Mjapologist - MJ

ngl i hate it that in the comics every peterfel story line centers around MJ and how it makes MJ feel and how it effects Peter and MJ’s relationship

Like goddamnnn can’t Peter and Felicia be together without the writers making it some weird roundabout way of Peter trying get back at or over MJ

I’m tired of seeing panels of MJ looking out windows at Peter and Felicia like ‘aw damn woah is me she took my man’ like ily sis but this ain’t about you!!!

i know peter has a perception as one of the nicer superheroes, especially compared to like. batman or daredevil. but like, it really boils when they conflate usually minimizing damage to not being feared/being harmless/disliking hurting people because

this is a man who

chased a robber around until he got a heart attack

came this close to murdering the goblin

gave otto arachnophobia after putting him in the hospital. it didnt stick obv, but the point stands

has ripped people's faces off. on at least two occasions when pressed

the entire back in black saga

is, and i cannot stress this enough, a man who legitimately thinks violence solves his problems

and more

(web of spider-man vol. 1 #17)

explaining my mutant!felicia hc 🫶🫶

Felicia is a feral mutant, meaning she has atavistic mutations or animalistic traits (think Beast, Angel, Sabretooth, etc). These traits include:

Cat’s eyes - This is why she wears her signature blue contacts: not just to see in the electromagnetic spectrum, but also to hide her mutation and make her less easy to identify. She uses different ones in and out of costume for fashion purposes, but her true eye color is green in the same way a cat’s eyes are green, not a human’s. Because of this, her pupils reflect off of cctv cameras sometimes which can also make her hard to identify. Our first look at Felicia in the 1963 ASM run shows her with glowing eyes, which have only ever been adapted in the Spider-Man animation (and you all know how i feel about that 😒).

Pointed ears - The reason she keeps her hair down while fighting is to cover her ears, despite the fact this is pretty inconvenient. The upper cartilage is a lot thinner and more flexible than human ears, which means she’s cursed to only wear lobe piercings (something she’s definitely a little bitter about).

Fangs - this one is definitely self explanatory, but cats also only get 30 adult teeth, meaning that rather than a full set of fangs throughout her entire mouth, the only sharp teeth she has are her canines. Other than that, her teeth are the same as a human’s. Felicia is also extremely lactose intolerant, just like real cats. Luckily, this is the only food allergy she has due to her mutation.

Claws (obviously) - Because cat’s claws are attached to the knuckle, Felicia’s claws work in the same way. This means she can’t extender her claws out fully while her hand is in a relaxed position, instead she must flex a ligament in between her distal and medial finger bones. This becomes inconvenient after long periods of time, which is why she prefers to use traditional fighting techniques in combat and only use her claws when necessary. She also sheds the outer layers of her claws as they grow, which makes manicures easy as it eliminates the need for nail polish remover!

No rigid collar bone - Felicia’s collar bone, like most cat’s, is disconnected from other bones and instead connected by muscles. This grants her increased flexibility and allows her to squeeze into tight spaces. Perfect for a career criminal!

A tail - honestly this one varies for me, so sometimes I like it sometimes I don’t 🤥‼️ Cat’s use their tails as counterbalances for walking on narrow spaces and when running and jumping, as well as expressing emotions and communicating with other cats. I alwaya hc Felicia as having very expressive facial movements and body expressions so this one just feels like it fits her well.

White hair - this ones kind of just playing with what’s already there. We see Fel with her signature white hair in her flashbacks as a child in TETMD, so I think it makes sense that this is a trait that’s naturally occurring and a result of her mutation.

I also hc Felicia’s mutation as being a pretty big divide between her and Peter because while Felicia’s bad luck can be targeted, it also is affected by her emotions and her control of them. This could potentially put people who are in a high-stress situation with her in a lot of danger. Felicia feels she can control her powers just fine, but Peter feels she has a responsibility to find some way to keep them in check to avoid other people from getting caught in the crossfire.

Felicia being a mutant is also a big part of her friendship with Logan, as both of them are feral mutants who view themselves as bad but think they’re past redemption. As mutants aren’t exactly accepted in the marvel universe , Felicia keeps her mutation relatively hidden. She’s perfectly fine with people speculating what she is, and keeps her crew small to avoid people finding out. This can be isolating however, and she confides in Logan often as her only real mutant friend.

(I’m a big Logan & Fel bff truther!!! I’m sorry I can’t help it they should be besties!!!!)

Felicia’s father, Walter (the first Black Cat) was a mutant without physical traits but had a much more subdued form of tychokinesis, which is where he got his name. As she inherited the X-gene from him, Felicia feels her mutation is the greatest gift her father ever gave her and is a lasting connection between the two of them following his death.

from Amazing Spider-Man #1

the reason peter is apparently competent at a motorcycle when he cant drive cars is that he's unhinged.

the exact reasons people hate motorcycles (exposed, unsafe, no protection) are why he loves them. he has so much more control than in a car. gives him a sense of safety. actually lets him drive without self destructing.

The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #267

Faire patte de velours

Black Cat | Spider-Man

Helena Masellis (art)

Do you think Peter Parker also falls into this missremembered thing? I've seen plenty of people saying he's this happy go lucky guy even though he's not like that in the comics

Oh yeah, definitely, though I think Peter’s a bit of a reverse of Johnny in this regard; Johnny gets oversexed to attempt to make him an easier character to understand, whereas Peter gets undersexed, partly, I think, to sell him as a cinnamon roll. (One thing that’s hard to deny when you read Spider-Man comics is that this is a character who really likes women.) But Peter is a much more popular character than Johnny. Johnny was maybe more popular than Peter for like a hot two minutes in the early 60s. And the bigger a character is, not even in a fandom sense but in a pop culture sense, the easier it is to accentuate or to invent aspects of their personality and then have them stick. I mean, I feel like everyone feels like they know Spider-Man, because he’s Spider-Man! He’s insanely popular! I know I felt like this and then because of that I totally accepted the soft Peter fanon of my day (I don’t know how far back you would have had to go in fandom to escape it, but my gut feeling would be pre-Raimi) and when you’re getting into a character, you’re probably seeing the popular posts first, and the popular posts with Spider-Man comics are usually quippy, goofy panels posted without context or sources, like so:

(From a oneshot called The Many Loves of Spider-Man, by the way!) And I mean, it’s a funny sequence, with or without context, and you don’t really need to know anything about Spider-Man to get it, so of course it goes around.

But that’s just one tiny piece of a huge canon, that also includes stuff like this:

So if those panels above gets 100k notes and this Peter beating the Kingpin in a humiliation/intimidation/vengeance power move in Amazing Spider-Man #542 gets, let’s be generous, somewhere between 30 to 100 notes, even though these are both the same character, people start to associate him with a funny gag and not with beating the hell out of the Kingpin, because that’s what’s being seen. And if he’s funny, he must be funny all the time, in this specific way, he can’t have a dark or a serious or an angry side, because that doesn’t fit with the snapshot image of this character. Apply as needed to any other side of his personality beyond “quippy.” And I’m not saying any one person believes this, I’m just saying that’s how the myth evolves. It’s just how things spread. And like, if it was just misinformed fan opinion that Peter Parker in comics is a sweet cinnamon roll who would rather die than hurt anyone, like, fine. But we’re living in an age where fandom is more widespread and more visible than ever before, and the people creating new content for this character can see those posts and go, okay, so that’s what people want, with the expectation that if you give people what they want, they will then give you money buying it, and now I’m grumpy about Spider-Man all the time because he’s being written more and more soft and his banter has totally lost its edge and you know sometimes you just want to read about him shirtless and beating people up.

tl;dr yeah I would say fandom misremembering a character en masse does apply to Peter as well as Johnny, it just applies to Peter in very different ways than Johnny.