a fox with a flute

1. call me parent

2. yes, you’re allowed to be gay now

1. bedtime is 12:00. you can stay up later than that but please be in bed by 12.

2. take your meds or no phone.

3. mandatory Minecraft on thursdays.

Marvel have spent over a decade insisting that Peter Parker’s character has to be “Kept Young” to have any appeal, and have gone out of their way to enforce the idea of “Spider-man is about youth” in both comics and adapted media.

They had his marriage to Mary Jane undone via deal with Mephisto, because supposedly having him married made him unrelatable to the target audience but having him be a divorcee would age him too much, so this was somehow their best option despite… you know, the whole thing spitting in the face of everything Peter’s character is supposed to be about.

Pretty much the majority of Spider-man media since the Raimi movies ended has featured Peter as a High-schooler and a teenager. Every cartoon that’s been made since Spectacular has kept him in High-school, in Avengers EMH he was only about 18 at most, in the Amazing Spider-man movies he only graduated High School in the second movie and then that series got abruptly cut short, and the MCU has basically cemented him as “The teenaged Avengers fanboy” character, with an entire trilogy planned to focus on Peter in high school.

It’s really only in video games that we’ve gotten a version of Peter that isn’t a teenager in the last decade outside of the comics, with the comics themselves making a point to mentally regress Peter to the chagrin of many long-time fans.

Marvel have been insistent that “Young, teenaged Peter Parker” Should be the default and that it’s where the character is at his most iconic and appealing…

And then Spider-Verse gave us Peter B Parker, a version of Peter who’s in his late 30′s and going through a mid-life crisis, has stubble and a beer belly, is a mentor figure to a new teenaged superhero, and has a character arc that concludes with him deciding to reconcile with his ex-wife after deciding he wants to be a father even knowing the risks involved…

And everybody LOVES this version.

So what if before they defeated Oblivio, Ladybug and Chat Noir found out that they are, in fact, not a couple. Say Ladybug finds a video of her denying as always that she and Chat are a couple and her insisting she doesn’t love him. 

And so right before Ladybug releases the ladybugs and resets their memories, they know that their time together is limited. They are so distraught that they have to part and forget how much they care for each other. They only had a chance to be a couple for like 15 minutes, and it’s going to end before it really even begins.

They embrace and Ladybug whispers into Chat’s shoulder, “I don’t want this to end. I only just found you.”

Chat’s heart drops to his stomach, realizing the finality of the situation. They wouldn’t remember any of this. He isn’t sure why, but he feels like losing someone, especially someone as important to him as her, is one of his greatest fears. She won’t like him, and for all he knows, he won’t like her either. In a strange way, it’s like this part of them is dying, but worse in a way. His eyes well up as they mourn the complete erasure of their time together. “Do you think…one day we’ll be together?” His breath turns shaky, and he pulls even closer praying somehow that would keep their memories intact.

Ladybug swallows thickly, looking up into his eyes, wondering if it’ll be the last time she really sees him like this. “We have to, right? There’s no way we could be a team like this and not see how much we mean to each other…” She half sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

Chat can only nod, trying to blink his tears away and believe her, despite the uncertainty in her voice. He flinches a bit as Ladybug shifts to hold up the lucky charm, getting to ready to summon her cure. His entire form droops in defeat.

“I don’t want us to go.”

Taking a deep breath, she meets his eyes again, this time with the confident look and warm smile that captured his heart just moments earlier. 

“I’ll find you, Adrien. There will be an us in the future. I promise.

Steve tears a door off a locked cabinet. “Sir, you’re not supposed to use excessive force to open anything.” “He’s not, he’s just like this.”

Wanda doesn’t see why she can’t just use her powers to trip mechanisms. They said she could only use what they brought into the room, AND SHE IS.

Natasha gets excessively competitive because she’s a SPY, clues are what she DOES, yes teamwork she gets it but CLUES LET HER AT THEM.

Related: Sam moves things around just to fuck with her. (He remembers where they were, he’s not a MONSTER, but come on. It’s an escape room. Relax, Romanoff.) He figures out a really hard clue before she does and he’s sure not going to pass up the opportunity to gloat.

Vision is programmed with logic and has all the internet at his fingertips, and ends up frozen with indecision over whether his participating at all counts as cheating after they get the reminder they can’t use cell phones.

Her walkie crackles as she stress eats Twizzlers. “Hi, Debbie,” says Captain America to her, Debbie, a Normal Human Girl who is talking to Captain America. “We could use a hint, over.”

Debbie watches on the monitor as the Black Widow wrestles the walkie out of Captain America’s hand. Captain America does not put up a fight. The Falcon is laughing. “No, we don’t,” the Black Widow says firmly into the walkie talkie.

“Uh,” says Debbie. She has been watching them fiddle with the fourth lock for ten minutes. They do seem to need a clue. The Scarlet Witch keeps offering to just blast open the lock. Debbie is not sure how she will ask the Scarlet Witch not to do that because that is against the rules.

“We’re fine, thank you,” says the Black Widow. And then after a pause, “The solution is in the posters, yes?”

“Actually, the book shelf,” Debbie says.

Faintly, and not through the walkie but through the actual walls of the room, Debbie hears James Rhodes aka War Machine shout, “I KNEW IT,” which is. a lot. for Debbie to process right now. She watches on the monitor as three superheroes sprint to the bookshelves on the west wall where they must solve a series of rhyming couplets related to various runes scattered through the room. The bookshelves are from IKEA. Debbie helped paint them so they’d look ancient and Nordic. She is suddenly very glad Thor is not here. 

“I would have looked at the bookshelves,” The Vision says, surprisingly sulkily. He is floating behind Debbie in the control room. He has been kicked out of the escape room because in the first minute of the first attempt, he simply phased through the wall and explained that he had successfully escaped. Which is sort of true, so technically he’s not kicked out so much as he won too quickly. Debbie had said he could go back in. Both the Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch had firmly said no. 

Tony is incredible at flashes of genius. Escape rooms require more methodological approaches.

Tony’s strongest skills include long periods of nonstop work and talking his way out of situations. Escape rooms have a specific time frame and cannot be worked around or manipulated no matter what you say.

Tony is a rule breaker. Escape rooms only work when you accept the conceit of the room and recognize aspects are non-negotiable.

Tony gets distracted by something he can build out of the pieces. He ends up building a tiny arc reactor in the escape room, but they do not escape.

Tony is not great at puzzles. He’s a mechanic, and he’s a PROBLEM solver, but he’s not a PUZZLE solver.

Tony does not play well with others. Escape rooms require teamwork with people besides Rhodey and Bruce.

Someone who isn’t Rhodey or Pepper tries to hand Tony a clue. It goes poorly.

To be clear, none of this is a knock on Tony as a character!

Bucky is not allowed in panic rooms because he once joked that every room is a panic room when you’re the Winter Soldier and it made Steve sad but also because everyone is fully aware that “small locked room full of hidden things and arguing people” is not a good match for Buckaroo.

This is EXACTLY what he would do.

He uses an electric screwdriver and no one even hears it over how loudly Natasha and Thor are yelling at each other over whose plan is better.