#simuran

Well … God's punishment has descended from heaven. The winged wolf is angry that people who extract killer whale meat have injured his son. I warned you that there would be consequences.

Hi! Thanks very much! So, this was a project I did a while back and basically... Doctor Who just moved on without me really, a little bit. I still love it a lot but I'm not as in the fandom as I was. This project was really just intended to counteract the constant "Doctor Who never passed the Bechdel test!" posts I saw back in the day.

Oh god it's very difficult to catch spoilers I think but don't worry! I'm here to tell you a thousand reasons to read it anyway. So.

First things first, it's a series of books by Martha Wells, 5 novellas and 1 novel, everyone has a story of its own but they are all connected and in chronological order. The protagonist is always Murderbot.

1) a totally egoistical reason, but it's the first book(s) in years (except from Pullman's) that I managed to read from start to finish without it feeling like a chore. I devoured them. It just ... caught me from the start and hasn't let me go since

2) the writing is so funny and witty ! It's from the prospective of an android, a security unit,that hacked its own governor module and so has what we would call free will. But as soon as it has done it realizes it now has access to all the entertainment channels and decides to start bingeing stuff. And in the meantime it keeps working trying not to get caught as a rogue secunit.

3)the first novella starts during one of those jobs, a scientific expedition where murderbot is sent like standard protection for the scientists. The characters here are the ones that will come back later in other novels, but I don't want to spoil it too much!

4) it's very action packed and and has a lot of the typical stuff of sci-fi, just not at all pretentious bc it's through the eye of a very disillusioned android that is done with everyone and everything and just wants to be in a quiet place to binge its series.

5) you'll love murderbot as a character. It's impossible not to.

6) super-capitalist society and evil companies vs people and murderbot. Just. A lot of good commentary on gigantic corporations.

7)casual queerness! Like so casual! I don't wanna spoil it but I did a double take the first time a very basic concept got introducted and now I want more. Everywhere. How is it not a standard thing in every sci-fi piece of media like spaceships. I found representation where I least expected it honestly

I think the less u know in advance th more you're gonna like it so I'm gonna stop there. Idk how Russian is with pronouns so I'd recommend reading it in English because some stuff is untranslatable if you have a very gendered language like Italian (although I read the first novellas in Italian and I really liked the translator choices)

This had to wait until I reread Black Widow: Name of the Rose because I wanted to be fresh and also because I've been meaning to do that for a while.

I mean, the unhelpful answer is "the whole thing." Thematically, artistically, characterization-wise...it's just a very good Black Widow story. But I can dig into that a little more.

"Wolves and girls. Both have sharp teeth.” I wrote...a personal essay that quoted this line. Because there’s this thing, as a theme of Marjorie Liu’s that shows up in a lot of her work (X-23, Black Widow, and, perhaps most notably because it’s her creator owned work, Monstress), about women and monstrosity, and monsters inside women, and women who are monsters or have been made monsters by others. And that’s a thread that runs through this comic, too - not as strongly as Liu’s other two series I mentioned, but it’s still there.

And the themes it brings up, too, of agency and choice, most clearly defined in the fight with Electra.

Natasha, walking out of the fridge. I wrote an essay for an art history class about this scene! Just...the fact that some villains literally strip Natasha naked and put her in a fridge, and she turns the tables on them and walks out of it, is such a pointed counter to the women in refrigerators trope that...it’s well done. And also I will never not be impressed with Acuña (see below) for managing to draw a naked Natasha through a lot of an issue and never making it feel (at least to me) voyeuristic.

The fucking end quote... "what matters is we loved...and lived." As I said above, there’s threads about monstrosity and the violence of Natasha’s past, and present; how dangerous she is and how vicious she can be. (”Killing people is easy. Making them suffer is an art.”) But the heart of this book, the core of it, I think, is this line and the monologue that precedes it. It echoes, actually, a panel from an old Marvel Team Up comic (guess what! I have it saved on my computer):

Natasha is a character intimately familiar with death. Dealing it, watching it, losing people to it. But I love when writers use that familiarity and make it not about cynicism or jadedness, but rather about a recognition of what’s beautiful about being alive.

The art. I love Acuña's art, not least because it lets Natasha look...well, not bad, no one in comics (who is good) ever looks bad, but look beat up. And also it’s just gorgeous, and I love how distinctive it is. Very much not house style.

Natasha's relationships with other characters at the fore - she stands alone/on her own but she has people at her back. I feel like this one speaks for itself, mostly, but - one of the things I love about Natasha in comics, and that I think sometimes people lose when they focus on her as the assassin/superspy, is the network of relationships she has. She works on her own, she’s independent, but she’s not alone. And I think my favorite Black Widow stories are the ones that remember that, even if it’s not the focus.