#irredeemable despite the fact that quite a lot of it had good morals and decent storytelling''

[ineffable-gallimaufry]

sorry for seeing one negative thing about a thing i like an then being annoyed about it for the rest of my life it's just like that sometimes

[bladekindeyewear]

Alright, new bonus upd8... time for Catnapped Part 2.

Time to see some Jasprose tormenting a captured Prez Jane I’m guessing?

==>

--yes!  But in newspaper format!  --I shouldn’t post pictures because, again, this is bonus material, but... my goodness!  An adorable pic of Jasprose and the kidnapped Jane looking all fucking tsundere, newsprint detailing Jasprose having declared herself Queen (!) and just, detaining Crocker indefinitely, giving her a time-out presumably until she swings back to the sane end of economics.  (Hopefully with some seen-the-Light seer-ness about her actions.  I wonder how Okay she is with what’s happening with robo-Rose?)

--Ooh, and we get a pic of Swifer!  A small one, anyway.  She looks cute.  Looks like she and most of the other leftover players are congregating for a discussion with Jasprose and captive about what exactly is going to happen?

--Heh, Rose never wrote about Jasprose’s existence in the history texts of their adventure.  Nice reference to the sprites’ conspicuous absence Epilogueways.

> ==>

Oh geez, Jasprose’s on a throne and everything.  :D

--pff.  She has some issues with their informally-written constitution, though not the ones I’d expect.  Mostly technical and linguistic.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Listen, Janey. JASPROSESPRITE^2: Janeypoo. JASPROSESPRITE^2: Janeums. JASPROSESPRITE^2: Your government's a fucking joke. JASPROSESPRITE^2: It's for clowns, by clowns, and you're the clownfucker-in-chief. JANE: I can't believe I'm getting called a JOKE by a fucking MONGREL HOUSECAT!

Oh, geez.  Hot fire getting spit here!  Jasprose bringing in irrelevant knowledge from Candy Rose that isn’t canon, Jane losing any restraint--!  But Jasprose’s references to Candy from her basically-Ultimate-Self status are a pretty good indicator of why she’d resort to this, considering she knows the direction Jane’s administration will probably go without a bit of intervention.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Now I'm just a simple kitty goddess with broad multiuniversal knowledge of multiple timelines' experience, who also happens to be the infinitely wise lesbotic Casanova of anyone's dreams, but I know a red flag when I see it.

I’m warming back up to Jasprose, guys and gals.

> ==>

Hm!  The art style is going to continue not to really push the bustiness on Jane and leave that in the descriptions, I sort of like that.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Your lack of so much as a completed high school education and any government experience is actively inimical to the idea you could serve as a competent mid-level bureaucrat in a global government, much less its purresident! JANE: ...

...yeah, her lack of legal experience translated right to the Constitution itself. VP Romneytroll would end up ruling by proxy, effectively, which may or may not have been any better.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Once you learn a thing or two about the three pillars of good rulership, the Carapace Kingdom will certify your election results and recognize the Earth C purresidentail government again. JANE: Oh jesus christ. JANE: What are these three vaunted pillars? JASPROSESPRITE^2: It's simple, cherry pie: JASPROSESPRITE^2: Women, wine, and song.

Oh dear.  Now we’re back to the insanity I would’ve expected.  The Cheshire Cat taking their turn at running the Mad Tea Party and all.

> ==>

...um... a fenestrated portal?  What the fuck??  Did she “uncaptchalogue” that or magic it whole with super sprite powers?  (EDIT: Anon added: "Portal/window summoning is Jasperose's main shtick. I think page 7652 is the first example." I've really gotten rusty on some late-Homestuck stuff; I think the fact this window wasn't sprite-creation-colored really threw me off.) Does it even lead to the same universe??? This could get crazy.

Omigosh that painting of everyone’s coronation in the background.

> ==>

Sending them all through the portal toge-- EXCUSE ME??????

> PROBLEM SLEUTH^2

Son of a bitch.

> PS: Inspect office.

Some Problem Sleuth fans on the art/writing team REALLY wanted to take their hand at this, didn’t they.

> PS: Look out the window.

I thought I was being hyperbolic when I said the window might lead to another universe, but dear lord.  “Midnight City”?!?

> PS: Get key.

You pick up the gun.

The grip is cold against your palm. This is your only friend in the world right now. It's gonna be a long night, again.

.....I hadn’t had the slightest, SLIGHTEST clue how badly I wanted all of this until this page.

> Next.

Hah.  Ace Dick has a yacht.  We’re fully post Problem Sleuth aren’t we? No wonder the title.

Is the Jasprose Party gonna start wrecking shit downtown and he’s gonna be called in to fix it?

> PS: Pick up the phone.

OH GOSH this ART.  She’s taken them all out for drinks in another dimension and is putting her most annoying flirt on.

> ==>

OH GOD EVERYTHING IS PINK.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: There's a lot of bad outcomes, but you aren't inherently evil. JASPROSESPRITE^2: And you just got elected, you haven't done anything irredeemable yet. JASPROSESPRITE^2: You've just got a lot of societal conditioning to undo!

Yup!  We’re “fixing” the canon timeline’s Jane so she isn’t quite so depressingly shit, the way she got sledgehammered with awful in both timelines.  Hopefully enough of it sticks that we can feel good about being Jane fans again, and feel good FOR her and how she’s turning out.

JANE: Tell me, then, JASPROSE, JANE: In what part of this seedy bar, exactly, is my "redemption arc" located? JASPROSESPRITE^2: I'm not quite all-seeing.

Hm.  So despite the fact that Jasprose’s methods are doubtless gonna be a little flighty, she has some good Lighty feelings about success being in this direction even if she doesn’t know how.  The fact that she DOESN’T know how is probably a good thing.  Chances rising on a decent outcome to all this, though they were already somewhat high just by virtue of SOMEONE trying to do something about it.

> ==>

Oh my fucking god you flirty sprite.  This ART.

...Heh, no wonder they brought Swifer and crew to bring some political reality to the situation, she’s really on point.

...Kanaya left her as MATRIARCH?!??  No wonder she’s peeved.

Oh shit.  Jasprose is also trying to un-Dirk Jane.  That’s wonderful.  If we’re going to have to bear firsthand witness to Dirk fucking character after character over with morally bankrupt, skeevy narrative mind control over in the main story, at least we can see that efforts are underway to make sure any further influence back on Earth is undone in his absence.  Dirk was likely keeping Jasprose out of the picture in the first place, as an Epilogue co-writer.

> Meanwhile.

Oh geez, here comes Dad.  Dad and PS are gonna team up to rescue their daughter aren’t they.

> ==>

Yep, that art style can only mean one thing.

See y’all next time!  I heard enough Patreon-ers contributed to Homestuck that they’ll start twice-a-month updates, so... ugh.  More work for me.  @_@

[kainosite]

Les Misérables 2018, Episode 2

Welp, Anthony Perkins is not going to be knocked from his pedestal of “Most Brick-Accurate Interpretation of Javert Despite Being Far Too Attractive for the Role” any time soon.

The Good:

• Finally we get an adaptation that will force both us and Valjean to confront the question “Does Petit Gervais deserve the protection of the French criminal justice system, and if not why not?”  The miniseries kind of had to do this because it made Valjean’s theft of the coin so much more deliberate than in the book, but it has done it, and not before time.  Les Mis fandom has been willfully avoiding this question for years.

• The Thénardiers were superb.  I know Olivia Colman is contractually obliged to appear in every BBC production ever, but her ubiquity is entirely justified here because she may be the best Mme. Thénardier of all time.  Thénardier was good too, and that brief flash of violence against Mme. T when she challenged him was a valuable addition, both because it explains a lot about her character and because it foreshadows what he’ll become in Paris.  So far we’ve only seen him as a corpse looter, a dodgy innkeeper and an extortionist, but he’s more dangerous than that, and we caught a glimpse of that here.  There were some nice subtle touches: the Sergeant of Waterloo sign and the story of Thénardier’s heroism, the fact that the girls only have two good dresses between them (Azelma immediately gets Cosette’s; when they’re showing off Cosette to Victurnien she’s wearing Éponine’s), the inclusion of unloved, adorable baby Gavroche.

• One consequence of Colman’s excellent performance is that Fantine’s choice to leave Cosette at the inn appears quite reasonable, as it should.  Fantine did exactly what a young woman traveling alone is supposed to do: she gravitated towards the mother playing with her children because that’s the person who is supposed to be safe.  Mme. T was welcoming and sympathetic, though still with a bit of a Thénardiery edge, the little girls played together like sisters, and Fantine’s decision to leave Cosette in this stable, apparently happy environment seems entirely natural.  She had no way to know that wholesome surface was wallpaper over an abyss.  The people who can afford the diligence get a recommendation for the other inn, but she had to walk.  (The Vimes theory of Yelp reviews.)

• Having Fantine walk in on Madeleine’s mayoral inauguration was a clever way to handle that exposition in theory, although slightly clunky in practice.

• Madeleine is so awkward.  His speeches are so bad.  His hat and coat are so ugly. <333

• I love every OC in Montreuil.  I love the bourgeois who is super excited about Madeleine becoming the mayor (I hereby dub him “Robert”).  I love Fantine’s factory friends who gossip about their sexy boss and his bedroom grotto and then run to get him to rescue their fallen coworker from  evil cops.  I even love the public letter writer with his creepy but pragmatic advice.  I imagine he’s been witness to a lot of human misery and has developed that cynicism and dark humor you often see in people in frontline emergency services.

• I don’t love Mme. Victurnien, but that’s her, all right.

• This adaptation is doing an excellent job with Fantine’s illiteracy, and has been since the first episode.  The skin-crawling awfulness of having to conduct your most private, personal business through the public letter writer and have him know and comment on all of it really comes through.

• The police are all in plainclothes and basically look like a gang of thugs.  This adaptation has really grasped the 1820s French police aesthetic.  I also appreciated how hostile and judgey everyone at the Prefecture was towards Javert.

• I don’t know what it says about Davies that the characters he can most consistently write well are the asshole fuckboys, but Bamatabois was great.

Also I don’t think I’ve seen a Fantine beat up a Bamatabois this bad since 1934 when she put his head through a glass window.  As in the 1934 adaptaion, this creates a minor problem with the narrative because it means she really is guilty of a serious assault and Javert is right to arrest her, but you’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy seeing Bamatabois punched repeatedly in the face.  I do not have a heart of stone.

• I’m choosing to believe that Javert’s handshake following his resignation is a little nod to readers of the novel, who know as well as he does that a legitimate magistrate has not taken the hand of a spy.

• Nice fake jet manufacturing process in Valjean’s factory: they even included the gum-lac.  The flag at the Prefecture of Police is the white fleur-de-lys, not the tricolor.  They really are putting tremendous effort into getting some of the little details right.

• This adaptation’s sense of place continues to be excellent.  Montreuil-sur-Mer has its steep hill; during Madeleine’s inauguration you can even see the Canche.  The soldiers from the garrison are a ubiquitous background presence. The Prefecture of Police in Paris looks like the old headquarters at the Rue de Jérusalem, which if it wasn’t a happy accident shows a truly remarkable degree of historical research and commitment to accuracy.  (They then proceeded to cover it up with that hideous red font, truly the ‘YELLOW’ of this adaptation.)

The Meh

• If you must go with a “Javert immediately makes a positive identification of Valjean” plot their first meeting wasn’t a disaster, I guess.  There was some decent dramatic tension.  I appreciated Madeleine’s initial cunning plan to stare out the window for the entire rest of his life so that Javert couldn’t look him in the face, before realizing that this probably wasn’t going to work.  The little slip where he called Javert ambitious and betrayed his prior knowledge of him was good.

• Why does every person in this adaptation have a ridiculous and implausible horse?  Why does Javert have a horse to ride to Paris, which is far enough away that you’d need to change horses and you should probably just take the diligence, but not to Arras, which is within riding distance?

The horses are elevated from “bad” to “meh” by the fact that Valjean’s palomino is gorgeous, though very unlikely to exist in northern France in 1823, and if he must ride an implausible horse it might as well be an anachronistically pretty one.  Also by Valjean and Javert’s fraught moonlit horseback encounter, which is obviously what an adaptation should do with its ridiculous horses if it insists on having them.

• The Chief Inspector in Paris was neither Chabouillet nor attractive, nor did he have any fun hierarchical tension with Javert.  Boo.

• This adaptation is sure going hard on the Valjean/Fantine vibes, huh.  I don’t hate it, which probably counts as an enormous accomplishment for the miniseries.  I think it manages not to come off as gross mainly because Madeleine is so incredibly awkward that it’s impossible to imagine it ever progressing to the point of a sexual relationship.  Fantine smiles at Madeleine because she’s so relieved to have found a safe harbor.  After an internal struggle Madeleine manages to smile back because that’s what you’re supposed to do when people smile at you, right??? and she’s so powerless that she’s the only adult in Montreuil he doesn’t find threatening.  In a decade or two they might progress all the way to reciprocal “Good mornings” when she comes in to work.  That’s as far as this is going to go.

• Sadly this vision of social harmony and human connection will never be realized, because Fantine got fired.  Specifically she got fired by Valjean for added drama.  I know people are up in arms about this, but honestly I think it’s fine?  At the end of the day it is Valjean’s sexist policy that costs Fantine her job and his chosen supervisor who implements it.  The franc stops with him.  Having him fire her himself just makes his responsibility a little more apparent. I don’t think it’s necessary to depict it this way, but it’s fine.  Adaptations do this sometimes.  In 2012 something very similar happens, where Valjean is too distracted by Javert to deal with the Fantine Baby Drama and lets a malicious subordinate call the shots.  The Original French Concept Album has Valjean fire her directly without any excuse for his behavior at all, and nobody thinks the musical is a irredeemable character-ruining travesty of an adaptation– well, one guy.

• Shouty Valjean is not doing anything for me but he’s not catastrophic either.  It is unfortunate that most of the people he interacts with in this episode, and therefore most of the people he shouts at, are female, but we know from Episode 1 that he’s equally happy to shout at bishops who have just saved him from a lifetime sentence of forced labor.  Westjean is an equal opportunity shouter.

The decision to portray Valjean’s saintliness as a constant effort that slips whenever he’s stressed is an unusual one, and certainly not Brick-accurate (Brick Valjean’s saintliness is a constant effort that almost never slips), but I don’t think we should dismiss it out of hand.  Television needs to externalize internal conflicts in some way, and I can’t say this is a less artistically valid method than eg. I Miserabili’s tendency to have everyone monologue all the time.  We’ll have to see where they go with it.

• Valjean didn’t refuse Javert’s resignation.  The resignation scene is so weird that I’ve decided I’m actually okay with this, because it’s really very unclear what Javert’s is resigning over.  Is it the “false” denunciation?  Is it the argument over Fantine, which he also apologizes for?  Has all this turmoil just made him reconsider his life choices, and he’s decided to emigrate to America and become a paddleboat pilot on the Mississippi?  Who knows!  Valjean has a moral responsibility to stop Javert falling on his sword over the denunciation, but not to keep him on the police force.  If Javert is going to be this vague, it’s his problem.

• The Burning Coin of Shame was so melodramatic Hugo’s ghost is presumably kicking himself for not making Valjean pick it up in the novel.  I don’t hate it, but when you’ve out-melodrama’d Hugo it may be time to take a step back.

The Bad

• That red font looks worse every time I see it.

• Valjean’s godforsaken ponytail.  WHY.  It’s not even attractive!  Who the fuck decided to lift every aesthetic decision from the 2012 movie except for the period appropriate hair!?

• Speaking of period appropriate hair, your prospective employers might be less likely to assume you’re a slut if you put it up like a respectable woman instead letting it flop all over the place like a prostitute, Fantine.

• I don’t love Fantine’s intake interview.  There are ways they could have depicted the factory’s morality policy without making Madeleine come off like such a nosy sexist asshole, and Davies should have found one.  Being the nosy sexist asshole is Victurnien’s job.  Madeleine is meant to be the paternalistic, well-meaning sexist asshole.

• The Brick glides over Marius’s childhood in a few sentences, so I appreciate there is a difficulty in finding incidents to fill the Pontmercy sections in these early episodes.  TOO BAD.  You decided to merge the timelines, Davies; it was self-evident that this was going to be the major problem with that approach when you did it.  THIS IS THE LIFE YOU HAVE CHOSEN.  Go over the novel with a fine-toothed comb or make some shit up, but it was your responsibility to  fill this gap somehow.

Killing off Georges Pontmercy ten years early is not a solution.

a) You gave us Hot Sad Dad Pontmercy and then tore him away from us two episodes before you needed to.  HOW DARE.

b) The Marius timeline in the Brick makes sense.  His father dies, he finds out Georges loved him from Mabeuf, he starts researching his dad and Napoleon and grows estranged from his grandfather, Gillenormand kicks him out of the house, he meets Bossuet and Courfeyrac.  Marius’s internal growth, the timeline and the plot all work together as a cohesive whole.  Fuck knows how any of that is going to work out now.

c) Marius is still going to be a child next week, so killing off Georges didn’t even solve the problem, it just postponed it for the space of a single episode.

d) The gap wouldn’t even have been that hard to fill!  Georges could have fought with the prosecutor about his decoration and spied on Marius at church or something.  It would have given us a chance to meet Mabeuf properly.  Fuck this bullshit so much.

• This is a minor thing, but there should be women at Gillenormand’s table.  Ancien Régime salon culture was run by women; the exclusion of women from male political and social life in France was a nineteenth century invention.  The Brick is very clear about this – Gillenormand generally hangs around with Baroness T.  History has enough sexism in it already.  There’s no need to invent more.

• I have no objections to Valjean firing Fantine in person, but the toy bird introduces a pretty serious flaw in Victurnien’s “She’s a callous whore who doesn’t care about her child” case, one you’d think Valjean might notice.  There’s no reason for it even to appear in that scene!  Have the Tories cut the BBC’s budget so much they can’t afford script editors?

• Gosh those are some bright, white street lamps they have in Montreuil.  I wonder what sort of oil burns with such a constant flame?

• If Davies wanted to dissociate his adaptation from the musical, a good first step might have been to spend much less time with the campy tooth and wig guy.  Fantine’s plot arc was actually fairly good up until that point, but after that it really did devolve into misery porn.

• Oyelowovert has a very pretty face.  What he does not have is any coherent motivation for his behavior in this episode.

Javert’s plotline was such a fucking disaster in this that I gave it its own post.

• If Davies insists on doing this stupid Arras entrapment plot, the least he could do is give us a Robert and a Genflou to make up for it.  Well, we got a Robert but not a Genflou, and I’m mad.

This episode was a mix of the sublime and the grotesque, and therefore, in a certain sense, truly worthy of Victor Hugo.  But Gavroche is going to have a lot of work to do at the barricade to make up for this mess.

[williamsjoan]

Marvel’s Spider-Man and Dissecting Its Black-and-White Tale of Morality

[Editor’s Note: This editorial will dive into some heavy story spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man, so we would suggest coming back to this piece after you have completed the game’s main story.]

No matter which version of the Spider-Man mythos one experiences, a few traits should remain intact regardless of the medium. For one, Peter Parker must always remain a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.” Despite his swinging around the city skylines, Spider-Man is ultimately a superhero who remains at the ground level, with his relatability being the characteristic that has immortalized the comic book character into a legend.

Marvel’s Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4 captured the spirit of Spider-Man, at least for the most part. But as I got deeper into the story, some cracks began to show, with certain storytelling threads falling short for me, and some potentially interesting opportunities being missed. Stories of comic book superheroes have traditionally been of a binary “good versus evil” archetype, but as the genre evolved to the point where it is today, I was hoping from a bit more nuance from Marvel’s Spider-Man as Peter Parker traversed through murky waters and played with delicate character dynamics.

As the game’s story barreled towards its final act, I found the origin of how this iteration of the Sinister Six to be quite intriguing. We’re used to villains being sniveling, irredeemable no-gooders, and in a video game such as this, they make for decent boss material. It isn’t quite cut and dry with Marvel’s Spider-Man, as the now-corrupted Otto Octavius exploited some major pain points in order to recruit his sinisters. And it isn’t through any form of blackmail or extortion, but rather with the promise of help, with Octavius promising to be a genie in a bottle granting each villain a wish.

Aleksei Sytsevich, the Rhino, has a physical problem in being unable to remove his armor. Mac Gargan, the Scorpion, has several monetary debts, primarily from gambling. Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, has spinal cancer caused by his suit’s power source. Max Dillon, aka Electro, has the desire to become “pure energy.” And as the game followed since the start, Martin Li/Mr. Negative had a personal beef with Norman Osborn, as did Octavius himself.

What has made Spider-Man’s rogue gallery probably the most memorable set of villains, besides Batman’s, is how grounded most of their backstories are; a different side to the coin than from Spider-Man, but the same coin nonetheless. The costumes and names may be gimmicks from a different era of comic book storytelling, but the characters themselves are a bit more sympathetic, at least in modern interpretations. In the films, think of Sandman in Spider-Man 3 or the Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming — both victims of economic strife and anxiety — or the Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man, attempting to remedy a physical disability of his.

Even with the reprehensible crimes of these villains in the PS4 game, it was made clear that these characters needed some degree of help. With this set-up, I was hoping that Spider-Man would do more than web and punch them all to submission and that the story would play with these motivations to create a story more interesting than “good guy beats bad guy.”

“What has made Spider-Man’s rogue gallery probably the most memorable set of villains, besides Batman’s, is how grounded most of their backstories are.”

But no, Spider-Man beats the s*** out of them and calls it a day. Granted, given the context, they all needed to be taken down as they wreaked havoc in a chaotic New York City, but the fact that these promises made by Octavius were dropped plot threads that Insomniac didn’t play with irked me. Now Rhino is stuck in his gargantuan suit eternally, and the Vulture is doomed to succumb to cancer. Perhaps they deserved it, but with so many other Spider-Man stories following through on these kinds of threads, I expected more catharsis from the game’s narrative.

Perhaps this was on me for expecting too much from “Spider-Cop.” Like most iterations of Peter Parker, this Spider-Man was bright, intelligent, and idealistic, and as fans, we’d like to think that he is morally pure. Spider-Man stories are at their most interesting when they involve our ordinary, grounded hero in some sort of ethical and moral dilemma, and we can probably say that the PS4 game succeeds with his final decision at the end of the main story. However, I couldn’t help but find some of this Peter Parker’s views on ordinary criminals to be a bit naive, particularly his extreme disdain for drug dealers.

To Peter Parker, this is the worst kind of crime that is unequivocally impossible to forgive. Parker almost expresses a delight at the thought of these nefarious miscreants on the street to be locked up for good. A noble cause on the surface level, but one that could have done with a more nuanced understanding of a larger systemic issue. Without going on overly long diatribes about the United States and its history of drug crime, there’s more to the issue that involves race, class, and fear-mongering from so-called “morally upright” politicians—the very type of figure that this version of Norman Osborn is meant to represent and caricature.

While I wasn’t expecting a Spider-Man video game to turn into a PSA or documentary about crime in America, I was disappointed that it overall had the simplicity of a D.A.R.E. ad. This is something that I want this version of Spider-Man to learn—even though he may be a young adult, he is still learning just how complex the world is, even in this game, as simple as I found it sometimes. He learned that just locking up Kingpin wouldn’t instantly make his problems go away, but rather create a power vacuum that arguably made things worse. This character has the capacity to move past his naïveté, but I grew frustrated that he couldn’t in this one case.

“Spider-Man stories are at their most interesting when they involve our ordinary, grounded hero in some sort of ethical and moral dilemma.”

Even stepping away from all of the real-life issues that Marvel’s Spider-Man somewhat touches upon, I felt that Insomniac could have tackled some common story themes in a better way. The primary theme and motivation behind much of the story is the idea of vengeance, how it drives someone, and how far one might go to enact it. The triangle consisting of Otto Octavius, Martin Li, and Norman Osborn is completely driven by it, with Osborn having wronged them separately in the past. It is once again a familiar tale that previous versions of Spider-Man have dealt with expertly, and while this game worked, there was a major opportunity that I wanted it to take.

Revenge can be a cycle—Octavius was denied his chances to innovate so many times, and with Li, Osborn is the culprit responsible for not only his condition but the death of his parents. Both characters go to extreme measures in order to get to the heart of their deep-seeded hatred for Osborn, creating a total path of destruction on the way. With casualties resulting in their respective quests for revenge, I kept wondering if the story would acknowledge the cycle. Li is vengeful for the deaths of his parents, but what happens when his crimes result in the deaths of someone else’s parents? How would Peter Parker respond to his beloved Aunt May dying from a disease that his former mentor and partner Octavius spread?

“Even stepping away from all of the real-life issues that Marvel’s Spider-Man somewhat touches upon, I felt that Insomniac could have tackled some common story themes in a better way.”

Spider-Man works as a character because he is meant to be better—he is meant to always make the right choice and represent the best of what a single human being can offer to the rest of society. To me, this Spider-Man having to deal with the dilemma of potentially having his own revenge story could have been an interesting route for the game’s story to take. What happens when Peter Parker goes through the same trauma as Octavius or Li? How can he break the cycle by making the right decision? To my disappointment, the game pursued no such thread, at least not one that registered to me, and I ended up just punching both of them a lot.

Admittedly, I have only recently purchased the DLC for Marvel’s Spider-Man and have yet to experience any story that they have to offer, so I couldn’t tell you if they remedy any of my qualms. Still, Spider-Man is a character that is rightfully championed for its conceptualization of representing us as a society—but as our understanding of society evolves, the Spider-Man stories should evolve with it. For a game that does so much right, I was expecting and hoping for more from Marvel’s Spider-Man.

The post Marvel’s Spider-Man and Dissecting Its Black-and-White Tale of Morality by Chris Compendio appeared first on DualShockers.

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