C&C Application.
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Skalja
JOURNAL: skalja
IM: fishphorescent on AIM
E-MAIL: incywincyhero@gmail.com
RETURNING: I'm new! But I've played with Jillian and Georgia before, if that's useful to know.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Peter Benjamin Parker, your Amazing, Spectacular, Sensational, occasionally Astonishing, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!
FANDOM: Marvel 616/Spider-Man
CHRONOLOGY: Shortly after Amazing Spider-Man #629.
CLASS: Hero. He'll keep the dog tags, at least to start with.
SUPERHERO NAME: Spider-Man
ALTER EGO: Peter Parker, unemployed. Previous work history: mayoral photographer, freelance news photographer, part-time high school science teacher, college TA.
[BACKGROUND:]
Peter is the son of CIA agents Mary and Richard Parker, who were kind of like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, except that I’m the only person who cares about them. (They did save Wolverine's life one time - actually, he was the first person to congratulate them on Mary's pregnancy. And that's your Obscure Marvel Canon Never To Be Referenced Again of the day.) Anyway, the Parkers were killed by the second Red Skull, and young Peter was sent to live with Ben Parker, Richard's much older brother, and his wife May.
Ben and May were good parents; Peter grew up well-loved and probably a bit smothered. Young Peter was far more interested in science than socializing, with predictable consequences for his standing in the high school pecking order. At the age of fifteen, Peter attended a science exhibition with questionable safety protocols, where he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Within hours, he'd developed an array of spider-like powers, if by "spider-like" you mean "electrostatic cling" or "specialized precognition." (See POWERS, below.)
Peter first planned to use his newfound abilities to win fame and fortune. He created the persona of Spider-Man, masked entertainer, and designed a full-body costume that would hide his identity as a nebbish teenager. To improve his act, he invented artificial webbing and web-shooters to dispense it. Hey, I know that when I invent an entirely new shear-thinning liquid polymer with the tensile strength of spidersilk which can be designed to dissolve after a timed interval, the first thing I do with it is use it in my variety show act, am I right?
Having missed his calling as a detail-obsessed cosplayer, Peter met rapid success as a minor television celebrity. One night after a TV special, he was passed by a thief leaving the station. Peter let him get away; after years of being pushed around as "puny Parker," he'd decided that the rest of the world - other than his aunt and uncle - could take care of itself.
This being an origin story, Peter's inaction came back to bite him (ahem). Not long after that fateful night, the very same thief broke into the Parker home and murdered Uncle Ben. Guilt-ridden, Peter took the harsh lesson to heart and made it his mantra: With great power, there must also come great responsibility! And, in Peter's case, lifelong daddy issues.
Peter spent the rest of high school juggling schoolwork, a burgeoning superhero career, and his new role as family breadwinner. Unable to find a job and desperate for cash, he became a freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle, selling photographs of himself in action that were used by irascible editor-in-chief J. Jonah Jameson to destroy Spider-man's reputation. He dated Betty Brant, Jonah's secretary, and met most of the villains who'd become his Rogues Gallery. Spidey also met many other heroes getting their starts. Though already competent, young Spidey was paranoid and had a hair-trigger temper, which didn't endear him to his peers. However, he had a cordial relationship with Daredevil from the start.
Peter went on to Empire State University, where through old classmate/rival Flash Thompson he met new classmates Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy, and made a singularly terrible first impression on both. Shortly afterwards the Green Goblin, one of Spidey's more enigmatic enemies, discovered Peter's secret identity and revealed himself as industrialist Norman Osborn -- Harry's father. In the subsequent battle, Norman was injured and developed convenient amnesia. In the first and worst of many instances of Peter thinking with his daddy issues, he allowed Norman to go free out of concern for Harry's feelings. It was a decision he would come to regret. (Dun dun dun.)
Peter ended up befriending Harry while keeping an eye on Norman. The two became close friends and roommates, which also helped to thaw Peter's relationship with Gwen. Meanwhile, Aunt May manipulated him into persuaded him to meet their neighbor's niece, Mary Jane Watson. MJ and Peter dated casually for a while, but eventually MJ dated Harry while Peter pursued a more serious relationship with Gwen.
Things were going swimmingly until Gwen's father, police captain George Stacy, was killed in the crossfire of a fight between Spider-Man and regular opponent Doctor Octopus. Gwen blamed Spider-Man for her father's death, and Peter for defending Spider-Man. It was some months before the two were on solid ground again.
Then, in rapid succession, Harry had a drug overdose and Norman regained, lost, and regained his memories again. He reclaimed the Green Goblin identity and kidnapped Gwen Stacy. Despite Spidey's best efforts to rescue her, the Goblin dropped her off the top of the Brooklyn Bridge. Peter panicked and tried to catch her with his webbing, and in doing so broke her neck from the sudden deceleration. Fueled by rage and grief, he attacked the Goblin, but it was the Goblin's own glider that killed him -- he was accidentally impaled on its front spike after Spider-Man ducked out of the way.
In the aftermath of the carnage (not that Carnage), Peter drew away from his friends, particularly Harry Osborn, whose father's "death" only exacerbated his own troubles. Eventually, Harry learned the truth about Peter and Norman's other identities and became the new Green Goblin. Peter was forced to fight him and he ended up in psychiatric care for some time.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane started drawing Peter out of his shell. They grew close, and two years after Gwen's death they started dating. Their burgeoning relationship was almost derailed when Gwen Stacy seemingly returned from the dead. "Gwen" was actually a clone created by Peter's former professor and occasional father figure (see what I mean?) Miles Warren, also known as the Jackal. She wasn't the only one, either - Warren had also cloned Peter.
To cut a long and extensively retconned story short, there were two Spider-Men running around until the presumed clone was seemingly killed in an explosion. He actually survived and, taking the name Ben Reilly, went on a soul-searching trip around the country. But Peter wouldn't know that for a few years yet. "Gwen" also took her leave to find herself, and Peter and MJ resumed their relationship. Eventually, Peter proposed, but MJ declared that she wasn't ready for that kind of commitment and left New York.
Shortly after graduating college, Spider-Man met Felicia Hardy, the cat burglar known as Black Cat. After a few sexual-tension-laden tussles, Spidey convinced Black Cat to reform, and they became a crimefighting couple. The relationship had its ups and downs: they came to care for each other very much, but between Felicia getting new powers that backfire on Spidey, Spidey being a sanctimonious goody-goody, Felicia finding Peter's civilian identity distasteful and boring, and Mary Jane coming back to town, things got complicated.
One day around this time, Spider-Man was kidnapped by the cosmic entity Beyonder to participate in his Battleworld experiment with a bunch of other Earth heroes and villains. While on the alien planet, Spidey's costume was destroyed and he finds a new, black one which could respond to his thoughts, enhance his powers, and generate its own web-fluid.
Not long after Peter returned to Earth, Mary Jane revealed that she'd known he was Spider-Man for years, and had kept it to herself because she was in denial. With Peter's secrets out of the way, MJ opened up about her own checkered past, and the two became close again while remaining nominally platonic. However, Peter's relationship with Felicia had hit another one of its lows. He broke up with her, and it wasn't long before he was dating MJ again, though on a tentative basis.
It wasn't quite as caddish as summarizing it in one paragraph makes it sound. Honest!
It was right after that that Spider-Man discovered that his costume wasn't alien technology, but an alien symbiote - a living creature that wanted to bond to him permanently. With the help of science hero Mr. Fantastic, he was able to break its hold and they contained it in the Fantastic Four laboratory. Eventually the symbiote, rejected by the one it loved, would escape and bond with disgruntled ex-reporter Eddie Brock to become Spider-Man's jilted lover enemy, Venom.
But first Peter had problems with another jilted lover. He had reconciled with Black Cat, but then discovered that she was still angry at being dumped and was plotting to kill him with the help of hitman and new lover, the Foreigner. In the end, Felicia realized she still cared about Spider-Man and Peter and doublecrossed Foreigner, after which she left the country to find a new life. (She would return later and remain a good friend of Spidey's.) Shortly thereafter, Mary Jane and Peter got married.
The first few years after Peter got married he was plagued by angry alien symbiotes, random cosmic empowerings, unwilling transformations, and sundry 90s detritus. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn had regained his faculties, married, and had a kid. But a demonic invasion of New York unlocked his repressed memories of being a Goblin and fighting with Spider-Man. Determined to fight Peter in a duel to the death, he ingested a new version of his father's Goblin formula. The serum gave him enhanced powers but also poisoned him, and though he had a change of heart mid-battle, he collapsed and died en route to the hospital.
Peter didn't handle his death well, not least because Harry hadn't lived long enough to undo all the anti-Spider-Man plans he'd put into motion as the Goblin. The Parkers were cautiously joyous when Peter's parents returned, supposedly having been interned for decades in a Soviet camp. But all too soon, they were revealed to be robot duplicates that Harry had had created to manipulate Peter's emotions and then destroy him.
The trauma of the incident made Peter reject his civilian identity and try to live as Spider-Man all the time; he only came back to himself with the reappearance of Ben Reilly. To both men's surprise, new tests revealed that Ben was the original Peter Parker, and the man calling himself Peter was the clone who’d accidentally stolen his life. After working through his identity crisis, Peter recommitted himself to his civilian life with MJ, who was expecting, and Ben took over as Spider-Man.
However, it turned out that the tests had been switched. The entire clone situation had been masterminded by Norman Osborn, who'd been hiding in Europe after faking his death on the bridge years before. Having established "mindscrewing Peter Parker" as a family tradition, he killed Ben Reilly and had an agent poison MJ to send her into premature labor. Baby May was stillborn.
Norman reemerged in New York society and divided his time between building up his criminal empire and making Peter miserable. After MJ was seemingly killed in a plane bombing, he took advantage of Peter's vulnerability to kidnap him. He tried to brainwash him into becoming the new Osborn/Goblin heir. Despite a brief flirtation with Stockholm Syndrome, Peter threw off his programming and escaped. From this point onwards, Norman and Peter's relationship took on a certain codependent aspect as Norman understood Peter (and vice versa) better than anyone else alive, with the possible exception of MJ.
It turned out that a superpowered stalker had engineered the plane bombing to disguise MJ's kidnapping. Peter rescued her, but MJ was traumatized after six months locked in a small room, and the couple separated while she went to LA to find herself.
Aunt May discovered Peter's secret identity and became one of his biggest supporters. Peter and Mary Jane evenutually reconciled, and Spider-Man was invited to join the New Avengers. The Watson-Parker apartment and Aunt May's house were destroyed by a enemy of Peter's, but Tony Stark invited them all to live in Stark Tower and took Peter under his wing as a protégé. Norman Osborn was unmasked by the reporters of the Daily Bugle, and he was hauled off to prison.
After Peter was killed and resurrected with new powers that have been largely ignored ever since, Tony made him a new power suit as a "rebirthday" present. Playing on his parental relationship with Peter, Tony convinced him to back him on the enforcement of the Superhuman Registration Act. At Tony's behest, Peter unmasked at a televised news conference and became the poster boy for registration. However, the superhero community was divided on the issue and the conflict escalated to out and out fighting in the streets. Shortly after anti-registration hero Goliath was killed, Peter discovered that Tony and Mr. Fantastic were jailing unregistered heroes in inhumane conditions in the Negative Zone. He publically repudiated the SHRA and joined the anti-registration side while Aunt May and MJ went into hiding.
However, the Kingpin of crime discovered their location and hired a sniper to kill them. Aunt May was critically wounded and went into a coma. In their grief over May's declining state, Peter and MJ were, ahem, left open to the psychic predations of Dzzzjjo KaySad'ha, a mysterious otherworldly being, and his companion Fan'Bhoi Nos-teljya. Okay, so this is fan theorizing more than canon, but it makes more sense and I’m sticking to it. KaySad'ha sapped their willpower, moral integrity, and common sense, so that when the demon Mephisto offered to save Aunt May's life in exchange for their marriage, they agreed.
Mephisto altered the timeline so that Peter and MJ never got married but were too gormless to end a relationship that would never satisfy either of them. Through his manipulations, Peter spontaneously gained the power to cure bullet wounds with love and saved May. Tony Stark, Mr. Fantastic, and sorceror Dr. Strange created a spell that erased all knowledge of Spider-Man's secret identity from everyone’s memories, sparing only Peter and MJ. After the strain of having her personality mystically butchered on multiple levels, MJ dumped Peter and went back to California.
Peter resumed his life as a safely anonymous freelance photographer, now with added asshole fratboy tendencies. Due to the machinations of Nos-teljya Strangely, he still had many romantic interests. Meanwhile Harry Osborn returned from Europe, apparently never having informed either his wife and child or his best friend that he was still alive. J. Jonah Jameson had The Daily Bugle sold out from under him, and made a successful bid for mayor. Peter quit his job at the newly rechristened DB and became an official mayoral photographer. However, in a fit of editorially mandated idiocy moral confusion he faked a photo to exonerate Jameson of having created a new supervillain. Jameson denounced him as a fake and fired him.
Norman Osborn, now leader of the “reformed” supervillain team known as the Thunderbolts, became America’s sweetheart for his actions fighting the Skrull invasion of Earth. Much to Spider-Man’s disgust and horror, Norman was put in charge of American security and started hunting down unregistered superheroes. Spidey and the New Avengers clashed with him repeatedly but were unable to stop him until he overstepped in his bid for power. When Osborn’s forces invaded Asgard, the President repudiated him and allowed the superhero community to take him down. After a frustrating few months, Spidey was pleased to get the last punch in before Norman was defeated and jailed.
At the time he's imPorted, Spidey has recently tussled with the Juggernaut. He’s in an extremely casual relationship with Black Cat, who no longer remembers his secret identity. He’s on the outs with his Aunt May (who, unbeknownst to him, is under the personality-altering influence of the crimelord Mr. Negative.) Unemployed and a persona non grata in the entire city after his photoshop fiasco, Peter’s feeling a bit down and hasn’t had much chance to savor the post-Osborn euphoria.
[BACKGROUND SIDEBAR - SPIDEY'S ROLE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:]
If the Marvel universe were high school, Spider-Man is the class clown with a secret 4.0 GPA: a lot of people don't take him seriously, but he gets the job done with the best of them.
His reputation is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, thanks to J. Jonah Jameson’s smear campaign, he's widely mistrusted by both the public and law enforcement. His heroic peers aren't always sure what to make of him; until recently he was extremely reticent about his personal life and would often be rude or standoffish rather than let anything slip. His nails-on-a-chalkboard style of humor annoys his fellows as much as it amuses them, and he can come off as an insensitive jackass exactly when he's trying hardest to cover up his feelings. He's highly distractable - perhaps because of his spider-sense - and can come off as unfocused and immature.
On the other hand, for his skills, bravery, and work ethic, he's won the trust of many people highly placed in the superhero community. The good word of heroes like Captain America, Iron Man, and the Fantastic Four has gotten him grudging respect even from heroes who dislike him. Plus, though Spidey claims to be a lone wolf, he's worked with almost everyone in the superhero community. These days he enjoys being an Avenger despite his insistence that he’s not a team player.
Spider-Man is an experienced tactician, but not much of a strategist - he concerns himself with the individual engagement more than the big picture. This makes him a competent field leader (at least, once he's dumped in the hot seat), but he's not really meant to run a team day in and day out. He prefers to see himself as one of the seasoned grunts, an ordinary guy who's just doing his best day by day.
[PERSONALITY:]
Depending on how you look at it, Peter is either a cheerful pessimist or a cynical optimist. He's realistic about the downsides of life, having experienced many of them firsthand, but he continues to believe that the world's a decent place all around.
Peter is good-natured and a bit goofy, as ready to laugh at himself as the next guy. He's introspective and deeply caring, but also impulsive and judgmental; he can be quick to jump to conclusions and has no sense of self-preservation, which can land him in sticky (pun fully intended) situations. On the plus side, he's equally quick to apologize if he's proven wrong.
Brilliant and unrepentantly geeky, he's hugely enthusiastic about science and the workings of the world, and thinks everyone else should be, too. Although his superheroics keep him a little too absent to be a truly good teacher, he has a knack for nurturing smart but troubled kids. He takes their problems seriously and knows how to talk to them at their level.
Peter's greatest weakness is his lack of faith in himself. His guilt over the death of Uncle Ben (not to mention Gwen Stacy and all the other people he's lost over the years) is branded into his psyche. It's not that he hasn't matured, but his sense of self is tied up in being that self-centered kid who got people hurt because he ignored his responsibilities. He will always be doing penance for his failures, no matter how many people he's rescued or how many times he's saved the city/country/world/universe.
By this point in his life, Peter's self-martyrdom is almost a security blanket; if he somehow managed to move past the guilt he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Spidey's heroic mantra is, "With great power there must also come great responsibility," but it might as well be, "The only factor I can control is myself." He's a control freak who has problems delegating even when he knows the situation's being handled. He has difficulty prioritizing Peter's responsibilties - to himself and others - as long as Spider-Man has obligations. Since Spider-Man *always* has obligations, his personal life is frequently left by the wayside, with obvious fallout to his friendships/romances/schoolwork/career.
Arguably, this is less tragic necessity than subconscious self-sabotage. He wants to be happy, but deep down he doesn't think he deserves it. He's prone to fits of melancholy and probably chronically depressed, though he manages it well just by keeping active and with the help of his willful optimism.
He also has epic daddy issues and a tendency to let them lead him around by the nose.
Since Peter's social life is such a low priority, he's occasionally stymied by the subtleties of social interaction. He cares deeply about his friends, but he keeps them at arms' length emotionally to protect his secret identity. He doesn't have time to see them often and when he does, he often ends up leaving abruptly to go be Spider-Man. As a result, Peter's friends think of him fondly but consider him unreliable and a bit distant; he's generally regarded as having squandered his potential. Peter is somewhat resigned to his poor reputation and even plays into it to protect his secret identity.
There are a very few people with whom Peter feels he can open up completely, and he treasures those relationships deeply, sometimes to the point of being clingy (e.g. with MJ and Matt Murdock). He yearns for commitment - white picket fence, 2.5 children and all - but secrecy has become such an ingrained habit that he finds it hard to confide even in his closest friends and family. He gradually got better at this over the course of his relationship with MJ, and especially once he'd come clean about being Spider-Man to Aunt May. However, since Joe Quesada and the Brain Trust lobotomized him Mephisto rewrote history, his relationships with both characters are much weaker and he's regressed emotionally.
Being Spider-Man puts a lot of psychological pressure on Peter - it's dangerous, thankless, and requires him to lie almost constantly to his friends and family, many of whom mistrust and dislike his costumed self, no matter how often he's put his life on the line for them. Every once in a while he resolves to put the suit away for good. This never lasts long; as hard as Peter finds being Spider-Man, it's harder still not to be him. The self-appointed responsibility is a millstone around his neck, but at the same time he feels being Spider-Man is the best thing that's ever happened to him. Wearing a mask, the terminally square Peter Parker can let loose as an uninhibited wisecracker.
Spidey's quipping operates on multiple levels. It's fun, and cheers him up in a high-pressure work environment. It also distracts his enemies and lulls them into a false sense of security. Contrary to popular opinion, Spidey is capable of not quipping and has even been known to shut up for longer than thirty seconds. Generally, this means one of two things: a) he’s sneaking around, and monologuing internally; b) someone’s about to get their ass handed back to them, with interest. Most of the time, though, he's one of the easy-going heroes -- once referred to by the Punisher as a "triple-jointed boyscout" -- and feels almost as responsible for his enemies as he does anyone else.
[POWERS:]
» Spider powers granted by radioactive spider-bite:
- Enhanced physiology: strength, speed, durability, endurance, agility/reflexes, healing, senses.
- Wall-crawling: uses bio-electricity to stick to solid surfaces with any part of his body. It’s the ultimate static cling!
- Spider-sense: precognitive warning of danger. He can sense urgency and a general sense of direction, but not the precise nature of the danger.
There's some anecdotal evidence that Peter’s physical powers are heightened by adrenaline. However, in terms of his basic powerset, Spidey is a jack of all trades and a master of none: he’s stronger, faster, tougher, and more agile than an average human being by several orders of magnitude, but ranked against other heroes in their particular specialties, he’s strictly middleweight.
» Artificial webbing: using mechanical "web-shooters" he designed himself, he can fire a shear-thinning liquid polymer ("webbing") he can spin into swinging lines, nets, and loosely woven pseudo-fabric. Standard webbing is fire-resistant, has a tensile strength stronger than steel, and dissolves after one hour. He can alter the formula as needed to modify its properties - make it more fire-resistant, less conductive, longer-lasting, etc.
» Other skills/equipment of note:
- Other equipment Spidey carries on him: spider-tracers (sticky little tracking devices he can follow with his spider-sense); extra webbing cartridges, flashlight in the shape of the spider-symbol
- Genius intellect, with which he invented his special equipment
- Strong background in: photography, chemistry, seat-of-the-pants engineering. Canon is incredibly inconsistent on Peter's computer skills, so I'm going to split the difference and say that he's competent at basic hacking.
- The Mephisto mindwipe, which has not only erased everyone's memories of Spidey's secret identity, but actively prevents people from figuring it out. Peter refers to it as a “psychic blindspot;” if someone finds evidence that could point towards Peter Parker being Spider-Man, they’ll just draw an alternative conclusion. The only way around the blindspot is for Peter to be unmasked, willingly or unwillingly. At that point, the unmasker will remember any prior memories they have of knowing Spidey as Peter Parker.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[ Video ]
[ The feed starts with a shaky view of a city street from above, with the sound of distant traffic and nearby muttering. After a few seconds, there's a noise something like kshhh-thup-sqwshh, and the view stabilizes to show a man in a Spider-suit. Yep, another one! He's perched on the wall of what discerning viewers will recognize as an old-fashioned water tower, not so much in defiance of gravity as in complete obliviousness. Judging by the view angle, the cameraphone is stuck to the wall of the water tower.
When he speaks, his voice is muffled, and ever so slightly nasal. ]
Okay. So. This is a dream, right? A mass delusion? Grand scale reality manipulation? Mysterio up to his usual tricks? Because I've been the poor schmuck dumped on the alternate world before, and I've done this this -- [ he brandishes a set of dog tags ] -- as well, and I really don't need to go through it all again.
[ He sighs, leans back on his heels. ]
Although I guess if this were a dream/hallucination/imaginary story, none of you would be able to tell me since you're probably all part of it. So I might as well act as if it weren't until the buildings flip over on themselves and all the passers-by -- passer-bys? No, passers-by -- start staring at me angrily -- that is, more angrily than usual. Well, not exactly more angrily, pretty much the way they always do, actually … Whoa, that's a bit existential for comfort.
[ A pause - he shakes himself. ]
Sorry, I think that got away from me. Take two, from the top, short version: what the heck is going on? Take two, long version: same as short version, but with more flailing, exclamation points, general hysteria, et cetera.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Patrolling the City, Spider-Man thought, was like waking up one morning and not knowing the back of his hand: everything was recognizable but ever so slightly off. Familiar places had different names. Buildings were older than they should've been, never knocked down and rebuilt after superpowered brawls. The Coffee Bean was a Starbucks and his favorite falafel kiosk in Battery Park -- was it even called Battery Park here? -- was now a pretzel stand. (A moldy pretzel stand, from the taste of them. It would just figure if he got food poisoning on his first full night here.)
It was hard not to get bogged down in the changes; hard to focus on the here and now, on getting through tonight and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow without freaking out, when every little change was like a tap on the shoulder: You need to find a way home. People are counting on you.
But how true was that, really? Aunt May was happily married and didn't even want to talk to her deadbeat nephew anymore. Jameson had written him off - was right to have written him off - and his friends from the Bugle and Front Line could hardly risk being seen with him in public, even if they wanted to after the stunt he'd pulled. Black Cat treated him the same as always. But for all the fun they had together they both knew the relationship was empty, even though only Peter realized why.
At home he was miserable and lonely, and it was a problem entirely of his own making. Here ... here was the chance for a new beginning. There were old friends here, and people who could be new ones. Daredevil, the Avengers. A Felicia Hardy who knew another version of him without all the baggage between them. Even family - his long-lost brother, his never-was daughter and that Darkdevil kid she was friends with.
(True, there was also Norman, but then there was always Norman, so that was hardly a con. He'd been locked up at home, but how long would that've lasted? And here Peter was, already thinking in "woulds" instead of "wills." Was he adapting already?)
The sound of a scream echoing off concrete interrupted his musings. Long experience let him pinpoint the sound - a block and a half east. A quick change of angle and one more webline had him dropping between the mugger and his prospective victim in a matter of seconds.
"Hi there! I'm new in town. Could you give me directions for how to get my fist to your face?"
Well, you had to start somewhere.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
I’m working off the assumption that the Mephisto mindwipe continues to function while Peter is in this universe -- at least early on. The exact nature of Mephisto’s reality alteration and the ensuing mindwipe have never been strictly defined, and the longer Peter stays in game, the weaker their effects might become … not only could the mindwipe’s protective effect wear off entirely, but Peter might start remembering his original reality.
NAME: Skalja
JOURNAL: skalja
IM: fishphorescent on AIM
E-MAIL: incywincyhero@gmail.com
RETURNING: I'm new! But I've played with Jillian and Georgia before, if that's useful to know.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Peter Benjamin Parker, your Amazing, Spectacular, Sensational, occasionally Astonishing, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!
FANDOM: Marvel 616/Spider-Man
CHRONOLOGY: Shortly after Amazing Spider-Man #629.
CLASS: Hero. He'll keep the dog tags, at least to start with.
SUPERHERO NAME: Spider-Man
ALTER EGO: Peter Parker, unemployed. Previous work history: mayoral photographer, freelance news photographer, part-time high school science teacher, college TA.
[BACKGROUND:]
Peter is the son of CIA agents Mary and Richard Parker, who were kind of like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, except that I’m the only person who cares about them. (They did save Wolverine's life one time - actually, he was the first person to congratulate them on Mary's pregnancy. And that's your Obscure Marvel Canon Never To Be Referenced Again of the day.) Anyway, the Parkers were killed by the second Red Skull, and young Peter was sent to live with Ben Parker, Richard's much older brother, and his wife May.
Ben and May were good parents; Peter grew up well-loved and probably a bit smothered. Young Peter was far more interested in science than socializing, with predictable consequences for his standing in the high school pecking order. At the age of fifteen, Peter attended a science exhibition with questionable safety protocols, where he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Within hours, he'd developed an array of spider-like powers, if by "spider-like" you mean "electrostatic cling" or "specialized precognition." (See POWERS, below.)
Peter first planned to use his newfound abilities to win fame and fortune. He created the persona of Spider-Man, masked entertainer, and designed a full-body costume that would hide his identity as a nebbish teenager. To improve his act, he invented artificial webbing and web-shooters to dispense it. Hey, I know that when I invent an entirely new shear-thinning liquid polymer with the tensile strength of spidersilk which can be designed to dissolve after a timed interval, the first thing I do with it is use it in my variety show act, am I right?
Having missed his calling as a detail-obsessed cosplayer, Peter met rapid success as a minor television celebrity. One night after a TV special, he was passed by a thief leaving the station. Peter let him get away; after years of being pushed around as "puny Parker," he'd decided that the rest of the world - other than his aunt and uncle - could take care of itself.
This being an origin story, Peter's inaction came back to bite him (ahem). Not long after that fateful night, the very same thief broke into the Parker home and murdered Uncle Ben. Guilt-ridden, Peter took the harsh lesson to heart and made it his mantra: With great power, there must also come great responsibility! And, in Peter's case, lifelong daddy issues.
Peter spent the rest of high school juggling schoolwork, a burgeoning superhero career, and his new role as family breadwinner. Unable to find a job and desperate for cash, he became a freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle, selling photographs of himself in action that were used by irascible editor-in-chief J. Jonah Jameson to destroy Spider-man's reputation. He dated Betty Brant, Jonah's secretary, and met most of the villains who'd become his Rogues Gallery. Spidey also met many other heroes getting their starts. Though already competent, young Spidey was paranoid and had a hair-trigger temper, which didn't endear him to his peers. However, he had a cordial relationship with Daredevil from the start.
Peter went on to Empire State University, where through old classmate/rival Flash Thompson he met new classmates Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy, and made a singularly terrible first impression on both. Shortly afterwards the Green Goblin, one of Spidey's more enigmatic enemies, discovered Peter's secret identity and revealed himself as industrialist Norman Osborn -- Harry's father. In the subsequent battle, Norman was injured and developed convenient amnesia. In the first and worst of many instances of Peter thinking with his daddy issues, he allowed Norman to go free out of concern for Harry's feelings. It was a decision he would come to regret. (Dun dun dun.)
Peter ended up befriending Harry while keeping an eye on Norman. The two became close friends and roommates, which also helped to thaw Peter's relationship with Gwen. Meanwhile, Aunt May manipulated him into persuaded him to meet their neighbor's niece, Mary Jane Watson. MJ and Peter dated casually for a while, but eventually MJ dated Harry while Peter pursued a more serious relationship with Gwen.
Things were going swimmingly until Gwen's father, police captain George Stacy, was killed in the crossfire of a fight between Spider-Man and regular opponent Doctor Octopus. Gwen blamed Spider-Man for her father's death, and Peter for defending Spider-Man. It was some months before the two were on solid ground again.
Then, in rapid succession, Harry had a drug overdose and Norman regained, lost, and regained his memories again. He reclaimed the Green Goblin identity and kidnapped Gwen Stacy. Despite Spidey's best efforts to rescue her, the Goblin dropped her off the top of the Brooklyn Bridge. Peter panicked and tried to catch her with his webbing, and in doing so broke her neck from the sudden deceleration. Fueled by rage and grief, he attacked the Goblin, but it was the Goblin's own glider that killed him -- he was accidentally impaled on its front spike after Spider-Man ducked out of the way.
In the aftermath of the carnage (not that Carnage), Peter drew away from his friends, particularly Harry Osborn, whose father's "death" only exacerbated his own troubles. Eventually, Harry learned the truth about Peter and Norman's other identities and became the new Green Goblin. Peter was forced to fight him and he ended up in psychiatric care for some time.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane started drawing Peter out of his shell. They grew close, and two years after Gwen's death they started dating. Their burgeoning relationship was almost derailed when Gwen Stacy seemingly returned from the dead. "Gwen" was actually a clone created by Peter's former professor and occasional father figure (see what I mean?) Miles Warren, also known as the Jackal. She wasn't the only one, either - Warren had also cloned Peter.
To cut a long and extensively retconned story short, there were two Spider-Men running around until the presumed clone was seemingly killed in an explosion. He actually survived and, taking the name Ben Reilly, went on a soul-searching trip around the country. But Peter wouldn't know that for a few years yet. "Gwen" also took her leave to find herself, and Peter and MJ resumed their relationship. Eventually, Peter proposed, but MJ declared that she wasn't ready for that kind of commitment and left New York.
Shortly after graduating college, Spider-Man met Felicia Hardy, the cat burglar known as Black Cat. After a few sexual-tension-laden tussles, Spidey convinced Black Cat to reform, and they became a crimefighting couple. The relationship had its ups and downs: they came to care for each other very much, but between Felicia getting new powers that backfire on Spidey, Spidey being a sanctimonious goody-goody, Felicia finding Peter's civilian identity distasteful and boring, and Mary Jane coming back to town, things got complicated.
One day around this time, Spider-Man was kidnapped by the cosmic entity Beyonder to participate in his Battleworld experiment with a bunch of other Earth heroes and villains. While on the alien planet, Spidey's costume was destroyed and he finds a new, black one which could respond to his thoughts, enhance his powers, and generate its own web-fluid.
Not long after Peter returned to Earth, Mary Jane revealed that she'd known he was Spider-Man for years, and had kept it to herself because she was in denial. With Peter's secrets out of the way, MJ opened up about her own checkered past, and the two became close again while remaining nominally platonic. However, Peter's relationship with Felicia had hit another one of its lows. He broke up with her, and it wasn't long before he was dating MJ again, though on a tentative basis.
It wasn't quite as caddish as summarizing it in one paragraph makes it sound. Honest!
It was right after that that Spider-Man discovered that his costume wasn't alien technology, but an alien symbiote - a living creature that wanted to bond to him permanently. With the help of science hero Mr. Fantastic, he was able to break its hold and they contained it in the Fantastic Four laboratory. Eventually the symbiote, rejected by the one it loved, would escape and bond with disgruntled ex-reporter Eddie Brock to become Spider-Man's jilted lover enemy, Venom.
But first Peter had problems with another jilted lover. He had reconciled with Black Cat, but then discovered that she was still angry at being dumped and was plotting to kill him with the help of hitman and new lover, the Foreigner. In the end, Felicia realized she still cared about Spider-Man and Peter and doublecrossed Foreigner, after which she left the country to find a new life. (She would return later and remain a good friend of Spidey's.) Shortly thereafter, Mary Jane and Peter got married.
The first few years after Peter got married he was plagued by angry alien symbiotes, random cosmic empowerings, unwilling transformations, and sundry 90s detritus. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn had regained his faculties, married, and had a kid. But a demonic invasion of New York unlocked his repressed memories of being a Goblin and fighting with Spider-Man. Determined to fight Peter in a duel to the death, he ingested a new version of his father's Goblin formula. The serum gave him enhanced powers but also poisoned him, and though he had a change of heart mid-battle, he collapsed and died en route to the hospital.
Peter didn't handle his death well, not least because Harry hadn't lived long enough to undo all the anti-Spider-Man plans he'd put into motion as the Goblin. The Parkers were cautiously joyous when Peter's parents returned, supposedly having been interned for decades in a Soviet camp. But all too soon, they were revealed to be robot duplicates that Harry had had created to manipulate Peter's emotions and then destroy him.
The trauma of the incident made Peter reject his civilian identity and try to live as Spider-Man all the time; he only came back to himself with the reappearance of Ben Reilly. To both men's surprise, new tests revealed that Ben was the original Peter Parker, and the man calling himself Peter was the clone who’d accidentally stolen his life. After working through his identity crisis, Peter recommitted himself to his civilian life with MJ, who was expecting, and Ben took over as Spider-Man.
However, it turned out that the tests had been switched. The entire clone situation had been masterminded by Norman Osborn, who'd been hiding in Europe after faking his death on the bridge years before. Having established "mindscrewing Peter Parker" as a family tradition, he killed Ben Reilly and had an agent poison MJ to send her into premature labor. Baby May was stillborn.
Norman reemerged in New York society and divided his time between building up his criminal empire and making Peter miserable. After MJ was seemingly killed in a plane bombing, he took advantage of Peter's vulnerability to kidnap him. He tried to brainwash him into becoming the new Osborn/Goblin heir. Despite a brief flirtation with Stockholm Syndrome, Peter threw off his programming and escaped. From this point onwards, Norman and Peter's relationship took on a certain codependent aspect as Norman understood Peter (and vice versa) better than anyone else alive, with the possible exception of MJ.
It turned out that a superpowered stalker had engineered the plane bombing to disguise MJ's kidnapping. Peter rescued her, but MJ was traumatized after six months locked in a small room, and the couple separated while she went to LA to find herself.
Aunt May discovered Peter's secret identity and became one of his biggest supporters. Peter and Mary Jane evenutually reconciled, and Spider-Man was invited to join the New Avengers. The Watson-Parker apartment and Aunt May's house were destroyed by a enemy of Peter's, but Tony Stark invited them all to live in Stark Tower and took Peter under his wing as a protégé. Norman Osborn was unmasked by the reporters of the Daily Bugle, and he was hauled off to prison.
After Peter was killed and resurrected with new powers that have been largely ignored ever since, Tony made him a new power suit as a "rebirthday" present. Playing on his parental relationship with Peter, Tony convinced him to back him on the enforcement of the Superhuman Registration Act. At Tony's behest, Peter unmasked at a televised news conference and became the poster boy for registration. However, the superhero community was divided on the issue and the conflict escalated to out and out fighting in the streets. Shortly after anti-registration hero Goliath was killed, Peter discovered that Tony and Mr. Fantastic were jailing unregistered heroes in inhumane conditions in the Negative Zone. He publically repudiated the SHRA and joined the anti-registration side while Aunt May and MJ went into hiding.
However, the Kingpin of crime discovered their location and hired a sniper to kill them. Aunt May was critically wounded and went into a coma. In their grief over May's declining state, Peter and MJ were, ahem, left open to the psychic predations of Dzzzjjo KaySad'ha, a mysterious otherworldly being, and his companion Fan'Bhoi Nos-teljya. Okay, so this is fan theorizing more than canon, but it makes more sense and I’m sticking to it. KaySad'ha sapped their willpower, moral integrity, and common sense, so that when the demon Mephisto offered to save Aunt May's life in exchange for their marriage, they agreed.
Mephisto altered the timeline so that Peter and MJ never got married but were too gormless to end a relationship that would never satisfy either of them. Through his manipulations, Peter spontaneously gained the power to cure bullet wounds with love and saved May. Tony Stark, Mr. Fantastic, and sorceror Dr. Strange created a spell that erased all knowledge of Spider-Man's secret identity from everyone’s memories, sparing only Peter and MJ. After the strain of having her personality mystically butchered on multiple levels, MJ dumped Peter and went back to California.
Peter resumed his life as a safely anonymous freelance photographer, now with added asshole fratboy tendencies. Due to the machinations of Nos-teljya Strangely, he still had many romantic interests. Meanwhile Harry Osborn returned from Europe, apparently never having informed either his wife and child or his best friend that he was still alive. J. Jonah Jameson had The Daily Bugle sold out from under him, and made a successful bid for mayor. Peter quit his job at the newly rechristened DB and became an official mayoral photographer. However, in a fit of editorially mandated idiocy moral confusion he faked a photo to exonerate Jameson of having created a new supervillain. Jameson denounced him as a fake and fired him.
Norman Osborn, now leader of the “reformed” supervillain team known as the Thunderbolts, became America’s sweetheart for his actions fighting the Skrull invasion of Earth. Much to Spider-Man’s disgust and horror, Norman was put in charge of American security and started hunting down unregistered superheroes. Spidey and the New Avengers clashed with him repeatedly but were unable to stop him until he overstepped in his bid for power. When Osborn’s forces invaded Asgard, the President repudiated him and allowed the superhero community to take him down. After a frustrating few months, Spidey was pleased to get the last punch in before Norman was defeated and jailed.
At the time he's imPorted, Spidey has recently tussled with the Juggernaut. He’s in an extremely casual relationship with Black Cat, who no longer remembers his secret identity. He’s on the outs with his Aunt May (who, unbeknownst to him, is under the personality-altering influence of the crimelord Mr. Negative.) Unemployed and a persona non grata in the entire city after his photoshop fiasco, Peter’s feeling a bit down and hasn’t had much chance to savor the post-Osborn euphoria.
[BACKGROUND SIDEBAR - SPIDEY'S ROLE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:]
If the Marvel universe were high school, Spider-Man is the class clown with a secret 4.0 GPA: a lot of people don't take him seriously, but he gets the job done with the best of them.
His reputation is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, thanks to J. Jonah Jameson’s smear campaign, he's widely mistrusted by both the public and law enforcement. His heroic peers aren't always sure what to make of him; until recently he was extremely reticent about his personal life and would often be rude or standoffish rather than let anything slip. His nails-on-a-chalkboard style of humor annoys his fellows as much as it amuses them, and he can come off as an insensitive jackass exactly when he's trying hardest to cover up his feelings. He's highly distractable - perhaps because of his spider-sense - and can come off as unfocused and immature.
On the other hand, for his skills, bravery, and work ethic, he's won the trust of many people highly placed in the superhero community. The good word of heroes like Captain America, Iron Man, and the Fantastic Four has gotten him grudging respect even from heroes who dislike him. Plus, though Spidey claims to be a lone wolf, he's worked with almost everyone in the superhero community. These days he enjoys being an Avenger despite his insistence that he’s not a team player.
Spider-Man is an experienced tactician, but not much of a strategist - he concerns himself with the individual engagement more than the big picture. This makes him a competent field leader (at least, once he's dumped in the hot seat), but he's not really meant to run a team day in and day out. He prefers to see himself as one of the seasoned grunts, an ordinary guy who's just doing his best day by day.
[PERSONALITY:]
Depending on how you look at it, Peter is either a cheerful pessimist or a cynical optimist. He's realistic about the downsides of life, having experienced many of them firsthand, but he continues to believe that the world's a decent place all around.
Peter is good-natured and a bit goofy, as ready to laugh at himself as the next guy. He's introspective and deeply caring, but also impulsive and judgmental; he can be quick to jump to conclusions and has no sense of self-preservation, which can land him in sticky (pun fully intended) situations. On the plus side, he's equally quick to apologize if he's proven wrong.
Brilliant and unrepentantly geeky, he's hugely enthusiastic about science and the workings of the world, and thinks everyone else should be, too. Although his superheroics keep him a little too absent to be a truly good teacher, he has a knack for nurturing smart but troubled kids. He takes their problems seriously and knows how to talk to them at their level.
Peter's greatest weakness is his lack of faith in himself. His guilt over the death of Uncle Ben (not to mention Gwen Stacy and all the other people he's lost over the years) is branded into his psyche. It's not that he hasn't matured, but his sense of self is tied up in being that self-centered kid who got people hurt because he ignored his responsibilities. He will always be doing penance for his failures, no matter how many people he's rescued or how many times he's saved the city/country/world/universe.
By this point in his life, Peter's self-martyrdom is almost a security blanket; if he somehow managed to move past the guilt he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Spidey's heroic mantra is, "With great power there must also come great responsibility," but it might as well be, "The only factor I can control is myself." He's a control freak who has problems delegating even when he knows the situation's being handled. He has difficulty prioritizing Peter's responsibilties - to himself and others - as long as Spider-Man has obligations. Since Spider-Man *always* has obligations, his personal life is frequently left by the wayside, with obvious fallout to his friendships/romances/schoolwork/career.
Arguably, this is less tragic necessity than subconscious self-sabotage. He wants to be happy, but deep down he doesn't think he deserves it. He's prone to fits of melancholy and probably chronically depressed, though he manages it well just by keeping active and with the help of his willful optimism.
He also has epic daddy issues and a tendency to let them lead him around by the nose.
Since Peter's social life is such a low priority, he's occasionally stymied by the subtleties of social interaction. He cares deeply about his friends, but he keeps them at arms' length emotionally to protect his secret identity. He doesn't have time to see them often and when he does, he often ends up leaving abruptly to go be Spider-Man. As a result, Peter's friends think of him fondly but consider him unreliable and a bit distant; he's generally regarded as having squandered his potential. Peter is somewhat resigned to his poor reputation and even plays into it to protect his secret identity.
There are a very few people with whom Peter feels he can open up completely, and he treasures those relationships deeply, sometimes to the point of being clingy (e.g. with MJ and Matt Murdock). He yearns for commitment - white picket fence, 2.5 children and all - but secrecy has become such an ingrained habit that he finds it hard to confide even in his closest friends and family. He gradually got better at this over the course of his relationship with MJ, and especially once he'd come clean about being Spider-Man to Aunt May. However, since Joe Quesada and the Brain Trust lobotomized him Mephisto rewrote history, his relationships with both characters are much weaker and he's regressed emotionally.
Being Spider-Man puts a lot of psychological pressure on Peter - it's dangerous, thankless, and requires him to lie almost constantly to his friends and family, many of whom mistrust and dislike his costumed self, no matter how often he's put his life on the line for them. Every once in a while he resolves to put the suit away for good. This never lasts long; as hard as Peter finds being Spider-Man, it's harder still not to be him. The self-appointed responsibility is a millstone around his neck, but at the same time he feels being Spider-Man is the best thing that's ever happened to him. Wearing a mask, the terminally square Peter Parker can let loose as an uninhibited wisecracker.
Spidey's quipping operates on multiple levels. It's fun, and cheers him up in a high-pressure work environment. It also distracts his enemies and lulls them into a false sense of security. Contrary to popular opinion, Spidey is capable of not quipping and has even been known to shut up for longer than thirty seconds. Generally, this means one of two things: a) he’s sneaking around, and monologuing internally; b) someone’s about to get their ass handed back to them, with interest. Most of the time, though, he's one of the easy-going heroes -- once referred to by the Punisher as a "triple-jointed boyscout" -- and feels almost as responsible for his enemies as he does anyone else.
[POWERS:]
» Spider powers granted by radioactive spider-bite:
- Enhanced physiology: strength, speed, durability, endurance, agility/reflexes, healing, senses.
- Wall-crawling: uses bio-electricity to stick to solid surfaces with any part of his body. It’s the ultimate static cling!
- Spider-sense: precognitive warning of danger. He can sense urgency and a general sense of direction, but not the precise nature of the danger.
There's some anecdotal evidence that Peter’s physical powers are heightened by adrenaline. However, in terms of his basic powerset, Spidey is a jack of all trades and a master of none: he’s stronger, faster, tougher, and more agile than an average human being by several orders of magnitude, but ranked against other heroes in their particular specialties, he’s strictly middleweight.
» Artificial webbing: using mechanical "web-shooters" he designed himself, he can fire a shear-thinning liquid polymer ("webbing") he can spin into swinging lines, nets, and loosely woven pseudo-fabric. Standard webbing is fire-resistant, has a tensile strength stronger than steel, and dissolves after one hour. He can alter the formula as needed to modify its properties - make it more fire-resistant, less conductive, longer-lasting, etc.
» Other skills/equipment of note:
- Other equipment Spidey carries on him: spider-tracers (sticky little tracking devices he can follow with his spider-sense); extra webbing cartridges, flashlight in the shape of the spider-symbol
- Genius intellect, with which he invented his special equipment
- Strong background in: photography, chemistry, seat-of-the-pants engineering. Canon is incredibly inconsistent on Peter's computer skills, so I'm going to split the difference and say that he's competent at basic hacking.
- The Mephisto mindwipe, which has not only erased everyone's memories of Spidey's secret identity, but actively prevents people from figuring it out. Peter refers to it as a “psychic blindspot;” if someone finds evidence that could point towards Peter Parker being Spider-Man, they’ll just draw an alternative conclusion. The only way around the blindspot is for Peter to be unmasked, willingly or unwillingly. At that point, the unmasker will remember any prior memories they have of knowing Spidey as Peter Parker.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[ Video ]
[ The feed starts with a shaky view of a city street from above, with the sound of distant traffic and nearby muttering. After a few seconds, there's a noise something like kshhh-thup-sqwshh, and the view stabilizes to show a man in a Spider-suit. Yep, another one! He's perched on the wall of what discerning viewers will recognize as an old-fashioned water tower, not so much in defiance of gravity as in complete obliviousness. Judging by the view angle, the cameraphone is stuck to the wall of the water tower.
When he speaks, his voice is muffled, and ever so slightly nasal. ]
Okay. So. This is a dream, right? A mass delusion? Grand scale reality manipulation? Mysterio up to his usual tricks? Because I've been the poor schmuck dumped on the alternate world before, and I've done this this -- [ he brandishes a set of dog tags ] -- as well, and I really don't need to go through it all again.
[ He sighs, leans back on his heels. ]
Although I guess if this were a dream/hallucination/imaginary story, none of you would be able to tell me since you're probably all part of it. So I might as well act as if it weren't until the buildings flip over on themselves and all the passers-by -- passer-bys? No, passers-by -- start staring at me angrily -- that is, more angrily than usual. Well, not exactly more angrily, pretty much the way they always do, actually … Whoa, that's a bit existential for comfort.
[ A pause - he shakes himself. ]
Sorry, I think that got away from me. Take two, from the top, short version: what the heck is going on? Take two, long version: same as short version, but with more flailing, exclamation points, general hysteria, et cetera.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Patrolling the City, Spider-Man thought, was like waking up one morning and not knowing the back of his hand: everything was recognizable but ever so slightly off. Familiar places had different names. Buildings were older than they should've been, never knocked down and rebuilt after superpowered brawls. The Coffee Bean was a Starbucks and his favorite falafel kiosk in Battery Park -- was it even called Battery Park here? -- was now a pretzel stand. (A moldy pretzel stand, from the taste of them. It would just figure if he got food poisoning on his first full night here.)
It was hard not to get bogged down in the changes; hard to focus on the here and now, on getting through tonight and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow without freaking out, when every little change was like a tap on the shoulder: You need to find a way home. People are counting on you.
But how true was that, really? Aunt May was happily married and didn't even want to talk to her deadbeat nephew anymore. Jameson had written him off - was right to have written him off - and his friends from the Bugle and Front Line could hardly risk being seen with him in public, even if they wanted to after the stunt he'd pulled. Black Cat treated him the same as always. But for all the fun they had together they both knew the relationship was empty, even though only Peter realized why.
At home he was miserable and lonely, and it was a problem entirely of his own making. Here ... here was the chance for a new beginning. There were old friends here, and people who could be new ones. Daredevil, the Avengers. A Felicia Hardy who knew another version of him without all the baggage between them. Even family - his long-lost brother, his never-was daughter and that Darkdevil kid she was friends with.
(True, there was also Norman, but then there was always Norman, so that was hardly a con. He'd been locked up at home, but how long would that've lasted? And here Peter was, already thinking in "woulds" instead of "wills." Was he adapting already?)
The sound of a scream echoing off concrete interrupted his musings. Long experience let him pinpoint the sound - a block and a half east. A quick change of angle and one more webline had him dropping between the mugger and his prospective victim in a matter of seconds.
"Hi there! I'm new in town. Could you give me directions for how to get my fist to your face?"
Well, you had to start somewhere.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
I’m working off the assumption that the Mephisto mindwipe continues to function while Peter is in this universe -- at least early on. The exact nature of Mephisto’s reality alteration and the ensuing mindwipe have never been strictly defined, and the longer Peter stays in game, the weaker their effects might become … not only could the mindwipe’s protective effect wear off entirely, but Peter might start remembering his original reality.