#this hc literally makes me explode like just. to say it in a goofy way he’s so woman coded to me!!!

[tiptapricot]

well now i does is have to know your transfem marc thoughts

TWO OF YOU! Ok. Ok I will talk ab it.

SO. Transfem Marc is this headcanon I’ve had for a while that I have a hard time explaining. He just has the vibes for it? Something about leaning into masculinity so hard it feels like it circles back to not being a dude, along with some other stuff.

(Talk of sys’s trauma, Marc’s bad coping, and some talk of sex and kink at end but not super explicit or in depth so you can skip if needed)

To start, Marc is a gruff man, he’s a guy who represses his emotions and his mental health issues and his trauma. He’s autistic and masks heavily, scared of emotional intimacy and the ways that being different can make you a target. He wears simple bland clothes that are predictable and reliable and don’t stand out. He went to the military, then into mercenary work, then into the service of a god. He has spent so much of his life fitting into boxes and predetermined expectations for how he should be, burying his feelings under violence and anger and emotional repression.

And there’s just a vibe there.

That’s sort of where it started for me, along with occasionally thinking of gender headcanons for the sys members (which is a whole other post). Marc had this flavor to him I couldn’t really name? He wasn’t a cis man, even though he appeared like one, and while I love transmasc MK sys headcanons and do have that as a side pocket headcanon, there was also just… woman vibes?? Truly idk.

Then I started fleshing out my expanded system roster and worked out my version of Inner Child from the Ultimate Marvel universe, and like… that is a little girl inside them. A kid to hold their innocence and place in childhood, the idealized self away from what they experienced. And she’s a girl.

I just kept reflecting on that, on what that piece of them meant. Women are socially and stereotypically seen as more innocent than men, as kinder, softer, so maybe it’s that, maybe just their brain finding a child they couldn’t be to maintain what they didn’t have. A separation for projection. A little girl who got through things instead of a little boy. But that… again there’s just this feeling to me of more.

Cause also like… Marc could never be that. He didn’t get the chance to be that. He was beaten into the shape of a little boy who was wrong. Was the one who had the name of their body, the weight of being the person everyone thought they were. And he had to keep doing that far into their adulthood. Be the Man, the Soldier, the Husband. There’s a safety in masculinity, one he can keep hold of, a script he’s always known and doesn’t have to think about with everything else going on. Being a man makes it easier, or at least feels like it does, but it’s a performance, a role he’s taken on for protection.

Boxes and boundaries and forcing yourself into a role that does not fully encapsulate you is an experience that connects with so many people, so many lives and states of self, but I just couldn’t shake trans vibes. And then it’s like. Where do you go from there?

Because if that is the case for Marc and we look at him through that lens, then… man.

It would be something that grows. Deep down there’s this niggling feeling he can’t place, and doesn’t want to because it means too much, opens too many avenues.

How can he recognize that facet of himself, that he may not be fully A Man, when thats just something else to make him different, something else to make him incorrect, something else to come to terms with when he doesn’t have the time.

How can he recognize that facet of himself when that’s one of the last lines of separation between him and Wendy.

He doesn’t want to feel closer to her, doesn’t want to feel more like her than he “already is.”

He sees his bad habits, his own stubbornness and anger and brashness, how he hurts those close to him, how he drinks when he’s angry and grieving and can’t put the bottle down. He’s too close. And so manhood is a way to distance himself, to not feel like a piece of her is lodged in him, is inescapable, that he is becoming the woman who hurt him.

But being a woman, sometimes, in some ways…Maybe that’s just him. And restricting that, holding it back, is the real thing that would echo Wendy’s hurt. Embracing the woman Marc has made himself ignore and finding his arms around himself and knowing he doesn’t have to be scared of her… it’s healing.

Part of it may be how he formed, that need for separation, that maybe a daughter would’ve been treated better than a son, or maybe it was always something in that young child, a space that didn’t fit that he held on to. He can’t know for sure, but it doesn’t really matter. I think he’d try to rationalize it some, think about it in regards to why he exists and how he was shaped, but in the end… he exists how he does either way, feels what he does either way, wants what he does either way. That won’t change.

(Mild sex/kink talk, skip to asterisks if needed)

Though not how I always imagine it playing out (I have a lot of various headcanon timelines in my head that are not always existing at once) I think one of the ways this discovery could get pushed forward could be via crossdressing play with Layla. They go into it in an attempt to test out how letting go of hypermasculine roles may help Marc let go of control, let go of tension and expectation, and it just… hits. It broils something up in Marc’s gut that is warm and confusing and overwhelming. Layla calls him a good girl, calls him pretty, loves him in that way, and for a moment he realizes how much he wants that, how it floods him with a relief of not having to hold onto a singular role anymore. And it just… forces those questions into the forefront, makes him think about them, grapple with them, try and explore them.

********

I don’t see Marc as a trans woman. I kind of place him in this bi-gender/gender fluid kind of space. Sometimes he’s a man, but sometimes he’s a woman too. Not a super feminine one. He still uses Marc and doesn’t get deep into heavy makeup or wigs or dresses, but maybe some lipstick or eyeliner, some looser hair now and then, a change in pronouns. He’s a woman because he is, and not when he’s not. Maybe has bracelets to signal how he feels since he’s not great at communicating wants and boundaries in words.

Maybe it goes further over time, but he also seems like the type of person, an older, complicated, queer person, who still sticks to what he knows, and understanding and engaging with himself authentically within that is enough.

Overall just… transfem Marc settles in right for me. A realization of identity that didn’t surface until so late because there was so much else he had to keep himself afloat through, and recognizing that there was more (just like we see with his ignoring of Jake) would’ve been too much to handle. But when it’s able to be real, when he’s able to touch that piece of himself and recognize it’s there, it’s a huge step in his growth and acceptance, in releasing the tension of hiding that he’s gotten so used to.

So yeah :-)

(Id for ask screenshot in ALT)