#Kess is actually me

[smolkatto]

More little snippets of art with Kess

Individuals posted below~

[beeheevs]

sometimes, I'll be reading an atsv fic and come across one word or way of phrasing or encounter, and all of a sudden just know the author is black. on the flipside, sometimes writers will write in a certain way that makes it obvious they're decidedly not 💀

[milimeters-morales]

Them (Miles Margo Gwen) all having issues with a social life is real nice. Gwen shutting herself off from other people and not learning some important social/people skills + Margo being in an online space nearly 24/7, her family issues, and her universe in general not really being an in-person place + Miles being a social butterfly who doesn’t actually form bonds with other kids easily at all. Gwen and Margo can probably bond over not using the right manners around certain people, or accidentally disrespecting someone else’s property, or a low impulse control when it comes to being with ACTUAL friends that you like and trust. Miles probably didn’t really think that he had a problem with his social life because yknow, switching schools changes that, and some people just aren’t people you hang with outside of school, but now that Gwen and Margo actually expect to hang out and call him, and he starts expecting the same and calling them, he’s realizing “ah i was missing this!!!!” they all make each other’s world go round each time they realize something they were doing wasn’t considered “normal”

[daydreaming-en-pointe]

CHRISTMAS SPECIAL(S) - A very Spidey Christmas

-> Oh, hello there!

Below you’ll find the links to all 6 of the series of Christmas oneshots/drabbles that were posted on Christmas Day (December 25th). Enjoy! 😁

1610!Miles Morales (Spider-Man) — Cookie Art

42!Miles Morales (The Prowler) — Tangled Tinsel

Gwen Stacy (Ghost Spider/Spider-Gwen) — Ice Skating Slip-ups

Margo Kess (Spider-Byte) — Sugar Cookie Chaos

Pavitr Prabhakar (Spider-Man India) — All I Want For Christmas…

Hobie Brown (Spider-Punk) — Snowman Shenanigans

Platonic (Spider!Reader) - DELAYED

christmas dividers by @/saradika <3

[moonyandrice]

okay my last post was like super negative and I don’t want my only contribution to the spiderverse fandom being a rant- so I’m just gonna throw it out there and say, whoever’s idea it was to ship Margo and Earth 42 Miles deserve a slice of cheesecake and a kiss on the mouth.

[kiss-dumbbunnies]

they visited australia to pay nate a visit for his birthday :)

extra text details under cut

nate, kess, and benjie have been good buddies since they were kids! nate had to move back to the ol' aussieland pretty early in their lives. they still usually kept in touch online, though!

apparently, nate and benjie had a bit of a falling out that kess was unaware of, and they hadn't spoken in quite some time. they seem to have reconciled, though...

they decided they'd all pitch in to pay for some tickets, and kick him out of his house for a few hours to prepare a super surprise party for his birthday!! :)

they had a lot of fun. he told them all about his wonderful [sic] adventures during his time in the outback. avery had no clue what he was saying half the time as she'd never once in her life encountered a man who could speak "english" without speaking english at all the whole time. she was awestruck. it was mesmerizing. devon didn't care because the girls were paying more attention to nate than himself. but he tried to be polite the whole time.

benjie and nate seem to be at least on good terms again. they had fun. avery had never seen so many different techniques for spider-killing and marsupial-clobbering. she vowed that the only time she would ever return to this country would be to study under his wing and/or marry him.

benjie and devon were sent to go get the tickets for the ride home while the girls stayed back and chilled with nate for a bit. it had only then dawned upon them that, caught up in their excitement of the idea of visiting a foreign land, they had completely forgotten that they had to pay for tickets to their destination AND the ride back. not only that, they had no local currency with them and no idea how to access their bank accounts without their cards. avery also probably forgot her passport somewhere in the bush. whoops! go figure!! haha!!! what will these crazy critters do to get themselves out of THIS sticky wicket??!!

[be-good-to-bugs]

why can i not clean my room?

[fitzfunnymoments]

I hope I'm able to start my meds soon because I am like so tired of being like I HAVE to be specifically invited like a vampire. Like not even just irl but if I just want to message someone I'm like no idk if they want me specifically talking to them right now </3

[tired-duckling]

halloween is nearing, and i present to you an idea:

bc of Paige posting ab “Sp5derman”, my brainrot is telling me: how ab gwen stacy spider woman and margo kess spiderbyte for halloween?!?!?? i think its p obv that Paige would be gwen stacy and reader would be spiderbyte

FEEL FREE TO WRITE AB THIS!! i would actually prefer if u did bc im so busy and exams are nearing but if not, i will write ab it as soon as I get my break. OK ILY GUYS HAPPY IMAGINING AND WRITING!!

[punkeropercyjackson]

Unchangable believer that the Spiderverse movies should've made Gwen a lightskin brown eyed and black haired half dominicana to make it a proper black story and since yt Gwen is quite literally the ONLY thing stopping her and Hobie from being thee perfect ship and that Margo should've been an mc and Miles' love interest with Siblings!Ghost Flower for some of that sweet sweet platonic m/f soulmateisms.I'm a Ghostflower fan and defender and Punkflower is my actual ultimate Spiderman otp but it's my opinion i won't back down on to anybody who tries to attack me over it that Gwen Stacy should be a black girl and that Margo Kess deserves all the material possible and beyond and that Hobie Brown and Miles Morales should black women from infinity to infinityyyyyyyyyy

[mintakablue]

cool details i noticed + things i loved in across the spiderverse

spoilers ahead!

i think the stylization of the different spiders was even more distinct in this movie than the last one! i like that when the camera is focused on certain characters, you get their aesthetic “bleed” into the world (e.g. gwen’s painterly strokes in her silhouette bleeding outwards, miles and his family having chromatic aberrations in theirs, manny’s chunkier outline, etc.)

i LOVE that the spot is miles’ nemesis for a couple different reasons. he aesthetically opposes how colorful miles’ world is, he is a “villain of the week” that peter parker originally faces off against rather than miles, the major inversion he gets (becoming black with white spots) kind of feeds into the underlying theme of asking who the good guys are--especially when we learn that miles would have been prowler in earth-42! obviously also the fact that he and miles are both anomalies is great. i also think it’s good meta humor to have made the bagel guy become the spot.

there’s also a bagel billboard above the spot’s apartment. in some ways very fortuitous that everything everywhere all at once related bagels to the multiverse.

the stylization of three side characters really stuck out to me--pavitr, ben reilly, and of course, hobie! i love pavitr and mumbattan, i think it was a good choice for the trailer and stylistically a really strong and complementary style to bridge miles’ transition into this aspect of the spiderverse. ben reilly’s stylization i love because it evokes the mobile spiderverse game that introduced a lot of people to some of the more obscure spiders. and DUH i love hobie’s style, you can really tell that they incorporated tons of actual britpunk influences in there. also let me not forget margo kess! she’s so cute in this i genuinely like that she’s a VR spider. i hope to god they make jokes about her being on the web. please.

on that note i do like that the prop design also retains obvious notes of which things belong to which spiders! hobie’s is obvious, but you also see it with gwen’s items. also i like that each spider has a different way of swinging through the air that’s more obvious in this one! gwen and pavitr both have an dancerlike quality to them, hobie’s is a little more erratic (anarchist), and miles of course is still figuring out how to nail some of those more tight swings, but he’s way cooler with being in freefall than any of the other spiders. also miguel using his claws instead of swinging and jess using her motorcycle were very cool! lots of aerial play in this one that i’m excited to watch again and follow the eyetrace for.

good moments with miles and his family! i almost always hate the moody teenager plot because it’s like. you don’t see why they even Should care about their family or the family is so overbearing you start just siding with the teenager, but this movie struck a really good balance there for me. also i just really really like that there are scenes where miles and his mom just speak spanish with each other :’) the rooftop party was so real to me. i am not Latine or live in ny, but i am Filipino and i have been at one million parties like that with my family. and those pink cake boxes from a small bakery that your parents like is iconic.

i genuinely enjoyed the commentary on faking the struggle to get into school LMFAO i think that’s very real for a subset of poc, but especially more affluent Black and Latine people.

OH YEAH miles cracks a joke about ATM machines and then pavitr (my king) cracks the same kind of joke about chai tea and naan bread. a bit of an old joke but hey the movie has been in production for 2.5 years and i do think it serves to highlight the way that spidermen crack the same joke. especially when after in the spiderverse HQ a ton of other spidermen crack the same kinds of jokes about spotting The Spot. across the spiderverse, spidermen are the same

pointing spiderman meme is terribly funny i will stand by that forever

more funny meta commentary about donald glover being people’s pick for miles’ voice and not becoming spiderman, so he’s the prowler--in the same way that miles, had he not become spiderman, would have been the prowler. more obvious is his appearance in mcu spiderman, but i still think it’s fun foreshadowing!

on foreshadowing, i think this movie does a great job of laying out a lot of those bits of information. starting off with highlighting earth-42 and making sure you know that sticks in your mind (and it’s also impossible to choose the number 42 and not evoke the cultural memory of hitchhiker’s guide lol), having the spot talk about how the spider came from a different earth, getting another glimpse at it, seeing miles’ earth number right in the splash screen, saying that the big spider device sends you back to your universe via DNA analysis + margo seeing the big EARTH-42 instead of earth-1610 on the screen. and then even in earth-42, the color palette is really different from 1610! 1610′s opposing color for miles is like a deep blue color (opposing his red suit accent), so 42 having a primarily green palette opposes the prowler’s purple accent!

not to mention that when miles pulls into his bedroom, you can see that he doesn’t have a drawing desk up (or his sashimi/supreme poster). i think it’s a sad little detail that the movie seems to imply that his mom didn’t notice a major change in his appearance (having a short afro instead of braids) is because she works so much she doesn’t see him that often :(

fun sound design in this movie! in the scene where miles-42 gets revealed as the prowler, you actually hear that growling sound effect first when miles-1610 gets tackled and then again twice: once we see miles-42 in shadow as the prowler, then when he says his name!

in fact there’s actually tons of fun sound design details! miguel gets a futuristic sting, gwen has like a full on leitmotif, miles has a short leitmotif which i believe is part of “what’s up danger” (i would need to go back and watch the movie a second time to really pick up on it), pavitr and hobie have their own musical instruments associated with them... and even the spider from earth-42 has its own sting! i might have misheard, but i actually also think hobie and pavitr’s “thwip” sounds are a little different than the standard ones!

i love when those little notes show up in the lower corner. very comic book! a lot of those details make me smile, i really feel like they cared a lot about evoking some of the writing styles of different spiderverse writers there

aesthetically and tangentially related, i like the sketchiness of some of the characters! it’s most obvious in the spot and the alternate universe vulture, but it’s such a neat visual trick. it also serves to give the spot an almost “unfinished” look while also giving him better volume. very excited to see the behind the scenes from the riggers/animators/3d artists

the idea of canon events is such a good one for spiderverse--i think it’s great! one of them that i’m almost certain they’ll bring up in the next one is that. um. gwen usually dies when spiderman is trying to save her. straight up i actually thought they were going to pull that one instead of officer singh dying after gayatri is falling! after all spider-gwen almost got shot, plus miles straight up almost drops her after he glitches out in mumbattan. sony please don’t break spider-gwen’s neck...

genuinely loved all the calls to different spidermen too! there’s like one really prominent shot of paperbag spiderman that made me and my sibling giggle. here’s how the fantastic four can still win

in that vein, i have at least Some prediction of what the spiderverse resolution will be? i can imagine that because miles is an anomaly, his canon event breaking might actually be permissible to some degree... perhaps only if he returns to his own earth? truly truly i cannot IMAGINE that they would make us watch his dad straight up die onscreen because like MAN we already watched his uncle die. that would be way too devastating... but obviously miles-42 and miles-1610 have a lot to say to each other about watching an older man in your life that you love die. i’m a little back and forth about the idea that miles was “destined” in some way to become the prowler in an alternate universe but i’m gonna put my faith in the team to not make it weird ykwim. seeing as they already slipped in commentary about the fact that like Yeah it’s partially because miles’ family has money in 1610 that he is even able to “stay out of trouble” i think there will be an interesting conversation to be had about class dynamics between miles-42 and miles-1610! i am like wildly excited for the next one, i have a lot of hope that it will be even more gorgeous than this movie was and will have the same depth of writing/foreshadowing!

lastly and i know i’m just saying this because to ME spiderman is a very trans character. but peter parker from spider-gwen’s universe was just taking his testosterone okay. and spider-gwen having that painterly pink blue and white as she was saying essentially “i want to live my life fully in my identity” was so... happy pride!!!

[kestrel-wish]

REPOST YOUR ART OF CARP!!! The famous carpet deity, omg-

I remember the wildest things at such late hours

AYE AYE CAPTAIN! 👍 I'm not sure where a good chunk of the physical drawings of them are, and to be honest i never drew it as much as Kess ( or windhover, i tend to call them windhover sometimes to avoid confusion with my fursona ) mainly because Carp's ears are surprisingly hard to draw well. But here are the ones that I can find

This is the main drawing of them, and i think the first actual one?

Also this one that was drawn mainly for expression practice and boredom You can tell i gave up when it came to drawing the background and also that's supposed to be a couch they're sitting on it's just hard to tell because it looks like a brick lmao.

That's all the good ones i can find my art files are terrible to try and look through I also have some goofy super low effort doodles of Carp and Kess ( And others! ) too if you'd like those

Left lower is a random 'garden'/plant creature similar to carp i made up but never really used, ( their name is Dandy , i show them later ) along with an idea for what the ceiling ( 'Ceil' ) would look like. More cat-like since i think we joked that the carpet would be rivals/kind of jealous of the ceiling so cat/dog because funny. Middle bottom is Ampere. I don't remember actually showing you Ampere? So if i either didn't show you or it's been a while this is ampere ( below ) Similar to the others but like a kitchen electronic kind of guy and the upper right of the doodle page is Carp and lower right is Kess, ofc

I like where i went with this look but he's also way overdesigned compared to the others it's ridiculous looking. Very cool nonetheless but just a bit jarring. Very polite looking guy, though. Yeah not much actual carp art, that i can find at least there very well might be more. Can't find it for the life of me. Properly name your art files , people! But i have this other one of Ampere if that's something

It's all old ass art so kinda wonky looking now in hindsight. I want to come back to them eventually as characters they're all silly. but especially Carp and Kess because they're the coolest. Blatant favoritism. The amount of lore and ideas I've come up with for those funny Quotev group chat ocs is terrifying and frankly quite disturbing. I do have more doodles of Kess than carp if you want to see those later, just ask. And i think a small animation but don't quote me on that. Sadly just not much of Carp itself. Or the others that i've thought of for that matter. Like you can see I tried to make ones much later to add to the personified house things, but I kind of ended overdesigning them a lot like you can kind of see with Amp. And Dandy, the plant one. I don't think you've seen it ever either, i made them a while after Amp on a whim, i think. The vague idea just came to me and i felt the need to doodle them too.

I like Dandy's design ngl very soft and warm looking. I feel like their fur would feel kind of crunchy. It's very obviously a first time doodle but it's a fun idea. Man, i love drawing funnily themed cartoon dogs. I know this is less Carp art considering you asked for Carp specifically but there isn't much i can find so woe other old art be upon ye.

People who did not know me in my early Quotev days are going to be so confused lmao i'm not tagging any of this i don't even know what tags I would use.

[speevtheteev]

AF Batch 2

I can't believe I forgot to post this RAHHH so Im just gonna put them here rq before i forget...

If anyone doesn't want their OCs posted for any reason, feel free to msg me and I can remove ur OC from the post :)

Attack 10 - GothicRift on Toyhouse, OneMillionFurries, @slumberingachievements, lun4rbunny on Instagram

10/07/24 || OC(s): Fanta, Peter, Kess, Zippy || Pokemon group attack! All of their designs were so fun to draw :D

Attack 11 - @boinklydoinklysploinkly

11/07/24 || OC: Carlos || I love Carlos's design so much!!! Such a cool oc :D

Attack 12 - voscra18 on Instagram

14/07/24 || OC: Matcha Moo || Matcha Moo is so precious ashjdkjasdkjas

Attack 13 - @riotzerosys, CriminalFlesh on Twitter, numberplaygroundchronicle on Instagram

14/07/24 || OC(s): REPUGNANCE, Tums, Strawbie || I love pixel art sm... All of them are adorable too :D

Attack 14 - @voidghost-aster

15/07/24 || OC: Ambrose || Revenge for an attack I received :) I love Ambrose's extra arms!!! Extra arms r def one of the coolest character design tropes!!!!

Attack 15 - @sparkyyybees

15/07/24 || OC: Lumi || I LOVE PIXEL ANIMATION GRAAAAH!!!!!!! Also Lumi was so satisfying to draw! I love OCs with perfectly circle heads!!! They're so cool and fun :D

Attack 16 - roonihere on Instagram

17/07/24 || OC: Poncho || I accidentally drew Ponchos horns as ears ashjdhkasdhk so that's my bad D: but I rlly love how the animation turned out! :D

Attack 17 - gxmmyshark on Instagram

20/07/24 || OC: Lilith || Revenge for an attack I got! I am actually really happy with how this one turned out ngl! I think the character design is rlly strong here too!

Attack 18 - @ughlibug

20/07/24 || OC: Soap || Adorable OC :D love characters with see-through heads sm!!!!

Attack 19 - british_fuz on Instagram

28/07/24 || OC: Harley || Revenge for an attack I got! Another pixel animation which I LOVE doing!!! Harleys design is also amazing :D

That's all for my AF attacks! I did get some attacks on the last day, and unfortunately I was incredibly busy around that time, so I was unable to revenge them. I will be participating next year to attack those 2 people at the start!! If anyone wants to attack me (I do revenges) next year, heres my AF! SpeevTheTeev

[deritosmi]

Do you have a spidersona? If so, wanna talk about them?

OH MY GOD I LITERALLY KICKED MY LEGS WHEN I SAW THIS!!!!!!

HEHE YES I HAVE A SPIDERSONA YES I WANNA TALK ABOUT THEM OMG

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAH OKAY SO

his name is dolce (for now)

For like seventy million years I didn’t know that you could make a spider sona that wasn’t extremely similar to yourself so I might change a lot of stuff about him pls be patient:)

I have yet to design eir suit buuuuut I HAVE drawn their face (trying to mimic spiderverse style)

I’ll say I think it was pretty good for the first time but I think the lineart was a bit too thick and the eyes weren’t really faithful to the spiderverse style so I’m probably gonna redraw (and redesign a little bit)

BUT ANYWAYYYYY (tee hee)

here he is!!!

My spider-sona 👍👍

Earth-143

Preferred name: Dolce (pronounced Dol•che)

Surname: Patal 

Nickname(s): 

Dookie 

he protested against this

Dolly 

he protested against this

Cheche 

he protested against this

Eight 

only used by fellow heroes

Phanny 

he absolutely hates this 

Cryptid name(s):

Eight Eyes

Explanation for Eight Eyes

The back of Dolce’s suit has a design that resembles a set of eight eyes. The first person who ever saw him only saw his back, hence the name.

Hero name: Phantom-8 (or just Spider-Man)

Pronouns: He/They/E/It (spivak)

Background 

Personality: INFP-T

Zodiac: I don’t know yet :)

He was bitten by an UNDEAD radioactive spider and now he fights against ghosts (in secret).

Rather than being seen as a hero, he’s seen as a cryptid(and his presence has caused more business and tourism in his little town.)

Living in a suburban neighbourhood in Atlanta (but don’t worry, he can roller-skate to get to crime scenes quickly.)

Powers and Skills

Skills

Skating

He can skate at 70mph.

Lying

he’s actually good at it 

Only does it for his secret identity

Spider Related

Spider-sense 

Tingling feeling in his brain that tells him something bad is coming (and what direction ‘something bad’ is coming from)

 High pain tolerance 

See: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MajorInjuryUnderreaction

Natural web fluid

spinnerets developed in his arms when he was bit

Shoot web fluid when they are pressed

Super strength

He can lift 10.5 tons

Ghost Related 

Intangibility 

allows him to phase through anything (except ghosts) at will

Allows him to touch ghosts 

Invisibility

self explanatory 

At will

Doesn’t work on ghosts

Relationships 

Earth-143

Wade Wilson - librarian.

Dolce is apart of the teen advisory board of the public library.

Wade is like a weird uncle figure.

(I love deadpool!!!)

Dolce is super distant with pretty much everyone. He doesn’t hang out with anyone.

Spider-Society

He’s still really distant but he’s a little more willing to be open since everyone there is like him.

He doesn’t really like the idea of making sacrifices to maintain the canon but he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go after being outed to his parents as a trans boy.

Dolce’s Feelings Towards Certain People 

Miguel O’Hara

avoids

Slightly dislikes

tries to be friendly 

Lyla

Friendly

Neutral

Jessica Drew

Avoids

But treats nicer than Miguel

Neutral

Peter B. Parker

Does not avoid

Friendly

doesn’t want to talk much 

Neutral

Pavitr Prabharker

friendly 

doesn’t talk much

Good impression 

Likes by association (Hobie)

Gwendolyn Stacy

friendly

doesn’t talk much

Good impression 

Likes by association (Hobie)

Hobart Brown

very friendly 

Talks a little bit more in comparison to other people 

Likes 

Margo Kess

don’t interact much 

Neutral

Miles Morales 

doesn’t know anything about him

Likes by association (Hobie)

Web slinger

Kinda Likes

Shy-ish

Likes the horse too

Spider Noir 

Unsure

Never talks

Peni Parker

Likes

Talk about interests frequently 

I JUST WANNA SAY TYSM FOR ASKING THIS THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOUUU

you have NO idea how happy this makes me

[roseamongroses]

something about the history of spider-byte's name (and intial lack therefore of a last name) is calling to me. like even now that margo has a last name, ppl still don't recognize her civilian identity bc of how little screentime she had and the brevity of the comic appearance.

hmmmm ok i've marinated. idk much about tech so take the terms with a grain of salt and just focus on the emotional story. think i have some headcanons:

margo lives in a society where it's common to use virtual reality to escape/ experience life but margo is actually one of the more extreme cases of this escapism

she's friendly with others, something doesn't seem to be wrong, but her peersknow she's always connected to the vr/always online. they don't notice how little they know about her home life or about her, despite her being familiar with everyone else.

-

and this disconnect only becomes worst once she takes on the mask of spider-byte. helping people in the way she's always desired to be helped is fufilling, but it doesn't take long for margo to become lost in her online persona.

-

the longer she spends as spider-byte, the more the two worlds blur. and once she gains the ability to physically manifest her avatar, her spider abilities begin to transfer into her irl body

-

at first margo was excited about this change. she could finally be the hero she wanted to be inside and outside of her vr- headset, but she quickly discovers that her bodily automony is being manipulated.

-

sometimes her skin glitches, changing into a rainbow of colors without her say-so (she'd have to fake sick to avoid questions from her peers/parents) . sometimes when she splits her avatar her body doesn't immediately return and if it does it never feels the same. as if data is missing.

-

but most obvious is that her understanding of humanity--of herself changes. not in a cruel way, but she feels an alienation from human connection that she'd never experienced before. she saves the day, not because of her childhood desire to do good, to be saved and save others, but because it is her avatar. it is her purpose as spider-byte, not the dream of margo kess.

-

it's when margo catches herself refering to herself spider-byte, even when she was outside of vr relaxing that she begins to investagate further.

-

she begins to question her relationship with the cyber crime police department and how easily they accepted her" "vigilatism"/ eventually she tracks down conversations between the department and an unknown scientist/ leading cyber security company. i'm thinking of this being her "doc oc" connection, but im open to other villian parallels tbh

-

the thing is this "doc oc" knows that margo has been tracking them . they think its funny. they're facinated with their experiement and are very willing to play along with the investagation as long as they get to observe their subject.

-

the fact that margo got "bit" was part coincidence. the program/ bug was sent out to find a suitable host. someone isolated, someone online for long hours to properly conduct the experiement, someone who had the need to escape and become something more.

-

it could've been anyone. they were meant to be corrupted entirely by the program, only leaving behind a husk irl as they accepted their new reality. but margo was different her need to do good was so great that it redirected the prgrams goals entirely. allowing for her persona of a hero to infliratrate her real life and vice versua in a way "doc oc" had never seen before

-

doc oc at first wanted to let margo live as a hero . but her changing the bug--resisting its intended purpose intrigued them more. it wasn't enough to collect data on the experiement spider-byte anymore. now doc oc needed to break her. to rebuild her and understand what makes her so special

-

and this back and forth does mean margo loses a lot. some days she doesn't even remember her last name. but she's motivated now to reclaim her life, her heroism, and make sure no one else is taken advantaged ;like this again

[silvermarmoset]

watched 'across the spiderverse' yesterday and it really stood out to me how, in the midst of all the explosions and web-slinging and Deep Family Talks™, 'across the spiderverse' has a lot to say about white supremacy. it stands out to me that when miles needs his allies the most, he's abandoned by gwen and peter (his two closest friends from the first film)—not because they don't love him, because they say they do, but because their love doesn't extend past the reaches of the system set in place and miles' place in that perceived system. they're full of "oooh don't be maaad at me" and "this is for the best!" as miles is running for his life. as miles is insisting that his dad shouldn't have to die to maintain some stupid fucking system. peter and gwen, instead of putting miles first or prioritizing their love for him, instantly justify and let go of him when his existence challenges a framework they are comfortable in and already supported by.

meanwhile, miles' real sources of support are hobie (a black anarchist who very loudly protests the system) and margo kess (a black VR gamer). when he needs to escape, they're the ones who actively help him out. even jessica drew, i think, kind of helps—it seems at the end she's ambivalent about really chasing miles down, and you can see throughout the film she's tussling with her thoughts on the spider society, pushing its boundaries here and there.

and getting back to gwen—yeah, we can see that she is struggling with problems of her own the whole movie. she's insecure, she's unmoored, the spider society is something that makes her feel safe. but the movie doesn't let her problems soften or apologize for her betrayal of miles. she's wrong. she is wrong. the movie doesn't deny it, not for a second, and the narrative never uses her issues to justify what she is foisting on miles.

i'd be really curious to know how much of this was discussed by the creative team—because from the outside, it looks like they planned a film centered on the black lives matter movement, with a story about challenging oppressive systems and valuing black solidarity, with a sidebar discussion on white supremacy, and then just....made it. actually made a movie about black people surviving a system that doesn't recognize them as human. and did it with superheroes and pop art and a segment made entirely out of Lego. and then got everybody to watch it! like! what!!

i'd be curious to see if this stood out to anyone else, and especially to hear black fans' thoughts and analysis. i did a quick sweep through the tag (man y'all are horny for miguel), but i'm sending this post out there hoping other people might have thoughts they want to share too.

anyway great movie 10/10