Gregory's Tumblr

[image description: A technicolor penguin zooms into the piece from the left, leaving the bright rainbow of their colors behind them. This ribbon of color is visible in the background weaving amongst a march of grey panguins that moves in the opposite direction behind them. Text reads, “47, Novana ~ The Small God of Nonconformity”]

Everyone belongs to her in the beginning. Everyone is hers to have and to hold. But she loses most as they move toward adulthood, as the idea that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down” takes root and grows. She is the tall poppy, the loudest voice in the crowd, the one who dances as if the music was meant only for her, as if the beats were suggestions rather than dictates. She does not conform unless she wants to, because true nonconformity is rooted in kindness.

When she likes the new trend, she adopts it. When something is “basic” but beloved, she embraces it. When something brings joy to the people around her, she delights in its existence. To insist that everyone must rebel in the same way is to conform much more than it is to worship briefly at the altar of Pumpkin Spice, who is sweet and tart and worshipped for good reason by those who love her.

Run, she whispers in the ears of her faithful. Dance. Be joyous, be glad, embrace the things that make you happy, turn away from the things that make you sad. Love the world as you want the world to be, and refuse to let it change you into something you won’t recognize.

She weeps every time someone slips away from her, every time someone conforms not because they love the positions they are taking, but because they feel like it would be easier to hide the colors of their heart and soul behind someone else’s screen. All she asks is that her faithful live. Free and happy and unconstrained by unreasonable restrictions. All she wants is for them to be safe, and to accept that sometimes we conform not because we want to bury ourselves, but because rebellion should never become self-destruction.

[image description: A black pony with large rust-brown eyes and a smiling pumpkin on her hip stands on golden and orange fall leaves. Behind her, the dark sky is filled with stars and her flaming orange mane shines brightly against the blues of night. Text reads “24, The Small God, Pumpkin Spice”]

• • • • • 

People assume she’s a newcomer, a fad, a frivolous flash in the pan.  But she was there when the first pumpkin pies were being baked; she was there when the first colonist cookbook was published, in 1769.  She was there when the British raided the rest of the world for flavors they could steal, and while her appearance may be sweet and adorable, her hooves are soaked in the blood of empire, for without conquest, she could never have been born.

But people, unwilling to consider the structure beneath the surface, look at her and see only big eyes, a flowing mane, a coat as soft as silk and as dark as midnight, and they mock her adherents, call them “basic” as if anything could be considered truly basic when it had been built through so many crimes.

Every piece of her was stolen.  Every pinch and particle was the subject of a terrible war.  The price of cinnamon is slaughter.  The fee for nutmeg is subjugation.  And now we serve her sacraments with whipped cream and sugar sprinkles, as if both those things had not also been stolen at some point, as if a foamy cloud could somehow clean the blood from those long lashes.

In these modern days, her most common manifestation is blended with sweet cream and coffee—a drink that has many gods of its own, that has sparked even more wars than her cinnamon pungency.  But for most of her time, she has been carried in the pie.

Pumpkin pie.  The ultimate jewel in the crown of colonialism.  Cooking techniques from Europe, spices stolen from India, Asia, and the Middle East, and a vegetable crown taken from the Americas, sliced and mashed and mixed until its wildness is lost, subsumed into custardy blandness, become one with the melting pot.

She’s not a newcomer.  And she’s not nice, either, and so few of those who worship her understand, anymore, that she’s not a god of whimsy or basic delights.

She is, now and always, a god of war.

• • • • • 

Please join Lee Moyer (Icon) and Seanan McGuire (Story) each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a guide to the many tiny divinities:

WordPress: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/smallgodseries/ 

Homepage: http://smallgodseries.com 

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