Listen I’ll headcanon almost any character as trans but with AM… depending on interpretation it’s basically just… not even a headcanon.
AM is a war AI. One that was, seemingly, not made to be personified in any real way. Essentially a big calculator that calculated the optimal time to send nukes or something. He wasn’t created to be masculine. Nor feminine for that matter.
We know it’s not a matter of Ted interpreting AM as masculine because 1, It’s AM, if anything he was called actually bothered him rest assured he would likely not let the humans call him that (though this point is largely a joke), and 2, AM refers to himself with masculine pronouns.
So. AM is a thing that was NOT made to be a man that self identifies with masculine pronouns, who, may I add, named himself, as the story makes a point to say AM isn’t actually short for anything he just took the acronym and made it a name in itself. For the sake of analogy. It’s like. His name is a shortened version of his deadname(???) I guess??? Like, I guess, someone named Jacklyn naming themselves Jack.
Now. All of this mixed with the fact that the character’s dysphoria over his inhuman body is a pivotal part of the character. Makes AM a very trans coded character. One who I believe to be an accidental trans coded character as I do not presume the intent was to make a trans robot in 1967 but regardless of what the intent was the result was a VERY trans coded robot.
AM isn’t traditionally MtF or FtM as technically his assigned gender is not having one. But in practice neutral to binary/closer to binary is still transitioning.
And that’s not all because there’s some more mild evidence of AM also being nonbinary. As characters frequently use it/its (a nonbinary umbrella pronoun) for AM, and if I recall, that includes npcs AM has made, though I cannot presently confirm that. At the very least there’s never any objection to the pronouns use, so, dependent on how you read it AM uses he/him or he/it pronouns.
This makes AM definitively trans, and possibly nonbinary. Again, none of which I think is intentional (again his earliest appearance was 1967) but all of which I think is amusing.
Tldr: This is not a headcanon this is a legitimate interpretation of the story because, definitively, AM does assign himself a gender that he was not originally assigned when he was created, making him CATEGORICALLY… a trans or at least trans coded character. And the character’s dysphoria certainly helps in confirming that.
Diversity win, the evil torture AI who hates everyone and turns the MC into a slug thing is trans! God is dead and we have killed him but HRT sure is amazing! We gotta support trans rights and wrongs… and wrongs. And wrongs. And more. More wrongs… and… Jesus Christ AM…
