#ozzer

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.

great book. We can all agree. However. The audio book I have is read by a man. And not even a young guy, or even a guy with a solid femme voice. It's Stephen Briggs who arguable is the worst narrator, or at least my least favorite, but it'd be whatever in a book who's pivotal character is masc. But to have a bloke like him narrate Ozzer's story! It's stupid. And I fully get that the 'were all afab and some of us will likely return to presenting femme, but a few of us are trans masc" of it all. So hire a nonbinary narrator! Who can balance the sliding gender of 99 PERCENT OF THE FUCKING CAST!!

“There was this about vampires: they could never look scruffy. Instead they were... what was the word... déshabillé.”

Remember that one person that Blouse referred to as having lots of dresses and enjoyed cross dressing? They could just be cross dressing because they like to or maybe they are trans

Socks... just socks...

Discworld fans trying to figure out Maladict(a)’s gender:

Me the first time I read the Monstrous Regiment trying to remember who everyone was:

(including the rest of the watch that was there)