Racing Turtles

Spider-Verse fanfiction idea I’ll never get around to writing:

Teacher: Congratulations, Miles. Your paper on multi-dimensional physics has attracted a TON of interest from our Science Mentorship partners. We’ve found you a really wonderful Science Mentor who’s going to be helping you prepare your Youth Science Innovators presentation this week.

Miles: Oh, wow, my parents are gonna be so proud.

Teacher: So, let me introduce you to Dr. Olivia Octavius. Thank you, doctor, for being part of this mentorship program.

Liv: It’s my pleasure, I’m just happy I can help inspire the science community of tomorrow.

Miles: … D:

Important additions:

- Liv is 100% legitimately invested in being a good Science Mentor. After all, today’s young scientists are tomorrow’s reality-warping coworkers.

- Miles’s paper was an edited version of his research on small, stable inter-dimensional portals, so he can hang out with Gwen/get multiverse help against major threats.

- Sometimes, Miles forgets to be scared or angry at Doc Ock and starts actually learning from her, except she inevitably proposes something super unethical and then unconvincingly adds “…theoretically, of course” and Miles starts planning how to counter whatever doom-bot she’s just come up with as Spider-Man.

- May Parker has been helping Miles with spider-gadgets and general science stuff after school. At some point, she and Liv have an angry shouting match over who gets science-custody of their science-nephew.

- Miles has to figure out how to turn down a very plush internship offer from Octavius at the end of the week. His parents insist he take it, he fails to come up with a good reason not to that doesn’t involve Spider-Man knowledge. His parents have Liv over for dinner, she speaks highly of their son and his bright future. The family loves her.

- When Liv eventually figures out his secret identity, she goes full punch-clock villain and keeps mentoring Miles while fighting Spider-Man’s attempts to stop her Bad Idea Science.

No

i’m weak.

im screaming!!

The Curious Case of May Parker

It’s happening in the cartoons, too:

Aunt May (and Ms. Lion) from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1980s)

Aunt May from Spider-Man: The Animated Series (1990s)

Aunt May from The Spectacular Spider-Man (2000s)

Aunt May from Ultimate Spider-Man (2010s)

True facts: Every time Peter’s uncle Ben dies in the latest origin story May absorbs the life force left over from his remaining years and uses it to rejuvenate herself

Uncle Ben dies over and over again to keep her young

I’m gonna be contrarian about this and say it totally fits better than any casting or art for Aunt May I’ve ever seen.

Think about it: Peter’s supposed to be in high school or early college at most, and Uncle Ben is supposed to be Richard’s(Peter’s dad’s) older brother. Having Ben and May be in their 60s-70s was always ridiculous because it meant Peter was born super late in his parents’ lives; what, did Mary Parker have Peter in her 50s-60s? Richard and Mary die when he’s six, at a point in their own lives when they are physically capable(under certain continuities) of being SHIELD Field Agents. They’re supposed to meet on the job, fall in love, and have a kid in pretty short order, which fits well with mid-to-late 20s behavior, or early 30s on the outside. They die when he’s 6, so early-to-mid 30s, making Ben anywhere from 32-45 when he and May adopt Peter, depending on how much older you want him to be. Tack on 10 years for Peter to reach 16, and you end up with an age-range for May(assuming she was about Ben’s age, which she should since they were childhood friends) from 42-55 when Ben dies and Peter becomes Spiderman. Marisa Tomei is 51 and easily capable of playing 10 years younger when she needs to, allowing her to p much cover the whole age-range depending on how you want to play it. 

This was great casting; It makes the ages much more believable.