cameoflage | Entries tagged with headcanons

(Crossposted from Tumblr, written for the Transgender September challenge)

Wilson may or may not have himself figured out before adolescence, but it makes very little difference in the long run when puberty blockers won’t be invented for another 80 years or so. However, he picks out his new name as a teenager; his exact choice, Wilson rather than William or perhaps something like Wilbur or Wilfred, and the way he discourages people from casually shortening his name to the first syllable, may be slightly pointed.
His parents aren’t thrilled, but they don’t disavow or contradict him over it, and this is hardly the first time they’ve acted like they would prefer he was someone else. They maintain that their middle child has always been a son. By their standards this is being supportive.
He goes through university and grad school presenting full-time as male and returns with diplomas in the name of Wilson P. Higgsbury. At some point around then it’s possible that he follows in the footsteps of Alan L. Hart and Karl Baer and undergoes gender-confirming surgery, though without the kind of media attention for being a pioneer thereof that would support a Wikipedia article about him solely on that basis a century later. (Certainly it would be more convenient later in life when he gets stranded in an alternate dimension consisting primarily of small unsettled forested islands.)
His greatest scientific success as an independent chemist is what he refers to as his “beard formula”, an artificial androgen that in particular promotes vigorous hair growth. Early trials result in various animals developing thick, bristly black hair, as well as that one time he spilled it on the rug and it still managed to stain and fluff up the completely inert fibres. Eventually he deems it suitable for self-experimentation, and afterwards develops a talent for growing several inches of beard over the course of mere months or weeks. It actually seems to grow faster the longer it gets, up until it runs out of steam around knee-length.
Unfortunately, he never manages to patent the beard formula before being sent to the Constant, partly because of difficulty reproducing the exact formula he used on himself and partly because of unchecked ADHD making it much harder to keep good records or follow a predictable schedule.
By now he exists in various records as a young man with his current name, so the thought of being drafted into the Great War and subsequently outed by the medical exam causes him quite a bit of anxiety. When he actually gets called up before the draft board in 1918 the officers dismiss him for being short, underweight, and sickly-looking before they even get to that point. Wilson is simultaneously relieved and insulted.