Which do you prefer - the "Columbo Goes International (or at least as international as we can take him)" episodes or the "Columbo Has A Personal Issue That Plagues Him Throughout (hangry, sleepy, sick, etc)" episodes? Mine is definitely the latter!
ugh. this is a hard one because i love both.
i really enjoy it when the series pushes the fish out of water theme and columbo goes "international"--mexico, england, a pacific cruise. dealing with an IRA operative and a middle-eastern diplomat. he's out of his element, out of his jurisdiction, and it's fun to watch him contrive a way to nail his perp despite these conditions. believe it or not, producer everett chambers almost got us an episode of columbo set in japan, but unfortunately the episode idea died with him when he left the series in season 6.
we get close enough in murder under glass, though. itadakimasu keiji koronbo-chan i guess
but i think i prefer status-affected columbo (poison, sleep, paralysis, etc.) because there's something special about seeing him overcome something intrinsic to do his job. it's one thing to put on his detective hat while on vacation--any self-respecting fictional detective would--it's another to ignore his own basal needs, pushing past being malnourished, ill, and/or dead tired, to do what he needs to do. it kinda makes you just want to make him some tea and tuck him into bed.
anyway, here's a fancam i made of columbo taking poison damage
I'm very intrigued by the bonus round, it's so funny to see the ratios! After it, how are you showing the results? Like listing out the the sweeps from greatest to least?? Just saying the top 3?? I'm curiouss
i'll list them from greatest to least with vote percentages :) but for more detailed info you can check the spreadsheet! here are the current standings. i'll update these either every day OR whenever i feel like it lol
Caught up to the fic!! Absolutely fascinated by all the queer/punk/poc history here, since I don't know much myself. Very sweet chapter as well.
Unrelated question - mostly - but why is it common fanon to depict Noir as the more scarred up of various spiderpeople? Naturally everyone has their fair share of fights, though the only we see sustaining any marks is Peter B and his misaligned nose. Personally, I've taken it as Noir Peter not healing as cleanly due to it being Spider God stuff over Weird Radioactive Healing Factor stuff. Thoughts?
thank you so much!! i’m glad you liked it, & hope the ending was satisfying for ya <3
short answer: hot
long answer, plus a map of my idea of noir’s scars: under readmore :)
i’m not a devout spidey comic/movie fan or a doctor. this is based on conjecture and minimal research!
when i came up with my unmasked noir ideas, i wasn’t influenced by fanon—i hadn’t seen any other fan art, not even when itsv came out. but i can think of a good few reasons that scarred noir is a popular headcanon: evidence of what he’s been through makes him feel more tangible/relatable, the visual difference enhances his thematic individuality as distinct from other spider-people (especially other Peter Parkers), self-consciousness can explain why he doesn’t take off his mask in itsv even around other spiders.
all perfectly valid and interesting reasons! but the first two reasons are doylist and the last one is missing a crucial question: why does he have scars? unless a wound is severe, gets infected, or gets lucky, it won’t usually scar. facial injuries especially need to be really bad to leave a mark. and of course most if not all other spider-people have the healing factor. so what gives??
i like the spider god’s curse influences healing factor idea; it opens up some nice angsty possibilities regarding an inability to Be “Fixed;” no matter how much he tries, he can’t erase/forget what’s happened to him. but i also enjoy the bandaging someone up after a fight genre of fic, and am annoyingly pedantic, so my personal working theory is that the healing factor is not a doctor with ten plus years of experience and an accurate understanding of human anatomy. when a bone really badly breaks, it has to be reset or it’ll heal wrong. to me, the healing factor doesn’t know what ‘right’ is, only ‘fast’ and ‘effective.’ it’s an accelerant, not a substitute for medicine.
so let’s establish the baseline. modern spideys either receive modern medical attention or the injury is superficial enough that they don’t require it. even poverty-stricken peter parkers get rushed to the hospital, because fictional doctors Don’t Care About The Money and/or peter is dolled up in spider gear and who’s going to ignore a visibly beat-up celebrity hero?? plus i honestly believed peter b’s nose was just genetics or smthn. my nose is misaligned and it’s never been broken to my knowledge
to compare, noir lives in 1933 and, far as i can tell, doesn’t rlly garner the same fame and respect from the public as modern spideys do. in the 30s, medicine was meh (they had x-rays but didn’t rlly consider radiation much of a threat, penicillin was still in its infancy, polio was a huge threat, etc) but was also, more importantly, far too expensive for most people suffering during the Great Depression. whatever treatment noir receives after a fight, if any, would look way different from ours. that means his healing factor, which can’t differentiate scars from normal skin or a misaligned bone from a whole one, would be inefficiently assisted or left alone. it would leave its history behind.
on the infectious disease side of things, it’s probably much easier for even noir to recover from less physical ailments like the flu and pneumonia—spider healing factor likely remembers and codes for immunity better than regular immune systems—but without modern drug therapies he’d still be worse for wear, ie internal scarring. mans would have a shorter-than-average parker lifespan if not for the pseudo-immortality of the Spider God
anyway. all this to say, here’s my personal map of parker’s scars. crop tank and daisy dukes to keep tumblr off my ass <3
(tbh this is more for my reference than anyone else’s, i’m sick of looking through my art of Just His Forearms to keep my details consistent, but maybe someone will find it interesting lol)
Stalker obsessed Barty, that eventually ends up kidnapping Regulus because very "nobody can't have you, your mine" and while Barty is tracing Regulus jaw slowly, he notices that Regulus is laughing manically - and that's how he finds out that while Barty was stalking him, he was actually stalking Barty and this was part of his plan.