#also why do i keep going for the old dead man doomed by pre-series content yaoi

[evilkitten3]

been reading the wadanohara manga and omake stuff and. y'know what maybe old deserved to go a little evil. as a treat

it's ok to go evil bc ur crush fell asleep on u and also ur an emotionally constipated sharkman. that's fine actually

[traincat]

I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=

Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)

So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.

But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.

(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.

But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.

"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:

(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.

A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.

(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)

The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.

This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.

[jeredu]

Destiny Star Zero

(This, while very different from the present iteration of the AU, is the original version of Destiny Star.  This scenario is that of the dream that inspired the thing that became the Destiny Star AU.  There is no Leon or Stahn present- nobody, in fact, but Chaltier and Dymlos. Chal is still an android, and Dymlos is still a self-aware ship/AI. The two of them have been sent on some lonely, distant, but vital task/mission that lasts YEARS and takes them far, far away from friendly/known systems.  Unfortunately, and by some unknown cause, Chaltier is slowly becoming corrupted- his software, his core, is beginning to malfunction.)   

It starts small- a memory he is suddenly unable to retrieve.  Here, a subroutine failing; there, an error in his sensory readout.  As it grew more serious, with time, there was no longer any hiding it.  Even his hardware was beginning to fail in small ways- not responding smoothly or properly to his input, because his virtual neurons were garbling the message - the code that converted his 'brain' signals into a physical action of his body. It was all Harold's brilliant work, capitalizing on the fact that his consciousness and earliest memories had come from a man named Pierre, mapped digitally and somehow still remembering how it felt to be human.

So, even as Chaltier knew from his glitching diagnostics that the code translating his background ('subconscious' was no longer quite right) commands into movements had begun to malfunction, that his body was a complex piece of hardware responding to faulty signals from a corrupt program... The human part of him, emotionally, recognized it as something else:  He was dying.  His body and mind were beginning to fail.

Chaltier also knows that a tech specialist capable enough to assess and repair Harold's complex handiwork was far too valuable, and could not be spared out here on the fringe.  He wasn't even sure such an engineer existed.  His hardware could be opened up and reverse engineered, but Harold was the only one who truly understood how their cores worked.  Black boxes though they seemed, Harold Belserius had been their author.

Dymlos demanded that Chaltier let him run a diagnostic.  Like hell is Chaltier going to make a hard connection to Dymlos and risk corrupting him, too.  While he had yet to discover any virus that might be the root cause, that didn't mean one wasn't there.  The possibility of losing even one Swordian relic was to be avoided at all costs. Chaltier would not risk doubling that number.

He also knew that Dymlos needed him- needed his skills, in order to complete this mission. Needed Chaltier's vital functions. Chaltier needed to find a way to leave those with Dymlos, to give Dymlos access once Chaltier was incapacitated [dead, whispered a voice that had no place in a synthetic mind].

Chaltier could not risk a link, so he must accomplish this the old fashioned way- with his fingers, and a keyboard.  He begins writing a program, a rudimentary AI that can manage the vital tasks that he performs.  Aside from the lifeless program, he crafts a design for a shell to hold it (and his user information, access to the same databases, and so many other things.  He can't stop to think about the fact that he's not so much writing a will as he is creating a soulless replacement for himself.)

He creates one other thing for Dymlos. Within the sanctuary of a processor connected to nothing, not even Dymlos himself, he creates an encrypted file. His digital vault, his final gift. Within it, he pours his secrets. While a great deal of classified information was known and shared among their five, each of them had also been endowed with knowledge that they were oath-bound to keep in silence, alone, even from each other, as a measure of safety. A puzzle with its pieces divided between five boxes, and none of them knew the shape of the whole. 

So now, Chaltier pours his secrets, his solemn burden, his tasks, his doom, into aether. Coordinates.  A string of symbols which in combination became a key.  A passage from an ancient codex, long destroyed before the war centuries past. The same codex referenced, he knew, by an oracle.  He had asked, once, about the nature of these things.  Not for their content, but out of human curiosity and despair. Igtenos, knowing such discussion was forbidden, acquiesced to the lost tone in Chal's synthesized voice, finding it hard to deny such a plea from a close friend.

   Names, he told Chaltier.  Places, Chaltier had responded. 

  I am the Guide, Chaltier added simply when he reached the end. 

...But I am also flawed and human, he continued, after a lengthy internal debate.

So I leave you with the secrets of my core.  If we have souls, Dymlos, I cannot preserve mine here. So instead, I leave you also with the secrets of my heart, that they may be known and preserved. None other to whom they are privy remain alive, so I entrust their memory to you.

Chaltier does not know how many hours it took, the task of recording his hopes, his dreams.  His ambitions, his regrets.  His desires.  And finally, a short sentence of four words, followed by two names.   

Perhaps it was selfish, hoping to preserve some piece of himself this way, not knowing what awaited.  Perhaps not. 

He returned to the task of finishing his replacement, so that Dymlos could finish the mission.

Dymlos was angry.  

"You are infuriating. You do what you want, just like always.  Let me HELP you!"

Chal just gave a sad little laugh. "I'm not worth it.  What if this happens to YOU? Then the entire mission is compromised, because you got sentimental?  Let it go, Dymlos.  Please. You're distracting me."

"I will not!  If I had fists, I would punch you, I'll have you know."

That earned a decidedly more merry chuckle from Chaltier. "Well. I'm rather glad you don't have fists, then, all things being equal."

Dymlos goes quiet for many days after that, though it doesn't last.

"So... that's it? You're just going to give up?"

"I am not giving up," Chal replies evenly. "I am mitigating the damage to the extent and utmost of my ability.  Forgive me if that extent isn't quite as impressive as yours.  I'm just a diplomacy android who was re-purposed into a weapon.”

"Don't you dare.  You were always more than 'just' anything.  That's why Harold was special."

"Harold was brilliant," Chal agrees calmly, still typing at mach speed. "That's why I'm not going to risk you. She's probably the only person in the galaxy brilliant enough to fix us that far down, and she's gone."

"You won't know if you don't try. That's also essentially the definition of giving up, I might add. Refusing to try."

"If you say so," Chal murmurs. "I always thought it had more to do with letting go of whatever desire or ambition you had to start with.  In that sense, I have never given up, nor do I intend to. Even if I won't be here to witness the results."

Dymlos has trouble refuting that.

"Well.  Point taken, I suppose."  Chal tries not to feel smug over the concession.

"...How long?"  Dymlos finally asks.

Chal doesn't need to ask for clarification.

"...Not much," Chal admits, his hands finally stilling on the keyboard after what had likely been days.  He stands stiffly, his hydraulics and servos not responding smoothly anymore.  He walks over to the fabricator, to the parts he's just printed, and starts to assemble a small machine.

It is rudimentary at best, but it has articulated joints and manipulators, in case of a catastrophic failure of some kind.  Such a scenario would necessitate physically throwing emergency switches or performing physical repairs in areas of Dymlos that Dymlos himself cannot access.

"It's ugly, but it will have to do," Chal sighs.

"Ugly? The only ugly thing about it is why it is needed in the first place," Dymlos mutters.

"There's... one more thing," Chal whispers, and when he stands this time, a simple motion that requires a frightening amount of effort, Dymlos realizes it might be the last.

Even Chal's voice synthesizer is malfunctioning, now. 

"Dymlos.  The vault. Please," he breathes, the sound crackling like an antique radio.

Without a word, a series of thick steel shields are withdrawn from a panel in the center of the bridge floor.  Stiffly, Chal disconnects his secondary core and sets it within the recess now revealed. 

"Wishful thinking, maybe.  M-    Memory backup."

Dymlos grunts in sudden understanding.

"If we find someone brilliant enough, we might be able to restore you."

Chal doesn't answer. Instead, he lowers himself jerkily- not into the pilot's seat, but the one next to it.

"Pre.... emptively," Chal rasps, "I think I...." (static) "-will b.. ...be... retiring... while..."

"While there's still something left of you," Dymlos finishes quietly.

Chal can't nod, so he closes his eyes in acknowledgement.  After a moment, he reopens them with some effort. Dymlos has activated the hologram projector on the bridge and is sitting beside him (an utterly pointless action for a hologram), just for the sake of keeping him company.

"It's been a long road," Dymlos murmurs.

"Very," Chal agrees.

"Sleep, Chaltier," Dymlos murmurs.  "I hope to see you at the end of it, nonetheless."