Human genetic diversity is wonderfully abundant in these books, and the cover art in the States that only ever shows Murderbot in EVAC suits or armour leaves us all the joy of seeing whatever future mixed heritage we want to see inside the armor.
I've only got a few book-canon character design convictions here:
0) No sex hormones, no gender, no digestive system (lucky bastard.)
1) Murderbot is lanky and mean, since most of it's actual attacks are based on speed and sneakiness. Also there is just too much Terminator baggage with a heavier build.
2.a) Murderbot is basically rocking less than 2cm of hair until ART messes with it.
2.b) Murderbot does not know how to do anything with it's hair other than "grow slightly more of it" until ART introduces it to hair gel this one time. No fancy haircuts, and sounds like hair length maxed out around 10cm, or somewhere short of being a shaggy bigfoot.
3.a) Murderbot doesn’t stand out in crowds. There are only human organics visible above a high shirt collar, though I'd buy in to some non-organic joins showing in its hands.
3.b) Corallary to not giving a crap: it’s not into self decoration, jewelry, or anything beyond “maybe taking a real shower sometimes.”
Personal takes:
1.) Anything goes on the eyes; I doubt there’s any meaningfully organic parts beyond some nerve bits. If I need an illustrators crutch for implied cyborgs then I CHOOSE GLOWING EYES. Also I’m gonna need that for drone drawings.
2.) Awkward skin and metal joins on the rest of the body. This is not a cool-looking hybrid. Sadly this means I have to figure that all out since Murderbot spends so much time being damaged.
3.a) On the gender problem: In order to imply toughness or combat ability, many people lean towards imagining heavy builds and hyper masculine traits. In order to imply “not actually male”, there can be a tendency to then lean towards then adding female decorative makeup. In the end, you get “a whole lot of gender” instead of “opting out of all of that”.
So I’m keeping this blog for fun and I get to rant: Many artists denote “female” by leaning hard on puffy lips, implied eye-makeup, straight-up makeup, childlike jaws, and either dramatic stick limbs or sweeping curves. Many XX humans don’t actually look like that, so “no sex hormones” is going to look uncomfortably male to a lot of viewers. That’s okay; tall and mildly muscular XX humans with short hair and no makeup also look “uncomfortably male” to United States culture, ask me how I am reminded of that on a daily basis whenever I leave the house. (Every grocery store trip is someone’s educational moment in my boring gendertrolling life since I precipitate pronoun panics in 80% of my interactions with strangers. Worst: I really wish they just, like, wouldn't. "Hey you" would be perfectly functional instead of "SirMa'amSirAreYouA...?")
3b. So to the easy stuff: no sex hormones means no extra estrogen: no developed breasts, no extra fat padding on the hips or arms. No extra testosterone means no dramatic decorative body hair, no extra muscles that aren’t made of robotic cheating, no extra bone development on the jaw or forehead. Easy. Done.
90% of you are going to say I’m drawing a male. Except anyone who has seen Raindove.
...I need to not add the hashtag “character design angst” to every post in the rest of this blog, but ugg, the temptation.
