Sin embargo, como muestra la historia de las polis griegas entre la democracia y la tiranía, ese equilibrio entre la metafísica del poder y su concreción en la ciudad es frágil. La lección histórica de esos tiempos, también de la historia política de la ciudad Siena, indica que hay que luchar por la calidad de la vida ciudadana. Producir y recibir tales imágenes, como la del buen gobierno [en la pintura mural] de Siena, requiere una cierta cultura urbana. Según su origen en latín, cultura significa una actitud agraria, el cultivo de un campa para que florezcan la plantas.
However, as is shown in the history of the Greek polis' inbetween democracy and tyranny, that balance between the metaphysical of the power and its concretion in the city is fragile. The historical lesson of those times, as well as of the political history of the city of Siena, indicates that it is necessary to fight for quality of city life. To produce and receive such images, such as that of the good government (in the mural painting) of Siena, requires a certain urban culture. According the origin from Latin, cultura signifies an agrarian stance, the cultivation of a field to make the plants grow.
En sus formas compuestas, el verbo colere, raíz del sustantivo cultura, indica refinar (excolere), elaborar (percolere), reconstruir (recolere). Estos ejemplos muestran que el concepto de cultura, ya en los tiempos romanos antiguos, fue ampliado a otras áreas de expresión humana, como las artes y las ciencias. No obstante, a pesar de las diversas formas en que se amplió el concepto de cultura, desde sus orígenes agrarios, se mantuvo la idea esencial de que la cultura no es un regalo, al contrario, es el resultado de un trabajo duro. Como el campesino lucha con su terreno para cosechar, el ciudadano lucha con su campo urbano para ganar una convivencia armónica. Cultivar la ciudad requiere aprovechar el potencial y asumir la responsabilidad. Cultura, en este sentido básico, no es una decoración de la política, sino uno de sus principios generales. Cultura exige una capacitación para arreglar los conflictos con racionalidad y control afectivo dentro de la comunidad, incluyendo la definición de límites de cada articulación espacial-arquitectectonica dentro de los muros de la ciudad. En fin, cultura implica la conciencia colectiva de valores y restricciones a favor de la comunidad.
In its composed forms, the verb colere, root of the substantive 'culture', indicates 'to refine' (excolere), 'to elaborate' (percolere), 'to reconstruct' (recolere). These examples show that the concept of culture, already even in ancient Roman times, was extended to other areas of human expression, like the arts and sciences. However, in spite of the diverse forms in which the concept of culture extended itself, ever since its agrarian origins, the essential idea has been maintained that culture is not a gift: on the contrary, it is the result of much hard work. Just as the rural peasant struggles with his land to produce crops, the city-dweller struggles with his urban field to obtain a harmonious cohabitation. Cultivating culture requires taking advantage of potential and assuming responsibility. Culture, in its basic sense, is not a political decoration, but rather one of its general principles. Culture demands the capacity for resolving conflicts with rationality and effective control within the community, including defining the limits of each spacial-architectural articulation within the perimeters of the city. Summarily, culture implies the collective conscience of values and restrictions in support of the community.
Todas estas descripciones comprenden le que se llama urbanidad. ¿Pero, por que, en estos discursos, se distinguen los términos “cuidad” y “cultura urbana”? El termino, “ciudad” se apoya en el concepto latino de civitas, que define una estructura metafísica de convivencia entre ciudadanos, con sus reglas sociales, sus leyes, costumbres y rituales. El termino complementario a esta superestructura virtual es urbs, palabra que indica la estructura material de la ciudad, sus muros, calles, casas. Las piedras de la urbs preservan y confirman definitivamente el espíritu de la civitas. Por su función mnemotécnica, la urbs sirve como instrumento educativo a sus habitantes. Por ello, la cultura urbana es algo muy concreto: es la verificación de lo que quiere la comunidad ciudadana.
All of these descriptions comprise what we call urbanity. But, why then, in these discussions, do we make the distinction between the terms "city" and "urban culture"? The term "city" is supported by the Latin concept of civitas, which defines a metaphysical structure of cohabitation between city-dwellers, with its social rules, its laws, customs, and rituals. The complementary term to this virtual superstructure is urbs, a word indicating the material structure of the city, its walls, streets, houses. The stones of the urbs define and definitively acknowledge the spirit of civitas. By its mnemonic function, urbs serves as an educational tool for its inhabitants. Urban culture is something very concrete: it is the verification of what the urban community desires.
Paisajes Urbanos: imagen y memoria, Peter Krieger, 2006
This week on the KMW podcast, it's McKenna Grace (Ghostbusters), Peter Capaldi, & Jack Antonoff!
And on WFPK, I'm joined by Robby Krieger (The Doors), Julia Michaels (Disney's Wish), Vince Clarke (Erasure), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett & Niamh Algar (Hulu's Culprits), & Caleb Followill (Kings of Leon)
Despite Insomniac's best efforts to pretend she never existed and that both her as a character and her storyline with Miles were completely irrelevant Phin has a few rare or totally missable mentions in both the Marvel's Spider-Man 2 prequel comic, as well as the game itself. Here are all of them:
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (prequel comic) mentions:
WARNING: The following images contain spoilers from this comic's storyline. If you don't want to know any details of it without having read it first, look it up online and read it before scrolling below
Phin gets mentioned in 4 different panels throught the comic. 3 by Miles and one by a random henchman working for Hood:
(Kind of an unrelated side note, but I do not like how Miles namedrops Phin by name twice in front of criminals who didn't know she was the Tinkerer. Specially since, unlike Otto, who was entirely exposed as Doc Ock after the first game's story had ended, only Miles himself, Simon Krieger, Rhino, Ganke, Aaron and Rio knew of her dual life prior to her death)
Okay, that's all the comic had to offer in this regard. Now let's shift focus on:
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (the game) mentions:
I'll clarify right off the bat that I'm not including the bits of Phin getting mentioned in the Mister Negative boss fight, as those are unmissable and thus irrelevant to the compilation I'm making
The first one to mention is the one most will likely be familiar with, as visiting Phin's memento in Trinity Church not only has Miles mention her, but doing it is required to get a trophy and is therefore part of the process to earn the game's Platinum Trophy:
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However, what you might not know is that, if you visit Trinity Church again after completing the main story, you'll get the buttom prompt to interact with the memento again, and Miles will have a different dialogue, which gets us our second rare namedrop in the game:
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The next one can be listened to after taking a picture of the Photo Op of the hot dog champion at Coney Island, in Downtown Brooklyn. If you open the Collections section on the menu and play the audio of this location only as Miles (if you're playing as Peter you'll get a different and completely unrelated dialogue), he will mention an eating competition he and Phin did against the champion:
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And finally, we have this dialogue:
This is the rarest of them all by far, as you can ONLY get it once per savefile (either brand new or New Game Plus) and if you have tutorials enabled in the settings beforehand and open your first Tech Parts stache as Miles. If you have tutorials disabled or do have them enabled but open the first stache you find as Peter, you won't get to trigger this dialogue at any other point in the entire playthrough of that save file
Aaaaand that's all I manage to find. If anyone has another unusual dialogue in the game or other suplementary material of the franchise that mentions Phin, do let me know and I'll add it to the blog
I have other blogs planned for Phin, so stay tuned!
Stephen Macht as Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu
James Woods as Captain Sammy Berg
Harvey Lembeck as Mr. Harvey
Dinah Manoff as Rachel Sager
Kim Richards as Alice
Aharon Ipalé as Major David Grut
Mariclare Costello as Gabrielle Krieger
Larry Gelman as Mr. Berg
After the Uganda–Tanzania War, Tanzanian troops discovered Bloch's body in 1979 in a sugar plantation around 20 miles (32 km) from Kampala, near the Jinja Road. Visual identification was impossible because her face was badly burned, but the corpse showed signs of a leg ulcer. A pathologist working with the Israel Defense Forces formally identified Bloch from the remains. Her remains were returned to her son in Israel, where she was given an Israeli state funeral. She was buried in Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot Cemetery. (Wikipedia)
I wonder if Insomniac not wanting to make characters too unlikeable in the second game stems from dumb criticisms to the Miles Morales game. Namely, lot of idiots continue to say that Phin was too uniquely difficult or unlikeable to sympathize with despite not coming close to what Otto intentionally did, so Insomniac in response may have written Harry's character to try to avoid this reaction. Likewise, many people complain about the Miles Morales game not giving "nuance" to a character like Krieger, who's willing to kill his employees and poison people in Harlem for profit, and instead depicting him about as unsympathetic as you would expect that type of person to be. Therefore, they double down on Norman truly loving his son to avoid being seen as depicting him as "too cartoonishly evil" like people said about Krieger. Tangentially, I'm also wondering if them not killing off Harry was partly influenced by the worry that it would seem too similar to Phin's death.
Yeah, I honestly wouldn't be that surprised if the backlash against Phin may have had some influence on the decision to write Harry as being a perfect paragon who has little to no agency and therefore no blame as Venom (possibly, the last third of the game really can't decide on what exactly is going on with him and what his goals are) - and it's frustrating bc while I understand some of the criticisms of the writing for Phin, a lot of the complaints seem to come down to people being much harsher on a teenage Black girl than a middle-aged white man for similar actions, even though I feel like Phin's motivations feel more sympathetic than Otto wanting revenge for being humiliated (which is fine, I actually like that Otto is petty, egotistical, and not completely sympathetic, and I think Insomniac did a better job with this type of Doc Ock than Raimi Spider-Man 2 imo) - which is weird bc I don't doubt that Harry being a white man would afford him a degree of leniency that Phin would never get, even if the writing for her was perfect, where her being a stupid bitch would have people praising him for being complex and sympathetic.
Granted, I do feel like there are at least two factions of Harry fans where one likes Harry as a complicated messy character with flaws and the other likes him as a perfect cinnamon roll who did nothing wrong, and you can't satisfy both for obvious reasons, but I do feel like a more flawed Harry with genuine resentment issues would have driven the plot better, esp when he's supposed to be the main villain and the whole symbiote amplifying your worst traits and emotions thing - though the symbiote issue is not exclusive to Harry bc I feel like the game was reluctant to have Peter be truly awful in the black suit beyond almost killing Kraven bc even the almost killing MJ thing was just the symbiote piloting his body while he slept and not something coming from him, but that's a whole other discussion.
The whole thing with Norman is weird bc I think you could have him love Harry while still being a terrible father and set up some of the plot beats better without sanitizing Norman - like I said elsewhere, if they wanted to have Harry being jealous of Peter bc he thinks Norman wants to replace him after he dies, it could be seeded earlier where Norman seems to be hinting at it (which would be in line with him being an evil CEO who would reasonably be looking to secure his legacy) and have it actually be a thing than a misheard conversation where no one is at fault for anything; but between that and the complaints about Krieger, I feel like this goes back to this weird thing where writers and audiences prioritize likability, relatability, and being sympathetic as the most important characterization traits, so even evil characters get watered down - but you can have dynamic compelling characters whose actions are understandable, and I think that's more interesting than everyone having a sob story and soft personality where you want to be their best friend.
The interesting thing about Harry is that in the early draft script outline, he was originally supposed to die, and the early version of that final post-game EMF mission was like, a posthumous message Harry would leave for Peter in case he died - I suspect both Phin's death and Aunt May dying bc of Peter having to make a choice played a role in letting Harry live bc three games in a row where a loved one of the protagonist dies as the ending would be repetitive, but it makes the ending and lead up to Norman presumably becoming the Green Goblin as revenge weird bc 'I'm going to kill the Spider-Men bc they saved my son's life like I told them to, but he ended up in a coma, which is not good enough for me bc I'm an ungrateful asshole' is like, sure, I guess that's how you can make it work, but it's convoluted and inelegant compared to, 'I'm going to kill the Spider-Men bc they killed my son' and it feels like they wrote themselves into a corner due to both choices made in past games and where the next game had to go.
I think it's better to just try & Make Peter's B or C-listers more competent for Miles to fight (Spot, Hydro Man, Ringer, Grizzley, Kangaroo, & Lady Octopus are ones that come to mind) & morph into his personal Rogues.
Like nobody knows how to make a Good supervillain these days (the good ones are very few & far between) & Miles OG villains aren't anything to ride home about. Maybe Rabble, or Simon Krieger, But I dunno how many care for Assessor, Alan Davis has become more & more a good guy in media than an outright villain(so he's disqualified), & nobody liked Ultimatum.
Across the Spider-Verse certainly made a strong case that a c-list villain like The Spot could be made into an A-list threat.
Still, villains are often a product of their times... as such there is always going to be room (maybe even a necessity) for brand new villains.