(Hello, I got here sort of by accident, sorry to jump in like this ^^;;)
I'd forgotten that "bad at feelings" is male-coded; I tended to read Murderbot's difficulties with social interactions and feelings in general as an autism spectrum/neurodivergence thing, and that was the part I related to the most. The whole thing about struggling to act in a way that was acceptable to humans -- does my face look right, am I saying the right things, etc -- was painfully relatable, and I loved getting to see someone with these difficulties as a protagonist valued for their contributions, not their ability to appear human. It's also easy to relate to that feeling of not being able to pass as human (or just barely making it), though in Murderbot's case being a construct at least makes that concrete; if the problems are mostly in one's brain it's a lot harder to articulate why one would feel that way.
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Date: 2021-07-23 11:00 pm (UTC)From:I'd forgotten that "bad at feelings" is male-coded; I tended to read Murderbot's difficulties with social interactions and feelings in general as an autism spectrum/neurodivergence thing, and that was the part I related to the most. The whole thing about struggling to act in a way that was acceptable to humans -- does my face look right, am I saying the right things, etc -- was painfully relatable, and I loved getting to see someone with these difficulties as a protagonist valued for their contributions, not their ability to appear human. It's also easy to relate to that feeling of not being able to pass as human (or just barely making it), though in Murderbot's case being a construct at least makes that concrete; if the problems are mostly in one's brain it's a lot harder to articulate why one would feel that way.