Okay, but what if not all mutations (a la X-Men) are actually helpful? The powers supposedly come from an evolutionary mutation, after all, and some of those hit dead ends – not everyone ends up ‘the fittest.’
And what if this is actually the explanation for Peter Parker’s extraordinarily bad luck? He actually is a mutant, but he has a terrible power that only causes him pain and grief, and the only reason he’s still alive is because he got those spider powers. And no one’s figured it out because they’re distracted by the spider powers and don’t notice that the luck is literally unnaturally bad.
I was talking to my sister about this, and she put forth the suggestion of Peter getting a mutant power suppressant collar put on him and I just… that would be amazing? Like, no one knows where Peter’s powers came from for the most part, we’re got all these mutants running around, it wouldn’t be a stretch for some anti-mutant jerk to just assume that he’s a mutant, catch Peter, and toss him in with all the other mutants they’ve captured for whatever purpose.
Cue Peter announcing to the rest of the captives “Don’t worry, guys, I’m not actually a mutant – my powers still work just fine!” and breaking everyone out. Except, as they get farther and farther into the escape, Peter starts getting more and more concerned because. Nothing is going wrong? At all? This has been shockingly easy? Everything’s going according to plan? What? By the time they’re out the door, Peter’s started actively trying to distance himself from the rest of the group and be annoying and unlikeable, because this is too long without something going wrong, someone’s going to die if this keeps up.
But no one dies. They get back to the X-mansion with minor fuss, Professor X runs some tests because Peter’s freaking out and it turns out, oh, you actually were a mutant, your power is just the worst power ever.
Peter: “Soooo… what I’m getting out of this is, if I keep wearing this collar, I won’t have such constant crappy luck?”
Professor X: “Well ideally it would be best if you learned more about your power now that you’re aware of it and-”
Peter: “Sorry, just remembered that you wouldn’t let me join your super-team so I don’t have to listen to you byeeeeeee~!!!”
And he makes it home in time for supper and life just gets better. Though Peter keeps getting surprised by stuff. Ex:
Peter: Wow, I haven’t stepped in gum in, like, a week. Weird.
MJ: That’s… actually pretty normal for most people?
Peter: What, seriously? Wild.
(snorts) A+ additional content, can’t stop picturing Peter somehow acquiring more of those suppressant collars, so he can learn how they work and build either build himself a new one if the first one he gets breaks or stream-line the design to make it more comfortable and less obvious to wear, because he is high-key Not Going Back To That.
It would also be interesting to see peoples’ reactions to that sort of thing, especially if this is in one of those universes where normal people know at least vaguely about the suppressant collars, not so much from a superheroing standpoint (he can always wear the thing under his costume and just say “yeah, trying a new look”) but from people in school.
‘cause I can see that covering a wide spectrum of reactions, from the people who have no idea what it is and think it’s just some new ‘look’ to the people who do know and approve (because that’s the ‘responsible’ thing for a mutant to do) to the people who think it is high-key disgusting that he’s wearing that thing for various reasons (either under the impression that he’s being played by the system or forced to wear it (I’m not saying MJ is ready to cut someone when she first sees it, but hoo boy, I’m not saying she isn’t, either)). If even a small fraction of the school knows about those collars, wearing it in public means he’s basically come out as being a mutant, and that news will travel fast, it’s high school.
The thing is, though? It’s also happening in a situation where Peter’s supernatually bad luck isn’t in play, and it’d be really interesting to see this play out in a situation where the worst-case-scenario isn’t automatically the most likely.
Also it’s canon that mutant suppression collars cause terrible headaches, so Peter could potentially solve that problem
Oooh, yeah! And if he can’t do it on his own, it’s also canon that he knows a magical surgeon who could potentially help him figure it out!
Peter: EYYYY, DOCTOR STRANGE! My favorite doctor-type person! Help me figure out how to make these stop causing migranes so I never have to take it off again, pretty please? I’m not quite sure which bit of me head it’s causing to hurt.
Dr. Strange: (is so shocked that someone’s asking after his medical knowledge as opposed to his magical knowledge that he’s halfway through a consultation before he realizes what he’s doing)
Peter Parker: -on meeting Loki, offers his hand- Hi, I’m Peter!
Loki: -shakes his hand- Loki of Asgard.
Peter: Aren’t you like…a bad guy?
Loki: It varies from moment to moment.
Peter: So like…on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst evil imaginable, like…killing puppies, and one being I’ll spit on your hotdog…where are you right now?
Loki: …maybe a three?
Peter: Cool. Lemme know if it gets above a six.
Loki: -thinking- I like him.
It had been a joke, a flippant line, but somehow, Loki found himself taking the youth up on it.
It was hard living around these heroic Avengers, hard trying to stay close to Thor. And when he felt his need for mischief rise too high, when he felt exasperation with these Midgardians turn too close to spite, he would casually say “Six.” to the young man, or sometimes “Seven.”
And Peter would spend the rest of his day with Loki. He would badger him with questions about magic, or drag him across his beloved city to see its entertainments, or take him along stopping petty crimes. He grounded Loki to the here and now, and distracted him from the churning, jagged shards of ice in his mind.
WE NEED LOKI AND PETER FICS
Yeah, the people who write the comics agree with you
imagine if someone really pissed Loki off and he turns to Peter and just “IT’s A TEN, CHILD”
Peter: OH SHIT. EVERYBODY EVACUATE THE CIVILIANS
@shesellsseagulls I know this isn’t your normal shtick, but IMAGINE!
ANYTHING with peter is 100% my shtick and I am HERE FOR THIS.
Because, like. On the one hand it’s just fun and funny and silly in the way we want Spidey to be- him being young and naive enough to take a command (like “You’re an adult in the Jewish community now” farther than it’s maybe intended.
But on the other hand, this is exactly what’s intended. Superheroes- at least, the best ones- are basically the living embodiment of “If not me, then who?” They’re trying to make the world a better place than it was. And that is the responsibility of any Jewish adult. Peter getting bit by a radioactive spider and saying “Well, shit, looks like my only option is tikkun olam” is SUCH A FUCKING RIDICULOUSLY JEWISH CHOICE.
Like- if Peter was already comfortably Spidey in Civil War, in the MCU he had to be pretty close to his Bar Mitzvah when he became Spider-man. Which means that it happened right in that time where you’re taking the idea of what b’nai mitzvot means super seriously. You’re suddenly expected to view the world as something you can fix. You’re considering what it means that you’re suddenly an adult, and that you have these new responsibilities, and how can you live up to them.
In that context, with great power comes great responsibility isn’t just about being a superhero, it’s also about being called to the bimah, and permission to read the Torah, and the ability to join a minyan. In that context, developing fucking spider powers must feel like a sign of how being a Jewish adult encompasses so much more than you could ever imagine, both in terms of pivilege and in terms of obligations.
Maybe “Spider-boy” could walk past someone who needs help, but “Spider-man” could not. In choosing that name, Peter is unequivocally embracing the power and burden of Jewish adulthood.
NO BUT GUYS.
Consider:
Peter’s congregation does not, officially, know that he’s Spider-man. It is definitely his secret identity and that has not been breached, he is VERY SECRETIVE, etc.
Except.
Except that they’re a community and they all know about the tragedy that took his parents, and then to lose his Uncle Ben (z’’l) on top of that.
When he started acting odd, they all thought it was grief, made it a point to keep an eye on him.
When he started asking questions about the morality of certain things- they took notice.
The way he disappeared some afternoons, even if there was a youth group meeting (and he used to be pretty good about attending those when he didn’t have clubs after school), and those always happened to be the same day Spidey footage showed up on YouTube.
The way he’s always offering to run errands and just happens to be able to do things faster than anyone else can.
The way Spider-man doesn’t seem to work on Shabbas unless there is something that really cannot be solved without him.
They see the Bugle articles about him and, as a community, reject them. The rabbi says it in his sermon: Spider-man is not a menace, he is a mensch.
In the pews, Peter Parker’s sigh of relief is loud, and everyone pretends not to hear it.
Peter asking his religious school teacher REALLY BIZARRELY POINTED QUESTIONS. Peter bringing up weird fringe Jewish theories he found on Reddit and YouTube and being like “Is this true though? IF I GOT BITTEN BY A SNAKE-” “Peter, did you get bitten by a snake? Forget religious concerns, do we need to take you to the hospital?” “DO NOT TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL”
Man, but this is actually a really interesting question! Because health and well-being takes priority over basically everything else in Jewish tradition, how does developing superpowers factor into that? Are they enhancing health and well-being, or compromising it? If it’s the former, would doing things to support superpowers be considered not just good because helping people is a mitzvah but also because it is using his body the way it was intended? By biting Peter, did the radioactive spider inadvertently perform a great service in more ways than one?
“Do aliens count as life? Would killing them bring repercussions upon me? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Am I a bad Jew if I teamed up with a non-Jew, like a…a spider or a gentile god or a sentient raccoon or something in order to fight said aliens? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Could non-kosher animals that perform a good service for a Jew be rewarded? In what ways?”
“Is it Jewish of me to get the urge to crawl into a ceiling corner and wait for flies?”
“What if I could help people, but the way in which I helped them didn’t match up with Judaism? I could follow Jewish teachings, but then I’d be helping less people…”
I think what I love most about this is that so many of these questions have halachic precedent, some even in our world, but ESPECIALLY in the MCU.
Because you know that the second Tony Stark stepped up to that mic in 2008 and said “I am Iron Man,” Jewish scholars started EXPLODING with discussions and hypotheticals about this new world they were suddenly occupying.
Plus, by the time Pete was bitten by the spider, the Chitauri attack already happened, which means rabbis in New York were at the FOREFRONT of figuring out what the shit is going on with their world and how that intersects with Jewish custom.
I’m unclear if SHIELD being infiltrated by Hydra ended up known or if they covered at least some of it up, but if it was public knowledge, that is such a huge additional thing for Jews- that this group historically associated with the Nazis is not just still around, but infiltrating the highest aspects of government. I think that would fundamentally change how Jews approach superheroes and superpowers. In fact, I think that would be a pretty big topic in youth groups and in religious classes, both dealing with kids’ fears and figuring out how to make the ones who AREN’T scared realize how deadly serious the whole situation is. And that, in and of itself, would probably change Peter’s response to becoming Spider-man; the great responsibility of it takes on new resonance in that climate.
blackash26 