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hi! would you be willing to explain a bit about where the trans alex carsen headcanon comes from? i’m admittedly not that far into the librarians yet but i’m curious if there’s coding or anything

Yes I would love to!

Disclaimer: I’m talking about evidence and interpretations from the text for a lot of this, but I do not think that anyone involved in the production for either the movies or the show sat down and went “now I will write a transgender character.” In fact, a lot of the first portion of this stems from the text trying to make a joke at this character’s expense. Additionally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with interpreting this character in a different way from me, etc, etc, it is just impossible for me to see her as anything other than a transgender woman and I love her so much. Also, I’ll be using both the names Alex/Alexandria and Flynn for this character depending on which would make sense for the situation. Hopefully that’s not too confusing!

Secondary disclaimer: Wow, this is really long. Sorry for the 2,000+ word essay. I’m also writing this in a document instead of in the Tumblr inbox so cross your fingers the format doesn’t get fucked up when I paste it in.

I: You’re Not the Incredible Pansy I Thought You Were

Ever since we have had gender roles and assigned false visions of subservience and superiority to them, we have been making (sometimes subtly misogynistic/homophobic/transphobic/etc, sometimes overtly so) jokes about swapping those roles. This is a big part of the first Librarian movie. Flynn being passive, awkward, and generally "feminine" in comparison to Nicole is a reoccurring theme, with Flynn being consistently characterized as the “girl” in their partnership. I think the scene that’s the most overt about this idea is the waltz, with Nicole dipping him and this exchange:

FLYNN: Shouldn’t I be the one dipping you? NICOLE: Technically.

As I said in the disclaimer, this is not an intentional moment characterizing Flynn as a woman, it’s a joke at his expense for being unmasculine, but it’s a good encapsulation of the idea that this is a character who is consistently feminized by the others around them. That’s without getting into the domineering mother trope with his mom coupled with the classic “this grown man still lives with his mom” bit, which is another thing meant to be an emasculating stereotype (even though it really shouldn't be, but I digress). Flynn even faces outright homophobia for being… the person he is at one point. The title of this section comes from the scene where he and Nicole are at the hotel following their escape from/the destruction of Shangri-La.

NICOLE: You’re not the incredible pansy I thought you were.

And this is, of course, the prelude to the two of them having sex for the first time. Now that he has proven himself to be sufficiently masculine in her eyes (because as everyone knows the most masculine thing you can do is badly steal a helicopter and almost kill yourself and your passenger just kidding I know it’s about his bravery in the face of danger or whatever) and is no longer occupying the dreaded role of feminized, the worst thing a man can be, she can allow him to take the man’s prize of sex with a woman. (I do think that breaking it down like this kind of makes it sound worse than it is; this is just a very 2004 movie.) I’m not trying to turn these kinds of jokes into some kind of, I don’t know, deliberate queer representation? But I think we can’t talk about a transgender reading of this character without bringing up that she is constantly framed as a feminized figure and gets called a classic homophobic term used to diminish any perceived femininity in men. In my opinion and in my transition timeline for her, this is where Alexandria is at the absolute lowest depths of internalized transmisogyny and shame in herself. It’s an entire movie of her being feminized and trying to crawl out from under it.

Crucially, though, Flynn never really escapes being, well, the person that he is, because it’s not something to escape from. This movie is partially about him trying to become someone else after being in a state of arrested development (#autism), but that’s impossible for him. He has to be himself, he has to be a Librarian. If he is not either of those things then he is truly miserable, as we’ll talk more about later on. This is not a movie about someone proving that they aren’t “the incredible pansy I thought you were,” it’s about them being themself and coming out on top. Despite the movie and several characters making fun of him for being in a feminized role, all three of the Librarian movies are about—

II: Somebody Very Special Told Me I Should Embrace Who I Am

The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice is an awesome movie and I love it.

To backtrack just a bit, I do think that there’s something worth saying about the second movie featuring a character who is intended to be “Flynn but a woman” that Flynn is incapable of getting along with because they’re too similar. But I have a hard time putting it into words, and I also don’t really care for Return to King Solomon’s Mines beyond four points: a) its insane lore, b) the scenes with Alex’s dad where he’s played by Noah Wyle wearing a fake mustache, by far the greatest choice they could have made, c) the really funny bit Judson does with the kite, and d) Jomo. However, I can say that in a straightforward reading of the text, Emily is already representative of the life Flynn can’t have, as evidenced by her getting on a plane and leaving at the end of the movie. In a reading of Flynn as transfeminine, Emily is who she wishes she could be.

Back to Judas Chalice, one of the greatest movies ever made. This movie is about Flynn learning to love who she is and the job she does, as summed up at the end when she’s talking to Judson:

FLYNN: Somebody very special told me I should embrace who I am. I think she was right.

This is why I think that in a reading of this character as transgender (regardless of whether or not you view them as transfeminine or transmasculine, even though it’s obvious how I see it), they can’t come out until after the third movie. The version of Flynn that we meet in the first movie is extremely closeted; this is someone who wants a life they cannot picture themselves as being allowed to have. She is trapped by herself. A pivotal part of Quest for the Spear is learning the language of the birds, a frequent symbol of freedom. (Being able to understand birds is also a shorthand for augury in older poems/texts, i.e. Teiresias, a Greek seer who underwent multiple sex changes and could understand birdsong after being blinded by Athena. This is definitely not a purposeful allusion in the text of the movie but it does make me go crazy so I’m putting it in here.) The Flynn we meet in that movie could not have come out prior to it. Thus at the ending of Judas Chalice is when she embraces being a Librarian and being herself after three movies worth of life experiences, she’s finally free to actually be herself.

The next time we see her, seven years later in the show’s premiere, she is undeniably happy. Lonely, sure, because her only friends are the coworkers she thinks of as her parents and an enchanted sword, but content in her role as Librarian. She loves it and she loves being herself. Has it led to unhealthy behaviors? Undeniably, look at And the Trial of the Triangle and everything that builds up to it, both in how she treats herself and everyone around her. But this woman is still confident in herself and her life in a way that can only come after Judas Chalice. She’s also dressing differently—not a “feminine” fashion sense, this is not a deliberate attempt at coding, I just think it’s worth noting that her style throughout the show is not the same as her style in the movies (tweed, colorful ties and pocket squares, comfortable shoes, and lots of pockets versus stiffer, more monochrome suits and plain white shirts, with most of the color being later on in Judas Chalice) and it reflects a change in her mental state and self-confidence.

This is a person who has absolutely been through a transition, it just isn’t textually a gender one.

And then there’s—

III: A Life of Choice

The season one finale of The Librarians is so transgender it makes my teeth hurt.

Here’s a version of Alexandria that never stopped being Flynn and never became a Librarian, and she is miserable. There is a reason I call this timeline Egg World (the other two being Ghost World and Dragon World for obvious reasons)! It is only by getting a glimpse through Eve into the life she could have been living that we see the version of her we know shine through the cracks.

And then, of course, there’s this exchange:

FLYNN: [...] I mean, I could have been, but I quit. And now I know what I could have had. EVE: Well, it’s not a great life, Flynn. FLYNN: Well, it’s a life. It’s a life of choice. It’s not a life of safety. If I could go back and—if I could—if I could have it now, I would choose—I want that now.

That’s why this is an episode that feels tangibly transgender to me. This is not just a character who is shunted into a feminized role and emasculated as a joke the way we discussed in part one (because the presence of a character facing and experiencing homophobia and transmisogyny does not automatically make me read them as transgender, and the lack of it doesn’t make me not read them as such) but someone who is trapped in themself and wants a life of choice. Obviously on a literal level it’s about being a Librarian (the life of adventure) but… I always circle back to “It’s a life of choice. It’s not a life of safety.”

It’s so easy to read it as being about transitioning even though it’s not originally intended to be. The “safety” of the closet where she’s already trapped in agony versus the choice to live as herself despite the danger! I’ve thought about this every day since watching the episode and will probably continue to think about it every day in the future. This is the crux of reading Flynn as Alexandria to me. A life of danger in being who you are versus a life of safety in being someone you’re not, and she will always choose the former. It may not have intentionally been about transitioning, but it is to me.

(Obviously, this is a bit of a simplistic take on the closet and specifically what it means to grow up as a transgender woman where the brackets holding you into the closet are stained with blood and even while closeted it is fully possible and even likely to be exposed to transmisogynistic violence designed to keep you from coming out by any means necessary and deny you of your very humanity. But this is meta about the Librarians franchise and not gender theory so I’m just going to acknowledge that and move on after a brief second to point out that this is part of why I mentioned the emasculation in Quest for the Spear above, because the way Flynn is treated in that movie is very reminiscent of the shadow of real transmisogyny.)

In conclusion: While I do a lot of headcanoning characters I like as transgender simply because I like them—Sue Dibny, Cindy Reynolds, Dante Ramon, Pat Dugan—and Alexandria “The Librarian from television and film” Carsen is not narratively intended to be a transgender woman, there is actually a legitimate reading of the text to back up my view that she is one. Not just through jokes made at her expense but in everything else including pivotal scenes and plot beats. Even if it’s unintentional, it enhances the story for me to find it. I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a while, so thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so! As you can see I was really excited to get this ask. I was planning on doing some kind of write-up at some point just for ease of explanation and this was the perfect opportunity.

As a character detail, I will also add that whether or not I think a transgender character would change their name depends on the individual, but I think that with what we know of Alex… She would change it. It took a while for us to find one that felt like it fit but come on, The Library of Alexandria for the first Librarian to last longer than ten years! We didn’t even know it was narratively relevant but it fits even more now that we know it is.

TL;DR:

(And if you want my Alex lore from her perspective, you can read out of the egg by clicking that link, if that’s not what brought you here in the first place.)

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