“Author of 25+ best-selling Pride & Prejudice variations”
Yeah, no.
if this is the same woman I think it is, I was sent one of her Pride and Prejudice ripoffs to review when I was a journalist. It was a find-and-replacd copy of the novel that had been made “steampunk” by swapping out various nouns and adjectives. it was completely unreadable.
a lot of people, even in progressive spaces, really do see gnc boys (and by that i mean literal children) as somehow sexually perverted and predatory despite being, you know, children
when i was a kid, there was a little boy i was friends with who had very stereotypically “girly” interests. he loved barbies, he liked dresses and sparkly things, liked to play dress-up, etc.
his family tolerated it when he was really young, but as he got older (maybe around 7 or 8) they started basically forcing him to stop. at one point they threw his barbies away iirc, i was told to never ever bring it up because his mom was very embarassed of the whole thing
and i mean, i know firsthand that people discourage little girls from being masculine, but this had a very different tone that even as a kid, i picked up on. they truly treated it like there was something genuinely perverted and wrong about him when he was literally just a little boy who liked dolls.
i remember as a kid, i couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 making some offhanded comment that was something like “I’m a tomboy and *insert kid’s name here* is a tomgirl” and my mom pulled me aside and told me never to say that again because it “wasn’t the same thing”
like it’s baffling. the poor kid just wanted to be cinderella for halloween and they treated him like he was deranged for it
Miguel O'Hara, probably: People tell me all the time, ‘wow you’re kind of an asshole’. And first of all, fuck you buddy. But second of all OF COURSE I’M AN ASSHOLE. O'Hara: I’M FROM A CYBERPUNK SETTING. MY ENTIRE TIMELINE ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE ALL THE REAL HEROES DIED AND EVERYTHING WENT TO SHIT BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT THE REAL EVIL WAS HUMAN GODDAMN GREED THE WHOLE TIME. O'Hara: Of course I’m an asshole, I’m from a gritty cyberpunk setting, what ELSE could I be?
Is he the coolest Spiderperson in the movie? Yes, by 1000%. Am I obsessed with him? Also 1000%. But he’s very, very Spider-dork.
Punk is an extremely flexible identity/philosopohy/belief system, and living it out is very different from being perceived as “punk.” To convince others you are “punk” you have to perform it effectively. Hobie’s world is a post capitalist hellscape, an anarchist dystopia, like the garbage strike in the 1970s that birthed punk in the first place, and he’s a punk because that’s an important and necessary way to be resiliant in his own universe.
But when he’s with the other spiders? He’s just playing. He’s funny. He’s inconsistant. He’s a goofball. He goes for obvious punchlines about Mayday. He’s just as much of a science nerd as any of them, but he lets them underestimate his scientific abilities so that he can rip shit off the wall and repurpose it while they all ignore the disruptor because that’s just Hobie, wrecking the place.
He realizes Miguel is dangerously full of rage before anyone else in HQ and as he watches what Miles goes through he is creating and evolving his escape plan. He uses the persona to convince everyone that he’s just obstinate and stupid, but his smart little spider mind is humming away under that fabulous head of hair, breaking everything down.
He’s also extremely community minded, which isn’t part of what outsiders see as punk but is absolutely what being an effective Spider is all about. (it’s also what real world punks are like but nvm.) Even though he seems like he’s not interested in being part of the squad, he shows up to help. He gives Gwen a place to crash (and i think it was platonically). His first words to Miles are advice to empower him (”use the whole hand”) because he’s the friendly neighbourhood Spider Man still. He’s got his cool jacket and his cool guitar and his cool hair and he uses all of those to hide. He watches all of them carefully and decides in advance who is worthy of his loyalty, and then he’s all in.
Like all the Spiders, he’s going to save everyone and he’s going to do both and he’s going to think of something no one has ever done before. Because that’s punk rock, bb.
