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ma1aikat · 10 days ago

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How would you say gwen and miles bring out the worst in each other?

alright like. i'm talking about them in general, but idk if you mean spiderverse gwiles or comics gwiles. i'll do both.

spiderverse gwiles: read this.

one addition: gwen sees miles as a replacement for her peter parker.

gwen: that's why she develops feelings for him. that's why she's protective of him. she hates herself for not being able to save and date her peter, so she's forcing herself to repeat the past with miles. and if she gets together with him, that just means she'll keep punishing herself forever when she should be moving on completely.

miles: let me get this straight: the trilogy of movies all about how miles should get to be his own person with his own story instead of being forced to imitate peter parker... are gonna end with him ending up with a girl who only wants him because he reminds her of peter parker? okay. i see. so he isn't going to be his own person in the end.

now. for comics gwiles. and really, gwiles in general:

first, to clarify: out-of-universe vs in-universe.

out-of-universe (as in, the real life shit motivating the writers pulling the characters' strings), this relationship exists because bendis has a Type of romance he prefers and he wanted to shove all of peter's leftovers onto miles instead of giving him something new. it was picked up for itsv because at the time miles didn't have many love interests to choose from and the white guys writing his story probably preferred gwen because she's who'd they want for themselves. it'll be revived and pushed because marvel editorial wants to cash in on spiderverse synergy.

in-universe (as in, the plot- and character- developments that have to be created to make this shit make sense within the world of the story), you'd have to justify it with stuff like...

on gwen's end,

gwen leaving her world forever turns her into a selfish coward. how can you honestly brand gwen as a brave superhero if she abandons her loved ones and her community, packs up and runs someplace easier when the going gets tough? how can she be a good spider-person if she abandons her responsibility to protect earth-65 to go make out with a boy?

gwen losing her girl's girl cred. miles is already in a relationship with tiana toomes. if gwen starts pursuing him while he has a girlfriend... i mean. what kind of pick me bullshit is that. and beyond that, if gwen starts centering her boyfriend instead of her relationships with other women... yuck.

the age gap problem. no matter how you spin it, there's just something uniquely pathetic about a 20something simping over a high schooler, and that's what the writers will do to her. she'll either get together with him even though he's underage, or she'll sit on the sidelines, waiting for him to be legal. regardless, gwen's going to act weirdly immature for her age to ~fix the gap~-- which will just make it creepier. at worst, it's gross. at best, it's humiliating, especially since...

gwen's closeting herself. the last and only time gwen considered a relationship with miles, it reeked of 'queer girl tries closeting herself to be accepted.' in the eight years since, gwen's creatives have tripled down on her queercoding and her lack of attraction to miles. gwen resuming that relationship with him will only reek of her backsliding into comphet. even more humiliating.

gwen is giving up on being her own person, and is settling into the patriachy. so much of gwen's story is defined by her fight to keep her agency and define herself apart from the men who want to control her. if gwen gets with miles, she'll always be secondary to him. so her entering a relationship with him means she gave up. the (hetero)patriarchy beat her into submission. the cycle continues. the cynicism is exhausting.

a relationship between miles and gwen turns gwen's story from an inspirational one about a queer female hero who fights to keep her agency from a world that wants her dead for refusing to be what it wants her to be into a tragedy about a girl who gives up on being independent and settles for centering her life around being the passive girlfriend of an important guy she's pretending to be attracted to instead. it's embarrassing, insulting and deeply sad to watch her be reduced to the girlfriend role spider-gwen was created to save her from, and have those spider-powers be twisted into making her an even shinier trophy instead of what set her free from being one at all.

.... it's worse for miles. and i don't mean 'miles has it worse.' i mean 'miles becomes a worse person.'

to be clear: gwiles isn't a relationship between equals. oou, miles is the more popular character among his writers and the fanbase, and his brand benefits from getting gwen as a trophy girlfriend. gwen's does not. all gwiles does is take gwen's world, supporting cast, personality and story away from her, and saddle her with a role that doesn't make her happy and violates the entire point of her character. miles will be a shittier person, and yeah his stories will keep needing gwen to pop up in them so he can show his trophy to the audience, but he'll still have his own stories, he'll still have his supporting cast, he'll still be the second-biggest spider-man. gwen gets to be his girlfriend, and then his wife, and then his babymaker, and you know each time the role evolves she'll shrink because men can't write wives or mothers worth shit, and they'll start favoring the gwiles offspring as soon as they can. gwen will always have it worse.

so in-universe, miles is more powerful than gwen. she might be older than him, but she can't stand up to him in any meaningful way. she can't beat him in a fight. she can't outsmart him. all their spider-friends will always take his side. the multiverse itself likes him better and is canonically trying to take her away from earth-65 to pressure her into a relationship with him. she will always, always be second to him for as long as the relationship lasts and it'll only get worse the longer they're together.

and in order to make the relationship last, miles would have to be written into the kind of guy who at best, has such a superficial interest in his girlfriend that he doesn't notice that the playing field is so uneven, or at worst, does know and is taking advantage of that power dynamic--- and regardless, he doesn't care that it's affecting her negatively because it benefits him.

you know. That Kind Of Guy.

what does that mean?

miles chasing after gwen signals that he's regressing in his sense of individuality. after years of progress in becoming his own character with his own unique supporting cast (including love interests) miles... is going back to chasing peter parker's leftovers? okay. i see.

miles is starting to reprioritize courting a white audience. miles and gwen are in assimilation narratives. miles has only recently begun doubling down on seeking black mentors and allies (specifically black women), and is finally starting to focus on his community instead of pleasing the entire city. if miles gets with gwen, all that progress goes down the drain and he's right back to seeking approval from white people instead of his own community.

miles's romantic priorities are getting shallow again. miles puts gwen on a pedestal. he's mostly into her because he thinks she's hot and that being with her makes him seem impressive. there is no deeper connection. in recent years he's grown out of this kind of behavior thanks to his relationship with tiana toomes. so if miles moves from tiana to gwen (especially if he leaves tiana for gwen)... look, you can't spin it any other way: if miles leaves a multi-year relationship with a black girl who's his equal and calls him on his shit for an infatuation with a white girl he barely knows, only wants as a trophy, and who can't stand up to him, he's regressing into a shallow, immature guy who sees women as objects. like, oh, okay, so you do want that. gross.

miles not helping gwen get her world back turns him into an opportunistic asshole. logically, if miles morales, who lost his own home world, found out that gwen couldn't go back to hers-- and unlike him, none of the people she loves are with her here and she is completely alone-- he should respond with "that's fucked up, i'll help you get home." but in order for them to stay together, he would have to respond with "that's fucked up... wanna make out about it?" --- so, he'd become the kind of guy who'd use a girl's vulnerability and isolation to reel her into a relationship with him. gross!

the homophobia problem. given gwen's overwhelming queercoding and how gwiles is subtextually linked to the concept of gwen closeting herself for acceptance, if they stay together, miles would become That Kind Of Guy who pressures his queer girlfriend into staying in the closet and playing out a heterosexual relationship arrangement she's fundamentally uncomfortable with so he can be with her. gross.

not to mention earth-8. gwen doesn't want kids. miles does. on earth-8, they have children. and earth-8 gwen is supposedly a future version of gwen-65. do the math: something had to happen to get gwen to agree to stay pregnant, and it probably wasn't good. given that miles is the one who wants the family, has more power in the relationship, and is a shittier person because of said relationship, it was probably miles who wore her down until she agreed. yep. That Kind Of Guy.

miles morales, whose character is meant to open the door for different marginalized characters getting their own narratives that represent and center them and their experiences... would become complicit in the destruction of gwen's. if not an outright participant. and he'd be turning into this hypocrite for the great, noble reason of "i want to force the girl i like to stay with me forever."

how can you honestly brand miles as a hero if he does this shit to a girl he claims to care about?

a relationship between miles and gwen turns miles's story from an inspirational one about an afrolatino boy who finds his confidence and comes into his own by embracing his community into... another tragedy. but because he keeps his agency, he plays a different role in it: the more he's with her, the worse he feels about himself and the more he turns to her for validation she can't give him, which leads him to do shittier and shittier things to her to keep her around. the cycle continues. he's not a victim, because he has too much agency. he's the bad guy. the longer the wheel spins, the worse he'll get, because he'll be even more responsible for turning it. he goes from being the hero protagonist to being the villain that atsv argues he was intended to be.

in this dynamic, miles is that guy playing dumb about gender dynamics when it suits him because he knows it'll get him out of any responsibilities for doing better. miles's role is microcosmic of how boys are initiated into patriarchy: yeah, you may not have chosen this system, but after a certain point, you figure out it's here to give you what you want (... and that you can stop it by telling it you don't want it anymore). after that point, any decision to let that wheel keep spinning (even if you never start spinning it yourself) so it can give you what you want means you are culpable in the harm it inflicts. you are part of the problem. there's no way to not have blood on your hands.

if gwen's story is about struggling to keep her autonomy in the face of heteropatriarchy-- which is being taken from her for miles's gain-- and miles is written into the kind of person who perpetuates those systems to keep her with him (which is the only way they'd stay together), then that means miles is the villain of gwen's story.

at this point, given that she's about to lose her world (and we all know spiderverse synergy aka gwiles is why) and especially if gwiles gets any further... miles is the antagonist. he's the force in the way of gwen achieving the goal of her story. she has to sneak around him, escape him, defeat him, or persuade him to get out of the way (= to refuse to be with her and help her get her world back) if she's going to get a happy ending.

and as long as the ship is framed positively, we know the story's rigged for her to lose, because miles is the only one who can change it, and he'll never acknowledge that he's making a mistake or needs to shape up if the narrative tells him what he's doing is right.

(especially since all their friends are going to be written to cheer this awful relationship on. peter parker is going to pressure another gwen stacy into a demeaning tragic narrative so he truly learned nothing. all the spider-women are going to become the kind of women who do nothing as one of their own is treated badly by a guy in their friend group. spider-punk is going to be written into That Kind Of Leftist Guy who talks a big game about equality and revolution but does nothing to help the women in his life when they're being mistreated by his bros. this ship ruins everybody.)

there's even a fucked-up symmetry to it: gwen's story starts with peter-65 and ends with miles, and in the end the only fundamental difference between them is that this time, the Nice Guy the audience is predisposed to root for succeeds at swallowing gwen whole, and we're expected to cheer when he does it because the story is on his side.

i mean. it's a compelling tragedy. in another circumstance i'd eat that shit up.

but their stories aren't supposed to be tragedies. gwen and miles are supposed to break out of the systems rigged against them instead of giving in and reinforcing them. they're supposed to be heroes and their stories are meant to inspire little kids. if they get together it all falls apart, yet it'll be framed like something good, romantic and happy. they both deserve a lot better than this.

so i'd rather we just... not.

#spider gwen salt #gwen stacy #spiderverse salt

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