Whenever you’re grieving over the utter tragedy that is the Poppy War Trilogy, and wishing that there had ever been a chance for things to end any other way, cheer yourself up by imagining all the characters gender flipped in a modern au.
I present to you: sapphic Chaltan. Female Yin Nezha. FEMALE JIANG ZIYA, oml so much potential.
And not only is it entertaining, it also gives you a chance to examine unconscious biases which we may have and also draw attention to the power dynamics in the Poppy War.
It makes you examine characters’ real personalities to appreciate, outside of behaviours they built because of society. Example: Sring Venka. Would her family still be pressuring her to marry in a modern setting? Probably. But as a man? No way. Who is she beyond the desperate desire to prove she’s as good as men? Did she even get a chance to find out who she was beyond who she was told to be?
It forces us to identify the moments that we see her real personality come through. She’s honest in the trilogy, brutally honest, in some (or most) cases (ignoring the very real possibility she could’ve been spying on Rin in the Burning God). She’s never afraid to say what she thinks, she’s brave, and let’s not forget cunning.
How about Chen Kitay as a girl? This is a slightly fluffier topic, as men in the trilogy didn’t face nearly the biases women did and therefore there aren’t nearly the amount of complex questions we have to face when trying to gender swap female characters (even just for fun), but it’s still great food for thought. They’d undeniably still be smart, and though women don’t face as many challenges today as they did in the trilogy, they’d still have a hell of a harder time trying to prove them self than as a man. Also it doesn’t hurt to imagine female Kitay as a bushy haired girl with turtle shell glasses and freckles. Like don’t get me started.
In addition, a very important point to extend on:
Sapphic Chaltan. Ugh, it’s just too peak. They’d both be sorta intense overachievers, but like in different ways. Chaghan would probably carry around rocks and stuff around with them everywhere, y’know, the whole spiritual thing, but overall just be the pretentious prick they are (in the most loving way possible). Also they have like the longest hair you’ve ever seen, always wearing super emo outfits with lots of rings to look intimidating. And Altan would be a gym rat of course, have some sort of long wolfcut and like live in leisure wear. Also they got high once and now has a tattoo which they hate.
We’d also have to think about how the biases against Rin and Altan would switch. They were both treated as almost alien due to their skin colour, but their treatments were still distinctly different because Altan was a man and Rin was a woman. Switching their genders is so complex, even in a modern au, because all of a sudden Rin isn’t automatically treated as incapable, and Altan doesn’t get nearly as many passes for his addiction (as we can see when Rin gets nowhere near as much support from the Cike during her addiction as Altan did, even considering how he generally had better control.)
When it comes to a piece of literature with so much depth as the Poppy War, putting the characters into this sort of situation is challenging, but also fascinating to work through.
Also y’all, what do we think about trans Venka? Bc that just occurred to me and the concept is pure gold. (Her being born male and transitioning to female. Completely different au but come on now that’s brilliant.)
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