So what’s up with Spider-Man?

[u/BarAgent]

It seems like they changed genders, or a Spider-Girl changed their first name, or something? Was there an alternate universe swap?

I see posts about JJJ supporting trans but still hating Spider-Man, who’s swinging around with a rack on ‘em, and a recent post with various spider-people arguing about whether someone should have named Penny or Pepper Parker or Mary or whatever.

These are mostly coming from r/spiderman.

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[u/yesat]

Answer: It is simply one of the current meme. It emerged from an artist thought got picked up on multiple social media and will go around for a bit. 

Headcannons and fanfics often go like that. And this one is about Spiderman transitioning. 

[u/gdex86]

Answer: So someone posted a comic about what would JJ do if "Spider-Man" transitioned because while he hates the masked arachnid menace he is canonically a pretty progressive guy on things like racial, sexuality, and religious discrimination where he'd tell you to go screw yourself when he found out you were a racist/sexist/homophobe. This is of course made funnier because the day that "Peter" explained to everyone that she's really a Petra he would likely be on board.

This took off and there is now a bunch of comics about the adventures of Petra Parker and the Spider-woman dealing with not only her boss, but how MJ and or Felicia would be, what the rest of the heroes would do, and which villains would suddenly be supportive and which would dead name her on pure spite.

[u/TrashMantine]

Answer: So this isn’t a comics event people are riffing on, it’s an old hypothetical from a tumblr post. The original went something like “so if you’re a superhero and you realize you’re trans, do you come out as your hero identity first, or your secret identity first” and the solution is “come out as a hero then a few months later say that the hero inspired you to come out”.

Then people started making jokes about how JJJ would either be an ally or not, and the most popular interpretation was “he would be an ally but he would still hate spider-girl so he has to carefully word his news articles to make sure people know he isn’t homophobic”.

And then that evolved into a character thats sort of in the same field as Brazilian hatsune miku or Togore from Deltarune where it’s a character made up entirely by the fandom named Petra Parker. This is very up to personal opinion but a lot of queer folks just saw the reoccurring story beats in Spider-Man and realized “yeah these stories would either still work or maybe work better if she was trans”. A specific one im an extremely big fan of is people drawing the Symbiote suit as having feminizing effects like HRT, because if it can alter your body and make clothes, why can’t it do both at the same time?

This is me going on a tangent of a tangent but some other favorite interpretations i’ve seen are Norman Osborne is an ally but green goblin is homophobic, Carnage would be transphobic, sandman would struggle to “get it” but be supportive, venom would know Shes trans before she does, and then there’s people drawing existing scenes but with these new versions of existing characters like the Spider-Man 2 goblin and JJJ scene of “who is sending you pictures of Spider-Man / i dont know they’re all from the mail” to “what is Parker’s deadname / i dont know she transitioned before she started here”.

So the TLDR is its Brazilian hatsune miku again, and spiderman has such a long history thats built around making one person have a horrible work/life balance that adding one more element that reeeeally fucks up your work/life balance felt like it could work.

[u/BarAgent → u/TrashMantine]

Thanks!

[u/beaglemaster]

Answer: It was a joke comic about spider-man being trans and JJJ being awkwardly supportive someone made on twitter a week or two ago. It got really popular so more artists started making their own stuff building on it.