jellsrants

[jellsrants]

Gwen and why she lies

This one is going to be a bit messy because I'm very tired after work, but I can't not talk about this anymore.

It's easy to criticize Gwen for lying to Miles. She was obviously in the wrong, right? The narrative calls her out, the characters call her out, and, oh boy, does the fandom call her out.

But dismissing her lying as "manipulative" or just "being a bad person" is doing a disservice to yourself. Because if I see you say that I will literally murder you assume you have no media literacy or desire to comprehend what you are shown beyond the surface level.

In ITSV Gwen claims she’s been Spider-Woman for two years. Her being fifteen years old, that makes her having taken that responsibility when she was thirteen, which is an incredibly formative age.

Moreover, she clearly has a strained relationship with her father, and her other parent, if she ever had one, is not in the picture entirely. Even in the flashback of a supposed happy memory of sharing a meal with her father and Peter, Gwen and her dad don’t seem to be on the same page at all.

Miles, on the other hand, has two incredibly present parents (and a really cool uncle). Do they also not always see eye to eye? Surely, but it’s obvious that love and support to each other is central to their household no matter what.

I believe that Gwen very early on understood and learned the old and true “lie to protect” way of thinking, and by the time she just met Miles, she already had it ingrained in her. Look no further than their second interaction - where she purposely bumps into him (no, really, find that scene, she literally leans back so he can bump into her), and then lies, cringes at herself, lies again, cringes more, and so on and so forth.

Gwen saying weird stuff and then cringing at herself around Miles is, like, a repeated thing, but that’s not the point here.

The point is, by the time ATSV arrives, the stakes for Gwen are really high. If she disappoints or angers Miguel, she might be sent back ‘home’, which would be akin to a death sentence (and which ends up happening anyway). If she tells Miles the whole truth she risks losing him, and from the context clues of her just having his pictures scattered around her bedroom we could tell he’s pretty important to her.

Thing is, she wanted everything to work out. There’s a reason Hobie and Pavitr seem to almost instantly recognize Miles, despite meeting him for the first time ever. And there’s a reason Gwen chooses him after all, despite all of her fears.

So, to get this train back on track, Gwen didn’t just lie simply because she didn’t trust Miles, and definitely not because she wanted to hurt him. She lied because in the turmoil she was feeling that was the only thing she knew to do.

For years, between her responsibilities, her father’s neglect, and her tragic loss of Peter, Gwen learned, even if wrongfully, that lying and keeping secrets is the only way to keep things in any sort of peace and balance.

But will she have enough time to unlearn that?

[jellsrants]

Randomly remembered how after rewatching Into The Spiderverse I texted my friend to tell them “Spider-Man Noir is Jewish”.

And then I went on an entire tangent about how in the 1930s where Spider-Man Noir is from, an average American didn’t really give a shit about nazis. It’s a historical fact that a whole ship of Jews were literally denied entry when running away from the Holocaust. Having Spider-Man Noir highlight fighting nazis as one of his main activities, while assuming he’s as much from New York as other variants of Peter Parker, tells me he really cared about what was going on and what nazis stood for. Which would make “he’s Jewish” be a very obvious conclusion to come to.

…and then, after my friend left me on read I googled if Peter Parker is Jewish. He is. Especially in Spiderverse.

So I guess historical continuity win?

[jellsrants]

I was not raised with Jesus watching over my shoulder. I was raised in an agnostic Jewish family. For me religious texts and figures, no matter the origin, were something to be studied academically. Which I always loved.

But I keep coming back around to thinking about Jesus. Because when I think of him, I think of my brother. My brother is only 18, he is a Jewish boy with dark curly hair and bright eyes. He is in no way like Jesus as he is in the Bible - my brother might just be the furthest person I know from Jesus. But he makes me wonder of when Jesus was 18. Or any other age besides a baby and a 33yo man, which are usually the ways he is depicted.

It makes me look at myself in the mirror and wonder if Jesus looked anything like me too. Or, even worse, if he felt like me. It makes me think of his siblings. Makes me wonder if he was a good older brother. If he made up games for them, if he taught them anything, if they ran to him with their childhood problems. I wonder if anyone picked on him and if his siblings defended him. Wonder if his siblings grew up and had children, and if Jesus was a good uncle to them.

I wish there was religious imagery depicting Jesus as a child playing with his siblings, and/or just other kids.

As @wolfythewitch, an amazing artist who makes me Feel Things, pointed out, we as humans tend to gravitate towards Jesus’s human side. And it’s a real shame that Christianity as an organized religion seems to almost miss that point.

Because when tears well up in my eyes for Jesus, who was, honestly, quite young when he died, they never well up for the son of God. They well up for the son of Mary and Joseph.

[jellsrants]

The Spider… Cult? A not-so-in-depth analysis

Thanks @0luna123 for the idea

After the user credited above mentioned that someone should do a cult analysis when reblogging one of my posts I just knew I had to do it. After all, this is an incredibly interesting angle (and, the more I found out about how to identify a cult, more plausible).

I mostly used information from this page, and will be basing this post on the information it provides. It’s an interesting and light read, so I highly recommend checking it out for yourself, even if just for fun. You know, the kind of fun when you want to read about cults.

Let’s begin by checking off boxes of the characteristics of a cult.

A charismatic leader - check! Miguel is undoubtedly the leader of Spider Society (jury is still out on charismatic, but considering the fandom’s response… well….). He is considered incredibly smart and capable, and is at least assumed to have created and be in control of all of the important technology in the Spider Society.

Ideological purity - check! Members of the Spider Society are, in fact, discouraged from questioning the validity of the “canon event” theory, and are punished if they do (and I’m not talking about Miles right now, I’m talking about Gwen being kicked out and disconnected for trying to go against the grain)

Conformity and control - check! Miguel is able to control the watches that he gives his followers, and use those watches as means to communicate, spy, analyze. He controls where they are allowed to go too. It is reinforced by regular members, and especially by his ‘close circle’ (even against other members of the circle)

Mind altering practices - nope! At least not that I’ve noticed when watching the movie. Unless, of course, those burgers with Miguel on them contain something sinister…

Isolation and love-bombing - check? Half-check? Well, at least for one member - Gwen. Though we don’t get to see much of how other people get indoctrinated, grabbing her from an incredibly stressful situation at an incredibly vulnerable state and promising safety and community… seems like that flag starts looking a bit red

Us-vs-Them mentality - check! Gwen quite literally describes the Spider Society as an elite society that is very desirable to join, even though technically there shouldn’t be a reason a Spider-Person would not qualify.

Apocalyptic Thinking - kind of check? Half-check once again. The members of the Spider-Society are not preparing for an inevitable apocalypse, but instead are preventing signs of one. Though, their methods and even the truthfulness behind what they are doing (or not doing) is under a big question.

Time and energy - check! The members of the Spider Society contribute a lot of their time and energy serving the unknown (or barely known) purposes imposed by Miguel. Sometimes their lives are put on the line, too.

That’s about a 6/8 score! And between that and the general sense of totalitarianism present, I feel as though at least a conversation on whether or not the Spider Society is simply a non-religious cult is a conversation that would be very interesting to have.

[jellsrants]

Can we talk about how Miguel treated Gwen now?

The conversation about the way Miguel treated Miles is as old as the movie (and, honestly, even older, considering it’s a driving point even in the screenplay).

But Across The Spiderverse has two protagonists. And as easy as it is to see how Miguel wronged Miles, his treatment of Gwen might just be worse.

Allow me to recap.

Miguel first showed up with Jess in Gwen’s dimension, where he helped her defeat the villain. But he was already pretty cold towards her. Then, a tiny bit later, when Gwen’s father pulled the trigger on her, he saved her. And gave her the ability to enter Spider Society. And that seems like a good thing, right?

Except it becomes glaringly apparent, that from the start Miguel held an astounding amount of power over Gwen’s head. She is sixteen, her secret identity has just been compromised, and literally the only person she could even hope to be safe around just tried to murder her. She has no choice but to follow Miguel.

She has no choice but do as he says.

And Miguel doesn’t seem to care about Gwen at all. In the short time she’s been in the Spider Society she seems to have become utterly traumatized. I mean, it’s either that Miguel himself planted the seeds of the “Gwen Stacy falling for Spider-Man = Game Over” idea in her head, with his love for “Canon Events”, or/and he just didn’t care enough to protect her from meeting her dead friend over and over, who looks at her and sees a ghost.

Ghost Spider had to come from somewhere too, you know. And it’s no coincidence that her closest friends in the Spider Society are a kid who’s Gwen Stacy is still alive, and a guy who’s Gwen Stacy (according to comics) was his favorite singer, not a close friend/lover.

And you could argue that he was too busy, that he couldn’t have known. Alright. But what about him sending her back to her dimension with no way to escape it?

He knew as he was sending her “home” and cutting off communication, that he was most likely sentencing her to homelessness or death. That there was no way of knowing that her father wouldn’t attempt to murder her again. And this time no one would be around to help.

So Miguel created a situation of dependency and then discarded of her when she became an inconvenience. Considering Gwen truly believed she could try and change his mind, and was originally too terrified to go against him when he lashed out… yeah, that checks out. Can this girl get a good father figure for once?

[jellsrants]

So… what makes someone Spider-Man?

(A side note before this post begins: I prefer using Spider-Man as an all-encompassing term for all variations. It is not a gendered term to me. Also I am rewriting this post a second time because Tumblr didn’t want to post the first version. Whoopsie)

I keep pondering over this question. Obviously, Miguel is wrong in his assumption of what makes someone Spider-Man. He is the antagonist, and, honestly, the straight up villain, of course we are meant to be challenging his opinions.

But the more I thought about this question, the more I came back to one line in the first thirty minutes of Into The Spiderverse as the perfect springboard for the answer that I think the franchise is trying to give us. So what is it?

Well, in the first movie, Spider-Man dies. And during what would already be an incredibly emotional montage of people learning of it and trying to cope, there is a voice over of Mary Jane’s speech about Peter Parker. A message for the people of New York, who we see dress up as Spider-Man to listen to her speak.

This moment is incredibly important already, being the first push of motivation for Miles to attempt to come to terms with his newfound powers and responsibilities. But it’s not just for him. She is giving this speech to every Spider-Man fan out there, both in the movie and in front of the screen.

And the line that really catches me is this one:

I’ve heard the sentiment that Spider-Man doesn’t choose to be a hero many times. But I reject this notion. Yes, it seems like that. But gaining the powers doesn’t automatically make you a hero, doesn’t make you Spider-Man. You can become a villain. Or you can just go home.

Spider-Man, however, chooses to be a hero. Because Spider-Man has to. It’s what a good person would do. And that isn’t just a choice you make once. You have to keep making in, whatever it is that life throws at you.

Sometimes being a hero will mean you make mistakes. Sometimes you will lose what you love. You will have to sacrifice. And choosing to be Spider-Man no matter what, choosing to be a good person, to, as Gwen mentioned in the same exact movie, get up again, and again, and again.

Honestly, this reminds me of the moral of Ratatouille. So, to paraphrase the phenomenal speech from a phenomenal animated classic, “Anyone can wear a mask doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone can be a great hero. But it means that a great hero can come from anywhere”.

And Spider-Man is a truly great hero.

[jellsrants]

George Stacy VS Jefferson Davis - a glaring parallel

Something I have been thinking about quite a lot (to the point where I made a video edit about it) is the difference in how Mr Stacy and Mr Davis reacted to a very similar situation. And, with a seeming uprise in posts defending George Stacy on Twitter, now is as good time as any to talk about it.

Let's start with the story of George Stacy. He had a preconceived notion about the actions of Spider-Woman. When he saw Spider-Woman kneeling over the body of a kid who was, by all means, a very close family friend, he assumed the worst. Then, he found out that Spider-Woman was a kid. Not just any kid - his own child, Gwen. However, despite her pleading with him to hear her out, not only did he keep his gun in his hands, but he actually fired it at her. If it wasn't for mere luck of them not being alone there, she would have been killed that night.

Now, let us turn our attention towards the first movie, where Jefferson Davis went through a fairly similar situation. He as well was shown to have preconceived notions about Spider-Man, with almost identical complaints that Mr Stacy made. He saw Spider-Man kneeling over the body of not just a close family friend, but his own brother. He assumed the worst as well. However, that is where the two stories take drastically different directions. When Mr Davis realises, that Spider-Man in question is a kid, and sees him fighting an adult villain, he understands the situation. Moreover, despite the danger to his own life and safety, he encourages Spider-Man to not give up, which is just the push that Miles needed to save the day, instead of succumbing and being defeated. Even without knowing that the child he encouraged was his child, Mr Davis did his best to be understanding and open-minded, which didn't just save the life of his own child, but saved their entire dimension from crumbling because of Kingpin's actions.

Quite a few George Stacy defenders argue that he is a cop, and acted accordingly to his job. But Mr Davis is a cop too, and he somehow managed to not get trigger happy with a child.

The real and true main difference between those two stories, in the end, was the ability of the father to, well, be a father. And just this simple parallel makes me believe, that if Gwen agreed to let Miles explain her situation to his parents, they would have been incredibly accepting and understanding, if a bit skeptical. But the way Gwen's and Miles' actions, fears and personalities are incredibly defined by their family dynamics is a theme for a future, much longer rant. Or even a series of rants.

[jellsrants]

Pinned post with some info

Hi! My name is Jell and my pronouns are he/them. I created this blog for my rants, mainly fandom-related, but I will definitely rant about IRL stuff that I am concerned about too.

I will do my best to tag my posts responsibly and accordingly to their content, but if you want me to add tags for triggering topics, please send me an ask about it.

You can also send me asks to ask for my opinions on certain subjects, expand on topics, all of that, but be aware, that I do not owe you participation in discourse. You are still free to send me anon hate and challenge me to fights in parking lots, though

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