Sonya Shalikova kissed her cuttlefish lady finally, and it was adorable. I relate strongly to her acting alienated about the ways people date and have sex, very cool. She could do it for Maryam!!!

Conversely Dear Zachikova, the fish lady with the gore robe emerging from a pile of fleshy briney guts is NOT AT ALL SUS, she is NOT MIND CONTROLLING YOU and you should DEFINITELY FUCK HER lmao. I do like how blunt Zachikova’s narration is about her attractions and lack thereof. She is extremely, deeply unconcerned about fucking the newly-formed fish lady. Took a lot of restraint not to fuck her on the floor of the hangar though, I never had Zachikova pegged for “too horny to live, will be subsumed by a sexy sea creature”… uncritical support though, lol. I like Arbitrator I and her aid in the ascent of the Brigand is extremely cool, the whole Omenseers thing fucks really hard.

During that same ascent, Yana finally gets over her hangups with EMOTIONAL SUPPORT CATGIRL AALIYAH, WHO GETS YOU THROUGH SUDDEN ASCENT! Everything from the point Ulyana realises that Arbitrator I is the dancer fish to the point where she calls for damage assessment is rad.

Meanwhile onboard the Antenora, I really did expect Norn to just beat the absolute living shit out of Gertrude, repeatedly, viciously. I woulda critically supported her, even! But the way she sees Emperor Konstantin in Gertrude, how she feels like a failure of a mentor, how she grants forgiveness to her, and the way she considers all of this as she stares at her own clenched fist while time is stopped? Again it’s a stellar moment for her. Norn always seems like she’s just rampaging around manipulating and murdering motherfuckers to take her bottomless anger out, but there’s so much going on with her internally. Her complicated feelings about the Emperor, her shrouded mysterious past with the Sunlight Foundation, her bond with Adelheid. She is an absolutely fucking superb villian. If evil lady bad, why sympathetic and complex and fascinating??? I cannot fathom her motivations and I desperately want to know.

Out of the Loser Gang, Selene sees the most immediate change, having been schooled by some funny gay autist.

Selene was speechless. Not just at the doctor’s manic behaviour, but at her own foolishness.

She had pumped a lot of psynadium during her confrontation with that girl-

Sonya Shalikova.

To think she had ti go this far to try to outmatch her and even so-

And as a result Sonya has a rival now, finally!! Selene deserves to feel like a pathetic untermensch or whatever the fuck, what a nerd lol. What credibility did she have?

But aside from ubermensch here getting dunked on, I learned a lot about her inner workings. When Selene asks questions about Who She Is, Why She Was Born, What She Is Meant For, I realise finally that she has fundamentally misunderstood the concept of purpose in life.

She asserts that natal humans are born with innate destinies, in families, states, ethnicities and such. She asserts that even Katarrans have a born purpose, but that she has nothing as a blank-slate person, and asks how to attain a destiny if not born with it. She is so myopically focused on PURPOSE that she cannot envision making her own. A character flaw of sorts. She desperately wants to be told her purpose, and knows not what she would do with herself if given freedom. Norn, who lives in spite of her grand stated purposes, strikes a fascinating contrast.

I’ll be real, chat, Unjust Depths is really picking up. Its leads are gaining in complexity and the pacing is tighter than a guitar string. Already good and only keeps getting better.

We should all benefit from my extensive pain & suffering today, because despite everything I did manage to improve my understanding somewhat. Consider this a follow up to my welcome to hell, 8.13) post.

First off, my assumption about Karuniya’s “thing” being neurotypical woo-woo was absolutely completely accurate. This I simply know to be the case, because if you ask neurotypicals (or even anybody neurodiverse, usually) about this type of thing, they’ll just wave their fingers mysteriously and be confused about why you do not ‘get’ & adore it. They’ll act like it is simply known, so no luck there. Makes sense, I think the entire flashback is really underwritten; long passages of dialogue go unaccompanied by any real descriptive narration or anything beyond Karuniya’s running commentary. I don’t think it gives the reader a sense of the affection between them, which as an autist makes perfect sense, ‘pls be more obvious’ y’know.

The revelation that I hadn’t considered, because it does not enter my mind, because wtf, is something most readers probably find really obvious: ✨ It’s a butch/femme bit ✨ ! And I was like ohhhhhhh, a lightbulb powered on in my brain, this makes perfect sense! Karuniya isn’t a creep because she’s necessarily a weird fetishist, she’s a creep because the bit they’re doing is a literal husband-and-wife bit!!! Although you do have to wonder, on their first date, has Murati agreed to play The Man in this relationship? Was it discussed, does it count as consenting if they woo-woo vibes make eyes at eachother neurotypically? It sort of seems like Karuniya has constructed a “Murati” in her brain before they even date.

Vibes-based analysis, I see two sorts of contexts, ish, in which butch/femme appears as a ‘thing’. One is mostly as an aesthetic or stylistic choice for the people involved, and not a lot more than that? The other one I tend to associate with like, old 1970s bar culture, and has both of them be almost gender identities unto themselves, with the butch basically being a 1:1 comedy trad man replacement. A thing! (Please bully me over this weird and probably wrong read, I do not pride myself on social understanding)

It’s pretty efficient as an explanation, because whenever I’ve read queer fic that plays into this really specific gendery butch/femme, I have been almost as weirded out by those too. Personally I never got why you’d want to replicate stock-standard heterosexual RETVRN gender roles with women… but I tend not to worry about it. If cis women wanna do that, sure, power to you. Hell, if trans people wanna, of course, who the fuck am I to say no?

The problem I have with 8.13 is many compounding things: as I nudged above, it kind of seems like this whole idea only comes from Karuniya’s end, like it’s wholly her thing and she pushes it onto Murati. In the flashback I feel like I can read Murati’s reaction to it as anything from “slightly bemused” to “really awkward”, and she seems more confused than anything when Karuniya starts calling her “husband” way back. Recently, as in circa 9.x, Karuniya has taken to calling her “hubby” and does Murati ever respond to it??? The time when Murati observes that Karuniya is “a screamer” in 9.5 is literally the first time I can remember that Murati has expressed, really romantic or sexual attraction, not just to her fiance but to ANYBODY. She’s so passive and quiet about it, even in her inner thoughts, and Karuniya’s enthusiastic prattling seems weird by contrast. I had kind of hoped 8.13 was gonna show us that Yes, Murati wants it too! but only barely. The romantically inexpressive, surprisingly unreactive Murati is a poor match for Karuniya’s over-enthused neurotypical hypersexuality.

The truth is though, it doesn’t really cover for Karuniya being desperately cock-hungry all the time. I don’t need to belabour that point though, because frankly pretty much everything I said in that post still holds up. Karuniya seems flippant and uninterested in anything about Murati that doesn’t involve sex. Do they ever talk about anything else? Surely Karuniya should be asking Murati how her squad leadership is going, right, since it’s new for her? I know so much more about the link between Sonya and Maryam, or Norn and Adelheid, than I do the protagonist and her fiance.

I think Murati/Karuniya is an underwritten mess, lacking a lot of the small, telling details you would usually see in a good romance, or even several of the relationships in Unjust Depths!! It’s an ugly mix and I hate it, I really wish I could not think this, but there is soooooo much at play here.

As an addendum: I find it interesting that Murati/Karuniya as a pair is so steeped in a real-world parsing of gender between sapphics. Most of the relationships in UD range anywhere from “somewhat removed from our social context” (autistic mech pilot x psionic cuttlefish churchlady) to “waaaay removed from our social context”, (autistic robot lady x bloodsucking shifter fish woman from the depths) I do really like that the author is so enamoured with fish, it’s cute and fun. But I’m not primed to expect what is bssically a sapphic romance trope, to me it sticks out like a sore thumb.

9.5: MAJIDA MENTIONED!!! Twice even! But this is The Relationships Chapter, for everybody.

Shalikova continues to be adorable in her nervous affection for Cuttlefish Lady. “Purple marshmallow”!!!

It’s a cool scene when she walks in to Maryam travelling in the aether, it really feels like her understanding of Maryam has increased considerably.

Whatever it was that she was doing, Shalikova wanted to support her.

I love Sonya Shalikova so much. She could overtake Murati in my favourites. This scene is fucking adorable ugh I could keysmash about it. Nowt but love in my heart for them, the way Madiha writes their awkward new love makes me feel. Oh my god they’re so cute help??? Like their bit is that Maryam is the overly enthusiastic sunshiney one and Shalikova is the overly serious stiff and awkward one, but they’re so cute at eachother that the dynamic feels perfectly balanced between them.

I’m your idiot now, Maryam.

Shalikova’s narration of psionics also feels deeply textural in a way that says “the tism!” very loudly to me. Feels like more of a sensory thing for her, which is rad. Her stream of consciousness is full of flavour like that. I also like that Maryam observes that she feels “dominant and strong, like a Warlord”, that’s ‘strong personality’ right? My read is that Sonya’s neurotype informs her entire experience of love and affection, and I adore that. There are dedicated romance novels with autistic leads that don’t hit the mark as precisely as this.

HAHA, oh man de la Rosa talking about how she always strikes gold with freely available independent fiction, it might seem self-congratulatory if it weren’t 100% true. I think I’ve said what she narrates about it 100% verbatim before.

de la Rosa feels like a self insert for my stupid ass, like Hello ma’am I am also hopelessly obsessed with gay women in my books. I am being reached out to by the author. I really like this, her little summary of Blind Princess and the Kind Retainer reads sort of like what I’m writing right now… There are multiple levels of meta at play, lol.

“Why- why are you freaking out so much. We’re both girls, you can stop hiding.”

Even Alex realised immediately what a stupid thing to say that was.

Lol, lmao! It’s fun to see Handsome Gamer Genivov being nervous and awkward when she’s usually so boisterous and loud. I like how when reading Unjust Depths, it pays not to judge a gay by their cover - characters will make weird or even bad impressions at first, and then unfurl amazingly, become fascinating and multi-faceted. Video games are reactionary and cringe, but it’s nice to see de la Rosa tolerate Genivov’s hobby :)

Handily contrasting how Shalikova sees psionics as an absolute win, meanwhile, Murati is all freaked out about the inequality of being able to read Karuniya’s feelings when Karu cannot do the same. Dw Murati it’s okay, Karu is a fucking weirdo so it all evens out. At this point “evil ingenuity” is rubbing me really wrongly coming from Karuniya, a fucking weirdo, should not be mischevious. “Hubby” is a straggot term, Karuniya, shut the fuck up.

For what it’s worth, it is a decentish scene for the pair of them, and I don’t intend to constantly belabour the fact of my boundless disdain for Karuniya. It is at least cool to see Murati show some sexual initiative, I realise now that one of the reasons their relationship can feel so creepy and unbalanced–especially in that 8.13 flashback–is that it’s been Karuniya doing almost all of the horny perving, with Murati being mostly passive, which makes her feel weirdly objectified to me. This is at least a slight improvement to the status quo.

The way Zachikova and Arbitrator I are described as cuddling does not, as the narration says, seem out of character for me. It’s a very casual, parallel-play type of physical affection, I know it and I like it. Autism. To be honest, Abritrator wrapping her body around Zachikova and sniffing at her hair while she’s using a terminal, it reminds me of cuddling my wife sometimes. I adore that Zachikova feels comfortable enough around Madame Fishy, and that this level of comfort is new to her. Affection in general is new to Braya Zachikova, and she seems to have poor emotional regulation about it but isn’t distressed by it, which is very cute.

…and then Zachikova says she’s all-ready to kill Arbitrator I in a multitude of ways! Countermeasures because she’s unfamiliar with cohabiting!! This is weird even to me, but it’s funny and befitting of our favourite former spec-ops robotic lady. She is so blunt, they have a curious but deeply pleasant dynamic. This is the best fucking autism rep this side of The Outside by Ada Hoffmann, and the single best chapter of Unjust Depths thus far.

Relatedly, Arbitrator revealing herself to be a sexy(??) yet meek vampire fish is weirdly intimate. I feel weirdly sympathetic to Arbitrator’s struggle not to harm humans despite her bloodlust, which is probably me and my murder-gays-affection speaking again. Arbitrator is all fucked up and borderline ashamed about it though, and I think extremely highly of Zachikova for calmly considering Arbitrator’s problem without freaking out, she’s so good to her fishy gf. I’m uh glad Zachikova can get off to it, there’s so much going on in this one scene. Great stuff.

There are some scraps, too:

Ulyana in fact IS on her way to un-fumbling; she and Aaliyah are having more than one shot, in their night clothes, toasting to the proletarian revolution! Progress!! Mostly they talk about the progress of the Brigand’s mission and its truly wonderful crew, but I liked Aaliyah drunkenly nuzzling Ulyana’s hand, very cute.

ELENA IS READING THEORY NO FUCKING WAY, on her way to becoming a bonafide Mordecist!!! And telling Marina about it!!! It’s great seeing Marina acknowledge that she hadn’t been considering Elena’s feelings, and Elena apologising for trying to hurt Marina. They’ll get better together, as friends!

Euphrates and Tigris mostly bicker about current events and get a little inspired to resolve the Sunlight Foundation’s internal contradictions, thanks to Murati. They are cute together at least, and it’s nice to know Tigris took in Euphrates’ blood to become immortal.

Haaaaaaaaaaha oh man, Sonya being so awkward asking Murati for advice is noooot stemming my nascent filthy rotten shipping instincts! They WILL kiss!!! Read eachothers’, auras, homos, and play coy!!! Avoid eachothers’ clear affections

Is it kind of a pacing mishap to have ALL OF THESE relationship updates piled into one chapter? Maybe, but it’s a good come-down after Goryk’s Gorge, the ascent and all of the interrogations, plus it pulled my heartstrings a bunch of times. I was reading Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (a messy but enjoyable shlock-horror novel) when I theorised: if you add queers, transes, autists, and other identities I have to your genre fiction’s protagonists, it will greatly improve my investment in everything else, right up to action sequences. Unjust Depths is the absolute poster child for this though, the quality relationships are the bedrock for everything else, the political maneuvering and mecha action and deep-sea esoterics.

Addendum: In plot movement terms, at the end we finally get Carthus, once again, Erich’s pet evil twink. My excitement knows no bounds, his dramatic expressions of being the mercury to Erich’s sun, is this what yaoi is usually like? If you keep me on a steady dose of lesbians alongside it, I could get used to this too. Sing to your prince, racist pretty boy~!

I adore what an irredeemable little fuck Carthus is, ooh he’s SUCH an evil murder twink. Nice to see that Erich has access to Sunlight’s EDEN database too, and his bag is that the Sunlight Foundation basically allowed Emperor Nocht I to erase history and build this shitty empire with all its troubles. He wants to rewrite history and the empire in his own image. A united One World Government, beginning with the destruction of the summer palace. He is playing an EXCEEDINGLY long game.

So I was thinkin really hard, mostly because every Diver pilot comes out of their machine covered in sweat and exhausted I suppose…

All of the enlisted soldiers onboard the Brigand must be incredibly fit, right? And maybe the sailors too? Like, DYEL-tier, muscular & athletic, surely. Idk how much mechanical resistance is or isn’t involved in diver piloting, but like certainly right? In general? Just a secret cruiser full of incredibly strong women?

There’s not a lot of descriptions of people’s physicalities iirc, so Idk, maybe not. Sonya Shalikova is meant to be pretty slim, so maybe Diver piloting isn’t that physically strenuous? But I’m kinda surprised that Depths hasn’t leaned on “hot stronk women” thing at all, to my memory. Could always do it, y’knowwww…

Tbh the Buff Transbian is one of my favourite archetypes and rarely seen, so y’know!

Aaliyah is so fucking hardcore about Sieglinde, it’s great. Ulyana is maybe understandably a lot more sympathetic to her, but Aaliyah is rightly all SHE KILLED OUR COMRADES IN THE REVOLUTION, SHE SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

I first saw the Restorative Justice concept discussed in The Last Girl Scout, and it’s still really refreshing to me. Like IMO, if Aaliyah or Khajida just straight up slit her throat, it would be brutal and kind of pointless, indeed it wouldn’t serve justice as Aaliyah says, but I’d find it kind of hard to blame them. But no, instead our hard-assed commie captain and commissar happily hear her out. So much for bloodthirsty tankies…

It’s a great moment for Sieglinde too, it’s hard not to be sympathetic to her. I mean she wasn’t literally as child soldier but she was basically groomed for combat, under threat of not being accepted by her adopted family. She’s also a little more based than I had expected, describing the leadership as “greedy Imperial landlords”, lol.

Sieglinde needs a hug, big time…

Also CAPTAIN ULYANA IS ON HER WAY INTO UN-FUMBLE TOWN It’s so adorable & funny when Aaliyah folds her ears and her tail shakes a bit, like dawwwwww you fucking dorky cat! She has a soft center actually, and Ulyana absolutely must be getting close to repairing things.

However, it had a nice boozy bite to it, and it would certainly fuck her up.

And getting fucked up was all she wanted in that moment, inshallah.

KHAJIDA ❤ and then immediately KHAJIDA OH NO, now I feel bad for Sieglinde, rip. Not like it’s unexpected though…

Not much to say about 9.3, kind of a slight chapter. I adore how Khajida feels equally:

• Deeply disappointed/anticlimaxed that her rival, the Red Baron, is just a pathetic, sad, lacking, exhausted dumb bitch who sucks, and won’t give her the satisfying victory of killing her

• Gutted to see that Sieglinde is very much like her: middle aged and feeling the passage of time, slowing down, borderline sympathetic, and totally understandable

• Hateful that Sieglinde is sad and self-pitying and feeling remorse after causing so much suffering and fighting for horrendous causes, killing her comrades

It’s such a complicated tangle of emotions, it’s kind of a huge mess after that lifelong rivarly. Hearing Khajida silently goad Sieglinde to do something about what a heartless, evil person she’s been, it’s great. But also though HOW DARE U KHAJIDA 42 YEARS IS NOT “OLD” >:|

The interrogations with Marina and Arbitrator are all absolutely hilarious though. When Ulyana asks why Marina wasn’t honest about Elena being royalty, she yaps:

“You’re fucking communists! one of your things is ‘eat the rich’ isn’t it?”

You see Marina, The Romanovs Deserved it, we have a brick wall and some rifles down in the brig,

I was less pleased when Ulyana asked about uh, Elena’s parentage. ULYANA!!! DO NOT FUCKING REFER TO HER AS A “FATHER” I am so pleased that Aaliyah glares at her for this, good stuff. Beloved commissar.

Afterword we get Zachikova and Arbitrator I at the desk, and when Arbitrator describes the bomb collar Zachikova put on her as “a form of play”, and declares her intent to breed with Zachikova, I lost it. Zachikova is furious and deeply flustered throughout the whole thing, so Arbitrator will call her “master” and Zachikova will threaten to blow her fucking head off, and then Aaliyah goes “This is an interrogation not some raunchy kink thread on a BBS!” I love her, ngl.

I am glad that Ulyana is asking the same what-are-her-motives questions I am about Arbitrator tho, and fwiw it does seem like Abritrator is just kinda vibing, like she probably actually just wants to kiss Zachikova a bunch?

The only thing I have desired in my adult life is to talk about books I like with people. How hard can that possibly be, right?

Dante Must Die Mode. It seems like 95% of the time I’d be more productive holding people up at gunpoint and treating it like an interrogation. Sucks to suck; the precious few times I’ve been able to do it, that shit’s like a drug. Please, I beg of you, we can talk about this forever, I have headcanons and fundamental misunderstandings!

Something that’s been rolling around my head for years now is that, in Nevada by Imogen Binnie Orange Book Bad, there’s this one bit where Maria Griffiths in her narration observes some total bullshit about genderqueer identities, which is not epic and I’m actually gonna cw for transphobia:

QUOTE

Not to mention, if you are a total baby panda at Internet communities asking, like, How do I get hormones, Internet trans women are very nice: they will tell you. But when you ask a more complicated question, like say, how do you resolve a genderqueer identity with a female identity when it seems like acknowledging the restraints of female identity and then bursting them doesn’t make you no longer female, just empowered, and therefore is genderqueer a privileged identity that’s mostly available to female-assigned people with punk rock haircuts, in college, everybody gets all butt-hurt and you get in trouble.

ENDQUOTE

Wow, I should post literal Nevada quotes online more often. This is fun!!

Anyway on its face this is stupid for a whole fucking mess of reasons I’m pretty sure, like Orange Book Bad itself references Gender Outlaw once or twice, (slightly dimly, fwiw) and this kind of read is noooot compatible with Bornstein’s read of gender as a class system. Ah yes, a non-cis identity is privileged and only available to one assigned gender…? Fuck off with that. It’s sort-of consistent with Binnie’s short I Met A Girl Named Bat in 2012’s The Collection as well, which uses “both genders” once, maybe just for the sake of being an asshole.

The thing is, I have constantly wondered if I am missing something, or this is a bit or whatever, like an inside joke.This read feels kind of fucking stupid, but I don’t have any other evidence by which to prove or disprove its shittiness. You can also observe that most people would rightly not bother, and dismiss it as a dogshit take. I’m slightly biased though, if Orange Book Bad is shitty, I desire to know exactly on what level and why.

Another factor is that someone could crawl out of the woodwork and be like “I lived next to a trans girl who said she was friends with Binnie, its actually a brilliant deliberate example of what an immovably awful person Maria is, Binnie said so” or something like that. I have low knowledge about this specific brainrot subject of books, so that’s a possibility. I only want to understand shit.

Okay so I kind of wanna get my fuckin balls chopped off, so I can tuck easier and so I don’t ever need to worry about the encroaching menace of testosterone. But I’m pretty worried it’d interfere with potential future stuff if/when I wanted bottom surgery…