#ch: gwen stacy (65)

[rappaccini]

arachnophobia ch 7 notes

chapter title

from 'vortex' by nova twins

initial quote

from catherynne m valente's refrigerator monologues, a series of short stories inspired by famous fridged women in comics. valente was inspired to write them after watching gwen die in the amazing spider-man 2, and the story this quote's from is the gwen stacy expy.

used here because gwen's finally making moves to establish herself and find her purpose.

summer

ghost-spider is gwen's current comics codename. they changed it to distinguish her from the dozens of other spider-women. it's lovely, i love that it isn't gendered (suits gwen's feminist ideology), and that it calls attention to gwen's status as a resurrected version of a famous dead girlfriend. (granted the movies started before she was called this, and kept calling her sw, so... confusion.)

gwen a doesn't use that name yet because she only thinks of it because of excursions in the multiverse. she will, though.

this fic always begins a chapter with a different name gwen goes by. spider-woman, spider-woman-in-name-only, spider-something, spider-gwen, gwen, gwen stacy, now ghost spider; each chapter involves gwen examining that aspect of her identity in some way, building towards a gradual detachment from the spider-woman identity and embrace of something wholly her own.

lost girl: peter pan ref. wendy's back from neverland, ready to grow up. she's not a lost girl anymore.

george quitting: still happens in this fic, but it's more a solution he comes to himself gradually rather than one he decides during their argument. gwen doesn't ask him to quit as one of her caveats bc asking your single dad to give up his career would feel like a stiff ask. the most gwen probably hoped for was him not hunting her anymore.

since gwen in the movies didn't kill her peter, there's technically a way for the manhunt to be called off and dismissed as captain stacy using taxpayer money to fuel his grief, and for gwen to be exonerated. i'm going with that, to do something a little different.

gwen's transformation into ghost-spider is tied in with puberty/coming of age and transition. she's finally ready to let go of all those traditional trappings of being a girl, and take her first steps as an adult woman, being fully honest to her family about who she is, without caring about fitting into any societal standards.

in terms of the seven stages of grief, we're at acceptance.

'you should be angry/you should do something' -- a little echo of 138

carnage is red. however mjarnage is a gorgeous mixture of reds, blacks, purples, oranges and yellows. i think gwarnage (bleh at that name) is a mix of the two: mjarnage's color palate, but with gwenom's silhouette and maybe a few small differences, like more armoring along the calves and forearms to nod to her ballet slipper ribbons and gloves.

symbiotes reflect the personalities of their most prominent hosts. 616-carnage's was a schizophrenic serial killer, so of course it's Like That. carnage-65b, in this fic, would be bonding with only gwen, so it'll be more of an embodiment of gwen's anger, vengeful streak and drive to survive, like comics-gwenom's.

comics-gwen mostly keeps her suit shifted to the classic spider-woman costume. gwenom only pops up when she's mad or stressed. to keep her distinct, gwen b mostly wears carnage on her sleeve.

social media reactions: meta. people think gwenom is less sexy than the spider-gwen costume, and they would absolutely pitch a fit about their daughters' precious role model being too problematic.

hobie-65 is a preteen who tags buildings and hates gentrifiers. he is so much more like young miles than hobie-138.

ock-65b is wildly different than comics-65 ock. i think this is kind of endearing, that movie gwen gets her own unique bad guy. especially since most of her rogues seem to be missing.

gwen's identity is preserved because there's no hand to pressure her into revealing it. and, with the new look, people assume gs is an alien. works for her!

if you wanna be technical, gwen b got her hand arc: after exposing herself to her dad, she was conscripted into a sinister society led by a creepy man (whose name starts with m) who wants to possess her, and holds a power she needs to survive at arm's length unless she obeys him; which she does out of fear for her dad's life. and then she found a way to get away from him, through embracing a symbiote, and makes up with her dad.

so in a sense, gwen's wrapped up her latour arc. she's made peace with her dad, secured her symbiote, and is no longer actively hunted by law enforcement. she's enjoying that quiet lull before the mcguire run begins, where man-wolf, the storms and jackal turn up. (if they ever do.)

"gwen watches her father doze..." callback to ch 2. all the things gwen missed about her world, back and current.

fall

the nyc kindergarten cutoff is 5yo by sept 1. gwen's got a mid-to-late aug b-day here, so she's one of the youngest kids in her class. ergo, she was in eighth grade when she got bit, peter either died at the end of ninth grade or the start of tenth, she was a sophomore when she met miles, a junior when she ran away from home (which would've had to have happened around january since she's in the ss for about five months by the time atsv picks up around may). so she's a senior now.

gwen doesn't have to repeat a year of high school despite having basically skipped half her junior year, because she and her dad lied about her staying with family due to peter trauma and his manhunt causing him to neglect her.

plus she rocketed through a placement test. she's a spider-person, she's smart under pressure.

(in the comics, gwen has family in london. that's who she's visiting when she goes there to get away from her dad's death.) thought it'd be funny if gwen gets to half-lie about going to london.

in the comics, 616 gwen went to standard high. 65 gwen goes to midtown, peter parker's high school. in the movie it looks like she's going to a version of visions, probably another, sigh, ~parallel to miles~. gonna twist canon here and say: fine, she went to visions for a while, but it was a case of her school busing half the student body there for classes while it repaired the building after the lizard battle.

again my issue is not with the movie canon diverging from gwen's comics backstory/world in and of itself. it's that all these changes seem to exist to water her world down and remove the people gwen loves to make it impossible for her to find belonging with anyone but miles.

and given all gwen's paranoia about her world spitting her out to force her to live in miles's, she WOULD assume that's what determined her assignment to visions.

em jay's slightly older here bc her character design just looks like it. in the comics, all the girls are the same age. here, i think of gwen and glory as 17, betty as 16, and em as 18.

gwen and her dad's caveats were: gwen will live at home again, but he can't stop her from visiting other dimensions. she will make an effort to meet people in her dimension, but she'll keep the friends she has in other ones too (... at this time, just hobie and gwen a). she will finish high school, but she will still be a spider-hero. she'll tell him what she's up to and who she's fighting, and let him give her advice and support, but he will not fight her battles for her.

basically, gwen's not an adult, but her experience away from home matured her a lot. she was homeless for months, she's been in danger constantly, she contemplated death, she lived with an intimate partner. she can never go back to being george's teenage daughter again. her emotional maturity's more that of a college sophomore than a high school senior: still a teen, but able to function independently and ready for more mature relationships. they're in that state aged parents and their near-adult children reach where there's far more negotiation of agency.

in the comics, the mjs are gwen's closest friends. in the movie, they're just bandmates, and given that gwen 'starts her own band' at the end of the movie, it seems like the vibe is that she doesn't feel like she belongs with the mjs at all.

fuck that! in this fic, the girls start out that way, but they work it out after gwen runs away. they just had trouble warming up to each other because of gwen's peter grief. they're not 65a-levels of friendship, but they're getting closer.

(+setup for gwen and miles in the end: both parties are in the wrong, with trauma keeping them from bonding, that they both have to deal with if the friendship's ever going to work. and both are finally ready to do that.)

the mary janes put up posters for gwen in the comics. i like to think they do here, and they can eventually be friends with gwen a. they're taking their first steps here.

gwen a doesn't have a watch, so b has to pick her up every time she visits. comics-gwen has a big sister vibe with all her variants, so i'm translating that here. and since gwen a in the fic's dad is dead, i figure she'd really want to be close to george b.

they're talking job apps because both of them are out of work. and playing chess because in the comics, gwen plays a few rounds with her reed when they need to talk; i figure a picked the game up from him.

hobie's watch: progress on it's slower in the fic than in movie canon; he had to rush to get gwen's done before she glitched out, and since he's out of the ss, it took even longer to get his operational.

the symbiote amplifies all emotions. yes, including the horny ones. your honor, they got nasty on that billboard. and in many other places too.

in the comics, the symbiote feeds off her calories, so she loses a lot of weight and starts getting migraines before she changes her diet. i figure the same applies here

the falling joke's just because i thought it'd be funny. another side effect of malnutrition is lightheadedness after all.

flash thompson is the midtown high gym teacher in the comics.

since gwenom needs cellulose, i figure carnage does too. cue the most miserable after-dinner snack imaginable: a raw head of cabbage.

the symbiote is sensitive to sound. given that gwen's a drummer in a rock band, it's gonna need time to get used to that. which should lead to some funny mishaps.

and all those teeth sticking out of gwenom's design have gotta be cumbersome sometimes.

great, okay, fine callback.

winter

howard the duck's president in comics-65.

jameson's the mayor of nyc in the comics. he isn't in the movies, but i think it's funny and sadly plausible, so we'll assume gwen's world is in an election year and jameson won. and gwen's dad is a christian cop so she is very worried that he voted for him.

gwen's new go-to foods: tea, because of all her time on 138; samosas, because of mumbattan; corn dogs because of gwen a.

idk if harry and reed exist in 65b. i hope they do. chalking this up to gwen deciding to let her people find her.

polaroids: continuity error between itsv and atsv: gwen's pic with miles shifts from a phone selfie to a polaroid selfie with no explanation. my guess is a polaroid just looks more aesthetically pleasing. gonna just go with it, and say that gwen likes analog cameras.

the b in english is gwen's worst grade in atsv. here, it's her best one, because girl's got other priorities than school.

i get the sense that gwen b won't go to college.

re college: comics-gwen takes a gap year after high school to figure out what major, then goes to prison. she tries enrolling at community college (i love that it's not ivy league), but bc of marvel editorial wanting her in 616 with the big spider-heroes, she has to commute to empire state in 616, before eventually going there for good after her solo's cancelled.

'not empire' is a dig at that. let gwen live in her damn world please. it's a good thing if she's not going to the exact same school as her 616 counterpart. and not every hero needs to go to a fancy college on a full ride. it was really refreshing that gwen wasn't a star student and was settling for community and she lost a lot of charm when she got handed that stark scholarship.

regrettable hookup: the gwenom vs carnage comic is so queercoded it's insane. they have an angsty guitar-drum battle over their feelings and it felt very much like one of the plans for mcguire's ghost-spider run was to make gwenjay happen. in this fic mj never becomes carnage, but in my heart that battle still happens because they had a fling and it didn't end well.

gwen's over ballet and finally ready to quit it formally.

she's over her replacement complex too. she doesn't mind if she's replaced at the barre, at the drums, if she's interacting with em or mindy. her confidence is hard to shake now.

movie betty joined the band to vent her feelings, so i figure she's a good person for gwen to do that with.

i like to think that gwen's trying to get more involved in the band creatively as her friendship with the girls improves, so she starts showing em and glory old punk and new wave records she'd have listened to on 138. in the comics, the mj's sound starts off as 'pixies x blondie' during latour and takes on a pop punk/p!atd sound during the mcguire run. in the movies, i assume they were more pop-rock during itsv (the elliphant song playing over gwen's intro), and will be headed into punk for their second round of songs.

spider-mutt is real! hobie's carnage is a little goopdog. i love it, and i wanted to include it. i figure fic-hobie probably took note of gwen's symbiote and thought, fuck it, i'll give it a spin. so now he has a goopdog.

a's uncomfortable with mattea bc of her history with matt murdock. b never met her murdock so never had that issue.

a's reactions are from the comics: comics-gwen thinks hobie's a bad singer, but still likes his music. she thinks 138 gwen's death is cool.

in the film, hobie's why gwen and her father reconcile. he's the one who told george she was coming home, left the watch with him to give her, and yelled at him until he saw sense. here, he's not so involved in the reconciliation, but they still meet and he still yells at him.

so their dynamic is: hobie has bad history with his world's captain stacy, and george doesn't like that this guy's sleeping with his daughter. they mutually hate each other's politics and life choices, but recognize that they both love and care about gwen. so they will try to get along... mostly by ignoring each other. the vibe's basically 'if hobie never leaves through her bedroom door george will ignore him climbing in through her window'

(... though 100% i think hobie pointed to his bootlaces and was like 'that's you. if you fuck up i'll do it again.' and george begrudgingly respects that)

gwen's dad's giving her The Look because he's put it together that gwen and hobie are sleeping together and that he can do nothing about it.

now that gwen has her independence, powers, support system, and world under control, she's ready for a relationship. that's the thing: gwen has to get those things FIRST.

in the comics, pav is a scholarship student who's bullied for his village background.

if pav's a variant of peter, and peter's biggest hobbies are photography and science, i figured pav would be the same. to switch it up, he's a photo nerd. (plus, it gives him and gayatri, a model, more to bond over)

the crazy thing miles did will be discussed soon.

hobie and miles are not friends at this point in this fic. they were for that first month of miles's membership, but when the unbreakup hit and miles assumed the ghostpunk vibe was to blame he stopped wanting to associate with him. and hobie had no desire to wade into teen breakup drama, so he didn't set him straight (... plus, his sympathies are more with gwen in the situation. miles, he gets that the situation's fucked up, but you're more in the wrong here and she has more to lose. plus he and gwen are much closer). so after the initial anger cooled off, they simply didn't reconnect because they spent more time being frosty to each other than being friendly.

gwen's Miles Thoughts are to set up their confrontation later in this chapter.

hobie gets away with his watch because the society thinks he isn't capable of that level of subterfuge, and that gwen came back to 65b after she quit.

more refs to gwen breaking hearts.

gwen's now classified as an anomaly, as a symbiote from another dimension bonded with a gwen who was never meant to have one, in the wrong way. i assume miguel slapped some caution tape over her and a's dimensions, like he did with miles and 42 in canon. i guess the logic goes that anomalies can be allowed to remain in the wild, as long as they stay put. and as far as he can tell because hobie's watches are undetectable, she isn't crossing over.

gwen still expects a confrontation. she wants one. setup for later.

the river-smell sweater’s hobie’s. small implication that he sleeps over at hers sometimes.

timeline update: it's been a few months since gwen returned. needed some time for her changes to set in and to get some practice with her symbiote. it's about january, so roughly the time of the guggenheim fight (... even if the animation makes it look like it took place in spring or fall, if you do the math, it would've taken place in winter).

comic gwen-8 just wears the generic spider-gwen costume. i'm dealing with so many gwens at this point that i literally have a cheat sheet with all their costumes drawn out to distinguish them and needed them to look different. so this woman's wearing something like the madame web gwen costume. it looks suitably dramatic for a seemingly perfect celebrity hero. white and pristine, with a big flowy cape to remind of miguel.

that rip spider-woman mural was still thrown up by hobie65 because after eight months of absence he assumed she was dead.

earth-8 notes

earth-8, for all it's built up as ~one of the best possible futures~ for gwen and miles, sure does have a lot of bad implications.

1) gwen and miles willingly abandoned their respective families, friends, communities and worlds forever, presumably leaving them to their rogues, so they could run off and be famous. which is insanely ooc for both. and deeply selfish besides.

2) the marriage age: according to the watcher's earth 8 timeline, gwen leaves her world after murdock's defeat (~age 20) and the wedding comes halfway between then and the birth of charlotte, when gwen's 26. so she was most likely 23 and he was 20. which is Insanely Fucking Young to get married for anyone and does not feel in character for them. (my best guess is that the dudewriters didn't want their ideal gwen over 40, so they made her 38 and didn't think through the butterfly effect implications for the ages they were at marriage/childbirth.)

3) this wedding of this supposedly perfect couple was televised to 300 billion people, and they did it unmasked. that's multiple royal weddings in one. that wasn't about love, that was about attention.

4) they have public identities on earth-8, and were already known to the public when they married. they literally monetized being superheroes, being a supercouple.... and being super-parents.

5) their kids are only 10 and 12 and are already super-celebrities with codenames, costumes and seats in an otherwise all-adult hero team. what parents let their kids go into battle with grown adults? not good ones.

6) every time we go to earth-8, the kids are just... unparented. sitting around the house, miles and gwen nowhere in sight and it's treated as standard. the kids are always with a babysitter/nanny who they have no trouble getting away from. gwiles sure are hands-off with those perfect powerful photogenic kids they supposedly love so much.

i'm pretty sure that out of universe, marvel editorial or at the minimum the spider-man writers wanted gwen out of her world after her initial solo ended so she could become miles's love interest/the vessel for his spider-babies, and earth8 was their vision of what they wanted for her future. gross!

anyway for this fic i'm gonna say Fuck That to the surface level earth 8 interpretation and try to write a version of this relationship that acknowledges all the bad implications, without villainizing them or turning gwen into a victim/passive bystander/superbaby vessel in her relationship with miles. while also trying to preserve gwen8 as the most palatable dude-friendly vision of spider-gwen. because that's what she was created to be.

so 1a) gwen-65 leaving her world after murdock's defeat can make sense easily: this is a gwen who was facing exposure, incarceration and abuse from her rogues behind bars. borrowing from 65b, her rel with her dad was on the rocks... and since gwen only seeks miles romantically when she's trying to avoid her problems, she did the same here. gwen-8 broke up the hand, then fled worlds before she could be arrested while she was presumably powerless. she met miles and they left for 8 together.

(how'd she get her powers back and leave the symbiote? idk. but she's a male writer's perfect gwen, and a male writer's perfect gwen would only have graceful spider-powers, not a scary messy alien blob monster clinging to her. my best guess is gwen 8 left venom with her dad and got her powers back on earth 8.)

(... ergo, she and miles probably tracked down earth-8's spider and made sure it'd bite her instead of whoever it was meant for. so they pulled an earth-42 switcheroo, but with gwen instead of miles and on purpose. i imagine that's why they chose earth-8 to settle in: take someone's power, take their responsibility.)

1b) miles i had more trouble with. atsv had the perfect answer: here's a miles1610 who doesn't encounter a spider from the wrong dimension, who starts out as the prowler, gets a bite from a dimensional-native spider after being the prowler for a while (not vigilante prowler; henchman prowler), tries to make his own way as spider-man (i assume ripeter's dead at this point), but no one will let him redefine himself as a hero. so he goes somewhere where he can.

i imagine his father still dies (earlier, bc a city without spider-man is even more dangerous), which leads him to burn out of visions and embrace his uncle and get sucked into prowlering (he wants to protect aaron); aaron's killed by kingpin (aaron wants to protect miles), who sees miles as a replacement. miles is stuck as the sole prowler until he gets his powers, his mom finds out and their relationship gets bad/distant enough that he feels the need to leave forever.

i figure he meets gwen because she's got no resources except her hand training and is pragmatic enough to return to crime to get by. she figures out he has spider-powers and gives him tips, they start learning about each other, develop trust, and decide to leave together.

2) they're 17ish and 20 when they meet under desperate circumstances and flee to earth-8. so they're young, impulsive, isolated, and under a lot of pressure. i figure they end up in that kind of ambiguous intimate partnership that gwen and hobie have-- not overtly romantic, but definitely not platonic. but everyone on earth-8 thinks they're a couple. and responds accordingly.

4) when gwen and miles arrived on 8, a futuristic world, they had no identification or support system. they had trouble assimilating, and decided revealing their identities on their own terms was the best way to be accepted and get enough power/money/respect to live safely. but that's a slippery slope: once you monetize your relationship, people demand a wedding.

3) the wedding was america's favorite supercouple inviting the public to invest in that parasocial relationship, so they'd be more willing to defend and support them. they were 20 and 23, of course they thought being influencers would be a good idea. (and, meta: the general audience and fandom like gwen better when she's on miles's arm, and they think miles is more impressive when gwen's his love interest.) 'america's favorite superlove story' was more a political marriage between partners in crime who did shady shit to start over, but nonetheless have an intimate bond, than a love story.

5) they probably got pregnant with charlotte by mistake but decided to go through with it to secure their image. once you're married, people expect kids. the 8 are formed after charlotte's birth, so presumably that's when they're established and powerful enough to have their own team. they gave the kids codenames because their identities are already public, so fuck it.

6) because of all their trauma, becoming parents too young and public pressure, miles and gwen just aren't emotionally available as parents. gwen especially, since gwen stacy (especially spider-gwen) just isn't maternal. of the two, miles is the more affectionate one, and gwen's the disciplinarian. they're like a miguel and jess who do care about their kids and just don't know how to express it, so they treat them like apprentices. (gwen's the miguel, miles is the jess.)

=gwen and miles 8 are image-conscious, calculating pragmatists. they're heroes, sure, but they're doing it to secure their positions. they'll get their hands dirty (including killing) to get what they want, gwen especially. they'll cut and run, and are out for their survival above all else. they're a couple, but they're more partners-in-crime than they are romantic or heartwarming.

the simplest analog i can come up with is if gwen and hobie's dynamic gave way to miguel and jess's: two unhoused kids in a bad situation who find support in each other as they do what it takes to escape that situation becoming a power couple who are a dangerously effective but emotionally stunted unit, who aren't sure if what they've become was worth it.

perfect gwen

gwen-8 going to brunch is a thing she does in the comics, with gwen-617. already had her doing it with jess, now it's the 65gwens' turn.

the light on pg settles over her like she's born to it, because she was. she's a 65variant, as we learn in this section. also, the light in gwen's world behaves like it's underwater.

miguel wants a new gwendaughter.

unfortunately all the ones currently in existence are either too old, too willful, or don't have a dad-shaped void he can fill. so far.

gotta drop 17628 and 8311/guin, plus 457 early. they'll be here soon.

specifically, the info that 457's exploring the multiverse is gonna come back.

anytime the text is in bold, that's the symbiote speaking.

we need to burst the bubble on perfect gwen. she is not perfect, she is a person.

the most definitive way to ruin gwen's reputation, as we know, is by having her do something shitty to her spider-man. or something 'shitty' like rejecting his advances, getting with another guy, prioritizing herself over him... you know. gwen b was 'shitty' to her spider-man. gwen-8's gonna be shitty to him.

ergo, gwen-8 intentionally killed her peter parker.

(+i wanted gwen b, gwen a, and gwen 8 to exist on a spectrum: peter's death is an accident and she liked him back / she wasn't into peter but didn't realize he was the lizard until after she manslaughtered him / she wasn't into him, knew he was the lizard and murdered him specifically to stop him from hurting her later)

further underlines gwen 8 as an extreme pragmatist who'll do whatever she has to to ensure her own survival, who WOULD leave her world behind. if she was willing to kill her own best friend to protect herself from a perceived future threat, she'd be willing to abandon her world to do the same.

there's no canon age for gwen8's power onset, though it's implied it's the same as gwen65 (age 17). i went with gwen b bc i thought (1) being sw for 25 years is a sexier number than 21, (2) it's a good way to contextualize her more regrettable actions and her stronger desire to leave home: she was thirteen when she got started, of course she fucked up. and her dad was hunting her for far longer and at a far younger age. (3) since gwen8 was sw for seven years before abandoning earth-8, all those canon events lasted longer. the manhunt lasted years instead of months, and so was her time with her abusive overlords.

more gwen b pulls: gwen8's dad tried to arrest her and she ran away from home for months, instead of gwen a's dad covering for her= more stress + a weaker bond to her dad that'd be easier to leave behind.

i imagine gwen8, instead of being scooped up by the society, was taken up by the hand after she ran away (on the spectrum, the event falls between gwen a's reluctant temporary hand membership to protect her dad, and gwen b's full-time induction into the society). so she both received their training, and put up with murdock's abuse full time (which means he had time to start extorting her sexually— a thing he’s implied to intend to do in the comics, but she ditched him before he could)— and all at a younger age than in canon. more context to her hypercompetency, and to her desire to ditch her world.

... but still. gwen8 abandoned her world. she didn't want to face the consequences.

also i imagine gwen8's subletter of 65 (65c?) is a world where george stacy got to live his dadcop dreams by being that world's venom. and that given how she's 38 and he's in his 50s when she's a teen, he's probably dead by now.

she's a science-inclined gwen instead of a music-inclined gwen (the two Big Types, so far), to further her palatability, and make it possible for her to devise that portal to miles's dimension.

age gap: gwen and miles were 16ish and 20ish when they had that terrible date in the comics. presumably gwiles8 have that same gap. ergo, they'd have met at that age too! yikes!

gwen8's defensive because she and miles8 were definitely doing shit when he was 17 and she was 20. yikes!

another reason for murdock's abuse progressing to a sexual extent: to make 20yo gwen's decision to hook up with a 17yo miles less gross and ooc. don't get me wrong, its still bad, but more understandable if she's trying to get some amount of power back and thinks someone younger than her wouldn't be able to manipulate her like murdock did. yikes!, but the best thing her traumatized ass could think of.

do things different: an atsv motif.

meta: gwiles are a massively popular fancouple. they move merch.

gwendolyn

charlotte probably was named after charlotte's web in the comics.

ficgwen's deadname is max. the alternate son people keep trying to convince her to have being named that felt... appropriate.

once pg's done recounting her backstory, gwen stops seeing her as perfect. thus, she's now gwendolyn.

it's batshit to me that gwiles8 got married at 20 and 23 and literally never had any other relationships than with each other.

happy vs content: another fic motif.

gwen8 is a gwen. she can only be happy, alive and empowered in a relationship removed from heteropatriarchy. once they brought people in, she and miles's relationship was poisoned. but those early years, where they were on the run together, where they first developed that bond, were real.

gwiles8's early dynamic, as stated before, is much more like gwen and hobie's. gwen's making that connection here (intentional parallel to hobie presenting her with the watch, and that i'll-save-you-look motif reappears here). and catching on that she and hobie fit into that labelless zone that gwenships need.

gwendolyn's sensitive about her kids, so she lapses into pr friendly humor to deflect. but i also think she does not know spanish.

gwen-8 is a ballerina because i want to maintain that spectrum of 65gwen palatability: a's a drummer, b's a ballerina only to get the girlhood cred and ditches it for the drums when she gets it, 8's unironically a dancer and liked it and had no musicianship interests). and a perfect palatable gwen would absolutely be a dancer instead of a drummer in a rock band. (and if she never has the mary janes to begin with, she can't give those drummer ambitions up. better alternative to surrendering her dreams to be a superwife)

'i bet you're straight too' -- you KNOW the most palatable dudefriendly gwen wouldn't be queer.

giselle is a tragic ballet about a woman who's betrayed by her lover, dies, and enters a coven of ghosts, all women who died young and tragically due to love, but spares her lover by forgiving him. gwen stacy fits right into that kind of story.

the royal ballet's in london. another gwen stacy nearly makes it there, but something stops her.

truly movie-65 looks like a dead wife flashback.

gwen8 in the comics is heavily implied to be a version of gwen65. playing with that here. fic gwen8 is from another 65 offshoot.

in the comics, a version of ham is part of the amazing 8, and often babysits the kids. here, gwen-8 is talking to the peter porker of itsv. great way to ref canon while also building into the realization that she's going behind the society's back by hanging out with undesirables.

gwiles-8 joined the society because they were sincerely seeking a connection with other spider-people, and did think it would be helpful for their kids. and also because they're so much like miguel and jess that i think they got along right away.

'calling us partners without treating us like it' -- all salt at the writers and fandom. if gwen and miles are equals, that means miles needs to care about advancing gwen's plot as much as she does his. and that gwen's individual world and story should receive as much emphasis. that doesn't happen though. so they're not partners, now are they? he's the hero, and she's the hero's girlfriend.

gwen a is totally uninterested in miles bc he's just some dude she's heard things about. gwen b still needs closure with hers.

gwendolyn plays along with the societal categories... and also pays the price: no one actually fits into these boxes ('perfect' gwen is technically an anomaly, and did some extremely questionable things). and while playing along might get you what you want materially and keep you personally safe, it furthers the idea that those boxes are necessary, and makes it impossible for people who seek a way out of it to realize you could or need help as well.

and you pass it on to your kids, who don't know you're playing the game against itself and internalize those behaviors unironically.

supposedly, comics-charlotte morales-stacy has a mystical connection to the web. the fandom keeps insisting that gwen hurry up and get with miles already so they can produce her, and i hate that more than life itself. you're not done when you marry that boy, now you are obligated to produce offspring and fuck what you want, gwen, your daughter in one dimension is special enough to totally overshadow your wants and needs. vomits.

that's going in the fic as stakes for any gwen who joins the spider-society. bc the next step in the patriarchy machine after marriage is babies ever after. and if the babies have powers that can be of use to the society, they're gonna want them.

gwiles8 aren't natives to earth8, so they should probably be wearing some kind of transdimensional stabilizer tech to not glitch out. ergo, they had a variation on the portal watch decades before miguel invented his.

i imagine their kids are earth 8 natives bc they were born there.

the kids: get into transdimensional mischief in the comics. something tells me they'd cause chaos in the society.

another reason for gwendolyn to get her powers at 13: so she can have a crisis thinking about charlotte being that age and going into battle.

re the kids: i like to think that the society mess made gwiles8 rethink how they're raising them, and they're going to try to let them be children more than junior spider-heroes now.

lego gwen is real, also from some unknown variant of lego peter's world. i know nothing about her, so she's just a cameo in the fic for that reason.

spider-witch is also real. from some marvel fighting game. also has zero characterization other than a vague reference to her having scarlet witch powers. so she's gonna be another cameo.

spider-woman-617 is an amalgamation of gwen 617, and what if...? dark's spider-woman, who has no numbered universe so i lumped her in to use the 617 title. essentially: taking 617's middle aged detective and giving her the backstory of gwen outliving peter, taking his mask and her dad's gun and going looking for vengeance.

and 617 gwen's universe collapses in the comics too. taking that and using the spot now to justify it, and solidifying the society as an enemy by having them pick and choose which universes are worth protecting. they'll never protect the ones where gwen gets to be the hero on her own terms.

we'll meet all these gwens next time.

the spot: a small way to imply that whatever showdown he and miles will have is still going to happen, even if out of this fic. again, i didn't want to rob miles of his atsv arc, just stretch it over months instead of hours and let gwen have one of her own beside it. the movies did miles right, so i'm doing gwen's side.

gwen 8 is a pragmatist and an opportunist. she would stay as long as possible to extract information.

and she'd get her hands dirty, but not in public... which is why she's talking to the irreputible gwens and asking them to do it for her.

earth 73

earth-73 isn't actually canon. made up for the purpose of this fic. she's the only spider-gwen variant who was entirely made up.

the gist is this is a world where gwen dies the night peter's bitten by the spider, but instead of dying, she's bitten too. so now there are two spider-people where there 'should' be one, and no dead gwen.

she's a gwendolyne-with-an-e to distinguish her from gwendolyn, spider-woman-8. and also to bookend gwen's story on being finally able to encounter a living gwen-with-an-e in a snowy alternate world.

it's 1973 and she's a woman in stem. gwendolyne's dealing with some insane sexism.

another cindy moon ref! sorry cindy, gwen snatched your destiny again!

gwendolyne's never gonna make it to london. again.

being out of reach: a motif for this section

this peter's only just gotten his spider-powers, so all his insecurities are still amped up to 11.

gwendy. the nickname only ever given to gwen by peter, occasionally mj, and hobie in the movies.

here, gwen's the uncle ben, so her death is the one that makes peter take responsibility and stop being reckless and attention seeking. meaning, he's gotta be reckless and attention-seeking when she dies. bad decisions ensue.

he's different, he's special, he's spider-man: bringing this back.

having to try: another motif brought in.

the rooftop flirtation/websling grabbing: got the idea from gwen and peter's first kiss in the amazing spider-man.

so. in this world, gwendolyne gets bitten by the spider when she crushes it. that's the moment of divergence from Canon.

so when she falls, she catches herself.

and so the world is changed: section motif.

issue 121 is gwen 616's death.

gummy spiders being used as tracking/surveillance devices are a thing!

in this world, gwendolyne's dad still dies. it just happens before spider-anyone is around to fight ock. that's her moment of inspiration.

and instead of being inspired by gwen's death, peter73 decides to accompany her.

this is a story where gwen and peter both get bitten, and both get to be heroes together. (it's the strongest way for a and b to witness how possible it is for things to turn out differently, if an og gwen and peter can fall in love, subvert the death, and gwen's powerlessness-- in agency and superpower. because why not?)

the Outfit gwen dies in: purple skirt, green coat. it's repeated in the amazing spider-man movies. you can see gayatri in a purple flannel. and gwen's wearing a green shirt in the film. (... they're so gonna do gwen's death in btsv)

it's a trigger point for gwen: from 'don't you dare interrupt the creation of this new story' to 'oh shit, someone's gonna do that.' it's what makes her want to give gwendolyne some options.

gwendolyne's a nerd. she's gonna think alternate dimensions are cool as hell.

she also doesn't want to leave her peter. she's bluffing to get the gwens to follow her back to him so they can talk this out together.

and the society's just shown up too. they've been talking to peter73, trying to gaslight the fuck out of him into thinking of the gwens as the enemy.

the society's gonna snip gwen73 out of the narrative.

the original plan was that they were going to kill her to force a gwen death canon event. i've since revised it to 'gwen doesn't know, but it's either that or miguel's found his gwen replacement goldfish and wants to retrieve her for that purpose' -- regardless, gwen's here to save herself and miguel's here to shut down a possibility of a new path for a spider-gwen.

jess isn't here because she's taken some of gwen's words in ch4 to heart. she doesn't want to be involved in gwen issues anymore, but she's still in the society.

lady spider's here because i wanted gwen to punch the victorian.

and ben because he's an edgelord.

and miguel, because he's miguel, and he wants a new gwendaughter.

peter73's looking for miles, who came in with the rest of the crew and turned invisible right before gwen73 hits the panic button.

the second miguel sees gwen he goes into rage mode.

look that symbiote tongue's gotta be so fun to use in combat. and the tooth hood. somebody's gotta get bitten by it.

tiger: tiny ref to em (of 'face it tiger' fame) being the original carnage host.

the lab needed to be mirrored so miles could see miguel coming behind him. the reflection motif was a happy accident discovered during drafting.

gwen and her symbiote are generally in agreement-- but it still feeds off her anger and fear. she needs to struggle with it sometimes-- and so an invisible miles can see her doing that, and assume the worst.

also i needed to explain how the society turned up early. makes sense that they'd be surveilling 73, and see the gwens, and decide to move up their mission.

and that gwen would instantly be paranoid of gwen8 selling them out.

funnel webs are the super messy ones. befitting of a portal watch made by a punk. as opposed to the structured orb weaver build of the one designed by a control freak.

miles:

miles and gwen's final confrontation was one of the first things i wanted to write in this fic.

the shoulder touch/"hey" is a ref to itsv.

comic and movie gwen fight different. comic gwen's a clumsy brawler. movie gwen uses her feet and moves like a dancer. miles, who's a smart guy who fought alongside gwen (... and paid a lot attention to her looks as an artist and a guy crushing on her), would clock those kicks and be able to tell the symbiotes apart.

the body running past them isn't maybelle or ben.

miles's temporary suspension was made permanent after earth-42.

miguel gave him this assignment as an opportunity to prove his loyalty and get back in. he wanted someone to handle gwen for him... but then went on a miguel rage, and forgot all about the plan.

miles is here for two reasons: 1) he can't help wanting to ~save gwen from herself~. you know that's how it'd go if gwen got a symbiote and started tapping into her rougher emotions.

and 2) he genuinely wants to talk to her again, but can't until this moment. taking miguel's offer was also tactical, and an indication that miles isn't as naive or as desperate to belong as he was the last time we saw him.

re: saving her: the last time miles saw gwen, she was having an emotional breakdown in front of him. since then he's only ever heard of her, mostly from pav and now peter b. pav last saw her when she attacked him and tried to die in his girlfriend's place, and pete saw her right before something violent went down with miguel and she left the society. and now here she is, months later, possessed by a symbiote in the wrong world, attacking the society. it is totally plausible to think that she needs help.

(and since he's definitely spoken to pete b about her, he does have more perspective about why she rejected him)

saving her 2: it is also very much that he's still stuck in that hero-saves-the-girl mindset. his first impulse is still 'the girl needs me to save her' and not 'maybe the girl is doing this on purpose'

~saving her~: one of the most predictable things you can do with gwenom is make her a victim who needs to be saved by the power of love or a monster who needs to be put down. by the male main character. all the more extraordinary that the actual gwenom arc totally blows those ideas out of the water.

it's an old story, and gwen hates it, so that makes her antagonize him.

miles at this point is getting over his feelings for gwen. he spent 6-8 months not interacting with her at all, after all (and getting closer to margo). he's genuinely not thrilled about the idea of kissing her better, but he still cares about her, and if that does it, he'll do it. (hence the 'i'll-save-you' facial language. you can see it in pav and hobie in 3 and 5 too.)

gwen clocks that hesitation, and it makes her settle down and want to engage with him.

miles is older too. puberty acts fast. he's not gonna look like how she remembers him.

miles's secret weapon is the venom blast (+invisibility). gwen's is the venom symbiote, which can turn her invisible.

his plan was: show up for the mission, get the symbiote off gwen, get gwen back to her homeworld safely. he had no interest in going back to hq or rejoining the society.

(which tips the favor in this being a kidnap-gwendolyne mission instead of a kill-her one. miles wouldn't help out if it were the latter, and the former could be construed by him as For The Best.)

gwen's finally capable of understanding that miles changes over time too. in ch2, she was convinced he couldn't understand her but totally neglected that she's the same.

miles is still a 16yo boy who doesn't totally get what relationship anarchy is.

gwen wants to patch up the miles-hobie friendship. it broke over her, so she has to be the one to fix it. i think he'll actually take her up on it this time.

one of my goals for this fic was making sure miles still gets his canon arc. i think it's exactly what his character needs, and i don't want to flatten him or assassinate his character and throw him away after shooting gwiles dead. so he's still getting all his atsv development, just at a much slower rate and offpage. and without gwen at his side.

ergo: after his big society blowup, here recontextualized as a suspension, he heads to 42. differences being: he goes there intentionally, knowing what he'll find, and he brings his friends (here, peni and margo). it goes less to shit than in canon.

miles peni and margo are a trio because if gwen's had her female friend group removed and is now a guys' girl, at least make miles a girls' guy.

yes, background margo/miles. flowerbyte is cute, margo's a great match for him and i love this ship! i like to think they have a sweet friends to lovers slowburn in the background while gwen's running around punching walls for six months.

so at this point miles is into margo, but still hung up on gwen. he's getting ready to transition from teenage infatuation into a more mature kind of love, but needs closure with gwen before he can move on.

one of my btsv theories is that we'll meet one of the alternate gwens the creators teased in earth-42, and she'll be the gwenom.

which, at least we'd get to see gwenom. but the whole point of gwenom is that she isn't an evil or sad worst-case-scenario version of gwen. she's just gwen. the main gwen.

hence gwen's symbiote calling that out. excuse me bitch, we are not a side character or a sad ending, we're the main event.

symbiote body horror is fun! and carnage 65 is covered in tooth barbs.

(... miles facing off against carnage is a recent comics arc of his. got to pay homage to it here, in a way)

miles was talking to miles8 about prowler stuff all along.

gwen and miles in this fic each have a perfect earth-8 variant who was much more shady behind the scenes, and a villified variant they're supposedly destined to be, who's actually a great influence on them. they are indeed the same in the ways that count.

gwiles8 set up the gwen-and-miles reconciliation. gwen8 was going to send gwen to get gwendolyne anyway, but miles8 sent miles along to make this happen.

dream girl gwen's been a motif throughout this fic. the thing about dreams is you have to wake up from them if you want to get on with your life. miles is about to do that.

miles ii

chapter 2 parallels: gwen contemplating becoming the palatable miles-gf. "they're not us." the gripping of the shoulder. the invisibility. this is an inversion of that scene; they've grown enough to be able to fix what went wrong there.

it's batshit that miles8 got married when he was 20. what the fuck.

the thing about gwen65 is that she can't end up with miles or peter, ever. she has too much history with peter (and he has too much with her), and if they get together all their development since that trauma goes out the window. and that future with miles poisons a present relationship, because that's what it's leading to. one destroy's gwen's physical life, the other destroys her ability to be a protagonist.

movie gwen, at least, could've had something with movie miles. if they'd stayed in touch after itsv, i buy that gwen's feelings for him would've developed and they'd have gotten together and been sweet. but not after a year and a half of no contact; with that much distance and stronger connections to other options (hobie, even pav to an extent), she's moved on.

(even if they joined the ss at the same time, their dynamic would be poisoned by canon and societal expectations. same result as in-fic, but even messier because then they actually WOULD be a couple imploding, instead of an almost-couple averting getting together by having the implosion first.)

and even if they'd gotten together, i still don't think they'd have lasted. they'd be a high school relationship, and those tend not to work out for a reason: adolescent love and adult love are SO different, and adolescence is a phase to grow out of. we desperately need more stories about teen love that take that approach.

and since spider-man can't let gwen stacy go, he wouldn't have let them grow apart. he'd have held on and "time would've made it worse" -- reversal of miles in ch 2. he's going step by step here, confronting all his misconceptions and letting go of them. and it would've made it worse. they have a dynamic that can only work temporarily, and the longer they're together the more that would show.

gwen's a step ahead of miles developmentally. either she has to regress or stay put in order to stay on his level, or he has to grow up too quickly. neither is good.

miles can't grow up and seek a more mature, deep relationship if he gets his dream girl. and gwen can't go home if she's trailing after this boy, fighting his battles for him.

more miles growth: he's not the exception. he's another spider-man who'd cannibalize gwen's story. meta: because that's what'll happen if they get together. the fandom, the audience, and the writers will all make their relationship about him and the longer they're together, the more gwen will be written to vanish into it, and the more miles will be written to enforce that. he'll be turned into that boyfriend who doesn't encourage his girlfriend to have her own life. being with her will make him a worse person.

gwen and miles don't need to form a romantic relationship. what they're seeking in each other they can only find in themselves.

now that gwen's met gwen a, and miles has met miles g, they've outgrown that fixation on each other.

miles woke up. now he sees his dream girl for who she really is: a person, who wants control over her own life.

and gwen finally sees past that shining light of inspiration for the person miles is: a boy who cares and doesn't always know how to help. (+half in love motif paying off)

miles is no longer a lost boy. he decided to grow up, just like she did.

(... to the people excited about the peter-pan-and-wendy nicknames hobie gives miles and gwen, please remember how that story ends. wendy gets over peter and goes home because if she stays with peter, she can never grow up. if she stayed with him, then the story would've been a tragedy, because refusing to grow up is not a good thing. the same is true for miles and gwen.)

and the only way they could ever have grown up is if they did it apart. together, they stagnate each other. fine for a temporary high school flirtation, but bad for a relationship intended to last.

not all not-good relationships are toxic or abusive. sometimes it's simply that you and your partner don't let each other grow or change for the better, or that your wants and needs are incompatible in the long-term. and just because you and someone are into each other doesn't mean you'd be a good couple.

another added bonus of the portal in this scene is: miles gets to face the light, and gwen's face is in shadow. it all ties in!

part of gwen's anger at miles has been that subconsciously, she wanted him to fix things for her because she believed she couldn't do it herself (and at the time he joined the ss, she couldn't; she had no support system, no confidence, was purely in survival mode and was totally dependent on them for her portal watch). now she knows she can.

they fixed their shit. now, can the other spider-men and gwens do the same, and even stay together?

miles and gwendolyn had it... before they sold out.

peter and gwendolyne have it. if the ss never showed up at all, they'd have debuted as a hero partnership. maybe they wouldn't have lasted as a couple, but they'd both be alive, powerful and equals in the narrative.

pav and gayatri seem like they could. she may not have powers, but she already knows who he is. and now that he's aware of the narrative, he could attempt to subvert it.

(gwen and hobie have it.)

gwen can't end up with just anybody, in just any scenario. but it IS possible for her and a spider-man to work out. the key's agency and equality... which can only exist, in a world dictated by canon, (or, meta: by writers and fans caught up in heteropatriarchal storytelling,) in the dark, in the margins, out of sight, to keep it safe from the people who'd demand the traditional arrangement. and it can only be with someone who'd never be tempted by said arrangement (in universe) and (out of universe:) can't overshadow her.

[cough hobie brown is that someone cough]

so, any canon version of gwen65 can't end up with miles. or peter, for that matter. (in fanfic, the sky's the limit. but in canon? nope. miles and peter are too big in comparison to her, and the baggage is too much)

miles iii

gwen and miles individually have what it takes to break canon.

they are both marginalized by it and constricted by the limitations of their narratives, though to very different extents-- especially since they're set up to view the other as an obstacle (to gwen, miles is yet another spider-man who's here to swallow up her story) or an object (to miles, gwen is the reward for being the hero and completing the character arc), instead of an ally.

both are denied complexity and given strict rules to play by in order to be tolerated.

both are punished for breaking, failing or not wanting to live up to those expectations.

both are ideally positioned to recognize the limitations of canon and have all the motivation to want to break it.

and both are needed to break canon all the way...

but they cannot do it if they're a couple. all that would do is break miles's canon, while gwen's stays intact. miles would be settling for a designated love interest instead of discovering his own, and gwen wouldn't get her own story. the hero getting the girl can never challenge canon because it's one of the oldest most fundamental parts of the canon. changing up which hero gets the girl doesn't change anything because he's still getting the girl. and if you're gonna break it, break it all the way.

the ultimate culmination of miles's arc (fuck canon, i'll do it my way) isn't actually him doing it his way-- it's encouraging others to do the same even at the cost of him getting what he wants from them. the best way to do that is for him to give gwen that opportunity, because it shows he's grown enough to recognize that her ability to lead her own story matters more than his desire to make her a supporting role in his. fic-miles has reached this conclusion. i hope (and doubt) movie miles will too.

the ultimate act of love is acknowledging that your feelings are less important than their freedom safety and happiness. hobie gets that right away. it took miles a while, but he's here now. albeit, after gwen's feelings already evolved away from him. still important that he got there. now he's ready to be that person for someone else (in this fic, margo).

gwen and miles kick miguel in the face because it was fun to write. also, they're a functional team again.

miles can't come with gwen because she needs to get on with her story, and her story isn't about him.

(intentional parallel to hobie: yeah, she could stay with miles, but doing that defeats the purpose of her emancipation. she has to follow through with it before they can have the relationship they've just admitted to wanting; with hobie, something romantic; with miles, something platonic)

gwen and miles' parting words/gesture are intended to mimic the ones they had at the end of itsv. they are friends, and actually get to stay friends this time.

miles isn't dying here fyi. he's quitting the society and heading back to his world. he's fine. he’s just waiting for gwen to back out of the metaphorical parking lot first.

end quote

from seanan mcguire's gwen stacy: ghost-spider. this is when gwen returns to her universe after a spiderverse event, finally free from prison and ready to redefine herself.

#arachnophobia fic

[vertigoimprint]

Miles Morales #26 variant covers by Rose Besch

#ch: miles morales #ch: gwen stacy (65) #they come as a set too #so cute #gwen stacy #spider gwen #ghost spider #miles morales #spider man #rose besch

[rappaccini]

arachnophobia ch 8/epilogue fic notes

chapter title

from 'antagonist' by nova twins

fic title

from 'athena', also by nova twins

yes, nova twins songs were used for every title in this fic. once more, i love this band, their songs just fit the vibe, and i think their sound is accurate to what the spiderverse mary janes ought to sound like.

this one specifically reinterprets the arachne myth as one of pyrrhic empowerment. sure, she was turned into an insect, but athena's going to be afraid of her forever and arachne can spend the rest of her life tormenting her in revenge. she gets the last laugh.

initial quote

from the myth of arachne from ovid's metamorphosis.

aside from it being the literal origin myth of the spider in greek mythology, in context arachne's myth can be interpreted one of two ways: arachne was a spoiled mortal girl who insulted the gods and was punished by being made into a spider....... or arachne was the only mortal with enough balls to tell the gods they were tyrannical, specifically towards women, and her punishment is a sign that the gods are unjust.

tying this into the fic title: this is a fic about a girl who calls out the misogyny inherent in her placement in the story, which may or may not be considered divine, who is alienated for it and dismissed as a villain and nuisance, but uses that power to get back at the powerful people who disenfranchised her and become a constant thorn in their side. unlike in the myth, there's a happy ending to this one.

guin and stacy

'various aliases' -- didn't plan for this to have eight chapters so i ran out of codename theming. hopefully this slaps a band-aid over it.

it's a world with looney tunes logic. therefore, funky physics, architecture and tweety concussion birds.

i don't know if 65-venom is omnivorous, but symbiotes are often carnivorous. and since carnage is the more bloodthirsty of the 65-symbiotes, i figure it would make sense for that to translate to it needing meat.

guin and stacy were a riot to write. i figured they'd have a vibe kind of like ham and noir's.

spider-guin is real, and a minor member of peter porker's world. her personality is basically invented for this fic.

and detective stacy, spider-woman of earth 617 is a composite of:

what if? dark's spider-gwen, from an unnamed universe where peter dies on the bridge instead of gwen, and she takes up his mask and her dad's gun and goes to get justice, and along the way decides to keep heroing. i'm taking that backstory and powerlessness, and combining it with

gwen-617 (for which her world is named), the middle-aged detective who's mutualistically bonded with her venom, albeit fic-617 doesn't have a symbiote.

[hence the shoutout to getting a symbiote in stacy asking gwen for her firstborn]

(however gwen-617's canon personality's been distributed to a and b in terms of the dead dad angst, inspiration to change her fate after meeting another spider-gwen, and being a cosw mastermind.)

617 in particular is real fascinating from a meta perspective. in the comics, she appears at the very end of gwen's original run, in an extremely meta storyline where the watcher that forced the siat gwiles kiss is observing earth-65, and complaining that it's unoriginal and full of uncompelling characters, and that they ought to get rid of it. [... which feels like commentary on the members of the audience and possibly editorial staff who wanted to strip gwen of her world and just shove her into a relationship with miles already]

then gwen-617 literally crashes in to tell him to fuck off.

gwen-8 is very much what the spider-man writers want gwen to be: the ultimate prize. a spider-gwen who marries spider-man, has his superbabies, has no symbiote, and never says a word about how she feels about having to abandon everyone and everything she loves in order to have a life she wouldn't be interested in. and naturally they park her at age 38, so she's still fuckable. a palatable spider-gwen well within the male gaze.

gwen-617 feels like the spider-gwen creator's take on what he wanted gwen 65's future to look like: a woman well into middle age who's showing signs of aging, no longer in a leotard, still bonded to and deeply connected to her symbiote, single and childless, and a cunning, snarky detective who gets her hands dirty to protect her and other gwens' autonomy. a spider-gwen who gets to defy the gaze and exist on her own terms.

(also, she and gwen-8 are brunch buddies and the 8-kids love her. wholesome! the opposing visions of gwen's future get along!)

at any rate i hope gwen65's future does turn out like gwen617's. my big fear is her getting gwen8... which i'm like 60% sure is what'll happen to movie gwen. gross!

back to the fic.

8311's physics are brought up in web warriors iirc, where it's discussed that you can literally vaporize people if you punch them too hard. and weblines connect to midair! fun!

the booze is looney tunes booze. it works like it would in an old tom and jerry cartoon. stacy's been hitting it hard.

gwen617's world collapses in the comics too. i hope she survived it.

full fucking salt here: of course the world where spider-gwen gets to hit middle age, stay powerful, and not have to answer to a man about it is the world that gets canned. thanks marvel!

included here because it was a way to incorporate the spot, give gwen a moment of pity for miguel, and set up how far the society's fallen.

unnecessary detail that's nowhere in this fic but i believe strongly: guin's an adelie penguin, because they have strong fuck-with-me attitudes.

i figured a cartoon animal world wouldn't let its characters swear. guin would resent this strongly.

spider-guin writes dadcop fanfic in canon. since she's hanging out with a detective, i figure stacy would peer review it.

guin's place

shellsea= pun on chelsea.

spider-guin plays the drums for the mary cranes in the comics.

spider-guin is peter porker's crimefighting partner as well.

the pork her joke derives from me misreading 'partner' on the wiki as romantic and not hero related, and having a split second of pure panic at the thought of.... peter porking her.

very interesting that spider-ham doesn't seem to be a society member in the movies. in this fic at least, him sharing a world comfortably with a spider-gwen is one of the reasons why.

they accidentally kidnapped peter-73. oops.

peter and gwen-e's blocking is meant to resemble gwen and hobie's in chapter 5.

gwen's watching another reciprocal partnership between a gwen and a spider-man develop. this peter's like hobie and miles-8. he's giving her what she needs to save herself (a web shooter, a portal watch, a radioactive spider) and trusting her to use it.

and from a meta perspective: can this kind of relationship between a gwen stacy and a spider-man exist in canon? or only off-page, in imagination and fanwork, without writers and audiences to demand it take on the usual conventions?

gwen8's touching her hand because it's where the spider bit her. she's thinking the same thing as gwen b. they're the only two who've had this kind of relationship but have come to opposite conclusions about it.

gwen8 ultimately accepted the constraints of her narrative and only subverts in the margins. now that the cat's out of the bag, she's backpedaling.

gwen8 and gwen617 aren't quite friends in the fic, since they only just met and stacy's furious about the death of her world. and gwen8 is only interested in her self. she made no effort to stop the collapse, only to grab stacy and run. and she's guilty about it.

gwen457 is from the ultimate spider-man cartoon. in this world, she's another powerless girl who chooses to be a hero, even when miles is already spider-man. she builds herself a tech-heavy suit to compensate, and doesn't bother teaming up with miles. very iconic of her. hence, she doesn't do invitations.

i figured since she's building it from robocop parts and doesn't have a healing factor, it'd need to be armored. and since her wallcrawling is reliant on magnetic gloves and boots, they'd need to be pretty big to hold her weight.

457's lair is in a sewer. and she's a girly girl. thus, the perfume.

she also seems to be very young in the cartoon. adapted here.

in the ultimate cartoon, peter encounters an alternate world where he died and miles (and gwen) is spider-man. referenced here. i imagine ultimate cartoon pete was recruited, gwen noticed his tech, and since she's a whiz, reverse-engineered it. and she went exploring simply because she felt like it.

457 gwen uses homemade cookies to win over her father. i thought it'd be fun to nod at that here.

as the only daughter of a single cop dad, gwen probably took on a lot of household responsibilites at a young age. 457, given how insanely strong her willpower is to become a superhero with no powers, probably got a bit of that unusual maturity from that.

this scene's a full-circle moment: gwen at the very start of this fic meets a dead gwen-with-an-e and processes the implications in an icy graveyard. now she's found a living one, and they can unpack it all together. also in a location made of stone and ice, that's basically a big symbolic fridge.

gwen keeps getting killed in purple and green. big 👀 at the atsv concept crew only considering gayatri and gwen in those colors.

spider-girl was the original idea for spider-gwen's name. bad idea! thank god they didn't use it!

the argument

gwendolyne's only chill about this because she hasn't processed that this isn't a temporary adventure. she's getting it now.

earth-8311's mary jane is mary crane. and look i HAD to have a gwenjay pairing here somewhere. it was almost stacy, but her being single was too important (also, didn't love the implication of the one gwenjay getting lexa'd).

spider-guin is a creature of great violence. i feel this deeply.

what if? dark's gwen stacy isn't a killer. i feel like 617 gwen would though. and fic-617 gwen's just had the worst week of her life, so i think it's on the table.

and really: the original gwen stacy from 616 HATED spider-man for his involvement in her father's death. she went to her grave resenting him. she has the exact same motive harry osborn did when he went villain. it's wild that no one's thought of resurrecting gwen as a villain.

gwen8's only plan all along was to hide the displaced gwens. which isn't enough for gwen b.

she's also in panic mode because taking peter means that the society's going to keep looking for them. peter parker's too valuable to them. she wants him sent back fast, and the others scattered.

peter-73 is not down with this situation.

comics-gwen-65a is a social butterfly. she loves meeting and bonding with alternate gwens.

she also loves dumb puns. hence porker and gwenergy.

recluse is a very obscure spider-hero. it's also a pun on the spider species, and the word literally means 'hermit'

ham's babysitting the kids, like he does in the comics.

and technically gwen8 hasn't been made, since she's covered for by her reputation and her miles.

gwen73 is very much in the vein of gwen616 in terms of characterization. confident, spirited, a little annoying about it, but very endearing.

look using death imagery with the gwens is so much fun.

gwen8 is still ultimately... gwen8. she is the palatable, male-gaze spider-gwen. she's the one who survives by going along with what they ask of her. in a sociocultural sense, she's the woman who plays ball with the patriarchy and sneaks what privileges she can out of it. yeah, you'll survive, but you won't be happy. and you won't be able to protect anyone else from it, including your kids.

gwen8 is so focused on survival that she can't imagine never having to do that.

the entire conflict over whether to hide or disband is a bit of salt about the council of spider-women in the comics.

the council of spider-women: an all-spider-gwen secret society devoted to protecting their own... who don't lift a finger to help anyone else. they sit back and hide out during the inheritor wars, and they haven't been seen since the end of the latour run.

out of universe: the writers forgot about it.

in-universe: they know the other spider-heroes won't do shit to help them, and that cynicism is ingrained deep in the organization.

hey girl i get it. but this fanfic's trying to imagine a happier ending, so we have to defy that.

more salt! about the other meta gwen plots from the comics. currently she's had two back-to-back event miniseries about meeting a group of alternate gwens, where they just repeat the same shit about deserving better, then go right back to the status quo.

look there are a ton of great gwen puns.

>introducing the term 'rotten' to build up to its use in a few pages.

why's the death of gwen stacy the thing that holds the concept of canon together? it takes the most understandable human impulses: longing to be special to someone, to love them, to keep them safe, and it poisons them. it takes that someone, and dehumanizes them. once you accept that someone you love is just a martyr to make your suffering special, all the rest follows.

which means that if you disprove that idea, everything else comes down with it.

and as seen with hobie, peter b, miles, miles 8, ham, peter, on and on it goes-- it is possible to change. you just need to believe it's possible.

(which, meta again: it is possible for spider-gwen to be her own protagonist without having to wall herself off away from the spider-men. she can even fall in love with them without losing her agency. the only reason why she keeps getting shoved in the girlfriend box is because the writers and audience don't realize the girlfriend box doesn't have to exist at all.)

the cosw in canon are absolutely reclusive. here, they aren't. because they can never enact any change unless they let outsiders in.

jess's absence: refusing to go along with miguel's gwendetta is the first indication that the treatment of her can make the society fall apart.

but gwen isn't a wrecking ball. gwen stacy ultimately is not the character that can shatter people's expectations of canon.

what she is, though, is rot. there's something rotten about the way she's treated by canon, and by the people who consume it uncritically. and if enough of it collects, everything falls apart.

callback to earth-138, and the 'i'm not the only one' mantra from atsv. gwen's spent the entire fic learning everything she needs to create an antidote to the society-- she's studied the organization while shadowing miguel, and how to unravel them while spending time with hobie. she's gathered all the motivation, and now she has people to help her do it.

'because they don't see us as people, they won't see this coming'-- callback to chapter 4, when gwen decides to yeet miguel.

'no need to get spider-man involved...' -- callback to chapter 1, and gwen's very first impulse when entering the multiverse.

but they will let him in the room. the goal isn't just to secure their individual survival, it's to make it possible for them to coexist with spider-men as equals.

having to try, and getting back up after they fall, and trying again. bringing that back too.

gwendolyn's expression: callback to the end of 1, and the look hobie gets when he decides to help her.

starting a band

peter73's too much of a spider-man to stay away from his world forever. i figured he'd have to return.

the implication in him handing gwendolyne's hw in is that they're regularly in contact.

and she's a take on gwen616. that girl doesn't miss an assignment.

gwen in chapter 2 desperately wants a gwen to mentor. now she gets one.

in the movie, inside gwen's bass drum, beside her spider-woman gear and that polaroid, is a birthday present from her mother. it's where she keeps her most important possessions, the things that remind her of the people she loves.

gwendolyne was always going to go home, just like gwen does. she stays away to gain the skills she'll need to be able to protect herself if the society shows up again (i think they probably do). and as soon as she's got the hang of it, she's coming back.

anyway in earth-73, an invention for this fic, spider-man and spider-woman are a team. and it's possible for peter and gwendolyne to have a happy ending, or at least to fall apart on their own terms. whether they end up together or not doesn't matter as much as whether they get to exist in the same world. they do.

with the appearance of man-wolf, gwen b's continuity is starting to shift into the mcguire era.

harry woke up offpage after the mcguire run ended. he does here in gwen a's world.

starting a band-- from the bottom of my heart: there's nothing canon-busting or story-redefining about gwen stacy leaping into action for her male love interest. it's far more subversive for her to choose to save herself instead.

also movie gwen being unable to connect to her all-female band and trading them in for a group of mostly-dudes (and two girls who are only there for miles), who she only assembles for the male protagonist she's the love interest of? gag. no. don't like that.

so here, her band is made up of girls, and she assembles it for them.

comics-gwen loves and recognizes the value in all gwens. clones, alternate spider-gwens, ordinary gwen stacys, even villainous versions of her. small nod to that here.

but this fic needed to limit the cast, and keep the scope on spider-gwen specifically. justified in-story as them not wanting to pull civilians into a dangerous situation (and in a broader sense, canon being so trimmed and strict that gwens that aren't the girlfriend at all don't get to exist-- like gwen goblin).

the gwens:

13122: lego gwen! supposedly from an alternate version of legoworld.

17628/marvel spider-man 2017 cartoon: from a cartoon that's disliked by the fandom, this is a gwen who also gets spider-powers, is a geneticist and science nerd who works as a team with peter, miles and anya.

people really hate this cartoon. idk why, it's cute! lampshaded here as gwen8 and the society turning up their noses at it.

spider-witch: there's basically no info on her other than that she exists, is vaguely scarlet witch-adjacent, and is affiliated with evil; she's from a fighting videogame, that's really the best you can hope for with those. but the idea of a gwen-as-reality-witch is cool, extending the olive branch to every single version of themselves no matter how evil is important, and it was funny to me about there being a spider-gwen who's only lurking in the council discord, so to speak. just because she's a gwen doesn't mean she'll play ball with the others.

"we all have a little bit of villain in us" is a quote from the shadow-clones gwen mini.

TRN684/marvel rising cartoon: from a far more low stakes world, being that it's a children's cartoon, but still important. (fun fact: she's why all the new spider-gwens have pink dip-dye; the animators mixed her and gwenpool up and so the design alteration was made) also the second i saw those gliders on her suit i knew i wanted a line about teaching them how to fly.

18157/marvel action: these comics are aimed at a younger readerbase, so i figured making her the most inexperienced (pre-gwendolyne) gwen worked. this gwen's still got a punk/counterculture style, but is primarily a reporter. and this one's friends with her miles and peter. which is what gwen needs to see to finally restart her friendship with miles.

all were chosen for the fic because they have distinct enough personalities or looks (not too many alt-spider gwens do; there's mostly just an indication that she exists), and have something the team could benefit from.

and msm and action gwen were specifically included because i know they're looked down on in the fandom. no elitism about which gwen is better; all of them matter and all of them deserve consideration.

council

the council of spider-women were named before ghost-spider was made her new codename. i'll recontextualize that here as a tactical move: conceal who the council actually are behind the assumption that it could be a bunch of spider-women.

i'm thinking the council structure is in opposition to the society: invite everyone, no matter how 'lame' people find them, everyone votes on action and there's no true leader, no set hq either.

that being said, it's gwen's band. she's the protagonist, she's the one who spearheads the council's creation. if there's an informal leader, it's her.

hq: the suite is gwen8's. the garage is gwen684's. the warehouse is gwen a's. the bullpen is gwen 18157's. the biotech startup is 17628's. the sewer is 457's.

at any rate they're declaring war on the spider-society. they don't want to ensure the survival of all gwens, just a fighting chance. and with canon being shaped the way it is, that can't happen.

the gwens selected for this fic were also chosen for their skillsets. all the most fleshed-out spider-gwens that currently exist just so happen to have the right skillset to form a strike team. whaddya know.

instead of isolating themselves, they enlist allies.

the first is hobie, who loans his place for a meeting and offers genuinely useful advice, (... and stays after to do some non-pg13-rated stuff with gwen b,)--- a callback to 5's distraction conversation.

others include:

gwen's dad, who at this point is the dad of all of them.

gwen a's mary janes, who already know her identity and have helped her with heroing before

peter porker. (the hot dog discourse is hilarious. look it up)

miles, margo (after seeing gwen457 my first thought was 'these two would be great friends') and miles g.

miles-8 and peter-73. two more partners.

aunt may 457 is gwen's crimefighting partner in the cartoon. she's her 'guy in the chair' so to speak.

peter and miles 18157, teenage boys who are gwen's friends and competitors at the bugle.

peter, miles and anya 17628. peter and miles, who are friends and coworkers. anya, who is gwen's girlfriend, because the gwenya vibe in msm17 was off the damn wall.

=all people who care about their gwens and see them as people.

so many people care, they just need to know how to.

they won't win a fight head-on, so making the society so inconvenient thatit starts to implode is their strategy.

miguel's hair going gray: ref to chapter 3, where gwen wonders if her death will amount to a white streak in his hair someday. not quite death, but a ton of mayhem from a ton of gwens will do the job just fine.

weird fact about earth65 technology: all the phones have minesweeper installed. i like to think gwen8's bonding with her son via beating each other's high scores.

peter b can definitely tell something's going on, but he is keeping it to himself.

gummy spider surveillance finally pays off. also it's my way of trying to justify the more omniscient pov-- technically, if you squint, gwen's observing the society goings-on through her gummies.

the brunch club joke is from the comics. not shitty at all there, for what it's worth.

i simply think that detective stacy and spider-guin deserve to kill. that is all.

so. shit's rotting.

the society as an institution is irredeemable, but it's full of good people who are misguided and confused. and realizing how misguided they've been, and how harmful their actions are (so harmful that the ghosts of their dead first loves are trying to destroy them), is triggering an internal breakdown.

web imagery: miguel's portals look like an orb weaver's, so i figure that's his approach to canon-- neat lines that are easy to arrange in a pattern. so he wants the web/multiverse to eventually resemble that concept.

in reality, it's supposed to be messy and chaotic, and being manipulated so heavily is going to yield a violent counterreaction.

gwen doesn't trigger it. she's a gwen. canon can rot because of her, but it won't break open.

she's not the wrecking ball. miles is. he's the one whose creation blew open the doors on the idea that anyone can be spider-man and his story doesn't have to follow peter's.

(... but fwiw, the 'not the only one' section also refers to the spot.)

miles and gwen, together but not together, are what's necessary to break things open.

miles tangent

as stated repeatedly before, one of my goals for this fic was making sure miles still gets his canon arc. i think it's exactly what his character needs, and i don't want to flatten him or assassinate his character and throw him away after shooting gwiles dead. so he's still getting all his atsv development, just at a much slower rate and offpage.

it goes as follows:

may: he joins the society on a trial basis for a month (excused as 'well gwen's obviously an anomaly and yet she got to join, so miguel's clearly persuadable'). his first mission's still mumbattan, but it's really just gwen showing him the ropes; the spot just fell off the face of the earth or some shit, he doesn't show up here. miles spends a month reconnecting with gwen, peni and peter b, befriending pav, hobie, margo as well.

he still learns about the captain death event, but jeff doesn't get his promotion until august, so miles just thinks that his father's death is possible if he becomes captain. thus, he doesn't panic and try to get home to protect him; the threat is distant and it isn't even clear if it'll happen at all.

june: he shoots his shot with gwen and shoots himself in the foot. he avoids the hell out of gwen and hobie, doubles down on his friendships with peni and margo, and starts getting mentored by peter b. he also starts asking about the other mileses because his existential crisis is just beginning, and triggered by gwen: he fully assumes her rejection of him is a rejection of him and not a relationship with him. miles wants to be a great spider-man, and a great spider-man should be able to save his gwen, so he thinks she thinks he's bad at it (cue the dead dad angst). that combined with miguel's reluctance to let him in has him trying to figure out what about him is 'wrong.'

(... which leads to him learning about his anomaly status, and the prowler)

august: dad gets promoted. mumbattan happens-- but it's miles interfering with singh's death just because of dad angst and with zero spot involvement.

then he's suspended. something similar to the hq confrontation, but less severe, because the spot (a nuclear threat to the multiverse) isn't involved. i imagine miguel lays into him in front of everybody, and prepares to fire him, but peter b pulls rank to get it down to an indefinite suspension.

~during his suspension he, margo and peni head to earth 42 to meet his shadow self. as in canon, miles gets his ass kicked by g. and the girl who likes him has to call in friends to help. difference is, now the girl is margo and he went to 42 with her and peni. anyway he and g work it out. and miguel decides not to let him back in over this.

also he and margo get together romantically during this time. i love flowerbyte! good ship! it's what they need and deserve!

in january, he reunites with gwen on earth-73, formally quits the society and has enough closure to fully move on.

may: the spot turns up on his doorstep at the end of the school year as miles weighs how to break some coming-of-age revelations to his parents ('i want to be an artist, not a physicist', 'i have a girlfriend from another dimension now', 'i'm spider-man').

back to the plot

so. the spot turns up after a year of blasting holes in the multiverse, finally ready to get his revenge, and the society wants to stop it. they're spider-people; they want to help.

and they receive concrete proof that they aren't when miguel refuses.

peter b. seems like he was one of miguel's first recruits. and they were, at one point, friends. i figure that's why he keeps sticking around. he has trouble letting go.

jess, in contrast, is here for the mission. she cares about keeping the multiverse safe, and has finally had enough with the society's incompetence.

everyone gathers to protect miles's world, including his mentor, his friends, and gwen, who rallies a band of her own together to do so.

differences being: peter's the one who says 'fuck the society, we need to help him' because i'm salty about him being so hands-off towards this kid he mentored so well in itsv.

and gwen does not start her band for a spider-man; she does it for herself.

but using them to help him is important. it's gwen wanting to save her friend, but it's also all the spider-gwens acting to save a fellow anomaly and affirm his existence and status as the protagonist of his own story. it's that arc of self-definition miles had that their organization now has too: 'you should have the ability to choose your own destiny and not be punished for it too'.

plus stacy's got beef with the spot so it's personal.

the one-two punch of miles and gwen breaks the society: acknowledging that miles and his world matter and deserve to exist, and seeing with their own eyes that turning gwen stacy into an object was unbelievably wrong.

whiplash!

pavitr

this was supposed to be an epilogue, but it got tacked on. forgive me the pov shift.

so. final timeline update: it's been another month. it's june now.

jess is still at it. there is something valuable about the society intervening to send people back to their dimensions before they glitch. only now, the philosophy is more search-and-rescue than policing.

most people don't have portal watches anymore, so transdimensional travel has died down, but it's still around in some capacity.

pav's still hanging out with miles and hobie, albeit not together at the same time.

rotten foundation.

aside from showing the passage of time, it's moody as hell, and it's appropriate theme-wise for pav to be in the society ruins. he needs to humble himself, and to calm down a safe distance away from everything so he can come to the right conclusion.

i like to think hobie drops by the ruins sometimes too. hence the graffiti.

hobie's beheaded his pm and taken a step into his public era as spider-punk, but remains cognizent of the work still to do.

hobie's great at keeping secrets, but dude needs to work on communicating. it's one of his most compelling flaws. if the guy just told miles 'don't join the society, they're gonna hurt you' instead of dancing around it, so much shit could've been avoided. same goes for telling gwen he's working on a bootleg portal watch for her. i figure he keeps things from pav too.

so pav's been out of the loop re: gwen since august. given how things went with him and gwen and all the shit that happened afterwards, i think they were too uncomfortable to approach each other, then things got too busy with the council on gwen's end.

and ultimately, he had to come to her. he wasn't ready to do that until now.

he wants to be friends with her again, and to get that old friend group together and see if they still work, but something else has to come first.

(sidebar: pav came to the spot fight with peter and the society defectors, not gwen. she turned up later.)

he's mad about the mumbattan incident, but he also misses her, and understands why she did what she did. time's given him the perspective he didn't have earlier.

pav's innocence and naivete are some of his most winning qualities. they are also a serious problem, because yes, you shouldn't have to be traumatized to be considered legitimate or mature, but if you never have a hard time, you're not going to be able to empathize with people who are.

ergo, during the past year, pav's screwed up big with gwen (and miles, for that matter). he fundamentally could not understand where they were coming from, and couldn't give them the advice they needed.

he gets that now.

spider-man is a coming-of-age story, and part of growing up is making mistakes, suffering losses, having a hard time. and pav has to grow up at some point, so it's going to start getting harder for him. because he doesn't know what that's like, it's gonna hit especially hard for him.

starting with gayatri. the same old story's playing out, right down to the goblin and the bridge, and pav knows how this goes. and because he spent months convinced he'd be the exception, he did nothing to prevent this from happening.

but now that canon's in pieces, he's able to reevaluate, and let go of all those impulses that cause spider-man to fuck this up: he accepts that he might not be different after all, he might make a mistake, he might not be the right person to help.

in short, he woke up from the 'spider-man gets the girl' dream.

this section is meant to show a spider-man having that revelation.

gwen's appearance: time's marched on, and she's grown up.

(hair tangent: it's longer because time passed and the undercut's complete because she's fully through the door miles first opened. the dye's purple specifically because 1) gwen's original costume wasn't pink. it was purple. as she became more popular, they changed the accent to the Girl Color, which 2)... is the girl color. little girls are socialized to assume they should like pink most. usually, they switch to favoring purple first as they get older and start to question all the trappings of girlhood. gwen, not a girl anymore but not quite an adult, who's done the same. 3) the other spider-gwens who dye their hair all do it in shades of pink. gwen's taking another step towards being something unique. 4) it's the color of carnage's tongue.)

gwen's a step ahead of spider-man. pav's grown enough to be comfortable with that. he's okay with not being as mature as her, because he knows he'll get there at his own pace. and he doesn't want trauma to be what sends him there.

you know shit's bad when pav's hair isn't perfect.

callback to chapter 3: pav doesn't know if things will be different.

he's spider-man. he has to try-- but now he knows that he needs to try something new.

so: he's here to ask gwen to help him save gayatri. closure for him, and closure for her.

gwen hugs him because she does miss him and want that reconciliation.

spider-man catches gwen stacy one last time. then he lets her go, and defers to her judgment. and doing that works.

(i like to think that pav and gayatri will work out. he's bringing her what she needs to save herself, and he's going to let her do it.)

end quote

from jason latour's radioactive spider-gwen. spoken in context by gwen 617, as she (on behalf of the council of spider-women) encourages the watchers (in-universe, and you, the reader) to let gwen 65 develop as her own person, rather than repeating someone else's arc. or existing as someone's girlfriend.

#arachnophobia fic