#but silver holds like a genuine fondness for jim or at least i think so - or he sees jim as easily manipulatable as a kid

[sameteeth]

DUDE. THE WAY JIM HAWKINS VIEWS SILVER THRU TREASURE ISLAND VS THE WAY SILVER HAS THIS UNENDING FONDNESS FOR JIM

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows Vol 2 #6-7 Thoughts

Previous thoughts here.

Okay I’ve finally caught up to where I left off with RYV in 2017 so these are my thoughts on the X-Men arc.

I have very mixed feeling about this arc depending upon what POV I look at it from.

As a general story unto itself and an instalment in this series it was pretty great.

However in the context of an AU series with a limited shelf-life as is and in a context when Spider-Man had so often been sharing the spotlight (and the Spider-Marriage hadn’t been seen) making what amounted to a standard paint by numbers X-Men story just from the Parker’s POV was very questionable even if I like the X-Men.

Finally from the POV of a guy who likes the X-Men but isn’t hardcore but is very much in love with 90s X-Men (which this version is based upon) my feelings are very mixed.

And that boils down to what I love about the X-Men and that era of the X-Men vs. how Conway apparently feels about them.

But let’s get general perennial opinions out the way. I’ve grown to begrudgingly accept the conceit of this series as a Spider Family book and a book where we are just going to ignore the child endangerment issues at play. But i’ve spoken about that before in my older coverage of issues #1-5. Similarly in those issues and it still holds true for this arc, Stegman is the goddam man when it comes to the artwork.

Whilst there was one panel in which he tried to draw MJ shocked and upset and it came off just goofy, over all the artwork in this arc was stunning and I genuinely said ‘wow’ out loud when I got to the splash page of Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Keeping on the visuals for a moment, I goddam love the costumes chosen for the characters here. Yes even the reimagined looks for Toad, Crucible and Mist Mistress.

Obviously I don’t talk X-Men here much but I adore the 1990s X-Men costumes from the 1992 cartoon, which originated under Jim Lee. And honestly they genuinely are among the most iconic and visually dynamic looks for the characters so it’s not purely personal preference. This is especially resonant for me with Wolverine. Spider-Man is my favourite (American comic book) character and following him are various Spider-Verse characters like MJ, Norman Osborn, Ben Reilly, Mayday, etc.

But outside of those Spider-Verse characters, Wolverine is my absolute fav Marvel character and it’s always annoyed me that Marvel were like embarrassed to put him in his classic Giant-Sized X-Men uniform once Whedon began writing X-Men.

That is THE iconic Wolverine look and in this story Stegman brought it back baby!

Similarly I appreciated that the Magneto of this story both looked and acted like classic Magneto. Not the aweful black and silver shit he was wearing around this time in the comics and I’ve never been fond of him as a good guy member of the X-Men.

Honestly, whilst I get it was well executed character development, Magneto is inherently more interesting as a morally grey antagonist for the X-Men than among their ranks. So much of the core premise of X-Men is built around the fundamental philosophical conflict between Magneto’s beliefs and Xaviers that you lose a not insignificant chunk of the essence of X-Men when you put them on the same side. Not to mention in a superhero story you want strong characters as antagonists and Magneto is arguably the best X-Men villain, scratch that best comic book villain, ever.

Okay now let’s chat story.

I wasn’t pleased with  the deaths in this. Banshee might be few people’s fav  but Beast was and in both cases their quick shock deaths were unearned and unworthy. Kind of overly dark to be honest with you given the nature of the RYV book and it gave the impression that Conway isn’t fond of either character.

But that sentiment shines through far more poignantly with Jubilee and Cyclops. Whilst Cyclops gets screwed over slightly less badly than he did in the X-Men movies, the same problems occur. He gets undermined in favour of Wolverine and so Logan and Jean can be shipped together. Which is only a different flavour of frustrating if you LIKE the Cyclops/Jean relationship as I do, than when Jean got screwed over so Scott and Emma could hook up. I still despise that.*

But at least this was kind of believable, at least to me. No X-Men expert so maybe their break up was OOC, but the idea that Cyclops and Jean broke up because Jean didn’t have faith in controlling her Godlike powers whilst Cyclops did is an interesting piece of relationship drama. And at least the characters in RYV didn’t get fucked as hard as they did in the 2000s.

Still you can kind of tell Conway isn’t a big fan of Cyclops (understandable he has his haters, I hate 2000s-2010s Cyclops) but you can equally tell he really doesn’t like Jubilee.

Again, not an X-Men expert here but I’m pretty sure Jubilee being a traitor to the X-Men and being disillusioned by Xavier’s methods is immensely OOC for her character.

Now that isn’t that big of a deal because this is an AU at the end of the day. But if you like Jubilee or just know her character then it will probably annoy you. Unfortunately for one reason or another Jubilee in my observations seems to get a lot of hate that Kitty Pryde and X-23 don’t and I do not understand why.

In the cases of both characters I could tell instantly that Conway was setting one of them up to be the traitor and honestly if you are doing an AU book, Cyclops is kind of the more interesting choice although I grant you maybe not in the context of 2010s Cyclops who already murdered Xavier in AvX and has been a douchebag for a long time. But in the context of this story and 1990s X-Men which this story is trading off of, it’s the more interesting choice. I will give it to Conway though for at least bothering to give us 2 suspects. These days most writers wouldn’t even bother with that and just think they were being subtle when they have Jubilee say shit like “Maybe your human friend wouldn’t like you if she knew you were a mutant!”

On some final notes about the X-Men themselves I feel like there was maybe something more interesting you could’ve done with Jean and Wolverine’s child than what we got with Shine. In her personality and powers she could be any one of the army of Summers/Grey children or any given generic mutant. There is no Wolverine in her to be seen.

That’s not me inherently hating her. She’s just more of a missed opportunity. She was adorable unto herself and even moreso in her relationship with Annie and I hope that gets revisited in consequent issues.

My final little note regarding the X-Men themselves was that I didn’t care for Magneto being mind controlled at the end or his over all plan.

Okay, it’s more like I felt his plan was underdeveloped. Because it’s not that it didn’t make sense because it was literally the same plan from X2: X-Men United. But Conway basically expected you to have just known  that because of the visuals and results of the plan. And for comic book and comic book movie fans like me, sure I know the shorthand but it’s not good storytelling. Similarly Emma Frost shows up at the end, barely talks but just kind of takes over as the main villain when Magneto had been the guy built up in the story and...he, he’s Magneto dude. That’s like having Puppet Master show up towards the end of a story where Doom’s been the main villain and take over.

Also doesn’t his helmet shield him from psychic control? I mean again it’s an AU and I feel like that wasn’t established until way later about Magneto but still.

I also wanna talk about how this arc more than anything else just blows up the continuity between RYV volume 1 and volume 2.

In RYV vol 1 #1 it was a big deal that the X-Men got wiped out by Regent and the implication was that the universe diverged in the early-mid 1990s.

In this arc though it’s made crystal clear that obviously the X-Men are fine and that in this universe (the dumpster fire clusterfuck that was) Civil War 2006 was avoided.

Which is again an example of Conway subtly saying screw you to stuff he doesn’t like but I don’t mind that because yeah screw Civil War it was hot trash. But it does make RYV volume 1 way more confusing in terms of continuity, especially since literally no other post-Secret Wars ongoing series (including X-Men ’92) seemed to radically alter their universe after the event like RYV did.

Honestly I think the only way to have it make sense is to just say RYV volume 2 is an alternate version of the RYV volume 1 characters and that prior to volume 2 a guy called the Regent showed up, stole some people’s powers then Spider-Man and his family stopped him. He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t take over the world, he wasn’t trying to kill God Emperor Doom or whatever and the world didn’t know who Spider-Man was by the end of it.

This actually jives way better with what Houser would later establish in her run on RYV that Annie isn’t a daughter Peter and MJ had INSTEAD of Mayday, but in fact the daughter they would’ve had if OMD hadn’t fucked everything up. I guess in the RYV universe though Spider-Man never joined the Avengers and fashion was stuck in the 1990s even in the 2000s.

I’m not complaining I’m just trying to get all this stuff straight.

Okay let’s move onto the Parker family.

I loved the payoff to issue #2 with MJ planning a party and it turning out to be for Peter’s birthday. That was the best scene in the whole story. Normal life drama with supporting characters we know and love. This is the heart of Spider-Man! And it came with adorable scenes like Annie confronting the horror of gluten free desserts and acknowledgments of Aunt May and Aunt Anna’s deaths.

The heart of the story was the stuff related to whether Peter and MJ should make Annie stay at the Xavier school or not and the scenes exploring this were really good.

Spider-Man deal with relatively relatable everyday issues and failing that stuff that s clearly allegorical to said issues. In this case Annie’s powers are allegorical to a kid with a disability, special learning issues, or someone with a particular aptitude for learning that would make a normal school more challenging.

Special props goes to Peter relating to how he struggled in school and not wanting that for Annie. In MJ’s case though she wants to keep her daughter close. This makes sense retroactively when you consider she’s already lost one child and if you pretend RYV vol 1 happened then she spent years keeping Annie close out of fear that she died.

Putting those aside though it could be a commentary upon MJ’s own childhood growing up where she was constantly being uprooted and saw her family and her sister’s family fall apart. For MJ it’s likely very important that the family unit stay close together.

Conway’s writing shines because he organically (albeit not as subtly as he could) has them switch positions creating yet more potential conflict and makes sure Annie has her own view on the matter. She likes the school, she likes Shine but she doesn’t want things to change and justifies this in a childish way by making out a popular kid in her school is a bigger deal than she actually is.

My major point of condemnation though is that I feel way more could’ve been done with the premise (e.g. having MJ and Jean connect over super powered kids) than actually was because so much of the plot is dominated by villains invading the Xavier school for the umpteenth time.

Actually goes into two other problems with the arc. This is an incredibly generic X-Men storyline because obviously it’s from a Spider-Man perspective. Like if an X-Men story tried to present a window into the world of Spider-Man it’d be a typical thing about him making rent, working for Jameson and missing a date or whatever. It’s like default setting X-Men and whilst I like that because I miss those days before X-Men became a clusterfuck, it’s not the most compelling main plot in the world.

And honestly it wraps up too quickly and easily, MJ just decks Emma Frost and the story is done. Annie and Peter don’t get involved enough which is weird because isn’t this a team book? I mean as the story highlights it makes Mj look cool but I don’t like doing that at the expense of the other characters.

Now in fairness that might’ve been set up for the next arc, which I know is about MJ becoming Venom. The last page or two of the arc implies this because it features an overtly villainous Liz Allan.

At first I raised my eyebrow at this. Around that same time Liz had been presented as evil in the 616 books and I thought this might’ve been lame out of nowhere synergy.

But in thinking about it, if this really is a Liz Allan who is recently went through the stuff she dealt with in DeMatteis’ Harry Osborn arc from the 1990s (as is the implication) then Liz would be a darker person, would be more hard hearted to protect her son and she wasn’t the nicest person to the Parkers at that time.

Although issue #4 had MJ refer to Normie as creepy implying the Osborns and Parkers generally aren’t all that close in this universe.

Regardless Liz with the Venom symbiote targeting MJ and having the there be an explicit thematic connection between them via their shared motherhood was a darkly delicious moment.

As many mixed feelings as I have for this arc over all I give it a solid B.

*Hence I personally also loved Emma Frost just being a plain villain and getting decked by MJ because I goddam hate Emma Frost I really do.

[mandabear72]

I managed to catch the portion of the livestream where everyone talked about "Who killed Markiplier" and it left me with some thoughts that I'm just trying to get out or vent now that everything was explained properly:

For starters, I wanna apologize because I had previously criticized the series. With the way it ended, I originally thought it was rushed and not well thought through when in actuality, they'd thought about this for MONTHS, even had the basis of it sprouting a little after they did "A Date with Markiplier". I DEFINITELY underestimated how much planning went into everything and was surprised about the whole process. 

Another thing I found out is that a lot of things I didn't catch went over my head my head because they were influenced by or references to shit I don't watch or read (i.e. Stranger things, American Horror story, War Hammer). That probably made even more confusing to try and understand. Honestly, it's kinda aggravating when everyone else is able to catch up on shit quicker or when you're just not able to pick up on it at all.

The explanations and break down of everything DID answer a lot of questions I had and some things I'm glad weren't what I previously thought they were. Though I am still curious about what happened to Mark's body and if Wilford and Selene were still together (though probably not)......that and as of current age skits, what the fuck's up with Darkiplier 2.0 and Wilford now? Because I'm pretty sure they're still not copacetic with each other.

Does this change my opinion on the ending or the entire series as a whole? Somewhat, but not entirely. I still think the ending could've been better in some ways and I'm calling bullshit on Mark for not knowing how sad it was until the editing process (You helped WRITE the fucking thing, how could you NOT know how tragic and fucked up the end was? You weren't "out to lunch" while writing and discussing it with your gang). HOWEVER, I am looking at everything from a different lens now that things have been explained.

There’s never any one particular thing or person to blame for the clusterfuck. So many factors went into it. Those factors being: The cursed house, Mark, Wilford, and Selene; in the respective order.

While the ones mainly involved (Mark, Selene, Wilford, and Damien) all seem to share the common theme of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"; be it Mark being heartbroken over Selene leaving him for his friend and setting up an ill-advised plan to get her back, Selene wanting to understand the house better, Damien for wanting to spare your character and wanting to help Selene, and Wilford wanting to stay for Selene and his friend, Damien, the one I think suffers the most out of it all is Damien. Still, it always brings me back to the origins of the characters that count (IMO) and makes me almost wanna rethink my decision to reject the canon.

If I look at Darkiplier 2.0 and break them down, I don't think I'm quite as opposed to them now as I used to be. On one side, Selene's curiosity (Seline, Celine, I STILL dunno how the fuck I should spell her name) leads her to the dark arts to try and understand the cursed house better. She was clearly in over her head with the unknown forces she was messing with and it got the best of her. I’m still not overly fond of her though. As Mark mentioned in the livestream, she’s very manipulative, ambitious to a fault (or rather on the darker side of ambition), and somehow is able to control the entire room upon immediate introduction without having been there before. She also views our character as expendable since we’re a stranger to her and because “the ends justify the means”. Not to mention the thing with Mark and Wilford, but I’ll touch up on that later.

On the other side though, Damien is genuinely good and benevolent. I’d like to think of him as the glue of the gang and perhaps the entire series. He wants to keep his friends together and is seemingly the only shred of humanity amongst the madness of everything else going on. He’s just confused and wants the best for everyone. He didn’t deserve to go through everything and I’d say the only weakness of his is his temper. But even that never truly comes from a place of malice. It just seems like it’s in response to the inconsiderate actions of others and if anything, he’s a victim of the shitty actions of his friends and his sister. He even goes as far to spare your character the pain they would’ve endured with him and Selene by knocking them out of their body later. Despite it being a betrayal (leaving them doomed) on his behalf since they’re forever trapped in the mirror and the cursed house itself, I see how he was trying to be thoughtful.

Wilford on the other hand...... I dunno what to make of him any more. I know what I said about him in this previous post, but even this is being brought into question. While he’s not the direct cause of everything that happened, he’s still very much in the thick of it with in causing a good chunk of bullshit with Selene. While others or maybe the story suggests he’s a good person, I.....really don’t think so and retract what I said about redemption in that post. Mainly because one of the major events happening was that he engaged in an affair with Mark’s wife and ran off with her. Of course, Selene willingly goes with him and she’s just as guilty (because you can’t steal someone away), but also even if one argues that he feels remorseful, I say no because he didn’t learn a god damn thing.Technically, he was back on his bullshit in “The Warfstache affair” because he did the same thing which ALSO entails murder (CLEARLY he has no problems in the dating department so, why can’t this fucker find a single lady that’s DTF and make HER see God instead of someone who’s already spoken for?). Not to mention that he also owed Mark a shit ton of money....for what, I dunno. I can see how he would see murder as a joke though after everything that happened. I just wish he’d realize not everyone stayed in that house or was part of the occult.

Considering the last post I made about WKM, I understand it might make me look like a hypocrite and yes, there’re a good amount of cognitive dissonance I feel towards Wilford considering I liked him as a bad guy before while he was doing some crazy shit identical to what he did here (So then why’s THIS the straw that breaks the camel’s back, Amanda?). But I’m genuinely confused about him. In general, both Darkiplier 2.0 are assholes in their own rights but I think this backstory of theirs changed the way I viewed both of them.......I think before I was just viewing them as characters and taking them at face value, which I was completely fine with. I knew they weren’t good characters as far as the moral compass is concerned, but I think the ending to WKM shattered that and it soured how I viewed them with their additional layers and baggage (And I GENUINELY wonder how different this would’ve been if they didn’t make it an origin like they originally planned). I felt like it wanted me to care about these two characters and honestly, I didn’t like that or my own person realization that Wilford wasn’t all that redeemable/good and Darkiplier 2.0 wasn’t completely evil while one half of them wasn’t good. 

The 2nd problem with that is I didn’t WANT care about the two characters after seeing such a backstory. In general, I don’t care about shitty people that are beyond the point of return and their actions (much like anyone else’s) are still theirs to be held accountable for; no matter how tragic their story is. I mean, if I can separate them, I can manage to care for Damien. But I think Selene should’ve just left well enough alone after everything that happened, I don’t feel sorry for her, and half of me is kinda glad Wilford is suffering with the guilt and hallucinations. He has no one to thank but himself and to some extent, Selene so, he can continue to live with it.

But mainly, characters and their shittiness aside, the ending offers no ounce of hope, no silver lining, no light, nothing. Everyone loses! You too, viewer, Good day!.....and then later on tries to attempt some form of happiness to pass off be it Wilford as a journalist (How the fuck did that happen anyway when he was a colonel? Jim twins found him fuckin’ around outside the house and brought him in?) or.....MAYBE Dark 2.0 trying to find someone to trap with them and use for god knows what as an option in “A Date with Markiplier” and helping other Iplier characters network a show of sorts. I know not everything is always light, but damn, the end’s just one, big, depressive suckfest with no joy and leaves you with a sense that they’ll never truly be happy until Dark 2.0 gets their revenge (and even that’s a stretch because Damien and Selene would potentially fight for possession of the new body once revenge is done) and Wilford......maybe dies, I guess? I dunno. But then again, does he even really deserve to be happy in the first place after everything he did? Either way, it’s not fit for anyone that has a soul.

Despite all of this and the ending, I’m not so sure about wanting to reject this canon...not that it really matters anyway....and the series itself, while being a lot to take in and process (because there were a lot of things that weren’t really easy to catch onto references/influence or no), I can appreciate the other aspect of the story as well as the production of it more. Mark said he was gonna eventually type down everything about this and put it up for us but eh......considering how his schedule runs, I’ll hold my breath on that one. For now though, at least there’s some amount of closure with the explanations finally given.