#I just think that Miguel and Miles are great foils

[yellowocaballero]

Miguel is Fine, Actually (Being Spider-Man's Just Toxic As Hell)

Before I watched ATSV I said that I would defend my man Miguel O'Hara's actions no matter what, because he's always valid and I support women's wrongs. I was joking, and I did not actually expect to start defending him on Tumblr.edu. But I'm seeing a lot of commentary that's super reductive, so I do want to bring up another perspective on his character.

Miguel wasn't acting against the spirit of Spider-Man, or what being Spider-Man means. Miguel isn't meant to represent the antithesis of Spider-Man. Miles is the antithesis of Spider-Man. Miguel represents Spider-Man taken to its extreme.

Think about Miguel's actions from his perspective. If you were a hero who genuinely, legitimately, 100%, no doubt about it, believed that somebody is going to make a selfish decision that will destroy an entire universe and put the entire multiverse at severe risk - if you had an over-burdened sense of responsibility and believed in doing the right thing no matter what - you would also chase down the kid and put him in baby jail to try and prevent it. He believed that he was saving the multiverse, and that Miles was putting it in danger for selfish reasons. Which is completely unforgivable to him, because selfishness is what he hates the most. And then he goes completely out of pocket and starts beefing with a 15yo lmfaooo he's such a dick.

But why did Miguel believe that? Why did he believe that Miles choosing himself and his own happiness over the well-being of others was the worst possible thing? Why did he believe that tragedy was inevitable in their lives, and that without tragedy Spider-Man can't exist?

Because he's Spider-Man.

Peter Parker was once a fifteen year old who chose his own happiness over protecting others. It was the greatest regret of his life and he never forgave himself. Peter's ethos means that he will put himself last every time, and that he will sacrifice anything and everything in his life - his relationships, his health, his future - to protecting and helping others. Peter dropped out of college because it interfered with Spider-Man. He destroyed his own future for Spider-Man. He ruins friendships and romantic relationships because Spider-Man was more important. If Peter ever tries to protect himself and his own happiness, then he's a bad person.

That is intrinsic to Peter. Peter would not be Peter without it. A story that is not defined by Peter's unhappiness is not a Spider-Man story. If Peter doesn't make himself miserable, then he's just not Peter.

That is a Spider-Man story: that not only is tragedy inevitable, that if you don't allow yourself to be defined by your tragedy then you're a bad person. If you don't suffer, then you're a bad person. If you ever put anything above Spider-Man, then you're killing Uncle Ben all over again. Miguel isn't the only one that believes this - as we saw, every Spider-Man buys into what he's saying. There's no Spider-Man without these beliefs.

Miguel attempted to find his own happiness, and he was punished in the most extreme way. He got Uncle Ben'd x10000. He tried to be happy, and it literally destroyed his entire universe. It's the Spider-narrative taken to the extreme. Of course Miguel believes all of this. Of course he believes this so firmly. He's Spider-Man. That's his story. And the one time Miguel tried to fight against that story, he was punished. And like any Spider-Man, he'll slavishly obey that narrative no matter the evil it creates and perpetuates. Because if he doesn't, the narrative will punish him. The narrative will always punish him. It's a Spider-Man story.

I don't think the universal constant between Spider-Mans, the thing that makes them Spider-Man, is tragedy. I think it's the fact that they never forgive themselves. And Miguel is what that viewpoint creates. He doesn't believe this things because he's an awful, mean person. He believes them because he's a hero. He's a good person who hates himself.

Across the Spider-verse isn't really a Spider-Man story. It's a story about Spider-Man stories. Miguel's right: if this was a Spider-Man story, then Miles acting selfishly really would destroy the universe. But Miles' story isn't interested in punishing him. It pushes back against Peter's narrative that unhappiness is inevitable and that you have to suffer to be a good person. It says that sometimes we do the right thing from love and not fear, and that Peter's way of thinking is ultimately super toxic and unhappy. ITSV was about Miles deciding that he didn't need to be Peter Parker, that all he needed to be was Miles, and ATSV is about how being Peter Parker isn't such a good thing. Miguel shows that. Whatever toxic and unhealthy beliefs he holds - they're the exact same beliefs that any Spider-Man holds. He's a dick, but I don't think he's any more awful a person than Peter is.

TL;DR: Miguel isn't a bad person, he just has Spider-Man brainrot.

#across the spider-verse #atsv #atsv spoilers #across the spider-verse spoilers #across the spiderverse #across the spider verse #miguel o'hara #atsv meta #source: i recognized an embarassing amount of those cameos #im also seeing a lot of ppl make a lot of assumptions about what miguel was injecting and why #we dunno guys! im not gonna suppose anything #I just think that Miguel and Miles are great foils #and that what makes them interesting as foils #is the fact that they're both good people who want to do the right thing #miguel shows how that gets twisted #to the point where you beef with a 15yo sometimes which is still so funny #im a big spidey 2099 fan #which I love bc it is NOTHING like spiderman and yet it's such a good spiderman story #but talking about comics migs is useless bc he has 0 in common with atsv migs #but there is a lot of VERY cool stuff to say about how #the sm2099 comic has nothing to do with spiderman at all whatsoever extremely pointedly #but its still a wonderful spiderman story that finds its own way #tbh it was kind of a breath of fresh air to read a spider-man story that wasn't about spider-man for once #and that was just about miguel #anyway stan women's wrongs #miguel o hara #miguel ohara #my writing

[y2kbugs-moved]

I'm going to debunk some Miguel misconceptions from movie-only fans, ok. I'm going to try my best to not sound like a dick, which is hard because it's early morning here and I really do want to clear things up.

Spoilers, obviously.

This is going to be very long (because I love to over-explain things), and I do want people to read all of this. I even highlighted important points in bold.

(Fanon portrayal is a whole other can of worms and I could make a post about that too, but I'm just going to stick with the biggest issues right now.)

Miguel is the villain!

The confusion of villain vs antagonist is a common one.

I'm going to use this site for definitions, but basically:

"In literature and film, an antagonist is a character or force that actively works against the protagonist or main character. Think of them as a roadblock with a clear purpose and well-defined reasons for their choices and actions."

"A villain is an amoral or evil character with little to no regard for the general welfare of others. They are driven by ambition, greed, lust, or a desire for power or revenge"

Indeed, a story can have both! A villain could also be the (major) antagonist, but not all antagonists are villainous. The site I linked actually lists some great examples from movies and I recommend looking through them! They're very clear.

A story can also have multiple antagonists and villains but it does take a bit to really pull it off. I'll make this brief and just speak my interpretation: The movie has two antagonists, but only one villain.

The Spot is both a villain (has evil motives, no regard for the welfare of others, driven by revenge) and an antagonist (a force directly opposing our protagonist, Miles Morales). He is actively trying to destroy the multiverse, and targets Miles specifically out of disproportionate revenge including wanting to kill his father, Jeff. Yes, he's goofy and incompetent at the start and has a inferiority complex, but he's still villainous. All of his actions are motivated by revenge, destruction, and perhaps pride.

Miguel/Spider-Man 2099 is an antagonist (Opposing force/obstacle to the protagonist), but, while having a few traits, ultimately not a villain (has ultimately good reasons and is driven by what he believes is right, even if his actions betray these).

Miguel is driven by trauma and an unflinching sense of order, and indeed he brings these beliefs to their extreme, resulting in his violent behavior in the latter part of the movie. He's trying to stop the Spot just as much as Miles is. He does not want to destroy the multiverse, he wants to keep it in check even if his theories about canon are ultimately wrong. The only non-supervillain person we see him be really violent to is Miles. He is described, both by Gwen and Peter B, as "a good leader/listener" and "just looks scary", and going by PB's reaction to how violent Miguel becomes, this isn't a normal occurence for him. He doesn't usually act like this. That's what pushes him to be like a villain, even if his motivations are good.

This isn't any defense of Miguel's actions in the movie, but to explain that what we are seeing here is a person who is ultimately a hero/"good guy" changed by trauma and refusing to compromise, therefore resulting in behavior that feels villainous to outsiders.

The third movie is yet to be released, but I have belief that Miguel will get some form of redemption but remain mostly an anti-hero and foil to Miles, while The Spot will always be the central villain.

And check out this Twitter thread on what Miguel is really like as a person. Images here:

2. Miguel is a vampire!

I'm not sure why people are so adamant about this one. I guess it's because vampires are hot, and he has fangs, but this is the most easily debunked one of all of these. Especially when you keep in mind that the only person describing him as being like a vampire is a teenager who just met him. I don't mind if you want to make Miguel a vampire in an alternate universe of your choosing, but to act like he is one in the main canon (ironic) is ignorant.

While the movie takes liberties and changes a few things from a Spider-person's origins, the core is generally the same. I see no reason at all for the writers to completely change Miguel's origin to make him a vampire. Not only is this just lazy, but it is also in my opinion disrespectful to the original writers who came up with his origin story.

I implore people to read the 1992 Spider-Man 2099 comic, it is really very good (but does have a few racial stereotypes early on unfortuunately), but for a brief rundown, Marvel Future Fight has a good summary of his story:

(Text: Miguel O'Hara is an engineer who worked for Alchemax in the year 2099. He was a genius in the field of genetics, but was reluctant when pressured by his higher-ups to imprint foreign genetic codes onto human physiology. After a test resulting in the hideous transformation and then death of the test subject, O'Hara attempted to resign from his position. However, he had a drink laced with a drug that bonds to the victim's DNA. To counteract the drug, he used a procedure to save himself, splicing his DNA with that of a spider, granting him enhanced senses and abilities.)

It does leave out what exactly the spider DNA gave him (and the fact that the genetic experiment was sabotaged by his boss) but it's a good summary that does not mention anything about vampires.

He has fangs which he can use to envenomate a person to paralyze them temporarily, and sharp talons under his fingernails (not part of or on top of) that can rend through metal and he uses to climb the walls instead of having sticky fingers.

All of the above points to being half-Spider DNA, nothing like a vampire.

3. Miguel is the Prowler/an Inheritor/Morlun!

I'm shocked some movie fans recognize these characters given their general ignorance of the comics, but...no.

I'm seeing something about Miguel and Prowler's musical cues having a similarity, while I can't check for myself, this is just something that occurs in media and narratives, and I would not be surprised that the music artists might reuse motifs just as animators reuse models, simply for convenience and time reasons.

Also, their masks look nothing alike.

If you've read through the whole post as I hoped, congratulations! Please go read the comics, there's a good reading guide here and a video overview of Miguel's origins here. You can easily read the comics online by just googling "Spider-Man 2099 1992 comic online" as a start.

#miguel o'hara #across the spiderverse #atsv spoilers

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

OK, but like. Miguel as a character has the perfect opportunity for the writers to use him as a cautionary tale. Trying to put the universe's rules in a finite little bubble; not processing grief; if free will is a right or an illusion. Obviously, they shouldn't try to do all of that at one time because that's a little much, but like. Miles being his foil. Miles showing him that not everything can be controlled and defined into a "canon." Vice versa, Miguel showing Miles that being Spider-Man comes with a hefty price (like his mom dying like she did in the comics), but Peter telling Gwen something like "pain is inevitable, might as well make it worth it" and so Gwen apologizes and she and Miles start doing multiverse dates as the backdrop for the credits.

I think this is a good idea, but I also feel Miles learning this from Miguel isn't a plan, mostly because that was the lesson he got from the first movie.

Like, again, he knows you cannot save everyone, but he knows you should at least try to save everyone; but that was one of the things the other spiders told Miles after losing his Uncle Aaron: You can't always save everyone.

I think it kind goes back to how for example, Peter was left with the "With Great Power, comes great responsibility;" that were the words that resonated with him because if he had stopped the muggler/whoever (I think that has been retconned a few times and I am too scared to look into it right now,) his uncle would had died.

However, what Miles got was "Just keep going." Which is exactly what Miles did.

i don't think Miles isn't under the impression he will never fail everyone, but at the end of the day he needs to keep going and move on, or it would swallow him whole.

Which I think is the lesson the other spiders should learn from him.

#ask #atsv #miles morales #miguel o'hara #across the spiderverse #beyond the spiderverse #btsv

[youhavereachedtheendofpie]

Yeah, you're right that that is what makes him interesting. I do think that as a character, he would be boring if he were "perfect" and I feel like he might come off as too righteous. I do think his trauma informs a lot of his character and it's so sad. Like so, so sad. I guess it's just frustrating from a modern context because I'm like, yo, you KNOW you're suffering. And you're hurting other people because of that. We're clearly only in the middle of the story and also as a person who had a bias towards Miles, I side-eye Miguel a lot, but that's personal lol. Like, very attractive man, absolutely trash personality currently going on lol. I think I really responded to Hobie's character a lot because deep down, beyond the rebelliousness, he was actually looking out for Miles and encouraging him to think for hinself and protect himself and others. Hobie sort of serves as a foil to Miguel and I find that dynamic interesting. There are definitely parts of Miguel I do like, though. Like, it's clear he really values family and while he comes across as curmudgeonly, he cares about Peter and Mayday and truly respects Jess. I just wish he could extend that to the younger people and I think he thinks he is doing that, in his own way, but his behavior really reminded me of like, unevolved, traumatized parents in real life, so my reaction to him was like, fuck off with that shit, man lol. It may just be me, but it's hard to separate some aspects of the characters because they seemed so intertwined. It's hard to separate duty and family. Like, Peter is sort of like another father figure to Miles, so he feel very betrayed when he finds out the truth of what's going on. Hobie was acting like a brother to Miles and Gwen. She saw Jess as a mentor and def wanted her to serve as a parent figure, though Jess was maintain boundaries around that. Like, they are heroes and have obligations but it's difficult to keep those dynamics separate. So when Miles comes to Miguel, hoping to connect with him and Miguel is an asshole and is all business, when there is a clear connection the Spider people have and everyone is acknoledging that, it was frustrating. But I'm curious to see what will happen in the next movie. I have the feeling Miguel and Gwen will fight, and I kinda wanna see that lol. It would be an interesting parallel to their first meeting.

combining both your asks into one for efficiency lol

we could probably go on talking about this until the next movie comes out, which is what makes it great C: there's just so much to discuss, so many angles, so many great characters <3

and of course it is very much the point that the characters can't see themselves from our vantage point as the audience. just like in your own life you are constrained by your own point of view and considering others requires an active effort on your own part. it doesn't just happen, you have to choose it

lol but I do love how it's essentially just

Miguel: nearly threw hands with a twelve-year-old 😑 Miles: what do you mean 'nearly'? also I'm fifteen 🤨

#pie replies #sry I went to bed last night and I only just got back from work + cinema #miles is fifteen right? or sixteen? #sry for memeing. I also think there will be fights. possibly not just between gwen and miguel

[thisdaynews]

Trump’s North Carolina Supporters Were Ready to Unload

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trumps-north-carolina-supporters-were-ready-to-unload/

Trump’s North Carolina Supporters Were Ready to Unload

GREENVILLE, N.C.—Whatever President Donald Trump was planning to do at his rally Wednesday night, the crowd outside Minges Coliseum was ready for it and ready to ramp it up.

More than three days after President Donald Trump triggered national outrage with tweets telling four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to the countries “from which they came,” the feeling among the throng mustering in the sweltering heat at East Carolina University was that the president had ample rope before he even came close to offending them.

Story Continued Below

The best-selling “MAGA” merchandise, perfectly parroting and even amplifying his taunts on Twitter, indicated just how much latitude he enjoyed.

“LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.”

“LET ME HELP YOU PACK!”

“BUILD THE WALL DEPORT THEM ALL.”

“FUCK OFF WE’RE FULL,” said one of these sorts of shirts, the design of the letters contorted into the shape of the United States of America. It was prominently displayed in the tent of sweat-drenched Glenn Wilcoxson, who had come from his home in Hudson, Florida. “Four left,” he told me, “out of—I don’t know—a lot.” It was a special offering, all his own, envisioned by him, his wife and his daughter, its timing the opposite of accidental. “We go by news cycles. We’ll design what’s going on in the news,” he said.

The vendors and the snaking line of voters—they were pumped up and primed for the rally and for what would be the essence of its message. Inside, barely 15 minutes into his hour-and-a-half stemwinder, Trump gave the people what they wanted: “The four congresswomen,” he said. The capacity crowd in the venue of 8,000 seats booed on cue. And then Trump named the women, starting with the only one of them not born in this country. “Representative Ilhan Omar,” he enunciated. He talked about the Minnesota lawmaker originally from Somalia, and only her, for the better part of five minutes, portraying her, a U.S. citizen since she was 17, as an anti-Semitic, America-hating sympathizer of terrorists.

“Traitor!” someone shouted from high up in the crowd.

“Treason!” someone else yelled.

And then the chanting started.

“Send her back! Send her back! Send her back!”

If there had been any doubt about how Trump’s latest political gambit would be received—had it inspired his supporters as much as it had enraged his opponents?—it disappeared here. Earlier in the week, when Trump defended himself against charges of racism, insisting “many people agree with me,” it was crowds like these he almost certainly had in mind. But until right then and there, he hadn’t heard directly from them—a live audience feeding back direct proof that this was something he could keep running on.

This is and always has been the engine of Trump’s political ascent and appeal—not just perpetual, calculated conflict, but particularly and specifically race-laced foils and feuds. His proto-candidacy was birtherism. The crux of the announcement of his 2016 candidacy: Mexican rapists. The ongoing battle cry: “Build that wall!” And while he filed for reelection the day of his inauguration, and his first official 2020 rally was a month ago in Orlando, Florida, this past half-week capped by Wednesday night felt like the truer, more telling start.

In this state, which he won in 2016 by nearly 4 percentage points—a wide, varied, critical swing state that is slightly more red than blue—Trump flagged with a new vigor and venom what is to come in these next 15-plus months. To his overwhelmingly but not exclusively white audience — composed of people wearing Trump flags like capes and “Make America Great Again” caps of an array of colors and shapes — the president roll-called his newest enemies.

The mere mention of Hillary Clinton had acted as an adrenaline jolt through crowds at scores of rallies just like this one. The Pavlovian response of “lock her up” had carried Trump all the way to the stage of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland and then on to the White House. It seems self-evident he would have been looking for a useful replacement.

And he had to hear what I heard, seated in the press pen. Trump stood at the center of the stage, under a giant American flag, and that blunt chant, unscripted and spontaneous, rained down, a newfangled three-syllable shiv. Television clips fail to convey its intensity. It was, by far, the most visceral, guttural sound of the night.

***

The place Trump pickedto test this sharpened pitch isn’t purely Trump-friendly territory. But it has the kind of divisions—between immigrants and native-born citizens, Democrats and Republicans, whites and people of color—that look a lot like the broader American fault lines to which Trump has taken a crowbar.

The largely rural eastern end of North Carolina leans hard for Trump, but Pitt County does not, or didn’t nearly three years ago. He lost handily to Clinton. Greenville, with a population of just over 90,000, and the county as a whole, with a population roughly double that, is home to both a major university and a community college and is a regional health care hub. It’s one of the state’s most educated metropolitan areas. And as popular as what Trump said was to those inside Minges Coliseum, it was chilling to many others I spoke to mere miles away.

Across the street from the local airport where Air Force One landed is a Tropicana Supermarket that services a growing Latino population. Surrounded by shelves stocked with Hojaldra cookies, chicharrones and the jerseys of the Mexico national soccer team, one of the owners told me business was markedly slower than on a typical Wednesday. With the arrival of president, this president, he said, many of his customers seemed to be lying low.

Outside, in the mostly empty parking lot, Miguel Ramos looked around.

“Usually,” said Ramos, 44, a Puerto Rican-Jamaican who runs a catering company with his Trinidadian partner, “Tropicana’s booming right now.”

I asked Ramos what members of the local Latino community think of Trump. His answer was as profane as some of the shirts I would see a few hours later.

“Fuck Trump,” he said.

People are afraid.

“The fear,” he said, “of being sent back to a country they were trying to get away from. I know people from Mexico, I know people from Honduras, I know people from South American countries …”

It’s what I heard all over the more Hispanic sections of the city in the morning and early afternoon before I headed over to the arena for the rally.

“People are tense,” said Jay Bastardo, the owner of the Dominican restaurant Villa Verde.

“The president has displayed scare tactics, and it actually has worked,” he added, “because there’s some self-deportation that we know, and people who would rather not spend six, seven months going through the process of getting deported, and some families that we know who are just not looking forward to making a future in America. And that’s a little discouraging.”

Wednesday crystallized this overall anxiety.

“You have the commander in chief coming into town, the guy who has called for these massive deportations,” Bastardo told me. He had heard from fellow business owners about employees calling in and not coming to work, “assuming,” he said, “that there’ll be checkpoints all around.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids haven’t happened here. Yet.

“You see all the stories,” said Esperanza Whitfield, the owner of the El Azador taqueria.

“We’ve heard rumors,” said Leticia Zavala, the local head of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

There’s a significant population, too, of Latino migrant workers, working seasonally in the fields in surrounding areas on cotton and tobacco and soybeans and sweet potatoes. “Thousands of them,” said Spencer Crawford, the research coordinator of the Greenville-based Association of Mexicans in North Carolina. “Just a completely underground population. They’re completely unseen.”

Wednesday afternoon, I talked on the phone with a 17-year-old high school student who wasundocumented and whose mother and father, also undocumented, brought him to the U.S. when he was a toddler. His younger sisters were born here and are citizens. His family were originally migrant workers, he told me, and their lives changed when Trump became president. He and his sisters get to school via the school bus, and his parents struggle to pay bills with odd jobs, and they live increasingly as shut-ins in their trailer in a nearby town. They make quick trips to the grocery store a couple times a week and hurry home.

“The fear for ICE,” he said. “Having to be careful, where you go, who you go with, how long we go somewhere.”

***

This, needless to say,was not the North Carolina that Trump described in his remarks at the rally. The way he described it was transactional and passing, saying the state was “beautiful” and calling its people “patriots” and thanking them for their votes. To me, it felt like the star of a sports team after a winning season praising his or her fans for being the best fans, which is to say: rote. The applause sounded about as obligatory. He welcomed onto the stage the Republican candidates in the pair of special congressional elections in the state this fall. “But let’s not talk too much about North Carolina,” Trump said at one point. What he said on Wednesday night mostly could have been said anywhere.

And in large part has been. It was a meandering mixture of breezy, box-checked, sometimes specious accomplishments (rolled-back regulations, “big, beautiful” tax cuts, a roster of confirmed conservative judges and Supreme Court justices, “jobs, jobs, jobs,” “better health care,” “we’re taking care of trade … nice and slow,” the economy that he’s “created”), reprised greatest hits (“hoax,” “witch hunt,” “fake news”), and odd phrases and easy laugh lines. He said bullshit once. He said goddamn twice.

The longer he talked, the more he told mostly uncheckable tales in which people called him sir. A smattering of policy squeezed between much more rousing personal asides and attacks, the speech was a sine wave of energy peaks and troughs. It was the extemporaneous product of an attention-seeking, room-reading savant, an instinctual gauger and tweaker and torquer of crowds, who understands the ebb and flow of their appetites, always aware of what line will get the biggest reaction.

Oddly for a campaign rally, one of those troughs came when he finally mentioned the Democrats who might be his actual opponent come next November. His invocations were brief, halfhearted, practically parenthetical. He called Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe.” He called Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.” He called Bernie Sanders “desperate.” He called Kamala Harris “a new one that knocked the hell out of Biden during the debate.” He called Pete Buttigieg “a beauty” who “runs a failed city” before poking fun at his name (“Boot-edge-edge!”). He called all of them “sad.”

The real takeaway, though, was some 20 minutes in. He spent far, far more time on the quartet of congresswomen he labeled “vicious” “extremists”—first Omar, and then Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and then Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a hard-to-miss chronology that prioritized the two Muslims before shifting to AOC (whom he pointedly called “Cortez”), and finally Pressley. He paused to listen to the chants about Omar and let others in the arena do the same.

Vote for Trump next year, the president suggested, or vote forthem.

“The choice for every American,” he said, “has never been more clear.”

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#Foreign #Politics #ready #unload