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#into the spiderverse is the Only exception
catpriciousmarjara · 9 months
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Tell me: Is He Gay or In a Sherwani?
Imposition of western norms in fandom analysis of Asian characters
With the rising popularity of Indian cinema sparked by the recent success of RRR on international platforms as well as the easy availability of multiple streaming services, in addition to the appearance of South Asian characters in prominent roles in western, particularly US media, I've begun to see some concerning 'analysis' posts online. So I thought I'd address something I found common in most of these takes.
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Guys, characterizing your blorbos as queer is great and all, love it, but you're making a fundamental mistake by making their clothing choices the foundation for your queer headcanons, especially when it comes to male characters. Do not apply existing western cultural ideas regarding male clothing onto South Asian characters and their dressing please.
The vast majority of the clothes being used by people in various online spaces as 'evidence' of a character being queer(gay or bi mostly) are just normal Indian clothing for men, like daily wear. A top being pink or a character's wardrobe being mostly pastel means absolutely nothing...cos Indian clothing tends to be colourful in general and the tendency to ascribe colours masculine and feminine qualities is considerably less in the subcontinent. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but generally not a concern.
There's also this pervasive idea that colourful clothing = flamboyance = queer and that itself is something many people have already pointed as a deeply flawed way of thinking and a stereotype. Furthermore, even if you do lean into the archetype of queer men being flamboyant, subscribing to the 'stereotypes exist for a reason don't they?' school of thought perhaps, there's also the fact that ideas of what is considered flamboyant change dramatically across different cultures. What is 'flamboyant' for someone might just be normal for others. Like maybe pink or purple or yellow might be considered too much, unmanly, emasculating etc in the US or something but they're just perfectly normal colours for men to wear in many, many cultures.
It's the 'Is he Gay or European?' principle. Did you characterize this Indian character (or any South Asian character really) as queer because of their canonical behaviour and portrayal, or did you just see their clothing and decide they're queer because being well groomed and having a colourful wardrobe is a character trait you exclusively ascribe to being queer?
Like guys, I like Chaipunk like the rest of you, but if you consider Pavitr queer just because his costume is a lot fancier than the others' (An actual take I've seen multiple times) without taking into account his cultural background....¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Let me make this clear, I don't think people need a ten page analysis to imagine their fave as queer. Headcanoning a character as queer can have any reason ranging from 'I said so and so it is' to 'this is my light character analysis that makes a masters thesis look shabby' and they're all valid and an integral part of the fandom experience. What I am annoyed at are these so-called 'well-researched' theories that did not make the slightest effort to look into South Asian culture and simply transposed their western bias onto Indian media and confidently make flat out wrong judgements and mislead other people. Clothing based sexual identity determinism is the least of it. That I can at least understand through the lens of a habitual process built through years of analyzing crumbs of queer representation available only through queer coded characters and symbolism such as clothing choices being the only way to see an aspect of yourself portrayed in an aggressively heteronormative media ecosystem. I do that too, because media is tragically heteronormative everywhere. But the rest? Its just straight up misinformation and misrepresentation touted as truth.
Its the same with relationships between men. There are plenty of cultures where skinship between men is not unusual and dynamics and nuances tend to be vastly different from western representations of male friendships. In xianxia and wuxia fandoms you can see this same problem in a different font when outsiders, most often the western side of the fandom, try to apply their own standards and morals onto the original work and try to interpret it through a lens it was never supposed to be interpreted through in the first place, except maybe for comparative analysis. This practice itself isn't a major problem, its natural for people to apply what is familiar to them to try and understand something new. But when this is also accompanied by them foisting their personal interpretation and analysis as the 'correct' one and trying to impose it on the fandom as a whole, it escalates into a powder keg situation as you can imagine.
Again, not saying that western parts of fandoms are the root of all evil or anything like that, gods know how toxic netizens can be. But in this specific situation, where people try to impose western ideals on to non-western content and assumes the universalism of their own principles and value systems? Indeed an issue to be addressed.
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ajournalingtrex · 11 months
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it has been three (3) hours since i saw spiderman: across the spiderverse and i am begging to see it again
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txxxciii · 10 months
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it's funny for me every time when I see someone like my commedia dell'arte posts, I look at their account and it's a genshin person
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st4rrych111 · 7 months
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me when a good franchise opens the horrifying can of worms that is the multiverse plotline and all of their new projects rapidly decline in quality </3
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8n53 · 9 months
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alright fineeee. i get why superhero stuff is cool now. Fine ! Whateverrrr !!!!
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ianthelordof · 10 months
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Just the other day I was thinking about that time when I was a little kid and I went to see Hey Arnold! The Movie with my mom and my brother and the film burned up and we only got to see the first half or so. I was thinking about how no one has to worry about that now that everything’s digital.
Tonight my brother and I went to see Across the Spiderverse and about halfway through the projector burned out and we spent 15ish minutes with sound and no picture. The more things change, the more they stay the same 🤷🏻‍♀️
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astroboots · 6 months
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omg tbh grumpy bored Miguel just having to sit, wait, hand over his credit card and then carry bags from lingerie store to lingerie store is so important to me and my daydreaming lmaoo. Punishment fits the crime imo!!
I also love the idea of him going solo and buying lingerie he likes and leaving her little presents because A) if she likes the pieces then perfect!! or B) if it’s not her taste then it’s perfectly okay for him to rip them of her and she doesn’t even get mad 😏😏
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Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x reader
Astroboot’s Masterlist | Spiderverse Masterlist
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When you had asked him to come with you to go shopping for lingerie, he had been thrilled.
Why wouldn't he be.
It had sounded like a great way to spend a few hours of on a lazy weekend together.
In his mind, it'd be you half naked, parading in scanty underwear for his eyes only.
A private fashion show, except sexy, instead of boring, where you'd be wearing a lacy piece that would barely cover your ass cheeks for him. A sheer peer of white panties that would leave nothing to the imagination. A frilly pair that was begging for him to rip them off right then and there, in the changing room.
He hadn't know then that it would be like this.
That apparently, in lingerie stores, men aren't allowed in the changing rooms. That he'd be banished in the lounging area, sat in a pink velvet armchair so tiny, it must be made for dolls that he can barely squeeze his ass into.
He's sitting here, exiled to this depressingly sad space of other bored husbands and boyfriends, who are half dozing off or staring at their phones like dreary zombies. Meanwhile he's hunched in on himself like a shocking elephant trying to fit in a goddamned teacup.
Not for the first time since he arrived in this world, the thought strikes Miguel that your world is a dystopia.
Because what other way is there to describe a world where one is supposed to sit sit mere feet away from their partner, while they get undressed and he's not allowed to look. Not allowed to touch. Not allowed to...
Shock.
This is torture. Why is he left out here like some abandoned dog out in the streets, forced to imagine what you look like in that tiny dressing room.
Forced to imagine you naked, with nothing on but a bra as you look at yourself in the mirror, and nothing he can do about it. Except sit here, as his dick stirs between his legs at the thought of it. Nothing to do but be tortured at the thought of you and your hands cupping your breasts as you try to decide if it's a good fit.
At the way you'd spin in front of your own reflection, and the way those sheer lacy panties he picked for you to try, that splits in the middle, would part as you move.
His fangs itch in his mouth at the thought of it. Fingers gripping into the arms of the armchair, as he resists every instinct to rush to his feet and break into your dressing room. Press you up against the wall until you're flat against it. Every inch of him pressed along yours, your legs wrapped around his waist, spreading you wide open as he --
"Miggy."
He breaks out of his reverie. Blinking up to see your face gaze down at him.
"I'm done," you tell him, showcasing the big shopping bag like a treasure.
Reaching over, he takes it from you. "What did you get in the end?"
"All of them. You've ripped so many I don't have anything nice to wear anymore except my old granny panties, so I figured I needed a whole new collection," you say a little pointedly as you serve him a side eye and steer him out of the shop.
He shakes the bag to peer inside, and the familiar white cotton and cherry patterns of the panties you wore this morning peeks out from the other wrapped items.
"Are those the panties you wore here?"
"Mhmm," you hum absentmindedly as you continue to steer the two of you towards the exit of the mall.
It's probably not easy for you to do, cause Miguel is larger than you, and the place is crowded, but he's too distracted to be more helpful to you in this moment.
Images of you flit through his mind. Of the cute sheer panties you'd picked up earlier hugging your hips even as you're walking next to him in this moment.
"Which one are you wearing now?" He has to swallow down the saliva flooding his tongue so he can ask the question.
Training his eyes on the bag, he tries to sneak another peek, even though every other piece has been carefully wrapped in pink tissue paper. "Is it the pink one? or the red ones?"
You cock your head slightly to the side and observe him with an amused smile lingering on your lips.
"Nope," you tell him, still with that casual smile.
"The sheer lacy one then?"
"No, not that one either."
"The baby blue?"
You shake your head and he frowns. This game of 20 questions is getting a bit too drawn out for his liking. And he doesn't quite get why you won't just give him the answer. Still there's only two more guesses left.
"The black satin?"
"No."
"So the--"
"I'm not wearing that one either," you finish before he even can point out the final option.
His eyebrow quirks in question. "What do you mean?
The gears in his heads are turning but not fully comprehending what you mean by that. He saw the ones you wore this morning in the shopping bag, and if you didn't wear any of the ones you bought then--
"I'm not wearing anything."
... Shock.
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Dedication & Credits: To my most beloved @thirstworldproblemss for always having the patience to listen to my unhinged thoughts. She had the most delicious thots about what happens minutes after this.
How Miguel would be too impatient to wait until you made it back home. How Miguel would have you pinned against the wall in a semi-secluded area, all: “don’t worry about it, nena. I’ll know if anyone’s coming, and we’ll be long gone before they get here.” But then being so distracted by you and the feeling of you wrapped around his cock that you nearly get caught anyway, and it’s only because you notice in the last second before discovery and tap him in alarm that makes him manage to haul you out of sight before you got caught.
Follow me on astroboots-writes and turn on notifications to be notified when I post something new!
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grendelsmilf · 2 months
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madame web was SO fucking funny i love that every single decision they make is certifiably insane but in a somehow very safe and pandering corporately-mandated way. here are some of my favorite choices:
an extended action sequence set to toxic by britney spears which stops in the middle to remind you that the year is 2003 so this song was actually just released
the villain goes to the opera, seduces an elegant woman with a single look, wakes up from a recurring nightmare wherein three teenage girls beat him up and kill him, proceeds to rant at this woman whom he’s just met about how hard it is to know how you will die someday, reveals that he is aware that she an nsa agent, and poisons her while he forces her to tell him the roughly 8 digit code that grants you access to every single security camera and government database in the entire world
one of the girls from girls is his assistant who tracks down three teenage girls for him by making composite sketches of their faces just via his own memories of his dreams. also, they are all wearing masks in his dreams, so how he was able to define all their features is extremely unclear
the fact that spidey powers originated from an indigenous tribe in peru does retroactively imply that every spider person within the spiderverse canon is performing an egregious act of cultural appropriation
adam scott plays UNCLE BEN, but because sony doesn’t have the rights to say the name “peter parker,” they are constantly finding ways to imply that he is, in fact, ben parker without outright saying it. we do see peter parker being born (i guess this spiderman was born in 2003?), but i’m not sure why we’re supposed to care since all of the girls (apparently) seem to have way cooler powers than he does
that said, we only see the girls use their powers in dreamlike sequences of the future. at no point in the present timeline do any of them use their powers whatsoever. except anya does have the power to be a #WomanInSTEM, so good for her.
dakota johnson’s cassandra webb, or “cassie,” (very normal thing to name your daughter who has spider-fueled powers of prophecy btw) cares for a stray cat who represents her own role as a “stray” as an orphan who grew up in the foster system (this is not subtle by the way, she literally says to the cat “gotta look out for fellow strays”). to illustrate that she is secretly a warm, nurturing woman despite her aloof and awkward veneer, this cat’s name is literally “cat.”
the villain of this movie never actually explains his motivation for seeking power beyond the fact that he had a difficult childhood. no details of his childhood are ever revealed. he is not given a single redeeming quality or even a reason to care about him. he is played by césar-winning and bafta-nominated actor tahar rahim in what i can only describe as the worst performance i have ever seen outside of a middle school play. he dies after being crushed by a giant letter S from a pepsi sign. you know. like a bug.
it’s never really explained why being bitten by a spider gives one prophetic visions, beyond the tenuous notion that to see the future is to “weave a web” of sorts. however, despite the fact that we establish that the villain can also see the future, despite having been bitten by the same magical species of spider, he never once is able to predict the future when it counts, such as foreseeing that he should dodge a falling giant letter S.
there’s an extended sequence dedicated to establishing that cassie’s colleague (who later dies in an ambulance crash) cannot grill for shit. as she sips from a refreshing can of pepsi-cola®️, she lambasts him for fucking up their burgers. this is the only piece of characterization they establish for him before he dies.
at the beginning of the movie, cassie receives a very earnest drawing done by a small child in thanks for saving his mother (she’s a paramedic). cassie very awkwardly refuses to accept the drawing, kind of just makes one continuous whine with the corners of her mouth until the entire family is weirded out enough to leave, and then complains that she has no idea what to do with the drawing, and will probably throw it out. we are meant to like this woman, probably.
cassie is a professional paramedic, but a hobbyist car crasher. she drives not one, but two stolen vehicles through the walls of buildings throughout the film, and it seems to be her go-to strategy in any fight.
cassie is allowed to fly internationally despite concurrently being very publicly wanted for the alleged abduction of three teenage girls. we never see her move through the airport despite the film heavily focalizing the issue of mass surveillance and preemptive criminalization in 2003 new york city, so i guess it just isn’t an issue for her. yet another win for white privilege
after cassie experiences a near-death incident on the job that triggers her latent powers of prophecy, her doctor recommends that she take the week off to get some rest and “watch old movies.” cassie clearly considers this to be sound medical advice, as in the consecutive scene, she is shown to be watching an early version of a christmas carol (in the middle of summer) and clearly feels a strong enough bond with scrooge that she feels comfortable speaking to him through the screen as if he were an old friend.
cassie has a vision of her mother researching spiders in the amazon before she died, and almost immediately yells “WHY DID YOU HATE ME!!!!”
cassie’s quest to save three teenage girls she doesn’t know ultimately results in the deaths of many more people, including multiple cops, train passengers, diner patrons, chopper pilots and people she may or may not have hit with her stolen taxi and/or stolen ambulance. but at least julia, mattie, and anya are safe!
after cassie is blinded and paralyzed(?), her entire personality does a 180 and she becomes a very creepy, ominous woman who serenely predicts the near future of her three adopted teenage girls, illuminated by a giant, weblike window. this is all done in service of setting up the sequel that sony clearly assumes is a given.
cassie attends her colleague/best friend’s sister’s baby shower (who happens to be played by emma roberts, and who also happens to be peter parker’s mother) and is for some reason corralled into playing some baby shower games, including “describe your fondest memory of your mother on a small strip of blue paper” (which cassie deliberately leaves blank, leading to a very awkward explanation of her mother having died in childbirth, but don’t worry, you’ll be fine) and “guess the name of my baby” (which is never actually revealed, because sony apparently has the rights to the name ben, but not peter).
anyone else really craving a nice refreshing can and/or glass bottle of pepsi-cola®️ rn, or is that just me?
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evilminji · 4 months
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Okay but... Many True King AU?
Think SpiderVerse. Think literally INFINITE Zone. Consider that Danny is probably not the ONLY Danny. But one of many. Consider... They Are King.
Yes, all of them.
They defeated Pariah. Yes, all of them. Did it happen all at the same Time? Yes. Somehow, by Clockwork's will most likely, it did. Were they working together? Aware if each other? Not in the slightest. They are just as shocked as you are.
But Danny is Danny.
Different lives, different species, different parents. All the same soul. Somehow found its way here. A great and terrible moment of Awe. A fixed moment in Creation. Like the Beginning and the End, he was simply? Unavoidable. Inevitable.
Danny.
Some of him are old men. Worn and weary, ground down by life. Some are far too young, confused but brave in a world too big for such small shoulders. There are scars amongst them. Terrible events and stories. But also hopeful ones. Heros. Good men, ready to take the burden.
Doesn't make the confusion any less, of course. When Danny meets... Danny? Who is not a clone. Who came through a portal in his parents basement. Who's exactly the same... except his house's street number is two off. Or is Danny's? Danny 1?
Wait! Why do YOU get to be 1?
Yeah, fair point. Pick a star name and get out your map. Time to figure out how many Danny's there are. And if any need help. But first! Where is YOUR portal? Mine is...*scribbling noises*
@hdgnj @the-witchhunter @mutable-manifestation @hypewinter
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your-averagewriter · 10 months
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Imagine the Spiderverse characters meeting Miguel's assistant
Including: Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Hobie Brown, Pavitr Prabhakar Miguel O'Hara, Peter B. Parker
Miles Morales - Miles is taken to meet Miguel and he was warned of his cold exterior but he wasn't warned about Miguel's assistant and her bubbly persona. You walk in and instantly his eyes are diverted from Miguel to you as you introduce yourself. You smile at the group and apologise for Miguel's bad mood as well as shaking Miles' hand upon meeting him and he swears he'll never wash that hand. Now he definitely wants to joining the Spider Society if he gets to see you everyday, after a while he comes back to see you asking you cute little questions and using bad pick up lines.
Gwen Stacy - Gwen also meets you when meeting with Miguel except it's not in his office, it's when she is 'enlisted' to the Spider Society. You saved her from the anomaly and whilst you did, she couldn't tear her eyes off of you and didn't snap out of it until Miguel was shouting at her to help. Afterwards, every time she saw Miguel, you'd be near (as his assistant) and she'd make up excuses to get to talk to you despite her awkward exterior. This includes 'bumping' into you when you go to lunch as she knows your schedule and checking with Miguel for the smallest of things.
Hobie Brown - You were actually the one who spoke to Hobie first at the Spider Society. Lots of people were put off by his 'extreme' exterior but you just thought he looked cool and naturally you wanted to tell him. Hobie was slightly confused by the small woman walking up to him and when you started complimenting his punk pins he was even more confused but also intrigued. He found out you liked similar music to him despite you're 'normal-looking' attire and he basically fell in love with you: the cute girl who liked punk music.
Pavitr Prabhakar - Pavitr was a relatively new Spiderman and was struggling to get to grips with certain skills so Miguel assigned you to helping him as you were of similar age. As soon as Pavitr saw you walk out from the portal in your Spider suit he was hooked and when he saw you take off your mask? He was even more hooked, sticking to your side throughout missions less for the safety aspect but more for the closeness and even after you've finished the short mentor programme with him he still hangs around you at the Spider Society not that you minded. You were perfectly happy having the puppy like boy following you around, keeping you company.
Miguel O'Hara - Miguel had a habit of scaring off every assistant assigned to him but that stopped entirely when you were hired. He expected you to be the same, nervous girl he always gets assigned but when you walked in you brought a couple of empanadas with you (not knowing his obsession with the food) which immediately gave him a good impression of you. After days of you working for him, his harsh stares became softer just for you and he understood the reactions you received from other Spider people that came to meet him. Afterall even he couldn't resist you're cute smile and friendly persona.
Peter B. Parker - When Peter met you he didn't know that you were Miguel's assistant but that probably only made him like you even more. You met when he bumped into you, after all he's not the most self aware of Spidermen. He was surprised to see such a unique Spiderperson as when everyone's wearing the same suit it's hard to stick out but you're kindness and friendliness really melted his heart. He, like Gwen, would make excuses to come and see you, his friendship with Miguel making it easier to come up with things. It's always "I need to show Miguel this new food from the canteen" or "I need to tell Miguel something I remembered about Miles" although he always means "I just wanna see (y/n)" and Miguel always knows.
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AN: I thought I'd try this new format. If you guys would like more fanfics with this format then let me know as I really enjoyed writing this!
I hope you enjoyed reading!
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heartpascal · 10 months
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or is it loneliness?
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▹— (eventual) spiderverse found family x platonic!reader
▹— summary: you need closure, and information. two visits kind of give you that.
▹— a/n: guys idk what im DOING. i have things planned for atsv but not how we’re gonna get there … rn im just yolo-ing. im not a big fan of this one but im gonna start writing the next one asap, which will hide fully be more found family-ish lmao arachnid is gonna start warming up to them all some day i swear
▹— warnings: angst, injuries, not good thoughts, dead parents, sensory issues, explosions, violence, fighting, blood?, damaged hearing for a good minute, peter b parker eating burgers deserves its own warning, food, mention of throwing up / nausea, insecurities about being good enough, refusing help, idk what else, if ive missed anything let me know!!!
▹— taglist: @rhymingtree (everything taglist) @justmare @uniquemonstrosity @lacunaanonymoused @erensbbg @dulceteris @noxxing @escherichiacolli @ray-rook @i-3at-kidz @miwagila @stoneforests (is it freedom’verse) — also i only tagged those who explicitly asked to be tagged!
MASTERLIST , part one
∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘
You spend a long time sat on the edge of the open window, staring out at the traffic below after getting back from Spider Society HQ. There’s a tangible relief that comes with returning to your dimension, like a weight being removed, a tension that is finally released from where it had been pulled taut. Your shoulders feel just as heavy as they did when you left, but you try not to think about it. You try to be happy that you’re back.
While you wouldn’t say it aloud, and you hate to even have the thought, you don’t think anybody had noticed you were gone. But then again, who would? You have no reason to be so upset about such a thing.
Time slips by as you diligently sew up the tears in your suit, frowning as you hold it up once you’re finished. It looks nothing like it used to, but then again, neither do you. Things have changed, it only makes sense that your suit would, too. You wonder if travelling through alternate dimensions can alter your perception of things. You’d swear that your suit had been a different shade before you left, lighter, maybe, but you have nothing to compare it to.
At least now, this time, when you put on your suit there is evidence of damage that Gwen Stacy had caused. The stitching along your the material where she had tore into you is a tangible thing, physical, and you run your fingers across it as if it might disappear. It’s almost a relief, to be able to feel where she had caused you pain, as opposed to the invisible ache she had left within you after fighting her the first time around.
Alongside the scar raised on your body, the fight with Gwen had left you with a sort of paranoia. An uncertainty in the back of your mind that has you glancing over your shoulder, has you messing up simple manoeuvres as you panic, thinking you hear her voice.
It must have been your third day back from the HQ that you come to the conclusion that you have to visit Gwen Stacy in her prison.
The decision doesn’t come easily. It comes slowly, torturously so, a realisation that deafens you as you glare through squinted lenses at the city around you. You won’t be able to go on like this, getting yourself hurt in stupid ways all because you’re not certain that she’s back in her prison. You’re meant to be a hero, which means that messing up, despite whatever paranoia that lingers in the back of your head, is unacceptable. It has consequences.
Seeing her in the flesh will likely be the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Except, maybe, not killing her when you caught her in that other dimension. You keep your mind on the fact that she won’t be able to touch you, that she’ll be walled away, to reassure yourself that there is no risk of either of you hurting the other — at least, physically.
But seeing her isn’t the only difficult part.
No, the hardest part is stepping back into an identity that you had lost your grasp on, long ago. You wear your old clothes, clothes that you hadn’t put on in months, and try to remember how it felt to be you, rather than Arachnid.
“Hi, Mrs. Stacy.” You say, when the door to an all too familiar apartment opens just a slither, and you catch sight of her wrinkled eyes. There’s a noticeable change to them when she realises who you are, and she’s slamming the door shut, undoing the chain, and reopening it before you can say another word.
She whispers your name like she can’t believe it’s you — and you can’t blame her.
You had disappeared, months ago, after the death of your father. Going missing was far easier than being placed in a foster system that would only hold you back. It had been so much easier, not having to face anyone, not having to speak at his funeral.
“Hi.” You repeat, when her stare lingers in the silence for far too long. The sound of your voice once again breaks her out of her trance, and she’s rushing forward to pull you into her arms as if you were her child. You suppose, in some ways, it was quite a lot like that. At the very least, your presence will remind her of the daughter she had lost.
“Where have you been? Oh, honey, I was so worried.” Mrs. Stacy says, her voice trembling by your ear as she squeezes you tight, unfazed by your lack of reciprocation. “Come inside, please.”
You follow her through the doorway, closing the door behind you as you had done so many times before. Not looking around at the apartment is near impossible, but you’re not sure how much familiarity you can take. Even just seeing Mrs. Stacey’s aged face makes your chest ache, your legs feeling shaky.
“Sit down, honey, let me get you a warm drink.” She says, a tremor to her voice as she bustles towards the kitchen which is adjoined to the living room. The news plays on the television, and you’re glad to hear a weather report, rather than some city-wide attack. Mrs. Stacy is quiet as she goes through the process of making your favourite drink, but with your enhanced hearing you listen to the telltale clink of a spoon against ceramic. You listen closely to her hitched breathing as her footsteps pad back into the room. “Here.” She hands you the warm mug, and you don’t comment on the way her hand shakes.
“Thank you.” You say, though it feels stilted, wrong, too formal. It’s hard to be normal in this setting, to be whoever you used to be, especially as she stares at you like she’s seen a ghost.
Mrs. Stacy stares at you for a long while before she speaks again, as if she’s still not sure that you’re real. “Where have you been? After—After your dad… we didn’t know what happened to you. Are you safe? Do you need help?” She asks, frantic once she’s gotten started on her questions.
“Mrs. Stacy, I’m fine, really.” You lie, smiling tightly over the rim of the mug as you hold it towards your face. Before, you would’ve burnt your tongue drinking it too fast, but you’re hesitant to drink it at all. The last thing you want is to become too familiar to your old life. “I’ve been staying with some friends, downtown. It’s been good.”
She raises a brow at you, and stares for a moment longer. “Honey… you don’t look well.” She tells you, and raises the back of her hand to press it against your forehead. Her frown only deepens when you flinch away from the touch. You try not to curse yourself too much, but can’t help reprimanding the way you hadn’t anticipated such an action.
The skin on your forehead is clammy, but that’s just the anxiety, the nerves at being back here. Arachnid can’t get sick.
“Listen, I… I was hoping I could ask a favour from you.” You say, hesitantly, gripping the warm mug tight between your hands, but loosen your fingertips against the ceramic when you hear a minute crack.
Mrs. Stacy furrows her brows, looking more concerned by the second, but nods. “Of course, anything.” She tells you, and places one of her hands against yours on the mug.
“I was hoping I could visit Gwen.” You voice, after one last moment of hesitation. The way her face immediately crumples at the request doesn’t give you much hope, especially as her hand withdraws from your own. “I—I know you don’t get to see her very often, and maybe it’s selfish, but… I don’t know. I wanted some kind of closure, I guess.” You ramble on in response to her silence, glaring down at the liquid still swirling in your mug.
“Honey,” Mrs. Stacy interrupts, her voice soft in contrast to the way yours was growing in volume. You quiet immediately, your gaze drawn up to where her tearful eyes stare at you, her expression almost mourning. “I would never deny you that, but you should know… I haven’t visited Gwenny since she was put in there.” She admits, her stare dropping to her lap, almost ashamed.
“Oh,” You voice, softly, in response. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed— I—I mean, I can’t even imagine—”
“No, don’t be silly, how would you have known?” She replies, raising her eyebrows at you strictly. “Now, I can get you that visit. I’ll call my attorney first thing tomorrow, but… really, honey, do you need me to call someone for you? Who are these friends?”
Her voice is familiar, and it’s kind, which makes it all the more painful. It’s strange, seeing the resemblance between her and the Green Goblin, and it makes a part of you ache. Your life wasn’t the only one torn apart by Gwen. In fact, her mother probably faced the worst of it. With her husband being long gone, her oldest son away at college, youngest withdrawn after her daughter became a homicidal maniac, who did she really have left? Who was looking after Helen Stacy?
You smile at her, as best as you can without tearing up, and reach out to grasp her hand, which she readily accepts. “I’m okay, Mrs. Stacy, I… It’s just a few friends of my dad, from his home town. Their kids, too. It’s better than being put in the system.” You tell her, and can only hope that she believes you. You have no way to back up these lies, knowing those friends of your father don’t exist.
“You could’ve stayed here, you know?” She says, teary and squeezing your hand so tightly you can hear your bones creaking. You smile sadly at her.
“You’re a much stronger person than me, Mrs. Stacy. I couldn’t even face my dad’s funeral, let alone be around the memories of somebody I lost. This place, it—it reminds me of her.” You explain, voice shaking as you hold back your own tears, swallowing them down and trying to breathe through the ache in your throat.
The way her heart breaks is almost loud enough for you to hear it, but she nods her head understandingly, regardless. “Of course,” She says, nodding still, “But know you always have a place here, okay?”
“Okay.” You respond, heart clenching so tightly you’re not sure it can pump your blood any longer.
“Now, what’s your number? Your old phone was disconnected.” She says, shaking her tears away to pull out a pad and pen from the coffee table. She sets the notepad against her knee, looking expectantly toward you.
“Oh, right,” You stutter, teeth chattering as you comb your mind for the number of your burner phone. “There was a mixup, because it was in my dad’s name.” You explain needlessly, still searching your mind for the answer. Finally, you remember it. You listen to her ballpoint pen scrape along the paper as she writes the numbers as you say them, and then she clicks the pen off after writing your name beside it, underlining it twice.
“How about I give you a call with the details of your visit, okay, honey?” She asks, nodding with a pleased hum at your affirmative. “Good. Stay for dinner, okay? I’ve missed you.”
Who are you to deny her that?
Though, even as you try to pretend that you help to set up the table for her benefit, and as you hug Gwen’s little brother tightly when he comes home for his, you know, deep down, that it’s for you. That this is a moment of selfishness that you’ll let yourself have, because god, you deserve it, don’t you?
∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘
It’s thirteen days post Spider Society discovery, and you’re starting to regret the way you discarded that watch so carelessly. Not because you want to be a part of some cult of superheroes, but because you wish you had asked some more questions.
Surely Miguel O’Hara must’ve known a way to stop these villains from appearing in other universes? And if he did, had he already implemented whatever it was to stop Gwen escaping again? How exactly did she escape the first time? Was it a coincidence? Is there somebody out there, working behind the scenes, helping her get out?
You, unfortunately, have no way to answer any of the burning questions nagging at the back of your head. While a part of you hopes that you never see any of the Spider Society weirdos again, you also desperately want answers. Especially if it meant you could call off your visit to Gwen Stacy.
But the day arrives as any other does, and you spend every moment before the drive over to the prison desperately hoping that one of the Spider-people will show their face. None of them do, and you’re left to get into Mrs. Stacy’s car and simply brace for the journey ahead.
You’re pretty sure that swinging would be quicker, or easier, but you had no way to explain that way of transport to an interrogating Mrs. Stacy, and so you had to relent to her insistence on driving you. Now, you sit here, shifting in the seat of the car, uncomfortable without your suit underneath the clothes you used to wear on a daily basis. Even the knowledge that it’s stuffed into the bottom of your tattered backpack in the boot of Mrs. Stacy’s car doesn’t bring you any comfort.
Instead, the rough material of an old jacket has your skin crawling like you were being bitten by a thousand mosquitos, and the trousers on your legs itch like you’re allergic to them.
You suppose, really, that the spider bite that gave you so many powers had to have more drawbacks than just destroying your life. It only makes sense that your heightened senses would extend to the receptors on your skin. It makes every movement in these clothes torturous, and you wonder if it had always been this way, or if you were just so unused to wearing your old style of clothes. Either way, you hope that you won’t have to wear them for much longer.
If it all goes to plan, you should be in and out of the prison, just ensuring that Gwen Stacy is actually in the cell as she’s supposed to be. Then you just have to endure the fifty minute drive back to the city with Mrs. Stacy, and you’re free. You won’t have to wear these clothes again, won’t have to use your name, no — you can just sink back into the half life that is being Arachnid. It’s better that way.
“Okay, honey, here we are.” Mrs. Stacy says at last, having shifted her car into park. She pointedly avoids looking at the looming high-security prison ahead, instead focusing on you as you wipe your sweaty palms against your trousers. “Now you take as much time as you need in there, alright? I’ll be just out here, if you need me.”
You smile tightly at her, nodding with what you hope is more of a grateful expression rather than a grimace. “Thank you, Mrs. Stacy, really. I appreciate it, more than you know.”
That much was true — after all, it wasn’t like you could tell her that she was allowing the vivid paranoia you had been experiencing to be put to rest after her daughter escaped to another universe. Mrs. Stacy, from what you could gather, didn’t even know that Gwen had been missing for any amount of time. She had no idea what Gwen had done, how many more people she had hurt, but you assured yourself that it was better that way. Mrs. Stacy already had to deal with plenty, and that knowledge surely wouldn’t help.
She was already dealing with her own grief and feelings on the situation, as well as trying to support her two sons in the matter. Given what Gwen’s little brother had asked of you when he found out about you visiting her, you knew that he hadn’t been to visit Gwen, either. It seemed that he wasn’t coping with it all very well.
“Of course, you’re family. You should know that by now.” She says, smiling with teary eyes, reaching across the console to grasp your hand tightly in her own.
Her words take a stab at your chest, especially considering what had happened to everybody else who had seen you as family. Dead parents, villainous best friend — it really didn’t bode well for your loved ones. You just reassured yourself with the fact that you’d be able to disappear as soon as the two of you returned to the city. You couldn’t put her in any danger, that way, or her remaining kids.
“I’ll—I’ll see you after, okay?” You respond, squeezing her hand in return before quickly letting go and throwing open the car door, getting out and catching a slither of Mrs. Stacy’s surprised reply before you shut the car door.
There are guards waiting for you at the gates, checking you are who you say you are, scanning you for weapons before you even get in the building. They’re satisfied after their searches, content that you weren’t stupid enough to bring a weapon into a highly secure prison. You keep your focus on your breathing as they walk you in, handing you clothes to change into as well as a box to put all of your belongings in.
The scrub-like clothes they give you are even worse than your own, sending shivers up and down your spine at the feeling of each fibre scraping against your skin. You just try to breathe through it. Luckily, the rest of the security checks blur by, which means less time spent on agonising over this visit. You barely hear a word of the statement they read to you before you go in, and your hand cramps as you write your signature against a dotted line of a waiver. All of the other legal things were sorted out by Mrs. Stacy’s lawyer, which you are more than thankful for.
Instead of having to deal with that, you just have to wait.
You think that the waiting might be the worst part of it all. With the scrubs making your hairs raise and promoting uncomfortable shivers up and down your body, as well as the cold metal seat that they sat you on, you’re far too aware of everything around you. You can hear the hundreds of heartbeats in the buildings, the beeping of security doors, the footsteps heading your way. You can smell the coffee that the head guard in the adjoining room to the one you’re in is drinking, as well as the day-old sandwich in his desk. Worst of all is the way your own heartbeat is thrumming in your throat, padding harshly against your chest, so loud in your own ears that it slowly starts to drown out everything around you.
Gwen’s footsteps are heavy, accompanied by the clinking of the chains she’s shackled in. You can practically hear the maniacal laughter that had come from her whilst in that alternate dimension, even though she’s completely silent as she enters the room.
She smiles at you when you look up, and for a moment you’re fooled — it’s soft, gentle, kind. But then you see the glimmer in her eyes that was distinctly not Gwen, and you feel the scar along your side throbbing with phantom pain.
You smile tensely at the guards, who regard you with looks of gentle concern and caution, before they attach her chains to a link on the floor beside a chair three metres away from where you sit. They nod at you, which you return, and you watch as they go and take their positions beside the door before you move your eyes back to the elephant in the room — which is Gwen Stacy.
“So, you missed me?” She asks, baring her teeth in a grin that has too much teeth to be anything friendly. Gwen regards you closely as you stare at her, watch for any signs of flickering, any signs that this isn’t real. Her brows raise slowly, the longer you’re silent, but you’re in no hurry to talk. “No? Is that not it?”
“Sure, I miss you.” You respond after another stretch of silence, tilting your head to study her more closely. You don’t acknowledge the way that your voice shakes as you speak, the way it comes out in something closer to a croak before you swallow harshly against your dry throat. “Thought I’d come to check in.” You add, brows furrowing to make sure she gets your true meaning.
“Ah,” She voices, then laughs, shoulders shaking, chains clanking loudly against her metal chair. “I get it, now.”
Gwen doesn’t add anything else after that, even though you suspected that she may take this opportunity to loudly claim that you were Arachnid, outing your identity once and for all. Apparently, if she does want to out your identity, she doesn’t want to do it like this, as she stays silent until you speak.
You sit forward on your chair, ignoring the way the guards at the edges of the room shift uneasily at your movement. “Your mom arranged this for me, you know?” You say, eyebrow raised. She probably knows what you’re doing, or what you’re trying to do, but she doesn’t voice it. Instead, she just shifts to lean backwards in her own chair, sighing as if relaxing.
“Hmm, so she can visit.” Gwen says, nodding her head as if it’s all making sense now.
“She can, she just doesn’t want to. Neither does Georgie.” You respond, and find satisfaction in the way her eyes flash at the mention of her little brother, the nickname that the two of you both used to call him. She recovers quickly, but you can tell that she knows it wasn’t quick enough. The Green Goblin cracked, right in front of your very eyes. It’s proof that, if anything, her little brother has some meaning. “He wanted me to tell you something.”
Her head tilts across from you, though she doesn’t move from her laid back position.
You clear your throat, and look at the words you’d written on your skin. She tilts her head forwards the slightest amount, and you shift uncomfortably in your seat, glancing at the guards who look just as uncomfortable as you feel. “He said that he misses his Gwenny, but he doesn’t want you coming home.” You stare at her as you repeat his message, the one he had told you nervously, as if he was truly afraid that Gwen would escape and come back. Her eyes twitch as she focuses on keeping her expression cool, but you know that the words have hit something in her, even if it’s part of the Green Goblin. “Looks like you even ruined your own family.”
You’re up on your feet as she lurches forwards, flung backward from where she tried to go against her chains to rush toward you. The guards are in front of you in mere moments, but you weren’t in any danger. Not as long as she stayed in here.
It’s almost satisfying, to see her chained up. It’s so different to seeing the Green Goblin on the outside, where she could be your Gwen Stacy. Whereas in here, bound by chains of heavy metal, clothed in uncomfortable looking prisoner scrubs, she was nothing but the Green Goblin. It was reassuring, almost, to be able to pick apart something physical between the two.
She bares her teeth at you, animalistic in a way that Gwen never was, and glares at you as you follow one of the guards out of the room, the others closing in on her, ready to take her back to whatever cell she came from.
The clothes you wear become less overbearing as you keep your focus on the guards taking Gwen away the whole way back through security, only switching back to your surroundings when they hand you the tray of your own belongings to change back into. You’re relieved for many reasons, and you try to focus on that feeling as you approach Mrs. Stacy’s car rather than the way your jacket itches.
Mrs. Stacy looks as if she wants to speak as you get in the car, as if she wants to ask about your visit, but she seemingly can’t bring herself to do it. You keep your mouth shut.
∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘
Not a month later, your daily activities are back to normal, uninhibited by the daunting idea of Gwen being free. Still, though, you think about her more often, as much as you did in the time after she was put away the first time.
Mrs. Stacy had tried to call you more than once since, and at the two week mark you’d had to invest in a new burner phone. You just couldn’t risk anybody getting a hold of it and seeing her contact, or the ringer going off and exposing your position in a fight. No, it was better for her not to have your number. Besides, you had hers memorised if you needed to call her.
It was better if you tried to reduce any connections to Gwen Stacy. You’d be much better off, the less you thought about her.
Despite knowing that, you couldn’t help it. And despite seeing that crack in the Green Goblin exterior at her little brother’s words, you didn’t have much hope for her. You don’t think they’d let her out of prison even if you could find a cure, somehow. The fact of it was that Gwen Stacy’s life was over. She had no hope of a future in this world, the Goblin had destroyed that. All you could do was remember her and hope beyond anything that in one of those alternate dimensions, you and Gwen were happy together.
The thought of it played on your mind every day, a lingering pain that stung at your eyes. You thought about it so much that you had even imagined the world where Gwen had never become the Goblin, where you and your Gwen were happy. It was a suffocating image, one without any hope of being true, but you couldn’t help thinking about it.
Even as you fought villain after villain, petty criminal after petty criminal, you thought about it. Even now, as you were swinging around a bridge, dodging all the debris this villain was throwing your way, it played on your mind.
It was a distraction, and it was one you needed to get rid of.
That much became certain as the villain you were facing, Tombstone, managed to get a hit on you, sending you flying across the bridge. You landed on a car with a groan, the windshield cracking below you, and you rolled your eyes as the person in the car held a hand on their horn until you managed to climb off, a distinct Arachnid-shaped dent left in the bonnet.
Well, that would be aching tomorrow, that much was for sure.
He grinned where he was stood across the bridge from you, showing off his filed teeth, as if trying to intimidate you with the pointy edges of them.
“You’ve been a formidable foe, Arachnid,” Tombstone says, his voice barely a whisper above the wind, but you can hear him perfectly. You suspect he knows as much, and that only makes you nervous. “But I think it’s time for our battle to come to an end.”
“I actually agree.” You respond, stretching your aching back and feeling a bone shift when it definitely shouldn’t. You can’t help but wince, gritting your teeth and glaring over at Tombstone across the bridge.
You’re getting tired of these villains, of their constant spiel about how the world should be, about how everything should be how they wanted it to be. What was so wrong with the human population that everybody couldn’t just get along? Surely, if everybody got along, listened to each other, the world’s problems would be solved. But then again, this is New York, and it’s a city in which greed is bred.
A light press against your webshooter has you slinging high up on the bridge, staring down at Tombstone as he watches you intently. You’re planning your next move, considering all the variables, when a burst of orange manifests into the air behind him. He looks confused as you falter in your web slinging, dropping slightly before you catch yourself, and he turns around just in time to receive a curled fist to the face, courtesy of a familiar man in a red and blue suit.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” You murmur, lowering yourself to the bridge to approach this Spiderman, glaring at where Tombstone stands, straining against a red barrier that had materialised from the device Spiderman had placed at his feet.
“I hate that guy!” The familiar voice of Peter B. Parker says, shaking his fist as he hops slightly from one foot to the other, his lenses squinted before he finally turns to acknowledge you. “That guy sucks.”
Your brows are furrowed, eyes squinted behind your lenses as you stare at Peter, confused. This Tombstone guy isn’t an anomaly, is he? While you hadn’t faced him before, you knew that there had been a battle between him and another vigilante down in Hell’s Kitchen. And he knew your name, hadn’t been calling you Spiderman like the last anomaly. So why was he here?
Peter sighed, as if he was disappointed to be met with your confusion. “You got a place, kid? Or a burger joint, maybe?”
With that same amount of confusion, you nodded, brows furrowed as cops came to collect Tombstone, who was still in a fit of rage. You can just barely hear him swearing to get you back, both of you, through the barrier. Peter gestured a hand forwards for you to lead the way, and with slight hesitation, you swung off with him following.
Now, the two of you are sat in a Shake Shack, despite you wanting to head back to the offices you were set up in. Peter had ordered two burgers, one for you and one for him, though you had decidedly rejected the one he pushed towards you. He had only shrugged, and accepted it onto his own plate.
“My wife’s pregnant, can’t even stand the smell of these.” Peter groans, stuffing what must’ve been at least a quarter of the burger in his mouth. You just nod at his statement, though you had to admit you were slightly surprised that this guy was going to be a dad. But then again, you’re pretty sure you can remember your dad scoffing down his favourite food in a similar way. “Now listen,” He continues, speaking with his mouthful and paying you no mind as you cringe at the sound. “Miguel wants to strike a sort of… deal with you.”
“Okay?” You respond, brows furrowed. You look around the place, uncomfortable with all the people staring at Arachnid in a booth beside an old man stuffing his face. The lenses of your mask squint with you as you look at Peter, waiting for him to add anything on to explain his statement. “Then why’d he send you?” You ask, at last, when Peter makes no move to speak of his own free will, too engrossed in his second burger.
Peter held up a finger, gulping down a sip of his strawberry milkshake. “Said something about this being good practice for me,” Peter eventually answers, flashing you a smile. “You know, being a new dad and all.”
He seems to realise quickly that that was the wrong thing to say as your eyes narrow further, visible only through the shift of your lenses. The last thing you need is some random guy trying to father you. Even just the idea of it irritates you, makes the very blood rushing in your veins feel hot with anger. You had a dad, and look what good that did you. He’s gone.
Not to mention the implication of you being a child! You’re far from being a kid. You’ve been looking after yourself for some time now just fine. Whatever deal Miguel wants to strike with you is because they need you. Not the other way around. You knew that you shouldn’t have let that Spider-doctor fix you up.
“I’m not some kid. I don’t need you lot, you need me. Don’t get it all twisted, Peter.” You respond as he continues to look like a deer in headlights, clearly kicking himself for revealing what Miguel had said. You keep your voice low, fighting to stay unheard with the quietened air in the diner. “Now hurry up and tell me about whatever bullshit deal you want to strike with me, so I can say no and we can go our separate ways.”
“Kid,” Peter sighs, before immediately wincing as he realised he just directly disregarded your statement about not being a kid. “Sorry, Arachnid,” He corrects, settling his hands on the table in front of him, finally taking a break from his almost-finished food. “Nobody’s saying you can’t do this.”
“Sounds like that’s exactly what you’re saying.” You mutter, averting your eyes from Peter and instead narrowing your lenses at the people still staring in your direction.
“All we’re saying is that you shouldn’t have to do this alone,” He continues, ignoring your interruption with nothing but a quirked brow. “It’s a tough job. Everybody needs someone to look out for them, you know? It’s in our nature to feel responsible for everything around us, as Spider-people. But you can’t carry the whole weight of the world on your shoulders, it’s too much!”
You stare blankly at him, remaining unimpressed with his whole speech.
Peter sighs once more, looking at you with hesitant hope that you’ll come around. Unfortunately, you’re not about to let these people think that you’re incapable. If anything, Peter’s little speech was just adding fuel to your fire. You liked proving people wrong — it’s what you thrived on. You needed to prove them wrong. Because if you didn’t, what did that make you? You couldn’t let people be right about their assumptions of you. If you couldn’t prove everybody wrong, then that meant some of the things people said about you were right. And with the amount of people who accused you of being responsible for more deaths than you saved, who portrayed you as a menace rather than a vigilante, who said you weren’t worthy of your powers, who said whatever divine intervention had given them to you was wrong, you couldn’t let them be right. You wouldn’t.
“I already told you people. I’m not interested.” You spit out at him, feeling your frustration brimming over the edge. Why would nobody just trust you? Was that so much to ask? You understand that you had made mistakes, that you had cost people their lives, but you were trying. Why couldn’t that just be enough?
Peter says nothing as you slide out of the booth, stomping your way out of the Shake Shack as if you were some kind of grumpy teenager. He could only hope that his unborn child was a less grumpy teen, but then again, he was pretty sure you had every right to be miserable. Correcting himself, he could only hope that his unborn child never experienced your reasons for being so miserable.
You make your way towards your office building, swinging through the streets whilst doing your best to keep your heightened hearing down. You really didn’t want to have to deal with anything else, tonight. All you wanted was to get back, to put on the only clothes other than your suit that didn’t make you want to crawl out of your skin. Even if it was just for an hour, you’d take it.
While you had gotten used to how quiet it was in the building a long time ago, you couldn’t help but think that tonight, it felt almost… eerie. There was something tingling, buzzing at the very base of your skull, but even as you strained your hearing, your sight, everything, you couldn’t detect anything out of place. Everything seemed normal, so you couldn’t understand why you were so on edge! It couldn’t just be Peter’s presence, surely, because he posed no threat to you. So what was going on?
Picking up your backpack filled with belongings, you stared around at the empty office, the breeze that flowed through the open window sending a shiver down your spine, even though you weren’t feeling cold. Something wasn’t right. You just couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Hello? Anybody there?” You call out, straining your hearing once more, trying to listen out for even the slightest sound. A movement, a breath, anything, even as you couldn’t help but think that this was the most cliché horror movie like moment that you had experienced to date. Still, you heard nothing, but that nagging feeling didn’t dissipate, and you quickly lost all desire to change out of your suit.
The unease you felt only grew stronger as you stood there, unsure what to make of the feeling. It was quickly growing towards being overwhelming, but you didn’t know what to do.
Luckily for you, you didn’t have to make a decision.
Unfortunately, the decision was made by one of the very people you were trying to prove yourself to.
Peter B. Parker — or at least, you were pretty sure it was him — swung through the very same window you had, only to grasp a hold on your arm and pull you out of the window as he jumped straight back out of it.
Now, you had been Arachnid for a long time now. You had gotten used to the swinging, to the way your stomach dipped and your throat tightened, but you had never experienced it where you weren’t the one in control. Finally, you understand why people you brought to safety had, on occasion, thrown up immediately after you set them down on their feet again. The feeling of falling, of having no choice but to trust somebody else to catch you, it was terrifying.
But what was infinitely more terrifying was the way that the very floor of the building you had just been stood on exploded.
The blaze was blinding, even with your lenses protecting your eyes, but the noise that came moments later was much, much worse. And sure, you had been around explosions before, but never one that big, never so close. And never so unprepared for one.
Your ears were ringing, and you vaguely realised that you had become dead weight in your shock, with Peter struggling to keep his grasp on your arm firm. After a moment, you had the sense to grab his forearm in return, trying to assist him in holding you up. He didn’t seem as effected by the explosion in comparison to you, and you wondered if he’d had the time to put earbuds in his ears as you had sometimes done before a fight. Either way, you were insanely envious as the pain in your ears increased, leaving you struggling to focus on holding on to Peter.
When he set you down, which couldn’t have been more than a minute after he had grabbed you, considering you could still see the office building smouldering, you had to hold a hand over your mouth even over your mask, trying to rid yourself of nausea. Smoke was leaking into the darkening sky, and you saw the flash of sirens below, but heard nothing other than the distinctive ringing that felt like it was melting your brain.
Peter’s hand was squeezing your shoulder, and after a moment in which you didn’t acknowledge him, he was gripping your other shoulder with his spare hand, shaking you the slightest bit. You looked up at him with a groan, squinting past the floating lights in your vision to see that his mouth was moving, no sound coming out. You shook your head, trying to get rid of that incessant ringing, but it didn’t work. You dropped your chin to your chest again, hands bracing against your ears as if they could ease your pain, and you didn’t make a move as Peter removed one hand from your shoulder.
Mere moments later, the same tingling you had felt before the building you were in exploded returned, stronger, more intensely. Your head snapped up, frantically looking around, paying Peter no mind as he spoke into the orange-glowing watch on his wrist. You breathed through your nose, trying not to cough at the smoke permeating the air, and you just managed to push Peter over the edge of the roof of the building, with you diving after him, as another explosive went off.
That explosion was smaller than the last one, and the only reason you had managed to avoid it was because you knew it was coming. You knew what the alarm bells in your head were trying to tell you now, and you spotted the projectile just seconds before it reached your feet.
Part of you was glad that your senses were dulled from the first explosion — your hearing, especially, as it meant you were less effected by the close-range on this one. You saw Peter’s eyes widen as he looked up above you at where the explosion had just occurred. You just about managed to web him before shooting a web towards the next building, feeling something in your shoulder pull sharply with his extra weight and the suddenness of the move.
You squinted down at him as he gripped the web attached to his chest with one hand, his lips moving more frantically as he spoke to a hologram projected by the watch on his other hand.
“Shit, what is going on?” You asked, though mostly to yourself, but the only way you could tell you had even voiced the words was by the way they rumbled out of your throat. That explosion had messed up your hearing, for the moment, anyway, and you quickly realised that with your slow healing and the ringing in your ears, this fight was going to be majorly difficult.
You only had a moment to think that, before something snapped the web that was holding you to the building, sending both you and Peter falling through the air. Embarrassingly, you’re pretty sure that you let out a yell of some sort.
All the air was knocked out of you the next second as something hurtled into you, sending you careening towards the windows of the closest building. Peter, for a moment, had a shocked expression on his face, before he seemingly realised what was going on, smiling and letting out a string of words that you didn’t hear. You groaned as your sore back collided with the window, smashing upon your impact, and you were sent sprawling over a desk, a monitor breaking underneath your sudden weight.
Yet again, there was a hand against your shoulder, and you paid it no mind as your head dropped back, thudding against the desk. You couldn’t help but groan, the duress that your back had been under today was certainly taking its toll, leaving your whole spine throbbing with pain. On top of that, you were struggling to catch your breath, and with the sudden adrenaline provided by the spider-sense fading, the intensity of the pain in your ears was increasing.
Finally, you managed to peel your eyes open to see a concerned Peter B. Parker looking at you, with Miguel O’Hara stood beside the shattered window, staring out menacingly, as if daring whoever it was to attack again. Peter said something else, squeezing your shoulder, and all you could do in response was hold up one thumb.
Miguel seemingly barked out an order over his shoulder, and a moment later, you were squinting against the bright orange light of a portal.
Peter was hauling you to your feet, leaning to hold one of your arms over his shoulder, practically carrying your weight towards the portal looming ahead. “No, no, wait,” You said, and you felt the way your words slurred as you became slightly delirious with a mixture of pain, adrenaline, and desperation. “Stop, I gotta—”
He only shook his head, before tipping the two of you forward until you both fell into the portal.
The dizzying feeling of inter-dimensional travel definitely didn’t help the pounding in your temples, nor the nausea you had previously been feeling, and you had no choice but to try and focus on Peter’s grip on you as you squeezed your eyes shut. When the world finally stopped spinning, or feeling like it was falling away around you, you opened your eyes just enough to take note of where you were — which was back in the Infirmary of the Spider Society HQ.
You shook Peter off, standing on your own weight and waving him away when he tried to assist you as you swayed once more. You glared, eyes narrowed, and turned to head straight back through the portal you had come from, only to see it close before your very eyes.
The same Spider-Doctor from the last time you were here snapped a band around your wrist, and you squinted down at the red and blue band. It made you feel lighter, even slightly, which felt good on your aching bones and muscles. You opened your mouth to speak as the Spider-Doctor led you to sit down on an empty bed with white sheets, but you vaguely saw the way his mask shifted as he presumably spoke. You couldn’t tell what he was saying with his mask on, but a minute later, you felt a sharp prick against the inside of your elbow.
You just about had the lucidity to murmur “You fucker—” before you succumbed to the weight of your eyelids.
∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘
When you woke up, it was to a throbbing pain in your forehead, that only got worse when you tried to open your eyes. At the very least, you were glad to have your hearing returned to you, albeit slightly muffled, which you were only aware of because the sound of voices across the room was the reason for you waking.
“I’m just saying, maybe knocking the kid out wasn’t the greatest idea!” Peter B. Parker’s annoyingly loud voice says, slightly high pitched in the end. Who he was saying it to, however, you couldn’t say, not without opening your eyes. And that didn’t feel like a good idea, the lights even with your eyes closed feeling like too much.
Instead, you just groan, bringing your hand up to rest over both of your eyes. “It wasn’t a great idea.” You say through gritted teeth, more than annoyed over the situation you found yourself in. Honestly, what did these people have against leaving you be? Why did they think they had any right to tell you what to do, or how to handle things, or to overrule you when it came to your own treatment?
“Hey, kid!” Peter responds, drawing the letters out in that typical oh shit voice. From the snippet of the conversation you had caught, at least he was seemingly trying to advocate for your consciousness. However, that didn’t change the fact that he was there when that Spider-Doctor knocked you out. No, you were still pissed. And when you got your hands on that doctor? He was in for it.
Any other thoughts or feelings on the matter were overturned when you realised that your hand was resting over your eyes, not the lenses of your mask.
Who do these people think they are?
You open your mouth to jump into a rant on that exact subject, on the audacity that they all have, but find yourself silenced by somebody grabbing onto your free wrist, and seemingly dropping your mask into your hand. You feel it until you’ve got it the right way around, and then pull it over your face.
The lights are much more bearable with your lenses back over your eyes, but it’s still painful, and still worsens that pounding in your head. But it does mean that you can see who’s around you; Peter, Miguel and the Spider-Doctor. You have half the mind to leap at that doctor, but Miguel is raising placating hands in your direction before you can make the move to do so.
“Let’s all calm down.” Miguel says, placing his hands on his hips when your eyes only narrow at him.
“What is wrong with you? Who gave you people the right to—to take off my mask? To knock me out? Hell, to come to my universe and get in my business!” You practically yell out, swinging your legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the way your back hurts with the movement and glaring when the three of them step forward to help you.
“If Peter hadn’t gotten there when he did, you would’ve died.” Miguel responds plainly, seemingly aggravated by your irritation. One of his arms is raised in a gesture towards the man, who smiles almost guiltily, as if helping you was a crime. Which, in your mindset, it might as well have been. “There was an anomaly, a villain from another dimension targeting you.”
“I can handle myself.” You spit out, though the way the room spins when you stand is almost a direct contrast to your words. Your blood is rushing through your veins, and you realise that there’s a machine beeping next to you, increasing in frequency. As you look, you realise it’s measuring your heart rate, and you yank wires off of you that you hadn’t even noticed before, as if they were exposing you somehow. “And that doesn’t give you the right to take off my mask. Who does that?”
Spider-Doctor raises his hands, as if surrendering, though seems unintimidated by the way your glare switches to him. “It was necessary. Your hearing was severely damaged by the explosion, you needed treatment. You have dampening-buds in your ears now, while your healing catches up.” While that sounds reasonable, it only makes you angrier. Why did these people even care if some anomaly killed you? If your hearing was damaged? Why did they insist on bothering you?
Miguel sighs, pinching his nose, before he lifts his head up to speak to you again. You just about stop yourself from making a snotty comment about his attitude. You didn't even want to be here, and here he was, acting like dealing with you was such an inconvenience to him. It was frustrating. “Your universe seems to be at some sort of epicentre of anomalies, and we don’t know why. Yet.”
“We’re just trying to keep you safe. You can’t deal with all of those anomalies alone, nobody can. Sometimes, you need a team.” Peter says softly, like he could convince you of the matter. “Believe me, you don’t want to learn that the hard way.” He adds on, smiling almost hesitantly, as if there’s a memory he’s thinking of connected to his own words.
You’re sighing through your nose, your teeth gritting together as you regard them. “Okay, fine, you want to come take out your anomalies, or whatever? You do that. But anything more than that isn’t welcome.” You say, at last, your eyes narrowed towards them as you wait for their responses.
You still don’t really understand it, any of it, but it’s becoming clear that you have no choice but to deal with these people. Apparently, they were not budging on all of this stuff, which — fine, so long as they stay out of your way. The last thing you need is a bunch of Spider-people stepping on your toes, or making you seem incapable in front of the citizens of your own dimension when in the end, they’ll all up and leave.
After all, you can remember your mother telling you how important it is to do things yourself. The moment you start accepting help, you relax, and when they decide they don’t want to help you anymore? You’re screwed, your sense of independence reduced to ashes. And as Arachnid, there’s far too much at stake to risk that happening.
“Here,” Miguel says, only nodding his agreement — or at least, that’s what you assume the nod was for. He throws a watch towards you, and you catch it with some confusion. “In case you see any anomalies before we do.” He explains as he watches you fiddle witht he watch in both hands, glaring down at it as if it was offensive. He’s relatively satisfied when you relax at that explanation. While Miguel doesn’t voice what else it’s for, knowing you’d only get irritated and refuse the watch, he’s silently hoping that you’ll understand. It’s so you can come to them, if you need them. They can only hope that they’ll be able to tell you that, one day, before it’s too late, without the offer scaring you off.
“So, I’m good to go?” You ask, looking between the three Spider-Men still staring at you and the watch you hesitantly clasp around your wrist. They nod, or, Peter and Miguel do, while the Spider-Doctor throws his hands in the air, exasperated.
“That dimension is yours,” Peter says, leaning over to see the screen of your watch. “The button at the bottom will input this dimension as the destination. Just press that,” He points to another button, “To open the portal to whichever dimension has been typed in.”
You nod, still pissed that he’d let the Spider-Doctor knock you out, but at least you didn’t give him a snarky comment. Instead, you just pressed the button to go back to your own dimension, and stepped through the portal the moment it was big enough for you to go through.
You didn’t expect for him to follow you through.
“Hey, listen,” Peter says, almost reluctantly, as if he doesn’t want to upset you. When you turn to him, he raises his hands, as if to further prove that sentiment. “I am sorry that he knocked you out, I didn’t know he was going to do that.”
“Okay, fine, apology accepted.” You say, flatly, turning to survey where exactly you are. It doesn’t take you long to notice the remains of the building you had been camping out in, the building charred and the air still thick with all the smoke that had been produced.
“I wasn’t done,” Peter sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose momentarily. “I also wanted to say that I’m sorry about your building. And I wanted to ask, well, mention about how when Doctor-Peter took off your mask, he noticed you don’t have anything protecting your ears, like other Spiders with your level of enhanced hearing do.”
You turn to stare blankly at him, while mulling through where exactly you’re going to stay in your head. If you’re being honest, you’re not paying his words much mind. So what, you don’t have anything protecting your hearing? Sure, sometimes you had stuffed earbuds into your ears when you knew you were going into a rough fight, but you didn’t know when some psycho exploded your building right in front of you. Plus, it’s not like you have unlimited resources to figure out some way of protected your ears under your mask while also letting you effectively use your hearing.
“Okay? And?” You ask, voice edging on the side of boredom. In all honesty, you just want to be left alone. You want to put on your comfy clothes, curl up into a ball and go to sleep so you can dream of a world where everything is okay. The likelihood of that happening is small, but not impossible, right?
“Well,” Peter hesitates then, which piques your interest the slightest bit. “Here, I had these made back when my hearing was crazy sensitive, but it’s not anymore, so I got no use for them!” He says, holding out two blue and red earbuds in a clear case. “You gotta wait until your ears are healed up to use ‘em, but I figured they’d do you more good than me.”
For a moment, you’re ready to deny him. To glare and insist that you don’t need his help. But then, he had said that they were originally for him, and he didn’t need them any longer, so really, would it be so bad to take them? To accept this one thing? To allow yourself to be saved of this tiniest bit of pain?
“You’re sure?” You ask, likely the least aggressive you’d spoken to him, though that’s not to say that it was asked softly. You were still firm on not accepting their help, on doing your own thing, but you could accept this much, surely? It couldn’t hurt.
Peter smiles, a short laugh leaving him, and he waves the box towards you. “I’m sure!”
“…Thanks.” You say, shortly, as you accept the earbuds offered to you. He also hands you the backpack that you had lost track of after the attack, and you accept that far more quickly. You’re glad that it feels the exact same weight as it did the last time you held it, before you shove the earbuds into the opening and zip it back up.
There’s a portal still open on the rooftop the two of you stand on, and Peter backs up to go towards it almost reluctantly. “Also, if you need somewhere to stay—”
“Don’t push it,” You respond, quickly, cutting him off before he could finish what he was saying. He doesn’t take offence to your abruptness, and smiles with a nod, before he disappears into the portal. You stare out at the city around you, looking in the direction of another building you had been very reluctant to return to. “What is my life?” You ask yourself, rhetorically, because you don’t know how you’d even answer that.
You glance behind you to ensure the portal is closed, before jumping off the rooftop, freefalling, relishing in the way the cold wind soothes the pain in your back. Before long, though, you have to shoot a web to catch yourself. You head towards the only place you know will be suitable for you, but can’t shake the way the thought of it chills you.
All you can do is hope that this multiverse stuff will be over with, and soon.
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angelltheninth · 8 months
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Hi omg I love you work so much and I always miss out when peoples requests are open so I'm so glad I finally made it
Could I make a spiderverse request for Peter b parker, Miguel o'hara, Spot? And Aaron Davis? Dating someone younger than them... like they have an age gap but it's totally legal though! That's my request 😊😊😊
It's cool Anon don't worry, I've put age-gaps in some of my recent fics too, you're not weird.
Pairing: Peter B. Parker, Miguel O'Hara, Spot, Aaron Davis x Fem!Reader
Tags: fluff, established relationship, age-gap, teasing, kissing, inexperience, protectiveness, domestic fluff, younger!Reader
A/N: Relationships with age-gaps can work in real life, just, you know, be careful.
Peter really plays up his charm when he's out with you. He has to put his best foot forward, show to you that he can still keep up with you even though you're younger. Except on the nights when he gets back from patrol, then all he wants to do, all he can do is fall asleep on the bed beside you, still in the bottom half of his costume cause he just could't be botored to take it off. You laugh now but one day he will be able to say he told you so. It's not easy being a dad, a hero and a boyfriend.
Miguel is extremely protective over you. Given the age-gap he feels like he has to be the tough and protective boyfriend. Jealous too, when he sees the men closer to your age flirting with you. None of them hold a candle to him in any way, and you let them know it when you walk over to him and drape yourself over his lap, kiss him while his hand goes to lay protectively on your hip. Just let them try something with you, he'll show them that these muscles aren't just for show or holding you against the wall.
Spot gets a happy smile on his face when he gets home and you're waiting for him, ready to hug and kiss him silly. Yeah it's a little thing but he hasn't had someone like that in his life for a damn long time. You bring out his better side, a side that wants to tease you, carry you to bed every night, show you how much he cares. He never thought he would care for anyone like this, that he would be this happy with his life. But then you showed up and made him realize he was wrong.
Aaron loves to come home to you after a long day and eat dinner with you. It's his favorite time, his favorite activity. There's a big part of him that feels like he doesn't deserve you, that you'd be happier with someone closer to your age, someone... who isn't a supervillain. You never wanted someone else, even when this relationship began and there was an obvious difference in all kinds of experience he was still there for you and you for him. He thinks just anyone can give you that. No, it's only him. Only his touch, his kisses make your heart beat so fast.
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kombuuuu · 10 months
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☆ Masterlist ☆
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Requests are closed! So sorry!!
My readers are completely non-descript, except gender when specified !!!!
My fics may get slightly suggestive, but I do not write smut !
Talk to me C: My inbox is still open to any non-request related things!
writer supporting writers (click for fic recs)
pfp of me drawn by my sister :3
the first tag is for smaller drabbles! (stuff I don’t add to masterlist!)
Across the Spiderverse:
☆ Miles Morales ☆
+Miles!42
“I’m Spiderman!”
[A date with a new man goes bad, Spider-man is there to help.]
Jitters
[You sit next to him on your first day, and now you’re best friends! Also, you’re both clueless.]
Saviour of Mine
[Miles is in love with Gwen, isn’t he? You confide in your teacher, Mr. Warren. Now you’re fighting that teacher, and Miles is hurt.]
Blood bond (Platonic)
[You find your brother on the ceiling. He confesses his alter ego.]
E42! Miles For the Soul.
[A simple meeting at his mothers cafe, and he can’t get you off his mind.]
E42! Miles Something Soft for Someone Tough
[Miles comes home hurt. You just want to give him some love.]
E42! Miles Deflecting.
[Miles couldn’t be civil with you to save his life. But when someone tries to mess with you? Nah.]
E42! Miles Deflecting PT2
[He couldn't leave it how it was.]
E42! Miles Take Me On
[Miles feels he doesn’t deserve you, and doesn’t know how to tell you he loves you. You already know.]
E42! Miles Headcanons
[Headcanons for your favourite babygirl.]
E42! Miles Birthday Girl {linked 1}
[Miles and Pavitr—, on your birthday !]
E42! Miles Give me the Phone.
[Someone won’t stop texting you, jealousy runs it course.]
★ Peter B. Parker ★
+MayDay (i’m her mom guys i swear)
No.1 Dad!
[Peter took your twins to another fight. You’re mad, but he needs comfort.]
☆ Pavitr Prabhakar ☆
Lovebug? No, Cuddlebug!
[How would Pavitr hug you?]
Only you.
[Your insecurities would be your downfall, luckily, Pavitr is head over heels.]
Birthday Girl {linked 1}
[Miles and Pavitr—, on your birthday !]
★ Gwen Stacy ★
Spidery Romance!
[Some headcanons for our communal girlfriend.]
I don’t like dorks.
[She doesn’t like dorks, you might be an exception.]
☆ Miguel O’Hara ☆
Hold my swaying Heart.
[You can’t dance, Miguel can teach you.]
Obsessions.
[Miguel can’t let you leave him — You swear you’ve been here before.]
★ Hobie brown ★
It sounds nice, coming from you.
[You won’t talk very often, but he understands you anyways.]
Spider Kisses.
[A kiss from a Spiders mouth.]
Late Nights.
[Late night store trips. Your lover is a bit of a tease.]
☆ The Spot ☆
Spotty Dog.
[You find your lover the perfect present.]
I write a common of 1 every couple days, word count getting sometimes stupidly high, so i’ll try and finish up all the requests in due time!
☆ Will continue to add accordingly! ☆
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There are two different versions of ATSV in theatres - and the only difference between them in Hobie Brown.
Okay ya'll I came across something so bizarre.
So I've seen Across the Spiderverse twice now, and my theatre was going to stop showing it this weekened - so I went to see it one more time.
Originally, I had seen version one. I knew there were two out there, but I had only heard of version 2. This time I saw it. And the ALL the differences has to do with Hobie Brown.
My man really hate consistency, I guess.
LOOK: This is the shot of Hobie saying 'I quit' that's most used. - THIS is version one
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But when I went this time, this is what I saw:
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THIS IS VERSION 2. (omggggggg!!!!)
As you can tell, instead of his normal colors - in this shot Hobie is a violet-pink instead, with a lot more texturing on his model.
And these are common throughout Hobie's screentime!
If you saw the top photo - you saw version one.
If you saw the bottom photo - you saw version two.
Chances are if you watched the movie early in it's release (first week or so), or you watched a fancam you have seen version 1.
I was able to capture most of the changes on camera - and it's kinda jarring to see but omg i find it so interesting!!!
I took photos of all the differences and compare them down below, including an explanation of why this happened.
Please let me know which version you saw, and when you saw the movie! Have you seen both versions? I'm so curious!
For the first half of Hobie's appearance the two version are entirely the same - except for what seems like either a different take or wording of his 'Gwendy, how much have you told him-' line. However, the changes begin at the end of Hobie's scene with Miles.
I spoke here about how in some versions Hobie says 'Don't enlist unless you know what war you're fighting', while others 'Don't enlist unless you know just who you're fighting'.
But the biggest differences are his last scene.
Last week I used THIS screencap that was taken from a Version 1 fancam. In it, Hobie is in full color:
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In Version 2, he's pink. Also - it's extremely faint in the photo, but if you look closer you can see there are also red spiderwebs behind the blue ones in Version 2:
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You can see his pink color better here:
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Later in the scene, Hobie changes colors. In Version 1, he maintains the same normal color scheme for the duration of the scene, however in Version 2 he's changing back and forth - even turning black and white at one point.
Version 1:
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Version 2:
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And can I just say -
This is to show how Hobie is literally the only one in the room who is 1) Literally and physically 'in Miles' corner, (literally) standing 'in the right' - to the right of Miles,
and 2) the only one being honest to Miles (why he turns black and white, he also turns black and white while talking about Miles' parents.)
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As the scene goes on, Hobie stays this color - which leads to one of my favorite differences:
His last shot.
In Version 1 - Hobie is white & black for one shot, as he says 'Here we go'. This is the same.
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However - for version one, he returns to his natural color for his final line of the scene - 'Good'. And for Version 2, he turns purple.
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So why did this happen?
According to the ATSV there are two (and only two) versions that were released in US theatres. Version 1 was released when Sony shipped early copies to translators so they could translate the script for international viewing. The version sent was about 98% done, and made to give the translators a jumpstart prior to release.
However, that version ended up being released.
Afterwards they swapped it out with the full, correct version - Version 2.
It seems like Hobie wasn't meant to be natural colored for the duration of the Canon-Events scene, and that in the whole film, he was the final thing they were putting touches on.
There are other small changes in version 2 - including when Miguel calls for backup - in Version 1 Lyla points at Miguel, however in Version 2 she takes a selfie with him on a AI cell-phone.
In Version 1 - Miles says 'No, no no!' at Pavitrs chai scolding, and 'Sorry, sorry' in Version 2. There are other small adlibs, and they said they removed Gwen's voicelines when she was searching for Miles and the child in the rubble (?? don't know why).
I also think - and I DON'T KNOW, I haven't checked my recording but I did record it - I THINK the watercoloring in Gwen's scenes have different colors in some shots, or different strokes, but only subtly. It just looked more detailed and vibrant to me, but idk. But the trans colors remain completely untouched in every way.
However, it seems that your best and most obvious way of telling which version you saw is by looking at Hobie's lines and coloring in different scenes.
Mans really hates consistency, damn.
______________________________________________
Outside of some split-second shots and ablids, He's the only things that's largely changed, and when seeing it in the theatre today I was literally shocked as HELL. When he said 'eh, what of it?', I was like 'mfer WHY R U PINK'. I hadn't noticed until right then. But I'm literally over the moon I got to see both, I feel like I found something secret.
Maybe being Hobie obsessed and Neurodivergent pays off.
Oh - and here's two more shots that were also changed that I didn't get footage of. If you have a photo or footage of these shots from Version 2 - PLEASE post or send them to me. Thanks!
Version 1 - 'What of it?' / In Version 2 he is a BRIGHT pink color
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Version 1 - Standing behind Miles while talking to Miguel / In Version 2 he is black and white with newspaper around him (also doesnt he look so cute look at that slutty waist ugh)
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SO uhhhhh yeah Idk if anyone else finds this interesting but I DO and I enjoyed it so much and I WISH I could get better footage of Version 2.
Had I not watched his scenes everyday for weeks and wrote out a dissertation about every one of his lines I might not have noticed lol
If you're not normal about Hobie Brown and found this interesting like me, thanks! Let me know if you read this far and please tell me what version you saw and when you saw it! Ok thxs again bye :)
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hanibalistic · 10 months
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#6F417E | EARTH-42 MILES MORALES.
genre | fluff / reader is gn
synopsis | miles found you fainted in an alleyway one day, except you died two years ago.
word count | 3090
warning | everything i know about e-42 miles morales (and just this spiderverse) is from the movies 
note | tentatively there're 5 parts to this story... thank you for reading :)  
parts | one, two, three, four  
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The streets in the morning were less eerie than at night, which you supposed was a given fact. It was like that back on your Earth too. One significant difference you found between your Earth and this Earth was that, while both were crowded, the general architecture of this Earth looked like they were on its last leg. There were more old and rusty gates than reflective and clean glass doors, and most buildings were held together through an abandoned construction process with no safety measures taken. 
Miles told you once that if the buildings hold, they hold. It took you a while to let that mindset sink in. When you realized your overthinking wouldn’t magically strengthen the morale around this place, nor would it collapse one of the dusty-looking buildings as you so feared, you stopped thinking too deeply about it. You would get jumpy occasionally, though, like if a few steel construction poles holding a balcony together start shivering in the wind. He never visibly laughed, but trust that he was always amused at your caution. 
“What about this one?” you asked, holding a sweater before your torso and turning to him. “I like this one. It’s cute!”
Miles peered at you, his hands shoved deep in his jacket pocket where he was safekeeping the money his mother gave him to do clothing shopping with you. The corners of his mouth pulled into a frown immediately. “It looks tacky.”
You mirrored his frown, but yours were defeated rather than mischievous. “You have something mean to say about everything.” 
“For good reason,” he said with a shrug. “You have terrible taste.” 
He wouldn’t be too wrong about that. Fashion was never your forte, but you did wonder if it could be when personal interest and financial budget were no longer an issue. You laughed under your breath; that felt like a faraway dream. Carefully putting the sweater back on the hanger, you made a point to scoff directly at his face. 
“I really don’t see how that’s tacky,” you said. “Is the sweater tacky, or am I?” 
“Oh, I can’t answer that,” he replied with a faux sympathetic smirk. He bent to your eye level and added, “Won’t wanna be mean.”
If he was taunting you, playfully so, it wasn’t successful. One thing you learned about Miles in these past few months of living with him was that he was all bark and no bite. All you have to do is level his stare for just a bit too long for comfort—you squinted your eyes, your nose scrunching as an afterthought, then abruptly stomped a foot forward. He immediately jumped back, but he did it to avoid hitting the tip of your nose with his, not because you successfully scared him. 
His eye twitched in dismay when you smiled triumphantly before turning around and running out of the store, dropping a quiet trail of snickers through your lips. Miles faintly clicked his tongue into a grin, which he had to physically rub off his face. After spending these months with you, save for the paranoia-inducing glitches you have been doing occasionally, he has mostly settled with your presence being a constant.
There was a spot for you in his twin-sized bed, at the dining table in the living room, and even on the chores list! Your prolonged stay was not anticipated, nor was your infiltration into his life to such an intimate degree. At some point, Miles completely tore his walls down to let his heart run astray, and the first place it ran to was you. The only issue now was whether you returned his feelings, and that was a question he couldn't even begin to pick apart. 
"It's so nice to put a face to a name.” Seconds after he left the store, he could recognize a voice. "Oh, yes. Miles talks about you all–" 
"Gwen!" 
Realization hit him with the hallucinated impact of a train entering a pitch-black tunnel. He bolted out to the street where you and his partner in crime (literally) stood, his arms stretched out so he could cover your ears just before Gwen could finish her sentence. You looked up just as your shoulders were hunched at the icy feel of his hands, and you saw Miles utter something through gritted teeth at the bemused girl you just met.
“You’re not funny!”
“Thank you, Miles. I try my best,” Gwen retorted with a satisfied smirk, then her gaze bounced down to you, and she scoffed in disbelief. “You’re right, though. They do look exactly alike. It’s uncanny.”
“They’re the same person,” he clarified, “just from a different Earth.”
“I know,” Gwen shrugged, “but you’d think they would at least have a different style.”
“They’re wearing my clothes. How would you know?”
“They’re wearing your clothes?”
Miles pursed his lips as he let go of your ears, subconsciously rubbing them through a brief caress before his arms fell to his sides. You widened your eyes in surprise when the cold Brooklyn air and the chattery street returned to your senses; it didn’t occur to you how much pressure he applied to muffle your ears until sounds came back to you. Shifting his weight and heaving a dramatic exhale, Miles let his friend know how little bullshit he was willing to take from her this day, especially when it came to jokingly expose his feelings for you. Gwen’s smirk stayed for a moment longer before she narrowed her eyes and gave a knowing nod; it was all for good fun. She understood the implication of someone like Miles falling in love.
“What are you guys up to?” Gwen asked, changing the subject. 
“We’re buying clothes,” you replied, clarifying with an indignant huff. “Or we would be if he wasn’t vetoing everything I suggest.”
“Their taste is awful,” Miles retorted without looking at you. He was speaking to Gwen. 
“A tacky shirt means I won’t have to take from your closet anymore,” you said, exasperated. You threw your arms up to smack his face with the overly long sweater sleeves before rolling them back up to your wrists, where you folded the hems twice to keep them from sliding over your hands. “Look at your clothes! They’re big on you, and they’re big on me!” 
Gwen pulled a face in agreement. “You do like oversized clothes, Miles.” 
“Thanks for the unsolicited input,” Miles smiled, “much appreciated.” 
The tension zapping between their fake smile and glaring stare was palpable. To your dramatic lenses, at least. You switched between the two of them, your eyes darting back and forth as your mind raced to find some kind of a conclusion to their relationship. If Miles was in love with the previous version of yourself, and they have since died, then the next possible candidate would likely be Gwen depending on how closely related they were. Or perhaps you were wrong all along! Miles told the truth when he said he was only good friends with ��you’ because his heart belonged to this girl across from you!
“What are you two?” you asked, promptly breaking their eye contact.
“Oh? We–uhh,” she awkwardly tugged a piece of hair behind her ear and glanced at Miles, “we work together?”
Miles frowned at Gwen for a split second before he nodded. “We work together.”
“Colleagues!” You crossed your arms and stared off into the distance. You ignored Miles when he began asking questions about what you were doing. “Colleagues… there is much to discuss… yes.”
“What?” He waved his hand in front of your face. “What are you yapping about?” 
“I think someone is getting the wrong idea about us,” Gwen said, failing to hold back a chuckle. She watched Miles roll his eyes as if you’ve always gotten the wrong idea about everything and smiled faintly to herself; she had not seen him this expressive in a while. Having a paralyzed face was his thing ever since grief took over. Looking away, she directed the conversation to you instead. “Hey, how is the glitching treating you?
You clapped your hands suddenly and tilted your head, ignoring the way Miles jumped in disbelief that you responded to Gwen and not him. You had no idea she knew of your glitching, but if Miles trusted her enough to let her on your identity, she must be someone you could count on. Nodding, you looked down at your hands and grimaced. “They’ve slowed down, thankfully. I don’t like the feeling of it.”
There were no words to describe how the glitching felt because you simply were not for a moment. It was the act of your existence being pulled apart manifested into a colorful and pixelated view for a third-party observer. The dimensional sight of it tricked people into thinking there was an experience to undergo, but there wasn’t, technically. You were glitched out of existence and then glitched back into reality. Your body and soul were pulled apart at the seams, separated into atoms and molecules of nothingness, and your mind wasn’t fast enough to catch up with its erasure that for a split second, you understood your oblivion before being forcefully put back on your feet. 
You were thrown into uncontrollable sobs the first few times you glitched. The process was all but a mere few seconds, but the aftermath was Miles staying up all those nights until you fell asleep first, holding his breath whenever you stirred in your sleep, and wishing he was capable enough to stop your face from getting stained by tears. You have mostly gotten used to the feeling, but that did not eliminate the grotesque urge to barf every time you glitched.
“Hmm…” Gwen rubbed her chin in thought at your reaction. She has been helping with figuring out what to do to stop you from glitching entirely, but the urgency of it all greatly stumped her thinking process. She worked well under pressure, not one of her friend’s many paranoid rambles about you dying. “The multiverse is difficult to figure out, but I think I have a few ideas I’d like to try.”
Miles turned to her with anticipation. “You have something?”
“It’s not a definitive something,” Gwen said as she stepped away from his prying eyes. “It’s more of a hypothesis.” 
“We can test it out,” he urged, eyes glimmering unfamiliarly. “Having something is better than nothing.”
“My problem is more about [Name] being the only person who can prove that what we made worked,” she said with a shake of her head. “I will not have them wear something that might kill them.”
There was a downward shift in the air as the Brooklyn cold froze over. Your eyes darted about at the drop of tension. The change in Gwen’s voice and how Miles’s feet shuffled so he didn’t have to maintain an awkward standing position were not lost on you. There was a shared sorrow that neither has opened up to you about. With Gwen avertinig her eyes and the gentle drop in her confidence, you couldn't have been mistaken that she also knew you well before you died. Deducing from her last sentence, these two might be why you met your end. 
“We should give it a try anyway,” Miles muttered. “If it works, it’ll really help them.”
You halted the inward debate on whether you should give a say in their conversation. You couldn’t begin to understand the science they would have to figure out to stop your paranormal glitching, even if they decided to discuss the plan with you. It still surprised you that Miles has the smarts good enough to be on his way to prestigious universities. He has been so regular—he went to school, lazed about the chores, and was afraid of his mother for reasons you now understand. Either way, your best bet was to trust that these two only had your best interest in mind. 
You smiled at Gwen and gave her two encouraging thumbs-ups when she glanced at you with what you could consider millennia of uncertainty. Her stoic brows relaxed as nostalgia packed her body into itself upon getting hit in the face, once again, with your familiar features. Two years of unresolved grief and self-blame, two years of longing for a friend, and everything dissolving into one innocent smile and two thumbs-up. Miles did not overstate his whiplash when he saw you because she was feeling it too. 
“I’ll gather everything I have and bring them over tonight,” Gwen said. “I have some stuff to do, so I’m gonna go. I’ll see you tonight, Miles, and, uh–“ she waved, for a farewell that felt long overdue–“goodbye, [Name].”
Her soft features remained in your head as her back faded into the crowd. The noticeable sorrow in her eyes whenever she looked at you further reinforced your assumption that you two, at least, used to be friends. A sense of pride for yourself from this Earth blossomed deeply in your chest, and you felt giddy knowing that you could maintain a genuine friendship with Gwen. But, more than that, you admired how her face glowed even under the chillingly dark sky and how her voice spoke like the texture of crumbled silk being smoothed over with a kind hand. Her delicate features plagued your head because you thought she was pretty. 
“I like her,” you said with a small smile playing on your lips. 
“I do, too,” Miles hummed in acknowledgment. He reached down to grab your hand so you wouldn’t get a chance to run off again, and you let him. “Not in the way you think I do, though.”
Question marks popped into the crease of your forehead as you looked up at him, acting incredulous now that you found out your self-curated romantic fantasy based off of one simple interaction between two people whose relationship you have no detail on read like an open book to him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he retorted as he raised your intertwined hands to point a finger at you. “You need to stop acting a fool.”
You squeezed his hand extra tight and huffed in dissatisfaction when he was barely affected by your abysmal strength. Taking a deep breath, you forced an embarrassing, wise chuckle and said, “Love is supposed to make you do stupid things.”
“Tell me when the love is there.”
“Ugh,” you groaned and pursed your lips to silence yourself. Observing passersby as a distraction, you managed to keep quiet for a few stores before bashfully inching closer to Miles, who sighed knowingly. “You really don’t have any feelings for her? Not even a little?” 
“No.”
“Ugh!” Your groan was less annoyed this time. “What a waste! I don’t understand!”
“You’re really hell-bent on this,” he mentioned as his legs stopped. He turned his body to you with wilful ignorance that he was forcing both of you to block everyone from walking down the middle of the street. He raised a brow, questioning. “I don’t like her like that. What don’t you understand?”
You felt a rare intimidation through his gaze, so you looked toward the direction Gwen left, chasing the image of a girl you tried not to feel envious of. Miles watched your eyes soften, but it was not the cause of relaxation but rather deep thinking that you forgot a world was happening around you. He waited patiently for you to return to him, anticipating your words. He always anticipated what you have to say, about anything, to the point it was foolish that he would wait for you to point out to him that an apple was red and a banana was yellow. 
“I don’t know,” you whispered loud enough for him to hear. “She’s so pretty.”
The thought that it never crossed his mind might baffle you, but it never did. Gwen was pretty, but to Miles, that was an undeniable fact rather than something sentimental. Or, at least, it used to be. The fact that she was pretty immediately became a jagged blade that threatened to cut your perception of his feelings for you after what you said. He was less than fond of it, and, unfortunately, he also has no idea how to keep you from being cut with it. 
It was a shame that you couldn’t see him the way he saw and knew himself. 
How no matter the tap water he splashed on his face and the flower-scented soap he applied on his hands, the only thing to truly rinse him of the grotesque, metallic stain of a purple mask was the double weight on his bed. How taking his prowler suit off could never rid him of the criminal identity the same way he could forget about it when he sat before the television folding laundry with you. How the heavy stomps of his feet treading down a path of crime and the terrified breathing of almost having his life taken from him could be so easily drowned out by the seamless way his voice weaves into the sound of your laugher as if you two were made for each other. 
You didn’t know the way he ached to sink himself into your presence, to relearn the world through your eyes and let you remind him that an apple was red and a banana was yellow, and how he would carve your face into his own so he would never forget you after you leave this Earth.
Miles’s heart was rebirth into the shape of yours, and you thought Gwen was pretty.
“There is nothing to it,” he said, clutching your hand to never let go. “She’s pretty. It’s empty.”
You slowly turned away from the street to look at him and smiled at his serious reaction. The dim sky tore open to let the sun kiss you, a tenderness he yearned to give you but couldn’t muster up the genuine courage to, so he only stared at you with endearment written all over his face in a language you haven’t learned to read. 
“Come on, let’s go back to get the sweater you want,” he muttered.
“You said it was tacky.” You followed behind closely as he dragged you by the hand.
“Exactly,” he mused, “you two are a perfect fit.”
You squeezed his hand in retaliation, but all he could feel was how perfectly they fit together. Maybe even better than you and that sweater.
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astroboots · 9 months
Text
Punch-Out Love
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Artwork by @guruan
FIGHT NIGHT
Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x female reader
Summary: You're lucky enough to score ring-side seats at a boxing match on Friday night. Getting the best view in the house of boxing champion: Miguel O'Hara.
Word count: 1,500
Next Chapter
Spiderverse Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist 
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You know fuck all about boxing.
About the only thing you know about the sport was from the glimpses you caught watching scratched up old recordings of Muhammed Ali fights on the boxy mini-tv of your old childhood friend's house.
It always seemed barbaric. The practice of watching two human beings beat the shit out of each other for spectator's entertainment. It seems like something that was better left in the Ancient Roman times. Have we all human beings as a society, really not come further some 2,000 years later?
Your bestie used to get mad at you for this. Constantly defending the sport from your criticism, because (according to him) it's not just about smashing each other's faces in. Supposedly, there's an art to the sport. Boxers are taught to respect their opponents and adhere to the principles of good sportsmanship. It takes great mental discipline, dedicated work and years of hard and punishing training to master boxing.
You never saw any of that in the matches he showed you. All you saw were two men needlessly being hurt, sustaining brain damage for rich people's enjoyment.
Then again, he was more than a little bit biased, considering it was his dream to go pro one day. Tall and gangly, with his scrawny antelope legs, thick-rimmed glasses and big-ass braces, he looked like he couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag, much less another person. You never understood how exactly he thought he was going to make it as a boxer.
But you never found it in you to burst his unrealistic bubble when he used to point at the screen excitedly, drawing your attention to Ali's footwork and the artistry in it. 
"It's like he's dancing," he used to say.
Except dancing is done with swelling music in the background. In dancing you often have a partner. It's an embrace. It's gentle and kind.
Boxing... was not that.
So you don't know how you managed to find yourself in the ringside seats of a local boxing match on a Friday evening, staring up at the boxing ring with the glaring ring lights shining into your eyes.
"Aren't these seats amazing?" Jess shouts excitedly over the familiar lyrics of ‘We Will Rock You' being belted out by Freddy Mercury on the loudspeaker.
You smile, and nod, because boxing-fan or not, she's right, these are some amazing seats. And considering you didn't have to pay a dime for them, personal aversions aside, you're never going to turn down free stuff.
Jess' husband tested positive for covid at the last minute, and you're the only one in your social circle that is anti-social and single enough to not have any plans on a Friday evening.
On the monitors above you, the menacing headshots of the two fighters swish into view.
"The first guy is an old reigning champ," she explains to you, as she leans in, shouting into your eardrums (and yet you can still barely make out what she's saying over the music). "The challenger is some new kid on the block. Has an amazing track record. Zero losses in the season. He's something else."
You look up at the gigantic screen, at the sharp cut cheeks, strong thick brows and the intense pitched brown eyes staring down at you.
Angry looking dude.
...Handsome too.
With a face like that, surely he could've gone into other careers. Calvin Klein model, movie star, or a news anchor. You wonder what makes a guy voluntarily have his face bashed in for money as a career.
"Ladies and gentlemen," a loud booming voice announces from the stage.
You jump in your seat from the suddenness, as you see a bald and overly formal dressed announcer in the middle of the ring. 
"Welcome to the electrifying boxing showdown of the century! Are you ready to witness some knockout action tonight?"
The crowd around you cheers with a pandemonium of shouting and whistling.
"Introducing our first fighter, a true hometown hero! With an impressive record of 20 wins, 15 by knockout, and only 2 losses, standing at 6'3 feet, and weighing in at 340 pounds of determination and strength, give it up for ‘the Knockout King’ Bobby Kane!"
You watch as the reigning champion walks down the tunnel to the midst of adoring cheers as he waves and gestures at the crowd like royalty.
Every inch the king that he is nicknamed, he jumps over the rope and stands tall and proud over the ring.
The man is huge, bulging with almost grotesque muscles. He's so large that you almost expect each of his steps to send a reverberation throughout the hall, as if this was Jurassic Park and he's a T-Rex.
"Now, entering the ring with the confidence of a warrior, fighting out of the red corner, with 15 wins, 10 by knockout, and no losses, standing at an astounding 6 feet 9 inches, and weighing in at 310 pounds of raw power, let's hear it for tonight's challenger, ‘Steel Jaw’ Miguel O'Hara!"
Wait what? You do a double take at the announcement. Six foot nine?!?! What kind of giant is that?
From the far corner of the hall, you see his silhouette emerge, and your eyes go wide at the sight of him. Tall doesn't even begin to describe him. 
There's a 200 year oak tree at Central Park, and with the shadow this man casts, you think their height must be nearly comparable. If you thought the Knockout King was tall, the "King" is practically tiny compared to this challenger.
You watch, as the man with cheeks so sharp they mind as well be blades (and god never has a nickname made more sense to you) as he strides towards the stage. He reaches the rope and barely even has to climb over it with how tall he is.
He's leaner than his predecessor. Every inch of him is cut muscles and tanned gorgeous skin as he stands in front of you. His presence is electric. The air crackles where he stands, towering over the stage.
You swear that his towering height blocks out the ring lights with it, casting the stage in the darkness of his tall shadow.
Somehow, he's even prettier in person compared to the still image of him blown up and plastered on the big screen. Soft brown curls and pouty lips. You don't understand in what world a man like that is a professional fighter.
From this distance, with the way that the light refracts from his irises, his eyes almost glow with a scarlet red that takes your breath away as you look up at him and meet his eyes.
If you didn't know better, you'd think he was staring at you.
The bell rings out, but he's not looking away. The intensity you find there is enough to make you swallow your tongue. Your face prickles with heat and for several long moments you forget to breathe, until the air seems to thin around you and your vision starts to swim.
Then he turns to face his opponent.
You're not quite sure where to look. There's so much happening at once. For his size, Miguel O'Hara is surprisingly deft on his feet. His footwork is somehow both unpredictable yet intentional all at once.
The King throws a strong punch, as he lunges forward, after his tall opponent. But O'Hara dodges them seemingly without effort. It's followed by punches so quick, the movements blur together.
Strike after strike. The King is giving it his all. But none of it properly connects. With every failed hit, you can see him growing increasingly more frustrated.
Your heart is in your lungs, and despite how close you are to the stage, you almost want to get up from your seat for a closer look.
Safe as you are behind the ropes, adrenaline rushes through your veins with a fury. You can't recall the last time you felt this ecstatic about... well, anything.
With each punch O’Hara dodges, you feel yourself lurch back in your seat, trying to dodge the punch with him.
It's titillating.
Exciting.
O'Hara's movements are precise and honed with intention despite the ferocity in his movements. Each one is measured and intricate and if you didn't know any better you'd almost call it graceful.
You think back to those moments in your childhood friend's home, and his excited words buzz in your ears now. For the first time ever you finally understand what he had meant.
It is like a dance.
Before you, O’Hara's eyes cross over in your direction and for a split of a second, you swear your eyes connect again. His gaze holds you there, pinned to your seat, and excitement shoots through the entirety of your spine until you feel lightheaded from the attention.
Then he finally steps forward, no longer evading.
It's brutal and efficient.
An uppercut that connects cleanly to his opponent's jaw.
Spit and blood flies out from the man's mouth, the flabby flesh of his cheek vibrating from the impact as he lands on the floor with an ear-shattering thud.
Then the guy is out.
Barely even eight minutes in. 
There's a stunned and shocked silence. The crowd seems both enthralled and disappointed at how fast it all went. On the ring floor, you can practically see the circle of cartoon birds flying above the defeated King's head.
You may not know anything about boxing, but you know that this man is not getting up anytime soon, no matter how far the referee counts.
Tearing your eyes away from the motionless body splayed out on the ground elevated above you, you can see the victor towering menacingly over the body.
But Miguel O'Hara isn't even looking at his defeated opponent
No, his eyes are staring straight into the sea of awestruck spectators. Except he’s not looking at them.
He's looking at you.
~ Next.
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Author's note: What's that you say? CiCi wtf are you doing starting another series when you already got one going on? ... Idek man. But I hope you guys enjoy it, cause I had a blast writing it, smut will ensue in later chapters I promise!
Dedications and Credits: Buckle up it's gonna be a big one!
Firstly to @guruan when I say she's my muse THIS IS WHAT I MEAN! Look at that beautiful artwork. I am drooling into my panties. I am crying between my legs. I am so damn horny! I cannot thank this amazingly talented genius enough. Please please give this wonderful brilliant human your love by following her, and drop by her KO-FI SHOP cause the art this woman bless us with is UN-fucking-REAL
Then to @djarinsbeskar who put this idea into my head. In my mind she is the OG Boxer AU champion and mastermind. If you are in the mood for more boxing content, she has a wonderful, devastatingly sexy series Boxer!Din AU that is just woof woof bark bark.
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