This was one of the first Spider-Man comics I read… such a good moment for Doc Ock

The face of fear

“You’ve never been optional, MJ”

mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker:

The above images are from Spider-Man Unlimited #1-2, Spec #248 and ASM v2 #50 respectively.

As you can see they display MJ seemingly contradicting herself. 

Does she accept Peter being Spider-Man or not?

Has she ALWAYS accepted it or what?

Does she expect Peter to put her above Spidey duties or not?

Has she really NEVER had that expectation?

WTF is going on?

The real answer is different writers with different interpretations of the character and her relationship with her husband.*

There is little doubt in my mind that each writer feels their take is simply how MJ feels on the subjects, plain and simple.

DeFalco feels MJ struggles to accept the risks Peter takes.

DeMatteis feels MJ wants Peter to put her above being Spidey and has always  accepted the baggage of being Mrs Spider-Man.

Straczynski feels MJ in fact doesn’t expect Peter to do that…and never has. 

If we accept for a moment 1 of them has to be right and therefore the other 2 wrong, this doesn’t undermine their credibility as Spider-Man or MJ writers. 

When you are dealing with such long storied characters with so much details to their personalities due to decades of development, mistakes happen. It’s entirely possible for writers to misunderstand certain aspects  of characters whilst having strong grasps of others.

It all depends upon how many aspects they don’t get, how important those aspects are and to what degree they don’t get them.

DeMatteis for instance is a God tier Spider-Man writer but in the Child Within he asserted that the root of Spider-Man’s heroic drive was a guilt born from his parents’ deaths. This is illogical and provably untrue, undermining Spidey’s origin itself. It’s a MAJOR faux pas, but he gets so much else about the characters we can’t call him a BAD writer honestly. 

Shit Stan the Man himself was guilty of occasionally mischaracterizing Spider-Man. Hell, he literally got his name wrong int he early issues…twice…once by calling him Superman.

Regardless, who’s interpretation is on point here?

Well…DeFalco’s. Or at least DeFalco’s is the closest. In fact Unlim #1-2 by virtue of simply being published prior to the other 2 issues by default sets the precedence and therefore is the thing the other two issues should jive with.

Does this mean MJ under DeMatteis or Straczynski’s pens was out of character?

Well the nature of decades long characters with multiple writers makes that tricky to determine.

To unpack it a bit she was out of character in terms of DeMatteis’ and Straczynski’s (presumed) intents. 

But from an in-universe point of view…no she wasn’t. Or at least not necessarily. 

In an ideal world characters would either be written completely consistently or we’d get clearer ‘signposts’ within the story to explain their state of minds.

But often times it’s possible for a story, intentionally or otherwise, to provide us with enough material and leeway to work through an explanation of our own. Sometimes these can actually enrich the narrative and characters.

That’s the situation with these 3 takes.

Whilst DeFalco, Straczynski and DeMatteis each have their takes that they are likely going to stick to, if we treat MJ as a (relatively) realistic human being for a moment the fact that she acted in these contradictory ways is entirely believable.

When you look at MJ’s wider history it’s clear the tension regarding her feelings for Peter is that she loves him for who he is, which is someone who will risk his life to help others. But equally because she loves him she doesn’t want him to get hurt and thus not take those risks. 

This isn’t something that really can be resolved…but you can absolutely live with it as a person. The family members of everyone who partakes in a dangerous profession live with that.

But it’s hard. And if there are other life stressors then that’s going to affect how she might behave on any given day. A bad night’s sleep and maybe she’ll be a little less accepting that day. Riding high off a great model shoot and she might encourage Peter to ‘go get ‘em tiger’ with a smile. 

Or in these specific situations…

• The death of her friend (who tried to destroy her family) and the widowing of her other friend and she’s going to find it real hard to just accept Peter risking his life, potentially widowing her.
• When dealing with the grief and vulnerability that comes from a miscarriage she may well feel she should always  be more important than Spider-Man
• After over a year of virtual isolation from her husband, loneliness in L.A., a good long break from Spider-Stress and actively trying to see if things can be fixed between them, MJ may well feel more humble about her position in Peter’s priorities

Now, deep down at the end of the day she absolutely recognizes that the greater good Spidey does is bigger than her. But she expects to be valued at nevertheless extremely important in Peter’s eyes, possibly of equal importance. **

I mean if you start a family you might accept that your child is more important to your partner than you are (and vice versa), but you still expect to rate very highly in their priorities. And of course there are times when you should be more important to your partner than your child, at least to some extent. Similarly there are times and situations when MJ feels that she should  be prioritised over Spider-Duties. And sometimes she’s going to be justified feeling that way. Other times it is going to be understandablewhy she would feel that way even if she is in fact unjustified.

As a three dimensional character, there are times she’s going to be less than perfect, less than altruistic, less than heroic, less than understanding, less than wholly honest. Times when she might be selfish, somewhat deceitful, mean or even a jerk. 

You know…flawed…

That’s what’s going on in those three above examples, both individually and when you take them collectively. MJ isn’t telling the truth when she says she’s ALWAYS accepted Peter being Spider-Man and that she NEVER expected him to put her first. Whether she’s forgetting, being ‘liberal with the truth’ or in those moments has herself convinced her account of herself is accurate, it’s a reflection of how a real person might behave. 

It doesn’t make her a bad person. On the contrary the fact that she’s as heroic, as understanding and as good as she is in spite of those flaws  speaks to her strength of character. 

 *Specifically the 4 issues written by Tom DeFalco, J.M. DeMatteis and J. Michael Straczynski respectively. 

**For Peter’s part I don’t know if he honestly does value being Spidey more than his marriage to MJ or not. I think he at least values them equally and is constantly juggling to keep them up. But there is of course a distinction between saving lives vs making a movie date with his wife and saving strangers vs saving the life of his wife

SENSE8 SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON 2015 PANEL RECAP

• J. Michael Straczynski, co-writer/creator and executive producer of Sense8, presented the panel on his own.
• There was a 2hr-long line outside Room 6A for the panel.
• No news on a season two renewal yet but we should have a say from Netflix in the next two weeks.
• Identity, gender and privacy were the main topics in the development room.
• Is filmed in first person perspective so, like the characters, the audience is supposed to be confused/learning as you go.
• In Iceland they build freeways around elves and their habitats (?!?)
• Dating in Iceland is tough and there’s an app that will let you know if you’re related to someone.
• The dildo scene in the first episode was them planting their rainbow flag.
• The 2nd Assistant Director’s job was to drop the dildo on the floor in that scene, and had to drop it multiple times.
• The response from around the world has been amazing (doing particularly well overseas). The acceptance from people is remarkable and he is very proud. They receive about 200 tweets a minute. That just shows the direction of the show and where it’s going.
• Amanita is not Capheus’ sister.
• Sense8 is structured as a 12-hour movie: 1st four episodes were act 1, 2nd four were act 2, and 3rd four were act 3 and has been launched on netflix with all the eps available so that you could see the first 4 in one run and figure out what it is about.
• The Indian film crew in Mumbai was extremely excited/appreciative about filming a story in Indian culture.
• All the scenes were filmed on location around the world, no sets involved.
• When they film the scenes twice, they can’t change their mind about it because they’re not going back to that location.
• All the shoots in San Francisco were actually shoot during the actual Pride Festival.
• One reason the show wasn’t received well by critics was because sci-fi is supposed to follow certain rules, and Sense8 didn’t. Sci-fi is a very particular box, and the writers didn’t want to be in that box. That’s what makes the diversity of the show.
• SPOILER!!! There’s a possible way to save Will if you remember the first scene when Angelica was searching for drugs and Whispers mentions “so this is how you’ve been hiding from me”. Heroin closes sensates off, but drugs like DMT and ecstasy help to open the mind and connect them.
• The writers looked for lots of sensory ways for the sensates to connect.
• The buses in Nairobi are an actual thing in country.
• Who you are and what you do every day has value.
• How is privacy defined if you’re part of a cluster? What is death?
• One could imagine there is a group turning or killing sensates (!!!)
• They have to shoot scenes of the show twice - with different locations and that’s a true challenge.
• Nomi and Lito scene was very difficult for the actors
• Wachowski’s background is the true north of the transgender story of the show.
• Lito is the most complex character because he has so much to hide.
• Stracyzowski says a lot of his bakground informs Wolfgangs and it was hard for him to write.
• Will new sensates be added to the story or will we stick with the main 8? Stracyzowski says watch and see!
• Lana and Andy are huge Van Damme fans.
• Sensates are more emotional than other people, which is why Will saves the boy’s life in the first episode when other officers might’ve not.
• Tom Tykwer scored the entire show before they shoot and music has a very important role in feeling the emotions in a scene.
• He is sorry for everyone who has “What’s Going On” stuck in their head.
• Sensates are not the mutations, we are. The theory is that everyone started out as sensate but through generations we lost it and became humans (humans are the mutation).
• They are in discussions for boxsets and soundtracks for the show.
• Who’s idea was it to have Lito experience pms? They just wanted to show what it is to be connected.