I do appreciate Across the Spider-Verse mixing up the “issues with your child growing up” themes in that it’s the father with the real issues, that manifest in a particularly masculine way, and with the new universe teasing a resolution that would be further racialized: appreciate that it was your presence and guidance in childhood that set him right, without which he might have fallen into the same roughness you escaped from as a young Black man in the ‘80s and '90s but people close to you didn’t.
And that Miles’ mom being more positive isn’t played as mother-as-bearer-and-transmitter-of-domestic-life, she’s not excited about her baby growing up and forming a family of his own, when his dad, deep in his masculine-idiom issues, is like “and what’s he doing with this Gwen girl anyway?” she’s basically like “well, he probably wants to fuck her.”
Also appreciation for how the way nothing really triggers off the way Gwen/Miles would be an interracial pairing.
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