can i ask what motivates the whole Isaac is trans idea?
cause i think its cool but ion really get where one gets the idea for her being trans in specific instead of other characters and id really like to hear why :P
HI. ok this is an incomplete and rambling list because I 1) just woke up and 2) really do not have time to double-check the transcripts any time this week but off the top of my head:
I remember when I first thought it, in my very first watch of UPP. In DisRes1 when Isaac and Will were like "how does she (Norah) do it (make our parents like her)" and Norah was like "idk I have a 4.0 GPA," Isaac said something like, "Yeah, I get it, you're everything my parents wish I was." And I, who hadn't even gotten obsessed with Isaac yet, was like "what, a girl, too?"
And then it never left my brain because:
-While I'm not religious, Isaac's struggle with faith and her family relationships reminds me a lot of how I distanced myself from my family and the beliefs I'd learned from them while trying to figure myself out.
-also the moving to Deadwood as a catalyst for this. Again this is partial projection/partial self-recognition but Isaac changing so thoroughly when her family moves to Deadwood reminds me of when I transferred high schools and suddenly realized a lot of things about myself. even though my transfer/realization was a much happier story overall i can't deny the ping of recognition i felt when isaac alluded to being uprooted and forced to adapt so thoroughly.
-Isaac's hair. I'm not a "long hair on a guy means they're not cis/not straight" person at all but Isaac's hair has been used against her multiple times now by people who've explicitly wanted to kill her and she still keeps it long. Given how her parents care a lot about presenting as a good christian family to their fellow churchgoers, and given how Bizly took the time to specify her father's last touch against her head as "gentle," I feel very safe inferring that her parents did not like it when Isaac started growing her hair out. If you're a believer in physical abuser James Brooks (which I'm not always but I'm not not a believer in it), the hair would be my first guess for how that physical abuse goes, since we have I think a couple instances of James physically controlling how Isaac moves? There's the car crash/kidnapping ofc and I thiiiiink there's a moment where James drags her into the house in DisRes but I might be thinking of the shtriga. REGARDLESS the fact that Isaac's hair keeps being explicitly used against her like this and she keeps it anyways. Realistically it's probably just Condi not considering how Isaac feels about that specifically but to me it reads as the hair being so important that despite the abuse/assault it nets her, she needs to keep it. because it matters to her more than the hurt it causes. trans moment.
-her role in these stories. tumblr won't let me search for the post but someone made a post a while back, soon after 2.2 dropped i think, about how isaac is reduced to the role of mr. abrahams's wife in the sacrifice, and how that ties into her trans coding? i may be paraphrasing a bit too heavily there but regardless there is a LOT of narrative parallels between isaac and typical female roles in horror. while the shtriga was obviously a metaphor for abuse of altar/choir boys (even if they glossed over it YES I'M STILL INSANE ABOUT THAT—) isaac is very much the final girl in that situation with breaking out of the coffin and stumbling free. and later on the shtriga takes janice instead, which is less putting isaac in a woman's place than the other way around, but i think can still be counted. later in empty graves, there is of course the sacrifice parallel. while obviously bizly is pulling from the story of abraham and isaac we can't deny the parallel to mrs. abrahams, and the literal "giving of one's life so a child may be born into the world (again)" of it all. again there's more but i cannot find that post and i don't have time to look more (we'll get to norah parallels momentarily)
-her family. okay. so. her family of course drives me crazy. we have a father who stopped loving her and a mother who can't seem to reach her and a sister who has distanced herself presumably for her own safety. again all troubled kid things but also all queer kid in a precariously christian family things. but i made that post last night about "when your father loves you as a son and then he stops loving you what then" which like. i love when the character is trans because their life changes too much. i love when the character is trans as a response just as much as i love when the character is trans from the very beginning. and it's not just her father's love she lost. what about when your mother is the only one who bothers to reach out but she doesn't even recognize you anymore and feels like she can't say no. what about when your sister is the only one you mourn. being trans as a response!!!! to family trauma!!!!!!!!!!!!
-NORAH. i have talked about how important isaac and norah's friendship is to me. i have mentioned in this post how it was a specific comparison to norah that made this click for me. i have joked somewhere in a tag about how norah cracks the rest of upp's eggs. AND I STAND BY ALL OF IT. isaac and norah in particular are constantly paralleled by the narrative and by deadwood, between them being the only ones to actually encounter the shtriga, them being the only ones to come so close to death, them being the only ones officer donald noticed, them being the "outsiders" of the group, even them being the ones to be trapped in coffins by the evils around them! and just as isaac is physically trapped by her parents, norah is socially/emotionally trapped by hers. the two of them have been cast in similar roles over and over and over again by their choices and by bizly himself (phone calls to the wisp house that ruined their day!! the car rides with their fathers!!!! THE USE OF THE TREES) also the fact. that these two imo are closer to each other than anyone else in upp. i know will and isaac get along like a house on fire and will and norah have some INSANE friendship/selfrecognitionthroughtheother going on but that's not the same as going "this is the person i feel safest around and am keeping an eye out for" yk? and that's them to each other. to me. and isaac is an outcast delinquent sports kid who openly hits on girls (the first meeting with janice) even if she doesn't expect anything of it (almost like she's doing it because she's expected to rather than because she wants to) and that is not the type of person who typically becomes friends with a norah to that degree, even if they have mutual friends! so i look at all that and i say "okay. what's one way we could explain this. could it be that isaac feels a particular attachment to norah because, as she's joked about multiple times, people (including herself) want her to BE norah"
-she's canonically started questioning her sexuality as of the first church incident with the window, it's very easy to extend that to gender to
in conclusion: LOTS. but mostly it's me looking at things that have happened to me and her both and going "huh," and also me looking at things in the show that have happened but aren't explicitly indicative of transness and going "okay, now what happens if we take this one step further?"
and when you have this many things—again this is an incomplete list—that one step further becomes less of a hypothetical direction, and more of an x-marks-the-spot kind of deal.
like, yeah, there's a lot of other ways to think about why all of the things i mentioned are the case. i enjoy thinking about them too! but transfem isaac is to me the most complete and compelling expansion of everything canon has built, with the addition that if i need to not deal myself psychic damage for once i can imagine her alive and transitioned and happy well after the events of deadwood when she moves the fuck out.
ALSO TO BE CLEAR: i think the other teens are various flavors of trans too! just not with the same conviction i hold she/her transfem isaac with yk. lui in particular reads soooooo nonbinary to me
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