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Tweak says, "Loves it"

drsevarius (drsevarius) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-13 16:48:00

Entry tags:

char: chameleon/dmitri smerdyakov, char: michelle gonzales, creator: fred van lente, title: amazing spider-man

Fred Van Lente update on the Chameleon controversy

I got another e-mail from Fred Van Lente, that he's asked me to post.

First off, while I believe he had the best of intentions, the poster "DrSevarius" wrote me under his real name and asked me a question I thought I was answering in private, to him. He posted my response without my permission and without telling me beforehand it was supposed to be for public consumption.

If he had told me that, I would have, first off, made it clear that I am not a Marvel employee. I am not a Marvel spokesperson. I am a freelancer. I speak only for myself. That is just as true for the following statement as the previous one.

Also, if he had told me that, I may have been less coy about the following "Spoiler Alert". Anyone who cares not to have stuff that's in ASM #605 revealed now should avert their eyes.

Amazing Spider-Man #605, which went to the printer weeks ago, makes it clear that Michelle and Chameleon did nothing more than make out in the kitchen scene in #603.

There was no sex, and therefore no rape.

And I'll simply point out that in the scene in ASM #604 when Peter comes home he has no idea why, exactly, Michelle is treating him differently, only that she is. He learns why-- at least partly -- and he responds, in #605.

Thanks for listening. I appreciate it.

Best,
Fred Van Lente

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box_in_the_box
2009-09-13 10:08 pm UTC (link)

I'll be interested to see if the comic actually SAYS, "No, they DIDN'T have sex," or if it simply says, "We made out," without ruling out that they also had sex, in order to keep it intentionally vague enough to preserve their "all ages" rating.

If it's the latter, then by that standard, we can't even say that Peter and Michelle had sex after the wedding, because technically, the word "sex" hadn't even APPEARED in conjunction with that event, on the printed page itself, and besides, Peter woke up in his boxers, and yet, Steve Wacker said, "What you think happened is pretty much happened," so it'll seem odd if Van Lente tries to impose a different standard of Proper Audience Interpretation onto those two scenes of maybe-sex involving Michelle.

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angelophile
2009-09-13 11:54 pm UTC (link)

I think that's most likely what'll happen. I didn't expect there to be any mention of actual sex (or in this case, rape) in the comic - if they were okay with being obvious about it, there wouldn't have been the sinking behind the table moment in the first place - it would have been all out in the open.

Likelihood is that the scene was written vaguely enough that it was up to the audience to decide, and in this case they did decide and they decided it was rape, so, understandably for the writer and Marvel themselves, there's a lot of hand waving and "whoah, we never showed them having sex, so they never did."

If they do explicitly state that they never had sex, then I can't quite see the logic in the scene in the first place. There's not a lot of humor to be found in the making the readers think she was raped.

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