Ray Murata

Gods is it tone deaf when it comes to racism/systemic oppression/colonialism. Pisses me off something fierce that every single Belter in the Behemoth is either an asshole, a coward, or a doormat. Sam barely even gets angry at Bull throwing her under the bus. Pa is a coward. Ashford is the most useless and detestable character in the book. He doesn't drive the story anywhere and he exists only for every single character, even Clarissa after hearing him speak at most six sentences, to consider him a complete idiot and thus elevate Bull's competence. Bull, who is an inner. Bull, who can't be captain only because he's an earther and who constantly brings this up/laments this fact as a tragic politically-motivated injustice that puts everyone at a disadvantage (this reeeeks of 'reverse racism' bullshit). And the guy is just another Miller, but much shittier as a character. Another "all i care abt is my work and I'm so competent at it because I'm a no-nonsense guy capable of doing whatever it takes, but otherwise I'm a drunkard incapable of living a decent life" boring asshole. At least Miller was a self-aware version of the "noir detective" trope because the book showed us that he was actually considered a has-been loser by everyone who worked with him. He didn't actually solve more cases than anyone else or anything of the sort.

Like, the only competent Belter I've seen in a little over 12 hours (of 20) of this book is Naomi, who was already our girl, and who's not really showing up much at all. And Bull's supposed to be some sort of Belter advocate? Puke.

Ugh. The series did SUCH a good job doing away with Bull, and reassigning what he does in the book to Camina (who's such a wonderful character!!!) and Ashford, making the whole tug-of-war for leadership a dispute between belter and belter, as it should be. A thousand times better, so kudos to the showrunners.

But what motivated me to write this is the bit I just listened to, in which Anna, who has been a really good character so far and presented as a kind of empathetic moral compass, says something along the lines of: "Humans were driven by curiosity to risk the unknown and set sail towards new lands not knowing what they were going to find. And that audacity drove progress and it was not hubris." Bitch please; go study some basic history on the mercantile era. Europeans were driven by curiosity my fucking ass - they were driven by greed. By the search for an alternative route to India that would allow them to import goods cheaper. For riches. After the first ones found the Americas, the greed got even worse. Those who would embark on that perilous journey did so because they knew it was a "high risk high reward" situation. They were ready to completely devastate lands and peoples for gold and silver and whatever else they could find. Is she fucking daft? And that is especially asinine coming from a religious character (who, once again, was clearly supposed to represent a reasonable, charitable, humble priest), if you know anything at all about the role religion had in the conquest of "the new world."

All I can hope for is for these two characters' vomit-worthy hypocrisy to be pointed out by the narrative? But I'm not holding my breath. There is absolutely no sign that it is self-aware when it comes to these two inners.