First off, my assumption about Karuniya's "thing" being neurotypical woo-woo was absolutely completely accurate. This I simply know to be the case, because if you ask neurotypicals (or even anybody neurodiverse, usually) about this type of thing, they'll just wave their fingers mysteriously and be confused about why you do not 'get' & adore it. They'll act like it is simply known, so no luck there. Makes sense, I think the entire flashback is really underwritten; long passages of dialogue go unaccompanied by any real descriptive narration or anything beyond Karuniya's running commentary. I don't think it gives the reader a sense of the affection between them, which as an autist makes perfect sense, 'pls be more obvious' y'know.

The revelation that I hadn't considered, because it does not enter my mind, because wtf, is something most readers probably find really obvious: ✨ It's a butch/femme bit ✨ ! And I was like ohhhhhhh, a lightbulb powered on in my brain, this makes perfect sense! Karuniya isn't a creep because she's necessarily a weird fetishist, she's a creep because the bit they're doing is a literal husband-and-wife bit!!! Although you do have to wonder, on their first date, has Murati agreed to play The Man in this relationship? Was it discussed, does it count as consenting if they woo-woo vibes make eyes at eachother neurotypically? It sort of seems like Karuniya has constructed a "Murati" in her brain before they even date.

Vibes-based analysis, I see two sorts of contexts, ish, in which butch/femme appears as a 'thing'. One is mostly as an aesthetic or stylistic choice for the people involved, and not a lot more than that? The other one I tend to associate with like, old 1970s bar culture, and has both of them be almost gender identities unto themselves, with the butch basically being a 1:1 comedy trad man replacement. A thing! (Please bully me over this weird and probably wrong read, I do not pride myself on social understanding)

It's pretty efficient as an explanation, because whenever I've read queer fic that plays into this really specific gendery butch/femme, I have been almost as weirded out by those too. Personally I never got why you'd want to replicate stock-standard heterosexual RETVRN gender roles with women... but I tend not to worry about it. If cis women wanna do that, sure, power to you. Hell, if trans people wanna, of course, who the fuck am I to say no?

The problem I have with 8.13 is many compounding things: as I nudged above, it kind of seems like this whole idea only comes from Karuniya's end, like it's wholly her thing and she pushes it onto Murati. In the flashback I feel like I can read Murati's reaction to it as anything from "slightly bemused" to "really awkward", and she seems more confused than anything when Karuniya starts calling her "husband" way back. Recently, as in circa 9.x, Karuniya has taken to calling her "hubby" and does Murati ever respond to it??? The time when Murati observes that Karuniya is "a screamer" in 9.5 is literally the first time I can remember that Murati has expressed, really romantic or sexual attraction, not just to her fiance but to ANYBODY. She's so passive and quiet about it, even in her inner thoughts, and Karuniya's enthusiastic prattling seems weird by contrast. I had kind of hoped 8.13 was gonna show us that Yes, Murati wants it too! but only barely. The romantically inexpressive, surprisingly unreactive Murati is a poor match for Karuniya's over-enthused neurotypical hypersexuality.

The truth is though, it doesn't really cover for Karuniya being desperately cock-hungry all the time. I don't need to belabour that point though, because frankly pretty much everything I said in that post still holds up. Karuniya seems flippant and uninterested in anything about Murati that doesn't involve sex. Do they ever talk about anything else? Surely Karuniya should be asking Murati how her squad leadership is going, right, since it's new for her? I know so much more about the link between Sonya and Maryam, or Norn and Adelheid, than I do the protagonist and her fiance.

I think Murati/Karuniya is an underwritten mess, lacking a lot of the small, telling details you would usually see in a good romance, or even several of the relationships in Unjust Depths!! It's an ugly mix and I hate it, I really wish I could not think this, but there is soooooo much at play here.

As an addendum: I find it interesting that Murati/Karuniya as a pair is so steeped in a real-world parsing of gender between sapphics. Most of the relationships in UD range anywhere from "somewhat removed from our social context" (autistic mech pilot x psionic cuttlefish churchlady) to "waaaay removed from our social context", (autistic robot lady x bloodsucking shifter fish woman from the depths) I do really like that the author is so enamoured with fish, it's cute and fun. But I'm not primed to expect what is bssically a sapphic romance trope, to me it sticks out like a sore thumb.