad. However, for the time being she gets in more than a few scrapes with Spider-Man, one of which leaves him knocked out in front of her. She considers pulling off his mask, but decides against it, preferring him to do it for her himself. She does plant a kiss though, the first of many as the Black Cat. The sequence is clear, Felicia is no longer the damsel but Spider-Man's equal and she hopes that this means things can change.

True, Felicia still gets into trouble and Spider-Man has to save her before the episode is out, but they actually do come together as partners by the end and effectively work together to defeat Fisk and save her father. Sadly, he has to return to SHIELD custody, of his own free will, to prevent the secrets he knows from ever getting out. I'd kinda like to to think they would give him a more witness protection situation than imprisonment for the guy, even if he did become a thief. It's SHIELD though, it's kinda expected they don't always do the sensible thing.

However this sets up the dynamic for the next few episodes as Black Cat and Spider-Man work together more and more. Spider-Man is reluctant at first, still mourning Mary Jane, but Black Cat manages to shake him out of that stupor. Reminding him not to close himself off in his grief. And Spidey himself remarks, as he and Black Cat work together, that he's actually having fun for once as Spider-Man. This is something to keep in mind, Black Cat actually challenges Spider-Man more often than not throughout their time together. Pushing him to remember why he does this job, stopping his pity parties cold, reminding him to not see his power as a burden that he so often does and as a gift he uses to help people. Even if she's not the same self-serving Felicia from the comics, as the Black Cat she embraces the liberated self her persona grants her. She's finally being able to do the things that her position as a rich socialite kept from her. Her stance is that Spider-Man can afford to think about what he wants and what makes him happy as much as his own responsibilities.

Frankly, it gets through to Peter. As time goes on, Spider-Man becomes more receptive to the idea that he should move on from MJ and be with Black Cat, a fellow crime fighter, on his level who can look after herself as much as him. This has been the problem Spider-Man has faced for a while, being able to protect the people he cares about despite his powers seemingly always getting in the way. In the same vein, Felicia's newfound abilities enable her to be Spidey's equal. Allowing her the opportunity to see him as a person and not just the superhero who saves her. This gives her the ability to challenge, as well as compliment him, as pointed out.

Their dynamic frankly rings more true and honest as a relationship. Even MJ never pushed Peter in the same way Black Cat pushes Spidey to be better. That's not to say MJ was a bad girlfriend, but on the show... she frankly resembled the comics version of Gwen Stacey personality wise. Black Cat may have been in love with Spider-Man, but that never stopped her from telling him off when he got something wrong. She had her own opinions and views on how this relationship worked and despite clashing with Spidey, they always seemed to be getting closer and more intimate every time she crossed his path.

That is until the goddamn Vampire comes back and ruins it all, because Felicia still has feelings for Morbius, I guess. In fact, he comes back so soon and suddenly, just as Peter is thinking of committing to Black Cat as Spider-Man, that it again feels like a mandate from on high. They're getting too close to each other, we can't have that, break them up by making Morbius a thing again. And quite frankly it feels forced because the only thing that seemingly prevents Spidey and Cat from sealing the deal is that neither of them have guessed at who the other is.

This is despite the fact that the Black Cat is obviously Felicia, given her very close relationship with Felicia's father that she doesn't even try to hide at all during her introductory episode. But Spidey has been consistently dense when it comes to secret identities, he couldn't even figure out Matt Murdock and Daredevil were the same person under similar circumstances. Using excuses THAT HE HIMSELF USES to cover his ass as Spider-Man. For being so smart, Peter is incredibly slow on the uptake when it comes to guessing Black Cat's identity despite how damn obvious it is. Not that Felicia is honestly much better, as both before and after this there are a number of clues to Spidey's true identity. Like... she kissed Peter AS Peter, she should know that mouth!

But the fact is, and this is where the forced editorial mandate thing comes in, that if they ever found out who the other was... that would be the end for any possible Peter and MJ relationship at this point. Felicia would finally realize why Peter seemed to never be around when she was in trouble, it's because he was Spider-Man. And given that Felicia's reasoning for being in love with Spider-Man is, again, the fact she feels he's always been there for her, she'd realize her most long standing intimate REAL relationship was with Peter all along! Peter in turn would realize that Felicia, the girl he first had a crush on, the one he was most conflicted about getting with before MJ vanished, a person he still has strong feelings for, is also the person who taught him to love again after MJ vanished. A friend he cares about who is now on his level and has also been there for him! There would be no way they couldn't get together at that point, or at the very least it would be very hard for Peter to decide between her and MJ from then on.

But no, the adventure with the returned Morbius leads to Felicia deciding to go with the creep Mutant Vampire and Blade to hunt other vampires and leave Spider-Man behind, just as he was about to be with her. Of course, Peter doesn't put two and two together that Cat is leaving with Morbius because as established he's an idiot when it comes to this stuff. If he was smarter, he'd have figured it out right now and probably revealed himself to her, and that would create a conflict and probably make her question this frankly boneheaded and nonsensical decision. So no, Felicia and Peter never find out each other's secret identities and she goes off with Morbius leaving Peter alone for no really good reason other than this felt like the fastest way to break them up so MJ could slide back in.

And MJ does slide back in, not long after this episode in fact and Spider-Man quickly fast tracks to proposing to her, revealing his secret identity, the works. However, Felicia isn't out of his life as MJ still keeps getting into trouble, constantly. At the wedding, Black Cat returns to make sure Peter's big day doesn't get ruined, because she does care about Peter even if she isn't with him. She does this again when MJ is seemingly kidnapped, first comforting Peter as Felicia reassuring him during a moment of hopelessness and then becoming Black Cat again to track down MJ for Peter.

And she admits aloud that she's doing this because she doesn't think she made the right call to follow Morbius and Blade, she still has feelings for Spidey, even though he's loyal and committed to MJ. Again, Felicia does not put two and two together given how gung-ho Spidey is for finding MJ. This also marks the only time MJ and the Black Cat meet, it's very quick, Peter has to answer a few obvious questions. After all that, Felicia decides to head back to Transylvania and once again Peter doesn't put two and two together that Felicia and Black Cat are back in town right at the same time. Because he's stupid like that.

What's important to note is that Felicia will drop everything for Peter, which suggests to me, on some subconscious level, she knows who Spider-Man is. And the fact she's still playing mental support coach to Peter, even outside of their secret identities, speaks volumes for their bond and connection. Even outside of the Black Cat persona and without directly knowing it, Felicia is there for Spider-Man when he needs her, just as much as he was for her.

But of course, all of this is for naught concerning Mary Jane's fate. Because... this is not Mary Jane. This hasn't been Mary Jane since she returned at the end of last season and conclusion of "Partners in Danger." Because we've been doing a random ass Clone Saga deal this whole time! This MJ, the one Peter married, shared his secrets with, probably most likely banged... wasn't his MJ. She was a clone created by Miles Warren who can use frickin water powers like Hydro Man because Hydro Man is an asshole ex who is obsessed with MJ and wanted his own version of her. But she wandered off, blah blah blah, point is her clone stability is breaking down and she's gonna evaporate. Cue one of the most gut wrenching screams in animation history.

So yeah, Peter never got the real Mary Jane back, only to be set up for heartache all over again. One could argue he probably loved this Mary Jane more. Sure he thought she was the original, but everything he experienced with her were steps he was unwilling to take with the real one. Similar to how Felicia has been feeling conflicted, one has to imagine Peter is even more so at this point on several other levels. Not that he has much time to mourn though. Madame Web has returned after a long absence from the series and she has war for him to fight, a Secret War.

In a very loose adaptation of the original Marvel Comics Event, Spider-Man is tasked by the Beyonder to lead a team of superheroes to liberate a planet that has fallen to villains he's plucked from Earth. This becomes a bit of a crossover between pretty much every Fox Entertainment Marvel Cartoon running at the time. From X-Men to Iron Man to the Fantastic Four, not Hulk though, Hulk rights are always a problem. But even after he's picked all the heroes he can afford to recruit, like any Gamer he can't resist modding shit to give him more stuff. And of all the heroes and allies he could pick to increase his ranks... he chooses the Black Cat.

It's a fairly odd choice honestly. Spidey has worked with a lot of heroes, maybe not as extensively as the Black Cat, but he's fought beside Doctor Strange, he knows other X-Men who are on Storm's level or at least just as capable. But he picks Black Cat. He picks her despite knowing that Madame Web knows the Real Mary Jane's location and promises it as a reward if he helps her. He picks Black Cat, despite knowing she is currently with Morbius and Blade. Makes one wonder... why?

Felicia isn't happy with this herself, because she just got pulled away in the middle of a vampire slaying fight. Don't worry, they're fine. It's Blade he'll manage without her.

...

What? Oh Morbius, yeah I guess he'll survive too just by being in close proximity to Blade. Have I mentioned I hate Morbius?

Anyway, the point is Black Cat is none too happy get pulled into Spidey's adventures against her will, like he can just do that on a whim. She's kinda right to be angry at him and she is for a good portion of the episode. When Spidey explains he picked her because he needs her support and they work good as a team, Felicia rightly says that he can't just rip her away from things because he needs to hold her hand. She'll be more than willing to do so on her own, he doesn't need to ask, he just shouldn't force her. It's a surprising role reversal, with Spider-Man being a bit more selfish than usual and Black Cat outwardly demanding to know when Spider-Man is gonna grow up. A question many comics fans wonder themselves to this day.

Spider-Man's ultimate ulterior motives are a bit more obvious though when he gets pretty jealous over Captain America and Black Cat bonding over her having the super soldier serum. And it doesn't help that Cap keeps kinda outshining him constantly when he saves Felicia a few times. But to be fair, Steve Rogers does that with everyone.

After the mission that topples the Red Skull ends, Spidey does apologize for taking Felicia against her will into this war. But she's no longer angry. Taking part in a mission bigger than even vampire slaying is important, a big deal, and if there is one thing Felicia has wanted its to not be left out of a fight for something bigger than herself. Plus, she get's to do it beside the greatest hero of all time. Spidey thinks she means Cap, but she corrects him, she's talking about the Web Head. Despite not being as perfect as Captain America, Spider-Man did prove himself out there as a leader to her and she admits she wouldn't want to miss this action with him for anything. Despite not wanting to be here initially, Felicia ultimately can't get over the fact Spider-Man wanted HER here with him. And given their last meeting had him coldly rejecting her advances, it says to Felicia that Spidey still feels for her and she clearly does too. Black Cat then kisses Spider-Man... and it's the last kiss he'll ever receive in the series. That's right, Peter's first and last kisses on this show come from Felicia. How do you not expect anyone to read into that?

No matter what lame line Morbius tries to give at the end of the episode, Felicia's heart doesn't really belong to him. It is very evident, crystal clear, painfully obvious, to anyone paying attention, that Felicia and Peter, on this series at the very least, were specially connected. Maybe not at first, but Felicia became someone who could match Spider-Man, physically and mentally, in many ways. And it's undeniable that, regardless of anything else, Peter held feelings for both Felicia and her Super Thief persona. Their banter was perfect, their partnership was top notch, the chemistry was amazing. The only thing keeping them apart was a story writing mandate from on high that they could not be endgame. Even though the writers took every chance they could nab to put them together. To shove Felicia back into Peter's life, even after she went off Slaying it up with Morbius. When I rewatched the series, it became painfully obvious who the writers seemed to prefer Peter with. None of this is to knock MJ as a character, on this show or in the comics, but it's hard for me to buy that there wasn't some kind of bias towards Felicia given everything that happens in this show.

Or maybe they just wanted an excuse to keep bringing Jennifer Hale back, I don't know! But I still choose to think that someone on that writing staff wanted a different endgame. It's been known to happen, creative teams aren't immune to shipping. Avatar the Last Airbender apparently had an ongoing tug of war between the executive producers and some of the writers over whether Katara would pick Zuko or Aang. It honestly feels like something similar happened here and as a result it comes across as the best evidence in my mind that this relationship could work. And the insane reality that less than a decade after Spider-Man TAS concluded, a show that did everything to ensure Spider-Man never got with the Black Cat because Peter/MJ were too iconic to not happen... One More Day drops and Peter has barely been with MJ for more than a single run out of several writers since. Said single writer being Nick Spencer, the Hydra Cap guy! Possibly in an effort to redeem himself from being the Hydra Cap Guy.

But I digress, as one can plainly see concerning this short retrospective of the series above, the 90s Cartoon has been over for a long time. Next year, it will be thirty years old. I can point out how it could've worked in that show, but that does nothing to prove Felicia and Peter ever have a chance now. All it shows is that I have a nostalgic attachment to this pairing because of an animated series. One with a highly different set of canonical circumstances between Spidey and the Black Cat that were crafted uniquely for this show alone. Circumstances that are worlds apart from the comics.

And that's because, as loathe as I am to admit it, Peter and Felicia's relationship has always had roadblocks in every piece of media involving them before and since. And I would be remiss if I didn't address any of those before I can start proving its viability now. If I don't I'll just have to do it later anyway. We'll look at how SpiderCat appears in other works as we go through this, but we need to head back to comic book land if we're really going to lay down what's actually keeping these two apart, and it's not the very weak contrivances preventing them from figuring out the obvious like in the 90s cartoon. No, it goes deeper than that. As you can see here.

90s Felicia wanted Spidey to unmask for her, but Comics!Felicia has had a hang up about that for a long while. This is the crux, the problem, with their relationship. The thing that always comes up when SpiderCat shippers argue for it. Comics!Black Cat loves Spider-Man... not Peter Parker. And mixing the two is too much for her to bare. This is what put strain on their relationship, Felicia didn't want her fantasy ruined by knowing the man behind the mask. Peter being an ordinary guy shatters her illusions about his prowess and ability. The phrase "Anyone can wear the mask" comes to mind and as long as Peter wears it for the Black Cat that is true. Take it off and Peter's normality leaks into things.

As a result, the main problem is Felicia can't love a man like Peter, who has a normal life outside of his superheroing. Felicia doesn't want normal, she likes what she is, who she is, doesn't want to go back to it. She wants to be the Black Cat because as the Cat she can do and get whatever she wants. Peter is, again, weighed down by responsibilities. While Felicia, once again, desires her independence from everything, including responsibility. Felicia would rather Spider-Man give up being Peter and just be the hero who swept her off her feet full time. To forever chase her across the rooftops and do what they want whenever they want. She's fine if that means fighting bad guys... so long as they're not tied down to normality. But Peter can't do that, he can never do that, not as long as he has ties to his life as Peter. And that's probably why Wells is considering severing a pretty big tie to that in order to make sure SpiderCat can't be reversed so easily. Can't really blame him for that though, given how comics are in constant flux. (Remember This)

This sort of issue is constantly reinforced. In the Spider-Man 2 video game, based off the Sam Raimi sequel, The "Spidey's loss of his powers" sub-plot is replaced by Black Cat trying to seduce him away into forever crime-fighting as his relationship with Mary Jane becomes strained due to her upcoming marriage to Jonah Jameson's son. Their dynamic matches the comics pretty well... and that means Spidey eventually breaks it off with her, saying he can't abandon his real life to forever play superhero with her. He needs a balance and that means he can't see her anymore. She leaves amicably, but it's sad to see happen.

In the Spider-Man: Web of Shadows game, Black Cat is revealed to still have feelings for Spider-Man and wants to be back together with him. This is pretty bad timing given the symbiote invasion going on. As the game is using the then popular trend of multiple choice endings there is one where you can have Black Cat be with Spider-Man at the end. It requires you basically healing her after a fight with your black suit, turning her into a Venomized version of herself. You can still pick the good ending after this where you defeat the Symbiotes, but all you know for sure is that MJ and him are on quits. You only see Felicia again if you pick the bad ending where Spider-Man breaks bad fully and decides to lead a symbiote army with Felicia by his side. Further emphasizing the idea that Peter can't pick being with Felicia without abandoning everything that makes him who he is.

There's also Spectacular Spider-Man, the other beloved Spider-Man animated series. Shorter-lived, but just as impactful. Where Spidey and Black Cat seem to hit it off during the start of Peter's whole symbiote storyline. Their banter is great, the chemistry fits, Felicia and Pete seem destined to be star-crossed opposite sides of the law lovers. However, when they meet up again Felicia is breaking her father out as she usually does... but the twist this time is Felicia's father is the one who shot Uncle Ben.

Naturally this completely wrecks any goodwill concerning Black Cat and Spidey's second meeting. As from here on out he's adamant Felicia's dad is not getting out. While it turns out Dad doesn't want to leave either and he decides to sacrifice his chance at freedom to stop a mass jailbreak of supervillains, that changes little. Spider-Man does not forgive Felicia's father and Felicia blames Spider-Man for infecting her dad with sentimentality. Even knowing he took an innocent life, all Felicia sees is her dad rotting away in jail. She declares she'll never forgive Spider-Man for this and rushes off in anger. The series ended shortly thereafter and this was never resolved. Greg Weisman, the show's creator, says if it had continued the relationship would've been "fraught." And once again this is the typical line concerning the fact Felicia's selfish desires run up against Spider-Man's heroic responsibility. And letting a criminal get away, especially one that killed his Uncle, is just something he can't do.

And I could go on, there are a ton of examples of this very problematic element of the relationship. It's the thing Marvel has consistently used to explain why Peter and Felicia aren't the right fit. Any romance would require either character to make sacrifices they are incapable of. Namely Felicia's independence and Peter's Responsibilities. Marvel itself decided to set this in stone to a degree with the usual question they ask... "What If?"

"What if... Spider-Man Married the Black Cat?" is the second part of a longer What If storyline answering what would happen if Peter and MJ did not get married. (HA! After OMD, one cannot help but laugh!) And as much as that cover paints wedded bliss... it's anything but. Felicia and Peter come to blows repeatedly, unable to reconcile their differences. Their goals are far too distant from each other overall and they just can't find common ground. By the end of the issue, Felicia lies dead, Spider-Man heart broken and the grim reality that this romance could never work is cemented in stone it seems. "What Ifs" aren't definitive statements about the only possible outcomes for the Marvel universe. But they are definitive statements from Marvel itself, a decree from on high that the current continuity, for all its faults, could be so much worse and we should be happy for what we have. And while the issue is loaded with nice panels that any SpiderCat fan would adore, the end result is still plain as day. Felicia and Peter are too oil and water to ever mix. And the end result would be the destruction of one or both.

How do you overcome the dreadful reality that your ship is declared doomed forever by the very company that in some sense set it in motion? Not just because Spider-Man can never be happy, but because the Black Cat is just too toxic a girlfriend to ever truly make him happy. Everyone argued that MJ and Peter's marriage was boring but they didn't want him to get with the next best option either because they think it's non-compatible, that they're just too different and of opposing thoughts to ever reach common ground.

And Marvel has tried to permanently set that in stone in canon once. To forever place SpiderCat as beyond possible, to sever their connection as decades long allies... and all because of an octopus in the brain.

The image above is not that of Peter Parker fighting the Black Cat. This is Doctor Otto Octavius, piloting Peter's body after jacking his mind. This is the Superior Spider-Man, and he does not care about Peter's past infatuations. He's here to prove he's the better Spider-Man and that means apprehending all criminals. In an otherwise re-affirming storyline that proves Peter Parker is the true Superior Spider-Man, Otto failing to live up to his lofty ambitious boasts, this scene... this one bloody scene, leads to the absolute low point period for all SpiderCat Fans. I call it the "Bitch Be Crazy" Era, an offensive title for a frankly offensively disgusting sub-plot in the Spider Run post-Superior.

Peter Parker informs all his Superhero buddies that Doc Ock had taken over his body for a long time, explaining his shitty behavior for the past year or so. Most everyone's response is "Oh, yeah, that's obvious in hindsight." Not Felicia.

The tables have turned, now Felicia has broke bad, but for real. And there is no way to describe what she becomes but extremely out of character. She doesn't accept Spider-Man's explanation, she doesn't even care. She is now obsessed with becoming the next Kingpin of Crime, a murderous, merciless mob boss who pulls the strings of supervillains, all in a bid to destroy Spider-Man and all he holds dear and it's absolutely, completely, stupidly, idiotically terrible. No matter how selfish Felicia can be, this is NOT her. Felicia has never shown any desire to be a crime boss, to be feared. Her desires have always been thrill seeking, shiny things and not being told what she can and can't do. She might be violent, but she is not a cold-blooded killer. She might be cynical, but she is not this petty. Every element of this terrible subplot makes no sense unless she's absolutely lost her mind or been replaced by a Skrull.

The only fun thing in this whole mess, was that Gwenpool's first in-universe story took place during this sub-plot and she crossed paths with her. And then did this.

I guess that justifies putting a Gwenpool tag below somewhere. Win for me!

Suffice to say, no one liked this change. Everyone hated it, even more than Superior Spider-Man. People came around on that, no one liked Felicia the Big Black Cat of Crime. Dan Slott could never justify it because it made no sense that Felicia would care this much about street cred because Spider-Man beat her up. As if there isn't a single crook in New York at this point who can claim Spider-Man hasn't knocked out one of their teeth. Others tried to explain it, to give it a more sensible face. There was an explanation in the Silk comic, but it didn't really stick as something that would drive her to this extreme. Regardless, it was a dark time for SpiderCat Shipping Fandom. And it took way longer than it should've to fix it all.

But it did get fixed and that brings me the counter to ALL of this stuff that stands in Peter and Felicia's way. And that is that no matter how much things stay the same, comics always inevitably change and so do the characters in them. We like to pretend that the way we see a lot of the characters in comics now has just always been them. But no, they're not. Batman used to carry a gun in his early days, Superman didn't always fly, Captain America, a WW2 Veteran, claimed he never killed anyone for a short time, Deadpool didn't always break the 4th Wall and Starlord used to be a lot more of a straight edged serious space hero and not a rock music lovin' dancin' fool of a rogue Han Solo. Tastes change, writers change, people change... and so has Felicia.

Felicia hasn't always been honest with Peter, she's tricked him into chasing her, played him to get away with a score, gotten superpowers from Kingpin in an effort to keep up with him which led to their first break up, she even dated Flash Thompson trying to make him jealous. But if one thing has been consistent, it's that Felicia can't help but cross back into Peter's life. And in the process, because she cares, even loves him, there are things she's had to accept, to admit to. And chief among them is Peter Parker is Spider-Man and Peter Parker's life is as if not more important to him than just being Spider-Man. She hasn't only loved Spider-Man for years at this point, for a long time. She loves both. and she is willing to accept both. If there is any problem, it's Peter accepting Felicia for who she is... which is a better person than even she gives herself credit for.

Spider-Man wouldn't be partnering up with Felicia so often if he didn't believe there was more to her than just a shallow thief. And the influence has affected Felicia, she's admitted as much. Maybe her shift to doing good was set off by a crush, but she owned that change and she kept pushing herself. She'll never have a strict moral compass, but she does know what the right choice is at the end of the day, what feels right. And when Spider-Man needs an ally, he can call on her as much as anyone. Spider-Man being in her life has only been a net positive for Felicia, Peter being with her has only been a net positive. And that brings us back to her time as a lame crime boss and how they fixed her. Because there's a better, deeper, actually meaningful reason for their schism besides Felicia's loss of street cred.

She forgot the man she loved and changed for.

Yep, we're factoring One More Day into this thing proper like. After an adventure with Venom and Spidey, dealing with some symbiote nonsense, Felicia is convinced to hash it out with the Wall Crawler. And she admits to him that she lost something, his face. When Spider-Man made the world forget who he was under the mask it affected Felicia too. All her memories, all the time spent with Peter post reveal, everything that she knew about the man behind the mask... it was either gone or in a fog. She can't remember all those times that Peter trusted her with who he was and it has been eating her up inside for years! And Spider-Man never thought about how that would affect her, a person he's loved, been intimate with, and at least now cares about. That was an important time in her life and it's just gone now. And it may be selfish to want all of it back and even demand it back... but she's right. Those memories were hers and Spidey took them away. And Spider-Man, being selfless as he is, can't just let that stand anymore.

Everyone says Felicia only loves Spider-Man, but that's not true. She may love the Spider... but she changed for the Man. She cherishes that time she had with that Man. And it's hard to believe that she doesn't love the Man as much as the Spider because, ultimately, they are the same person. That's the other difference between this and Bruce/Selina. Bruce Wayne is the mask for the boy who died in that alleyway, Batman is who he's been since that day. Peter and Spider-Man are the same person, it's why he can't leave either persona behind. And Felicia has long since accepted that, and that has never changed how she feels about him until she lost who he was beneath the mask. Now it's all back, the highs and lows of that tumultuous time in her life when she fell for a Spider and came to love the Man. It doesn't heal everything, but it repairs the bond that was broken so long ago and so unintentionally.

There is, however, another argument being floated around these days I have to address. That even if Felicia can accept the man beneath the mask, do either really NEED each other? I'd point to all the stuff above that shows how that's simply not true, but there's more to it than that. Love isn't always about what you need, it's just as much about what you want. And I'm not talking about a person or thing, not something material. What does Felicia want? What does Peter want?

Felicia wants to be more than what she is, always has been. She wants thrills, she wants to be her true self and I feel Spider-Man brings out those qualities more than any of her other boy or girlfriends, especially since he started her path to change and growth. She stops being selfish and reacts more selfless. His influence on her is undeniable and she knows as much as anyone. She'll never be a good girl, but she'll at least be a better one than she is without him in her life.

Peter wants to be at peace, to be happy with who he is, to not always feel burdened. Felicia has always been one of the ways he's released that burden, he's been happy with her. Sure he's been happy with others, but Felicia has met him on a level that none of them could, she's been able to be in the thick of it with him. She's been able to share the burden. She's been able to be an active participant. With her around, Peter's world as a superhero doesn't feel so lonely. And maybe, if Felicia could accept the man as much as it seems she has, so too could she accept Peter's regular life.

In Taylor Swift's song, Anti-Hero, she reflects on how exhausting for her it's been that she hasn't seemed to learn anything and keeps making the same mistakes over and over. And if you pay attention to the lyics enough, they start describing Felicia Hardy pretty well.

I should not be left to my own devices They come with prices and vices I end up in crisis (tale as old as time) I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I'll watch as you're leaving 'Cause you got tired of my scheming (For the last time)

However, just as much of it can sorta apply to Spider-Man as well. His heroic selflessness is frankly a very long depressing slog of him being unable to forgive himself for letting down Uncle Ben, placing all the blame on his shoulders and then repeating that process whenever his great power can never live up to his great responsibility.

Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time) I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I'll watch as you're leaving And life will lose all its meaning (For the last time)

When it comes to Spider-Man and the Black Cat, a lot of the things that make them unhappy are self-inflicted. Lewis Lovhaug of "Atop the Fourth Wall" Fame has argued that the problem with Spider-Man in a lot of modern stories is that he never learns from anything. He hasn't done enough to improve himself as Spider-Man or as Peter Parker, he just keeps feeling sorry for himself that one gets in the way of the other. And frankly, the same curse has affected Felicia. Because a lot of what has prevented her from being with Spider-Man has been herself. Ultimately both will, as the song says, always look towards the bright sun of what they think they want, but never in the mirror. They'll hurt themselves, never realizing that they're the source of their own dissatisfaction with how their lives are. It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero, especially when its yourself.

Maybe Peter and Felicia don't need each other, but they do need someone to set them straight and get them to stop believing their own bullshit. To make them stare away from the sun and into the mirror. Because they are each exactly the kind of person who would do that for the other, in fact they've been doing it for as long as they've been together. Their bond is stronger than people give it credit for.

Early on in their relationship, Black Cat was badly injured and has to be rushed to a hospital. Helpless to really do anything, Peter could only stand by her bedside and hope she'd be okay again. For all his power, once more, he can't do anything but just stay with her. And actually, that's enough.

But come now, would Felicia ever do the same for Peter you ask? Well... during a recent story event, Spider-Man was badly injured and slips into a coma. But there was one person constantly by his side throughout it.

This isn't derogatory, Felicia is clearly lamenting the fact that someone so good who does everything so selflessly despite no thanks or praise, is so constantly placed into situations like this. It's unfair to her. It's why she's here now, like he was for her. And just like before...

It's Felicia who gets the first response out of him. Claim all you want that Felicia doesn't need Peter, that she's moved past him, that Peter and MJ are too perfect for each other, that the Black Cat can't ever settle down like Peter probably wants or that Peter can never really be there for Felicia in the way she wants. But I don't buy it. And stuff like this is why.

No matter how much bad luck she is, Spider-Man wants and in some ways needs the Black Cat is in his life. And no matter how much she can try and say she's over it, The Black Cat will always find a way to cross paths with her Spider.

In the recent PS4 Spider-Man game, Felicia came back after a stint of going straight to prepare for a major strike back against Hammerhead and the Maggia families. She coerces Spider-Man into another of her games where she steals $50 Million worth of stuff and forces him to chase her around the city to find it all. She leaves the loot behind though, because it was all trick to break into the police evidence lockup and snag her old gear. But she did leave Peter a cool new suit, a reference to the time when Felicia made a new black suit for Peter after giving up his symbiote. You know, so they match.

Felicia's little game comes to fruition when "The Heist" DLC comes out. Felicia strings Spidey along, pretending Hammerhead has her son, strongly implying its his. Ultimately this is revealed to have been a lie of course, another game. Because this, to Felicia, is basically the perfect date night. Spider-Man chases her, they team up, she gets what she wants and runs off into the night. In this case the entire wealth of the Maggia after double crossing Hammerhead. This gets a target on her back instantly. Spider calls her to warn her, leaving Felicia more than a little surprised.

Felicia: I just conned you and here you are trying to save me. How can you be so damn nice all the time?

Spidey: It's not about being nice, it's about doing the right thing! You have so many talents, I wish you'd use them to help someone other than yourself.

Felicia: Yeah well, you should know by now that's not how I roll.

Spidey: People can change, Felicia.

Felicia: Love you, Spider. I'll miss you.

Felicia's penthouse explodes and she appears to die. But eagle eyed players would notice the puff smoke just before the bomb goes off. The Black Cat fakes her death more than Doctor Doom uses robots. Felicia got away, scot-free, with all the money she could ever need or want. She conned Spider-Man, Hammerhead and everyone. She won hands down and can do whatever she wants from now on. No one will be looking for her. Hammerhead's plans to utilize weapons of war to take over the city isn't her problem.

And yet...

Felicia comes back to help Spider-Man, knowing it will basically put her on the radar again given everything she's stolen. She doesn't stay, but she saves him and gives him the means to take Hammerhead down. No matter what anyone thinks of Felicia, especially herself, she is not nearly as incapable of being selfless as one thinks. And this is true of most of her incarnations. Perhaps because the Black Cat will do anything to get what she wants, even if it means turning over a new leaf for her Spider. It's how this all started after all. Selfish Selflessness, it's probably the best middle ground Peter can hope for. But at least it means he can count on her, to be selfish. And that's why she'll always be there for him. Felicia doesn't like to lose the things she has.

I think it also says a lot that many players felt that Peter and Felicia's chemistry was loads more interesting and compelling than his relationship with the estranged version of MJ Spidey has to deal with. And frankly, Felicia being in those stealth sequences would've made a million times more sense. There are some who have even speculated, with no real proof mind you, that Felicia was lying about lying about having a son. That she DOES have one, he just wasn't in danger. But of course, that's unlikely. For the same reason Peter remains hung up on Mary Jane in this game despite the fact most players seem apathetic to them getting back together. Spider-Man being a father out of wedlock is something that Marvel is not really prepared to sign off on. Just as much as they resist him being with someone other than MJ in other media, despite not wanting him to be with her in the comics.

It all seems so arbitrary to me, that they just can't be together because of the iconography of Peter and MJ. Or because she can't love the man the Spider is, which isn't true. Or Spider-Man can't change her or trust her, which also isn't true. If there has ever been a more consistent, sustainable, supportive and bonded character to Peter Parker it has been Felicia Hardy. Romantically or platonically, Felicia has dropped things to be there for Peter. And the idea that they are toxic for each other has never rung true. People can change, and this romance proves it. They just need to be given the chance to do so, and have the right person along for the ride. And the forced separation feels more arbitrary when you take into consideration, that Marvel has kept MJ and Peter apart for over a decades worth of comics and has never bit the bullet on simply just letting Felicia and Peter be together until now.

Some have claimed the new romance is out of the blue, that Spencer was setting things up to undo OMD, and that Wells just pulled this off out of nowhere. Well... no. Because those scenes where Felicia brought Peter out of his coma, the re-unmasking, the re-entry into his life through a number of adventures... Spencer either wrote those himself or they were written in conjunction with his run. People have confirmation bias, I'm no different, I don't claim to be. However, everyone has wanted OMD to be undone since the storyline first concluded. Marvel has played with fans' heartstrings that it will do so and it has prevented Peter from moving on because if he's not in a committed sustainable relationship, there's always hope that Mephisto's deal will be undone! And it has not helped anyone in the slightest to keep buying that horse crap.

The fact is I'm honestly sick of this "will they won't they" garbage from Marvel on undoing One More Day and I think more people should be by this point. Let me make this perfectly clear, even if they undo the deal... they're not getting remarried. Marvel simply is not interested in going down that road for Spider-Man again. Even with the new Spider-Verse movie showing Peter B. with a kid. Because the problem has never been they won't let Peter be married to MJ. The problem is they won't let Peter grow. The problem is they won't let him move on and change. They stick him in a misery spin cycle and just never let him out.

Why not just end the charade? Let Peter grow. Let Felicia grow. They both already want to. They both already desire to. And they both have already done so for the other. Felicia has been there to challenge and push him, while also protecting and supporting him. And Peter has undeniably changed Felicia as a person. She may never have the same moral compass, but she's no longer as lost as she once was. Her selfish cynicism is kept in check when it comes to Peter. And his selfless self-destruction is held back thanks to Felicia. Why deny them the chance to both be truly happy? Especially when they make each other better people. Why deny chemistry that is so perfectly balanced in its contradiction?

I don't begrudge people for preferring Mary Jane being with Spider-Man. I'm more or less at peace with the reality that some pairings are just thought of as the default and nothing is really gonna change that. I prefer Rogue with Deadpool, that doesn't change the fact she'll always be with Gambit. What I wanted to stress with this isn't so much an argument to ship it so much as the ultimate reason I simply can't let these two go.

For me, SpiderCat speaks on some primal level, more than wish fulfillment, but the idea of growth. That love can hold you up in your worst moments, or change you for the better. That it can make you look in the mirror and ask, who do you want to be? What do you want? What is worth changing for? Felicia found her answer, a nerdy, selfless, eternally tormented wall-crawler, who should know better than to go chasing her trying to save her from herself... but does it anyway. How could she not return the favor and be there for him? It's hard to say whether he caught her in his web, or if she just loves walking across his path. What is certain is they are bonded to each other, in one way or another. And that's the only thing about either character that I don't think can ever truly change.

Well this was a long one, and probably a lot more introspective and personally relatable than I thought. I think now have a better understanding of what has always drawn me to these two. And also now think I have discovered the song that describes them both so... thanks Taylor Swift! Whatever future this rekindled romance holds in the comics, we'll see how it shakes out. But I can enjoy the ride even if some of it has been rocky. Not the first time I've had to deal with that.

If you're still here, congrats, you've made it to the end. And I hope I didn't completely bore you all with this fairly overly comprehensive look at a pairing spanning various mediums and continuities. But I like to be thorough. So I hope you can appreciate the amount of work I put into this whole thing for you all. If I ever do this again I can only hope it won't be so... all encompassing. But I make no promises.

One thing I know though, I'm probably gonna be riding and dying these two forever. The Cat and her Spider, the Self and Selfless. Beautiful in the mess they are apart and the whole they are together.

#Marvel #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Black Cat #Felicia Hardy #SpiderCat #PeterFel #Spider-Man x Black Cat #Shipping #Comics #Video Games #Animation #spider man: the animated series #90s cartoons #Gwenpool #Taylor Swift #Anti-Hero #PS4 #Zeb Wells #Dan Slott #Nick Spencer #Damn that's a lot of Tags!

[rjmhereunderprotest]

The Polly/Oz Shipping Post for Personal Mental Well-Being

It's been one of those past couple days, and frankly I'm in need of a break from... well a lot of thoughts. I've not been absorbing some stuff well. I'd normally slip into Gwenpool stuff, but at the moment that's kinda being a mental drain. So, I need to focus on something positive and happy and anything that makes me smile and- oh look Polly and Oz of Monster Prom!

For something that is not technically canon in any respect, because Monster Prom's canon is whatever the hell you want it to be relationship wise, Polly and Oz have always spoke to me as the S-Tier Romance of the game. Sure, many people ship Oz with Damien and Polly is... well I'm not sure who is preferred. I've noticed at least one person goes REALLY hard for Polly and Vicky. Regardless both and all Monster Prom ships, regardless of popularity are equally valid. This isn't a definitive statement about canon because right now canon isn't always the answer for me. Even though a lot of Monster Prom's promotional material likes to show Polly teasing Oz in an overtly flirty manner, that isn't a definitive statement about the creator's preferences. They've had Oz decide to date Zoe in a Monster Road Trip trailer, it means nothing. (Although Zoe is fricking awesome and is my second romance choice behind Polly) What matters most in Monster Prom, at least to me, is emotional connection and compatibility. I think it's the same for, well, frankly a lot of ships.

So this is a bit of Fandom Mentality self-care where I talk about why I've written in my mind that Polly and Oz make the most sense for romantic partners. Because I love them a lot and I find them cute and I think it just makes sense. So... let's start.

So, Oz... why do I main Oz so much is probably the real question I should be asking myself? Maybe because they fit the most with me and my high school experience. Oz is an extreme introverted, nervous social outcast. Everything about his dialogue and actions we can see him doing in the game suggests he is a mega nerd, a good student and, quite frankly, at the bottom of the Spooky High totem pole. Like I was.

I'm not a Vicky who was bold and outgoing, I'm not a Brian who was aloof and tried to coast, I'm certainly not Amira, the fiery bad girl. No, I was Oz, perpetually afraid of high school even as I took the work seriously but constantly wanted to get out of there because it was a fucking pressure cooker!

The difference between me and Oz is obvious, THEY are some kind of amorphous shadow creature who, apparently, is the embodiment of fear. He's probably older than even Liam. He's quite possibly super powerful. And his little imaginary friends who he uses to try to cope are real, they're those little phobias who pop up around him and do cute things. And yet, they choose to be THIS, they choose to be this scared high schooler who is insular, lonely looking and desperate for love/affection. At the very least he seems to WANT acceptance. Like most of the super thirsty monsters among the main characters of the game. I identified with that a lot. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, he's clearly lonely and probably not always in the best place mentally as he tries to navigate a high school that he probably doesn't need to be in. Honestly, none of the monsters need to be there though, I mean... they don't exactly LEARN anything there as far as I can tell. I'm not even sure if they have a full staff of teachers or if most of them are just jokes.

So I've always just seen Oz as my closest facsimile to my High School experience, at least in terms of how it felt, terrified of everything and wondering if I even belonged there. So while I like the other characters, Vicky and Brian especially, I always felt more connected to Oz as a result. I know this sounds like "He/They are Literally Me FR", but it's more... I just can more easily place myself into Oz's headspace and emotionally connect with him to a degree. I don't think I'd make all the choices he does, but I can certainly understand him the most out of all the characters in the cast.

When the eventual Monster Prom Reverse is released, I fully expect Oz's character will be better fleshed out. If he hasn't been already in those Monster Road Trip sequences where he can be a hitchhike passenger. This is mostly just my interpretation based on what I've seen. This is the unique thing about Monster Prom shipping when it involves anything with the MCs. A lot of it is speculation and, a little if not a lot, of self-insertion. So it's best to always keep that in mind. This is a dating sim after all, fantasy wish fulfillment is inevitable, it's something even the game criticizes about itself a lot. That a lot of this is very silly and stupid and unrealistic in terms of actually setting up a real relationship with someone, especially a romantic one. It's why it usually doesn't take itself too seriously. Which is epitomized by, who else...

Polly Geist, the ghost party girl who I'd call the face of Monster Prom if I didn't think Damian could arguably be just as much at this point, at least Tumblr wise. Polly is still super popular though and its easy to see why. She funny, fun, cool, extremely sex positive, her outlook is very progressive, lighthearted and she is herself... sexy as hell. She's just a really fun character and it's hard not to enjoy any of her scenes on their own.

Whether she's pulling pranks with Scott, (Well, mostly leading Scott into pulling pranks because the dude is too stupid and nice to know how to do them) starting food fights by flashing people, causing general mayhem in the pursuit of advancing the science of partying or scamming you into performing a nonsensical sex act, Polly is highlight of Monster Prom. Even when she's too drunk to know what's going on, or high, or drunk and high, Polly is the afterlife of the party... which goes on forever from her perspective because she's dead. And yet despite that she is the love interest in Monster Prom who loves life the most and refuses to not spend it to its fullest. You have to admire that level of extroverted joy.

But Polly is not a superficial party girl, she might be dead and therefore removed from all consequences of her lifestyle, but she isn't a shallow sex obsessed ghost. She has actual depth, probably the most out of the other main love interests, barring maybe Vera, but that's mostly because of her sisterhood with Valerie gives her some much needed motivation beyond just being an evil criminal mastermind/capitalist. (Although I imagine a few people would say there's little difference between the two professions) Polly's depth is ALL hers. Because this is the thing... Polly's Forever 22, Stupid and Partying attitude? It's a front.

Oh she doesn't actually HATE partying, sex or drugs. She loves and is ALL about that. That's as much who she is as anything, but she plays up the idea that she's an idiot... when she's far from anything. Polly is actually an accomplished MASTER Chess player, a highly advanced gaming skill level that requires a lot of forward thinking and strategizing. She really good at Chemistry, mostly because it enables to make her own drugs, but Chemistry is a highly analytical field involving math, problem solving and attention to detail. Her favorite field of study though is literature, Classic Russian Literature in the vein of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. This is reflected in one of the Pre-Game Skill Boost choices, where the FUN option (Which is Polly personified) involves making a movie that has several of the most famous Russian Novelists going off on a Hangover-style adventure.

The point is, Polly isn't an idiot. She's actually highly intelligent... so why does she act like a fool? Because... she wants to. She wants to spend her afterlife how she most desires. That doesn't preclude her other interests of course, she still loves chess, chemistry and "War & Peace", but she's capable of more than just those nerdy pursuits. She pushes herself to remain highly socially, outgoing, never allowing her love of life to dim even in death. And she just doesn't want to advertise, I think, her more intellectual pursuits. Likely because she doesn't want to appear above all of that, as better than the people she cares about, because she does care about people.

Scott is probably her best friend, as a Fellow Prank Masterz (With a Z). And Scott IS an idiot, like a complete idiot. Look up the word Himbo in the dictionary and you find his face. He might be a lovable genuinely nice werewolf jock... but he is very clearly a dumbass. But Polly will spend time with him, why? Because she's enjoys his company, she enjoys being with him and pulling pranks. She never considers being more intelligent than him as something to lord over Scott. She might easily lead him into some situations, but she never wants to make him feel inferior to her.

And that attitude extends to other people, like Kale. You might know him as the plant guy, as well as the Asexual/Aromantic character of the game. He has no interest in sex or romance... but Polly hangs out with him and smokes weed with him anyway. When your character tries to seduce Kale (albeit you do not know he is an ace at the time) Polly is irate with you for making shit weird. It's very clear Polly understands and respects personal boundaries. She'll tease people, try to make them come out of their shells, open up, live a little... but if she knows that someone is not interested she won't push things. Kale is a friend and despite being a flirty party girl, she does not do anything to jeopardize that with him.

There's a lot I could on with about Polly honestly, her friends with benefits relationship with Faith of the Coven, her sunny friendship with the cold Vera, her seemingly really good organizational skills for setting up an Orgy... but at some point I'd just be arguing that Polly is best girl and that's not why we're here. I'd just wanted to lay this all out so we better understood who Polly is.

So why with Oz? I'd be lying if there wasn't some sort of wish fulfillment element to it. Like I said, a lot of dating sims fall into this category and Monster Prom doesn't pretend its any better, it's just trying to acknowledge it and offer a different take on it. So the idea of a popular party girl falling for a neurotic nerd who's afraid of everything is no doubt appealing to me on a personal level, but I like to think there's more to it. If only so my enjoyment of this pairing isn't completely concieted sounding.

Here's the deal, Polly's obvious flirting with Oz, pushing his buttons, taking an interest in him, is clearly an effort to get him to come out of his bubble and enjoy things. To not be so scared to live life. I don't think any of it is pushy though, it's mostly knowing looks, brushing her hands along sensitive spots, she's gentle about it. She never seems to be forcibly pushing Oz to leave his safe space, but urging him to try.

The idea that Oz would be willing to try, because this crazy hot ghost girl takes an interest in him is... well frankly cute in both respects. Him because he's willing to take a risk for personal self-growth. Her because she seems to be doing this without any concept of a reward. She's not overtly trying to get in his pants and I don't think she's maliciously messing with him, playfully yes, but she clearly doesn't have sinister designs to make a fool of him. She's just decided Oz could use the chance to escape his box and she'd like to be the lockpick... and knowing her she'd probably make that into innuendo, but that's just Basic Polly at that point.

But why would Polly be interested in Oz romantically? We can already discern why Oz would be. Polly is a sexy fun party girl, she seems to take an interest in him despite having the pick of the litter. Finding out her hidden depths would like only make Oz like her more, although I suspect he'd be concerned that he thought less of her for a bit. Ultimately Polly is designed, like all the love interests, to illicit this response with ANY of the main characters you can play as. The thing that makes it different, special with Oz is that his personality as the shy nerd boy makes their match with the outgoing party girl appealing aesthetically. But why would Polly be into Oz?

Well those hidden depths I mentioned are part of it to a degree. Polly's intellectual pursuits never held her back. She probably doesn't want the same for Oz. Although I feel their more calm, collected and less extroverted nature would give Polly an anchor that she probably sometimes needs. While she is good at knowing when to stop, what her limits are and should be, let's not kid ourselves, like everyone at Spooky High, Polly has a tendency to go overboard to an extreme degree. Like, one of her endings involves the literal apocalypse so... yeah. Polly could use a tether and she probably wants that to some extent. Both for reasons I'll explain soon and reasons I've already stated. Polly likes to know when she is crossing a line because she isn't outwardly malicious, she doesn't want to hurt people in her pursuit of fun. Polly only ever gets mad if you're ruining her fun by being boring or just by being a jerk to people she thinks don't deserve it. And Oz likely knows better at times what lines she doesn't want to cross herself.

Another part of it is who Oz is himself, besides seeing some things in him that are like her, Oz doesn't come across as the kind of person who would consider Polly as just another sexy girl they can bag. Oz very clearly respects Polly, that's what a lot of the point of the events that can lead to dating of the love interests in the game are about, respect. Respect for yourself and respect for the person you want to be with, understanding who they are and appealing to those aspects, showing you're willing to meet them at their level. In my mind, if anyone would respect Polly as a person rather than just a shallow sex kitten a lot of people sometimes see her as, it would be Oz.

And this is because... well Oz himself, or themself, isn't all they appear to be. They are, after all, the embodiment of fear. As I alluded to, Oz does not seem to fit in Spooky High in any sense. He's probably more of an Eldritch than even Zoe. At least Zoe has a recognizable form as basically an adorable version of some sort of Lovecraft Mythos Tentacle Beast. Oz is some sort of shadow creature. Some people have assumed he's like Slender Man or something to that effect. An SCP that's gone rogue and decided to attend high school. He should not be intimidated by anything here. Although I imagine, if anything could make a shadowy creature that is the living concept of fear itself quake in terror, it would be high school. Oz doesn't strike me as someone who sees people as what they are on the outside. Oh imagine he would be shocked to see how different Polly is on the inside, but he's not going to let that completely deter him. If nothing else I think Oz is a very determined shadow creature. Why would he keep up this appearance of a pathetic frightened geek? Maybe because he is genuinely frightened, maybe he has other motives, maybe he's just doesn't want to be defined by what the world says he has to be. But I am certain that, at the very least, he chooses to be what he is now as much Polly chooses to be what she is now. In a strange way, they're both seemingly living an afterlife... or different life.

As a sort of aside, there is something to be said on a mythic level too of a ghost, a spirit typically meant to evoke fear in people of the inevitability and permanence of death, and a creature that is the literal personification of fear itself, falling in love. A spirit that was once mortal and a being that has just always been since time immemorial. It's kinda like something out of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" when you look at it in that respect. And I do like me some Sandman.

But if that's not enough to convince you of at least some substantive reason for why I like Polly and Oz together... well here we go. The one time Polly ever got serious feels most appropriate when it is connected to Oz rather than any other character, to me. Let's talk about the Locket.

The Locket is an Event Item you can unlock in Valerie's Store, like most of the added Event Items that were added in around the Holiday Season, it's meant to flesh out the love interests some. While they're not exactly lighthearted, Scott's deals with being abandoned as a pup, they're not exactly bereft of comedy either. But The Locket comes close. It starts out with the mysterious haunted inhabitant of the locket trying to share his sad story of lost love... and then Polly shows up and decides to hijack that whole plot as she do! Because she's gonna smoke it! Yeah, she's gonna literally smoke a locket and she wants you to join her. This leads to a few choices about responsible drug use, probably useful. Honestly if I ever did drugs I'd at least want to be safe about it.

However the good times of you enabling Polly's addictions is somewhat ruined by the untimely arrival of the Coven, Spooky High's pre-eminent supernatural hero squad in the vein of Charmed/Buffy, except not objectively terrible (Charmed) or written by an asshole. (Buffy) They're quick to do the usual "Just Say No" deal at Polly, wishing she wouldn't supplement her partying with constant drug use. Polly, dropping her usual fun façade, gets serious and lectures back. Insisting she is not being irresponsible... she's dead. And therefore nothing she does can hurt her and even regardless she practices safety first with her drug use. She is not any worse than someone who really enjoys a lot of chocolate and she is in control of her drug use unlike such people. "Drug Use, Not Abuse" she explains.

It almost works, the Coven actually respectfully admit that they're probably sticking their noses in a place they don't belong. Polly isn't stupid, she is responsible and more importantly she is already dead so it's not like she can really harm herself anyway. Then Polly lets it slip that the locket she's smoking contains the soul of a dead guy and they take issue with that. Smoking haunted artifacts is fine, but a clear line in their eyes is basically smoking a soul for your own benefit and possibly destroying said soul's afterlife. Polly is fed up playing nice and tells them to fuck off, because it's HER afterlife and she'll spend it how she wants. Making reference that she knows plenty about drugs because drug use was how she died. Joy, the Coven's leader, then makes a mistake. Thinking this is another bit of the ongoing gag of Polly making up how she died, she has a lot of them and this feels no different, but seemingly more insensitive by making drug abuse a joke. She tells Polly that maybe she wouldn't be so flippant about her drug use if SHE had been harmed by someone's use of drugs.

And this is when Polly loses her shit. The insensitivity of the comment sends Polly over the edge declaring the Coven, and by extension us who have mostly been silent during this whole exchange, have no idea what her life was like and what she's been through and declared that if this is how they're going to speak to her about how she lives her afterlife, fine! Fuck everyone! She's going to party... but not fun party.

Polly's in-game sprite art takes on a horrifying visage. Her eyes glow, her smile turns to a painful scowl, her rage seems to basically circle her head like something out of Poltergeist or the Exorcist. And she can only speak in all-caps rage about how she wants to keep partying forever. Her anger affects the school all around her, as the halls apparently fill with ghastly wails and flying objects. You can't even talk to her at the lunch break, she will beam Liam in the head with a chair just for "Um Actuallying" her. Liam kinda deserves it, so it's funny, but the rest of this is not.

The Coven, mostly Joy, realizing their mistake, enlist you to help them fix this. You can do this by either contacting Polly's mom or a creepy yet friendly psychic kid ala the Sixth Sense. Either way, a successful meeting ends the same way, this reaction really is related to how Polly actually died but if you want to know what happened you need to talk to Polly herself.

You find Polly huffing gas in the school basement, completely forgetting her "Drug Use, not Abuse" statement in favor of just outright indulgence. Joy and the Coven apologize best they can and say they want to understand, but Polly is indignant. Revealing that her death was caused by her father. He was the drug abuser in the family and he made life difficult for everyone. He didn't cause Polly's death deliberately, it was a car accident while he was under the influence, killing Polly, her mom, her little sister... but leaving her father alive. She had been using drugs herself at that age, but she tried to be responsible with them. Possibly as an attempt to connect to her dad, it's not outright said, but it's implied. And despite her being careful she still ended up dying anyway.

Polly at that point demands to know what crazy idiotic choice between two options are you going to pick to suddenly make all this shit better. And even the game admits that this isn't really the time to be funny and offers two options that are sincere, supportive and apologetic. If successful, it breaks through Polly's emotional episode and allows her to finally put herself at ease and come to terms with her feelings.

You might be wondering why the player has to do any of this. It wasn't YOU who stepped on Polly's incorporeal toes and shamed her. You didn't awaken any long buried trauma with insensitive speech. Well, no, but you were kinda enabling Polly's worst habits. Not the drug use, but not considering the harm she could cause to others through it, like smoking another person's soul. So, really you're sorta responsible for not checking Polly's worse tendencies, just letting her ride the haunted locket smoke train without trying to dissuade her because it's just Polly being Polly. So being honest and trying to reach her by admitting that you just want to hear her out or even just be there for her right now, no judgment or anything else, that's an important step here.

Polly of course fakes crossing over as a prank to show that she's back to her old self again and promises to be more mindful of her drug use from now on. But it's not all good. After picking Polly to go to Prom, she admits to the player that she still feels hurt and sad. That in her pursuit of living her afterlife to the fullest, she got caught up in the same mistakes her father made and she's not proud of it. Most importantly though, she admits that despite everything she doesn't hate her dad for what he did, she still loves and misses him. That a lot of her drug use was more about just trying to forget rather than confront these feelings, ignoring the pain rather than dealing with it. Being happy is great and all, but not at the expense of acknowledging when you're hurting.

In all honesty, I feel this ending works best with Oz. Because I can more readily see Oz empathizing the most with Polly in this moment. If anyone knows about hurt, it's a creature that embodies fear. And Polly has admitted to hers, feeling hurt. Oz being there for Polly, trying to show that this is okay, that being not okay is ok, makes the most sense for me. Polly doesn't want to hurt anyone because she knows what it's like to hurt the people you love. And Oz I feel knows a lot about hurt being what they are. And maybe through sharing that kind of pain, in confronting things like Polly encouraged Oz to do with his own fears, they can both be stronger people.

This isn't to say these scenes can't work with other characters, they're not built to only work with one of the MCs. But for me, a lot of Polly's stories and events, this one especially, ring the most true when it involves Oz.

I think the relationship between the two can and could be very endearing. Allowing both to actually confront their fears, center themselves and be better people in the end. Monster Prom's tagline is "Be Your Worst Self", a sort of play on words, but a lot of its romances are actually a play on that concept. The phrase is really about being true to who YOU are more than anything, that includes the worst parts of you. If Monster Prom is about anything it's about finding happiness with who you are before you can truly find happiness with another. And I feel something like PollyxOz stands the best chance of achieving that goal.

I don't want to pretend it's the only solution, of course it isn't, none of this as said before is meant to invalidate your love for Oz getting with Damian or Zoe or Miranda or Polly with Vicky or Brian or even Amira. (Although I feel like no one is beating AmiraxVera on that one) This is about what works for me and my rationalization, you are free to think differently of course. I would hope this at least better explained my preferences and perhaps even helped you a little with your own anxieties as it has mine today.

Well I suppose I should try and lead you to some more Polly/Oz content if you're interested. While I do have ideas for fanfics and there's plenty of art you can look up, I'd rather just send you over to Vanilla Chinchilla, who is probably more prolific and better artistically concerning this than I ever could be. Again, this stuff is all just me working through some junk. Plus their artwork, such as the comic panels right above this paragraph, is really cute and fun and I enjoy it a lot.

That's really all from me, if you've honestly stuck it out this long with me rambling about the romance of two monsters from a silly video game... well I applaud you I honestly don't know if this is really all that compelling. This was an exercise for my own sake, but like I said, I hope you got something out of it. At the very least, I've put something positive into this place rather than just ragging on it for crass reasons. Thank you for your time guys.

#monster prom #polly geist #Oz #oz yellow #PollyxOz #oz x polly #shipping #Dating sim #visual novel #mental wellness #gaming #romance #This has been me trying to deal with some thought processes from this week. Apologies on it being so long.

[rjmhereunderprotest]

An Apology to Luimnigh

I don't always coem across... at my best. I fully admit that. I don't usually mean to anger people. Nor do I mean to upset them. Not over stupid shit that shouldn't matter. I've been looking back a lot lately on how I behave online at times... I'm not happy with it. I don't like being abrasive and I don't like angering/upsetting people. That's not my intention. And I don't like creating animosity where none is deserved.

I've upset people I probably could've been friends with if I hadn't been an asshole. Or not reacted the way I did. Whatever. Point is, I will admit when I've wronged or am wrong. I am not that conceited. I fully accept that I rub people wrong, I get overly defensive, emotional. I fully accept people don't like me for me because of how I act. I like to think there's more to me than that but... I don't know sometimes.

In that regards I want to apologize to someone on here who, frankly, did not really deserve so much ire for a minor disagreement with their analysis. An analysis I took the wrong way and reacted badly too. It was concerning Gwenpool's current status in the X-Men books. I was mostly taking my frustration out on the situation at hand, but rather than better specify and limit that, my comments on twitter blew back on said person, Luimnigh, a fellow Gwenpool fan who was merely expressing that they felt the reason Gwenpool was with the X-Men was because of an attempt by the X-Offices to better consolidate their brand. I, in my anger and vitriol at the situation, of Gwenpool not being used in any X-Books since her self-enforced accidental retcon, lashed out at the argument and subsequently, through my own brash, vicious, cluster bomb technique of engagement, attacked them as well. I didn't name them, I didn't link them, I was over on twitter, but if I'm being honest, it was mostly just done out of a hope I would not be found.

It wasn't done because I was angry at Luimnigh, I was angry at Gwenpool's lack of use in the X-Books. I felt the theory was naive or overly optimistic and I was lashing out over what was frankly a frustrating sense that no one was trying all that hard. That people weren't more mad. That no one was doing anything and in my desire to make people angry, I only managed to export my anger at other people who did not deserve it. It was unfair, it was wrong and I should've been more mature about how I addressed such a minor disagreement. Luimnigh is as big a fan of Gwenpool as I am, perhaps moreso, and they were trying to take some solace while I remained bitter. I am still bitter, but I can't fault other people for TRYING to keep their spirits up. Who am I to impose everyone be as angry and upset at these things? That's wrong. I was wrong.

This was a while ago, I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm not asking that. I just don't like knowing I've hurt someone who didn't deserve it and have done nothing to really mend the fence on it. Maybe I'm just looking back on things in my life and not feeling terribly proud of all of them. I don't like introducing myself to people as my worst self. And maybe I did that when I showed up here, now that I think about it. Which... yeah... not exactly helping my case in that regard I suppose.

Forgiveness is earned not given, I don't expect anything. And this shouldn't be about me, it should be about the person I've harmed, or at least upset. I doubt this will reach them, but who knows. I just need it to be out in the ether so they're aware how I feel now. Frankly this should've happened sooner. I did not have a Tumblr back then and I've only had one for a short while at this point. Four Months, since November. So it's probably too late for any of this, but here it is:

Luimnigh, you've been a staunch advocate for Gwenpool as a character deserving of stories, of love and appreciation. You've done a lot on this front that I honestly wish I was more capable of doing. I understand why you're upset at me, what I did was uncalled for and I don't expect you to do anything in return. While I don't agree with you on everything related to Gwenpool and comics, you are certainly deserving of respect that I was unwilling to give in that current state of mind. I felt I could use twitter as a shield of some sort and escape scrutiny, that was cowardly. If I wanted to engage you on this subject I should've gotten a tumblr myself and just did it. Moreover I shouldn't have branded your attempt at explaining the situation with Gwenpool on Krakoa as anything other than you putting your own thoughts into words. You weren't trying to make a definitive statement as to whether or not Marvel cared about Gwenpool, you were just explaining a practical business reason of brand consolidation and I honestly took it the wrong way and reacted to it badly. I don't claim there's an excuse for this, I can only express that I was in a bad place regarding a lot of things... and I'm sorry for taking a small portion of it out on you.

I can understand if you don't want to start over, star fresh. I understand building a shell around you so you don't get hurt. Believe me, I respect that. Oh lord do I ever respect that. You don't owe me anything, but I at least owed you this. I am sorry. That's all I can really offer at this time. Gwenpool taught me that toxicity breeds bad things in people, I guess I didn't learn it the whole way through. But if I can make amends now, sincere amends, that would be all I need. You deserved better than what I had to offer that day. That's really all I can say. If you'd permit the chance, I'd like to be better than what you saw... but I understand if that's not something you're willing to risk.

This is the best I can do, I'm not trying to sound pitiable. I don't know the right words half the time. I try and be better than the day before. I don't know. I just decided, upon a lot of reflection, I don't want to leave the mistakes I've made, the people I've hurt, with ill toward feelings. I at the very least want to make an effort to apologize. I don't know if you'll read this, or if you'll care to if you even find out about it, but I just wanted to do this. I probably should've done it sooner.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. I hope if there is a next time between us, it's a better interaction.

#Apology #luimnigh

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Krakoa Limbo

Gwenpool is trapped on a Island that Doesn't Care and I hate it.

I want to preface this very succinctly, because I know how many X-Stans are on here and how insanely overprotective they are about this IP. So lets get this straight from the get go. The X-Men deserve to feel safe, loved and like they belong. There is nothing wrong with them want that level of self determination.

Nonetheless, Krakoa is terrible. It has turned the X-Men into the very people they've have routinely fought against in the past. They have become bigots, isolationists, obsessed with genetic destiny, racial superiority and ethno-fascism. They've built a nation intend to make it paradise and have repeated ALL the mistakes that are routine among nation builders. Deny it all you want, but even the comics agree with me because they've only now started to admit that Krakoa is not paradise, there are cracks in the façade, injustices perpetuated on their own people, their ruling governing body is paralyzed with corruption and literally sinister agendas and the only people who are trying to fix it are the OG X-Men who clearly do not like what they've become. Like they suddenly got some sense into their heads. Maybe Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine paused their collective polyamorous relationship a bit to realize "Holy shit, guys, we're palling around with fucking Apocalypse and Mister Sinister? Are we the baddies now?"

You'd think the X-Men finally starting to realize their paradise has foundations of clay would get me to start reading, if only to see how this all inevitably falls apart. But no, because there's a personal matter I take issue with that even now the books refuse to cop to. Gwenpool has been trapped among the mutants, forced to be the occasional cameo... and nothing else. She has been stuck on that island for close to FOUR YEARS, an eternity in Comic Book time! And she has been allowed to do nothing! The most she's gotten is a guest appearance in a MODOK miniseries. And apparently she'll have a story in Love Unlimited, a digital only comic on Marvel's exclusive digital store service and nowhere else! And the only way you'd know about it is if you're already a Gwenpool fan constantly searching google for news. The damn thing doesn't even have a synopsis or even an actual title for the story arc, if it even is an arc. It's being released in 2 days! And we still know nothing! Like they intend for it to die on the vine!

And that is my problem, Gwenpool has been basically shunted into limbo, never being used, despite Gwenpool Strikes Back making it a big deal she accidentally retconned herself into Mutant status. Her biggest speaking role in the mainline X-Men comics was when she finally got to go to that stupid Hellfire Ball because the X-Men Chief Editor found an excuse to get her in there. For whatever reason, the rest of the X-Office, not even Leah Williams, who put Gwen on Krakoa to begin with, wants to use her. She hasn't even interacted with her ex-boyfriend, Kid Omega, since she arrived on the damn island.

What the hell is going on here? Why is there just basically radio silence on Gwenpool's status? Why does it feel like every cameo and appearance is some kind of miracle? Why did the X-Offices want her if they have no intention to use her? And are they refusing to use or are they unable to? What is the problem here? Why won't they tell us anything? Why are Gwenpool fans getting the shaft?

Those questions can only ever be ultimately answered by those in charge. And I doubt they will answer it. But as a fan of the character it is infuriating. They are wasting a character for no good reason. It would honestly not harm them to have her show up. To have her do things. To involve her in the plot for an issue or two. Why they won't is beyond me.

So if I can't get answers from the creators, I turn to the fans. Assuming you're still here, you're probably a more reasonable X-Fan, one who is at least willing to discuss these characters and not lionize them. The creatives at Marvel have failed to make me care, so I put the question to you. As a Gwenpool fan... what is there for me in the current X-Men run? Why should I care about it? What are the books offering for me as a fan of this character that it refuses to use? Why should I read these books? Why should I want Krakoa to succeed if all it does is keep Gwenpool away from any new book ever again? WHY should I care?

I just want someone, anyone to understand the ultimate issue for me. You X-Fans should have a modicum of sympathy for my plight and the plight of Gwenpool fans the world over. Your beloved mutants were almost wiped out, removed from the Marvel Universe, placed on permanent hiatus because of a douchebag, aging Trump Supporting asshat corporate raiding executive who refuses to keel over already, was having a petty bitch fest over other companies owning the rights to them and other characters. A situation I might add, he helped cause! You of all Marvel fans should know what it's like to watch your favorite characters be seemingly abused and mistreated for what felt like forever by the very company that owned them. Now imagine that for the length of the attempt to replace them with the Inhumans, you didn't even know what was going on with them, what was happening to them. You didn't get to see them, the company just erased them and pretended they didn't exist.

That's Gwenpool now.

If the X-Men have ever been about anything, they've been about trying to foster empathy between people. Understanding. Respect. More than just tolerance, but compassion and acceptance of others. And considering all the terrible things in the world going on right now, I feel like its a very small, even insignificant ask, that the X-Men Fan community recognize why I'm not happy with how Gwenpool is being treated right now, and even advocate for her on our behalf. She's a mutant now, shouldn't that count for something? You're living in a golden era, you've all clearly fallen in love with this status quo, so much so you dread a return to the mansion. You have it good now, doesn't that oblige you to think of those left out?

Please, all I ask is for a semblance of compassion here. Gwenpool deserves so much better than this. She is the reason I am still reading comics. She saved me from some pretty dark depressing places. She made me re-evaluate a lot of things about myself and my relationship with the media I love. I'm sure at least a few of you have similar feelings about the X-Men.

Help me care, tell me there's a reason to hope. Show me something to prove that Gwenpool is embraced by this community and not just held up as a trophy because they can claim her as a mutant or whatever. Make me care about Krakoa as a Gwenpool fan. Make me feel like I belong here. Because believe you me, I want to like the X-Men again, I seriously do. But I can't right now, knowing that Gwenpool is trapped on that island, waiting for the moment when Krakoa blows up so she can do literally anything else. Because as it stands, I'm basically just dreading her getting killed off in the background when this all goes wrong, because it always does with the X-Men. It. Always. Does.

Thank you for your time. Please... just help me care about this. Help give me some hope for Gwenpool. I don't think it's much to ask.

#gwenpool #gwen poole #X-men #Krakoa #Comics #Marvel #fan community

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Deep Dive Thoughts about the Daily Bugle Lego Set

I got this Lego Set for Christmas, highlight of the day honestly cause I've wanted one of my own for awhile if only to play out my many Spider-Man story fantasies. It's an impressive looking set to be sure, and I love it for how it has gone all out in many respects. But something really cool is how many minifigs are included in it! Every possibly Spider-Man character is here. Well there are a few exceptions, probably based on them not being able to fit so well with the others. Like, the Lizard has to be a tad bigger than these guys. Same with the Rhino, but almost everyone else is here. It's an impressive cast to be sure.

Look at that, they even have various non-affiliated Marvel heroes because they have connections to Spider-Man. Punisher debuted in an issue of Spider-Man for example. Miles is here sporting his getup from the Spiderverse movie as well, which is kickass cause I love hoodies. Miles should just wear a hoodie all the time as Spider-Man, makes him standout even more. Maybe they're worried he'll look too much like Ghost-Spider, who also wears a hood... I just like hoods.

But there is a major missing member of the Spidey Support cast though. Someone VERY important, Mary Jane Watson!

The woman most associated with Peter Parker/Spider-Man as his primary love interest. So much so they actually got married... and then that all got erased because Marvel couldn't figure out how to make their marriage compelling or interesting. But despite that, even though people claim them being married would be boring all over again, Marvel continues to tease and hint and fakeout the possibility of them getting back together again. They've been doing so for well over a decade at this point. Most recently after heavily hinting at the possibility of their romance returning throughout the Nick Spencer run, Peter has done something terrible enough for MJ to not only leave him but start up a new relationship with someone else who has kids who call her mom!

People are not happy about being yanked around like that, but this is not the point I want to stress here. My point is mainly, Lego decided that for this huge Spider-Man based set, featuring tons of characters, they were going to just cut MJ out altogether. She's just gone! Nowhere to be seen! But another love interest is still there, in fact she's doubly there!

Gwen Stacey is here, Peter's first love and perhaps true love given how he will never be over her. To be fair, its hard to get over someone who died on your watch. More specifically died because your web-line, for the one and only time in existence, decided to obey the laws of thermodynamics concerning centrifugal force. But she's not dead here!

In fact, in the bio for her minifigure, the instruction booklet clearly states she is Peter's "College Crush". Spidey fans might be aware that Gwen dies during Peter's college years. This was something Greg Weisman had to clearly state for fans in recently years concerning the ultimate fate of Gwen on the Spectacular Spider-Man Animated series. Basically, Gwen was never going to die on that show which would've naturally ended when Peter graduated from high school, not after or before. So Gwen was never dying on that show.

But wait, you say, that just means that this is during Peter's time at college! So maybe Gwen is about to take the plunge! Slow your roll buddy! First of all, there is no REAL death in Lego. Haven't the various video games taught you anything? Everyone just runs off screen or plops down with cartoon stars over their heads forever. They're fine!

Second, that's not possible either, because various events that SHOULD have taken place as a result of Gwen's death have already or ARE occurring at this point of time in the story of the set! Case in point...

As you can see in this picture one of the many stickers for the set, the Clone Saga is happening! The infamous 90s sequel to the original Clone Saga of the 70s in fact, since Scarlet Spider is around! For whatever reason, Professor Miles Warren has not become the Jackal, or the very least he has not yet been discovered and is hiding his evil alter ego. Even from Ben Riley, who he created! Assuming this is a three way live interview J Jonah Jameson is running (And that seems to be the case), then for whatever reason no one has figured out what Warren is doing!

For those uninitiated, the Clone Saga was initially kicked off because Prof. Miles Warren had a creepy obsession with one of his students, Gwen Stacey. When she died, he tried to clone her so he could be with her. You know, cause he's a creep. That went badly with the original Gwen Clone getting lost and a Spider-Man clone falling into a smokestack. Years later that Peter clone becomes Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider, and kicks off a whole other Clone Saga. One Marvel has overstay its welcome because Marvel in the 90s is run by the marketing department and not the actual storytellers.

Now considering that Gwen is still alive, active, in college and being pined for by Peter as they attend classes together, it stands to reason that not only did this version of Spidey manage to save Gwen from a fatal snap off a bridge but that despite her survival, Miles Warren still futzed around with cloning tech and we have probably skipped the original Clone Saga and gone straight to the 90s one.

That should be it, right? Well no! We still have another very big question to ask... Ghost-Spider, aka Spider-Gwen!

She's included in the set too and before you suggest she's a clone or from another dimension as is usually suggested, no, she's not. The backstory blurb for her figure says she is, in fact, Gwen's alter ego! She's not from another world, she's not a clone, she IS Gwen. It makes sense, Peter Parker and Spider-Man have their own individual mini figures, but they're clearly meant to be the same person who's figure you swap out when necessary for the story. So the same has to hold true for Gwen Stacey! This is a universe where Gwen Stacey also got Spider powers! Maybe, in fact, as a result of Miles Warren's experiments with cloning or perhaps in a similar lab accident that would lead to Miles Morales getting Spider-powers as he's here as well!

But here's something that's also very random, and I only discovered this while I was writing all this down, Gwen's minifig outfit is a reused torso model.

This is common practice and given how much they spent on creating this set it stands to reason they had to reuse some figure designs to cut down on costs. This particular figure's outfit is from the Haunted House Attraction set. So I can only assume that the attraction exists within the world of Lego Spider-Man, or at the very least, it has the same clothing line.

If the former is the case then that opens up a whole other can of worms because of Haunted House ride is based off another line of now defunct and out of print Lego sets, Lego Adventurers!

The principal villain of that series was Baron Von Barron and his house is the basis for the storyline of the Haunted Attraction ride. Although its hard to say whether the ride itself is BASED on the story of the Adventurers series or is actually built around Barron's old house. So either the stories centered around the Adventurers sets are REAL and occurred within the Lego Marvel universe or they are themselves a popular old adventure serial within that universe.

So, putting it all together. Lego Spider-Man exists in a world where Mary Jane either does not exist is not a mainstay in Peter's life. Gwen Stacey is still alive and may or may not be in a relationship with Peter while also being Ghost-Spider at the same time. Indicating she got powers at some point in this world. The Clone Saga itself is currently happening, through entirely different circumstances and means but is occurring regardless. And the old Lego Adventurers series is in one way or another Canon to the Lego Marvel series, as either actual events or in-universe media.

This is all incredibly out of left field and strange and a major rabbit hole of over thinking. So I'm just going to end this by saying, I'm just glad Black Cat is included in this set, cause I'm gonna have her and Spider-Man making out on the top of the building when I'm finally done building it! Peter X Felicia forever!

#lego #legominifigures #spider man #marvel #gwen stacy #spider gwen #ghost spider #mary jane watson #Black Cat #felicia hardy #peter parker #daily bugle #clone saga #ben reilly #spiderman x black cat

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Kai Leng was always a whole new level of petty. I imagine this was meant to make you hate him and want him to die slowly and painfully. The truth is though, while it did do that, I never felt he was on my level and part of it was because of stunts like this. Saren never taunted me like this. Harbinger was a poet with his smack talk. Kai Leng was 90s era High School Bully, petulant and douchey. He felt he had somehow EARNED the place of being my rival or whatever, he hadn't. My Clone was more of an effective rival, not Leng.

#mass effect #kai leng

[rjmhereunderprotest]

I Survived the "Voltron: Legendary Defender" Fandom Ship Wars

I've seen my fair share of fandoms, and the subsequent warring that can go on within them. Shipping tends to be the primary focus of a lot of it, and that was no more true than "Voltron: Legendary Defender" and I'm reliving my experience with it because shut up.

I literally was only in this whole thing because, as the Megas XLR theme song states, "I dig Giant Robots", which is true of pretty much everyone. I wanted a fun space opera quest with giant friggin robots that was done better than the anime from the 80s. The prospect of former members of the crew of Avatar: The Last Airbender being on the project sweetened the deal. And for a time it was good... and then it all imploded because idiots had to ruin it.

This was honestly the dumbest dip in fandom engagement I've ever seen and it was all over shipping and seriously stupid fucking people. A series if idiotic actions that led to compromises at the creative level that severely undercut the end product. Everything that transpired in the run up to the series finale, from the 7th Season onward, perhaps even before that, you can trace to one thing... the Shipping War between which dude Keith, the Red Paladin, should fuck. His older mentor Shiro, who turned out to already be in a same-sex relationship, or Blue Paladin Lance... the literal Lancer of their five man band.

Oh it got ugly fast, Shiro was too old for Keith, they were reading too much into rivalry of Lance and Keith, accusations of pedophilia, nasty screaming about whether they'd LET these characters be gay, I watched it all and rolled my eyes thinking "Who gives a flying fuck?" Let's not even get into how the fandom treated the potential female rivals for Lance and Keith's affections. Allura and Lance shippers were a lesser front in the war of words. The main screaming matches were between the slash ships, but there was always a little ire reserved for anything hetero. I remember how desperate they all were to find a way out. To prove that Space Azula, Acxa, was not into Keith, maybe even his sister.

For a while it stayed like this, angry fans on reddits and twitters and tumblrs and forums of all sorts. Then the shippers did the big No-NO, what EVERY fan sooner or later seems to forget. You bring this drama to the attention of the creators... and you involve them in it. Suddenly it's no longer about preferences, it's about fans making demands of the creative team. "Make us Canon or die!" And it probably wouldn't have been so bad if the Voltron Team wasn't so active on social media, but they were! Poor sweet summer children, were they ever.

Any tacit support for one side over the other was seen as damning condemnation. How DARE the creatives speak about their own preferences? Or ideas? Or lend credence to that side over the others! Maybe they're pedos too if they seem to want Keith and Shiro to be together. How dare they dismiss all this evidence of Klance and ruin their whole super important character development that is clearly integral to the story about the intergalactic war against an even empire utilizing a giant robot.

I just did not care for ANY of this. I was paying attention to Pidge exclusively at this point as her story was far more engaging and or interest than over some stupid romance most people had made up in their head. And I felt that getting on the asses of the creators to bend to one side of the other was becoming more and more fucking disrespectful. Let them tell their story, ya jerks, stop trying to force them to tell what you want. Just write fanfics if you're that desperate.

Then... someone did something VERY stupid. Well, two someones actually. During a tour of Dreamworks Animation, someone thought it would be quite "corking" if they allowed their fellow "high school chums" a look at some classified storyboards and sketches. A few neat little spoilers online that they snuck out of the tour on a hidden camera. Clever little scamp, posted it online... and instantly drew the ire of Dreamwork's legal department. Net wide, Dreamworks demanded the removal of the spoilers. But one moron thought it would be a brilliant fucking idea to keep them up... unless demands were met.

"Make Klance Canon and I'll take the spoilers down!"

The idiot's understanding was, since other sites had the pictures, that they couldn't be liable for stealing anything. They didn't take the pictures, they just had them. So really, if the other sites were going to be pressured into removing the material, they could keep it up and use it as a form of protest. To make their stupid ship real.

Other people told them, that's fucking blackmail, that's illegal. And eventually that thought stuck.

Yeah ya did, Sunshine. People thought these two fans were one in the same, but from every indication it seems like it really was two people with the "blackmailer" likely being a really stupid kid who took advantage of a situation without realizing that their plan was gonna potentially land them in a ton of legal trouble. But the damage was done at this point. Because once fans start threatening to ruin ALL of your creative plans, that's when the higher ups get involved. That's when shit has to change and drastically.

To summarize what happened, from what most people have gathered, a lot of story points, ideas, plots, etc. got up ended by all of this. They had to alter their original ideas because the fans had fucked it up by going overboard. Now, whatever plans they had for the series were basically thrown out the window in favor of a new direction that NO ONE LIKED!

Allura and Lance get rushed into a relationship, Shiro's husband dies and he finds a new one some rando background dude. Any potential Keith romance is just thrown out because both sides are already losing, might as well not anger them more, oh and then lets kill off Allura next just as quickly as we finalized this relationship. EVERYBODY LOSES and it's all because a bunch of shippers could not fucking chill!

And I just laughed, I just had so much fun watching the rest of this trainwreck slide into the on fire tire fire on the garbage scowl before sinking into the sea and hitting an unexploded atomic warhead from a sunken sub! They all went ballistic, every single fan just fucking went off at once in a screaming angry tirade of abject total failure. But I was mostly cool, because Pidge got a great ending and I didn't care about anything else at that point. So out of ALL the fans of Voltron, I won. I won along with every Pidge fan and I was more than happy to watch the rest burn. And fuck'em anyway, they did this to themselves. Let them all shriek and screech and run around mad at the creators. They made themselves so fucking toxic, so goddamn impossible to deal with that I'd have probably done it sooner were I in charge and probably worse.

I'd have had Auxia kiss Keith full on the lips while she lifts one of his legs to lightly straddle her while both Shiro and Lance look on giving thumbs up and hugging close their own significant others. Shiro's would've been a dude at least because I'm not so cruel as to throw away LGBT representation. But still, totally would've done that shit in like season 5. Trust me, I would've drunk the angry screeching of everyone because they all deserved it at that point. ALL OF THEM. I have no sympathy.

Voltron: Legendary Defender is a lesson for fans the world over. Shipping is all fun and games when you keep it that way. Write fanfics, share your headcanon, create all the racey sexually explicit dude on dude, girl on girl, human on tentacle monster, etc. art you can paint or sketch to your heart's desire... but leave the creative team out of it. It's ultimately their story, not yours. And believe me, most of you here and Tumblr played RIGHT into all that shit because I know at least a few of you fucking did this.

As for me, to prove I'm not completely above it all, I'll pony up. I had one Voltron Ship, one I actually liked, supported and was totally cool with knowing it was never gonna happen. And it's not any of the ones you think... I wanted Lance to get with one specific person. Well, not person, fish-person.

Plaxum! That's right! I wanted Lance to end up with the Mermaid Revolutionary voiced by Mae Whitman! Because fuck it, Mermaids are fucking awesome and you can try however you fucking want to ruin the fantasy of mermaid love under the sea with your fish biology lessons, I know for a fact you're all wrong because if anything, mythical mermaids are more akin to sharks than regular fish and SHARKS actually DO have sex. The males have TWO big fat ones down under in fact, so what does that say about mermaids?

So in conclusion this has been a very long winded way of me justifying my mermaid fantasy and possibly grossing a lot of you out. I have no regrets and if any remaining Voltron Fans want to take issue with it, tough. The show's over I can make up whatever I want. Namely that Lance eventually returned to Mermaid world and had a hundred or so babies with Plaxum, because I live in fanfic land and you can't drag me out of it if you tried!

I have now thoroughly wasted ALL of your time. Good day!

#voltron legendary defender #shipping #Lance #Keith #Shiro #Fandom Entitlement #Lance/Plaxum Supremacy #I'm still Winning

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Mass Effect Mod Pet Peeve

I just randomly want to reiterate something that annoys me among the Mass Effect Modding community. It has nothing to do with gameplay tweaks, or adding new cutscenes or changing some incremental shit for the sake of lore or whatever. It has to do with this... STOP REMOVING PEEBEE'S MASK!

I'm serious, this has always bugged me and it still does. I get Andromeda isn't well loved, I have my own complaints, but this one thing fans do pisses me off something fierce.

From a practical standpoint it's very simple, Andromeda's Asari all have the same face. Every single one has the same face. It's super fucking jarring. The only exception is Peebee who not only has a unique shape and structure for her face's model, but she also has the mask, which helps her standout from the overload of Andromeda Asari who quickly begin to bleed into each other as soon as you see at least two next to one another.

If you're going to mod anything, why not mod the Asari's faces so they, you know, don't look like the same butt ugly clone pasted over and over again. And that's not a knock against unconventional concepts of beauty or anything, I'm saying they look bad as character designs, I'm saying they don't look right! You can have a frumpier Asari, but they shouldn't all look like the same level of very garbage puffed up cheeks and oversized noses. At least change their eye sizes or something!

PeeBee is the only one that actually looks well-designed. She's not drop dead gorgeous or supermodel levels of hot, she's cute, adorable, charming. She works! And the mask is part of that, because it gives her what all these other Asari are lacking... dynamic personality! This is important for characters and especially someone like PeeBee because the mask is her entire point.

PeeBee does not act like traditional Asari, she is very far removed from someone like Liara who reveres her people's culture and legacy. PeeBee wants to stand out from that, she doesn't want to be beholden to it, she does not like strings and having to live up to cultural expectations assigned to her by her species is a string she wants to cut. So she wears a black makeup mask to distinguish herself and her individuality. She is saying "I am unique, I cannot be tied down!" PeeBee's entire arc is basically about that, the mask is a symbol of her insecurity and her standoffishness.

PeeBee is introverted, guarded, does not expect to last long among people. She lives in an escape pod because she expects to wear out her welcome and she'd rather make cutting the strings less painful. Therefore, it's better to pretend you're fine with being tossed out on your ass than it is to worry about when it will happen. This is the result of her escaping a toxic relationship that was not going well for her. And on the Tempest, she needs to learn to open up to people, to trust them and to not assume they are waiting to get rid of her. She needs to learn she is not disposable.

The Mask is a symbol of both her assertion of individuality and her introverted protective nature. That she won't let just anyone in to see her true self because she does not want to be hurt again. It is why when she admits, during her romance arc, that she WANTS the strings that it's such a big deal to her. She is finally ready to attach herself to someone, to the crew, to other people, again.

And what do modders think about all this highly important characterization, subtle story-telling, unique design aesthetic and facial recognition codification? "She looks like a Raccoon! Get rid of it and replace it with nothing or a generic Asari facial design."

Congrats to every Modder who does this, you've failed every basic tenant of character design in favor of trying to make her look "prettier" to yourself. You suck, just like everyone who turns the women of Skyrim into plastic Barbie Dolls sucks. No, I'm not gonna sugar coat it for you. If you remove PeeBee's mask through mods, you are sacrificing character for a ridiculous preconception of standard beauty. You have terrible taste and you probably make Serana in Skyrim look like she got Botox injections somehow. Please, never design a game yourself, you're shit at it.

That's it, that's all I feel like screaming about right now. PeeBee is a great character, fuck you for trying to ruin that if you've tried.

#Mass Effect Andromeda #peebee #modding #video games #Asari