#ab athenia

[pluralsword]

astrobots really went lets have a cynical thoughtful determined robot catgirl sword mom protagonist and we are here for that:

anyone else on the edge of their seats w/ patient anticipation of what's going to go down in Astrobots #6? We are. the story so far lays out a complex world where mass produced bots r stratified by hardlined code thanks to humanity, hierarchy therein inherited from them too...

reading that in issues #1 and #2 alone for both atlas city & the persephone ship gave the impression that something was deeply wrong that would be the source of conflict (see: atlas being a jerk). also was nice 2 be able 2 see the overlaps between athenia & arcee, & references to transformers such as solus, scylla, and xaaron

#5 ends on such a massive cliffhanger. the conflict is laid out sure, but how is artimis going 2 be psychologically throughout the series? r her clashes with athenia going to have some level of homoeroticism, and can the latter help her? will atlas's bioessentialism end him?

his whole shtick of trying to make a genetically improved humanity without hate he learned from them & attempting to coerce a specific line of bots to do it may not seem like him being a misogynist at a first glance but when you account for humans making that line that way, well. a greek goddess-named line of bots who r sword wielding curvy bipeds w/ cat ears & hardlined coding to nurture with skills to raise humans no other line got (it is unclear at present if multiple genders exist per bot line or not, we genuinely hope for the former) sure does feel like humans had a particular idea about what kind of fierce parental figure they wanted to mass-produce that raise even more questions. one that leaves one realizing humans made the bots of all lines without thinking about programming modularity. frames too. they all have heels, no body type variety, gave us a feeling of the humans in charge not quite having humanity's or robotkind's interests in mind so much as perpetuating a specific kind of society especially since the one body type only thing is true of every other bot line because of adherence to an alienated concept of function (its still unclear whether the remaining humans in the sol system are capitalists or collectivists or what but we have a feeling which one it is). and atlas making the threats he does thus does come off as him having recreated a form of discrimination a few times removed from human context.

the other thing we like is that astrobots doesnt simply do humans vs robots. it is instead robots vs robots who are both custodians of different kinds of humanity, following up on conflict of genocidal reactionary humans vs robots and humans living in harmony responded to w/ dirty nukes, after exodus from earth.

we do genuinely think this very easily some of Furman's best writing. there's an earnest revisiting of older ideas with new ones in a new setting that carries a great deal of nuance and delicacy. Athenia and Apollo's insightul valiant outlooks are entwined, minor characters r fun