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Yeah on the flipside it's kind of funny to me because like. Obviously this is not my first rodeo. And I don't think there's any escaping this. Johnny is just never going to be as popular as Spider-Man, so a lot of the draw to the ship is always going to come through Peter, but like the thing is Johnny is very much his own character. So there are people who treat Johnny as like, this stand-in cardboard cutout boyfriend for Peter, because a lot of popular m/m Peter ships don't like, require huge amounts of canon knowledge. Either they're crossovers or they're ships based more on potential than interaction. This isn't a value judgment blah blah blah. It's just true. There's pros and cons to that, from a fic writing perspective -- no preexisting relationship gives you a certain amount of freedom. In a crossover ship with no shared canon, you never have to worry about conflicting with that canon. I can see the appeal, even if it's not my tendency.

Spideytorch by comparison offers a lot of flexibility. Depending on what canon you're going with, there's as much or as little to work with as you want. Using 616 as the default, they've known each other half their lives. Johnny knows Peter's real name and his face. He knows him so well that when Spider-Man's identity was wiped out of the minds of the entire planet, Johnny knew that he used to know who he was, and was hurt that that knowledge had been taken away from him. Peter's one of the few people who knows the details of Johnny's Skrull marriage. They know each other's families, friends, what the other likes on pizza. They've lived together. Peter bought an entire building to keep it safe for Johnny. Johnny's slept naked in his bed. It's a deep, grounded relationship that really matters to both characters.

For something like the original Ultimate universe, you're working with less canon, but still a very intense relationship. Johnny admired Peter. They lived together. Peter died underneath Johnny. Johnny couldn't attend his funeral because he could only literally explode with grief. It's a lot.

Then you have universes where they never met, but the potential is there. We have roadmaps for how their relationship goes. Something like TASM!Peter/Fant4stic!Johnny, which I obviously have a lot of feelings about because I wrote 80k of it, where they never meet in canon, but you can build a relationship. And Johnny is half of that relationship equation. It can't just be Peter. Johnny who is weird and nerdy and doesn't have a lot of friends, Johnny who longs to be seen, Johnny who has a complicated relationship with fame and who loves his powers but recognizes the inherent destruction in them. Johnny the romantic who wants to be loved for himself and not for his celebrity.

And one of the keys to Johnny is that he's always a little bit of a nerd. Peter's smart, Peter's a genius, but his dedication to any kind of pop culture is a recent phenomenon. 616 Johnny collected comics and makes horror movie references and listed Titanic as his favorite movie. Fant4stic Johnny has a Fire Flower dangling from the rearview mirror in his car and a Lego mug in the lab. I have mixed feelings about how First Steps utilized Johnny, but it showed that he's not a dumb jock. He's smart when he chooses to apply himself. Johnny's biggest enemy has always been his own self-image, not an actual lack of intelligence. He's not a polar opposite for Peter in some imaginary nerd/jock dynamic -- and if that dynamic did exist, I have bad news about Mr. Peter "Why Won't Anyone Love Me For My Hot Body And Incredible Athletic Abilities Instead of My Intelligence" Parker.

some old msm2017 edits I did to make Peter more look like his comic book self because I thought it'd be a fun challenge :3

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