Hi gang!!! As some of you know, I’m in a long-distance relationship with my wonderful partner @dizzeeflower. for the past several months, Dizzee has been suffering from a currently undiagnosed chronic pain condition that has completely uprooted faer life. Dizzee is now completely housebound, unable to walk without significant support, and dealing with debilitating nerve pain virtually the entire time that fae’s awake. After months of doctors appointments, tests, and waitlists, we’ve finally put together a GoFundMe campaign to help faer improve faer financial situation!!!
Our current goal is £3,100. More details are available if you click the link, but long story short, the main financial priorities Dizzee has are:
Additions/upgrades to the NHS provided wheelchair that fae’s on the waitlist for
Private talking therapy
General disability devices (eg. a shower chair)
Overdraft repayment
Student loan debt repayments
Monthly expenses (food, rent, etc)
(if it’s easier, you can also donate directly to Dizzee’s paypal: paypal.me/elbeel)
Please consider donating if you can!!! Dizzee is my very best friend and the love of my life; watching faer suffer every day with what could be the beginnings of a lifelong condition is heartbreaking. Any help you could give, either by donating or by sharing this post around as much as possible, would be so so so welcome <3
Like all spider people, she has to figure it out by herself. An endless slew of villains and only one teenage girl against them. An endless slew of villains and one of them turns out to be her best friend.
Peter Parker was bullied until he couldn’t take it any more, and decided to fight back. She must not have noticed him cracking, breaking. He knew her secret the entire time, was there for her the entire time, and she didn’t even realize his true identity until he was already burried under scaffolding and rubble.
“I just wanted to be special, like you.” She’s a wanted criminal now. She’s always alone. She’s hiding increasingly bigger and bigger parts of herself from her father, who loves and supports her and tells her he’s going to lock her up as a means to comfort her.
And then he tries to. And she takes the mask off and he keeps trying. Gwen Stacy held at gun point by the last and only loved one she has in the world.
A freak accident happens and she winds up in a place where a Spiderperson has it all figured out and is a well respected member of their community. A place where her best friend is alive and well and special right up until she sees his corpse plastered on news reports all over a foreign city. And there are other Spider people. Other Peter Parkers, all haunting her with never-ending “What could have beens”. Gwen isn’t alone any more until she is, two days later and with no means to ever see the one tentative friend she may have made, ever again.
A year passed and he might have just moved on from her, anyway.
Gwen Stacy meets a Spiderwoman who is cool and capable and doesn’t let love drag her down, but she still gained happiness, somewhere out there. Jessica Drew is a flicker of hope for Gwen that there might be happiness waiting for her, for a Spiderperson that isn’t Peter Parker.
Except of course, Jess seems to barely tolerate her. The rescue, safety, is conditional. If Gwen falters, if Gwen isn’t good enough, if Gwen slips up even once, she will prove herself a liability, will be send back into isolation, a hopeless situation, home. Will disappoint a person she’s trying so hard to impress and connect with.
Spider society is still haunted by the countless ghosts of her best friend. Because every Peter Parker became a hero except hers. Every Peter Parker is fundamentally a good person who wants to save people, every Spiderperson is a good person who wants to save people, except her Peter and this Gwen, who has his blood on her hands.
Notice how Gwen and Peter B barely talk, never have a real emotional conversation with each other. They treat each other as equals, and they do care about each other, but they can’t shake off the ghosts haunting each other’s faces.
Gwen tells Miles “in every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spiderman.” People don’t soften their blows for Gwen. How did she find out about all the dead Gwen Stacys? She spend several months dimension hopping on missions, did she witness a Peter Parker fail to save his best friend? Is that a “canon event” for Peter Parker? For Spiderman?
Maybe Gwen and Peter can’t coexist in the same universe without one of them dying tragically young. Maybe Gwen was never supposed to be Spiderwoman, stole the spot from Peter Parker, robbed him of his life, and her universe hates her for it now. One more anomaly for Miguel to catch later, once he finds out.
Maybe Gwen is the one who got away, she one Gwen who’s supposed to have got it good, who made it, will live to see 30. The one Gwen to survive and she’s alone, unloved, teetering on the edge. The Gwen that is special and thus shares her fate with all the spider people - will either watch her father die or watch him lock her up or even shoot her on sight. Which is worse? Miles asks Gwen whether that’s it, and she just says “Yeah”. She gets to chose between the rock and the hard place. Maybe she doesn’t have a choice. Gwen Stacy either dies or watches everyone else die. Does it matter, which is written into the fabric of the universe and which is a fluke?
Gwen tries to play by the rules, can’t risk messing up again for Jess, can’t risk losing Miles, can’t risk losing one more friend. One more friend because she can’t help but get attached to people, can’t help but fall in love with a Spiderman, like all the other doomed Gwens in other universes. But Miles is so fundamentally good he’s burried under scaffolding and rubble, curled around a little kid he’s saved. Gwen almost watches her best friend die a second time, willing to watch a few civilians die instead. She’s been on the other side of that equation and the regret is tearing her apart, the other way around must be better, right?
Would Gwen do it again, knowing who was hidden beneath the scales? Would she sacrifice his bully, her classmates? A little kid and a police captain? Her police captain?
The tragedy of the classic trolley problem is that someone always dies anyway, no matter whether you pull the lever.
Superheroine Idea: A heroine whose powers are seasonal
Plant powers in spring
Fire powers in summer
Wind powers in fall
Ice powers in winter
But! Her moral alignment also changes. She’s a classic hero in spring, an anti-hero in summer, a morally ambigious character in fall, and a straight-up villain in winter.
She often has to start every spring undoing the damage she’d done in the previous winter.
Her given name would be Demeter, and her alter-ego would change with the seasons, too.
It’s insane how subtle the familiar relationships are coded between the characters in this film, and how everyone respects that dynamic. Gwen asks Jess if she would adopted her but Jess turns on her in the end. Miles calls Miguel “tio” but Miguel attacks him. Peter wanted to have Mayday in hopes she’d turn out like Miles, but he fails Miles by siding with Miguel. Gwen lives with Hobie and wears his clothes like a younger sibling would borrow their old sibling’s clothing. When talking to Prowler, Miles refers to Jefferson as “our” dad establishing that brother-twin allusion. And then there’s also the fact that even though they’re from different universes, 1610 Miles still sees 42 Aaron as his uncle, but 42 Miles doesn’t see 1610 Jefferson as his dad. I don’t know, that’s all just crazy to me.
But what really gets me is how Rio and Aaron (briefly) can’t tell 1610 Miles isn’t 42 Miles, even when he’s taken his braids out and probably sounds different (different VA). Like Rio doesn’t even have to sit with it for a minute, she just carries on as though it’s totally normal same with Aaron until he presumably gets a text from 42, and I think it just shows that Miles’ family, at least subconsciously, loves every version of him no matter what - 42, 1610, Spider-man or Prowler.
I refuse to believe that Hobie is smooth or suave in any way. Stubborn? Yes. Cool? For sure. But he’s just as much of a dork as the other spiders. I so desperately need BTSV to have a scene where he has to do a smooth recovery to hide his identity and he botches it like the rest of the Spider Band.
To be fair, Daniel Kaluuya can do a decent American accent, so it could work.
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