Autistic Child of an Asshole Goldsmith

but Caroline Moore is a fiber artist who makes real shit that’s way cooler than this that you can buy on her shop

like, this is most obvious in Homecoming, where Peter wants to upgrade from the baby heroing of stopping street level crime to fighting space gods, and the progression of his arc is him gaining the experience to get that “promotion”. The implication is kinda that stopping a bus from crashing is kinda lame, cuz you only save like, what, twenty people?? And if you fight a space god, you save millions of people. There’s no point in helping someone carry their groceries or saving people in a burning building, because the numbers are too small to mean anything. What’s the point of saving anyone if you can’t save everyone? If you’re not incredibly powerful, you can’t make a real difference.

And I think this is the MCU’s disconnect from the superhero genre. We’re not watching people who have a passion for helping others and using their abilities to alleviate suffering—we’re watching people win glory in their personal epics. The soap opera of gods and giants. That’s not a bad type of story, but it lacks one of the core emotions of superhero stories—the fantasy of being able to make a tangible difference. This extends into the MCU’s unwillingness to disrupt the status quo, as described in this excellent video by PopCultureDetective. (One example of his that really stood out to me is how in Age of Ultron, Stark and Banner’s attempt to use their superhuman genius to create something that will benefit all humanity is framed as foolish, dangerous hubris.)

This incongruence is most obvious when comparing Spiderman movies, because the core of Spider-Man’s character is “great power, great responsibility”. The thing that makes Peter Parker stand out is how no matter how broke, lonely, or even powerless he is, he still tries to use what he has to help the people he can.

I think it’s also noticeable how the MCU superheroes don’t really have Helping People as their Job. Like, whatever they’re doing in between movies, when we’re not watching, when there isn’t a massive problem to solve, they don’t have Rescue as their day to day Job the same way most superheroes do. Plenty of them have Beating Up Bad Guys as their Job, but that makes them more……soldier than superhero. More military than first responder.

Rocky: What is spice question?

Grace: It’s when humans eat something that burns our mouths because it evolves to be painful to stop animals from eating it, but we like the flavor of pain.