Just saw somebody genuinely recommend the gwenverse series and I realized I’m not sure I ever explained here why I hate it so much, so… Is there an interest in reading me tearing it to shreds?
Oh my god I’m so sorry for taking so long. At first I just didn’t get around to it but then I got insanely busy and now here it is woo
Anyway so just for background in case y'all aren’t familiar, earth 65’s Gwen Stacy was introduced in the Spider-Verse event in 2014 and got her own comic, Radioactive Spider Gwen, in 2015. That run ended in 2018, and she promptly got a run called Spider Gwen: Ghost Spider that ran for ten issues and a follow up run called Ghost Spider that ended too soon imho. These two runs firmly established her new identity, and she stops using both Spider Woman and Spider Gwen as her hero names, adopting Ghost Spider, which is a fine name imo and works well with her arc. So for a couple of years we have no main title comics for Gwen, although she appears here and there in 616 comics as of the end of Ghost Spider she only operates in 616 due to Stuff. Read the comics they’re great I won’t be getting into that here.
So like I said, Gwen doesn’t have a title after 2019, but then a miniseries is announced, starting summer 2022, starring my beloved Ghost Spider. It’s called Spider-Gwen: Gwen-Verse.
Wait, just a second, record scratch. Did I read that right? Spider-Gwen? I thought she’d been called Ghost Spider since 2018!
Oh well, maybe it’s an artefact title, just meant to appeal to an audience that isn’t familiar with her canon? Although like. That doesn’t usually happen. Like Tim Drake isn’t currently being referred to as Red Robin when he’s operating as Robin just bc of recognizability (ignoring that fact that he should NOT be Robin anymore, but that’s a different rant).
This is a minor problem, supposedly, but I think it’s indicative of the problems inherent to the mini series as a whole, which is that Tim Seeley has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about!!!!
Ghost Spider (2019) ends on this massive dramatic cliffhanger - that same aforementioned Stuff that prevents her from working in her own universe as a hero - and yet here there is no mention of any of that. Gwen is still going back and forth from 616, yeah, but there’s no mention of her being unable to patrol her own universe at all. And then there’s also the fact that this Gwen isn’t anything like my Gwen at all. She’s so out of character the entire time - in fact the entire plot hinges on it.
Like, okay, just a sec. I need to explain the idea behind gwenverse before I can explain why the entire plot hinges on Gwen being ooc. So the idea for gwenverse is that in the far far future there is an artist called Finale who wants to become, I shit you not, “the ultimate meme”. In order to do this, Finale wants to copy herself across time. However, as she tries to copy herself, entirely coincidentally Gwen is crossing universes to go to college and boom suddenly she’s the one being copied across the timeline and for some reason there is now a Thorgwen, Iron GWEN, Gwen Rogers, Gwen Howlett… Okay you get it. These versions of Gwen that have been copied into history have wreaked havoc on Earth 65 and its timeline, and now Gwen has to fix this shit.
The main theme of the narrative is that every version of Gwen spread throughout history has an aspect of Gwen that makes up most of her personality, and that in order to fix the timeline Gwen has to not only gather all the Gwens but also learn to love herself and correct her mistake. But there is so much wrong with this!!!!
Firstly WHAT THE FUCK WHY IS THIS NARRATIVE OF SELF ACCEPTANCE CAUSED ON ACCIDENT!!! If Gwen had SNEEZED before entering the portal none of this would have happened!!! Narratives that involve accepting your flaws should, always, every time, be caused by your flaws, you can’t fucking change my mind. Gwen’s self acceptance plot is entirely pulled out of Tim Seeley’s ass. Not only is it not thematically coherent since it’s accidental, he invents entirely new insecurities for Gwen that have NEVER been seen before in eight years of publication. Gwen HAS insecurities - that she won’t always do the right thing, that she’s not strong enough, that she’s not a good friend. But she doesn’t like, struggle with self love, or have anger issues, or any of the bullshit Tim Seeley pulled in this series.
Tim had a vague idea of what Teenage Girls™ Are Insecure About, and he had a vague recollection of the Wikipedia entry for Spider-Gwen, and he wrote a shitty story that had no thematic consistency or narrative appeal - it didn’t make sense as a continuation of Gwen’s character, and it completely ignored her previous plot and character development. It feels like whatever the opposite of fanfiction is - taking a character you have no respect or enjoyment of and writing for them because it’s your job.
It’s a waste of everyone’s time, effort, and frankly, I could’ve written something better in high school.
Fuck Tim Seeley and screw gwenverse Gwen deserves better
r/lawncare is an excellent demonstration of the premise underlying diet and beauty scams. Namely that if you advertise enough Products intended to do a thing—however impossible and unrealistic the thing—no force under heaven will be powerful enough to turn people away from the foolish notion that they can accomplish it.
The Products become an Industry, and the existence of the Industry becomes irrefutable evidence that the ideal is a real thing you can do.
There are many, many posts on r/lawncare that are vaguely the same: photos showing a neat lawn with a rather thin, faded appearance, with green sparsely overlying undertones of brown thatch and dust. “What’s wrong with my lawn? It looked so nice a few months ago?”
It’s working as intended, my friend. You got rid of all the weeds, cut the monoculture of grass 2 inches short, and nuked the environment of insect life, and now the soil is compacted, there’s no nitrogen fixers, no mycorrhizal network, no tunneling, digging or decomposing being done by bugs, no earthworms, and no broad leaf vegetation, so the grass is slowly starving and suffocating to death.
No such thing as a healthy monoculture.
One of the most horrific posts I’ve ever seen online:
So if you get anon hate like this, there is a few things you can do. (Also once again the person linked is totally innocent, anon is just using a link to them for some reason, do not bother them)
First of all, Tumblr made it so only people who have accounts and are logged in can send anons AT ALL. So if you want to you can click the three little dots in the upper right corner and report them
Anyways once you’re there, select the type of harassment you’re getting, after consulting a few people on discord I decided it was the second to last one.
Then of course you fill out the little form
Afterwards you can hit “Submit and Block”
Fun fact: when you block an anon you permanently (there is no way to reverse it) block their IP address and they can’t send you any more anons, also as a bonus, if you’ve received a LOT of anon hate and then you block one of them, reload your inbox to see how many it got rid of, because it might have just been one loser spamming you. If you don’t feel like reporting them then that’s fine too, just block those suckers.
And finally, you can take solace in the fact that you could never be as big of a loser as the anons sending people hate.
This article documents the severe and ongoing specimen neglect I witnessed over 12 months working at Florida State Collection of Arthropods. FSCA actively solicits donations, then picks and chooses what specimens to care about based on individuals’ personal favorites. The rest are left to rot.
Please take a look and consider sharing this, it’s extremely important for people (especially in science, taxonomy, natural history, museum curation, etc) to know how and why scientific material is being lost.
Sorry all, I’m extra sad about this today. I keep writing about this situation and deleting it later because I’m still scared they’re going to come after me.
I got fired from FSCA not because of my skill as a curator or the amount of effort I put in (I used to come in on weekends for no extra money just because I enjoyed the work, totally honest) but because I complained anonymously on my twitter about head curator Paul Skelley continuing to hang around in my office and try to talk to me after I had told my boss Felipe Soto-Adames MULTIPLE TIMES that Paul made me very uncomfortable. In a moment of weakness, I complained about it to strangers on the internet because my boss refused to do anything to help me out (he has personally confirmed) out of fear of retaliation/firing. While I was working at FSCA my job was basically covering for Paul, fixing the specimens including holotypes that he and others had neglected for longer than I’ve even been alive. So, yes, having to fix his gross negligence eight hours a day while also having to politely stroke his ego whenever he felt like chatting me up eventually shredded my nerves.
What’s extra pathetic is I still miss that job despite everything. I miss curating and having that goal of fixing up the whole wet collection even though I should not have had to do that and I wasn’t being treated well at all. I learned afterwards that Paul has gone after other young “troublemaking” employees before me and I am only the most recent target.
FSCA has probably burned all evidence that I ever worked there in a ceremonial fire by now but I still think about the place every day. I moved to my current apartment specifically for that job, and I had promised my boss I would stay there permanently even though the pay was barely enough for me to live. I don’t have many job skills. I was just going to stay there and work on my weird shrimp even though there were some jerks around.
I don’t know what to end with, I’m just still sad about this and I’m going to be sad for a while.
If you are in biology or natural history, please don’t forget about Paul Skelley and all the effort he went through just to get back at me personally because I got frustrated at him one time. My life is considerably harder now because I insisted on sticking up for not only myself but for the other people whose thousands of hours of work have rotted into nothing under his watch. Don’t let this guy stay famous for being a great scientist, he is not.
I’ve spent countless hours researching and analyzing the history and mythology behind the Tiefling race, and have compiled a comprehensive list of names that are sure to inspire and delight.
BUDDY you’re a BOY you’re a BIG BIG BOY you’re a BIG BIG BIG BIG BIG BIG BOY you got mud on your face you BIG BIG BOY kicking your can all over the place singing WEE wee WEE wee WEE wee WEE wee
UGH is is literally so much to ask that I have time and money to learn how to tailor clothes and embroider and knit and make cakes and bake bread and do makeup and hair and nails and do all my own diy projects around the house and
like I know this is probably so hard to make but my brain says I could do that and I need to do that
btw since this I have been beautifully and painfully trying to learn to cook, crochet, sew, paint etc and oh boy am I mediocre at a bunch of things but I’m having fun
