Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
I know people usually call for things like Kraven's Hunt, but that was one hell of a story arc.
Pound the Table | An X-Men Self-Insert
- Thread starter October Daye
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Honestly, im not a fan of Gwen Stacy death still happening in light of Galactus arrival. After everything that happened, I don't think goblin would think this would be a perfect time to attack Gwen Stacy, or the very least spider man would be more on edge after galactus and would have had a better chance to prevent gwen death then canon. With galactus having a stronger impact on the world then canon, it would have made sense to have gwen death be butterfly away.
- Location
- California
The Goblin is also a master opportunist. This was the perfect time to strike.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
I wasn't sure how to approach it, but I had a similar sentiment. I'm reserving any judgements until further development, though.
One thing first though is that from what I can see Norman didn't go *straight* to do this immediately after Galactus, but during the "reconstruction" still weeks after. That's not completely unreasonable. People are vulnerable. The recent threat was not on a human but cosmic scale; their alertness are probably firing up more on existentialism than on personal vendettas. Between that and Noa's ultimatum ("she promised to set the goddamn MAGNETO on his ass!") I can see Peter getting blindsided.
Also, this.
Now, that's not necessarily a reason to write it, or against it. Maybe a touch like here May dying instead of Ben (not like I *like* that either, I'll be honest, but it kept us on our toes and provided half the basis for the events of the arc), like say, George's dying at the bridge instead of before, or Gwen surviving but cutting off with Peter... would definitely taste better than "Gwen trips and croaks, take #65, action!" That said, I understand why a fic would keep some stations of canon, depending on what they're going for. There can be reasons like October having plans for a Peter with a very similar state of mind as in in canon, or just not having plans for Gwen, that would allow or require some economy on the plot points to change from canon. It still wouldn't be ideal, but I'd understand it.
The issue would be like if mentioning her death here amounted to nothing more than making Peter an excuse to drive Noa and the plot to the Academy. Then one could question if it was necessary at all. But for now I'm trusting October.
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- Location
- California
Peter/Shadowcat incoming!…Sorry that was the last Spider-Man/X-men crossover ship I read. Just like Bats he's got a way with cats.
While Peter Parker is hated and feared like a mutant, he fails at the second, third and fourth parts of being one: Being a humongous jackass, a blithering cockmongrel and a judgemental prick(see all mutant comics after ´83).
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Peter needed to be in a particular state of mind and headspace, one that was overwhelmingly negative, but also would put him in a state where he wouldn't seek out his Uncle Ben for emotional support. He could theoretically have gone to MJ, who is also a friend of Gwen's and was similarly devastated by her death, but because so much of the emotional baggage is tied up in "I am Spider-Man and my fuck-up led to the death of someone I care about, again", it had to be somebody who knows that Peter is Spider-Man, AND doesn't wish him ill.
That list is incredibly short. As mentioned in the chapter, it's two people: Uncle Ben, and Noa.
As much as I like Gwen Stacy, I... don't have a need for her in the plot. Killing off a character is a very difficult decision, one that should only be done when 1) you've exhausted all further character arcs and plot threads for that character, and 2) the character arcs and plot threads you have to gain by killing them outweigh the benefit of just... letting them fade into the background of the plot.
In this case, Gwen Stacy died so that I could set up something else further down the line. Namely...
SPIDER-MAN
AND HIS
AMAZING FRIENDS
AND HIS
AMAZING FRIENDS
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Better than the reason Marvel did it, I reckon.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yeah I figured as much as soon as you introduced Bobby/Iceman.
You know for someone who gave J. Jonah Jameson a complex and complicated relationship with professionalism and the truth you kind of dropped the ball on this one. Gwen Stacy before she died was an insecure, sometimes bitchy tsundere that let her insecurities bleed into her relationship with Peter and make it worse.
Metatextually the entire reason Gwen was killed off was because a bunch of men in the 80s didn't want to take a long hard look at their own relationships. Gwen and Peter were never going to work out long term because neither was willing to be honest with the other about their feelings and drives. So instead of getting them to that point of honesty the writers just killed off Gwen, put a back up clone into the story and tried to go with Mary Jane as the love interest and they by accident hit upon a dynamic that worked a lot better to the point unless people are huge comic book nerds, or have issues with married people being heroes, they don't even know that Peter has had multiple love interests. That boy has Emiya energy when it comes to women and Mary Jane and Peter work so well most people don't even realize that.
Fucks sake Felicia works better as love interest to Peter than Gwen did sometimes.
- Location
- MN
better reasoning than the one more day story line.
erasing years of Spiderman lore and putting everything back to the status quo and killing off peter's unborn kid just because the guy writing it didn't like that Peter hooked up with MJ. good lord.
erasing years of Spiderman lore and putting everything back to the status quo and killing off peter's unborn kid just because the guy writing it didn't like that Peter hooked up with MJ. good lord.
chibipoe
May I tell you of the glory that is Catradora?
- Location
- Astoria, Oregon
70s, btw.
We don't talk about One More Day.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
70s, btw.
My bad. I keep remembering that as the 80s.
Technoturnovers
$19 Fortnite card. Who wants it?
I think the main issue you're going to have with reader reaction here is that the death of Gwen Stacy, while not overwhelmingly negatively received at the time or in context of re-reading the original storyline, is a narrative beat that has been exhausted to the point that most Spider-Man fans are just kinda over it at this point, much in the same way as people are tired of Barbara Gordon being crippled, causing DC to heal her and bring her back as Batgirl. Also, while I don't personally care overly much about this type of argument, it could be argued that killing off Gwen Stacy here for this purpose is basically amounting to "fridging" her, or where you just lazily kill off a male character's love interest solely for induce character reactions for the narrative purposes of that male character. I don't buy that argument in general personally, and obviously you're a woman so I think that kind of accusation is doubly baseless, but it's still something that people could perceive in this way.
Now, as for an alternative, I see a few different ways to induce the type of emotional state in Peter that you're aiming for here- the main thing I'm thinking of is borrowing something from Spider-Man: Homecoming and have Peter be attacked during a
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The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
I just figure that Gwen and subsequently Norman's deaths are kind of foundational parts of Spider-Man's plot, we're at roughly the point in this version's career for those things to happen, and nothing that's occurred so far has fundamentally changed the course of the Spider-Man plotline enough to justify butterflying the storyline that basically defined the Bronze Age of comics as an era where the heroes didn't always win and were allowed to have normal human reactions to that.
Also, while Amazing works, isn't this more setting up Spider-Man and his Uncanny friends?
Also, while Amazing works, isn't this more setting up Spider-Man and his Uncanny friends?
Technoturnovers
$19 Fortnite card. Who wants it?
The problem is, when you write an SI fanfic involving major canon characters like this you're kind of expected to show the impacts of your changes you make on the plot seriously, otherwise you're effectively writing a sort of side-story/spinoff deal where you're observing the original course of events through a different POV character, which is a massive waste of potential in my opinion. Like, Norman Osborn got his ASS kicked here, and in a way totally different than if he just got finally outed as Green Goblin or managed to get locked away in super-prison for good- why not explore the ripples of that further? And this is especially the case when the only reason Green Goblin ever came back in the first place was because Osborn got totally Galactus-whammied and lost all sense of restraint, but if that's the case, then why did he lose his shit in the exact same way he would have in the original comics? It just feels like cheap railroading, and honestly, you can afford to fudge the specifics of Spidey's characterization given he isn't the main POV character, so I feel like the utility of following the stations of canon in this way is limited regardless.
Technoturnovers
$19 Fortnite card. Who wants it?
This type of choice is subject to substantive criticism- while it isn't gonna be a major story-killer obviously, that doesn't mean you can just shut down issues people might have with it with "well it's the author's choice."
Great Greedy Guts
Ceterum censeo Vigilam esse delendam.
I'd also say that for all this is a Marvel fic featuring Spider-Man, it's not a Spider-Man fic. If this was a Spider-Man focused SI, I might be more critical, but this isn't. Noa isn't a Spider-Man character, she's a Marvel character who had a Spider-Man crossover and now they show up in each others' stories sometimes.
It's also not a point of divergence that changes easily, necessarily. Like, it's not a big scheme quickly butterflied away by the smallest change or a one-in-a-million coincidence. All it takes is Norman deciding to do this thing, having the chance, and the catch going bad. Norman being the kind of person that this comes naturally to, does it at the drop of a hat. Once he decides to do it, he'll wait until he has (or can make) the chance. Peter, being a teenager, makes the obvious mistake in trying to save the day because it isn't something he's had to worry about and there's not a school for this.
This isn't a big strainer of credulity, exactly. The only surprise is Galactus sending Gobby around enough bends that he gives this a go despite what he thinks of Noa (which is pretty easy to understand, overall, I think).
It's also not a point of divergence that changes easily, necessarily. Like, it's not a big scheme quickly butterflied away by the smallest change or a one-in-a-million coincidence. All it takes is Norman deciding to do this thing, having the chance, and the catch going bad. Norman being the kind of person that this comes naturally to, does it at the drop of a hat. Once he decides to do it, he'll wait until he has (or can make) the chance. Peter, being a teenager, makes the obvious mistake in trying to save the day because it isn't something he's had to worry about and there's not a school for this.
This isn't a big strainer of credulity, exactly. The only surprise is Galactus sending Gobby around enough bends that he gives this a go despite what he thinks of Noa (which is pretty easy to understand, overall, I think).
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, but I'm still going to shut them down.
At the end of the day, there is no clear, satisfying Watsonian reason for why Gwen Stacy still died. She died because she happened to be there on the night before Peter's 18th birthday, Gobbie had a small window of opportunity, took the opportunity, took Gwen, and everything else played out pretty much as expected.
The Doylist reason is the important one here. And the Doylist reason is "I wanted to set up Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, do so in a manner that lets me loop in a possible future angst point when Bobby Drake eventually trusts Spidey and Firestar enough to come out of the closet to them, and use that to address the attitudes of the era towards both homosexuality and bisexuality, using a character people know and can relate to, which would make the reaction probably more jarring".
... that, and I didn't really want to write Gwen Stacy. Not her, not about her, not around her.
So she's off the board.
And this is pretty easily explained. Noa is a sane woman, with an infinitesimally small glimpse at things beyond mortal ken. As a result of that, Galactus nearly killed her just by existing within the same fucking Astronomical Unit.
Norman Osborn, by contrast, was crazier than a bowl of Froot Loops or Fruity Pebbles. Buuuut guess what? He also had a day job that only got more chaotic in the wake of Galactus! Nutty as he was, he literally didn't have the time to go and enact some crazy revenge scheme either!...
... until he overheard Harry mulling over when to get Peter's birthday gift to him because he didn't wanna ruin his best friend's night with Gwen, checked the calendar, and what do you fucking know, it's a Sunday night, and it's about to be Peter Parker's birthday! And then (because again – fucking crazy!), with his already insane mind still a bit addled from Galactus, stress bearing down on him badly enough that he really just wanted to KILL something, and a wonderful opportunity to kill two birds with one stone... what do you think happened?
Anyway.
Now that that's out of the way... folks.
The fact remains, as much as Spider-Man was the focus for the previous arc, and as much as several Spider-Man mainstays have been featured, Spider-Man is not the main character here. Hell, he's about to fade right back into the background, for the most part, with occasional follow-ups as what is essentially a long-running D-plot evolves.
So please. Gwen still died, I get some of your are unhappy.
But lay off it.
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I, for one, am all here for Spider-Man and his amazing polycu… friends. Completely and totally platonic friends until they all reach the age of majority.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I think part of the problem is also that there's been some problems creeping into the story for a few chapters now, and this chapter has established that they're becoming a pattern rather than a fluke. What's the old editor's adage? If a reader tells you there's a problem, they're almost always right, but if they tell you what the problem is and how to solve it, they're almost always wrong? Well, in full knowledge that I'm probably doing the same thing, I'mma draw on the observations of a couple acquaintances who would prefer to remain anonymous, and lay my perspective out.
One of the perennial issues with SI fiction is that authors rarely feel like challenging 'themselves' to an extent appropriate to a character in a story. The format is an easy vehicle for bland power fantasies, and while SI authors often make a big hullabaloo about how the character has some deep flaw running through them that will serve as an engine for drama by creating problems, in practice these problems are, overwhelmingly often, minor things which are easily brushed aside. Well, until the author remembers that they're supposed to exist and consciously makes a big deal out of them (usually by overcoming them, so the author can go back to ignoring the flaw for good), but other than that the character usually either effortlessly overcomes all obstacles, or is constantly run over by an endless train of them, delete whichever is appropriate for whether the story is a straightforward power fantasy or more of a misery porn deal.
One of the great draws of Pound the Table, I think, is that the early material signalled a willingness to avert this trend. The first arc ended in Noa losing the case, losing her big job, getting outed as a mutant, and having to work double time to establish herself as an independent lawyer. It wasn't a total loss; the client ended up rescued by Magneto, and Captain America speechified about how corrupt the sentence was in the first place, but these were more by way of silver linings than snatching any kind of victory from the jaws of defeat.
That was great! That was a lot of fuel for drama and a clear willingness to avert the the usual pitfalls of SI stories - even if, granted, the SI nature of the story was of curiously little relevance. It didn't really add anything to the story, but it also didn't really affect anything, so one could kinda just shrug and chalk it up to how most good SI stories would be better off ditching the SI angle. And you followed that up with the tennis game arc, which was honestly pretty solid - it was a straightforward win, but that was needed as an upswing from the first case, and it was very much a courtroom drama win, claimed by merit of Noa's effort and talents. Well, mostly Noa's merits, Jameson helped out a bit - regardless, this story didn't attract a bunch of appreciative lawyer readers by accident!
But, the longer the story goes on, the more it's been undermining the credit earned by those arcs, burning the logpile of dramatic fuel without really coming to anything. Noa lost her job, but this has mostly meant she takes on cases directly, calling on her old contacts whenever the story needs them; she lost the structure, expectations, and bureaucracy of a large firm, but kept the contacts, both client and comrade, and she still has a variety of underlings to handle the grunt work. She was outed as a mutant, but has faced little consequences for that beyond what can be brushed off. To some extent that's because the story has been more interested in centring the Jewish aspect of her character, both as habits and also as something antagonists can use as an attack vector, but it still invites the question of what the point was in outing her in the first place.
And, looking back a couple arcs on from the tennis case, a pattern starts to form. Noa is given a case that seems beyond her and sets up an underdog struggle, but she pulls out a trick, gets some outside information, and scores a major win that advances her case and career - theoretically in a way that causes her complications, as being friends with a wanted terrorist like Magneto should, to pick one example, but in practice she has so many powerful friends (her old boss from the firm, the owner of the largest and most influential newspaper in town in a milieu where print newspapers are still significant, multiple big-name superpowered vigilantes willing to act on her behalf, FBI contacts...) that these consequences... are inconsequential.
And when she does have genuine problems, things like the Galactus nightmares or being buried in casework from the latest update, they tend to get glossed over quickly and then offhandedly solved before they can become recurring or otherwise serious issues, things that matter and have dramatic weight. The office is overrun with cases? Solved the chapter it's introduced, with a single phone call. Ditto the Galactus nightmares, although I think it reasonable to hope that Professor X playing dream guardian won't be a one-and-done silver bullet solution. Neither 'problem' seems to interfere with her ability to effectively handle Peter's problems when he shows up on her doorstep with them, either; I am somewhat bitterly reminded of the Dresden Files' recurring narrative flourish of Harry tossing another shattering fire blast fuelled by the last dregs of his exhausted willpower, after having summoned up the last dregs of his exhausted willpower about four times already that book.
The point is that it's one thing to talk about how Noa will totally get comeuppance and has major character flaws that have real teeth and will bite her soon, but plenty of authors say that. Pound the Table made a good first impression as a story that would walk the walk as well as talk the talk, but that impression is having some trouble with panning out, and I think that contributes to why people are grumbling about Gwen's death - it's an easy symbol to latch on to without having to spend,
/me checks
~1k words analysing the structure of the story as a whole.
One of the perennial issues with SI fiction is that authors rarely feel like challenging 'themselves' to an extent appropriate to a character in a story. The format is an easy vehicle for bland power fantasies, and while SI authors often make a big hullabaloo about how the character has some deep flaw running through them that will serve as an engine for drama by creating problems, in practice these problems are, overwhelmingly often, minor things which are easily brushed aside. Well, until the author remembers that they're supposed to exist and consciously makes a big deal out of them (usually by overcoming them, so the author can go back to ignoring the flaw for good), but other than that the character usually either effortlessly overcomes all obstacles, or is constantly run over by an endless train of them, delete whichever is appropriate for whether the story is a straightforward power fantasy or more of a misery porn deal.
One of the great draws of Pound the Table, I think, is that the early material signalled a willingness to avert this trend. The first arc ended in Noa losing the case, losing her big job, getting outed as a mutant, and having to work double time to establish herself as an independent lawyer. It wasn't a total loss; the client ended up rescued by Magneto, and Captain America speechified about how corrupt the sentence was in the first place, but these were more by way of silver linings than snatching any kind of victory from the jaws of defeat.
That was great! That was a lot of fuel for drama and a clear willingness to avert the the usual pitfalls of SI stories - even if, granted, the SI nature of the story was of curiously little relevance. It didn't really add anything to the story, but it also didn't really affect anything, so one could kinda just shrug and chalk it up to how most good SI stories would be better off ditching the SI angle. And you followed that up with the tennis game arc, which was honestly pretty solid - it was a straightforward win, but that was needed as an upswing from the first case, and it was very much a courtroom drama win, claimed by merit of Noa's effort and talents. Well, mostly Noa's merits, Jameson helped out a bit - regardless, this story didn't attract a bunch of appreciative lawyer readers by accident!
But, the longer the story goes on, the more it's been undermining the credit earned by those arcs, burning the logpile of dramatic fuel without really coming to anything. Noa lost her job, but this has mostly meant she takes on cases directly, calling on her old contacts whenever the story needs them; she lost the structure, expectations, and bureaucracy of a large firm, but kept the contacts, both client and comrade, and she still has a variety of underlings to handle the grunt work. She was outed as a mutant, but has faced little consequences for that beyond what can be brushed off. To some extent that's because the story has been more interested in centring the Jewish aspect of her character, both as habits and also as something antagonists can use as an attack vector, but it still invites the question of what the point was in outing her in the first place.
And, looking back a couple arcs on from the tennis case, a pattern starts to form. Noa is given a case that seems beyond her and sets up an underdog struggle, but she pulls out a trick, gets some outside information, and scores a major win that advances her case and career - theoretically in a way that causes her complications, as being friends with a wanted terrorist like Magneto should, to pick one example, but in practice she has so many powerful friends (her old boss from the firm, the owner of the largest and most influential newspaper in town in a milieu where print newspapers are still significant, multiple big-name superpowered vigilantes willing to act on her behalf, FBI contacts...) that these consequences... are inconsequential.
And when she does have genuine problems, things like the Galactus nightmares or being buried in casework from the latest update, they tend to get glossed over quickly and then offhandedly solved before they can become recurring or otherwise serious issues, things that matter and have dramatic weight. The office is overrun with cases? Solved the chapter it's introduced, with a single phone call. Ditto the Galactus nightmares, although I think it reasonable to hope that Professor X playing dream guardian won't be a one-and-done silver bullet solution. Neither 'problem' seems to interfere with her ability to effectively handle Peter's problems when he shows up on her doorstep with them, either; I am somewhat bitterly reminded of the Dresden Files' recurring narrative flourish of Harry tossing another shattering fire blast fuelled by the last dregs of his exhausted willpower, after having summoned up the last dregs of his exhausted willpower about four times already that book.
The point is that it's one thing to talk about how Noa will totally get comeuppance and has major character flaws that have real teeth and will bite her soon, but plenty of authors say that. Pound the Table made a good first impression as a story that would walk the walk as well as talk the talk, but that impression is having some trouble with panning out, and I think that contributes to why people are grumbling about Gwen's death - it's an easy symbol to latch on to without having to spend,
/me checks
~1k words analysing the structure of the story as a whole.
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Great Greedy Guts
Ceterum censeo Vigilam esse delendam.
Ah, sorry. I meant surprise as in "I didn't see this coming" and not as in "this makes no sense" because it's pretty thoroughly obvious in retrospect why this would happen this way, I was just (like the characters in the story) more focused on Galactus than Norman and figured Norman was in hand even though it's obvious (with hindsight) that he wasn't going to react well to the brain-breaking entity from beyond the stars. I just figured the delay was him working up the nerve and finding the time.
The only surprise is that I was surprised, as it were, because nothing that happened there was actually surprising outside of my not expecting it.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So. Overall very good criticism. And there is a particular response to… pretty much all of it, that I hope won't be overly unsatisfying to you.
The past few arcs, and one more arc beyond that, are all very much the "setup" phase. If you want a payoff later, you have to set it up now. And several things that have happened are all planned to tie back into larger issues further down the line. This is planned to the point that the very first arc, the Pyro trial, is the first domino in what Noa will eventually call "the road to hell, paved with my best intentions".
But you can't get there without setup. A LOT of setup. And more importantly, you can't get a fall like that without first having a climb.
What this means is that on a narrative scale, the path they follow must largely be an uphill trajectory. Setbacks exists, obviously. Bumps in the road MUST exist, without that there is no conflict, and you just run into something as boring as "how I became the supreme overlord of the planet in these twelve easy steps".
But these last few arcs have largely been, I'll admit, my way of solving problems now so they don't have to become issues later.
Setup task 1: Noa needs to be able to get words into the right ears at the right times. The two ways to do this are clout and money. Which goes back to the purpose of the Jacques Canter trial — got her a moderate in with JJJ to expand upon later, and essentially solved the finances issue for the rest of the story.
Setup task 2: Noa needs to be someone whose opinion is relatively trusted by enough people in the superhero community that she's not dismissed out of hand. Here, we solve that with three people: Quicksilver, Professor X, and Spider-Man. (Not Dr. Strange, he's got his own shit to handle)
The hard part was getting Spidey, and necessitated working backwards from the situation I wanted to eventually arrive at a set of circumstances that could get me there. This task also continues into the current arc.
Setup task 3: Noa must be placed into a precarious position balancing Charles and Erik, and while neither can hold sway, the balance must rip towards Erik. Obviously, Erik is unofficially her godfather. But at the moment, Noa is slightly dependent on Charles for her mental well being.
Now, obviously there's a lot more setup involved than just this. And I can't exactly show you all of it — that ruins the point of writing the story!
But.
Just as a show of faith in response to your criticism, and to hopefully alleviate at least a couple of your concerns, please see the the tentative arc titles, which should all hint at what's happening there.
Arc 4: Assembling Avengers (the current arc) (1990)
Arc 5: The Exoneration of St. John Allerdyce (1990-91)
Arc 6: Seeing Green (1991-92)
Arc 7: Calling Card (1992)
Arc 8: God Loves, Man Kills (1993)
Arc 9: Born Again (1994)
Arc 10: Itching for a Cure (1994-5)
Arc 11: Good Intentions (1996)
Arc 12: Yom HaShoah (1996-7)
Arc 13: The Way to Hell (1997-8)
Arc 5: The Exoneration of St. John Allerdyce (1990-91)
Arc 6: Seeing Green (1991-92)
Arc 7: Calling Card (1992)
Arc 8: God Loves, Man Kills (1993)
Arc 9: Born Again (1994)
Arc 10: Itching for a Cure (1994-5)
Arc 11: Good Intentions (1996)
Arc 12: Yom HaShoah (1996-7)
Arc 13: The Way to Hell (1997-8)
As you can see, there is a pretty definitive plan in place. The problem is that to get there, I need to have a lot of moving parts in the right positions. The events of arc 1 allow arc 5 to happen, which leads into arc 6, which itself follows into arc 9, and the events of all of these together allow arc 10 to happen. Arc 10 is the impetus for arc 11, which is when the prologue took place. But Arc 10 and beyond can only have the impact they do because Arc 8 happens, and Arc 8 can't properly occur without Arcs 4, 5, and 7 allowing for it.
As you can see, there are plans. All of these things carry consequences; you just can't necessarily see them yet, and may not see them for quite some time. But trust me when I say that I can see them, I have planned for them, and a lot of these "oh, that was resolved really easily" have a purpose.
After all, the hard times seem far harsher when you have the good old days to look back on. But on a similar note, the good old days give you the hope needed to get through the darker hours.
- Location
- Leeds
yer, well
if this reaction is going to be jarring I suspect the polycule is off the table.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This is pure evil.
It's not wrong to be clear. You write what you think should be written and Gwen dying after Noah had demonstrated actual palpable change to what amounts to a spree killing by Norman who is known for being an unstable bastard demonstrates the limits of Noah's reach and grasp.
She reached out to St.John and saved him from fully becoming Pyro. He knows there are people out there ready to fight for him including Captain America so that means a lot less cynicism and despair to drive him into terrorism. Down the line she might even save him from being Pyro, but that remains to be seen.
She then also managed to get more justice for mutants than they got in the original timeline and lessen the isolation mutants feel from the rest of humanity. Sports are still open to mutants. This means Eric is less radicalized as he has seen the system be made to work for mutants.
She then used her skills and connections to nuke Norman Osborne from orbit and shut down his power trip over the Parkers helping Harry. And instead of Gwen dying to Norman pulling mind games on Peter she dies to Norman going on a killing spree. Noah made the situation better, but she didn't make it good enough to save Gwen's life. Especially since the rest of the world got involved and caused the same end result.
This is important in most writing, but especially so for SI writing where unless and until the SI is proven to not affect the world in some way they are assumed to be affecting the world. Such is the nature of SI writing which mostly amounts to fixing some aspect of the story the writer perceives as wrong.
The pure evil part comes in in the metatext. There are characters like Gwen Stacy and say Matou Shinji, who is just the male version of Matou Sakura since they literally both have the same abuser and their abuse differs based on their genders and irony and Sakura being presented in the most sympathetic light while Shinji is presented in the least sympathetic, that neither writers nor fans of the work they are from are interested in exploring and instead are either only interested in killing of or OC-ing into their own characters.
This is a problem in real life because people thinking of someone as "boring" or "pathetic" or "irredeemable" is the cause of so much misery and death while also causing people who identify with such characters to feel like they live in a society hostile to them.
My problem with how you handled Gwen's death isn't in her dying @October Daye it's with how Gwen's death gives context to how you've set up Noah's relationship to Hank McCoy:
Writers that are willing to simply ignore the nuances of characters and use them simply as props to die or vessels for their OCs also in my experience have a pet peeve to pick with other characters in a setting demonizing them. And yes I can tell that you are using Noah as an unreliable narrator meaning that Noah having a pet peeve with Hank or Hank having a pet peeve with Noah doesn't mean that you personally have a pet peeve with Hank.
But for your:
road to hell to work when written you have to demonstrate as writer a good grasp of pettiness and stupidity before the main punch comes in because if characters don't show their fears or desires or pride or whatever else leading them into mistakes and disaster a road to hell paved with good intentions breaks the suspension of disbelief because nothing before the fall showed that was an option.
Let me demonstrate: You've shown J. Jonah Jameson both as a skilled reporter and a petty asshole and how she managed to convince him to be less of a petty asshole towards Spider-man. While also contrasting Noah's own skillfullness, pride and closeted/guarded nature with Jameson's own. Where's the opposite?
Where is a skilled person that tears themselves down into being less because of petty asshole behavior? Is it MacDonald Gargan? Is he going to become Scorpion despite Jameson not pushing him into it? Gwen Stacy is off the table with this chapter. Beast is being set up as some sort of hero antagonist to Noah so far and using him specifically as the example I'm talking about runs into the problem of Henry not being skilled enough to count as an opposite example because of his lack of skill, like Beast mutated himself trough experimentation meant to cure himself the first time and has always been the awkward one amongst the X-Men.
There are parallels between him and Noah yes, but not ones of a rise and then fall. Beast is the perpetually fallen-ish tech support of the X-Men.
It's Angel's arc towards becoming Archangel not Beasts arc of oops I mutated myself, again, that is a rise as an X-Men and then fall into a villain.
It is Cyclops' arc of slowly becoming a worse and worse person that happened over decades of comics and then was just swept under the rug by Marvel because when it came time to pull the trigger on one of the original X-Men going bad they chickened out that is also a rise and fall.
So:
laying off the Gwen stuff specifically, but I am going to express my worries that you might not be the sort of writer that can pull off what you set out to write to my own satisfaction as a reader.