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rappaccini · 4 months

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something more notes.

only one masterpost this time, because this thing isn't nearly as dense as arachnophobia.

first of all, this is a companion fic to arachnophobia.

everything that happens here is canon to that story, and everything that happens there is canon to this. each chapter roughly syncs up between fics as well (arachnophobia 1 takes place at the same time as something more 1, etc).

the canon divergence can largely be summed up as 'gwen isn't into miles; she gets her own arc that centers her and not her relationship with him' and 'miles's arc is extended over a year to give him time to befriend more characters and dwell on certain plot beats.' if you want the month-by-month breakdown of where his atsv elements are rearranged, it's here, under the 'miles tangent' section.

chapter 1

margo goes to the peter parker institute of science and technology in the comics. (it's not clear if it's a high school or university)

spider-byte is her alter ego, who fights crime and helps people in virtual reality.

"her parents world" -- in atsv, margo always refers to her dimension as her 'parents' dimension' -- i try to do that here.

in margo's comics, she's introduced hunting down an identity thief. her vigilantism is more small-scale and mundane, being online.

so, things like password recovery, hacking, identity recovery, getting rid of bot farms. not really combat based.

the cyber crimes investigation is a police force in margo's comics. we so incognito is on a poster on movie margo's wall; it's either an organization or a piece of pop culture.

atsv-margo lost a captain of her own. she's one of the figures in that canon event montage. no clue who it is though so i simply made the rest up. (makes you wonder: how exactly does someone die in a virtual world?)

margo's rootkit will come back.

margo's tiger: tiny, tiny ref to mj's 'face it, tiger' line.

i spent a lot of time thinking about how a world where people spend all their time online works. people work and go to school at home, they receive all their purchases by delivery, and odds are, family dinners aren't really a thing, at least for the kesses.

major motif for this fic: margo feeling unentitled to her own feelings, both as a side character in a story she isn't allowed to have a major role in, and as a girl who's always interacting with people through a screen.

i'm not sure when earth-22191 is meant to be. presumably in the future, further ahead than miguel. my guess was 22nd or 23rd century.

margo sees miguel as a father figure.

miguel recruited margo for her coding skills in atsv. there's more to it than that in this fic.

being invited: miguel finally gets margo what she wanted from the organizations in her own world. she is seen, valued, and included.

ultimately, margo joins the ss because she wants to find people who care about her. all it would have taken to stop her was her parents being concerned.

"won the jackpot" ... tiny tiny ref to "face it tiger, line" x2.

according to atsv, margo's already in the ss by the time gwen joins.

web-slinger and spiders-man were featured with margo in vault of spiders, the comic where she debuts.

margosoft is in atsv-- it's on a few of the ss screens. presumably the software the watches, portal tech and go home machine operate on was designed by her.

'blow up the building'-- tiny detail on one of margo's screens. she's not just operating the go home machine; she's sending orders to members in the field.

margo wears glasses in this fic. she's blasting blue light into her eyeballs at point blank range 16 hours a day. that eyesight's fucked.

miguel stops paying attention to margo after he's gotten his os out of her, and once he knows he can trust her to follow orders. it actually has nothing to do with gwen's arrival, but margo doesn't know that.

there's no info on gwen-22191. made it up for this fic. presumably she dies young, as usual. and she's peter's science whiz girlfriend, as usual.

peter-22191 has no details about his life, apart from him being dead by the time margo's going to the school named after him. being an arachnologist was just a spider reference.

mary jane watson-22191 is a dead end instead of dead because she's not dead; she's margo.

i figured margo would probably be very protective of her little workspace so she does not like other people touching it.

margo's first impulse being to reach out to and befriend gwen is going to come back later.

gwen looking up her dead selves is expanded on in arachnophobia; this is just margo's side of that event. margo avoids gwen because 1) it understandably freaks her out.

2) she has very low self esteem and has picked up on how the society has put gwen on a pedestal; she assumes (wrongly) that gwen wouldn't want anything to do with her.

3) she's jealous. i think the margo-gwen jealousy onion is fascinating, and everyone does it a disservice by reducing it to ~two girls fighting over a boy~ or overcorrects by insisting they be ~two girls being bffs because they're two girls~.

no. let's peel this thing: margo and gwen both want what the other has, and that tension would've existed even without a boy in the picture. we'll go more into gwen's side later, but for now--

a) margo wants functional parental figures, and she views being discarded by miguel and ignored by jess, right as they give gwen special attention, as them choosing gwen over her.

b) margo joined the society to feel included, and everyone ignores her and lines up around the block to see gwen.

c) margo's uniqueness in the society is ignored. gwen's is celebrated. no one cares that there's only one spider-byte. everyone is invested in the one spider-gwen.

d) margo comes to hq to get away from a shitty home life and a dimension she feels like she doesn't belong in, but she hasn't actually physically left earth-22191. the society let gwen stay at hq full-time. margo would kill for that.

e) margo believes society propaganda about suffering being what makes you a better hero. there's no way she wouldn't look at gwen abandoning her world and her responsibilities as a moral failing, and being bitter that gwen is being 'rewarded' for it with special treatment.

f) margo wants to be loved by spider-man. gwen is the famous dead girlfriend on a pedestal. the same attention that gets gwen killed and makes her miserable would make margo happy, and she's bothered by how gwen takes it for granted.

margo is a teenage girl with low self esteem. she isn't considering that the attention and special treatment gwen's getting isn't a good thing, or that everyone would have ignored margo anyway. that's still to come.

on margo being a nobody: she's not, but she doesn't know it yet.

we end where we started: on margo, alone, feeling like her emotions about the way she's being treated and her desire to connect with people isn't valid.

chapter 2

i'm guessing the society started a little after itsv, so by the time gwen joins, it's been just under a year since it was founded, and by the time miles arrives, it's been a year and a few months.

one of margo's skills is creating digital doppelgangers of herself to outsource her work and be more efficient.

margo's fully tuned out. she has the work figured out and she knows no one's paying attention to her, so she's numbing herself to the situation by distracting herself.

she's watching streamers and reactors as ways to pantomime human interaction.

great, okay, fine comes from arachnophobia chapter 2. a motif that worked here too.

like in chapter 1, margo joined the society to lash out at her parents and test if they'd care. they still don't.

the web. play on world wide web and web of life and destiny.

thought i'd expand on how the spider-society has a hierarchy. yes, elite spider-people are members, but there's another rung up that ladder, and that's miguel and his inner circle-- the best of the best, who actually make the decisions. if the ss is obsessed with preserving canon, it follows that the people whose lives check off the most canon boxes are higher up on the totem pole.

so margo's at the bottom.

margo isn't the only one of her kind at the society. you'll know who they are by the end of this chapter.

like gwen, margo's an outlier in the society. unlike gwen, nobody cares about finding a place to make her fit. they've already dismissed her as only good for grunt work.

"pushing buttons and making vague gestures of support" -- what i'm worried the sv movies will make of margo. also, what the fandom thinks of margo.

margo's an avatar, yet she can interact physically with objects in hq. using miguel's holosuit as a reason why-- her avatar's made of the same stuff.

spinneret and the spider-women from 2301, 8545, 42124 and 12041 are all mj variants. they can tell she's one of them, even if they don't know what it means yet.

jessica's motives get a big exploration in arachnophobia 4, but the gist is: she decided to put herself over solidarity with her fellow jessica variants so she could get a high rank in the society. she's the only jessica and the only spider-woman, who matters. ignoring margo is an intentional choice on her part.

miguel dismissed margo once he was through using her. at least he's consistent. and hey, if he doesn't pay attention to you, he can't hurl verbal abuse at you.

look you can't tell me there wasn't at least one time where peter b accidentally handed margo the baby on autopilot, and margo accidentally accepted, and both forgot for a split second that margo can't actually hold mayday so they ended up technically dropping her.

taking that tiny moment of margo being annoyed at miles walking into her and pumping it full of air? hell yeah i am.

first moment of true canon divergence reached: miles joins the spider-society formally instead of inviting himself there.

the moment of ~mysterious connection~ between miles and margo set my brain on fire. this fic exists largely because i just wanna tinfoil about what the hell that is.

margo's constantly on the society computers, overseeing the anomalies. she has to know miles is one. which means she's also complicit in the big lie about him.

margo has no peripheral vision in a vr headset.

miles is the first person who can actually capture margo's full attention because of that connection. she wants to be fully engaged by and vulnerable with him.

spider-byte is a pun on spider bite. great name!

miles likes smart girls: thinking gwen was a fellow gifted kid helped him develop his crush on her. it'll draw him to margo too.

overall in this fic i'm trying to balance margo's actual behavior at home with how she presents her avatar. since she spends all her time alone online, this girl's gonna be awkward.

margo has no spider-powers. the avatar has all her abilities.

you can't tell me miles's lightning palms wouldn't absolutely fuck margo's gear up. or that she wouldn't be pissed about it.

when margo's moving so fast she spits out other versions of herself, that's called an echo trail.

i simply think it's relevant that miles has the power to turn invisible, and margo's invisible whether she likes it or not.

margo's trying to warn miles that miguel and the society aren't great company.

remember, miles wanted to join the ss and thought the place was awesome at first. i'm just taking that beat and expanding it since his arc's getting stretched from a few days to a few months. therefore, he's gonna drink the society kool aid.

... it must take gwen and hobie fucking forever to put those shoes on, though.

it's a running joke in this fic that people keep fucking with margo's hq workstation.

there's concept art floating around of miles watching titanic and crying. referenced that here because i think it's funny.

one of the most important things about miles as a character is that he's all about inclusion. thematically, and in terms of personality: if he sees somebody being left out, he wants to bring them in and make them feel like they belong.

it's also a compelling flaw: he wants to be included. miles doesn't just want to be a good spider-man. he wants to be the best. that meant wanting to join the society. that'll mean, if he did get to join, wanting to be one of its leaders.

background note: in this fic, the ss does have mileses in it. they're just minor members who have little sway and are typically looked down upon.

had to bring up the 'is miles spider-man' debate. the ss is an allegory for society as much as it is for the spider-man canonmakers and fandom. they'd get into discourse about it.

in arachnophobia, miguel lets miles in because gwen kept asking him to. more on that there.

the source of gwen's jealousy's going to get a focus later.

at least in arachnophobia, gwen's comphetting her way through her miles crush.

"no one notices because there aren't many girls in the society" -- sorry! getting salty! you can tell gwen's written by dudes in these movies.

this fic is a metatext on how margo's treated by canon and fandom. she knows she's the disposable second girl in the love triangle who'll be expected by the fans (... and possibly written by the writers) to inexplicably be the supportive bestie who wingmans her crush into getting with another girl.

gwen and hobie. margo knows about them. more to come on that.

detailed earth-8 hate can be found here under "earth-8 notes"

margo having a courtside seat to this drama means she can be objective about it: the earth-8 speed date is creepy, cringy and gross. and gwiles as a couple are not the fairy tale ending everyone wants them to be.

salt! of course a bunch of white nerdy guys think the best canon subversion for spider-gwen is swapping out what guy she belongs to.

salt! it's not a coincidence that the white nerdy guys writing these movies (and the comic the gwiles romance is based on) gave miles a white girlfriend, or made their kids (their daughter specifically; their son's just blue-eyed miles) racially ambiguous. when writers create bad romances, its often because they force the character they identify with to pair off with the one they're most attracted to.

settler and sellout: what gwen and miles-8 are.

the unbreakup is much more detailed in arachnophobia ch 2.

the society were listening.

a hill i intend to die on: margo is an mj variant.

chapter 3

characters in alternate comics worlds tend to appear in cohorts. peter, gwen and mj are usually always a set, as are miles and ganke.

but there are exceptions: on earth-65a, flash thompson is gwen's high school gym teacher instead of her classmate, for instance.

and on earth-22191, margo is 200-ish years behind all her friends.

margo-is-an-mj is just a headcanon (for now 🤞), so knowing her peter parker is definitely dead led to a bit of extrapolation: if margo's totally alone in her world, then the rest of the empire state gang are probably gone too.

being left to one's devices. wordplay is fun.

in an all-online world i figure memorials are probably interactive. like facebook pages full of messages, videos and photos.

fic-gwen-22191 died in the 80s (her birthyear is the year of her first appearance, 1965. add 19 years to get to her death age), so she would be gone before that would have been possible. therefore, she doesn't get one. (+another gwen who's totally in the shadow of her boyfriend.)

in a world where everyone interacts via avatars, i figure facetune/image manipulation is the norm. nobody shows you their actual, unmanipulated face until you're very close friends.

so margo had a lot of culture shock at the society. being around masked people would've felt more normal than seeing all those faces.

and therefore, seeing the gang in photos pre-image manipulation, around the 1980s, would have a strong effect on margo. in a way, she is getting to see her friends' faces.

people typically aren't gorgeous in their natural states. they look better that way, when they're real.

ai: i figure margo's world is so deeply entrenched in tech that it's taken over entertainment. there aren't any career actors or musicians anymore; you just prompt an ai to give you what you want.

therefore, an 80s sitcom starring margo and her dead friends. it's very macabre.

the silver spoon is where the 616 empire state gang hung out during the college years in the late 60s.

i figure margo's probably programmed herself a few artificial boyfriends and friends over the years. if she's that talented at coding and she's that lonely, she would.

margo isn't thrilled about going to college because in her world, it just means staying at home even longer.

mj and harry both have dysfunctional families.

if mj and peter parker are such a universal pairing, margo would wonder if she and her peter would've fallen in love.

... and if she and her gwen would've fought over him. it's wild that the mj-peter-gwen love triangle was two best friends who are technically dating the same guy and competing for him. it is WILD that peter and mj get together because she swoops in on her best friend's boyfriend right after she dies.

"painting our nails and sharing secrets" will come back.

margo's the hero of her world. she wouldn't assume peter's the spider; she'd assume she still would be.

margo trying to make a connection in her world and failing was important to include.

in a world where everyone's online, the city's probably very quiet.

the fact about stars is true.

miles morales is an anime fan. there's no way he wouldn't try to get peni to watch it with him.

and there's no way peni wouldn't have opinions about it.

real friends aren't people you can turn off or reprogram when they annoy you. getting to know them takes effort, which is why the connections matter. margo's starting to learn that.

margo probably gets no sleep. that girl's chugging monster like it's water and making energy drink jungle juice in her spare time.

margo would probably be a gamer. thought it'd be fun if she and peni swapped recs. (the one they're talking about is hatoful boyfriend. the doctor route is indeed batshit crazy.)

i think peni and margo would be great friends. i wanted to give them that here.

also: miles hanging out with peni and margo is a ripple effect from arachnophobia-- i hate that the writers made ambiguously queer girls' girl gwen into someone who only interacts positively with men and has only male friends. the bare minimum would've been giving miles a female friend group to balance it out. so for these fics, that's what i did.

post-unbreakup miles is not taking it well. there's one more big event between it and this scene between margo, peni and miles that'll be mentioned later.

as a reminder, this is a canon divergent au where gwen and miles do not get together, and gwen gets an arc on par with miles's. that's in arachnophobia.

and since this is a companion to arachnophobia, a lot of character and plot beats rhyme-- like miles and gwen both interacting with their earth-8 selves. in miles's case, he admires him and wants to emulate him.

because he views gwen's rejection of him as a sign that she thinks he's an incompetent hero who can't save her, he's trying to overcompensate by showing everyone how great a spider-man he is. it's wearing him down.

ss as an allegory for the writers and the fandom: miles getting gwen as his girlfriend makes him more impressive to them because she's the shiniest, most conventionally-attractive, most unattainable love interest. if he can't land her, they'll look down on him.

(which is why earth-8 miles is both gross and fascinating: literally, when the writers created their ideal miles, they made him joined at the hip with his gwen.)

kid arachnid, spy d and spin are all alternate names miles has had in continuities where he and peter are heroes together.

the spider-society only legitimizes miles-8, the palatable one who sold out his authenticity for greater appeal and uses gwen as a symbol of that.

there's no way margo doesn't have a folder of security footage highlights featuring the cringiest spider-person moments.

jess in the comics eats butter to cope with pregnancy cravings

hobie's facial hair: ref to earlier concept art of him. it did not look good.

hobie's doing disruption in plain sight: intentionally covering up security cameras while pretending it's just vandalism.

re: miles and hobie. people forget that miles spends all of atsv hating on the guy (he only changes his mind when hobie helps him escape). extending that out = miles wasn't exactly friendly with him for that month before the earth-8 blowup. and there's no way a 15yo boy is gonna be nice to the guy he thinks his crush rejected him for. there's a bit more that happened there, but that'll be discussed later.

"betrayal" -- salt about the fandom's take that gwen and hobie having a relationship would somehow make them traitors to miles. what betrayal? she was never miles's girlfriend (if anything she friendzoned him) and hobie never met the guy. they don't owe him shit!

re: miles's feelings. one of the biggest issues with atsv is it wants so badly to critique the spiderman canon without acknowledging that it is a part of that canon and not the exception to it. miles is spider-man, a superhero who takes after that old western storytelling tradition of 'super special male protagonist whose actions and desires are more important than everyone else's.' if he really wants to be different, we have to unpack that idea too.

so, miles, like miguel/peter b/jess/the elite ss members, thinks that his feelings are inherently more important than everyone else's-- important enough to somehow convince gwen, who hasn't seen or spoken to him in 1.5 years, to put her entire life on hold and never move on with anyone else. (... yes it's salt at the writers. she would've moved on.)

he's also a 15yo boy. so he woulda thought that regardless.

another plus of miles hanging out with girls: they can help him understand how bullshit the gwen stacy hero complex is (no girl would want to fall off a bridge so her bf can look cool saving her) and how creepy being tied across dimensions is.

gwen-65 canonically hates babies and has no maternal instinct. motherhood is something she isn't interested in and would never choose. makes the 'perfect future' where she has a nuclear family with miles all the more questionable. it's not HER perfect future, it's his.

it also makes comics-gwen's reaction to it (confusion, then immediate revulsion) make sense. the best possible future for her and miles is one that would make her miserable so of course she runs for the hills.

comics-miles, though, gets most of what he wanted out of it, so naturally, he keeps a torch lit for a while.

examining that here: fic-miles can kind of tell that something about earth-8 is off, but since that future still looks on the surface like everything he thinks he wants (respect and renown from his public and his peers, a team of heroes to work with, kids someday, and a romantic partner who is a fellow superhero), he's clinging to it.

margo regresses to tabsurfing to pull her attention away from this conversation because it's too emotionally draining.

and miles notices because it's unusual for her to do that with him.

i'm sorry! i hate gwiles! gotta point out all the fucking problems with it! shit like, they genuinely don't know anything about each other.

one of the reasons i want mj variant margo so bad is the thematic relevance it would have. one would think that the logical next step in a trilogy of movies all about the importance of a black spider-man would be including a black mj.

miles and miguel are alike in a lot of ways. including how they both think they're better than their own canons and want to be the exception to it (in order to obtain or keep a gwen/gabi).

miles is mostly offscreen in arachnophobia, so his arc is mostly implied. since margo spends most of her time with him, this was a chance to touch on it: he needs to understand that he isn't the exception.

22191 worldbuilding: one would think in an all-online world that social interactions can be archived. ergo, margo can watch her parents chatlogs and social media posts like they're home movies.

and in an all-online world, you meet and date online too. meeting up in person is probably like moving in together, if not synonymous.

and as is often the case... sometimes, the person you think you're meant to be with turns out to be someone else when you spend more time with them and your mental picture of them has to reconcile with the real thing.

and sometimes it's too painful to admit that, so people don't, and they keep clinging to their idea of the person even as it gets further from the truth.

miles and gwen are this in a nutshell. the most positive i can be about sv gwiles is that they seem like they would've made great high school sweethearts post-itsv. if they'd stayed in contact, they would've paired up, stayed together for most of high school (... to me, that 17 month timeskip feels like the amount of time they'd have lasted), and eventually drifted back into friendship.

but they didn't. they spent a year and a half with zero contact, romanticizing the idea of each other. now that idea is stronger than the connection they made originally because they don't know each other at all. if they get together now, they'll just be chasing romances they made up in their heads, and the longer they stick together the more unfulfilling, stagnating and ultimately toxic that dynamic will become.

add that to miles's spider-man complex: he thinks of himself as a good person, and is mistaking that for being good for gwen. those things are different.

margo gets this. she is a product of that kind of relationship.

margo making ai boyfriends is a parallel to miles sketching gwen: it's art, but it's also not the real thing.

margo's ai sitcom of her dead friends is what solidified that for her.

miles has further to go before he gets it. his feelings for gwen are so wrapped up in a need for belonging and validation that he has to satisfy that first before he moves on.

we arrive at the part where margo's supposed to give that motivational speech that gets gwiles together.

this is a meta text, and margo's role in the story, at least as of atsv, is 'disposable second corner of the love triangle.' the expected outcome for her character is that she'll do something selfless to make gwiles get together, step out of the way for them and/or conveniently no longer be competition.

if the sv movies really want to break canon, then they should do the opposite. let the hero and his designated girlfriend decide to stay friends, and make margo the endgame love interest instead.

taking shots at the fandom for reinforcing the idea that margo's a supportive bestie, ~sister-coded~, a matchmaker, the butt of some joke about miles wasting his time before he pairs off with the fandom-preferred girl, or the disposable black love interest. (... and possibly firing off a warning shot at btsv if that's what they do with her)

discovering she's an mj made margo realize she isn't a nobody and gave her the confidence to demand better treatment. she might not be miles's mj, but she still is one, and she's going to claim all the things mj is entitled to.

so she uses some of that mj fire and stands up for herself. no, she's not going to help him make nice with gwen, and she's making it clear that she's a contender for his feelings.

miles can clearly tell that margo likes him. so if in btsv he treats her like that disposable friend, keeps flirting with her, and gets with gwen anyway? dick move.

dick move here too. he isn't maliciously playing with her feelings, but he is hanging out with a girl he knows is into him (and doesn't think will stand up to him about it) to make himself feel good.

"don't be mean" = subconscious little women ref.

because it IS mean. the mj-spider-man-gwen love triangle is, when not written well, such a shitty treatment of these girls.

margo's given miles a lot to think about. more on that soon.

"knowing it's not supposed to count, wanting it to, and doing it anyway" will come back too.

chapter 4

'abyss' is a term that comes up a lot in arachnophobia. thought i'd add it somewhere in this fic

so's 'i'm you and you're me'

margo getting on with her life and focusing on her own situation will pop up again soon.

this chapter concerns why margo's status as an mj is so controversial and why even her own alternate selves can't wrap their minds around it.

for better or worse, margo's more visible now. which means she's visible enough for miguel to get angry at her.

re: jess. one of the biggest things about her canon characterization is her lack of solidarity. she didn't protect gwen, she didn't protect miles. she wouldn't protect margo. at least in these fics, jessica drew-404 cares so much about the mission that she'd throw anyone under the bus for it, and she believes as long as she personally gets a comfy spot at the top of the hierarchy, she doesn't mind what happens to anyone else.

also given timeline creep, jess had her baby by now.

the anomaly that's dimension-jumping will come back.

margo's home is minimalist and full of soft things and dull colors because for people who are constantly stimulated by the internet, they'd probably want somewhere calming to escape to. gotta extrapolate those white bedroom walls somehow.

touch as a motif pops up again here.

peter having photos of gwen in his house is first mentioned in arachnophobia.

peter parker gives me overworked ta vibes, and if mj's based on raimi mj, then she would've been a model/actress for a while.

og 616 gwen stacy was a football fan.

peter b recognizing his wife in margo is what made him stick up for, and bend the rules for her.

had to use that hologram effect of the portal watch for something. why not margo making house calls?

... something tells me margo makes ai art. and miles has opinions about it.

margo recording her conversations for later comes back at the end of this chapter.

mj facts: she was originally intended to be a running joke about 'the girl next door peter's aunt keeps trying to hook him up with' before she became The Love Interest, so mj has a history of knowing about peter but being unacknowledged by him until college. i've always really liked this. important people creep up on you.

'she's not the only one'-- another arachnophobia motif

in this chapter, we need to demolish the gwen jealousy. best way to do that is 1) let margo have a big jealous rant, get those feelings out, and

2) have the source refute that idea and tell her that the situation's more complicated: gwen isn't some superior girl waving her boyfriend in mj's face; they were best friends who respected each other even when they liked the same guy, and while gwen and peter were together, mj got on with her life. the ~catty jealousy~ was a misunderstanding of the situation, usually by the men reading and writing those comics who like watching two hot girls fight over their self-insert.

since the society's based on those guys, it follows that margo would learn about the love triangle in that context, and her insecurities would be inflamed by it.

(i'm not thrilled about mj chastising margo. but if a girl starts talking shit about your dead best friend, you're gonna shut her up.)

'love's not a competition' comes back in 5.

'in name only' -- margo isn't. the more you examine her character and where she appears in the sv narrative, the more in common with mj you find.

it's important to note that the mjs aren't rejecting margo out of malice, like miguel is. they're just so set in their perceptions of themselves that it's hard to imagine something different-- much like how margo was in denial about being an mj at all.

(sidebar: or like how it took gwen months to realize gayatri's a gwen variant)

in these fics, meeting your alt-self tends to be a good experience. that's you, after all. of course they're going to instantly empathize and care about each other. but there are going to be bumps in the road.

also. fandom salt! at the people who won't let a certain black spider-man character be called by that title, and keep insisting, sometimes with good but misguided intentions, sometimes knowing damn well what they're saying, that they should ~be their own person.~ you know who i'm talking about.

miles babysitting mayday comes up in arachnophobia. fun to see it here.

bringing back margo's eavesdropping habit.

if miles is at the society, he's gonna ask at some point why his universe is 1610b. which means he's gotta learn about a.

new holes in the multiverse: coming back later.

btsv is absolutely going to do a metacommentary on how shitty it was to destroy 1610a to force miles into 616a. thought i'd incorporate that here: miles is starting to catch on that nobody wants him to have his own world, and now that he knows that the last miles who did lost his, he's getting paranoid.

and peter b, while well-intentioned in wanting to look after him and promising him a place in 616, doesn't get it.

atsv salt: makes no sense to me that peter b would be so hands-off when he had such a great bond with miles in itsv. part of the reason for having him join the ss was so they could reestablish that mentorship.

including miles dropping into peter's dimension when he needs space, like he does here.

peter and mj are 100% talking about miles and margo. and putting it together that they aren't giving them the best advice.

the captain event: in this fic, miles's father is promoted a few months later than normal, and his death event is even further ahead (and not calculated yet). this was so he wouldn't flip his shit and ditch the ss before he could explore it.

the earlier mention of margo breaking her own distancing rule to help miles figure out when he'd die referred to this. she's been there too, she's a kind person, and she cares about him. she would.

now, after months of drinking society kool-aid, running himself ragged trying to prove himself, slowly realizing he'll never belong, and now learning that one of the deaths he's most afraid of is on the horizon (but not imminent), miles is cracking up. hence, wearing his spider-suit all the time, fighting with his dad to get him to quit. ignoring that he's grounded to keep spider-manning.

another divergence: pav's captain event is pushed back too. you'll see why.

... look if miles finds out an alt-him has a baby sister, he'll definitely put his foot in his mouth trying to figure out if he's gonna get one too.

mj and peter b put together what they were doing wrong. "i feel it" is both an apology and an acknowledgment of what margo's looking for.

margo not being physically present in any of her interactions with miles, and the disconnect that causes, comes back at the end of this chapter. the lack of reaction to the humidity is just setting that up.

fun fact: back to the future was originally meant to star eric stultz. michael j fox replaced him.

the 1610 to 616 salt was also a way to help margo put together that she wouldn't mind sharing a world with someone.

however, she still believes the ss doctrine about being miserable making you a better hero.

margo doesn't look at the love triangle as a competition anymore, so she's able to talk about gwen without getting mad.

'doing both' -- motif from atsv. and what all the society mjs are in fact doing-- being love interests AND heroes.

an aside, to list all the things margo kess has in common with mj watson.

both are spunky young women from dysfunctional families who badly want affection and a functional, loving home.

both are introduced in the narrative after spider-man has already formed a romantic attachment with gwen stacy, and though they have instant chemistry with spider-man, he prioritizes gwen over her.

both are pitted against gwen stacy over spider-man's affection. sigh.

both already know spider-man's secret identity (... and in margo's case, that miles is an anomaly) when they meet him. and neither acknowledges this information for a long time.

both have a love of fashion and visual aesthetics-- mj's a model; margo's constantly changing her hair and makeup.

both keep spider-man's secrets and intimately understand his struggles in a way nobody else does.

both have the capacity to become superheroes in their own right.

both aren't at a risk of being fridged.

(beyond here's all relevant to the fic only.)

both take a while to be noticed by spider-man. in mj's case she was an invisible neighbor for years. in margo's, she's a friend who isn't taken seriously as a romantic option for months.

both are up front about having feelings for spider-man.

both get on with their lives while they wait. mj sees other people, margo hangs out with peni and tries reaching out to the mjs.

gwen ultimately brings them together. for mj, it's her death. for margo... it'll be something else.

it's a rocky road to getting together, but at the end of the day, spider-man always comes back to them, and they end up together.

thank you. back to 4:

anyway. it's insane to me how textbook an mj variant margo is.

which makes you wonder: why doesn't anyone talk about this? i'm absolutely not the first person to come up with this idea (i got it from a convo with a friend), but it's very rare to see anyone consider it.

rhetorical question. look, if margo were a white girl with red hair, or even just a white girl, the margo's-an-mj theories would be a lot more popular and so would interest in her character.

the disconnect is that margo's black. simple as that. this is a meta fic. had to bring that up. the ss is a stand-in for the writers, audience and fandom, so all the hangups they have will be reflected in the society.

if spider-byte's an avatar that can look like anything, then margo made her recognizably black for a reason. it is important to margo that the people of her world know their spider-hero is a black girl.

it's important for the people watching these movies to know that mj can be a black girl too.

miles and margo are in the same boat. both of them are their canon's incarnation of an iconic character in the spider-man story, but both are disrespected and ignored by both writers and fandom because they're black.

therefore, margo's the person who can help miles piece this together.

which is where the meta comes in: yes, it matters that margo has her own world and her own identity as byte... but that world and identity aren't particularly respected. it would be very easy for her to fall into obscurity and vanish, which is often the fate of marginalized characters with original stories; they get an initial push, then fall away and vanish.

spider-man and mj are indisputably vital characters to the spider-man canon. they'll always exist, and always be retold and reinterpreted in new stories. they have gravity and reach. their stories are agreed upon by EVERYONE as important.

and if the story's important, then anyone should be able to take part in it. that is why a black spider-man matters.

mj, in spider-man stories, is typically the pinnacle of love and desirability. she's not just a love interest; she's the love interest. she's the girl the hero ends up with who's so irreplaceable and beloved by the writers and fandom that they keep being drawn to each other whenever the story's retold. when you gatekeep what mj's allowed to look like, you are telling people that only one specific kind of person is worthy of love. that's why a black mj matters.

it's also why a romance between a black spider-man and a black mj would be so groundbreaking. (... more groundbreaking than the black spider-man sticking with a white gwen stacy he barely knows and puts on a pedestal.)

sidebar: diverging from sv canon here to change the ss's perception of miles. it was important that he be able to interact with other mileses, so they had to be in the ss, but also to acknowledge that even though miles-1610b was blocked from entry because of 42, they're all dealing with the same shit.

... even miles-8. even the ~perfect future~ for miles is one where he can't keep his own world and has to end up on earth-8, sharing it with gwen. she's definitely not his equal there, but he still has to have her (aka proximity to a white person) to have the status.

sidebar over. that staticky feeling is miles's hand zapping margo's with a bit of bioelectricity. he's trying to hold her hand, but she doesn't pick up on it.

anyway, because of this conversation with margo, about the importance of claiming these legacy titles in spite of who's gatekeeping them, miles is ready to ditch the society.

he's just got one more hangup: he's worried that on his own, he won't be able to help his father and gwen, people he cares about, from dying.

which margo helps him with as well: the society won't help, so you might as well do it yourself.

which brings us to pav. when miles interferes with his captain canon event in this fic, he's making an intentional, informed decision.

and he's also fully aware that he'll get kicked out for it, so he's trying to let margo know that he has feelings for her without leading her on given that 1) she just chewed him out for doing that, 2) massively misreading shit with gwen fucked up their friendship and he doesn't want to repeat that with margo, and 3) he thinks he's getting kicked out. bad time to start something you can't finish.

"seeing me" -- lifted from the atsv script.

margo watching her old conversations returns. more on what exactly she's doing this for next time, but essentially, with distance, margo now realizes that miles has reciprocated her feelings.

chapter 5

"wrecking ball" -- lifted from arachnophobia.

margo was rewatching that rerun to look for signs that miles was going to fuck up pav's canon. she found them, and now knows he did it on purpose.

the fic-equivalent to miles's conflict at hq is him returning after intentionally ruining the captain canon event, getting chewed out publicly by miguel for it, starting a fight with him, and getting suspended.

changes as follows: miles isn't a rogue anomaly who escaped his dimension, turned up in another, and fucked up the story there after a nuclear threat to the multiverse (the spot) escaped; he's a well-known member of the society who broke a big rule-- don't interfere with someone else's story. and the spot wasn't responsible for the captain's almost-death, so there wasn't even an anomaly angle to it. and, jeff's death doesn't have a set timer on it to lock miles up to keep. therefore, there's no hundred-spider chase to the moon. it simply never gets to that point.

also, peter b pulls rank to protect miles because i'm salty about how atsv made him useless when he (not gwen) should've been the one most in miles's corner.

hobie gets involved in the fight to preserve the element of hobie having miles' back in this moment. here, instead of refusing to take part, he intervenes to protect him.

miles is getting a suspension... that miguel will never end.

this fic extends the narrative elements of atsv-- like hobie immediately wanting to befriend miles... and miles disliking hobie out of insecurity and jealousy until hobie sticks up for him at hq. this was that moment.

hobie brown was the original 616 prowler decades before miles (and aaron) came along. he was almost always the prowler, and punk is the only time he's a spider-man. contrast to miles, who's usually a spider-man and rarely the prowler.

all hobie's big disruptive actions are to cover smaller strategic moves.

i figure the same solidarity margo and hobie feel towards miles they'd feel towards each other. hobie's always in the field and margo's always at hq, so they don't interact much, but they won't tell on each other.

hobie's from '78. he's a genius, but he's still gonna take a second to adapt to future tech.

running joke: people fucking up margo's computers.

miles was avoiding hobie. hobie wasn't avoiding miles.

in the comics, jess uses a donor to get pregnant.

arachnophobia goes into this more, but the angle i'm going with for gwiles-8 is that they are not the happy supercouple everyone thinks they are.

in these fics, i'm swapping gwen's feelings for peter, miles and hobie. ergo: she's comphetting her way through her friendships with peter and miles, and she wants a relationship with hobie. more on that in arachnophobia.

i do find it fascinating that both gwen and hobie are so physically affectionate with all their friends... except each other. probably the animators wanting to make sure miles's designated gf can't get too touchy with the guy he's worried about. but fuck it i'll make it mean something.

also, margo fixating on touch.

meta time: margo is ignored or looked down on by fandom at large because she's a black girl. hobie was perceived as a threat because he's a black boy.

(miles is also treated badly for this reason and a lot of his character's execution is the way it is to make sure the white audience isn't too uncomfortable with him. including the gwen ship. his atsv metanarrative's about a black boy struggling to find acceptance from white people, and weighing how much of himself is worth giving up in order to get it. translated here as miles' antics to get the society to tolerate him.)

with hobie, that's a steeper hill to climb (on top of racism, there are the added factors of classism and homophobia), and it's built into his character that he'd never climb it.

it's not surprising that people reacted to the possibility of gwen and hobie being a couple (which is teased in the comics) with confusion that they would be capable of being attracted to each other, shitty jokes about the relationship being superficial, or disgust at the thought of them being together.

all that pearlclutching about hobie being an adult somehow... gee. wonder why people have trouble believing he's a teen.

plus all the 'boys and girls can be friends' statements that only ever get thrown at them and margo/miles and never at gwen and miles, who ended itsv by telling each other they wanted to stay friends. nice sentiment, but if you apply it selectively, all you're doing is trying to police shipping.

fandom treatment of hobie's a seesaw: to some fans he's a hypersexual predatory douchebag who only keeps gwen around for sex, to others he's a wholesome, nonthreatening, asexual ~big brother~ who'd never lay a finger on her.

the second camp sprung up in response to the first, and are so busy patting themselves on the back for not being blatantly racist that they haven't considered that they've done nothing to address the actual problem: the expectation that a relationship between gwen and hobie would be inherently predatory. (if anything, all they're doing is agreeing with that statement, and sidestepping it by saying "but don't worry, it didn't happen...")

... but if it did, it wouldn't be a bad thing. it just wouldn't.

miles will be defined by his achievements, so a romantic endgame that isn't the preferred option will be looked down on, but not overshadow him as a person. gwen will be defined by her relationships, and her role in the story (in the society) is dependent on choosing the right boy to be with. if she ends up with the 'wrong guy,' people are gonna be pissed.

feeding that meta into the society = if hobie and gwen pair off, there will be consequences.

hobie knows this, and is evasive for their safety.

margo and hobie are in the same position: they're the disposable corners of the love triangle who have better chemistry and stronger potential with the main pair than they do with each other. they're here to incite jealousy and then be wingmen.

if the sv movies really want to challenge canon, they should be the ones to win out in the end.

credit to atsv for subverting the idea of hobie as a mean older ~bad boy~ rival for gwen's affection by making hobie supportive and kind to miles (and gwen. he's not a manipulative or shallow bad boy miles needs to ~save~ her from. he's a good guy who DOES have her best interests at heart, probably more than anyone in the entire film, including miles).

... that being said (@ the fandom:) hobie is not a yes man. look at how he treats gwen when she does things he disagrees with: he voices his disapproval, encourages her to stop, and refuses to go along with it.

if he's like that with a girl he's been friends with for months, who's slept over at his place many times, who he might have a relationship with, he'll probably be tougher with a boy he doesn't know well.

especially when that girl is the topic of conflict, as it goes in this fic.

so: when miles comes to hobie and asks him to respect society hierarchy and end whatever it is he's doing with gwen so miles can have her, and to help get them together, hobie refuses.

there's more to the fight than that, but that's the basis of their falling out.

chapter 4, ii

people have a kneejerk hatred of love triangles. part of it's a response to bad writing, part of it's twilight backlash, part of it's wanting their fantasy couple to get together with no competition or conflict.

it's also that people want for the character they project onto to end up with the character they're personally attracted to the most. which is why internalized bias is so important to confront: it's real fucking clear why margo and hobie aren't considered as serious contenders.

margo's peter and hobie's gwen are both dead. technically, they're out of the running.

hobie's rant: he's dealing with the same shit as margo. both joined the ss looking for community, both found out it's full of bullshit, both met someone who sees and appreciates them, both start to develop a bond with that person... and are told by everyone that what they have isn't legitimate, because it's not the romance the general audience want.

hobie seesaw vent ii: even the less misogynistic corner of the hypersexual hobie brigade see him as a shallow fling for gwen to ~get her bad boy phase out on~ before she departs for a 'respectable' relationship with miles. never mind that spider-gwen is a character who doesn't want and doesn't do well in 'respectable' heterosexual relationships. ffs read the comics.

(which is ironic because hobie's the one who meets gwen's dad in atsv.)

the other end of the seesaw: hobie's a chaperone to keep gwen in line until it's time for miles to come take custody of her. there's such a strong 'gwen needs to save her body for miles' vibe to the way people talk about her relationships with other guys that i find disgusting.

once more: if they have/had a relationship, that doesn't make hobie a sleazy predator, or gwen a disloyal slut.

like. why would the spider-punk believe in bro code.

miles-hobie fight dripfeed 2: the falling-out was over gwen, but it was about hobie's disappointment in miles for becoming the kind of guy who'd view a girl he likes as a prize to win. that's why he put his foot down and said he wouldn't budge.

hobie and gwen's dynamic is more central in arachnophobia 5, but the gist is they're doing relationship anarchy. no labels, no commitment, no exclusivity, no making a big deal of it. if being spider-man's girlfriend kills gwen stacy, if she's not his girlfriend, then technically she's safe, right?

in these fics i to walk hobie's development back from the atsv incarnation to give him an arc. he's great in atsv! he just doesn't grow or change at all. not doable here.

he starts these fics as an isolated kid with a martyr complex ready to devote himself to spider-punk and the ideology he represents. through gwen, he realizes how harmful his death wish is, pulls back, starts embracing his humanity again and fine-tunes his mindset into the "love each other" message he has by the time miles shows up (which is what he has in atsv).

hobie's methodical nature probably makes him an overthinker. which leads to being a worrier.

the h/g emotional angst is an onion:

layer 1: it's very punk to take in a homeless girl and deprogram her so she'll leave her abusive cult. it's not very punk to catch feelings for her and want her around just because you like her.

layer 2: the meta. he's spider-man and she's gwen stacy, and this relationship tends to end terribly. he's firmly in the camp of fuck canon, but on the off chance that he's got it wrong, the girl he loves could die a terrible death because of that relationship. challenging canon has high stakes.

layer 3: the miles. gwen falls for spider-man, but hobie's not the one people think she's for. he hates the idea that some spider-society-approved guy's entitled to her... but then that guy shows up and it's miles. and miles is great! and hobie wants to be his friend! it's a mess!

margo's never actually considered if the attention she envies gwen for getting was a good thing, or if it was ever wanted. now she understands that it isn't.

mega salt: they're definitely gonna do the death of gwen stacy canon event in btsv. whether she dies, or gets a death fakeout, it's coming. and it'll almost certainly be miles, who barely knows her, who's given the greatest emotional weight in that scene. as opposed to (possibly jess or) hobie, the person who has the deepest bond with her, who will probably have to comfort miles.

mega salt: hobie can have a girlfriend AND take down the government, guys. your personal connections fuel your politics. it's not one or the other.

but hey. it's a cool flaw to give hobie. realizing that is essentially his arc in these fics.

and it circles back to margo. punk and byte are important, but so are hobie and margo. their societies (and the society) only care about punk and byte because they can use them for their labor, which means they have to work especially hard to protect their human sides. they can do both.

and by holding on to these relationships, they can. being in love humanizes them.

that is why flipping the outcome of the love triangle would be so subversive. whoever 'wins' at the end is the person the story deems the most attractive and loveable. margo being preferable to miles over gwen, and hobie being preferable to gwen over miles, makes you reexamine your ideas about what makes the best relationship and who makes the best partner. miles and gwen getting together only reinforces our expectations.

comics-hobie is informed by an extradimensional being that he's doomed to die young. it happens in these fics too.

his arc, mostly offpage in both fics, is about rejecting that idea and accepting shades of gray into his philosophy that'll make it possible to live long without losing hope.

margo needs confidence and hobie needs contradiction. both find and embrace those qualities in spite of the society. both find it because they fall in love with someone they're not supposed to.

what is love? it's not a competition. it's not chasing your crush into another dimension because you can't bear not being near them. it's making a choice to build a relationship with them with care, intention and effort. it's accepting that doing so will change you. it's putting what they need above what you want.

.... in across, hobie is the person who does this for gwen, not miles.

hobie making the portal watch exemplifies this: he spent months showing up at a place he hates because gwen's there, supporting her, building a bond with her, listening to what she needed and getting it for her. and then he gave it to her with no strings attached and got out of the way so she could use it for whatever she wanted, and trusted her to do what was best for herself even if it meant they wouldn't be together.

margo's jealousy towards gwen getting to leave her shitty home life is alleviated, along with the last of her spider-society indoctrination. no, suffering is not okay.

comics-earth-138 has radionet. whatever that is.

margo's too dependent on the internet to want to shelter there.

part of hobie's motive for making the watch was making it possible for them to stay together without the society as a go-between. but mostly, it was about giving her autonomy.

the miles-hobie fight: in the sv movies, miles is the protagonist. hobie's likability is literally written into the story as dependent on how supportive he is of him. if hobie denies miles something he wants-- like gwen-- he will be framed as a bad person.

chapter 5 iii

... if in btsv the anti-authority spider-punk encourages a girl to enter a het relationship that'll only end in her losing her autonomy... that's some bullshit.

so when he's given that choice in these fics, he tells miles as much.

hobie has miles's back. he is not miles's yes man. he would not do that shit.

"when two girls fight about a guy, it's never actually about the guy" -- something margo's realized after visiting mj-616b. it's true of any relationship squabble: it's about the underlying issues in the two people doing the fighting, not the person they're fighting over.

miles and hobie were using the topic of gwen as a way to get mad at each other about their respective insecurities, and how they've failed to help each other get over them.

the rootkit returns: miguel noticed margo for her coding skills. in the fic, he chose her because he realized she was capable of zoning out, following shitty orders and desensitizing herself to their consequences.

hobie needs no persuasion to rebel against the society. margo does, and got it from their conversation. conversely, margo needs no persuasion to embrace her feelings for miles, but hobie's not quite there yet with gwen until margo gives him a push.

hobie making the portal watch is paralleled to margo making miles the admin key. both consciously choose to build something that will give the person they care for what they need, and are changed by the process of building it. both are in love.

margo loves miles, but she's not dependent on him. if letting him go leads to him never returning, she'll move on. she's affirmed in who she is, she's confident, she knows she'll find someone else.

miles got his ass kicked by miguel. not as bad as in atsv, but he's still a little fucked up.

miles is fully past his need to prove himself to gwen.

part of me still wanted to preserve that plot thread of a girl who loves miles needing to come clean to him about the society's deception. couldn't be gwen, because she's on a completely different plot of her own. margo ended up working well-- she's a member of the society, she definitely knew, and she's a secret-keeper.

and margo, as in atsv, is the one to send him to earth-42.

"i'm glad i met you" is as close as these awkward teens can get to "i love you" at this point.

gwen's arc in arachnophobia was constructed in part to mirror miles's in atsv and btsv, and miles's in turn was altered to mirror hers-- but they differ in a few key places. for instance: both need to find validation in themselves and not the society. gwen's arc is about finding her autonomy and going it alone, miles's is about embracing his community. so in this moment where they both are given something by their love interest that offers them a chance to meet their villainized alternate self, gwen goes alone. miles brings some friends.

chapter 6

earth-42's as much an anomaly as miles is.

margo coming in person is a culmination of her arc: she's finally ready to fully commit physically and emotionally instead of keeping herself detached emotionally and behind a screen. all the more impactful because as far as she knows, this world is dangerous.

margo's also never been in another dimension where she can smell, taste and feel. up until now all the sensory details in other worlds she's visited have been restricted to sight and sound. naturally, she's gonna be a little weird about it.

since she's never gone worldhopping before i figure she'd probably come prepared. she's got a big bulky backpack full of stuff, including the tech she needs to access her powers.

miles pissed off his parents a lot this summer.

it's a given that they'll be found out and punished for coming to 42.

margo's never been in the same physical space as the boy she likes. it's gonna make for some charged interactions.

tied in with margo's eavesdropping habit: yup, she heard gwen and hobie getting nasty. before, she didn't get it at all. now, when she can experience touch for herself, she gets why it's so appealing.

margo and miles are awkward teens. naturally they're gonna stammer their way out of a Real Date and end up inviting a friend as a buffer.

and miles is all about inclusion. he wants to be on everyone's team. he wants to bring everyone along with him. of course he'd bring as many friends as he can... which unfortunately is just two, in this fic.

also i wanted peni and margo's friendship back in focus. important for margo's first time physically in another world to be about more than just romance. it's connection of all kinds, including friendship.

the parallels between miles winning the visions lottery AND getting bitten by the spider, in both cases technically 'taking someone else's spot/opportunity' make me insane.

they're teenagers on a spur of the moment mission. of course they're gonna fuck it up.

so much of the city in earth-42 is on fire. someone's gotta bring it up.

margo's the guy in the chair. she has no idea what to do in the field. it's safer for her to be away from the action.

thought it'd be funny if all the outlets on 42 don't work on her tech, so she's truly depowered.

this is a world where there presumably aren't many heroes. people would probably assume the worst of peni.

this being margo's first outing, she's naturally going to be insecure about not being able to operate as byte. and this chapter's all about the importance of margo sans powers-- just her personality is enough.

margo, like a lot of terminally online teens, is a lot more confident online. in person, she's much more awkward.

boy it WOULD be some bullshit if btsv confirms that margo's an mj only to say 'whoops! this is the ONE time spider-man sticks with gwen instead!'

it's bs that gwen, hypercompetent spider-hero, wanders around 1610b for a whole week without accomplishing anything when she's so on the ball during her screentime in itsv. justified here as an effect of being in a different dimension without a portal watch: it kinda fries your brain for a while. it's not your story, so the default is you're not allowed to make choices that matter. it takes time to break through that boundary when you're new at it. like margo currently is.

also adding a bit more creep factor to the society: hq's in 928 so miguel can be extra sharp in comparison to everyone else.

margo's a spider-person. she might not have the powers, but she's got the nerve for what they do.

tiana toomes is miles's current love interest in the comics, and far and away the best one he's ever had. she's not in these movies because she was created after atsv was too deep into production to add her, but there's a chance she could be in btsv. i want that badly. she's the vulture's antiheroine granddaughter, and 42's run by the sinister six cartel, including him, so earth-42 presents a good opportunity for tiana to cameo.

since miles is a hero and tiana's an antihero in the comics, and miles g is (probably) an antihero on 42, i figure tiana also gets a slide down the morality scale. here, she's an antivillain. working for her grandpa, but with conflicted feelings about it. (miles can fix her.)

thus her cameo here: if she sees an unidentified mecha zooming past her grandpa's business, she's gonna knock her ass out of the sky and steal her shit. but she also won't let margo die.

margo dropping a tiana ref in her salty call to miles is what gets g to pick up. that, and mentioning his dad in danger: it confirms that miles is being honest about his intentions.

speaking of, presumably g ambushed miles like in atsv. not for being at his mom's, but for being an unfamiliar villain (he thinks) in his territory. and presumably, there's still a punching bag interrogation from which miles escapes.

past that, who knows. insert the events of btsv here. kept off-page for that reason. that's also why the girls take ages to find them-- so they have time to fight, gain each other's trust, and bond.

that's g on the line. the girls are close enough to miles to recognize that it isn't him instantly. they're gonna come looking.

the hoops i jumped through in this chapter to avoid writing miles g bc i don't know what his personality is yet. whew.

anyway off the crumbs of info we have on him, we know that he acts similar enough to miles1610 that rio can't tell the difference when they interact at first, therefore miles g is, at least around his mom, sweet, nerdy and a bit of a dork. and the prowler act is just that-- peacocking to make himself seem tougher than he is.

all the same, i figure he's probably a bit more cynical/suspicious. he comes from a rougher world, his dad died recently, and he's taken on the prowler mantle to (based off some concept art:) engage in vigilantism against the cartel. he's hardened a bit as a result.

anyway: tianamiles crumb. in this fic, i think these two have a situationship going on on the side. something batcatty. uncle aaron finds it hilarious.

he also doesn't know what tiana looks like, so he's going to assume margo is her.

which means miles g can let his mask slip around a stranger he'd otherwise be cautious around.

no dramatic face-off between 42miles and the spidergang here. the fight's over before margo even turns up. her confidence and determination is what matters, not an actual threat of violence. she's fully formed.

first hug! first kiss!

the original plan was for margo to draw the davis's attention away so peni could move into position to bust up the apartment. narrowly avoided.

chapter 7

bringing back the flash drive from chapter 1: margo's first trip to another dimension didn't rely on a watch. she still has the code, so she can replicate it. therefore, she can drop in on miles and peni even without a watch, but she's stuck as an avatar again.

miles is an artist. he's gotta hate ai art.

irony: margo's right back where she started, an avatar with a digital boyfriend.

miles reconciling with hobie happens after his conversation with gwen in arachnophobia 7.

which means he's getting a bootleg, and margo's about to get one too.

cue margo getting to explore the multiverse in person. and she's less dependent on constant distractions and a life of constant internet stimulation to keep her from feeling bad. she's starting to embrace real life too.

which makes her an oddity in her world.

timeline: miles and margo are juniors at this point. which means their futures are starting to loom.

and since school's online on 22191, margo's not getting a break from her family situation... unless she decides to go elsewhere.

enter gwen: arachnophobia goes into why she's like this. the gist is, she and a group of her alt-selves are planning to take out the spider-society. also she has a symbiote.

rootkit returns. gwen needs it to fuck up the computer system, and margo's bitter that her software's being used without her.

timeline jump: and now it's the end of the school year.

the jealousy's gone. margo doesn't want approval from the society or its leaders anymore, and has no desire to stay there. she doesn't need validation from anyone but herself, and the boy she loves isn't putting her behind gwen.

gwen's em jay in the movies is black. it makes sense that she'd catch on first; the thing that makes margo being an mj unbelievable to most people is a given to her.

gwen and miles were never together in these fics, but they behave like they went through a breakup, so they might as well have been.

gwen's end of the jealousy: gwen never wanted to leave her world or her family, so she resents that margo gets to go home at the end of the day. she doesn't like the attention she's getting and would rather be left alone to do her job, which is exactly what margo gets.

and margo's an mj. editorially, gwen was killed off because the writers were bored of her and wanted to make room for mj (and instead of letting gwen move on with her life, they had to make sure she'd never move on from peter. ugh.). so in a literal sense, mj's introduction to spider-man starts the clock on gwen's death. that's the source of gwen's hostility: feeling like if margo and miles get close, her time will start running out. it's less jealousy, more self-preservation.

love triangles done wrong are about fluffing the ego of the person in the middle by making two people fight over them. it's especially gross when it's two girls being pitted against each other for a guy. sir, you're not that impressive.

when two girls fight over a guy it's not about the guy. it's about the girls feeling inadequate. the boy's not the reason, he's the excuse.

there is actually a world where mj kills gwen with fireworks. wild.

margo and gwen don't have to fight because they're girls. they also don't have to be besties just because they're girls. there are months of cold shouldering to get over, and they have very different personalities.

but gwen CAN help margo with a unique problem.

(gwen-457's in arachnophobia. i figured two tech-based heroes would get along, thus the mention of a margo friendship)

gwen fled a dysfunctional situation into another world... but who also eventually went home. if margo's going to do the same, she needs to know why she went back.

gwen's dad having a potential cop relapse is a ref to the spider-gwen mcguire run, where george... sigh. goes back to being a police chief.

so's the "commuting" ref. gwen does this in the mcguire run-- going to school in 616 and living in 65. it does not work!

as this fic is written, gwen's getting tossed into 616 'for good' in the comics to synergize with the sv movies. it's going to be a disaster for her character because she doesn't function without her own world.

it absolutely feels like they're planning to force her and miles together. major salt at that.

more salt: you can't call gwen a hero in good conscience if she ditches her world for an easier one. that's not heroic.

spider-gwen, and arguably gwen stacy as a whole, is simply not a character a married-with-kids ending works for. hobie's the same, which makes him one of the best options for a love interest for her. both aren't the domestic type, both aren't ~relationship~ people, and both need their own worlds. it works.

gwen in general can't find that balance between hero and love interest. movie salt: even when she's the hero, all it takes is for one spider-man to get a crush on her to strip that away.

mj can make that balance. she's been a hero, she's been a love interest, she gets much more agency in her appearances.

margo approaches gwen for advice on her plan to move dimensions.

but she's apprehensive because she's worried about how doing it for a relationship will land with gwen, given her baggage with that motivation.

another dig! this one's at the fandom: the council of spider-women is an all-spider-gwen secret society from the comics. it does not exist so they can wingman gwen as she feeds herself to a relationship that'll take her autonomy away. it is literally there to do the opposite. they wouldn't support gwiles, they'd get her an escape plan out of that relationship.

possible preemptive salt at btsv: i swear to god. if the council appears there, and gwiles support is the purpose they serve, i'll go rabid.

if miles g is how we nickname miles42, gwen m would be the nickname for an alternate gwen. a pun on gwenom, too. i didn't think of that when i was writing arachnophobia, but i have it now! damn!

tianamiles crumb. gotta give em where i can.

it is worth noting that "everyone gets a gwen and an mj" is a shitty idea. that's for peter. let the other spiders have their own distinct love interests... like tiana, for miles.

the counterpoint, for this fic, is that margo does qualify as something new, since miles has never had an mj, and there's never been one like her before.

margo loves miles and they're great together. they're also 16 and each other's first romance. it's better not to assume they'll last forever. thus, apprehension is appropriate. moving dimensions for a relationship is shaky. doing it for a variety of reasons is much more stable.

finally, gwen stacy gets mj and spider-man together in the end. that still happens here. and instead of margo having to wingman gwen and miles together, gwen performs that role for margo.

chapter 8/epilogue

i feel it in my soul that margo would hate irl concerts. she's short, it's loud, it stinks. no thanks.

koca-soda= miles's coke.

the bugs margo prefers are digital ones. excuse for spider-puns.

i'm recycling the rooftop party scene from atsv here: it happens a year later, and it's not about jeff's promotion, but it still happens, and miles still awkwardly introduces his girlfriend to his parents.

margo's gonna be awkward in person if she spends all her time socializing online.

miles drew gwen. he'd draw margo too. and rio would definitely look at his sketchbooks.

a year ago, after gwen dumped miles, he went home and cried about it. thus, rio wants to hunt gwen for sport.

miles counts the relationship from when they started meeting in person, in january, when he got his bootleg watch. margo counts it from the earth-42 mission.

recycling miles's 'my interdimensional girlfriend is just from out of town' excuse from atsv

like in atsv, rio's initially hostile to miles's love interest because she's afraid she'll take him away from her.

rio comes around to margo because margo also wants miles to be happy and close to home. jeff comes around to her because she seems practical.

... miles did a lot of unhinged shit over the summer to protect his dad after his promotion. stuff like trying to get him out of the captain position by screwing him up on the job.

the spot's back! more on this in arachnophobia 8.

didn't write the fight because idk what happens there other than that miles definitely saves his dad and reveals he's spider-man to his parents. we'll wait for btsv i guess.

anyway, margo's tipping point for deciding to move to 1610b after graduation is meeting his family and realizing that she wants to be a part of it.

(if you'll recall, margo comes from a world where meeting with a romantic partner in person is indicative of serious commitment.)

she's taking from gwen's commuter idea, and the assertion that a relationship/dimension move doesn't have to be permanent as well. margo will live and go to school in 1610b, and perform vigilante services as byte on 22191. she can do both!

again, margo and miles are 16/17. they're great together, but they still might not last. and that's okay. margo can have a full, rich life on 1610b or beyond, without him if she needs to, and since this is a margo fic before it's a flowerbyte fic, i wanted to underline that one more time. getting the guy is second to finally feeling good about herself and like she belongs somewhere.

movie night's from the spider within short film. it's a tradition miles and his dad have. by including margo, jeff's letting her know he's accepted her and wants her to be a part of the family.

#arachnophobia fic

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