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It’s that time again—looking over some of my old posts about a story with Big Neurodivergent Energy and realizing how it resonated with me as an “unhatched” autistic ADHDer. Today, we’re looking at Spider-Man, mostly MCU with a dash of The Amazing Spider-Man. ADHD-coded (and maybe autistic-coded?) Peter Parker, how I love you! Plus, bonus autistic-coded MJ! For what it’s worth, Miles Morales reads as ADHD to me too—what is it with these teenage superheroes?—but my old posts on the Spider-Verse don’t really highlight those traits.
Favorite Characters: Peter Parker (The Amazing Spider-Man)
[Peter is] prone to impulsive decisions, he can be stubborn and immature, and his emotions can get the better of him. […] He gets distracted by his love life, and when he’s disheartened, his mind can go into “I don’t know what to do!” overdrive, heightened by the trademark Great Responsibility that comes with his Great Power.
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He’s a genuine smart cookie, designing his web shooters among other techie gizmos (some apropos of nothing—I love the mechanical lock rigged up for his bedroom door,) taking a frequently analytical approach to solving his superhero problems, and just generally being enthusiastic about knowledge, calculations, and experimentation. He uses his webs to get around and to immobilize baddies, of course, but he also uses them creatively and intelligently to accomplish a variety of goals; I really like how he sets up a network of webs to search for the Lizard in the first movie, along with the relation between webs and electric conductivity with Electro in the second.
[Tom Holland’s] youth makes the “teenage” part of this teenage superhero really hit home. We get so used to seeing 25-year-olds play high schoolers that whenever an actor who’s even 18 or 19 comes along to play a teen, it’s astounding how young they are. And that’s Holland’s Spidey all over. Whether it’s his awkwardness around girls, his short attention span, or his helpless fear when he really gets in over his head, this Spidey feels genuine in a way that his predecessors, despite their own merits, can’t manage.
Favorite Characters: Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man (MCU)
His awkward teenage problems, like running into his crush in the hallway or getting himself stuck in detention, feel genuine, as does his dorky enthusiasm at all the cool superhero stuff he can do – I love the moments where he’s geeking out with Ned over himself. This Spidey is every inch a teenager, and that’s reflected in how he agonizes over whether he should investigate bad guys or hang out with a cute girl. How he makes lame excuses to his aunt and talks himself into doing really ill-advised things. How he debates the merits of using the suit to impress girls. How he races into things without thinking and then suddenly realizes he’s going to need a plan when he gets there.
This is a Spider-Man who’s still rough around the edges. He gets himself in over his head, he sometimes blunders into situations where he doesn’t belong, and he has no idea what to do when he’s in the suburbs and doesn’t have any tall buildings to attach webs to.
I like that she randomly hangs out in detention (despite not having detention herself) because she “[likes] drawing people in crisis,” and I love that she’s the only kid who doesn’t tour the Washington Monument when the Academic Decathlon team goes to D.C. because she doesn’t want to celebrate something that was built by slaves. Throughout the movie, lots of little moments add up to give her a glimpse of who she is: someone frank, someone deadpan, someone observant, and someone a little bit dark.
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Not to mention, she doesn’t miss a trick. As Peter works up the courage to tell her that he likes her, she assumes he’s going to tell her his other secret, the one she’s already (mostly) figured out: the fact that he’s Spider-Man. Maybe MJ initially started watching Peter because she had a crush on him, but the things she saw while doing that led her to a correct supposition, and while she wasn’t convinced, she was sure enough to say it out loud to him. That takes a gift for observation, some good deduction skills, and the ballsiness to actually run with what probably seemed at first like a ludicrous theory.
A Few Thoughts on Peter Parker (Spider-Man: No Way Home)
Tom [Holland’s Peter] is the youngest, prone to impulsive/excitable dumb decisions but still a kid with a decent head on his shoulders, one who desperately wants to do what’s right and feels the heavy weight of that responsibility when things go wrong.
Relationship Spotlight: MJ & Peter
We also see that she’s tuned into Peter in a way that a lot of the other kids aren’t: since becoming Spider-Man, he’s given up most of his extracurriculars, a fact that only she picks up on. She puts it down to her observant nature, rather than any personal investment she has in him, but the lady doth protest too much.
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It’s cute that he very specifically likes her weirdness, planning to get her a dahlia necklace, which is her favorite flower “because of the murders.”
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