omg i’ve never seen someone who shared my beloved transfem acxa headcanon. my ears have perked up at butch ezor. (btw i would read every word of ur role reversal fic)
HELLOOOO ANON!!! Thanks for the ask 🙂↕️ 🙂↕️
My reasoning behind the transfem Acxa hc is largely vibes-based, but I do think it’s sort-of supported by the text if you squint hard enough. I haven’t really talked about it much because I tend to stick to analysing strictly canon details (I’m shy about headcanons unless asked, new fandom and everything), but…
These lines in particular stand out to me. Yes, they’re chiefly about Acxa’s relationship with race, but… there’s certainly something to be said about how overrepresented male Galra are within the army. Lotor’s squad being made up of *four (racialised) women*, three of them disabled, two of them lesbians — is important. It tells us what kind of guy he is. When he was willing to play the benevolent god, he played the unifier. And Acxa believed his act (‘he preached unity, but in the end, he sought only power’/‘I know how you feel, I fell for Lotor’s lies as well’) — yet despite that, she felt she did not *fit in*, even though by all rights she should have. Even if Lotor shunned her, community could surely be found with Ezor, Zethrid and Narti. Her transfeminisation would well explain that feeling that it couldn’t.
Then there’s a slight dissonance in Acxa’s gender presentation. Um, she lives in a cave for three years and has time to do her makeup? Acxa is a highly practical person, and makeup is sort of… not. UNLESS the makeup acts as a pillar of identity rather than a date aesthetic. And you might be thinking ‘but Jaques, why does Acxa lean towards androgynous clothing/short hair if that’s the case’, and to that I answer: there is a huge chasm between what the Galra classify as feminine presentation and what we classify as feminine presentation. The Galra society is an unsustainable, unstable, military meritocracy; beauty standards will tangle with measure of conquest because *every single Galra* is pushed to prioritise the Empire’s expansion above all else. Everything else sort of orbits that. While I think the Galra society retains aspects of traditional patriarchy (Haggar being referred to as a ‘witch’ is suspect, plus, again, male Galra are heavily overrepresented within Zarkon’s ranks), the feminine ideal will not be the white skinny frilly tradwife; it will be a (reasonably) muscular woman with several territories tucked beneath her belt (who will, of course, still defer to her lord husband). Also, Galra just do not have feminine clothing.
I also think there’s just something about Lotor and Acxa’s relationship. In s3-4, their relationship is not unlike Haggar and Zarkon’s. Acxa refers to Lotor as ‘My Prince’, ‘sir’ and ‘My Lord’; Haggar refers to Zarkon as ‘My Emperor’, ‘sire’ (this one is creepy as hell I’m ngl) and ‘My Lord’. Acxa and Haggar both obey without question. So, Haggar’s (or, rather, Honerva’s) relationships with Zarkon and Lotor basically *define* her connection to womanhood (as a wife and mother, which I kind of have ~problems~ with), and for Acxa to narratively parallel that, despite her obviously-greater comfort with independence, is interesting, because it almost feels as if Acxa is (over)*performing* a Very Certain Kind Of femininity. The forced, blank docility, the suicidal loyalty, the deference… How do I put it into words? Transmisogynistic sentiment typecasts trans women as mannish and aggressive, and as a result many trans women feel as if they are imposing by merely existing. They shrink into themselves, not wanting to be a bother. I see something like that in Acxa’s behaviour: nobody on the team is quite as restrained as her (and Lotor clearly takes advantage of this fact).
Now, butch Ezor is also something I’ve been sitting on for quite a while. I’ve talked about Ezor’s manner of speaking before, but I’m too lazy to link the post, so I’ll rehash here:
Ezor has always had a childish way of speaking, but it is not reflective of her actual, serious state so much as it is a defence mechanism. When she’s around Lotor, her superior, her expression becomes especially infantile:
Whereas when she addresses her ‘inferiors’, her inflection becomes condescending:
But neither of these extremes are who Ezor, boiled down her fundamentals, is. They are both performances. Truly, Ezor is a deeply emotionally-stunted, vulnerable, insecure young woman playing as either in-control (to satisfy others’ question of her fearsomeness) or out-of-control (to justify her unwillingness to take reckless initiative: notice how she relies on Acxa to make the call on betraying/returning to Lotor thrice) — but there’s another layer to this. Infantilisation is heavily associated with feminisation, thanks to our pedophilic beauty standards. ‘Oh but Jaques, you literally said that Galra standards are different to human standards—‘ yeah. But. I don’t think Ezor identifies as Galra the way Acxa does. Like, at all. Ezor was not raised Galra the way Acxa was. Ezor was not a child soldier the way Acxa was. Ezor was raised with her non-Galra half. Whether or not Ezor’s society would have similar standards to ours really depends, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll assume it does. Ezor kind of acts old-school about certain things (like her assumption that Acxa would have a crush on Keith, I honestly don’t think that idea even crossed Acxa’s mind lol — even if she *did* have a crush on Keith, she wouldn’t have saved him for it) in a way that mimics Earth patriarchy.
Okay, so Ezor overperforms femininity. And the way she does it is so particular; so ill-fitting and off-putting, like she shifts into another skin — that childish person is just *not her*. It’s the worst version of her, and Ezor explicitly steps away from it in order to facilitate self-growth & lack the need for constant reassurance. In ‘Genesis’, you see her attempting to pace Zethrid where before she fed into her destructive tendencies with glee. I think it’s interesting to consider that from a gender-presentation/identity lens.
As for the fic. Glad I have at least one taker lol.
