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  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Hi trans mega :)

    Some 8.10/8.11 Unjust Depths discussion, mech battles n character things

    cri okay remember how I said I wanted more Murati flashbacks, my heart might not be able to take it. In 8.11 you get to see ten year old Sonya and I’m like BAWWWWWWWW LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS, LOOK HOW EXCITED SHE IS AT GETTIN GENDER AFFIRMED cri Zasha is such a cool older sister, she lectures about the meaning of combat and supports her kid sister transitioning… but like look at this adorable lil autist, “It’s like crazy how good I am” yes it is you little fucking lovable dork, you ARE the hero!!! bridget-smug and she has a stuffed cuttlefish lol. I wonder what thats about =)

    Also the mech fights in this chapter? 11/10 no notes, Sieglinde getting battered by Khajida with two chainswords while receiving a vicious roasting had me like FUCKING GET ER KHAJIDA, SHOW THAT BITCH WHAT A UNION PILOT WITH SOMETHING TO FIGHT FOR CAN DO!!! Similarly, Sonya diving out of the way of the Option drone, baiting it to shoot the Jagdkaiser because Selene is a fucking idiot? When Sonya says I’m not a lab rat! I’m Sonya Shalikova! You think this is fun? Are you enjoying yourself?, uncritical support to Sonya in her pitched battle to murder Selene. There is an interesting footnote tho:

    “She generated no ambient emotions for Selene to pick up. She was invisible to psionic senses.”

    I thought Sonya just had really strong latent powers that stopped Maryan from reading her, but… is the implication here that Sonya is invisible to psionic vision cause shes just that fuckin autistic that her emotions are unreadable?

    Shalikova felt like crying - she was crying - there was so much pouring out of her. She knew it was irrational, but she was so affected by the emotions she felt from Selene.

    It definitely feels subtextually like psionic autism. Lol.

    In other news, and since it so rudely interrupted the climax of battle, (a classic shonen battle trope) oh god for fuck’s sake, I didn’t realise we’d be getting flashback scenes of sad egg vibes in this, oh it puts me in mind of James H in Nevada holy shit. Going home to his shitty apartment in Star City to try on a dress and smoke weed and be depressed, as Marina does. I am so fucking dismayed that the word transvestism survived from the surface world, oh fuckin man kombucha-disgust Republic delenda est…

    I do find it kind of funny that Marina has to shoulder all the internalised transphobia in this plot, because everyone else is too cool and rad.

    • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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      7 months ago
      psionic autism is the name of my new band

      baby sonya is so good! she’s so excited to be a girl and be like zasha. i really like the characterization we get of zasha where she’s clearly not 100% on board with the change but is really trying as hard as she can to not let sonya know. it IS crazy how good she is!

      god yeah the khadija sieglinde fight is so good. sieglinde is so caught up in her own conception of herself, where she hates fighting and has given up any hope for the future even for herself, that she cannot imagine that anyone she views as a peer could have legitimate principles. i feel bad for her, she’s incredibly pathetic

      selene is pretty pathetic as well but in a very different way. i still like her because she sucks in a way i find compelling but she SUCKS. it rules seeing sonya kick her ass

      baby egg marina is so sad. the republic is truly evil they are JUST america and this story understands how horrifying that is. the bit where they have cars for literally no reason and they make it so much worse to live there is like. damn, this story gets it amerikkka
      also it’s so funny that all the gia agents have american president code names. america is always on its bullshit, even in the underwater postapocalypse

      • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago
        Sick bandname!!

        I absolutely demand the author quit tugging my heart strings like this, I’m not gonna last if these flashbacks to dorky kid versions of my favourite characters persist. Gets me every time ✨ I was very pleased to learn that Zasha does not deserve the wall tbh, the entire sequence is wonderful. Can we have more Zasha too actually?

        Y’know, the Antenora is literally just a ship of fools huh? I think Norn and Adelheid are the only ones onboard who aren’t total losers. Selene is a eugenics-pick-me, Gertrude is an empty-headed dork who puts “get GF” before any critical thought, Sieglinde projects her total lack of conviction & ideals onto her lifelong for and gets rekt for it(I was glued to the page). They’re all clowns and I think I love it - Gertrude absolutely deserved that dressing-down Adelheid gave her, unexpected based Adelheid moment.

        I still don’t find Selene to be that compelling, like I don’t want to be in her head unlike everybody else, but if her purpose was to get sandbagged by Sonya, job well done. The fight was superb, I could watch Sonya take a psionic supremacist down a peg any day. I was mad when the Marina flashback cut this fight off, I know someone is gonna save Sonya but I wanna see, pls let her be ok :/

        Idk, sitting in your dark, shitty apartment in lacy undergarments and smoking your depression away, I mean it’s kind of a vibe. It’s such a vivid image and I’ve seen it a few times, I was nodding along. “Ah yes, relatable. Can’t wait for her to be forcefemmed.” My mood was kind of all over the place reading Marina’s bit, there was that scene and then the “Piedmont must have thought he was a fucking queer” which made me snort, I love how crass and sweary Marina is. But then you meet Leda and it’s like kbity-how That is not how I expected the " had a knife held to her cock" line to be paid off?? How should I feel??? I guess I expected the Leda/Marina/Bethany thing to be… okay well maybe not “wholesome” but not THAT, what the fuck. No adequate face, except kbity-how I guess. Consent, where are you now…

        Lmao okay is it weird that I kind of hate the Republic more than the Empire? The Republic seems like a very serious hellhole, like maybe as bad as the slavery empire. In general I am dismayed that so much amerikkka has survived under the sea. The Union should liberate this place fr fr.

        • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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          7 months ago
          ty

          never! next up is baby ulyana living under the empire and being radicalized into a revolutionary! yeah zasha isn’t perfect but she’s doing self crit and trying her best, and she clearly loves sonya so much. though i have bad news regarding what we already know about zasha

          yeah lmao. hunter iii isn’t a loser but that’s because she’s very no thoughts head empty all she wants to do is grill eat raw meat! selene sucks but it’s so fun to see her get wrecked by someone she sees as lesser. sieglinde’s fight is better but that’s not really saying much given how good it is

          marina’s whole thing is so good. the leda stuff is like. NOT what i expected and it’s wild. and no i think it’s very fair to hate the republic, they’re INCREDIBLY evil. truly madiha gets it

          • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            7 months ago
            yw!

            Oh nooooo that’ll be sad vibes, I’ll end up discovering why Yana is such a dork and fumbles cool cultural catgirls kitty-cri-texas Way better than Deshnov, I was worried every trans-sibling was gonna be a clown… I will say the Children’s Halls are incredibly fascinating to me, that kids get raised with a degree of autonomy and all, I think I dig that.

            Ah right I literally forgot about Hunter III I love her! Uncritical support to our hungry aphotic salamander!!! Her head-empty is very refreshing actually. Potomac was also not a loser even if the Sunlight org is pretty sus. All of the silly puppies onboard though, Yurii and Petra and also Ingrid, they’re kinda losers too if pitiable =) Where is my dog girl communism, why so few? Idk though, I mean Khajida v Sieglinde is super killer, but Sonya v Selene that begins with failson getting rekt? Sonya thanking Maryan for her psionics? I adore that shit maybe just as much.

            Yeah uh when she forcefemmes you at knifepoint?? I… guess that’s something? kbity I keep hoping Marina is okay but she is so clearly not. The republic is also an empire >:3

            • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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              7 months ago
              i love that cultural catgirl is catching on, though i never watched that show

              yeah i was referencing the children’s halls when you got to that deshnov flashback. kids have options if they want independence! it’s cool, i dig it

              hmm. the mechanics of the selene fight are cooler, but the 20 year history between khadija and sieglinde is so good, realizing the true extent to which sieglinde had been wallowing in her misery over realizing that she was a tool for empire without seeing an alternative is just killer. but that’s a good point, sonya thanking maryam is v good

              yeah marina is very much not ok. the republic is exactly as much of an empire as the empire yeah

              • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                7 months ago
                Idk the reference I just thought it was funny c:

                Ohhhhhh now I see =) Yeah that’s really cool, fuck the Union is so rad all the time…

                I love that both happen at once, excited to see Sonya kiss her cuttlefish when she gets back! Also though I just got to 8.13 and I’m like MURATI NO YOU SHOULDNT BE OUT HERE WTF, DONT BREAK YOUR FUCKING NECK YOU DUMB BITCH niko-what STOP THAT, although also hey, maybe Karuniya can develop some character traits here? I do want to see her become her own person…

                E: Oh a Karuniya flashback!

                E2: Oh… a Karuniya flashback lea-tired

                Either way Marina is gonna need to get those brainworms out, she is doing the lib thing of going “weh capitalism bad evil empire” but still calling people “commies”… Marina Re-Education Camp t34

                • Cromalin [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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                  7 months ago
                  the reference is all purpose cultural catgirl nukunuku

                  which i THOUGHT was one of the anime airing on american tv that had the 9/11 sympathies message during broadcast but i misremembered, it was just on the same channel. (serial experiments lain neon genesis evangelion and sakura wars were the three)

                  and yeah i wish i lived in the union so fucking bad kitty-cri

                  yeah they both rule. this arc just has really good booking! and the karuniya murati duo mech is cool as hell

                  i like karuniya’s flashback blob-no-thoughts i think it’s cute and i like hearing her talk about ocean facts. but she’s still pretty ancillary to murati, i do wish she got more on her own here

                  yeah marina is still a massive lib, regardless of how sympathetic she is

                  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                    7 months ago
                    Ohhhh...

                    Oh no not 9/11 sympathies, national-mourning-period now I know tho :>

                    tfw no socialism with underwater characteristics kitty-cri-potato

                    This is an incredible arc, goated almost all the way around. But…

                    I am gonna make the worst fuckin post you have ever seen in your life. It’s gonna be terrible, we’re all gonna die, I’ll do it once the mega refreshes blob-no-thoughts It’s ridiculous, I am cooking a weapons-grade bad post. Surely a bad post to end all bad posts, like it’s not even gonna be in c/badpostimg but they’ll have to close the comm. I cooked it while Hexbear was asleep, look out.

                    E: I have posted. Site’s over everybody go home.