#it's crazy everything that's happened since venom inc! i hope they hug by the end of whatever this summer event is

[kitausuret]

Symbiot3 for the ask game!

I don't ship it. :/

...

....just kidding! I absolutely ship it. Everyone knows I ship it. If you didn't know, congrats! Now you know! Ahem, thank you for indulging me, my friend.

What made you ship it? The funny answer is "spite". Back in, oh I don't know, maybe January of 2018, @amaronith and I were complaining about Venom Inc. and That Scene™ in the Alpha issue like "haha what if Eddie and Flash just got together instead of fighting. seems like the only way they can solve this".

(Venom Inc: Alpha #1; Slott, Costa, Stegman. they are SO dumb.)

The real answer is that AFTER we made that joke I started thinking about it and I was like "oh shit they actually have a lot in common and the Venom Symbiote is obviously in love with both of them... holy shit this might actually be a good ship. hot damn."

The ship is still largely out of spite for Venom Inc, but it's grown into so much more than that. I really like digging into all the characters and their respective relationships with each other and how it can all lead up to the three of them finding what makes it work.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

HMMM. Well. There was this moment from the Savage Six arc in Remender's run on Agent Venom...

...mostly because this is, at least to me, the first time we see Eddie address Venom with some like... modicum of the love he felt for the symbiote once upon a time. Like for a brief second there, he believes that maybe there's a part of the symbiote, regardless of who it's with, that has just saved him. And he's stunned. It's glorious.

There's also the glorious tension-filled Hallway Scene in Cullen Bunn's half of that same Venom volume, and I know that this one is precisely from #35:

I know that technically Eddie is Toxin here but MAN this scene was insane for that. Like. Holy shit.

Aaaand despite all my gripes about it, I have to hand this one to Donny Cates and Iban Coello. It's absolutely gorgeous. I'm pretty much internally screaming every time I see these panels. I don't really like the writing in this scene, I don't feel it's very indicative of what I think Eddie and Flash's relationship up to this point should be, buuuuuuut it's very sweet and very tender. I think they should kiiiiiiiss.

Overall I think there's just SO much potential to explore all they have in common, between complicated family relationships and complicated romantic relationships and both having grown up Catholic and their really different connections to Spider-Man, there is SO. MUCH. And the symbiote knows them, and it knows their hearts, and while I think if forced to choose between them it ultimately would.. but I would rather it not have to.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I do find this kind of a funny question because I know there are people who think that this ship existing at all is an "unpopular opinion" in and of itself. But I don't think there's any real grounds to the idea that the symbiote isn't willing to share its host with another lover - especially if that other party is willing to accept symbiote+host as a package deal. I think it would be very normal for any bonded pair, for the human side to still desire a relationship with another humanoid.

There's this... particular way that Eddie isolates himself after a certain point in comics, right around the mid-90s when he leaves San Francisco I think, that really bothers me. Do I think he needs a romantic relationship outside the symbiote to have a happy and fulfilling life? Certainly not. But I also don't think it's going to be detrimental to him or his bond with the symbiote.

I guess the only other "unpopular opinion" I might have is that by making Eddie hold hands with Flash I would also expect him to get drawn into Flash's social circle. Flash is at his core a Spider-Man character and especially my more recent fics I like to lean into that. Some people don't like the idea of Venom being closer to the Spidey cast, but the truth is that I think their best stories are when we remember that Eddie and Flash are really very ordinary guys.

And they are both in love with a space alien. (And each other.)