#acau core tag

[milimeters-morales]

A few months into year 1, Peter starts noticing new missing person posters of himself, and he doesn’t trust that this isn’t some evil plan to capture him again, so he asks Miles and Matt for old Spider-Man stories they know, researches articles and sloppy interviews that might give him information about his home life or areas he frequents, realizes the Peter Parker that took Spider-Man photos was actually him, and starts to look into his own documented life as much as possible (there isn’t a lot so that’s difficult). He also starts to gather information/stalk the people that put up the posters of him (his friends and Aunt May) because he honestly still doesn’t believe they’re normal civilians yet.

[milimeters-morales]

okay it’s canon now. acau miles gets into BVA when he’s 13 like usual, and before he gets bitten/taken, and he spends his weeks at the school and his weekends at home since he knows Aaron isn’t around that much anyway right now, and that gives him more space to be spidery in peace. He has his own room (little bribery thanks to Aaron) (don’t tell Miles) but starts to share a room with Judge and Ganke by the time he’s 16 because he’s starting to like them + Aaron thinks he needs it to socially develop. He’s good at hiding his spidery-ness when he doesn’t go out at night but has to be in the dorm; he plays it off as being extremely cranky/unpleasant when he’s tired so people don’t try and wake him up or bother him. very effective!!

overall he’s a good student, just lonely, and is made fun of behind his back a little by some students and staff, but they won’t do anything outright and to his face. it’s not a good look for them to be picking on the deaf + mute kid with one arm who is actually a pretty pleasant person

[milimeters-morales]

okay so there are robots in the ACAU, but they vary a ton based on who & what they’re made for. The main ones i talk about Miles destroying are robots that were made in secret by Alchemax, which was going to become like the Alchemax of 2099 before Miguel showed up, and he calls just calls them “prototypes”. more info under the cut bc it got long

They’re actual weapons, and are used to attack/kidnap whoever Alchemax wants them to without them getting an actual human’s hands dirty. These robots are not very smart but very strong, and can still be a huge threat bc of the weapons they can use, and have been programmed to not hunt down Peter and Miles because Alchemax just can’t risk them blowing shit up again and exposing their other experiments to the world (there’s more to it but that’s their main fear as a company), but can attack if they just so happen to run into them, and are programmed to self destruct if they realize they can’t win a fight or risk getting exposed to the public (usually already destroyed before they can do that lol)

The other robots, the ones that aren’t trying to kill anybody, are usually for cleanups, repairs, search & rescues, and constructions that are too dangerous for a human, and are a bit small and don’t have a human appearance at all. Think of the robots in Wall-E, that’s the most common style they’re made in and the. distributed to the better funded public services (private stuff gets more specialized, custom-looking, expensive robots) Some are simply created for companionship or servitude, which can actually be bought in some stores by anybody who can afford it. All of these robots are also mainly created by Alchemax!

Miguel knows what becomes of these Prototypes, so he and the duo try multiple ways to destroy them completely so their final versions don’t exist in the future to take away from the future’s already huge problem, but since altering the past is a delicate operation, unwanted things keep happening instead, some more horrible than others. So Miguel keeps having to jump back to Miles and Peter’s time and try something new. It ranges from a few hours to a few days for Miguel to come back to them and update them, but for Miguel, it can range weeks to months because he actually needs to be have the actual portal to time travel each time (but sometimes he does have to actually seek out what else changed in the future which takes a while)

and btw when I say Alchemax, i don’t mean every single worker, because around 80% of them don’t even know about the Prototypes or other insidious parts of the company, they’re just normal ass employees lmfao. well most of them.

[milimeters-morales]

so since there’s a robot threat in the ACAU, Miles being deaf can be a problem sometimes in the event that a Prototype looks human enough from a distance and/or with a disguise. Miles can’t hear a difference like Peter can in the heartbeat, because robots have an electric, higher pitched sounding heartbeat (think dubstep), and he can’t hear any sort of noises that something hitting metal would make if he were to toss a pebble at it, so he has to find other ways to assess if this is a human or not.

He can’t call out to the Prototype and find out from its voice and speech patterns if it’s a robot, which sucks. He has to be a few feet away to see anything that looks off, and then he has to be absolutely sure because there’s always a chance he’s about to attack a human who’s just acting unfortunately in the situation. His untrustworthiness towards everything and even himself is really apparent in these moments. But being a few feet away puts him closer to a huge possible threat, so he has to compensate by building up more electricity in and around his body in case he needs to use a venom-blast-like attack to put space between him and the possible Prototype. Then, he has to be even closer and get low if the possible Prototype has convincing features, in order to feel the faint vibrations in the ground of the robot responding to the growing energy in the ground (which could even make them stronger unfortunately). At this point, he’s way too close for his comfort, and any wrong move could get him seriously injured or killed if this isn’t another human, so he is very tense and not at all in a playful mood.

And this, from the perspective of a normal person who was approached by Brooklyn’s spidey, is absolutely freaky and terrifying. Spider-Man appears in front of you, the street lamps above start to flicker, there’s an faint yet ominous buzzing noise, he looks like he doesn’t trust you/is about to attack, and he’s slowly approaching and crawling on the floor all weirdly. You think you’re gonna die, or something fucked up is gonna happen like you being webbed up and left to hang somewhere all night for spider minions to eat or whatever. And then he suddenly just leaves? what the fuck??? He’s just as bad at the Spider-Man in Queens at this point!!

(don’t let him find out you think that lol)

But anyway, this is part of the reason why he is so vicious once he spots any robot that he feels threatened by or just wants to destroy. He has to take more risks with them than anyone else, and he doesn’t like being reminded that being deaf will always make him more vulnerable in this situation, and any chance he doesn’t have to take those risks and be reminded, he’s happy to be releasing a lot of frustration through destruction. Of course, this could lead him down a bad road if he’s just allowed and encouraged to destroy stuff as his main coping mechanism, so i’ll explain Peter, Aaron, and Matt’s approach to it in another post

[milimeters-morales]

also the Boogeyman is real in the ACAU, he’s considered a cryptid and also a silly recurring villain that’s powered by the more stories people tell of him + little kids with stress disorders. but he only begins to show up for Miles in year 2. it’s one of those “the monster is powered by your imagination but can still very well harm you if it chooses” monsters. Miles doesn’t know why it shows up for him despite being 14 at the time, and Peter just doesn’t believe in it. Matt believes Miles when he says “the boogeyman is after me” but only because it would make Miles feels better, not because he 100% believes in it. MK can see it, avatar powers and whatnot, but can’t do much since it is considered a personal battle, like sleep paralysis

[milimeters-morales]

do acau aaron and matt have any kind of relationship? are they glad miles has another (relatively) positive role model, or do they disagree too much abt whats best for him?

Matt and Aaron don’t like each other for a long time once they find out about each other; Matt thinks Aaron is a reckless father and puts his job before his son, & Aaron thinks Matt is a useless hypocrite who’s not trying hard enough, but they have very similar ideas and methods, and begrudgingly respect that in the end they are only doing what the can to protect and/or provide, so they have to work together to keep Miles alive (and sane basically). Once Miles finally confesses why he’s dropping the Spider-Man mantle for a bit (so about two years into the story), the two do begin a very shaky friendship in their normal civilian lives in order to better help Miles with both his powers and living a normal life again, making friends, trusting himself and others, stuff like that. But Matt still doesn’t like that Aaron’s risking Miles’s life by simply being the Prowler, and Aaron doesn’t like that Matt still tries to help Peter become a better person.

(Matt doesn’t find out that Aaron isn’t actually the father until nearly a year after meeting each other bc Miles and Aaron do a little trolling.)

[milimeters-morales]

So Peter’s approach to Miles’s destruction is to give tips on how to destroy them without accidentally getting unwanted people involved in the process, like how to actually hunt in the way Peter sometimes hunts and not lose himself entirely. He sees how overly excited and frantic Miles gets when he’s tearing into a Prototype, so he teaches him how to be in control with different strategies like isolating the robot or tricking it in some way, how the environment he’s in can affect his chances of actually destroying it, when to realize it’s not worth it (one of the most difficult lessons) and just give up on that hunt, stuff like that. Peter is genuinely helping using his own experience hunting down humans and and small animals, and it makes Miles sick but the advice does help so he appreciates it in a strange way, and is starting to sort of become desensitized to Peter’s actions towards others in a way and further attached to him. ruh roh raggy

(Aaron and Matt under the cut)

Aaron actually doesn’t disagree with Miles destroying Prototypes, he’s just worried that the robots will be made more advanced by Alchemax based off of the ways Miles defeats them, which will only make them harder for Miles to fight and increase the risk entirely, so instead he tries to steer Miles towards his old hobbies! Miles used to draw a TON, and for several reasons he stopped, and it always calmed him down and was a way to communicate, make friends, be more involved in his community, and just have fun. He also loved helping animals whenever he could, but he also stopped for several reasons, so Aaron tries to get him to do both of these things again, which he hopes will get Miles interested in new hobbies and topics as well. It’s hard since he isn’t always around to see if Miles is actually sticking with the hobbies and enjoying them, but he trusts Miles to be honest about that. They have a good relationship, but it’s just a bit complicated since Miles has gotten so used to Aaron not being around as often despite being his guardian that it’s hard to just act like Aaron has always and will always be there even if he accepts it. He’s sort of got this “why do all this work if my uncle’s not even gonna be around to see it, what does any of this matter when i have a working system already??” mentality that he’s not telling anyone about :/ Aaron has had a few thoughts when it gets very tough, about just letting Miles join him in doing Prowler work so they spend time together, Aaron can keep an eye on him, and he gets his energy out the way he’s used to, but mans quickly shuts that down .

Matt discourages him fighting the Prototypes entirely for more or less the same reason Aaron doesn’t like Miles fighting them. It gives Alchemax countless opportunities to improve and make them stronger against people fighting back with the amount of times Miles faces them, but he also sees this as first and foremost unnecessary endangerment of a child when said child has several adults perfectly capable of helping him out (and i mean. yeah.), & as a gateway to destroying whatever or eventually whoever he feels like because Matt doesn’t fully agree with Peter’s version of teaching Miles control. He likes and supports that Peter’s helping Miles not freak out while he’s… like that, but he thinks Peter focuses way too much on the “we’re in this emotion now, here’s how to minimize casualties and have the most fun!” aspect rather than the “we can avoid getting to this point entirely” one. He thinks Peter is being immature and not thinking far ahead enough, which is a dynamic im glad i can keep in this world btw! He tries to give Miles other actual (healthy) coping mechanisms and tips so upsetting stuff is a bit easier to handle, and he won’t just be a walking ball of frustration and other negative feelings until he can beat the shit out of something, and will frequently tell him that fighting isn’t always the answer. Miles typically ignores him about that, because he sees Matt as a giant hypocrite just like Peter rather than someone who is trying to help him not turn out so violent and angry, but somewhere deep down he wants to agree with Matt since it’s the same thing his mom or dad would probably say and he looks up to them.

(also, about Matt finding Peter immature and short-sighted, i think it’s also a bit sad because Peter doesn’t remember anything about his old life and doesn’t really act the way he used to, but still manages to frustrate Matt in the same way he always did anytime they had to work together, and Matt, in his most desperate moments, would do anything to have those moments back. lol. lmao even)

[milimeters-morales]

i keep seeing your spiderman acau and like it seems so interesting and i wanna hear all about it but idk where to find like- idk how to word it 😭

my apologies if this was hard to understand 😓

idk what exactly u wanna find, but if you’re trying to see if there’s a masterpost explaining everything or something: there isn’t 🤞🏾 i’ll just tag this with all my acau tags and i guess you can go from there