salarta

mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker:

There is so much wrong with
One Moment in Time but maybe the most despicable part was the first issue. They
redialogued and cut up scenes from the Wedding annual and then inserted extra
scenes by Riviera to give out grossly different impressions than was the case in
the original annual.

Reading this accentuated the apparent doubts and apprehension
Peter and MJ had in the original annual which were mostly just natural jitters.
You don’t see any scenes which countermand that idea. The removal of the Bruce
subplot or the Empire State Building scene all work against showing how the
characters really did want to go through with this. 

Then you have the inserted crap. First of all the co-producer of
the Life of Reilly blog said some really moronic crap about how ‘MJ
dancing with loads of guys before her wedding showed how bad she was, or words
to that effect (it wasn’t Greenberg for the record).

Second of all we’re
supposed to take that scene in tandem with Harry’s comments but really even if
you go by the scene and accept it it doesn’t do anything the original scene of
the issue didn’t do…unless you buy into yes MJ doesn’t really want
to be married to Peter. See how ‘inappropriate’ she is? She wants to dance
with half-naked men (because bachelor parties haven’t ever had scantily clad
women invovled in any way ever) and travel to exotic locations. And she will be
all alone because he has to go and be Spider-Man…something she is fully aware
of and accepted before agreeing to marry him because she was basically doing
what she would do if she was married to him anyway.But you know that scene
could’ve happened in the annual and it would’ve been actually not too bad. Just
another doubt MJ would have that she would get over in order to marry Peter.
Except that the way the annual plays it it is almost like she partied all night
and then, oh yeah she has to get married. Like it didn’t matter to her.

And then we follow up the ‘MJ was left all alone see how bad
she had it and how good it is she’s out of that relationship’ bullshit by
having the modern day sequence reference it. Which is even MORE bullshit
because if MJ was going to end their relationship or truly hold that against
Peter she would’ve done so long, long long ago. On multiple occasions she’s
been okay with it or at least one of them pointed out she knew what she was
getting into. In JMS’ run she was even shown to put up with it willingly. You
know…like the wives of doctors, policemen and fire fighters. Guess those guys
are assholes for putting thier wives through that too amirite!

The Riviera scene following the nightmare wasn’t too
offensive. It needlessly made Peter’s concerns less subtle and just further
pushed the idea that he wouldn’t marry her/they are bad for each other. Thing
is, even in this story it comes off as pre-wedding jitters for Peter because of
the shit Peter knows MJ went through. Sure he WOULD probably think about this
but ultimately, it isn’t that he wouldn’t care, he just wouldn’t let it hold
him back because if he would he wouldn’t have gotten involved with ANYONE after
Gwen died…or you know…have off panel resolved his problems and decided to
marry MJ anyway like he did in the real version of this story.

But the worst thing to me was Harry.

MAYBE I could buy Harry and Flash expressing concern for all
the doubts Peter seems to have (those doubts they seemed to put to rest at the
bachelor party if you bother to look). Maybe, but frankly thier statements are
asinine. Apart from the fact that they know Peter has wanted to get married
ever since he was dating Gwen, nothing about what Peter is saying clearly
indicated he has ‘a lot of doubts’. He is saying nothing that a million men
have probably wondered about before they got married. What? There NO ONE who’s
gotten married or stayed together has had moments of doubt or gotten freaked
out by it? Shit, I was scared shitless and debated not going to live at
college. Up until the first night I was every now and then nervously wondering,
even suggesting ways that maybe I wouldn’t have to live away from home effectively
by myself. I got over it in the first night. When you are on the cusp of a big
major life change these sort of concerns are FAR from unnatural so Harry, a
married man himself, reacting this way is questionable at the very least.

But what is worse is he is such a fucking asshole about Mary
Jane. He is talking about her as if she isn’t his old friend and the
godmother of his child! If she is so damn wild and irresponsible
(even though she’s calmed down a shitton since college) why did Harry agree to
let her be the godmother of his beloved son?

And she’s going to chew Peter up and spit him out because
she can smell weakness? And then he SAYS how surprised he is that Peter pulled
out? I get that he remembers what happened in the Drug Trilogy but Mary Jane is
his friend. He cares about her. She assaulted a criminal to save him and his
pregnant wife. He and his wife shipped Peter and Mary Jane months before their
wedding. This is not Harry Osborn. Except for Quesada who first encountered MJ,
Harry and Spider-Man in the Drug Trilogy where she wasn’t very nice to poor
drug addicted Harry, no OF COURSE Harry would bear a grudge.

On top of all this shit most of Quesada’s “see see this is
why they are bad for each other” moments don’t even make sense when we’ve SEEN
what their married life was life and have been TOLD it was apparently the same
after OMD. So MJ STILL got to party a lot. Peter wasn’t ALWAYS out being
Spider-Man. MJ WAS okay with it at many points. MJ was NOTHING like how Harry
described.

Worse is the fact that Harry saying this stuff and MJ
getting mad alters their relationship as well. We were old everything happened
the way we read it except they weren’t married. But now there is embarrassment
and resentment mixed into MJ and Harry’s relationship. Now when he and Liz and
MJ and Peter live together that is going to be an subtextual bone of
contention. And Harry and Flash are going to look back on Peter and MJ and
somewhere in their minds think ‘we saw that coming. This is awkward’. In fact
every time they bring up marriage anyone who was at the wedding is going to
feel awkward. Shit Flash in this story says he would love to be married and
later on in the 90s is jealous of Peter being married to MJ. Well now THAT is
screwed with as well.

It all loops back around into exemplifying why this is the
worst Spider-Man story ever!