#they're going to end up like ozzy osborne the lot of them

[alarrytale]

I’ve been studying to become a therapist and one of the first things I’ve been told is that therapy doesn’t work for everyone and isn’t necessarily a cure for someone. Louis never said he opposed therapy. It sounded like it doesn’t work for him. He did take his sister to therapy and rehab, even took her to Egypt for intensive rehab. He also paid for therapy and rehab for that xfactor contestant when he was one of the judges. Lottie has made it clear that therapy helps her and that’s great but again it’s not for everyone. Louis is often in touch with his emotions openly and has teared up many times while performing on stage so that’s not apart of a lad image at all if we’re going to stereotype. He’s also said in Interviews he’s not afraid to cry. Louis is very emotionally expressive when he sings Saturdays also. I was happy to see he included that song during his longer set. Louis must really love that song or has formed an attachment to it because he really lets it all out during singing that song especially. I noticed he does have some of his previous little mannerisms peeking thru more and more these days too. I saw his popped hip make an appearance a few times in these performances recently. Made me smile that he was feeling at least a little more relaxed. It’s good to keep in mind though that we really don’t know Louis. We don’t know how he’s feeling or handling his grief & trauma, nor should we as fans. He could be trying therapy now for all we know. We don’t know how often he drinks outside of the public eye either. So to say he’s handling his grief thru drinking, etc seems like it’s just not our place as outsiders to judge. I do remember Louis losing a lot of weight during the time he must’ve learned his mom was ill til her passing so that was very visible at the time. Dangerously skinny from a few pics. If I remember correctly they even wrote an article about his thin appearance and fans concerns for him. I think Louis is one to see the glass 1/2 full always but in reading some previous interviews and even the article with Lottie yesterday I got the sense that he feels the need to take care of others, just as Lottie does. Emotionally that’s a heavy weight to bear, but I think the optimism thought process does keep him on more of an even keel.

Hi, anon!

I hope Louis at least has tried therapy, before deciding it's not for him. Or that he goes from time to time. I think it should be mandatory for people in the spotlight, people who went from rags to riches, closeted celebrities and people who worked under SC to get help dealing with the pressure, the supression of yourself, the mistreament and having to deal with a shitty, corrupt industry who boycotts you.

I personally think Louis would greatly benefit from therapy. He's lost his mother figure, who he used to tell everything, he heavily relied on his vocal coach (Helene) as a life coach and motivator, and as a confidence supplier. He's got a friend clinging to him wherever he goes and acts as a comfort goat to him. I have never seen anyone more in need of therapy actually. He should be getting professional help. I'm pretty sure Oli's advice to Louis would be to blaze up to forget and repress stuff more. He can't move on until he deals with his issues. He's been pretty stagnant for years now. He's still super nervous before shows. He still relies on liquid curage to do his job, and his stoner brain is affecting his performance. He also acts uncaring about his health and appearance at times and that's concerning.

I don't care what anyone says, Louis would benefit from therapy. He needs to be told he's not responsible for his siblings, he needs to be told he's good enough and make a plan to be less reliant on his bad coping mechanisms and get some healthier ones. He needs to want to do this for himself though, and it shouldn't be forced, but he would benefit from it, i'm sure. It won't fix everything, but he needs to start somewhere.

I also think it's important to distinguish between having an alcohol issue that's born out of surpressed emotions due to trauma vs. not having an issue, but you’re promoting alcohol as something cool to your fanbase and using it to enforce an image. If it's the first he's not to be judged, i just want him to get help. If it's the second, then i take issue with that. If it's the first, masked as the second, then that's enraging and i blame his team. Regardless if it's the first or second option he's promoting it, even if it's unintentional, and i'm just not down with that. I'm not liking what i'm seeing.

[myersesque]

hey can you info dump about hobie to me please :D

hello!!! sorry this took me a while to get around to, i got SO nervous that i'd get smthn wrong n an army of comic book dudebros would emerge from hell to smite me down - but then i remembered that i don't care and hobie is fun to talk about, so hello!!!

[quick note before we start: hobie will be referred to as either "hobie" or "spiderpunk", for the sake of not being confusing, since there are 47385783643 spidermen in existence. yes, he prefers "spiderman" and initially took spiderpunk as an insult, but as of his latest solo run, the battle of the banned, he really could not care less n actively refers to himself as spiderpunk. i'm noting this now so i don't get 50 people correcting me in the replies lmao. i also don't hyphenate spiderman because i'm lazy]

you didn't ask for anything in specific so i'm gonna just Keep Going until i lose steam, hope that's alright!

first things first: hobie isn't an original character created to be spiderpunk! he's actually a variant of hobart "hobie" brown, earth 616's prowler, which i think has a LOT of interesting potential for btsv, if you catch my drift:

why did they choose to make him a hobie variant rather than make up a new spiderperson? who knows! could be that they saw how painfully fucking close hobie was to his "capitalism is the real enemy actually" breakthrough before deciding to become a supervillain about it; maybe it's easier to get comic book nerds into new stories if they're vaguely familiar with one of the characters involved. who knows. i can't actually find any source on this one.

(interesting sidebar: in the spiderverse movies, peter b parker is from earth 616, and intended to be a direct page-to-screen adaptation of classic comic book peter parker - which makes me wonder how he reacted to meeting hobie for the first time. i doubt we'll ever see that first interaction, but it's cool to think about!)

spiderpunk's design actually originated as concept art for spider-UK, as drawn by olivier coipel (the punk movement is often credited as having started in the UK - more accurately, by black british punks, using elements of jamaican reggae - so it makes sense that they explored a punk angle for spider-UK at some point). they felt it didn't fit the character, but still loved the design, and so they wrote an entire character to fit around it! (that's also why hobie is often portrayed as british despite being written as american in the comics - his whole concept is essentially a love letter to black british punks, and tbh even when i'm reading the comics i pretend he just ended up moving to new york from london bc i cannot imagine him as an american lmao sorry)

a lot of people who learnt of hobie from atsv seemed surprised that he's genuinely punk and not just using the aesthetics - but, like, he's genuinely punk, guys. he lives in a fascist dystopia (the spider that bit him was irradiated from all the toxic waste the government illegally dumps) where norman osborn is president of the united states (and referred to as "ozzy osborn" lmao) and also a massive fascist dickbag (and venom's current host!). he then proceeds to beat said fascist dictator asshole to death with his guitar! by which i mean quite literally hit him so hard his organs come out ✨

(like - i saw someone theorising that hobie would be the twist villain of btsv and actually just using miles for his own benefit, and i had my own little "he would never fucking do that what the fuck 😡" moment before realising that they were probably just some 14 yr old kid who's never seen hobie before and is trying to come up with a dramatic twist. so i'm not taking it to heart! but please know that it was very bad and incorrect, hobie is a real one and would never 🫶 /lh)

if you get a chance to pick up any of his comics (or, uh, discover them in alternative ways, wink wink nudge nudge capitalism is a prison but seriously please consider buying them from small local comic book stores if you do - that way your money goes to an actual local business & the writers rather than a massive chain store corporation) then i highly recommend - not only are they super fun, but they're gorgeous,

(i know that the covers are always rendered differently to the actual comic pages but i just needed you to all look at these images, please, especially all the intricate details on the second one. i literally paused midway through reading my comic to stare at that cover with hearts in my eyes. he's so cool i adore him)

and they're also full of lyrical references to punk music, such as these (the first two off the top of my head - there are TONS more):

and they're pretty dang diverse, too! including, like, explicitly and undeniably queer characters (note: there's been a lot of misinformation spread around - hobie and karl (captain anarchy) aren't explicitly confirmed to be anything but platonic friends. karl DOES have a boyfriend whom he is explicitly romantic with, but it's not hobie! he's still totally queer though and nobody can convince me otherwise), which is pretty neat.

this isn't really relevant to hobie in specific, but it's part of his universe and i'm a massive daredevil fanboy, so i NEED you to witness his daredevil variant, mattea murdock:

tumblr isn't gonna let me add any more images (sob) so i'm gonna try n wrap this up fairly quick !!!

lightning round of just. fun and unfun facts, i guess:

hobie's homeless and lives in a community centre with the rest of his band

iirc "spiderpunk" was essentially his equivalent of "spidermenace", which he eventually adopted for himself because, well. they aren't wrong. (he got the name for the obvious reasons of his style and politics etc, but also because he can be quite brutal when he needs to be - see norman's very bad no good day above.)

his band is referred to as both "the spider-band" and "the daredevils" (after meeting mattea), which made my little daredevil fanboy heart soar a little ngl

in spiderverse specifically, hobie took 3 years to animate due to all the specific ways they stylised him and his movement! i am not an animator and cannot put it into actual technical terms so here's a tweet of one of the animators discussing it for anyone who's curious :]

he has a van called the spider-van, and sings the spiderman theme song at it sometimes ("🎶spider-van, spider-van, driving cross-country as fast as we can!🎶") which is ADORABLE. i love how cool he is in atsv but i need you to understand he's a DORK he's a NERD

another one for the dork point: he doesn't swear unless he's yelling at fascists (he's instead prone to a good "frick" "heckin" "motherlovin" etc). which i realise is probably just comic book censorship and them only being able to get away with a certain amount of tastefully censored swears and gore before someone gets in trouble and/or has to bump up the age rating, but also it drives his bandmates INSANE so i like to think he just does it for a giggle tbh. again, massive dork

and finally, to end things on a fun note: his current solo comic writer, cody ziglar, made him an official spiderpunk playlist so maybe we can stop having pointless playlist discourse and let people have fun!

i hope this infodump was alright and didn't disappoint fjdnfjfn!!! i definitely forgot (and/or ran out of space for) a bunch of shit but that just means i get to do this again, so :]!!!