Sleepisntreal - Too Old Inside

DATS Rant: The Ultimate Spider-Man Is a Masterpiece

Hot take: The Ultimate Spider-Man is the most thematically cohesive Spider-Man show I’ve seen.

All the Youtubers who rag on this show always point to individual scenes and lines as dumb and claim that the show has bad writing because of them. Frankly, I’ve found myself despising the writing on several shows that have a lot of good scenes the fandom goes wild over because the show’s theming is broken or outright missing. coughMiraculouscough

The thing about theming is that it can really work to enforce what your story is about. If your themes don’t work, vanish or aren’t even a consideration, your story is thin. Many current stories struggle with theming, by which I mean things seem to happen without reason. I’m not talking about just kids’ media either, adult shows also seem to have events strung together more just to be shocking instead of in order to say something.

It’s actually pretty easy to do a show-wide theme like family, friendship, the horrors of war or how broken people often have broken relationships. You just need to bring it up every now and again. The problem seems to be story arcs with themes. This is because having a theme in a story means building events up to a certain conclusion that supports said theme. It means predictability and there seems to be a weird allergy for that going on.

The theming in The Ultimate Spider-Man is actually very visible in its handling of the Venom arc. Youtubers with no concept of theming don’t understand why Harry Osborn becomes Venom. Here’s the thing: Harry’s relationships with both Peter and his dad begin deteriorating as soon as Spider-Man shows up. It’s also without him knowing it, in the case of Peter. “Venom” means “poison”. Spider-Man poisons Harry’s relationships with his dad and Peter. It’s poetic.

This is why it’s important that Peter starts off disliking his new teammates. They’re often literally getting between him and Harry, just like Peter’s duty as Spider-Man is figuratively between them, pushing them apart.

This is also why Harry becomes Anti-Venom as part of the arc that leads up to Peter revealing his secret identity to Harry. “Anti-Venom” is basically another word for a counter-poison. Their relationship is being healed, the poison is being countered. Fittingly, the story where Harry becomes Anti-Venom is also the one where Norman Osborn gets redeemed.

Harry becomes the Anti-Spider-Man, then he becomes Venom, then he becomes Anti-Venom and then he becomes Harry again. That’s an arc, those are themes. This show is good.

Video version

We all talk about how ridiculous Danny Phantom would be for the Justice League to deal with but you know who’d be even worse? Timmy. Goddamn. Turner.

Because Phantom and his villains might be insanely overpowered but at least they actually make sense and have a specific jurisdiction! Here’s this random kid who can and will make Literally Anything happen whenever and wherever he wants and half the League isn’t even allowed to know why! Batman tries to investigate and while he does find out that Dimmsdale is legitimately batshit insane any time he gets close to figuring it out all his leads end up taking him to a website that literally just says “Fuck You Crocker” in eighteen different languages including fucking Atlantean!(in totally unrelated news Aquaman hasn’t been answering his calls.) The space heroes hear about him and are all like “you mean that little fucker who brought Dark Laser to life?” and this is news to everyone else because somehow they missed the LITERAL DEATH STAR SHARING THEIR ORBIT!!!!

And then when they finally manage to bring him in to get things cleared up Constantine goes even more ballistic than he did with Phantom, because You Absolutely Do Not Fuck With The Fae And Their Chosen. Do you want the apocalypse? Because messing with this shit is how you get the apocalypse.

Now, this Limited Interaction Policy worked out well with Phantom because he and the League had the right perspective to understand why it existed and go along with it. Timmy, who is a child having fun hanging out with superheroes and has been conditioned by circumstance to distrust magical authority figures, decides that Constantine is a bitch-ass motherfucker and starts interacting with the League as much as he possibly can out of Spite, which Cosmo and Wanda are actively encouraging both so he can potentially have positive relationships with adults for once and for the lols. He very quickly clocks Batman and Wonder Woman as being parent-shaped and will often just follow one of them around the Watchtower if he’s bored. 

Also when he meets the Young Justice team his first thought is to wonder what would happen if he put Wally “I can run faster than sound but magic isn’t real” West in a room with Denzel “Everything is because of Fairy Godparents” Crocker and locked the door.

So I’ve been teaching 6th grade since January, and one thing about my female students which made me upset to realize is how many of them are obsessed with skincare. I've heard the girls in my class discussing the EYE CREAM they use. Like tf you mean eye cream? You're ELEVEN!!! I'm a decade older than you and have never even touched eye cream!! The most skincare a middle schooler needs is cleanser and moisturizer, maybe some acne cream. Who tf is selling you all this other stuff? Who tf told you you needed all this?

It hurts me to see. Their brains are too young for these types of insecurities 😭 no 11 year old girl should be obsessed with wrinkles, I wanna beat tf out of whatever tiktoker made them believe they needed skin that perfect

"This fic was ai generated—" Cool, so lemme block you real quick

i cant even properly explain how it emotionally affects me when my cat comes up to me for cuddles. small creature walks up to me, a giant, in search of a gentle touch, because he trusts me completely. that is what love is. that is what the universe is built for. i want to cry

We failed as a society when everyone stopped wearing headphones.