As a blog writer there’s not many feelings worse than seeing a story circulate, thinking to yourself “eh, that will blow over in no time I shouldn’t bother covering it” and then it continues to escalate into a full-blown debate that has lasted long beyond what was anticipated. Now here I am, crawling back to finally cover the uproar surrounding Mary Jane’s face in Spider-Man 2. The developers aren’t afraid to alter key aspects in the games of this series, originally starting with massive changes to Peter’s character model after the first game. To be clear this is not new. Mary Jane’s face received changes way back several months ago. However, to this day the debate continues and was recently reignited by a broader debate about modeling faces based on real people in video games. Kinky may be covering that soon so today we’ll narrow our scope down to simply MJ’s treatment. 

Essentially you have one side stating that this is a total downgrade and a travesty that makes MJ look way uglier than the original face composition. Whether you agree or not, this side has been receiving criticism as some wackos are tracking down the new MJ’s face model, Stephanie Tyler Jones, and harassing/stalking her. On the other hand you have the side that argues this is a much more realistic portrayal and that people are merely upset to see characters in video games actually have faces with flaws or unique features for once, especially the female ones. My personal take is that the new model does seem slightly less attractive, but not nearly as much as the outcry would have you believe. Make no mistake, if either MJ asked me out I’m ready to thwip webs at a moment’s notice. Overall I’d still prefer Black Cat but that’s neither here nor there. I do admit that some angles and certain lighting do make the new face seem significantly worse, but don’t bad angles and lighting do that to most faces anyway?

Not all angles are created equal.

Call me a little bitch fence-sitter but I just don’t think the changes were drastic enough to warrant the level of outrage. Honestly I’m way more salty about Peter’s changes. He went from looking like a slightly unkempt nerd to a highschool football quarterback. My man has the “fr fr no cap” cut nowadays. I know he’s supposed to be an older Peter that has actually developed a sense of style somewhat, but it’s like someone asked an AI machine to create “generic white guy” and we went with the output. Perhaps I’m simply biased for a nerdy Pete thanks to Tobey Maguire’s portrayal in the original trilogy but to me, that should be a much bigger source for controversy.

I miss the old Peter, the almost-Aizen haircut Peter.

Often this debate spirals out of control into a larger argument that Western developers are trying to make uglier representations and become woke(r). I do think some studios are mixing politics into games in distasteful ways, but I also purport that the anti-woke crowd often has huge overreactions to small changes. Two things are for sure: I’m still down to fuck new MJ, and debates on the internet prove unproductive once again as everyone resorts to calling for the other side’s execution and harassing people who are ultimately innocent. Have you played either of the Spider-Man titles? Have you heard about this controversy? Do you agree with one side or the other, or is your stance somewhere in between? Load your web shooters, swing through the city, and stop crime in the comments below!