i liked the piece, the tradition of haphazardly gendered inhuman little monster guys is one of the few really endearing things about the format to me. i do wonder if some of the blame for the slow cruft of sloppy personhood is just that a corporate setting tends to slowly recast happy accidents as willed, personalized accomplishments - fictional characters go through the same dogged narrativization as the ceo’s memoirs, same panicked effort to glop something person-shaped together. even super mario has a weird little backstory which serves to both imply preordained greatness and also connect this squat little golem back to the family unit.
