“a love interest you don’t see coming”

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I am so curious to see how much screen time Zendaya/MJ is gonna have and how many stunts she ended up doing. I want a whole ass documentary of that, thank you.

just dropping by!

HOOBOY.

So, Zendaya’s MJ stands within a long history of fans losing their absolute minds when Black people dare to exist on screen, whether if it’s a change from the source material, a difference in a vague mental image, or even if the character was a poc in the actual source material. In fact, I have some receipts for it:

It doesn’t matter if the personality/role is the same as canon. When Candice Patton was cast as Iris West in The Flash, despite keeping the same kind of job, rough personality, and relation to Barry, she was (and is!) harassed repeatedly for her portrayal and there has been endless debate over her “not being the real Iris” (and ruining the show, being a terrible actress, and a whole host of things I will neither repeat nor link bc they don’t deserve the time of day). Iris’s translation from comic to screen is at least as on par in terms of comic accuracy as Felicity Smoak’s of Arrow, but while Felicity was the Fandom Darling, Iris was dragged through the mud.

It doesn’t matter if it’s not even relevant to canon. When John Boyega was cast as Finn in Star Wars, there was a massive uproar over Black stormtroopers existing, despite there never being a canon reason to call this into question—especially for a brand new character existing in a brand new Order. The reaction was so intense—#BoycottStarWarsVII was trending on twitter at one point—even Oscar Isaac and JJ Abrams were asked to comment on it. And all of this was based on about 10 seconds of trailer footage, never mind how Boyega was treated for the rest of the sequel trilogy’s run.

It doesn’t matter if it’s ACTUAL CANON. When Amandla Stenberg was cast as Rue in The Hunger Games, despite Rue literally being poc in (“She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that, she's very like Prim in size and demeanor,” amongst other explicit mentions), there was still a sizable contingent on both tumblr, twitter, and instagram that were furious over the fact that Rue and Thresh were Black. It’s also worth noting that this same contingent was utterly silent about the whitewashing of Katniss, but that’s a topic for a different day.

So now that we’ve established there’s literally no way to win, let’s talk about MJ specifically via the arguments that normally get hurled her way.

Her name is wrong! She can’t be my MJ because my MJ is Mary Jane, not Michelle J[ones]!

Adaptational Name Change is a time-honoured tradition in book-to-screen translations. In the MCU, Scott’s wife Peggy is called Maggie, Chewie the not-cat is called Goose, and Drax’s name in the comics is Arthur Douglas. In comics and common fan lingo, MJ is overwhelming referred to as just that—MJ—and so to give this moniker to Michelle means something. It also precludes any other appearance of a “real” MJ thanks to the One Steve Limit—if TPTB wanted a different character to be MJ, they wouldn’t have given the initials to Michelle at all. And given that MJ is an integral character to Spider-Man lore, it seems very odd that they would deliberately prevent themselves from including her—unless they already had, in the form of Michelle.

But she’s different from her comics counterpart?

I have to laugh anytime someone defines what can/can’t be canon based on comics because have you met comics?? It’s a buffet!! Some writers are God’s Greatest Gift to Man, and some need to repent of their sins and probably never touch a pen again!! Time gets rewritten!! Character traits play hot potato!! People randomly appear and disappear!! Someone’s the pinnacle of sobriety or a walking disaster depending on the run!! Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter so to say something can’t be canon is a lot shiftier than to say something can.

But... the hair? My Aesthetics™?

Listen if they wanna give MJ some highlights in sm3 or something I will certainly not be against it bc Zendaya already looks Like That so can you imagine, but also, this is an aesthetic preference. And heavens knows fans get up in arms over the smallest things—the Harry Potter eye colour debate, anyone?—but also, I’ve never seen anyone claim Harry Potter is not in fact Harry Potter because his movie eyes are a different color than from the book. There’s a huge difference between saying “this character doesn’t match the aesthetic I wanted” and “therefore this is not that character.”

The Powers That Be said that it’s not really MJ so it CAN’T be MJ because Word of God!

This is the one argument you can claim because yes, in a 2017 IGN interview Feige said Zendaya wasn’t playing Mary Jane, and in a separate (pre-film release) Zendaya herself said she’s just playing Michelle.

HOWEVER. There are two major problems with this argument.

First, Zendaya’s comments all came out before the movie was released, as a part of Marvel’s Hush Hush Secrecy™ bid, meaning her original comments weren’t so much about facts so much as preserving the secret (whatever that secret was meant to be). Secondly, after the leak happened and The Racist Backlash™ that Disney’s terrified of, then Feige commented on how “no no, we never planned for her to be MJ MJ, it’s just an Easter Egg! 

This imo is wildly misrepresentative and cowardly because if it really were “just an easter egg,” why on earth would they bother hiding it? They spent months dodging around the subject for just a tongue-in-cheek line? They cast Zendaya as a non-comic OC main when they’ve never done that before or since? And really—they thought fans wouldn’t immediately make the connection as to who Zendaya was supposed to be playing after that line, when they’re known for dropping comics references as hints of things to come (e.g., Dr. Strange’s name being mentioned in Captain America: The Winter Soldier)? 

...Sure, Jan. Sure. 

Before Feige’s statements came out, James Gunn (GotG director) defended the casting of Michelle-as-MJ in August 2016, Jon Watts has talked about drawing from various Mary Jane comics both before and after, and as recently as July 2020 Zendaya talked about how Marvel “already kind of wanted to re-create the character and turn her into a new version of what I think maybe the original Mary Jane character represented” (which is much more in line with how production has discussed the rest of the MCU’s take on Spider-Man—not as “a wholly different thing,” but as “a wholly different version”). Michelle only became definitively “not MJ” for TPTB after they realized people would fight them over it.

Second, given that we’re talking about the slice of comics fans that almost invariably hate MCU!Peter, making WoG claims is... kinda sus? I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll say again: you cannot simultaneously claim Word of God/Authorial Intent and Death of the Author; they’re mutually exclusive frameworks. If you’re arguing Michelle can’t be the character of Mary Jane explicitly bc The Powers That Be say so, but also discounting XYZ character despite TPTB’s words, you’ve created a bit of a logical nightmare. It’s fine to say they got one thing right and got the other wrong. But you can’t base your premise in both camps.

IN CONCLUSION. Fandom in its essence is about transformation, and even if I thought Zendaya’s MJ wasn’t supposed to represent MJ™ in canon, I kinda wouldn’t care. Claims like “fandom’s only racist/sexist/whateverist bc the source material is” don’t pass the vibe check because the systems of the world we actually live in are also sexist/racist/whateverist because of the “source material”—generations of histories and laws and prejudices. The fact that a bad thing is started by someone else doesn’t mean we’re excused to continue in that exact same bad thing. 

So. Zendaya is Michelle. Michelle is MJ. MJ is Mary Jane.

never ask me about my business

“Their Don is some kid named Peter Parker. 33. No previous mob affiliations. He turns 23 and bam! It looks like he just snapped. He gathers a group of affiliates and goes on a spree. Knocking off mob bosses and lower level guys left and right.”

Michelle swipes the screen. A grainy picture of a man standing outside of a ShopRite materializes. He is carrying groceries for the older woman next to him. He looks boyish. Michelle asks, “Track and report?“

This is the masterlist for my in-progress Celebrity AU, Most Ardently. You will find all content for this fic here. 

Playlist

Chapters: 

a truth universally acknowledged

not knowing how

a certain step

more natural

particularly intimate

PETER PARKER IN FAR FROM HOME (2019)