Also excuse me if I ask you this, but when you began to hc Jaune as Jeanne?
Doing okay. Work and life got me a bit off the keyboard for the last months. But as soon as I can, I'll retake the asks.
I think it all started with "I don't want to be the damsel in distress! I want to be the hero!". I know that, in the context of the scene and arc, it was more about Jaune feeling inadequate as a Huntsman and left behind by his friends.
But it's not too hard to relate that framing to a gendered one. At the ver least using a gendered role like "damsel in distress" in dichotomy to being a hero. Specially when at the end of that same arc, we have Jaune himself admitting his macho know-nothing-know-it-all act from the first two volumes was an act he thought he needed to hold. So, it's not that much of a step ahead to see Jaune's relationship with gender as something filtered through roles and expectations.
Which is an overarching theme in Jaune's development through the series. Both roles and expectations haunt Jaune through the narrative, but also identity. Specially by Vol 9, when he's given the role of "the hero", and it tragically makes everything worse for Jaune.
Because Jaune tries too hard. That's kind of the core of the character.
A lot of what Jaune is and does early on is performing what he thinks a hero is supposed to be. What a Huntsman is supposed to be. What a man is supposed to be. The confidence, the bravado, trying to carry everything alone, trying to embody this image of the ideal hero.
And the narrative keeps punishing him for it. Not because Jaune is weak, but because the role itself does not fit 'him'.
Meanwhile, Jaune's genuinely heroic moments almost always happen when that performance drops. Specially saving Weiss at Haven. That it happens right after the attempt to be the hero by trying to kill Cinder to avenge Pyrrha adds up to that.
Which is about where the transfem reading clicked for me so hard.
Because suddenly Jeanne's arc stopped being about an insecure boy failing to become the ideal hero, and started being about someone exhausting herself trying to perform an assigned identity that never really fit.
And once I started looking at the character through that lens, more things started to make sense.
Jeanne constantly treats her existence as something she has to earn. She needs to prove herself useful, dependable, strong, heroic enough to justify existing in the spaces she occupies. And when she fails at that, her immediate instinct is to double down. Try harder. Carry more. Sacrifice more of herself.
"They're the ones that matter".
Trying to perform the identity and role she was assigned is inherently self-destructive. Which was already on display on Vol 1 when rejecting Pyrrha's help, was taken the to the extreme in Vol 4 with her suicidal charge against Cinder, and lingered by Vol 9 through the Rusted Knight.
The tragedy of the Rusted Knight is that Jeanne got exactly what she thought she was supposed to be, and there's barely a person left underneath the armor anymore.
Which is why I don't really read Jeanne as a character whose narrative is about becoming stronger, or manlier, or more traditionally heroic over time.
Instead, I read it as someone slowly learning that fulfilling a role will never make her happy. That performing usefulness is not the same thing as having an identity. That she cannot build a self out of expectations.
And that's where the gender aspect really settles in for me.
Because Jeanne wanting to be recognized as a woman does not contradict her discomfort with gendered expectations. If anything, it reinforces the point. Her entire narrative is about struggling under roles she thinks she has to embody in order to deserve love, respect or acknowledgement.
So, I want to make a point abundantly clear; the idea of Jeanne transitioning isn't about replacing the character of Jaune Arc with Jeanne Arc, but just reading the former as the later.
I'm not saying Jaune is (or has to be) queer. Just pointing some adjacency going on. It's perfectly okay to be a het-cis dude, and I actually like how Jaune's first arc was "stop being a toxic macho and accept help from others".
But because it's a positive gender arc, it doesn't call for much tweaking to make it about gender too. Jaune as a trans man still learning to define what his chosen gender is for himself, or as a trans woman understanding what she still has to de-learn from her raising as AMAB, or enby Jaune just shedding off gender expectations altogether.
In the end, Jeanne as a reading isn't about "fixing" the character, or pretending it secretly explains every single thing in canon, but because there are themes of identity, roles and expectations with Jaune that I could see being built from.
The fear of failing at the role you've been given, and the slow realization that maybe the role itself was the problem. Jeanne, to me, is simply taking those ideas to their natural conclusion; someone who spent years trying to become the person she thought she was supposed to be, only to finally ask herself who she actually wants to be instead.
But as you said in the ask, it's mainly a headcanon. A reading I have.
P.D.: Also, making trans headcanons is a thing I like to do. Shinji Ikari, Tim Drake, Izuku Midoriya…
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