This Is Exactly What Runs Through My Head Every Time I Hear That We “only Make Up 1% Of The Population”

Quite well thank you!

Happy February. How's your woolies mammoths coming along ladies?

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My girlfriend told me this once a night out and it's lived rent free in my head since

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS 🤘

Spent all morning distracted by what an amazing needle drop moment it would be at the end of a Gideon the Ninth adaptation if the outro was War Pigs by Black Sabbath.

Hear me out

The instrumental intro of that song is pretty long. What if we slow it down a tad. Make it a tiny bit moodier. Jod does his whole monologue about not being able to save Gideon, about the need for Lyctors like Harrow. Then the song starts in its normal speed/sound.

“Then rise, Harrowhark the First.”

🎶 Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

Evil minds that plot destruction

Sorcerer of death's construction 🎶

The both look out the window at a fleet of imperial ships massing at the edge of the system.

🎶 In the fields, the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning🎶

The scene fades to the bloody and abandoned mess of Canaan house, to the skeletons scattered everywhere, rubble from the building, the bloody spikes of the railing. It transitions to the house coffins in some hanger on the ship.

🎶 Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds

Oh lord, yeah!🎶

Screen goes black, credits start the rest of the song plays on.

Oh hey two obscure things I relate to!

is this anything

While I love and personally feel very seen by the allegorical* butch transfem/gnc/non-passing rep we get from Pyrrha, the circumstances that lead to her current gender situation somewhat muddy the waters on this imho….

Functionally*, Pyrrha becomes a butch trans woman who works dig-sites to feed her found family. This is entirely due to G1deon dying to Varun and leaving her behind in his body though, so whether this is her preferred presentation can’t really be called here.

Before lyctoral consumption, Pyrrha was head of intelligence for the Cohort, and a cop long before that. She’s great with guns and swords, and falls for people capable of burning empires down single-handedly. Classic femme fatale shit historically, but slightly gender-fucky given the cavalier dynamic.

On the other hand again, she calls her family “daddy’s treasures” after coming home late one night, and leaves her/G1deon’s hair cropped. 🤷

So in short.. Pyrrha is a woman who died alongside her nerdy polycule in a nuclear apocalypse, got resurrected as the bodyguard of her best friend, got killed again and magically consumed by said best friend, spent the next 10,000 years give or take intermittently regaining consciousness in his body after having part of her soul eaten away, and now lives in his body full time while undercover in an active war-zone. Anyone got a niche gender label and pride flag for that?

….

*While I wouldn’t want someone in these books to just say “Hi! I’m trans and go by -/-” as this would clash with the subtler baked-in queerness of the post-resurrection world building, there are other ways to write explicitly trans characters that don’t require the plot hoops that Pyrrha had to be thrown through in order to be classified as representation.

my daily mental exercise is trying to determine where pyrrha falls on the butch-femme scale

And don’t even get me started on the book!

It’s crazy how it takes 20 years to make a Wicked movie and once they do, it comes out just after Trump’s reelection. The stripping of minority rights, rollback of progress, and intentional demonization of activists are such central themes in that story, and here we are, watching queer people/immigrants/women/people of color/etc being slowly stripped of their rights under conservative regimes. Personally, watching Dr. Dillamond’s firing seemed analogous to deportation of immigrants or firing/silencing of queer teachers. And then the fact that another core theme is the way the government constructs propaganda to make a mediocre con man look like a god!! And all this is shown to be horrifyingly and objectively wrong!! Absolutely insane timing.

Bleak, but accurate.

Reread wicked again. I love the musical with all my heart but the book has something really special to it. It goes against the whole chosen-one trope and instead details the lives of children, students, adults moving through the world while facism rises around them. And like regardless of what their views are- they’re pretty powerless to stop it. They can only experience it.

I understand that this may make the plot seem slow or oddly paced but it’s not really about the hero’s journey, it’s about ordinary people’s lives. Elphaba is NOT the hero, or even the anti-hero. We might agree with her morals over other characters but she actually accomplishes very little. Almost every moral crusade she undertakes fails. She dies as just one of the many symbols of the resistance. The most productive rebellion we hear about comes from the Vinkus allyships and that happens in the background.

Wicked isn’t a book about good saving the day, or about compassion unifying the country.

At the end of the book, Elphaba and Glinda are divided by morals, Fiyero died for a cause he was never that much a part of, and Boq and the others have retreated into the background to protect their own. The wizard leaves yes, but he leaves behind a society in political turmoil. Munchkinland is facing re-annexation, the Vinkus is under attack, the Animals and the Quadlings have been shoved almost out of existence. The wizard can’t even be called the true Villain because his leaving does miraculously turn society back to “good”.

Wicked is about radicalism and facism can very quickly become the norm for a society through a series of tiny and almost ignorable steps for those not directly affected. It’s about waking up and realizing that all of a sudden you can’t remember the last time you saw an Animal walking free through the city.

This hits WAY too close to home for me.

Escapism

Truly one of the best side-effects 😭

Heck that’s honestly just one of the effects lol, no side- about it!

I love the fact that I can cry like Mary in a pietà for whatever reason now, good or ill.

🫂

So much of my gender is wrapped up in what I can do for others. What I can be for others. My gender is anything before it is my own; the helpful young man holding doors open for strangers, the caring grandson visiting his grandmother in the hospital, the protective older brother, the son trying and trying and trying to be perfect for his mother.

I am the son trying to be perfect, and the best thing I can do for my mother is be a daughter. What else am I supposed to do, other than try my best to be a daughter? My gender is a man whose only purpose is what he can do for others, and that means I must be a woman.

I heard someone say, once, that men are taught that our value comes from providing for those around us. We're taught that being a man means taking care of a family, but we never learn that being a man means taking care of ourselves too.

Do I matter too? The best thing I can do for my mother is be her daughter, and the best thing I can do for me is be her son. What am I supposed to do? What's more important? My gender is about taking care of my family, providing for them, and my gender has never been about doing anything for myself.