The ultimate trans headcanon? Marion Crane from Psycho. Here's a thread of bullshit because I haven't seen the movie in awhile.

The film starts with Marion and her lover Sam, meeting in secret in a seedy hotel. They talk a lot of respectability and how ashamed they would be to be seen in public together. Marion asks him to marry her and make her an honest woman but Sam is dodgy about the idea.

A client comes into Marion's work and waves around $40,000 boasting about his wealth and flirting with Marion. He tries to proposition her and offers to take her to Las Vegas for the weekend. That motherfucker is a chaser. Look at his little rat face.

Marion's cis worker remarks "He was flirting with you! I guess he must have noticed my wedding ring."

Yeah, I'm sure THAT'S IT.

Marion takes the $40,000 and skips town. The film tells us this is because Sam has debts preventing them from getting married, but of course Hitchcock always worked with metaphor/subtext.

Marion stole this money to get the final surgery she needed to "make her an honest woman"

Marion doesn't sound particularly "cis". She wears short cropped hair and matches height with most of the men in the film. I just think that's significant.

Marion falls asleep in her car and a cop hastles her. Despite telling her she hasn't broken any laws, he follows her for what seems like hours.

Marion goes to sell her car and get a new one, so she can't be followed. The police officer doesn't take his eyes off her, the salesman is hesitant to sell her anything, she eventually convinces him and speeds away while the 2 men (plus a mechanic) stare at her suspiciously.

Rain starts pounding down and Marion stops at the Bates Motel to stay for the night.

Norman is ecstatic to meet her. Overeager and nervous. Marion recognizes him as an egg and is uncomfortable clocked by him.

I don't know if Norman IS an egg. Does he want to be his mother? Was his mother abusive because of his "gender confusion" or did the abuse cause those feelings?

The one thing I'm sure of is he wants what Marion has and it leads to him killing her.

When Norman shows her around the hotel room, he halts at the bathroom and gets really nervous about it but she's cavalier. Clearly this is foreshadowing later events and even if Marion isn't trans, Norman feels strange about his own predatory nature; but I like this added layer.

Norman asks Marion what she's running away from and she's cagey about it. The camera mirrors their expressions as they both stare out the window.

Norman: We're all in our private traps... and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and claw but only at each other and for all of it, we never budge an inch. I was born in mine. I don't mind it anymore.

Marion: But you SHOULD mind it.

Norman: Oh, I DO. But I say I don't.

Marion: Why don't you go away?

Norman: To a private island, like you?

Marion: No. Not like me.

Norman: I couldn't do that... Her fire would go out. If you love someone, you don't do that to them even if you hate them... I don't hate her... I hate the illness.

She suggests Norman "puts his mother in someplace" and says "It seems she's hurting you."

She warns him against transition and suggests he finds his own private island. Norman is angry. His mother is a part of him.

They talk about fear of institutionalization which like... MOOD

Norman watches Marion get undressed and into the shower. He's envious of her body. He's angry she would dissuade him from "obtaining what she has"

He feels like a disgusting warped version of her and that's what finally brings "mother" out.

And then of course, Mother kills Marion in the shower.

Read into it what you will. This is Marion's last scene in the film. Of course there's the context of "men pretending to be women in the restroom" but there's also a reading about violence trans women face in these spaces.

Norman returns, disgusted at what Mother has done. This was someone and something he aspired to be and now he's deformed that side of himself into something twisted and angry and shameful.

He disposes of her body inside her car unceremoniously in the swamp.

And that's really the last we see of Marion. Jeez, downer ending.

I wrote this all as I skimmed through the movie so I'd be interested to see if this theory holds water to a rewatch (or even to Bates Motel!)