Hey there! My name is Andrew or Drew. I’m a 21M and I’ve been writing for the last few years. I’ve made my own world so that I could create stories with better details. I just want to pick your brain and get a few opinions on how you like it or dislike it. If anyone wants to talk past that then I’m an open book and a yapper lol. Have a great day, whoever you are and what you decide.

It's that time of week again. X-Men head editor Tom Brevoort is answering questions on Substack again. This time with fewer throuple mentions. As always, you can read it here: https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/114-one-hundred-questions
Some questions of interest:

I noticed in the solicit for Stephanie Phillips’ Phoenix #1 that it would guest star Nova, but as of now he’s still in a coma from Pestilence’s arrow in X-Men Red and hasn’t been healed/woken up yet. Will him being back in action be explained in that issue or before then? Just curious.

TB: I’m almost certain that it won’t be explained in PHOENIX #1, Joe. Presumably, he healed up over time.

The vast majority of fans want you to know that they know what the vast majority of fans want.

TB: And whatever it is, Ralf, they want it now.

After reading your most recent newsletter it really got me thinking about another topic that goes through its ups and downs every couple months and I think you did note somewhere else that the divide within the fandom was noticed by the editorial office. And that is the Psylocke conundrum. There are those that feel Betsy owns the codename and the butterfly because she got those from her original creator and before the body swap shenanigans. HoXPoX brought in newer fans that feel that it all belongs to Kwannon because the character of Psylocke became popular in her Asian body.
We know business wise keeping the iconic Jim Lee look and code name with an actual Asian character makes sense but was it necessary to do that when comic book readers (I hope) are not that inept and because we do have both caucasian characters Kitty Pryde and Elektra that were allowed to function in the same capacity but are not Asian; but it was taken away from Betsy for reasons. We could have gotten both Psylocke and Revanche popular established IP.

TB: I think this is a situation analogous to the Jean Grey one from a while back, CG. By which I mean that there is a lot of frankly confusing backstory to Kwannon and Betsy Braddock, to the point where they’re literally difficult to describe to people. But rather than try to “fix” any of that stuff or retcon it or whatever (which is very much what got us to this point), I think the only thing to do from here is to go forward. And that means further defining who Kwannon is as Psylocke and who Betsy is as Captain Britain (or whatever she might become in days to come).

You mentioned before having a "grand unified field theory" about Scott and Jean's relationship, one that you'd peel back like layers of an onion across several stories. Can we expect that to play out in X-Men and Phoenix or is this something that we can expect further down the line? And any hints or elaboration on what you might have meant by this theory?

TB: I think that’s more of a long term things, Mercury, though I’m sure that you’ll see aspects play out in the various comics that Jean and Scott are in, since I’ll want them to be in line with my way of thinking. And eventually, assuming that there are creators among our team that are interested in running with that ball, we may eventually get to it as a story element. Or we may not—X-MEN functioned for years with a lot of its characters’ backstories hidden away, and that mystery didn’t hurt anything, it drove interest among the audience. So it’s really going to depend on where I think we might be able to get the most juice.

Many comments this week allude to the hypothetical Scott-Logan-Jean relationship, and in one of your answers you mention that only one scene is what would support that it was an open relationship over five years.
What this comment has led me to think about is the small number of everyday scenes that exist in today's Marvel comics. I'm a reader who grew up reading in the '70s and '80s, and I really miss the everyday element in superheroes. Because at that time we knew Peter Parker's apartment inside out or what pizza he liked; and there were plenty of character treatment scenes in the Avengers and X-Men mansions or in the Baxter Building. In current times, I have the impression, probably subjective, that that element of everyday life has been lost a lot, that the Marvel characters are more iconic, but less close and identifiable in those aspects.
Recently, I was taking a look at my favorite scenes by Pepe Larraz, an artist who creates spectacular fight scenes, but the ones that stuck in my mind were not any of those, but small moments of characters talking in an everyday environment. I was thinking about a scene that is quite a few years old now: the conversation between Cyclops and the vampire Storm in a cafeteria, in X-Termination. If I remember it so vividly it is precisely because of the magical nature of these types of situations, and that for me they summarize the essence of the Marvel Universe: the way in which the fabulous and fantastic is introduced into the real world. When I remember what hooked me on X-Men, I remember a lot of that. Kitty and Doug playing video games, Peter, Kurt and Logan at a bar, Storm swimming in the Forge pool, or the usual baseball games in the mansion's courtyard. I really miss seeing those types of situations in comics in a more common way. I hope we have many of those in the new run that now begins, because that is also part of the X-Men lore.

TB: We’re definitely looking to do more of that manner of scene, Julian, depending on the series and the preferences of the creative team. One of the things I definitely wanted to get back to, for good or ill, was the X-Men interacting with regular people out in the world rather than segregating themselves with only their own kind in Krakoa.

Tom, the vast majority of fans want Stilt-Man to be in every Marvel comic. When are you all going to give the people what they want?

TB: Stilt-Man IS in every Marvel comic, David. You just have to look up.

Progression Fantasy is still a very young subgenre, so I think it fair to forgive it a few growing pains, but...
It's got an economics problem. A real economics problem.
Namely: While there have been quite a few attempts at writing economic progression fantasy, where the MC progresses not just in personal power, but in economic strength (wealth, etc)- remarkably few of them impress me. In fact, the only one that I will outright declare a win is Kyle Kirrin's Shadeslinger. (Which, I should note, is not an attempt to build a functioning "real" economy, but instead to build a functioning videogame economy- a challenging task of its own, and one Kirrin does fantastic at for the purposes of his narrative.) (Also Frank is the best, long live Frank.)
Now, I've hardly exhausted the whole of economic progression fantasy, there's tons of examples I haven't read- but the failed attempts I have read, numbering quite a few, tend to have some fairly similar failure states. (I won't name any of them- I don't generally like speaking ill of other living authors' works,just their politics.)
This is of especial interest to me because I'm literally in the midst of writing an economic progression fantasy. I enjoy reading and writing this stuff! (Though, I should be clear, my upcoming series does not have a commerce-based progression plot- rather, it has a magic system deeply integrated into its economy. Also, it's socialist sword and sorcery.)
So here's a non-exhaustive list of failure states for writing economic progression fantasy, and tips for writing good economic progression fantasy/litrpg. And, while I'm very much a socialist and anti-capitalist, this advice is intended to be useful to anyone writing economic PF, regardless if they share my political and economic leanings. (Though I'm still gonna trash-talk capitalism a bunch lol.) And remember: I call them pitfalls, not rules, because these are not things you're forbidden to do, these are things that are harder to do.
Pitfalls:

• Trying to write the protagonist's organization like a startup, the whole series: Startups can only behave like startups while they're small. Once a company gets big, attempts to continue functioning like a startup will just make the whole thing crash and burn. When you're small, just going "oh, Richard down the hall knows how to fix that" works fine. Once an organization grows in size, Richard down the hall cannot fix the issue for hundreds or thousands of people- there need to be standards and practices in place. And unfortunately, the transition between small agile startup and robust, reliable large business is a REALLY tough one to navigate, and is a spot where corporations frequently fail. This difficulty unfortunately extends to writing about the transition as well- something not helped by an absolutely ridiculous culture of praising startup values at levels ranging from the large mature corporations to schools to national governments! (I blame the VC industry for this silliness- they were largely responsible for an ecosystem where startups could wholly concern themselves with making themselves look good for potential buyers among the large tech firms, rather than care about profitability in any way, shape, or form. This silliness then spread, and... ugh, don't get me on a rant about VCs, it's a stupid industry full of stupid investors who are investing other people's money (often from pension funds) and getting disproportionate rewards on their rare few wins, while being sheltered from their losses, all while ignoring actual due diligence.)
• Trying to write capitalism into a pseudomedieval setting: Medieval Europe was not capitalist, full stop. It was a feudal economy with its own distinct economic systems, often of shocking complexity and international scope. Do you need an accurate medieval economy in your progression fantasy? Probably not, it would be a lot of work to adequately explain it to your readers while logically modifying it to the demands of your magic system. At the same time, however, importing capitalism is a much more demanding challenge, because it relies on certain technologies and social structures that tend to be absent from pseudomedieval fantasy. (I'm importing capitalism into my current pseudomedieval work, but I'm doing it purposefully, and knowing what I'm doing, with a strong (at least for a layman) understanding of both capitalism and medieval economies.
• Mistaking commerce for capitalism: When you go to the corner shop and buy a soda, you're not engaging in capitalism, you're engaging in commerce. In fact, most of use do not actively engage in capitalism in our day to day, though we often act as cogs in it. When I write a book, it's not capitalism, it's labor. When I buy lunch, it's not capitalism, it's commerce. Defining capitalism positively is a trickier endeavor, but generally speaking, you can see it as leveraging capital- high value goods that amplify labor value, like industrial machinery, real estate, or some intellectual property.
• Going too fast in the late stages: Lotta economic PF and LitRPG picks up the pace of economic growth after a slow initial start, which... just doesn't feel right. Large scale expansion is difficult and slow in the real world, and is a much different challenge than the early stages.
• Insufficient delegation: A PF MC that doesn't delegate in their economic organization as it gets large is gonna fail hard, and if they don't and somehow still succeed, it's not gonna read right to readers familiar with economics or the function of large firms.
• Treating economic systems as too stable, especially capitalism: Economic systems screw up on the REGULAR, almost regardless of system. Having an economic system that's just been stable for centuries (hell, for decades) is deeply unrealistic. (Capitalism is especially prone to this, love it or hate it. (You should hate it.) Both socialist and capitalist analyses of capitalism tend to center on crises of capitalism, for good reason. Keynsian economics (or as left and right wingers alike enjoy calling it, for different reasons, Socialism Lite), is almost entirely built around strategies for avoiding, minimizing, and recovering from crises of capitalism.)
• Falling for the Tragedy of the Commons: Look, coordination problems are damn tricky, and a lot of communities have failed at commons management. It's a real challenge with real failure states! But the Tragedy of the Commons in its modern form? Was completely non-empirical, just a bullshit thought experiment white nationalist Garret Hardin made up to advocate for eugenics. There are PLENTY of clever ways small communities manage to share common resources- in fact, this was basically how medieval economics worked! Villages shared most of their grazing land and much of their agricultural land, and had shared common coppicing rights in local forests. (With variances for region and feudal system.) The lords were very seldom managing peasants in their fields. (Why would they want to?) If you want to deep-dive into how small to mid-sized communities can safely manage their economic commons, I highly recommend Elinor Ostrom's Nobel-winning book (For Nobel in Economics values of Nobel) Governing the Commons.
• Power scaling wrong: Wealth is power. Any power you give a character in progression fantasy? You gotta take into account when giving them challenges, so you have them at the power level you want them. Lotta folks slip on this one.
• Having protagonists make money too easily: A lot of protagonists- especially isekai protagonists- just wander into a pseudomedieval society with an absolutely bottom shelf business idea and get filthy rich with it, to the point where it's kind of absurd how easy it is for them. You really think none of the locals wouldn't have thought of that? Avoid low-hanging branches, folks. (I'm reminded of a scene from the terrible 2001 move Black Knight, where Martin Lawrence tries to fend off his execution by showing a medieval crowd a lighter. "I make fire!" To which a bored peasant replies "We have fire.") Many technologies that would be nominally feasible for pseudomedieval societies would fail due to lack of support infrastructure- semaphore towers, for instance, would have been technologically feasible all the way back in the Roman Empire, but their optics technology sucked- without spyglasses, they would have had to place the towers way too close together, making semaphores economically unfeasible.
• Having the protagonist become filthy rich without changing their role in society: Large amounts of money warp the hell out of social relations around people, in quite a few ways.
• Making your currency system too clean and neat. A pseudomedieval currency with fixed decimal
• Falling for "one neat trick": Pretty much ANY time someone advocates for a single cure for all economic ills, it's... probably bullshit. "Going back to the gold standard will fix all our problems!" "Giving control of the economy to genius CEOs will fix all our problems!" "Executing all landlords will fix all our problems!" "Lower all taxes and corporations will flood to the state of Kansas despite Kansas sucking!" It... never really works out. (Though persecuting landlords is super tempting, ngl.) That said, if instead someone is advocating for a single solution not as a "fix all problems" sort of thing, but as a "this will massively improve a lot of different problems" sort of proposal, it's okay to be more open minded and offer their arguments more time and brain space. (For instance, Thomas Piketty's advocacy for a return to powerful progressive income taxes in Capital in the 21st Century? He doesn't present it as a cure-all, but rather as a difficult to implement policy that would have significant impacts on wealth inequality, and offers an extreme degree of evidence. Agree or disagree with him, he's certainly not trying the "one weird trick" approach. (Though I should note that it's hard to disagree with the sheer scale of his evidence.)
• Trying to to design an economy based off a niche economic theory, like Georgism, for your PF world without sitting down and doing your research first: Really do your best to understand how it could go well, disastrously, or weirdly. It could work out fine, even great, in some situations- a PF system where magic power is based off magical "ownership" of land that supplies the owner with mana, for instance, could integrate well with Georgism, but you've really got to know what you're doing to stick the landing. (This sort of speculative worldbuilding is the one time you shouldn't bully Georgists. They're just so... bullyable.)
• Treating humans as rational economic actors: Bad idea. Humans are irrational as hell, lol.
• Basing literally any of your ideas off those of Ayn Rand: lol. lmao.

Tips:

• If you promise economic fantasy, deliver economic fantasy! Same thing as any other narrative promise- you don't keep it, your readers will feel betrayed.
• It's okay to create the illusion of an economy! Seriously! You don't need to plot out an elaborate economic system, you can just leave hints and clues that let the reader puzzle it out to the degree they wish. Just keep what hints you do describe logically consistent and well thought out! Like: What products can be found at the market? How far away do they come from? Is bargaining common, or are there consistent prices? Do consistent weights and measures exist, or is that always a source of frustration for folks? Are taxes in coinage, in product/produce? And if they're in the latter, is it a percent tax (one third your wheat crop!) requiring expensive monitoring and enforcement, or is it a flat rate (two bushels an acre!) that can punish farmers for bad crops but is much cheaper?
• Don't necessarily try to make your MC the leader of a large firm! You can, it can be fun, but there are plenty of other, often easier and more satisfying, paths to writing economic fantasy! Like, how does someone in the middle of a democratic revolution against a magical monarchy experience the economic shifts?
• Remember: a government's ability to control an economy, to whatever degree, is strictly limited by the amount of information they have about that economy! Legibility is power!
• Read quality economic fantasy outside PF and LitRPG. J. Zachary Pike's Orconomics, Seth Dickinson's Masquerade series, etc, etc.
• Read more about actual economics. Basic economics texts are great here!
• Then read a bunch of stuff critical of basic economics, because economics as a science is full of crap. For instance, there's STILL folks teaching that coinage and commerce arose out of barter, despite the fact that evidence of barter has never shown up in a pre-coinage society! Pre-coinage societies almost universally use complex social credit and debt systems. (Read David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years for more on this. Fantastic book, has inspired quite a bit of SF/F.)
• If you stumble across a disagreement between theoretical economics and empirical economics, side with the empiricists! If theory disagrees with reality, theory needs to be the one to bend. (In general, empirical economists are just in a whole different league.)
• If you stumble across a disagreement between economics and anthropology, or economics and history, or economics and literally ANY other science... probably side with the other science. Economics is in a fairly rough state these days, folks, for... long, complicated reasons ranging from philosophy of science issues to good old fashioned corruption.
• And, ABOVE ALL ELSE: Spend the time to figure out HOW your progression system will affect the economy! Doesn't need to be perfect, but you need to consider how magic will affect things like: Food production, shipping and logistics, crop yield, bank vault security, counterfeiting (illusion magic's impact on the economy? Potentially huge!), healthcare quality and access, public heath measures (even more important than healthcare!), the presence or absence of insurance industries, how the use of various materials like gemstones as magic components would affect their price, magic's impact on ursury/credit, its impact on contract enforcement (if tracking magic is stronger than concealment magic, it gets a lot harder to renege on a debt, and vice versa), its impact on capital accumulation, its impact on precious metal supply (divination magic or transmutation magic could absolutely flood the market for gold and or silver, crashing its price!), and much much more! You don't need to answer all of these specific questions- rather, you just need to give the reader confidence that YOU have spent time considering how inhabitants of your world would try to make a living with magic.

Again, this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list! It's just a few pitfalls and tips, in no particularly coherent order. If you want to write really good economic fantasy, of any subgenre, you need to do your groundwork, do your research, and be ready to stress test the hell out of your worldbuilding.

I originally wrote this for Letterboxd and thought I would post it here, I hope that's okay; I never see this film being reviewed anywhere.
This was quite a surprise, to be honest. I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy the film, but I was immediately sucked in. The real genius here is the "documentary" parts spliced in between the faux horror film "Pumpkin" created by no-budget filmmakers and doomed lovers Warren Werner and Samantha Dixon who commit suicide (this is explained in the opening monologue so it's not a spoiler and you need to know it going in) when the entire town crucifies them for their graphic homemade serial killer gorefest. I (appropriately) wanted to shake the hell out of the interviewees who seem to blame the double suicide on Warren and his "dark personality" which seems to consist of a perhaps overly exuberant young love affair and an obsession with horror filmmaking; hardly anything to get in a snit about and certainly a far cry from the devil worshippers the town brands Warren and Samantha.
The other part of the film consists of the remaining footage of Warren and Samantha's film "Pumpkin" and I have to admit I thought this part was going to be awful but I loved it! Was it ridiculous? Yes. Was it cheesy? Sure. No budget? Terrible acting? Bad special FX? All present and accounted for. Technically terrible? Oh yeah. Maybe it's just me but I often end up enjoying the kind of SOV gore-and-tit-fests "Pumpkin" would've turned out to be and this one I would've likely watched more than once. It's in such incredibly poor taste that it becomes kind of delightful really, a harkening back to the era of analog without overdoing it. It concerns a serial killer named Taboris DeWitt who is hitchhiking across the country, or well, at least Alabama. But first we sit through a pretty pointless scene involving two bimbos having a pillow fight in their underwear in a seedy motel to the absolute most ear-splitting song I have ever, ever heard... and don't get comfy 'cause it plays many times throughout the film. First one girl gets a room with a "sexy guy" (god help me) named Johnny Knickerbocker, a loser hung up on his ex-girlfriend and traveling aimlessly across the country even though last Halloween he had his arm hacked off by a psycho clown and an old man traveling in a van (this part is important, for what it's worth, lol). The actor is clearly not an amputee by the way, his arm is just under his shirt. He also looks like a junkie about halfway into their nod but far be it from me to cast aspersions. They've only just seated themselves in their new temporary digs when Bimbo #1 (don't expect me to keep track of everybody's names) proceeds to immediately call up her gal pal, Bimbo #2, telling her she's got a hot guy in her motel room (yeah, no, sorry). She shows up, they have their pillow fight, they try to rouse Johnny from his opiate-esque stupor, and he then throws both bimbos out saying he's not ready to be with a woman because of his ex. He's clearly an idiot because these girls were actually pretty cute, especially for a movie like this! It's kind of a weird trend, all the girls bar one (who we'll get to later) are cute. Well I can't tell if the strippers are cute because you only really see their asses, but the asses were decent I guess. I mean, it ain't no high-class club is what I'm sayin'.
Okay, now we switch to storyline #2. Yes, these filmmakers were quite ambitious with their project, adding a whole other storyline, which means we're back with Taboris the serial killer from the beginning. They actually do a pretty decent job of switching between storylines considering. So we're back with Taboris now, who in what can only be dubbed a Tarantino-esque move has the serial killer walk right past Johnny Knickerbocker and get a room at the same motel! He's playing drunk but isn't and is in the process of dragging a very inebriated, rather portly woman (I'm sorry if you're reading this, actress) with the most irritating accent I have ever heard into a motel room. She seems amenable but simply unable - that is, to stand on her own. By some sweet miracle we do not have to watch the first sex scene between these two. He wants a ride in her Cadillac - but whoops, when she said her Cadillac she meant her pussy. Um, yeah. It's not a Cadillac. I admit to knowing this with shame. If you somehow wanted to see these two vastly unattractive people have sex, great! Because that's what happens after the Cadillac convo. And it's doggy-style. Oh yes, this glorious actress and all her rolls hanging down kind of makes her look like a pregnant... you know I'm not gonna say that. In any case, you get a good view of them doin' the nasty with great enthusiasm. He then strangles her and mutilates her body in the bathtub, talking to no one, and then washes all the blood off in the sink and kind of seems to have some sort of orgasmic experience while toweling off. It was weird.
Our two storylines (those being the serial killer plot and the Johnny Knickerbocker plot) are about to merge. Again, being quite ambitious. But you know, the editing's not bad for a camcorder production. I've certainly seen much worse. Anyway, right, so our two malcontent stars finally meet as Johnny picks up Taboris hitchhiking. Now I KNOW your mother told you not to pick up hitchhikers Johnny. Bad boy. Taboris tells him he just needs a lift for a few miles up the road. But oh no! Johnny doesn't realize he's picked up a crafty killer with a fake southern accent masking what I presume is this actor's "I am playing a serial killer" voice; a little bit Lecter-esque but mostly just pretentious. He chokes out Johnny and here I was almost certain they were gonna try and pull a Hitchcock and kill off their star (or at least one of them) early. But no, he merely chokes Johnny into unconsciousness and then ties him up, yes, at that same goddamned motel where you'd think the employees would be suspicious of this guy carrying a giant teddy bear (way to keep your cover doofus) and looking like - and answering to the name of - Taboris DeWitt, the serial killer on all the TV stations that two lamebrain detectives are trying to catch in yet ANOTHER storyline. One guy's words are barely intelligible through a thick accent and hardly any teeth. He tends to kind of force lines out in chunks but he does... okay? I mean you obviously have to keep your expectations in check here. The other guy is chubby and apparently hiding the fact that he's having gay hookups, possibly on the job? This movie has a lot of gayness, but not the good kind. More like the kind that would've been in a splatter movie from Alabama in the early 90's. Again, expectations.
Now that he's cast off the chunky paramour and left her body for motel employees to find, Taboris is moving on to Johnny. He's got him tied to a chair, listens to his story about having his arm hacked off by a psycho clown and an old man on the move in a van (but of course) and then subjects him to what feels like a very, very long and obscene dance in his underwear... to the same fucking song from the double-bimbo room earlier. This movie was starting to give off Greasy Strangler vibes, no shit. Speaking of which, that's the next thing Taboris does... with sound effects. I'm making this movie sound like torture but by god I enjoyed myself. So let's go on. Taboris is now in the mood for action (send help) and we thankfully do not witness this nor does Taboris get to fulfill his desires because... reasons. What, you gonna come for me now because I don't remember the details of the movie I literally just finished? Well, you do you I guess.
Alright, next I remember Taboris meets up with his beloved daughter Dana, who is a stripper in that sleazy-ass club I told you about earlier, but before we see her we see some pole dancing by some, uh, lovely ladies... TO THAT SAME SONG. The one difference with Dana is we can see her face and I don't think she actually gets naked in the film. She is, again, a pretty cute girl (I presume I no longer need to amend these sentences with "...for a film like this.") No really, she is cute and she does pretty much fine in her role, better than a lot of the others, not perfect but fine for... oh, I almost did it again. For some reason, Dana decides the right course of action is to tell her dad to get the hell out, allow him to leave the premises as a wanted murderer (and she knows this) and not inform the police of this amazing new lead. Oh yeah, Dana also knows where Daddy Dearest is heading. Where is he heading you ask? Why, to a horse farm on a rural road where an old man and a strangely-acting clown live. Alarm bells ringing for you? They should be; Johnny mentioned two such characters in his story about losing his arm. For some unknown reason under the sun, Taboris claims he has come seeking revenge for Johnny Knickerbocker, you know, the guy he choked, tied up, molested and almost killed? Right. Taboris gets the clown to come out to look at his car, which is beyond me because the clown is supposed to be intellectually challenged but of course that's not the term they use (which shall remain unnamed for those who can't read the goddamned room). Taboris sneaks up behind him and beats the clown to a bloody pulp with a baseball bat yet doesn't manage to kill him. I think he wanted to um, have relations with the clown. Ugh, some of this is kind of weird recounting. But if you fuckers can sit through Kuso you can sit through this!
Taboris goes back to the house under the presumption of talking about horse-racing with the old man. Uh-oh, twist incoming though! The old man and clown are no strangers. Taboris had found out previously that his real father wasn't who he thought it was, oh no. His real father was some schmuck his mother fooled around with a few times and who was married and unaware of the child's existence. Don't feel bad for him though because as soon as Taboris leaves him unattended, old Pops is getting out of his restraints and grabbing for a kitchen knife. Who will win this most epic battle of wits? Just who will survive and what will be left of them? Will I in turn ever regain my sanity? The answer to the last one is probably no, but there's hope for you (not really, there's no hope for you) if you like the sound of any of this. Oh, you thought this was the end of this gargantuan dictionary of a review? Sorry, not done with you yet. One last important piece of the puzzle has not been placed. That piece of the puzzle is the story of Warren and Samantha, dogged by rumors of devil worship throughout the town after a packed opening turns into a disaster. There are some short bits of what purports to be a local TV program who interviewed Warren on the show and you can see the light slowly going out of his eyes as he's grilled by the somewhat horrified host who clearly doesn't understand horror films or filmmaking or art. It's actually a really good acting job and very subtle and kind of brutal to watch. One can't help but think though that if the entire town hadn't made these two kids out to be some cockamamie cult and demeaned their artistic expression (such as it is), there probably would never have been a tragedy at all. Ignorance kills, and we know it. I think that is part of the story the film is trying to tell.
There's no sugarcoating that "Pumpkin" isn't great, but the documentary portion is also very sympathetic to Warren and Samantha. If a couple of kids in the middle of nowhere with a camcorder, some friends and some Karo syrup can't make an amateur movie without their lives being ruined then what the hell does that say about us as a nation? And no, you're right, it's a fictional story, but it's still a message worth sending, even though it will likely only be preaching to the choir. This type of film was never for normals anyway. What does it matter what their opinions are? They're never gonna get it. Don't chase after these type of "audiences" because they will never get or enjoy anything you make. And if Warren and Samantha had the gift of years to understand that, they would still be alive in their fictional universe and maybe even still making movies. Who knows? All that potential went to waste. And honestly I felt pretty sad after the ending, which I never expected to feel.

I've seen a number of dashboards online that have a dropdown menu for changing dashboard views, and I'd like this for my own. Does anyone have this in your dashboard, and how did you get it to work?
For me, I have an input_select entity created for the dropdown. I'm using an entities card to display the dropdown on my dashboard. And then I have an automation set up that I would assume should change the view. It triggers the automation, but doesn't change the view. Here's the code to my automation:

alias: Dashboard Dropdown Change trigger: - platform: state entity_id: input_select.views_dropdown action: - service: browser_mod.navigate data: path: /home-dashboard/monitor 

I will say that I used the input_select entity on a button card, and it works just fine:

type: custom:button-card name: System Monitor tap_action: action: navigate navigation_path: /home-dashboard/monitor 

Any thoughts?

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I’ve been passionate about leveraging technology to solve real-world problems for years. This project is close to my heart because I believe that with the right tools, we can make the hiring process more efficient, fair, and enjoyable for everyone involved.
Thank You!
Thank you in advance for your time and insights. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please feel free to reach out. Your contribution is greatly appreciated!
Warm regards, Bernardo Aguiar (LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bernardo-de-aguiar-bfa05 )

Hi Reddit Community!
I hope you’re all doing well. My name is Bernardo Aguiar and we are developing a recruitment software to support and optimize the recruitment process. Our goal is to create a solution that simplifies repetitive tasks, allowing recruitment professionals to focus on strategic and value-added activities. As someone who deeply values the insights and experiences of professionals in the field, I’m reaching out to this amazing community for your help.
Why This Project?
Recruitment is a vital part of any organization, but it often comes with its own set of challenges. We’re developing a tool that leverages AI to handle repetitive tasks, streamline processes, and ultimately make the recruitment journey smoother for both candidates and recruiters. But for this tool to truly make a difference, we need input from the experts—YOU!
How You Can Help
We've created a short survey to gather feedback on various aspects of the recruitment process and how technology can better serve these needs. Your insights will be invaluable in shaping a tool that meets real-world challenges and delivers real value.
Here’s the link to the survey: https://forms.gle/SZAzkUTjvZtXXFwz7
It will take just a few minutes of your time, and your responses will be kept confidential and used solely for the purpose of improving our project.
A Little About Me
I’ve been passionate about leveraging technology to solve real-world problems for years. This project is close to my heart because I believe that with the right tools, we can make the hiring process more efficient, fair, and enjoyable for everyone involved.
Thank You!
Thank you in advance for your time and insights. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please feel free to reach out. Your contribution is greatly appreciated!
Warm regards, Bernardo Aguiar (LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bernardo-de-aguiar-bfa05 )

Introduction: I am a medical student of 2017 batch... I was selected for PG in NEET 2023 but didn't join, preparing again for NEET 2024. I was humiliated by a surgery resident in my internship, causing me to avoid surgical residency. I would get sudden anxiety whenever I saw him coming in the room. This was totally situational and I knew my neurosis was common as similar stuff started happening to most of my batchmates. Suddenly there was a wave of anxiety issues. I became interested in this particular issue and I realised that it was due to the psychological humiliation in internship that many people wanted to compromise their professional interests... So I wanted to get over this rabid fear neuroses that seniors create when you join a PG course or their department in internship. I researched these resources a tonne and asked with legal experts as well. They all agreed with me on these points as to how to deal with harassment in the workplace...
1) rule 1 - Do not accept harassment..nursing staff, co interns, residents and even professors will try to get you to accept the situation instead of changing it. This is not to be done or else you might develop anxiety and depression. Acceptance of harassment leads to loss of self esteem and it should not be tolerated.
2) rule 2 - Understanding the psychology of abusers and power structures in medical colleges
Most interns are afraid of consequences of disobeying their seniors
Common threats include - 1) holding your attendance 2) failing you on academic evaluations 3) creating uncomfortable work schedule 4) continual over checking of your work 5) making you work longer than usual hours
These threats by your seniors will scare you into compliance.. they will abuse you with these threats.
However, most of these threats are OUTLAWED. Yes you heard it right. You cannot be mentally harassed by anybody on these grounds. It's literally against the law. Yes the professors are psychopathic (lacking empathy) and they will allow it to happen. But guess what it's literally against the LAW. that means all you have to do is catch your seniors saying these things to you on the phone.. or use videography of them saying these things. It's as simple as that. If you gather proofs, you can build an anti ragging case against them.
Modern anti ragging guidelines (2009) include all these kinds of threats as psychological humiliation and make it a COGNIZABLE OFFENSE at par with rape.
Professors will continuously Gaslight you into accepting bullying and humiliation but the law is totally different. Under this regulation, even the principal of the college can easily be booked for allowing ragging.
In the FIR at the police station the Inspector will have to register it (cannot be denied) you can name your abusers at anytime. If you have the proofs with you, your abusers will have to answer their crimes in court. They can't apply for jobs as they'll fail police verification. Since it is congnizable your abusers will literally rot in jail without a warrant. If they're a service candidate, they will literally lose their salaries and increments.. unless the case resolves they can't even get pension. They'll cry everyday.
Another thing is, previous Pg medical education regulation (2000) had no provision of mental health of PG students. Now in 2023 they have added a clause saying everyone in the system will have to give you an appropriate time to rest EVERYDAY. yes, your senior cannot hold you against your will and on contrary to new Regulations. Previously Pg students had no leaves, we were at the mercy of psychopathic professors for leaves. Now we don't have to accept mental harassment for leaves as NMC has clearly defined a minimum of 77 leaves per year. Yes you heard it right 77 leaves per year. They have also removed log book signing.. logbooks will be digitally signed every month.... Also thesis evaluation is to be done by external examiner outside state.. they can't legally do much to hold you against your will, or scare you by saying we won't sign your logbook or thesis. Your PG guide can only guide your thesis someone else will check it.
They will Gaslight you into believing you are learning more or you will face some harsh undedinable consequences But believe me the system has made tonnes of rule for safeguarding human dignity. You can literally write it to the local DM and he will make life extremely difficult for your psychopathic professors and seniors... As per the new rules.
Just to be clear... You only need 80 pc attendance (this is after availing 77 leaves per year) take photos of your attendance register every day you go to college.
The professor cannot make you delay signing logbooks. He has to do it every month. He is powerless here.
They cannot force you to stay over time. They have to give you time to rest every day.
The professor cannot fail you in thesis... Your thesis is going to be examined by someone else.
You only need to present one poster now for final exams. And nothing else. You can even write your own paper and publish as first author without needing your professors help.
You again don't need to ask anyone for permission to start a family... Maternity leave is a right. Please all girls should avail it to the max level. Girls can take one year of leave from PG.
Basic gist is that professors power has been greatly diluted... They cannot make any huge problems for you. They have been rendered powerless as there is no room for ambiguity in guidelines. You don't have to walk on eggshells anymore.. don't fight or say anything just collect evidences and complain directly to the local media, police and district magistrates. There is no ambiguity to shield their psychopathic behaviour anymore. They will have to answer for their crimes.
Code of Professional Ethics 2002 also applies to doctors at any level..
Recently state mental health authorities have been made also.. any non implementation of anti harassment guidelines will land principal into extreme trouble.
Please don't accept ragging and fear and panic in the name of education.. you are not becoming better doctors this way..please change work culture wherever you are. I know to which extent these shameless professors lie....they used to do it because they knew nothing could be done against them... but now time has changed and specifics have been added to the law. Please collect proofs wherever you are..with new guidelines the police will act very quickly...

Dead Pixel Dayz Revival! PC US Chicago Hosted
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Welcome back. Welcome home.

Shortform

• Massive exploration of the Society beyond the big names we've spent time with in Across
• Villains forsaking their rivalries for survival and universes paving their own roads
• Gwen temporarily eating it but coming back, then leaning on her comic self (A variant)'s new Ghost-Spider ident to mark her defying fate's scythe

Premise

Here is the textual taxonomy of trilogys as I've heard in (obscure, hard-to-find) writing structure lessons

• Installment 1: Exposit - What is the subject
• Installment 2: Analyze - What is the subject's meaning
• Installment 3: Perspectivize - What is the subject's value and suasoria

Across may not have been a conclusive Act 2, but it is definitely a valid standalone one

• Expanded the 'verse and the major cast by throwing a curve into their relationships and own philosophies
• Delved deeper into what makes a Spider-Man by presenting a free will vs. determinism arc a la Civil War that also happens to have metacommentary

"I'ma do my own thing."
"We're supposed to be the good guys."
Miles summarized his new path throughout the movie, then Gwen called out the Society for their enabling of so much death and suffering to serve a misguided dogma.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/File:Spider-Man_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster_003_textless.jpg
There's almost certainly gonna an all-out ideological civil war (fists or not, composite of MCU and comics, but Spiders-only) like that split poster teased.
Gonna be grimly hilarious seeing Spinneret/Spiderling fight Peter B. and Mayday (the former are on Miguel's side to the left, along with Insomniac Spidey)
Yes, I believe there will be a few more new support characters in Beyond - there's a reason certain folks were at the front, and it's just really curious and a wasted opportunity that this Spider-MJ didn't interact at all with this active version of her other (stillborn) daughter or her (Mayday-616B) dad.
I very much appreciate the lifting of other Spidey variants to the zeitgeist fold - Noir, Ham, Gwendy-65, the UK/Punk and Indian ones, the weirdos like Parkedcar from Not! Pixar's Cars, a damn popsicle possibly (lol), a plushie, etc. - but they

Events and Themes

1. Universes

Serving the Installment 3 role, Beyond will probably tie up loose ends and make the above themes reverberate across universes. Like, for 42:

• Miles Prowler can prove that the world doesn't always need Spider-Heroes to save itself, only the spirit of the concept - Spider-Man isn't the center of the multiverse, and given the last movie's title, it will navigate its own fate independent of any Spider at all - let the world do its own thing

Beyond the 'verse of men of spiders, Reality-42 rises up against villainy.

• Maybe Kingpin and Dr. Octopus return someway, then emulate their TAS 1994 counterparts in allying with the Spiders out of existential pragmatics

2. Characters and Developments

By "reverberate," the Spider-Hero question is going to strike real nerves that change the Society and the world, making them examine the morality of the war they fight against anomalies like Spot; survival at all means and costs vs. idealistic stand against fate. And for certain Spiders, we could get more screentime with certain Society members and ex-members - preferably Spinneret and Spiderling, the Insomniac Spideys, and Scarlet Spider - and Endgame-ify Beyond's length.

• The RYV (Reality-18119, Renew Your Vows) Parkers confide with the others including Peter B. on family and how do they keep it together in light of their role as preserving fate and existence itself
• PS4/5 bros relate their experiences of loss and keeping going, especially to 1610B Miles. A great way of giving a layman on the games' plots while relaying their themes to the wider non-gamer audience
• Ben Reilly (Scarlet bro), being a Pete clone and a technical predecessor to Miles, will have his status put to address. His struggles with his inheritance and identity - bearing the names of Peter's parental figures - will probably mirror Ultimate Spider-Woman, and hopefully, he's a major outcrier against Miguel's misguided cause
• Jess-332's and Peter B's babies will interact, leading to the former's moral realization due to Peter B's time with Miles being the reason for his family's reconstruction - influenced solely by extrauniversal (of course anomalous) factors. Throw that Madame Web Spidey (Julia Carpenter) into the fray somehow?
• Interuniversal linkage like in the comics (616/928 and 65/8) can be explored to further the fate-changing theme; whether 928B the bad future of 616B is an inevitability - we haven't really explored 928B - and whether 42 is 1610B's worst possible self and how it can change. The Miles/Gwen dynamic could play here too, 65B and 1610B and the references to the number 8 (which happens to resemble the infinity sign - "infinite Spider possibilities") in Across. Not suggesting that Comics Earth 8's characters play any role, tho, 'cuz per the themes, the duo should connect on their terms
• Variant Miguels when, Sony - like the variant MJs, Harrys, Normans, Flashes, and Gwens, etc. Get freaking Edge of Time, not just Ultimate and 1994, in it
• The locked-up anomalous villains perhaps even helping stop Spot - like Kingpin and Ock above. Basically No Way Home's scenario but tweaked a bit and writ large; let them decide whether to have a new lease of life or to keep their exploits going - their outcomes, their terms as usual. I wonder how would Atari Osborn fare, though, XD

Feel free to add more :) Not quite a Marvel binger yet, XD

3. Fates

Another element to be addressed is the room elephant of canon events. Their loopholes, their flexibility have to be expanded upon: They are fluid like time's arrows and oceans. For one:

• George lives? Sorry, but Gwen's relationship with him remains strained, on top of her guilt from treachery and deception. Also, the canon event ain't really death, but the Captain losing their job

Maybe we even trade one event for another, as in a major death of sorts. In my opinion:

• Not Peter B., because he's a living meta rebuttal to people holding off (at the very least) on an aged-up/married/parent Peter, the 616 editorial included. Him dying, let alone Mayday (toddler, so definite write-off), would undermine this subtext
• Not Jess, 'cuz she's a mother and despite her jerkish mentor habits seems willing to look the other way for turncoats like Margo/Byte
• Not Jeff, 'cuz that would just prove Miggy's point in light of George being living proof, as well as utterly render worthless all the effort thrown into saving him
• Not Miguel (yes, how dare I), 'cuz for all his pain-motivated harshness, he deserves better than the cliche'd fatal redemption trope of villains, of which he technically ain't one (and don't "Thanos" this as unlike Migs, he knew of better options but foregone it)

Here's a unique twist: The mastermind behind this Spider- conspiracy grows a conscience after all the breaking lectures against his warped view of canon events, then resolves to save as many lives as possible, dropping all pretenses of controlling the Spider-War
At risk to himself, he'll unhesitatingly save lives while one/some of those who blindly followed him give theirs. As shitty as his Society's turned out to be, they still have their main directive of fixing multiversal incursions, and someone has to keep giving the orders, someone with the most drive and commitment (especially for atonement)
Why on Miguel? Matured thinking aside, it evokes how science and philosophy works; cognitive science has this cliché of at least two sides theorizing extremes that are contrary to one another, and as time passes with discovery, the proof points to both sides having a point and deciding on a compromise; this of course goes beyond simple personal disagreement
So who'll it be?
Spider-gents and ladies, none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy of Earth-65B
In the vein of MCU Aunt May being her Pete's Uncle Ben delivering that responsibility quote, and through it occurs the Spider-Verse's true Ultimate Fallout/Death of a Spider event this way
Gwen being slain and (certainly) coming back would be a wakeup call to both her world and the Society, as well as the latter group's morality in their internal strife and conflict against Spot. Redeem her image to everybody, Miles included, while allowing them to get together on solitary terms
That way:

• Miguel's right that being a Spider is a sacrifice, it's just their assigned canon events ain't 1:1 across every universe
• Miles' right that you can have and eat two cakes - meaning canon events can be alleviated (such as debris falling on Singh without killing him) - it's just that there's a cost

It'd also be a roundabout redemption for blindly following the Society's beliefs and causing unnecessary pain to Miles, deeper than "My well-meaning side right, your well-meaning side wrong" - no, both sides can have their two cakes; say, the rest save Jeff, Gwen herself - the motherless one - saves Rio, let 1610B not be 1610A in this particular way
I'ma spitball here, but it's kinda like Nolanverse (TDKR) Batman, come to think of it. Maybe George is informed of and reveals his daughter's "demise" and publicizes her ident? The latter I admit is questionable
Maybe Gwen goes to 1610B and RVs with Miles to Florence - there's this café on the banks of the Arno - for a fine evening sitting there and ordering a Fernet Branca
XD

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

... "We wanted to craft this moment where Miles encounters this powerful figure in his life that he loved so much and he lost," says director Justin K. Thompson. "That's when he realizes that he is not really in his own dimension, as well as the gravity of what he has lost. In this reality, Aaron had to shake off his life of crime and became a surrogate father figure to Miles."
... In this alternate reality, the Sinister Six have been able to flourish and take over the world. "Criminality runs rampant," says Thompson. "We wanted to create a world where it felt like Aaron and Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 [this reality's counterpart to Miles Morales] are the only heroes.
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Earth-42, p.190
... This version of the character was never bitten by a radioactive spider and doesn't have any superpowers, but he has fallen into the role of becoming the vigilante the Prowler, under the tutelage of his uncle Aaron. ...
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Miles G. Morales: The Prowler, p.200

• Here's a pattern: We meet multiple Spidey-Peters and our intro hero is, well, RIPeter, then some podcast revealed we'd be meeting multiple Gwens in Beyond; timestamp 17:51-18:45

Interviewer: Will we see other multiversal variants of Gwen Stacy in the future even if they don't have spider powers, like you do with MJ, Uncle Aaron, and Miles?
Lord: Currently yes. ... But there’s one I’m very excited about.
Miller: Yes, yeah, I know exactly the one you’re talking about.
Lord: You know the one I’m thinking of, which is based on... I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything.
Miller: But it is sort of plot-integral, I would say.
Interviewer: If there are other multiversal variants of Gwen in Beyond the Spider-Verse, will they impact her arc, her relationship with Miles?
Lord: I would say yes.

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
https://preview.redd.it/kpz7vzvub64d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d25e78b18f3fc82e58eb1516d1ac915fc130470

• Friendly reminder they referenced fuckin' Ultimate Fallout of all storylines in Gwen's room, under which she mostly lingers while speaking with her dad. Are you telling me that scene just happened to be shot like that? No, they orchestrated it! L&M! The story that deals with Miles' overall debut and the (of course, cue pathos) fallout of 1610A Spidey's demise! Been struggling to find and spot it honestly, damn lighting and coloring
• Guess what's 1610A Pete (the original Ultimate comics version, not blond RIPeter)'s death age? 16, exactly 65B Gwen's present age. MCU Pete's too when he was snapped
• Notice the last part of the Canon Event exposition scene; Hobie's got the Spider-Man No More comic panel, Jess-332 the If This Be My Destiny one, Peter B. the wedding, and Gwen? Spidey rising from the grave in Kraven's Last Hunt, modified with herself doing the feat. The kicker here: Neither Hobie nor Gwen's displayed events have official releases yet, although Hobie did say he opted out of chasing Miles - which is to say she's next and last, as well as #4 (so deathly the connotations) on the shown list

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

• People keep saying there has to be a much more nuanced wrap-up - an idea with traction around these subs in a good way; to this day, people argue whether that Mumbattan hole was Spot BS or a canon event's unraveling. Mine has that nuance IMO
• Migs up and stated Mumbattan wasn't their first canon event ruptures rodeo and they couldn't save some 'verses from them, why would he be bullshitting or even fully wrong on CEs if he had that Spider team with specialized equipment for canon event containment? They were conveniently there right as that hole formed, and hell, they could reconcile that hole with the Dead Migs dimension where everything digitally evaporates as the latter being the end result
• He put on his shitlist Spider-Holland (maybe along with Maguire, Garfield (the light one)) for a reason - not hesitating to save MCU MJ (Michelle Jones-Watson) rather than let her be Spider-Tom's ASM-121 moment - although one can argue the memory wipe counts as first love loss, along with his Iron Man being his police captain canon event - and Raimi-verse Gwen is very much (per that meme) hot, single, and alive. Observing Sinister, Supreme, and 838/Illuminati-Strange's destroyed realities made him a rage button for 2099
• Showing the other 'verses like the comic-based What Ifs and that Armored Spider-Man one from the 1994 cartoon? It's kind of like a cheat out of the dilemma, and I'm not sure the other viewers would agree. Miguel also knows of Dr. Strange and possibly his What If? versions
  • Before someone "Absolute Points solve themselves, Society's unneeded" me, we know too the APs are a nascent concept and Miguel probably thought no two universes will always solve themselves and CEs are probably spontaneous - maybe a day, a week, or even a year plus, they will happen, scapegoat or not
  • To the people who say Migs was mistaken in how he destroyed that reality and that it was an Incursion: IT WASN'T ONE, because it would have caused a collision course between that 'verse and 928B, which I don't think they have any means to stop - only someone like Strange. Aside from the trolley sacrifice of one Earth, we're not privy to what are the other seven ways to averting Incursions. Guess what, Gabri's reality went poof on its apparent own while 928B stayed very much alive. Didn't even look like 928B was approaching from the skies at the time either
  • Returning to Miles' side, I also hear of the fixed time points comparison from Dr. Who; I'd like to point out the Doctor was able to fake his death by hiding inside a, uh, humanoid ship at Lake Silencio, so I've read, despite records saying so
• They keep insisting "First time for everything," right, plus the cake stuff? Why not a Venom Blast resuscitation somehow on the brink of death, then being comatose or some other critical injury so the "lost Lenore" event doesn't stick? Or! In the style of BvS Dawn of Justice and What if? Spider-Man The Other (plus Ultimate Gwen ofc)...symbiotic resurrection (possibly even transporting that one symbiote drop in that bar in the MCU), and cue Gwenom arc in some spinoff like Spider-Women
• Alternatively, to avoid the fridged LI trope absolutely, Rio gets the Ultimate comics treatment of death somehow - but as said repeatedly, doing one's own thing, and I think this Spider-War's seen enough dead Moraleses. Miles has already grown and seen enough from the other Spiders' losses and his own. Honestly, people need to hear comic quotes often, take Mark Waid's Daredevil run:

Rachel Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!

It's relevant because Rachel's stance here was that people like them who fight for causes are solely inspired by loss, only for Matt to verbally skewer her. The subtext here, synthesizing it with the Spidey mythos is that it's misguided to think that losing forever more loved ones is the only way to make a true Spider-Hero.
Flip the narrative and say "Villainy only happens if they're abused/poorly raised, alas, poor villain;" one is warranted to call it a vomitous insult to every abuse victim/improperly raised junior out there who became better than their elders/superiors - i.e. not go evil.
Either way, the greater gist of this is losing a close one for good isn't the way, emphasis on "for good"

Future Implications

Wrapping everything up like above (I mean the objectives), one way or another (not necessarily mine), would show full commitment to the theme of forging one's own destiny right down to the metatextual. The Spidersoc let confirmation bias blind themselves to possibilities and seemingly have yet to expose themselves to the preestablished branch realities where, say, Spider-People lose nobody or a Gwen Stacy ties neatly her romance quest with a Spidey. The themes of doing your own thing openly and honestly and in safety - rather than requesting permission from broken systems - resonate much with an Excel list: People who are queeof colowomen/disabled
Beyond that obviousness, we have disabled Spideys, Muslim Spideys (that female UK one), Blob-fat Spideys - even PLUSHIE Spideys, just to name a few, all to show the movie being the most diverse and inclusive Spidey work to date. These themes are so incredibly applicable to the lives of atypical people or otherwise people who live under systems that aren't designed for them to succeed. IE: POC, women, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. One can argue "doing your own thing" was what made ItSV such a breakthrough success and a decade phenomenon: Everything about the animation
I get that a teen girl dying, even temporarily - especially one who resonates much with LGBT (transgwender specifically) themes - is real bad optics, but we went through this before with Luz Noceda (bi rep exactly) from The Owl House, and things landed on their feet :)
If/When she comes back to crimefighting, this would be the moment she goes by Ghost Spider like her A self - a Gwen who fought fate and died for it, but another Spider loved her so much, he raised her from death to life in Ultimate defiance (getting flowery prose here) that prevails

Shortform

• Massive exploration of the Society beyond the big names we've spent time with in Across
• Villains forsaking their rivalries for survival and universes paving their own roads
• Gwen temporarily eating it but coming back, then leaning on her comic self (A variant)'s new Ghost-Spider ident to mark her defying fate's scythe

Premise

Here is the textual taxonomy of trilogys as I've heard in (obscure, hard-to-find) writing structure lessons

• Installment 1: Exposit - What is the subject
• Installment 2: Analyze - What is the subject's meaning
• Installment 3: Perspectivize - What is the subject's value and suasoria

Across may not have been a conclusive Act 2, but it is definitely a valid standalone one

• Expanded the 'verse and the major cast by throwing a curve into their relationships and own philosophies
• Delved deeper into what makes a Spider-Man by presenting a free will vs. determinism arc a la Civil War that also happens to have metacommentary

"I'ma do my own thing."
"We're supposed to be the good guys."
Miles summarized his new path throughout the movie, then Gwen called out the Society for their enabling of so much death and suffering to serve a misguided dogma.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/File:Spider-Man_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster_003_textless.jpg
There's almost certainly gonna an all-out ideological civil war (fists or not, composite of MCU and comics, but Spiders-only) like that split poster teased.
Gonna be grimly hilarious seeing Spinneret/Spiderling fight Peter B. and Mayday (the former are on Miguel's side to the left, along with Insomniac Spidey)
Yes, I believe there will be a few more new support characters in Beyond - there's a reason certain folks were at the front, and it's just really curious and a wasted opportunity that this Spider-MJ didn't interact at all with this active version of her other (stillborn) daughter or her (Mayday-616B) dad.
I very much appreciate the lifting of other Spidey variants to the zeitgeist fold - Noir, Ham, Gwendy-65, the UK/Punk and Indian ones, the weirdos like Parkedcar from Not! Pixar's Cars, a damn popsicle possibly (lol), a plushie, etc. - but they

Events and Themes

1. Universes

Serving the Installment 3 role, Beyond will probably tie up loose ends and make the above themes reverberate across universes. Like, for 42:

• Miles Prowler can prove that the world doesn't always need Spider-Heroes to save itself, only the spirit of the concept - Spider-Man isn't the center of the multiverse, and given the last movie's title, it will navigate its own fate independent of any Spider at all - let the world do its own thing

Beyond the 'verse of men of spiders, Reality-42 rises up against villainy.

• Maybe Kingpin and Dr. Octopus return someway, then emulate their TAS 1994 counterparts in allying with the Spiders out of existential pragmatics

2. Characters and Developments

By "reverberate," the Spider-Hero question is going to strike real nerves that change the Society and the world, making them examine the morality of the war they fight against anomalies like Spot; survival at all means and costs vs. idealistic stand against fate. And for certain Spiders, we could get more screentime with certain Society members and ex-members - preferably Spinneret and Spiderling, the Insomniac Spideys, and Scarlet Spider - and Endgame-ify Beyond's length.

• The RYV (Reality-18119, Renew Your Vows) Parkers confide with the others including Peter B. on family and how do they keep it together in light of their role as preserving fate and existence itself
• PS4/5 bros relate their experiences of loss and keeping going, especially to 1610B Miles. A great way of giving a layman on the games' plots while relaying their themes to the wider non-gamer audience
• Ben Reilly (Scarlet bro), being a Pete clone and a technical predecessor to Miles, will have his status put to address. His struggles with his inheritance and identity - bearing the names of Peter's parental figures - will probably mirror Ultimate Spider-Woman, and hopefully, he's a major outcrier against Miguel's misguided cause
• Jess-332's and Peter B's babies will interact, leading to the former's moral realization due to Peter B's time with Miles being the reason for his family's reconstruction - influenced solely by extrauniversal (of course anomalous) factors. Throw that Madame Web Spidey (Julia Carpenter) into the fray somehow?
• Interuniversal linkage like in the comics (616/928 and 65/8) can be explored to further the fate-changing theme; whether 928B the bad future of 616B is an inevitability - we haven't really explored 928B - and whether 42 is 1610B's worst possible self and how it can change. The Miles/Gwen dynamic could play here too, 65B and 1610B and the references to the number 8 (which happens to resemble the infinity sign - "infinite Spider possibilities") in Across. Not suggesting that Comics Earth 8's characters play any role, tho, 'cuz per the themes, the duo should connect on their terms
• Variant Miguels when, Sony - like the variant MJs, Harrys, Normans, Flashes, and Gwens, etc. Get freaking Edge of Time, not just Ultimate and 1994, in it
• The locked-up anomalous villains perhaps even helping stop Spot - like Kingpin and Ock above. Basically No Way Home's scenario but tweaked a bit and writ large; let them decide whether to have a new lease of life or to keep their exploits going - their outcomes, their terms as usual. I wonder how would Atari Osborn fare, though, XD

Feel free to add more :) Not quite a Marvel binger yet, XD

3. Fates

Another element to be addressed is the room elephant of canon events. Their loopholes, their flexibility have to be expanded upon: They are fluid like time's arrows and oceans. For one:

• George lives? Sorry, but Gwen's relationship with him remains strained, on top of her guilt from treachery and deception. Also, the canon event ain't really death, but the Captain losing their job

Maybe we even trade one event for another, as in a major death of sorts. In my opinion:

• Not Peter B., because he's a living meta rebuttal to people holding off (at the very least) on an aged-up/married/parent Peter, the 616 editorial included. Him dying, let alone Mayday (toddler, so definite write-off), would undermine this subtext
• Not Jess, 'cuz she's a mother and despite her jerkish mentor habits seems willing to look the other way for turncoats like Margo/Byte
• Not Jeff, 'cuz that would just prove Miggy's point in light of George being living proof, as well as utterly render worthless all the effort thrown into saving him
• Not Miguel (yes, how dare I), 'cuz for all his pain-motivated harshness, he deserves better than the cliche'd fatal redemption trope of villains, of which he technically ain't one (and don't "Thanos" this as unlike Migs, he knew of better options but foregone it)

Here's a unique twist: The mastermind behind this Spider- conspiracy grows a conscience after all the breaking lectures against his warped view of canon events, then resolves to save as many lives as possible, dropping all pretenses of controlling the Spider-War
At risk to himself, he'll unhesitatingly save lives while one/some of those who blindly followed him give theirs. As shitty as his Society's turned out to be, they still have their main directive of fixing multiversal incursions, and someone has to keep giving the orders, someone with the most drive and commitment (especially for atonement)
Why on Miguel? Matured thinking aside, it evokes how science and philosophy works; cognitive science has this cliché of at least two sides theorizing extremes that are contrary to one another, and as time passes with discovery, the proof points to both sides having a point and deciding on a compromise; this of course goes beyond simple personal disagreement
So who'll it be?
Spider-gents and ladies, none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy of Earth-65B
In the vein of MCU Aunt May being her Pete's Uncle Ben delivering that responsibility quote, and through it occurs the Spider-Verse's true Ultimate Fallout/Death of a Spider event this way
Gwen being slain and (certainly) coming back would be a wakeup call to both her world and the Society, as well as the latter group's morality in their internal strife and conflict against Spot. Redeem her image to everybody, Miles included, while allowing them to get together on solitary terms
That way:

• Miguel's right that being a Spider is a sacrifice, it's just their assigned canon events ain't 1:1 across every universe
• Miles' right that you can have and eat two cakes - meaning canon events can be alleviated (such as debris falling on Singh without killing him) - it's just that there's a cost

It'd also be a roundabout redemption for blindly following the Society's beliefs and causing unnecessary pain to Miles, deeper than "My well-meaning side right, your well-meaning side wrong" - no, both sides can have their two cakes; say, the rest save Jeff, Gwen herself - the motherless one - saves Rio, let 1610B not be 1610A in this particular way
I'ma spitball here, but it's kinda like Nolanverse (TDKR) Batman, come to think of it. Maybe George is informed of and reveals his daughter's "demise" and publicizes her ident? The latter I admit is questionable
Maybe Gwen goes to 1610B and RVs with Miles to Florence - there's this café on the banks of the Arno - for a fine evening sitting there and ordering a Fernet Branca
XD

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

... "We wanted to craft this moment where Miles encounters this powerful figure in his life that he loved so much and he lost," says director Justin K. Thompson. "That's when he realizes that he is not really in his own dimension, as well as the gravity of what he has lost. In this reality, Aaron had to shake off his life of crime and became a surrogate father figure to Miles."
... In this alternate reality, the Sinister Six have been able to flourish and take over the world. "Criminality runs rampant," says Thompson. "We wanted to create a world where it felt like Aaron and Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 [this reality's counterpart to Miles Morales] are the only heroes.
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Earth-42, p.190
... This version of the character was never bitten by a radioactive spider and doesn't have any superpowers, but he has fallen into the role of becoming the vigilante the Prowler, under the tutelage of his uncle Aaron. ...
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Miles G. Morales: The Prowler, p.200

• Here's a pattern: We meet multiple Spidey-Peters and our intro hero is, well, RIPeter, then some podcast revealed we'd be meeting multiple Gwens in Beyond; timestamp 17:51-18:45

Interviewer: Will we see other multiversal variants of Gwen Stacy in the future even if they don't have spider powers, like you do with MJ, Uncle Aaron, and Miles?
Lord: Currently yes. ... But there’s one I’m very excited about.
Miller: Yes, yeah, I know exactly the one you’re talking about.
Lord: You know the one I’m thinking of, which is based on... I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything.
Miller: But it is sort of plot-integral, I would say.
Interviewer: If there are other multiversal variants of Gwen in Beyond the Spider-Verse, will they impact her arc, her relationship with Miles?
Lord: I would say yes.

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
https://preview.redd.it/kpz7vzvub64d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d25e78b18f3fc82e58eb1516d1ac915fc130470

• Friendly reminder they referenced fuckin' Ultimate Fallout of all storylines in Gwen's room, under which she mostly lingers while speaking with her dad. Are you telling me that scene just happened to be shot like that? No, they orchestrated it! L&M! The story that deals with Miles' overall debut and the (of course, cue pathos) fallout of 1610A Spidey's demise! Been struggling to find and spot it honestly, damn lighting and coloring
• Guess what's 1610A Pete (the original Ultimate comics version, not blond RIPeter)'s death age? 16, exactly 65B Gwen's present age. MCU Pete's too when he was snapped
• Notice the last part of the Canon Event exposition scene; Hobie's got the Spider-Man No More comic panel, Jess-332 the If This Be My Destiny one, Peter B. the wedding, and Gwen? Spidey rising from the grave in Kraven's Last Hunt, modified with herself doing the feat. The kicker here: Neither Hobie nor Gwen's displayed events have official releases yet, although Hobie did say he opted out of chasing Miles - which is to say she's next and last, as well as #4 (so deathly the connotations) on the shown list

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

• People keep saying there has to be a much more nuanced wrap-up - an idea with traction around these subs in a good way; to this day, people argue whether that Mumbattan hole was Spot BS or a canon event's unraveling. Mine has that nuance IMO
• Migs up and stated Mumbattan wasn't their first canon event ruptures rodeo and they couldn't save some 'verses from them, why would he be bullshitting or even fully wrong on CEs if he had that Spider team with specialized equipment for canon event containment? They were conveniently there right as that hole formed, and hell, they could reconcile that hole with the Dead Migs dimension where everything digitally evaporates as the latter being the end result
• He put on his shitlist Spider-Holland (maybe along with Maguire, Garfield (the light one)) for a reason - not hesitating to save MCU MJ (Michelle Jones-Watson) rather than let her be Spider-Tom's ASM-121 moment - although one can argue the memory wipe counts as first love loss, along with his Iron Man being his police captain canon event - and Raimi-verse Gwen is very much (per that meme) hot, single, and alive. Observing Sinister, Supreme, and 838/Illuminati-Strange's destroyed realities made him a rage button for 2099
• Showing the other 'verses like the comic-based What Ifs and that Armored Spider-Man one from the 1994 cartoon? It's kind of like a cheat out of the dilemma, and I'm not sure the other viewers would agree. Miguel also knows of Dr. Strange and possibly his What If? versions
  • Before someone "Absolute Points solve themselves, Society's unneeded" me, we know too the APs are a nascent concept and Miguel probably thought no two universes will always solve themselves and CEs are probably spontaneous - maybe a day, a week, or even a year plus, they will happen, scapegoat or not
  • To the people who say Migs was mistaken in how he destroyed that reality and that it was an Incursion: IT WASN'T ONE, because it would have caused a collision course between that 'verse and 928B, which I don't think they have any means to stop - only someone like Strange. Aside from the trolley sacrifice of one Earth, we're not privy to what are the other seven ways to averting Incursions. Guess what, Gabri's reality went poof on its apparent own while 928B stayed very much alive. Didn't even look like 928B was approaching from the skies at the time either
  • Returning to Miles' side, I also hear of the fixed time points comparison from Dr. Who; I'd like to point out the Doctor was able to fake his death by hiding inside a, uh, humanoid ship at Lake Silencio, so I've read, despite records saying so
• They keep insisting "First time for everything," right, plus the cake stuff? Why not a Venom Blast resuscitation somehow on the brink of death, then being comatose or some other critical injury so the "lost Lenore" event doesn't stick? Or! In the style of BvS Dawn of Justice and What if? Spider-Man The Other (plus Ultimate Gwen ofc)...symbiotic resurrection (possibly even transporting that one symbiote drop in that bar in the MCU), and cue Gwenom arc in some spinoff like Spider-Women
• Alternatively, to avoid the fridged LI trope absolutely, Rio gets the Ultimate comics treatment of death somehow - but as said repeatedly, doing one's own thing, and I think this Spider-War's seen enough dead Moraleses. Miles has already grown and seen enough from the other Spiders' losses and his own. Honestly, people need to hear comic quotes often, take Mark Waid's Daredevil run:

Rachel Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!

It's relevant because Rachel's stance here was that people like them who fight for causes are solely inspired by loss, only for Matt to verbally skewer her. The subtext here, synthesizing it with the Spidey mythos is that it's misguided to think that losing forever more loved ones is the only way to make a true Spider-Hero.
Flip the narrative and say "Villainy only happens if they're abused/poorly raised, alas, poor villain;" one is warranted to call it a vomitous insult to every abuse victim/improperly raised junior out there who became better than their elders/superiors - i.e. not go evil.
Either way, the greater gist of this is losing a close one for good isn't the way, emphasis on "for good"

Future Implications

Wrapping everything up like above (I mean the objectives), one way or another (not necessarily mine), would show full commitment to the theme of forging one's own destiny right down to the metatextual. The Spidersoc let confirmation bias blind themselves to possibilities and seemingly have yet to expose themselves to the preestablished branch realities where, say, Spider-People lose nobody or a Gwen Stacy ties neatly her romance quest with a Spidey. The themes of doing your own thing openly and honestly and in safety - rather than requesting permission from broken systems - resonate much with an Excel list: People who are queeof colowomen/disabled
Beyond that obviousness, we have disabled Spideys, Muslim Spideys (that female UK one), Blob-fat Spideys - even PLUSHIE Spideys, just to name a few, all to show the movie being the most diverse and inclusive Spidey work to date. These themes are so incredibly applicable to the lives of atypical people or otherwise people who live under systems that aren't designed for them to succeed. IE: POC, women, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. One can argue "doing your own thing" was what made ItSV such a breakthrough success and a decade phenomenon: Everything about the animation
I get that a teen girl dying, even temporarily - especially one who resonates much with LGBT (transgwender specifically) themes - is real bad optics, but we went through this before with Luz Noceda (bi rep exactly) from The Owl House, and things landed on their feet :)
If/When she comes back to crimefighting, this would be the moment she goes by Ghost Spider like her A self - a Gwen who fought fate and died for it, but another Spider loved her so much, he raised her from death to life in Ultimate defiance (getting flowery prose here) that prevails

Shortform

• Massive exploration of the Society beyond the big names we've spent time with in Across
• Villains forsaking their rivalries for survival and universes paving their own roads
• Gwen temporarily eating it but coming back, then leaning on her comic self (A variant)'s new Ghost-Spider ident to mark her defying fate's scythe

Premise

Here is the textual taxonomy of trilogys as I've heard in (obscure, hard-to-find) writing structure lessons

• Installment 1: Exposit - What is the subject
• Installment 2: Analyze - What is the subject's meaning
• Installment 3: Perspectivize - What is the subject's value and suasoria

Across may not have been a conclusive Act 2, but it is definitely a valid standalone one

• Expanded the 'verse and the major cast by throwing a curve into their relationships and own philosophies
• Delved deeper into what makes a Spider-Man by presenting a free will vs. determinism arc a la Civil War that also happens to have metacommentary

"I'ma do my own thing."
"We're supposed to be the good guys."
Miles summarized his new path throughout the movie, then Gwen called out the Society for their enabling of so much death and suffering to serve a misguided dogma.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/File:Spider-Man_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster_003_textless.jpg
There's almost certainly gonna an all-out ideological civil war (fists or not, composite of MCU and comics, but Spiders-only) like that split poster teased.
Gonna be grimly hilarious seeing Spinneret/Spiderling fight Peter B. and Mayday (the former are on Miguel's side to the left, along with Insomniac Spidey)
Yes, I believe there will be a few more new support characters in Beyond - there's a reason certain folks were at the front, and it's just really curious and a wasted opportunity that this Spider-MJ didn't interact at all with this active version of her other (stillborn) daughter or her (Mayday-616B) dad.
I very much appreciate the lifting of other Spidey variants to the zeitgeist fold - Noir, Ham, Gwendy-65, the UK/Punk and Indian ones, the weirdos like Parkedcar from Not! Pixar's Cars, a damn popsicle possibly (lol), a plushie, etc. - but they

Events and Themes

1. Universes

Serving the Installment 3 role, Beyond will probably tie up loose ends and make the above themes reverberate across universes. Like, for 42:

• Miles Prowler can prove that the world doesn't always need Spider-Heroes to save itself, only the spirit of the concept - Spider-Man isn't the center of the multiverse, and given the last movie's title, it will navigate its own fate independent of any Spider at all - let the world do its own thing

Beyond the 'verse of men of spiders, Reality-42 rises up against villainy.

• Maybe Kingpin and Dr. Octopus return someway, then emulate their TAS 1994 counterparts in allying with the Spiders out of existential pragmatics

2. Characters and Developments

By "reverberate," the Spider-Hero question is going to strike real nerves that change the Society and the world, making them examine the morality of the war they fight against anomalies like Spot; survival at all means and costs vs. idealistic stand against fate. And for certain Spiders, we could get more screentime with certain Society members and ex-members - preferably Spinneret and Spiderling, the Insomniac Spideys, and Scarlet Spider - and Endgame-ify Beyond's length.

• The RYV (Reality-18119, Renew Your Vows) Parkers confide with the others including Peter B. on family and how do they keep it together in light of their role as preserving fate and existence itself
• PS4/5 bros relate their experiences of loss and keeping going, especially to 1610B Miles. A great way of giving a layman on the games' plots while relaying their themes to the wider non-gamer audience
• Ben Reilly (Scarlet bro), being a Pete clone and a technical predecessor to Miles, will have his status put to address. His struggles with his inheritance and identity - bearing the names of Peter's parental figures - will probably mirror Ultimate Spider-Woman, and hopefully, he's a major outcrier against Miguel's misguided cause
• Jess-332's and Peter B's babies will interact, leading to the former's moral realization due to Peter B's time with Miles being the reason for his family's reconstruction - influenced solely by extrauniversal (of course anomalous) factors. Throw that Madame Web Spidey (Julia Carpenter) into the fray somehow?
• Interuniversal linkage like in the comics (616/928 and 65/8) can be explored to further the fate-changing theme; whether 928B the bad future of 616B is an inevitability - we haven't really explored 928B - and whether 42 is 1610B's worst possible self and how it can change. The Miles/Gwen dynamic could play here too, 65B and 1610B and the references to the number 8 (which happens to resemble the infinity sign - "infinite Spider possibilities") in Across. Not suggesting that Comics Earth 8's characters play any role, tho, 'cuz per the themes, the duo should connect on their terms
• Variant Miguels when, Sony - like the variant MJs, Harrys, Normans, Flashes, and Gwens, etc. Get freaking Edge of Time, not just Ultimate and 1994, in it
• The locked-up anomalous villains perhaps even helping stop Spot - like Kingpin and Ock above. Basically No Way Home's scenario but tweaked a bit and writ large; let them decide whether to have a new lease of life or to keep their exploits going - their outcomes, their terms as usual. I wonder how would Atari Osborn fare, though, XD

Feel free to add more :) Not quite a Marvel binger yet, XD

3. Fates

Another element to be addressed is the room elephant of canon events. Their loopholes, their flexibility have to be expanded upon: They are fluid like time's arrows and oceans. For one:

• George lives? Sorry, but Gwen's relationship with him remains strained, on top of her guilt from treachery and deception. Also, the canon event ain't really death, but the Captain losing their job

Maybe we even trade one event for another, as in a major death of sorts. In my opinion:

• Not Peter B., because he's a living meta rebuttal to people holding off (at the very least) on an aged-up/married/parent Peter, the 616 editorial included. Him dying, let alone Mayday (toddler, so definite write-off), would undermine this subtext
• Not Jess, 'cuz she's a mother and despite her jerkish mentor habits seems willing to look the other way for turncoats like Margo/Byte
• Not Jeff, 'cuz that would just prove Miggy's point in light of George being living proof, as well as utterly render worthless all the effort thrown into saving him
• Not Miguel (yes, how dare I), 'cuz for all his pain-motivated harshness, he deserves better than the cliche'd fatal redemption trope of villains, of which he technically ain't one (and don't "Thanos" this as unlike Migs, he knew of better options but foregone it)

Here's a unique twist: The mastermind behind this Spider- conspiracy grows a conscience after all the breaking lectures against his warped view of canon events, then resolves to save as many lives as possible, dropping all pretenses of controlling the Spider-War
At risk to himself, he'll unhesitatingly save lives while one/some of those who blindly followed him give theirs. As shitty as his Society's turned out to be, they still have their main directive of fixing multiversal incursions, and someone has to keep giving the orders, someone with the most drive and commitment (especially for atonement)
Why on Miguel? Matured thinking aside, it evokes how science and philosophy works; cognitive science has this cliché of at least two sides theorizing extremes that are contrary to one another, and as time passes with discovery, the proof points to both sides having a point and deciding on a compromise; this of course goes beyond simple personal disagreement
So who'll it be?
Spider-gents and ladies, none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy of Earth-65B
In the vein of MCU Aunt May being her Pete's Uncle Ben delivering that responsibility quote, and through it occurs the Spider-Verse's true Ultimate Fallout/Death of a Spider event this way
Gwen being slain and (certainly) coming back would be a wakeup call to both her world and the Society, as well as the latter group's morality in their internal strife and conflict against Spot. Redeem her image to everybody, Miles included, while allowing them to get together on solitary terms
That way:

• Miguel's right that being a Spider is a sacrifice, it's just their assigned canon events ain't 1:1 across every universe
• Miles' right that you can have and eat two cakes - meaning canon events can be alleviated (such as debris falling on Singh without killing him) - it's just that there's a cost

It'd also be a roundabout redemption for blindly following the Society's beliefs and causing unnecessary pain to Miles, deeper than "My well-meaning side right, your well-meaning side wrong" - no, both sides can have their two cakes; say, the rest save Jeff, Gwen herself - the motherless one - saves Rio, let 1610B not be 1610A in this particular way
I'ma spitball here, but it's kinda like Nolanverse (TDKR) Batman, come to think of it. Maybe George is informed of and reveals his daughter's "demise" and publicizes her ident? The latter I admit is questionable
Maybe Gwen goes to 1610B and RVs with Miles to Florence - there's this café on the banks of the Arno - for a fine evening sitting there and ordering a Fernet Branca
XD

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

... "We wanted to craft this moment where Miles encounters this powerful figure in his life that he loved so much and he lost," says director Justin K. Thompson. "That's when he realizes that he is not really in his own dimension, as well as the gravity of what he has lost. In this reality, Aaron had to shake off his life of crime and became a surrogate father figure to Miles."
... In this alternate reality, the Sinister Six have been able to flourish and take over the world. "Criminality runs rampant," says Thompson. "We wanted to create a world where it felt like Aaron and Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 [this reality's counterpart to Miles Morales] are the only heroes.
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Earth-42, p.190
... This version of the character was never bitten by a radioactive spider and doesn't have any superpowers, but he has fallen into the role of becoming the vigilante the Prowler, under the tutelage of his uncle Aaron. ...
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Miles G. Morales: The Prowler, p.200

• Here's a pattern: We meet multiple Spidey-Peters and our intro hero is, well, RIPeter, then some podcast revealed we'd be meeting multiple Gwens in Beyond; timestamp 17:51-18:45

Interviewer: Will we see other multiversal variants of Gwen Stacy in the future even if they don't have spider powers, like you do with MJ, Uncle Aaron, and Miles?
Lord: Currently yes. ... But there’s one I’m very excited about.
Miller: Yes, yeah, I know exactly the one you’re talking about.
Lord: You know the one I’m thinking of, which is based on... I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything.
Miller: But it is sort of plot-integral, I would say.
Interviewer: If there are other multiversal variants of Gwen in Beyond the Spider-Verse, will they impact her arc, her relationship with Miles?
Lord: I would say yes.

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
https://preview.redd.it/kpz7vzvub64d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d25e78b18f3fc82e58eb1516d1ac915fc130470

• Friendly reminder they referenced fuckin' Ultimate Fallout of all storylines in Gwen's room, under which she mostly lingers while speaking with her dad. Are you telling me that scene just happened to be shot like that? No, they orchestrated it! L&M! The story that deals with Miles' overall debut and the (of course, cue pathos) fallout of 1610A Spidey's demise! Been struggling to find and spot it honestly, damn lighting and coloring
• Guess what's 1610A Pete (the original Ultimate comics version, not blond RIPeter)'s death age? 16, exactly 65B Gwen's present age. MCU Pete's too when he was snapped
• Notice the last part of the Canon Event exposition scene; Hobie's got the Spider-Man No More comic panel, Jess-332 the If This Be My Destiny one, Peter B. the wedding, and Gwen? Spidey rising from the grave in Kraven's Last Hunt, modified with herself doing the feat. The kicker here: Neither Hobie nor Gwen's displayed events have official releases yet, although Hobie did say he opted out of chasing Miles - which is to say she's next and last, as well as #4 (so deathly the connotations) on the shown list

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

• People keep saying there has to be a much more nuanced wrap-up - an idea with traction around these subs in a good way; to this day, people argue whether that Mumbattan hole was Spot BS or a canon event's unraveling. Mine has that nuance IMO
• Migs up and stated Mumbattan wasn't their first canon event ruptures rodeo and they couldn't save some 'verses from them, why would he be bullshitting or even fully wrong on CEs if he had that Spider team with specialized equipment for canon event containment? They were conveniently there right as that hole formed, and hell, they could reconcile that hole with the Dead Migs dimension where everything digitally evaporates as the latter being the end result
• He put on his shitlist Spider-Holland (maybe along with Maguire, Garfield (the light one)) for a reason - not hesitating to save MCU MJ (Michelle Jones-Watson) rather than let her be Spider-Tom's ASM-121 moment - although one can argue the memory wipe counts as first love loss, along with his Iron Man being his police captain canon event - and Raimi-verse Gwen is very much (per that meme) hot, single, and alive. Observing Sinister, Supreme, and 838/Illuminati-Strange's destroyed realities made him a rage button for 2099
• Showing the other 'verses like the comic-based What Ifs and that Armored Spider-Man one from the 1994 cartoon? It's kind of like a cheat out of the dilemma, and I'm not sure the other viewers would agree. Miguel also knows of Dr. Strange and possibly his What If? versions
  • Before someone "Absolute Points solve themselves, Society's unneeded" me, we know too the APs are a nascent concept and Miguel probably thought no two universes will always solve themselves and CEs are probably spontaneous - maybe a day, a week, or even a year plus, they will happen, scapegoat or not
  • To the people who say Migs was mistaken in how he destroyed that reality and that it was an Incursion: IT WASN'T ONE, because it would have caused a collision course between that 'verse and 928B, which I don't think they have any means to stop - only someone like Strange. Aside from the trolley sacrifice of one Earth, we're not privy to what are the other seven ways to averting Incursions. Guess what, Gabri's reality went poof on its apparent own while 928B stayed very much alive. Didn't even look like 928B was approaching from the skies at the time either
  • Returning to Miles' side, I also hear of the fixed time points comparison from Dr. Who; I'd like to point out the Doctor was able to fake his death by hiding inside a, uh, humanoid ship at Lake Silencio, so I've read, despite records saying so
• They keep insisting "First time for everything," right, plus the cake stuff? Why not a Venom Blast resuscitation somehow on the brink of death, then being comatose or some other critical injury so the "lost Lenore" event doesn't stick? Or! In the style of BvS Dawn of Justice and What if? Spider-Man The Other (plus Ultimate Gwen ofc)...symbiotic resurrection (possibly even transporting that one symbiote drop in that bar in the MCU), and cue Gwenom arc in some spinoff like Spider-Women
• Alternatively, to avoid the fridged LI trope absolutely, Rio gets the Ultimate comics treatment of death somehow - but as said repeatedly, doing one's own thing, and I think this Spider-War's seen enough dead Moraleses. Miles has already grown and seen enough from the other Spiders' losses and his own. Honestly, people need to hear comic quotes often, take Mark Waid's Daredevil run:

Rachel Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!

It's relevant because Rachel's stance here was that people like them who fight for causes are solely inspired by loss, only for Matt to verbally skewer her. The subtext here, synthesizing it with the Spidey mythos is that it's misguided to think that losing forever more loved ones is the only way to make a true Spider-Hero.
Flip the narrative and say "Villainy only happens if they're abused/poorly raised, alas, poor villain;" one is warranted to call it a vomitous insult to every abuse victim/improperly raised junior out there who became better than their elders/superiors - i.e. not go evil.
Either way, the greater gist of this is losing a close one for good isn't the way, emphasis on "for good"

Future Implications

Wrapping everything up like above (I mean the objectives), one way or another (not necessarily mine), would show full commitment to the theme of forging one's own destiny right down to the metatextual. The Spidersoc let confirmation bias blind themselves to possibilities and seemingly have yet to expose themselves to the preestablished branch realities where, say, Spider-People lose nobody or a Gwen Stacy ties neatly her romance quest with a Spidey. The themes of doing your own thing openly and honestly and in safety - rather than requesting permission from broken systems - resonate much with an Excel list: People who are queeof colowomen/disabled
Beyond that obviousness, we have disabled Spideys, Muslim Spideys (that female UK one), Blob-fat Spideys - even PLUSHIE Spideys, just to name a few, all to show the movie being the most diverse and inclusive Spidey work to date. These themes are so incredibly applicable to the lives of atypical people or otherwise people who live under systems that aren't designed for them to succeed. IE: POC, women, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. One can argue "doing your own thing" was what made ItSV such a breakthrough success and a decade phenomenon: Everything about the animation
I get that a teen girl dying, even temporarily - especially one who resonates much with LGBT (transgwender specifically) themes - is real bad optics, but we went through this before with Luz Noceda (bi rep exactly) from The Owl House, and things landed on their feet :)
If/When she comes back to crimefighting, this would be the moment she goes by Ghost Spider like her A self - a Gwen who fought fate and died for it, but another Spider loved her so much, he raised her from death to life in Ultimate defiance (getting flowery prose here) that prevails

Shortform

• Massive exploration of the Society beyond the big names we've spent time with in Across
• Villains forsaking their rivalries for survival and universes paving their own roads
• Gwen temporarily eating it but coming back, then leaning on her comic self (A variant)'s new Ghost-Spider ident to mark her defying fate's scythe

Premise

Here is the textual taxonomy of trilogys as I've heard in (obscure, hard-to-find) writing structure lessons

• Installment 1: Exposit - What is the subject
• Installment 2: Analyze - What is the subject's meaning
• Installment 3: Perspectivize - What is the subject's value and suasoria

Across may not have been a conclusive Act 2, but it is definitely a valid standalone one

• Expanded the 'verse and the major cast by throwing a curve into their relationships and own philosophies
• Delved deeper into what makes a Spider-Man by presenting a free will vs. determinism arc a la Civil War that also happens to have metacommentary

"I'ma do my own thing."
"We're supposed to be the good guys."
Miles summarized his new path throughout the movie, then Gwen called out the Society for their enabling of so much death and suffering to serve a misguided dogma.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/File:Spider-Man_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster_003_textless.jpg
There's almost certainly gonna an all-out ideological civil war (fists or not, composite of MCU and comics, but Spiders-only) like that split poster teased.
Gonna be grimly hilarious seeing Spinneret/Spiderling fight Peter B. and Mayday (the former are on Miguel's side to the left, along with Insomniac Spidey)
Yes, I believe there will be a few more new support characters in Beyond - there's a reason certain folks were at the front, and it's just really curious and a wasted opportunity that this Spider-MJ didn't interact at all with this active version of her other (stillborn) daughter or her (Mayday-616B) dad.
I very much appreciate the lifting of other Spidey variants to the zeitgeist fold - Noir, Ham, Gwendy-65, the UK/Punk and Indian ones, the weirdos like Parkedcar from Not! Pixar's Cars, a damn popsicle possibly (lol), a plushie, etc. - but they

Events and Themes

1. Universes

Serving the Installment 3 role, Beyond will probably tie up loose ends and make the above themes reverberate across universes. Like, for 42:

• Miles Prowler can prove that the world doesn't always need Spider-Heroes to save itself, only the spirit of the concept - Spider-Man isn't the center of the multiverse, and given the last movie's title, it will navigate its own fate independent of any Spider at all - let the world do its own thing

Beyond the 'verse of men of spiders, Reality-42 rises up against villainy.

• Maybe Kingpin and Dr. Octopus return someway, then emulate their TAS 1994 counterparts in allying with the Spiders out of existential pragmatics

2. Characters and Developments

By "reverberate," the Spider-Hero question is going to strike real nerves that change the Society and the world, making them examine the morality of the war they fight against anomalies like Spot; survival at all means and costs vs. idealistic stand against fate. And for certain Spiders, we could get more screentime with certain Society members and ex-members - preferably Spinneret and Spiderling, the Insomniac Spideys, and Scarlet Spider - and Endgame-ify Beyond's length.

• The RYV (Reality-18119, Renew Your Vows) Parkers confide with the others including Peter B. on family and how do they keep it together in light of their role as preserving fate and existence itself
• PS4/5 bros relate their experiences of loss and keeping going, especially to 1610B Miles. A great way of giving a layman on the games' plots while relaying their themes to the wider non-gamer audience
• Ben Reilly (Scarlet bro), being a Pete clone and a technical predecessor to Miles, will have his status put to address. His struggles with his inheritance and identity - bearing the names of Peter's parental figures - will probably mirror Ultimate Spider-Woman, and hopefully, he's a major outcrier against Miguel's misguided cause
• Jess-332's and Peter B's babies will interact, leading to the former's moral realization due to Peter B's time with Miles being the reason for his family's reconstruction - influenced solely by extrauniversal (of course anomalous) factors. Throw that Madame Web Spidey (Julia Carpenter) into the fray somehow?
• Interuniversal linkage like in the comics (616/928 and 65/8) can be explored to further the fate-changing theme; whether 928B the bad future of 616B is an inevitability - we haven't really explored 928B - and whether 42 is 1610B's worst possible self and how it can change. The Miles/Gwen dynamic could play here too, 65B and 1610B and the references to the number 8 (which happens to resemble the infinity sign - "infinite Spider possibilities") in Across. Not suggesting that Comics Earth 8's characters play any role, tho, 'cuz per the themes, the duo should connect on their terms
• Variant Miguels when, Sony - like the variant MJs, Harrys, Normans, Flashes, and Gwens, etc. Get freaking Edge of Time, not just Ultimate and 1994, in it
• The locked-up anomalous villains perhaps even helping stop Spot - like Kingpin and Ock above. Basically No Way Home's scenario but tweaked a bit and writ large; let them decide whether to have a new lease of life or to keep their exploits going - their outcomes, their terms as usual. I wonder how would Atari Osborn fare, though, XD

Feel free to add more :) Not quite a Marvel binger yet, XD

3. Fates

Another element to be addressed is the room elephant of canon events. Their loopholes, their flexibility have to be expanded upon: They are fluid like time's arrows and oceans. For one:

• George lives? Sorry, but Gwen's relationship with him remains strained, on top of her guilt from treachery and deception. Also, the canon event ain't really death, but the Captain losing their job

Maybe we even trade one event for another, as in a major death of sorts. In my opinion:

• Not Peter B., because he's a living meta rebuttal to people holding off (at the very least) on an aged-up/married/parent Peter, the 616 editorial included. Him dying, let alone Mayday (toddler, so definite write-off), would undermine this subtext
• Not Jess, 'cuz she's a mother and despite her jerkish mentor habits seems willing to look the other way for turncoats like Margo/Byte
• Not Jeff, 'cuz that would just prove Miggy's point in light of George being living proof, as well as utterly render worthless all the effort thrown into saving him
• Not Miguel (yes, how dare I), 'cuz for all his pain-motivated harshness, he deserves better than the cliche'd fatal redemption trope of villains, of which he technically ain't one (and don't "Thanos" this as unlike Migs, he knew of better options but foregone it)

Here's a unique twist: The mastermind behind this Spider- conspiracy grows a conscience after all the breaking lectures against his warped view of canon events, then resolves to save as many lives as possible, dropping all pretenses of controlling the Spider-War
At risk to himself, he'll unhesitatingly save lives while one/some of those who blindly followed him give theirs. As shitty as his Society's turned out to be, they still have their main directive of fixing multiversal incursions, and someone has to keep giving the orders, someone with the most drive and commitment (especially for atonement)
Why on Miguel? Matured thinking aside, it evokes how science and philosophy works; cognitive science has this cliché of at least two sides theorizing extremes that are contrary to one another, and as time passes with discovery, the proof points to both sides having a point and deciding on a compromise; this of course goes beyond simple personal disagreement
So who'll it be?
Spider-gents and ladies, none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy of Earth-65B
In the vein of MCU Aunt May being her Pete's Uncle Ben delivering that responsibility quote, and through it occurs the Spider-Verse's true Ultimate Fallout/Death of a Spider event this way
Gwen being slain and (certainly) coming back would be a wakeup call to both her world and the Society, as well as the latter group's morality in their internal strife and conflict against Spot. Redeem her image to everybody, Miles included, while allowing them to get together on solitary terms
That way:

• Miguel's right that being a Spider is a sacrifice, it's just their assigned canon events ain't 1:1 across every universe
• Miles' right that you can have and eat two cakes - meaning canon events can be alleviated (such as debris falling on Singh without killing him) - it's just that there's a cost

It'd also be a roundabout redemption for blindly following the Society's beliefs and causing unnecessary pain to Miles, deeper than "My well-meaning side right, your well-meaning side wrong" - no, both sides can have their two cakes; say, the rest save Jeff, Gwen herself - the motherless one - saves Rio, let 1610B not be 1610A in this particular way
I'ma spitball here, but it's kinda like Nolanverse (TDKR) Batman, come to think of it. Maybe George is informed of and reveals his daughter's "demise" and publicizes her ident? The latter I admit is questionable
Maybe Gwen goes to 1610B and RVs with Miles to Florence - there's this café on the banks of the Arno - for a fine evening sitting there and ordering a Fernet Branca
XD

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

... "We wanted to craft this moment where Miles encounters this powerful figure in his life that he loved so much and he lost," says director Justin K. Thompson. "That's when he realizes that he is not really in his own dimension, as well as the gravity of what he has lost. In this reality, Aaron had to shake off his life of crime and became a surrogate father figure to Miles."
... In this alternate reality, the Sinister Six have been able to flourish and take over the world. "Criminality runs rampant," says Thompson. "We wanted to create a world where it felt like Aaron and Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 [this reality's counterpart to Miles Morales] are the only heroes.
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Earth-42, p.190
... This version of the character was never bitten by a radioactive spider and doesn't have any superpowers, but he has fallen into the role of becoming the vigilante the Prowler, under the tutelage of his uncle Aaron. ...
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Miles G. Morales: The Prowler, p.200

• Here's a pattern: We meet multiple Spidey-Peters and our intro hero is, well, RIPeter, then some podcast revealed we'd be meeting multiple Gwens in Beyond; timestamp 17:51-18:45

Interviewer: Will we see other multiversal variants of Gwen Stacy in the future even if they don't have spider powers, like you do with MJ, Uncle Aaron, and Miles?
Lord: Currently yes. ... But there’s one I’m very excited about.
Miller: Yes, yeah, I know exactly the one you’re talking about.
Lord: You know the one I’m thinking of, which is based on... I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything.
Miller: But it is sort of plot-integral, I would say.
Interviewer: If there are other multiversal variants of Gwen in Beyond the Spider-Verse, will they impact her arc, her relationship with Miles?
Lord: I would say yes.

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
https://preview.redd.it/kpz7vzvub64d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d25e78b18f3fc82e58eb1516d1ac915fc130470

• Friendly reminder they referenced fuckin' Ultimate Fallout of all storylines in Gwen's room, under which she mostly lingers while speaking with her dad. Are you telling me that scene just happened to be shot like that? No, they orchestrated it! L&M! The story that deals with Miles' overall debut and the (of course, cue pathos) fallout of 1610A Spidey's demise! Been struggling to find and spot it honestly, damn lighting and coloring
• Guess what's 1610A Pete (the original Ultimate comics version, not blond RIPeter)'s death age? 16, exactly 65B Gwen's present age. MCU Pete's too when he was snapped
• Notice the last part of the Canon Event exposition scene; Hobie's got the Spider-Man No More comic panel, Jess-332 the If This Be My Destiny one, Peter B. the wedding, and Gwen? Spidey rising from the grave in Kraven's Last Hunt, modified with herself doing the feat. The kicker here: Neither Hobie nor Gwen's displayed events have official releases yet, although Hobie did say he opted out of chasing Miles - which is to say she's next and last, as well as #4 (so deathly the connotations) on the shown list

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

• People keep saying there has to be a much more nuanced wrap-up - an idea with traction around these subs in a good way; to this day, people argue whether that Mumbattan hole was Spot BS or a canon event's unraveling. Mine has that nuance IMO
• Migs up and stated Mumbattan wasn't their first canon event ruptures rodeo and they couldn't save some 'verses from them, why would he be bullshitting or even fully wrong on CEs if he had that Spider team with specialized equipment for canon event containment? They were conveniently there right as that hole formed, and hell, they could reconcile that hole with the Dead Migs dimension where everything digitally evaporates as the latter being the end result
• He put on his shitlist Spider-Holland (maybe along with Maguire, Garfield (the light one)) for a reason - not hesitating to save MCU MJ (Michelle Jones-Watson) rather than let her be Spider-Tom's ASM-121 moment - although one can argue the memory wipe counts as first love loss, along with his Iron Man being his police captain canon event - and Raimi-verse Gwen is very much (per that meme) hot, single, and alive. Observing Sinister, Supreme, and 838/Illuminati-Strange's destroyed realities made him a rage button for 2099
• Showing the other 'verses like the comic-based What Ifs and that Armored Spider-Man one from the 1994 cartoon? It's kind of like a cheat out of the dilemma, and I'm not sure the other viewers would agree. Miguel also knows of Dr. Strange and possibly his What If? versions
  • Before someone "Absolute Points solve themselves, Society's unneeded" me, we know too the APs are a nascent concept and Miguel probably thought no two universes will always solve themselves and CEs are probably spontaneous - maybe a day, a week, or even a year plus, they will happen, scapegoat or not
  • To the people who say Migs was mistaken in how he destroyed that reality and that it was an Incursion: IT WASN'T ONE, because it would have caused a collision course between that 'verse and 928B, which I don't think they have any means to stop - only someone like Strange. Aside from the trolley sacrifice of one Earth, we're not privy to what are the other seven ways to averting Incursions. Guess what, Gabri's reality went poof on its apparent own while 928B stayed very much alive. Didn't even look like 928B was approaching from the skies at the time either
  • Returning to Miles' side, I also hear of the fixed time points comparison from Dr. Who; I'd like to point out the Doctor was able to fake his death by hiding inside a, uh, humanoid ship at Lake Silencio, so I've read, despite records saying so
• They keep insisting "First time for everything," right, plus the cake stuff? Why not a Venom Blast resuscitation somehow on the brink of death, then being comatose or some other critical injury so the "lost Lenore" event doesn't stick? Or! In the style of BvS Dawn of Justice and What if? Spider-Man The Other (plus Ultimate Gwen ofc)...symbiotic resurrection (possibly even transporting that one symbiote drop in that bar in the MCU), and cue Gwenom arc in some spinoff like Spider-Women
• Alternatively, to avoid the fridged LI trope absolutely, Rio gets the Ultimate comics treatment of death somehow - but as said repeatedly, doing one's own thing, and I think this Spider-War's seen enough dead Moraleses. Miles has already grown and seen enough from the other Spiders' losses and his own. Honestly, people need to hear comic quotes often, take Mark Waid's Daredevil run:

Rachel Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!

It's relevant because Rachel's stance here was that people like them who fight for causes are solely inspired by loss, only for Matt to verbally skewer her. The subtext here, synthesizing it with the Spidey mythos is that it's misguided to think that losing forever more loved ones is the only way to make a true Spider-Hero.
Flip the narrative and say "Villainy only happens if they're abused/poorly raised, alas, poor villain;" one is warranted to call it a vomitous insult to every abuse victim/improperly raised junior out there who became better than their elders/superiors - i.e. not go evil.
Either way, the greater gist of this is losing a close one for good isn't the way, emphasis on "for good"

Future Implications

Wrapping everything up like above (I mean the objectives), one way or another (not necessarily mine), would show full commitment to the theme of forging one's own destiny right down to the metatextual. The Spidersoc let confirmation bias blind themselves to possibilities and seemingly have yet to expose themselves to the preestablished branch realities where, say, Spider-People lose nobody or a Gwen Stacy ties neatly her romance quest with a Spidey. The themes of doing your own thing openly and honestly and in safety - rather than requesting permission from broken systems - resonate much with an Excel list: People who are queeof colowomen/disabled
Beyond that obviousness, we have disabled Spideys, Muslim Spideys (that female UK one), Blob-fat Spideys - even PLUSHIE Spideys, just to name a few, all to show the movie being the most diverse and inclusive Spidey work to date. These themes are so incredibly applicable to the lives of atypical people or otherwise people who live under systems that aren't designed for them to succeed. IE: POC, women, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. One can argue "doing your own thing" was what made ItSV such a breakthrough success and a decade phenomenon: Everything about the animation
I get that a teen girl dying, even temporarily - especially one who resonates much with LGBT (transgwender specifically) themes - is real bad optics, but we went through this before with Luz Noceda (bi rep exactly) from The Owl House, and things landed on their feet :)
If/When she comes back to crimefighting, this would be the moment she goes by Ghost Spider like her A self - a Gwen who fought fate and died for it, but another Spider loved her so much, he raised her from death to life in Ultimate defiance (getting flowery prose here) that prevails

So, I want to give a shout out and a thank you to u/blackjackbjc because of this reply he gave concerning the timing. Therefore, if we add 30 days for the grace period, 6/11 turns into 7/11/2024 which is more in line with 9 months from the time Dr. Lalezari more than likely decided to come on board with CytoDyn. Thank you blackjack and thank you u/Insider1209887 for helping me on this and with the Scott Kelly statement that there is more than one way to create a partnership.
So, I have no authority. I just write things down as I see it. You can read my opinions and understand what I think, but you should always do your own diligence to form your own basis and interpretation.
So, today, I wanted to review some more of the things Tyler Blok said. So, he talked also about Amarex. Let's read it again.

"Tyler Blok 04:33: Samsung, Amarex
Thanks Jay. So as always, we are very much restricted on what we can share by way of legal regulatory and IP matters, but we did want to make a point to share what we can at this time. And we do think it's important. So, first and foremost, and mostly, by way of a recap, we were very pleased with the recent result in the Samsung dispute.
Needless to say, the Samsung this resolution removes significant short-term pressure on the company and also allows us to now use our immediate resources and funds to get back into the clinic and all those related preparations. We appreciate Samsung's willingness to come to an agreement in the end and also in that it was structured in a way that allows them to be repaid in line with the future success of CytoDyn.
And to the Amarex Litigation, we are very much aware of the overwhelming investor interest in this proceeding but there's not much we can say as it relates to this pending litigation matter. So, what I'll do is I'll just do a recap of what we can right? As this goes in our recent SEC filings, the arbitration is set to commence, November 11th 2024. That arbitration proceeding itself can sometimes last multiple weeks.
Typically, an award is issued by the arbitrator approximately 30 to 60 days after the conclusion of the arbitration proceeding. So again, you have an arbitration proceeding, a couple weeks, maybe, 30 to 60 days thereafter, you can potentially see an award from the arbitrator. OK?
Tyler Blok 06:05: Settlement Offers, Settlement Discussions
The company. What's been going on recently? The company has been working recently with Sidley Austin on a number of Discovery objectives in the litigation.
We continue to collect evidence for our claims and make preparations for the arbitration later this year. We also, and this was disclosed in filings as well, we remain open to settlement offers from Amarex and we, in fact, remain in settlement discussions with them at this time, as to when you could potentially see a settlement on that front.
The case could theoretically settle at any time before the conclusion of the arbitration proceedings. But at this time, we really, we simply remain committed to maximizing the result for the company and that could be whether through settlement or arbitration, again, the focus on maximizing the result for the company. The typical lawyer close-off, as this is an ongoing litigation matter, we cannot comment further at this time."

Basically, Tyler is saying that they would like to bring this to a close as soon as possible, but if they can't arrive to a settlement offer that is agreed upon by both CytoDyn as well as Amarex, then it will have to be decided in arbitration beginning November 11, 2024. So, CytoDyn is preparing with Sidley Austin on a number of Discovery Objectives in expectation that this could go to arbitration and CytoDyn's intentions are to maximize the arbitration award, but CytoDyn also remains open to settlement offers up until the date of arbitration.
Surely all the twatwaffles and even Amarex themselves would like all of us to believe that CytoDyn should just call it quits because they have no chance on collecting anything and instead of Amarex owing anything to CytoDyn, the end result will be that CytoDyn owes Amarex. Nobody and I mean nobody on CytoDyn's end even remotely believes this. Let's take Samsung mentioned above. If Samsung believed that CytoDyn would owe Amarex $13 million, would Samsung have agreed to defer the payment of the debt owed to them? Samsung knows that a ruling against CytoDyn in the Amarex arbitration would not bode well for CytoDyn's future and if that were in fact to occur, Samsung just as well should kiss goodbye those ~$36 million owed them. But they did agree to a deferred payment because they believe Amarex will pay CytoDyn and do not believe the opposite.
Is Amarex looking for some concessions from CytoDyn? Could they be looking for some compromises made by CytoDyn, that if agreed to, then, they would put forth a settlement offer? Like what? Not to rip KK apart? Not to defraud the stellar reputation Amarex is attempting to protect? Is CytoDyn looking for more than just a large cash settlement? What about further lawsuits with Amarex or lawsuits to go after those who spurred Amarex to do what they did? Does Amarex want CytoDyn to give up their right to pursue these things if they were to receive an appropriate cash settlement? Thank you u/sunraydoc for that great post. You need to post way more often.
On the topic of Discovery Objectives in the event this goes to arbitration, I would be interested in a quantitative calculation of both compensatory damages as well as punitive damages, (as it is obvious Amarex acted in such a harmful way as sunraydoc pointed to), but you can also refer to some of the following posts to get a better idea:

1. The Manifestation of Truth Delivers a Tried & True and an Expected Resultant Outcome
2. Fair And Square
3. The Walls Closed In On Amarex
4. CytoDyn's Stepping Stone
5. Nine Lives
6. Go Go Go SA
7. Time Of Transition
8. Sad Turns To Glad
9. And there is way more where all that came from.

I would say CytoDyn/Sidley Austin would need the help of an expert quantitative economist to come to an appropriate calculation of what the compensatory damages really would sum up to. I'd say Sidley Austin already has their own that could do that. As to the punitive damages, that should include learning from KK who put Amarex up to this and extracting those damages from the puppet master.
These settlement talks can only go on for so long. They can go up to November 11, 2024. A settlement could be reached even on November 10, 2024, but it would be unlikely CytoDyn would agree to any quantity even modestly less than the minimum they would entertain, the closer it is to that November 11 date. This means that the sooner a settlement is agreed upon, the less Amarex might have to pay. And once they pay, all of this talk on Amarex would go away. All that is agreed upon in the settlement offer would need to be abided by. Whatever clauses of compromise and stipulations posed, must be adhered to, so, if Amarex was smart, they would get the greatest bang for their buck by choosing to make an agreeable settlement offer soon.
Does Amarex have hopes of surviving once this settlement/arbitration award is paid? Would NSF continue to maintain that business? Possibly, if a settlement is agreed to, but probably not, if it goes to arbitration, because in the arbitration, I don't think CytoDyn will do any more compromise. Now is the time for compromise. Later, if they choose to ignore this opportunity they have, then later, CytoDyn and Sidley Austin will have no mercy. And if NSF intends on maintaining Amarex following the result of this arbitrage, then they too should realize the importance of this time period that is rapidly running out within which they have the opportunity to salvage as much as they can of their company they unfortunately purchased.
CytoDyn ain't backing down. The terms stipulated by Tyler Blok will be adhered to until that day. The pressure is on Amarex and NSF. Nothing will dissuade CytoDyn / SA from carrying out this necessary justice. There is too much CytoDyn has against them. The suit originally was Amarex suing CytoDyn for something like $13.5 million, but after David Welch put up the $6.5 million bond, Sidley Austin reversed the suit and CytoDyn now is suing Amarex.
CytoDyn is expecting at a minimum $100 million + the return back of the $6.5 million bond. But, if this goes to arbitration, much more than this can be expected. I'd say CytoDyn might be willing to accept $75 million in month of June, then $80 million in month of July, then $85 million August, $95 million September, $105 million October and then, if these offers were not made, then, it goes to arbitration. I'm sure Mitch Cohen with Dr. Lalezari's guidance, already has in mind how he would intend to allocate such funds which would be in CytoDyn's account at most 60 days following the settlement offer. This would end the war with Amarex, and Tyler Blok along with Sidley Austin need to make these decisions as to how much they are willing to accept.
As of this date, no settlement offer has been agreed upon and so, they continue to press on in their pursuit of the Discovery Objectives.
One option that just occurred to me, what if Amarex assured CytoDyn that they have a willing partner that would pay top dollar for CytoDyn, but only if this arbitration was completely dropped and all charges against KK and anyone else involved were also dropped? Say they have a buyer of CytoDyn for $15 billion, which would only occur if these charges were dropped, would that deal be taken or agreed to? I think that might be one way they could remove this noose from around their necks. This would mean that CytoDyn drop all charges and give up all their goals in attempting to reach justice in the matter. Letting bygones be bygones.
Those who remain as shareholders in the company would receive their benefit, but what about shareholder who exited because of what Amarex did? There would be no justice for them in any settlement. And why would CytoDyn choose to believe anything Amarex might say or offer? Were they trustworthy before? Or were they only capable of lies? If CytoDyn chooses to lift the pressure just a bit, will Amarex take advantage of that and undo all the progress CytoDyn made with Sidley Austin? How can you resume something you stopped already? That is a difficult proposition because then, there would be too many that would object to CytoDyn reintroducing the crime. Only Blok and SA can make that decision as to whether or not to accept such an offer. They might say to themselves, let us make this offer to CytoDyn knowing that this is our only opportunity to escape the fate befallen us and if they take it, and drop the case, we can go back on the offensive, all over again.
CytoDyn cannot afford to not finish this in the manner already decided upon by both CytoDyn/SA and Amarex/NSF. Tyler Blok affirms this and re-affirms this a few times already that their intention is to pursue this until the end. We already know the end date being 30-60 days after November 11, 2024 or sooner and when it is over, it will be finished, unless it goes to arbitration where further lawsuits might be initiated if agreed upon by the arbitrator. Yes, CytoDyn will receive its due award, but possibly even more. Tyler's intention is to maximize the result. Maximize the pain to Amarex. This is the way he described it. This is the way he feels. What do you expect knowing this?
KK testifies and implicates his puppet master. All agreed upon settlements are paid to CytoDyn. CytoDyn puts forth another suit against puppet master. Headline news. Does Amarex / NSF really want it to end this way when all they have to do is pay so much less now upfront? Blok is very confident. The Discovery Objectives are powerful evidence and Sidley Austin has the resources and experience in winning slam dunk awards. This continues until an appropriate settlement offer is made with reasonable contingencies and concessions. This would end the dispute.
I get the impression that Blok and SA are closer than we all might think. They are in talks right now. It seems to me they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think I'm done with this subject.
9 days until LIVIMMUNE is Issued and becomes Active, then remember to add 30 more until the grace period is over. Let's hope nobody objects.

(Adding to the comments below about other channels, and now that I've missed a birthday writing this, I should probably put this as it's own thread)
I love Kinging It because their origin story is very similar to mine (cancer, catastrophic injury, vowed to spend their life traveling). And they have done amazing charity work and also quite a lot of unique road trips: rickshaw in India, Mongol Rally, etc.
My favorite series was when they traveled around Europe in Custard for the first time. They were sponsored by Marco Polo travel guides and planned it all according to meeting the brand's expectations and requirements, and to me that was proper travel blogging, not just "here's our life, blah blah blah." I've been a travel journalist for 25+ years, so that's when I got into their channel. Now, though, it has become more of a daily life blog, which is alright, they are entertaining and funny, but a little overdramatic on the acting.
I've lost count how many channels have become "look at us fail" channels or totally gone out in left field. To name a few [FEEL FREE TO ADD TO THE LIST]

• Travel Beans - American van blew up, UK van too small, rented Europe van broken into, failing at buying property, Alex couldn't do a 48 hour hike, etc.
• Endless Adventure - endless mechanical breakdowns, deliberately buying ailing vehicles, I think they have like four RVs/campers and two cars, one still in storage in Texas and now they are buying a house or land
• Those Happy Days - geeeeeeezus the WORST channel. He yells when he speaks, she looks like she's about to have a nervous breakdown, constant nonstop failures on everything and now they are living in a car after selling their broken camper van.
• Kara and Nate - failing to complete challenges lately, mechanical breakdowns on their rigs, never sticking to their "here's our plan for [insert year]" calendar
• Max and Occy - nothing at all going right with his cabin build. I don't believe for a minute that he bought a total lemon. He claimed to have had his eye on the property for a long time, and I think he knew of the issues before he purchased it
• Christian Schaffer - never really liked her channel. Weird odd vibe. She treated her boyfriend horribly, and regards friends as acquaintances who are in-the-way space fillers. She folded clothes at the Gap and life suddenly was too hard. Trying to come across as this wallflower but I think she's just depressed and secretly sad, but trying to convince herself that vanlife is her life. Yet every other episode is about how she's thinking of quitting it all.
• Kombi Life Adventures - I think he's on travel girlfriend soon-to-be-another-fiance #5. Another endless mechanical breakdown channel dragging an unsuspecting fangirl along with him only to very highly publicize every breakup and never removing any content of the bad stuff with the girlfriend after the new girlfriend comes along. Still making references to Faith even though Tamara is on the scene. I did like the first half of his Hasta Alaska series when he was with 100 different backpackers along the way but not with Leah. I think he treats his girlfriend's horribly narcissistically.
• Cecilia Blomdahl - not a vanlife channel, just her in Svalbard. Not a fail channel either. I'm just appalled at how wasteful, greedy and over-consuming two adults can be in such a remote area. The amount of groceries they buy and the amount of stuff they have accumulated is mind-boggling. I live in a major city in an apartment with my kids and I don't have 1/10 the stuff they have, use or consume.
• Overlanding Sophia - nice chill channel with a chill couple but they recently totally quit their Pan American adventure after getting down to Guatemala because of the visa and border crossing issues, plus they have two dogs and a right-hand vehicle which is illegal in some countries in South America. They’ve returned to the UK and I give them a lot of credit to deciding to explore their home country properly for the first time, so they are only on the fail list because they quit South America, not because their channel is starting to suck like the others.
• Jimmy and Natalie - I feel a bit bad for them, they are young (like 25 or something) and they were so wide-eyed and gung-ho about getting into vanlife and traveling. They applied to be Kara and Nate's video lackeys but didn't win. Right after, they announced they were quitting YouTube for a while. They were the total K&N fanboy/fangirl combo even going around Europe last year based on the K&N $100 per day budget, which I think they did to show that they were serious about wanting to do the FareDrop gig. They had a bus and now a van, but they quit YouTube for an indefinite period of time.
• Ame in a Van - I watched for a bit but she's ridiculously overdramatic on her channel (and normal person on her parent's channel). Way too much contrived drama, everything going wrong all the time but be just like me and do vanlife but oh no failing again. Also, as a mother of daughters around her age and considering she had a stalker in Spain, I don't agree with her sexualization of the channel and thumbnails. Just a bit too overplayed.
• Vancity Vanlife - don't even know what his channel has become, certainly not minimalist vanlife around Canada. Now it's like some garage mechanic build channel yet he still tries to convince himself he's the minimalist non-capitalist nomad. Quite the opposite now.
• FNA Vanlife - didn't like that at all during the pandemic (faking their way into Canada only to get denied, not being honest about their builds, demanding people join their Patreon to keep them on the road), but I do sympathize with her difficult birth struggle and I think the are doing great with the new baby while juggling their RV/van builds. But their channel direction is all over the place right now as they figure out how they are going to do 6 months in Canada for Frank's resident visa and six months in the US, all with a baby.
• Flying the Nest - not a fail channel, but not interested in a toddler travel channel.

Granted there are about 60+ other channels I subscribe to that are still in line with their original direction, and there are a few daily vlog type channels I watch, but these above are the ones that have really gone off course. The best channels (as with anything media) is to keep on topic. A cooking magazine should be about cooking and things related to cooking. Not including pages about fixing an engine, unless you're cooking a baked potato on one.
I didn't mention Eamon and Bec because they are dealing with real life tragedy.
The roadmap seems to be: become vanlifer -> get AG1 to sponsor -> write a cookbook -> make merch -> sell van -> buy another one -> get a dog -> buy land -> sell van -> build off-grid house -> fail at everything with the house build -> have baby -> get another dog -> create AI thumbnails -> still claim to be a minimalist nomad who doesn't buy into mainstream society -> be totally reliant on mainstream society

Hello,
I've been feeling tormented for the past few months. I have no one to talk to about this issue, as it involves the only two people I'm close with, so I'd really like to get an outside perspective.
I've been in a relationship with my boyfriend (22m) for almost two years now. Things are going well at the moment. We've had some problems in the past, which we managed to more or less resolve through communication, including a major one: a year ago, I crossed some boundaries concerning fidelity. I was lacking a lot of affection in my relationship at the time (we were having frequent arguments due to his lack of effort), and I met a guy at a party who I found very attractive. He started flirting with me, and I let myself enjoy the attention while setting boundaries when he wanted me to be explicit about my attraction (for example, I avoided his invitations to meet up or when he asked me for a kiss). I felt very guilty afterward, cut off contact with the other guy, and told my boyfriend what had happened two or three months later. He forgave me, but now he has a lot of concerns whenever I talk to a guy, which I completely understand.
After that, our relationship was pretty calm. I stopped going out with friends as much—it was mostly just acquaintances from university—so my life revolved around my studies, my hobbies, and my boyfriend. But towards the end of 2023, a new guy joined my program at university. I was the first person to welcome him as he seemed lost. Our interactions were limited to greeting each other in class until Valentine's Day, when I was sitting alone at university, and he came over to join me. He started getting to know me, asking about my hobbies, and suggested we hang out together outside of classes. I was really happy because I missed going out with friends.
The next day, we started sitting next to each other in class, and we got to know each other better. He asked me a lot of questions about my life, my interests, the music I listen to, the books I read, etc. I was thrilled to share these things with someone since few people are interested in these topics when I try to talk about them. But what struck me the most was what he had to say—he has a fascinating world of his own, he's very elegant and romantic, and he has very refined tastes. We had a lot in common, too; we're both passionate about rock music, we both left a science prep school for university for the same reasons, and we're both highly gifted (so we share the same challenges). I started developing feelings as we talked—he's really the type of person I like. I also told him about my love life with my boyfriend, and he told me he was in a relationship too, so I didn't think it was mutual at the time. (Another detail: our respective partners know each other and were friends in high school, which was a funny coincidence for us. Both are studying abroad, so we're in long-distance relationships.)
EDIT : in my case, my long-distance relationship is not permanent and has not always been long-distance. I have only been in a long-distance relationship since the beginning of 2024, but we have been together since 2022, and my boyfriend is coming back in January 2025
However, I was very surprised when he asked for my Instagram account that day. He handed me his phone to look up my account, and I saw that his search history was filled with accounts with my name (there must have been about twenty). I didn't say anything but started to wonder if he liked me. I told my boyfriend about this encounter with the guy (omitting the fact that I liked him because I had no intention of crossing any boundaries this time—I wanted to keep it to a friendship, hoping my feelings would fade over time). My boyfriend immediately concluded that the guy was interested in me based on his Instagram searches, the fact that he suggested hanging out together during our first conversation, all his questions about my interests, etc. So, he's very wary of this guy. He said he would tell the guy's girlfriend if he found out he was cheating with me.
For my part, I wanted to check if he was really interested in me or not because I didn't want to ruin a potentially great friendship based on possibly false assumptions. This guy and I have grown very close. We often eat together, go out just the two of us outside of classes, help each other with homework and studying, share a lot about our lives, and do sports together. He's very attentive to me (for example, once I told him I liked a certain kind of compote, and the following days, he started bringing two of them—one for him and one for me; he buys me drinks before meeting up with me; once we went out at 5:30 PM, my mom was supposed to pick me up but had an emergency and he waited with me until 8:30 PM; he gave me a flower made out of origami). I found his behavior quite ambiguous because usually, only guys who are interested in me treat me this way, but he seems genuinely happy for me whenever I talk about my love life with my boyfriend, unlike other guys. Also, he only has close female friends, so I don't know how to interpret his actions.
Recently, I met one of his best friends for the first time when we ran into each other at the university cafeteria. The three of us ate together. When I introduced myself to his friend with my name, she immediately said, "Oh, so you're THE [my name]," which threw me off. I asked her what she meant by "THE [my name]," and the guy jokingly said, "Do you think we talk bad about you?" I played along, saying yes. The girl laughed and said, "Oh, don't worry, he just told me you have a boyfriend studying in [name of city]." I found it strange that they talked about that, as I didn't know this girl at all, and I looked at my friend who seemed quite embarrassed. At one point, I was alone with her, and she said, "[Guy's name] told me you deleted Instagram! Why?" (I was taking a break from social media to focus on my exams, so the guy couldn't message me for a while, which I hadn't thought about—it created some distance between us for a week). I told my boyfriend all this, and it made him very concerned.
In short, my situation is complicated. I really wanted everything to remain purely friendly with this guy because I have real future plans with my boyfriend and I love him sincerely. But when I'm around this other guy, I can't shake off this attraction, and it's becoming quite frustrating because I'm used to being quite assertive and moving things forward quickly when I like a guy, but now I'm holding back despite my desires. Also, my friendship with him really bothers my boyfriend, who thinks the guy has bad intentions and has many concerns about me due to my past actions. But at the same time, I really enjoy this guy's company—I've never had such a pleasant friendship, so I don't want to lose it. I don't know if I should be as wary of him as my boyfriend is. Usually, the guys who like me are much more explicit about it. To my boyfriend, it's obvious that he's interested in me, but personally, I don't know. I'm lost.

I've had some ideas for a while on how some TI mechanics could be reworked or implemented differently. I figured that I may as well write them out to post here. Just to be clear, I'm not saying the game should necessarily add any of these, they're just ideas I think would be interesting to discuss.
Factions
Unified player faction: Instead of picking from the 7 factions at the start, the player always begins as a UN committee trying to formulate a response to the crisis. Your actions during the early days align you towards one of the factions.

• 2 factions are guaranteed to split off around the time that the Academy crackdown currently happens
  • If you align with Humanity First or Resistance, Protectorate and Servants leave
  • If you align with Academy, Initiative, or Exodus, HF and Servants leave
  • If you align with Servants or Protectorate, HF and Resistance leave
• Depending on how you manage the other factions, you'll likely have 2 more split off by mid-game

Faction Senate: This idea was inspired by the Galactic Council from Stellaris. The UN space council is a body of 100 members formed a few months into the crisis that starts with little power, but can grow in power and implement bigger policies as the game progresses.

• Factions try to align council members towards their voting bloc through various methods
  • Bribery, lobbying, blackmail (spending money, influence, ops)
  • Controlling appointment of new members
    • At game start, members selected from random country, weighted by total CP, similar to EU4 bishops
    • Appointed councilors have a chance of being a faction member based on CP control of the country they're from
    • Change to direct proportional elections, regional proportion system, or 2 members per independent country
• Initial UN announcement decision can give more starting aligned members
  • Public announcement grants 10 members, subtle manipulation grants 6, staying in the shadows grants 2
• The space council can implement a variety of policies. Policies take time to implement based on resources available, taken from IP taxes and faction contribution
  • Sanctioning non-democracies
  • Changing how councilors are chosen
  • Deploying sun shades
  • Forming a world government
  • Inviting representatives from the Alien Administration
• Countries and factions can withdraw to starve the organization of funding and legitimacy, at the cost of becoming unable to influence it anymore and losing any benefits it can bring

4 faction start: Each faction starts in a pair with another faction. The factions still play the same as now, but basically you have a guaranteed ally to start with.

• Eventually the differences in the faction will cause issues
  • You can resolve your differences and merge the other one into your faction
  • Purge the other faction to destroy them. You'll get the majority of their assets but many are destroyed or taken by others
  • Split amicably
• Factions
  • Anti-alien: Resistance / Humanity First, moderate vs radical
  • Coexistance: Academy / Protectorate, idealistic vs cynical
  • Pro-alien: Servants / Aliens, partial vs total subjugation
  • Unaligned: Initiative / Project Exodus, short-term vs long-term escapism

Orgs
Orgs as actors: This idea is inspired from a discussion on this subreddit. Orgs act like restricted councilors, able to perform certain actions on their own.

• Action set depends on category of org
  • Foreign intelligence can increase unrest in other countries
  • Domestic intelligence can crackdown and defend interests in its own country
  • Media companies can increase support
  • Special forces can assassinate and detain
• Orgs have skill level of 4/8/12 based number of stars
• Existing government orgs will perform certain actions even if no faction owns them
• Orgs can still be set to support councilors, like what they do now

Org development: Orgs can be created and leveled up

• Private orgs require money and time investment
  • Factions can start an org in any category they want with a time and money investment as well
• Government orgs leveled up through IP investment
  • Countries have org capacity, similar to councilors, but based on GDP
  • Consumed org capacity costs IPs, similar to armies
  • Nations can create new orgs from specific categories
    • Foreign/domestic intelligence
    • Counterterrorism
    • Special forces
    • Research

Org charts: Every organization, including CPs, is made up of org charts of characters. Control of CPs depends on controlling specific positions at the top of each chart

• Most characters only have limited simulation, just a name/age/nationality.
  • Characters will get moved around occasionally due to promotions, dying, retiring, losing election, etc.
• Factions recruit characters to their side, then promote them internally like in Shadow of Mordor
  • Certain forms of recruitment don't reveal the character as a member to allow infiltration
• Controlled characters can be promoted to a faction's inner circle and become a full councilor
• Org structure depends on the type of org
  • Promotion/appointment system
  • Internal elections
  • Number of executives
  • Power of different roles

Control Points
Control point autonomy: Control points will have some control over investment

• Direct control, ie trade unions automatically siphon some IPs to welfare
• Soft requirement like spoils, ie defense sector demand on a percent of IPs directed towards military

Increased priority weighting: Certain CPs will count for double when calculating the percent of IPs assigned to a priority

• Corporations counts as 2 CPs for the economy category
• Executive counts as 2 CPs for all categories

Resources
Near-future alloys: Got the idea from the nanofiber in 3 Body Problem. Create a mid-tier resource that has to be manufactured on Earth or in orbit to build mid-game modules and ships

• Modern alloys assumed to be cheap and easy to manufacture, costs stay as basic resources

There’s a lone peasant on the beach of Saru Island in Ghost of Tsushima’s Iki Island DLC.
Last night he burned the final pieces of wood from the Bamboo Strike to stay warm under the moonlight. If Jin wishes to practice his swordsmanship, he’ll need to supply his own wood.
…at this point in the game you have 9827346 bamboo pieces. A few to spare should do no harm.
After three perfect slices, Jin and the Peasant exchange words again. Noticing the lack of any other humans in the area, Jin asks why the peasant makes his home in a location so remote. The Peasant replies:
“As you just demonstrated, the quiet helps one focus.”
--
Ghost of Tsushima (GoT) is a game about slicing up bad guys while dressed as a cool samurai-ninja dude heavily tied to nature and spirituality. It mirrors and puts to use a staple of Japanese culture; Shinto — a spiritual tradition which holds that deities are found in nature.
I do not pretend to be an expert on Shinto or Japanese culture. Au contraire, I'm a basic-bitch white dude in America. I just like writing about video game elements that catch my attention, and GoT uses nature in ways that really capture me. If you'll allow me to explain with a nice wall of text...
ELEMENTAL EMPHASIS
You don’t need me to tell you that GoT is a visually and audibly incredible game.
You don’t need me to remind you of its golden forests, its snowcapped mountains and its rugged seaside cliffs — you’ve seen them for yourself.
It’s clear that jaw-dropping visuals and natural environments were something the devs wanted players to experience rather viscerally — take, for instance, sunrise and sunset being their own distinct times of day, not just a few scant moments between the day/night cycle. Or the sheer dramatic bombast of the autumnal forests, floral fields or sun-splashed mountains of Tsushima and Iki.
The realism in audio as well still impresses me — crackling bamboo forests, crashing waves, rushing waterfalls and powerful wind gusts all sound incredible. They sound more than that, they sound enveloping, three dimensional — they sound as they should; like you’re really there.
These are all great, yeah, but plenty of games look and sound great. What I noticed was the subtle ways the devs prompt additional emphasis on them.

• Minimal HUD for maximum eye candy
• Minimal music during open world traversal to lean into the sounds of nature
• Rule of Thirds camera angle at all times gives plenty of room to see the sights
• Camera pull-outs on horseback and in select locations (shrines, certain mountains & fields) to drink in even more beauty
• Incredible vistas and plenty of rocks, mountains and hills to summit to view them from

Naturally, you’ll slow down to appreciate these at least a little, even if you are the most impatient kind of player (assuming the game doesn’t get in your way when you try).
Again, the game was crafted in such a way that tells me that the devs want you to slow down and experience these things. Take, for further evidence, some of the game’s activities and waypoints:

• Hotsprings — encourage the player and Jin to reflect on the story
• Haikus — encourage the player to meditate on circumstance and emotion
• Sanctuaries — encourages Jin to reminisce on his childhood and contemplate music’s place in his life
• Keirei (Bowing) Interaction — encourages Jin to honor and then interact with the locale’s fauna
• Freeing Caged Animals — encourages the player and Jin to value natural life

Reflect. Meditate. Reminisce. Honor. Value.
GoT’s activities aren’t all combat, time-trials and races. They’re communion with nature, and GoT is telling you that it must be achieved slowly, with respect and in the quiet.
“As you just demonstrated, the quiet helps one focus.”
ELEMENTAL POWER
But the landscapes and vistas of GoT aren’t just pretty pictures for the sake of being slowly-consumed eye candy. Sucker Punch leans deeper into Shinto than just the aesthetic, nearly personifying Tsushima’s natural wonders.
Nature is Spiritual

• Jin’s honoring of deities at Shrines (all placed in secluded, naturally wonderful locations) grants him gifts and upgrades.
• Haiku meditation grants Jin a vanity piece, but also represents his grappling and overcoming of circumstance and emotion, balancing his spiritual well-being
• Yuriko mentions that Jin’s deceased father, Kazumasa, is the Guiding Wind and his late mother the Golden Songbird
• Foxes leading you to Shrines of Inari are implied to be Inari themselves leading you to their graces

Nature is Knowing

• There’s a subconscious realization that nature sees you in GoT
• The Guiding Wind points you on your way, it knows where you are and where you need to go
• The more Ghost actions you perform, the more stormy Tsushima becomes. Nature sees your actions and reacts to them.
• Inari foxes and Golden Songbirds know where you are on the map and jump in to help you when you’re near something you could miss. In both instances, that thing makes you stronger, leading me to…

Nature is Powerful

• Hotsprings add to your maximum health
• Charms gifted by Mother Nature bolster Jin’s abilities
• Storms sweep the trees and send startling cracks of thunder across the land
• Mount Jogaku is frigid and dangerous to summit without additional sources of warmth
• Jin & co. rely on the strength of a storm to aid their final attack on the Khan

Be it spiritually, intellectually or physically, nature holds power in GoT.
WHERE MAN MEETS NATURE
So GoT emphasizes natural wonder and gives it agency… Cool, whatever.
Where do we come into this? Where do man and nature meet and how do they interact in GoT?
SuckerPunch (and myself) are hitting you over the head with it; Man meets nature respectfully, in the tranquility of the quiet. When he does so, he receives its blessings.
He becomes stronger of body (hotsprings, shrines) and sounder of mind (haikus, sanctuaries).
GoT interactions, activities and more demonstrate to us that when man communes with nature and approaches it carefully with reverence and appreciation, he grows.
He learns, he sees, he remembers, he feels, he discovers, he opens.
Even the seemingly trivial headband vanity rewards we receive at haikus represent this — their namesakes denote some mastery or acceptance of the quality, circumstance or emotional subject of the poem. Consider the Handbands of Strife, Fear, Uncertainty, Perseverance, Rebirth and Hope, for example.
Jin is facing his mental struggles and conquering them not with force or ignorance, but with quiet contemplation using nature as the vessel.
Respecting nature brings it joy (Keirei interactions at signposts). It allows nature itself to thrive (sanctuaries) and allows us to thrive (haikus). Even freeing hawks and monkeys at Mongol camps grants us additional awards.
Conversely, when man meets nature violently, destruction is usually reciprocated in return.
Consider the storminess of the game’s major battles, or the increase in rainfall as you perform stealth kills and your Ghost Meter fills. The Mongol’s burning of the Endless Forest leaves death and devastation; their final battle with Jin is shrouded in storm.
Antagonistic and wrathful actions bring about destruction — they upset nature’s balance.
WHERE JIN MEETS NATURE
What if, genetically speaking, you were… “the lightning in the storm?”
That sounds an awful lot like destruction.
And that is the fate of Jin Sakai. Aside from the fact that the devs have more-or-less confirmed this, consider not just Kazumasa’s words above, but also… well, the game’s default sword kit, passed down in Jin’s family — it’s the Storm of Clan Sakai.
Not to mention Jin’s ownership and use of the flute, a mechanic that allows him to change the weather.
Jin is the storm. We, the player, are the storm.
We sweep across Tsushima, wreaking havoc in our wake of bloodshed, piling up countless Mongol corpses and stirring the island’s inhabitants.
Jin’s descent from honor into becoming the Ghost is his own internal storm (represented externally by, well, storms), and creates a similar uncertainty and disjointedness in Jin’s character as the island of Tsushima is experiencing under the Mongol invasion.
With such internal and external unrest, how can Jin achieve his goals and halt the Mongols?
PERFECTLY BALANCED
Jin may be the storm literally genetically, but remember that only half of his parenthood bore the Sakai name.
If Jin’s father — by his own admission in so many words on Iki Island — embodies a wildness, a propensity for conquest and might, then Jin’s mother brought him the opposite.
Indeed, it was two mothers — one biological, and one of nature.
We mostly learn of Jin’s biological mother through his own recollections at Sanctuaries. I wish I had a bank of this dialogue for further support here — I couldn’t find it while searching around.
What I remember is that she contrasted Kazumasa.

• Where he brought wildness, she brought calm.
• Where he brought brute force, she brought emotion.
• Where he brought seriousness, she brought lightheartedness.
• Where he brought conquest, she brought peace.
• Where he was uncertain, she brought thoughtfulness.

Raised by the opposing sides of a single coin, Jin is naturally bound to land somewhere in the middle.
But, under the stress of a terrifying invasion on his homeland and, as a result, mentally and emotionally unbalanced, he’s bound to land more on his father’s side. He’s bound to bring that wildness to his endeavors and potentially cause unnecessary harm and destruction.
Thankfully, with his mother’s principles swirling subconsciously, Jin remembers the importance of the land around him. He remembers to honor the very ground he is trying to liberate.
Rather than rushing Castle Shimura off rip, Jin engages with the land of Tsushima.
He rests at hotsprings, contemplates haikus, pays homage at shrines and reaps the physical, mental and emotional benefits that follow his reverence.
He does not ever quell the storm that lies inside of him — no, he is clan Sakai — but because of his attention towards and engagement with nature, he does gather it. He does control it. He does master it.
Through his late mother and through mother nature herself, Jin takes the weight of saving an entire island off his shoulders. Sound of body, mind and spirit, he becomes perfectly balanced. As all things should be.
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Jin can do incredible things on the battlefield and in the shadows. He’s an absolute freak of nature when it comes to swordsmanship and athleticism.
Jin Sakai is, indeed, the lightning in the storm. All its power, all its might, all its destruction — importantly — captured in one single space. Honed into one prong, one moment, one man.
By prioritizing Shinto practices, Jin is not a reckless, swirling, chaotic typhoon — he has balanced his internal turmoil with peace and meditation and is now a controlled force, focused vigilantly at Khotun Khan.
“As you just demonstrated, the quiet helps one focus.”