the spider-man complex - one more letter
Dear Micaela,
Well, that was maybe the most unsatisfying, messy, empty climax I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been on estrogen for over a year now.
I truly want to know what happened to Insomniac’s writing team between the years of 2018 and 2023; Spider-Man (2018) feels a world apart from Spider-Man 2 (and Miles Morales, to a lesser extent). Honestly, my rage and bitterness from initially experiencing this game has cooled off into a reserved disappointment and confusion. It could have been so much more. It could, as its tagline decreed, be better. The ending of Spider-Man 2, ironically, does not make me ‘feel like Spider-Man’ in the way the 2018 game absolutely did — there’s none of the responsibility, none of the suffering, none of the guilt, none of the sacrifice, none of the hard choices. Being Spider-Man isn’t a blessing, it’s a curse.
You know, I’m glad you said you like hearing me talk about Spider-Man, because this is going to be a nuclear example of me being a fucking nerd. So, okay, let’s try to parse this mess of an Act 3 — calling it an entire third act is a qualifier it doesn’t really deserve considering its length (and size does matter here!), but for all intents and purposes, it is. Harry, his mind completely taken over by the symbiote, initiates his plan to ‘heal the world’, transforming Manhattan into a symbiote-infested hellscape within the space of about two hours, somehow. Oh, I guess this increased area of effect is thanks to the meteorite fragment? I’m glad that was explained. On that note, what’s up with Knull’s swirl symbol appearing on the meteorite and the symbiotes spawned across the city? There’s absolutely nothing to suggest Knull actually exists in this universe (which is good, because he’s far too cosmic of a threat for this relatively grounded setting), and thus no reason for his symbol to manifest. This game sure loves taking pieces from Donny Cates’ run without giving it a moment of thought! I can’t wait for Carnage in Spider-Man 3 or the maybe-possibly-happening Venom-led spinoff to inexplicably have his design from the Absolute Carnage run, just because.
But wait, why is Harry doing any of this? Sure, he’s maybe a little bitter towards Peter for borrowing the suit for a couple days, but he has no malice in his heart. He’s Peter’s Good Best Friend. Well, obviously, the answer is that he’s not. Harry is no longer a character at this point in the plot. It’s just Venom. So, uh, what the fuck is the point of there being a symbiosis? This is the root issue of the symbiote being inherently evil coming to its inevitable end point: not a hint of complexity in Venom as a villain, just pure world-conquering malice. I miss Eddie Brock.
Anyway, off Peter and Miles go to save the day from this Saturday morning cartoon version of Venom (sorry, that’s probably unfair to *Spider-Man: The Animated Series actually). Miles shows up in his Evolved Suit, the single worst designed suit that Miles has ever been forced to wear that’s also an Adidas product placement at the same time. Wonderful. One thing I do enjoy about this game is the unity between every single player switching off of this suit as soon as the story allows. And hey look, Peter also gets a new suit in the final hour! I’m gonna fucking scream about it!
The cum suit — sorry, I mean, the Anti-Venom suit — is so unbelievably stupid. Something that needs to be said upfront is that this suit only exists so that Peter can continue to use symbiote abilities in the postgame while canonically not having the Venom symbiote on his person, because Insomniac couldn’t possibly just ignore canon and let him keep using them anyway (sure never stopped them when he inexplicably has nanotech Spider-Arms with no explanation onscreen or off!) This happy ending for Peter comes (okay, I’ll stop) about as a remnant of the Venom symbiote latches onto him, leading Miles and Li (who’s completely reformed and good now, by the way, glad we saw that happen) to delve into his psyche using Li’s unexplained mind palace powers to explore Peter’s greatest insecurities, ending on a vision of him crying over Aunt May’s dying body from the end of Spider-Man (2018). Good on Insomniac for reminding me of when these games were written well, but this inclusion inevitably holds up a mirror to how consequences and responsibility are handled between the two stories. Spider-Man (2018) ends with Peter forced to make an impossible choice, where both options will rip him apart, but only one will rip the city apart. He can’t be selfish. He can’t make like a Life is Strange fan and choose one woman over the lives of so many. May has to die so the city can be saved. It’s the Spider-Man complex condensed into one scene. It’s simple and perfect. This is what Peter holds onto as his greatest failure, a crystallisation of his inability to save everyone. With great power comes great responsibility comes great guilt.
So anyway, after being reminded of a well-written narrative, we return to Spider-Man 2. Miles has a single moment of what could be called character complexity, in which he tells Li that “I don’t forgive you. I can’t do that. But I’m done carrying this hatred.” This is, genuinely, a great moment, and one of very few that I can point to when discussing Miles. Forgiveness is not the same as putting down a weight. The people you’ve hurt do not have to accept your amends, no matter how much you might mean it and be trying your best to make up for your sins. It’s a hint of emotional complexity in Miles that is sadly never expanded upon, much like his earlier choice to prioritise Li’s prospective death over saving civilians. In another version of this story, Miles’ relationship to Li could have been an actual focus and granted Miles a meaningful arc. In what we got, it’s just another afterthought.
After all of this literal soul-searching, Li’s powers transform the leftover symbiote within Peter into an inversion of itself: an Anti-Venom, you could say. Li loses his powers entirely in the process, granting his healing touch to Peter. Very little time is spent on Li no longer having the capability of being a supervillain. He just walks away. Anyway, this suit allows Peter to permanently bond with this white symbiote, gaining the shapeshifting, increased strength and speed, and infinite webbing abilities that he gained from the Venom symbiote, but without any of the mental downsides. No voice in his head, no increased selfishness or anger, no damage to himself or his relationships — no drawbacks to the drug. Remember all of the issues we had with Insomniac attempting to write the black suit as an allegory for addiction? The Anti-Venom suit lets Peter have his cake and eat it. Consequences no longer exist for Peter Parker.
I’ve seen a few comments on this suit refer to the black suit as booze and this as ‘anti-booze’ and, while a very reductive look at it, I can’t deny there’s a point to be made. It’s just fucking lazy, undermining the entire (already poorly handled) point of the black suit. The conflict of the black suit roots from Peter being a better, more efficient Spider-Man with it on, something he explicitly calls out and is deeply insecure about, at the cost of his worst qualities coming to the surface as power corrupts. The Anti-Venom suit does make him a better Spider-Man through a force outside of himself at no cost, so why would he ever switch back to the classic red and blue? What baffles me is that there was actually an alternative way to tackle Peter losing the symbiote, one that’s been attached to his back the entire game: the Spider-Arms. Look, I hate them, I wish they weren’t something Peter just inexplicably had. But what if it wasn’t inexplicable, and this is where he built them? Like building the Anti-Ock suit to combat Octavius in the past, Peter could come to realise that he doesn’t need the symbiote to be a better Spider-Man — he just needs his brain. Peter is a genius, so let him be one. Let him learn from his past, his struggle to combat Octavius’ domination in combat thanks to his extra limbs, and use that experience alongside his own mind to build something to defeat Venom. Let him work with Miles to design it, using the Tinkerer’s programmable matter tech to give their existence some foundation in the universe’s technology and rules while also making the Tinkerer’s existence and the plot of Miles Morales mean fucking anything. Black suit Spider-Man, no more. But no, we still need the fun goop abilities for postgame, so fuck the addiction allegory, they never cared about it anyway. The cum’s sticking around.
There are a million things that I could say that I think could improve this story, but that’s not what we’re here for. I guess I should get onto the ending, as little as I care anymore. Peter and Miles take turns fighting Venom, with Venom pretending to have a relationship with Miles to patch over the fact Insomniac forgot to write one of their two protagonists interacting with their main villain. The fight ends, Venom sprouts wings (again just taking from Donny Cates’ work without context, who gives a fuck anymore), Harry’s face emerges from Venom for a millisecond to pretend that there’s any of him left in Venom (which there isn’t, based on the rest of their writing of the evil goop), and Peter is faced with the necessity of killing Harry and Venom together. It should be another impossible choice, like having to choose the city over May. A moment in which Spider-Man has to accept the deaths of his loved ones for the greater good. The hard part of being Spider-Man. You can’t save everyone. And for a moment, it looks like that’s what happens. Venom is disintegrated by the cum suit’s healing touch. Peter spills his heart, tells Harry that he loves him, as his best friend’s own heart stops. The symbiote infestation across the city disappears in an instant. The choice has been made. Peter Parker cries over the dying body of a loved one after having no choice but to sacrifice them for the lives of many.
But, no. Peter, once again, has his cake and eats it. Harry can’t die. There can be no consequences. Miles remembers he has a biological defibrillator in his body and jams his new Electric Blue sparks into Harry’s chest. Harry’s corpse comes alive. No one dies. Nothing matters. Who fucking cares. I’m so fucking tired. I truly despise this game’s narrative. A fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man. A sanitised clusterfuck of villains and arcs that allow for none of the difficult choices and necessary suffering for the greater good that makes Spider-Man, Peter Parker, the platonic ideal of the superhero. Nothing. Fucking. Matters.
Thus, Spider-Man 2 ends. Venom is gone (unsure what’s happening with that spinoff?) Harry is alive but in a coma. Peter is permanently bonded to Anti-Venom (good luck explaining that one away in the next game). MJ runs a podcast after quitting the Bugle (lmao). Peter decides to retire and let Miles be New York’s one and only Spider-Man (I guess he got over that insecurity offscreen???), because as we all know, with even greater power comes absolutely no responsibility. Norman cries over Harry’s comatose body and exposits about the G-Serum, because yeah of course he’s going to be Green Goblin in the next game, then visits Octavius in prison like he’s fucking Nick Fury in The Avengers. Sure, another Sinister Six. Would be crazy if the first game in this series already blew that load. Octavius says some cryptic bullshit about the final chapter. Rio’s new boyfriend turns out to be Albert Moon, father to Cindy aka Silk. Sure. Three Spider-People in the next game. God knows they did a great job balancing two, how hard can it be with three?
If it seems like I skipped through all of that without patience, it’s because I did. I just do not fucking care anymore. I’m conscious and a little ashamed that I’ve thus far written very little about myself, about us, about complexes and complex emotions, about our responsibility, about being a better person. I’m grateful to know that you, as always, are the beating heart of this series, and able to write in much more beautiful and rending words than I can regarding these harder topics. I’ve been blinded by a fresh, burning rage. For that, I apologise. I am simply upset about what could have been — and maybe that sadness is something I could talk about in greater detail. I don’t know. I’m just a little tired. Spider-Man 2 does not want me to care about its narrative, so I won’t. This story is an insult to the games that came before it, Peter, Miles and Venom as characters, and the core concept of Spider-Man. Sure, maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but I know how strong Spider-Man stories can be and the potential that this character holds — there are 64 years of stories proving that. This is just garbage. I can’t wait to uninstall this 100gb waste of my time and storage space. I’m gonna go watch Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 instead.
Thank you for joining me on this adventure. I’m endlessly grateful to you for your emotional place in my life, even if your geographical place in my life is across an ocean and very rarely tangible to me. I miss New York. The real New York, not the facsimile Insomniac has jumbled together. Spending days and nights with you exploring the city, our hearts and our minds all at once. Savouring my precious time with this girl I got to know through discussing dresses and almost writing for her indie site (and, pointedly, not telling her to fuck off about it). Having difficulty coming to terms with the dichotomic yet equally unbelievable realities that I was physically in the city, physically in the same space as you, as I had wanted to be since meeting you, and also that this small heaven was so painfully temporary. My heart was filled and shattered within the space of around two weeks — transwomen be speedrunning everything.
I built a habit of absentmindedly swinging through Insomniac’s New York back in 2022, when I first picked up Spider-Man (2018) on Steam. To give them credit for one thing that they nailed initially and only improved over time, swinging through the city that never sleeps is just magical. I’d hit play on a punk or hip-hop playlist depending on mood, turn off the HUD and just lose myself in the literal pull of webs, falling and rising and falling and rising and. This remained an on-and-off comforting habit for the years to come, joining Yakuza 0 and Sonic Generations as a sort of focused meditation in the twilight hours to mindlessly relax myself after particularly stressful daylight hours.
Then I met you, let you into my heart and, much later, was let into your apartment. Suddenly, New York meant something to me. I continued to swing, shifting from the progenitorial Manhattan of Spider-Man to the snow-covered wonderland of Miles Morales all the way to now, with the almost-Brooklyn of Spider-Man 2. But now, it’s not absent-minded: I think of you. When I launch myself through the busy streets of Chinatown, I recall wandering through those streets myself, following you as you led me and Julia to King Dumplings for the best shumai five dollars could buy. Perching upon the rounded edge of the Guggenheim, my thoughts drift to looking at you looking at Gabriele Münter’s works. Listening to a subway car rattle far beneath my extended web wings, my neck remembers the feeling of melting into your shoulder on our many sunrise and sunset subway rides — at home while so far from home. As I watch the orange sheen of the Staten Island Ferry float through the harbor from a skyscraper, I think not of the 3D model interacting with a water simulation within a video game; I think of the afternoon sun hitting your face while we look out to the water on the ferry’s bridge, red strands alight and alive in the bitter wind, teeth bared in an unfettered grin paired with an uncontrolled laugh, eyes full of sun and sky and water and metal and god and love.
All of that is to say, Spider-Man 2 means very little to me, and is something I am excited to forget. New York, and my time in it, is something that I never will.
Trying to do better,
Ashley Violet
Dear Angy Ashley,
One of the ironies of writing the second letter in each post is that, about halfway through the series, I got ahead of you in story progression. Around the same time Venom tore through Times Square and crunched on Kraven’s head, I experienced things first and wrote about them much later. Your ferocious, volcanic anger at the final act of Spider-Man 2 has cooled into something more brittle and porous for me.
Harry’s sublimation into Venom and subsequent quest for world domination are Saturday Morning Cartoon stupid. Goop (black, purple, green, yellow) infects random passersby, seemingly dropped from the large, pulsating black shafts that spring up throughout the city. Despite their alien nature, Venom and the hypercharged Symbiote never feel dastardly or apocalyptic like Devil’s Breath. At most, they feel inconvenient, like stepping in dog shit while trying to avoid sidewalk construction. It’s dirty and loud and aggravating, but it’s not the end of the world for anyone involved.
Honestly the most aggravating part of the goop’s spread is the creation of Symbiote Nests, timed arena battles where players must protect a sonic bomb while it “harmonizes” or some dumb shit and destroys a core, saving the infected and I guess loosening Venom’s grasp on the citizens? It’s unclear. What is crystal is that these fucking blow. Battling an endless barrage of enemies until number go down enough can be engaging once, maybe twice, but to do it ELEVEN GODDAMN TIMES (ten nests plus the introductory story mission) is infuriating. Most encounters run identically; a small handful have two bombs to protect, although the enemy AI is so stupid that it often only attacks one at a time; only one had the unique idea of moving the bomb around the arena to be more engaging. The minimal challenge of the Nests — there are lots of enemies who dodge and slip and slide away — initially forced me to use lots of gadgets, webs, and Iron Spider moves. But any difficulty dried up when I unlocked the Anti-Venom (or I mean, cum) suit, which deals extra damage to Venomies and can rip through crowds like a paper shredder.
Before racing to the end with the impatience of Insomniac’s narrative team — which condenses Venom’s NYC romp into about 90 minutes, twenty of those being the final boss fight — I wanted to give the briefest of space for the side quests, almost none of which resolve in a meaningful or fulfilling manner because of the spectre of cancelled DLC. Cletus gets a hold of some Symbiote, which turns red due to match his fiery anger, and flees, leaving Wraith to begrudgingly save Peter and promise to reach out whenever the cult leader-turned-mass murderer arises again. She says it will probably take years. After wing surfing through enough airstreams, Spider-Man investigates the apartment of the Chameleon, who is Kraven’s brother (the only surviving Kravenoff), who makes a comment about wanting to hunt Spider-Man (again). The Nests give you literally nothing in the way of story. Am I missing anything from this checklist of Things To Do? Probably not; if I am, it’s not important enough to recall. The last mission starts, Peter, MJ, and Miles take turns taking back the Knull meteorite to the EMF particle accelerator so it can be exploded by energy or something. A remorseful Harry briefly makes an appearance, but doesn’t die because we need an excuse for Green Goblin and a living grief for Peter to consider should he ill-advisedly be a protagonist in the third game. That’s all, folks. (Can she say that? Legally?)
One point of contention between the two of us in regards to the final act of this game is the inclusion of Scream, in the form of a Symbiote-infected Mary Jane. The boss fight itself is one in a succession of punching bags because who gives a shit about proper pacing (and yet another example of how unbelievably lucky Peter and MJ are that deep Queens is apparently in a constant state of repair and construction). It is narratively convenient that MJ becomes Scream, mostly because no other Symbiote creatures — Lasher, Phage(???), Agony, Riot, Toxin — are even referenced, but MJ is Important Enough to warrant becoming a recognizable character. The fight itself exists solely to climax and resolve the narrative tension between Peter, an unemployed man torn between being a hero and making a family, and Mary Jane, the proud journalist forced into clickbait to keep food on the table and the bank away from May’s house. It would help if this tension was actually built upon before the scene, but for once, let’s take a look at what’s here rather than what should be.
Scream is supposed to embody all of MJ’s swallowed resentments: at Peter, for prioritizing superheroing over a normal life (job, date nights, a future); at J. Jonah Jameson, for his misogynistic tendencies and adoration of angry clickbait over actual journalism; and at the world itself for ignoring her genuinely important book on Symkaria, thus forcing her into yellow journalism. On paper, this isn’t a bad idea; in fact, it might even be a good one. As we’ve said repeatedly, the Symbiote is supposed to dangerously heighten a character’s emotions. Making Peter, and the suburbs of Queens, confront MJ’s frustrations head on could be powerful in the hands of a competent narrative team, but alas none of those are in sight. Instead, Peter punches the everliving shit out of the love of his life, and each drained health bar sparks a conversation about just how terrible of a partner Peter has been (something he pointedly blames on the Symbiote and doesn’t ever apologize for), how shitty the world has treated MJ’s writing, how terrible it feels to write something that you know for a fact will make zero impact. (That one hits a little close to home for my writing insecurities.) Some of these insecurities have been hinted at before, but most of it comes to light for the first time during the fight, the narrative once again mistakenly believing that emotional catharsis can be achieved with zero set up. They’re firing blanks, not missiles like they seem to believe they are.
Scream is the closest Spider-Man 2 gets to understanding how unprocessed emotions can turn us into monsters. As I’m settling into yet another change in medication, something that should be for my benefit, the wreckage of my most recent outrages sits before me to pick through. As I’ve gotten more sober and more competent at dealing with difficult emotions, the blast radius of my crash outs has, thankfully, minimized. Less friends and family are in the wake of devastation, but that means that the venom in me is frequently aimed toward those closest to me and those in my immediate vicinity, like customers at my job. These poor tourists and locals who wanted steak dinner were greeted with barely veiled frustration at their mere existence as my shifts crawled to their end. You, Ashley, faced plenty of my outbursts with dignity and grace, a byproduct of your care for me, which I am endlessly gracious for. But many of my frustrations were instead aimed inward, and damaging myself has never been something I've cared enough to stop. Even days later, it continues to happen for no other reason than curiosity, or boredom, or self-loathing.
Scream, at least in this generous reading, briefly hints at the inevitable conclusion of the Spider-Man complex: placing others above yourself at all costs inevitably hurts them and yourself. Peter’s selflessness places unwanted burdens on MJ, infecting her self-image, her relationship to her work, and her understanding of her place in Peter’s life. When Peter makes sacrifices, he’s making it for both of them. It’s not that MJ didn’t sign up for this — loving Peter means loving Spider-Man means dealing with the aftermath of both of their decisions — but agreeing to something doesn’t make it easier to deal with.
Having an alter-ego is not entirely unlike having a mental illness, a secret that you keep close to the chest and try to deal with without the two sides clashing, affecting one another, damaging each other. Spill over is inevitable. Peter will have to choose between May and stopping Ock. Miles will have to place aside his hatred at Li for the sake of saving Peter’s life. These are actions that will haunt them, their ghosts lingering deep in their memories like poppies thriving six feet under. This isn’t an exact metaphor but it’s close enough to hit home. My illnesses do not provide me with superpowers or make me responsible for the lives of millions of people: just a few. Myself, my family, my loved ones. Loving me means loving me when I’m spiralling means dealing with the aftermath of my crash outs. I think this is part of why Spider-Man Blue remains my favorite comic: Peter reminisces about Gwen Stacy, his first love that he couldn’t save, while MJ listens, unable to lessen the weight that burdens the man she shares a life with. Love is not in spite of, it is in addition to.
Mary Jane loves Peter and knows she will never be the most important thing in his life, so long as he’s Spider-Man. Which, at least by the time the credits roll, is something he’s willing to stop doing for the moment. He wants to take a crack at being Peter Parker for the first time in years. Whatever shape that takes. Do I believe Insomniac will let Miles fully take the mantle and keep Peter on the sidelines? Not really, no. But I think it would be a kindness to let Peter have some actual time exploring what life is like sans-spider persona. Silk is already there as a willing replacement and second playable character. After all he’s been through, losing his Aunt and his best friend in a short matter of time, he more than deserves the break.
I cannot hang up my mask. I cannot blame my addiction, my anger, my violence on a black goop. I refuse to wave away my bad actions and malintentions as out of character. They are a part of me. Even after years of treatment and miraculous transformations, I will still have the same sicknesses; believing otherwise is a fool’s errand that results in relapses and vanity. There will be good days, but there will certainly be more bad ones. Razors will be covered in blood more often than I would like, and three meals a day will not always feel possible. I will not always want to get out of bed. I will almost never be as kind to myself as I should be. And I cannot promise how long it will take until a drink or a joint stops seeming like an appealing solution to the discomfort of living. It might be never.
But I will get out of bed eventually. I will attend a meeting, go to therapy, call a friend or someone I only recently met. I will put my cheap fountain pen to paper and scribble out resentments, tap my fingers on a keyboard and exorcise my emotions about everything from silly video games to serious life topics. I will do my best to be of service to everyone not in spite of myself, but because it’s what makes me a better version of myself. This isn’t the Spider-Man complex, but something else adjacent. Something I don’t really have the language for yet. Others say things that land instead: esteemable acts build self-esteem; it is by self-forgetting that we find ourselves; some third trite aphorism comforts me depending on the day.
I’m not “well” yet, but I’m closer than I was. Messes will be made. Trials and tribulations are a promise, and I probably won’t always handle them as a woman of dignity and grace. So, what’s a girl to do? Are there any good options? My favorite writer seems to think so.
The possibility of falling apart is everpresent. My flame flickers often, more than I’d like. I struggle to hold myself together, close to shattering if I loosen my grip for just a second. But I’m slowly, hesitantly, with great effort, allowing myself to crumble when I need to. There are people willing, waiting, begging to catch me. And when I’m with them, I don’t have to think about myself, and it hurts less.
I promise, here in front of however many readers, that I’ll catch you. I don’t have webbing, but I’ve been told my arms are an okay place to land. Do you promise to catch me back?
Not in spite of, but in addition to,
Micaela Hazel