#evo kitty is more happy go lucky & more of a kid for sure .

[with-pryde]

spot the difference:  excalibur kitty pryde v. evolution kitty pryde

𝙴𝚇𝙲𝙰𝙻𝙸𝙱𝚄𝚁:

academics.  in junior high (so grades 7-9, approx. ages 12-14), she was enrolled in college courses and was so ahead of her peers that she barely had anything to do with them, and rarely ever saw them.  like a lot of gifted kids, she sees herself as “better” than her peers and she can be quick to alienate kids her own age, and isn’t entirely sure how to socialise with them.  she got off on the wrong foot with the new mutants even before getting put on their team by calling them babies, despite the fact that some of them were older than she was.  problem was, she had more experience and was smarter, thus, age didn’t factor into her assessment.

the two exceptions to this rule are her two roommates, illyana and rachel, but it should be noted that, as roommates, both spent a lot of time with her to break these barriers.  and both had such horrific childhoods, illyana in limbo and rachel as a hound in the future, that they were forced to grow up and mature faster than kids their age.  and, thus, like kitty, they both also don’t really have much of a connection / fit in well with their peers (unless they work at it), so they’re more exception cases than the norm for kitty re: friends her age (though rachel IS maybe a few years older than her anyway).

aggression.  as noted above, kitty had very little to do with her peers and, after joining the x-men at 13 (and a half), her main influences were those she served on the team with (namely ororo, colossus, kurt, logan and the professor, with scott and psylocke also featuring).  of those, she forged strong bonds with kurt, logan and ororo, but she takes after wolverine a lot, even using his phrase bub when in a bad mood.  she’s pretty quick to resort to violence, though she’s of course mindful of who she’s up against.  the goal is to hurt, not kill (though when she’s mad she often thinks about how good it would be to kill them).  granted, she doesn’t understand wolverine’s “berserker rages”, and isn’t much like that, until she joins excalibur and Sees Some ShitTM that makes her understand what whole consuming hate and rage feels like. 

also worth noting during this time she’s dealing with a lot, including loss of those who were like family and chronic pain, but even so she has a pretty short fuse and will punch you in the face.  or, in the case of a friend, will have something smart and sarcastic to say.  also kitty is very much the type of person where, if she’s mad, she’s mad at the whole world and will unduly take her anger out on people who aren’t even remotely responsible for her misery.  she gets better about not yelling when she lashes out (she mostly drops that by excalibur), but she still lashes out with mean / sour comments or gets very snappish and snarly.

authority.  again, like logan, she doesn’t always take kindly to authority.  granted, she does tend to like her teachers and likes to receive praise from them, but she will also yell at the authority figures in her life without batting an eye.  she will also go against their wishes, too, like facing threats on her own to prove she belongs on the x-men main team instead of the new mutants.

colour palate.  she loves colours, mostly jewel tones and saturated colours.  blues and hot pinks and creams.  when she wears her cream sweaters, however, she’ll accent it with colours like red elsewhere.  while she used to wear the most eye-catching bedazzled outfits, she’s mainly toned it back to a bright splash of colour in her outfit, usually her shirt.  her clothes also favour comfort over style and attraction, and the one time she tries skinny jeans she hates them.

computing.  she’s a computing genius and sometimes jokingly calls herself the goddess of computers, with every right.  she especially excels at hardware, and can make a stunning array of gadgets, including a handheld non-telepathic cerebro.  she can also programme, however, one of her best friends, doug ramsey, a mutant gifted with an ability in language (including machine languages), he could often take her most mediocre efforts and make it work amazingly well and, often, handled a lot of the code and programming.  they did work together and she learned a lot from him.... but she also relied on him a lot, too, and so when it comes to software and programming, she’s not as strong as her evo counterpart for it.  

confidence.  in the toilet.  again, because she has little contact with kids her age and looks down on those her age, kitty pryde tends to crush on older people who are out of her league age-wise.  they don’t really pay attention to her, at least, not in a romantic way (as it should be), but she tends to take this as rejection of who she is.  her roommates, illyana and rachel, too, are very good looking and tend to get a lot of attention that she doesn’t, and so kitty goes through her younger years believing she’s not very attractive.  she’s also incredibly self-critical and just.  doesn’t have much self-confidence outside of her ability to beat people up.

cussing.  she doesn’t outright cuss, but instead uses words like flamin’ and devil.  it doesn’t sound bad nowadays, but i’d say it’s like the equivalent of crap, and she’s constantly reprimanded for her inappropriate language when she uses these terms.

demeanour.  when she first arrives to the x-men, she’s bubbly and cheerful, if a little introverted.  by the time excalibur rolls around, she’s travelled to space, across galaxies, faced gods and aliens and her worst fears ten times over.  excalibur forms, in large part, because the x-men are dead.  she also has no real way of dealing with and working through all the trauma.  as such, she’s more serious when excalibur rolls around or, at least, knows when to get serious.  she’s still quippy but more measured and, again, she has a short fuse, a problem that’s only exacerbated by sharing a small living space with the whole the excalibur team.

music taste.  kitty absolutely had her boy-band phase, and loved dazzler (sidenote, it’s because of dazzler she wanted to wear the roller skates in her first costume) however, by excalibur, she’s refining her taste.  she still likes music she can dance to, however, her favourite band, cat’s laughing, is one whose lead singer is also kitty’s favourite writer.  it’s more refined, with good lyrics and writing.  think kind of like hozier lyrics but with more of a danceable beat.  she also likes big band music and jazz from her dancing days, music that’s old for her even then.  the key is danceability, though.

personal style.  while she absolutely detests “preppies”, kitty pryde dresses like one when she leaves the house, with collared shirts under sweaters and full on suits being things she wears out.  often, she’ll pair her outfit with her black leather jacket, a prized possession, which often lends a bit of toughness to her otherwise preppy look.

at home, it’s usually it’s loose sweaters / shirts and leggings with her hair restrained in a ponytail, especially when she’s working on something.  she also wears glasses when tinkering.  as mentioned above, she always has a splash of colour somewhere, which applies to at home as equally as going out.

because this is the 80s-90s, when she dresses up (and even her costume), the outfit usually features poofy sleeves and/or very pointed and defined shoulder pads.

relationships.  as colossus and pete wisdom are not canon here, she hasn’t had a canon relationship, which also feeds into her insecurities and low self-confidence.  again, because she tends to have eyes for older guys and gals, relationships rarely pan out for her.  occasionally, however, someone her age catches her interest (in canon, part of her loved doug ramsey, for instance, because although he was her age, he, no pun intended, spoke her language) but, usually, she needs to be forced to see people her age.  like with larry, she was told by a teacher to dance with him at a school dance and only then did she find out he was pretty nice (that ended badly but the Concept applies).

teamwork.  kitty tends to do her own thing.  she can and does operate as part of a team, but she doesn’t always coordinate well with them.  she definitely starts out as more of a team player because she’s not equipped to handle situations on her own, and because she’s scared, but as she receives more training and her confidence in her abilities increases, she often thinks she can handle it on her own and grows more self-reliant.  it makes her more capable and better at devising plans, but sometimes it means she bites off more than she can chew.  as well, if she thinks she has something to prove, she’ll try and tough it out alone.

training.  she’s been possessed trained into a killer ninja by a master with a bone to pick with wolverine in a very traumatic milestone.  she hates to think about it, but the training did remain even when the “demon” did not.  she’s incredibly deadly, though she still hasn’t added the swords to her repertoire.  also, during the events of excalibur, her default state is to be phased, making her extremely difficult to target (barring her powers malfunctioning for whatever reason).

𝙴𝚅𝙾𝙻𝚄𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽:

academics.  kitty is taking advanced and college level classes and graduates a year early, however, unlike her excalibur counterpart, she’s not so far beyond her peers that she never sees or interacts with them.  at most she’s a year or two younger than those in her class and, in this verse, all of the x-men are teenagers meaning she spends a lot more time with people her age and is generally more social and more sociable.

aggression.  again, she’s got more social skills.  this translates to an increased understanding of those around her and her first tactic is to try to mediate and preserve social cohesion.  like her counterpart, she can and will stand up and say something if needed, and she will get into fights if needed, but it’s usually to protect a friend rather than herself and when there are no other routes for compromise (like when duncan takes away scott’s glasses and tries to get him kicked out of school, she shows up ready to brawl but, also, when duncan and his pals leave, she lets them, without pushing for a fight).  

while sometimes sarcastic, she’s also less sharp with her sarcasm.  for her, it’s less about hurting the other person and more about highlighting the situation whereas, in excalibur, her words hit much harder.  part of this, i think, is her social cohesion with her team; she’s more mindful of how her words can hurt and, therefore, doesn’t throw them around as quick or to be mean.  she also knows how to contain her anger better; she may be annoyed and grumbly, but she won’t be yelling at someone who isn’t responsible, only maybe venting if they’re willing to lend a listening ear.

authority.  again, like her excalibur counterpart, she thrives on praise from her teachers and authority figures in her life.  unlike her excalibur counterpart, she’s much less likely to go against them and usually only does when it’s a friend on the line.

colour palate.  kitty also favours colours here, but she wears a lot of pastels that her excalibur counterpart doesn’t really.  pastel pink, sherbert orange, pale lavender.  she does also wear some jewel tones (green, burgundy and purple), but her go-tos are the pastels.

computing.  she favours software to hardware, unlike her excalibur counterpart.  she has no doug ramsey to help in this show, so she has to develop and write her software on her own.  hardware-wise she’s not inept, training with the x-men gives her a strong base with it, but it’s not something she nurtures.  because she grows up in a more typical school setting, she still wants to have a sort of normal life, and working on hardware just isn’t it.  software is easier and, as she takes a computer class, she also meets people who are into it and she can connect to over the interest, namely in risty (mystique in disguise, but obviously she doesn’t know that) and arcade (yes, that arcade, though the show changed him considerably).

confidence.  because kitty tends to like guys (yes, guys, i’ll get into the heteronormativity piece in the relationships section, but that’s deliberate wording here) her own age and they’ve liked her back and she doesn’t have the same superiority complex (resulting in looking to older people outside her league and facing their rejection), kitty in evo has way more confidence than her comic counterpart.  of course, like any high school girl she has things she hates and she does find flaws in the mirror but, on the whole, she doesn’t feel ugly or less than compared to the other x-men the same way her comic counterpart does.  (if she does feel inept next to them, it’s mainly due to her inexperience, though that inspires her to do better and eventually goes away as she gets more settled into the life of being an x-man).

cussing.  no cussing.  heckin is about as bad as she gets.  granted, as she grows up she starts cursing more but, during her years in canon her language is pretty tame.  because this is the 90s / early 00s, she does say lame a lot which, while not a cuss word, isn’t good to say, but for different reasons (ableist and rude), but that’s a different thing.

demeanour.  she hasn’t quite had the same level of traumatic experiences as her excalibur counterpart and, moreover, they’re way more spaced out than they are in the comics so she’s pretty bubbly and upbeat throughout most of high school.  this changes a bit with the emergence of mutants and when the world hates them, she’ll sometimes get down about it, but, on the whole, her world tends to look up.  like her excalibur counterpart, things do eventually take a turn for the dark and in future verses she’s more measured and has lost some of this shine, but she definitely is upbeat for longer.  

music taste.  very, very pop heavy.  boy bands, britney spears, taylor swift, katy perry etc.  she’s not a jus.tin bie.ber fan but that’s about it in terms of restrictions.  as she gets older she branches out more, including into electroswing, but she’s more of a pop girl at heart.

personal style.  again, she tends to dress “preppier”, but 90s/00s style: so a collared shirt except it shows her midriff or capris and a cardigan but the shirt under her cardigan shows her midriff.  lots of midriff outfits (even her school dance dress was two pieces and showed some stomach) and collars (her costume even has like that business shirt collar thing going on).  she tends to favour comfort, too, but also pairs it with some style (like, platform sandals: comfy but also very in).  also plastic jewellery, chokers, etc.

relationships.  as she goes to school and has a lot of contact with her peers, she actually crushes on and dates people her own age in this show (and we love to see it).  granted, she kind of lets a lot of things slide in her first relationship that aren’t cool, something which informs her relationships going forward (in that, she realises they weren’t okay and isn’t going to take it in future ones), and her first relationship is very, no pun intended, rocky, with break ups and get togethers galore but.....it’s with someone her own age which, have i said how much we love to see it?  because kitty is in school in the 90s/00s, and felt the pressure to try and fit in for longer, she absolutely internalised some heteronormativity (in the comics, too, but she sheds that faster after leaving school so young and joining the x-men), and, while she looks at women, it’s very much in a “wow i love that outfit on her” or “wow how’d she get to look so pretty, i gotta ask for tips” way, and it takes her time to connect this to an interest in women, too so, generally, for her canon / high school years, she only really looks to guys/male presenting peers in a romantic way (or, that she connects to as romantic).

teamwork.  finally, she’s better about working in a team here, too.  partially because she doesn’t have the skills to be completely on her own (no ninja training til post canon) and partially because her team is all the same age and her friends both at school and at home, she’s more used to looking to them for support, especially scott.  something happens and her first instinct is to go to him and get his take on it.  sometimes she’ll still act on her own but, barring a time crunch or someone really instantly in danger, she favours waiting for the team.

#tbt . #long post / #thought i'd sit down & finally compare & contrast . #evo kitty is more happy go lucky & more of a kid for sure . #exc kitty grows up faster & wasn't ever a normal kid to begin with . & that's really affected her in noticeable ways . #you can really see it in the issues she goes to the girl's school in excalibur . like she's very different from her peers & isn't good #with connecting w them ( unless it's her fist to their face ) . & same w the new mutants . #it's a mission & a need to get something done that brings her together w her peers & while that bond works & makes them friends . #w/o it . she has no common ground . unlike evo kitty who is an expert at finding common ground & is friends w people in her classes . #& helps even throw a party & is very social in general . #ANYWAYS . #death ment / #ask to tag /