#girlclair

The fact this is represented by looking into a mirror and being so dissatisfied and unhappy with his reflection fits very neatly into his trans coding. He's afraid to see that boy who struggles to become a man in that mirror. Compare this to Xichun's scene where her flashback is described like this:

I was brushing my hair and looking in the mirror as we were talking, but…I realized that I no longer recognized the girl in the mirror. I don't know why, but I just… I found it so hard to meet her eyes.

At the end of the scene she concludes that looking into the mirror in the present day has taught her this

Now that I've had some quiet time looking at my reflection, I think I uncovered a part of myself I've had hidden away for a long time.

Xichun hid away the girl she used to be in order to become strong enough, resilient enough to survive in Hongyuan, to make it through the Hierarch war. And through her classes she is reconnecting to that girl and that childhood she wasn't properly allowed to have.

Paralleled to Sinclair, we can say that Sinclair in his refusal to meet the mirror in the present day is still unwilling to connect to the part of himself that he had to lock away in order to survive. He's scared of his future and of his past, even as he's overcoming things he worries he is too chained to who he once was and is unable to properly evolve into a better version of himself for the future.

This CG is one of my favorites as we see XIchun embrace those parts of her stolen childhood to have fun, to go back to what makes her happy, meanwhile Sinclair can only watch on from the sidelines. His expression is hard to read but it is to me a little full of awe. Yet he does not participate.

A lot of Spring Cultivation and Sinclair's relationship to Xichun is meant to be a redo of his school years and his relationships with Kromer and Demian. This time he gets a 'bestie' that he forms a more honest and transparent bond with, not one based on lies, and not one based in a secret potential hidden in Sinclair. Xichun sees Sinclair for who he is now and much like he does, also needs to grow and learn about the world and how to become a better version of herself.

But despite all this progress, despite this chance to redo the past, while Sinclair takes chances to branch out, be more himself, show that he has grown. It still isn't enough.

There is still a fundamental truth about himself that he refuses to see. Other people can see it, can see that he's still trapped inside the shell, but he doesn't. Or does he? "Sinclair's expression seemed more like anxiety than confusion to me." He knows. But he refuses it.

A lot of this language is also used in The One Who Shall Grip's ID story by Carmen who is narrating.

It's not so easy to reject the ease of letting another crack the egg from the outside. (...) Pushed out of his nest all too soon, feigning the confidence he sorely lacks… A baby bird who hasn't even broken his shell fully. That would be the description most befitting this child.

While the Sinclair of the LCB has one stroke of the sign, N Corp.'s Sinclair has two. Notably still incomplete, likely out of his refusal to act on what his own thoughts and beliefs are, having taken the easy path to let someone else force the egg open, a chick who was not ready yet. And he will never be complete, unlike how LCB Sinclair is still steadily progressing through his arc.

But. But. "A bird that has failed to break its shell in time will rot within its confines." This time its taking is still hurting Sinclair. We see that in how he struggles to look in the mirror. He's rotting in that shell. He's dying, even as he tries to look away from it, tries to pretend that he's okay, he isn't.

The trans metaphor that can be read here is a painful one, but shines through. How long can someone deny their identity even as it hurts them? Sinclair is not happy with his current self, he knows that this current form of himself is one that needs to be broken through if he ever wants to be happy, if he ever wants to live. Not just up to his full potential, but if he ever wants his life to be his own his has to crack the egg.

This intermission choosing to parallel him with Xichun, a strong woman who is a leader and connecting with her own past and the parts of herself she hid away because she thought she had to in order to be strong in the first place, is the third time in Limbus Company that Sinclair and his desire to become stronger has been compared to a woman/that he strives to emulate a woman as a part of unlocking his inner potential. (Canto 7 has both him say he wishes to be more like Don Quixote and also his role as Bari was chosen because he is "a little green, a little incomplete, but still with the sign of great potential")

All of this works specifically with a transfem reading of Sinclair's character - the idea that he needs to transition into a different state of life, away from the sheltered and scared man that he thought he was going to be his entire life, and into a new world and state of being that is shaped by Sinclair and his relationship to himself.

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Okay that's all for now, please feel free to share this around if you're talking about girlclair, and let me know in the replies or tags if you'd be interested in seeing me talk about Canto 3 which of course has so much to unpack I might need to break it up into a couple posts ! And of course one day I'd love to talk about Demian and the Sinclair of the novel as that's where a lot of the themes of specifically gender come into play rather than just the general idea of cracking the egg and becoming fully realized which on its own is enough for a trans reading but it really does get enhanced when you add in the themes present in the book.