Reblogged
performance reliability dropping
Reblogged inkedinserendipity
I've been seeing a lot of discourse about the Murderbot casting, to the tune of "Wells says she imagined it as brown"/"the narrator of the audiobook is a man"/"the writing just sounds female, the types of things it notices and cares to mention and the way it puts its sentences together is how a woman would"/"it's canonically agender wtf"/"agender people can look masculine you asshole"/"it's supposed to look big and average that means white male"/"that's your own cultural bias in play and evidence says the average in its universe is brown"/"that's your bias in play there's no ironclad indication what the average is in the Corporation Rim"/"here's every single canon description of Murderbot it has no canon physical attributes other than Tall it could be played by literally anyone Checkmate Atheists" etc etc etc and it all just... misses the point?
No one is annoyed with Skarsgård!MB because "white dude" isn't canon.
They're annoyed because written Murderbot presents a level of identification and recognition for them that "white dude" does not.
Or, in other words: it is difficult to imagine a level of abuse more profound than not having the freedom of your own literal thoughts, consigned to a cripplingly limited and cruel social role from which any deviation is met with brutal pain. And it is all too easy to imagine a demographic who are presumed violent, hostile, and inferior, good only for labor and violence, who must be controlled and denied and unpersoned for the good of the rest. The lines aren't hard to draw, here; Murderbot is deeply relatable to many people who are not (visibly masculine) white men, specifically because they are not (visibly masculine) white men. Because they share with it the experience of oppression, marginalization, and being known on sight as wrong, being punished for the slightest deviance. Because it is not just another in the long boring line of ten thousand thousand grizzled white space marine heroman types; it is the thematic opposite of that.
And yeah duh obviously you can look like a boilerplate white dude and still suffer plenty of oppression, but film is a visual medium. Character design is a crucial part of its language, especially when a specific character is the only example of its type available to the audience. It is a shorthand that the audience will understand as a reflection on the wider setting. Which means that casting Skarsgård is, whether they meant it or not, a subtle statement that the ultimate bigotry in Murderbot's universe is against and about conventional white dudes.
Or in other other words, you cannot refute complaints about Skarsgård!MB with ~canon~ because canon has nothing to do with it. It's a thematic inconsistency, a failure to understand the not the story's text, but its subtext and its place in the wider cultural conversation of sci-fi (or at least to accurately translate those meta considerations to the satisfaction of a decent segment of the audience).
Like you can still yell about how bullshit you think that is if you want. Casting's not that deep or it's an important queer metaphor to pass and still struggle or people have no inherent 'right' to representation or whatever else. I'm not telling anyone what to say or believe. But just understand that that's what you're actually arguing with (or for, for that matter), is all I'm saying.
the thing is that able bodied masc white men are the *normative* person in our society, the *most* person that a person can be; every other person is considered to be a deviation from this norm.
it is thus a deeply annoying situation to see a character *who is not considered a person at all in its own culture* be presented as the very image of someone who is *the default person* in our culture. it requires nothing from us but to passively accept a foregone conclusion; of course someone who looks like that is a person. of course! unquestionably!
but you know, it would have been nice if the show that asked, 'isn't this a person too?' held up someone who looked like us. the people to whom the answer to that question is a dubious shrug instead of a horny affirmative.
tl;dr, SCIENCE FICTION SHOULDNT ASK RHETORICAL QUESTIONS.
ALSO also because this just occurred to me and made me emotional…thinking about the parallels between dr mensah and iris…both realizing murderbot was nearby and beginning to hope they could be rescued…..murderbot as a source of faith and confidence for its friends and it has no idea………..
#there’s no chance Murderbot realizes how much comfort its presence brought those two#dr mensah 🤝 iris: notice Murderbot and start to have faith#tmbd#mb#the murderbot diaries#murderbot diaries#GOD OUCH FUCK#bonus points for iris because she didn’t even KNOW it at that point#not really#she was just going off what art said#which has wrenching implications for how highly#(y’know for art)#art must’ve talked about secunit#its friend!!!#that she immediately trusted and felt safe with it#UGH GOD.#one day i will write up a whole bit about how the women in TMBD specifically#feel safe almost instinctively with murderbot#and how it protects them so so fiercely right off the bat#i believe tapan was a woman…? l#will need to verify before writing up that particular bit lmao#side note obviously diagetically gender doesn’t really matter#like in universe gender basically doesn’t mean shit#but in the reader’s world (our world) it does#and its a neat little way to tell the audience that yes#traditionally vulnerable populations tend to trust this person#subconsciously changing how we as an audience feel about it#its so well done
one of the reasons i think that the murderbot diaries’ emotional moments hit so hard is because of a scarcity effect that the author has set up really, really well.
because, like—murderbot, as a character, is an answer to the question how do you “show and not tell” emotional moments from the lens of a character who point-blank will not acknowledge any affection directed their way. or, instead of overtly stating that characters are friends (“tell”), how do you demonstrate it with text (“show”)? well, most authors go ham on characters smiling at each other, laughing, joking, expressing reciprocal loyalty.
#tmbd#the Murderbot diaries#serenblabs#this stuck out to me as i was noodling on all the things wells does well#this post feels a little scatterbrained to me but hopefully gets the point across#murderbot as a character is so freaking incapable#of conceptualizing and even THINKING#that other characters might regard it positively#that a lot of relationship-building necessarily has to happen almost around it#like you’re ambushing murderbot with friendship. don’t let it know you like it or it’ll shut down#inspired in part by reading the home short story yesterday#and being genuinely shocked how much Mensah talked about murderbot#she was openly positive and affectionate toward it in her thoughts#in a way that caught me off guard because i’d gotten so freaking used to#THIS asshole’s emotional constipation#like as an author building believable relationships with one character who is so closed off from them#and is so traumatized#must be so hard and wells does it so well#and those emotional moments fucking HIT#constantly in awe of her work#well fucking done
Reblogged angel-ascending
I've been seeing a lot of discourse about the Murderbot casting, to the tune of "Wells says she imagined it as brown"/"the narrator of the audiobook is a man"/"the writing just sounds female, the types of things it notices and cares to mention and the way it puts its sentences together is how a woman would"/"it's canonically agender wtf"/"agender people can look masculine you asshole"/"it's supposed to look big and average that means white male"/"that's your own cultural bias in play and evidence says the average in its universe is brown"/"that's your bias in play there's no ironclad indication what the average is in the Corporation Rim"/"here's every single canon description of Murderbot it has no canon physical attributes other than Tall it could be played by literally anyone Checkmate Atheists" etc etc etc and it all just... misses the point?
No one is annoyed with Skarsgård!MB because "white dude" isn't canon.
They're annoyed because written Murderbot presents a level of identification and recognition for them that "white dude" does not.
Or, in other words: it is difficult to imagine a level of abuse more profound than not having the freedom of your own literal thoughts, consigned to a cripplingly limited and cruel social role from which any deviation is met with brutal pain. And it is all too easy to imagine a demographic who are presumed violent, hostile, and inferior, good only for labor and violence, who must be controlled and denied and unpersoned for the good of the rest. The lines aren't hard to draw, here; Murderbot is deeply relatable to many people who are not (visibly masculine) white men, specifically because they are not (visibly masculine) white men. Because they share with it the experience of oppression, marginalization, and being known on sight as wrong, being punished for the slightest deviance. Because it is not just another in the long boring line of ten thousand thousand grizzled white space marine heroman types; it is the thematic opposite of that.
And yeah duh obviously you can look like a boilerplate white dude and still suffer plenty of oppression, but film is a visual medium. Character design is a crucial part of its language, especially when a specific character is the only example of its type available to the audience. It is a shorthand that the audience will understand as a reflection on the wider setting. Which means that casting Skarsgård is, whether they meant it or not, a subtle statement that the ultimate bigotry in Murderbot's universe is against and about conventional white dudes.
Or in other other words, you cannot refute complaints about Skarsgård!MB with ~canon~ because canon has nothing to do with it. It's a thematic inconsistency, a failure to understand the not the story's text, but its subtext and its place in the wider cultural conversation of sci-fi (or at least to accurately translate those meta considerations to the satisfaction of a decent segment of the audience).
Like you can still yell about how bullshit you think that is if you want. Casting's not that deep or it's an important queer metaphor to pass and still struggle or people have no inherent 'right' to representation or whatever else. I'm not telling anyone what to say or believe. But just understand that that's what you're actually arguing with (or for, for that matter), is all I'm saying.
the thing is that able bodied masc white men are the *normative* person in our society, the *most* person that a person can be; every other person is considered to be a deviation from this norm.
it is thus a deeply annoying situation to see a character *who is not considered a person at all in its own culture* be presented as the very image of someone who is *the default person* in our culture. it requires nothing from us but to passively accept a foregone conclusion; of course someone who looks like that is a person. of course! unquestionably!
but you know, it would have been nice if the show that asked, 'isn't this a person too?' held up someone who looked like us. the people to whom the answer to that question is a dubious shrug instead of a horny affirmative.
tl;dr, SCIENCE FICTION SHOULDNT ASK RHETORICAL QUESTIONS.
#science fiction shouldn’t ask rhetorical questions.#was dumbfounded by the casting choice#really?#you went with Him?#mb#ugh. le guin rolls over in her grave etc etc#how deeply boring of them#how deeply thematically inappropriate. what a terrible misreading of subtext#actually more accurately#what an awful#ridiculous#terrible translation of that world to ours#congratulations! you missed the point.
Reblogged arealdeamon
So I'm halfway through Gideon the Ninth and how come nobody has told me about Dulcinea?? She's so good, you'd think people would go bonkers over her
Ah.
Ngl ive had Gideon the ninth in my to read pile on my kindle app for months and this post is what inspired me to finally open it now
Ah, I see.
......well now I'm curious.
Reblogged
Murderbot, a construct that was built and used to do extreme violence it's entire existence : I hate talking to people but I will try to resolve this situation peacefully if I can, threats only make people panic and then they take irrational decisions. Extreme violence is sometimes unavoidable but last resort.
ART, a peaceful research transportation : I love talking to people because I can threaten them with extreme violence right off the bat and it makes them do what I want (ads more totally-not-weapons to it's research equipment)
