Siya

[verona2007]

It's always funny how Finnick realizes in the arena that Katniss really loves Peeta and that she wouldn't be of ANY help if he died

No one will ever be more stressed than him, a temporary single mother of two children who works multiple jobs trying to keep them both alive

[writersiya]

I often think about how similar Katniss is to both Arjun and Draupadi from the Mahabharata. They are from two completely different worlds and yet the similarities are unmissable if you know the lore

[writersiya]

Your inspiration as an author? In your genre and how's your neet prep going tt all the best>>

There are way too many inspirations as an author, but what inspires me the most is the real people around me—my family, friends, and even people I observe while travelling to Uni or just anywhere, public transport travelling can give you some of the best inspiration if you are observant.

I'm based outside of India, and actually in Australia. I'm not preparing for NEET but rather another exam that's meant to be given here, and am currently doing my undergraduate course,.

And thank you for the wishes anon

[writersiya]

Anon game for authors

1. What is the first book you ever tried to write and what was its name?

2. What do you love and hate about your own writing?

3. Who is your favourite character from your own book or from an epic you love?

4. What would you love to try next a new story, a genre, a specific idea burning in your mind?

5. Do you wish to publish your work and why or why not?

6. What is the scene or character in your book that makes you feel terrible the one that haunts you?

7. Who is your least favourite character from the epic and why do they unsettle you?

8. Leave a message, advice, or motivation for writers who want to start writing now or dare to publish in the mythological or historical genre.

Hi anon,

Absolutely love these questions so let me answer them:

1. I had never titled my first book ever, it was written in a notebook, back when I was 14 and was about a friend group navigating their life in a futuristic society. It was supposed to be a Slice of Life Drama of sorts, and I never got to complete it.

2. Love: The ability to write nuanced characters and especially focus on women and their experiences in epic and contemporary settings. I just love writing women and learning them as people on the go

Hate: I can't say hate, but I'm disappointed that I've not been able to explore diversity in my books yet. I'm still very much in my comfort zone, and that's something I hope to change from this year.

But if you need an absolute hate, then it's the inability to write a convincing description without cringing at them.

3. From my books: This is a difficult task, because that's like putting a mother on the spot and asking who's her favourite child.

a) Devika from The Tethers of Hope (wrote this under the pen name Sitara)

b) Anita Raichand from Vellichor (again under the pen name Sitara)

c) Nitya from Shattered Reflections (under the pen name Sitara)

d) Amrita Bharadwaj from the Aparachita Rajakanya Series

e) Dharini from the Manasvini Trilogy

f) Anagha from Manasvini Trilogy and Anagha: The Goddess's Teacher

g) Utpalini from Utpalini the Goddess Descends

h) Maithili from The Lost Queendom

From the epics: Sita from Valmiki Ramayana, Draupadi and Satyabhama from the Mahabharata, hands down. They are the women I truly look up to.

4. There are plenty of ideas I want to write, but to start off, I have a novella that's based on the Dyuta Sabha that happens in the Mahabharata narrated through Yudhishtir and Draupadi's POV. A Sahdev X OC Romance Drama (a time travel romance to be precise, with reincarnation tropes (Mahabharata)), and a retelling of the events surrounding the Syamantaka Mani and the marriages of Satyabhama and Jambavati to Krishna.

5. I would absolutely love to publish my works in the future, and I'm working on them. One of the reasons I've always wanted to publish is I have known the power of stories and story telling, it's an integral part of civilizations and this is my small contribution to spark curiosity and conversation for important themes and topics that must be discussed.

6. This scene is from The Lost Queendom, and it's the scene where Maithili realises that she is simply a myth and people in the distant future don't even know her name. It's a poignant scene as it's not only greif, but the unravelling of what happens with women's history and contribution in real time.

7. Karna from the Mahabharata unsettles me the most. Other than the obvious evil that many know about him, it's his behaviour with Yudhishtir on the 17th day that disgusted me the most when I read it. I'm not going to delve too much into it as it involves assault, but let's just say, there's no character as evil and as disgusting as him.

8. Write. There are no shortcuts, you're writing will be dragged through the mud, but like iron, it's molten and hot, and needs to be melded carefully. I would also say read in the genre you write, the good, the bad, the ugly, the phenomenal ones, read them all even if some of them get on your nerves, because that will help you see your craft and what you want to write and most importantly, what NOT to write.

The simplest advice I will give is: read like a writer and write like a reader.

[writersiya]

1. If we were villains or secret history by donna tart

2. Favourite food

3. What could you've been doing if not a writer

4. Warm colours shades or cold

5. Choose any academia apart from dark

6. One advice that you could give to your younger self

7. Tomboy or girl's girl

8 Your all time favorite novel or books

9.Topper or a average student

I love a fun quiz, and thank you for these anon;))

1. I've unfortunately not read either of them, but The Secret History is on my physical TBR, which I do hope I will be reading in July.

2. It's rice, thovve (basically dal tempered using coconut oil, mustard seeds, curry leaves, asafoetida (hing) and dried red chillies) and potoates that are fried in a coating of rice flour, red chilli and a little semolina.

3. The thing is I'm not just a writer. I'm currently a pre-med student and absolutely love doing both, and hope to one day lead researches that are focussed on paediatric neurosciences while also writing my novels.

4. Warm and bright colours any day, they bring life on even a long day and keep me going

5. I'm a very light and chaos academia person; absolutely find the little joys in learning, and also have a very chaotic workspace and mind

6. Never say never, and never underestimate the power of the arts in STEM. It's something I've learnt during my higher education, and stuck with me.

7. Depends on the situation. I'm mostly a girl's girl, but being a tomboy helps me get out of sticky situation if I need to.

8. This one's gonna be difficult but let me try; Macbeth by William Shakespeare, The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods, End of Story by Louise Swanson, Piglet by Lottie Hazell, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Choker Bali (I've read the translated version though) by Rabindranath Tagore, The Last Tiger by Brad and Julia Riew, whole of Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordon (I need to reread them, it's been a long time), Hunger Games (the trilogy and the prequels, all included) by Suzanne Collins, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series by Holly Jackson, The Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi.

That's to name a few that's on top of my head, I do have an extensive list though

9. I've mostly been an average student all my life

#anonasks #siya speaks #anon #answered

[writersiya]

Krishnavataram Is A Glorified Music Video Disguised as A Film

Honestly speaking, I wanted to root for this film. It looked beautiful, the music was soulful, and the actors were serving with their face cards (especially the women, I swear to god they deserved better written roles as their debut or route to fame). It had everything on its side when the trailer dropped—we were just disappointed when the first looks of a big-budget film dropped; it was the antithesis of that—bright, colourful, playing on familiar emotional ground, and a rare exploration of a Satyabhama-centric narrative.

Now, I'm aware that Krishnavataram Part 1: The Heart (Hridayam) (2026) is an adaptation of Satyabhama (2025) written by Ram Maori. I'm not going to comment on the book, as I've not read it. However, whatever opinion I form is based on the movie, my understanding of movies, and, most importantly, my understanding of the epic.

The review will include major spoilers, as it's a rant review. You've been warned; now proceed with caution.

The Good:

The actresses and music. That's it, that was the only good in this "film". The actresses, despite inconsistent styling (I'll get into it later) were beautiful onscreen. And a special mention for Nivaashiyani Krishnan: she was ethereal as Rukmini and perhaps one of the prettiest women I have seen onscreen.

Also, another good thing, ig, I've found my new crushes (yeah, not the men, I was busy looking at the girls with heart eyes).

The Problems:

This is going to be a long one, so buckle up.

The age-inappropriate casting:

I can't stress this enough. This is a huge problem because it detracts from the film's immersion. I swear to god, it did bug me, the Vrindavan sequences especially. Siddharth Gupta didn't even look like a teen, forget about a preteen or early teenager, the character would most probably be like. I think they wanted to go for Radha and Krishna being in their late teens (inaccurate, but whatever), and the visual difference between Radha (played by Sushmitha Bhat) and Krishna (played by Siddharth Gupta) was very visible; Sushmitha was convincing with some of her expressions and her styling that made her look like a teenager who was in her late teens, the naivety was visible, where as the same can't be said about Siddharth, it was too visible that he was an adult cosplaying a teenager and the styling too didn't do much. It was annoying to say the least, and also very distracting.

The Inaccurate and Inconsistent Styling Choices:

No, I'm not talking about just the "women did not wear blouses in that era". That's simply the start. It's the inconsistency that bugged me about the women in Dwaraka: you have Satyabhama (played by Sanskruti Jayana) dressed in flowy, dreamy lehengas, but then you have other women like Revati, Subhadra, and even Satyabhama's aunt dressed like they were extras in Bahubali. Like, the South Indian in me couldn't ignore the half-sarees and styling that I would find in a quintessential South Indian wedding; not that it's not beautiful or the women looked bad in them, it just did not make sense to have that kind of inconsistency.

I could have forgiven the anachronisms in the styling had there been consistency and an actual visual story behind it, which you don't get in the film. And just to reiterate, this is the same director who's behind shows like Siya Ke Ram and Devon Ke Dev Mahadev, and both of those shows too had anachronistic styling choices for women (blouses, net sarees, and the typical 2010s fashion choices were visible), yet there was consistency, and a story that was being unravelled visually. The costumes the actors wore revealed much about the characters without much being said. Cinema is a visual medium, and visuals and clothes do more than aesthetics in a film; they're an important part of character development, and tell the audience something that is absorbed subconsciously, let us sit with it because I don't want to just see pretty women, I want to see characters when I'm watching a film.

Also, can we learn to style men better in mythic fiction? What was that? Except for Siddharth, everyone else's styling was hard to remember, and all of them come from similar economic backgrounds within the story. We need to do better.

The weird placement of the music:

Don't get me wrong, the album of this film on its own is beautiful. The vocals really transport you to another world; in fact, I'm writing this review as I listen to the album (it's diabolical, as I don't have the nicest things to say beyond this). But the audience is treated like they are dumb and cannot grasp the complexities of the characters and their decisions unless you explain them through song and dance. It gets even weirder when you realise that it doesn't do much for the film, it neither reveals character nor moves the plot forward; instead, what it does is halt a non-existent plot. It takes away the very soul that was poured into making those very songs. It really irritated me that the songs were beautiful and soulful, but then they felt empty in the way they were used in the film.

Inconsistent Characterisations and Rushed Screenplay:

First off, there was barely a plot, and second, the inconsistency with which both Krishna and Satyabhama were characterised really bothered me. Now, I understand that the film wanted to focus on a specific aspect of Krishna's life, i.e., his love life, but that doesn't excuse the choppy characterisation of the main characters. Krishna is presented as an antaryami at the start, which, to be fair, was fine, but then there's this sequence where Krishna is reminded about dharma, duty and all of it like he needed guidance; now, this would have worked out if we had a younger actor playing this role and we would have visually associated, okay, he was young and needed that push. But since it's Siddharth himself, it's hard to buy that (cinema is a visual medium, people).

The same goes for Satybhama: throughout the film, you strip her of her divinity. Show her like a naive teenager, that spectrum of being in possessive love and slowly learning to accept all (you tried, but failed miserably; will get to it in a while). But then, when Naraka Vadha arrives, she's suddenly Bhudevi, displays her divinity, and once that's over, she goes back to sulking, being jealous, and being possessive for no reason. Hear me out: if you're diverging from the tale, please do it wholeheartedly, not like this. I will still have my complaints, but whatever. She had some of the weirdest dialogues, starting from how she talks about winning Krishna's love; that's just not Satyabhama, but whatever, I guess. But the nail in the coffin was when she called herself Haripriya and told Rukmini that she was only Yadulakshmi; it reduced both of them simultaneously, because that's both of them–they are both Haripriya and Yadulakshmi; it's not a singular title or who Krishna loved the most. Polygamous marriages may not be the ideal, but we are talking about a period when it took place for multiple reasons, including building alliances. It requires nuance in portrayals given we are talking about the past, and that is something I wish the makers had paid attention to.

The disproportionate attention to Radha is tiring. Credit where credit's due, despite casting inaccuracies, Sushmitha Bhat brought Radha's innocence and liveliness to life. That period in Vrindavan is associated with childhood and adolescent innocence, and she truly embodied that. There were a few issues with the delivery of the dialogue, but the expressions and essence were there. You spend about 40-50 minutes on her only to then reduce her to the unrequited love that could never be pursued later. The Radha-Krishna story as known in popular culture is beautiful, and is childhood companions and lovers who had to separate because life happened, it's sad, but then that's also a reality, we sometimes do leave parts of our childhood behind when we enter adulthood. It was a painfully beautiful story, we don't have to keep bringing her up in a way that she's the only great love of Krishna; yes she's one of the important women in Krishna's life, but so were Rukmini, Jambavati, and Satyabhama, each of them are important and had both a personal and plot contribution, so to reduce them to only revolving around Krishna in a way that strips off their individuality is concerning and serves no real purpose.

Satrajit's (Satyabhama's father) portrayal was also concerning. There was a condescending attitude from him towards Krishna from the start. It's inaccurate, but I thought, okay, maybe this is being used as a plot device to bring drama when Satyabhama and Krishna marry (spoiler: it doesn't). But no, he's obsessed, he despises and then has a beef with Krishna, it could have been a good subplot, but it doesn't delve enough to get you invested. He disowns Satyabhama, which was weird because canonical tales tell us that Satyabhama was probably the heir to the Syamantaka Mani, again, the potential of a good subplot was lost.

Honestly speaking, they shouldn't have rushed it like this. Everything felt like patchwork and stitching together of random scenes with no head or tail. It was a tiring watch not only because we don't tap enough into the characters, but also because we are treated like we are dumb with songs explaining the scenes before it, and then the scenes that stand on their own are rushed, taking away the immersion or me enjoying the film.

Overall review:

It was a tiring watch. I felt empty after watching it, tired even. I'm not going to rate it, but I wouldn't recommend it if you are particular about portrayals of characters from our epics. I do have a few comments specific to the portrayal of women in this film, but it's going to get long here, so I will probably make a separate post on it when I get time.

Signing off

Siya💕

[luna-azzurra]

Writers cannot watch a movie normally. we are sitting there going "oh that's the inciting incident" and "they introduced that object too early it's obviously coming back" and "this dialogue is doing three things at once good for them" while everyone else is just. watching the movie. having a normal experience. feeling feelings without labelling them. i envy that so much and i would never give it up.

[thesmileykate]

i don't think we talk enough about how peeta went into THE WOODS to find the primrose plants at the end of mockingjay.

in first book, peeta was scared of the woods. in the second book, he was unhappy with katniss risking her safety by going into the woods. in the third book, peeta was so messed up that we really don't revisit the whole 'woods' conversation...

this boy was not a fan of the woods.

but he went there. stayed in the woods for enough time to search for a specific type of plant.

all for her <3

[writersiya]

hey please write something up on vanmozli

Hi anon,

Unfortunately, I'm not as well-versed with Vanmozil beyond the PS films (it's been ages since I last watched, and my goldfish memory doesn't remember much). However, I will give it a try, probably late June to July, after my exams (may be rewatching the films and actually get a few fresh ideas 👀👀👀)

Love,

Siya💕

[unheardoracle]

writing is such a strange hobby because sometimes you’re like

“wow I created something beautiful today”

and sometimes you’re like

“oh i just spent 4 hours researching whether this character would realistically bleed out under different circumstances”

[writersiya]

"I can't live without you, and without you, even the heavens feel like hell." 

~ Maithili, The Lost Queendom

It's a little something I made a while ago for one of my ongoing works on Wattpad. And yes, I'm not dead, I just didn't know what to post here and was on a huge posting block here.

Also, for anyone interested in the book, it's a loose adaptation of the Ramayana and does diverge from the epic as I explore a what-if scenario in which Sita could rule, based on Vashishta's words to her before the exile. The book is called The Lost Queendom.

Tags: @vishnavishivaa @ahamasmiyodhah

[writingdose]

write it anyway even if you think it’s bad. a badly written fic is still better than a nonexistent fic.

[writingdose]

fanfic writers who type their works directly onto ao3 instead of copy-and-pasting from elsewhere have no fear. fear fears them.

[writersiya]

I do that with Wattpad too despite its glitches. Ofc, fear has to fear me

[a-tangled-mermaid]

Sigh. At least I have this.

[autistichalsin]

Bad writing is great!!!!

Bad writing means you took the time to write something, you, a real human being. It means you created something! And you have the awareness to see that there's room for improvement, too!!!

Bad writing is wonderful!!! Bad writing is a platform from which you can build your masterpiece! Bad writing is the backbone of good writing!

Give yourself permission to write badly. No, actually- give yourself permission to write something TERRIBLE. Give yourself permission to write such drivel that you can barely read it.

Nothing comes out a masterpiece the first time!! You think Isaac Asimov never wrote a total stinker he had to rebuild from the ground up? You think Jules Verne never wrote utter slop for a first draft?

WRITE SOMETHING AWFUL!!! Write something so bad you cringe about it years later!!! And then when that's done, write some more!!!!!

[jakeperalta]

not using AI genuinely feels like the rest of the world is experiencing some kind of mass amnesia. if someone says they never use it, the immediate response is that can't be true because "everyone" uses it to write their emails or answer their questions. saw a comment suggesting that not using chatgpt to write an essay is "like the 90s". girl I graduated in 2021 and we weren't doing that! how is it that everyone has suddenly forgotten that they were entirely capable of doing these things all by themselves for their entire lives up until the past few years!! am I going crazy!!!

[yoursdrs]

I keep analysing each Mahabharat character, and now we've Gandhari....

Everyone mourns Gandhari as the blindfolded mother who lost everything.

The woman who was once called the most beautiful in the Aryavart. The woman who chose darkness for love. The woman who endured. The woman who suffered.

And yes, she did.

But that's not ALL she was; the Mahabharat doesn’t just show you her grief. It quietly shows you her silence; a silence that lasted for years. A silence that existed while Duryodhana grew into who he became. A silence that watched ambition turn into entitlement, and entitlement into destruction. A silence that watched her brother use her children to carry out his revenge...

Adaptations often portray her as powerless and helpless, but was she? Or was she someone who chose not to intervene when it mattered most?

Because Gandhari was not unaware. She was not foolish. She understood dharma.

And yet, when the time came to restrain, to question, to oppose, she didn’t.

And that silence doesn’t disappear just because grief comes later. That’s what makes her tragedy so much heavier.

Because by the time she speaks, by the time she curses, by the time she breaks, it’s already too late.

The war has happened. Her sons are gone. The consequences have already unfolded.

Gandhari is not just a symbol of suffering; she is a reminder that love without accountability can become destruction. She is a lesson to all parents who ignore disciplining children in the name of love...

And maybe that’s why her grief feels so unbearable. Because a part of her knows that all this didn’t just happen TO her.

It happened THROUGH her.

[writersiya]

And the few times she did question, it was a little too late as the damage was done and the consequences were reaped.

She is not a woman to be idolised but rather to be understood and to learn from

[spidermansballs]

katniss is like haymitch in that her father died young in a mining explosion, and there were always rumors about him

peeta is like haymitch in that he got strong from hauling around capital goods

katniss is like haymitch in that she helped raise her younger siblings

peeta is like haymitch in that he had absolutely no one left until katniss came around to him

katniss is like haymitch in that she had a covey made gold work that became more of a symbol than she could've ever thought

peeta is like haymitch in that he fell for a covey girl and promised her that they would end the games