The Symbiote: Spider-Man's Perfect Flaw – Detail Diatribe

I do love that originally the symbiote just wanted to help Peter get more heroing done while also letting him sleep, and simply didn’t realize Peter wasn’t getting the rest he needed doing that.

To think all this sh*t with the symbiote happened because of this: Peter in Secret Wars: "Damn, my suit is in tatters. Let's see what this random alien item machine has..."

For me, the "SHCOCKER!" scene doesn't live rent free in my brain. It owns the condo. It makes other memories pay rent to be there.

The thing is, the Symbiote joy-riding around, being Spider-Man even when Peter is asleep and fighting crime as efficiently as possible is actually kind of endearing. Like, as alien as puppeteering someone's body around without their knowledge or consent would seem to a normal person, as an actual alien, it was doing what it thought the host would want. You know somewhere in Peter's head there were worries that his villains were becoming too much of a problem for him. So of course the symbiotic suit that bonded with him on a psychological level could sense those anxieties and would literally jump at the chance to do something about it and help its host get those good brain chemicals going again. Good intentions, horrible execution. Then he sheds the suit. Massive breakup, after the suit had done everything it could for him. He just cut it off in an extremely painful experience (high frequency sound waves, usually). Ofc it's gonna hold a grudge.

The Symbiote is always an amazing character moment for Peter. People make fun of the 90s animated series for doing it over the top, but nobody will ever forget, “I’LL CHASE YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH.”

The sudden like sucked back to Earth dread of a cocky villain when they realize a hero is actually possibly about to murder them is honestly my favorite thing that anti-kill hero stories can do.

I love the idea of the Symbiote being Spider-Man's jilted lover. They both know they don't work together, but if Peter ever offered to take them back, they'd drop their current host in a heartbeat, but Peter never would because he knows their relationship was super toxic.

Fun detail: The reason the Symbiote was about to kill Dock Ock in cold blood in Spectacular out of all the Sinister Six, is because just a moment before, Octavious had voiced an interest in Spider-Man's new suit upon seeing its regenerative abilities and wanted to, essentialy, peel it off Peter to dissect and analyze it.

Something really cool about the sinister six fight is you can actually see that he’s fighting without his spider sense. He is getting hit in the back frequently and blind shot with stuff he would never been hit normally. But the symbiote makes him SO DAMN DURABLE the hits he takes doesn’t even matter.

Peter did not get fired from the Connor's lab in the spectacular Spider-Man series because he was failing to be present, he was fired because he was taking pictures of the lizard, aka the mutated Dr. Connors, and then selling those pictures to the bugle for money. Mrs. Connor saw this as a massive breach of trust and fired him

49:05 Reds point about the landlord getting yelled at and turning to his niece and saying "he is good boy something must be wrong" also stuck out with me. Like it would have almost been typical for him to lash out someway or evict peter and later peter apologizes but instead it's a wholesome moment from this unassuming character and i like that

Honestly I think my favorite thing about the PS5 version of the black suit is that the first thing Peter notices about the suit is that he finally feels good. The bedrock of addiction is being in a vulnerable mental state to begin with.

The brawl with Harry was really sad. Because in a lot of ways it was inevitable. They spent so much of their lives being deeply jealous of each other and the moment their inhibitions slipped; they went for it.

You mentioned the thing about the landlord, and honestly, its one of my favorite things about Sam Raimi Spiderman. That world is so mean and cynical on the surface, really driving home the thanklessness of being spiderman, but over and over again, it keeps giving you these tiny moments of deeper humanity in a way thats genuinely really touching and nuanced. Like his landlord is an ass but he sees Peter is hurting and gives him grace; J Jonah Jameson is also an ass most of the time, but then he lies to cover for Peter even when his life is on the line; the people of the city are generally pretty selfish and rude, but they try to step in when villains are getting the upper hand, and there's those people on the train that hide his identity for him. It's honestly really, really nice and i miss that vibe in newer superhero stuff.

It's interesting that Red brought up the question of whether the real reason Spider-Man got the black suit was because the artists got tired of drawing all the little webs, because the reason the Hulk is green actually goes back to something similar. In the Hulk's first appearance, he was colored gray, but the cheap printers that were used to print the comics had a hard time keeping him a consistent shade, so they decided to make him green, which was easier for them to color.

I love how the symbiote isn't inherently bad, it's just that Peter's emotional baggage was so big that he couldn't control it. Like every venom symbiote user after Peter managed to make peace with it and turn it into a force of good (Flash and Brock). However, Peter is so convinced that it's the Symbiote that's evil that it is always on sight for him. I found that amazing, it's a nice character flaw of Peter that he himself doesn't see. He refuses to acknowledge that maybe it was him who made the symbiote like that, not the other way around. Don't get me wrong, Peter is an amazing hero, but it's true that most of the time he works out of guilt and disregards the concerns of those around him. His funny persona is a way to mask that sometimes, he really doesn't want to do the superhero thing, but from his perspective “someone has to do it”, it's more out of obligation than goodwill. Venom represents all the things Peter has suppressed. His frustration at life for not being able to be a normal person, the frustration of enemies that keep going at him, the stress of managing a secret identity and him being fed up that those around him judge him for his failures without knowing the whole story (the Spider-Man thing eating at his whole life). Peter is bad at managing his life to a ridiculous degree, because he's always so desperately looking for people to save (out of guilt) that he never dedicates time to himself. Heck, Otto did a better work managing Peter's life. He got a degree, built a company, and made the whole Spider-Man thing more efficient, all in a matter of months and just by not wasting himself away patrolling.

One of the big character contrasts I love with the Spider-Gwen comics is how her "Gwenom" phase ends with her using music to connect and build a relationship with her symbiote and ever since she's just casually been Technically A Venom but she's just chill and low-key about it. Fitting for the melancholy pop album Web-Slingers & Feelings vibe of Spider-Gwen's whole universe.

If it wasn't for Symbiote Spider Saga we wouldn't get one of the best lines in super hero cartoons. "SHOCKER! YOU CAN'T ESCAPE ME! I'LL CHASE YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!"

Interesting take on Sam Rami’s Spider-Man 2 that I heard recently; Peter actually starts losing his powers because of the psychological stress and PTSD in relation to all of the stress and loss he’s had to experience so far in the story. When he gets his powers back and starts feeling better, it’s because he’s reduced his stress, taken time to walk around outside at a leisurely pace, and he’s had time to process what he wants. The latter half of the movie, when he gets a car thrown at him by Doc Oc, is him returning to reacting on instinct because the world needs Spider-Man more than Peter Parker needs stable mental health. It’s a commentary on how we treat our heroes and what we demand from them. Perfect example is healthcare workers during the pandemic

I introduced my wife to all of the Spider-Man films in preparation for No Way Home. Raim was her favorite version, 3 was unironically her favorite film. She enjoyed that the Raimi films were the campiest and "least embarrassed about being a superhero movie", and so because of that, she thought the silliest one in the trilogy was the strongest. Embracing the camp was just one step away from embracing the edge, apparently.