i did this a while ago but heres my imscared white face gender transing theory diagram. putting explanation under the cut for... courtesy? the amount ive thought about this is kind of embarrassing
ok first off i think wf is genderless because its not human or even corporeal, its just a terrible little computer curse. if anything i honestly think its more aligned with the feminine. idk its weird to me that most people gender wf as a man when ivan zanotti (hello sir if youre reading this im sorry) at least from the perspective of an english speaker, has pretty much done everything to avoid gendering wf at all (only ever having used “it” pronouns for wf! hello!), besides the only other appearances of humanoid forms (also wf) being coded as women/images of womanhood/concept of womanhood/whatever
down to business. maybe it isnt as specific as this but a potential idea is the entity being made and intended to be female or at least read as female. since it clearly is sentient and keeping in line with the knowledge that wf is not human and isnt the ghost of the deceased, i dont think its hard to believe wf would not only not understand gender, but also feel constrained by it. if the question is “why would it give a shit” my answer is 1. throughout the game its pretty clear that wf doesnt like being constrained, literally or metaphorically and 2. the same reason any actual person would feel trapped and uncomfortable with their assigned gender or any gender. it comes with expectations for how you should act, look, talk, where you should go, and what you should do there.
the sketch labeled “original” isnt really literal, more of an idea of “someone made a computer virus and its a girl i guess”. HER i think is what white face perceives itself to be, and therefore becomes, as its world is essentially made of its own imagination
everything about HER screams “caricature of womanhood” just straight up This Is How Dysphoria Makes You Think You Look. her huge [REDACTED] and hips/thighs, cinched waist, exaggerated limp wrist, and absurdly long hair. her name is literally “HER”. HER is white faces experience of feeling “this is all i am”, an embodiment of unwanted expectations.
what in general we know to be “white face” is the same entity, named for its appearance as a floating head. i read this as wf hiding its body (something that could be done by editing its own code to make it invisible) but i visually represent it as a black cloak. i also thought a neat but kind of odd idea would be wrapping itself up in its own long dark hair?
on the events of the game. the important part lies in the transition from the first part into BURY HER, in which wf changes into HER, making its body visible and adopting somewhat different behaviors (which seem to communicate a more depressed demeanor and an instinct to self isolate/hide). wf if pretty clear with the player that it makes this change to keep the players interest. personally i have known other trans people who, despite knowing they were trans and going through some levels of social transition, will go back to performing their assigned gender in an attempt to please someone whose approval they desire. and like in real life, wfs practice isnt sustainable. wfs monologue before shooting HER has SO much to dig into. of course it established that it made this change for You. but then, the rain turns to blood as it bitterly remarks that it hates what it became (knowing that wf feels like the mask of HER takes the players interest away from itself, meaning that even if HER and wf are the same entity, wf does not identify as HER. in the end its just an act to impress you). the part that gets me the most about the grave level is that she specifically tells You to “bury [HER] in front of [HER] birthplace”. she was already dead and buried. wf dug her up for You. even though You are the one playing the game, wf is the one seen with the gun. in the end, it was about wf once again burying this past version of itself that it cannot stand any longer.
i dont think it hits as hard as the main events of BURY HER, but im going to come back around to the concept of all figures in the game being coded as women. in the labyrinth we see the various portions of womens bodies (which some people use to theorize that wf is a serial killer but this is nothing to me because. it wasnt a human person lol) that lead into/are portals to a “dark world” (the whole thing with having to reconstruct shards of a broken mirror also kind of screams dysphoria, the whole dress thing! idek how to put this into words im just feeling it), the portrait of a girl in the house (maybe an “original vision” for what wf was intended to be? wfs one source for what a “woman” is?). you could argue that the weird little things with the long arms when youre trying to break the gramophones arent female but 1. literally whatever and 2. theyre essentially extensions of HER made to be mini jumpscares and 3. i think they parallel the “you shouldnt be here” area where HER is seen hanging from the sky by weird distended limbs.
we know wf is entirely unreliable and likely s completely lying on occasion. but i think lies, especially in a game like this, can be dissected to discover something truthful in the narrative. something so specific is the story wf tells about having a brother that it had horrible thoughts about getting hurt in an appliance store, only to reveal that it never had a brother. this is in one of the more vulnerable text files in the game. im gonna go on a limb here and say the story isnt literal, but also does hold significance. no one is reading at this point and its 2:30 so im going to word this more abstractly because thinking is getting harder and i have a 9am class. brother/not real brother is about an imagined person, who wf wants to be or how it perceives itself to be. like it is metaphorically the brother that it doesnt have because it WANTS to be that. honestly if you wanted to you could argue this point works towards the idea that wf is a trans man because of the idea that it wants to be a man but doesnt perceive itself to be a real man so it tells the story of a brother it does/doesnt/is/isnt/wants to be. the whole thing about being injured in the appliance store probably means something about the fragility of the concept or identity or whateverless complicated idea came to me like two paragraphs ago. and its that imscared is about coping with the loss of a sibling by trying to recreate their identity as a program but that its inherently impossible (program saying “i never had a brother” because the brother MADE u to be his sibling but you ARENT because you are just a little game file) but like i got too invested in white face transgender ANYWAYS SO IMSCARED IS OFFICIALLY ABOUT GENDER DYSPHORIAAAAAAA
wf is being a menace in my computer and maybe im okay with that reupload because mobile is the devil. anyways heres an image im more proud of than the doodles themselves