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#don't ask where we are going
inkskinned · 7 months
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love when men cry about body hair bc "it's hygiene" and yet 15% of cis men leave the bathroom without washing their hands at all and an additional 35% only just wet their hands without using soap. that is nearly half of all men. that means statistically you have probably shaken hands with or been in direct contact with one of these people.
love when men say that women "only want money" when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.
love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it's actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.
love it. told my father this and he said there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we're cooking or cleaning.
maybe i'm overly nostalgic. but it didn't used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we've known since well before the 50's.
recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the "male prerogative." i don't know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.
#writeblr#warm up#ps edited so it is more clear where “half” of men is coming from:#15% literally don't even touch water#an ADDITIONAL 35% ''wash'' by just running their hands under water WITHOUT SOAP#15+35 =50%#like that is not washing ur hands. go back and use soap#btw the numbers for women are 4% never washing and 15% ''just water''#which is still gross but like. sooo much better yikes#ps i know we're all gay on this site but watching ppl ''correct'' my math on this has been wild#i have a learning disability im genuinely bad at math so i check EVERY time someone corrects me#but no they're just confidently wrong.....#182 hours is a week babes. 182/24 (number of hours in a day) is ~7.6#that's where i got that number from. also from rent we know there's 168 hours in a week.#ALSO btw if u read this and ur response is ''men are also struggling rn tho'' like babe you missed the point of it tho#this doesn't even make fun of men it's legit just pointing out that bigotry against women isn't founded#in anything men actually CARE about . like they don't actually CARE about ''being clean'' when they make fun of armpit hair#or they would be WASHING THEIR HANDS.#men pretend to be rollin' in cash and Apex Predators and instead they are trained to be lazy and unwilling to act in emergencies#i have never and will never make fun of men for asking for more support on important topics like DV and mental health.#this is so clearly not about men; it's about how common just being plainly misogynistic has become.#like they don't try to hide it anymore.
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pinkd3mon · 6 months
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Kirby deals with existential crisis and Bandana is a good friend
#kirby#kots#kirby of the stars#kirby fanart#hoshi no kirby#king dedede#bandana waddle dee#gooey#i like the fact that gooey is canonically Kirby's roomie and we never see him therr#i don't think even Kirby knows where he goes#he's like a wild cat you let live in your house but still manages to go out and returns when it wants#did you know gooey means everything to me#everyone's pal gooey#enough about gooey let's talk trauma#Kirby's existential crisis is my favorite subtextual overall narrative from the kirby novels#it's so good how Kirby is always a bit uncomfortable every time they find someone who looks like them#and no one makes them feel worse than void#i think Kirby understood more about void than we give them credit for#and if you ask me why does Kirby have nightmares despite being inside of Dreamland and around the fountain of dreams#the answer is idk#anyway bandana is really perceptive about it#marx is an asshole as always#i wish Kirby's fear and inadequacy could be explored more#they're only hinted at by the novels#but i know Kirby saw themselves in Galacta Knight#the novels confirmed Galacta used the allies sparkler when defeating void termina and the sparkler represents something objectively pure#so my favorite hc is that Kirby was born after the heroes of yore defeated void and star allies draws parallels to that giving you og Kirby#Kirby defeated void and got friends Galacta got imprisoned for eternity#i wonder if Galacta went through the same identity crisis Kirby went through but Galacta sealed with it worse#anyway nothing bad will happen to Kirby after all they have tons of friends to rely on
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blueskittlesart · 4 days
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deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao
not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad
#people ask me sometimes why ill occasionally talk about something i like and then go 'but it's bad' and the answer is usually because it is#i love teen wolf. i love genshin impact. i love detective conan. and i fucking LOVE taylor swift. that doesnt mean theyre good#it just means i like them. and recognizing their flaws actually helps me better identify what i like about them!#it's like. in my mind bad > good is the x axis and i like it > i dont like it is the y axis yk. they're not mutually exclusive#tldr it's not that serious. we can all relax a little#irt taylor swift i do also think she has done some real harm to her fans in enabling them to deflect all criticism of her as misogyny#and i don't think it's fully the fault of these people who are parroting that response bc so much of her marketing has deliberately#reinforced this idea that to be a swiftie is to be a part of a sisterhood and that any attack on taylor is an attack on all of those women#who are in that in-group. when that's obviously not the case. but she's marketed herself as. for lack of a better term. 'girl music'#to the point where it makes her fans feel as though any criticism of the music or the woman responsible for it is an attack on their#personal experience of womanhood/girlhood/sisterhood/etc. and that's how you get all of thess bad-faith accusations of misogyny#i don't necessarily think this was her deliberate goal with her marketing tho because like. on first glance such a strong sense of communit#among fans sounds like a great thing. the friendship bracelets i got at the eras tour movie are really genuinely special to me.#but it does present a problem when your fans are unable to separate how they feel about the community and experience your music has fostere#from how they feel about you as a person. especially when you are a billionaire who absolutely CANNOT be above criticism in this economy#anyway. tldr i love taylor's music and i don't think swiftie hivemind is as deliberately malicious as it may seem#but it's obviously necessary to be able to take a step back and look objectively at what you're participating in.#anyway stream ttpd or don't idc <3#taylor swift
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yo-yo-yoshiko · 7 months
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I always love a heel, but not like this....... not like thissssss!!
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mfshipbracket · 1 year
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As someone who also lives under a rock (does not watch anime), if I don’t recognize the ship going against Reylo, I simply Do Not Vote. I still want Reylo to lose across the board, but I’m leaving it in the hands of each fandom to take that strike against them.
anon abstaining when they don't recognize the ship:
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anon joining when they do recognize the ship:
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moongothic · 5 months
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Honestly I think crocodile/dragon and crocodile/Doflamingo are only interesting when treated as failed relationships spinning off into increasingly petty grudges and instigations. Become a warlord to piss off one ex by working with his hated father only for the OTHER ex to ALSO become a warlord to drive you insane. Etc.
I am now going to take his as an opportunity to rant about Dragodile because I unironically think it's an interesting ship if Crocodad Real and I don't think I'm ever going to find a better excuse to rant about it unprompted lmao SO HERE WE GO
But yes like. Dragodile is so fucking interesting to me
A marine and a pirate falling in love with each other is already some starcrossed lovers kinda BS. But then it's like, a FORMER marine and pirate who is WORKING FOR THE GOVERNMENT. That's EXTRA JUICY, it adds layers to the starcrossed lovers shit, and I am not immune to it, it's FACINATING, like what was the dynamic here
But also we don't even know when Dragon left the marines and when he and Crocodile first met, so for all we know it could've been some real enemies-to-lovers-to-enemies shit AND THAT'S SO INTERESTING
(Also the mere concept that Dragon could've been chasing Crocodile around kinda like Smoker tried to chase Luffy, only for Crocodile to become a Shichibukai and Dragon having to give up because they're on the same side now (kinda). Like. That is so fucking funny. And then he leaves the Marines to start a revolution. Or just out of spite dshgjdgs)
Then there's the absolutely hysterical part where Crocodile is the meanest, most intimidating, standoff-ish asshole around. So the idea Dragon was fucking into that is INCREDIBLE. THIS MAN LIKES BEING BULLIED DFSHFKGHFGJHDS (It's possible Young Croc might've been less mean but it's funnier if he wasn't)
And yeah. Somehow. In complete secret. A romance blooms.
And then there's a baby.
And Crocodile transes his gender.
And there's a divorce.
And 17 years later Crocodile has commited dozens of unforgivable warcrimes that are almost exactly the kind of things Dragon wanted to stop the government from doing to begin with.
Mind you, I don't actually think there's coming back from that, this relationship was burned to the ground and the ashes blown away by wind, there is nothing left
But could you imagine if despite the anger and the hurt and the warcrimes they still somehow loved each other
I would just
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#Moon posting#Crocodad#Sir Crocodile#Monkey D Dragon#Dragodile#OP Meta#I keep on mentioning Dragodile Divorce but to be fair we don't even know if they had been married#All we do have is the fact that Crocodile Very Specifically doesn't wear a ring on his ring finger (in the manga)#(First half of Alabasta it's his middle finger but from the second half onwards it's consistently been his ring finger)#And there's that SBS where a person asked if the Shichibukai were gonna remain single etc and if they had any kids#And Oda was like ''hMmM I wOnDeR iF aNy oF tHeM hAvE bEeN mArRiEd... Anyway I imagine their kids would be like this''#And then very very specifically he only did Doflamingo Mihawk and **Crocodile**#So like. If Crocodad Real. The two could've been married briefly (in secret). Probably just engaged in my personal opinion#Also like. Like we all know Iva's Magic HRT is POWERFUL STUFF right#There is something so deeply tragic to me about the just the mental image#Of Crocodile trying to put on his engagement ring post-HRT only to realize it doesn't fit his massive man hand#Like a horrible premonition of how this relationship was going to end#Even if he was the same on the inside he no longer literally fit the mere concept of the woman Dragon had fallen in love with#Can you imagine the series of emotions Crocodile would've gone through realizing that#Or who knows maybe he realized it all much earlier-- when and however the fuck he decided to get HRT from Iva-chan#There is much to be said about One Piece's running theme of loneliness and the loneliness queer people experience#God Oda please I need this man's backstory#I need to know what the fuck happened#I NEED TO KNOW HOW THE DIVORCE HAPPENED#NGL there's a part of me that almost hopes Dragon was Objectively Horrible (in a heated moment that he really regrets)#Just so Crocodile could be at least a little justified in being at resentful towards Dragon#I dunno it would not sit too well with me if the Cishet Man Dragon was 100% In The Right And Never Did Anything Wrong#And then it's the transgender man who does all the morally questionable horrible shit because he's an evil queer#(There's more than plenty of positive queer rep in OP to balance out one (1) evil trans character don't get me wrong)#(But it would be sad if Crocodile was An Evil Queer especially because he's the one who has transitioned)
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science-lings · 5 days
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PLEASE elaborate on the phoenix and franziska shenanigans during the 7yg you have NO idea how much i like them
I am someone who loved the investigative portion of Bridge to the Turnabout where Franziska had to babysit Phoenix when he wasn't allowed to follow Miles and Iris. I think when he's not her rival defense attorney and is looking particularly pathetic, she is actually pretty chill around him. She is not exempt from his aura that gets young women to imprint on him and follow him around.
She is genuinely offended on his behalf when he gets disbarred because he beat Miles and Manfred and even her! why the hell would he cheat in a case against a teenager! She does not think for a second that he forged that diary page because she knows firsthand how he throws himself into things and cannot prepare an entire evil plan for shit. However, she does not know how to convey this to him so she bullies Miles into flying him and Trucy around because Miles is almost too good at being resigned to pine sadly from a distance.
It's also important to know that she sees Phoenix being a caring father to Trucy and as someone who never really had a valid father, decided that maybe (ex) defense attorneys have rights... Even if Miles didn't get his shit together to put a ring on That Man's finger, Franziska would find herself in Phoenix's found family, it's only a matter of time.
For some reason Phoenix doesn't go to court with Edgeworth, maybe he can't stand being there while not being a lawyer, maybe he forgot he wasn't an attorney once and got kicked out for yelling out an objection, it doesn't matter, Trucy gets to be Edgeworths weirdgirl assistant and Phoenix is stuck investigating with Franziska and they are the worst people to keep each other out of trouble. We're talking about 'guy who ran across a burning bridge' and 'woman who got shot in the shoulder and still managed to get to court eventually' they are an unstoppable duo when they find something they can both get behind.
If anyone can slowly get Franziska to loosen up and learn to embrace the childhood that she lost, it would be Phoenix. I mean, this girl passed the bar at like 13 there was no way she had time to binge she-ra and check out books on drawing horses from the library. He would convince her to get a cat who hangs out in a window backpack that she can carry around during her travels because it turns out that her life is kinda lonely and she totally seems like the cat lesbian type. She is also allergic to cats so she has to get a sphinx or a devon rex or just the most gargoyle/ golbin looking creature to walk on this earth. That just seems like her vibe.
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destinyandcoins · 2 years
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lmao i know it’s 2 seasons later but it just occurred to me: what if, at the beginning of s1, instead of deciding his funeral was the best way to get everyone back in one place, reginald decided to have a wedding instead
not only do we get the entertaining side-plot of this poor person reginald has bribed/blackmailed/begged to marry him For The Con, but the only reason any of the kids show up is because they got a wedding invite and immediately went “oh now this i gotta see”
#the episode is titled ''we only see each other at WEDDINGS and FUNERALS''#i'm just saying it could have gone the other way#the umbrella academy#half the kids are there to check in with their new stepparent and make sure they're there of their own free will#''idk what he told you but you don't have to do this. say the word and i'll get you out of here''#''no i promise i. definitely....want to...be here :) :) ''#i can't decide if it's funnier if five knew because time travel and he's already had time to adjust to this concept#so is perfectly polite and accommodating if slightly confused because the personality he built for them in his head isn't accurate#while the rest of them are going through the 5 stages of grief over discovering their dad is capable of romance#or if through some time fuckery five came from a timeline where he saw the news that reginald is dead#and then drops into the timeline in the middle of a fucking wedding and is COMPLETELY blindsided by this#but doesn't have time to deal with this shit#somehow THIS is the timeline where they do manage to prevent the apocalypse#and at the end of everything the new stepparent divorces the fuck out of reginald ASAP because holy shit they were not paid enough for this#and yet they're like ''well i did what you asked (even if you didn't mention the LOOMING APOCALYPSE)#but holy shit i'm taking these kids in the divorce because what the fuck dude what the FUCK. idc if they're all adults#they need a better family and now i'm obligated to be that for them''#and reginald was playing fast and loose because of the LOOMING APOCALYPSE and didn't sign a prenup#so the new stepparent gets the academy (the property AND the actual kids) and reginald has to move out and live on the streets#tua meta
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front-facing-pokemon · 8 months
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revvethasmythh · 1 month
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🔥
I think New Adult is a completely unnecessary literary genre and I've been watching people on social media essentially try to "make fetch happen" with this age range for almost a decade now and it hasn't made any more sense as time has gone on. Frankly, if you're writing a character who is is 20+ years old, they should be in Adult. I don't think we need to create any more additional sub-categories for age ranges than what already exists: Children's, Middle Grade, YA, and Adult is perfectly fine. The age range NA represents is just 23-year-old teenagers. It's just YA with sex. Grow up and read adult books
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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
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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:
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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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inkskinned · 3 months
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crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.
i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.
in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.
i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.
i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.
plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.
the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.
we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.
i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.
a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.
today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.
loved beyond thinking.
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blinkpen · 2 months
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whu,
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just now caught up on the. the that. jesus christ. as someone who was like, Around during the mass nuking of blm and ferguson related tags and blogs, i'm not, SURPRISED, at it happening, this isn't the first incidence by any means, this is a member of the choir of "the hellsite is used by necessity, fuck the racist transphobic brand-brained management and their refusal to ban literal nazis, if you gave them money for a fun widdle badge i have in fact judged you at least a little bit" you're preaching to
though "the turbo-transmisogynist ceo hopped platforms and logged into his accounts on other websites just to keep harassing and being a sore winner at women he felt he hadn't gotten enough of one over on yet??? in front of everybody??? like a jackass??? like a huge fucking piece of shit bigot jackass???" is certainly.
well it certainly. is.
trans women i love you and this is such an obvious thing to say but you deserve to use social media websites at the same clip as anyone else without being perpetually forced to dance on a cliff's edge above an ocean of internet harassment where you get cut off from community and support you need in this increasingly isolated hellworld, and it pains me greatly that you don't get that!
i know i don't accomplish much by stating the obvious but! it bears repeating! even if the skeletons running this website is hostile, each of us can still do the most we can to compensate and work to make the world better for you because you deserve that, you deserve that effort.
the first step is watching the matt man get thwapped with a newspaper by whoever has to deal with the legal fallout of this because Hopefully, there will be accountability? i won't patronize by being like oh This is Definitely how the Bad Man finally gets struck by All the consequence that feels appropriate in the "if life was like a movie" sense bc you and i have both been around the block enough times to know how rarely that actually happens but
like i said, those awful odds are something the rest of us need to work and fight to square up and make not awful anymore, and frankly, prevent situations where accountability even has to be pursued from happening in the first place, by fostering a baseline safe and accepting atmosphere where. yknow. treating you this way isn't even going to cross someone's mind, because why should it?
it shouldn't! there's no reason for it!
i'm rambling, i don't really know how to wrap this up or make it deep or worded extra good or anything, just. yeah. if you are transfem and reading this, i love you, i will never stop demanding the world to be kinder to you, that the lgbt community to be kinder to you, you belong in it! you should be safe and loved and able to rest and party and yell and cry and react and feel and be all that you are here, and anywhere you go!
you were born on this world! by definition, you belong on the face of it, as visible and varied as you see fit, as anyone else! so you should get to live like it! gesticulates frantically bc again i don't know how to end this train of thought! i love you!
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nekojaf · 3 months
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Okay but I find it hilarious if I go into VR chat with the Eclipse model and go to the old daycare world I immediately start getting beaten to death by everyone in the room.
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chirpsythismorning · 10 months
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When you tell a milkvan that they used the score Eulogy (a song they notably use when a character is mourning a beloved characters' death) during Mike and El's fight in s4.
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feluka · 29 days
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GPS lady on google maps in this country is like:
turn left at a̷̢͔̬̓̈́̿͐b̸̡̖͗̅̅̌a̵̩̘̳̾͝a̸̢̛͓̒̾̕s̵̛̲l̸̠̟̇à̸̰q̸̖̲̜͑͌̚̕ͅǎ̴̜a̷͙͂d̵̗̘͛͝ street 😊
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