Miles Morales/Miguel O'Hara

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Pairing
Pairing: Miles Morales/Miguel O'Hara
Alternative name(s): FlowerFang or FlowerBite
Gender category: slash, M/M
Fandom: Spider-Verse
Canonical?: Non-canon
Prevalence: Popular
Archives:
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Miles Morales/Miguel O'Hara, also known as the portmanteau FlowerFang, is the slash pairing of Miles Morales and Miguel O'Hara in Spider-Man fandom, specifically, Across The Spider-Verse.

Canon

Spoiler Warning: This article or section may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.

Miles and Miguel meet in Miguel's Cyberpunk Nueva York on Earth-928B, a reality set in a variant future of MIles' Earth, after Miles disrupts a canon event in Pavitr Prabhakar's Earth-50101B, which causes it to start being consumed by a dimensional disruption.

Miles is excited to meet Miguel, who is presented as a Leader of the Spider Society. Unfortunately, since he had put Prabhakar's Earth in danger, Miguel is less than pleased to see him and reacts violently (it is later learnt that this is not the only reason for his anger).

It is soon learnt that Miguel has developed a theory on canon events and shares it with Miles. When an important life altering event does not occur in a spider person's life, their Universe begins to destabilize and is eventually consumed and disappears. Miguel has learnt this first-hand when he found a Universe where his variant had a daughter. With this comes great sacrifice, one that is seemingly accepted by other spider people in the Spider Society, including Peter B. Parker. During these scenes Miguel is shown as sympathetic and gently touches Miles' shoulders to call his attention, but quickly pulls back, giving him space.

Miguel gets more and more violent as he and the other Spider-People try to capture Miles, ripping into Miles' suit as a consequence of having his claws out.

It is during this chase that some of the more pivotal moments to fandom occur. Miguel eventually manages to catch up with Miles as they struggle on a train to the moon, with Miguel slamming Miles against the top of the train and trying to reason with him while forcing eye contact and growling in his ear. He switches from trying to reason with him to emotionally hurting him. In part it can be assumed Miguel has lost control of his emotions and is finally telling Miles why he apparently feels such a strong dislike for him. He reveals that Miles is the original anomaly, the one who caused the Spider-Verse to become unstable. This is due to the fact that the spider that bit Miles hadn't been from his dimension, but rather from Earth-42. He has come to believe that Miles should have never become Spider-Man and that, together with his recent disruption of Earth-50101B, has caused him to snap.

Instead of breaking Miles down, this seems to give him the strength he needed in order to outsmart Miguel. Instead of trying to escape Miguel's grip, he grabs him back, which immediately seems to cause Miguel to panic. He holds on as he uses his venom on him, which disrupts Miguel's holographic suit (it was revealed in concept art that Miguel is apparently naked underneath and that the venom could have rendered him naked[1]) and pushes him back with great force.

Fandom

The pairing's popularity seems to have blossomed from the chase scene in the train, in which Miguel slams Miles against the moving train and Miles, in turn, grabs onto Miguel and uses his venom on him, temporarily messing with his suit and forcing him backwards at great speed. This same chase scene is also likely to be the epicentre of the Miguel O'Hara/Reader(or self-insert) works, as many of them replace Miles with the self-insert during this scene or use much of his interaction with Miles as the basis for the interactions of the pairing. Many fans speculated that it is likely that if Miles was canonically an adult in the movie, the FlowerFang pairing would be much, much larger.

In the social media platform Twitter the pairing is represented with the sunflower and blood drop emojis, representing Miles and Miguel respectively: 🌻🩸. Fans may choose to change the order of the emojis to signal whom they favour as a top, with the first emoji gaining that meaning: 🩸🌻 (top!Miguel) and 🌻🩸(Top!Miles). It’s not clear if the sunflower coming first always represents Miles as a top, since it’s also a representation of the pairing name, FlowerFang. Another pairing name that is used to show who is the preferred top or bottom is migemi or migemai (top!Miguel), but it is usually used together with FlowerFang. A list of these can be found here.

Underage controversy and harassment

Due to the ages of the characters in the movie (Miguel O'Hara is in his early thirties and Miles Morales is 16 to 17 years old), the fandom has a large amount of Underage or Age Difference content, which has led to a wave of online harassment. Even when the younger character is aged up, there is still harassment. As a consequence of it, a large number of works are being published on AO3 under an Anonymous nom de plume, in order to protect the authors. As of August 2023 there are 74 stories published under Anonymous, and several more anonymous-adjacent (authors who created a different AO3 account in order to not connect their Flowerfang stories to their regular online persona and save themselves the harassment). Several stories have also been orphaned within a few months of the pairing's creation.

It has also become common for artists on Twitter to censor the characters’ names with numbers or punctuation, for example Mil3s or M!guel, in order to avoid being easily found by both harassers and people who might not wish to see FlowerFang content.

The Bottom or Top controversy

There seems to be some friction as to which characters top or bottom in the pairing, with several artists even blocking anyone who ships Top!Miles and Bottom!Miguel, without warning. This has led to neutral fans (those who ship any dynamic) who simply have kudo'd or liked a work with bottom!Miguel to suddenly find themselves closed off from part of the fandom. There's also been harassment towards Top!Miles shippers[2].

While it's not so common to make inflexible pairing dynamics in the western fandoms, some believe it might be due to the large amount of Asian fans of the pairing, thus leading to more focus on the choice of pairing dynamics (a classic example of a pairing like this would be to place the oldest, tallest, high hierarchy character as the top and the youngest, shortest, low hierarchy character as the bottom). Some Asian fans even attribute the Bottom!Miguel scenario to Western fans[3] (although the concrete meaning behind the words western and Asian isn't completely clear). These sorts of dynamics based on size or age have been subverted by Slash fandoms over the years, but it is also possible that this inflexible idea of dynamic is connected to the fact that the movie is animated and thus has some crossover with Yaoi fans.

Some of the arguments against Bottom!Miguel seem to be related to Miles being part African-American and Miguel being part white, with the argument that black characters tend to be mischaracterized as older or more violent in relation to white characters and thus, this pairing dynamic should be avoided for Miles. In opposition to this argument, the FlowerFang paring dynamic that has Miles as a top doesn't have a focus on this characterization of Miles. A short list of the main themes of Top!Miles follows:

  • Trans!Miguel;
  • Miguel's struggle with being Spider-Man and relinquishing that responsibility to Miles (unlike Peter Parker, Miguel O'Hara variants were already adults when they became a super-hero and want to lead a normal life, but are stuck with uncomfortable powers and even see themselves as freaks);
  • The reverse of the power dynamic of old man versus young man;
  • Miguel wanting to start family.

The argument might be occurring simply because the non Top!Miles fans don't engage with the written works of the pairing dynamic and thus make their own assumptions about it based on their view of the pairing and their reason for disliking it in the first place.

Fanfiction is usually tagged with “Top Miguel” or “Bottom Miguel” (same for Miles) as a way to help fans engage with the type of dynamic they enjoy the most. Regardless, plenty of fans are not inflexible in their shipping, and aren't commonly aware of the controversy until they engage with someone who is. Fans who use Twitter or Discord as their main shipping hub tend to encounter this behaviour and other types of harassment, while it is less common on tumblr or AO3. Since the top/bottom dynamic is more connected to the Asian side of the fandom, the names MigMi or MiMig[4] are commonly used in art, mainly on twitter. Mimi is the dynamic neutral name of the pairing.

Common Tropes & Storylines

  • Underage and Age Difference are common tags of the pairing, as well as Dead Dove: Do Not Eat (this last one sometimes is added simply because of the underage tag). While the pairing features many rape and manipulation stories (mainly due to the fact that Miles is a teenager and Miguel an adult), there is also a large number of stories with other focus.
  • Trans!Miles (this being the more popular one) and Trans!Miguel are common tropes, the last which is also popular with the Miguel O'Hara/Peter B. Parker pairing (Spiderdads or Papas Araña).
  • There's a small subset of the fandom which infantilizes Miles and has him behave in a more childish way and have a younger body than the one canonically portrayed in the movie in order to also have a predatorial Miguel.
  • Miguel's unique Spider-Man abilities (his fangs and light sensitivity) also led to the popularity of the Vampire!Miguel trope.
  • Due to Miguel's tragic backstory and Miles' love for his family, creating a family and having children is also a popular storyline. Pregnancy is part of these storylines, either because one of them is a trans man, or with omega m!preg. Non-omega M!preg seems to not be explored.
  • Identity Porn while popular in super-hero fandoms, doesn't seem to be very prevalent with this pairing, with few stories focusing on their real identities, even with Miles' struggle to come out to his parents.
  • Omegaverse is a popular trope as well, sometimes incorporating arachnid characteristics due to the pairing's DNA. Through breeding and m!preg it also ties in to the Family trope mentioned above.
  • Because both characters share Hispanic latino heritage (Miles' mother is Puerto Rican and Miguel's mother is Mexican) both characters have canonically interacted in Spanish (although Miles seems to be less fluent than Miguel, only speaking it when prompted or with a thought out purpose. He also mixes English with Spanish when he doesn't seem to remember the words, much to Rio Morales' chagrin. Miguel speaks it while cursing or when frustrated, leading viewers to observe it sounds more natural) and thus this behaviour is replicated in fandom spaces, with them both communicating frequently in Spanish. Due to their different Spanish backgrounds there are some instances of misunderstanding which are used as either comic relief or as a plot point to advance their relationship. There don't seem to be many cases of Gratuitous Foreign Language, as the Spanish used tends to be punctual, close to the usage in the movie. There are some situations of Miguel sounding OOC while using it however, especially when his persona closely matches the movie persona. This could be due to the writers not being native speakers of the language and not necessarily a portrayal of the Latin Lover or Everything Sounds Sexier in French (Spanish in this case) Trope.
  • There's some crossover with Miles 42, Wiles (due to a W being an inverted M) or Prowler from Marvel Earth-42, with the pairing being sometimes an OT3 or simply Miles Morales | Prowler (Marvel Earth-42)/Miguel O'Hara. The two Miles characters are mostly considered two different entities. There is also a Miles Morales/Miles Morales | Prowler (Marvel Earth-42) pairing.

Fanworks

Fanfiction

  • Mechanical Engineering by CallMeW Or Miles gets hurt a lot, and Miguel’s venom can numb the pain. (2023)
  • Gato by Anonymous The longest multichapter fic of the pairing, featuring Trans!Miguel as well as bottom Miguel. Miguel can't stop thinking about that moment Miles held him down. Miguel's never felt such strength, and can't stop fantasising about Miles holding him down like that again. Sure makes becoming friends with Miles a lot more awkward. (2023)
  • i savour every touch (of your skin) by sepiacigarettes Series of stories featuring the evolution of the pairing's relationship. “I meant,” Miguel says slowly, like he’s trying to find words and yet both his languages are escaping him. Miles knows that feeling completely. “What can I do to help?” It’s definitely not what Miles was expecting him to say, and the emotional whiplash he goes through from hearing it makes him a little wobbly around the edges. This is the man who body slammed you until your ears bled. (2023)
  • push my buttons, baby by maerkive Story featuring Vampire!Miguel. The Morales got a new neighbour. (2023)
  • The Adults Are Talking by SealSeal Miles made himself problematic to contain. To solve the issue, he's assigned a warden to keep an eye on him; Miguel O'Hara. (2023)
  • Gemelo o Mellizo by Anonymous Bottom!Trans!Miguel story. Miguel has to temporarily replace a version of himself who's killed by an anomaly. It all goes as well as it can, until one night, he's visited by the other Miguel's secret boyfriend, Miles Morales, there to celebrate their one-year anniversary. (and he brought toys) (2023)

Fanart

Archives & Fannish Links

Miles Morales/Miguel O'Hara works on AO3

References

  1. ^ https://twitter.com/kristaferanka/status/1672284754052534272(archived https://web.archive.org/web/20230623200510/https://twitter.com/kristaferanka/status/1672284754052534272)
  2. ^ https://twitter.com/ariaforhypnos/status/1681721117789294592 (archived https://web.archive.org/web/20230802094619/https://twitter.com/angelowithwords/status/1681721687585243151)
  3. ^ https://twitter.com/OZ_174/status/1684355351808987136 (archived https://web.archive.org/web/20230802095521/https://twitter.com/OZ_174/status/1684355351808987136)
  4. ^ https://twitter.com/NehanHaides/status/1675157463111450624 (archived https://web.archive.org/web/20230802100309/https://twitter.com/NehanHaides/status/1675157463111450624)
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