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rappaccini · 10 months ago

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a queer reading of spider-gwen

okay. this is fifty pages long so i'll skip the sentimental intro: spider-gwen's existed for ten years, and over the course of that decade she's steadily been written as a more and more overtly queer character.

gonna get gwen's appearances in animation/movies out of the way first.

IN OTHER MEDIA:

in ultimate spider-man (2015), gwen collaborates with peter and miles but no romantic tension is present, and she clearly prefers working alone or with aunt may. takeaway: inconclusive.

in marvel spider-man (2017), gwen's teased as a romantic interest of peter's, but they ultimately stay friends. at the big end-of-series dance, her date is a boy who's a side character at best. she has a ton of tension with anya corazon, her female best friend and has a moment of gay panic when she sees black widow-- though both could still read as her just being affectionate towards other women. takeaway: inconclusive, but with plenty of fuel that she might be bi with a preference for girls or a closeted lesbian.

in marvel rising (2018), gwen has no romantic partners and expresses interest in no one. the murder of her male best friend, kevin (peter placeholder) motivates her, but she shows no signs of romantic feelings for him. she's still a drummer for the mary janes and exclusively interacts with other women. takeaway: inconclusive, queer if you squint.

in spidey & his amazing friends (2021), a cartoon aimed at preschoolers, gwen is an elementary schooler. takeaway: irrelevant.

IN THE SPIDERVERSE MOVIES

in ITSV (2018),

gwen's a supporting character whose arc is about warming up to miles and embracing new friends after the death of her peter (here referred to as only her friend, which was probably all he was at this point in development).

even if the planned romance plotline was cut down to 'miles has a crush, gwen's so reserved you can read her either way, and they end the movie agreeing to be friends,' she's still in the movie. so the writers probably intended for her to be straight.

and her personality is so off that it wouldn't surprise me if they never read her comics past her initial origin story, the spiderverse event and sitting in a tree... which means the writers probably didn't realize gwen was queer until after they expanded her role for atsv.

in terms of gender presentation... gwen has an edgier haircut and an eyebrow piercing, but the piercing's lifted from katie bishop, miles's first love interest in the comics. and she's also a ballet dancer, so she's automatically coded with conventionally feminine interests.

and let's be real, there's no way the writers intended gwen to be trans-coded until atsv at the earliest.

takeaway: inconclusive, but probably straight.

ATSV (2023)

gwen canonically has romantic feelings for peter-65 and tension with both miles and hobie (though she insists hobie's 'just a friend,' given that gwen's lying for most of the movie, hobie does for gwen what she does for miles in his parent's apartment at the end of the film and pav is 'good at reading people' and says something's going on there... something probably went on there). it is crammed down our throats that gwen is definitely into guys.

gwen interacts with many female characters, and is in the mary janes band, but has no chemistry with any of them, does not regard any of the female characters her age (the mary janes, margo) as friends, and is hostile towards them all. she clashes with rio. she seeks a female mentor in jess, subtextually a mother figure to gwen, but has a poor relationship with her that frays over the course of the movie.

her plotline entails compulsively lying to everyone in her life to protect herself from rejection, being hunted by the authorities for an identity they disapprove of, running away from home after being revealed to an unsupportive parent, and sheltering with hobie, who's confirmed to have a genderqueer influence in concept art. and we've all seen the scene where gwen comes out to her father (lifted word-for-word from the comics). however, these could be read a variety of ways. if you don't want to see the subtext, technically, you don't have to.

she's also the most romance-driven version of spider-gwen that has ever existed:

the first words out of gwen's mouth, the words that open the movie, are "let me tell you how special the boy i like is, and how i wasn't loyal enough to him"

instead of being repulsed by peter's advances, gwen clearly intended to go to the dance with him as a couple and is upset that she didn't get to

her origin story is sanitized to make sure she doesn't have any hangups about getting a boyfriend, and that miles doesn't have any about being attracted to her.

she's so fixated on peter that she's projecting him and the relationship she wanted with him onto miles

the storyline about gwen isolating herself from her friends, adapted from the comics, is recontextualized so she's pining for miles the entire time because she thinks only he can understand her

she risks her life (since at this point she assumes being sent home could get her killed, and knows about the gwen death canon event)... to see a boy she hung out with for one afternoon a year and a half ago

she reunites with miles by diving onto his bed and creeping through his window. you know what that implies.

she takes him on an elaborate swinging date through the city, where their compatibility as a team is emphasized and she introduces herself to his dimension as THEIR friendly neighborhood spider-woman

(said date includes a storyboarded shot that was cut where gwen and miles photobomb a wedding in the places of the bride and groom)

the date ends with them visiting a special secret place to watch the sunset and talk about their feelings

she seems more upset by the idea that she can't be in a romantic relationship with spider-man (not even "a spider." a spider-man.) that ends well than that she will die young

the entire party scene is essentially miles introducing his girlfriend to his parents, and gwen failing to win their approval

gwen interacts with hobie with romantic intent as well-- wearing his clothes, flirting with him, constantly spending time with him, talking about him when he isn't around the same way she would miles, sleeping over at his place, getting flustered when he's brought up. even pav has noticed that something's going on between them.

gwen observes miles being protective of children in mumbattan and has a moment of Lingering Eye Contact with him when they look at mayday's baby pictures. the directors want you to think of them as parents together, and spiderverse gwen doesn't share her comics-counterpart's repulsion towards babies

she and miles are given a "wendy and peter pan" parallel in dialogue

she's catty to another girl over a boy's attention

she becomes disillusioned with the spider-society not because of her own mistreatment, but because of miles's

she stands up to the spider-society not for her own sake, but her future boyfriend's

she has a ~mysterious connection~ to miles that allows her to sense he's in danger across dimensions. they gave her a brand new superpower that revolves around being constantly aware of her boyfriend's needs even when he isn't in the same universe as her. it isn't even clear if the connection runs both ways.

gwen reunites with her father because she returns to their apartment for a photo of her and miles, and her reward for making up with her dad is a portal watch she can use to see miles.

she spends the movie in a subtle love triangle with hobie and miles, and despite knowing hobie far better and being far more comfortable with him, we know she's choosing miles for some reason. a relationship with the straight boy she barely knows, can't be honest with, and has barely done anything for her somehow matters more than the queer-coded boy she has a deeper connection to. she's choosing the heteronormative option.

the climax of gwen's arc isn't actually her confrontation with her father. it's when she goes to miles's to apologize, puts miles' hoodie on (you know what it means when a girl wears her boyfriend's clothes), and wins his parents' respect by defending him to them. it's literally all about introducing herself to her boyfriend's family and reassuring them that she's good for him.

the ending of the movie is gwen handpicking a team for miles made of all his friends and allies and ends the movie on her way to deliver them to him. it's only her team until he shows up. then she'll immediately fall into line as his support.

gwen decides to defy her narrative by... pursuing miles to apologize for not being honest, confess her love for him, bring him home to his family and prove how devoted she is to him by helping him protect what he loves.

gwen's atsv arc is about deciding to be brave enough to be a straight boy's supportive girlfriend.

(we know btsv is going to involve gwen's death canon event, it being subverted somehow and the gwiles romance getting, according to the straight white nerdy guys who wrote this story, a 'satisfying' conclusion.)

this is the first time in her character's ten-year history that a spider-gwen plot has been dominated by gwen wanting a boyfriend.

so if nothing else, gwen seems to be written, directed and performed as straight. her design has a queer vibe, but her behavior does not. and i doubt they'll want to introduce any more rivals to their precious gwiles, so she'll probably stay that way.

but in terms of gender identity, she's definitely coded as transgender.

we've all seen the 'protect trans kids' flag in her room, and the abundance of pink, blue and white in her world's color palette. if i had to bet, some animators picked up on the queer vibe of gwen's storyline in the film and/or knew her comics counterpart was much more overt, snuck the flag in as a way to acknowledge her queerness without contradicting the narrative's need for her to be only attracted to men. (they would never have made gwen a lesbian, and even bi-coding wouldn't have worked because the plot obligates her to be a male character's love interest, she has no sapphic vibe or even positive relationship with any other female character, and having gwen 'come out' to her dad as bi-- right before she gets a boyfriend-- isn't the most coherent; no queer girl would come out to her conservative cop dad if she were going to be introducing him to her straight boyfriend. she'd just not tell him.) and when it got a good reception after the trailer came out they got the go-ahead to crank up the vibe in the animation effects, which elevates gwen's story from 'open to interpretation' to 'so intentionally coded if you don't acknowledge it you either didn't pay attention or you're deliberately refusing to see it'.

so now, those visual elements plus gwen's coming-out speech, her runaway plot, camaraderie with hobie, her ability to fit into hobie's clothes, her haircut, her conventionally masculine childhood hobbies (like playing with action figures; mentioned because if a young gwen was socialized as a boy, that's what she would have been steered towards) and even her religious father saying he hates gwen's alter ego because 'she took a boy i think of as my son away from me' have a much clearer subtext. gwen's story is a queer narrative about running away from and eventually reconciling with transphobic family, sheltering with another queer kid, having her vulnerability exploited by opportunistic adults, and finding acceptance with other kids like her.

the takeaway: spiderverse gwen is probably intended to be heterosexual, but is definitely trans-coded. i could see the writers using this as a way to acknowledge spider-gwen's queerness (... and dodge potential backlash for straightwashing a queer girl to make her the main male character's gf and refusing to switch gears once they realized what they did) while making sure she stays Miles's Girlfriend above all else.

we'll get back to this. put a pin in it.

IN THE COMICS:

the source of all these alternate versions of spider-gwen. i'm gonna try to go in chrono order, but where overlapping events hit, i'll just place the event where it doesn't disrupt the flow as much as i can.

IN SPIDERVERSE (2014-2015)

gwen's first appearance. at this point she had no established lore or personality, so her default state as Peter's Love Interest seems to be the guiding principle. also, tasm2 came out recently and the gwen/peter romance would have been front of everybody's minds.

for ref this also tends to be the personality gwen has in all other team-up events: she's nice, social, competent, enthusiastic and always in peter's corner. (out of universe, this is who writers who don't read her comics think she is. in-universe, this is how gwen wants to be perceived by the other spider-people.)

gwen's first moment of shippy behavior happens when she meets peter 616. he immediately orders her to stay at the camp where it's safe while the Real Spiders go to war. she begrudgingly agrees. ew.

later, when she gets him to let her leave the kitchen, we get this. cradling his face, staring deep into his eyes and promising to protect him is not platonic.

this is never followed up on. whenever they interact past this point, it's as friends. this is a good thing.

peter continues to have to remind himself to let gwen fight her own battles and not intervene on her behalf. this is a bad thing.

gwen keeps getting more shippy moments with peter variants sprinkled throughout the event. the peters keep trying to have a moment where they touch or hold each other, stare into each other's eyes and apologize about failing each other's variants. and she allows it.

takeaway: our first impression of her is that she's presumably a heterosexual cis woman who was in a romantic relationship with peter-65.

IN WEB WARRIORS (2015-2016)

tricky continuity: after the inheritors are defeated, the web-warriors stick around to clean up a few loose ends. gwen is on this team. so technically, though the latour run starts before ww, ww takes place during the couple months gwen leaves home to fight with the spider-army and gets stuck on battleworld before her solo kicks off.

in general gwen hangs out with several spider-people, including an aged-up mayday and anya, but there isn't much of a vibe there. unlike in sv, gwen seems to be accepted as a comrade instead of a potential love interest. and she's cool with it.

gwen is referred to as peter-65's "girlfriend" by his bullies in a flashback. the writers don't have the details right, but this is their assumption of that relationship. they clearly think gwen's into guys and that gwen was peter's girlfriend.

one interesting thing does happen: gwen meets hobie here, and he, like many of the peters in spiderverse, immediately gets flustered. it could be hero worship of a girl who has his favorite musician's name and face, it could be a crush. probably a bit of both.

regardless, gwen is initially weirded out and surprised by hobie's interest in her. she's more concerned with how her alt self dies than hobie's starstruck reaction to her, but she doesn't mind him clutching her hand like he's in a regency novel and that touch lingers a bit longer than normal. and by the end of the event, they've become friends and proceed to go on many missions together.

takeaway: inconclusive. if i had to guess, gwen isn't being written as queer; she's being written as 'straight, but off limits to guys who aren't peter parker.'

IN THE LATOUR RUN (2014-2018)

GWEN'S GENDER IDENTITY

first of all, to the spiderverse fans who think trans gwen is canon to the comics: thanks for the enthusiasm, but gwen is not explicitly trans; at no point in the canon is she referred to as such.

and gwen being trans-coded isn't necessarily that prominent. there are seeds you could read into... or not:

she goes through a physical change after an injection, and has a secret identity that people despise and her father initially hates. the spider-man metaphor works for so many things that you can take or leave it.

gwen worries being a spider-person makes her a ''monster'' and if "a real friend would give [her friends] a chance to run"... which could be about a trans girl being anxious that her queer cis friend group won't want her, or about any number of gwen's other issues, most notably the fact that she killed their mutual friend and is keeping it from them.

she has traditionally-masculine interests-- like d&d, drumming, fantasy novels, cop shows and kung fu movies-- but is also written as a tomboyish nerd who grew up with a single dad who shared his interests with her.

she's insecure about her breast size and her body, but that's probably just male writers being male writers.

she has a lanky build, dresses in an androgynous style and even wears a hood sewn into her costume, but given that the writer's intent was to keep gwen from being sexualized by intentionally not giving her curves and form-fitting skin-baring outfits (and the hood was a very 2014-era commentary on how "wearing a hoodie doesn't make someone a criminal")... something else is going on there.

murdock cracks a joke about pronoun usage when gwen's venomed out... but everyone who uses venom uses "we" pronouns

mattea murdock later uses gender-neutral pronouns when discussing her, however that's probably just an earth-138 thing.

it's there if you want it to be, but there's a counter to every point, and most of those points are so ambiguous that they can speak to a number of different situations or queer experiences.

the strongest argument you have is the power-up pills.

gwen loses her powers, and becomes dependent on using pills that temporarily restore them so she can keep being spider-woman. she only has a limited supply, and wonders if running out or throwing them away will mean she's 'normal' again.

however, the problems persist. enough villains know her identity that they'd continue to seek her, and she wouldn't be fulfilled.

murdock gets his hands on them, and uses them to force gwen to do his bidding. the subtext is that murdock is gwen's abusive partner who's keeping her dependent on him by making her take drugs when she's with him. or dealer. your choice.

the metaphor works with any drug. given that gwen's constantly on benders after peter's death, keeps being found by her friends passed out in bars and alleyways, and her relationship with her symbiote is initially written as an "addiction" -- her taking something to numb the pain is the most obvious reading.

and in general the power pills play into the run's theme about gender and power: gwen claimed a power that typically isn't given to a female character, and cindy moon 65 took that power from her because she was angry that she wasn't the special one. gwen loses her powers as she's dominated by men and gains her symbiote when she gets her independence back.

but if you want to take the power-ups as a story about a trans girl being violently denied her identity by a transphobic cis woman, contemplating going off her meds and detransitioning, before realizing it won't change who she is, and then becoming trapped in an abusive relationship with someone who controls her access to her medication... it's a very good allegory.

however, given that sitting in a tree insists that gwen-65 is the past version of gwen-8, who gives birth to two children... gwen must have the hardware for that to be possible. that, or bendis really had no clue what the fuck he was doing when he created earth-8 and made gwen have kids without realizing she doesn't have a fucking uterus... or the terrible implications of writing a story about a trans girl being told that in the best possible world where she's accepted and beloved, she'd have to be capable of getting pregnant.

also, if you're looking for a trans-coded character in the cast, there actually is one: earth-65's captain america is a genderbent sam wilson. she has a clone, sam 13... who is somehow male.

takeaway: enough is there that you can read gwen as trans if you want, and the coming-out narrative can work for gender identity as much as it does for sexuality, but it's not an overwhelming and intentional subtext. it's a "maybe, if you want."

not like the subtext surrounding her sexual orientation is.

gwen could be trans... but she definitely is not straight. and it's been that way since the start of her solo run.

(so to the people insisting that the spiderverse writers couldn't possibly have known that gwen was queer back in 2018... yes the fuck they could have. it was always this obvious. they didn't know because they did no research or had already decided they wanted her to be straight so they could ship her with miles.)

GWEN'S SEXUALITY

gwen's plot across the latour run is basically a coming out arc.

she has a secret side to herself that her family and community despise, that led to her turning down a relationship with a boy the audience expects her to be with, and being hunted by the police and hated by her father.

she spends much of her time lying, sneaking away for days or weeks at a time, and contemplates running away for good to a place where someone 'like her' would be more tolerated.

she's constantly informed by powerful people that she's supposed to have been in a heterosexual relationship, and keeps ducking out of them.

she's sussed out by various people-- friends who guard her secret and support her, and enemies who use it to exploit her.

she begins coming out to the people in her life one by one: her father, harry, the mary janes, her neighbors. it takes time for some to accept her, and others embrace her right away.

she breaks out of the last of her repression and embraces her emotions in their entirety... which scares people.

she reveals herself to the world because she's no longer afraid of the consequences of being exposed, and to take away the power from someone using her secret as leverage against her.

and then the systems of power in her world lock her up and leave her to face abuse to punish her for events that kicked off with her refusing comphet.

it's very, very clear. especially when you factor in her relationships.

THE MARY JANES

the first thing we learn about gwen is that she's a drummer in an all-female rock band. as soon as gwen has her own backstory, it decenters and deromanticizes her relationship with a guy we all expect her to be the girlfriend of, and places gwen in a peer group and subculture that skews extremely queer.

and over the run we gradually learn the mary janes are almost entirely made up of openly queer and queer-coded girls (em jay is bisexual, glory is a lesbian; betty is unclear, but is repulsed by/indifferent to male attention even if she jokes about finding guys hot).

betty brant:

not much here. betty hugs gwen and gives her a 'vampire kiss' once, but she has an odd sense of humor so it's not clear if she's serious. and regardless, gwen seems uncomfortable.

glory grant:

the girl gwen singles out as the one she prefers to talk to the most and her closest friend in the band.

glory is the first person in the band gwen nearly 'comes out' to about being spider-woman. (not em jay.)

gwen admits to finding it enjoyable when they land on top of each other after stage diving during a concert. in this same issue, it's confirmed that glory's an out lesbian.

tbh, if gwen's into any of the mary janes romantically in the latour run, it's glory.

em jay watson:

em jay mentions finding gwen attractive early in the run, is the first in the band to guess gwen's spider-woman, is especially upset when gwen puts herself in danger as spider-woman, and has a habit of getting into belligerent fights with other members of the band (felicia, glory, gwen). given that she and glory later get together, being rude and demanding seems to be a signal that em jay's attracted to someone.

for future reference: em jay is openly bisexual. she has an infamously colorful dating history containing at least one guy, glory jokes about em having too many exes, and she's even lost a friend, liz allan, because liz's boyfriend made a pass at em, and when em came to liz to tell her about it, liz believed em was cheating with him. being promiscuous, noncommittal and unsafe to leave around someone else's partner are all stereotypes leveled at bisexuals. and em jay has lost a friend because of them. put a pin in that.

on a night out, while glory, randy and betty are scrolling on dating apps, gwen and em pair off together, em tells gwen she'd never use one, and talks about the inevitability of being rejected. it's implied she's talking about having tried and failed to attract gwen.

given that em later begins flirting with glory, who asks em if she's just a placeholder for gwen (which em denies), it's clear that em had romantic feelings for gwen, gave up and got together with glory instead.

gwen seems totally unaware of or indifferent to em jay's feelings for her. she does not reciprocate during the latour run.

felicia hardy:

former member of the mary janes

mentioned because if em jay gets bitchy with all her crushes, given that she and em hated each other, that means felicia was one of them. possibly even an ex.

she is paralleled to gwen: both are young women with single fathers who they are extremely close to, who have belligerent tension with em jay (mutual for felicia, one-sided for gwen) and quit the mary janes to 'go solo', who have vengeful streaks and despise matt murdock, who are obsessed with their pasts.

and felicia hardy 616 is canonically bisexual

throughout the run, gwen constantly seeks the mary janes' company, even when her secret identity keeps her from being honest with the girls [who piece it together themselves long before she tells them], and she always keeps herself apart when they flirt with her or each other. the implication being gwen is closeted but just aware enough of her sexuality to crave kinship with other queer women.

MISC: KITTY PRYDE

assassin gwen has a bit of tension with.

like felicia, kitty is also paralleled to gwen as another rageful young woman with a complex relationship to her father (though kitty's is alive and she kinda hates him), who has trouble retaining her agency and is being manipulated by murdock

and like felicia, kitty is also bisexual in 616.

MISC: CINDY MOON AND JESSICA DREW, 616

when gwen teams up with both women, there's no tension. gwen and cindy dislike each other, and gwen views jess as a mentor.

jess asks gwen if she’s interested in a boy or girl romantically, which gwen never answers. its possible that jess has figured out that gwen is queer… but she might also just be covering her bases. regardless the possibility of her being bi is first teased out loud here.

gwen's dislike of cindy stems from "being afraid she'll end up like her." cindy (... who has the most romantic tension with other women) spent a decade sealed in a vault by a man she trusted, she was hunted the moment she got out, and hurled at peter as his hypersexual 'soulmate' by the writers. that's what gwen is afraid will happen to her.

as for her relationships with men...

it's rough. the latour run is bookended by gwen encountering male villains who want to exploit her sexually and punish her for not being attracted to them: gwen's backstory kicks off with lizard attacking her because she accepted a date with a different guy, and gwen's first villain encounter in the present is rhino, who gropes gwen while they're fighting. the story ends with gwen defeating murdock, who has a sleazy obsession with her.

i mention this because the context is important: gwen's got a lot of trauma related to being forced into intimate situations she doesn't want. not just with her villains. with her friends too. and often those friends become villains because they want an intimate relationship with her at any cost.

PETER PARKER 65

peter and gwen are childhood best friends and neighbors. even though she's referred to as his "girlfriend" by peter's bullies, that's all they are. friends.

peter parker was attracted to gwen. he resents that they aren't in a relationship, and that she's the one protecting him from bullies. he's jealous when harry asks her to the prom, and his lizard rampage is triggered by seeing harry that night.

he's also infatuated with spider-woman's power, and wants it for himself. he doesn't seem to know she and gwen are the same person, but he's still possessive of both sides of her.

gwen's origin story kicks off when she literally has to kill peter parker to start her character development as spider-woman.

and how does she kill him? by "breaking his heart" -- physically, by bashing his ribcage in. and emotionally, by not wanting to be his girlfriend.

gwen was not attracted to peter at all. she only ever refers to him as her 'friend' and mentions she never had feelings for him multiple times, to harry, to miles, to gwen-617. given that she just learned that in most universes they're a couple, and had to deal with dozens of peters pushing that vibe onto her, it makes sense that she'd be so insistent about this.

it's also interesting that she keeps this information secret from all the spider-people during this run. now that we know she and her peter were never involved romantically, that means all those moments where she seemed into the alternate peters weren't genuine. she was faking it.

the thing that gwen's world turns on her over and sends her to prison for is "breaking peter's heart." it's not following through with comphet. gwen literally gets demonized and locked up for not being straight.

SIDEBAR: CLONE CONSPIRACY (2016)

it's not clear when this event occurs in gwen's chronology. she has spider-powers and doesn't mention her power-ups, so though this was published during the power-up pill arc, it seems to take place before gwen loses her powers. so best i can figure, clone conspiracy takes place after gwen reunites with harry and they forgive each other and before she encounters cindy and jess from 616 (additional proof: during the spider-women crossover, the mary janes are shocked when gwen turns up; it makes more sense if she's been in 616 for a few weeks than if they just saw her at the bonfire).

anyway: gwen travels to 616 to help kaine infiltrate the jackal's latest clone nonsense, and impersonate the resurrected gwen stacy. during this time gwen and kaine spend possibly weeks alone together. and gwen spends a lot of time literally replacing the girl she's constantly compared to.

gwen and kaine have chemistry and a mutual protective streak towards each other. they were an effective team during their time alone, and bonded over their common status as the inferior doppelgangers of 616 icons. at one point gwen likely undressed in front of him. i'd say it's all incidental, but then they're paralleled to peter and gwen-616.

so yeah that shit's on purpose.

basically the vibe is that gwen and kaine probably hooked up or had some kind of tryst off-page while they were investigating the jackal, but then got back to business.

if it did indeed happen, gwen's first and to-date only sexual encounter was with a much older man who has the face of the dead best friend she had no feelings for and killed because he kept coming on to her, and this hookup occurred at a time gwen was extremely fucked-up about said friend's death, aware that all the spider-men expect her to have feelings for him... and peter-616 in particular (who kaine is cloned from, and who has a mixed-to-negative relationship with him). so there are other factors at play that aren't attraction.

if gwen got with kaine, it was most likely a mix between a sense of obligation (fine, she'll screw a version of peter) and maybe an act of rebellion (but not the peter anyone wants) or sabotage (she's choosing the guy that'll make the peter she's expected to be with too uncomfortable to even think of going further with her... and it worked).

it's worth mentioning though that the encounter, if it happened, seemed to work out fine for them both at first. they're not awkward, angry, regretful or uncomfortable, they work together well, they part on good terms... but when gwen's back in her own world, she later mumbles about how she dislikes clones and she makes no effort to be close with kaine ever again. if they hit it, they quit it and though gwen was cool with it at the time, she later sours to the experience.

takeaway: this gwen's being depicted as straight again. but in context, she seems to be trying to negotiate with or subvert comphet.

BACK TO LATOUR

soon after clone conspiracy's published, sitting in a tree happens. the writers seem to have realized a few years into spider-gwen's existence (and a few years removed from the amazing spider-man movies) that a gwen-peter romance would be a terrible idea... so they're tossing her at alternative spider-men to see what sticks.

[all the more relevant when gwen-617 essentially looks into the camera and says "stop trying to force her to be a love interest. she's her own person."]

MILES MORALES

siat is a mess. for these issues only, gwen is smitten with miles-- who she barely knows-- and then barely mentions him for the rest of the run (and is never wistful or pining when she does).

the whole team-up feels like two writers with very different takes on the relationship fighting each other. bendis wants gwiles, latour doesn't. the characterization's all over the place.

(so are the ages. gwen's 19-going-on-20, but based on gwen8's canon age of 38 and the 20-year-anniversary announcement of her wedding to miles... i guess bendis thinks she's 18? also, miles is 15-16 here but insists he's almost 17.)

the event, split between miles and gwen's solos, is also split between their povs. relevant because it turns out that they have slightly different perceptions of the events.

in siat, gwen constantly initiates touch with miles. she grabs his hands and wrists, leans on him, clings to him, whispers reassurances in his ear, stares deep into his eyes. on the surface, it looks like she's into him.

his entire side of the story, told in retrospect to his buddies, reads her behavior as swoony and romantic. the whole time miles thinks he's The Man for attracting this hot older spider-woman. he never picks up on any of her signals, or if he did, he ignored them.

(and kept ignoring them, because later in champions, miles calls gwen his "girlfriend from another dimension" when he's trying to impress the team. they don't buy it and drag his ass for it, but he still did it. miles views her as a status symbol.)

when they discuss her peter, she says he "followed her around like a puppy"... just like miles does in siat. and since gwen wasn't into peter... hm. wonder what that implies.

miles and murdock, who are both canonically attracted to gwen and want relationships with her, have a dick measuring contest. you could read it as 'miles, the good suitor, is standing up against matt, the bad one'…. or, as them being juxtaposed to show how similar they are: both impose on gwen a relationship she doesn't want and neither cares about her agency. you know, like peter did.

miles keeps pushing gwen's boundaries and not listening to her. he takes too long to let go when they hug. he puts her in danger when she tells him not to take her webslinging (she doesn't have powers) and he does anyway; yes, he ~saved her from falling~ but he pulled her off the edge of a building in the first place. he follows her into a club when she tells him to wait outside. he doesn't tell her about his invisibility power when she'd need to know about it. he trusts her, but not that much.

throughout the event they keep having ~romantic moments~ that are interrupted by discomfort: are they awkward teens... or do they just not have chemistry?

when gwen and miles encounter kamala khan, who at the time was his potential love interest, and the vibe is ~uh oh, miles's two girlfriends are in the same place~... miles gets flustered. kamala gets twitchy and concerned. gwen isn't either. she even invites kamala along on the mission, and sticks with kamala instead of miles.

when she and kamala are alone together, and kamala tries to say she's cool with gwen and miles being a couple... gwen gets embarrassed, says "why can't we just be friends" and when kamala misreads again, she facepalms. when gwen's alone, she drops all interest in miles. which means when gwen's with miles, she's faking it.

when they discuss having variants with preexisting relationships gwen says she feels "twisted up lately" and is used to doing "whatever it takes" to get through hard situations. she's not saying she wants to be with him; she's saying she feels pressured to.

and then she's lured to earth-8, where she sees the Perfect Future created by gwen and miles marrying and having a perfect nuclear family... gwen's reaction isn't excited or awestruck. she asks if she's hallucinating, she looks underwhelmed, and only smiles when she's leaving. she brings the kids, but only as reinforcements for a fight she's reentering.

gwen suspects she was taken there on purpose, and implies she thinks earth-8 is the answer to her problems. and then kisses miles.

there are two depictions of the kiss in siat. one is from miles's pov, at the start of the story when he's recounting it to his friends. you've seen it. it's pink-toned, sexy and dramatic... but only in his memory.

the other is from gwen's pov, as it happens. it's depicted as distant, cold and dark, with their faces in shadow. from her pov, it was not a good experience.

gwen immediately pulls back, apologizes, and can't give a clear a answer as to why she regrets it, but insists she doesn't want to replicate earth-8, that if they get together she "can't feel like we didn't have a say. like we got forced by the hand of fate"... third time she's said she feels forced.

she makes him promise to stay friends. though she promises it's just "for now" she never follows up and immediately goes on the run with another future love interest.

also, while on the run with said love interest, she contemplates fleeing to another dimension, and after considering earth-8, she dismisses it altogether, says earth-8 is no safe haven, and commits to standing her ground in a battle they think they have little chance at winning. gwen would rather risk death than return to earth-8.

even though earth-8 is sold to her as an ideal future, she clearly disagrees. it's not gwen's ideal future, it's miles's.

remember gwen's issue with cindy? oh look, gwen's worst fear is coming true: she's trapped, pressured by forces outside her control into a relationship with a spider-man she has a dubious amount of consent in, and that relationship is turning her into an object. the only difference is instead of being a sex object, gwen is a status symbol and vessel for children. gwen's worst nightmare is miles's dream come true.

the story feels like gwen going through comphet, trying to make herself like miles and failing. and/or pretending to reciprocate to avoid hurting his feelings-- probably because the last time gwen was bluntly uninterested in a boy who puppy-dogs after her, he tried to kill her friend. the trauma's not keeping her from being with him. it's keeping her from rejecting him bluntly.

for future ref: gwen and miles never go on a solo adventure together again. every time they're together, it's in a group setting where she's friendly but unattracted. she makes no effort to see him on her own, and avoids him when he reaches out with romantic interest. one has to assume she's uncomfortable with being alone with him for that reason.

much later, we learn that the omniscient watchers [implied to be stand-ins for the writers/fans] overseeing gwen's world have already written her off as destined to become gwen-8. in other words, god has already decided that gwen's purpose is as a wife and mother, and in order to be accepted, gwen has to be straight, whether she likes it or not.

gwen-617 refers to gwen-65's future being determined [as earth-8] as "wrong," "dark" and "toxic." and that it perpetuates a "cycle" she, another spider-gwen, intends to break.

it's implied she sent gwen to earth-8 and earth-617, the two possible known futures for a spider-gwen-- the one she'll be forced into, and the one she'd actually want-- so she'll be able to tell the difference and save herself before it's too late.

HARRY OSBORN

both he and peter are gwen's high school friends who have one-sided crushes on her.

harry asks gwen to the prom, she agrees but seems indifferent about his proposal and oblivious to it having been romantic in nature. she also doesn't meet him there or at all once peter attacks. so she didn't exactly turn him down or accept him.

unlike peter, gwen doesn't repeatedly insist she was never attracted to harry.

when harry returns two years later, he's still carrying a torch for her but maintains that they are friends and never tries to push anything else on her.

talking to harry is enough for gwen to break through to him, and they embrace.

harry's treated as the foil of peter parker in the latour run-- both are nerdy, bullied boys gwen befriends in high school, whose attraction to her she's (while in high school) indifferent to, who become villainous as a result of abuse and ostracization and take lizard serum to punish her. however, peter does it to punish her for accepting another guy's attention. harry does it to punish her for killing peter, but forgives her, and reforms into a close ally of gwen's.

in short, harry did what peter couldn't: he was able to understand that gwen's her own person who makes her own choices, and to let go of his anger and break the cycle of violence that caused it.

this could mean that unlike peter, harry accepts gwen as a friend.

or unlike peter, gwen reciprocates his feelings.

either works.

right after siat, harry osborn returns. the end note that gwen and miles are essentially in an arranged marriage immediately being followed up by gwen running away with another boy she has tension with? that shit's on purpose.

the predators arc is all about how deeply connected gwen and harry are: he can call her from across the world and she'll drop everything to come to his side. they'll run away together and live on the lam. she'll care for him while he's sick. they'll fight for each other, they'll keep each other alive, their history runs deep and the symbiote is made of, among other things, a piece of each of them.

during their time in madripoor gwen and harry become much more touchy. they're constantly clinging to each other by the end of the event.

gwen's feelings for harry seem to evolve over the run from platonic during high school to something deeper by the time they part ways in madripoor. they never kiss or acknowledge any feelings, they never go on a date, but something has shifted.

it's still ultimately ambiguous as to whether this dynamic is romantic or platonic.

THE SYMBIOTE

in madripoor, gwen creates and then absorbs the venom symbiote, which restores her powers without a need for power-up pills, grants her a new set of abilities unique to her, and frees her from murdock's control...

though it takes a few weeks for her to get used to it, and she has to change her behavior and open up to others if she wants to maintain control of it. like with 616, a symbiote and its host are a relationship unto themselves.

when the symbiote is created by gwen, it's to save harry. and when gwen gains control of it, it's thanks to the sound of her band. the people gwen has the strongest emotional connections to are the reason why she's able to regain her power and be her most authentic self. (in other words, gwen's at her most free when she embraces her feelings for both men and women)

her symbiote "makes you who you always wanted to be" and removes your inhibitions-- it doesn't corrupt you, it reveals who you were all along. gwen isn't in a relationship with a sentient being, she's in a relationship with herself.

so what does gwen want all along? gwen's symbiote helps her escape a situation threatening to take her agency away. it helps her maintain her freedom by taking her on the lam, and eliminates and menaces people she views as threats to her and her father's safety.

she also finally reveals her identity to her friends, the parkers, and the entire city.

gwen's symbiote gives her a repulsive, frightening appearance and makes it difficult to be sexualized or touched without her consent. probably pretty appealing for a girl who keeps being pressured into intimate situations she doesn't want.

it's mentioned by the watchers that gwen keeping her symbiote would jeopardize the earth-8 future, and her earth-8 children refer to it as gwen's 'greatest villain' who she presumably defeated before marrying miles. why? what about the symbiote makes it such a threat, other than that an uninhibited gwen would never want to live in heteronormative bliss with miles?

here i should note: miles-1610 hates symbiotes. his world's venom killed his mom (she got better) and he still has a strong kneejerk reaction against them. it isn't a coincidence that gwen's symbiote is mysteriously gone and being demonized in the world where he marries her. it was probably a result, if not a condition, of the relationship.

... look dude. the allegory's lining up: miles resents gwen's queerness and would get rid of it if he could.

this means that gwen-8 either rejected the opportunity to live as her truest self... or had it taken from her, and everyone around her, including her own children (and definitely her husband), believe it was the right thing to do.

we don't actually know what gwen-8 thinks about it-- or anything about her life on earth-8-- because she never actually appears in-canon. we're only told by other people that she Sure Is Happy. hm.

gwen-617 is revealed to have become her world's venom equivalent. of the two futures we see for gwen, one is a heterosexual marriage with a nuclear family where she's kept offscreen so she can't tell us what she honestly thinks about her life, and the other's a single, childless, uninhibited gwen who bounces through the multiverse protecting other gwens' agency. one gwen loses and demonizes her queerness, the other uses it as a source of empowerment.

so literally, having the symbiote sets gwen free from her worst fear: having to be spider-man's love interest.

gwen-617 bursts into earth-8, the heteronormative world, and tells the watchers [and the readers/writers they represent] upset that it might not happen: "what about this is so scary to you?" it's a challenge to let gwen be single, queer and independent in her own world instead of becoming some guy's girlfriend again.

even though gwen-65 has no idea this conversation occurs, she still makes the choice to voluntarily re-host her symbiote and stay in her world after her release from prison despite being able to move to 616. she's choosing to take after 617.

in other words, gwen's embracing her queerness in her own world for the first time, when she could recloset herself or leave for another world where she still has a 'secret identity' as a normal, read: straight girl.

the takeaway: gwen is definitely queer. we just don't know what kind of queer, except that she's probably not trans. she might be a lesbian. she might be bisexual. she might be asexual.

regardless, she starts the run concealing her true self from her loved ones as she grapples with guilt over peter [over not being straight], resists giving in to comphet, and ends the run by becoming her most authentic self and coming out in her own world.

IN SPIDERGEDDON (2018)

key words: own world. when gwen's in spiderverse events, she's depicted as more girlbossy and chipper than she is at home, and also doesn't use her symbiote much or at all, even when she logically would.

again this is probably due to writers being unfamiliar with her personality or powers. which means in-universe, gwen has kept it to herself.

so in a sense, gwen's still closeted to the other spider-people because she's afraid they'll reject her if they find out she's 'not one of them.' (remember: her first exposure to the spiderverse consisted of being constantly come onto by peter after peter. she knows what they want from her and that if she isn't in the club, she'll be vulnerable to interdimensional threats). for instance, the one time gwen does use her symbiote in spidergeddon, she waits until all the spider-men she's with leave first, even though she's in serious danger. very telling.

anyway: gwen's at the center of a subtle love triangle with hobie and miles that was definitely inspiration for atsv.

unlike in atsv, while miles still carries a torch for gwen, she's friendly to him but indifferent to his crush. (note that this event came out the same year as itsv, where miles's one-sided crush on gwen is a plot point. synergy.)

but when hobie shows affection, this time she's receptive to him.

contrast gwen's reactions to hobie and miles. when miles gushes over gwen, she throws him a peace sign and keeps her distance. when hobie throws himself at her for a hug, she lets him have it and keeps coming back for more.

there's a clear difference: gwen was serious about not wanting a romantic relationship with miles and is keeping that door shut. she feels the opposite about hobie-- initially she was only interested in friendship, but as of spidergeddon her feelings have evolved. this hug is probably the moment something shifted.

gwen stays close to hobie throughout the event. they're always together during the fighting and are drawn to each other after the funeral. they're constantly protecting and checking in on each other. (... and gwen is more concerned about him than peter and miles)

gwen returns his embrace, see above.

both assume responsibility for the funerals: he leads the eulogy, she informs the dead's loved ones.

she also reciprocates his touches (not dissimilar to what she does with harry when he returns from abroad).

she confides in him about her visit to earth-3109, the world where gwen and em jay are a couple. his immediate response is to insist on staying with her for support and tell her she doesn't have to fight her battles alone. he knows.

hobie suggests they find time to hang out together again. gwen shuts it down because she doesn't want to stress the collapsing multiverse. even though gwen isn't as enthusiastic about meeting again as hobie is, she's sad when they part ways, so it seems like she wanted to say yes.

they haven't interacted again, so i guess the vibe still stands.

very interesting that we're revisiting gwen's connection with hobie and making the interest mutual. remember, the last time they met, gwen was pretty firmly regarded as peter's love interest and wasn't allowed to like anyone but him. now that we're officially out of the Peter's Designated Girlfriend era, she can reciprocate. when gwen takes steps towards emancipation, she gets closer to hobie.

also, another confirmation that she knew peter-65 was attracted to her, and that she was uncomfortable with it. she wasn't unresponsive because she was oblivious-- she was trying to discourage peter. you know, exactly like what she's doing with miles during this event.

the takeaway: gwen's not comfortable enough around other spider-people to be herself, but she's getting firmer about rejecting comphet. she's still interested in some men though.

IN THE MCGUIRE RUN (2018-2021)

GWEN'S GENDER IDENTITY

... yeah there's not much for the trans coding. nothing disproves the reading but not much supports it either.

people glaring at the sight of gwen on a date with harry, gaping at her, politicizing her when it's convenient, jumping at the chance to demonize her at the slightest indication that she did something wrong... sure, it could be her city reacting to her as an out trans woman, but it's also that she's a famous controversial superhuman who got out of prison a month ago.

the trans coding still works, but in general, the vibe the power-up pill arc in the latour run gave gwen largely fades away past this run. so she's presumably cis from here on out.

GWEN'S SEXUALITY

gwen, 52 days out of prison at the start, is ready to restart her life and trying to adjust to a world where everyone knows her secret identity. she wants to "have it all"-- a normal college experience, friends, superhero adventures... and yes, she tries dating too. it doesn't end well.

("have it all" is a phrase famously associated with the modern career woman. think every 90s romcom protagonist: if you can juggle a heterosexual relationship, a family, a social life and a career, you 'have it all.' like earth-8 gwen. so gwen, fresh out of prison, is trying to emulate this ideal.)

gwen's coming off of having been locked up and abused for a series of events that started with her not being romantically interested in a boy... and is emerging into a community that has mixed feelings about her.

she can't perform with her queer friends without the venue being bombed.

she can't go on a date without being kicked out of the building because the sight of her is upsetting the customers.

she has to go to school in another city where no one knows her because at home she's gaped at.

and even at school, someone figures out What She Is, stalks her, kidnaps her, and tries to sexually exploit her.

she's constantly scrutinized by the media.

her identity is used as a political prop.

she's ultimately driven out in favor of sue and johnny storm-- two gorgeous, palatable straight celebrities who literally play up an incest vibe for ratings; so any straight activity is preferable to a single queer woman-- and has to flee to 616 to avoid being imprisoned again.

put into context, the latour run was about gwen coming to peace with her queerness, coming out and winning the support of her loved ones. the mcguire run is about gwen being rejected by her community after doing so and the consequences of that trauma.

said consequences being: gwen starts to regress to protect herself.

she cozys up to the cops instead of questioning their practices

she tries dating a boy

she starts spending a lot of time in another community where she isn't out to anyone but a single friend

she starts dressing like that community's preferred version of her (from here on out she has gwen-616's haircut, and her style is no longer androgynous and grungy.

she flees to that community when she's kicked out of her own, and stays in the closet while she's there.

(note that this run came out the year of itsv, and the status quo for this run is 'gwen becomes a multiverse-jumping spider who loves hanging out with peter and miles.' this was the first big attempt at forcing gwen into 616, and it's all for spiderverse synergy.)

HARRY OSBORN

the run opens with gwen running into harry and agreeing to eat with him at a diner. they bond, she shares her spider-gwen experiences with him, and they hold hands at one point.

but the interactions are ambiguous: are these dates, or just friends getting food? harry's still into gwen, but does she like him back?

after two more occurrences of this, he formally asks her out. and she agrees... while telling herself it's "normal".

she also needs no clarification that it's a date, so their diner meetups were dates too.

this is the end of the ambiguity about gwen's feelings for harry. nope, it's not just that he's her friend. it's romantic.

[so clearly, gwen's feelings shifted from platonic to something more before she went to prison and after harry returned from abroad. i'm guessing it happened when they reconciled after the green goblin fight. remember that very shippy embrace? and how the next time they meet right after siat, gwen drops everything to run across the world to his side? yeah.]

[also, gwen and harry discuss the prom, and refer to each other as having been each other's dates. so in hindsight, gwen does see herself as having accepted his proposal.]

but when they go on a formal date-- dressing up, gwen being given flowers, going out to a nice restaurant as a formal couple-- her internal monologue is nervous, she's taken aback by how expensive everything is, and panics and leaves in a rush.

to be clear, she flees because they're asked to leave the restaurant because the patrons recognize and are bothered by gwen. gwen tells harry she can't go through with the relationship because she thinks being a public figure makes dating too difficult... but something else might be going on here.

it isn't that she isn't attracted to him. even though she calls him a "really good friend" gwen continues to get touchy with harry, seek out his company, puts him on the same level of importance as the band, says he keeps her "sane" and that she "needs" him. they go back to casual diner dates and he turns up at her gig to support her. so gwen clearly does have feelings for him. and he's still into her, but willing to take things at her pace.

harry's even supportive of gwen being a superhero (... unlike em jay). he reassures her when she's doubtful. he's someone she confides in about her activities. he helps her access oscorp so they can investigate her symbiote together. he's worried she doesn't have any use for him since he doesn't have powers. he wants to be a part of her superhero life, but doesn't pressure her into making room for him.

like with miles, harry's written out quickly and never returns, but unlike miles, it's because harry gets put in a coma. he and gwen have a shippy bridal carry and she sits by his bedside, but after the mcguire run he's awakened offpanel and they haven't interacted again on-page.

there is no closure to their relationship.

PETER PARKER 616

the shippy vibe of spiderverse is dead. gwen and peter have a brother-sister dynamic.

she even takes shots at the idea that people think they might date, and keeps stressing that he's too old for her and she's not into him.

this all unfolds as gwen tells peter about her symbiote. he's the only spider-person who knows about it other than her.

revealing the symbiote and slamming the door on ever being interested in him romantically feel linked.

THE JACKAL

a 616 villain. empire state professor who's obsessed with cloning and "in love" with 616's gwen stacy. tracks spider-gwen to her home dimension and kidnaps her, straps her to a gurney, and declares he wants to keep her forever. another creepy man who wants to possess her.

MISC

gwen mentions miles is her friend a few times but makes no effort to see him when she's in 616, and cites him being in school as why (note that gwen brings up that peter's too old, and miles is too young). that 'friendship' is all spiderverse movie synergy.

gwen's 616 classmate, kosei, seems to have a crush on her. after a few interactions, she has a charged moment with him. it goes nowhere and we never see him again.

it gets real spicy when we get to the girls.

specifically, EM JAY

gwen begins the run circling a romance with harry, but then is dropped into an alternate dimension where gwen and mj are a couple (and peter and harry might have been one too). then, after gwen returns, she can't quite commit to a relationship with harry and he's conveniently written away as em jay comes into focus.

gwen starts noticing em jay's feelings for her, becoming more attentive to her and showing her special attention. if i had to guess, seeing gwen goblin/mj made gwen realize she could have that too (... or she feels as obligated to the gwen/mj relationship as she is to the gwen/spider-man one).

gwen notices em jay's written a song about wanting to be picked by a noncommital love interest, but dismisses it being about her.

em's belligerent crush attitude is back.

gwen's first instinct when the jackal threatens the girls is to protect em, even though glory and betty are also there.

gwen uses her portal necklace to take the janes to another dimension's version of em's favorite band, and plans to do it even more. all four girls are there, but gwen's attention is all on em jay. she and em jay throw their arms around each other and em jay's wearing a "latveria is for lovers" shirt.

and get this: glory's right there and doesn't mind. (also of note: glory commenting about em and betty hooking up. could be a joke, could be a sign the girls really are in a polycule. regardless, glory isn't the jealous type... at least for now)

when gwen's exiled by the storms, her final voicemail is to em jay.

the end of the run is devoted entirely to the tension in gwen and em jay's relationship bubbling over and imploding. the entire gwenom vs carnage event is incredibly gay.

first of all, gwen's roommates in 616 look exactly like the janes. so while stranded in 616, gwen made little effort to hang out with any of the spider-people there, including the men she's been shipped with, and sought out the closest thing to the band she could get.

jackal kidnaps em jay for an experiment intended to locate gwen because em has a "bond" with gwen (remember: he noticed gwen protecting her over the other girls), and infuses her with some of gwen's symbiote...

which causes her to teleport across dimensions to gwen by bursting through her heart. and to turn into carnage.

so, just like gwen, em jay's symbiote was activated by intense feelings towards men and women (fear of the jackal, love of gwen).

the symbiote, arguably a metaphor for her queerness, is what alienated gwen and em yet now connects them. it helps them work out their issues, but is also causing their conflict. hm.

throughout this run, gwen is interested in learning about her symbiote's potential with harry as it begins acting up... at the exact same time she's drawn towards em jay. in other words, she's exploring her sexuality with a guy, only to find it leading her towards a girl.

during the run, gwen is extremely in touch with her symbiote. she starts using its unique features, like her gummy spiders, and it even appears often-- and always in reaction to gwen being hurt, cornered or feeling threatened. at this point, gwen's symbiote has a clear motivation: defense, survival and protection-- of her, of people she views as vulnerable. she lets go of her reservations when she feels her physical safety-- and her freedom are threatened.

since 65 symbiotes remove their hosts' inhibitions, we learn em has been hiding a deep jealousy that gwen got the power and public attention instead of her, the frontwoman. she's angry that gwen's presence in her life has made it so difficult and that gwen left.

the conflict is that these girls who love each other a lot but not quite in the same way miss each other and want to be in each other's lives again. gwen comes to understand how hurt em is, but not why. em can't understand that gwen genuinely can't help her lack of commitment. so the conflict ends unresolved.

we get a flashback of gwen and em in middle school, and learn em first thought of the band then, as an activity she wanted to do with gwen together. the vibe's that em has had feelings for gwen for years, envisioned a future where they're together, and is upset that it hasn't come to pass. another layer to the conflict.

em jay, like harry, mimics peter parker: both em and peter are childhood friends of gwen's who have crushed on her for years, and are angry that their love is unrequited. both go on monstrous rampages to punish her for not returning their feelings and becoming someone they cannot control with a life that does not center them.

a shippy 'it's not you, i know you're in there' fight ensues, with gwen pulling her punches, trying to talk em down, and the girls landing on top of each other.

when discussing peter's death and her spider-heroics, gwen says she did it to protect harry... and em jay. (even though em was never threatened by the lizard fight at all)... this isn't about peter. this is about how gwen now thinks of harry and em in the same light. both are love interests to her now. (or, she understands both are attracted to her, but cannot reciprocate)

the fight starts when em jay literally bursts out of gwen's heart and ends with em in gwen's arms.

the mcguire run is bookended by gwenjay. it starts with gwen learning that in another world she and em jay are a couple, and ends in em jay's feelings for gwen erupting, and gwen's just starting to evolve.

SIDEBARS

the glory-gwen vibe from the latour run is gone. gwen no longer confides in her or has any vibey moments with her. i guess she had a bit of a crush and is over it now.

betty's interest in gwen has cooled off too. just friends.

sue storm has no chemistry with gwen, but she is foiled with her: both are blonde famous superhumans. gwen uses her powers responsibly but keeps being perceived as a villain; sue maintains a hero's reputation but is secretly evil. sue is beautiful and cares about her appearance, gwen's canonically mid-looking and isn't interested in being attractive to others. sue gains her powers by seducing dr doom; gwen gains hers by 'taking a boy's place' and denying him intimacy. sue plays along with the system and it rewards her, gwen tries to resist it and it spits her out. mentioned because sue is the female hero who forcibly takes gwen's place as new york's protector-- the one-two punch of earth-8/sue storm has given gwen a very clear picture of what she has to be like in order to be tolerated: she needs to cater to the male gaze, play along with the boys, partner up with a man, and get her power sneakily.

the takeaway: gwen's feelings for harry are confirmed as romantic. she also begins to reciprocate em jay's feelings for her... but doesn't seem totally aware that she does. the subtext is that gwen's bi or pansexual.

but as gwen's feelings start to evolve, her comfort with them devolves. now that she's out, gwen's trying to 'have it all' to regain her lost sense of normalcy and make herself palatable enough to be tolerated, but it fails. she loses the people she's trying to protect, wrecks two relationships before they can even begin, and the straight people she's trying to placate drive her out anyway, to a different city that's less accepting of her, where she goes back in the closet and stays.

coming out isn't a one-and-done thing. you do it over and over to everyone you meet, in every place you go-- and though sometimes, it's safer to keep it to yourself, it takes a serious toll on your relationships and your sense of self. that's the new status quo for spider-gwen going forward.

... it's not a happy story, but it's a very queer one.

LAST REMAINS (2020-2021)

(takes place before gwenom vs carnage, but probably after gwen's exiled.)

gwen and the order of the web protect peter as he deals with the return of the green goblin. they get briefly possessed by kindred, tear up 616, get better, get kidnapped and end up in a creepy dinner party setup the villain uses to punish peter.

not much to report. gwen interacts with cindy, julia, jessica, anya, peter and miles, and there's not a hint of romantic tension.

she and miles don't mention siat or his gushiness over her in spidergeddon, and behave like coworkers. given that tiana's in the picture by now, he's hopefully over gwen. or at the bare minimum, he can behave himself around her now.

with peter, she puts her foot down on not being a stand-in for his gwen or needing to be defended by him when norman skeeves out on her. which, great for her. but peter's backsliding into treating her like a gwen616 placeholder. years into their friendship, he still can't stop himself. and don't give the ~unhand her~ moment any credit: it's not about protecting gwen, it's about peter showing off how badass he is. gwen is back to being a vessel for his Dead Girlfriend Feelings.

... and none of their friends say or do anything about it.

symbiote sidebar: in general, during gwen's exile to 616 and during all the multiverse minis, gwen doesn't reference her symbiote once or use its unique abilities, even when she logically would. she uses it for spider-powers, and for quick changes, but nothing else. gwen hasn't rejected it, and has remained in control of it, but that's all.

apply the allegory and you get: gwen doesn't hate herself for her queerness, but doesn't feel comfortable enough to reveal it to anyone and only embraces the parts of it that help her fit in... and that behavior is starting to bleed over even when she's at home.

takeaway: inconclusive. gwen has no tension with anyone, and she's still holding her ground about not being a love interest, but peter's no longer listening to her.

SIDEBAR: SPIDER-PUNK (2022)

aside from hobie continuing to have an interest in gwen-- though he refers to her as a friend-- he drops her name to mattea murdock, who has the gayest possible design and a strong queer vibe (... and red hair and a name starting with the letter m) with kamala-138, and suggests they'd get along great.

you could interpret it a few different ways, including hobie wanting the girl he likes to meet his friends, and---because gwen told him about her time in gwen goblin's universe, including who that gwen was in a relationship with, hobie noticed that gwen's into women--- he's trying to set her up with his friend.

since he's spider-punk, i think both interpretations are correct; his entire friend group's got a polycule feel, most of them are canonically queer and even the ones that aren't have a strong queer vibe-- hobie included. if anything he probably wants her to join the polycule.

included here because even without gwen appearing in the miniseries, it keeps building the context: the only spider-man we know gwen hasn't rejected the advances of is the one who realized that gwen is queer, and he's supportive of it. he is also the first person outside of earth-65, and the first spider-person, who gwen has come out to.

GWENVERSE (2022)

not much to report here. gwen's still single. no sign of harry. no symbiote. gwen meets many alternate versions of herself. her characterization is very off the whole time, it's not clear how she made it back to her dimension after her exile and some of the lore is wrong (em didn't start the band with gwen; she started it with glory). it's very somehow-palpatine-returned.

but there are a lot of shippy moments with women here.

there's this moment where spider-zero saves her. and since zero is younger than miles and gwen is over 20 that's the most i want to say about it. gwen's age is another thing that seems to have been forgotten.

gwen visits a universe where the mj variant is ecstatic that gwen's a hero and fangirls out on her. and spider-zero seems a little annoyed that the woman she's into is getting attention from someone else.

this moment feels very shippy, especially since gwen just came from a world where her em is angry that being ghost-spider is pulling her away from the band.

... but gwen is uncomfortable with mj wanting to hug her. could be that this isn't the em jay she wants approval from. could be that gwen's interest in em jay has faded and she doesn't see her like that anymore. could be that even if em embraces gwen's powers, it still won't be enough for them to work as a couple. needs more data.

takeaway: she's still in her Have It All era, though: dipping out of her unaccepting home with another girl to meet women? hm.

SIDEBAR: END OF SPIDER-VERSE (2022)

gwen is a minor character in this crossover. nobody flirts with her, nobody comes onto her, and she's too busy trying to stab peter to take interest in anyone.

but since she's possessed by shathra the whole time, she and all the other waspified spiders she's with during this event (including miles and hobie) are out of character for the whole crossover. we can't really take anything here as evidence for an argument.

(no symbiote, btw. so as far as we know, she's still keeping it a secret.)

takeaway: inconclusive

SIDEBAR: GWENPOOL (2023)

gwenpool / gwendolyn poole isn't actually a variant of gwen stacy. gwen poole is a totally different woman.

however, everyone assumes they're variants, to the point where gwen's marvel rising adaptation ended up with her pink hair because her concept artist accidentally referenced gwen poole. this hair has been adapted for the spiderverse movies too so at this point it's gonna be here to stay and most people assume they're variants.

i'm mentioning her here because of the potential impact of this character's sexuality on the overall perception of spider-gwen:

gwenpool is canonically aroace. she has an entire comic about that experience, mentions it multiple times elsewhere, and has worn the flag.

and if almost everyone who sees gwenpool assumes she's gwen stacy... you do the math.

MISC ALTERNATE GWENS

first and foremost, gwen-616. dater of men, lover of guys with football player builds, infamous love interest of peter parker. clearly intended to be straight at the time she was written, though she's had a few 👀 moments with mj. this is the gwen spider-gwen was created in response to and is constantly compared to and in conversation with. notably, everyone (friends and enemies; by characters within the stories, and the writers and audience who make and receive them) treats spider-gwen as a copy or lesser version of gwen-616.

an alternate spider-gwen is a valkyrie who has a charged moment with an mj. gay.

spider-gwen and mj get vibey during a zombie apocalypse in a-force (... as early as 2015). gay.

gwen-8, supposedly a 'possible future' of gwen-65 who leaves her world, marries miles and has his kids. definitely intended to be straight. but if it really IS gwen-65, given all the coding, she's closeted and miserable and i hope she goes out for cigarettes and never comes back

gwen-617, a split-timeline version of 616 gwen stacy who doesn't die on the bridge, eventually leaves her peter parker and is content as a seemingly-single woman living as a superhero. inconclusive, but given that she's contrasted to gwen-8, the Straight Option, i think gwen-617 should probably be assumed to be queer.

marvel action gwen: a continuity where she, miles and peter are high schoolers who attend a daily bugle internship program together and spider-people who work as a team. gwen's just friends with both boys (and is better friends with them here than in the main continuity) with no hint of a romantic subplot with either of them-- though she does get a ship tease with harry osborn. glory has em jay's usual role of being gwen's belligerent band leader bff (make of that what you will). gwen's got an extremely gay fashion sense, discusses clashing with her father over it, and how she's not sure how to move forward with her life because she's "proud of who [she is] but going public could ruin [her] dad's life." she's into guys, but there's a hint of bisexual coding.

earth-3109: the mcguire run opens with gwen spending multiple issues interacting with an alternate version of herself, gwen goblin, who she helps get back together with her mj. this is a lesbian couple marvel won't let kiss or say 'i love you'

what if? dark's spider-gwen is a variant of gwen-616 whose boyfriend peter dies, and has a charged interaction with mj. probably intended as straight, given that it's written by gerry conway

earth-21798: this one's a bit of a reach, but the continuity where gwen stacy becomes the vigilante nightbird involves a backstory where she's preyed on by professor warren and flash thompson-- more abusive comphet-- and studies psychiatry at an asylum, before going insane and being committed there. maybe it's just me, but even though this character's 'based on batgirl'... she screams poison ivy (creepy professor) and harley quinn (abuse+committed to the asylum she once worked at). and harley and ivy are now famously bisexual. harley even shares gwen's status as a female character who spent decades defined as a more prominent male character's love interest, before stepping out of his shadow as her own person as the toxic sexual tension with her redheaded friend comes into focus... who gets put back into that guy's shadow because of a major movie release and will supposedly get a solo movie co-starring with other women a la birds of prey. (fun fact, the writer of the upcoming 2024 ghost-spider ongoing? used to write for harley quinn. hmm.)

RAPID FIRE SHADOW CLONES GWENS:

an alternate gwen is seen marrying a man who looks a lot like peter parker. so, into men at the minimum.

an alternate spider-gwen is male, with the trans flag and symbol (⚧) pinned to his costume.

an alternate gwen is having a fruity mj interaction at college. inconclusive, but probably queer.

an alternate gwen is standing in front of a pride flag.

bringing these up because the number of gwen variants created after spider-gwen debuted that are queer or queer-coded is unusually high. it is more likely for a spider-gwen to be queer than for her to be straight, and the creation of spider-gwen in the first place is what probably tugged all the gwens after her in this direction. there's a growing consensus among the people writing and drawing marvel comics that gwen is queer, even from people who've never written for her at all.

(the animated spider-gwen section isn't here because of organizational issues. i'd recommend rereading it and noting the progression as it relates to the comics canon:

in the earliest days of gwen's character, they tease a relationship with peter or keep her totally uninvolved with any romance.

but as time goes on, she starts gravitating more towards women. (not-so-coincidentally during the mcguire run era, where gwen starts leaning towards em jay romantically.)

and then everything changed when the spiderverse attacked.

-> (... given that these movies take many years to make, they're discussing a canon that's 3-5 years behind the release date.

-> do the math: itsv came out in 2018, and centers gwiles, which was attempted in 2016/17, and depicts gwen the way she was written in sv crossovers: a hypercompetent straight girl here to have a romantic tease with the important spider-man.

-> atsv released in 2023, centers gwiles, which has been a nonentity since 2018, features margo kess and a miles-gwen-hobie love triangle-- both of which only appear in a 2018 event, and calls gwen "spider-woman," when she's been ghost-spider since 2018.

-> Not Great that the atsv script would've been written when gwen's queercoding-- in particular her sapphicness-- was very clearly present in her comics.... and the spiderverse writers completely ignore this, include no positive female relationships with gwen, and emphasize how totally into boys gwen is, and how she prefers the straight boy she has little connection to over the queer boy she's spent months with. so either they didn't bother to read past the first handful of issues in her solo run... or they did, and intentionally left her sexuality out because it would be an obstacle to gwen being miles's future girlfriend.

-> the trans coding is important! but it's still only implication, and switching out one queer identity for another isn't good. they aren't interchangeable. and gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things. she could've been both trans and bi.

-> atsv is clearly taking inspiration from sitting in a tree, but they're inverting the story: now instead of a closeted-queer girl trying to worm her way out of a heteronormative relationship being forced on her by canon... a presumably-straight (but trans-coded) girl wishes she could be in a heteronormative relationship being denied to her by canon. you get that's worse, right?

-> so atsv is simultaneously depicting a queer(-coded) girl coming out... as it's erasing her queerness and insisting that getting a straight boyfriend is the answer to her problems.

-> btsv is probably going to borrow from comics releasing right about now. so given that gwen's sexuality has been all but confirmed this year to be "bi and in the closet" and she’s being dragged out of her homeworld for spiderverse-synergy (… and therefore, gwiles)…. we'll see what beyond the spiderverse does about that. if they ignore it, it's definitely on purpose.

RELIGION SIDEBAR

here because there isn't a better place to put it.

plenty of alternate gwen stacys have had crosses on their graves, gwen-616's mother had a christian memorial service according to the gwen stacy miniseries, and sv gwen says grace with her dad and is irish-american, so is most likely catholic.

the status quo for the stacy family seems to be that they are or were christians.

gwen-65 and her father aren't religious, and haven't been since high school at the latest since it isn't mentioned in the latour run, but given all the other gwens likely had this background, it's more likely that she did than that she didn't.

if we're taking after 616, they likely were at the time of her mother's death. which means the falling-out happened sometime after gwen was a toddler and before age seventeen.

this is a sidebar because if gwen-65 had a religious background it adds a new wrinkle to gwen's tendency towards repressing herself: she likely shares the common queer experience of growing up in a religious household and later distancing herself from said religion (right around the time a lot of kids figure out they're queer), but still holding onto some of the behaviors it instilled in her.

which retroactively means latour-gwen's guilt, repression, initial black-and-white view of right and wrong, need to punish wrongdoers and protect the innocent, and later belief in redemption for herself and others may stem from that upbringing too-- much in the same way that a lot of peter's behavior can be interpreted as coming from his jewish background.

and her perception of fate, canon, and the omniscient watchers will be interpreted through an ex-christian point of view. she's probably going to interpret these concepts in line with god's plan, canon law, and, well, an all-seeing god.

so when gwen discovered the multiverse, and that the higher power she rejected or distanced herself from (probably in part due to queer angst) does seem to exist, and given her usual fate, hates her more than she could have ever possibly imagined... except for in the utopian future where she marries miles, she would absolutely have associated that with "you can only go to heaven if you're straight."

[... during siat, when gwen discovers earth-8, the antagonist gwen's facing a future of being trapped with is the devil of hell's kitchen]

there's no way that wouldn't absolutely fuck her up. the existential horror is off the charts.

(on a less depressing note, since christianity's the default for a gwen, especially a gwen who takes after 616, when gwen-617 tells off the watchers gathered on earth-8... it's a middle-aged queer woman breaking into heaven to tell a hostile god "there was never anything wrong with my younger self, leave her alone.")

in SHADOW CLONES (2023)

gwen interacts with em, but doesn't have any chemistry with her. em's still belligerent, so i guess there's that.

gwen has zero chemistry with a new character, her boss mateo, yet has a crush on him that apparently has existed for three months. he asks her out on a date she bails on to fight crime, and then she asks him out at the end of the miniseries. we never see the date. we don't even know if she went through with it. regardless after this mini he never returns or is referenced. so clearly it didn't work out.

gwen also mentions being interested in dating, and having "some" feelings for mateo-- but believes she's unable to pursue anything thanks to her superhero responsibilities and lack of confidence.

we glimpse dozens of alternate gwens, including yes, one gwen marrying a man--identity unclear, most likely peter. which is extra questionable given that the wedding is juxtaposed with text describing the villain's loss of "a chance for love"-- therefore implying that gwen's 'chance for love' was peter.... does the writer realize that spider-gwen was never attracted to her peter parker?

anyway. there are many more single and queercoded gwens. featuring a panel of our spider-gwen surrounded by them with a pride flag dangling over her head.

like. come on.

shadow clones is... confused. it uses that surface-level girlboss gwen characterization writers unfamiliar with her default to, resurrects her blushy need for a relationship with a guy she's had no romantic interactions with not seen since siat-- and it's all dropped right after.

it also forgets that gwen has a symbiote. and given that her symbiote is tied up in her queercoding... yeah. sounds about right. hey maybe it ate mateo.

the takeaway: shadow clones gwen feels very written-as-straight, but put into context with the rest of her continuity, it feels like gwen's comphetting again in response to spending so much time in limbo between worlds. she's still trying to Have It All. and as she's assimilating back into her own world, part of her process is getting a boyfriend.

but the flag's still there. so at the least, there's an acknowledgment that many of gwen's alternate selves are queer.

... it doesn't feel like a coincidence that this characterization happens the year atsv is released featuring the most boy-crazy spider-gwen yet. or that her out-of-nowhere love interest is a latino guy whose name starts with the letter m. synergy.

(... or that shadow clones introduces a trans-coded genderbent spider-gwen in the same year that spiderverse gwen is coded as a trans girl.)

bonus pride flag easter egg on the backpack:

SMASH & GIANT SIZE (2024)

where we're at now.

[minus the annual where apart from some minor tension with white fox/ami, who gwen has never met before and will never see again, the only thing to note is that gwen's being drawn with a very queer fashion sense: when given an opportunity to put gwen in a bikini, a princess gown and a flapper dress, she's instead given a wetsuit and leather vest, armor, and a suit.]

combining these two because they were written back-to-back by the same writer. same creative vision.

gwen is back with her band, touring for dazzler and co, who are being stalked by earth-65's bruce banner.

this is the first time gwen takes part in a textually queer story, because in issue 3, it's confirmed that em jay is in love with gwen, in issue 4, that gwen doesn't feel the same right now, but believes she could someday. and in giant-size, that one of gwen's greatest fears relates to losing a queer girl to the closet.

CONTINUITY SIDEBAR

glory having a problem with em jay's interest in gwen is a new development, and em using glory as a placeholder for gwen is too (remember how she and glory got together only after reassuring glory that she isn't one?) i guess we can streamline this into:

em tried to move on from gwen, but ultimately couldn't. she just shoved those feelings down without ever letting go of them. gwen's return from prison woke them up, they've been eating at her ever since, and they became toxic during gvc.

glory's fine with em sleeping with other people, but not when serious feelings are involved. or, she tried to be a good sport about it but now that it's fucking up the group dynamic she's on the verge of a breaking point.

gwen started to realize em had feelings for her-- and that she might return them-- but her exile forced her to set that aside and she's compartmentalized it away. now that she's spending more time on 65 and with the girls, they're reemerging because she's starting to poke her head out of the closet again. and if em jay's parting words to gwen are any indication, they're one conversation away from gwen coming out.

anyway. s+gs is FULL of gay shit.

em's jealousy of gwen and dazzler's connection is explicitly romantic, as called out by glory. it's possessive too: emjarnage says dazzler's taking "what doesn't belong to [her]"

so's em's anger that ghost-spider is 'taking gwen away from her'

glory hates being a "third wheel" to gwen and em jay

for the first time since the mcguire run, glory and em jay's relationship is acknowledged. they never kiss, but they're constantly touching and they sleep in the same bed on the tour bus

the tension in the band stems from the glory -> em -> gwen love triangle, now back from the latour days but textually confirmed for the first time

em jay passes up an embrace with glory to hug gwen, and several panels show gwen separating (... coming between) the two of them

smash opens with em jay singing about how her love interest will regret leaving her in the past, as she's looking at gwen.

em jay is kidnapped and gwen comes to save her in a classic damsel-in-distress storyline

em jay's love for gwen is compared to bruce banner-65's stalkerish obsession with dazzler

a dazzler song plays over gwen and emjarnage's fight, about the pain of being in love with a fantasy, and realizing your crush doesn't want you back

even the focus on mutants in the miniseries connects, since mutants are an allegory for minority groups-- increasingly, queer people specifically

dazzler's a mutant pop star. her character in 616 always had connotations of "female pop star with an enormous gay fanbase that she's an outspoken ally of." no surprise that she turns out to be an ally of the mary janes.

natasha romanoff, whose 616 counterpart is bisexual, makes an appearance. doesn't feel like a coincidence.

gwen remembers that em jay likes dazzler's sparkly microphone and gifts it to her at the end of the series.

as of smash, everyone has noticed the tension between gwen and em jay and calls it out. betty jokes about gwen being distracted by em's "big long tongue". (glory gets mad about the joke.) they're called "an unconventional pair" by orlando octavius and a "striking pair" by mortis.

even gwen calls em "thirsty" and offers to... help with that by giving her bottled water. the double entendre is obvious.

when em jay turns into carnage, we get a replay of the i-know-you're-in-there fight from gvc. twice. and both times, em jay's go-to move is pinning gwen to a wall and licking her face as mortis comments about how their dynamic is "complicated".

just like in the jackal confrontation, gwen favors protecting em over glory and betty.

when em jay leaves gwen, it's because their 'partnership' is toxic. the scene is on a rooftop at sunset with another woman pulling away to 'give them a moment', and it ends with them staring into each other's eyes, embracing, and gwen shaking and crying as em jay tells her she loves her. that's our last image of them in this story.

it's queer.

but what kind of queer story is it?

the central conflict, that gwen's queer friend group are angry at her for not being what they want her to be, reads as an allegory for two specific queer experiences:

1: an openly queer friend group being frustrated that a friend they can tell is queer hasn't come out yet. they tried to be patient and supportive and to let her do it on her own terms, but she just isn't getting there on her own, and if anything is regressing and pulling away from them. they're upset, they're concerned... and they're tired. and gwen, still in the closet, can't articulate why she's having such difficulty staying with them.

then gwen ends smash by acknowledging em jay's feelings for her and admitting she's open to a romantic relationship with her (which implies other women are on the table too).

when giant-size picks up right after, all the old signs that she's crushing on em jay are coming back: double entendres aplenty. gwen being more protective of em than the others. gwen getting emotional when em jay leaves her because they're finally getting somewhere with their dynamic and she wants to keep going.

em revealing herself as carnage on live tv is referred to as a "coming-out party"

when gwen sends betty and glory to safety, she throws them in a closet, and one of her worst fears is leaving them in it until they die. or, in other words: losing her relationships with them forever because she never comes out.

gwen has started fearing gwenom, her most uninhibited self, again.

2: variations on the same theme: queerphobia within queer friend groups. the mary janes might not be comprised only of lesbians, but they are completely uninterested in men. that kind of dynamic can be unwelcoming if you don't quite fit the bill. two options here.

-> a: gwen is asexual and her sapphic friend group is mad that she genuinely isn't attracted to them.

they consider booting her out because she's 'not really one of them'

gwen worries that her lack of attachment makes her a bad or broken person

all of em jay's advances on gwen are treated with reluctance and repulsion. gwen does not like being touched by carnage.

or the more likely answer:

-> b: gwen is bisexual and her sapphic friend group is angry that she won't "commit" to 'their side.' and no one's angrier than em jay, the only other confirmed bi girl in the group.

gwen's struggling to reconcile the two sides of herself after spending so much time only favoring one, in a community where the default perception of gwen stacy is Straight Girl.

look again at gwen's dilemma of being torn between two worlds: a world of straight men who want her in a heteronormative relationship that is fundamentally bad for her, that she has no choice but to continue visiting and is under immense pressure to stay in forever; and a world full of queer women who want her to commit to them only, even though it's fundamentally not in her nature to do so. the multiverse-hopper gwen arc is about the bisexual experience.

the girls' problems with gwen are dead ringers for biphobia: she can't commit to us, is she even one of us at all, can we really trust her, that other side of her is causing problems for us, she can hang out with us but she better not bring up What She Is.

em jay hasn't dated or been interested in a male character after committing to the band. she 'chose a side' -- dating women-- and expects the others to as well. gwen included.

she and gwen are the only symbiote hosts. and it takes an emotional response to both male and female characters to activate their symbiotes.

unlike gwen, em jay has no control of her symbiote. when gwen's was like this it was all the way back when she hadn't come to peace with herself yet.

so what's em jay repressing? can't just be her romantic feelings for gwen, because they're out in the open, yet she still has no control.

aside from her lack of anger management and issues with possessiveness, there's something else too: remember em jay's history with internalized biphobia? how she got a reputation as a promiscuous, noncommital, untrustworthy girl and a bad friend?

now, as her relationship with glory's breaking down because em "can't commit" to either her or gwen and she thinks she's about to lose a friend... her reputation's coming true.

em jay's hate of her and gwen's symbiotes goes hand-in-hand with her anger at herself for not being able to get over gwen and at gwen for not loving her back and not "choosing a side" like she did (maybe gwen's fame isn't the only thing em's jealous of).

she outright says she feels like ghost-spider, half of who gwen is, is an obstacle to them being together.

she's taking out her internalized biphobia on gwen.

not a coincidence that this also happens to be a story where symbiotes are used extensively-- the most since the mcguire run.

THE SYMBIOTES

as gwen's reconnecting with her community and her queer friends, and acknowledging the possibility of her own queerness, she's starting to drop the mask she wears in 616: she's whipping her symbiote out in front of a crowd instead of waiting to be alone before she uses it.

the symbiotes take center stage in the climax of smash when em jay turns into carnage again. this is gwenom vs carnage round two except now the quiet part's being said out loud: em jay is in love with gwen and angry that her feelings are not reciprocated.

gwenom emerges when gwen is cornered and helps her flee and eliminate the people she views as threats to her safety and freedom. gwen's most authentic self is ruthlessly committed to protecting her own freedom and safety-- and that of others.

emjarnage emerges when em jay is angry at gwen, and wants to dominate her. em jay's most authentic self is a lot like the lizard or miles: someone who loves gwen not as an equal, but as a possession.

right as she and gwen discuss her feelings, we learn carnage is still active: it's out there, and now they have to deal with it.

emjarnage keeps emerging and she still has no control of it, because her core instincts haven't changed.

and gwen keeps beating it down while never using her gwenom morph... because after spending so long dodging her problems in the multiverse, she has repression problems now too.

-> given that giant-size has closet joke after closet joke, it's pretty clear what she's repressing. the subtext is obvious.

in giant-size, gwen works with emjarnage for the first time -- you know, as partners-- as the tension between them is acknowledged by their supporting cast.

and when mysterio exposes their deepest fears, it's not clear whose are whose. the simplest explanation is these are fears they both have in common.

two of them are gwenom and emjarnage. they're afraid of their own-- and one another's-- most uninhibited selves. why.

gwen's afraid of emjarnage because she can't ignore em's feelings for her... or that there's a toxic element to them: em doesn't just want to be with gwen, she wants to be the center of gwen's world, and to punish her for stepping out of line.

-> for some reason, they haven't followed up on their promise to talk about em's feelings, and gwen isn't ready to reciprocate. this is probably why. gwen doesn't want to be with someone who hates half of who she is, or who wants to control her.

em's afraid of emjarnage because she doesn't like what her feelings for gwen turn her into: a jealous, possessive, abusive monster.

-> they refer to em and carnage as separate beings, and carnage behaves like a separate consciousness from em... but they're not, because that's not how earth-65 symbiotes work. neither can acknowledge that the toxicity is coming from em jay, so they displace it.

-> you know that tendency for queer women to insist that there's no way they could be toxic or abusive to each other because We're Queer Women? gwen and em jay are doing that here.

gwen's afraid of her own symbiote because the time gwen's spent refusing to use or acknowledge it has damaged her relationship with it. she's spent so long trying to get people to like her that she's lost touch with that core need to protect her own freedom at any cost and she has internalized the idea that it's a bad thing.

-> gwen hid her symbiote on earth-616, where she passed for straight. she still refuses to use it on em jay... because she knows em jay doesn't like that gwen isn't just sapphic. she's not out of the closet yet, remember?

and em's afraid of gwenom because if gwen's her most authentic self, she won't go along with what em wants from her. em jay wants total commitment and devotion from gwen, and sees ghost-spider as an obstacle to that, because ghost-spider is the literally empowed side of her that's capable of fighting back or leaving. and gwenom is gwen at her most uninhibited: ruthlessly dedicated to protecting her own agency, and in touch with her attraction to both men and women.

the third fear, of betty and glory dying because they were left behind in the closet during the fight pretty clearly symbolizes the fear of losing a girl you love to the closet.

in combination with the symbiotes, you get: gwen and em are so afraid of losing each other that they won't acknowledge the relationship they're on the verge of starting would be a toxic or outright abusive one.

and here's the thing-- it is. look at the way gwen and emjarnage behave:

the dynamic rollercoasters back and forth between intimacy (the women clinging to each other) and violence that's largely one-sided: it's emjarnage tying gwen up, yelling at her, threatening to kill her and anyone she shows attention to, and trying to hit, bite, scratch and throw things at her as gwen laughs it off, tries to talk her down or has to fight emjarnage to get her to stop while pulling her punches the entire time.

whenever emjarnage pins gwen to a wall and licks her face, gwen squirms away. there's clearly a sexual undertone, and gwen clearly doesn't want it. (it feels like a callback to gwen's fight with rhino)

in smash, as em's paralleled to abusive creep bruce banner, gwen insists that 'deep down em jay's still good' ... and they never actually solve the problem, they just brush it away and push on.

and then em jay does that shit again. it's a cycle.

in giant-size, em jay's set off by gwen making mistakes in her drumming. judging by the way glory and betty react, this has become routine: gwen does something minor wrong, em jay flies into a violent rage, and gwen has to scramble to stop her from hurting someone and put herself in harm's way to calm her down. it repeats again and again. nothing changes for the better.

(and they have yet to start on gwen unpacking her own feelings because their dynamic is all about placating em jay... and because if they do, they'll have to acknowledge that gwen isn't just sapphic: she's bi. and em jay doesn't like that.)

you know what this is an allegory for. if em jay were a guy, you'd say it right away. queer people can be in toxic relationships too. (... and compared to lesbians and straight women, bisexual women are even more vulnerable to abuse, intimate partner violence and victimization, even from other queer people.)

but here's the twist: em jay owns it.

she acknowledges that her behavior is harmful, she absolves gwen of the responsibility for containing it, she takes the initiative to get a grip on her impulses and to stay away until it's handled. and she doesn't want gwen to go any further with her until that happens.

like harry, em jay has become a foil of peter parker and done what he never could: acknowledge that she doesn't have a right to control gwen, that her behavior isn't acceptable, and that it's on her to fix it.

in other words: the central conflict of gvc has been resolved. gwen now knows why em is so upset with her: em jay is in love with her. and em now understands how difficult it is for gwen to have her powerset, and why her sudden departures are often necessary (even her jealousy has been resolved: now em has her own power source, and the whole world knows about it so her fame is skyrocketing to a level comparable with gwen's.). she's also taken responsibility for her toxic behavior... at least for now. we have no idea if it'll stick or not.

the takeaway: off this miniseries alone, gwen is textually bicurious and wants to explore her feelings for a girl. put into context with the rest of her canon, gwen is definitely queer, and definitely in the closet.

she's letting go of her need to "have it all" by wanting to stay in earth-65, with her queer friend group. and she wants to talk out her feelings with the girl she likes... but can't do that until said girl addresses her own issues first.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

yes, comics spider-gwen could be read as trans. but it's iffy. the coding fades away after the latour run. if you want to read her as such, you can, but the hill to climb is steep and getting steeper with every year that passes. (and they'll probably never bring that coding back, let alone make her canonically trans, because straight guys really want gwen to be cis, and one of the biggest draws to gwiles is gwen being the vessel for miles's children; they're gonna want to leave the door open to that being possible.)

but over the past decade, it's become all but clear that gwen is definitely not straight. the subtext was there from the moment gwen got her own backstory, but it's gotten clearer as time has passed and more and more of her writers her have tripled down on this aspect of her character. gwen is queer. the only way you can't see it is if you have no familiarity with her character or if you're intentionally denying it.

the specifics of her queerness have fluctuated. under latour, gwen seems more asexual, under mcguire she leans towards bi. her writers have mostly oscillated between those two. not all the people writing her seem to realize it, but most of them do, and even some of her artists have given her a queerer fashion sense.

we're now reaching the point where we're in an emperor's-new-clothes situation with gwen's queerness: the readers know, the writers know, the artists know, but it can't be canonized since

1) gwen is a character marketed to children. she's the biggest female spider-hero marvel has, and they won't want to jeopardize losing merch sales if homophobic parents lash out and decide their kids' hero being queer makes her a bad role model. 2) gwen is a variant of gwen-616, one of the most famous Girlfriends Of Comics. men have spent fifty years jerking it to gwen, who tends to be stereotyped as an uptight Good Girl, and marvel's not going to want to disrupt that fantasy. 3) gwen's biggest push to date has come from the spiderverse movies, which are why she's been rebranded as a ~multiverse character~, deaged to a teenager and keeps getting pushed as a trio with peter and miles. and since she's miles's love interest in the movies and people fucking love this whitebread romance, they're not gonna want to dilute that while spiderverse synergy's making them money.

odds are gwen hasn't said she's queer yet because of outside factors. out-of-universe, it's that marvel is homophobic and wants to make as much money off gwen as possible, and thinks her queerness is an obstacle to that. so they aren't letting the writers go there.

so in-universe, the way to explain this disconnect is that gwen is in the closet about her sexuality. all but confirmed as of giant-size given all the closet jokes.

[and because gwen is 1) a Gwen Stacy, famed girlfriend of peter's and fantasy fuel for the mostly-male comics audience, and 2) the general public now sees her as Miles's Girlfriend thanks to the spiderverse movies, they will never make gwen a lesbian, or fully aromantic-asexual. marvel can make more money if they leave the door open for her to be shipped, especially with men. so they will. we're probably in the era of gwen being Miles's Designated Girlfriend and it'll probably last, at minimum, until after btsv comes out. it might even last forever.]

so. she won't be aroace, a lesbian or trans in canon. what can she be?

she's attracted to women, but doesn't consciously acknowledge it; gwen favors relationships with women, shows signs of attraction to them, and has admitted she might be interested in women and wants to explore those feelings, but has yet to confirm that she is.

she is attracted to men, just not as much as she thinks she is. when it comes to men, gwen distances herself from most male attention (peter parker, miles morales), but she is receptive to it from specific men under the right circumstances (harry osborn, hobie brown, possibly kaine).

but here's the interesting thing: gwen's a lot less interested in romance in general than she thinks she is-- every time gwen goes on a date, or is pushed towards a conventional romantic pairing, something goes wrong, she flees or she withdraws.

the first thing we ever see gwen do is make a romantically-charged vow of devotion to peter parker... after which point she treats him like a big brother, finds the idea of them dating repulsive and makes fun of it.

gwen is indifferent to dating in high school and to our knowledge never went out with anyone there.

gwen is aware that peter-65 is attracted to her and uncomfortable with his advances. it is important to her to bring this up to people often.

gwen doesn't realize harry is romantically interested in her when he asks her out. she accepts, but they never end up going to the prom together; they show up separately and then peter rampages.

gwen is uncomfortable with the world where she and miles marry and have children, tries and fails to make herself like it, and the more time passes, the angrier she gets about it.

gwen is receptive to some physical and emotional intimacy with hobie, but when he suggests they spend more time together, she becomes hesitant.

gwen flirts and is physically affectionate with harry, and goes out with him several times, but when they try to go on a fancy dinner date as a formal couple, she panics and flees as soon as it starts.

whenever em jay tries to get gwen to 'commit' to her and the mary janes, gwen responds with obliviousness, indifference or discomfort.

gwen accepts when her coworker mateo asks her out, but immediately bails to stop a robbery. later she hypes herself up to ask him out and succeeds, but we never hear of or from him again so clearly it didn't work out.

when gwen expresses interest in figuring things out with em jay (who she knows is in love with her), em has to put a stop to it and insist she needs to work on herself first because the situation is too toxic.

this could be due to many factors-- and aside from plain old not-feeling-a-spark, being too busy with superhero adventures, finding interdimensional dating too complicated, or just preferring to be single-- gwen has suffered a lot of trauma related to intimacy and relationships that needs to be acknowledged.

the initial trauma from peter taking gwen's lack of interest as an invitation to murder her date, gwen having to kill him to get him to stop, and the way everyone turned on her as a result of this domino effect.

the compounding trauma from the many, many other people who've tried to force her into relationships and intimate situations: the jackal and murdock wanting to possess her sexually, being groped by rhino, fate forcing her and miles together, peter treating her like a dead girlfriend traumadump, the many spider-men who've projected their gwens onto her, emjarnage.

the way gwen keeps getting shoved into intimate situations with both predatory older men and people she considers her friends, and comes out emotionally distressed saying "i didn't want it, i didn't want it, i didn't want it" to everyone in her life. and said male friends (and at this point, the fandom and certain makers of canon) don't believe her and keep doing it. (... and at this point, so does emjarnage.) add to this her decision to keep a power that makes it difficult to be touched without her consent but also alienates her from all her actual friends... there's a sexual assault trauma allegory to be made

both her canon earth-65 love interests have been attacked because of their proximity to gwen: harry was put in a coma, and em jay was forced to host a symbiote

her awareness of her status as a Gwen Stacy, how the most prominent and beloved gwens tend to be straight or straight-passing, and how romantic relationships tend to cause variants of her harm... yet are still expected of her

hell, even her awareness of the many, many alternate spider-gwens who are in relationships with their mj watsons counts: is gwen reciprocating em's feelings because she actually wants to, or because she's seen so many versions of herself doing it and feels obligated to follow their lead? (remember, she also did this with peter and miles: she was exposed to an alternate world where she was their girlfriend, considered following that world's lead, and later snapped out of it and realized she wasn't being genuine.)

if she's religious: the existential horror of learning the higher power she rejected might actually be real, it dislikes her and she cannot escape it, and the only way it'll be nice to her is if she represses her true feelings and starts a nuclear family

she was put on trial and locked up for "breaking peter's heart", was abused behind bars and is so afraid of returning to that situation that she compromises who she is to win people back and constantly has one foot out the door of her own world

so she's clearly built up some walls to protect herself. if all you've ever experienced-- and all you've ever been told is possible-- is unwanted affection from people you aren't attracted to, or relationships with power dynamics that always hurt or disempower you, of course you're going to be resistant to romance.

however, gwen wasn't romance-driven in the first place. all the way back in high school, gwen was still indifferent to it. this lack of interest predates all her trauma. so if anything, the trauma's not preventing gwen from following through with romantic commitment-- it's forcing her to seek it out even when she doesn't want it. (... she wants to Have It All, right?)

look back at those relationships. there's a pattern: comic-gwen only tries to force herself into relationships whenever she feels pressured to fit in...

when she goes to the prom, she's expected to have a date, so she accepts harry's offer on autopilot

when she joins the spider-army and meets other spider-people for the very first time, and learns their leader/the Most Special Spider-Man had a gwen he was in a relationship with, she falls into that role of 'sensitive girl he needs to protect' with him and a few other peters because she wants to belong and make them and especially peter-616 like her

when she's depowered, her dad's in prison, murdock is exploiting her, and a higher power dangles the only happy future gwen has ever seen for herself since entering the multiverse in front of her and tells her "you have to end up with miles to get it", gwen kisses miles and contemplates a future with him

when she wants to feel normal after being released from prison, she goes out with harry, and cites that as her reason for doing so

when she wants to feel more confident and as she's integrating back into her world after her exile, she asks mateo (her boss) out.

when she's on the verge of reintegrating into earth-65 after bouncing through the multiverse and encountering mj after mj who's romantically interested in their gwen, and when putting off em jay's feelings is fucking up the band/friend group, she rushes to partner up with em jay (who controls the band and therefore whether gwen is allowed in it) and tolerate her toxic behavior even though the partnership is unsustainable and they've done nothing to unpack gwen's own feelings.

... only to pull away from those dates as soon as they start, because she realizes she doesn't want the relationships, just the stability and belonging that participating in them can give her. she's said it herself: she'll do "whatever it takes" to get by. and at this point, hypergamy is one of the tools she uses.

this isn't to say she isn't interested in romance at all; given that she's a gwen stacy variant, marvel will never make her off-limits for romantic plotlines.

but gwen's romantic priorities are unusual.

gwen doesn't get jealous or possessive

gwen doesn't want to settle down or have kids

gwen doesn't want a longterm relationship that requires commitment, exclusivity or following typical romantic conventions, regardless of the gender of her admirer

gwen doesn't even seem to develop crushes on strangers

gwen wants love and affection, and is open to relationships, but she isn't motivated by dating or hookups and she isn't impressed by big romantic gestures. she's capable of being interested in specific people, but she does not seek out romance or sex and doesn't feel like anything's missing if she's single

gwen's attraction is very conditional, and only to people who satisfy the following:

1) a preexisting familiarity. every single person gwen has shown attraction to is someone she had to spend time with as a friend or acquaintence before she developed feelings for them.

glory, the first girl gwen shows attraction to, has been her friend for years. so are harry and em jay, her only canon love interests from her world.

gwen spent a lot of time with kaine we didn't see and according to them they got to know each other very well.

(i'd rather forget mateo exists, but gwen did spend three whole months as his employee before she started crushing on him, so technically he fits the pattern)

gwen had to get to know hobie platonically on their web-warriors adventures before she developed an interest in him.

2) respect. they need to care about gwen as a person, understand her boundaries, not treat her like a prize or object or turn on her if she decides to stop the relationship.

glory and em jay love gwen and constantly worry for her well-being. they call her out often, but their anger is always rooted in concern.

em jay's relationship with gwen falls apart when em resents that gwen's more powerful and famous than her, and that she isn't the most important priority in gwen's life-- because em doesn't want gwen to be her equal. and then when em jay finally understands where gwen's coming from, acknowledges it, and takes a step back to fix her shit... gwen's feelings for her are revived.

kaine doesn't coddle gwen, trusts her abilities, and works well with her as a teammate. and as a clone, he understands how it feels to be constantly compared to a 616 doppelganger and has had her back when she's been compared to gwen-616.

harry is contrasted with peter as the male friend who was able to respect that gwen didn't want a relationship. he listens to her, offers advice, takes things at her pace and doesn't hold her apprehensions against her.

hobie quickly shapes up and treats gwen like a friend and teammate. he's the middle ground between kaine (keeping it professional when they're on the job) and harry (wanting something more, but letting her set the terms).

harry, hobie and em jay begin with one-sided crushes on gwen that she only reciprocates after she sees proof that they can handle rejection without holding it against her, and that they respect her.

3) a similar lack of interest in conventional commitment. they aren't babies-ever-after people. they want something casual, nonmonogamous or unlabeled too.

glory and em jay are queer women in a relationship that doesn't seem exclusive (it's possible the mary janes are a polycule). the dynamic goes to shit when em starts favoring gwen over glory and demanding that gwen put her first.

if gwen and kaine hooked up, they got right back to business and he had no problem treating her like a partner afterwards.

harry and gwen are great when they're on the run together, investigating oscorp or having casual dates. the thing that fucks them up is trying to be a serious couple playacting traditional gender roles.

hobie is likely queer, possibly in a polycule with his own band and definitely not interested in conventional relationships given that he's spider-punk.

so. to try and pin it down, gwen is queer. that's nondisputable. comic-gwen is bi/pan in terms of her preferences... and she's either so jaded and traumatized about her intimate experiences that she's keeping herself guarded to relationships, or she's possibly somewhere on the ace spectrum in terms of how she expresses her orientation (most likely demiromantic/sexual).

... and she's in the closet about some or all of this. but she's very, very close to figuring it out.

and the overall arc for gwen so far is:

gwen started to come to terms with her identity. she got over her internalized guilt over not complying with comphet, came out to her friends and family, and even her entire society… but she didn’t come out as any particular identity— she came out as “not straight.”

after encountering an alternate version of her that's queer, she even started to consider that she might be queer too, and took steps towards starting relationships with both a boy and a girl.

but after being imprisoned, rejected by her world and bombarded with messages from her friends, community and literally the entire multiverse that she will only be wanted and accepted if she 'straightens' up... she's starting to do that.

she's changed her look to be more feminine. she's losing her radical politics and regressing to something girlbossier. she's concerned with public perception. she keeps throwing herself into relationships that she keeps dipping out of. she spends more and more time in places where no one knows she's queer, and even when she comes home, she can't be herself anymore.

ironically, trying to be palatable only led to gwen alienating all the people who love her, losing her connection to the place she belongs, and hiding the most uninhibited parts of herself even when there's no one around to take issue with them... to the point where she's starting to fear those impulses again.

she started to let go of her need to "have it all" by recommitting to her home and her queer friends there. in doing so, her queerness is starting to reemerge, and she has made a commitment to face it and figure it out this time with someone she lost because of her recloseting.

but she also needs to realize queer relationships can be just as harmful as straight ones.

and if she's ever canonized as on the asexuality spectrum, she's got even longer to go before she figures that out.

.....and here comes the stuck-in-616 run! dammit!

so, where are we going from here?

instead of figuring her sexuality out with other queer people she trusts in a familiar environment... gwen's moving to the city she went to when she wanted to hide. "for good."

this city is even less accepting of gwen's identity than the one she's leaving. it has an ironclad idea of the type of person she's allowed to be-- a straight girl who's subservient to her boyfriend's narrative. she will never be able to step out of that straight girl's shadow.

this city's also filled with 'friends' she doesn't trust enough to be herself around, who keep comparing her to the idealized straight version of herself, pressuring her to be more like that girl, and coming onto her… or who don't do anything to stop their friends when they engage in that behavior.

gwen is definitely not moving here because she wants a clean slate somewhere she'll be more accepted. 616 is not that place. she's here because she wants to hide again. she's recloseting herself.

and now that spiderverse spider-gwen is the definitive spider-gwen and atsv synergy is underway, she's going to be expected to behave like that gwen too-- a teenage girl who might not be cis, but is still definitely all about her boyfriend miles-- as she's thrust into proximity with miles, the boy she knows fate wants to force her to end up with and as she's referred to as a "teenager" in her character descriptions even though she should be in her early 20s.

and since gwen has an established pattern of getting into relationships she'd otherwise refuse with people who tend to be more powerful than her when she wants to fit in... well. there's no guarantee that anything will happen, but gwiles is on the table again.

(... and since gwen may have responded to the multiverse throwing her at a very specific man and insisting that they kiss by getting with his clone who he has a complicated and often negative relationship with, which killed the vibe between her and that man... she might act out similarly to try and rebel against gwiles.)

if gwen and miles get together, it's not because she loves him. it's because she's giving up on being independent and comphetting again. miles morales is not ~the guy who's going to set gwen free from her harmful canon.~ he's the guy who's going to drag her back into it and keep her there forever. since gwen's story is about discovering herself as a queer woman and affirming her right to exist and thrive in her own space away from heteropatriarchy, and miles is currently the biggest obstacle to that, that by definition makes him the villain of her story. the only way that'll ever stop is if this ship sinks for good.

until that day, back in the closet she goes.

two steps forward, one giant leap back.

sorry to end this on a gut punch!

#spider gwen thoughts #spider gwen meta #spider gwen #gwen stacy #spiderverse #marvel rising #petergwen #ghostpunk #scarletghost #glorygwen #gwenjay #msm 17 #ghostgoblin #glojay #ghostfox

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