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IN CHARACTER

Character Name: miguel o'hara
Canon: marvel comics

In-Game Tattoo Placement: inner right wrist, design something like this.
Current Health/Status: dandy — physically, he's fine; mentally and emotionally a little all over the place because he is Repressed and does not deal with emotions very well.
Age: laughs in comics it's literally never specified, but early 30s, probably — liz allan states that he sounds "older" than peter parker, who's identified as being 28 by the end of dan slott's run on asm, and miguel was stuck in "present" earth-616 circa-2014.
Species: human, but with 50% spider dna.

Content Warnings: domestic/physical violence, child abuse, verbal abuse, forced drug use/addiction, ableism, cannibalism.

History: lmfao he's a (not very competent) time traveller — shit gets weird, but.

Personality:

We're all familiar with that other Spider-Man, right? The one that got bitten by a spider, was an angry teenager for like 5 minutes, then his uncle died and he learnt a very important lesson? Yeah? Miguel isn't him.

Miguel has a lifetime of non-spider related experience behind him — by the time he gains his powers, he's relatively settled in the type of person he is: this means, predominately, he's arrogant, grumpy, blunt and an all-around dick. He's used to being one of the smartest people in the room and it shows — he even admits, at one point, that all he'd ever wanted was to be important — not necessarily someone that did the right thing, just important.

That said, there's a degree of learned behaviour here — Miguel's step-father, and the man he grew up believing to be his biological father, was shown to be physically and verbally abusive both to Miguel's mother, and to Miguel and his brother as children. Even as a child, Miguel had a smart-mouth and admitted that the only reason he was well-behaved around his father was because his father would hit him if he wasn't.

Whilst Miguel himself isn't shown to be physically abusive, even pre-incident at Alchemax, he is shown to be something of an unrepentant asshole verbally to basically everyone. The long story short of all of this is that Miguel isn't very good with emotions: he doesn't really know how to be kind or comforting, it's something he has to learn fairly late in life, and he doesn't have very good coping mechanisms — his response to anything adverse is to either lash out or shut down; or shut down and then lash out.

(Tangentially related to his poor coping skills, when Miguel is left stranded in 2013/2014, it's implied that he's taken to drinking frequently, but it's an off-hand remark that is never referred to again.)

Unsurprisingly then — and given his terrible interpersonal skills — Miguel isn't very good at relationships. He's not shown to have any friends — in fact, the closest to a friend he appears to have is his holographic assistant, Lyla, who doesn't have emotions and was made in the image of Marilyn Monroe¹, whilst a flashback to an encounter with his (step-)father reveals that Miguel's former romantic relationships were built around women Miguel found physically attractive but could mock without them noticing.

¹ Why Marilyn Monroe? Because his ex-girlfriend and only friend at school had a tattoo of Marilyn Monroe on her abdomen and he's attached. Why ex-girlfriend? He cheated on her with his brother's girlfriend.

The guy is bad with people..

His relationship with his brother is strained — Gabriel is, objectively speaking, a much better person than Miguel: he's kinder, gentler, more thoughtful, and if you were to put the two brothers next to each other, the one you'd pick out as Spider-Man over Miguel. His relationship with his mother is equally strained — she favours Gabriel, blatantly, whilst Miguel is aware that she dislikes him because he reminders her of his father. For what it's worth, up until after Miguel became Spider-Man, this wasn't something he particularly tried to challenge — he acknowledges it and admits that he reminds himself of his father. (Case in point: he has a tendency to call his mentally ill mum 'crazy lady' to her face whilst acknowledging that his father's abuse of her exacerbated, if not led to her mental illness.)

Basically: Miguel hasn't had a whole lot of good examples of relationships in his life and whilst he's not uncaring — he's in fact incredibly emotional, he doesn't really know what to do with his emotions or how to channel them productively. Despite his own inability to foster particularly strong relationships with the exception of one or two, and his own admission that he really doesn't like most people, Miguel actually functions best when he's got a relatively stable support network — whether that's family, friends (loosely speaking) — around him, even if he doesn't always get on with them. When he lacks in that network, Miguel's worst tendencies tend to come front and centre.

Whilst he becomes less self-centred as time goes on, at one point Miguel's brother comments that the only reason Miguel is engaged and the relationship has lasted as long as it had is because (she's) 'the only person that loves Miguel more than Miguel loves himself'. It's not strictly true — he did care for his fiancee, but he's not always great at showing it.

Professionally, he deliberately antagonises his colleagues and superiors at Alchemax, including the CEO; and routinely fails at being a compassionate human being whilst running Parker Industries' NYC R&D branch.

(The latter isn't for lack of trying, he's just very, very bad at it, especially when he's stressed or under emotional duress.)

His utter dickishness lessens slightly when he embraces more and more of being Spider-Man and acknowledges the good it (and by extension, he) does; and acknowledges that he was, in his words, a fucking idiot for failing to see — or more accurately, acknowledge — the harm that comes from the corporate society that exists in 2099. He lived in a bubble and was reluctant to look outside of the bubble, despite his brother and mother pressuring him to do so. It was, in a word, easier to pretend that his relatively privileged lifestyle was the same lifestyle that most others were offered. His activities as Spider-Man end up directly influencing his priorities as Miguel, much to own initial dislike, and he switches his focus at Alchemax from being a cog in the corporate wheel to actively trying to better them from within.

It's not that Miguel didn't have responsibilities before he became Spider-Man, he just wasn't particularly willing to acknowledge that he had the ability to make a difference — or that anything needed changing. The events and circumstances that he falls into as Spider-Man make him mature a bit and realise that he can't always run away from things that makes him (emotionally) uncomfortable.

(He's spent a lot of time being an ass, is what is being said here. He's aware he's spent a lot of time being an ass, and he's very gradually trying to make up for it.)

Despite quite literally all of the above, he considers himself a relatively decent guy — and he's certainly more of a decent guy than he used to be. He strives to not be like his father, strives to help the people of Downtown New York, particularly as Spider-Man, and he wants to make the world a better place — in one version of 2099's future, he becomes the CEO of Alchemax in an attempt to help Alchemax atone for its mistakes and corruption. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Miguel as Spider-Man is the fact that if he could help more as Miguel, he wouldn't feel the need to be Spider-Man.

There's not a huge divide between Miguel O'Hara and (his) Spider-Man: where Peter Parker used Spider-Man to become more confident and as a coping mechanism, Miguel fell into being Spider-Man entirely by accident. He acknowledges that being Spider-Man and helping out feels "right", but he also acknowledges the fact that it's a monumental hassle and his life would be a lot easier if he wasn't. Perhaps ironically, he does find the superheroes of the Heroic Age inspiring, but despite that, the first time he heard THAT^TM saying, his response was to go "no, with great responsibility comes great guilt" and just feel extraordinarily put out by everything that was going on.

Whilst Miguel is making a degree of effort to make up for his past mistakes and choices, it's something he does occasionally waver in and doesn't always succeed at — he's not an awful person, he just has a tendency to be self-absorbed and short-sighted, and doesn't always make the right decision for the moment, and despite being a monumental ass most of the time, he's self-aware enough to be able to poke fun at himself for it and to be aware that he can be a dick. He's aware, too, that his reaction to emotionally compromising events is to Lose His Shit, which — well, he doesn't stop doing it, but when he calms down he does, can, and will apologise for it.

—Basically, he's flawed and he's a work-in-progress. He's aware he's flawed and he really does try to help people. He tries to balance the opposing responsibilities of his professional life (at least, pre-time travel and timeline shenanigans) with his responsibilities as Spider-Man. He's grumpy and melodramatic, but he really does want to do good, help make the world a better place and, in his words, make up for the fact that he was an "uncaring jerk" for most of his life.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping:

MIGUEL is a highly skilled geneticist and reasonably skilled with technology, depending on when it's from — if it's from 2099 (and after), he's going to hold his hands up and admit he's not the best person to ask (decent enough, but not a tech genius). If it's from the 20th century? He'll be more than alright. He was head of R&D for a time at Alchemax, and then at Parker Industries when he became stranded in the past. The guy's good with Science, is what I'm saying.

Due to his spider DNA, he has red eyes (see below for details), as well as retractable talons on his hands and feet that allow him to climb walls (note: he is not sticky). He also has elongated non-retractable canine teeth that secrete a paralysing venom. This means that he's kind of prone to mumbling in an effort to hide them when he talks. He's not always successful and sometimes he just plain forgets or gets overcome with emotion (anger, we're mostly talking anger).

as SPIDER-MAN he does not have a spider-sense, but what he does have is super strength, speed and agility; as well as durability and a slightly increased healing factor that accompanies his increased durability. It basically just means he heals slightly faster than the average human, but he's not Wolverine.

He also has accelerated vision (yeah, he can "zoom in" on things that are far away, alright) and the ability to see perfectly in the dark. This does mean he's incredibly light sensitive, so outside of the costume, he's constantly wearing sunglasses.

He has spinnerets on both of his forearms that allow him to produce organic webbing identical to spider silk.

I don't believe any of this requires warping, but am happy to amend if so!

Inventory:

— Lyla! aka his holographic assistant that he mostly uses as a sounding board and to, like, look up lottery results in advance so he's not broke in the past. lyla is also capable of creating other holograms — miguel's day-to-day clothing tends to be a holographic construction over the top of his Spider-Man suit (which is the classic blue + red suit, fwiw). For the most part, in-game I imagine lyla basically being his wardrobe and being capable of giving health status/surrounding updates, and that's about it.

Lyla's, like, basically in his watch. she's watch-siri. and his diary.

— As a note, the suit is made from unstable molecules, which means it's incredibly durable. as another note — without this, miguel will wreck shit with his talons. He can control them to an extent, but as he has to focus to do this, if he's shocked or surprised... ( aka rip, water mattress ).

— Tinted/reactive glasses, because the guy's very sensitive to light and he likes being able to see.

— Cell phone, circa-2014.

On a related note, whilst Lyla is NOT an android, I would be quite happy to play around with any events that may affect technological beings if they occur! Lyla has been affected by viruses in canon that have altered her programming (and subsequently, her behaviour).

Writing Samples: tdm tl, network @ a ... different tdm, or: texting.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: laura
Player Age: 30
Player Contact: ruffians or pm

Other Characters In Game: none
In-Game Tag If Accepted: miguel o'hara: laura
Permissions for Character: here!
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: yes!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: honestly, i love delving into the psyche of characters and what makes them tick and why they're the way they are — so anything that affects characters mentally and makes them question themselves and their surroundings is my favourite thing, but i love horror in most forms — there's nothing i particularly shy away from. basically: fuck me up, fam.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: none.
Additional Information: honestly, i've made a big deal about how much of an ass miguel is and how he's trying to Grow as a person, but he's also just a giant fucking loser.