I really wish that more pre-reform/pre-surak fics leaned into cyberpunk instead of going for "shirtless men with spears". Like if I'm being honest, it feels like people sometimes turn vulcans into the "noble savage" trope. Which is, I cannot stress this enough, very weird. You're writing about spacemen and you're somehow managing to be racist against native people. And like. I don't think it's deliberate, and I'm aware that this conception of vulcans has been around for decades and that many people have just kind of picked it up by osmosis, but. Like. It's not great. It is, dare I say, a little bit problematic. It also isn't at all accurate to canon? People just made that up. Because Surak died in the 4th century, just about 2000 years before canon, and do you know what his cause of death was? Radiation poisoning. When they say, "vulcans were extremely violent pre-reform, and nearly wiped themselves out," they don't mean they were having tribal battles on the backs of sehlats or whatever. They mean they were having nuclear warfare.
