thelittlestspider

[thelittlestspider]

#aid #palestine

[thelittlestspider]

Inspired by @lacnunga 's adorable dragon embroidery

[thelittlestspider]

The baby so far 🐉 still got a few bits to add but Im quite happy with it so far

[thelittlestspider]

[thelittlestspider]

'Serpent', a scent bottle, no.

502, designed 1920. René Lalique.

Clear, frosted and sepia stained glass.

[thelittlestspider]

Look, the reason Star Trek aliens are just humans with funny foreheads isn’t because they’re lazy, it’s because Star Trek as a franchise pre-dates both CGI and The Muppet Show, and by the time the technology existed to routinely depict non-humanoid aliens on a TV show budget, it was too late – forehead aliens had already been established as part of Star Trek’s defining aesthetic.

#star trek

[thelittlestspider]

i'm obsessed with this fic

warnings: sex.

Peter groaned as he came, panting into Milla's neck. He kissed her, then pulled out, lying next to her under the sheet.

They lay side by side, catching their breath.

Peter turned his head to look at Milla. She had her eyes closed, looking peaceful for someone who just slept with her husband's friend.

"I'm divorcing Matt, you know," she said.

A pit formed in Peter's stomach.

"Shit." He rubbed his face. "I'm sorry for all this. I never wanted to break you and Matt up."

Milla snorted, surprising him.

"Peter, it's not your fault. I already knew Matt was attracted to you. That's not why." Milla sighed. "When we started dating, I thought I knew what I was getting into. That I could handle whatever crazy stuff he could throw at me. But what I didn't account for was how fucking lonely it would be. Just waiting here, night after night, wondering if he was coming home."

Peter thought of MJ, waiting for him to come back, when she wasn't off working. It wasn't fair to put her through this like Milla. Hell, it was one of the reasons they broke up so many times before they got married.

"You like MJ, right?" he asked. Milla looked surprised, then smiled at the thought of her.

"I like her a lot," answered Milla.

Then that decided it. Peter would let MJ go.

#every me and every you tag

[thelittlestspider]

i feel like there's not enough written about matt's radar interacting with peter's spider sense

#every me and every you tag

[thelittlestspider]

[thelittlestspider]

[thelittlestspider]

i will never ever get over this

[image id: comic excerpt from daredevil (2014) #10. first panel: kirsten mcduffie and matt murdock are on a walk together, and kirsten tells matt, “i—it seems pretty obvious to me that those kids did a number on your inner matt. tore up some mental floorboards. are you really okay, or is this ‘fake it til you make it’ mode?”

second panel: matt and karen’s silhouette’s show as they walk down the street, and matt says, “they churned up a little grit, but it’s settled. i fake notning. i am ducky, ma’am. beautiful day, lovely company, wrongs avenged...life is pretty spectacular.”

third panel: matt kisses kirsten on the lips and says, “see ya tomorrow, beautiful.”

fourth to eighth panels: matt comes home, and his apartment is dark. he takes his shoes off and hangs his white cane. he goes up the stairs while he takes his shirt off. he sits on his bed, takes his glasses off, then curls up in his bed, facing away. there is no text aside from the daredevil logo to imply that the issue has ended.

ninth-twelfth panels: matt’s phone rings, and he picks it up to answer.

thirteenth panel: matt is laying on his side, and he begins to say, “hey—“ but is cut off by kirsten on the phone saying, “‘ducky’? who says that? did you really fool anyone into believing you were your own twin brother once? because i have seen horses on mexican soap operas that are better actors than you!” matt continues his initial sentence by saying, “—there.”

fourteenth panel: matt is lying on his back now, and says, “i just...i feel like talking. you don’t have to come over or anything...” kirsten tells him, “of course i don’t.”

fifteenth to eighteenth panels: kirsten is sitting on the floor next to matt’s apartment door. she says into her phone, “i never left.” she looks at his door, which unlocks.

nineteenth panel: kirsten smiles and says, “thanks for letting me in.” end image id.]

#dd #mattkirsten #*dying seal noises*

[thelittlestspider]

Making a post to register an important observation of mine. as I was going through very early issues of dd yet again, something that comes up for me is how Foggy's visual identity was slowly developed through the issues into something we recognize as a Foggy that looks like Foggy. And to this post, it's on the exact point where Foggy acquired his signature hairstyle.

I already knew Gene Colan was responsible for shaping Foggy into the recognizable Foggy figure, body shape, facial features, hair, fashion sense, but I hadn't thought to mark when exactly the changes happened. And now in this reexamining I noticed that the Foggy bangs came to be in between issues 25 and 26 of volume 1, as Fog started out with wavy slicked back hair.

For visuals, this is Foggy in issue 25

And this is Foggy in issue 26

I just think that's neat :)

(has alt text)

#foggy nelson

[thelittlestspider]

Matthew M. Murdock By Gabriel Larragán

#matt murdock

[thelittlestspider]

#spiders

[thelittlestspider]

I'm going to need to know your FULL opinion on the erosion of Elektra Natchios in The Red Fist Saga ASAP!

OOF. Okay, here goes...

Elektra's role in the Red Fist Saga directly follows the Woman Without Fear mini-series, so I feel like I should start there, especially since I haven't really talked about it yet on this blog. Woman Without Fear was an Elektra solo comic that came out just as Devil's Reign was ending and the creative team was gearing up for the Red Fist Saga. The mini-series's purpose was to introduce big, shocking changes to Elektra's origin story. These changes didn't end up having much to do at all with the Red Fist Saga, or with anything else really, but they did functionally strip her of her agency and autonomy and made her motivations instead revolve around Matt. Now, Elektra's origin story has changed before. Frank Miller himself gave us three versions: the original, introduced in Daredevil volume 1 #168 and #190, a slight variation in Elektra: Assassin (he changed the timeline a bit and modified the character of Elektra's father), and then an entirely new, in my opinion much less interesting version in Man Without Fear-- which was not intended to be part of the 616 continuity, though that didn't stop later writers from drawing from it, including Zdarsky, who seems to have used it as a core text to inform his characterization of Elektra in general.

I know you know Elektra's original origin story, but I'll provide the general gist for anyone who might be unfamiliar: Elektra Nachios was the daughter of a rich Greek diplomat and his wife. Her mother was gunned down by assassins while pregnant, but Elektra survived. Her father, now paranoid and fearful, put Elektra in martial arts classes from a young age, while also keeping her sheltered to protect her from harm. She ended up attending college in the US, where she met Matt Murdock, another sheltered kid with a beloved but overprotective father. They fell in love, but the magic was destroyed when Elektra and her father were taken hostage by terrorists. Matt tried to be a hero, and Elektra's father ended up getting killed. Shattered by grief, Elektra left school and traveled across the world to train with Stick, who had trained her childhood martial arts teacher before casting him out (in Elektra: Assassin, the timeline is slightly different; Elektra trained with Stick before attending Columbia, though the end result is the same). Stick saw Elektra's skill, but judged that she was too emotionally compromised to complete the training and kicked her out. Elektra devised a desperate plan to prove herself to Stick: infiltrating the Hand and taking them down from the inside. She failed tragically. Turned cynical by grief and hardship, she used the skills she had picked up from all of her training as weapons to protect herself from a harsh and unforgiving world. She carved herself a life from the tragedies she had endured. She became an assassin.

Note that I mentioned Matt's name a grand total of two times in that synopsis. It's not to say that Matt isn't important to Elektra, of course he is, but he isn't that important to her origin story. The star of this beautiful tragedy is Elektra, as she should be.

Woman Without Fear introduces something new-- at least, new to the comics (more on that in a moment). It takes the Elektra: Assassin timeline and suggests that she trained with Stick when she was still a child. (It also brings in things from the Man Without Fear Elektra origin, but I don't think I'm going to get into that here because that is a whole other rant and this post is long and tangent-y enough already). It then suggests that when Stick rejected her, she still ended up with the Hand-- but not of her own will, with the intention of destroying them. No! She was successfully recruited. And once the Hand had her in their clutches, they sent her out to go after another target: Matt Murdock. In this shiny new backstory, Elektra and Matt run into each other at college not as two kindred spirits, but because Elektra was ordered to hang out with him in order to bag him for the Hand...before, oh no!, accidentally falling in love with him. To add extra insult to this character assassination, we're told in the main series that even her behavior during her father's hostage situation was intended as a test for Matt.

What this change indicates to me is a fundamental lack of understanding of Elektra's character; or worse, a lack of respect for her complexity, or a conviction that she operates at her best as a tool to further Matt's narrative.

What is possibly most baffling to me about all of this is that this change had pretty much no bearing on the Red Fist Saga. Why was it made? What was the point? The term "MCU-ification", referring to changes being made in Marvel's comics that seem aimed at aligning them more closely with the MCU, gets thrown around a lot-- possibly too much-- but this really does seem like a case where there's no other clear explanation for the change other than to shift 616 Elektra's backstory closer to that of her live action counterpart. (In the Netflix show, Elektra recruited Matt for Stick; something I, as a huge Stick and Elektra fan, actually thought was a cool What If?/alternate universe because it presented an opportunity to explore a different take on their relationship). The new backstory is mentioned a few times in the main Daredevil series, but otherwise it seems irrelevant to the plot. And that's because Elektra herself is kind of irrelevant to the plot. She seems to have three purposes in this story: 1. To serve alongside Stick as an exposition machine and provide details about the Hand/Fist/Pinky Toe/etc.; 2. To be someone Matt loves and thinks about in moments of danger and conflict (despite the fact that they have very few moments of actual emotional connection in this story, despite getting married!), and 3. As a warm body onto which Matt can project his perpetual internal musings on good and evil ("Elektra was Bad, but she is Good now. She, like all people who have done bad things, is still worthy of God's love and is capable of rehabilitation, and look! Her decision to take on the Daredevil identity is proof that she is now Good! She has become a worthy soldier of God." Man, I wish I was exaggerating.)

Elektra's appearances in Daredevil comics have always centered around Matt to some degree, simply because it is his comic. There's miles of difference between reading a DD comic with Elektra cameos and reading an Elektra solo series. But that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating to have comics like the Blackman/Del Mundo run, or the Dark Reign solo tie-in, that delve so deeply into Elektra's rich psyche, that truly do look at her worldview in a way that is complex and morally difficult and so, so compelling, and then to have comics like this where she barely even feels present because so little effort has been made to do anything other than slap some vague morality lessons onto her and make sure she and Matt sleep together every other issue.

#dd #elektra natchios

[thelittlestspider]

hey guys i-

#q

[thelittlestspider]

Stanisław Wyspiański - Study of a Dog (1900-1902)

#dogs