(no subject)
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Stacey
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: N/A
IM: thepenguinred
RETURNING: New
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: May ‘Mayday’ Parker / Spider-Girl
FANDOM: Marvel MC2 Universe
CHRONOLOGY: End of Amazing Spider-Girl #13
CLASS: Hero. She will keep her dogtags, at least at the start.
SUPERHERO NAME: Spider-Girl
ALTER EGO: May Parker, high school student.
BACKGROUND:
May was what led Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man, to retire. May was stolen from the hospital by an agent of Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, and replaced with a recent stillborn. She spent the first few months of her life in the company of this agent, until the cult working for Osborn came to reclaim her, then Spider-Man’s old enemy Kaine forcibly takes her from them to return to her parents. After learning of the plot upon May’s return, Peter goes to confront the Green Goblin for the last time. During this battle Norman Osborn is killed and Peter loses his right leg, causing him to hang up his webs forever.
Other than the adventure of her first few months of life, May has a perfectly normal childhood. Her mother works in fashion, her father is a forensic scientist for the police, and superheroes and her father’s past as Spider-Man are never discussed. May is a popular student at school, and while she sighs over the hansom Franklin Richards of the Fantastic Five and cheers for the New Avengers, she has no idea how closely her family is tied to them both. All this changes when she is fifteen years old and her Spider powers suddenly manifest during a basketball game.
After this manifestation, May’s life quickly ditches anything resembling normal. At the same time she discovered her powers, Normie Osborn, the grandson of Norman Osborn, decided to take up the Green Goblin mantle and try to kill Spider-Man, leading to her parents being worried enough to disclose the truth about the past to May. She has her first taste of superheroing when she steals her dad’s old uniform to go take down the Green Goblin, thought this stint as a mask is quickly cut short when her parents forbid her to take up the family business and burn the costume in the back yard.
Following this May at first fashions her own, fairly terrible, costume consisting of a black work out outfit and ski mask, then steals another one of her dad’s old costumes. During her time as an under the table superhero, May meets several of her longer term allies and enemies, including: Crazy Eight, Mr. Nobody, Spyral, the Fantastic Five, and Darkdevil, the vigilante that replaced Daredevil. Her parents eventually find her out and summarily ground her and, once again, forbid her from ever playing superhero again. Help comes from an unexpected source when her ‘Uncle’ Phil Urich, a coworker of her dad, an old family friend, and a former, admittedly short lived, masked hero. He takes to training May during their lunch hour, at first alone and later with the Ladyhawks, a pair of sister masked heroes.
After another series of encounters with villains and other heroes, Peter finally caves and agrees to train May in the mornings, though he never fully supports her decision to become Spider-Girl. Between morning and afternoon training sessions and being Spider-Girl after school, May’s social life spirals in the same way Peter’s had as a teen. She’s still a popular girl, but her friends both notice and comment on her recent tendency to be a flake. As May’s life goes down hill, Spider-Girl’s goes fairly well and she manages to land a spot as a reserve New Avenger, becoming fast cape-friends with three of the members: American Dream, J2, and Stinger.
During this time May meets two more major people in her life, Kaine and Brenda Drago, both of which are initially on her villains list, but eventually turn to the path of redemption and become, if not always trusted, at least long term allies. May also meets Jack ‘J.J.’ Jameson, the grandson of the original J. Jonah Jameson, and Felicity Hardy, the daughter of Felicia Hardy. J.J and May date for a short time, and long after they’ve broken up May discovers J.J is the masked hero known as ‘The Buzz.’ Felicity, though only thirteen, discovers May’s secret identity as Spider-Girl and is determined to be her new side-kick. She is the on again off again Scarlet Spider, much to May’s constant disapproval, and eventually settles in as May’s info-gatherer, compensating for May’s own lack of investigative skill.
As a result of a major electric shock, May loses her Spider-Powers for a time. During this period is when Normie Osborn breaks out of the mental facility holding him and, after being beaten up a little by Mary Jane when he attempted to kidnap her, nabs the powerless May and ties her to a chair. They have a long verbal confrontation, during which May figures out Normie is waiting for her to escape and kill him in order to end the Osborn/Parker feud. When May refuses, Normie is unable to actually murder her and she talks him into seeking actual mental help. Since then Normie has been one of her most steadfast allies, and actually supplies her with the gear needed to become the ‘Spider-Goblin’ until her powers return, along with a secret base that once belonged to his grandfather (grudgingly allowed to be named ‘the web site’ later on).
May experiences her first accidental death during a gang war between the Kingpin and Cannis, a new crime boss, when Crazy Eight is shot by Mr. Nobody after she dodges the bullet. Both May and Crazy Eight’s brother, Funny Face, hold May responsible for the death. When Funny Face springs his mother, Angel Face, from prison, May responds by forming her own ‘Even Newer Warriors’ consisting of Phil Urich as the Green Goblin, the Ladyhawks, the Buzz, the Raptor, and, when he feels like it, Darkdevil. May, in a moment of guilt over Crazy Eight’s death, makes a bargain with Angel Face after she and her son have beaten up most of the New Warriors: she’ll let them go if they promise to quit crime and leave New York. Angel Face takes up the offer, and the New Warriors kick May off the team she formed as a result. May lives with regret over her decision for months, until later she has her second round with the criminal pair, putting them back in prison.
Cannis eventually wins the gang war, killing the Kingpin. His reign as the new kingpin is short, however, and he is eventually taken down by a combined effort of Spider-Girl, the New Warriors, and a team of reformed villains, including the Raptor and Kaine, put together by an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. During this time, May becomes an object of fascination for the Black Tarantula, a South American crime lord, who swears that she is destined to be his perfect mate. He, for a short time, equips her with ‘Team Spider,’ her own strike force, and hires Elektra Natchios to help train her. The arrangement is short lived, ending with the Black Tarantula surrendering himself to Spider-Girl rather than having to harm her, though he later escapes S.H.I.E.L.D custody.
Life continued to be hectic for May, with many battles with various villains occurring. One important event was the return of Nomie Osborn’s ‘wife,’ a foreign crime lord who led ‘The Cult of the Goblin’ and called herself Fury, the Goblin Queen. She was determined to make Normie embrace his goblin side, leading to Normie being temporarily dipped in the Goblin serum Norman Osborn had created. He is later possessed by the Venom symbiote and claims he can control the symbiote, making them a team. These combined events lead May to question his loyalty for the first time, creating a tension on top of the awkwardness already there thanks to Normie’s engagement to the Raptor. The symbiote later dies to save Normie and Spider-Girl’s lives during a showdown between Spider-Girl and her allies against the Hobgoblin and the Cult of Scriers, proving that Normie had been right.
After that big show down, during which both May and Peter are injured, Mary Jane forbids May from being Spider-Girl, claiming it isn’t fair to her or to Ben, May’s newly born little brother. May concedes to her mother’s wishes and stops being Spider-Girl for several months. During this time she focus on her social life, dating and been broken up with (after retuning to being Spider-Girl) by Gene Thompson, the son of Flash Thompson and Felicia Hardy, and nearly running for student body president at school. This hiatus ends when trouble too disturbing to ignore starts up again and May, once again behind her parent’s backs, dons the Spider-Girl costume. She does battle with the Hobgoblin once more, who is now challenging the Black Tarantula to become the new Kingpin of crime, and manages to screw up a S.H.I.E.L.D operation being led by Maria Hill, resulting in the Carnage symbiote being released. May takes down the symbiote, but not before it kidnapped both her father and brother, with the results of her rescuing Ben being him loosing his hearing. Shortly after this, a girl in May’s class having her mutant powers activate during school leads Mary Jane to reflect on her attitude towards her daughter, and May is once again given permission to be Spider-Girl.
PERSONALITY:
May is, first and foremost, her parent’s daughter, and her personality reflects that. She didn’t need a tragic death on her shoulders to become Spider-Girl, as being raised by Spider-Man and his number one fan was more than enough to result in her having an iron-clad sense of responsibility. She believes in what she does, and takes it very hard whenever her lack of action results in another being hurt. Being Spider-Girl isn’t something done for fun or profit. She herself often hates the time, energy, and willpower that being a cape takes out of her, but she still fights her parents tooth and nail to be allowed to do it. She often goes so far as betraying their trust and going behind their back to act as Spider-Girl, as she simply can’t live with herself if she isn’t doing everything she can to help people. She has these powers, she can’t simply sit on them while innocents suffer. This responsibility affects not only what she does, but what she doesn’t do as well. From something as simple as quitting the basketball team because she had an unfair advantage, thus giving up a hobby she loved and her potential future college scholarships, to refusing kill anyone, or even let anyone die on her watch, her sense of responsibility acts as her moral code.
Closely linked to this is her guilt. May sees herself as responsible for everything, any wrong could have been prevented if only she had been there. That fact that she is only human, an inexperienced, young one at that, and so can only do so much doesn’t stop herself from blaming herself for everything. When her friend was hit by a car, May blamed herself for it because if she’d been out shopping with her friend, rather than running around as Spider-Girl, she could have dived out and saved her. May lingers over guilt for that for weeks, along with the guilt for every other thing she thinks she should have been able to prevent. While she’s quick to take the weight of the world on her own shoulders, May never places the same kind of blame on others. In fact, she often hands out advice to her friends that applies directly to herself as well, and usually can only solve her own inner turmoil by first having to deal with the same in someone else. In the incident with her friend above, for example, she only realized she wasn’t fully to blame after explaining to the girl’s boyfriend that it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t there to prevent it, either.
May is an incredibly optimistic and forgiving person, believing heavily in second chances. She is either directly responsible for or at least an advocate of the redemption of several villains, many of which become her close friends or allies after the transformation. When fighting an enemy, even one she only plans to send straight to prison, May will usually try to figure out what their motivations were. She usually believes in trying to talk first, seeing violence as a last resort. This view has been shifting slowly during her time as Spider-Girl, especially after the Angel Face and Funny Face fiasco, as she learns that not everyone in the world is innately good, and sometimes a gratuitous fight scene is the only way to protect people.
She still believes in protecting the innocent rather than punishing the guilty as her motivating factor. She has started to question even this recently, however, wondering if she’s beating up villains because she wants to save people, or simply because she can. As seen with her sense of responsibility and guilt, May is far more forgiving of other
people than she is of herself. If another hero came to her with these same doubts, May would have no issue reassuring them that they are a hero, that they’re doing things for the right reasons, while she can only constantly second guess herself and her own motivations. May can’t seem to go a comic without questioning whether or not she is worthy of being Spider-Girl, if she’s actually doing it for the right reasons, or if she’s actually what Darkdevil claimed she was when they first met: just a girl playing pretend.
Much like her father had when he was a hero, May keeps these thoughts to herself. Whether it’s from her sense of responsibility telling her that she needs to take care of herself and not burden others, or from something else, May internalizes all her problems and very rarely talks about them. She questions her ability to be Spider-Girl, but defends her right to do it to her parents as if she’s never had a moments doubt. May also keeps the secrets of others, even against her better judgment. She has a fierce sense of loyalty, and often sees simply seeking help for a friend from an outside source a betrayal of their trust in her if they didn’t ask for that help. When Normie accepted the venom symbiote, claiming he could control it, she lied, or at least omitted the truth, to the Avengers, the Warriors, her other allies, and her family about it because he asked her to, and because doubting Normie’s assurances would be a betrayal. In this case, it worked out alright, but there were certainly come a day when that blind loyalty will get her into trouble.
All these traits come together to form a woman who, though riddled with self-doubt, is fiercely independent. May is a reserve member of the New Avengers, but has been threatened with being kicked out of that position more than once because of her inability to follow orders when she thinks they are wrong. This defiance has shown itself in her tendency to run off on her own to confront villains she sees as ‘her responsibility’ rather than waiting for the team as ordered, and once even manifested in a flat out battle between her, several members of the New Avengers, and an agent of Tony Stark when she refused to help them arrest the Buzz. That isn’t to say she’s defiant for the sake of being defiant. Though she find the endless debates and paperwork involved with being a team player annoying at best, and is still uncomfortable enough during team meetings that she raises her hand like a kid in class to speak, when the chips are down Spider-Girl is reliable. She will go against instincts to stay and fight with her teammates when ordered to go on a side mission, and generally comes through so long as it doesn’t feel innately morally wrong to her.
Though Spider-Girl is nine times out of ten a reliable ally during a fight, May herself is still a teenage girl, and is rather easily distracted. She misses appointments with her friends, family, and superhero allies because a new problem has popped up and she quickly becomes blinded to anything outside of that immediate issue. She doesn’t consciously choose to miss her previous appointment, it just completely flees her mind until the problem at hand is solved, and she then allows the guilt for failing whoever it was to consume her, completely ignoring all the good she’d accomplished by solving the problem that distracted her.
On the teenage girl note, outside of being Spider-Girl, May is very much one. She loves shopping, especially for shoes, gossip, and, like any cape, is constantly torn between various love interests. She has had a very hard time finding a balance between being Spider-Girl and being Mayday Parker, with Spider-Girl nearly always taking priority. This is often another source of guilt for May as she fails her friends, but she still tries to be there for them as much as she can, even going so far as to toy sharing her secret identity with a few of them from time to time.
Though May dabbles in the quips and one-liners, she is not on her father’s level as far as that is concerned. Humor is a huge coping mechanism in her life, she’s even admitted that to herself, but in very serious, life or death situations where she knows she’s over her head, May tends to fall silent. She is still a young hero in a world of very established heroes, and she is very aware of that. Though she may quip at someone like Captain America, she’s fast to recognize if it may have crossed a line and apologizes for it on the spot. When she rambles at the baddie instead of at herself, it’s usually in an attempt to distract them from the fact she’s setting them up into the proper position to take them down. She’s not a master strategist, she’s purely ad-lib, but when she forms a plan during battle she’s usually pretty good at tricking her opponent into thinking she’s just talking and darting randomly rather than getting them to maneuver into place.
POWER:
May has several canon Spider-Powers and one main gadget. Her powers are very similar to her father’s, though some fall short and others exceed Spider-Man’s abilities.
The proportional speed, strength, and ability of a spider:
May has super human spend, strength, and agility. She’s not as strong as her father, capable of lifting up to five tons compared to her father’s ten, but is more agile than he was. She is also capable of leaping several stories in a single bound.
Spider-Sense:
A sixth sense that signals danger to May before is actually happens, and acts as a sort of radar for powered individuals in general. The signal ‘tingles’ at varying intensities depending on the level of the threat, with the lowest being what goes off when another superhuman, with no ill intentions, is in the area. May’s Spider-Sense goes above Peter’s in that each person she knows has a set ‘frequency’ on it, meaning that if she’s met a person before she can generally tell if they are what is triggering her sense based on how it feels. She’s also figured out that by focusing on an opponent she can detect which areas of their body trigger the sense harder than others and uses this to discover the weak spots/location of weapons on her opponent. When faced with a very challenging opponent, May learned from Elektra to close her eyes and stop thinking, allowing her spider-sense to completely guide her actions, greatly increasing her reaction time and destroying any kind of predictable pattern of attack she may have had.
Bio-magnetic field:
Like her father, May can cling to surfaces and objects, but, unlike him, this is not the limit of her power. Unlike Spider-Man, May’s ability to do this is from a bio-magnetic field she has around her body, which allows her to make others unwillingly stick to an object/surface when she is clinging to it, as well as allowing her to forcefully repel objects, effectively using them as missiles.
Web-shooters:
Inherited from and updated by her father. The web-shooters allow May to use the webbing solution made by her father, creating anything from a single web strand to a full blown cocoon of webbing in an instant depending on how she pressed the trigger. May often makes shields with the webbing to protect her from various attacks. The shooters are also equipped with metal ‘stingers,’ sharpened metal darts that she can fire at enemies, but are rarely used as she doesn’t agree with that level of violence. In addition, the shooters have a built in cell phone that looks like a normal webbing cartridge, and is constantly set on vibrate. This phone has ruined May’s attempts at stealth and spying more than once.
Spider-tracers:
Small mechanical spider that, once placed on a person, can be tracked using a hand held device. The tracers were made by her father and are tuned to the frequency of his Spider-Sense rather than hers, meaning May needs to use the ‘gizmo’ to follow their signal instead of being tuned into them.
Mundane martial arts:
May is a natural born athlete, having started gymnastics before she entered kindergarten, and has trained for over a year with the Ladyhawks and her father, as well as for several weeks under Elektra, in addition to the ‘on the job training’ that comes with being Spider-Girl.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Video]
[Spider-Girl is in full uniform and apparently crouching on the side of a brick building with the phone in one hand, pointed towards her face. She’s cupping her chin with her free hand and going back and forth between looking at the camera and looking around.]
Alright, so skipping into another dimension was soooo not on my list of things to do today. Not even sure how I stumbled on this one. Far as I know Spyral’s not due for his yearly jail break for at least another month, and the Avengers semi-annual retreat to the latest dimension o’horror’s not till Thursday. But, from the looks of it, I’m guessing this time it was a yank instead of a shove that got me outta Kansas.
So, uh, here’s where I do my desperate hope thing, sorry if it’s way outta style ‘round here. American Dream, Psi-Lord, Normie, Doc Magus, somebody…anybody? You guys out there?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
She ran along the roof tops, leaping from building to building with a single jump and a quick twist in the air, then ricocheted between skyscraper walls with no real pattern or ultimate destination. No use web-slinging, it’d just be a waste of webs, and she could get around easy enough this way. Webbing around town without Daddy back at home to refill her stock would be silly, would be what a little girl playing would do rather than the actions of a hero. A hero. Yeah. Right. Just because some weird computer gave her a set of tags and sent her on her way didn’t make her that. Dad would be so proud, a Spider-Person doing good deeds for cash instead of just to protect people. Dad…
What were Mom and Dad thinking now? First their son gets his eardrums blown open by their stupid daughter, and then that same daughter vanishes. It was the worst thing she could do to them, the worst thing she’d ever done, and she couldn’t fix it. She wasn’t like the Fan Five, she wasn’t smart enough to find a way back, couldn’t do anything but take her tags and go about her patrol. She’d give anything to be grounded right about now, to have her web-shooters taken away and costume burned in the back yard, to be told she wasn’t good enough to play at Spider-Girl. To be home. But, no, instead she’d gotten what she’d always wanted, full: unconditional support to be Spider-Girl, a bonafide hero. Man, oh, man what she wouldn’t give to trade it back.
The scream in the alley below brought her up short, the finger tips of one hand catching on the side of the building and holding her fast stories above the potential crime scene. Nope, sorry mister, not today. Not if she had anything to say about it. It was a different dimension, full of more masked heroes than she could shoot a web at, but it was her city for now nonetheless, and innocents got protected on her watch. It may not be New York, but for now and until she got home, it was still a Spider-Girl world.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
May is not the science wiz her father is. She does well in school, but she is not a child genius, and, even if she doesn’t realize it, she is heavily reliant on her support network to be a hero. She relies on her father to make her webbing fluid, without him around she’s going to run out of her current supply in a matter of weeks and need to find an alternate source/material. May can’t even sew, if something happens to her costume she’ll need someone else to repair it or make a new one for her.
NAME: Stacey
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: N/A
IM: thepenguinred
RETURNING: New
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: May ‘Mayday’ Parker / Spider-Girl
FANDOM: Marvel MC2 Universe
CHRONOLOGY: End of Amazing Spider-Girl #13
CLASS: Hero. She will keep her dogtags, at least at the start.
SUPERHERO NAME: Spider-Girl
ALTER EGO: May Parker, high school student.
BACKGROUND:
May was what led Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man, to retire. May was stolen from the hospital by an agent of Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, and replaced with a recent stillborn. She spent the first few months of her life in the company of this agent, until the cult working for Osborn came to reclaim her, then Spider-Man’s old enemy Kaine forcibly takes her from them to return to her parents. After learning of the plot upon May’s return, Peter goes to confront the Green Goblin for the last time. During this battle Norman Osborn is killed and Peter loses his right leg, causing him to hang up his webs forever.
Other than the adventure of her first few months of life, May has a perfectly normal childhood. Her mother works in fashion, her father is a forensic scientist for the police, and superheroes and her father’s past as Spider-Man are never discussed. May is a popular student at school, and while she sighs over the hansom Franklin Richards of the Fantastic Five and cheers for the New Avengers, she has no idea how closely her family is tied to them both. All this changes when she is fifteen years old and her Spider powers suddenly manifest during a basketball game.
After this manifestation, May’s life quickly ditches anything resembling normal. At the same time she discovered her powers, Normie Osborn, the grandson of Norman Osborn, decided to take up the Green Goblin mantle and try to kill Spider-Man, leading to her parents being worried enough to disclose the truth about the past to May. She has her first taste of superheroing when she steals her dad’s old uniform to go take down the Green Goblin, thought this stint as a mask is quickly cut short when her parents forbid her to take up the family business and burn the costume in the back yard.
Following this May at first fashions her own, fairly terrible, costume consisting of a black work out outfit and ski mask, then steals another one of her dad’s old costumes. During her time as an under the table superhero, May meets several of her longer term allies and enemies, including: Crazy Eight, Mr. Nobody, Spyral, the Fantastic Five, and Darkdevil, the vigilante that replaced Daredevil. Her parents eventually find her out and summarily ground her and, once again, forbid her from ever playing superhero again. Help comes from an unexpected source when her ‘Uncle’ Phil Urich, a coworker of her dad, an old family friend, and a former, admittedly short lived, masked hero. He takes to training May during their lunch hour, at first alone and later with the Ladyhawks, a pair of sister masked heroes.
After another series of encounters with villains and other heroes, Peter finally caves and agrees to train May in the mornings, though he never fully supports her decision to become Spider-Girl. Between morning and afternoon training sessions and being Spider-Girl after school, May’s social life spirals in the same way Peter’s had as a teen. She’s still a popular girl, but her friends both notice and comment on her recent tendency to be a flake. As May’s life goes down hill, Spider-Girl’s goes fairly well and she manages to land a spot as a reserve New Avenger, becoming fast cape-friends with three of the members: American Dream, J2, and Stinger.
During this time May meets two more major people in her life, Kaine and Brenda Drago, both of which are initially on her villains list, but eventually turn to the path of redemption and become, if not always trusted, at least long term allies. May also meets Jack ‘J.J.’ Jameson, the grandson of the original J. Jonah Jameson, and Felicity Hardy, the daughter of Felicia Hardy. J.J and May date for a short time, and long after they’ve broken up May discovers J.J is the masked hero known as ‘The Buzz.’ Felicity, though only thirteen, discovers May’s secret identity as Spider-Girl and is determined to be her new side-kick. She is the on again off again Scarlet Spider, much to May’s constant disapproval, and eventually settles in as May’s info-gatherer, compensating for May’s own lack of investigative skill.
As a result of a major electric shock, May loses her Spider-Powers for a time. During this period is when Normie Osborn breaks out of the mental facility holding him and, after being beaten up a little by Mary Jane when he attempted to kidnap her, nabs the powerless May and ties her to a chair. They have a long verbal confrontation, during which May figures out Normie is waiting for her to escape and kill him in order to end the Osborn/Parker feud. When May refuses, Normie is unable to actually murder her and she talks him into seeking actual mental help. Since then Normie has been one of her most steadfast allies, and actually supplies her with the gear needed to become the ‘Spider-Goblin’ until her powers return, along with a secret base that once belonged to his grandfather (grudgingly allowed to be named ‘the web site’ later on).
May experiences her first accidental death during a gang war between the Kingpin and Cannis, a new crime boss, when Crazy Eight is shot by Mr. Nobody after she dodges the bullet. Both May and Crazy Eight’s brother, Funny Face, hold May responsible for the death. When Funny Face springs his mother, Angel Face, from prison, May responds by forming her own ‘Even Newer Warriors’ consisting of Phil Urich as the Green Goblin, the Ladyhawks, the Buzz, the Raptor, and, when he feels like it, Darkdevil. May, in a moment of guilt over Crazy Eight’s death, makes a bargain with Angel Face after she and her son have beaten up most of the New Warriors: she’ll let them go if they promise to quit crime and leave New York. Angel Face takes up the offer, and the New Warriors kick May off the team she formed as a result. May lives with regret over her decision for months, until later she has her second round with the criminal pair, putting them back in prison.
Cannis eventually wins the gang war, killing the Kingpin. His reign as the new kingpin is short, however, and he is eventually taken down by a combined effort of Spider-Girl, the New Warriors, and a team of reformed villains, including the Raptor and Kaine, put together by an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. During this time, May becomes an object of fascination for the Black Tarantula, a South American crime lord, who swears that she is destined to be his perfect mate. He, for a short time, equips her with ‘Team Spider,’ her own strike force, and hires Elektra Natchios to help train her. The arrangement is short lived, ending with the Black Tarantula surrendering himself to Spider-Girl rather than having to harm her, though he later escapes S.H.I.E.L.D custody.
Life continued to be hectic for May, with many battles with various villains occurring. One important event was the return of Nomie Osborn’s ‘wife,’ a foreign crime lord who led ‘The Cult of the Goblin’ and called herself Fury, the Goblin Queen. She was determined to make Normie embrace his goblin side, leading to Normie being temporarily dipped in the Goblin serum Norman Osborn had created. He is later possessed by the Venom symbiote and claims he can control the symbiote, making them a team. These combined events lead May to question his loyalty for the first time, creating a tension on top of the awkwardness already there thanks to Normie’s engagement to the Raptor. The symbiote later dies to save Normie and Spider-Girl’s lives during a showdown between Spider-Girl and her allies against the Hobgoblin and the Cult of Scriers, proving that Normie had been right.
After that big show down, during which both May and Peter are injured, Mary Jane forbids May from being Spider-Girl, claiming it isn’t fair to her or to Ben, May’s newly born little brother. May concedes to her mother’s wishes and stops being Spider-Girl for several months. During this time she focus on her social life, dating and been broken up with (after retuning to being Spider-Girl) by Gene Thompson, the son of Flash Thompson and Felicia Hardy, and nearly running for student body president at school. This hiatus ends when trouble too disturbing to ignore starts up again and May, once again behind her parent’s backs, dons the Spider-Girl costume. She does battle with the Hobgoblin once more, who is now challenging the Black Tarantula to become the new Kingpin of crime, and manages to screw up a S.H.I.E.L.D operation being led by Maria Hill, resulting in the Carnage symbiote being released. May takes down the symbiote, but not before it kidnapped both her father and brother, with the results of her rescuing Ben being him loosing his hearing. Shortly after this, a girl in May’s class having her mutant powers activate during school leads Mary Jane to reflect on her attitude towards her daughter, and May is once again given permission to be Spider-Girl.
PERSONALITY:
May is, first and foremost, her parent’s daughter, and her personality reflects that. She didn’t need a tragic death on her shoulders to become Spider-Girl, as being raised by Spider-Man and his number one fan was more than enough to result in her having an iron-clad sense of responsibility. She believes in what she does, and takes it very hard whenever her lack of action results in another being hurt. Being Spider-Girl isn’t something done for fun or profit. She herself often hates the time, energy, and willpower that being a cape takes out of her, but she still fights her parents tooth and nail to be allowed to do it. She often goes so far as betraying their trust and going behind their back to act as Spider-Girl, as she simply can’t live with herself if she isn’t doing everything she can to help people. She has these powers, she can’t simply sit on them while innocents suffer. This responsibility affects not only what she does, but what she doesn’t do as well. From something as simple as quitting the basketball team because she had an unfair advantage, thus giving up a hobby she loved and her potential future college scholarships, to refusing kill anyone, or even let anyone die on her watch, her sense of responsibility acts as her moral code.
Closely linked to this is her guilt. May sees herself as responsible for everything, any wrong could have been prevented if only she had been there. That fact that she is only human, an inexperienced, young one at that, and so can only do so much doesn’t stop herself from blaming herself for everything. When her friend was hit by a car, May blamed herself for it because if she’d been out shopping with her friend, rather than running around as Spider-Girl, she could have dived out and saved her. May lingers over guilt for that for weeks, along with the guilt for every other thing she thinks she should have been able to prevent. While she’s quick to take the weight of the world on her own shoulders, May never places the same kind of blame on others. In fact, she often hands out advice to her friends that applies directly to herself as well, and usually can only solve her own inner turmoil by first having to deal with the same in someone else. In the incident with her friend above, for example, she only realized she wasn’t fully to blame after explaining to the girl’s boyfriend that it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t there to prevent it, either.
May is an incredibly optimistic and forgiving person, believing heavily in second chances. She is either directly responsible for or at least an advocate of the redemption of several villains, many of which become her close friends or allies after the transformation. When fighting an enemy, even one she only plans to send straight to prison, May will usually try to figure out what their motivations were. She usually believes in trying to talk first, seeing violence as a last resort. This view has been shifting slowly during her time as Spider-Girl, especially after the Angel Face and Funny Face fiasco, as she learns that not everyone in the world is innately good, and sometimes a gratuitous fight scene is the only way to protect people.
She still believes in protecting the innocent rather than punishing the guilty as her motivating factor. She has started to question even this recently, however, wondering if she’s beating up villains because she wants to save people, or simply because she can. As seen with her sense of responsibility and guilt, May is far more forgiving of other
people than she is of herself. If another hero came to her with these same doubts, May would have no issue reassuring them that they are a hero, that they’re doing things for the right reasons, while she can only constantly second guess herself and her own motivations. May can’t seem to go a comic without questioning whether or not she is worthy of being Spider-Girl, if she’s actually doing it for the right reasons, or if she’s actually what Darkdevil claimed she was when they first met: just a girl playing pretend.
Much like her father had when he was a hero, May keeps these thoughts to herself. Whether it’s from her sense of responsibility telling her that she needs to take care of herself and not burden others, or from something else, May internalizes all her problems and very rarely talks about them. She questions her ability to be Spider-Girl, but defends her right to do it to her parents as if she’s never had a moments doubt. May also keeps the secrets of others, even against her better judgment. She has a fierce sense of loyalty, and often sees simply seeking help for a friend from an outside source a betrayal of their trust in her if they didn’t ask for that help. When Normie accepted the venom symbiote, claiming he could control it, she lied, or at least omitted the truth, to the Avengers, the Warriors, her other allies, and her family about it because he asked her to, and because doubting Normie’s assurances would be a betrayal. In this case, it worked out alright, but there were certainly come a day when that blind loyalty will get her into trouble.
All these traits come together to form a woman who, though riddled with self-doubt, is fiercely independent. May is a reserve member of the New Avengers, but has been threatened with being kicked out of that position more than once because of her inability to follow orders when she thinks they are wrong. This defiance has shown itself in her tendency to run off on her own to confront villains she sees as ‘her responsibility’ rather than waiting for the team as ordered, and once even manifested in a flat out battle between her, several members of the New Avengers, and an agent of Tony Stark when she refused to help them arrest the Buzz. That isn’t to say she’s defiant for the sake of being defiant. Though she find the endless debates and paperwork involved with being a team player annoying at best, and is still uncomfortable enough during team meetings that she raises her hand like a kid in class to speak, when the chips are down Spider-Girl is reliable. She will go against instincts to stay and fight with her teammates when ordered to go on a side mission, and generally comes through so long as it doesn’t feel innately morally wrong to her.
Though Spider-Girl is nine times out of ten a reliable ally during a fight, May herself is still a teenage girl, and is rather easily distracted. She misses appointments with her friends, family, and superhero allies because a new problem has popped up and she quickly becomes blinded to anything outside of that immediate issue. She doesn’t consciously choose to miss her previous appointment, it just completely flees her mind until the problem at hand is solved, and she then allows the guilt for failing whoever it was to consume her, completely ignoring all the good she’d accomplished by solving the problem that distracted her.
On the teenage girl note, outside of being Spider-Girl, May is very much one. She loves shopping, especially for shoes, gossip, and, like any cape, is constantly torn between various love interests. She has had a very hard time finding a balance between being Spider-Girl and being Mayday Parker, with Spider-Girl nearly always taking priority. This is often another source of guilt for May as she fails her friends, but she still tries to be there for them as much as she can, even going so far as to toy sharing her secret identity with a few of them from time to time.
Though May dabbles in the quips and one-liners, she is not on her father’s level as far as that is concerned. Humor is a huge coping mechanism in her life, she’s even admitted that to herself, but in very serious, life or death situations where she knows she’s over her head, May tends to fall silent. She is still a young hero in a world of very established heroes, and she is very aware of that. Though she may quip at someone like Captain America, she’s fast to recognize if it may have crossed a line and apologizes for it on the spot. When she rambles at the baddie instead of at herself, it’s usually in an attempt to distract them from the fact she’s setting them up into the proper position to take them down. She’s not a master strategist, she’s purely ad-lib, but when she forms a plan during battle she’s usually pretty good at tricking her opponent into thinking she’s just talking and darting randomly rather than getting them to maneuver into place.
POWER:
May has several canon Spider-Powers and one main gadget. Her powers are very similar to her father’s, though some fall short and others exceed Spider-Man’s abilities.
The proportional speed, strength, and ability of a spider:
May has super human spend, strength, and agility. She’s not as strong as her father, capable of lifting up to five tons compared to her father’s ten, but is more agile than he was. She is also capable of leaping several stories in a single bound.
Spider-Sense:
A sixth sense that signals danger to May before is actually happens, and acts as a sort of radar for powered individuals in general. The signal ‘tingles’ at varying intensities depending on the level of the threat, with the lowest being what goes off when another superhuman, with no ill intentions, is in the area. May’s Spider-Sense goes above Peter’s in that each person she knows has a set ‘frequency’ on it, meaning that if she’s met a person before she can generally tell if they are what is triggering her sense based on how it feels. She’s also figured out that by focusing on an opponent she can detect which areas of their body trigger the sense harder than others and uses this to discover the weak spots/location of weapons on her opponent. When faced with a very challenging opponent, May learned from Elektra to close her eyes and stop thinking, allowing her spider-sense to completely guide her actions, greatly increasing her reaction time and destroying any kind of predictable pattern of attack she may have had.
Bio-magnetic field:
Like her father, May can cling to surfaces and objects, but, unlike him, this is not the limit of her power. Unlike Spider-Man, May’s ability to do this is from a bio-magnetic field she has around her body, which allows her to make others unwillingly stick to an object/surface when she is clinging to it, as well as allowing her to forcefully repel objects, effectively using them as missiles.
Web-shooters:
Inherited from and updated by her father. The web-shooters allow May to use the webbing solution made by her father, creating anything from a single web strand to a full blown cocoon of webbing in an instant depending on how she pressed the trigger. May often makes shields with the webbing to protect her from various attacks. The shooters are also equipped with metal ‘stingers,’ sharpened metal darts that she can fire at enemies, but are rarely used as she doesn’t agree with that level of violence. In addition, the shooters have a built in cell phone that looks like a normal webbing cartridge, and is constantly set on vibrate. This phone has ruined May’s attempts at stealth and spying more than once.
Spider-tracers:
Small mechanical spider that, once placed on a person, can be tracked using a hand held device. The tracers were made by her father and are tuned to the frequency of his Spider-Sense rather than hers, meaning May needs to use the ‘gizmo’ to follow their signal instead of being tuned into them.
Mundane martial arts:
May is a natural born athlete, having started gymnastics before she entered kindergarten, and has trained for over a year with the Ladyhawks and her father, as well as for several weeks under Elektra, in addition to the ‘on the job training’ that comes with being Spider-Girl.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Video]
[Spider-Girl is in full uniform and apparently crouching on the side of a brick building with the phone in one hand, pointed towards her face. She’s cupping her chin with her free hand and going back and forth between looking at the camera and looking around.]
Alright, so skipping into another dimension was soooo not on my list of things to do today. Not even sure how I stumbled on this one. Far as I know Spyral’s not due for his yearly jail break for at least another month, and the Avengers semi-annual retreat to the latest dimension o’horror’s not till Thursday. But, from the looks of it, I’m guessing this time it was a yank instead of a shove that got me outta Kansas.
So, uh, here’s where I do my desperate hope thing, sorry if it’s way outta style ‘round here. American Dream, Psi-Lord, Normie, Doc Magus, somebody…anybody? You guys out there?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
She ran along the roof tops, leaping from building to building with a single jump and a quick twist in the air, then ricocheted between skyscraper walls with no real pattern or ultimate destination. No use web-slinging, it’d just be a waste of webs, and she could get around easy enough this way. Webbing around town without Daddy back at home to refill her stock would be silly, would be what a little girl playing would do rather than the actions of a hero. A hero. Yeah. Right. Just because some weird computer gave her a set of tags and sent her on her way didn’t make her that. Dad would be so proud, a Spider-Person doing good deeds for cash instead of just to protect people. Dad…
What were Mom and Dad thinking now? First their son gets his eardrums blown open by their stupid daughter, and then that same daughter vanishes. It was the worst thing she could do to them, the worst thing she’d ever done, and she couldn’t fix it. She wasn’t like the Fan Five, she wasn’t smart enough to find a way back, couldn’t do anything but take her tags and go about her patrol. She’d give anything to be grounded right about now, to have her web-shooters taken away and costume burned in the back yard, to be told she wasn’t good enough to play at Spider-Girl. To be home. But, no, instead she’d gotten what she’d always wanted, full: unconditional support to be Spider-Girl, a bonafide hero. Man, oh, man what she wouldn’t give to trade it back.
The scream in the alley below brought her up short, the finger tips of one hand catching on the side of the building and holding her fast stories above the potential crime scene. Nope, sorry mister, not today. Not if she had anything to say about it. It was a different dimension, full of more masked heroes than she could shoot a web at, but it was her city for now nonetheless, and innocents got protected on her watch. It may not be New York, but for now and until she got home, it was still a Spider-Girl world.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
May is not the science wiz her father is. She does well in school, but she is not a child genius, and, even if she doesn’t realize it, she is heavily reliant on her support network to be a hero. She relies on her father to make her webbing fluid, without him around she’s going to run out of her current supply in a matter of weeks and need to find an alternate source/material. May can’t even sew, if something happens to her costume she’ll need someone else to repair it or make a new one for her.