In a lot of comics, Symbie is pretty articulate. That’s the one thing that bothered me about Costa’s run (aside for not getting a proper goodbye with Sleeper) – the baby talk.
I find it super endearing despite myself and use it in my fanfic, but if you think about it, it’s infantilizing the symbiote even as it’s pretty explicitly in a romantic relationship with Eddie in that run.
In beginning of the Costa run, Symbie is also articulate:
It has conversations with Lee (its terrible host):
They never really explained why it started talking that way. Just this:
Lee’s hurting Symbie was never really enough to explain it. It’s like Costa just lampshaded it and walked away. Later, Eddie discovers that the symbiote is regressing a bit due to his body chemistry issue (though not necessarily IQ, more like animalistic rage), but the baby talk started before that. And the regression issue was fixed but Symbie kept speaking in its super-cute but kinda troubling way.
Interestingly, in the Poison-X X-Men event, Symbie sounds more like a grownup, even if it doesn’t speak a lot.
I’d love for Eddie and Symbie to have actual conversations. We’re not going to get that anytime soon, though, given the current comics’ trend re its “childlike” voice (to quote Cates) and its current coma.
I might be thinking too much into this, but when I started writing fanfic using the modern Venom comic voice, I got creeped out and had to insert a line stating that the symbiote is smart but still learning human speech (not the case cannonically).
i’m, like, completely certain that the reason for the symbiote’s new mode of speech was handwaved away because it’s actually just a matter of personal preference. like, that’s the real and only reason. he just wanted to write it that way and thus had to get the old way… out of the way. any way.
but i never read it as “childlike”. i read it as alien. remember that the costa run is basically intended to be the hunger 2: the hungering.
i think costa’s vision, canon be damned, was to get at this kind of effect. words are close to meaningless to the symbiote. it sounds like a foreign language speaker because the very concept of language is foreign to it. its mind just works fundamentally differently.
compare, also, separation anxiety:
where this effect is heightened to the point where it becomes obvious that the words are only there at all for the reader’s benefit, only as an attempt to translate the concepts and emotions the symbiote has in its head.
the context of the symbiote having sounded sophisticated before technically makes it regression, but generally, i always much preferred the weirder interpretations of symbiote communication. god knows the first times it suddenly started waxing poetic without a host weren’t accompanied by the most thoughtful characterisation.
That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.
One of my all-time favorite writing advice givers.
I tend to write a long ass paragraph of “this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens” without worrying about a goddam thing. And then I read over it when I’m ready and write the real version, but I keep the shitty summary in case I forgot something.
sometimes i wake up in the dead of night in a cold sweat and remember the edge of spiderverse comic gerard way wrote that made the evangelion kids canon to the marvel universe
i had to read this sentence four times to comprehend all its individual parts
gerard way is a surprisingly good comic book writer ok
gerard way has always been a comic book author foremost
my chemical romance was his side gig
peni and daredevil also teamed up to kick kaneda’s ass
