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  • ashinadash [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    [Unjust Depths posting] I'm sorry to the author but this shit with Elena and Gertrude is so fucking boring. Yeah Gertrude is okay as far as being a soldier lady goes, but THERE ARE TRANSBIANS AND CATGIRLS on that fucking boat!!!! I want to go back to them!!! Shit, I'd probably even prefer Prince Erich and his evil twink to this. I did not sign up for a regency romance, I signed up for semi-automated luxury transbian underwater communism.

    light spoilers for.chapter 4.x idk

    Update: Okay so MAAAYBE it's cute that Elena's late mum was in lesbians with Bethany, her maid, and Bethany feels sort of motherly toward Elena about it because they're all gay, and I know probably the Brigand will swing by and use these gays to cause revolution, but buuuhhhhh I miss Murati I miss Yana cri save me gay commies... gay commies save me...

    • Cromalin [she/her]M
      ·
      8 months ago

      yeah chapter/book 4 is a big slowdown. one of those things where in retrospect it has a lot of really important stuff that goes into some really interesting places, but even as someone who was a little more into the regency romance stuff it was still kinda frustrating

      it introduces some incredible stuff, but i was very happy to return to the gay commies

      • ashinadash [she/her]
        ·
        8 months ago

        I can tolerate it, I can forsee some of the cool stuff fwiw. It's a shame though because everything from the 3rd Battle of Thassal Plain through the Yana Drama to boarding the Brigand to the leviathan battle was 10/10 nonstop awesome. I don't mind Elena & Gertrude, or Bethany even, but as the cast of characters ballooned I was worried it'd cause pacing issues :/

        • Cromalin [she/her]M
          ·
          8 months ago

          yeah the pacing is at its worst at this point. it suffers a bit with the big cast at some future points, but generally i think madiha has a much stronger handle on it going forward

          • ashinadash [she/her]
            ·
            8 months ago

            Good :3 I still love it fwiw, like there's honestly probably nothing the author could do to make me not read the entire thing at this point. I recommended it to a woman I know in a lib queer discord, it's SUCH a great story to sell people, it has everything ✨

            Also the prince is definitely secretly gay with his twink guy right? Like I'm not misreading the sexual undertones there, am I?

            • Cromalin [she/her]M
              ·
              8 months ago

              oh 100%, if you assume any given character is queer you'll basically always be right

                • Cromalin [she/her]M
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  unjust depths is borderline heterophobic. like, if you wanted to invert the way standard homophobic storytelling is done it would look very similar to unjust depths. very few straight characters, it's treated very clearly as a personality flaw in all of them

                  • ashinadash [she/her]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    8 months ago

                    Is it a personality flaw to uncritically support fictional heterophobia? 'Cause uh =)

                    • Cromalin [she/her]M
                      ·
                      8 months ago

                      no, i think heterophobia is good as hell. more stories should engage in heterophobia. it's a shame unjust depths is the only truly heterophobic story i can think of

                      the closest thing is a few stories that have lots of gay people and also some straight people and all the straight stuff leads to disaster while the gay stuff has messy drama but isn't as bad, but that's not the same

                      • ashinadash [she/her]
                        ·
                        8 months ago

                        THANK YOU, I feel deeply satisfied being able to just safely assume that every single named character is queer. Bury your gays, more like bury your straights comfy-cool Unjust Depths is such a treasure, I haven't read anything else since I started.