#valpool brotp 2024

[sciderman]

pokes you with a stick…what do you think of valpool

oh bless you - uh, not a lot. i don't think the comics gave me a lot to work with, on that front. i think when i was reading it i kept thinking "how long is this one gonna last before inevitable double cross / untimely death / off screen break-up" and turns out the latter happened. sorry val.

so my own cynicism meant i never got too attached to val. because i knew we weren't going to be seeing them for very long. nothing in a deadpool series endures. and i'm so frustrated that wong's deadpool run was a 10 issue thing. because it was over and done before i even started enjoying it.

for me it takes a long time to get attached to a deadpool - because every wade wilson is different. they have their own thing going on. wong's wade is softer. more childlike. very childlike. actually, almost irritatingly childlike. like thats his whole thing. he's s child.

that was off-putting for me. he didn't feel like the kind of deadpool i'm interested in reading. he felt like the softer, cuter fanon-interpretation of deadpool. which i guess goes over well with fans who love their baby girl. but i... eeh. i can't bear it. he's not a baby. and i'm not a baby either. stop feeding me baby food.

i think - in my head - when wade acts like a baby, there's an angle to it. i don't think he's sincere. he does it so enemies will undermine him, or to win favour with the audience - there's an angle. he's not sincerely that naive. he's smart. so - when i see him acting like that - sincerely - i can't feel like he's being sincere at all. he's smarter than that. he's doing it on purpose. so - so... i don't know, i never felt like we were getting a sincere wade, in this series. he never turns the baby act off. we don't get a peek behind the curtain. i think that's the thing with wade lately - i keep expecting an eventual peek behind the curtain so i can say "oh. there he is. there's the deadpool i know. he was doing it on purpose. he was acting shallow and cutesy just to sell books and the real deadpool was lurking behind there all the time," but it hasn't happened with any deadpool media at all, lately, save for the recent kelly dp/w wiiii book - (once again, thank you kelly, owe you my life, only man pulling his WEIGHT around here) - maybe my expectations are just too high for wade, in that i'm doomed to be disappointed by like, 90% of deadpool media.

i feel like maybe wong could've done something if they'd had more time with it. but for me, man, i didn't get anything out of it, or any kind of attachment to it. and i felt so disappointed. especially with it being a nonbinary author, and a nonbinary love interest for a character i've so long headcanoned as nonbinary. i just - i wanted more from it. i always write from a nonbinary angle - because i don't know how to write from any other perspective. it comes out in everything i write. so i was expecting something more like that. i was expecting it to come through - not in some overt way - but in small ways that i could read and appreciate. like the matrix. that's a trans story. there are no overtly trans characters in it but it's a trans story with lots of trans allegory to digest and the authors are trans. but - you know, not being trans, it's not immediately obvious. but it's there. food to eat. and chew. and digest.

i know marvel definitely wouldn't let wong get away with much - but, god almighty. i was hoping even for something subtle. some little crumbs of food that brought some new dimension to wade that i could sink my teeth into. or something interesting about val that i could get attached to, in spite of the relationship being rushed and quick and abrupt.

i'm not saying it had to be a nonbinary story but - like, man. it feels like, conceptually, i should get excited, and i should sing more praises to this series, but what it feels like more, to me, is a wasted opportunity, and val is another love interest that readers failed to get attached to, and another in a consistent line of deadpool's love interests that marvel rushes to forget and move on from. and... sighs. sighs.

i do want more from valentine. because i feel like they're such a wasted opportunity, and i don't want to throw away one of marvel's only non-binary characters. that's too much food to waste. i think - for me, at least, i think wade deserves healthy relationships. ones that aren't always necessarily romantic - and - well, him having someone to go on cute zoo dates and hang out and be unapologetically gender with - well, i'm all about that.