awww thank you for the support i genuinely love coming to know when people like my tweets and im just not rambling into nothingness 😭 i have a few ideas for transfem mika coming to terms with their identity and the same with trans girl mika (i know these identities/their experiences are not mutually exclusive)
mika has always had an odd relationship with manhood and masculinity, particularly discomfort with traditionally masculine men and an affinity for women and traditionally feminine people. he himself used to express embarrassment at having certain feminine traits (i.e. having a feminine name) but moreso because it brought extra attention to himself and he used to have pretty severe social anxiety. much of his relationship to masculinity/feminity stemmed from his upbringing within the foster care system, acting as a big sibling to primarily girls (assumedly). i feel like its implied that his dislike for men came from his experience as an orphan and encounters with men in power in the system as well as his foster parents. other than these details in canon, unless im forgetting something (which i very well could be because i havent reread mikas older stories in a while) mika doesn’t have a strong connection to his own gender as a canon cis man.
i think mika’s earlier experiences with dysphoria would be brushed off due to him not being able to identify it, it was just a general underlying discomfort. mika grew up disregarding his own wellbeing because he had people, younger children he considered his family, to take care of. combined with the fact that he was at the mercy of whichever foster parents decided to take him in, his sense of identity and desires became distorted because he basically lived for other people and not himself… his disregard and lack of concern for himself later manifest in stories like neverland, human comedy etc where we see he’s not used to confronting these issues or letting anybody else know what he’s going through. humanity is painful to mika, and mika’s pain is something he learned to gloss over lest he collapse under all his troubles. shit you could even use the entirely of post exvalk downfall as an example of this with mika pushing himself past his bodily limitations to keep him and shu afloat.
at the end of the day, discomfort became familiar to mika, something he learned to ignore. he wore it like a glove. questions of his individual identity wouldn’t be given priority because he regarded himself as a puppet/extension of shu and valk, essentially. once he’s not under shu’s care and has to live on his own, however…
discomfort is no longer something mika can wave off, if not for his increasing awareness of his emotions and improving ability to identify his internal turmoils and put them into words, then because of his loved ones’ encouragements to establish his own identity and stop ignoring his physiological needs.
*While a lot of this paragraph was composed of my assumption’s about mika’s character, it’s mostly steeped in canon and act as a general character analysis and can be regarded as separate from the upcoming discussions of dysphoria, and mostly give context for canon divergence mika’s future thoughts and actions. since the next paragraphs go into discussing transfem mika, i’m changing my pronoun usage from he/him to she/they.

if i’m gonna be honest i dont think mika would ever be able to put a name to their dysphoria. an old friend and i agreed that she’d be “cis out of convenience” (i stole this concept from someone but i dont remember who). basically mika would subconsciously do anything to minimize her own discomfort/pain; not really living in a state of denial but not entertaining ideas about her identity that conflict with how she’d lived her life up to that point, mainly because they wouldn’t be able to put a finger on what exactly it is about her identity that lives discordantly to the rest of her. mika’s only encounters with dysphoria and transness include their best friend, whos been certain of her identity for years, and shu, whos either deeply in denial, deeply repressed, or a mix of the two. some trans people can identify their dysphoria from childhood. others don’t realize that their experiences fall under the category of dysphoria because they mistake dysphoria as some tangible, obvious, singular emotion rather than an amalgamation of complicated feelings, all of which point toward the conclusion that something is wrong with that something being a disconnect between the brain and the body. i never would’ve thought my body dysphoria was, well, body dysphoria because i just figured in childhood that that feeling of wrongness was normal for me and something i’d have to get used to. i don’t really think im projecting though when i say mika’s dysphoria would be similar though haha, it just seems in character for her. mika files their dysphoria under her general daily discomfort. i don’t really know what would provoke that initial recognition of dysphoria for what it is; i think arashi referring to herself and mika as girls and mika assuming a more feminine state of dress would put dysphoria on the tip of her tongue, able to be recognized but not verbalized. i think it would all come to a head entirely by accident; someone else spells it out for her without even realizing what they did. though it doesn’t fully awaken her, it does bring her to the conclusion that she’s not cis, and then she’d probably go to arashi shyly because she doesnt know how to broach the subject and arashi reacts really enthusiastically before being like wait ok let me calm down before i scare mika off. obviously arashi knows how sensitive a topic gender can be and how scary coming out is but hey she can express a little excitement at possibly having a close trans friend. as a treat. despite her trepidation i dont think mika would have much trouble at all approaching naru because naru is the person they go to about most of their problems anyways and they know that she’d never judge or belittle them. from there onwards its mika experimenting with her gender and expression for a bit before realizing that the transfeminine identity fits her like a glove. she’d never get surgery and she’d know on a base level she experiences body dysphoria but the fact that tools exist to mitigate dysphoria would completely skip over her until arashi brings up E and mika’s like hm. mulls it over for a really really really long time because she wonders if hormones could possibly help her with the feeling that
shes too long for her body and her skin feels too tight on her with everything being so sharp and boney to the point she doesnt recognize herself in the mirror and she doesn’t want to give herself false hope but she takes a leap of faith… i think overall her transition would be very nonlinear and deeply confusing to navigate but she never looks back once everything’s said and done

of course other factors play into the complications of her transition like fear of backlash… she is a public figure after all and she’d be scared shitless of a public transition possibly negatively affecting valkyrie’s image. she’s definitely be trying not to let her severe social anxiety hinder her and i’m sure she has confidence in valkyrie’s ability to succeed regardless of what comes their way but she works herself into a tizzy anyway. unsure of how mika transitioning would affect shu’s own journey with gender but i do know that shu would sooner tell their fans to fuck off and die (in a more pretentious and posh way) than allow their input to impede on mika’s happiness

i also think shed delegate her distaste for manhood pre-transition solely to her misandry and not consider how dysphoria might play a part in it

mmm i probably have more thoughts but cant think of them now. if you guys have any thoughts disagreements agreements send them my way. peace and love