My desk is littered with toys, actions figures, and collectibles. Every day when I come in to work, I’m greeted by the plastic faces of Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Captain Kirk, and many other of my favorite characters. These toys remind me of characters who I’ve identified or fallen in love with. Displaying them on my desk is an important way for me and many nerds to share the fandoms they love with the people they spend time with. Yet while I own several bisexual characters, I have yet to find a single toy of a transgender character that I identify with, despite being transgender myself.

So when I heard that Funko Pop! was releasing a line of Pops based on the Saga comic book series by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan, I was ecstatic. Saga contains one of my favorite science fiction transgender characters, Petrichor. Yet when I saw the list of Saga characters that were getting Pops, Petrichor was nowhere to be found (though we did get two versions of the Will and three versions of Lying Cat).

Petrichor is one of the few trans characters in science fiction that I truly love. She is clearly transgender, often remarking, educating, or even joking about her transness. Her transness also informs her character choices. Due to her having lived in two gender worlds, Petrichor empathizes with the lead character’s plight of being hunted for her biracial identity. Yet while being trans informs her character, it does not completely define it. She is a remarkable soldier, is easily the most well-trained of any of the lead characters, can do magic, and has saved the protagonists’ lives on numerous occasions.

Most important, however, is that she is not perfect.

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