This is a story about a book that changed my life.
It's also about how amazing libraries and authors and people who care about sharing cool things with curious kids are. Also, fish (especially fish). It's kind of different than what I usually post but it's been bouncing around in my head basically since I started this blog so here you go, I hope you like it. This is the reason I love coelacanths so much, and why I think everyone should know about how amazing they are.
When I was little, I loved going to the library. My little brother and I would pick out way too many books and the librarians always had to come over to override the 30 book limit at the checkout stand (they pretty much knew us on sight and were ready to override it as soon as we started heading over to check out). After we finished getting our library books, our mom also let us look through the free pile that was in the foyer on the way out. It was mostly old library books that the librarians just needed to clean out, but there were a lot of books that people brought when they cleaned out their personal collections too (especially teachers, and there were a bunch of books with old school library stamps inside). The free pile didn't usually have a lot of things that interested me, but one day when I was poking through it I found a book called Fossil Fish Found Alive: Discovering the Coelacanth, by Sally M. Walker.
I loved it. I had never even heard of coelacanths before, but this book fascinated me. It told the story of an incredible animal, long thought to be extinct, that had somehow survived for millions of years! It was nothing like any fish I had ever learned about before. I already had a casual interest in marine biology that I can thank PBS Kids and Wild Kratts for (particularly their episode on sperm whales and giant squid, I loved that episode), but this book took it to a new level. I wanted to be a marine biologist so I could learn more about coelacanths.
Like a lot of things when you're 7, that was a phase. Unlike a lot of phases, this one I came back to. After taking a break from my dreams of being a marine biologist to experience the hell that is middle school, one day I pulled a book off my shelf. I hadn't read it in a while. When I picked it up again, I remembered how incredible this animal was, and how much it had inspired me when I was younger, and those thoughts of becoming a marine biologist started to return. I'm in college now studying marine science, and I brought the book with me to school, where it sits next to two other science books that have inspired me (My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall and The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson).
Earlier this year, I was thinking about how much this one book had changed my life and I wondered if I could find Ms. Walker and thank her. I knew she had many other science books for younger audiences, and even another book about coelacanths, so I was sure she had a website of some kind, and I was right. So I found her contact page and wrote her an email explaining the impact her book had had on my life, and thanking her for it. And to my surprise, she responded! She was very kind and we sent a few emails back and forth. She gave me some excellent advice and even told me about some of the people she contacted while researching her book, including Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer herself, the person who rediscovered the coelacanth when it was thought to be extinct! I'll never forget how she took the time to respond to me and how encouraging she was.
But Ms. Walker isn't the only one I have to thank for pointing me toward the path I'm on right now. If I hadn't already loved reading, if I hadn't seen any show or video to make me interested in marine biology, if the library didn't have a pile of books for anyone to take home, if I had lost that book during one of our many moves as a kid, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. There were a lot of things that happened to make it so that I found this book, but I'm glad for every single one of them. They led to me learning about an incredible animal and changed the course of my life. And now, I love coelacanths.
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First things first(spoilers for spiderverse/spidergeddon and comic noir storyline) this is a long post but you’ll have fun I promise. As always feel free to engage with the post, I’d love to hear different theories/opinions/conclusions on this in the tags or comments. Sorry it took so long!
Now I’m gonna say something morbid:
Spider Noir’s death in the comics was hilarious
Jarring, but hilarious. Like why’d he grab him like that. I physically had to shut off my iPad and go for a walk after this scene when I first read it.
But to my point, you know how some people say your birth mark is how you died in your last life?
Well post resurrection we might have A, B, and C:
(Now before anyone gets on me for, why would you do that/even think of this? In my defense, I couldn’t remember where he was grabbed, it’s been a while since I’ve read these. I thought it was gonna be on his back or shoulder and I’d give him a burned on handprint going all ‘gripped you tight and raised from perdition’ which is cool, fun, sexy, and conveniently hidden. Then I reread it and it’s basically a permanent face palm. Also pretend his face looks the same in every one. Couldn’t decide on hair either lol.)
Either way post resurrection Peter should have physical after effects of his resurrection. Either lines all over his body from having the life force sucked out of him or birth/burn marks on his face. I think this would be hilarious, angsty, and interesting. I also hate when people are just resurrected willynilly. LET THE TRAUMA OF DYING AND COMING BACK TAKE ITS TOLE. Especially if it’s multiple times.
In MK: Midnight Mission they, pretty recently, came up against this problem with the MK system being resurrected over and over again and facing really no visible consequences. But then we find out, there isn’t really a limit(ignoring the whole Khonshu imprisonment), but eventually mentally, there will be nothing left to resurrect. And the mindless mummy warrior creatures we meet from Khonshu’s ‘world’ were old avatars that wasted away from resurrections. It explains the alterations and perversions of the MK system’s mental conditions, because they are actively being altered and changed, to be brought back, by a multidimensional creature that doesn’t care about their mental health/state(that Khonshu takes advantage of, knowing what he’s doing). Sound familiar?
Now, time to get philosophical. Ship of Theseus.
What is it? Ship of Theseus is an ideological/philosophy problem about a king, Theseus, who saved the children of Athens from king Minos and the Minotaur and then sailed his ship to Delos. Then each year Athenians would sail that same ship from Athens to Delos in celebration of the myth. Over time they kept replacing parts of the ship for maintenance purposes, till every plank had been replaced, so they could still make the voyage. Now the question is, is it still the same ship? At what point did it stop becoming that original ship? And does it matter?
Applying this philosophical exercise to resurrection, with what we know above, we can get an interesting dialogue going. But, with that said, it’s important to keep in mind that the resurrection process in this context with these multidimensional gods isn’t explained with enough detail to really take it apart. Like what happens to the soul? Is the brain damage we know Marc has from repeatedly dying and his brain repeatedly going without oxygen or is it from just interacting with a multidimensional god? Is the spider god comparable to Khonshu? Is the spider god even real, if not what or how was Peter actually resurrected? And if it is real, what is its main goal? At least with Khonshu we know he has an agenda. What does it want, what’s its end game?
But let’s get into it anyways.
Now, you may be wondering, why do I keep saying multiple resurrections in regards to Spider noir? I am so glad you asked! I believe Peter's initial spider bite killed him. He had to go to the afterlife to actually see the spider god. That’s why we really only see them three times, at the initial power conception, Peter’s resurrection, and when Peter goes to the ‘underworld’ in the 2020 run. We see something similar with Khonshu in Midnight mission, while he’s in space jail, Marc can only see him during resurrections or while he’s dead. And while we’re comparing the MK system to spider noir, when Marc got his powers, he basically had to die first. That was implied to be his first resurrection. So this wouldn’t be a one off situation. We have some rules.
What we don’t see with Moonknight and Khonshu is visual physical change. Outside of the ghost bird skull armor the boys aren’t visually changing. Meanwhile, Peter has physically turned into a monster before and turned completely back. In #4/5 of the 2020 noir run the cicada stone/pink meteor turns people into monsters, but not everyone. Huma turns, Shocker turns, Peter turns, and all the resurrected villains(one guy just explodes). But Hu-Ri and Checkpoint Red don’t, until Hu-Ri touches the stone. Huma and Peter are both in close proximity to eldritch beings, them turning into inspired versions of those beings make sense. The Shocker turns because he spent so much time holding onto the stone, whereas Red hasn't. But notice Shocker and Hu-Ri don’t turn into an animal inspired version of themselves like Huma and Peter do, he becomes more of a hulk like creature, because he isn’t attached to an other-worldly being. And when Peter turned back he essentially said “that hurt like a bitch” and kept moving.
If we want to keep with the canon noir timeline and going with the idea that the Spider god is either continuously changing Peter, or just changing him during resurrections this would explain the webbing and mood/personality change from the 2009 comics to the 2020 comics. But that’s boring and too simple and I hate the time jump so fuck that shit.(again another post).
So let’s focus back on ‘Ship of Theseus’ in the context of resurrection. We have too many questions about the process of resurrection for spider noir to properly have this conversation, but I’m going to try anyways. Let’s hit what we know again: resurrection changes your brain chemistry/structure, the spider god is changing Peter throughout the series, Peter has possibly had three resurrections, the spider god resurrected Peter from a different dimension, which confirms this is a multidimensional being(if she exists but shhhh). So now that we’ve established that there are changes happening to Peter(one way or another) we know that the spider god is ‘repairing’ Peter throughout the series or ‘replacing his boards’ so to speak.
At what point is this no longer Peter? Is it when he is no longer recognizable as a human? Or is it when there is nothing left in his mind to resurrect? Or has this never been Peter, or rather not since his first resurrection when he got his powers? Is this change sudden or slow? Is it the resurrection that turns him into something else, is it slow build up like an Iodine Clock titration and one day he just wakes up no longer human, or is it a slow process of subtle changes? But if the latter, what’s the change that does it? What defines Peter’s humanity? Does it matter if he’s human or not? Does it change anything for him if he’s no longer human in body and mind?
Part of the answer may lie in the villains we see through the 2009 and 2020 runs. In the first run the main villains were the Goblin and the Vulture. Both who were implied to not be human or having physical inhuman qualities(but I’m partially ignoring the whole carney thing cause honestly it’s ableist and boring). In Eyes Without A Face, the second run, the main villains are the Crime Master and Dr. Octavious, both humans with no inhuman or supernatural qualities. For simplicity sake, let’s focus on Octavious and Goblin. In comparing the two I think most people would agree Octavious is the more heinous of the two. Goblin takes on the role of a mob boss. He runs a crime empire, exploiting the defenseless in New york. It’s nothing new and he’s even somewhat sympathetic ‘I’m finished with freakshows’, you can understand how he got where he is. This is not to say he isn’t a villain but he very much fits the ‘villain with a tragic backstory’. People look at him like he is a monster, we, the reader, start out the story knowing what he is.
Whereas Octavious is not even remotely sympathetic because there is no empathizing with how he ended up there and why he does what he does. He is not only othered by his actions but also by the narrative for his disability(it’s important to acknowledge the ableism in his story but that is another post). Ultimately his delusions and the acts he commits make him a much more sinister monster than Norman, despite Norman actually having stereotypical qualities of a monster.
Then we have Huma and Shocker from the 2020 run. Huma is the closest person we see who is in a similar situation to Peter in terms of the spider god. While we don’t know all the details, whether she is the same as Peter, bearing a curse of power, or the actual god. Either way she presents as human and is not treated differently than any other human woman. At the end of the series we realize how corrupt she is and that she’s been working with Nazi’s, not necessarily for the ideology but to achieve what she wants. Her transformation is the nail in her coffin of her monsterous perception. The question is did we need her to look like a monster to see her as one?
In general we are left with more questions and theories than answers.
But onto my subjective answers to the questions. My answers might change over time so don’t hold me to them.
Of course it matters if Peter has humanity. Peter Parker across the board is one of the characters who HAS to hold himself to a moral code or he falls apart and becomes the villain(well maybe not the villain but you know what I mean) of the story. He holds back during fights and has a no kill policy for a reason.(Good men don’t need rules, today is not the day to find out why I have so many.-dr.who) But noir Peter isn’t your typical Peter. He kills, he maims, he doesn’t hold back. With that said, he still is held together by his morality. It’s just different than what we are used to seeing from Peter, but don’t mistake that as a lack of morality. However, do I think it’s a very real possibility that this morality could be eroded over time especially considering his home world and the above circumstances? Absolutely. Peter is someone who historically needs someone to ground him and ‘make’ him human. This is normally May Parker, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, occasionally Harry Osborn, Daredevil, Johnny Storm, and Flash Thompson, and the ghost of Ben Parker. Dude lives by a passing saying of a dead relative, he clearly doesn’t have a super solid moral compass. I think this is part of the reason the noir comics kept his relationship with May and Mary Jane(I disagree but whatever whatever), because he needs support to stay grounded.
Now, under what circumstances is Peter no longer Peter? I’m going with the Iodine Clock titration theory. Just drop after drop of ‘changes’ and morally questionable decisions that don’t seem to hold much weight, until he does something truly off the reservation. Like seeing himself do something truly horrific that a couple years ago he would have never done and shocking himself out of it. Or looks in the mirror and doesn’t see a person staring back. For either circumstance, because he’s appalled with himself or struck by the fact he doesn’t really care. This is not to say I don’t think he could come back from this but holy shit will it be a process.
But it brings us back to ‘If there is too much power then it is the responsibility of the people to take it away.’ Peter losing his humanity puts him in the Goblin’s place as the one with great power that cannot be trusted from the first comic. Whether it’s the resurrections, the spider god ‘replacing’ parts of him, or him just being pushed to the brink mentally that does it. Whether the change is physical, neurological, spiritual, or mental. This ‘Peter’ is not the Peter we first meet in 1932.
This is a different ship, and you can sail and stay on the same course in memory of, or under the false pretense of being, the original as many times as you want, but you cannot bring back the parts you replaced and undo the ‘improvements’ you made. But that doesn’t need to make Peter a monster.
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list of things i noticed from various vast error wiki pages
taz and vilcus share an emanant aspect (rage)
necron's aspect is hope. makes the first third of the sbb epilogue hurt a lot more :(
aumtzi's aspect is... life, for some reason? i know im as bad at classpecting as everybody else in this fandom but it just seems a little interesting to me idk.
seinru's brain tumor isnt listed on his page
^ this. (AGONIZING)
they referred to lefty getting stolen as "lususnap"ing. made me giggle
talald is 35 human years. apparently.
pozzol's page has this which i think is pretty fitting
this bulletpoint is just me being confused by the vocab to be honest. how long is a "decagrade" because it says necron and oricka have been matesprits for "decagrades" but theyre, like, 13 and 14 sweeps respectively. am i just putting human meanings onto troll words mistakenly by assuming a decagrade would be 10 sweeps/10 of something. whatever
yeah hold on sidepoint oricka's like 30 human years. thats funny
this ones just me being stupid Apparently calder is a violetblood and not a fuschiablood. even though hes barbie pink. like pinker than the fuschias in homestuck
more on blood. it doesn't list al's? isn't he a rustblood. do i have to become a wiki editor. i might
why do they list the troll from the reduplication page that never gets mentioned again and the karen carapacian but not seinru's brain tumor or mention eyepatcholon at all Am i tweaking rn. I feel like i am
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