I Feel Like The "put Your Mask Back On!" Bit Has Been Memed To Death And Reduced To "Felicia Has A Mask

Wait why do you hate Harley/Parkner? Seems harmless to me

I don’t know how or why this ask came to me today but you know what, I got time.

I actually having nothing against the character of Harley Keener. He’s a literal child in the MCU that showed up for all of (5) scenes at best. Tony was an asshole to him, called him a pussy and was generally Not Very Cool as the Adult™️ in the situation. Just a plot piece for Tony’s development that in a just world, would’ve just been that.

But he isn’t.

The sheer amount of fan works that were created for and developed for him is both a sign of creativity, of the joy of fanfic of expanding something out of nothing, and also unequivocal racism.

And that is where parkner comes in.

There’s a thing in fandom called Two White Guys, a trope that has existed long before parkner ever did and will continue long after the heat death of the universe. Name a fandom and people will find the two white guys to obsess over, create fanfics for, create meta and art and history for… and have absolutely none of that energy for the canonical women + POC in the main white character’s world.

Peter Parker in the MCU has an entire cast of people his own age who are also POC. Tell me that there’s any other reason than racism that mostly white girls would see ALL of those characters, pass over them entirely (with the excuses that they don’t see the chemistry, or think they’re better off friends, or don’t know how to write checks notes teenagers), and instead decide that Harley Keener, a kid from another franchise in the MCU that Peter has never met before, is gonna be his one true love?

I’m a multi-shipper at heart but if you’re genuinely telling me that picking out the (1) white guy over literally every other POC that not only knows MCU Peter but has actual relationships with him on screen, isn’t an example of fandom racism than you’re probably white not seeing it for what it is.

Made even worse by how parkner as a fandom is to the POC in MCU Peter’s life. You can absolutely write two white guys smooching without being a sexist, racist POS.

I’ve yet to encounter it for that fandom.

Because if you have to make MJ or Ned have another marginalized identity that somehow magically makes them not interested in Peter Parker, do you actually care about representation or are you just a white girl looking for an excuse to bring the white dudes together?

Because if you have to demonize, make them abusive, or straight up MURDER MJ or Ned so that Peter is available and available for the white guy, you’re on my shit list.

Because if you argue with your whole chest that you “don’t see the chemistry” between MJ and Peter but write exclusively the white boys’ long and beautiful relationship when they’ve never even met, than you’re just a racist.

Because if you tell me that Ned is Peter’s BEST FRIEND and I just DON’T SEE THEM ROMANTICALLY but you’re easily able to write Harley in as Tony’s adopted son, Peter’s best friend/boyfriend and making him totally at ease in NYC when he’s from bumfuck nowhere and also a literal child with zero background, then I call bullshit on what you don’t see and say that you just don’t want to.

If it seems “harmless” to you, you’re probably white and have never had the unfortunate experience of reading fic after fic after fic (tagged PeterMJ or Peter & Ned or Peter & Flash) where the POC are beat down, abused, dismissed or completely ignored for the sake of some hick white boy from another franchise.

I actually used to LIKE Harley as a character, in theory, because I go feral for creativity in fan works. It is GOOD FUN to write something from nothing.

I have lost nearly ever bit of that like because of how many times I have personally seen, experienced, and been harassed by parkner fans— to the point where i have a new blog is in no small part because parkners (and most of irondad) is more concerned about protecting white girls racist fanfics than POC.

So no. I don’t like Harley. And I don’t like parkner.

And that has everything to do with fandom.

Aunt May's Photo Album from 1981's Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #3 by Roger Stern with art by Marie Severin and John Romita.

You blinked.

Whatever. You can’t even see what you’re doing!

Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 677: “The Devil and the Details”

Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson & Betty Brant by Terry Moore!

Marvel Comics #1000: Because Of Her

DAMN. (Web of spider-man vol. 1 #11)

Do you think Peter Parker also falls into this missremembered thing? I've seen plenty of people saying he's this happy go lucky guy even though he's not like that in the comics

Oh yeah, definitely, though I think Peter’s a bit of a reverse of Johnny in this regard; Johnny gets oversexed to attempt to make him an easier character to understand, whereas Peter gets undersexed, partly, I think, to sell him as a cinnamon roll. (One thing that’s hard to deny when you read Spider-Man comics is that this is a character who really likes women.) But Peter is a much more popular character than Johnny. Johnny was maybe more popular than Peter for like a hot two minutes in the early 60s. And the bigger a character is, not even in a fandom sense but in a pop culture sense, the easier it is to accentuate or to invent aspects of their personality and then have them stick. I mean, I feel like everyone feels like they know Spider-Man, because he’s Spider-Man! He’s insanely popular! I know I felt like this and then because of that I totally accepted the soft Peter fanon of my day (I don’t know how far back you would have had to go in fandom to escape it, but my gut feeling would be pre-Raimi) and when you’re getting into a character, you’re probably seeing the popular posts first, and the popular posts with Spider-Man comics are usually quippy, goofy panels posted without context or sources, like so:

(From a oneshot called The Many Loves of Spider-Man, by the way!) And I mean, it’s a funny sequence, with or without context, and you don’t really need to know anything about Spider-Man to get it, so of course it goes around.

But that’s just one tiny piece of a huge canon, that also includes stuff like this:

So if those panels above gets 100k notes and this Peter beating the Kingpin in a humiliation/intimidation/vengeance power move in Amazing Spider-Man #542 gets, let’s be generous, somewhere between 30 to 100 notes, even though these are both the same character, people start to associate him with a funny gag and not with beating the hell out of the Kingpin, because that’s what’s being seen. And if he’s funny, he must be funny all the time, in this specific way, he can’t have a dark or a serious or an angry side, because that doesn’t fit with the snapshot image of this character. Apply as needed to any other side of his personality beyond “quippy.” And I’m not saying any one person believes this, I’m just saying that’s how the myth evolves. It’s just how things spread. And like, if it was just misinformed fan opinion that Peter Parker in comics is a sweet cinnamon roll who would rather die than hurt anyone, like, fine. But we’re living in an age where fandom is more widespread and more visible than ever before, and the people creating new content for this character can see those posts and go, okay, so that’s what people want, with the expectation that if you give people what they want, they will then give you money buying it, and now I’m grumpy about Spider-Man all the time because he’s being written more and more soft and his banter has totally lost its edge and you know sometimes you just want to read about him shirtless and beating people up.

tl;dr yeah I would say fandom misremembering a character en masse does apply to Peter as well as Johnny, it just applies to Peter in very different ways than Johnny. 

can i get a pound of the virginia ham and can you whimper a little while youre slicing it. yeah daddy likes that. now let me taste the sample

So I've only recently gotten into Spidertorch because I read Amazing Spiderman #680 so I went on TUmblr and read your fic and now I'm hooked. Do you have a list of MUST read comics for spidertorch shippers? That'd help me so much with my newfound obsession

I definitely do! Since we’re talking 50+ years worth of team-ups between two of Marvel’s biggest heroes, this is far from a definitive list - I mean, they literally meet in Amazing Spider-Man #1. Mostly I’m just highlighting my favorite issues. If anybody else would like to add onto it, please feel free!

Marvel 616

Recs under the cut! Surprising nobody, it got long.

Keep reading

Well That’s Accurate