Virgil Voltspun


Pronouns	He/him, it/its
Alias	Web-Surfer
Species	Human mutate
Age	Adult
Place of Birth	Disco, Wisconsin, United Republic
Nicknames	Vee, Veevee, Webby, Webs, Spider, Fuck-Face
Occupation	Photographer, vigilante, student

Hold the mustard, who are you again?

Well, if it isn't the man of the hour!
The reclusive hermit, overworked student, photographer, bona fide nerd, and rage-filled vigilante with a penchant for Stars-forsaken humor; Virgil fucking Voltspun. The sensational Web-Surfer in the flesh.

He's trying his best. His Aunt Brie and Uncle Gingersnap may or may not have drilled in ”With great power, comes great responsibility” and "You alone sculpt your future" a bit too hard into Virgil's brain as a child, developing his self-sacrificial and self-loathing hero complex one scolding at a time… but that's okay.
It's all okay because the only thing keeping the Ville de Nouvelle Yorke from succumbing to oblivion is him, and it would remain that way for as long as he could still fight and swing. Talk about responsibility, huh?
Virgil enjoys giving gifts (to people that don't piss him off). Web-Surfer was the greatest gift he could bestow upon humanity, despite his bitter resentment.

He would live life to the fullest, dammit! The blatant lack of therapy would be nothing more than a distant memory. His enemies and naysayers could kiss his ass. He decided his own fate; no one else.

Life is admittedly bland, according to him. Its illusion of optimism always gets shattered by the sheer magnitude of Virgil's self-awareness. The Universe is not a benevolent being, contrary to popular belief.
Duke it out with some emotionally constipated asshole evildoer of the week while pretending he's not also some emotionally constipated asshole, nearly break down from calculus of all things (almost, since emotions are for lesser beings, after all), play video games, and resist the urge to break his landlord's skull for jacking up the rent. Rinse and repeat. Chaos inevitably becomes indistinguishable from order.
It was draining, not that he'd ever admit that. Someone needed to keep the city safe, after all.

No matter how many hits he takes, he will always bounce back.

Biography

Early Life

Virgil Vesper Voltspun was born in Disco, Wisconsin, United Republic of Leathucaria (URL) to engineers Vanilla and Velvet Voltspun. As their work hindered their ability to care for their child, Virgil's primary caregivers were Aunt Brie and Uncle Gingersnap Voltspun, moving into their suburban abode in Ville de Nouvelle Yorke, Nouvelle Yorke early in his adolescense.
Virgil strongly dislikes his relatives at best.

Virgil had multiple developmental delays, which swelled into a myriad of problems, the sources of which have never been checked by a psychiatrist at the dismissal of both its parents and relatives. Virgil learned to 'cope' over time and eventually reintegrated into formal K12 education at the end of his fifth year of elementary school.
These abnormalities and delays did not go unnoticed by the people around it, however. He served as a prime target for bullying and exclusion due to his perceived (including but not limited to) eccentricity, unregulated mental health problems, extreme reclusiveness, self-imposed isolation, lashing out or fleeing during emotional outbursts, social ineptitude, incapacity for friendship, misanthropy, and extreme obsessions over unorthodox interests. This was particularly prevalent during his middle school years — the main perpetrators being Eugene 'Flash' Thompson and Elizabeth 'Liz' Allan — that permanently skewed Virgil's self-perception for the worse, adding to a growing array of unresolved issues.

Virgil's struggles had resulted in unshakable self-loathing for himself by his middle school years.
The realization of an undiagnosed disorder being the root cause of his suffering had not brought Virgil relief and liberation. Rage manifested in its stead.

The idea of him being inherently unlovable due to something he was born with resulted in disdain towards both the world around him and himself. Bending to the will of a mundane and uncaring civilization that granted him nothing but proof of his inferior status was a miserable and meaningless existence.

He was overcome with the sensation of being eaten alive that day.

Web-Surfer

When Virgil was thirteen, he and his relatives moved to Ville de Nouvelle Yorke. His new middle school's Astronomy Club had been invited on a field trip, along with many other schools, to the National Science Convention (NSC) at Oscorp by Norma Osborne herself.

The National Science Convention was an annual exhibition resulting from the scientific and technological advancements that had emerged at the tail end of the third millennium. The public's interest had considerably increased with the culmination of the Dyson sphere surrounding the white dwarf Surya, working in tandem with nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels.
This led to a plethora of companies, such as Oscorp, to indulge in extravagant events, such as the NSC, for financial gain.

Here, Virgil attended the reveal of the Star Cruiser. The exhibition consisted of blueprints and concepts for a hulking starship/'artificial planet' that would one day house a spaceborne group of organisms to find a habitable celestial body, topped off with its very own natural satellites. The Star Cruiser was a run-of-the-mill fancy ship to the layperson. However, the presenters oozed contagious excitement while rambling about its features, such as its artificial gravity and supposed immunity to the harsh vacuum of Space. It was too large to bring to the convention physically.

Two spiders, no longer than twenty centimeters in length, were selected to show the Star Cruiser's capability of harboring healthy life. Spider A was set in one of the Star Cruiser's controlled environments; Spider B was put into a standard starship for two months each.
Spider B displayed erratic behaviors due to Cosmic fluctuation, not Cosmic radiation as everyone had assumed. Unbeknownst to the presenters, it had received a severe quantum fluctuation that mutated it, as opposed to Spider A. Its fear of the NSC's unexpected stimuli had caused it to bolt off of the stage, wildly running until it had bitten Virgil on the neck and got promptly slapped to death. No one in the audience had noticed it bit him due to the tween being far back.

Virgil had felt strange since that event. His senses, strength, and agility were significantly heightened. He had gained poor thermoregulation along with an ability to detect danger. He linked the sudden mutation to the spider immediately after discovery.

Gingersnap and Brie Voltspun had told Virgil countless times, "With great power, comes great responsibility” enough for him to put his self-sacrificial and parental issues to use in the superpowered world. He yearned to be on the same level as his idols, seemingly far out of reach. He wished to finally love and be loved due to his heroism, turning it over in his mind for weeks on end before finally arriving at a decision.
He would become a vigilante.
Heroes, primarily the Avengers, typically only emerged to fight high-level threats, such as killer robots or people trying to take over the world. No one was there for robberies, hostage situations, or muggings. Tony Stark especially, that pretentious fucker, never did much besides publicly humiliate those who dared speak against him with endless alternate accounts and patent a new piece of technology. The disillusionment was stifling.

Virgil would need to bust his ass learning how to fight and make a costume, but he'd be a hero, live his life to the fullest, and become a better person. It would all be worth it because he would be the benevolence and hope of the Universe he searched for. He began his superhero career two years later.

High School Years

The Wall-Crawler became a photographer for the Clairon Quotidien newspaper and magazine after his move to Ville de Nouvelle Yorke, working under one J. Jonah Jameson as a photographer who primarily captured images of superpowered individuals. He served as his muse as Jameson's hatred for Web-Surfer was concerningly lucrative. Jameson would rant about how Webby was a criminal for his boundless distaste for police, suggestions for a better prison system, and focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, making it an awful influence. Virgil hated his boss, but he did take some of his words to heart regarding lessening property damage, trauma, and injuries for civilians.

Virgil began his freshman year at West Towne High, an urban public school riddled with problems and questionable students. It can be described as a stereotypical American public school, filled to the brim with fights, petty drama, threats of violence, and people who reeked of smoke.
Elizabeth Allan originally simply apologized to Virgil for her bullying him throughout their middle school years a few weeks into their first semester, however, they shared a few classes, leading Virgil to very slowly becoming less aggressive and closed-off towards Liz due to her frequently talking to him and partnering for projects, much to the dismay of her friends.
Virgil did his best to be a good friend; being supportive, reciprocating, unjudgemental, and attentive. They had their squabbles and grew distant at times, along with Virgil's paranoia and trauma over the years manifesting as clinginess and overprotectiveness of Liz, but they grew to be Virgil's only friend; it hated the rest of the student population and felt genuine repulsion at the idea of making genuine friends with anyone else that attended West Towne, despite the abundance of extracurriculars it participated in.

Virgil mostly took science and math related courses; overly difficult ones, to boot. He excelled at those but was awful at analyzing media, writing stories, and anything art-related. His art teacher also despised Virgil — for seemingly no reason — and nearly failed his classes because of them.
He truly did feel nothing but contempt towards West Towne and the majority of students there. Especially as Virgil was frequently reminded that there's something about him people inherently despise and he will most likely never know what that is. His incapability to befriend his peers, frequent shutdowns, and seemingly automatic preference among his schoolmates for literally anyone else but him led to bouts of spiraling throughout his high school career. Not that he'd ever admit that.

Elizabeth and Virgil were stark contrasts. Elizabeth was a social butterfly who somehow befriended everyone by simply existing. She had her own struggles, too. However, Virgil could never understood how she always managed to socialize 'correctly.' Any jokes Liz made regarding her friend's ineptitude would form into a grudge.
People frequently asked Liz as to how the two of them are good friends due to their differences and Virgil's generally off-putting and strange disposition when they believed Virgil to be out of earshot. Liz never told him about any of these incidents to not upset him.

In the midst of their junior year, Liz declared the two of them to be best friends abruptly during a lunch period, replacing Flash Thompson. Virgil (and later Flash) attempted to argue with her, however, Liz was quite obstinate and her mind was already set. By senior year, Virgil had become rather clingy, as much as he tried to hide it.

University

Virgil's grades and GPA at his graduation were as unremarkable as his school due to his numerous mental problems, vigilantism, and a few particularly spiteful teachers. His Oscorp science internship, nerdiness, extracurricular participation, determination, and eclectic array of demanding courses landed him at Duchess State University in Ville de Nouvelle Yorke, majoring in computer science and astronomy. Virgil convinced Elizabeth to attend Empire State University, which was close by, leading the duo to get an apartment together, one perfect for Virgil to sneak out through his window unseen.

Elizabeth returned to their apartment one morning with two of her new ESU peers — Harry Osborne and Gwen Stacy, who were good friends of hers — and forced Virgil to get to know them through pizza, old video games, rambles, and Liz's 'jokes' of kicking both of them out if either of them upset Virgil. This repeated enough times for Virgil to reluctantly accept Harry and Gwen as his only friends besides Elizabeth, which resulted in a friend group.