#like jackrum being trans

[substitious-bastard]

Non canon discworld things i love

Nanny has dyscalculia

Granny has dyslexia and is ace

Death is aroace

Captain carrot is autistic and aro spec

angua is bi as hell

Tiffany is aroace and autistic

Lipwig and vimes both have adhd but like at opposite ends of the spectrum

lipwig and adora are both bi

otto, sacharissa and william are all dating

Ridcully has adhd and autism

Polly/Oliver is genderfluid and pansexual (I’m not projecting I swear)

Maladict is trans and uses he/they pronouns

Everyone in the monstrous regiment is some form of fruity exept shufti who is absolutely fighting for her life as the token straight

blouse is just a confused himbo

jade such a butch

Nobby likes experimenting with his gender presentation and def has a drag persona

Rincewind has anxiety and ptsd and probably some chronic pain (I headcanon him needing a cane most of the time) his hat is also a comfort item

vetinari and sybil are besties (i will die on this hill)

Im definitely missing some but I’ll just reblog this with additions while I’m rereading the books

edit bcs people keep saying stuff is canon: you are totally right, this started as me listing hcs but sorta just became me waxing lyrical abt my favourite characters

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

You know, I was thinking about Monstrous Regiment as I always do, and I just say, damn, Terry Pratchett sure as shit did the "Female attack drone operator killing children" joke ages before we even got there culturally.

Like, OK, during the climax of the book we find out that half of the Military high command are also women right? Disguised as men and wanting to keep their secret hidden as they live as men yes, but still women.

And here's the thing.

That's not, unlike Jackrum's ending, to be read as a trans allegory.

These are women, who joined the military, a sexist and awful military force who would have killed them had it found out for both being women and for crossdressing, got in a position of power by following the rules and not rocking the Boat (unlike Polly and her squad, who were offered the perfect way out yet still decided to come out as women), and then once they become the high command of the military they do NOTHING.

They do not change those same structures who oppressed them, because now they are in power so who care if other women get hurt.

And they do not stop the war, continuing it instead.

"Women can do the same things man can" is one of the Book's arc words, and it does sound like a pretty neat message, until Terry points out how this very same message can be used to sponsor horrible actions too and passing them for progress.

Women can be war criminals just like man can.

Much like back in the days, cigarette companies sold women cancer on a stick presenting it as freedom and liberation for their gender.

Much like The pilot of the drone that's going to burn your house to the ground has a pride flag pin on their lapel.

You are not immune to fucking military propaganda.

[catharsis-in-a-bottle]

i don't think there's any actual good reason for a modern discworld au (a roundworld au, if you will) EXCEPT for whimsy. i say this because im thinking about a modern vetinari who's obsessed with all the latest technology driving a stupid fancy black car and constantly being like "alexa, detain that man" and playing crosswords on his cell phone. i can't imagine vimes as a modern policeman but i CAN imagine him living in sybil's crazy old mansion and going to the gas station for cigarettes and wearing the same pair of jeans for the rest of his life. what about monstrous regiment just being a group of trans teenagers experiencing the horrors of high school (jackrum is their gym teacher). brutha being a tiktok famous prophet. modern goth adora belle dearheart in platform boots. moist von lipwig playing mario kart. and also it would be really funny if vetinari was still an assassin

[sing-you-fools]

being a Discworld fan honestly should be, like, the #1 book recommending a person sort of things, and i hate that it's not because so many of his fans get it so wrong. like. i try not to get incensed about people being wrong on the internet, but how anyone reads these books and thinks this man was a bigot, thinks the representation he put in Discworld was at the expense of those represented, like. like. i'm furious about it. every time. especially as he continued to learn and grow both as a writer and as a person. even stuff that was originally meant to be a little silly, like a female dwarf, he found meant a lot to people, and he learned how to better include that story!

(spoilers ahead for Shepherd's Crown)

he leaned into it in the most loving and respectful way. fucking READ The Shepherd's Crown!!!!! the man found out trans women identified with his character so he learned how to represent them! and then, he wrote Jackrum! AND THEN HE WROTE GEOFFREY!!!!! with his last fucking book he gave us a character who says he doesn't really feel like a man or a woman, just himself, fucking ages before anyone else was writing nonbinary characters! AND HE PUT HIM IN GRANNY WEATHERWAX'S FUCKING COTTAGE Y'ALL! LIKE HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS BECAUSE I HAVE SOBBED SO FUCKING MUCH ABOUT IT! (Note that obviously Geoffrey doesn't have/use different language for himself, but that's how he feels and pronouns are not gender.)

thanks to how he handled Cheery and how he went from there, Pratchett included trans representation for ALL of us SO SO SO SO SO LONG before we were on anyone else's radar, and it's honestly so much more respectful than some of the stuff i've seen out there more recently!!!!!

he wasn't perfect, and a lot of social standards have evolved since the earlier Discworld books especially, but he always kept an open mind and listened and tried and grew. and there are people out there insisting he would be this hateful bigot!!!!! i hate them!!!!! let me hire the fucking assassin's guild!!!!!

[aspiring-creative-person]

Ok just finished monstrous regiment today. I’m gonna dump some of my thoughts, will post fanart sometime this week.

First of all, I’m a little surprised people are shipping Polly and Maladict? Like in my mind there is a significant age gap lol but if you read them closer in age I guess I see it

Ok I know Maladict is canonically a woman but I still read him as a man. Like He/They maybe because who really knows about vampires you know?

Jackrum being a trans man makes sense to me. Literally said “I am your dad now” in more ways than one 😂

Honestly I read Polly as gender fluid? I haven’t seen many people talking about this. Like, there are moments, at least two, where she feels like she’s dressing *up* as a woman, not just dressing *as* a woman, and I guess the end where she tells the girls they can choose might indicate this but also I guess was more there for plot reasons but still.

Ok, also I absolutely love Otto the Vampire?? What a character entrance 😂😂

I haven’t actually read many other discworld books. I wasn’t aware until after I finished this book that some of the side characters in here are major discworld characters, and I’m excited to keep reading it!!

Oh more about Maladict. I also didn’t reread the physical description until the end, and I view him as very short and not actually really skinny like it describes him oops. But it’s too late I already have my image of him. Anyway I love how in discworld the vampires are like, middle aged men, rather than sexy Twilight high schoolers forever 😂😂

Also Igorina is so cute??? I’ll never get over characters who are like aliens or something, enjoying something that tastes bad to other people. It’s always so wholesome 😂

Also Blouse!!! Super fun! I love him. He’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit. And also he is actually really smart! And he sticks up for them when it matters :) Good for him.

Ok I think that’s it for tonight oof

[cephalofrog]

finished reading monstrous regiment

they weren't kidding that book can queer rep

spoilers below cut ofc

I kinda already knew about like... a queer relationship + trans character existing in the book but it still kinda caught me off guard - like I guess I shouldn't assume stuff to be generic from terry pratchett but I didn't know anything about jackrum aside from him being trans going in and it caught me off guard just how damn GOOD a character he is.

I'll admit I wasn't even certain that he was the trans character for a lot of the narrative, like I thought I maybe misremembered the posts or something cause surely the fat, extremely skilled, morally grey man with a lot of PTSD but who clearly cares deep down isn't actually gonna turn out to be a trans man right cause no one would write a trans character THAT interesting and good in 2003 and god dammit I underestimated terry pratchett so much. I am a fool.

the fact that he's like. no I don't want to reunite with my kid + grandchildren cause I can't stand the thought of just being their old granny cause he can't imagine a life for himself where he can exist as a man outside of needing to do so to survive then to have polly suggest it, giving him a new idea, letting him let go of not only the dangerous life of existing in the army but also giving him permission to himself to exist as someone's grandfather?? as a man, not because he has to, but because he wants to??????

god that final conversation between polly and jackrum is fucking perfect. I'll admit I need to consume more media centering trans narratives cause I don't really have a comparison point but it feels like the first piece of media I've ever consumed that honestly reflects how I feel about being trans. you don't need permission or a logical reason to exist a certain way - you're allowed to exist in a certain way just because you want to exist that way.

it's super impressive how deconstructive the book is - like it makes me wonder whether terry pratchett learned about queer theory prior to writing the book or whether he just developed the way that the book talks about gender of his own accord cause the entire damn plot hinges on the fact that gender is socially constructed and fully based upon perception. people see the characters as men, they treat them as men, and so they are men. the entire concept of men and women having some impossible-to-overcome differences is questioned, stereotypes are introduced and then used to disprove themselves.

I think the only thing that the book kinda dropped the ball on was maladicta's character - she gets a lot of focus and is super cool and likeable in the first half but I feel like she gets left behind a bit after running out of coffee, and I do wish there had been a more interesting conclusion to her being the last of the regiment to be confirmed as female (since we all kinda knew it was coming but for some reason it takes a long time to get around to it with no real reason since everyone knows everyone else is a girl at that point).

I'm glad polly and maladicta end up leaving on the boat together though. (they kiss after the book ends, terry pratchett appeared in my dream last night and confirmed it as canon)

[falderaletcetera]

I was not expecting to wake up to have feelings about jackrum today but it sure is happening

(big spoilers for monstrous regiment below, this is a frustrating thing to discuss in public spaces)

so like. I will heartily defend readings of jackrum as a trans man, Full Stop. I will also, now that I know it's an issue beyond the audiobook, extend some grace to folks who don't read him as trans, in case they read an edited version and not, y'know, the author's original intent for him.

and this is a thing where it's vague enough in the text - jackrum never exactly declares himself a man, he actually has this running joke that "on my honour, I am not a violent man" or similar, where the joke is eventually that he is not a man so can actually say that while beating the shit out of everyone - where reading him anywhere in the wonderful soup-pot of gender variance is, y'know, justifiable, to my mind. so long as there's space for him being happier living as a man and settling on he/him pronouns (in original editions) and male presentation.

for me - as someone who is sort of chronically Not Sure about their gender, and exhausted by the question - it encapsulates the "what is important is what would make you happy, not what you are" thing beautifully. jackrum doesn't exist in a time and culture that has the kind of awareness and defintion of gender identity that we do. (maybe this is me being a bit of a pedant about it though.) jackrum can say, and does say and does show us, what he's happier doing.

this is going nowhere I'm just experiencing great fondness and appreciation for it and mourning, a little, the fact that most of the books out there wipe out this reading in favour of Less Transness.

...monstrous regiment does have a few rough spots if you read it with a trans lens. jackrum outs an entire room of soliders as "women", with the names they went by before, which was a tough thing for me to swallow until I accepted that a) jackrum is just not a nice person b) he had good reasons for stirring things up a bit and c) pratchett, maybe, was operating on "transness is probably quite rare" assumptions.

but his handling of jackrum made me want to hug him. jackrum was fat and violent and crude and not very nice; he had a soldier's honour, which is to say, rather little and tempered as steel; he was, frankly, a bit of a monster. he taught brave young lads to go out and kill or die or both for the stupidest of reasons. but he got treated with grace. he got to fool everyone and make his secret jokes and help others like him, or not like him, make it in the army, and when someone selfish and clever and sharp enough to actually figure him out tells him as much, he gets to tell his story. and then he gets to be happy.

jackrum's chosen gender presentation is, to my mind, potentially tangled up with him being a manipulative bastard who loves to fool people, and this is beautiful, actually. he's a complicated monster the likes of which I have never read before, and he's trans, and no fucking wonder more recent editions retcon this wonderful mess, but I'm so glad we got it when we did.

this is still going nowhere, and that is all.

[noirandchocolate]

Monstrous Regiment Spoilers Below!!

Just read Jack Jackrum’s entry in Turtle Recall this morning.  Happy to report that although so far all the entries of other members of the ‘monstrous regiment’ I’ve come to alphabetically (plus at least one higher-up in the army) have included a sly ‘to close friends, known as [female name]’ at the end, Jackrum’s used he pronouns throughout.  Even after it mentioned his locket with ‘a picture of a dark-haired girl and a young man (William)’ in it.  Still ‘he’ while going on to mention his son.  :)

[crashdown]

okay ive been thinking about it a lot and i think it's time i actually wrote it down bc the pratchett fandom can be a little transphobic! i wont lie. anyway:

trans characters in the discworld

(minor spoilers for thud!, monstrous regiment, and literally anything with dwarves in it)

first and foremost, the obivous one. dwarves. in the discworld, dwarves are a one-gender race, though they don't have a single sex. this just means that female dwarves are expected to be men, behaving like men and living their entire lives out as men.

this means that any dwarves who don't conform to this are considered unusual and usually looked down upon. now, in the tv adaptation of the watch, the dwarf cheery littlebottom was cast as a nonbinary character. this caused a lot of uproar because cheery is a woman. that's a huge part of her character: the fact that she refuses to conform to the gender norms set by her people. like, i dunno, nonbinary people? trans people in general? the way that cheery presents herself, fully bearded yet unapologetically female, really resonates with me as a trans person.

(cheery is in front of the man in red)

while i didn't really like the adaptation, i personally saw nothing wrong with cheery's casting. female dwarves have always been sort of a trans allegory to me, and i definarly think they were at least a sort of commentary on gender itself.

now we move to monstrous regiment, which is arguably terry's queerest book. you'd have to hope that a book centred around the concept of a girl dressing as a boy to go to war would be a little queer, wouldn't you? polly, the main character, is not trans, however. it could be aruged that she's sapphic, but that's a whole different discussion.

no, the trans characters in this book are maladict and jackrum, and though there might be some argument as to the valididty of these claims, i can pretty confidently back them up.

starting with maladict, the vampire joined the military in a different country to escape the opressive, suffocating expectations of womanhood in his country. though as the book presses on and more and more of the characters are revealed to be women, maladict only really tells polly his sex at the very end, and in private. he sees that it's more than a safe place to be a woman and yet he doesn't reveal himself. why?

well, because he's not one. you cannot honestly tell me that a woman behaves in such a way when given the oportunity to exist as a woman on their own terms. maladict remains a man.

(a note i want to add here to validate this claim. in the book thud!, sally, a vampire, explains to angua that when vampires turn into mist or bats and then re-form into their own bodies, men keep their clothes and women lose them. when mal turns into mist and re-forms again, he still has his clothes. therefore: man)

which brings us to jackrum, who's transness is a little more pronounced. jackrum joined the military to follow his lover, william. he ended up being much more sucessful than william, being promoted and gaining a reputation. but even after william died and jackrum gave birth to their child (we love a seahorse dad), he stayed in the military. he had a family to raise now, and his boyfriend was dead. he had no reason to stay, right?

only the idea of womanhood is no longer appealing to him. so much so that when they're sneaking into the kneck keep, both him and mal opt to stay behind (for jackrum, he’d rather miss the action than be perceived as a woman, even in disguise. for mal it was more that he was in a coffee coma but even if he wasn’t, i’d like to think he would have stayed behind as well).

there's a really beautiful line in regards to jackrum after his discussion with polly about going back to his family:

"Polly paused when she got to the door. Jackrum had turned her chair to the fire, and had settled back. Around him, the kitchen worked."

this is the moment that jackrum realizes that he doesn't have to be a woman. he can go back to his family and be the father he's always wanted to be, he can keep his legacy and his glory and his pride. he knows that it's okay to be a man now, that he no longer has to be a woman in disguise. that sudden change in pronouns always gets me.

you can have any opinion you want, but personally, these stories really resonate with me as a trans person, intentional or not.

[autisticzukka]

iroh is trans

- Short King

- wife basically never mentioned and certainly not by name. yet he has a son who’s on screen quite a lot? and he’s not the kind of guy who would only mourn his son, even if it was a political marriage and she died fairly early in it-- it’s deeply weird he doesn’t mourn her and no one (azula) brings her up as weapon. unless there is no wife

- good secret society member

- super supportive of Smellerbee and instantly course corrects in a manner that makes it clear the misgendering was his foolish mistake while also complimenting her.

- basically fits the high class version of the archetype Jackrum from Monstrous Regiment does

- puts “I am your loyal son” from Ozai into a whole new category of disrespect, Azulon sucked but it’s hilarious if you consider it as him being like “YOU’VE SUBTLY MISGENDERED YOUR BROTHER FOR THE LAST TIME! HE WILL BE FIRE LORD, DIPSHIT.”

[patricianandclerk]

God ur ongoing anger at the l-space wiki just reminds me of how one time I was getting transphobic shite hurled at me, as is often the way on this website, n I saw one blog title that was discworld themed and they're like. A whole ass dedicated discworld fan and also proud TERF, transphobe, general asshole. Like, you like discworld? And hate trans people???? Have- have you read Discworld??????????

Honestly, things I’ve seen Those Kinds Of Discworld fans do:

get angry and defensive at the idea of people interpreting Vetinari as gay

people trying to argue that Mr Harris (as in, the guy that runs Ankh-Morpork’s big gay club, The Blue Cat Club, the queers’ answer to the Pink Pussycat Club) wasn’t necessarily homosexual, but was maybe into bestiality instead

that Lofty and Tonker are “very close friends”

that people who read transgender elements into the dwarves are just reading into it

anything any cisgender person has ever said about jack jackrum

people getting upset at the idea of them introducing people of colour or “forced diversity” into the City Watch series, a book series ABOUT FUCKING CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND HOW GOOD IT IS FOR THE CITY

And this is on top of the general attitude on the Reddit, which is astonishingly dumb! I saw someone claim that Vetinari is selfish and powerhungry, and the funniest thing about that is that like, obviously Vetinari isn’t, but the reason that they interpreted him that way is because that’s what they want to be. That’s what they want to emulate in their shitty OC power fantasy that they replace Vetinari with!

Bigots read Discworld, and then try to brush off all the stuff about bigotry in Discworld as only being about this fantasy world - in much the same way, I’m sure, that some people read Good Omens, then turn around and make it into Heaven being “right”, because they’re “good”, when the point is that both Heaven and Hell are awful.

The thing is, people that like... misread books that are good and kind and fun to make them about their own, less pleasant interpretations, these people can’t actually take those books from us. They would LOVE to be able to go back and take away queer and trans writers, or rip out beloved characters of colour from the annals of history, or rewrite stories to be about only those that they’ve decided meet their moral minimum, but they can’t do that.

They’re there! And we love them! 

Bigots cannot ruin Discworld, because they just don’t have the power too, with their little grabby crying baby hands. :( Sorry, babies. Cry all you want. 

[mycroftrh]

Since so many people are into Good Omens right now, and some of them are excited about Crowley and Aziraphale being trans, I thought I’d introduce you to some other trans Pratchett characters!  (Neil Gaiman has some too, but I’m not as familiar with them, sorry.)

Note that one of these has MASSIVE SPOILERS.  The main spoilery section I will warn for and put under a cut.

Here’s a cool academic Gender Studies article that mentions a lot of these:

https://www.academia.edu/7555630/A_Golem_is_not_Born_but_Rather_Becomes_a_Woman_Gender_on_the_Disc

Trans Golems:

Golems, in Discworld, are sentient constructs.  They have no sex, in any sense - no DNA, no genitalia, no reproduction.  They are by default referred to as “he” and “him”, and all are referred to as “Mr.”.  However, one Golem comes to be named “Gladys”, and referred to as “she”; she starts to engage in feminine activities and presentation, then starts to actively identify as a woman.

Trans Dwarves:

In Discworld, all dwarves present and identify as male.  While they have multiple physical sexes, they don’t even know each others’ sexes until it becomes relevant for reproduction.  Until recently!  Some dwarves, most famously Cheery Littlebottom, began to identify as female.  They began using “she”, dressing differently (though still in ways that we would consider masculine, they are distinct for dwarves), etc.  Increasingly more dwarves begin to identify as women - some who were implied to be “physically” female, but some very prominent ones who weren’t, as well!

Nobby Nobbs:

Non-binary-ish, complicated, it’s been a while since I’ve read the relevant books so others feel free to elaborate.

SPOILER SECTION - VERY, VERY SPOILERY FOR MONSTROUS REGIMENT

Monstrous Regiment:

Monstrous Regiment contains multiple women who dress as men to go into the military.  However, there are two characters who don’t just dress as men, but identify as such - or at least not exclusively as a woman, for one of them.

Sergeant Jackrum:

Jackrum has a backstory about dressing as a man to join the army.  However, not only has he lived as a man from youth to old age, after he retires from the army and goes to live with his family he continues to live as a man, choosing to be a “father and grandfather”.  (After women have become permitted in the army.)  He is a 100% canon trans man, established as AFAB but living and dying - without exterior motive - as a man.

Maladict/a:

Maladict/a is a bit more complicated.  They present and refer to themself as male through all but the last chapter and a third of the book, long after every other member of the company has been revealed to actually be women.  They had no reason to not reveal themself earlier.  At the very end, they finally say “I’m actually Maladicta,” with no reference to identified gender.  This is their explanation:

“Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: vampires have a pretty good time of it whatever sex they are, right? But it's the same everywhere. Velvet dresses, underwired nightgowns, acting crazy all the time, and don't let's even go near the whole 'bathing in virgin's blood' thing. You get taken a lot more seriously if they think you're male.”

Maladict/a prefers to be seen as male and present as male, but makes no reference to their actual identified gender.  For the last chapter and a bit they are referred to as Maladicta.  However, all other characters were strongly hinted fairly early on to be actually AFAB - except for Maladict, who expresses a clear preference for male presentation even after coming out.  So... yeah.  Maladict/a’s a bit unclear, but I do like this quote in response to them saying “I’m actually Maladicta” - 

“Thank you for telling me." "Is that it?" "Yes," said Polly. "You're you. That's good. I'm me, whoever I am. Tonker's Tonker. It's all just... people.”

(As you can tell, I can write essays about Maladict/a, but I’ll leave it there.)

Relevant ending of Monstrous Regiment:

"I'm Mary," said the other. "I heard girls were joining, but everyone laughed, so I thought I'd better pretend to - " "Oh, you can join as men if you want," said Polly. "We need a few good men." The girls looked at one another. "You get better swear words," said Polly. "And the trousers are useful. But it's your choice." "A choice?" said Rosemary. "Certainly," said Polly. She put a hand on a shoulder of each girl, winked at Maladicta and added: "You are my little lads - or not, as the case may be - and I will look after... you." And the new day was a great big fish.