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vampiricsheep · 2 years

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🍳🍪🍽️ for all of your characters with animal qualities/features!

@mystery-salad

oh going for my throat with one huh lmfao; that IS my brand tho........ty <3 I'll skip the charr, werewolves, n khajiit, and anyone else whose animal qualities are typical to species since I feel that's slightly different and would also make this incredibly long! Since evander's traits are for the most part costuming rather than inherent I'll disqualify him too. Winter's less tief traits are inherited from a satyr parent, so they don't count either.

that'll be rrenne (wolf-adjacent), banni (rabbit), tueggi (bird of prey), stinnt (body modded goat legs + hawk wings), laamb (experimental genetic warping resulting in ovine features), skunk (similar to laamb, but skunk-like and self-inflicted), ram (sheep legs n horns and a weird alien tail), sasha (catlike eyes and shark teeth), matias (clawed feet, horns, and a general catlike vibe)...and I think that's everyone!

Rrenne

🍳 - How well can they cook?

If he can set it up over a fire or in the sun and just leave it for a few hours or days he's perfectly fine, but anything with complicated steps are difficult, since in his mind they'll flip around in order or be randomly omitted. Having a recipe written doesn't help much either. In fairness, he has to keep his wyvern from eating it while he isn't looking, which is harder if there's two bowls. And you really, really don't want a fire wyvern getting into a bowl of flour.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

Calling back to the first point, not very well on his own. If you walked him through it, he'd be fine.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

this man ate fermented mycelia-riddled uncooked boar flesh. at this point, anything novel.

Banni

🍳 - How well can they cook?

so-so, but not horrible. much better with a recipe on hand. Needs the aid of a timer for some things, or to walk out of the kitchen with the spatula or mixing spoon to remember to come back.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

same as above! It's more complicated when you have to make vegan substitutes, though. no two recipes treat applesauce or bananas the same way, for example, and some recipes are really dry because there's an overlap between vegan food bloggers and food bloggers who think any oil, saturated or not, will advance your death date astronomically.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

...kale chips, or a well baked sweetroll of one variety or another.

Tueggi

🍳 - How well can they cook?

She's had a lot of practice, and her kitchen is workable if a little small. She's got a big recipe book and takes it out every time she cooks; even though she probably knows some of them by heart, she refuses to trust memory when she has a reference immediately on hand.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

She's pretty good, but she'd never enter a competition.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

Their name is escaping me right now, but those fried dough balls served in a spiced honey syrup. She's not very good at making them, so they're an especially nice treat.

Stinnt

🍳 - How well can they cook?

He won't win any awards, but it's edible and not unpleasant. He sticks to simple, reliable recipes and flexible things like stews.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

it's miserable and he hates it. If he touches flour it's for gravy, not pastry.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

one time laamb made this really good root vegetable curry and he's ever since wished to have it again, but it used exclusively fresh-harvested herbs and vegetables in a region they haven't since returned to.

Laamb

🍳 - How well can they cook?

She's pretty good! Even before The Incident she had a keen nose that gave her an advantage in spice mixing.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

It's difficult, but she can do it if she sets her mind to it. She's made some very nice brown breads in the past.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

Honestly, fresh-from-the-oven bread served with a good hearty soup.

Soft Skunk (she needs a real name huh...to be fair that's probably all her colleagues call her now)

🍳 - How well can they cook?

we'll just say that she's not allowed to bring anything to a potluck. to be clear, it's not that she refuses, she's been banned from it.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

also pretty bad. She'll eat anything she makes but that's more of a talent than anything.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

It's, fuck, it uses bloodstone in seimur's signature style. what is it under that? nobody wants to get close enough to find out.

Ram

🍳 - How well can they cook?

decently! he's good at improvising with what's on hand, but better with a given recipe and its intended ingredients.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

he doesn't work with anything too complicated like layered pastries, but LOVES baking bread!

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

warm, fresh, leavened bread with butter or herbed oil.

Sasha

🍳 - How well can they cook?

Not super well, but passable.

🍪 - How well can they bake?

They just don't bother, which is for the best.

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

mangoes <3

Matias

🍳 - How well can they cook?

He'll make something, and you won't really know what it is, and neither will he, but it'll be pretty good, or at least ok, most of the time!

🍪 - How well can they bake?

same as his regular cooking tbh!

🍽️ - What’s their favorite food?

honestly, I'm not sure, but he is fond of a warm, honeyed coffee with soymilk specifically.

#*I trip and fall and several more fall out of my sleeve* how...what...who are you #you could make the fair argument here that I'm just a furry and while that's true I'd like to think there's more to it #exploring the depth of personhood and alienation #Rrenne #banni #tueggi #stinnt #laamb #just a rambly vent yall skip if you want #sasha seaborn #leafcat #long post #sheep is also omitted on the basis of being essentially an anthro sheep sldjfklksjdf #but the answer for ''can it cook'' is 'yeah'#ty for the ask!!

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thornfield13713 · 2 years

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Top 5 Lovestruck characters you wish had got a route that didn’t?

Okay! Since they are now never going to get routes, I might as well do this now.

So-

Liliane Labasque

Okay, yes, I do realise that this does fill essentially the same basic 'dark vampire’ slot as Antonio’s route, but...much as I did genuinely enjoy or come to enjoy Antonio’s route, I just...thought Liliane was more interesting. Part of this is my basic bias towards WLW routes, it’s true, but the hints we got of her past were interesting, her dynamic with the MC was a lot of fun and every time she was on screen, I just wanted to see more of her.

I will confess, she places relatively low here because, much as I enjoy her as a character, I don’t really have a clear idea of how her route might go and what the major themes and plot beats might be. Differentiating her route from Antonio’s is relatively simple, what with Eva not being a major part of it, but I’m not sure what plotline would take its place.

Rhea Everleigh

I do...mostly...enjoy Starship Promise. It’s not my favourite, but the alien MC is probably my favourite MC in the Lovestruck stable, and Antares is one of my favourite LIs, and...god help me, I love a good space opera, even if it is a bit hokey sometimes and they should probably have workshopped a better name for the Evil Force. Even just calling it the Smoke would have worked better than that.

However, I’m not going to sit here and say the writing was always that great, and Rhea was one of the biggest casualties of that - she could not have been more blatantly killed off in order to clear Orion’s ex out of his life in his route - unnecessarily, as she had expressed vocal support of the human MC’s relationship with Orion before her death - and she is severely underutilised in the other routes she turns up in, to the point where I had to check the wiki to see if she was actually in Antares’ route at all.

Which is kind of a shame, because her storyline has a lot of potential. She joined the Empire to escape grinding poverty on one of the colonies - implied to be a Union colony - was accidentally murdered by the man she unrequitedly loved, and was then resurrected without her memories of either him or her other best friend, Antares, and possibly with no memory of her past at all. Okay, yes, that borrows a lot of story beats from Nova too, but as Nova’s arc with the human MC didn’t really explore any of this as deeply as it deserved, a Rhea arc might work to explore some of those themes of memory and personhood, and whether Rhea decided to go the Antares route and reform the Empire from within (even if I don’t know if she’d go so far as getting herself crowned Empress) or the Orion route of leaving after learning what they have done to her, I’d be very interested to read it.

Edward Bardot

Okay. I’ve talked before here about why Edward would be my first choice for the next LI for the MMC in Ever After Academy, and I stand by that argument. My other option, Sir Galahad, would also be great, but at the same time, he might be a little too close to both Abel and Lucas - both noble, duty-bound men - and might not offer anything new in terms of themes and dynamics.

Edward might work very well as the MMC’s version of the Lavinia route - a somewhat shady mercenary who nonetheless takes a liking to the strait-laced MMC, whom nobody else approves of as a love interest, but who shows unexpected depths when MMC takes the trouble to get to know him. Added to which, I just- I love Beauty and the Beast stories, and Edward being the Beast was always going to be enough to catch my interest.

Added to which, honestly, MLM routes were a very new development before the app announced it would be shutting down, and I kind of wish we’d got more of them, because the ones we did get were pretty damn great.

General Nisse

Okay. This was a close one. I was, like everyone else, looking forward to playing a Quince route, but...I think Nisse has the edge for me just for what she represents as the only LI completely outside the power structures of Altadellys. Yes, okay, an argument could also be made for Galen, but Galen nonetheless spends a lot of time in the circles of the powerful and will work for the Council. Nisse has none of that, which makes her already an entirely distinct route from anyone else in the game.

Furthermore, Nisse, as the leader of a group fighting for the interests of the Winter Wilds, brings the interests of the Wilds and the heroines origins as the ‘Wildergirl Queen’ to the fore of the story, and I can see a lot of ways that that could work very well - maybe start with the heroine joining Nisse’s army and introduce the discovery that she’s the lost heir at the end of the first season? Or have them begin as antagonists because Nisse feels that the Queen is not doing enough to support the Wilds. There are so many ways to make this route work, and it would offer an outsider perspective on the court that no other POV really does - sure, again, Galen is an outsider, but Galen’s route mostly takes place at sea, without interacting with Lysende’s politics, in a way that would be impossible in a Nisse route.

Ezekiel Dorian

Yes, okay, I know they put out a short for him, but! It was very clearly marked as ‘to be continued’ and ended ambiguously, establishing Zeke’s tragic doomed love for the MC and that he is still searching for some timeline somewhere where they can make it work without the world being doomed! You cannot offer me a setup as romantic as star-crossed lovers finally making it work when in every other timeline their love leads to disaster and then not follow through on it!

Added to which, Zeke himself is an engaging character in every other route, he has a fascinating backstory as the original leader of the Syndicate, but he also doesn’t often show more than a rare flash of vulnerability, so having the MC finally get to see behind the chill exterior is a very intriguing set-up for a romance.

I love all the LIs of Villainous Nights, but I really do feel like Zeke might’ve ended up my favourite if he got a full route, and given how much I love everyone else on this route, to the point of having some trouble calling a real ‘favourite’, that’s really saying a lot.

#lovestruck

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saturdaysky · 3 years

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hello! i hope you don't mind a message, but i am just excited to see someone else who liked AMCE and would love to know if you have recs for books that are similar, because i've been thinking about it for like a month straight since i finished reading it and would love something else to occupy my brain the way that it did. no pressure to answer ofc, just happy to share good vibes over a book :)

I do not mind it at all! <3

I do have some books that scratched a similar itch as A Memory Called Empire! I looooved the thoughtful focus on culture and language and identity within an intricate setting, so these recs follow that pattern somewhat.

Under a cut because this got kind of long.

The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie

Liked the exploration of culture, identity, and imperialism in AMCE? You will probably like these books, since they also grapple with those themes. Also present is the exploration of personhood, who has it, and who does not -- because our main character is a person who used to be a starship. Or well, sort of. Wikipedia has a decent blurb:

The novel follows Breq—who is both the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery, and the vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization.

These books are honestly some of my favorite books ever. They combine a really thoughtful and deliberate focus on all the stuff mentioned above, fascinating plots and world-building, and characters who absolutely made me Feel Things. Highly recommended if you like, say, emotionally closed-off and damaged characters learning to care and be cared for while also skillfully navigating an intricate web of power to pursue their goals and reckon with the harm they've caused. But with bonus smart thoughts about robots.

The Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh

I haven't fully made my way through this series, but it's rewarding every time I sit down to read another book. The books follow Bren Cameron, diplomat to an alien court, as he negotiates the intricate web of politics and intrigue involved in making sure the crash-landed colony ship he represents doesn't get obliterated or obliterate anyone else, despite humans making some monumental fuck-ups in the recent past.

And when you live and work and eat among one people, how much do you really belong to the people you came from? Of course, neither side really trusts someone who straddles both worlds, and to cap it off, the atevi people he lives among are different from humans in a fundamental way: they have no word for friend or love because those are alien concepts to the atevi. They do not feel such things. Instead, they live by an intricate web of obligation and favors. Trust is something a little more practical and a lot more deadly, for the atevi.

But these are not heartless novels -- part of the joy is watching the main characters grow meaningful relationships, even though the form is fraught and strange and never quite means the same thing to the people on either side.

If you like slow and thorough explanations of culture where meeting with your friend's grandmother is a potentially perilous activity (because the tea might be poisoned, because she might take you on a hunting trip you won't come back from, because she's a formidable political power and might be trying to assassinate your friend, because your friend might know all of this and have sent you anyway, also your friend is the king) these are books you might like.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

If you like deep dives of culture, language, identity, and loyalty within the deadly intrigue of a fantasy court, I hiiiiighly recommend this book. The book follows Maia, the youngest and least-favored heir to the throne who gets unexpectedly crowned when everyone else in line dies and must quickly learn to survive the cutthroat politics. But Maia isn't cutthroat by nature; he is kind and must negotiate how to keep that kindness in the face of pressures that would be easy to solve with cruelty, as well as people keen to take advantage of what they think of as a weakness.

This book'll hit you with a lot of fantasy language at first (it's a focus of the book), but if you stick with it you'll be fine. You're learning all this intricate court language at the same time as our protag; he too is a little out of his depth at the start.

Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein

I dearly want to go back and read these -- it's been a few years, but they absolutely sucked me in. The books follow Rowan, a steerswoman, as she tracks down the mystery of a strange and incongruous gemstone. In-universe steerswomen are basically traveling scientists and naturalists who have taken an oath of truth.

The books start out in what seems like your fairly typical Standard Fantasy Setting with wizards and dragons, but as Rowan learns more about the strange gem, it's clear that this Standard Fantasy Setting is...not as it seems. There are three things that I loved about these books: the sense of wonder and discovery as our fantasy scientist protag reasons through problems and begins to discover she lives in a sci fi world, the interesting relationship between the main characters, and the excitement you as a reader have when YOU realize exactly what mysterious object Rowan is describing and what the implications of that are for the setting.

The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

Riveting series -- brutal and beautiful. Straddles the line in some respects between sci fi and fantasy. Follows characters who live on a far, far-future Earth plagued by catastrophic climate events called "Seasons" that last generations. There are some people born who have power drawn from the earth; these people are alternately hated and ruthlessly trained to hone their powers to attempt to prevent another Season. (This sort of sounds like the setup to a YA coming-of-age novel, but it is really really not.)

The world and fantastical aspects are fascinating (cyclical post apocalyptic societies! geology magic!), and the books themselves explore family bonds, racism in both a personal and systemic sense, and broken systems and the wounds they leave upon the people within them even as those people wound others. The series is not a light read, but it is a good one.

Literally anything by Ursula K. Leguin

All of her work could be recommended if you liked AMCE. Her writing spans fantasy and science fiction, and includes thoughtful and moving explorations of some similar ideas: culture and cultural exchange, gender, different societal setups, you name it.

If you're looking for a good novel, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic for a reason. If you'd like a sample platter of interesting short stories, The Birthday of the World and Other Stories is wonderful.

#book recs #i had to trim this list down so you know... i got more recs where this came from #like #anticapitalist books about Personhood & a killer robot who just became A Person; robot is in a committed not-relationship w a cargo carrier #a book from the POV of a god who is a mountain watching society rise and fall around it. but other gods do more than just watch...#books about greek gods making a bet & stealing 10k children to form a philosophically perfect society outside of time. 3rd book set on mars #scifi books about an alternate history of the US space program if an asteroid struck Earth in 1952 - as told by the first female astronauts #a book about the messy relationships between you - a body-hopping parasite - and the people whose bodies you steal #a book about a colony ship that lands on a planet full of plants they do not realize are sentient and predatory - as told over generations #a book about a colony ship that lands on a planet where ancient terraforming accidentally uplifted spiders instead of primates #AND MORE!#asks #burningdarkfire

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random-thought-depository · 3 years

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Tangent to my last post: a possible problematic Vulcan racial attitude toward humans that I think might be interesting to explore is inferiority complex.

Setting aside ENT and probably various bits of fan lore for a moment and imagining that humans and Vulcans were more-or-less a mutual first contact... I think the Vulcan experience meeting humans might be a lot like this. Vulcans had a tremendously traumatic historical experience, and in response they embraced an extremely radical and tremendously costly bargain. Vulcans aren’t naturally emotionless, they’re more emotional than humans, so the Surakist lifestyle must be a huge and radical sacrifice for them. And then they meet people who just ... didn’t do that, and are more-or-less doing fine and are more-or-less good neighbors.

You know what that makes me think of? Chris Wayan’s Aeps and Angels:

“Quite by chance, most Abyssian vertebrates are six- not four-limbed...

Two factors have so far blocked Terran birds from building civilizations, despite high intelligence, sociability, and communications skills.

Hand-feet are awkward; not only must you compromise between two shapes and functions, you have to balance on one leg to free up a hand. Stand firmly, use your beak, and you can't easily see what you're doing. Or what the local predators are doing...

Flight limits absolute size, and thus brainweight. It's true that birdbrains are way more efficient than mammals'--but growing much past the size of the largest parrots starts to make flight difficult. And that's dangerous, most places on Earth.

But not necessarily on Abyssia! The huge flightless birds that tend to evolve on Earth's loneliest islands will also tend to appear on Abyssia's deeply isolated landmasses. They'll lack both the above limitations. Huge birds like our Aepyornis or Andalgalornis, but with small forehands, are the most likely candidates for intelligence on Abyssia...

...

Aristotle teased his contemporaries with this splendidly unhelpful definition of humanity: "What is Man? A biped without feathers." Undeniably true, undeniably not to the point. It teased generations of philosophers to define personhood by attributes of the mind. With my six points above, I've taken an earthier approach: my six, if they chanted in a Greek chorus, would answer Aristotle with "What is Man? A smart, talking, friendly, adept creature who creates--stories, monuments, science, art..."

But our Aep will be able to tease his or her contemporaries--of any species--with a distinctly Aristotelian definition that addresses real evolutionary pressures: "A flightless biped." (Forget the "featherless"; I doubt we'll be seeing any Naked Aeps. Plucked chickens aren't sexy; unsexy birds don't found nations.)

All it takes (in deep time, at least) to rule the Abyssian world, is to renounce the sky--and thus grow brains. So they'll have mythic tales of the Fall on Abyssia; but not from Eden, or innocence. From wings, and grace, and Heaven. And... stupidity.

...

The core Aepish myth will be the Fall from Flight. But there's a faint chance that a winged intelligence will evolve on certain invisible islands. Well, they're visible of course; but you won't have seen them as islands. In the geology section I've described how the islands and seamounts of Earth, inverted on Abyssia, form thousands of pit-lakes. Most of these are merely deep lakes with hotsprings, anoxic sulfurous depths, and a rude habit of farting fatal CO2 clouds when they're in a bad mood. Still, they're just deep volcanic lakes. Sometimes drinkable, sometimes dangerous, sometimes both. Not profoundly alien. Except...

In the deserts of Pacifica and Agassiz, the driest places on Abyssia, a few of these pits yawn three miles deep. Their lakes have receded until the evaporation off their shrunken faces drops to match their scant inflow. Modern Earth's closest equivalent, the Dead Sea, is just a few hundred meters down. These are thousands! Up to five kilometers below sea level.

And in their depths, on the shores of tiny briny seas, along creeks that are more waterfall than stream, life has adapted to what might as well be another planet entirely. Oven-heat, salty and alkaline soils, yet weirdly humid for a desert, with mild sun and little ultraviolet--you slowly bake but never sunburn in that hazy light. Strangest of all, air pressure rises down in these pits--up to twice as dense as at sea level.

Here, and here alone on Abyssia, the size-constraint on bird-intelligence is lifted; if there's social pressure toward larger brains and higher intelligence in the "handed" Abyssian equivalents of parrots or corvids, here the body can indulge it; the maximum flight-weight is double Earth's.

...

But how would such a desert tribe of fliers impact the world?

...

Maritime nations and seaports have always been centers of innovation on Earth; but can mere sailors compete with fliers able to travel and spread news twenty times faster? And the Aeps' whole mythology will be based on their ancient bargain: renounce flight for brains. Soar in the body, or the mind; not both. And then along come some desert savages who rejected the price! Angels who rebelled, were cast into a hellish Pit... and emerged triumphant, with both brains and wings. Aeps versus angels! Or devils.

Hey, it's a desert tribe, I had to go all Judeo-Christian on you. Miltonian at least. Okay, okay. Will Greek myth work better for you? Prometheus comes out of the desert with the fire of mind and an intact liver--and lookin' vulture-ugly. Embarrassing feather loss...

As an Aep, what do you do? Do you welcome these fliers so future Abyssian civilization will be winged, or do you defend your inferior genes? Does "we" mean "intelligence" or just "my tribe?"

I see a cultural crisis brewing here. If a biologically better person comes along, should you and your lineage bow out, stop reproducing? Why limit your chicks so? Let their souls be born to Pitian parents, let them be ugly--but winged. So welcome the Pitians, integrate them into world civilization, and let them take over--right?

Or, of course, you could kill them out of spite. But that's a rather continental attitude. Europeans, Chinese, yes, I can see them responding so. But the Pacific cargo cults were a different response. And the Tasmanians, facing invaders with impossible, magical technology, just gave up in despair. And these were mere cultural differences; the same exact species! On Abyssia, we're considering the shock of meeting a people you can't interbreed with, a new species of people with powers you long for but can't learn... that you'll always lack.

Darwin? Come on, that shock was nothing. So we have crude, embarrassing relatives! What else is new? But imagine the shock for the poor aeps, facing their legendary angels. Finding they're the crippled, defective, primitive ones. And just possibly dying out in shame.”

#Star Trek #Vulcans #Planetocopia #Chris Wayan

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rotationalsymmetry · 3 years

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General gripes about DS9 and gender (some spoilers) (content notes: some references to sexual abuse/trauma, and specifically spiritual abuse/sexual misconduct in religious leaders, also death/murder):

I swear to fuck these people do not know how to write female characters without shoehorning them into romance plotlines. (Or weird fucked up stuff, like when that Cardassian serial murderer kidnaps Kira.) Especially noticeable with Ziyal -- when Kira takes her to DS9, the writers apparently can't think of a single thing to do with a young woman other than ship her with a much older Cardassian. Then, she's starting to get her own life and make a name for her as an artist, and they fucking refridgerator her. The fuck. (And: the focus is on how her death affects Dukat, that fucker. Which, obviously sure it's going to affect him...but it's also going to affect Kira, who sees Ziyal as like a younger version of herself and was trying to protect her. And then Ziyal dies. That should have some sort of effect on Kira! And did no one else on the station make any sort of connection with her when she was there?) This is arguably not primarily a gender thing, but it is partly a gender thing: the show keeps demanding Kira find sympathy for her oppressors, over and over again. (This is a gripe fest: of course there's a lot of things about Kira's character that are done really well.) She keeps getting thrown in situations that show (some) Cardassians in more nuanced lights and that more or less force her into relationships with them, while meanwhile her old resistance cell friends all get killed off, her parents are dead, if she has any other family we don't hear about it, and she's basically left with no Bajoran friends even, as far as we know. She gets Bajoran lovers who... OK, about that. First, Vedek Bareil. Now, Bajorans are shown to have a pretty relaxed attitude towards their clergy (eg Kira is frequently rude to Winn even after she becomes Kai with apparently no consequences) -- but still. Vedek is roughly equivalent to, what, cardinal? He's high up in the heirarchy. And, he's put himself in a role of spiritual authority relative to Kira: she gets access to one of the Orbs through him. They've got a power imbalance and one that's connected to Kira's ability to do her religion. I don't care what the social norms are on Bajor that is 100% sexual misconduct on Bareil's part. If something went wrong in their relationship, it could fuck up Kira's connection to her faith. And in the show it's presented as no big deal.

(Star Trek seems to be aware of this when it comes to ship's captains! For all that Kirk notoriously fucks everyone, he never voluntarily (/outside of the mirror universe, outside of odd transporter malfunctions that split him into two parts, etc) came on to a crew member. But it's no less important for religious authorities.) (Also: this has nothing to do with celebacy. I'm fine with Bajoran religious figures being allowed to have sex and being allowed to have sex outside of marriage. But: a religious leader having a sexual relationship with someone who they're in a pastoral relationship to is wrong, and while Bareil isn't exactly Kira's pastor I think there is some level of, he's providing spiritual guidance to her. That means she's off limits to him, or should be. In the same way that bosses shouldn't fuck their direct reports, college professors shouldn't fuck their students, therapists definitely shouldn't fuck their patients, etc. Regardless of how they handle their sex life outside of those restrictions. And regardless of whether there's love involved or not -- romantic love absolutely does not make it better.) And then there's Shakaar, the former leader of her resistance cell. That she joined as a teenager. It's...yeah, it's been many years, yeah she's not directly under him any more, and yeah goodness knows a band of resistance fighters is probably not going to have a clearly written up sexual harassment policy so it's not necessarily unrealistic...it's not as blatantly "oh god no" as Bareil, but it's got some...is anyone thinking of potential abuse of power issues here? Anyone?

There was one episode where Jake and Nog were double-dating and it goes badly due to Ferengi, uh, gender roles not meshing well with Federation egalatarianism. And, then the rest of the episode is all about how they're going to repair their friendship. And I was thinking: we didn't see either female character either before or after, and why is a sexism issue being shown from the lens of "how can I, a nice guy, stay friends with my male friend who has sexism issues" and not "how am I, a young woman, going to deal with this affront to my basic personhood" or "how am I, a young woman, going to repair my friendship now that I talked my friend into a double date so I could date the guy I liked but his friend turned out to be garbage?" Like...out of all the potential relationships there, why is Jake's friendship with a guy with sexism issues (who's made it clear he's not going to change, at least as far as dating goes) the one presented as being in most need of preservation? I know, it's because Jake and Nog are more central characters and their friendship has been significant in the show for seasons now. But...that just brings up more questions. Like why does this show have a significant bro friendship between two teenage boys, but there's no friendship between two women (or between a woman and a man for that matter) that's given as much weight? There's some bonding between Kira and Dax, but it doesn't have the same presence and significance as Jake and Nog or, say, Miles and Julian. (I'm having first name/last name inconsistencies here. Ah well.) Keiko has no on-camera friendships. Kira has no on-camera friendships that have Jake & Nog or Julian & Miles weight. Dax maybe does with her Klingon buddies from Curzon's lifetime. (Benjamin Sisko also doesn't.) Ziyal could have, but doesn't. Molly could have, but doesn't. Miles doesn't seem to have any (on-camera or otherwise acknowledged) parent friends (like...there's one couple mentioned who can babysit Molly at times? That's it? We never even see them?), which is weird because fuck knows parenthood can make it hard to have any friends who aren't parents. Odo's got his weird frenemy thing with Quark. Garak has his standing lunch with Julian (if you read that as platonic, which ... yeah, there's not a lot of arguments for seeing it as platonic beyond "they're both men.") I am, don't get me wrong, extremely for showing male friendships. Very much for it. It's just...I want friendships that aren't between two guys also. And I want them to be shown as significant and meaningful and worth overcoming obstacles for. Friendships between women, friendships between people of the same race or culture (or alien species, since we are talking Star Trek here), friendships between men and women that aren't just a precursor to romance. And...parenting that isn't just...I want to see Keiko have problems with parenting that she overcomes with help from other people. I want to explore the emotional ramifications of Kira being a surrogate mom to Kirayoshi or being a semi adopted mom to Ziyal and then having her die. I want Kira to talk about how her own upbringing in times of famine and war and occupation affects her sense of her ability to potentially be a parent. I want a female character to calmly talk about her decision to not become a mother and have that decision be treated with the utmost respect. I want the sort of struggles that male characters have with parenting on the show, like Worf's difficulty connecting with his son or Benjamin's conflict over watching his son grow up and get less interested in spending time with his dad, be shown for female characters as well. And the joys, like when Benjamin remembers holding Jake as an infant, like when they reunite after Jake gets caught in a war zone. Rather than parenting be this thing that mom characters apparently do on autopilot without any internal conflict or feeling out of their depth or particular moments of joy and amazement. There's so many plot lines and moments and bits and pieces that could be amazing moments that give

mother characters balance and nuance and characterization, but they only ever get shown for fathers. (And this is not just Star Trek either...look at all the kids movies that are about father/son or father/daughter bonding, and somehow the moms...just aren't there. It's so good when there are single father storylines, just...where are all the mom storylines that could be like that?) And why do teenage boys get focus and their own stories (especially with Jake in DS9, but also TNG has Wesley Crusher and Alexander, and TOS had one story centering on a teenage boy) but girls either aren't there at all or don't get to have stories that are about them? Ziyal's stories aren't about her, she doesn't get to form her own friendships and only barely gets to develop an interest of her own before her life is taken away from her. Molly doesn't get stories that are about her. (And yeah, Molly's a lot younger than Jake, but those are still choices: DS9 could have been set when Molly was a teenager, or the show could have introduced a different teenage girl as a significant character, or Jake could have been a girl rather than a boy, or Benjamin could have had two children...)

#incidentally I have no complaints about how winn is written as a female anatagonist #she's a shitty person and an excellent villain #I have pretty tangled thoughts and feelings on dax #she's had a few really great episodes and it seems like her characterization is starting to make more sense since her relationship with wor #moogie is odd but satisfying as an older woman who lives life on her own terms under a highly patriarchal culture #ds9 #feminism #gender and media #women in media

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rhetoricandlogic · 4 years

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For the Love of a Murderbot: Network Effect by Martha Wells

Em Nordling

Tue May 5, 2020 11:30am

Look: to know Murderbot is to love Murderbot (that goes for the character as well as their titular series). It’s not just that Murderbot is relatable (though they somehow are) or that I want to protect them like a murderous, sweet summer child (though god help me, I do). Loving Murderbot is just a natural outgrowth of witnessing them, page after page, do so much good and act—in spite of themselves—out of such depth of feeling. The series is a redemption narrative and a coming-of-age plot wrapped up in a space opera—a story about the stories we tell so often they grow into something new. Network Effect, the series’ first full-length novel, is no exception.

Between 2017 and 2018, Martha Wells gifted us almost 1.5 glorious years of social awkwardness, dry wit, and proficiency porn. Following up that quartet—All Systems Red (May 2017), Artificial Condition (May 2018), Rogue Protocol (August 2018), and Exit Strategy (October 2018)—Network Effect follows Murderbot on a whole new adventure with a familiar cast of characters. Murderbot is on a mission, this time, with a team—their team. And not just as a security detail, but as a friend. Figuring out what friendship is and means is tricky, though, especially when you throw hivemind alien tech and corrupt corporations into the mix.

Note: a major spoiler for the first ~150 pages of Network Effect ahead.

My expectations for a Murderbot sequel were as follows: I expected to learn more about the corporations, including “the company;” to perhaps witness some kind of rebellion or other political upheaval; to explore in more depth the personhood of bots and constructs and to see some kind of understanding reached by Murderbot (for sexbots, especially!); and of course, more media consumption, more space fights, and more ruminations on autonomy and community.

The reality of reading Network Effect was like settling into a warm bath. Don’t get me wrong—the novel includes plenty of action and tension and forward momentum. The main plotline follows Murderbot as they attempt to rescue their crew and literally turn themselves into malware, and you really can’t get more action-packed than that. But I’d apparently forgotten to anticipate the sheer pleasure that comes from reading Martha Wells’ storytelling. A lot of my expectations were met, but still more were exceeded. For instance, I didn’t even dare to hope that the series would get queerer, but I’m happy to report that Wells’ imagination is not nearly as limited by cynicism as my own. I may have anticipated growth in Murderbot’s relationship with their human crew and with other bots, but the return of ART was maybe the best thing about 2020 so far.

The return of the series’ exploration of media was immensely satisfying as well. First of all, I’ll never tire of its meta-commentary: if the first four novellas mimic Murderbot’s favorite episodic serials, Network Effect packs the punch of a full-length film (or, as the theatre festival at the start of the novel implies, a play). But the stories’ genres/forms don’t stand alone in their commentary on how media shapes our lives and personal stories. So much is communicated in the moments where characters talk about theatre or space TV, and even more when ART and Murderbot watch serials together. These moments are like little pockets of peace in the midst of chaos, the stuff—as much as major events and plot points—that life is made of. They speak not only to shared narratives, but also the ways that we learn to be better and, well, fake it till we make it. Most fiction would be utterly cynical when tackling such a theme (you can imagine the Black Mirror episode now), but I don’t think there’s a cynical page in this book. Media doesn’t exist in Murderbot’s world as mind control or even as mere distraction, but as meaning maker, community builder, and respite from pain and violence.

Another return to form in Network Effect is Wells’ deft exploration of the line between the corporeal and non-corporeal forms. As in the previous books, the actual plot hinges on the non-literal, with cognitive and technical experiences rather than physical ones driving the emotion and drama of the story. New (or at least deepened) in Network Effect is the exploration of trauma—both Murderbot and Mensah’s—and how it is literally written on or in the body. ART and Murderbot’s developing relationship adds an additional layer to this embodiment, with Wells portraying a quasi-romantic relationship totally outside of the body, taking away things like eye contact and gesture. Their relationship is instead built on the language of story and shared experience.

(There’s something to be said, regarding this non-embodied love, for ace and neurodivergent representation in the series, though I wouldn’t want to belabor the allegory [no, asexual people aren’t all robots—you know what? We don’t have to go there]. The fact that so many identities are mappable onto Murderbot is—unsurprisingly—just another beautiful, glorious thing about media as a meaning-making machine.)

For all the ways that Network Effect builds on the previous books and answers their questions, the series does not feel over. More threads may have been stitched together, but the complete quilt hasn’t been revealed yet. We have Murderbot’s relationships with individual bots and constructs (boy, do we), but not with, like, botdom as a whole (what’s the robot version of class consciousness?). We have stacks and stacks of company crimes and even an introduction to an anti-establishment group, but still no direct confrontation of the system itself. Look all I’m saying is I want a Murderbot revolution (even though I know they’d hate that. Sorry, Murderbot!). But until I get one, I will—true to form—just keep rereading the old serials and delighting in their every twist and turn.

#Martha Wells #Network Effect #mahreviews #long post #Murderbot Diaries 5

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