The Sword and Laser discussion

Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "Fresno Bob wrote: "Murderbot's voice and build for me has always been that of Jeffrey Donovan, playing the character Michael Westen in "Burn Notice", the right amount of smart and snark....

https:..."

mos def!

Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "Fresno Bob wrote: "Murderbot's voice and build for me has always been that of Jeffrey Donovan, playing the character Michael Westen in "Burn Notice", the right amount of smart and snark....

https:..."

mos def!

Fresno Bob wrote: "Murderbot's voice and build for me has always been that of Jeffrey Donovan, playing the character Michael Westen in "Burn Notice", the right amount of smart and snark....

https://www.youtube.com/w..."

Snort! Oh yeah! 😉

I've always seen Murderbot as female. I've been training myself not to default all characters in books to being white in my mental vision, so I initially thought of her as Black and that's my headcanon now.

Okay, now I wish the narrator of the audiobooks was female or more androgynous. He really did a great job though.

I'm at Network Effect right now and Amena called her "Third mom" and that jarred me if Amena is mocking it on its behavior or because it has feminine features.
I've assumed - since it's a security bot and all - that it has predominantly masculine features as it makes more sense to make a cloned security guard with tough and big male genes tho I also thought it could've been androgenous in appearance because of its mech parts/not having much estrogen/testosterone. And also because it's so tall that it tends to look down on people to look them in the eyes.

Max wrote: "And also because it's so tall that it tends to look down on people to look them in the eyes."

See my earlier post about tall women. Sigourney Weaver is 6 feet tall and Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) is 5’11”. And they’re short compared to previously-mentioned actresses.

I've heard the topic on this thread come up on the podcast a number of times over the years. Since there's recent activity on it, I guess I'll comment.

I'm surprised by the way people try to cram Murderbot into either male or female when it is explicitly and canonically agender, uses it/its pronouns (not just on forms but in the occasions when it refers to itself in the third person and when it refers to other constructs using pronouns), and in every way forcefully rejects the idea that it has a gender the way people do.

I specifically decided to give this series a try in the not too distant *because* I discovered Kevin R. Free was the actor performing the role. (I primarily knew him from his role as "Kevin" in the WTNV podcast.) I love his performance and think he nails Murderbot. But I wouldn't mind hearing an interpretation of the character from an actor like Amber Benson either.

But then, as my youngest and I have discussed many times, gender is weird and complicated. I've often used the "gender nonconforming" non-specific umbrella because nothing else fit. But the term 'gender detachment' coined in this paper really struck us both as perhaps coming closer.

https://osf.io/nbr28

But seriously, Murderbot is canonically agender so much so that attempts to impose a gender on it causes it to respond in horror and revulsion. Let it be agender.