#idk i just realized that okay atleast she's good at being a mother dad isn't even that why am i feeling good about him when his love

[girlthativealwaysbeen]

sometimes my bestfriend is like an angel in disguise istg

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

Has it ever occurred to you that since Gwen hasn’t had a mother figure for the majority of her life and from the beginning of ATSV its kinda shown she’s been craving that type of guidance or even affection when she sees Jess for the first time, do you think that once the dust is settled between her and Miles and she finally gets to properly introduce herself to his parents, do you think that Rio can not replace Gwen’s mother but atleast fill in that gap in some way where she’s able to get some of the guidance she’s been looking for. Idk I just feel like the dynamic between the two could be interesting once they both get along with each other, hopefully this makes sense to answer.

Ohh this is interesting.

Now, hope you don't mind, but Gwen and Jess situation is something I wanted to talk about for a while, so, I will use your comment to talk about this.

I will do the Rio part too, but knowing myself, there is a chance that would end in a second post because I talk too much.

Let's go!

Now, do I think is this a joke? Yes, but I also think Gwen means it.

And look, this is not to say that you necessarily need to have two parents to raise a kid, I personally believe that one parent, if they provide the necessary attention and care to the child or children, could be an amazing parent and not let their kids feel like they are missing anything.

However, as discussed on this post, I mentioned why while George isn't a bad dad, sadly he is not the best parent for Gwen.

And here I also discussed why Gwen's mental health is a bit of a mess.

But to not sent people to do homework, let's give the cliff-notes version.

George is trying to be a good father, however between his job and his refusal to understand nuance, he has accidentally pushed Gwen away; even if maybe this could have been resolved if she talked to him in a normal situation, the fact that he did what he did in the beginning shows she was scared for a reason.

So that means Gwen has a gaping hole in what a role model and parent should be, since she needs more support. Of couse her Spidey identity is important to her (in fact she leans too much into it,) and having no one to help her on that complicated path doesn't make the situation any easier.

Enters Jessica Drew.

You know I found extremely telling that when Gwen sees Miguel, she is cracking jokes and not really taking his professionalism crap seriously; yet when Jess comes kicking ass with her motorcycle and she looks at her like she has seen the light.

Perhaps it had to do with her realizing this failed artist is more problematic than she expected, or the fact that Miguel was quickly disposed of by something she saw from a mile away; while Jess came putting the bad guy on a grinder and maneuvering a bike like nobody's business. Needless to say, Gwen is DEFINITELY impressed.

Once again, this plays almost like this is a dream come true for Gwen.

She hides it well for most of the movie as well as the previous one, but the reality is that underneath that cool exterior, this is a teenage mess with so much angst she is giving my teen self a run for their money.

Just like she craves companionship in the form of Miles as well as other spiders, she probably wants someone who can tell her everything is going to be okay or what they should do. Again, we may forget sometimes, especially with superhero movies where protagonists need to be competent despite their age most of the time; but Gwen is 16, 17 at the most; and has been handling this stress and turmoil for at least 3 years. That's a lot.

Top it with her dad not being able to emotionally support her, and the fact that she wants a mom becomes less a possible commentary about not nuclear families, and more of a likely possibility because the first 20 minutes of the movie gave us LOTS of material to show how mess up this is.

I think is a testament to the situation that she doesn't default to Peter B or Noir in the first movie, nor Miguel; she only seems to be interested in learning from someone when she sees Jess.

Is funny, but is also very painful to hear for me, as if you ask me she said it completely straight, and this just shows how much help she needs.

Granted Gwen said that accidentally and probably wouldn't have said it if thought about it first, but the fact that it slipped says a lot.

She desperately wants someone like Jess in her life, and to top it off, she probably wants that person as a maternal figure; probably someone to ask about techniques for defeating baddies and also who could talk about feelings without this person defaulting to work as a copy mechanism.

Feel free to call me crazy for getting so work up about a joke, but if I am honest other interactions really make me sell this idea for me.

Now let's talk Jess.

Literally what other reaction she was going to have.

We really never hear a definitive answer to the question, but I also think Jess didn't think too hard about it for a reason.

I am planning to go through some scenes of Gwen and Jess to dig deeper into their mentor/not-mom situation, but let's start with this.

Do I think Jess should have adopted Gwen? No, not at all.

Look I am a sucker for found family and adoption tropes, and I would had love nothing more than for Jess to give one dirty look at Gwen's dad, tell her she would be there for her, and take her away to a good home. That is not what happened, and I don't blame her.

She is on her way to having her own kid, she needs to be spider-woman and to top it all off, she seems to be kind of a second in command in a really big operation, where your boss is your friend who is also way too into his job and she probably is still there partially to make sure Miguel doesn't completely lose it. She has a lot on her plate as it is, adopting a traumatized teenager is a lot of work that shouldn't really be her job.

Do I think that means she has no responsibilities to Gwen? No, not really.

And this is largely why.

Okay, I will try to not go over every moment with them, as this is more about explaining their situation than a deep dive of every instance of their relationship, but this is a good kicker for the situation.

Jess immediately takes an interest in Gwen for the organization, now while I can understand that she based this purely on her abilities, I think a part of it was the comment Gwen made earlier. I think she sees in her someone who needs a steady hand and some support.

As a mentor.

This is going a bit ahead on the post, but let's establish that 1) This exists, and 2) Jessica got that idea EXTREMELY quick all things considered.

Here is where the responsibility part actually kicks in.

No, Jess doesn't have any responsibility to Mother Gwen in any way, regardless if Gwen needs one or not (she does,) but the moment she not only started to argue for her to have a spot in the organization, to take her in when the things in her universe technically imploded (which they are marginally responsible considering they came to clean this means and they only did it thanks to Gwen,) She implicitly accepted to look after her.

Okay here is where we need to talk a bit about tropes.

When you have protagonists that are teens or kids with powers, is inevitable that they will need to deal with dangerous stuff that no sane adult would let a real kid do, but is fiction so you kind of have to suck it.

This is a trope that I found kind of lazy even when I was part of the age demographic; which is why stuff like The Owl House with Eda was refreshing.

She was also a Mentor who was also not very responsible as a guardian, but she ended up growing into one, and even if she failed to protect her apprentice, she did try her damnest to do it.

Jess is not Eda, and she doesn't need to be, except that this story has proven to be aware that they are still teens.

Jess clearly recognizes this isn't fair for Gwen. We also see something like this in the first movie, with Peter B worried about Miles can or can't handle, while still letting them do stuff you wouldn't catch me letting my little sister get away with; they know that there are somethings someone at that age shouldn't just be handling on their own.

And Jess isn't exactly ice-cold about Gwen.

Jess took interest in Gwen's potential quickly, she looked after her, and quickly went to try to calm her down and support her during a very high tense and stressful moment. Even here is Gwen the one who ultimately moves away, not Jess, proving she could had try to stay close to ensure she was okay.

And this is something that shows that it kind of sticks.

While considerably harsher here than in her introduction scene, Jess is showing that despite her annoyance with Gwen, she still likes her. She never thought her relationship with Miles shouldn't be a reason not to have her on the team; she trusted a mission in the universe despite that, and also calls Gwen her star pupil, which I don't was sarcasm.

She also gives her an hour to fix this, which even if not much, is more than she could have given her.

I am not saying that Jess didn't look after Gwen, or didn't care about her beyond what she could do for the organization, however, it wasn't what Gwen needed.

Let's circle back to responsibility,

Jess is aware of what happened with her dad, she knows what Gwen lost, and she can probably imagine that a kid that lost her identity and her world like that on just one night can't be doing okay; yet nothing shows me she ever did anything about it.

Here is the thing, Jess doesn't need to be Gwen's mom, but she can't just insist to have her and be her mentor, and don't think about checking on her in something other than her kicking-ass abilities. Even if she doesn't want to deal with it, she should have either seen how to make her father see reason, or lock her in the room with the spider-man psych.

Considering how things go in this movie, neither thing happens.

And it feels more painfully obvious when you see how much Gwen tries to appeal to her emotionally.

In a vaccum, none of these are a big deal, but the more I think about it the more heartbreaking this is for me to watch.

This is why I find these to be such a big deal: Gwen doesn't like to do emotional shit.

I know, I probably repeated that more times than I can count; but let that sink in contrast to what's going on.

After Peter died, she decided to not have any friends because she couldn't deal with the grief, with Miles only getting past that rule because they are both spiders plus chemistry. And even then, when you see Miles asking if she is going to talk to her dad, she decided to crack a joke and brush the idea as swiftly as possible.

When her dad tells her about the break in the spider-woman case, she tries to brush it off with false enthusiasm at first, and then when she gives a more honest response is more out of bubbling annoyance that truly her trusting him with something.

She isn't baring her heart open in these moments though, let's not have it twisted; however, she is trying to use emotion as a way to appeal to Jess, which is not her first move with most people in general. Even when she is not actively giving her an in-depth explanation, in each of those moments she is giving the emotional context as to why this is so hard.

"You never got too close to someone?" -> "This person is important to me and this is hard for me, wasn't it for you?"

"But my gut says-" -> "I know this looks bad, and I can't explain how, but this isn't right, trust me."

"Tell him he is wrong!" -> I don't really need to explain this one, do it?

She continuously looks up to Jess to hear her out, and to understand what she is going through; she sees her and expects someone who can connect with her on that level and care about it.

But that's not what Jess does, because she is not her mom, she is her mentor.

For the most part, when Gwen tries to appeal to Jess emotionally speaking, Jessica shuts that idea down fast.

Now, I am going to preface this by clarifying that in real life, a mentor would probably check emotionally on the kid they are mentoring if only for the fact that when you are in charge of a kid, you should look after them. Fiction however is another ballpark, and technically speaking, a mentor shouldn't need to be doing something that is the job of the family.

A good mentor would probably understand their apprentice position and listen, since regardless of your years of experience, you can't just underestimate people or you will inevitably be surpassed. However, Jess isn't trying to be anything like that; she wants to teach Gwen her way, and her way says that emotions are kind of on the way. So regardless if it isn't what Gwen needs, she will insist on that.

I think there can be a way to accept emotions but also don't let them cloud your decisions, yet again, Jess is not interested in that, and I Gwen actually have normal, supportive parents (or even just one,) I wouldn't be so hung up about this. But she doesn't and Jess knows this.

Superhero or not, Gwen is just a teen, and shouldn't need to be living this, especially because I freaking doubt this is a canon event or something; with the resources they have, and the people they have on board, I can't believe there isn't a way they could have talk to Captain Stacy and made him see reason.

But they didn't, because they are more worried about spider-man duties than whatever is going on to the person under the mask, and for them, this is just what comes with the territory so you have the suck it up. Even if this is perfectly avoidable once you think of it.

That's something that I had been thinking about a lot while doing my post on the organization as well as the one with Gwen falling in Mumbatthan. The spiders are stronger together, and in general working as a team gives them not only better chances at saving people, but also helping with the stress they have and being there for each other. That isn't the goal of the organization though.

Miguel's mission is to preserve the canon and to put people from other dimensions back into their respective ones, anything else is probably secondary to him. Sure, if someone asks for help from another Spider I don't think he would stand in the way; except if it is a canon event, which in that case, he will probably say to people to suck it up.

The pain they have, the trauma they are suffering, while being together helps it was never the end goal to help with that, and there is no regard in avoiding said pain. This is a job first and foremost, which is the attitude Jess has.

Gwen is not her kid, or even a young student, she is a coworker; one that she needs to guide a bit, but her subordinate at the end of the day.

Sometimes the waters get muddier, on both sides if I am honest.

I will touch a bit on other scenes, but I wanted to bring up this one in particular because there is something that feels a bit more mother-daughter than it probably has any right to show.

Now I will be the first to admit this may be a me thing, I can be very formal in real life and that goes double with people who are older than me and in a position of power over me, the only exception to that rule is my current boss because he is the mythical creature of being a manager who remembers employees are people too.

Gwen is not like that, she jokes and doesn't give too much of a shit regardless if you are Miguel or a bad guy. However there is something in the way Gwen acts that feels she wouldn't be phrasing stuff like this if it was Miguel on the other side; again, back to her using emotion as a first resource rather than as a lashing effect of her anger.

Jess, while being kind of no-nonsense overall, is also not the most formal, because this is the spider society and Miguel had the bad luck to be the only straight-laced one while everybody else tries to be a comedian for the most part. But there is a way that she talks to Gwen that for me feels kind of like her not fully keeping this professional either.

I can't fully put it into words, so feel free to not make seriously on this one, but there is something about the way Jess is commenting on the situation that reminds me more of a mom than any of my bosses.

Then we have scenes like this.

I am sorry but this part really first like is a discussion between mother and daughter, even with contexts the way the scene delivers gives that energy.

This isn't exactly wrong by itself, nor is it truly that surprising. The boss I mentioned before had also mentioned off-topic that me and my other coworker (who is a couple of years older than me,) are almost like his kids, and we share an age range. However he doesn't try to parent us really, and even if some of the comments are very much 'now listen to me kids' he quickly remembers we are adults and would drop topics or decisions we made that I know wouldn't be his reaction has been one of the kids that are actually kids.

It probably has more to do with the way they talk and see people younger than them that any parental feelings, and none of this is really inappropriate.

Nonetheless, the fact that Gwen craves that motherly bond makes these interactions hurt all the more for me.

Gwen may not be under the illusion that Jess is her mom, but she's subconsciously looking up to her, and the fact that Jess acts like this, even if by accident, just feels into that mentality. The mentality Gwen has that maybe Jess will listen this time, that she will take into account her feelings and her opinion in her decisions; but she continues to not do that.

For the most part.

Is a bit hard to see with the resolution I have, but when Gwen is kicking and screaming while been taken by the machine, Jess's gaze goes in another direction.

I am sorry if this is feeling repetitive, I know this post is a long one (which is funny how this post created another 2 just so those topics wouldn't be here.)

What I am trying to say with all of this, is despite Jess' insistence this is just work, that Gwen is just her pupil and she can only do so much; Jess continues to have a soft stop for Gwen that let's her get away with things. Is kind of ironic how Miguel said Gwen was a liability for her feelings for Miles, yet couldn't even consider how feelings in general would get in the way, considering Jess assigned this mission to Gwen (which then she fumbled the bag and led to the Spot becoming an actual menace,) give her a second chance, and then apparently let her go.

(It is possible she is looking for where Gwen is going to tell Miguel, but I doubt it.)

I fully believe that by the third film, Jess will probably end up either switching sides or just letting Gwen do what she wants, and even if is the first scenario I think it would be via Gwen that happens.

But to wrap things up, if Captain Stacy is not enough as a parent for Gwen because he can't do that role properly, Jess isn't good enough as a parent for Gwen because she doesn't want that role, regardless of if she sometimes kind of acts like it.

I think their relationship is fascinating, and I would love to explore more of this connection in some way; if only because the complicated nature of it makes it all the more interesting for me, but in a nutshell, is this:

Jess: I wanted an apprentice, you wanted a mom. Gwen: Well I guess we are both disappointed.

(Sorry I couldn't help myself, OOF I wish I could draw well enough for this.)

Now, with my thoughts on Rio, I could probably put them on this post because is not that long, but it will probably feel off with all this commentary I had been making, so it would be in another one.

If you got this far, congrats on your patience, and thank you for reading!