#now that's how you do cultural

[raayllum]

the way in katolis lady justice wears a blindfold (i.e. covering the eyes) but for the sunfire elves the masks of the six horns tribunal cover everything but the eyes (because "my eyes for truth")

#tdp #the dragon prince #eye motif #now that's how you do cultural #worldbuilding #appreciation #mine #text post

[langernameohnebedeutung]

ngl, I'm beginning to take issue with how in conversations about anti-intellectualism almost automatically, the face of girls and women will be slapped on the problem.

#'all those tiktok girls who only like marvel films and' - why do you always say girls and women? are the guys filling opera halls instead? #'women in their mid 20s who still only read YA novels' okay sure that's an example and relevant discussions can be had #but it reminds me of the mocking tone in which people speak of 'chick-lit' to use women's interest as an indicator of lower value #while in fact women are reading more than men in EVERY single genre of fiction. Women are doing a lot of (often unpaid) labour #supporting libaries supporting theatres supporting cultural events #meanwhile there is a pretty big overlap between toxic masculinity and anti-intellectualism #(especially misogyny and homophobia) #especially when it comes to things like ballet or opera or musical or generally dance #in fact it is often the female investment in specific things that makes them less 'valuable' in general consciousness #for thousands of years the theatre was well-respected and a high form of art - and now it's a 'wife-thing' #the father who will teach his son that theatre and dance are for girls - how is that never an example for anti-intellectualism

[comradekarin]

barbz are so fucking stupid it makes me sick. y’all doxxed, harassed and threatened a tik toker for being the one to TELL THE TRUTH about nicki, and use the sarcastic “so family is off limits” comment as if that’s cute? doing a fabulous read on nicki “cokehead” minaj defending and endorsing her rapist, pedophilic husband and brother and surrounding herself with violent men while simultaneously degrading women are the same as a sixteen year old saying her opinion online? the barbz getting other accounts banned/doxxed who speak out against her? leaking megan’s mother’s gravesite? making dehumanizing edits and disgracing megan’s character (and nicki liking and reposting these comments as well)? nicki minaj is a 41 year old grown ass multimillionaire woman, please stop excusing her childish and dangerous ass behavior because of how she grew up. even the insinuation that she doesn’t know any better because of her upbringing is also an extremely disgusting thing to say. her long ass incoherent rants on twitter are not “iconic”, it’s EMBARRASSING.

nicki loves to play villain and victim when it suits her. you’d think her defense of her husband and brother would be the line drawn for people, but it’s treated as something to bypass and ignore and “not consider as a fan of the music”. nicki is NOT your friend. she is NOT your family. parasocial relationships with celebrities who will never know you are dangerous. it’s one thing to be fan, it’s another to blindly follow, support, and justify anything your fav does. if you can excuse the disgusting actions of one, that means you have never stood for the principals and morals you claim to have. fuck, some of y’all must be doing lines with her cuz the amount of delusion, hate, and ignorance that so many barbz exude needs to be studied. do better.

#nicki minaj #megan thee stallion #especially for them because y’all pissing me off #how STUPID and in someone’s ass can you BE? get a LIFE #like this isn’t even beef Nicki is just spiraling rn and showing her colors YET AGAIN #stan culture is so dangerous #rarely do I do long posts like this that aren’t shit posty but I have to now

[bonefall]

If you’ve already answered this then no worries, but what would the typical clan cat lifespan be then (assuming they don’t die prematurely from injury/illness). Just curious as to how many generations have passed since the clan’s founding in the 80 or so years.

Clan cat lifespans can be pretty variable! They're considered senior warriors at 5, but if all works out their lifespan is often 16 years. Kittens usually enter the picture for a parent who is 2 to 8 years old, but they COULD have them anywhere between 1 to 15.

Clan cats play less attention to raw age than to EXPERIENCE, though. It is socially discouraged for a fresh warrior to become a parent, and you are NOT an adult until you're out of apprenticeship. They see age like this;

Child: Less than 6 full moons SEEN. If a kitten's eyes were not opened when the first moon of their life passed over them, that is not a month they were alive.

Adolescent: The amount of time you are an apprentice. Flamepaw was considered a child while his sister was an adult.

Young Adult: The first full year out of apprenticeship, when you've handled a full year on your own. A warrior is only eligible for an apprentice after this length of time, so by extension a cat COULD be a mentor around age 2 (BUT that's considered young. 3 is a better bet.)

Adulthood is even more variable, because you're usually not considered "aged" until you've had an apprentice or a litter and you're around 5 years old. Without either of those things, you often won't be considered a "senior warrior" until you're as old as 8.

So to answer your question directly, you can comfortably estimate a new crop of warriors about every 5 years, and full population turnover every 15. Between the numbers, 8 is a good estimation of how long it takes for a generation to pass

(Though I'm more partial to historic events and time periods than crunching numbers like that)

Elders can hang on for a LOOONG time though-- One-eye over in ThunderClan was a personal friend of Pinestar and witnessed the Crusades before passing away at the tender age of 20-something.

#clan culture #better bones au #Age #It's good to remember that population isn't like salmon who die when they have kids #Gen X Millenials Z and Alpha are all coexisting right now #And imo the distinctions between the generations have much more to do with what we grew up with #I'm a lot more fond of the benchmark ''do you remember a time before 9/11'' to separate Millenials and Z for example #Rather than the imo silly division of the year 2k #One of those is much more meaningful to how you developed as a person than the other imo #A SECOND TREE HAS HIT THE RIPPLESTAR

[uncanny-tranny]

Something I realized (which was obvious to me subconsciously) is that... The family that vehemently didn't accept me when I first came out but now do accept me are still the same family that I am most unwilling to be open about things I feel protective over.

I remember that my dad reacted so poorly, not to my coming out, but to my transition specifically that my therapist was the one to ask if I wanted to put it on my file that I wanted nothing to ever be shared with him about my health after I broke down multiple times due to my anxiety that I would never transition. While there are and were protections for me, I was incredibly fearful at the time because I was a minor, and I was so worried that he would have prevented my transition that I couldn't have said for certain what (if any) lengths he would have gone to to prevent that.

He's grown a lot as a person, and made some commendable strides. But he didn't find out from me when I medically transitioned the second I turned eighteen, and I think that's among the things that truly made him realize the scope of the issue.

I'm not here to guilt trip parents, guardians, or other members responsible for the care of the children or teens or young adults in their care.... but this is a cautionary tale. You aren't saving the people in your care when you do this, you simply reinforce an idea that you will never care for them, never want them as they are, would rather them be shoved away.

When you give people reasons to be secretive, they will behave secretively. When you give people reasons to doubt their safety around you, they will become sneaky, defensive, and withdrawn. When you give people reasons to doubt that you value their life, they will believe that you don't care if they live or not.

#queer #lgbt #lgbtq #ally advice #transphobia #transphobia tw #i always feel the need to preface that i have a rebuilt relationship with my dad specifically... #...but that my experiences with them have served to me in many ways to illustrate... well... what NOT to do if you are in his situation #i do still grieve that my relationship with him looks very scarred and that it took a long time to get to where he is now #but i recognize that in many ways this is a product of the world and culture we live in and that he lived in #in a world he grew up gay was used as a slur. would i expect that trans people would be treated better? #and he was responsible for how he reacted but also... it's nuanced as to why he reacted so poorly #and i want people to AVOID being like he did if they EVER want a decent relationship with the other person #i want this to be a cautionary tale and that my ending is unique. not all of us are even ABLE to repair a relationship that was THAT broken #some of us die trying. some of us never get closure. some of us are in active danger because of those reactions #and that's the more common reality i have found. most other queer people have no-contact with families who pulled the shit my dad had... #...and that's - frankly - a good idea in 99.9% of cases. i will never judge someone for the way they go about dealing with that #i'm just emphasizing that i am unique in the sense that i was able to somewhat repair that

[viasplat]

I typed up the Pentiment bibliography for my own use and thought I’d share it here too. In case anyone else is fixated enough on this game to embark on some light extra-curricular reading

I haven’t searched for every one of these books but a fair few can be found via one of the following: JSTOR / archive.org / pdfdrive.com / libgen + libgen.rocks; or respective websites for the journal articles.

List below the cut!

Beach, Alison I, Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria. Cambridge University Press, 2004

Berger, Jutta Maria. Die Geschichte der Gastfreundschaft im hochmittelalterlichen Mönchtum die Cistercienser. Akademie Verlag GmbH, 1999

Blickle, Peter. The Revolution of 1525. Translated by Thomas A. Brady, Jr. and H.C. Erik Midelfort. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985

Brady, Thomas A., Jr. “Imperial Destinies: A New Biography of the Emperor Maximilian I.” The Journal of Modern History, vol.62, no.2, 1990. pp. 298-314

Brandl, Rainer. “Art or Craft? Art and the Artist in Medieval Nuremberg.” Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg 1300-2550. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986

Byars, Jana L., “Prostitutes and Prostitution in Late Medieval Barcelona.” Masters Theses. Western Michigan University, 1997

Cashion, Debra Taylor. “The Art of Nikolaus Glockendon: Imitation and Originality in the Art of Renaissance Germany.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, vol.2, no.1-2, 2010

de Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. Phaidon Press Limited, 1986

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Translated by William Weaver. Mariner Books, 2014

Eco, Umberto. Baudolino. Translated by William Weave. Boston, Mariner Books, 2003

Fournier, Jacques. “The Inquisition Records of Jacques Fournier.” Translated by Nancy P. Stork, San Jose University, 2020

Geary, Patrick. “Humiliation of Saints.” In Saints and their cults: studies in religious sociology, folklore, and history. Edited by Stephen Wilson. Cambridge University Press, 1985. pp. 123-140

Harrington, Joel F. The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013

Hertzka, Gottfied and Wighard Strehlow. Große Hildegard-Apotheke. Christiana-Verlag, 2017

Hildegard von Bingen. Physica. Edited by Reiner Hildebrandt and Thomas Gloning. De Gruyter, 2010

Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. Translated by Barry Windeatt. Oxford University Press, 2015

Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others. Routledge, 2017

Kerr, Julie. Monastic Hospitality: The Benedictines in England, c.1070-c.1250. Boydell Press, 2007

Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden rites: a necromancer's manual of the fifteenth century. Sutton, 1997

Kümin, Beat and B. Ann Tlusty. The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe. Routledge, 2017

Ilner, Thomas, et al. The Economy of Dürnberg-Bei-Hallein: an Iron Age Salt-mining Centre in the Austrian Alps. The Antiquaries Journal, vol. 83, 2003. pp. 123-194

Làng, Benedek. Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008

Lindeman, Mary. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2010

Lowe, Kate. “'Representing' Africa: Ambassadors and Princes from Christian Africa to Renaissance Italy and Portugal, 1402-1608.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Sixth Series, vol. 17, pp. 101-128

Meyers, David. “Ritual, Confession, and Religion in Sixteenth-Century Germany.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 89, 1998. pp. 125-143

Murat, Zuleika. “Wall paintings through the ages: the medieval period (Italy, twelfth to fifteenth century).” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, vol. 12, no. 191. Springer, October 2021. pp. 1-27

Overty, Joanne Filippone. “The Cost of Doing Scribal Business: Prices of Manuscript Books in England, 1300-1483.” Book History 11, 2008. pp. 1-32

Page, Sophie. Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013

Park, Katharine. “The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 1994. pp. 1-33

Rebel, Hermann. Peasant Classes: The Bureaucratization of Property and Family Relations under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511-1636. Princeton University Press, 1983

Rublack, Ulinka. “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany.” Past & Present, vol. 150, no. 1, February 1996. pp. 84-110

Salvadore, Matteo. “The Ethiopian Age of Exploration: Prester John's Discovery of Europe, 1306-1458.” Journal of World History, vol. 21, no. 4, 2011. pp. 593 - 627

Sangster, Alan. “The Earliest Known Treatise on Double Entry Bookkeeping by Marino de Raphaeli”. The Accounting Historians Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, 2015. pp. 1-33.

Throop, Priscilla. Hildegard von Bingen's Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing. Healing Arts Press, 1998

Usher, Abbott Payson. “The Origins of Banking: The Primitive Bank of Deposit, 1200-1600.” The Economic History Review, vol. 4, no. 4, 1934. pp. 399-428

Waldman, Louis A. “Commissioning Art in Florence for Matthias Corvinus: The Painter and Agent Alexander Formoser and his Sons, Jacopo and Raffaello del Tedesco.” Italy and Hungary: Humanism and Art in the Early Renaissance. Edited by Péter Farbaky and Louis A. Waldman, Villa I Tatti, 2011. pp. 427-501

Wendt, Ulrich. Kultur und Jagd: ein Birschgang durch die Geschichte. G. Reimer, 1907

Whelan, Mark. “Taxes, Wagenburgs and a Nightingale: The Imperial Abbey of Ellwangen and the Hussite Wars, 1427-1435.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 72, no. 4, 2021, pp. 751-777.e

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2008

Yardeni, Ada. The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Paleography, Script Styles, Calligraphy & Design. Tyndale House Publishers, 2010

#pentiment #Pentiment bibliography #some of these books give me strong first-year undergrad vibes #even just seeing ulinka rublack’s name gives me semi-traumatic flashbacks to cultural history seminars #would I cope better with it now that I don’t have to write essays each week on the topic? #¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ #probs not tbh #also it probably would have been a lot faster if I could have pulled this list from game files somehow #but I do not know how to do that :))) #Anyway I hope this is of use to somebody at some point #I wish you all a very happy reading about the primitive deposit banking system everybody 😌

[gobstoppr]

hey guys am i allowed to say on main that i dont like metadad . am i gonna get beaten up for saying this.

guys i think we all took the term found family too literally and now everythings flattened into a boring nuclear family. guys can we stop. hello . is anybody there

#text #it was kinda charming at first but it feels like everytime i try to look at the mk tag its always the same shit . guys. guys. #we can do so much more w/ their dynamics than just dad and son ugh its so . ughhh. #every since i realized i was like . really really aroace. ive started to grow a bit of a distaste for shipping culture #this is relavant i swear. iwanna talk about metadede #like ok in fandoms right. theres often #the enforcement of specific roles onto characters for a simplified understanding of them for memes and drawing ideas #we want gay rep but we dont quite have it canonically so we make our queer headcanons seem more legit #by giving a char a same sex partner. ok easy we did it. gay people are real now #and we get awesome art and its wonderful bc people are wonderful #but its like . the relationships themselves feel flat a lot of the times. #metadede never seems to be about dedede. its about mk having a boyfriend. bc we need him to date someone. #and im not like . mad at anyone about this. i participated in it back in the day. but like. #ok so. gay hcs are the most popular in most fandom things bc its easy; hot; and sweet #but things like aro or ace hcs? its just. they. how can you depict that in a single framed drawing of a char?so theres none at all. #its not even that i actively hc chars aroace its jsut this is my world view; how i default to reading chars #maybe this rant in the tags is unrelated after all. #but idk. ive got lots of thoughts about things. #anyways as ceo of meta knigth im right about everything #i can talk more about metadad stuff specifically if people want

[gen-is-gone]

my for some reason unpopular opinion is that it's boring when Fitz remains unhinged levels of self-deluded and closeted actually. Why does he have to be doctor who's answer to dean winchester, huh? why would this man in his mid-thirties who has spent at least a decade traveling in time and space still have weird insane hangups about being attracted to dudes? why does that need to be the thing about the text that we all collectively think is worth taking at face value? it's boring and fucking depressing and honestly doesn't make sense when the future of humanity in doctor who is that bisexuality is the cultural default and completely unremarkable.

#like geez I don't think that making it to thirty+ years old and still being afraid and filled with self-hatred is funny actually #eighth doctor adventures #eighth doctor #fitz kreiner #megan whines into the empty abyss of cyberspace #it's also weird because this definitely wasn't the attitude in fandom ten years ago #my suspicion is that Steve Cole's confirmation that Fitz was always meant to be bi made people start taking the text literally #in a way folks didn't before when slash shipping culture was just used to reading against a text as a default #like I vaguely recall a post going around shortly after that was confirmed in 2019 #that brought up how Fitz being canonically bi meant that all his weird hangups couldn't be handwaved away now #because if fandom made him bi against canon then you could just ignore his weirder no homo moments #but if he was intentionally written as bi then he was also intentionally written as deeply closeted #and like. that's true. but also you can just do whatever the fuck you want with canon no matter what #and also like #sure many of the writers were writing him as queer intentionally #but like the writing in the EDAs is so inconsistent of course some people are going to write weird no homo crap #because those writers weren't comfortable with queerness even if Cole's intent was that Fitz was bi #like The Gallifrey Chronicles's whole thing with Fitz and Trix is one long lance parkin no homo moment #does that really matter more than textual evidence that he is attracted to men and knows this about himself? #like I just don't know how you reconcile 'Fitz will bend over backwards to pretend he's straight' with #'a consideration of his chances of [...] getting laid by the Doctor' #or for that matter 'with the Doctor it's the real thing' #or the really really heavy implication that he and Sasha had a one night stand in History 101 #or that he and George went on a date in Camera Obscura which led to Fitz being invited on the Siberia expedition in the first place #and again and I can't emphasize this enough: why is this the thing about 'canon' that is so worth keeping? #why is Fitz being depressing levels of in denial more fun than him being openly bi? #destielification of Eight/Fitz smh

[dykedvonte]

@gecko-in-a-can THIS ABSOLUTELY

Resentment is such a big part of Benny’s motives towards House, feeling he’s underserving to rule and shouldn’t have the right to keep the title of Vegas just because he claimed it first long ago. Say what you will, Benny puts the effort in, through honest and dishonest work albeit, but he puts in the effort. Not saying House didn’t but House had the luxury of having a lot of that effort done before the war and subordinates to do so after. House is untouchable, something everyone wants in the Mojave, if not for the power, but because of the security. House takes that for granted seeing how easy he thinks it is to buy people. Benny, a Mojave native, has to be irate about that seeing how he has seen the heights and slums of both lives.

Also with the AIs it’s so telling because in a lot of ways, Yes Man has more autonomy than House’s major personality securitrons. Yeah, Yes Man has to be helpful but he’s aware and able to be snarky and coy. Benny has an issue with not being listened to but that’s the only perimeter Yes Man needs to act on. He can’t condescend but lord you can tell when he wants to. House’s AIs serves specific and highly detailed functions but are confined to act in accordance. They are subservient to a T and are extensions of House while Yes Man really is a creation that adapts further, hence his desire for the assertive upgrade. Benny made something, or at least was okay with a helper, that can progress for itself. House made things that replicate or facilitate an era of the past and don’t hold the power to contest it.

#for all the focus on Vegas Vegas itself in the game is not discussed enough #like I want to know more about the families relationships with each other #how Tommy and swank really feel #a meeting with all the heads of the casinos must be a major cat fight let’s talk about how like fiends are just right outside???? #but let’s talk about the favoritism house has to the tops and how the other families must resent that only for the chairmen to be like #these high strung former warrior nomads cause they got big brother right on their asses cause boss man is his special boy #like no one but swank and the chairmen really complain about house in the strip so the chairmen have to have a unique perspective #but back to Benny and house it’s like a weird you owe me thing where house 100 believe Benny and the chairmen are beyond grateful and are #down to do whatever he says cause it’s like he controls your basic needs now and the culture of the boot riders is one of pride and honor #and by extension helping your own and houses capitalist ideology is alien and isolating to them socially #that it would be an insult because their relationship is already mutually beneficial and now your taking so much more that they are now #getting less than what house is giving #enough tag talking I should focus on another post but first i need to brainstorm #fallout new vegas #fallout #benny gecko #robert edwin house #mr house fnv #Benny fnv #rebloggin #gecko-in-a-can

[butwhatifidothis]

Will never forgive certain parts of the fandom for letting the idea of "Claude being confused over Hilda's willingness to die for him is a showing of how morally lacking he is" become an idea that's any kind of popular.

This man spent the first 15-16 years of his life having basically no friends and having everyone around him either trying to murder him outright for attributes about himself he had no control over or otherwise forced him to completely fend for himself against said attempts on his life (Parents of the Year), but he's supposed to just accept that he has someone willing to die protecting him? With that someone being a person who presented herself as someone who would never do exactly that (and who in fact genuinely believed that she would never do that)? After he'd told them to retreat if things got dicey?

His parents literally wouldn't even lift a finger to help stop people trying to murder their child - they told his ass to Get Gud or perish. But him being horrified and baffled that someone would die for him means he's a shitty person who never actually cared for anyone in Fodlan. What complete balderdash

#claude #claude (fire emblem) #claude von reigen #don't normally post in the main tags but omg this take is so ass #''Local Man Raised To Rely On Only Himself And Not Others For Self-Preservation Is Confused By Others' Willingness To Protect Him'' #some folks: clearly this is evidence he never REALLY cared #also ignore his culture that teaches him that retreating to fight later is better than dying in a fight now #that can't possibly have anything to do with anything no it must be that he just doesn't genuinely care #because that is completely congruent with how absolutely distraught he sounds as he's yelling in horror over her dying for him #(oh ENG!Claude if only you were allowed the same emotional range as JPN!Claude because holy SHIT the difference is staggering)

[demigod-of-the-agni]

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

[ciderjacks]

hey if u guys r sad about ofmd and want another show with gay people to watch you should consider watching Deadloch. It’s really good it’s really really good uh it might get a second season if the creators decide to do that.

if you watch good omens you’ll be able to watch Deadloch they’re on the same service. Uhhhh One of the actors from ofmd is there shes one half of the main duo (the other half is played by Kate Box who’s an amazing actor and Dulcie is now one of my fav characters ever) gets to wear an open Hawaiian shirt for like 3 of the 8 episodes which is a bonus. It’s extremely gay and it’s fun and beautifully written and no queer characters die and it’s satisfying and funny and Please watch it I’m begging you please watch itPLEASE

#ofmd #deadloch #PLEASEEEEEE please Im begging Im on my hands and my knees PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW #It’s not shy about being gay it practically opens with gay sex ok please pleaseee watch it #It’s got so many amazing characters every character is so well written it’s a detective satire that ends on a pretty openly anti cop note #The main characters work so well together and the actors have such good chemistry and the storytelling is so good and well done #Literally my only my singular criticism of the entire show is that I think the lighting in some scenes could be brighter so you can #Actually tell what’s going on bc it’s sort of hard to at certain points #THATS MY ONLY CRITICISM AT ALL ITS THAT GOOD #Ive watched it 10 times now I’m still finding new stuff and connecting things it hasn’t gotten old yet #It’s seriously like unironically a masterpiece of a show. I would like it just as much if everything else was the same but the characters #Were straight #Though given how much of it is tied to gay and specifically lesbian culture it would be sort of hard to do that LOL #but still. like hypothetically. If it was straight I would not like it any less I would still be just as crazy about it

[suckerforfluff]

is it fucked up that as a filipino i dont know any filipino mc streamers or filipino streamers in general? like the ones who actually stream in tagalog/bisaya/ilocano/ilonggo/whatever dialect???

like im so envious of the ppl who are like "so and so was my childhood im excited to see them in qsmp" and here i am like "wow filipino streamers huh can't wait to meet them ^_^"

#qsmp #i would also like to preface this post by saying im from the middle of mindanao and i spent all my life hating manila #motherfucking manila why do they always get all the conventions and concerts #most of the ppl from manila ive interacted with online/irl when they learn im from mindanao say 'wait you have internet?' fuck off fuck you #actually now that i think about it maybe i dont want filipinos on the qsmp our country is so fucked up it's like the tower of babel #like what if theyre out of touch rich kids or worse like what if theyre from manila? like i cant handle that #dapat yung laki sa hirap dapat yung probinsyano #coco martin for qsmp #payag ako na tagamanila kung laki sa hirap #ALSO WE HAVE SO MANY DIALECTS LIKE HOW DOES THIS EVEN WORK? #like are they only recruiting tagalog streamers or are there cebuanos and ilonggos too? maybe even maguindanaoans? im reaching #when q said he was researching a country with an interesting culture i hope it was us #pilipinas as a country is just a whole can of worms and it sure is interesting #i also spent most of my life hating spanish ppl for colonizing our country haha and now im learning spanish haha how ironic #actually no im like cellbit im learning mexican #hi mexican ppl did u know our countries are like colony twins #girl no one is reading this

[twinstxrs]

thinking about how gorgug + kristen perceive both their own deaths & each other’s, and how that impacts their relationship. bc i feel like freshman year kristen was too caught up in her newfound knowledge of the nature of her own god to truly clock & process gorgug’s internal revulsion of where he went after he died, & freshman year gorgug wasn’t familiar enough with the complexities of other people to truly lock onto the sorrow buried within the chaos of kristen’s upward/downward/sideways spiral until she was seemingly on the other side of it. & i wonder if they’ve ever really talked about it (unlikely), or if they’ve just cracked very few jokes that didn’t land and decided to never quite do the work & dig through that part of their relationship. but there’s a kinship there; kristen specifically singles out gorgug to tell him she died again, and gorgug apologizes that he wasn’t there with her this time. gorgug takes one of the finger bones off kristen’s newly/long-time decayed corpse to have an anchor to something in the world. despite the fact that they were in different places after death, having been together during it means everything.

anyways what i’m trying to say is i think they should talk about it.

#thinking WAY too hard about a comedy dnd show when half these moments are played for laughs #dimension 20 #fantasy high #kristen applebees #gorgug thistlespring #me & the bestie when we both die a horrible death at age 14 & don’t know how to talk about it #me & the bestie when you said you thought you went to hell & i called it embarassing due to the culture of religious shame i grew up with #me & the bestie when death transformed me loudly with reckless abandon & death stole something from you you’ll never speak about #me & the bestie when i focus so much on what i gained to avoid what i lost and you quietly internalize your loss & cannot find the gain #when i died i asked for knowledge. when you died you cried wordlessly. i do not know which one of us is more broken. #kristengorgug my repressed besties #ok i’m done now but if ally & zac ever played a scene like this seriously i’d lose my fucking mind fr #sorry if this is like indecipherable but after fhsy they’re so clearly the two most repressed bad kids & that fascinates me #(in my opinion) #fabian still up there in 3rd place tho boy u r GAYYY u like MENNNNN #btw if any of this is wrong shhhh i haven’t done my pre-fhjy rewatch yet this is all from memory

[hella1975]

all hate to tiktok for taking 'having a space to more openly and actively talk about different cultures' to mean 'cultures are NOT to be shared and we must be vigilantly defensive of our cultures for fear of appropriation, a word that can be applied to any multicultural interaction'. like of course cultural appropriation is a very real problem but ive seen with the access to global multicultural conversation that tiktok provides it's made people TERRIFIED to even interact with cultures other than their own for fear of 'doing it wrong'. like at some point you have to acknowledge that in the real world of the great outdoors, the majority of people are eager to SHARE their cultures. yes there are ignorant questions and biases but also... how do you think those things get unlearnt? i dont understand how deciding that multiculturalism is an elephant in the room instead of a normal thing that should just be talked about and lived with is supposed to benefit anyone? and kids on tiktok are CONVINCED that it's a time bomb of a conversation to have and therefore must be avoided at all costs but like. people generally LOVE their home and their culture and are PROUD of it and want to share it. how have we made it so that showing genuine interest and a desire to understand something so integral to a person's identity is now feared and borderline demonised?

#thinking about this a lot lately. thinking about how fun it was comparing cultural differences in america #thinking of how when i was homesick one thing i found a great comfort in was talking about my home #and how it differed and i really loved and appreciated it when people would ask me about england #in a way that they genuinely just wanted to learn about it and not to take the piss #thinking about how the kitchen at work has chefs from all over europe. we have an irish chef and a spanish chef and an italian chef #and one of the kps is from eastern europe (i havent actually been able to find out where yet) etc and the way they banter with each other #like usually chefs are Problematic bc their humour is VERY abrasive and usually offensive #but this is one instance where it's actually to their benefit bc they're so unafraid to ADDRESS THE FACT THEY HAVE DIFFERENT CULTURES #i feel like the tiktok gen are so petrified of even acknowledging other cultures let alone discussing them #that it's actually sending the conversation backwards. like how does hoarding your culture and pretending it's not there benefit anyone #LET ALONE YOU AND THE CULTURE IN QUESTION. idk it just baffles me a bit that something that started as people on tiktok #genuinely spreading information and talking about the BAD side of this where people DO culturally appropriate or invade spaces that arent #theirs has now become 'for fear of speaking bad about it we will not speak about it at all'. and they'll crucify you if you do. like what #even at uni my best mate is indian and she's too scared to join the sikh society on her own so i regularly go to the events with her #and im typically one of the handful (or the only) white non-sikh there and i get SO welcomed each time #like there's such a genuine excitement to share the culture with someone who is effectively a blank slate #and like yeah ill ask 'dumb' questions or i'll have different experiences (tried a samosa for the first time at one of these events #and the moment that info got out i had like five STRANGERS trying to give me different samosas to try and it was genuinely such #a laugh bc yes they were TEASING me bc 'how have you never had one' but they were also really eager to share MORE as a result) #ugh idk what im saying. i just think it's a shame to watch this happen in real time on the internet #when if people would just go outside and actually TALK to people from other cultures they'd realise 9 times out of 10 the interactions #are actually really really nice for BOTH parties. and actually refusing to talk about this stuff is long-term pretty fucking detrimental #and it also goes the other way!!! like imagine if i - citizen of colonisation motherland herself - didn't interact with other cultures #and didnt ask questions or hear their opinions on whatever shared history we have from THEIR POINT OF VIEW #imagine the kind of shit id be internalising bc i only hung out with other white british people. it wouldnt matter if i was doing it #to be woke or 'respect their culture'. it would still be fucking ignorant. like half my interactions with other cultures #see me as the butt of the joke bc of this like aforementioned irish chef at work VOCALLY slates the english all the time #but it's done in an environment where we're FRIENDS and it's poking fun at each other while still addressing a very serious history. like?? #idk if any of this is worded in a way that makes sense but yeah. i have thoughts #cant believe i got inspired to make an actually serious post bc of the CHEFS AT WORK. embarrassing. no one let them see this

[justanotherfanartist]

I think we as a fandom are collectively sleeping on Carolina being raised with Jewish holidays. dude can you imagine her being reintroduced to them once she’s with the reds and blues maybe cus they picked them up as a found-family sort of tradition because of church and they continue them when he’s gone. her getting to relive the sweet nostalgic parts of her childhood with her new family. can you imagine her coming in and seeing all the decorations and food she hasn’t seen in years (this is ofc assuming they didn’t really do holidays on the MOI) screaming and crying do you see it do you see my vision

#she needs something happy her childhood has caused her a lot of pain already #im having some banger matzah ball soup rn and it got me thinking cus this stuff is the definition of warm and comforting simple food #can you imagine Carolina having that again for the first time in years and remembering maybe when Church or Allison used to make it for her #and now it’s the reds and blues doing the same for her and keeping a part of her culture and family alive andjshlfbsldm #im not Jewish myself so I had to do a bit of research for this so if I got something wrong about how holidays and observers work #im very sorry feel free to correct me or add on #rvb #agent carolina