You can if you squint your eyes. I don’t think about how Peter Parker has shaken hands with his successor nearly as much as I think about Spiderman’s new name being Miles Morales.

And also because I am perfectly comfortable with a black Spiderman. This resistance to thinking of them as the same person is just not felt in my brain.

This is a learned skill, by the way. Or unlearned, maybe. I.e., you should think about it.

I used to think I had a problem with Nintendo just deciding for some game that Link would be a girl now. Not a different canon, not a different timeline, not Zelda in disguise: just “Linkle.” In the years I’ve had to think about this, I’ve realized I do not give two shits about it. I might even welcome the sensational 5-gum freshness of it.