okay here's my full thought process on why i love transmasc noelle so much
genuinely i think it adds so much to his character that it's hard for me to see him as anything else now and that's coming from someone who is a trans woman who kins him and loves all of the wonderful artwork and fanfiction about transfem noelle i've seen over the years
so i don't mean to take away from any different headcanons at all because i think it's super interesting seeing different interpretations of characters! but for me personally
noelle is a character that feels or is literally being trapped. he's seen by other characters as being weak and defenseless and is the subject of casually sexist remarks by characters such as berdly and spamton. he constantly has to put up with the pressure of being a "perfect daughter" by carol. in the dark world he is constantly being captured and put into damsel in distress roles. but it isn't until that he stands to queen and calls her out for thinking she knows the most about him and what's best for him when she doesn't that she's stopped.
we don't know a ton about dess but from what little we do know about her we know that noelle looked up to her A LOT and that she was more rebellious and tomboyish than noelle. i think this would inspire noelle to want to follow in her footsteps and try to emulate that but this all fell apart after dess went missing, leaving noelle lost and scared again. i think noelle wouldn't know what to do and would be hesitant to try new things and stick to what he's used to after her disappearance, since he doesn't have the protection of dess with him anymore. this causes noelle to repress and push away any desires to be more masculine he may have had and why he presents so outwardly feminine. i think he would carry with him a lot of guilt of not wanting his family to "lose another daughter" as well, going back to the pressure to be the perfect daughter for carol.
from a prophecy perspective, we don't know if "the girl" is meant to be different from "the girl with hope crossed on her heart" which refers to the second hero. but with "the girl" being referred to as being last we can definitely read it as such and noelle would slot into this. noelle being reduced to just "the girl" in the role of the prophecy while ignoring literally everything else about him feels like a reflection of how noelle is just seen as a pretty nice girl by those in hometown and would make it all the more satisfying if noelle broke the prophecy by realizing he's actually a boy.
this then ties into the weird route as well. people have already speculated that the weird route is all about noelle making the girl in the prophecy but even if that isn't the case, the weird route still has A LOT to say about how noelle sees himself and forced gender roles. there are so many parallels to arranged marriages in the weird route. you force kris and noelle to say they're "something else" besides friends when an addison asks if they're dating, which noelle initially refutes. you then receive a ring from him that you use to help control him. afterwards you then receive ANOTHER ring from spamton and we actually watch kris put this on him while he's clearly frightened and afraid. then when we're in the lake with noelle him and kris are holding their hands together in a way that is reminiscent of couples at a wedding ceremony.
i think the chapter five weird route in particular revealed a lot about how noelle views himself. the weird route is noelle being able to express his innermost desires but being forced to go about them in the darkest of ways. noelle feels that his life is stagnant in a way that leaves him feeling he's an outsider watching his own life play out. he says he wants an escape from that but can't. because he's just noelle. and a noelle has to do noelle things. we are taking away his agency and depriving him of a freedom to be himself with the one woman who isn't tied to his past. so instead noelle forces kris to metaphorically commit suicide with him.
do i think toby fox intended this or that this will become canon? no but i find the concept FASCINATING and adds depth to who noelle is.
also all of this isn't to say that every woman who has the desire to do masculine things or wants to be braver or escape from misogyny is actually a man. susie to me is a great example of a woman who is gender non-conforming and doesn't take shit from others. i just think transmasc noelle is a great way to tie into one of the game's main themes of freeing yourself from what is expected of you and doing what you want.
transfem ralsei is also a great example of this and serves as an interesting paralllel to transmasc noelle. they already have parallels as lightner vs darkner and ice magic vs fire magic. for ralsei, they're (using they/them for ralsei since that change is canon, i personally like she/they ralsei) expected to be a prince and to not want things outside of their role in the prophecy. but we see as the story progresses that ralsei starts to self actualize beyond what they're meant to be and they're happy being referred to and referring to themselves as princess and trying on dresses. chapter five made me a big believer in transfem ralsei and unlike transmasc noelle i DO think that's canon.
(side note: feels kind of weird referring to him as what would become his deadname so much but this makes it easier for people to know who i'm talking about. personally i prefer the name noah for him but i've also seen people use noel, nicholas, and elliot. i really like that last one because it allows him to still be "elly" to dess and i think that's sweet.)
