rocky horror is the worst and is also transmisogynistic can we please finally get over this shit movie
ok but like the writer is transgender nonbinary and the language used in the play was the preferred language by trans people of that time can we not deny parts of our history because we’ve evolved since then thanks
So fucking much this.
PS, youth of today: you’ll be saying the same damn thing about art from this time before too long, for good or for ill. Terminology will, in fact, change. Definitions will, in fact, shift. It always does, they always do.
PPS, it is pretty much impossible to overstate how life-alteringly important this movie was to kids who didn’t conform to standard expectations of gender and sexuality, back in the day. Especially when back in the day was the mid-to-late 1980s, when the only queers you saw on TV were neutered AIDS tragedies, Bowie was playing straight, and even Elton John was married to a woman, and midnight showing of RHPS were pretty much the only place that felt like home. It was mental life raft for a lot of people.
Mentally, yes, but also literally. We found community and passed resources, we found roommates and bought each other post-show food at diners. It was a way to network in places where there weren’t Queer Centers.
I’m not saying the show doesn’t have its issues. It does, and the things which are keeping you alive? They have issues, too. Nothing we make is perfect.
Someday the things you hold precious will show their age, and you can then rejoice in that, because that will mean we know more and we’re doing better.
I’d argue that RHPC is still important and absolutely boundary pushing to this day. We straight up do not have nearly enough of this energy anymore. RHPC said “You think I’m a villain? You think I’m a murder rapist transvestite? Well, honey, it’s fun when I do it.” We straight up need this energy of celebrating queer villany and queer evil and making it fun, because that, too, is an important kind of reclamation. This is a story about a vanilla straight seeming couple being involved in filth and degeneracy and horror and coming out queer and vibrant (as much as the times allowed for that story). It’s “yes, you should be afraid that we’ll turn your children against you and you should believe that we are powerful and will not hesitate to fuck shit up.” And that is an open defiance to everything pushing down on us. That is what makes RHCP important, not the fact that it had Tim Curry in sexy stockings. It exists to spit back at the people spitting in our mouths when we ask for water. And in a sea of good representation it’s important that we don’t forget to embrace reclamations of bad representation. And that we realize that a queer person embracing queerphobic stereotypes and making them an identity is in no way the same as a straight person using them to defame us.
I think “Rocky horror picture show was a lifelinefor queer folk” and “it’s creator though nonbinary is still a transmysgonist peice of shit” are sentiments that should both exist.
Our trans sisters have every right to be pissed off.
… sure. But no one’s saying they don’t have right to be. Like, at all.
a lot of people who loved Mercedes Lackey’s Vanyel trilogy as teens, including a fair few who attribute their survival as young queers to having those books as a lifeline, are actively anti-recommending the Vanyel trilogy to everyone else. stated reasons include but are not limited to how Tragic Gays it is, how much Lackey did not know about trauma recovery, and the list of content warnings, which looks about like—and why is the only version of this gif I can find one that has the text “let me explain why I want superwholock”?—
[gif: late in Supernatural season 7, Crowley takes a scroll out of his jacket to show Dick Roman. he then lets it fall open: the free end of the comically long document hits the floor and rolls several feet farther.]
—but I think the real reason is, when you’re thirsty in the desert and all the water there is is in an oasis and will make you sick if you drink it, you drink the water and live. maybe you even get enough of a taste for the flavor to come back on purpose. but if you bring anyone with you, you bring bottled water.
i think the funniest thing that happens on this website is when you express an opinion and someone is like “well 3 years ago you said the opposite. you’re such a hypocrite ” and you have to like. explain to this adult human being that sometimes opinions change over time
“We were all so clueless that it was kind of hilarious.” (p. 209)
Five teenagers, in their final year of high school, quietly embark on a quest to disentangle the venal contingencies that bind their soft and elegant egos to the fabric of whatever constitutes their self-identity. This journey is neither planned nor intentional, but through it all, there is a fever of inevitability that refuses to break, a chancing of emotional uncertainty that harangues the good with the bad, with the hope of discerning the best.
I HAVE A SECRET fits nicely among Sumino’s better titles for its indisputably slick concept and clever, low-key execution. Five kids each possess the ability to read other people’s emotions, but there are two meaningful snags: (1) each character reads emotions differently, and (2) none of the characters know the other characters possess such a skill. The result is a puzzling together (or apart) of teenage anxiety, romance, and overconfidence through five different lenses and just as many multipliers of consequences.
Kyou is the most level-headed of the group. He is also, however, critically introverted and resists the urge to speak his mind to those he cares for most. Internally, this registers as cowardice. Externally, this registers as forlornness. And since Kyou reads others’ emotions as punctuation marks floating above people’s heads, he’s self-conscious about monitoring his behavior to soothe the emotional well-being of others. An exclamation mark? Excitement. Eagerness. An ellipses? Deep in thought. An interrobang? Hyper-cautious.
I HAVE A SECRET is an equally funny and tense read for how it renders scenarios that are equally perfect, and equally horrible, for Kyou, or others, to analyze in situ. Kyou, for example, has a massive crush on Miki-san, the exuberant and athletic girl at the front of the class. If the boy reads Miki-san’s floating punctuation as that of a girl aching for emotional validation, does he step forward and fill in the gap? The girl’s personality is as bright as a shining sun, but there is a hesitancy and an emptiness about her. Does Kyou’s knowing this give him the right to help her? Even though she has no idea who he is? Would this endear him to her? Or would he be abusing her emotional availability?
The ambiguity surrounding these questions and others fuel the novel’s industrious annexation of young adults in search of belonging. Readers learn early and often there are no easy answers.
Kuroda-san is a girl frequently chided for saying or doing something awkward. She enjoys being different, even if it means “hid[ing] the truth behind some other truth” (p. 150). She enjoys doing the unexpected. It humors her and gives her energy. Kuroda cares for her friends deeply and meddles incessantly, but affectionately, because it adds color and fragrance to the world. And how, exactly, does Kuroda see the world? She can read the heart rate of others. Perhaps that’s why, beneath the veneer of the excitable and “looney” Kuroda, rests the unsteady sense of self of a girl constantly modulating her behavior.
Alas, reading into the temperance of the hearts of others can prove troublesome. Does an even heartrate imply calmness or depression? Does an elevated heartrate imply quizzical affection worthy of a nudge in the right direction or does it imply a tepid nervousness inching ever so slightly toward trauma?
These boundaries are indefinite. And the blurrier the boundaries, the less palatable one’s desire to become his or her own person. Readers won’t be surprised then, when Zuka-san, a sporty and popular boy, and friend to Kuroda, gives the girl a reality check by declaring the fact that they can’t succeed at being who they want to be is precisely what pushes them to keep on trying (Zuka: “We know who we wanna be, but we suck at it. We can’t keep up the charade. We slip up at the most critical times – especially me lately – but I think that’s why it never gets tiring,” p. 153).
I HAVE A SECRET successfully pivots in this way, from purposefully jocular (Why is Miki changing her shampoo every three days?) to calculated tension (Why did the quiet girl who sits next to Kyou stop coming to school all of a sudden?). It uses its characters’ unique abilities to read the emotions of others to position them to help one another, to harm one another, to believe in one another, to scare one another, and to find themselves in one another.
The novel asks difficult questions about the evanescence of young love: Miyazato-san can see arrows between people who have found true love, but sinks deeper into sadness upon realizing nobody’s arrow ever finds her. The novel also asks difficult questions about the credulity of knowing oneself and exposing that knowledge to others: Zuka knows his apathy is his blind spot, but he also believes it’s sinful to cling to others, “hoping to one day find the humanity [he] never had” (p. 201).
One particularly commendable facet of this book is its pacing and scope. The book takes place over the course of the teenagers’ final year in high school, spring through autumn/winter. Each character snares a chapter, and each chapter takes place several weeks following the previous. This structure gives the characters and events room to flex and breathe and impresses upon readers the fundamental impermanence of things. Another day, another test. Another week, another club activity. Life moves on. Emotions shift. People change.
The narrative voices aren’t too differentiated, with a few exceptions (e.g., Miki is too hilariously high-energy to miss), but the shift in emotional sensitivity from character (chapter) to character (chapter) is so unmistakable that Sumino can be forgiven for not varying perspective as deliberately.
And yet, I HAVE A SECRET, for all its mucking in the shadows of what a darkened heart is known for, is a novel with a positive outlook. There are romantic misunderstandings and platonic pledges of fealty, sure, but the book makes a conscious effort to show readers that it’s worth exploring the difficult stuff so as to get to the better, kinder, gentler aspects of personal relationships. The challenge, of course, rests in not giving up until one’s time is true.
