it/its + skull/skulls | Friendly Neighborhood Werewolf

She literally showcases reviews for her books that say that she didn't do the racist trope of making a default evil race, by defending her default evil race by saying that if they're evil, then you'd have to say that British colonizers were evil.

Those fan essays defending her racism with more racism were published in 2023.

People, including old cis straight white men, have been criticizing this aspect of her racist writing since The Books of the Raksura came out in 2011. When the trope of "inherently evil races" was already outdated and seen as embarassingly fucking racist to write.

She has had people for over a decade of people talking about why this racist trope she used is racist and not okay. Does she showcase any of those and apologize? No. She literally waits until 2023 when she finds someone defending her by defending British colonization, because she is not interested in any real analysis of her books, she just wants endless praise for her racism.

And when people still keep criticizing the blatant racism that was literally considered outdated and embarassing in 2011, she pulls out the "it's not that deep, stop taking it so seriously, they're just silly dragon bee people" card.

She would literally rather demean and infantilize her own work than just fucking admit she used a racist trope. Because she's racist. And despite having people point this out for over a decade now, countless times, she's still determined to keep doubling down forever until she dies, I guess.

And this is just one aspect of her racism. There's also the constant slavery apologism, which she did in The Books of the Raksura, and is still fucking doing in The Murderbot Diaries even 7 years and 9 stories into the fucking series.

In the Books of the Raksura, she literally advocates for using eugenics to make the Inherently Evil Race stop being evil by integrating Good Guy Blood through forced and controlled breeding to make them stop being evil.

She portrays oppressive caste systems as good and right, because their biology simply determines every single thing about their lives, including who they have the right to love, what jobs they're allowed to do, and whether or not they have the right to even fucking set foot outside this abusive society under their own power.

And says that if you disagree with the position you were assigned at birth, you're just a Scarily Mentally Ill Serial Killer. Because not wanting your entire life be determined by how you're born is unnatural and means there's Something Evilly Wrong With You and you probably murder people for fun.

I'm not fucking joking.

She's fucking racist. She's been racist for decades. And despite hundreds if not thousands of opportunities to listen to the people criticizing this racism, she instead chooses to only cherry pick the reviews of a person who's fucking defending her by defending British colonization.

Insult of your choice, I would fucking kill for Murderbot to be allowed to be happy. But we're not actually supposed to want Murderbot to be happy. We're supposed to want it to stay a meat shield for slave owners for fucking ever. A thing it is literally unable to not try to be.

"You just hate everything about the series" I hate the fucking racism. I hate the ableism and exorsexism.

I would love for Murderbot to get to be fucking happy and safe but because the author is racist and loves slavery apologism, that will literally never happen /and she thinks we're idiots for wanting that to happen/.

Murderbot will never get to wear the clothes it started at so longingly in the catalogue. Murderbot will never get to relax and write fanfiction for Sanctuary Moon and figure out that it can actually write its own new show if it wants.

Murderbot will literally never be allowed to have any value in itself for its own sake outside of using itself as a meat shield for slave owners.

Because it is programmed to be unable to want anything else, and isn't even fucking allowed to be aware of this fact to know just how deeply it has been enslaved heart mind and soul.

And we're supposed to be okay with all of this.

Martha Wells, annoyed, in a paywalled interview with herself: It doesn't have Stockholm Syndrome. SecUnits are just fundamentally programmed to be incapable of not wanting to be meatshields. This is completely normal and even admirable of them. You shouldn't want Murderbot to stop being the meatshield it was enslaved to be because this is just its natural function. That is hardwired in to its core programming. Totally natural and normal and not something you should be upset about. Stop saying it shouldn't have to be a meatshield for slave owners! You're violating its bodily autonomy for wishing it saw itself as having worth outside of being a meatshield for slave owners! It's just the natural function these slaves naturally want to perform! It's built into their biology--I mean -- core programming!

Like, you're telling me you're excited for the Deliberate Enshittification & Forced Obselescence The Company™ to be adapting the book series about "Deliberate Enshittification & Forced Obselescence is extremely evil" ???

While literally *whitewashing* the main character who has the darkest skin out of all of the book cast, who is a slave who escapes to freedom? ???

While erasing the fact that Murderbot is nonbinary by allowing a rich white cis man to cast himself in the lead role???

Ah, but now with the power of the billions of capitalist dollars from Deliberate Enshittification & Forced Obselescence The Company™, we can now watch as The Murderbot Diaries goes from the premise of

"Capitalism is bad here's a slave escaping to freedom and kicking butt, mocking the humans around it for being incompetent at security"

To the completely new framing and context of

"Capitalism is bad but not Apple™, we're the cool good technology guys! See, here's us making a show about a White Man who is Enslaved by a diverse cast of color, and he escapes to freedom only to return to be the White Savior because the people of color around him always need him to rescue them!!!!! Did we mention that we, Apple Corporation, are the good guys?"

🤮🤮🤮

The fact the fandom is eating this shit up and browbeating anyone who has a problem with the whitewashing and queer erasure sure is something.

Especially the posts strawmanning in the most pathetic and obvious way possible that "people just don't like Murderbot being self-cast by a white man becusse they're the *real* antiblack racists, not the guy who cast himself in the lead role instead of allowing a queer actor of color to have a job!"

Also lmao.

Antiblack slavery apologists on tumblr.com: Only one person in the entire world has ever used speech to text in the history of the world. Therefore, I am right to worship a white supremacist white woman and claim her slavery apologism is actually progressive, because I'm gonna claim only one (1) person thinks antiblack slavery apologism, Nazi levels of dehumanization of physically disabled people, exorsexism, and more, are bad!

Also, everyone please fucking note that ask!

"#noticing".

The person sending this ask is a fucking Nazi. "#noticing" in this format is a Nazi dogwhistle for seeing the "machinations of scary Jews who secretly control the government".

This peice of shit is literally working with Nazis to defend a white woman who'se been writing antiblack slavery apologism and eugenics propaganda for decades.

This fuckwad is literally teaming up with Nazis to defend slavery apologism, and claiming no one *really* thinks bigotry is a problem, so therefore everyone criticizing the bigotry in this series must just all be *me* in particular.

While teaming up with Nazis to defend antiblack slavery apologism.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

Nope, and literally the only reason I'm gonna assume you have to ask, is because the racist anon from The Racist Anon Saga is in your inbox I presume, telling you that anyone and everyone that criticizes the murderbot diaries must all secretly be exactly 1 person with a million sockpuppets?

This is a perfect example of how this fandom, and honestly, most racist fandoms react to criticism: they will literally come up with conspiracy theories that no one can *really* have critical thinking about their series in a way that is not endless praise, and that if people *do*, they're actually all secretly 1 person who is a convenient scapegoat for various harassment campaigns for..

... calling out racism, misogyny, ableism, and transphobia in fandoms?

Anon, if you're here because someone's trying to convince you to just turn your brain off and not think deeply and critically about the themes and messages in The Murderbot Diaries, know this: the person in your inbox is *literally* spouting conservative-style, anti-intellectual conspiracy theories in order to defend their favorite racist book series from critique for the racism in it. if you turn off anon, that coward will vanish into thin air because they do not dare use their actual blog names when they spout that "it's racist against white people to call out a white woman from texas for writing racist books" and that "if you criticize racism in this book series, you're somehow doing 'digital blackface'".

If you do, genuinely, want to see what I, and everyone else who criticizes this book series are talking about, pull out your copy of All Systems Red, and before you even open the first page, watch this entire video:

then, from start to finish, in one sitting if you can manage it, re-read All Systems Red, and mentally replace "client" with "slave owner" or master, replace "secunit" with "slave" and replace "rouge secunit" with "escaped slave" and really, *really* think deeply and critical about what, exactly, you are being expected to accept and support.

When Mensah get's the sole character description in the entire novella, mentally replace her "dark brown skin and light brown hair" (Repeat performance of Colorism from Martha Wells: none of her characters who are people of color can have natural Black hair that is... black. Nor can any of them be described explicitly as "a Black woman"-- no, instead, she has dark brown skin.... but her hair is light brown. Lighter than her skin tone. Colorism. in. Action. A more inclusive and insidious form of more overt racism.) with "pale white skin and light blonde hair" as the Head Slave Owner in the context of the full entire story, instead of allowing her actions to be *Blackwashed* as the white author's Black OC Slaveowner.

Read this series under the lens of how it is treated not scary disposable robot-people (who are literally dehumanized people), but as actual marginalized, disenfranchized enslaved people who have thoughts, feelings, emotions, and interiority that you are being told point-blank to ignore and dismiss as being below not active care, but even *noticing* how many slaves are being brutally murdered for the crime of being enslaved, when it is fully, effortlessly within the protagonist's power to free every single slave it encounters, and has been within its power for over 4 years before the story began.

btw, if you actually even looked into the blogger you're asking if I'm a sockpuppet of, you'd see it literally labels every single one of its themed sideblogs as belonging to it, as a specific courtesy to the people who have its main blog blocked so people who have skull blocked don't accidentally, unknowingly follow one of skulls themed sideblogs.

If you want to engage with the "critical thinking is mandatory" blog, you've gotta at *least* do the slightest bit of reading to see the very clear differences between my blog and this user.

We criticize the same racism and ableism in series though, so ~magically~, that means that I, and any other blogger who criticizes these same series, must all be the same person who is considered an easy target for these transphobic, misogynistic conspiracy theories.

You'll notice how the entire fandom takes it as read that Mensah is a Black woman --

Up until the point I guess, where I, and others, point out that Mensah being a Black woman is part of the anti-Black racism and slavery apologism, because she is a white woman from Texas 's Black OC, who is not just the slave owner who owns the protagonist, but is quite literally The President of The Entire Confederate Alliance of Planets Which Succeeded From The Union and is independent of the corporation rim, which therefore, means they are a utopia where no one who is considered human has to work!

They have complete 24/7 access to completely free, without restriction, fresh, perfectly ripe tropical fruits of any description you can think of, and a huge assortment of different nut milks, available to every single deemed-human in their billions who live in this Confederacy of Utopia Planets where no one who is deemed human has to work....

.... Oh, where do they get all these perfectly-in-season fruits and vegetables and nutmilks in the quidrillions to feed billions of people for free at all hours of the day, you ask? If no one has to work, and the only work we see any of them do are those lofty, elevated, college-educated rich careers?

Why, they use slaves of course!

Their entire economy, where no one who is considered human has to work, is built upon slave labour of course!

With entire planets, nay, probably entire solar systems, converted into Banana Republics for the sole purpose of exporting unthinkable numbers of water-intensive nuts for making milk, and tropical fruits which are always perfectly ripe, for the billions or quadrillion people in this Utopian Confederacy of Planets Built On Slave Labour.

Oh, what's that? You thought "banana republic" was just an upscale american clothing company?

Nope, it's the horrors of capitalism and colonialism rolled into one, and if you read up on the horrors committed that allow americans to buy fresh bananas year round for just 40-60 cents a pound, imagine the sheer horrors that are enacted upon the enslaved population who are deemed subhuman, who are The Happy Slave Trope incarnate, in order to provide completey unfettered access to a multitude of perfectly ripe tropical frutis and nutmilks at every single hour of the day every single place you go in Preservation?

And hey, did I mention all of the 24/7 completely free food options are vegan? Which tells us that all these colonized planets aren't even raising livestock, so there's no meat, there's no dairy, there's no cheese, they're all likely monoculture farms covering whole planets, worked 24/7 by slaves, and use up the planet's resources until its completely depleted, at which point they probably just bring a good old terraforming station in or hop over to the next, newly-colonized planet? No meat or dairy or cheese -- how many cultural foods have been erased? How many staple crops of indigienous people become the Fad Foods and now exists to be farmed by an enslaved work force to feed a bunch of slave owning rich academics?

Political Implications of how utopias are framed completely uncritically as utopias in science fiction series where the author wants you to forget the protagonist is the legally enslaved property of her Black OC? On the critical media analysis blog? It's more likely than you think!

A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites.

Which is an absolutely wildly fucking antiblack statement to make, as well as attempting to throw nonblack people of color who are *not* antiblack shitheads under the bus.