Oct 6, 2025
the concept of Sevika wearing oxidised silver jewelry that matches the color of her eyes
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pls tell me y'all see the vision
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Brazil
seen from China
seen from Ukraine
seen from Russia
seen from Ukraine
seen from Sweden
seen from Thailand
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from Ukraine
the concept of Sevika wearing oxidised silver jewelry that matches the color of her eyes
Like?
pls tell me y'all see the vision
As a desi person yourself what is the most anyoing tropes you have
Pa: im asking you this if i in the future write a desi and ask you since your desi so best person to ask :)
i'll kill two birds with one stone and answer your second question in this post as well!
so there's still not a lot of desi representation in media but here's some stereotypes that i'm not a fan of.
the broken english i.e. Baljeet from Phineas and Ferb. i love Phineas and Ferb, it was my favorite cartoon growing up. but even back then, i felt like Baljeet's indian accent was exaggerated for comedic effect.
there's nothing wrong with a character not being super fluent in english but definitely don't use it as a comedic trope. and of course, there are plenty of desi people who speak english well, most of us are taught english in school at a very young age.
but this was an older trope that has since gotten less popular but i think a lot of authors later tried to overcorrect this by making their desi characters completely westernized. giving them english names, perfect american accents and not addressing their ethnicity or culture beyond a random joke about strict parents or something.
i know that a lot of people are born and raised in the US and thus, are effectively "more american" than whatever their ethnicity is, but i would like to see more POC characters who aren't american. i'd like to see desi characters who don't have "first name english, last name native", but instead characters who have names that are "hard to pronounce" for non-indians, who wear indian clothes and eat Indian food, and are in touch with their culture.
one trope relating to this that i've seen a lot is the desi character who has an ethnic name, but goes by a more "western" nickname. for example, Tamanna but Tam/Tammy for short. or Siddharth, but Sid for short. and most of the time, every other character refers to this character by their western nickname only, because it's easier to say and more familiar. it really hammers home this whitewashing of POC characters.
so if you ask me, don't do that. if your character's name is too long, you can still give them nicknames that aren't westernized, like Devi short for Devika or Krish short for Krishna.
also, coming back to the strict parents bit, this is generally a thing with any asian characters but there are so many instances of parental abuse or helicopter parenting that's played off as a joke.
it is true that india, as well as a lot of other asian countries, have an unfortunate reputation of having overly strict or controlling parents or normalizing abuse. but it doesn't really help to make every asian character fall into this archetype, especially if you're not gonna comment on it and instead turn it into a quirky one-liner.
i can't count the number of times i've rolled my eyes at some desi character casually saying "lmao my mother would murder me if i even looked at a guy" and everyone else just laughing it off or at best, exchanging weird looks and then moving on.
as to your second question, i think just do some research on whatever culture you're going to write about. indians are not a monolith. there's a lot of different cultures, traditions, religions and other stuff that separates each state.
don't write us as a stereotype but also, don't overly westernize your desi characters. and this applies to any POC, although i can't speak for everyone. even if you have a POC character that is born and raised in the west, it would be more interesting to have them maybe reconnect with their culture rather than just create a white person and then make them POC.
my biggest advice to writing any character that is not from your own experience is to do proper research, try and speak to people who have experience on the matter and just be aware of any stereotypes or caricature that exist.
So, I've wrote chapter 1 of NewStar project, I still don't know what to name it though.
Also this chapter involves kidnapping, name calling, creepy behavior (though it is low, MC doesn't like it and is talking about it a lot), and some horror and synesthesia elements.
𓏏𓏏𓏏Chapter-1𓏏𓏏𓏏
Tell me: Is He Gay or In a Sherwani?
Imposition of western norms in fandom analysis of Asian characters
With the rising popularity of Indian cinema sparked by the recent success of RRR on international platforms as well as the easy availability of multiple streaming services, in addition to the appearance of South Asian characters in prominent roles in western, particularly US media, I've begun to see some concerning 'analysis' posts online. So I thought I'd address something I found common in most of these takes.
Guys, characterizing your blorbos as queer is great and all, love it, but you're making a fundamental mistake by making their clothing choices the foundation for your queer headcanons, especially when it comes to male characters. Do not apply existing western cultural ideas regarding male clothing onto South Asian characters and their dressing please.
The vast majority of the clothes being used by people in various online spaces as 'evidence' of a character being queer(gay or bi mostly) are just normal Indian clothing for men, like daily wear. A top being pink or a character's wardrobe being mostly pastel means absolutely nothing...cos Indian clothing tends to be colourful in general and the tendency to ascribe colours masculine and feminine qualities is considerably less in the subcontinent. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but generally not a concern.
There's also this pervasive idea that colourful clothing = flamboyance = queer and that itself is something many people have already pointed as a deeply flawed way of thinking and a stereotype. Furthermore, even if you do lean into the archetype of queer men being flamboyant, subscribing to the 'stereotypes exist for a reason don't they?' school of thought perhaps, there's also the fact that ideas of what is considered flamboyant change dramatically across different cultures. What is 'flamboyant' for someone might just be normal for others. Like maybe pink or purple or yellow might be considered too much, unmanly, emasculating etc in the US or something but they're just perfectly normal colours for men to wear in many, many cultures.
It's the 'Is he Gay or European?' principle. Did you characterize this Indian character (or any South Asian character really) as queer because of their canonical behaviour and portrayal, or did you just see their clothing and decide they're queer because being well groomed and having a colourful wardrobe is a character trait you exclusively ascribe to being queer?
Like guys, I like Chaipunk like the rest of you, but if you consider Pavitr queer just because his costume is a lot fancier than the others' (An actual take I've seen multiple times) without taking into account his cultural background....¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Let me make this clear, I don't think people need a ten page analysis to imagine their fave as queer. Headcanoning a character as queer can have any reason ranging from 'I said so and so it is' to 'this is my light character analysis that makes a masters thesis look shabby' and they're all valid and an integral part of the fandom experience. What I am annoyed at are these so-called 'well-researched' theories that did not make the slightest effort to look into South Asian culture and simply transposed their western bias onto Indian media and confidently make flat out wrong judgements and mislead other people. Clothing based sexual identity determinism is the least of it. That I can at least understand through the lens of a habitual process built through years of analyzing crumbs of queer representation available only through queer coded characters and symbolism such as clothing choices being the only way to see an aspect of yourself portrayed in an aggressively heteronormative media ecosystem. I do that too, because media is tragically heteronormative everywhere. But the rest? Its just straight up misinformation and misrepresentation touted as truth.
Its the same with relationships between men. There are plenty of cultures where skinship between men is not unusual and dynamics and nuances tend to be vastly different from western representations of male friendships. In xianxia and wuxia fandoms you can see this same problem in a different font when outsiders, most often the western side of the fandom, try to apply their own standards and morals onto the original work and try to interpret it through a lens it was never supposed to be interpreted through in the first place, except maybe for comparative analysis. This practice itself isn't a major problem, its natural for people to apply what is familiar to them to try and understand something new. But when this is also accompanied by them foisting their personal interpretation and analysis as the 'correct' one and trying to impose it on the fandom as a whole, it escalates into a powder keg situation as you can imagine.
Again, not saying that western parts of fandoms are the root of all evil or anything like that, gods know how toxic netizens can be. But in this specific situation, where people try to impose western ideals on to non-western content and assumes the universalism of their own principles and value systems? Indeed an issue to be addressed.
Current WIP....
Details
How to write an Indian Character by an Indian person.
Disclaimer: when i say Indian, I don’t mean native Indian. I mean INDIAN INDIAN. You know from that large asian country that’s shaped like a kite? Yeah, that Indian.
1. India is a large country not all Indians are Hindu.
2. Not all Indians are vegetarian.
3. Not all Indians are math wizards.
4. Not all Indian people are nerds who don’t know how to date.
5. Not all Indian people are straight and cis. (if you’re writing about Hijra or Kinner character then please do a lot of research into their culture before you write them, Hijras and Kinners are often misrepresented in Indian society to be evil and such other things)
6. We don’t eat curry, curry is not a real thing. You have to be more specific than just curry. Like please for the love of god.
7. The name of the language of India is Hindi, not Indian.
8. India has many other languages other than Hindi. Eg. Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, Marathi and many households prefer to talk in their native state/city languages rather than Hindi.
9. Indian cuisines vary from region to region. So not everyone in India likes to eat the same thing. North Indian and South Indian cuisines are very different from each other.
10. Not all Indians celebrate the same festivals but that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy them all.
11. Many people’s Indian accents are a lot more subtle than you think.
12. Different regions in India have different cultural clothing.
13. Not all Indian people look like your typical brown skin black hair, northeast Indians more often than not have features very similar to Chinese people. (But remember when you write northeastern Indian characters, many of them are discriminated against in mainland India and some of them don’t really believe themselves to be Indian)
14. Most Indian don’t use toilet paper (look into this yourself, I’m not gonna go any further)
15. Indian English is more similar to British English than American. Indian English has its own slang too. Some Indian English things to know: - Duffer = slang for stupid - We a lot of the times have problems differentiating between the pronunciation of V and W. - A lot of people pronounce the G in gesture how you pronounce the G in Grapes instead of pronouncing it like a J - We say rubber not eraser. - Schedule is pronounced Shehdule not Skedual. - Mother promise is a way of saying pinky promise. - Eating my brain means you’re irritating. Eg. “Stop eating my brain” which means stop irritating me. - Senti is slang for sentimental - Dickey refers to the boot of the car (please don’t ask) - Cheatercock is a person who cheated in a test, or an exam or did something to gain advantage in life (not a cheater as in in the romantic/sexual sense)
16. We have a tendency of saying yaar or na after things. Even when we text.
17. ‘Are yaar’ is an expression that can have multiple meanings depending on the context you use it in. But it usually is a saying of exasperation.
Indian characters can be very hard to write depending on which religion, region, gender, sexuality you choose for them to be. India is a large country, when writing Indian characters, remember that this is the second largest population in the entire world, not all Indian characters are the same, especially the ones you see these days in mainstream western media.
Ramadan kareem !!
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ID in alt text and under the cut
... Don’t get me wrong, I love Kamala Khan and Iman Vellani, but the first episode (at least) wasn’t the extremely revolutionary piece of desi immigrant media it seems to be. Of course, there is a significant improvement in where the brown girl stands in the story and it’s definitely a stepping stone in representation... I’m also not saying desi girls shouldn’t love the show. I’m saying that we cannot ignore some things about the show.
I don’t pretend to know everything about Muslim households or immigrant culture, but Ms. Marvel still subtly plays into the same tropes that we’re tired of, ie:
The brown girl is tired of her repressive, over-traditional family.
She needs to go to a party.
The parents are always very embarrassingly desi.
Her white friend is her only relief from this.
This along with several other things that are pointed out by Pakistani/ Muslim tumblrs, are very telling of how the show is repeatedly remolded to look more palatable to white people.
Again, I love Iman Vellani, but the rate at which characters of color (Storm, American Chavez, Wanda, etc.) just get lightened up on screen despite clearly being canonically a shade darker -- follows the trend of colorism that people just want to ignore. I’m tired of feeling obliged to digest it every time I want to see myself on screen.
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Ms. Marvel has the potential to be a wonderful show, but the ignorance reflected in so many things just makes the desi inside jokes seem like a weak attempt to appease brown viewers while keeping up the conceptual trope of completely changing up culturally important details of the story like they don’t matter.