Arcane Compendium

so many responses of “its nice that you’re privileged enough to be able to steal from Target willy nilly!” and that’s not at all what this is about. like, yeah, shoplifting and loitering and graffiti and breaking the rules is, obviously, part of “do crime”. but they’re not parts you have to do.

would you help someone get an abortion where it was illegal?

would you help a trans friend get healthcare that had been criminalized?

would you shelter someone fleeing persecution, even if the law said not to?

would you help a gay couple stay together when the state decided their relationship was unlawful?

instead, would you report someone else for breaking the law? will you snitch on your hungry neighbors for stealing food? on your homeless neighbors for sleeping where they’re able?

But here? This reveal? This is a Big Reveal for us, Peter B Parker, and Miles, all on different levels. We and Peter both know Doc Ock is a portly dude, not a woman. We know the name Octavius… Otto Octavius. But when she says her name is Olivia Octavius we’re clued in to the fact that Doctor Octopus is a woman in this universe. And she has Peter captive.

Miles, if he was paying attention in science class earlier in the movie, would have known her name was Olivia Octavius, but that doesn’t mean anything to him, why would it? Liv has apparently been very good about keeping her supervillainy a secret. She’s in educational videos shown in high-schools. So to Miles, the reveal here is this scientist lady, who he knew enough about to know was the head scientist at Alchemax, is a supervillain. He gets the reveal a second or two after Peter.

And the movie? It was dropping hints the entire time, confident in our expectations blinding is to the truth. Olivia’s name was partially visible when Miles got to science class. Her glasses are octagonal. The lights in her lab are octagonal. We know she’s working with the Kingpin. Why wouldn’t she be a supervillain? Because she’s hot? Hell, Peter even says he needs to reexamine his internal biases. Maybe he was telling us that we should too.

Because it's a massive East Coast city but the property values are probably like $200 a month for a three bedroom apartment, and most Gothamites are like, "Hey, Bane never swore to break my back."

And here's the thing: you're not just moving out of Gotham City. You're moving into the rest of the DC universe. And it has hero-based power scaling.

Oh, Metropolis looks fucking great. But it gets invaded by aliens and robots and demigods, because Superman is there.

Wonder Woman's tangling with gods.

You go to Central City, and some Reverse-Flash motherfucker runs backwards from an alternate future and kicks your balls off at the speed of light.

You could move to the West Coast, and oh, an entire city just gets exploded by Cyborg Superman or some shit.

How about you move to Indianapolis, or Cleveland? Haha, no. They have no protector during the alien invasions, and you're in Cleveland

So stay in Gotham. Sure, you have lunatics, but you know that if you had a gun, you at least have a chance against the Joker or Riddler. Mongo of War-World would crush you. But Gotham just has creeps, and you know you have a chance. Even Bane, R'as Al-Ghul, Killer Croc, and Mr. Freeze are just slightly altered dudes. Oh no, Poison Ivy is going to kiss me to death! Who gives a shit, you kinda wanted to go out that way anyway.

I think it's all about perception. Gotham City has crime. But when Ares sends his undying legions to march upon the mortal realm and Wonder Woman has to punch all of them, people don't internalize that as "crime." That's "a crisis" or "a religious event" or at best, terrorism. Same thing when Superman has to stop Brainiac from shrinking Metropolis or whatever. That stuff is objectively more dangerous but it's on such a huge scale that "crime" is not the word for it. The cops don't involve themselves in this at any point. But the stuff Batman deals with is like, robberies, assaults, gang wars, serial killings. All his villains commit actual crimes, so they go into police reports, which end up as statistics. So when someone compiles all this data, oh look, Gotham City has the highest crime rate in the country, yet again. Forget the fact that 10% of Keystone City's population had their skulls crushed by invading superintelligent gorillas. Who cares that a random guy in Opal City accidentally teleported the entire state to Hell after he found out the hard way that he was born a wizard. Those are not crimes. There's nothing in the police recordkeeping app's drop-down menu for a Gorilla invasion. Closest thing we've got is Random Chimp Event.

But let's talk really quick about the "why" of it. First off, teenagers have a need to rebel; especially when they're in the majority group. And they default to this stuff because it's "shocking" and "pearl clutching" and "fuck you upright establishment". And yeah blatant racism is that, but systematic racism is always lingering below the surface. Them defaulting to this kind of edge didn't come out of the void.

So sadly while it's not "okay" there is a level of "normalcy" to the racist phase. Because racism permeates our entire system. It is woven in. This is a symptom of that.

And I don't think treating individuals like shit because they had that phase and grown out of it, is good praxis. No one choses where they're born. I didn't ask to have all these shitty messages subconsciously imprinted into me. I'm working on it.

But, I eventually realized that expecting to be forgiven for it, was shitty of me. You are not obligated to forgive what I contributed to. You are not obligated to give me a pass just because I've "gotten better". I ask that you don't outright harass people if they've genuinely grown, but you don't have to forgive them.

And I think that's what most white people are doing when they excuse this kind of stuff? It's classic white guilt. Which does no one any favors. Fuck your guilt, if you've truly moved on and are a better person you've should have made some level of peace with your former sins. It's not up to Pocs to do that for you.

Also yes if Pocs treating you badly once in a while (and in my experience it is, once in a while, ex. Op is being super nice about this bullshit) cause you to 'become a bad person' you were never a good person to begin with.