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rappaccini · 3 months ago

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k i think i will actually write about gwen's relationship with harry. idk if it makes sense but i have been thinking at length about it.

first of all, superficially and in isolation, gwen and harry (616) are something of a pair

they're both the permadead members of peter's supporting cast, who keep getting resurrected for peter's angst.

they both are only children with a dead mother and a prominent father who's often absent due to his work.

they're both the doppelgangers of the abusive parent who they're doomed to follow in the footsteps of: like helen, gwen will die young and never be remembered as anything more than a footnote in her male partner and their offspring's story (and like her mother, gwen will be stuck in a marriage to a man she doesn't love as much as he loves her, who she treats like a project, with kids she doesn't love much either). and harry will put on his father's goblin armor to fight the same hero his father did, as he descends into the same mental illness and becomes an abuser who takes out his aggression on his wife and doesn't show up for his kids.

both of them are the third consecutive member of their family to deal with this same intergenerational curse: gwen, her mom, and maternal grandmother all are swallowed up by the pressure to be a powerful man's wife. harry, his dad, and grandfather all crack under the pressure to be powerful men.

they're both from a similar background of prestige, privilege and conservative-leaning politics.

both of their fathers ascended from poverty/a lower middle class background rapidly (though harry's grandfather squandered a preexisting family fortune, so he's technically old money).

they both tend to follow left-brained, business-minded career paths that lead them towards oscorp.

they often date or become a couple but it never works out.

they both keep getting pushed into situations where they marry/have kids but it always feels... off. like it's being done out of heteronormative obligation rather than a true desire to have a family.

related: they both have a queer vibe.

peter's college era friend group begins with gwen and harry, who gradually add other members. they are the core of the coffee bean gang.

they both share a hatred of spider-man for his conflict with their fathers. gwen's is downplayed or ignored; harry's drives him to supervillainy.

they're both abused by harry's father, and that abuse leads to their deaths (though in gwen's case, it's because he kills her; in harry's it's because he follows in his footsteps and gets himself killed).

so, looking at the gwen map for them specifically yielded some interesting discoveries.

how it starts

so much has been made about how death loves gwen stacy, and gwen's reclaimed this by taking on a second life as ghost-spider, but harry... has not. death loves harry too, and at this point it's more likely for him to end up permadead in a continuity than for her to. we don't really talk about that.

especially when you consider that gwen stacy and harry osborn having a relationship in the first place completely depends on if gwen's lost her mother. in every timeline where helen stacy doesn't die (including the ones where she abandons the stacy family), gwen and harry never become close in the first place. and the 2020 gwen stacy miniseries following gwen-616 all but confirms why: the basis of their friendship is harry bonding with gwen after her mother dies, which he directly relates to due to his own mother's death. their first conversation is about their dead moms, and their first shared activity is going to see a zombie movie.

the entire backbone of their dynamic is death. it's where they always start. it's where they almost always end.

the friendship

and this friendship is frankly deeper and more personal than any other platonic friendship gwen has-- including with mj. if gwen goes to standard high, where she meets and befriends harry, then she's known him since high school, which makes them the oldest friends of the coffee bean gang (and it's possible gwen was harry's only friend at standard). even when gwen goes to horizon (17628) or midtown, if harry's in the student body, it's never long before they find each other. and in every world where they both attend standard and peter never meets them, they become inseparably close.

harry and gwen have a deep sense of understanding, trust and history built on shared family experiences (gwen has never discussed her mother with peter or mj, but she will with harry; she's also the first person harry confides to about his father). but they also have shared interests and earnestly love each other's company. they go to class together, they go to work together. in 616, they party together and hang out at the coffee bean all afternoon; in 65a, they play d&d together; in 17628, they're nerding out in the lab together.

what's especially interesting is that harry's fortunes are directly tied to gwen's. whenever gwen's popular, he is too. whenever gwen's a nerd, he's at the loser's table with her. when gwen decides to befriend peter, harry follows her lead (616, 65a). wherever gwen goes to college, he's always there with her, taking similar classes if not in the same program. when gwen becomes a villain or vigilante while he's alive and a presence in her life, he's usually by her side in a supporting role or as a partner. when she dies, he's not long to follow. when she lives, he lasts longer. they have a very us-against-the-world kind of loyalty.

unlike gwen, harry osborn doesn't have particularly strong goals or ambitions for his future; his main aspiration in life is to loved and approved of. by his father most of all, but also by his friends, notably gwen. therefore it follows that harry spends high school and college following her, and as his oldest and possibly only friend, gwen is so important to him that he's willing to reshape his life to stay near her, and he is comfortable letting her take control of the relationship dynamic and steer them where she wants to go.

and being close to gwen is sincerely good for harry; continuities where gwen stays close to him through college (as opposed to peter) tend to lead to harry not succumbing to his addiction, probably because gwen's usually capable of getting him to stay on the wagon (and he's comfortable decompressing about his dad with her). when she's his closest friend and peter is absent, he tends to make it to a high-powered career that she most likely steered him to. gwen is a source of support and stability to harry.

... but she's also a source of stagnation. she can comfort him about his father, but she never encourages him to stand up to or leave him.

harry in turn is supportive of gwen's interests and goals. if she's running for class president, he's her campaign manager. if she's partying, he's hyping her up. if she's wearing a dumb outfit, he'll compliment her. if she's in the superhero game, he's at her side in battle or supporting her at home. if she's leading oscorp, he defers to her business judgments.

gwen-65a even confirms that harry's keeping her anchored to reality (which she had a front seat to, seeing how gwen-3109 immediately loses her mind clinically when her harry dies), and not-so-coincidentally as soon as he's out of the picture, she loses her grip on her world and never gets it back.

... however. harry isn't necessarily good for gwen. the downside to him being willing to follow her is that he may accept her flaws and support her ambitions, but he doesn't challenge her to be a better person or call her out on her bad behavior. when she's a superhero, that means he's her rock. when she's a civilian, that means he's the stone weighing her down that she won't let go of to be a better person.

gwen's meaner, more selfish side is indulged by him; if she's the popular girl, he's her minion who eggs her on as she bullies peter (and probably other students too). and continuities where peter never attends university with them tend to lead to gwen going into a career at oscorp, likely because of harry offering her a place there, where she immediately gets her hands dirty with their unethical business and scientific practices. in other words, if gwen never encounters peter and becomes a kinder person through knowing him, she's on a track that's leading her towards villainy.

(... and if gwen had lived, gotten to leave peter for good, and her hatred of spider-man were allowed to go somewhere, one has to assume she would've become a supervillain just like harry. probably with harry, who shares that hate.)

anytime gwen wants to improve as a person, she has to connect with and prioritize people who aren't harry, like in 616/617 (where meeting peter and mj in college makes gwen a kinder friend), 3109 (the one time associating with oscorp doesn't lead to gwens' morals decaying is the one where mj and peter are their coworkers), and 65a/8 (where being friends in high school with peter and mj leads to gwen becoming a punk and punching out bullies).

if she does, it's possible to inspire harry to rise to her level, like befriending people he'd otherwise ignore (616/617, 65a/8) or becoming a vigilante (3109). but gwen always has to take the first step, because he takes his cues from her. if she starts expanding her horizons, he'll follow the leader.

(though when gwen and harry are vigilantes together, most of the time it ends in him dying (3109), becoming incapacitated (65a/8) or turning villain on her (1074). he has a lower survival rate than even gwen.)

it should be noted: because gwen's in control of the dynamic and maintains her agency in their relationship, if she corrupts, it's because she decided to become a worse person. harry doesn't make her worse, he just doesn't encourage her to be better; if gwen fell to the dark side, it's because she jumped, not because he pushed her.

the romance

with their friendship being deeply intimate, it follows that they often become a couple. 9/17 continuities on the map involve gwen dating harry at some point.

and harry's quite clear about carrying a torch for her. he makes his affection for her known and makes the first move in most of those continuities (616/617, 1074, 26496, 65a/8). he also isn't particularly jealous if she pursues or has feelings for other people. the vibe with harry's that he just wants to be close to her in any way he can, and sometimes that affection presents itself romantically because he thinks it's expected of him.

however, harry's almost always a second choice or lesser priority to gwen-- after all, she's into conventionally-attractive men in uniform who put themselves in danger for a living, rebellious outsiders, and girls, and harry's a stringy rich boy with the ugliest widow's peak imaginable who isn't particularly compassionate to anyone who isn't in his social circle. harry just isn't gwen's type. (the notable exception being 65a, where harry absorbs flash thompson's enlistment storyline, and gwen only seems romantically interested in him after he comes back from working with shield.)

but she's willing to try him out anyway if she doesn't have any of her usual options, because gwen in many universes feels an immense pressure to have a boyfriend. their romance is more companionate than sexual and most likely grows out of pragmatism and familiarity; as such they've always had a very 'if we're still single by thirty let's just marry each other' vibe. we're not beating the lavender marriage allegations but at least they're on the same page.

[if gwen had not died in 616 and been able to leave peter permanently, it absolutely feels like she and harry would have ended up together-- notice how harry keeps going for blondes, like lily hollister (it was his clone that time, but still) or liz allan especially?-- see earth 6160, where they never meet peter and mj in college and are an evil power couple together.]

and when they do become seriously involved, like in 6160 or 21798, gwen typically assumes a high-powered position in the same industry as harry, like ceo of oscorp or future politician's wife. they never have children (but might make vague gestures towards doing it someday; it's that comphet), and are very much a partnership: she stabilizes and provides focus to harry, he supports her ambition, they circle the drain together.

but every single time gwen and harry are a couple, it ends in tragedy. like, they have a lower success rate than petergwen or gwiles.

most of the time, if they date, they break up permanently after a short period of time, because gwen loses interest in him quickly or finds someone else she likes better.

if they stay together, it almost always ends in gwen's death (616, 26496), harry becoming comatose (65a/8, 21798), or there's an implication of future violence to come (6160's heavily foreshadowing this; 18157, being a world where peter's spider-man exists, almost certainly means his conflict with harry would occur, with harry's implied future romance with ghost-spider therefore being automatically doomed).

(even 65a harry/gwen's first date starts with a gift of lilies. a funeral flower. naturally everything goes to shit immediately.)

there is no timeline where gwen and harry end up together and live happily. which does follow. this relationship isn't one where they mutually help each other improve. that in and of itself isn't a happy ending.

gwen's upbringing pretty much primed her to jump from middle class to wealthy, and sticking by harry earns her that status, especially if she marries him. this is the hope gwen's family (particularly her mother) had for her future, realized. this is not a good thing.

and gwen's ambition and drive are qualities harry's father wishes harry has. part of his need for her may stem from hoping that if he attaches himself to someone with the qualities he lacks, his father might approve of him. this is also not a good thing.

(harrygwen is a lot like gwiles in this way: both harry and miles provide gwen with a high level of prestige and status, and are drawn to her because she has the qualities that will appease the shitty people they feel pressured to seek approval from... when what they all really need is to let go of that insecurity entirely. and similarly they're at opposite ends of a spectrum -- gwen and harry have little physical chemistry but a deep emotional connection; it's unattractive but complex. gwen and miles have no real emotional connection but he sure is attracted to her and she's kinda iffy about him; it's aesthetically pleasing but shallow-- with peter sitting in the middle as the romance that equals the emotional intensity and physical chemistry).

and the implosion is pretty much always because of harry's father's influence (like. the one time the relationship implodes without his dad at all is the concert bomb sending harry into a coma in 65a/8), either through norman directly harming gwen or damaging harry's psyche so deeply that he self-destructs. it always gets in, because the same way he doesn't prevent gwen from becoming a colder, more selfish person, harry allows it to.

about harry's dad

most infamously, gwen's killed by the green goblin, who is usually harry's father (... but sometimes harry, like in 20703). and harry frequently self-destructs due to a combination of drug use, mental illness, and harmful behavior he learned from his father. both harry and gwen are victimized by the same man.

(idk man it's always seemed like peter should take a backseat to letting harry and gwen beat norman up but maybe it's just me)

harry's a naturally sensitive, nervous, caring boy who likes to let other people take the lead and is happy to support them. his father hates this. he wants his son to be as aggressive, domineering and manipulative as he is, so he can pass on the family wealth, holdings and status to a worthy heir.

and harry loves his dad as much as he hates him. he wants to believe his dad's secretly a good, misunderstood man. he's afraid of disappointing him and doesn't like leaving him alone with his friends (particularly gwen) because deep down, he knows he isn't. and gwen knows about this because harry has told her... and possibly exposed her to it because her relationship with him puts her in proximity with norman.

... to get to the elephant in the room, the retconned storyline of sins past (where norman 'has an affair with' rapes a teenage gwen, impregnates her, and his murder of her is to cover up this crime) still casts an enormous shadow over gwen, norman and harry. in 616, norman is still depicted to this day as pervy with gwen. it may not be canon that he impregnated her anymore, but it is canon that he’s creeping on her at 13-15 and trying to take advantage of her while she's grieving her mom.

like. this comic came out this year. in 2024. it's real clear what norman's implying and why harry's rushing to get her out of that apartment.

it was retconned but we are so not past this. in 616, in other places. spider-gwen constantly fends off villains who have a sexual interest in her, and nightbird gwen of 21798's backstory is full of implied rape (including by norman, who in that continuity is her ex-boyfriend's dad).

now i know it's never explored, but... alright, there's another layer to the tragedy of gwen and harry's dynamic and it starts here: the timeframes of harry's downward spiral into addiction/mental illness and gwen's sexual abuse (assuming it happens/isn't retconned) would have overlapped.

like. imagine the fucking guilt of realizing your abusive dad did that shit to your best friend/girlfriend, and she was only near him in the first place because she was there for you. i'd shoot up too.

(and add onto that the psychosexual fuckery of hating your dad but also wanting to be him and learning that this man, who looks exactly like you, had a '... relationship' with someone you're attracted to and want for yourself. there's a lot there.)

and finding out your abusive dad murdered your oldest friend? yeah. we don't talk about that enough. (and neither do the spider-man writers. come on now.)

(tangent: last i checked the latest writer retcon of sins past is 'harry spliced gwen and norman's dna together to make their biological children' and... honestly that's worse. it's more ooc for harry to desecrate his closest friend's corpse and make clonebabies out of her and his dad, and construct an elaborate fantasy about his dad raping his friend who he was kinda attracted to to torment her then-boyfriend who was also his friend, than for his abusive, misogynistic dad to... be abusive and misogynistic to a girl he has access to and power over. it's simpler and it makes more sense, which is why the abuse still bleeds into their interactions to this day.)

how it ends

death. literal or metaphorical. gwen and harry keep fucking dying. whether they're a couple, friends, or even complete strangers, they keep falling into the same tragic patterns that end in their deaths.

and even in death, they're linked: peter parker is usually culpable to some degree. in 616 gwen's death even occurs around the same time harry's health takes a nose dive, and several times, they die in each others' presence.

gwen and harry love each other. they have fun together. they keep each other's secrets, they understand each other's situations, they shape their lives around each other. but in isolation, this dynamic is only going to lead them off a cliff because both harry and gwen are dealing with the same problem: they're faced with reenacting the sins of their parents... and they both tempt each other to follow through with it.

to get political about it, gwen and harry are being pressured to align with the traditional structure of white, wealthy, hetero patriarchy and what it demands of the men and women it wants to elevate: it wants white men to be active, aggressive, domineering assholes who advance its system through violence and subjugation, and white women to be their passive, unassuming, supportive helpmeets who perpetuate it through their quiet complicity in exchange for the illusion of protection and special treatment. their arcs involve them coming into conflict with this status quo, and whenever it ends badly, it's because they can't let go of the outdated expectations being pushed on them, even when those expectations will kill them.

harry's ultimate test as a character is about disowning his father. it's about accepting the sensitivity that was always used as justification to harm him, and either standing up to his dad directly or walking away from what he represents for new connections with other people who can help him with his problems. it's about letting go of the need to reinforce violent patriarchy for the sake of advancing a Man's Legacy, and embracing a supportive role in his friends' lives. if harry lets others in and lets them help him, and owns that he's been wounded and traumatized, he'll live and maybe become a hero (see earth 65a, at least in the latour run). if he can't, he'll descend into addiction and self-implode as he becomes as much of a villain as his father.

gwen's ultimate test as a character is about realizing the system she's been raised to support is corrupt and going to kill her, and standing up against it even if it means losing her comfort. it's about recognizing that the men in her life won't actually protect and provide for her (including harry), and that the status she's been raised to desire can only be given to her if she ignores, tolerates or perpetuates abuse and corruption. if she chooses her independence and decides to take a stand against those systems and not allow them to perpetuate through her, she'll live and become a hero. if she doesn't, she'll die, likely through being fridged outright, or become a villain that is inherently disposable compared to her male peers (which means, inevitably, she'll be killed off in the end).

their friendship is already one step in the right direction: harry has someone he can be vulnerable with, and gwen has someone who supports her ambitions and defers to her.

however, that's as far as they can go alone, because left to their own devices, they will stagnate into the people their parents want them to be, since they can't challenge each other to be anything different (especially if they become a couple). remember gwen's reaction to learning about norman being an abuser? it's a microcosm of the issue with their dynamic: they help each other get through the situation, when what they really need to do is get out. you can’t girlboss your way through a patriarchal relationship dynamic because even if he’s cool with you having agency, the patriarch he answers to will always seep in and sabotage your efforts (same issue as gwiles; miles admires gwen, but his attraction to her is fundamentally rooted in seeing her as either a tool to gain the approval of white society, or a trophy for doing so). it's them against the world, but the world will always win.

(like, to put it in perspective, harry lands about here in the spectrum of gwen's canon romances. he's better for her than peter or miles in terms of agency, but not so much in terms of morality or mortality.)

they don't have to leave each other behind. they just have to recognize that they can't be the most important people in each other's lives anymore. if they open up and let other people who aren't like them in, (... who aren't lonely rich white kids,) who can challenge their worldviews and inspire them to change, they can take another step forward.

the final step is out of their hands. it's if that change sets in and stays--if spider-man canon makes room for that change and embraces it; if gwen's independence isn't sabotaged to make her The Girlfriend again, and harry isn't sent into a toxicity relapse to fuel someone else's angst. if that happens, maybe then gwen and harry can get to a better place and stay there. (earth 65a being the best example so far, at least in the latour run.)

gwen and harry's relationship starts with death and ends with death. but death doesn't always have to be a bad thing: instead of letting that zombie of a status quo infect them, they need to let it die, to make room for something new.

#gwen stacy meta #spider gwen meta #gwarry #ghostgoblin #harry osborn #harry osborn 65 #gwen stacy #gwen stacy 616 #gwen stacy 6160

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rappaccini · 8 months ago

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alright i've had this thing in the drafts for a minute, and i just want it Out There.

semi-disorganized thoughts on the politics of gwen stacy, as they relate to race and privilege.

in general when it comes to the major female characters in peter's life, there's room to play around with their interpretations and race.

cindy moon has to be korean and glory grant has to be black because it's written into their characters

mj and betty can be anything, and have been racebent with great success.

felicia hardy can be a lot of things, but some should probably be avoided because if you write it wrong it could turn out offensive. like, if you make the only woc love interest the hypersexualized, 'crazy' criminal (especially if you make her the only black or brown love interest)... okay. not a good look there.

liz allan has been racebent... but she honestly works better as a white woman given how her character represents the waspy background peter initially wants to enter (mcu liz allan's a weird one, given the vulture twist. since homecoming borrows so much from miles, and tiana toomes was likely inspired by her, mcu liz reads like more of a first draft of tiana than a liz depiction).

gwen... hasn't really been racebent anywhere (unless you count gabi/gabriel o'hara and gayatri singh). and that follows, because she falls more in line with liz allan; this is a character whose whiteness-- or at least, her access to institutional privilege and status as part of that subset of women within society that are considered desirable, protectable and worthy of putting on a pedestal-- is very important.

this is too disorganized to write into like. a proper essay. so have some bulletpoints.

her background:

little is known about gwen-616's family background, apart from that she has relatives on her father's side who live in london (but it's not clear if they're literally british or they're just expats), and her mom's from a german/english background.

(spiderverse spider-gwen is specifically irish-american)

she had a christian, most likely catholic, upbringing.

we have no idea how gwen 616's parent's met. but gwen-617's father was a cop who met her musician mother at a peace protest; and since earth 617 is essentially 616 if gwen left peter, we can assume that's the intent for gwen-616 too. and gwen-65's father is specifically a former street gang member who, like 617, met gwen's artistic mother during a conflict with the police. he helped her police captain father resolve the situation. soon after they became a couple, and he became a cop. so spider-gwen's dad is specifically part of that phenomenon of poor men becoming cops to raise their economic status, and gwen in general is usually the product of a family where law enforcement is considered a tradition (and so is marrying law enforcement; her mother and grandmother both did it).

she isn't generationally wealthy or new-rich. her family is comfortably middle- to upper-middle-class and achieved that status before gwen was born (but her father remembers what it's like to be poor). she grew up without having to worry about money-- with the possible exception of tuition.

when gwen's mother dies (in 616 it's an unspecified illness; in 65, who knows), there's no mention of medical debt. so the family could afford it, or whatever helen had, they were lucky it didn't wipe out the family finances.

gwen and her father live in a nice but not luxurious apartment. (and 65a lives in a dated two-story house in peter's middle-class forest hills suburb, so she's presumably at his lower-middle-class income bracket)

gwen went to standard high, a prestigious prep school where she was classmates with the children of the city's best architects, physicians, business owners and billionaires. since her household's single-income (even before helen stacy died, she was a housewife), and they don't have any generational wealth, she would've had to have been on a scholarship to afford that tuition.

at that school, she's a popular honors student who wins class president, is best friends with the richest boy at school, dates the star quarterback, and laps up all the fancy college scholarships. and when she arrives at college, she leads a group of kids in freezing peter out like a high school mean girl, because he isn't giving her enough attention. so even though gwen wasn't rich, she was comfortably at the top of the high school hierarchy, and maybe even a bit of a bully. to say the quiet part out loud, if gwen had been a woc, everybody would've been giving her shit for needing a scholarship to afford to attend and she would never have gotten that level of acceptance.

she's a scholarship student (again!) at empire state university, where she's a top student in a stem major.

however-- that empire state scholarship isn't framed as a make-it-or-break-it achievement. when gwen's chasing it in high school, she doesn't say she can't enroll if she doesn't get it. so most likely, she could still afford college; she'd have just had a shitload of loans.

(gwen-65 goes to peter's public high school. she gets a scholarship to empire state too, but that's strictly a bullshit handwave of ~your superhero connection got you this made-up scholarship for interdimensional exchange students so you can go here~ that means nothing. for all intents and purposes she's a dropout.)

gwen stacy isn't a wasp, but she's white, anglo-saxon (or irish) and christian, so she's close enough to it to rub elbows with them. she isn't rich, but she knows how to fit in with rich people, and rich people let her get away with it. and she's one strategic marriage or career move away from getting into that social circle.

... her name literally means "white" in welsh.

her appearance:

the one trait that stays consistent throughout all her depictions, moreso than her personality or family background-- and the one trait a lot of men people bother to remember about her-- is that she's a blonde. and blondeness tends to be associated largely with whiteness.

gwen's largely regarded as the 'nice, tame good girl' ... even though in canon, she's a night owl who has a vicious temper, goes out partying often, juggles multiple suitors and is sexually forward. people keep forgetting all that, because something about the way gwen looks makes people keep defaulting to 'innocent.' -- it's that she's a blonde (specifically, a blonde being juxtaposed with a fiery redhead), and people are applying stereotypes about blonde girls being uptight and delicate to gwen.

gwen's a beauty queen. what kind of physical attractiveness do beauty pageants tend to reward?

even the gwens who aren't beauty queens are still regarded as extremely attractive. including spider-gwen, who puts no effort into her appearance, keeps finding herself the target of romantic and sexual attention. this girl is consistently at the top of whatever her society's beauty standard hierarchy is. (and we know that standard more often than not tends to center whiteness.)

spider-gwen's costume? white.

her politics:

gwen's father is vaguely on the left (if he weren't, sam bullit gloating about how captain stacy's daughter endorsing him is an ultraown to the libs wouldn't make sense), but she's... not.

rich boys and men in uniform -- soldiers, cops, football players, (unknowingly, superheroes) -- are the type of guy she prefers to pursue romantically (... likely taking cues from her mother and grandmother, who both married cops). flash thompson goes to fucking vietnam and she thinks it's such a turn-on that she slips him some tongue at the airport right in front of her boyfriend.

she's annoyed and unsympathetic when vietnam war protesters disrupt her education. i don't know if gwen's just that serious about her education or if she genuinely thinks the war's okay, but it's not looking good!

gwen's politically active: in high school, she runs for class president, in at least one continuity (21798) she's constantly brushing elbows with future politicians, and in 616 she earnestly participates in her local elections-- and though she ultimately votes and campaigns for the progressive richard raleigh, she does seriously consider publicly endorsing the racist republican with fascist leanings, sam bullit. she doesn't just vote, she campaigns. and sometimes, she runs.

she dislikes vigilantes and trusts the police.

she uses "my dad's a cop" as an excuse to get out of being punished and a threat to people she dislikes.

gwen's most prominent relationship was with peter, but she was going out with harry and flash casually at the same time and had dated plenty of guys in high school; she's by no means a blushing virgin who's loyal to Only One Man. gwen has options, and she pursues them.

she and peter had an implicitly sexual relationship, and she and darius leclerc were at least hitting second or third base, so gwen's cool with premarital sex. she consumes porn and even likes messing around in public (fooling around with darius at the public library; even asking peter if he wants to go to an adult theater to watch dirty movies).

gwen references betty friedan and the women's lib movement, and she's a female stem major in the 1960s, so she's a feminist and probably had no intentions of being a housewife... but her feminism starts and ends with herself.

even gwen-1610, the counterculture rocker chick who hates cops, jocks and bullies, and has casual sex, has this personality largely as a response towards her mother leaving her family. it's not that she's political or liberated, it's that she's raging against her parents and acting out to get a reaction. she hasn't applied her sense of disenfranchisement to anyone beyond herself. she's that kind of white punk.

the default gwen stacy is a white feminist who believes in and supports institutional power because she's always benefited from it, occasionally balks against it but only when it affects her, and she's naive at best and indifferent at worst to the ways it could hurt marginalized people -- specifically black people.

the elephant in the room

(... walk with me: given that the stacys get up close and personal with "spider-man" when hobie brown is wearing the costume to help peter throw off suspicion that it's him, and the textually racist sam bullit, a former cop, considers him public enemy #1 in the same issue where his blatantly racist policies are raised... there's a non-zero chance that the police-- including gwen's dad-- during the early 70s, think spider-man is a black guy and that assumption of his race is a contributing factor to their distrust of him. and gwen... agrees.)

look gwen-616 isn't beating the allegations. she was on the fence about voting for a racist cop, she backs the blue, she hates protests, she hates a vigilante that she has good reason to believe is a black guy. the way she's simply... never around randy robertson unless she's with peter, and surrounds herself with only white friends, is also telling too. it's all adding up to gwen being racist.

and the more that modern writers try to slap a band-aid over og gwen's issues with black people, the more visible they get.

gwen-616's relationship with her high school sweetheart darius and earth-8's alternate spider-gwen marrying a miles morales paint a very clear picture that gwen, in her default state, is the kind of white girl who would date or marry a black guy... but only the kind of black guy who's disconnected from his community and assimilating into greater white society to access wealth and power (miles-8, who mysteriously left his family, friends and world forever to live on a world where he's rich and famous), or who has already done this (darius, big man on campus at the rich kid school and son of multimillionaires), and she will make no effort to understand his perspective and stick up for him and his community.

in the case of darius, gwen-616's investigation into a crime lord gets darius's dad into a situation that gets him killed, apologizes for failing him... and proceeds to stan for a racist republican who explicitly wants to hurt black new yorkers two years later. retconning a romance with darius into her story means gwen learned nothing from that experience and her apology wasn't sincere.

gwen-8 in particular is the kind of white woman who'd marry a black man and have children with him... and make no effort to make sure their biracial kids are connected to the black community they're a part of. (miles's people are nowhere to be found on earth-8-- no presence, no mention, no photos on the wall, nothing. but gwen's half-black kids have photos with their white cop grandpa. that says a lot. and the fact that miles-8 doesn't even seem connected to his community suggests that quality made him even more appealing to gwen-8.)

even spiderverse spider-gwen represents this to her miles, whose interest in her is directly tied to his desire to ditch his dimension for the spider-society, and to leave brooklyn for princeton; atsv miles wants to pull a miles-8.

-> she unintentionally leads him into a situation where he comes under attack for reasons that are racially-coded by her peer group and she doesn't stick up for him. yes, she realizes she made a mistake and resolves to make it up to him, acknowledges that miles's community is important to him, that she has no right to remove him from them, and vows to help him protect them (which is more than gwen-616 ever does for darius or gwen-8 does for her miles)... but he still sees her as that easy way up the social ladder.

-> and gwen returns the favor. she prefers a heteronormative romance with the middle-class straight boy with a nice family who's bound for an ivy league and a bright future, who she barely knows, over the poor queer homeless punk boy who she has a stronger connection with. assimilation into a society (not even hers; any will do) ultimately matters more to her than the actual depth of the relationship. rio and jeff were right to doubt gwen's intentions, because they weren't sincere; deep down, gwen isn't here for miles, she's here for the stable family, accepting community and bright future he has and she thinks if she's his girlfriend, she can obtain those things by association.

-> which, in context: spiderverse spider-gwen's spent six-ish months as a homeless queer runaway who thinks she'll die a violent death at a young age. it follows that she'd badly want a stable situation, and be willing to throw herself at a boy to get it. her motive isn't climbing the social ladder, it's avoiding being shaken off of it. like with comics-spider-gwen, when spiderverse gwen feels adrift and in need of belonging, she goes looking for a romantic relationship with a straight boy who's palatable to society as a survival strategy. she's not desperately in love, she's desperately comphetting.

-> the narrative framing that romance as "look at how different and brave and boundary-breaking we're being!" even though it's fundamentally not, as this is still ultimately the male lead getting a romance plot with the female character who was only placed in the movies to be his future girlfriend, (especially in comparison to what she could have with hobie) positions spiderverse-gwen as... the kind of white girl who rebels against her conservative parents and the status quo she hates by getting a black boyfriend instead of addressing the actual societal problems that are harming her.

especially when you consider miguel is symbolically her foster father (his design and george stacy's are very similar, he has a dead daughter whose name starts with a g, he intervenes in gwen and george's confrontation right as george makes a move to disown her, he's introduced alongside jess, who gwen asks to 'adopt her' and who serves as her mother figure). gwen bringing miles to the society reads like a white girl bringing her black boyfriend home to piss off her conservative dad. and gwen goes looking for miles to further rebel against him.

-> to be fair, gwen's willing to show up for her black boyfriend and his community, which is more than what most of those girls do. and atsv makes a point of showing that gwen seeks a mentor in jess drew and friends in hobie and pav-- they're establishing that gwen is simply the kind of white girl who's drawn to people of color, black people especially, even when romance isn't on the table.

-> but she's still ultimately using miles as a band-aid over insecurities he cannot help her with, she still aims to assimilate into the system instead of finding a way to escape it, and she still won't be an ally until she thinks she can get a boyfriend out of it.

(... can we please unpack how spiderverse gwen has been spending every day with jessica drew and especially spider-punk for months... and yet a couple hours with miles, and the idea that maybe she can date him if she shapes up a little, are what radicalize her in the end? okay babe. i see.)

which makes (comics-)gwen-65's subtextual interest in hobie brown and glory grant, who are queer black punks, all the more interesting; the gwen stacy who's a fully-actualized hero is drawn to people of color as well, and to queer black love interests who won't conform, and not-so-coincidentally learns all on her own to look out for their interests without any expectation of a romantic reward for doing so. her love interests don't lead her to activism, her activism leads her towards her love interests.

-> and as comics-spider-gwen starts to regress, her romantic interests have switched to harry-and-em jay, and then just em jay. (and she's probably about to be paired up with miles, the guy who ends up with her supposedly-future-self, gwen-8, who takes far more after gwen-616 in her treatment of black characters. in other words, being with miles will make gwen regress into a much crappier person... because she's using him to get that same comphet security as spiderverse gwen.). not a coincidence.

her status in the narrative (to others)

gwen's role in peter's love interest hierarchy is similar to liz allan's: both are part of love triangles peter faces where he has to choose between an aspirational girlfriend who can give him what he wants materially but doesn't bring out the best in him (gwen and liz) and a girlfriend who cannot give him a gain in status but is in tune with his emotions (mj and betty).

-> in high school, peter (who's strapped for cash and starts his origin story as far more selfish, sexist and profit-driven) is drawn to liz's beauty and wealth, but ends up being pulled towards betty, who is working-class.

-> in college, peter is drawn to gwen's beauty, her stable future as a scientist, and a relationship with her means being accepted by her police chief father (... and therefore, spider-man being accepted by the law enforcement of the city at large)-- or mj, the unpredictable girl who juggles a half dozen jobs to chase a creative passion, and comes from a middle-class background just like his.

-> a relationship with gwen, through her social position, represents entrance into upper-middle-class prosperity, stable white-collar employment, and acceptance into the class that the status quo (the legal system and the cops) will protect. who are the people who tend to occupy this position in society. who do the cops protect. white people.

her role in the spider-man canon as the tragic helpless victimized love interest who's deified after her death... but whose death is never meaningfully prevented from happening again. (how many murdered girls are turned into symbols after their death, as the actual causes of their murders remain unaddressed? what do those girls tend to look like?)

this status relies on her whiteness. if gwen stacy were not a pretty blonde white girl, her murder would've been forgotten quickly because it wouldn't have been considered shocking or tragic, or worthy of obsessing over for decades.

and she wouldn't have been peter's love interest-- or even in the story at all-- if she were not white, because she was created in 1965.

spider-gwen, whose existence is a response to and condemnation of gwen stacy's fridging and reduction to the status of dead girlfriend on a pedestal, would never have been created in the first place if gwen weren't white.

if gwen hadn't been white, miles would never have been shipped with her in the first place because 1) spider-gwen wouldn't have existed. and 2) even if she did somehow, brian michael bendis loves swirl ships. he'd have passed right over her if she weren't white.

and gwen's importance in the spider-man canon [which she only has because she's white] is the entire reason comics miles is interested in her. he's literally told by the universe that the world where he gets the greatest institutional power and acceptance is the world where he has a blonde, blue-eyed white wife with a famous name and some not-so-coincidentally blonde, blue-eyed ambiguous-looking kids.

spiderverse miles is first attracted to her because he feels alone after leaving his community for the first time, and she makes him feel like he belongs at the visions, where he [and the audience] assume she's top of the social hierarchy; the same thing happens again at the spider-society, and both are part of atsv's greater metaphor about how those places are representative of a white-centric society. if gwen were not a white girl, the metaphor would instantly change.

miles likes gwen for multiple reasons (mostly that she's pretty and has powers, and spiderverse miles at least admires her intelligence and competence and enjoys her company), but given that he barely spent any time with her, the biggest one that nobody talks about is that she's a white girl, and he thinks he can speedrun his way to the status and acceptance he wants through a relationship with her. that's remained consistent between the comics and animated movies. the connection is literally skin-deep.

and out of universe... look, there's a reason that gwen and miles keep getting shipbait covers even when they had one regrettable makeout session eight years ago, have never actually dated, are interested in other people, and miles in particular largely dates nonwhite girls. there's a reason that the idea of gwiles has gotten more marketing than the reality of the relationship with a black girl that miles has been in for years. there's a reason editorial won't stop pushing gwen as a love interest, and won't even bother to try with tiana, and that's because they've already decided that the black girl isn't a commercial enough love interest for a mass audience, the white girl is... and that dating her will make miles more marketable too (... because aside from giving people a self-insert, if he has a white girlfriend, his stories will still center white people, and he'll have to prioritize their feelings). no surprise whatsoever that the first time miles made it to the movies, the white writers gave him a white love interest.

gwen's whiteness is the thing that gwiles stans like the most about her. putting aside how most of them have no clue who gwen is on her own and don't even know what her personality's like because her appearance is the most important thing to them, just watch how they talk about miles's other girlfriends and try to count the racist and sexist microaggressions.

and look at the way gwiles stans either completely ignore miles's blackness and how it informs his character or their relationship... or insist that white-ass gwen stacy would somehow speak perfect puerto rican spanish, be able to do miles's hair, and seamlessly fit into his community with no misunderstandings or friction. even spiderverse fans ignore their movie's own canon actually addressing those disconnects.

either they want the aesthetic of an interracial relationship without any engagement with the actual challenges of being in an interracial relationship, or they want miles to date a blonde blue-eyed white girl who behaves exactly like an afrolatina girl. okay. i see.

… even look at the way gwemj shippers blatantly ignore that em jay is already in a relationship with glory grant, or that gwen had a crush on her too. not a coincidence that the white f/f ship is getting favored over the ones with the black girl.

her overall plotline

is that of a privileged white woman who has faith in the system, slowly being failed by it until it kills her.

she's a star student studying to be a scientist, but she's consistently only valued by everyone for her looks. the reason her boyfriend noticed her in the first place is because she's pretty, and she's valued more for her appearance and politeness than her scientific aptitude or her status as peter's intellectual equal. her friends spend more time with her socializing instead of in the lab. who she's dating matters more to everyone than what her future career will be. her father cares more about her boyfriend than her grades. even her professor turns out to be only giving gwen special attention because he wants to fuck her, and he's so obsessed with her that he keeps cloning her after her death for that reason.

she trusts the cops to protect her, but they consistently don't.

she reaches out to a politician who's her dad's old police force friend for protection, but realizes he's only using her.

she trusts her boyfriend to be honest with her, but he never has been since the day they met. she believes she's in control of her relationship with him, but she never was.

her father, both the chief of police and the literal patriarch of her family, dies and leaves her completely alone.

she's ultimately murdered by her friend's dad*, and is put in a position to be murdered because her boyfriend won't be honest with her about the danger he's putting her in yet won't let her go when she makes it clear that she wants out of that situation bad enough to flee the country.

her murder itself strips her of all agency: she's so drugged she has no idea she's even being killed, and all retcons about how awake she was are more about her ~realizing her boyfriend was a hero~ than realizing she's about to die or that she's been lied to by said boyfriend.

*and depending on if you retcon a certain hated plotline or not, gwen's murderer, a wealthy and powerful middle-aged man who is her close friend's dad, may have coerced her, a teenager, into sex (which may have been her first time) and impregnated her. and her murder may in part be a coverup for that crime. look sins past was retconned because its the Fucking Worst, but this is how canon treats her and there are still fans and writers who hold a plotline that is so clearly a sexual assault against her.

(and then her murderer... never really gets punished for it. norman isn't killed, doesn't go to jail, even gets a redemption arc or two. and peter's off making out with her best friend a few issues later, never tries particularly hard to bring gwen back when dozens of other people are resurrected all the time, and whenever she's cloned, it's agreed that those clones don't count and aren't worth preserving. there is no justice for gwen's murder and everyone agrees that we don't need to bring her back anyway but we sure as hell will obsess over how tragic her death is. they like her better dead because if she's alive, they don't have full control over her anymore.)

she's failed by everyone and everything she trusts and cares about. specifically all the white men. her male friends, her boyfriend, her teacher, her father, his coworkers at the police station, her friend's father.

(... and the only people who have not failed her, and have even stuck up for or supported her are mj, sally green, aunt may, hobie brown, and darius leclerc. women and people of color.)

and maybe most importantly: she never gets an opportunity to process any of this or make a choice about it. because she's dead. and every time she's resurrected, it's only to fluff the ego of the guy who got her killed before being quickly killed off again. it's been like this for fifty years and it just doesn't stop.

-> gwen 6160, a version of gwen who gets to grow up to full adulthood and does so without spider-man triggering the collapse of the system around her-- and therefore, gwen still believes in it-- even goes so far as to become co-ceo of oscorp, and marry harry osborn-- a white billionaire who literally has the leader of their totalitarian oligarchal society on call. she has her doubts about the way things are and wants the system to change, but believes she specifically is superior enough to solve things with no consultation or oversight. this character's being primed to either have that arrogance lead to her death or a descent into supervillainy.

-> even spider-gwen has to unlearn her specifically white feminist politics. she needs to have the concept of gentrification being bad explained to her. she initially behaves like a rogue cop and her killing of peter parker is framed as an act of police brutality. the entire point of her initial comics run is gwen realizing that the police, the legal system, the media and society are corrupt and that she has to change her mindset if she's going to be a worthy protector of her city. she has to unlearn girlboss feminism, does so by listening to people of color, and refuses to take advantage of her privilege even when not doing so could get her killed-- when she's incarcerated, she receives a reduced sentence in part because of the optics of a girl with a 'good background' being locked up and she's offered a fully commuted sentence in exchange for becoming a government agent. which she refuses. the origin story of spider-gwen is all about radicalization. i can't get over how smart her creator was for doing that.

-> and as spider-gwen has since regressed back into white feminism, to the point where she's been explicitly called a "girlboss" on-panel, she starts palling around with her dimension's cops again and has not-so-coincidentally begun favoring only her white friends-- first harry and em jay, then only em jay (who she starts to have romantic tension with... even though em jay is already in a relationship with a black girl). and now she's abandoning the world she spent years learning to be a better ally to entirely for an easier one where she has fewer responsibilities and is in closer proximity to the important men who treat her like a romantic object.

the missed potential of gwen stacy's plotline all boils down to lack of agency. she needs to live so she can realize how she's been failed, and decide what to do about it.

if she concludes that the system is bad for her and stands up against it, she stands a chance at breaking the cycle, surviving and becoming a hero, like ghost-spider.

if she doubles down on supporting it, it will corrupt her into a villain.... and probably kill her once she's not useful to it alive anymore.

to bring the subject of this ramble home: the payoff we're waiting for in gwen's narrative is about how a white woman responds to realizing the system she's been raised to trust and uphold is corrupt and broken. you have to reckon with your privilege, how you've been lied to, how the power you thought you had doesn't actually exist, how your special position near the top of the hierarchy has nothing to do with how special you are and everything to do with keeping you close so the people with actual power can use you to replicate the system through another generation, the authority figures in your life are actually useless or harmful and the people you've been taught to push away are actually your real allies. and then you choose to help undo that system to liberate yourself and the other people it's hurting... or you keep believing the lie because you'd rather keep the few privileges it does allow you, become complicit in its continuation and it still eats you up when it's done using you.

spider-gwen already passed this test and become a hero (but may fail it if she ends up with miles). gwen-6160 has failed and become villainous. gwen-616 has never gotten to take it, so her fate's still up in the air.

anyway politically speaking, from right to left, the main gwens go: 6160/hickman ultimate (knowingly complicit in some war crimes), 616/original (wobbling on the fence until she loses her balance and gets impaled by it), 1610/bendis ultimate (edgelord who occasionally stumbles onto the right idea), 65b/spiderverse (she's a little confused but she's got the spirit. dump miles and you've got it.), 65a/spider-gwen (the actual radical, pre-spiderverse synergy).

#spider gwen meta #gwen stacy 616 #gwen stacy 6160 #gwen stacy 1610 #gwen stacy #gwiles #gwen stacy meta

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