If you’re familiar with transgender headcanons from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic—wait, did I seriously just TYPE that?! There seriously is no hope for me.

Anyway…

Let’s try this again.

If you’ve heard of only one transgender headcanon from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, it’s probably the headcanon that Trixie is a trans girl. As you know if you’re aware I wrote a trans fic about Rarity, I have had a change of heart about transgender headcanons over the past few months and now find them more fascinating than ever before. A friend of mine suggested I talk about trans Trixie in my review of No Second Prances (which I haven’t started writing yet), but I decided to make a separate blog post about it instead. And it’ll be my own earnest explanation of why I think this headcanon is so popular, without any of that patronizing attitude a lot of trans headcanoners have (cough cough Vylet Pony). I mean seriously, you won’t get people to respect your headcanon if you’re going to be a jerk about it.

I think I know why Trixie is so commonly thought of as transgender. She hits the perfect storm of qualities to make this headcanon appealing:

• She first appears in season 1, meaning just about every fan knows who she is, and she’s considered one of the MLP characters even though she only appeared twice until season 6. The sad truth is a lot of fans have only seen the early seasons anyway.
• She has a distinct mix of being self-absorbed and insecure about herself, which I think a lot of trans people can relate to.
• She seems to have a difficult upbringing and rocky history, flitting between unfun jobs and a shoddy reputation after Twilight Sparkle initially outmatched her. A lot of transgender people live difficult lives too, because it unfortunately isn’t easy for everyone to accept that they’re real.
• She has a human-sounding name, which means that a good amount of trans people will name themselves after her.
• And finally, she’s a fun and unique character with a lot of depth! This means there are a lot of aspects of her character to explore if you interpret her as trans, and fans clearly love doing so.

I think as far as MLP transgender headcanons go, trans Trixie is a pretty basic choice. But I promise I don’t mean this in a bad way! There’s nothing wrong with liking something so popular—typically, such things are popular for good reason.

Now with that said… Rarity being a trans girl is the best MLP trans headcanon by far, because it requires you to rethink her upbringing, her ladylike mannerisms, her complex dynamic with Spike, and so much more. It may be weird to say, but I think it suits Rarity really well to be transgender. Her character has always been meant to subvert gender roles, and if you assume the most ladylike of the Mane 6 was born as a boy but passes as a girl REALLY well, that truly changes everything about her. Well, not quite everything—it doesn’t change that she’s incredibly cute and lovable.

I should stress that you don’t have to agree with the above paragraph. If you think trans Rarity makes no sense, that is perfectly fine.

Wait, this post was supposed to be about Trixie. So I’ll end it by saying this: if you headcanon Trixie as a trans girl, that is totally understandable and you have no need to feel embarrassed about it.