Why Does Cindy Moon's aka Silk's Love Life Suck?

[Winter]

With Spider-Man 2's New Game + coming out in 2 days now (why does Sony keep holding off on NG+ in so many titles) I've been thinking about Cindy Moon aka Silk who will be joining Peter and Miles as part of the Insomniac continuity. I've already talked about the idea of Cindy being given Adaptational Sexuality and being given a girlfriend but going back and reading up on her comics I suddenly realized something, Cindy has had, at the very least, 3 male love interests and they've all sucked or at least the relationship sucked.

There's her "romance" with Peter, her supposed true love Hector (whom I'm pretty sure we haven't seen in 8 years) and Max who was her physiologist who betrayed her because he was secretly a villain working with Saya Ishii, whom I've already covered. There was apparently another guy she dated but he only showed up in one issue and has not been mentioned since.

The only romance of note here is with Peter and the only reason that is worth mentioning is because it's one of the worst romances in the Spider-Verse series. Just about everyone agrees it was a bad idea including the people who made it and Insomniac is making the VERY Wise move of just ignoring it altogether as A) He's already in a committed relationship with MJ and B) He's at least 26 while she's least 15, that is a HUGE amount of NOOO!!! And the other two are so uninteresting that it's barely worth talking about them.

For the life of me I don't get why Marvel sucks so much at giving Cindy a compelling romance. As I've made clear her most compelling and tense relationships have been with other women. She and Felicia worked together while Cindy was spying on her and the two have had a rather tense since. Saya is one of her most reoccurring adversaries and it's heavily implied that Saya is attracted to Cindy more than once. And finally Luna Snow is one of Cindy's best friends and a good chunk of the time their interactions comes off as if Cindy has a crush on her despite being in a love triangle with her and Brawn aka Amadeus Cho (yeah that was a thing that happened and it was SO forced).

I want to make clear that I'm not against Cindy having several love interests regardless of their gender. I mean most people don't have an issue with James Bond having several love interests with people often making lists of who their favorite Bond Girl is (Mine is Tracy Bond just FYI) but the same cannot be said about Cindy.

Or Hell look at Peter who has a MUCH bigger list of love interests then most are aware and many of them went on to have their own series or become such a huge part of Peter's lore that they've gone on to appear in several adaptations.

But Cindy's love interest? The writers care so little that the one they insisted was her OTP was just kinda forgotten and not mentioned while the other notable one after him was quickly turned into a villain in the hopes of making him interesting, (which failed FTR).

And it's often something that drags Cindy's solo series down. The series is at it's best when it focused on her relationship with J Jonah Jameson, her family, her complex relationship with Felicia, Luna & Saya and her social disabilities. These are what made her go from a hated character to a fan favorite while her romances are often criticized for hurting otherwise fun stories.

For example Cindy is trapped within her own mind and she's forced into believing she's a cowgirl, a pirate among other silly and amazing scenarios while her brother tries to save her. This is a plot by Saya who is turned into a monster as a result of Albert, Cin's brother, working with Wong to save his sister.

This was honestly a really enjoyable arc that took advantage of the fact that it's a superhero story and even provided a fun bit of insight to Cindy, Albert and Saya. The weak link in this was Max who was Cindy's newest therapist and love interest who is also Saya's brother who was planted by Saya to get close to Cindy for this newest scheme. This should be interesting but Max is so boring and his romance with Cindy is completely overshadowed by her relationship with her brother and nemesis.

And this is again a problem with Cindy and the series is at it's best when it just focuses on anything besides romance and speaking as a romantic this makes said romance in this series suck even more. Again the reason I and so many others are onboard for Cindy getting a female love interest is again, because she has more chemistry with Felicia, Luna and Saya then she does with whatstheirnames and she and Peter work better as friends with a brother/sister dynamic.

As I write this I can't help but think of Kate Kane from Batman, who started out as a distaff counterpart for the Dark Knight and a forced love interests but was later reintroduced as his cousin while also making Kate gay. With Insomniac wishing to show more support for the LGBT (especially after getting heat from none LGBT supports for removing pride flags in the background in SM2 for releases in certain countries) I can't help but wonder if Cindy will be re-imagined as a lesbian or bisexual to try and allow her to have a romance with Luna or Saya (not Felicia as she's just as old as Peter in this continuity).

[CharlesPhipps]

Short version: Cindy doesn't have enough exposure to get a canon love interests.

Long version: All of them suck.

[Winter]

Short version: Cindy doesn't have enough exposure to get a canon love interests.

Long version: All of them suck.

Out of curiosity if you were given the option to give Cindy a love interest who would you pick regardless of Gender. As mentioned before my pick would be Saya as I do love a good Enemies to Lovers Arc.

[hammerofglass]

Is there already an Aña Corazón in that continuity? Because if they want some representation there's always

[stryke]

Without reading a single issue of Silk I'm going to put it down to it's far, far easier to write turbulent messed up broken romances or the chase for love with lots of yearning and all those missed or almost chances than it is to write happy emotionally fulfilled stable couples. Not just comics, you'll see it in long running tv shows too where you'll so often hear some variation of 'the show sucked after the couple finally got together'.

[Thebestoftherest]

It marvel comics they seem unable to write good relationships and keep them together.

[CharlesPhipps]

Melodrama is always fun.

Nothing wrong with superheroes as soap opera.

[Winter]

Melodrama is always fun.

Nothing wrong with superheroes as soap opera.

Yeah, but there are limits to how far you should go, One More Day for example is that step to far, or the New 52 when DC Broke up Lois and Clark for no other reason other then they thought there was a higher demand for Superman and Wonder Woman. Or when Maggie was killed in the pages of Batwoman because DC thought characters getting married somehow led to lower sales.

I'm all for melodrama but there's melodrama and then there's seemingly screwing up what was working for no other reason besides, "Because I really didn't like this pairing so let's have our hero make a deal with the devil to end his marriage."

Just to contrast, as I mentioned it earlier, Catra and Adora's REALLY complex and is almost Shakespearean in how it is written but when you break it all down it's really just two dumb teenage girls unable to admit they love each other which equals a war that envelops an entire planet.

Switching back over to the love life of Silk, the reason I and a LOT of other fans don't much care for Max is because there really isn't anything of substance to his relationship with Cindy even though he was her therapist and love interest and this is barely a footnote in this story. Cindy's relationships with Albert and Saya is given so much more focus because it was more fun.

And keep in mind this is the story arc where Cindy dreams about being a gumshoe reporter/detective, a cowgirl, a pirate and is eventually rescued by a wizard which results in her adversary being turned into a monster as a result of the dream thing backfiring on her. Comic Books!

And yet they can't seem to really think of anything to do with Max or his relationship with Cindy despite this being a SERIOUS betrayal of trust. Even her first love, Hector, is also a superhero who's unable to maintain a physical presents meaning he and Cindy can't even touch one another. This should be heartbreaking but everyone cares so little about him that he can disappear for 8 years and no one mentions it.

The fact that Cindy started to show interest in other guys tells me that the writers don't care about her love life and that it's there because "We need a romantic subplot" and no other reason.