#maladict with the little peek-a-bangs like Raskolnikov in the Crime and Punishment manga

[pourablecat]

7. Polly/Ozzer Perks

"And then there was the young-male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail." - Monstrous Regiment

I promised not to draw any primped-up dresses this time, yes? Unfortunately I didn't say anything about ridiculous style changes. So this time we have Ozzer in Osamu Tezuka's style. Aka Shoujo manga Polly. And... I didn't notice until now that I forgot to draw her, ahem, socks. But I swear, I used a male character as reference for her build. Tezuka's characters don't have much in the way of secondary sexual characteristics anyway.

If you've read some of Tezuka you'd probably know why I chose his style for this book. Ribon no Kishi or Princess Knight has the two-hearted Prince/Princess Sapphire, who is in no way like Polly. (By the way it wasn't Sapphire I used as reference - it was her son in Twin Knights). Unlike Monstrous Regiment, though, the crossdressing/genderfluidity was... not really handled that well. Yet there's something so distinct in Tezuka's drawing style that carries very well across genres, I think the wackiness would work very well in some (not all) Discworld novels. For one Jackrum would work awesomely in Tezuka's style - I could see him moving along like a balloon in the wind like how Sir Pterry describes him.

Still, I do find Monstrous Regiment one of the weaker Discworld books. Might be how the Ins-and-Outs don't really do much in the way of bringing about the climax of the story (granted, the problem here is deep and systematic and pretty much unsolvable by a measly few people). One thing I did like, though, was how part of the message was that toxic masculinity is unacceptable even when enacted by a woman. Here it's sockness, in Revolutionary Girl Utena it's the concept of a Prince. A woman can wear socks, or be a Prince, but still step right into the pitfall of misogyny. A world in which being a woman in power means you have to act exactly like the men (which, by the way, Angua mentioned once in Feet of Clay, I think?) is not really much better than a world in which you have a Nuggan-mandated code for womanly behavior.

Jackrum, though - his last confession and the bit where he retires to be a grandfather brought tears to my eyes. Did it never occur to him before that he could leave the army as a man? And yet again how could one say Sir Pterry would've supported the transphobes?