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demigod-of-the-agni · 1 month

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Spider-Man India, but... where from India?

A SUPER long post featuring talks of: cultural identity, characterisation, the caste system, and what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man.

I’m prefacing this by saying that I am a second-generation immigrant. I was born in Australia, but my cultural background is from South India. My experiences with what it means to be “Indian” is going to be very different from the experiences of those who are born and brought up in India.

If you, reader, want to add anything, please reblog and add your thoughts. This is meant to be a post open for discussion — the more interaction we get, the better we become aware of these nuances.

So I made this poll asking folks to pick a region of India where I would draw Pavitr Prabhakar in their cultural wear. This idea had been on my mind for a long while now, as I had been inspired by Annie Hazarika’s Northeastern Spidey artwork in the wake of ATSV’s release, but never got the time to actually do it until now. I wanted to get a little interactive and made the poll so I could have people choose which of the different regions — North, Northeast, Central, East, West, South — to do first.

The outcome was not what I expected. As you can see, out of 83 votes:

THE RESULTS

South India takes up almost half of all votes (44.6%), followed by Northeast and Central (both 14.5%) and then East (13.3%). In all my life growing up, support towards or even just the awareness of South India was pretty low. Despite this being a very contained poll, why would nearly half of all voters pick South India in favour of other popular choices like Central or North India?

Then I thought about the layout of the poll: Title, Options, Context.

Title: "Tell us who you want to see…"

Options: North, Northeast, Central, East, West, South

Context: I want to make art of the boy again

At first I thought: ah geez. this is my fault. I didn't make the poll clear enough. do they think I want them to figure out where Pavitr came from? That's not what I wanted, maybe I should have added the context before the options.

Then I thought: ah geez. is it my fault for people not reading the entire damn thing before clicking a button? That's pretty stupid.

But regardless, the thought did prompt a line of thinking I know many of us desi folk have been considering since Spider-Man India was first conceived — or, at least, since the announcement that he was going to appear in ATSV. Hell, even I thought of it:

Where did Spider-Man India come from?

FROM A CULTURALLY DIVERSE INDIA

As we know, India is so culturally diverse, and no doubt ATSV creators had to take that into account. Because the ORIGINAL Spider-Man India came from Mumbai — most likely because Mumbai and Manhattan both started with the same letter.

But going beyond that, it’s also because Mumbai is one of the most recognisable cities in India - it’s also known as Bombay. It’s where Bollywood films are shot. It’s where superstar Hindi actors and actresses show up. Mumbai is synonymous with India in that regard, because the easiest way Western countries can interact with Indian culture is through BOLLYWOOD, through HINDI FILMS, through MUMBAI. Suddenly, India is Mumbai, India is a Hindi-only country, India is just this isolated thing we see through an infinitely narrow lens.

We’ve gotten a little better in recent years, but boy I will tell you how uncomfortable I’ve gotten when people (yes, even desi people) come up to me and tell me, Oh, you’re Indian right? Can you speak Hindi? Why don’t you speak Hindi? You’re not Indian if you don’t speak Hindi, that’s India’s national language!

I have been — still am — so afraid of telling people that I don’t speak Hindi, that I’m Tamil, that I don’t care that Hindi is India’s “national” language (it’s an administrative language, Kavin, get your fucking facts right). It’s weird, it’s isolating, and it has made me feel like I wasn’t “Indian” enough to be accepted into the group of “Indian” people.

So I am thankful that ATSV went out of their way to integrate as much variety of Indian culture into the Mumbattan sequence. Maybe that way, the younger generation of desi folk won’t feel so isolated, and that younger Western people will be more open to learning about all these cultural differences within such a vast country.

BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SPIDER-MAN INDIA?

Everything, actually. There’s a thing called supremacy. You might have heard of it. We all engaged with it at some point, and if you are Indian, no matter where you live, it is inescapable.

It happens the moment you are born — who your family is, where you are born, the language you speak, the colour of your skin; these will be bound to you for life, and it is nigh impossible to break down the stereotypes associated with them.

Certain ethnic groups will be more favourable than others (Centrals, and thus their cultures, will always be favoured over than Souths, as an example) and the same can be said for social groups (Brahmins are more likely to secure influential roles in politics or other areas like priesthood, while the lowers castes, especially Dalits, aren’t even given the decency of respect). Don’t even get me started on colourism, where obviously those of fairer skin will win the lottery while those of darker skin aren’t given the time of day. It’s even worse when morality ties into it — “lighter skinned Indians, like Brahmins, embody good qualities like justice and wisdom”, “dark skinned Indians are cunning and poor, they are untrustworthy”. It’s fucking nuts.

This means, of course, you have a billion people trying to make themselves heard in a system that tries to crush everyone who is not privileged. It only makes sense that people want to elevate themselves and break free from a society that refuses to acknowledge them. These frustrations manifest outwardly, like in protests, but other times — most times — it goes unheard, quietly shaping your way of life, your way of thinking. It becomes a fundamental part of you, and it can go unacknowledged for generations.

So when you have a character like Pavitr Prabhakar enter the scene, people immediately latch onto him and start asking questions many Western audiences don’t even consider. Who is he? What food does he eat? What does he do on Fridays? What’s his family like, his community? All these questions pop up, because, amidst all this turmoil going on in the background, you want a mainstream popular character to be like you, who knows your way of life so intimately, that he may as well be a part of your community.

BUT THAT'S THE THING — HE'S FICTIONAL

I am guilty of this. In fact, I’ve flaunted in numerous posts how I think he’s the perfect Tamil boy, how he dances bharatanatyam, how he does all these Tamil things that no one will understand except myself. All these niche things that only I, and maybe a few others, will understand.

I’ve seen other people do it, too. I’ve seen people geek out over his dark brown skin, his kalari dhoti, how he fights so effortlessly in the kalaripayattu martial arts style. I’ve seen people write him as Malayali, as Hindi, as every kind of Indian person imaginable.

I’ve also seen him be written where he’s subjected to typical Indian and broader Asian stereotypes. You know the ones I’m so fond of calling out. The thing is, I’ve seen so much of Pavitr being presented in so many different ways, and I worry how the rest of the desi folk will take it.

You finally have a character who could be you, but now he’s someone else’s plaything. Your entire life is shaped by what you can and can’t do simply because you were born to an Indian family, and here’s the one person who could represent you now at the mercy of someone else’s whims. He’s off living a life that is so distant from yours, you can hardly recognise him.

It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, yeah? But, again, you’re looking at it from that infinitely narrow lens Westerners use to look at India from Bollywood.

AND PAVITR PRABHAKAR DOESN'T LIVE IN INDIA

He lives in Mumbattan. He lives in a made-up, fictional world that doesn’t follow the way of life of our world. He lives in a city where Mumbai and Manhattan got fucking squashed together. There are so many memes about colonialism right there. Mumbattan isn’t real! Spider-Man India isn’t real!! He’s just a dude!! The logic of our world doesn’t apply to him!!!

“But his surname originates from ______” okay but does that matter?

“But he’s wearing a kalari dhoti so surely he’s ______” okay but does that matter?

“But his skin colour is darker so he must be ______” okay but does that matter?

“But he lives in Mumbai so he must be ______” okay but does that matter?

I sound insensitive and brash and annoying and it looks like I’m yapping just for the sake of riling you up, so direct that little burst of anger you got there at me, and keep reading.

Listen. I’m going to ask you a question that I’ve asked myself a million times over. I want you to answer honestly. I want you to ask this question to yourself and answer honestly:

Are you trying to convince me on who Pavitr Prabhakar should be?

... but why shouldn't i?

I’ll tell you this again — I did the same thing. You’re not at fault for this, but I want you to just...have a little think over. Just a little moment of self-reflection, to think about why you are so intent on boxing this guy.

It took me a while to reorganise my thinking and how to best approach a character like Pavitr, so I will give you all the time you need as well as a little springboard to focus your thoughts on.

SPIDER-MAN (INDIA) IS JUST A MASK

“What I like about the costume is that anybody reading Spider-Man in any part of the world can imagine that they themselves are under the costume. And that’s a good thing.”

Stan Lee said that. Remember how he was so intent on making sure that everybody got the idea that Spider-Man as an entity is fundamentally broken without Peter Parker there to put on the suit and save the day? That ultimately it was the person beneath the mask, no matter who they were, that mattered most?

Spider-Man India is no less different. You can argue with me that Peter Parker!Spidey is supposed to represent working class struggles in the face of leering corporate entities who endanger the regular folk like us, and so Pavitr Prabhakar should also function the same way. Pavitr should also be a working class guy of this specific social standing fighting people of this other social standing.

But that takes away the authenticity of Spider-Man India. Looking at him through the Peter Parker lens forces you to look at him through the Western lens, and it significantly lessens what you can do with the character — suddenly, it’s a fight to be heard, to be seen, to be recognised. It’s yelling over each other that Pavitr Prabhakar is this ethnicity, is that caste, this or that, this or that, this or that.

There’s a reason why he’s called Spider-Man India, infuriatingly vague as it is. And that’s the point — the vagueness of his identity fulfils Lee’s purpose for a character that could theoretically be embodied by anyone. If he had been called “Spider-Man Mumbai”, you cut out a majority of the population (and in capitalist terms, you cut out a good chunk of the market).

And in the case of Spider-Man India? Whew — you’ve got about a billion people imagining a billion different versions of him.

Whoever you are, whatever you see in Pavitr, that is what is personal to you, and there is nothing wrong with that, and I will not fault you for it. I will not fault you for saying Pavitr is from Central due to the origins of his last name. I also will not fault you for saying Pavitr is from South due to him practising kalaripayattu. I also will not fault you for saying he is not Hindu. I also will not fault you for saying he is a particular ethnicity without any proof.

What I will fault you for is trying to convince me and the others around you that Pavitr Prabhakar should be this particular ethnicity/have this cultural background because of some specific reason. I literally don’t care and it is fundamentally going against his character, going against the “anyone can wear the mask” sentiment of Spider-Man. By doing this, you are strengthening the walls that first divided us. You’re feeding the stratification and segmentation of our cultures — something that is actually not present in the fictional world of Mumbattan.

Like I said before: Mumbattan isn’t real, so the divides between ethnicities and cultural backgrounds are practically nonexistent. The best thing is that it is visually there for all to see. My favourite piece of evidence is this:

It’s a marquee for a cinema in the Mumbattan sequence, in the “Quick tour: this is where the traffic is” section. It has four titles; the first three are written in Hindi. The fourth title is written in Tamil. You go to Mumbai and you won’t see a single shred of Tamil there, much less any other South Indian language. Seeing this for the first time, you know what went through my head?

Wow, the numerous cultures of India are so intermingled here in Mumbattan! Everyone and everything is welcome!

I was happy, not just because of Tamil representation, but because of the fact that the plethora of Indian cultures are showcased coexisting in such a short sequence. This is India embracing all the little parts that make up its grander identity. This scene literally opened my eyes seeing such beauty in all the diverse cultures thriving together. In a place where language and cultural backgrounds blend so easily, each one complementing one another.

It is so easy to believe that, from this colourful palette of a setting, Pavitr Prabhakar truly is Spider-Man India, no matter where he comes from.

It’s easy to believe that Pavitr can come from any part of India, and I won’t call you out if the origin you have for him is different from the origin I have. You don’t need to stake out territory and stand your ground — you’re entitled to that opinion, and I respect it. In fact, I encourage it!!!

Because there’s only so much you can show in a ten minute segment of a film about a country that has such a vast history and even greater number of cultures. I want to see all of it — I want him to be a Malayali boy, a Hindi boy, a Bengali boy, a Telugu boy, an Urdu boy, whatever!! I want you to write him or draw him immersed in your culture, so that I can see the beauty of your background, the wonderful little things that make your culture unique and different from mine!

And, as many friends have said, it’s so common for Indian folks to be migrating around within our own country. A person with a Maharashtrian surname might end up living in Punjab, and no one really minds that. I’m actually from Karnataka, my family speaks Kannada, but somewhere down the line my ancestors moved to Tamil Nadu and settled down and lived very fulfilling lives. So I don’t actually have the “pure Tamil” upbringing, contrary to popular belief; I’ve gotten a mix of both Kannada and Tamil lifestyles, and it’s made my life that much richer.

So it’s common for people to “not” look like their surname, if that’s what you’re really afraid about. In fact, it just adds to that layer of nuance, that even despite these rigid identities between ethnicities we as Indian people still intermingle with one another, bringing slivers of our cultures to share with others. Pavitr could just as well have been born in one state and moved around the country, and he happens to live in Mumbattan now. It’s entirely possible and there’s nothing to disprove that.

We don’t need to clamber over one another declaring that only one ethnicity is the “right” ethnicity, because, again, you will be looking at Pavitr and the rest of India in that narrow Western lens — a country with such rich cultural variety reduced to a homogenous restrictive way of life.

THE POLL: REINTERPRETED

This whole thing started because I was wondering why my little poll was so skewed — I thought people assumed I was asking them where he came from, then paired his physical appearance with the most logical options available. I thought it was my fault, that I had somehow influenced this outcome without knowing.

Truth is, I will never really know. But I will be thankful for it, because it gave me the opportunity to finally broach this topic, something that many of us desi folk are hesitant to talk about. I hope you have learned something from this, whether you are desi or a casual Spider-Man fan or someone who just so happened to stumble upon this.

So just…be a little more open. Recognise that India, like many many countries and nations, is made up of a plethora of smaller cultures. And remember, if you’re trying to convince Pavitr that he’s a particular ethnicity, he’s going to wave his hand at you and say, “Ha, me? No, I’m one of the people that live here in the best Indian city! I’m Spider-Man India, dost!”

(Regardless, he still considers you a friend, because to him, the people matter more to him than you trying to box him into something he’s not.)

#long post + more tags that kinda spiral away BUT expand on the points above AND kinda puts everything together concisely #BROS THIS IS AN HONEST TO GOD ESSAY #THAT HAS BEEN COOKING IN MY HEART FOR A WHILE NOW. SIMMERING FOR MONTHS BEFORE FINALLY BOILING OVER IN THE LAST WEEK #genuinely hope you read MOST of it because yes it has Quite A Lot Of Exposition but it all matters nonetheless #put in a lot of thought into this so i expect you to do your part and challenge your thoughts as well #you see how i'm not asking for you to listen to me. but to actually Think. i want you to cook your thoughts and add some spice and flavour #and give it a good mix so you can come out of this a little more wiser than before #because!!! yeah!!!! spider man india is just that!! he's indian!!!!! we don't need to collectively agree on where he comes from #bc it gets rid of that relatability factor of spider man. at the most basic level #think of it as a schrodinger's. he is every single culture and none of them at the same time. therefore none of us are wrong!! sick!!!!#pavitr's first priority is making sure HIS PEOPLE are safe. that's probably as far as we can go that relates him back to peter parker spide #he loves his people and working in the name of justice to FIGHT for HIS PEOPLE is just the duty/responsibility he takes up #it makes sense that he loves everyone and every culture he engages with bc that's the nature of spider man i suppose #if peter parker spidey acts as the guardian for the regular folk.. then in my mind pavitr spidey stands as the bridge uniting the people #because society as its core is very fragmented. and having pavitr act as a connection to other folks.... mmmmm beautiful #that's what i'm talking abouttttt !!!#anyways guys this is literally 3001 words on my document EXCLUDING THE TITLE. THAT'S 7 PAGES AT 11pt FONT. i'm literally cryingggg wtf #pavitr prabhakar #spider man #spider man india #desi #desiblr #atsv #across the spiderverse #atsv pavitr #indian culture #india #desi tumblr #what the fuck do i tag this as #agnirambles

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onewholivesinloops · 11 months

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those two shots from the first episode of oniakashi showing satoko's reflection as her witch self, as she observes rena spacing out because of her home problems, and the second shot where she's presumably thinking of how she's going to inject rena at the nurse office struck me. satoko is so alienated from her surroundings after looping through her trauma for so long that it feels to her like everything is a 'dream'. she's so emotionally disconnected from the people she cares about as if she were separated by a glass wall. it's a literal interpretation of depersonalization/derealization.

satoko has now entirely compartmentalized the idea that she's doing anything bad. she's completely distanced herself from the violence she's committing towards herself and others. this is no different from a club game or one of her many traps. nothing is real including her friends until she's happy. until the reality wherein she can survive is within her grasp. everything else is a delusion and her friends are just pieces on the gameboard.

still, satoko gives rena the grief and remorse she doesn't give to mion, because rena has always fought against fate - the same fate satoko believes mion has not had to suffer through before that she and rena always do. satoko makes rena much like herself, that way they can be together in this.

rena's reaction to rina and her feeling that she has to kill rina in oniakashi is a parallel to satoko's reaction to rika and st. lucia as a whole. it's this sense that no matter what nothing can get better unless you commit an absolute. a certainty. others will not change or be better if you talk things out with them. satoko sympathizes with rena because she sees much of herself in rena.

it's different with mion whom satoko injects out of curiosity, the curiosity to see something she's never seen before playing out, but that's also an expression of her resentment towards mion - resentment because mion never had to go through what she and the others did while also being complicit in her ostracization and othering as a sonozaki in her mind. there's jealousy there. a bite of biterness. it's why satoko loses all the sympathy she had for rena when she's dealing with mion. satoko feels guilt over making rena go L5, but all of this is goes out of the window when it comes to mion. that's purposeful.

every fragment satoko weaves with eua is just another duel!!!!!!

duels are all about making Duelists and Brides relive anthy and akio's problems. it validates akio's horrible solution as akio is looking for the power to reinforce his worldview that enables his abuse of women and anthy. eua is the same. eua has turned her despair + loneliness into boredom and she sees the world as a stage to relieve that, but she only counts on the cruelty of the children of man. the savagery of the loops reinforces her worldview and validates her manipulation of satoko and her perspective of people.

satoko and anthy are also making them relive their trauma in a similar way, but they're more justified. satoko and anthy are trying to escape, find love, destroy themselves and their loved one. [REDACTED] from umineko is like them too btw.

the akashis are all about the thematics and parallels. gousotsu as a whole is. very utena!

#higurashi #higurashi gou #higurashi sotsu #satoko houjou #gamo.txt #those arcs aren't mere retreads they're different takes on earlier arcs with differences and those differences serve an important purpose!!#gousotsu is simultaneously a thematic remake AND a sequel #and to engage with gousotsu you need to engage with the former as much as the latter #gousotsu is a love letter to the survivors who want to improve but still need to lean on this feeling again enough to prop themselves up #it's a walk through memories and nostalgia for us and for satoko #it's revisiting and re-enacting and trying to understand because problems still exist in different forms #it wants to simmer in those feelings and thoughts #it wants to simmer in what makes things worthwhile to revisit once again #it wants to simmer in what truly makes something a remake #it's going through all of those events again but this time from the specific angle of what they mean for satoko #the entire show is satoko soaking herself in all these events and feelings again #the akashis are really fun concepts to me because they're all about being different takes on arcs from the original #oniakashi is all about giving you a more sympathetic take on rina whom i'd argue was handled a little poorly as a sex worker in the origina #and i like how it implicitly addresses some of rena's internalized misogyny in doing so #wataakashi is all about addressing how mion has always been passive/cowardly to a fault while also giving her an arc of her own #it's where sotsu messed up the most but it's still fun to chew on these concepts and i like what it was going for!#tatariakashi is the culmination of the critique of satoko being a damsel in distress in the original and a deconstruction of that #it's a critique of the message of unity and forgiveness etc etc and recognizing traumas can't be erased and happy endings are elusive #because the harm was still done #people don't want to admit that the world rika created covered up the original problems especially for satoko #who got the short end of the stick in terms of a real higurashi ending which is why they see this as a sick joke #sorry if this makes no sense to anyone i may be insane

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xwhitepolar · 8 months

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do you also have blogs you dearly admire but keep on accidentally mispronouncing their urls? or realize after YEARS that you have been misreading them altogether (not just, "idk how to say your name", but also "wow the letters were not in this order yesterday were they?") ?

because sometimes I'm here like - 😭

[ID: gif of Good Omens character Furfur, mispronouncing Aziraphale's name three times in a row as "Azirapalala", "Azirapapap", and "Aziphapalala"]

#Please I have so many T--T #I've been active for what? 7 years? 8 years?#and lurking from earlier #AND STILL sometimes I get notifs from you lovely lovely simmers and I find myself like. wait. I have been misreading your name since the-#-beginning of time #I won't say who because I'd die from embarrassment #nonsims #xwp nonsims #gif

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sysig · 9 months

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Oh getting very close now, villainy feels right around the corner (Patreon)

#Doodles #Villainsona #Just Desserts #So you can see - the TVAU floodgates lol #Upon realizing how fun and easy Charm is to draw in the WOY style I was like ''So designing outfits then''#It's like an inbuilt base maker! This style is perfect for just getting a scribble down and then extrapolating from there!#Surely we've all seen the phenomenon of starting with something simple and expanding and building once the base is established #Like kid drawings being redrawn by professionals :D Or pixel art into fully rendered or Minecraft skins open to interpretation #The urge to Artistic Liberty lol - I just managed to find a style that I can do both in >:3c Create the initial and build from there! Yay!!#Love having that as an option ♪ And like I said she's criminally fun to draw like this lol she's just a cute rectangle #Plus - and this is really the big plus lol - since WOY is so silhouette-based it's a great style to test outfits on #The biggest problem for designing her TVAU outfit for me has been how readable it is with and without the wings #Classic Charm is perfect and that's reflected in her design as well ♪ TVAU is in the image of another hm hm hm #<Already a tag lol - but she is! Classic Charm has the perfect amounts of breaks and rests and interest and design flow I just hhh <3 <3 #And also true for the TVAU! Charm is under pretty direct influence by that point and I want that to be very reflected in her outfit!#I had a bunch of themes I wanted to explore like two months ago but kept coming up empty :P But now that I've had a chanced to simmer :3c #The biggest elements I'm happiest with are her belly showing in the first one - one of the themes was ''forced vulnerability'' so #I'm not sure what to do with the hem of her pants tho I very intentionally didn't design where her shirt and pants meet in Classic lol #The second design is probably my favourite overall :D And not Just because she turned out so cute in the WOY style haha #I mean she also turned out very cute in the JD style hehe - but I kinda forgot that Kaiein started as a dragon!#Turning her spiderweb theme into dragon scales is so just- how did I not think of that before gods what a brilliant idea lol #And I can keep scalloping! Scallops forever dragon scales spider webs sugar candy sweets ♪ My favourite :D #I like that it keeps the shawl as well while still having very uncovered shoulders - feels villainy and still reflective of her design :D #The last one is more building off the previous two - chest window for the vulnerability theme - dragon scale ''train'' like the first's #I think it's decent but it was honestly more for the dark striped leggings since the middle had them light like her Classic design #One of the other themes I was going for was ''coloured over/blotted out'' and having it be ''her'' design while literally coloured out #I think there's something to that :3c #Also *toots own horn* I did a fantastic job reconstructing her leg in that last one >:3c #I bet you'd never know the the entire bottom half of her left leg had to be digitally added after the fact! I even did that with my trackpad #Hehehe ♪♫ Quite pleased :3c

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mkstrigidae · 9 months

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Apparently, the solution to my APWH writer's block was just opening up a new word document and rewriting the whole damn next chapter.

#I've been going back and doing some minor edits to older chapters recently- it's also been a necessary reread #because there are a lot of fucking details in this story #and it feels like i'm doing that thing where you spin plates on a stick but i'm spinning like 200 plates #just apwh things #this isn't just me being like 'i'm making progress again!!1!' for the thirty-fifth time either #like I have a full complete draft of chapter 16 that I'm about to start revising #shit's getting chaotic #there's not so much a chekov's gun as there is a chekov's whoopie cushion #i.e. a previously mentioned aspect of life at winterfell causes an objectively silly situation #but because this is me we're talking about- that silly situation quickly brings a lot of simmering things to the surface #there are a couple of fun mya conversations though which is good #sansa and mya's conversations are some of my favorites to write #because they're the only scenes where sansa isn't constantly second-guessing herself and kind of just is herself #the outside world is beginning to encroach on the Winterfell Bubble™ and ho boy is it a doozy #seriously i rewrote this entire fucking chapter and i'm so mad that THAT's what it took #anyways am definitely in the market for some beta-ing soon #and kind of need someone to bounce ideas off of because i am desperately trying to figure out #how to commit a hypothetical crime #and how to solve a cold case #send help lmao #I am prob going to make everyone extremely angry in a few chapters so enjoy the Winterfell Bubble™ while it lasts

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apricote · 10 months

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i hope the horsie pack comes with some good builds because im not about to build a house for reggie and daphne myself

#the builds have been pretty good in the newer worlds tbh #probably because simmers have built them and not EA lmao #obvs i'm going to decorate the interior myself and stuff but i hope it comes with some nice big houses #because i wanna play the pack asap and it will take time for other builders to build some lots for the new world #i don't even remember what the world is called lol #💬

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el-im · 11 months

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personally it's hard to feel excited for snw when it just feels so hollow? im not sure if it's the pacing or what but it feels ungenuine? and beyond that people's characters feel rushed? like i know hemmer had to be replaced but like we could've spent way more time on his character! he was interesting! (i might be biased bc i love the andorians) and not even touching whatevers going on with spock. or chapel. this is the least of my grievances but when they put that black undershirt on pikes green wraparound...hate crime.

yeah, I mean. whatever. I watched it in a single sitting when I was sick and it beat laying in bed looking up at the whitewashed ceiling.

I agree the exposition of characters seem very rushed. It kind of violated the “show, don’t tell” rule, particularly w la’an, who was kind of put in a position that needed her to air her dirty laundry in front of the whole crew. I wish they’d had time to create narratives around past experiences, kind of like they did with Kirk/Tarsus in TOS, in which his participation in a historical event was made relevant by whatever was going on in the ep. (This was kind of(?) done in the Jurassic Park Knockoff Ep they did but not super successfully). I do believe it’s a pacing issue.

That said, I will say that I appreciate it being (more, at least, than the other new treks I’ve seen… which is… only Picard) episodic. I love that they’ve got some new task to handle, some new planet to explore in each ep. In that sense, it’s much more similar to TOS than I could have hoped for, general relationship arcs aside. (But wrt pacing, sometimes I think this works against them bc of how the show is written. They could do a self contained so w a lot of backstory in TOS, but bc of how this show is written, it’s more difficult to accomplish all that in a single ep. Like M’Benga’s daughter? In that specific instance I wish they’d shown him talking about her in previous episodes, and people asking if she was back on earth w his partner or… and him going quiet. Or Hemmer trying to fix the medical transporter in an earlier ep and him freaking out, but not having that immediately resolved… the same goes for discovering Una is… whatever species she is. Would have LOVED to see some xenophobia first—the crew making jokes when they come across some anomaly that it must have been caused by them, or something, and her looking uncomfortable/chastising them/whatever. Or the demonstrated persecution of them broadcast from some federation planet… if we had more context for these stories, if their roots were better established, they’d land harder. But they don’t). So sometimes that episodic formula kind of works against them, but ! like I said. whatever.

frankly, I was ambivalent abt the whole enterprise (la de da) to begin with, so wasn’t expecting much and was pleasantly surprised by it, on the whole. A friend of mine has seen Disco and didn’t think I’d enjoy it, so I haven’t seen that, and I’m not inclined toward watching animation if I can help it so haven’t seen LWD or prodigy, the second of which is literally made for babies but. Yanno. I liked SNW. I didn’t love it, I don’t agree with a lot of decisions they made, but I can see their intentions/where they’re coming from. I LOVE this spock, though think you have to see him as separate from the Spock we see in TOS (like in AOS, you kind of have to appreciate their differences as characters, and learn to love them not as the same person, but as branching extensions from a stem). I also LOVE Pike. I had a lot of hopes about him going into it because I thought the original storyline for him in TOS was done so well in that two part ep that included the original footage from “The Cage”, and I think they did an excellent job tailoring Mount’s Pike to the character laid out there, all the while fleshing him out into a fully fledged captain.

further, I’ve gotta say, I love the antics/shenanigans, and how much everyone seems to like each other. I don’t get the point of rough and tumble, cynical sci fi 24/7. (I do—it has its place, but it shouldn’t be in Star Trek). Even DS9, which as we all know tackled huge narratives abt power dynamics and prejudice and genocide… had episodes where they played baseball. And fishing mini games. Picard, which I’m comparing it to bc, again, it’s the only other trek I’ve seen that’s been produced since AOS (I think), seems similarly jam-packed with shit. Ohh the Borg and here and so are the romulans and Deanna’s son died somehow and the Android suppression as a weird metaphor for ?? Revolution? Workers rights? Idfk? And there’s time travel and fascism and section 31 and corruption at the highest levels of Starfleet which only peepaw and his dog, tintin, can root out. And there’s his mother, for some fucking reason, and-

And it’s all horrible. Everyone’s cynical and mean and/or gratingly stupid/infantile (AGNES!!!!!!). It was refreshing to see something that… wasn’t… that.

#I didn’t care abt hemmer at all though so I can’t really speak on that point #I think conceptually it would have been neat to have an aenar onboard but frankly I think ent did more w the aenar in their last terrible #season by establishing them culturally than snw did by having an individual #who had maybe like 4 lines ?? before dying? I just didn’t care #I liked his relationship w Spock and their little carrot scene but that’s the only memorable interaction he had to me #asks #trek #am surprised by the Spock/chapel thing cause I think how it was presented in TOS was excellent.#her loving him and never saying anything. he feeling respect and affinity for her but not having/being willing to express anything beyond #perfectly done. and they both have to take that in stride because they’re professionals and have bigger fish to fry yanno #so I dislike that this is coming up as something so soon in their lives #when I think it’s something chapel should have been aware of then but let it steep and simmer #because the way we see it in TOS. It’s like resignation.#knowing she’s kind of. condemned to feeling that way.#but.#I’ll say again #I think comparing it to TOS isn’t the way to go and it’s got to be something in its own right #I’m excited for the second season! again. not touched by every character but didn’t really hate anyone #looking forward to cherry picking what is canon to ME #and throwing the rest away

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