Unhatched Observations: Spider-Man

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.

 

Spider-Man: Homecoming

[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. 

 

Favorite Characters: MJ

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.”

 

Relationship Spotlight: Peter B. Parker & Miles Morales (Spider-Man)

*Miles-Peter-related spoilers.*

I definitely remember liking Miles and Peter’s relationship when I saw Into the Spider-Verse in theaters, but it took rewatching it ahead of Across the Spider-Verse to make me go, “Oh wait, I love these two!” Nothing like a reluctant/depressed mentor paired with an eager/anxious would-be mentee.

By the time Peter gets pulled through a portal into Miles’ universe, he’s been Spider-Man for a long time. He knows how hard it can be, both physically and emotionally. He has back problems, he’s sick of the grind, and he’s been using food to self-soothe ever since he and Mary Jane split up. He’s burnt out but dragging himself through the day with a lot of apathy. The last thing he needs is to get sucked into another universe that just lost its Peter Parker.

Actually, scratch that. The last thing he needs is a jittery, impulsive teenager who got his spider-powers literal days ago. Miles is at first relieved by his appearance. He feels like he let his universe’s Spider-Man down, and he wasn’t sure how to make it right. Furthermore, his universe’s Peter promising to help teach him was the one thing that calmed his new-power panic. That Peter only knew him for a few minutes, and it was when he was in the middle of a serious fight, but he still took time to reassure Miles that it was going to be okay. But then he died. For Miles, meeting another Peter Parker feels like a second chance.

But then, it quickly becomes clear that this Peter is a very different Peter. He isn’t, not really—although he’s been doing this a lot longer and has been seriously banged around by life, he’s still the same fundamental guy. He doesn’t look or act like it, though. He does everything he can to push Miles away, vowing to destroy the collider but not wanting any sort of mini-me tagging along. And once Miles’ stubbornness and persistence secures him a spot at Peter’s side, Peter vacillates between not wanting to teach him anything and expecting way too much from him at a moment’s notice.

It's a wonky experience for both of them. Miles’ enthusiasm and endless questions irritate the jaded Peter, while this sad, out-of-shape Peter definitely feels like a step down compared to the first one Miles met. But by fits and starts, they begin to help each other. When Miles disobeys Peter’s orders not to follow him into Alchemax, his unexpected power of invisibility comes in handy. Meanwhile, Peter basically drops Miles into the deep end when it comes to swinging lessons, but once they get started, Peter actually does a good job of coaching him through the basics in the middle of a high-stakes situation.

I like this relationship because it’s very one-step-forward two-steps-back. I like that they annoy each other and disappoint each other, that Peter is the one who stands up for Miles with the other Spiders but still acknowledges that he isn’t ready for the collider mission, that Miles has to prove his capabilities to himself before he can prove them to Peter.

In the end, it’s not an overstatement to say that Miles changes Peter’s life. Meeting him is what makes Peter realize that he does want to be a dad, even if it’s scary, and that leads to him reconciling with Mary Jane and having Mayday. For my money, Across the Spider-Verse squanders this relationship a little, along with kind of squandering Peter as a whole. While Miles and Gwen’s relationship experiences some major friction in a complex way, Miles and Peter’s relationship is dealt with almost more as an afterthought. Peter is more in comic-relief mode in this film, and when their own friction arises, they’re not really given anything substantial enough to address it.

Which of course means that I hope we get a lot more of Peter and Miles in Beyond the Spider-Verse. Both Gwen and Peter have definitely realized how badly they let Miles down and are anxious to make it right. I have no doubt that Gwen will have plenty of space to do that, but in what’s sure to be a jampacked movie, I hope Peter gets the chance to do the same.

Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Peter Parker (Spider-Man)

*MCU Spider-Man spoilers.*

As I’ve looked over my various fandoms for characters who resonate as neurodivergent, I haven’t gotten too deep into Marvel yet. I’m sure a fair number of characters will pop up in my mind eventually, because once you start looking, it’s easy to see that neurodivergent-coded characters are a lot more prevalent than you might at first assume. (And I would bet that plenty of it is unintentional—I can imagine there are lots of undiagnosed neurodivergent writers and/or actors out there, incorporating relatable traits into their characters without necessarily recognizing that.) At any rate, when I did a cursory rifle through my MCU mental filing cabinet, the first character that really jumped out at me was one Peter Parker.

Now, this may simply be a product of the MCU interpretation of Spider-Man leaning hard into the “superpowered teenager is easily distracted and reckless” angle, but Peter definitely reads as ADHD to me. The stress of being a kid juggling a secret identity can contribute to this—all the Spider-Man franchises feature scenes where Spider-Man misses something important or flakes on errands he said he’d do because he gets held up fighting a bad guy, and Ms. Marvel has some of this flavor too—but the MCU Spider-Man films show that this is not just about having too many conflicting responsibilities.

Yes, Peter has a ton going on. His head is also constantly going a million places at once. Whether it’s making web fluid in a desk drawer during chemistry or editing videos for his Spider-Man YouTube channel during math, he’s frequently doing at least two different things at any given time. He’s a smart kid who often manages to get by anyway—in that math class scene, he’s totally called out by the teacher for not paying attention, but he’s able to look up at the board and quickly figure out the answer to the question. But in a way, being able to camouflage those issues with attention can actually be a hindrance, because it lets him assume he’ll always be able to compensate, and the times when he can’t are often when the stakes are highest.

Peter is also definitely impulsive. He throws himself into all kinds of dangerous situations without a plan: he only survives his first encounter with the Vulture because Tony saves him, he accidentally gets himself locked inside a Damage Control facility with no way to escape or let people know where he is, and he manages to hitch a ride onto one of Thanos’s spaceships, something that Tony is obviously not cool with. And when it comes to less immediate, less adrenaline-fueled situations, he can still do some pretty ill-advised stuff without thinking, like when he decides to hand control of Tony’s E.D.I.T.H. network over to Quentin Beck or when he keeps interrupting Doctor Strange’s spell to make people forget his identity, screwing up the whole multiverse in the process.

And let’s be real: the boy cannot sit still. His most ADHD scene of all time probably comes when he’s trapped inside the Damage Control facility in Homecoming. There are no bad guys for him to fight here, but there’s also not much he can practically do to escape until morning, so Peter is left mostly on his own with only the AI in his suit for company. While he waits, Peter makes a hammock out of webs, gives his AI a name (Karen,) takes a refresher course on the different types of webs his Stark-tech suit can produce, makes a jump rope out of webs, and discusses with Karen whether or not he should tell his crush he’s Spider-Man. He then discovers that only 37 minutes have passed and is utterly gobsmacked. This is the most prominent example, but we see Peter’s hyperactivity all over, like when he talks a zillion miles a second recounting his Civil War experiences for his video diary or when he bounces on his motel room bed while Ned examines his suit tech.

Peter’s ADHD traits can make things hard for him, in both “regular” life and superhero life, but they can also come in handy. He’s creative and can come up with outside-the-box solutions in high-pressure situations, and when the people he cares about are in danger, he’s able to hyperfocus, doing absolutely everything it takes to keep them safe. He’s also caring and compassionate. When villains from other universes start bleeding through to his, Peter wants to send them back where they came from—you know, so the multiverse doesn’t collapse—but he wants to try and help them first, hoping that if he addresses the physiological accidents that gave them their powers, they might be able to avoid their fates back home.