Trans Media

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 8

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision dial set to max bronze for THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 8! This week, we get all the transition care we need and self-actualization arrives!

For the last time (in this series, anyway), I’m gonna pester you to be sure you’ve read PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, and PART 7 first. I know, I know, it’s a lot of parts. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make this movie! All I did was love it. Yeah!

Let’s get this wrapped up!

1:24:48 – Frank leaves with the trash can that Michael’s penis and testicles landed in. Frank wants those things. And we know Lisa has bottom dysphoria, and Frank is Lisa’s self-actualization, sooooo… you know where this is going.

1:24:55 – Even still, Lisa goes to comfort Taffy, to try and make her feel better. Having to manage the feelings of the cis people in our lives when we come out, even though we are the ones society makes it so difficult for, is a very real thing we have to do. Often. CIS GRIEF rears its head again.

1:25:22 – Inside Taffy’s red car, with Taffy’s red face, Lisa still tries to comfort her, but Taffy pulls away. Horrified by Lisa’s truth.

1:25:58 – Lisa is still trying to comfort Taffy, who’s terrified. Lisa: “Thank you for being nice to me when no one else was. I did notice. It was just that your mom was so heinous that I- I’d already decided that you were, too. You’re the type of person who usually bullies me or looks right through me. But you didn’t. You actually went out of your way to try to tell people I was part of your family. You really actually wanted me to be your sister [emphasis mine].”

Even people who might accept us as nonconforming people of the gender we were assigned at birth cannot handle or accept us once they learn we’re actually trans. See CIS SPOUSAL AND PARTNER SUPPORT for more.

1:26:39 – Lisa gives Taffy her mom’s rosary, those old fears and feelings will no longer hold her back! They do, however, belong to Taffy… now that she’s revealed her true, traitorous self, and betrayed Lisa.

Lisa: “You are, you know? You are my sister. You’re a great person, Taff. And I’m sorry… I hurt you. I love you.” We do love the people in our lives, and we never meant to hurt them. Coming out as trans shouldn’t hurt them, though. And society teaches us that we have to apologize for our very existence, for wanting to stop living a lie and be free from pain, just because cis feelings are hurt. And that’s bullshit.

Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf) by Pixies plays. More lyrics? Hell yeah

Cease to resist, giving my goodbye
Drive my car into the ocean
You’ll think I’m dead, but I sail away
On a wave of mutilation
A wave of mutilation
Wave of mutilation

You will think I’m dead, just like Lisa’s mom did, but Lisa’s going off to be her true self. And she won’t drown under the water of dysphoria, she’ll sail across it. With the body modifications she needs, which a whole lot of cis people sure view as “multiation.”

1:27:22 – Lisa picks up the axe (used to sever and obtain Michael’s genitalia), seemingly to go kill Frank? Cis grief has made her feel so bad she’s going to try to kill her true self for good.

1:27:51 – Lisa ducks under the yellow fear tape to get to Frank. But she’s now crossed the line of fear, it’s behind her now… and she can’t kill Frank. She can’t kill her truth. And so:

1:28:06 – She embraces her true self! Lisa: “You love me?” (do I love myself enough to do this?) “You love me?” She does. He does. I do. (marriage!)

1:28:36 – Lisa: “Listen, we’re running out of time. Make love to me.

1:28:44 – Frank looks down, then grunts in discomfort.

1:28:54 – Frank puts Lisa’s hand on his crotch. Lisa: “Oh. Oh. Oh!”

1:29:12 – Lisa’s asking herself if she can transition and be the man she wants to be without the thing our sexist gendered society says you need to be a man. And she confirms it to herself.

HERE COMES THE TRANSIEST THING IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE:

Lisa: “That’s okay. We can… I mean, you don’t need one of those to be a man.”

YOU DON’T NEED A PENIS TO BE A MAN.

Genitalia does not determine gender. You don’t have to get bottom surgery to be a man.

Lisa: “It’s actually like the least important part, really. We can do other things and it’s fine, it’s fine.”

1:29:23 – But Frank has Michael’s junk. You don’t need bottom surgery to be a trans man, but if you’re a trans man who needs bottom surgery then you should get it.

But either way, it’s not the thing that determines the gender you know yourself to be.

1:29:29 – Lisa: “You cut it off for me?” Yes, we will get gender confirmation surgeries if it’s what we need. And sometimes that means modifying our bodies in ways we need to live authentic lives.

Cis people do this allllllllllll the time, even while being horrified by, and legislating against, trans people doing the very same things. Again and again this comes up, please read it: CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO.

1:29:31 – When Lisa and Frank are closer than they’ve ever been, a police officer, aka the people who literally police gender in our society, comes in to break it up. “This is an active crime scene. You guys can’t be here.”

Women don’t belong in a grove for bachelors, this is unacceptable! (It’s worth noting actual cops are, as a group, incredibly hostile to trans people).

As in THE MATRIX films, police (and security guards, and Agents) are the tools the system uses to oppress trans people.

1:29:43 – Frank drops the cop in a grave. Your “rules” in support of THE FALSE DICHOTOMY and oppression will not stop me. They no longer apply to me. I’ve seen through the lies.

1:29:54 – Lisa, in what is intentionally a very sexually suggestive pose, attaches the genitalia her true self needs. Bottom surgery. Note the large “penis” grave drawing we saw earlier is right next to them. And what’s to the left of that? A women in old-timey high-fem clothing, like Lisa was wearing in her dream, but it’s in negative, the black and white are reversed. That’s the opposite of what she wants.

REO Speedwagon’s I Can’t Fight this Feeling Any Longer plays, but it’s a cover with a woman singing… a perceived gender change.

1:30:12 – On the black wooden cat behind Frank, it says “Feed the kitty.” Which, ummmm, may be a thing Frank can do after bottom surgery, if you… follow the euphemism.

1:30:23 – They come out of the shed with the magic electric tanning bed, the surgery, and the HRT, are complete.

1:30:29 – Frank kisses her hand. Acceptance. Thanks. And a goodbye to the person he was, who got him here. Look how Frank is now more human in appearance than ever.

1:30:38 – He puts a candy ring on Lisa’s finger, the two are now one. Their marriage. Their union. Frank will be all there is.

1:31:14 – Another kiss of self-acceptance.

1:31:53 – They change positions. He is now where she was.

1:32:01 – Returning to the opening animation style, they ride a rocket to the stars together.

1:32:07 – Their rocket crashes into the man in the moon and they walk across his surface, over and beyond. She did it. He did it. They’re here, and going further than they ever dreamed they could.

1:32:28 – After consummating their union, and gaining full acceptance, Lisa: “There’s no other way. No, don’t cry.” They kiss each other’s hands to cement the transition. His tears don’t smell now. Or, perhaps, she’s grown to like that smell as it affirms who she is.

1:32:36 – “I don’t know how I was ever afraid of you.” We spend our lives terrified of what’s inside, of who we truly are, because society teaches us to do exactly that.

But they, we, were never anything to be afraid of.

They’re about to kiss when police sirens interrupt them. Society’s policing of gender roles is still coming for them.

1:33:17 – Sitting on the edge of the tanning bed (which again, looks like a coffin), she hands Frank a note and uses her thumb to move a kiss from her lips to his, his face awash in trans lighting. For our true selves to live, our old selves must die. I SAW THE TV GLOW also uses this metaphor to great affect in its allegory.

1:33:35 – As Lisa lies down inside, ready to fully become her true self, the final kiss of self-acceptance.

1:33:47 – She’s bathed in the dysphoria light. It, too, will die with our old selves, as we live authentic lives hopefully free of the dysphoria that plagued us.

1:34:13 – Lisa’s not afraid now. This is what she’s been waiting for, and what she needs to do.

1:34:19 – The sparks from the final transformation knock over a pillar with one of Taffy’s tiara’s on it. A pillar of femininity is falling.

1:34:27 – The tanning bed erupts in flames, the past is destroyed. Frank’s still a little sad and emotional about it.

1:34:38 – Frank opens Lisa’s note. “Death is temporary. I’ll love you forever.” She did not sign her name, for “Lisa” is no more. There is only a lightning bolt, a symbol..

…of the thing that allowed her to become him.

1:35:15 – The shed goes up in flames. A kid looking on: “Bitchin’.” Yeah kid, transition is bitchin’!

Worth noting that I SAW THE TV GLOW also uses flames, and even emergency vehicles showing up at a house, in the same way. We “burn down” falsehoods and society treats it as an emergency and a crime.

1:35:24 – Taffy and their dad visit Lisa’s grave. She’s dead to them. I SAW THE TV GLOW and THE MATRIX (specifically the Animatrix short “Kid’s Story”) also use this metaphor for how many cis people see us when we transition… we’re dead to them.

1:35:43 – And yet, Taffy’s and Dad’s flowers are explicitly pink, white, and blue. As if, in death, perhaps, they could finally acknowledge Lisa’s truth. Maybe. But Taffy wear’s Lisa’s mom’s rosary, so she’s still chained under all those false beliefs.

And if you watch, Lisa’s dad doesn’t even leave the flowers he brought for Lisa. He takes them with him! Ugh c’mon man.

1:36:45 – But look at the flowers Frank left for her. They are, in fact, the very same flowers Lisa brought to Frank’s grave in Bachelor’s Grove back at 6:30 into the movie!

Frank was “dead” and had no way to know what she would have left him… unless he and Lisa were always the same person at two ends of transition.

Also, uh… didja catch what it says down on the bottom of Lisa’s tombstone? Beloved wife.

Transition: achieved. Self: Actualized.

1:36:51 – Frank is now on the bench, reading aloud. He has a voice. Finally!

He reads the poem “To Mary,” by Percy Shelley, who was… well, he was a lot, but he was married to Mary Shelley, who wrote the original Frankenstein (possibly as an excuse to get away from him for a while).

O Mary dear,
that you were here.
With your brown eyes
bright and clear.
And your sweet voice,
like a bird
Singing love to its lone mate
In the ivory bower disconsolate;
Voice the sweetest ever heard!
And your brow more than the sky
of this azure Italy.
Mary dear, come to me soon,
I am not well whilst thou art far;
As sunset to the sphered moon,
As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.
O Mary dear,
that you were here;
The Castle echo whispers ‘Here’

Very much a longing for the one we love, the one we wish was here. And if you again view people in a romance as a person loving their true self enough to transition, it’s also perhaps a final goodbye. To the person we were, to the costume we wore, to the part we played. None of them our truth, but they persevered long enough, until we could be free. And real.

1:37:20 – Lisa is all in red, now she’s nothing but love. And she’s all bandaged, like a mummy (the poster in her bedroom/subconscious), like the papoose blankets she wrapped herself in, here at Papoose Lake. Even her brooch is a heart.

Notice again that the hat (which Frank gave her) has a flower on it, and she accepted it. Remember the opening credit animation, and how that indicated the perceived woman accepting the gift of Frank’s existence, but it disappeared when she rejected him? Well… here it is again. For good.

And her face is all white, going through the reversal of what we saw Frank go through. This is her end, and why Frank is saying goodbye.

And just look at his rainbow suspenders, he’s out and proud.

As we close out, I Call You Mine by The Zombies plays. Here’s some lyrics one. More. Time!

Though you and I would dance and laugh and play
Walk in the light of day and talk the night away
Could you see, baby, you understood then
That I loved you, how I loved you?

I couldn′t chance to break the spell we had
The happy times we had and yet the times were sad
Just for me, baby, you understood then
I was afraid to try to call you mine

But now, you’ve come to me (I′ll call you mine)
You’ve brought your love to me (I’ll call you mine)

Welcome, new real me. I’m here to stay.

And farewell, old me. You were never really me, but thanks for holding on long enough, and loving yourself enough, to get me here.

So! What’s your verdict? Was the incredibly deep transness in this film unintentionally intentional? Was it intentionally intentional? I think I’m leaning more toward the latter, but it’s up for debate!

But what’s not up for debate is that this is the most explicitly transmasc allegory I’ve ever seen, in a film that’s not only fun and a delight to watch, but that has so much to say about the ways society forces conformity on us all, and the damage that does to us.

Maybe at some point you got close to figuring yourself out, but then got scared, or hurt, and put the real you back in a box and buried them deep in your heart.

But Zelda Williams, Diablo Cody, Kathryn Newton, and Cole Sprouse are here to remind you that you can always let them back out. And you should.

It might just feel electric, and it might just make you whole, and a more real person than you’ve ever been.

Thank you for joining me on this installment of Tillyvision, and for accompanying me on the choppy seas as we ring the bells to keep the monsters away.

Transition saves us, babes.

And you’re worth saving.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 7

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision batteries at maximum for THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 7! This week transition goes further than ever, which causes those we love to reveal their true nature!

C’mon, just read PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, and PART 6 first so that you actually understand what I’m saying, okay? Do it for me.

Ok thx. Moving on!

54:51 – Lisa stitches the hand onto Frank. Here in her heart, she rejected the guy who assaulted her. Remember her confusion after it happened, in the “boys will be boys” world we lived in, as a trans man, when she wondered… if she didn’t want to assault women, was she really a man? Could she really be one? Is that really what “men are?”

No. You can be a man and respect women, actually, and here she’s finally rejected the kind of man Doug was. And it brings another piece of the real her to life.

55:27 – Frank goes for another dose of HRT energy in the tanning bed, and Lisa increases the dose to Ultra High. We’re moving up!

55:52 – Frank sits up from the tanning bed, more human than ever before!

And look, this is just my opinion, but his artful shaggy hair, the sideburns, the comfy casual clothes… Frank looks extremely transmasc-coded to me.

56:14 – They embrace, they dance in celebration. Lisa’s starting to really except her inner man.

57:03 – Frank immediately takes to the piano, to express himself. He’s great, and Lisa’s impressed.

57:55 – Lisa: “You had a whole life.” Frank points at her. “Yeah, I guess, yeah, I do. I guess so.” She does now!

58:10 – Frank wants her to play the piano with him, two as one. She says no, the piano is her dad’s, he hasn’t played since her mom died. Her only access to masculinity hasn’t expressed itself since her mom’s terrible reaction to Lisa being trans.

58:22 – She sits next to him, but doesn’t want to play. Clasps her arms behind her back. As they play, look how similar their hair is to each other as they sit side by side. Almost the same silhouette, but reversed. And we were introduced to Frank in the opening credit animation as a silhouette.

Huh.

58:40 – She sings, expressing herself as he expresses himself. They are as one. This is REO Speedwagon’s I Can’t Fight this Feeling.

I’ve been keeping a list, a long list, of popular songs that have really strong trans readings. There will be an essay featuring them someday, and let me tell you this song has been on my list for years.

It one hundo percento reads like a trans person truly accepting themselves.

I can’t fight this feeling any longer
And yet I’m still afraid to let it float
What started out as friendship
Has grown stronger
I only wish I had the strength to let it show

And even as I wander
I’m keeping you in sight
You’re a candle in the window
On a cold dark winter’s night
I’m getting closer
Than I ever thought I might

And I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
And if, to bring this ship into the shore
Come crashing through your door
Baby I can’t fight this feeling anymore

This is Lisa’s transition self-acceptance song!

1:00:04 – Frank sniffles. Yeah! It’s so emotional to finally accept yourself! And live life as your true self. Though, again, the new smell catches her off guard.

1:00:39 – Lisa, to Frank: “You saved me.” Yeah, our true selves do save us. We are the one we’ve been waiting for (THE MATRIX is alllll about this).

1:01:10 – Lisa: “I gotta go change my pad,” Yeah, trans guys may have to do that, “and you gotta get upstairs for the night ‘cause they’re gonna be home soon.” This has been great, but I can only do this when I’m home alone, I can’t come out to my family or let them catch me.

1:01:31 – Look how miserable Lisa is having to hide her true self around her family. But she’s still in black. Though she’s still hiding her true self from them, she’s no longer hiding him from herself.

1:02:43 – Lisa makes a bad excuse to go up to her room (especially because Taffy is going to try and call their mom), and her dad notices her fingernails, there’s blood around them. What have you been doing? She’s suddenly worried she’s been caught.

It’s like when you experiment with gender when you’re alone and try to remove all signs before anyone sees, and maybe you missed a spot (we see this in I SAW THE TV GLOW (and Owen being ashamed of it, trying to wipe and scrape the evidence off of him).

But he’s not even worried she might have hurt herself, he’s agog that she used white out and not a pretty nail polish like she’d been taught. Nails should be polished and pretty and feminine! Never concerned with her well-being, only her appearance.

1:03:20 – Lisa goes into the closet, where Frank is playing with dolls. She laughs. Lisa: “That’s ‘Starlight Rosebud Hella Good Girl Gonna Need a Big Bank.’ But I just call her ‘Nibblets Corn.’ I don’t play with dolls anymore.” Is that… a name a girl who liked playing with dolls might name their doll? And the disdain when she said “I don’t play with dolls anymore”… is that because she’s too old?

Or because she wasn’t into “girly” things like that?

1:04:07 – Taffy calls Lisa from the hall, and Lisa freaks out and quickly closes the closet. Almost caught exploring your true gender again. Terrifying.

1:04:16 – When Taffy says she called her mom’s hotel and she never checked in, Frank thumps the closet door. With overly restrictive, transphobic, forced feminine gender conformity gone, the real us is anxious to finally get out of the closet for good.

1:04:21 – When Taffy’s talking about trying to find Janet in a Milwaukee hotel, note that she mentions Janet had multiple different last names. Forced compulsory cisgender heterosexuality says it’s fine for cis women getting married to change their names, but they balk at trans people doing it.

Remember Janet was a complete hypocrite, so this tracks. Name changes for me but not for thee. Gender affirming healthcare for me and not for thee. Once again, please see CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO, and TRANS KIDS 1: FACTS AND DANGERS (which will show you the very people legislating against surgeries trans kids aren’t getting make carve-outs in the laws to be sure they can force surgeries on intersex infants to make them conform).

1:06:00 – Frank, in a nightgown, uses the magic wand on Lisa’s shoulders. But Lisa is in collared pajamas with pants. With cowboys on it. Distinctively dudes. They have swapped.

1:06:32 – Lisa: “Do you feel anything in your body?” Will being a man make me feel like my body is mine, and that I’m whole? Frank grunts and nods. Lisa: “It must be kind of uncomfortable sleeping in the closet.” Let him out, let him feel.

1:07:21 – Look at them side by side in bed, in the same position, the trans lamp on the bedside table. Here, together in the subconscious, they face transness head-on.

1:08:40 – There’s an electric zap and the lights flicker due to the magic wand, and Lisa cries out “Oh my god!” We know what zaps mean. Life! Transition progress! Sometimes that includes learning how your body responds differently to certain stimuli after beginning HRT.

1:09:23 – Lisa: “After my mom died, everyone was in such a hurry to go back to normal. And they kept acting like I had a problem because I couldn’t stop missing her. Started to feel like I was going crazy. I thought that was gonna last forever but it didn’t, you know? And pretty soon everybody seemed like they were almost excited to move on and forget about her.”

Lisa’s mom’s betrayal wounded her, but everyone else just wanted Lisa to “go back to normal” and act like nothing happened.

1:09:48 – Here we see them drink at the same time, because they’re the same person. Lisa: “They kept saying, ‘time heals all wounds.’ But that’s a lie. Time is the wound. Takes you further and further from that place when you were happy. Makes those good smells go away. People are so afraid of death… ‘cause they don’t know when it’s gonna happen to them. It could be an axe murderer, it could be the flu, but they don’t know and they hate that, so… I’m not afraid of death anymore.”

She’s no longer afraid of transition, even though it is literally making her good smell change.

1:10:46 – They drink at the same time again. Lisa: “But I don’t want to die a virgin.” She wants to experience life, but for real this time. As her true self.

1:11:20 – Lisa asks Frank if he ever had sex, and Frank drinks while she clears her throat. Can’t respond when you’re drinking, y’know! Might make you choke a little.

Frank admits he had sex one time, with a woman he loved. Lisa: “I want that. I want to do it with someone I truly love. Like Michael Trent.” She wants to fully experience life as a gender nonconforming man. Frank grunts in annoyance, because he’s there already, but she still doesn’t feel like she is.

1:11:55 – Lisa says she’s going to “offer her body” to Michael. She’s going to try to make her body like his.

1:12:29 – Lisa’s now in the most black she’s ever been in. Transition is rolling right along. Taffy literally says it’s her costume. Nobody would really dress like that, Lisa.

Taffy’s upset about not knowing what happened to Janet and they switch seats, Lisa’s going to drive. Finally.

1:14:40 – Everyone at school knows Doug’s missing. Taffy’s too upset and says she’s going home, asks her friends if any of them can bring Lisa home after school, nobody wants to.

1:15:30 – Michael isn’t in class, he’s missing.

1:15:40 – Lisa gets called to the principal’s office. A girl student says, “Dress code violation.” Why are you dressing so weird Lisa? Don’t you know how to conform like a good girl? Girls don’t dress the way you do.

A boy student says, “Slut penalty.” You’re too weird for the conformos, you’d have to be a sexual deviant to dress that way!

1:17:31 – Tamara: “She’s off her rocker. She needs help. You know there’s a rumor that she killed her own mother.” There it is. She’s trans, ew. Punish her.

1:17:38 – As Frank walks, an old man disparages a young boy (in a dysphoria shirt!) trying to start a lawn mower. “Pull harder. What are you, a little fruitcake, huh?” Gender conformity comes for you when you’re perceived as a boy, even if you’re not, and even if you are!

1:18:02 – Frank takes a dysphoria club off the steering wheel of Janet’s car, which is yellow (she literally let her fear drive her).

It was locked by dysphoria, but now Frank is gonna drive. The horrible old man objects to Frank’s appearance. “This is my neighborhood. And you don’t need to be here. So carry your ass on out, or me and you gonna go after it right here.” Get out of here you fucking tranny, or it’s violence.

1:18:20 – Frank drives off after we see he laid the old bigot out (and took his clothes?!). The kid in the dysphoria tee waves and smiles happily as he goes. Protect trans kids, babes. And yourself.

1:19:17 – Lisa: “Shit is transpiring, man. You have to take me to Michael’s.” She wants her inner dude to take her to the non-toxic man she wants to be, still not fully comprehending all the red flags she’s seen along the way.

1:19:25 – Look at them sitting next to each other, both looking kind of formal, pseudo-Victorian in dress. They’re approaching the moment of self-actualization, when the inner man truly and finally comes out.

1:19:50 – Frank stops in front of a house with a ton of plastic pink flamingos in the yard. They kind of form a line. Lisa knows the “order” of conformity that she’s been taught, and this is her last gasp at fighting her truth. I’m just a girl who wants to bang a guy and nothing more.

1:20:00 – Frank doesn’t want her to have sex with Michael. You might be attracted to him, but mostly you want to be him, and that guy is right there in front of/inside of you, Lisa. Let him out.

1:20:14 – Lisa: “It’s your fault we’re screwed. You killed Janet, it wasn’t my idea.” We’re in this mess because I have a man inside me and not a woman, and you made me reject stereotypical femininity and the expectations that come with it.

“Okay, going after Doug was my idea, but only because killing Janed felt really good and I was just an accomplice.” You made me want to be the man I am and then I had to reject being the sexist creep that society says is just “boys being boys” because that’s not who I am.

Lisa: “But now you’re out of control. You’re beating people up, driving around in plain sight.” You’re making me see and reject all the lies of society, and you’re out where people can see you aka me! What will people think?!

1:21:20 – Lisa: “You act like you’re happy for me, and you care about me, but you’re not really happy for me.” “Stay in the car. Don’t let anyone see you.” Let the fear box you in, and hide your truth. Don’t let anyone see.

1:21:43 – The house is red. Danger. Taffy’s car is there. Red. Danger.

1:22:07 – The walls and the curtains are all yellow. She’s afraid of what she’s going to find, because she has picked up on the warning signs, even if not consciously.

1:22:22 – Lisa sees Taffy in bed with Michael, blue walls and blanket. Michael isn’t really different from other guys after all, and the despair of that (and of Taffy’s betrayal) is a lot.

As they’re about to kiss, she breaks in with a scream.

Remember at this point Taffy’s said she wasn’t into Michael twice, but those were lies. Michael gave her that hickey. And in fact, he even says he became infatuated with Taffy ever since the party… the party back at the beginning of the film when Taffy was supposedly going to confront him and Tamara about spiking Lisa’s dysphoria drink!

Taffy was going to defend Lisa, but instead just took the guy she was interested in. Just like when she outed Lisa to the other girls at the party, Taffy’s allyship has been PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP and FALSE ALLYSHIP all along. She was never truly on Lisa’s side, Taffy just wanted to feel like she was, so she could think of herself as a good person.

1:23:10 – Michael calls her “kiddo!” Infantilizing her just like her mom did, just like Doug (say it with me, I fuckin’ hate Doug) did. Michael is, in fact, no different from the rest of them.

He says he doesn’t have feelings for Lisa like he does for Taffy. Lisa: “Why? Because I’m not sweet, and simple, like her?” Because I’m not conforming to what society told me to? “Not enough polarity for you, Werner Heisenberg?” She’s name-dropping theoretical physicists now. As with silent film director Pabst, Lisa demonstrates she’s actually smart and knows a lot.

“You want to be the smart one who likes cool stuff, and you don’t want your girlfriend to like cool stuff. Do you know how uncool that is?” Why’s he gotta not be the kind of man she thought he was? The kind she wishes she was (and already really is)?

1:23:45 – Frank comes in to stand up for her, pulls the blanket off of Michael. Look at the blanket colors, there’s pink and blue together. Something trans is going on here.

On the Wings of Love by Jeffrey Osborn plays. Time for some lyrics!

Like a stream running free,
traveling on the wings of love.
On the wings of love
Up and above the clouds
the only way to fly
is on the wings of love
on the wings of love
only the two of us
together flying high

If we again interpret flight as GENDER EUPHORIA and love as the love of self it takes to transition in spite of all society throws at you, here’s the “I’ve found myself and gender euphoria” moment.

And given what’s occurring when it plays…

1:24:16 – This is about Michael’s “manhood,” ie Lisa realizing she didn’t want him, she wanted to be him (or rather, who she imagined he was).

1:24:19 – Lisa is… not horrified to realize what’s going on. She’s… surprised. And excited.

1:24:44 – Taffy screams and is horrified by Lisa’s revelation. Lisa still stops Frank from hurting her. Lisa never wanted to hurt anyone, even when those same people don’t and won’t accept her for who she is.

Remember this kill represents Lisa rejecting what she doesn’t want to be, which makes this one extra monumental (and is why it comes last). For the entire movie she’s been wanting to be Michael, but in learning the truth, that even he was putting on a bit of an act and wasn’t who she thought he was, she’s rejecting that too.

She doesn’t want to be any kind of man that’s dishonest or uses women, she wants to be a sensitive, creative, gender-nonconforming guy. And so she shall.

And as a reminder, we don’t transition to hurt cis people, we transition to relieve our own hurt. If they’re going to make it all about them and act like we lied to them, even though it was them and all of society who lied to us our entire lives, perpetuating SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING, that’s on them.

It’s not on us.

Next week we bring it all home and see if Lisa finally becomes the Frank she is. You might even say… we wrap it all up.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 8 is here!

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 6

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision’s gonna getcha in THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 6! Finally, transition begins… and it brings with it a whole new set of problems to deal with!

Heed me now or forever be doomed: ye need PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, and even PART 5 before ye be divin’ into this part 6, aye? Avast!

37:07 – She put the guy back into the closet, but the next day… he’s still there. Closeting yourself doesn’t make the truth go away, actually!

Lisa wants to get dressed, and closeted Frank tries to hand her a black dress of Taffy’s. Hey Lisa, transition, I’m right here.

Lisa: “It’s not really my style.” Frank tosses her a hat and the lacy black dress. The hat has a flower on it. Remember Frank giving a flower to a lady in the opening credits animation, and what it stood for? Hmmmmm…

37:45 – Lisa heads to school in the clothes Frank picked for her, and she looks great and it’s very gothy, right? And gothic things are emblematic of death, like we’ve talked about a few times already. Death is synonymous with change. The end of one thing so that something new can begin. She’s never dressed like this before, something. Has. Changed.

She’s the furthest into transition that she’s ever been. And look how suddenly the entire world around her is filled with danger. This is exactly what cis society is like for trans people, especially when we first come out and experience the world as our true selves.

Also the school mascot is the opossum. What are they most well known for? Playing dead. This is society mocking Lisa, mocking trans people, for existing in public as our true selves.

You’re just playing, you’re pretending to be a man, Lisa. We all know you’re “really” a woman.

It’s genius in the film, fucking awful in the real world.

And remember, again, that this school is in Brookview. You’ll never escape the water, and you’ll be surrounded by danger. Congrats on your transition, Lisa!

Everyone stares at her, she seems a bit embarrassed but then tries to own It. Cis people absolutely do this when they can’t instantly decide what gender they think you are, by the way. See STOP STARING AT US (trans people are human beings).

And so she’s uncomfortable, everything’s weird and different, and let’s look at some of those lyrics to “Lips Like Sugar” by Echo and the Bunnymen, which is playing during this segment.

She’ll be my mirror
Reflect what I am
Loser and winner
The king of Siam

And my Siamese twin
Alone in the river
Mirror kisses
Mirror kisses

It’s unfortunate that an offensive term like “Siamese twin” is in the lyrics (the 80s were a mess), but that really does read like dealing with another version of yourself that you’re trying to accept, huh? Huh.

38:11 – The audiobook Janet’s listening to is actually calling her out on everything she’s not, but what she thinks she is. Transphobes don’t hate trans people, they just want us to conform for our own good, you know! Uh huh.

Frank comes down the stairs. He won’t remain closeted.

38:30 – Look at the sheet Janet lifts up. Look at her leotard! Do you, uh, do you see those colors? It matches the walls of house, it’s all dysphoria and gender conformity. This isn’t a welcoming place for Frank.

39:00 – Frank spots the piano and heads for it. Creativity. Create. Self-expression. Make me real. Let me feel.

40:05 – What does Lisa’s true self, her inner man, think of Janet the literal dysphoria mommy? We’re gonna drop a worm in her food.

40:27 – Confirming what I just said about Janet’s audiobook, it says “You will instinctively know when something is off,” as she mixes her cottage cheese without noticing the new… addition. Until it’s in her mouth, and she pulls it out in disgust.

40:49 – The red lockers, the dysphoria, gender conformity, and despair flyers, and the dysphoria backpack. Just starting transition doesn’t make it all go away.

41:00 – Michael drops by to say he cut class, and wants to know if Lisa has any notes. She tries to play it cool like she was also planning to cut class, but has some notes. But her notes are super extensive. She’s not conforming to what other people at the school do, and she’s performing the femininity they expect to see.

This exact metaphor was used in REAL GENIUS, which is also an intentional trans allegory, to show a trans person not conforming to the cheating that society expects of us!

Also look at how Michael’s clothes have changed, and he’s now all dysphoria and danger. Now that Lisa’s dipped her toe into being her true self, something in her is setting off alarm bells about the guy she thought she wanted to be like.

41:15 – The same girl in red passes by… twice. I did not put those screenshots out of order to make it look like she walked by twice, she literally walks between them and the camera twice.

Is this an accident because there were a lot of extras and nobody noticed? Maybe. But it was a choice to use shots that make it appear that she passes by twice when editing. Maybe, juuuuust maybe, it’s Lisa picking up on the heightened danger around her.

41:23 – Michael: “You’re kind of absurd, aren’t you?” This is what the cis think of our false gender performance. Stop playing possum.

41:40 – When Taffy tries to get rid of Michael, “no punks, trenchies, or death clowns,” he replies: “Oscar Wilde said, ‘To definite is to limit.’” Hypocritical cis people drive me bananas. This is something you see in the intentional trans allegory of I SAW THE TV GLOW, and is a real world thing that happens.

We absorb all these aphorisms from society about how we should “be ourselves” and “break out of the box” and “you can be anything you want to be,” until you say “okay, I’m trans!” and then society has a collective shit-fit.

My wife and I actually wrote a very intentional trans allegory about this very phenomena in the Witching Season comic anthology.

42:08/42:17 – The same woman in a green-blue dysphoria outfit is seen over Taffy’s shoulder. First when Taffy asks if Lisa will cover for her when she goes out after cheerleading practice, and then when Taffy talks about how overprotective their dad is, and she lists his controlling behavior of wanting to know where she’s going and when she’ll be back.

Is this, again, because there were too many extras to track? Or do you think, even if the same extra they intentionally clothed in the color that’s their metaphor for gender dysphoria, walked by in two different shots that didn’t line up with how she was walking, they kept it in for a reason?

Could be accident! Could be intentional.

Either way, they chose to keep those shots in the final cut of the movie.

42:49 – Frank wants his body modifications to feel whole, and look at what his hand stump has been covered with? Dysphoria. The missing part of his body is causing dysphoria. And between them, a poster for The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Frank she wants to be, born out of transitioning from dysphoria.

42:57 – Lisa: “I can’t just get you new parts. I mean… you’re a dead man, not a Chrysler LeBaron.” The man inside is dead and not complete with the body he has. Lisa: “I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”

Janet comes home and Frank runs for the closet. Lisa: “Damn it! Janet!” That’s a quote from and reference to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is famously gender-bendy.

Frank barely makes it back in the closet before Janet comes in, dressed in a nurse’s uniform, somewhat reminiscent of Nurse Rached from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a symbol of everything gone wrong with people who abuse their power and corrupt bureaucracies. A pointed reference.

Lisa says she thought Janet was in Milwaukee. Basically, “I thought it was safe to let out my inner man and explore who he is because you were gone and I was alone.”

Janet blames Lisa for the worm in her food. Technically her fault, yes… but not dangerous? An inconvenience that you find gross. Like Agent Smith hating the smell of humans in THE MATRIX and Hathaway hating the smell of popcorn in REAL GENIUS, the way we inconvenience cis people is more important to them than us living authentic lives free of pain.

44:15 – While comparing herself to a literal angel, note that Janet suddenly uses two gendered insults for Lisa, “whore” and “bitch.” There’s nothing wrong with sex workers doing the job by choice, let’s be sex-positive here. But that doesn’t change the way the word and even the association is weaponized against all women… and perceived women. Akin to the way transphobic society often treats trans men as “confused lesbians,” just women who don’t know what they’re doing.

The gendering here is important. Janet’s saying you are a girl, Lisa. One who I will subjugate and oppress. Don’t forget it.

44:30 – Lisa: “I didn’t want to go to a new school my senior year. I didn’t want to leave the town that I lived in my whole life.” But she had to, because her mom reacted so badly to Lisa’s truth. Maybe the whole town did, too. Trans people often have to flee to places that are safer for us (see TRANS KIDS 2: THE INTAKE EXAM AND TRANS FLIGHT). And in the past we were even forced to hide ourselves even after receiving transition care. See TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH version 1).

Janet: “You were lucky to get out of there.” Meaning… what? Lisa might’ve been killed for who she was? “I’m sure people were talking.” Oh, Janet’s heard the rumors, it’s why she’s using gendered insults here. “Or maybe you liked being a hot topic.” You’re just doing it for the attention, nobody is really trans. “Maybe it was the first time anyone ever looked at you.” People saw you and hated you, Lisa.

Lisa tells her to shut up, and Janet slaps her. Physical violence for trans people not conforming. A sad reality for many of us. Janet then tells Lisa she’s being admitted to “Serenity Manor,” a name listed as the definition of “irony” in the dictionary.

Mental institutions for trans people, here we are. Again. Janet: “Where a disturbed person like you belongs!”

And then Frank knocks her. The fuck. Out. Her inner dude is not putting up with that.

Except this is a horror movie, so she’s actually dead. And remember that every kill in this movie is a rejection of the type of person Lisa/Frank doesn’t want to be.

This woman, and in fact, all of the ultra-femininity that she represents, have been rejected for good.

45:27 – Look at the sewing machine. A tool usually associated with “women’s work,” covered in gender conformity, dysphoria, and danger. And used to get rid of Janet? Frank drops it. We’re going to reject those things, too.

46:20 – Janet’s got red shoes, is wrapped in a red blanket, in a red wagon, and is dumped into a grave. We’re removing ourselves from that danger, burying it, and it allows us to move closer to our true selves and makes us more whole (as you’ll see in a second).

46:50 – Lisa: “Is it peaceful down there?” Frank shakes his head no. Lisa smiles. Why should our literal tormentors, who abuse us, be allowed more peace than they allow us? Why is it fine for JKR (see TERFS) to be allowed to use her billions to strip our rights away, but the second we say that’s bigoted and awful of her, we are made into the villains? Calling her a transphobe is so much worse than her actual transphobia to soooo many cis people.

And that ain’t right.

47:05 – Lisa sews the ear onto Frank, and look how the light has changed. There’s still danger, but the “eye” windows have turned blue. Which we know is metaphor for despair, but when next to the pink walls, it takes on a new meaning. Transness.

Frank’s new ear has Janet’s earring in it. You can be a gender nonconforming man, she tells herself. But it’s not functional. Lisa: “Maybe it could just be for looks?”

She can wear a packer if it makes her feel more whole, even if it doesn’t have any functionality. (a packer is a prosthetic penis and testicles trans mascs can situate in their undies to possibly lessen their gender dysphoria).

Lisa then relates it to her cousin Carlene who got a boob job (CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO). A breast enhancement is only about looks, fake boobies (which are totally fine if you want them, but no one should be made to feel like they need them) don’t serve any other function.

But hold up. Because “Carlene” derives from “Carl,” which derives from “Charles,” which means… “man.” The perceived man got a boob job, and their name is now the feminine version of “man,” so… “woman.” Sure sounds like Lisa has a cousin who’s a trans woman.

With a drawing of a lightning bolt, Frank tells her he needs electricity to make his body work better. Remember the electric zap the first time Lisa was in the HRT hut? And when the lightning struck and brought Frank to life? He’s asking for hormones!

48: 11 – Lisa takes him to the tanning shed, the path still one of danger, dysphoria, and gender conformity. But perhaps what hurt her before (trying to conform to being a woman) will help her now (trying to conform to being a man).

We already saw her mom’s earring on Frank’s new ear, so we know she’s going to be a gender nonconforming trans man to some degree. But parts of who she really is might also find that what society says men should be is what she wants, and that’s okay too (maybe like having a beard, or a deeper voice… things that gender affirming medical care can give you with HRT!)

Lisa’s wearing a tiara and holding a magic wand. How many trans people have said hormones are literally magic? So many of us.

Also if your body is too low on both estrogen and testosterone, did you know you will have less energy? You feel lethargic and tired all the time.

Even having the wrong hormone in your body can make you feel like shit, ask me how I know. But the right hormone will literally energize you.

48:25 – The tanning bed opens, dysphoria light everywhere. She “awakens” him by tapping him with the magic wand (which is extra funny considering what’s in her closet, the magic wand vibrator). And his new ear works!

49:08 – Lisa comes in, dressed in red and black. A change, a transition, that she loves (when she’s in red, remember, it means love and not danger).

There’s a “25” shadow on the wall behind Lisa, from light from outside coming through above the door, all of the address that can be seen.

Again, meanings vary in metaphor and numerology, but there seems to be a consensus around it meaning things like personal growth, inner wisdom, and major life changes.

HUH.

49:31 – Taffy: “You look deadly.” So transy, Lisa! WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING YOU.

“Don’t tell Mom I said this, but it’s actually kind of nice not having her in town.” Yeah, because gender conformity hurts cis people too, even the arch-feminine.

50:15 – Lisa: “What happened to your neck?” Taffy’s got a hickey, but makes excuses. Why is Lisa calling it out here? We already know since we’ve seen the movie, but remember Michael’s shirt from the last time Lisa talked to him? Danger! And dysphoria.

“Head On” by The Jesus and Mary Chain plays. Here’s some lyrics:

As soon as I get my head round you
I come around catching sparks off you
I get an electric change from you
That secondhand living, it just won’t do

And the way I feel tonight
Oh I could die and I wouldn’t mind
And there’s something going on inside

As transition songs go, regardless of the song’s original intent, this one’s screaming “full speed ahead.”

51:17 – Lisa’s leaves a lipstick kiss on a note. Who’s it for? Not who you think. It reads: “Hi… I’ve been thinking about you… a lot. Meet me at Papoose Lake at 4 pm? Yes or No, Love, Lisa S”

So, uh… what is a papoose? It comes from the Narragansett word “papoos,” which means “child.” Buuut it’s also come to be used for the baby carrier some Native Americans use, where the baby is swaddled up inside.

Remember when Lisa wrapped herself up in her bedsheets to look like that? Remember the poster for The Mummy on her bedroom wall? And now Papoose Lake?

This is foreshadowing everything. We’ll refer back to this at the end!

51:24 – Lisa does her nails with white out. If she’s going to conform to gendered expectations, she’ll do it in a way you didn’t think she would.

51:53 – Someone circled Yes on the note, he’ll meet with her. But who?

52:02 – Lisa’s on the bench, alone. The same one we saw Frank on, in the opening credits animation.

51:19 – It’s Doug! (I fucking hate Doug.) What the heck is he doing here?

52:40 – Doug says he’s never heard her talk this much. Lisa: “I suppose I never thought I had much to contribute, but I feel much more extroverted lately.” See CONFIDENCE and CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD for a direct connection to how this changes with transition!

52:52 – She’s taken Doug to Bachelor’s Grove, the place where her true self was walled off from the world. Her heart. Why would she let this creep in there?

53:15 – Doug: “It’s not Christian for a graveyard to be left like this.” But it’s Christian to force unwanted sexual contact on someone, is it?

53:42 – Lisa: “I want you to touch me exactly the way you touched me at the party.” Doug: “Oh I knew you wanted it.” Barf.

53:54 – Frank pops up from under the leaves to take care of this problem. Lisa knees Doug in the face. (I fucking hate Doug. This is very satisfying.)

54:14 – Frank chops off Doug’s hand, Lisa raises it in triumph. Frank flings the axe and kills Doug. (Bye Doug, we fucking hated you, you won’t be missed.) Remember kills are metaphors for rejection! She will not, she will never, be this kinda dude.

Come back next week as transition progresses further than ever before, and sadly reveals a new level of betrayal from those we love.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PART 7 is here!

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 5

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision stops for no one (except for me, when we get to the end) in THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 5! This week we’ll examine the hell we’ve been trapped in, and confront a part of ourselves we’d left for dead!

I don’t know how many times I’ve got to tell you, but you def need PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, and PART 4 first. If you start here at part 5, listen, I won’t be held responsible for your confusion.

Ready? Heck yeah! Go!

25:47 – Lisa climbs out onto the roof and we get our first look at the house she lives in, is trapped in. It’s gender conformity allll the way down, with only more gender conformity and dysphoria inside. Look at how the symbols just below both house peaks look like a uterus! They’re the highest points, for the woman at the top and the girls beneath her. Making babies is what women are for, and that includes you Lisa, because you’re a woman!

And the two oval windows, in places of prominence, that look like vulvas!

This house is nothing but conformity and dysphoria for a trans man. Again, trans dudes don’t need to have bottom dysphoria, but this is metaphor… and Lisa sure seems to have bottom dysphoria.

26:18 – She falls, and Frank is there to break her fall. Supertext? You better believe it.

And there they are, face to face. But he’s sure hard to see clearly, isn’t he? The neighbors hear Lisa screaming and think nothing of it because “[Lisa’s] very odd.” Not worth helping when you scream, not if you’re gonna be all trans about it. But they think Taffy’s “adorable. And what a figure!” (ew)

This is how society reinforces its gender norms and compulsory cisness, and we absorb that our whole lives and learn we’d better be good little cis folks or people will never help us. (How sad it is that we’re at a point where just not helping us feels like it’d be a step up from everyone always attacking us).

To learn more about the ways society programs these things into us, see IMPLICIT QUEERPHOBIA.

26:55 – Back in the house Lisa sprints past the mirror, and it once again splits and breaks her reflection. She picks up the red phone to call 911… but hears Frank on the phone? He’s grunting into her dad’s shoe-phone from the other room, where he sits on the floor. She’s going to call for help, and the man she is, or wants to be, is there for her. He’s the help she seeks.

“Strange” by Galaxie 500 plays again. We previously heard it in Lisa’s dream… her dream about becoming her true self. That it plays again here, when she finally meets him, is telling you lots. Are you listening?

Frank’s missing a hand. The man she truly is doesn’t have all the body parts you might expect a man to, or doesn’t look the way society tells you that men look. And she’s immediately no longer afraid of him.

27:35 – Look at the pink and blue under the stereo, right next to Frank. Transness!

Lisa mentions the shoe phone was a free gift with her dad’s subscription to Sports Illustrated, more conforming to gendered expectations. Does Lisa seem sporty to you? Like she wants to play sports? No. That is also not the kind of man she wants to be, but that’s what society says men have to be, and this shit really messes you up when you’re trying to figure things out.

No shade if you are a trans guy who likes sports, I like sports and I’m a trans woman! Like what you like! But also there are things society says we have to do and like to be men and women, and that’s bullshit. Did you notice that the golf club Lisa grabbed to defend herself had a green-blue dysphoria cover on it? Being a sports dude is not the kind of man she wants to be either.

Frank gives Lisa her lost slipper back. This guy you are inside and want to be? He can help you, Lisa.

28:26 – They talk about the music, she asks him if he likes the song (the song about how living a lie brings no joy!), she says she has The Cure and Frank is excited and holds out his hand-stump, and she meant the band, not the cure to gender dysphoria, but that music can cure him emotionally.

But she does have the cure to Frank being incomplete! Letting him out and transitioning can make you whole.

28:33 – She takes Frank to her room and says, “We’ve got to hide you.” Yeah we know what happens when you let your inner man out, your mom becomes dead to you and vice versa. “Definitely no one can see you.”

We only let our true selves out for minutes at a time at first, hidden behind closed doors.

When they enter her room, aka subconscious, in the background you can see a poster for The Mummy on the wall. Remember how she wrapped herself up in blankets when Frank was brought back to life?

This’ll come up again. It’s something that’s on Lisa’s mind.

Frank spots the rubbing from his gravestone, and points to it to let her know that’s him. It’s you Lisa, the true you. Back from the dead. It’s not too late. To confirm he pulls Lisa’s mom’s rosary out of a pocket. He kept it safe just like she asked.

Reconnecting with her inner man that she thought was dead brings back all those feelings, from her mother, that kept her trapped. Now she’s feeling all those things again.

29:28 – Lisa: “You? You’re him? Well, why are you here?” I didn’t ask for this, why is this happening to me? He lifts her hand to kiss it, and she pulls away, disgusted. Sadly society teaches us to be disgusted with ourselves, that our transness is something wrong, to be ashamed of, to hide behind closed doors. She’s not ready to fully accept. Oof that INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA hits hard.

29:47 – Lisa: “When I said I wished I was with you, I meant I wished I was in the ground, dead. Life sucks and people are jerk-offs.” She wished her false girl shell was dead so she could be with the boy she’d been pretending was dead all her life, and now he’s here, alive.

Also, realistically, a lot of trans people feel so attacked by society and their own friends and family, and are left to suffer, that many can think death is their only way out. And that’s extra horrible and sad because happiness is attainable if we’re just supported.

Lisa clarifies she was only looking for that way out, and didn’t realize there was another way out of her pain and misery… through him. Frank is saddened by the news, he cries. He’s sensitive.

And the smell overwhelms her.

Now look, she was kinda into the smell of the guy she thought she wanted to be, Michael Trent. What would it be like to smell like that?

Here, her true man has a smell, and it revolts her. Remember that the tanning bed shed is our metaphor for HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY.

One of the first things to happen for a lot of people who go on HRT is that our smell changes. Really early on in my medical transition, I just started smelling like a girl! For trans people on testosterone, it goes the other way.

I imagine everyone’s familiar with the smell of boy funk. It is, generally, somewhat less pleasant than girl smell. Some people undoubtedly like it! But Lisa was not prepared for her smell to change, and possibly “worsen” in her opinion. It’s also possible that suddenly smelling like a boy spiked some INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA, so do read that if you haven’t yet.

30:37 – She takes him into the bathroom, he picks up a douche, and she’s like… no. He drops it. Many trans men would like to not have the body parts those are used on, I’m just saying.

Again again again, you don’t have to need or want bottom surgery to be trans, okay? Just clarifying. This is metaphor remember. You will find no TRANSMEDICALISM here.

30:43 – The mirror in the bathroom is fixed already, but through this scene you never see them in it. But here you can see Lisa’s looking at it… but she’s not looking at it straight on. She’s looking at an angle… she’s looking at Frank. Even though he doesn’t at all look like the man she recognizes or wants to be, she can see him in it!

30:56 – Lisa says she hasn’t talked this much in a long time (or in the entire movie so far), and couldn’t talk at all for a while, which all started after her mom’s “death.” She asks Frank if he’s going to talk, and he only… moans. He cannot talk. When did that happen to Lisa? After she talked to her mom about her gender feelings.

And here she is, encountering her inner man, and he cannot talk either.

31:16 – She turns on the shower radio for him, not Taffy’s station “for beer sluts” (lol), but she turns it to the college radio station (often indie, counterculture, unrestrained, nonconformist) and says “it’s for people like us. With feelings.”

”Like us”, Lisa? With feelings? What kind of feelings? This is a newly undead man you know nothing about! How could you know he had the same taste in music? Unless…

Yeah.

31:48 – “Up the Down Escalator” by The Chameleons plays as Frank showers, and over the next scenes. With a title like that you know it’s a song about not conforming to what society expects, not taking the easy way of doing things the way they want. Here’s a choice snippet of lyrics:

They sit at their tables and throw us the scraps
For Christ’s sake leave us something!
Now they can erase you at the flick of a switch
How long now will it take now?
There must be something wrong boys
There must be something wrong boys
They’re dragging me down
And they’re dragging me down
They’re dragging me down
You either swim or you drown

You either transition or you succumb to dysphoria. Yeah, there’s something wrong, boy.

32:09 – Cleaned up and closer to the real him, looking more alive, Frank wears a lady’s robe! Lisa opens her closet and dresses him in a bunch of her different clothes, because when you transition, at first all you have is all your old clothes from the gender you never were.

Lisa’s closet has the man on the moon with the rocket in his eye on it, from her dream. She keeps a poster of it in her room, as a reminder, an aspiration… like a vision board. But every time she puts Frank in the closet (supertext), the moon is split. And then forms a barrier keeping them apart.

She’s never going to get there by keeping him in the closet.

But she closes it, leaving him in there.

He opens it, in a White Sox baseball jersey. Which she just already happened to have? Pristine and new because she never wore it, because she’s not a sports guy.

He opens it again, and comes out in a kind of western cowboy shirt. It’s blue, as are his pants. He has cowboy boots on. All of which she just already happened to have?!

He opens it again in a red and blue collared shirt, jeans, and red shoes. All male-coded.

WHICH SHE JUST ALREADY HAPPENED TO HAVE??

He pops out in a pink satin robe, and Lisa says she loves it, but Frank doesn’t.

She’s tried a bunch of different guy clothes and none of them felt right, so she went back to gender conforming in a women’s pink robe, and her inner guy said no, that’s not right either.

He comes out in a pink and red getup, male-coded, that is also not right.

WHICH SHE AGAIN JUST ALREADY HAPPENED TO HAVE.

Then Lisa has an epiphany, and gives him a stack of clothes that include a Violent Femmes band t-shirt (what might society say about a perceived woman who refused to conform and said she wasn’t a woman at all?) under a men’s blazer…

WHICH SHE ALREADY JUST — look, you get it already, this whole bit… she had these clothes because she’d already been experimenting with dressing in guy clothes because they gave her gender feelings, possibly even left over from when she first realized and came out to her mom, which went disastrously.

These are the whole early stages of transition, trying out so many things that don’t work or aren’t right, backsliding, jumping forward, trying to find what feels like you. See FINDING OUR TRANS STYLE for more.

We don’t do it in one night, or in a montage set to music, but y’know, this is art and not real life.

32:37 – She’s brushing his hair in the bathroom, trying it different ways to see what looks best. Here, finally, we see them together in the mirror, looking at each other. He grunts toward his missing hand and she says “I can’t do anything about that. I’m not a doctor.”

Yeah, some of us do need medical transition. Lisa: “But it’s okay. They’re just things that make you different.”

So she’s telling herself, here, that the fact that she doesn’t have the body you might expect a man to have is okay, it just means she’s different. It doesn’t mean she’s not really a man. And if you think that’s a stretch… I beg you to please keep reading.

Lisa then goes on to explain there’s a character with an eyepatch on a soap opera that’s very cool and his eyepatch doesn’t define him. But his name is “Patch,” and she realizes our terrible society sadly does define us by our differences.

I’m always seen as trans before I’m seen as a woman or a wife or a mom or a writer or anything else. See NO ESCAPE (from reminders I’m trans) for more on that.

Also look how neither of them are really happy yet… just because you start transition doesn’t mean you instantly start seeing the real you in the mirror. It took me years of transition until it started happening regularly.

You can watch it happen for me in real time, in PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

34:05 – Lisa’s parents come home and we hear them yelling from downstairs (about the broken glass and mess from Frank) and Lisa gasps and instantly tells Frank: “Get in my closet!” Well it was fun to experiment alone when nobody was here and now back into the closet we go so my parents don’t find out.

34:12 – Lisa comes down the stairs reassuring them that she’s fine, but they’re not at all concerned about her, only about, again, the way this has affected them (it’s CIS GRIEF again, all up and down).

Lisa makes a (hilarious) bad excuse to cover up what she was really doing. Janet: “Lisa got a lot of attention when the tragedy happened. So now she’s, well, recreating the scene of the crime.”

When Lisa’s mom “died” it’s when Lisa first revealed a piece of her truth. But clearly we “only do it for the attention” (so many Republicans think we actually do this, or that trans kids actually do this, because it’s “popular” or we just “want attention”).

And so here’s Janet… correctly piecing together that there’s a connection between Lisa revealing a piece of her truth when her mom “died” and what she’s been up to tonight.

I told you, I FUCKIN’ TOLD YOU!

Janet: “She has been ransacking our home, little by little. The cake stand, the bathroom last night, and now this.” Why won’t you damned transes see how this is affecting me, a cis person, and the only one who matters when you come out?!?

“She needs help. Residential treatment. She needs to go somewhere.” Get this trans out of my life and out of society, can’t you see what they’re doing to ME and MY HOME (never once showing an ounce of concern for the child she’s supposed to love and care for).

35:18 – Frank hears this, and he’s stumbled out of the closet. Lisa’s inner self has more CONFIDENCE than the false shell, and can’t stand the way they’re being treated.

35:43 – Lisa: “I’m not crazy.” No she’s not! Her dad: “Nobody said that.” Taffy: “My mom actually just did!” Dad: “No, she would never say that.”

That’s SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING in action, it’s real and it fucking sucks. Janet: “You’re either crazy, or you’re just goddamned inconsiderate.” Me me me, why won’t you think about how your trans nonsense affects me.

36:25 – Lisa retreats to her room, back to the despair box of bed, the gender conformity of the pink wall, the fear light framing the photo of her mother, the danger right in front of her. Phew.

Frank gently comes out of the closet, between the moon with the rocket in its eye. Lisa rolls away from him, tears in her eyes, rejecting the truth she was starting to find again, because cis people put their feelings over her needs and hurt her. Her family hurt her and it’s making her reject her truth. This happens to so many of us, sometimes even from those who supposedly love us the most. See CIS SPOUSAL AND PARTNER SUPPORT to learn more.

But this is the actual goal when cis people treat us this way, even if they don’t know it consciously. It’s to make it too painful for us to continue existing as our true selves, so we’ll reject our truth and we will suffer so cis people don’t have to be made “uncomfortable.”

Those who do that to us do not care about us. No one who would ask us to suffer for their convenience actually cares about us, no matter what they may say or think.

So Frank retreats back into the closet, and closes the door. And now even the idea of GENDER EUPHORIA, of flying up to that moon… is in that dysphoric green-blue, glowing in the dark. All she can see.

Come back next week to see transition begin! And how that opens you up to a whole new world, in ways both good and… dangerous.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PART 6 is here!

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 4

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision speeds down the slopes in THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 4! This week we discuss Lisa’s super trans dream, and how hate and bigotry can come in passive-aggressive forms!

Like a good student of the art of cinema, you’ll have read PART 1, PART 2, and PART 3 first, so you have some idea what’s going on, yes? Yes.

Good, because I’m not waiting any longer. Lessgo!

16:22 – “Strange” by Galaxie 500 plays. The lyrics sure read to me like someone just going through the motions, doing the cis things everyone expects of them, and wondering why they ever agreed to it.

Why’s everybody actin’ funny?
Why’s everybody look so strange?
Why’s everybody look so nasty?
What do I want with all these things?

16:40 – We cut to black and white, a world run by the FALSE DICHOTOMY, the false cis binary matrix, and the tears on her face. She’s still in bed but in a fancy dress with bows on it. Ultra femininity.

17:06 – She sits up, and a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer blanket falls off of her. It, and the Doug it represents (I fucking hate Doug), was holding her down and confining her to that box.

She looks at a photo of her mom, who tells her to wash her hands and calls her “kiddo,” infantilizing her. Remember just a few minutes (of screentime) ago, Doug called her the same thing. It’s no coincidence it happens again here, from her mom. Neither of them respect her.

And the “wash your hands,” well… where did Lisa have her hands when she was assaulted? Note that her mom also winks at her after saying it. It all reads as very “boys will be boys” and “you were probably asking for it, Lisa” and “if he says you led him on, you must have” so just be a good girl and clean up afterward.

A doll looks at her and calls her “Mama.” Being a mother is also a box society wants to force her (and all perceived women) into, and that can be dysphoric when you’re not the gender that word’s associated with. Getting called “dad” was always painful for me, even though I love being a parent, and I never knew why, until I figured out I was trans. See TRANS PARENTS (Mother’s Day) to learn more about that.

17:30 – She sits up further, and Frank, as the statue from his grave, sits next to her. You can see her hair really well here, and what’s it look like? The Bride of Frankenstein. Frank’s not fully alive, she’s not fully his bride, so they’re not together aka a self-accepted and transitioned person, but they’re closer than they’ve ever been, despite the world seeing in only black and white, cis boy or cis girl.

They turn to look at each other, but she’s not scared. He opens his hands to reveal a package of Freshen-up gum. They clasp hands over the gum, squishing it, causing goop to run out and drip down. You don’t need to “wash your hands” and “freshen up” after a sexual assault, you need to squash the entire concept.

They both lean forward and look down, in sync, as a masked person comes out from under the bed and grabs their feet. That person is wearing the same Bride of Frankenstein mask that Lisa’s mom’s “murderer” wore!

 The person in the mask then grabs both their feet, at the same time. These two are one. As in the flashback when the man in this mask was representative of Lisa’s transness, here it represents the same thing. Trying to get her to see the truth.

This man may look “dead,” may seem to be nothing more than a statue, an unreal representation of a person, but you can make him real, Lisa. All you had to do is let him out.

And you just did.

18:05 – They lean back and slowly put their heads together, as they look at old footage of the man in the moon from A Trip to the Moon, a silent film from 1902 (see Doug! (I fucking hate Doug!), Lisa’s a real fan), as a rocket hits the moon in the eye.

When they put their heads together, the man in the moon rests between them.

This is them looking, together, at the place they want to be. Shoot for the moon. Aim for the stars. Flight. Joy. Freedom. GENDER EUPHORIA. A second after their heads touch, the rocket hits the moon right in the eye. Arrival at the destination. Will they ever make it there?

18:16 – Taffy wakes her up, and we see Lisa’s pajamas are in trans colors… Cathy from the comic strip of the same name, on a beach, with the words “unattached and cordless.” Unattached = unmarried = a not whole trans person, cordless = without a, uh… ahem. “Cord”. Supertext?

And her hand’s in her shorts. Implying masturbation maybe, sure, but that wasn’t a sexy dream in any regard, was it?

If you’re dreaming out the trans man you really are inside, one of your most likely sources of dysphoria is what you find, or don’t find, in your pants. And maybe you try to imagine what it’d be like if that was… different. (Standard reminder: you don’t need to have gender dysphoria or want or need bottom surgery to be trans, but many trans people do and this is metaphor.)

18:28 – Remember when I said Lisa’s bedroom was her subconscious? Look at the windows above her bed, they literally look like lies. We’re inside her head, and it’s gender conformity pink and green-blue dysphoria everywhere. Her sheets were very blue prior to the dream, but now seem to more closely match that signature dysphoria color. That could’ve been done by switching the sheets, or even slightly tweaking the coloring when editing the film.

And there’s those dysphoric black and white drawings jailed behind red danger lights. Eyes that look scared, and someone covering their face as if they’re horrified by it. And there’s…The Creature from the Black Lagoon? From the old horror movie of the same name. Whaddaya think that means?

There’s actually a poster from that film on the walls of Lisa’s bedroom that you can see in other shots, so they’re really hoping you pick up on it.

Despite the fact that I’m calling him Frank, the movie calls him “the creature.” Remember I mentioned that in this film, black and Lisa together are a signifier of change and transition (and this is a great place for a reminder, because this is where all the black really starts appearing). Lagoon = water.

Frank, transition, water.

You can interpret the water as dysphoria, and the ways it drowns us, but I think this is actually more about foreshadowing where Lisa will transition to Frank…

Next to Lisa’s bed is a black and white photo of her mom, who only saw things in FALSE DICHOTOMIES, and her photo is bordered by the pink flowers of gender conformity.

And we still aren’t done talking about this, because look at the far left… and how that suuuuure does look like a penis drawing on the wall. The thing Lisa doesn’t have but was maybe just dreaming about having, to alleviate her dysphoria.

There’s so much going on in this one shot!

18:54 – Lisa goes down to talk to Janet about the destroyed bathroom mirror, and look at her. Remember how Barbie in BARBIE woke up the day after her egg cracked? Yeaaaah. Remember how Neo in THE MATRIX woke up after his egg cracked? Yeaaaaaaaaaaah. Metaphor, surely, but drastic changes to physical appearance clue you in to what’s going on with the character internally, and mean a lot when the story’s about transition.

And look at the mascara under her eyes, even more pronounced than before. The black/change/transition is growing.

19:15 – Look at all the pink and green-blue between Lisa and Janet. This whole house is a nightmare for Lisa.

20:39 – Notice how none of them ask if Lisa’s okay, or how she’s feeling, they’re only concerned about how what she’s going through affects them. This is CIS GRIEF in action.

Janet: “Lisa, do you know what happens to people who act out? They wind up in the looney bin.” They literally used to do this to trans people, mind you, and certain people would love to again. It’s not a mental illness! It’s just how we are! But display any more signs of that, Lisa, and we’ll lock you up. How you affect us is more important than anything you feel, or the hell we’ve put you through.

And Janet’s a psych nurse, so that’s an extra big threat, saying she’ll have Lisa committed if she doesn’t drop this trans stuff. Taffy calls her out on how she shouldn’t be calling it a “looney bin,” but Janet doesn’t care at all (including not caring about her patients, as she feels they’re all nonconformos who “deserve” to be there).

21:19 – Lisa sees the news report that the statue and grave of Frank was struck by lightning, which “reignited neighborhood concerns”. The trans man she buried deep inside is coming back to life due to Lisa’s egg fully cracking, even if she hasn’t realized it just yet. And the cis sure have “concerns” about that.

Throughout the scene, Lisa’s incredibly visually evocative of that striking, idiocyncratic look of Malcom McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. The entire scene she keeps her head down even while looking up, as if to drive the reference home even further.

So in A Clockwork Orange, the character Lisa’s drawing allusions to, Alex, is a violent criminal and sexual predator. Lisa Frankenstein isn’t saying here that Lisa is those things, but that Janet sees her that way.

But the most important part is that Alex is used as a tool by those in power, who try to brainwash his “undesirable” qualities out of him, and in so doing use him as a political pawn.

Given we know that Janet will soon make further references to having Lisa committed for her “deviant” behavior, and actually has the power to make that happen (and puts those plans into motion), and the way society weaponizes transphobia as a political wedge issue, this reference absolutely tracks.

21:19 – Lisa’s back at work like a good contributing cis member of society, but look how she’s walled in by the pink. And behind her, by the door when Michael Trent walks in, there’s a poster (in the iconic Patrick Nagel style so popular in the 80s) of overly sexualized Elvira, in a pink Frame.

Who is Elvira? An overtly sexualized performance of a woman, created and performed by Cassandra Petersen. These are the messages Lisa (and everyone) are bombarded with about who and what women are supposed to be.

This is not the fault of Elvira mind you, she’s great and that’s a performance where how overtly sexualized she is is part of the joke. The point is just that despite her overtly sexualized nature being part of the joke, many miss the “joke” part and just overtly sexualize her because that is what society tells us to do to women. And that can be extra dysphoria-inducing for trans men.

And look at Lisa’s magnifying glasses, they’re blue. All she can see in here is despair. She’s even dressed in blue.

21:53 – There’s another similar ultra sexualized, ultra fem art piece behind Lisa, framed with pink gender conformity and green-blue dysphoria.

Though just seeing Michael, who’s closer to the kind of man she wants to be, the kind of man she is, has helped her see things more as they are. Or, rather, as she wants them to be. She’s no longer looking through the magnifying glasses.

22:05 – Michael apologizes for the spiked drink (that was weird how you got gender feelings, we definitely didn’t mean to do that) and jokingly calls her an “experienced psychonaut… an astronaut of the psyche.”

But like… guess what looking inward and examining your heart and subconscious, which all trans people do, is? It’s exactly that.

Lisa says she’s the “Sally Ride of drugs.” Funny, yes, but also Sally Ride is… famously queer, though she was forced to pretend to be straight for a very long time because it’s what society required of her for her to be an astronaut.

Doooo you see any parallels there?

Do you?

22:36 – Lisa’s boss acts like she has no friends (what a dysphoric loner!) and she can’t get a date. When he says it and claps her on the back, the despair goggles fall to cloud her vision again.

He then says… he then says, “it’s probably because she’s so flat-chested.” Which is inappropriate on multiple levels, but also this white cis man with power has noticed Lisa is not as sexy as she should be. Maybe like she’s even… doing something… to make her breasts appear smaller? HUH. See TUCKING AND BINDING if you need more info on that.

23:13 – Lisa smells the jacket that Michael left to get cleaned and smiles, because she likes him… or maybe wants to be him (or both!). Again see SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER. What would it be like to smell like a boy?

23:22 – Lisa comes home to Taffy telling a story about a teacher at school, seemingly about his being sexually inappropriate, and she and her parents all laugh. So funny! Boys will be boys.

Ugh and ew, and how extra difficult does that make it for trans guys who internalize that their whole lives but, y’know, actually respect women?

When Lisa comes in, we never see her face reflected in the mirror by the door.

It also seems clear that they want us to see the “254” from the house’s address in blue light on the wall. Meanings on this vary, but when you look at numerology and astrology, there’s some rough consensus that it stands for self-sacrifice, balance, positive change and… transformation.

Welp! Supertext.

23:35 – Taffy invites Lisa to go with them to the late showing of Look Who’s Talking.

Lisa asks if there’s pizza left… the saved her one slice, but her dad says: “Looks like it’s got a little meat on it.”

And it’s of course entirely covered with meat. This is a genius little moment that tells you so much.

Vegetarianism is a choice some people make for various reasons, and a lot of people disrespect vegetarians for that choice. For the way they live.

Being trans isn’t a choice (though you can be trans if you decide want to be, because you’re trans if you say you are (YOU ARE TRANS ENOUGH), but transitioning is a choice. Talking about your complicated gender feelings is a choice.

And her family does not respect that choice.

Janet: “Oh she can pick it off.” Never mind there would literally be almost no pizza left. Never mind it would all be contaminated from having meat on it. “We will not accommodate your choices, and if you don’t like it, you can have the nothing scraps (of society) that are left over for you.”

The disrespect is painful. And all too familiar.

Taffy wanted to get Lisa a veggie lovers pizza, but Janet wouldn’t allow it. Even though Taffy is gender conforming and clearly doesn’t get or understand what Lisa’s going through, and has done things to harm her (like spreading rumors about her), she doesn’t want to actively exclude her. She’s kind of trying, in her backwards way, to be supportive.

Janet also has no respect for Lisa’s job doing alterations, but Taffy’s cheerleading (a very gender-conforming physical sport) gets all the respect in the world. And though it’s funny, the line about Taffy spending hours screaming with her legs spread against the walls is pretty dark. Because Taffy says “it doesn’t even hurt anymore,” implying those are not screams of pleasure.

Highly conforming to gendered stereotypes hurts cis people, too.

Taffy thinks Lisa’s fingers probably hurt from sewing, and Lisa says: “Eventually a callus just forms.” But she’s so dejected and dead when she delivers that line.

She’s talking about her heart, because of the way her family treats her, for being different.

24:41 – Lisa’s watching Dawn of the Dead, and they make a point to show us Bub.

If you’ve not seen the film, Bub is a smart zombie who’s capable of learning. He screams and thrashes in chains. When you learn how society wants us all to be chained like zombies, all you want to do is break free. And he’s undead. Brought back to life.

Huh.

Lisa, in yellow, pink, and green pajamas, surrounded by yellow lights, smiles. This pain and discomfort is familiar to her. Light from outside the windows? That green-blue. She’s interrupted by loud banging and groaning from outside.

25:04 – Lisa sneaks toward the door and grabs the red phone, but she does not cross in front of the mirror.

25:10 – Too late, that egg you duct-taped closed has re-cracked, babe. Frank smashes in through the dysphoria window. She screams and runs as he zombie walks after her. You are Bub, bub.

25:40 – She runs to her room, and look at the dysphoria hallway, the pink gender conforming walls, the yellow light, the red danger lights reflected in the mirror that she sprints past. More danger and change (red and black) art on the walls, and on the frame of the mirror, a rubbing that says “memory.” Remember how you figured this out a long time ago, Lisa, and it could have led you to your true reflection? Time to remember again.

Next week, we’ll see if we can escape this part of ourselves we thought was long dead, and finally get a clear picture of the prison we’ve been trapped in!

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 5 is here!

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 3

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision can’t be stopped as we dive into THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 3! This week we see what loved ones not being accepting can do to us, and see if a little trans energy can wake us up!

You’ll want to read PART 1 and PART 2 first, because that just makes good sense.

Let’s go!

9:21 – Flashback to Lisa and her mom playing a board game, and look at the board and pieces. Blue and pink! Red. Yellow. Transness, with fear and danger. Lisa’s got pink flowers on her shirt and a pink band in her hair, all gender conformity. Whaddaya think that all means?

Taffy: “Like two years ago, Lisa was home alone with her mom, and this psycho broke in.” A man with an axe enters the house. He… he’s carrying an axe and wearing a Bride of Frankenstein mask!

No, really. Let me lighten it up for you.

There’s so much going on here.

You’ve already seen the movie, right? Right?

What is Frank? A man.

What does Frank kill people/reject the idea of being those people with? An axe.

If a man and woman pair are this movie’s symbol of a trans person accepting themselves, and they are (as established in the opening credit animation), who is the “bride” of Frank?

LISA.

This is Lisa “breaking in” to the happy home to tell her mom that

she
is
a
trans
man!

Listen, this mask alone makes me want to remove the “unintentional” part of calling this an Unintentionally Intentional Trans Allegory. Because why else would you put a Bride of Frankenstein on this guy who has an axe?!

I’M JUST SAYIN’.

Lisa’s mom freaks out, sure that she’s defending her child in doing so, because transness is bad and evil. And what does Lisa do?

9:37 – She runs to hide in the closet.

This is metaphor for Lisa previously feeling safe and comfortable with her mom, and telling her she was a trans guy, and it basically killing her mother (or making her mother feel dead to her, or made her mother treat her like Lisa was dead, etc), and sending her back into the metaphoric closet, “killing” the man she truly is.

This is why Lisa left her mother’s rosary, full of her mother’s fear, despair, and danger, at Frank’s grave. Those are what caused her to bury her true self.

9:42 – Now another person is sitting next to Laurie and hearing the story. The rumors of Lisa’s transness spread.

9:51 – The guy “escaped,” and “by the time [Lisa] came out, it was too late.” Lisa came out, but her mother couldn’t accept it, and the guy disappeared. I tolllld youuuu.

9:59 – Yet another girl is now next to Laurie, listening. Rumors spread fast. Laurie: “I’d be screwed up if I were her, too.” Can you imagine thinking you’re really a man? Can you imagine being a weird tranny?! That’s so fucked up! (those girls can go to hell)

10:07 – After that, Lisa “kind of just wandered around like a zombie.” Suppressing yourself makes you dead inside. In a lot of these essays I’ve even described it as “a waking death.” Y’know… like a zombie.

10:28 – Yet another girl is listening to the story. Taffy explains how Lisa’s dad met Taffy’s mom six months later and got married and Lisa “had a new mom right asway.” You can’t not have femininity in your life, Lisa! You need it to conform and be a good “girl!”

10:52 – Tamara asks if Lisa wants a sip from her green-blue cup. Michael says he does, and Tamara says “why would I assume [Lisa] parties?” Look at that weirdo who’s not fem like me, I’ve heard the trans rumors, why would I think she’d conform to the “cool thing” teens are “supposed” to do?

11:02 – Pressured, not wanting to be further ostracized and othered, Lisa drinks from the dysphoria cup. She coughs and gags, while Tamara laughs. Michael takes a sip and spits it out, the liquid is the same color as the cup. Michael: “What is this?” Tamara: “I’m not really sure.”

Michael got a taste of dysphoria (maybe from seeing Lisa’s reaction to it) and found it gross, maybe even drugged. Tamara can’t even identify it. Cis people have no idea what dysphoria even is, and cannot imagine anyone having it.

11:28 – Taffy runs to check on Lisa. Lisa’s vision is blurry, her hearing distorted. Taffy asks if they gave her something, and Lisa nods (yes, dysphoria). Taffy is upset… with Lisa. “This isn’t what I expected from you. You have so much potential.” Lisa’s face is awash in yellow even though she’s nowhere near the firelight.

How could you feel all dysphoric because of what other people did to you? This is your fault for being trans, and not the fault of the world that treats you like shit because you’re trans.

Sad tale as old as time.

11:52 – One of the kids, dressed in clothes with pink and that dysphoria green, plays a ukelele and sings part of the chorus of “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash. This song’s pretty well known, but again look at the full lyrics:

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for

It’s gonna be a bright, bright
Sunshiny day

Sure sounds like coming out of a dysphoric funk to accept the truth, doesn’t it? Guess what’s about to happen for Lisa?

12:00 – Lisa stumbles into a girl who says she’s psychic and she thinks it’s going to rain. Lisa looks up at the storm clouds… and all that dysphoria green-blue.

12:07 – Outside and inside this house, the lights are all fear, the dysphoria fairy lights border the room.

12:25 – A dude comes to check on Lisa, asks if she’s okay. She touches and squeezes his face. This… how do I get… how do I become… this?

She asks who he is, he says he’s Doug (I fuckin’ hate Doug). “Doug” comes from “Douglas” which means, no shit, “dark river.” More darkness in the water, dysphoria dysphoria dysphoria.

He’s her lab partner, in is in a red, yellow, green-blue, and blue shirt. All the bad things, wrapped up into one. (I fuckin’ hate Doug).

He says he’ll find somewhere for her to sit and she takes his hand, he leads her past yellow light streaming down on a boy and girl making out on the couch. Lisa looks at them with wide eyes. Doug says he’d rather watch movies. What kind of movies, Doug??

There’s nothing wrong with adult entertainment, mind you, as long as it’s consensual and everyone’s treated fairly and not exploited, but bringing it up when talking to someone who’s not your partner is a weird and bad thing to do.

13:04 – Doug leads her down a hallway with yellow lights, and yellow wallpaper, still pretending he wants to talk about movies. He asks her favorite director, and she says “Pabst.” Doug thinks she just read his beer can, asks what kind of movies he made. Lisa says: “Silents.” Which Doug takes as “silence” and is a great gag, but also Lisa is right and knows more about movies than slimy skeezeball Doug (I fuckin’ hate Doug). G.W. Pabst was a director of silent films!

Anyway, remember Pabst for next week’s installment.

13:21 – Lisa looks at a painting on the wall that seems to be moving, of a ship (with large bells fore and aft) sailing turbulent blue seas, red and yellow, sea monsters lurking, under a green-blue dysphoria sky.

This is a real piece of art (as in, it was not created specifically for this movie), but it’s actually an engraving that exists only in black and white. Meaning the color was added just for the film, so think about why they’d make certain things those colors and what that’s telling you.

The text on the bottom Is Latin:

Navita Erythraeum pavidus qui navigat aequor,
In prorae et puppis ummon resonantia pendet
Tintinnabula: eo sonitu praegrandia Cete,
Ballenas, et Monstra marina a navibus arcet.

Via Google translate, it reads:

The sailor who sails the Erythraean waters, afraid of the wind, On the prow and stern hangs the echoing bells: with that sound he keeps away the enormous whales, and sea monsters from the ships.

I’ve asked a few people who know some Latin to translate it for me as well, because translation is an art and humans can much better discern intent and meaning, and they came up with these:

(credit to AB):
A sailor sailed the fearful Erythraeum/Red Sea – In the bow and highest stern hangs a small bell/windchime, ringing: I go to make a noise to ward off colossal Dolphins, Whales, and Monsters of the sea from the ships.

(credit to Mo Ryan):
From the bow and stern, the frightened Eritrean sailor navigating the sea hangs the loudest of bells
With that sound, he drives from the ships the enormous whales and sea monsters

“Navitae” means sailor, that much is clear. So this could be about an Erythraean sailor, or a sailor on Erythraean seas.

But get this:

The Red Sea appears red due to a bacteria in the water, Trichodesmium erythraeum. “Erythraeum” is derived from the Greek “Eruthraî” or the related Latin term “Erythraeus”…

Which means “red.”

So maaaaaybe what we have is a red sailor.

If the sailor (a man, “navitae” is gendered male I think?) is red, they are wearing red, meaning they have love for themselves. So what you’d have is a self-actualized Lisa-as-Frank, sailing through despair, with fear and danger all around, dysphoria looming overhead… and only the bells, a loud proclamation (of her existence), can keep those things at bay.

You gotta transition, man! It will help you!

Look at what’s staring you in the face, Lisa.

I was sure the Latin on it was something added for the film, but it’s part of the original.

Dang, that piece of art was a find.

13:23 – The room Doug’s leading her toward is red inside, blue light on the door. Lisa barfs into the trash, as he holds her hair and says it feels like easter grass (what color is that, usually? A… greeny-blue maybe? Mmhm.)

Doug reacts to the smell. Sure, it smells bad. But maybe there’s more to it… I wonder if smells ever come up again?

13:38 – Doug calls her “kiddo,” infantilizing her. Not only is she 18 and an adult, we learn later that she’s older than he is. But because he’s a cis white man, society tells him he has authority over everyone. “Kiddo” is a recurring theme in this movie, watch for it.

13:50 – The lights in the room are yellow, but the light on Lisa’s face is blue, as she tries to steady herself. Doug sits next to her on the bed.

14:00 – Thunder and lightning outside the window behind them, the light that green-blue color that lightning actually isn’t (its color is very intentional, is what I’m saying).

14:11 – Doug says the thunder is “the angels bowling,” and Lisa says her mom used to say that. Doug is reminding her of her mom, which means this guy who offered to help is not going to be actual help… and so here comes the turn.

14:21 – Doug has his hand on one of her breasts and asks if that feels good. Takes her other hand and puts it right on his crotch. “Come on, you can’t stop once you’ve started. It’s the rules.” Never mind that he instigated this, and didn’t ask if it was okay, and she’s done nothing to make him think it was okay, and in fact is in an altered and vulnerable state. Since he started the rules are she owes him sex.

Doug’s even more toxic than the jocks were. (I fuckin’ hate Doug).

14:26 – Lisa’s horrified, there’s blue light on her face, and suddenly red light outside the window… for no reason whatsoever? But she is in danger, isn’t she. And there’s your reason.

14:30 – A haunting cover of “I can see clearly now” plays as Lisa’s mind reels. She doesn’t want to be a bro jock, she doesn’t want to assault women, why can’t she just be a guy like Michael? (Michael is also shit, but we’ll get there eventually).

Lisa gets off the bed and says no, as Doug pleads with her. There’s more red outside the window, but also blue, the yellow lamp, the very green wallpaper with hints of yellow. This is a torture chamber for Lisa.

Doug: “You know it’s not nice to lead people on, Lisa.” You’re supposed to let me sexually assault you, I’m a man.

And if you were a man, this is the kind of thing you’d do, too. It’s what society says we do.

14:50 – Lisa stumbles through the hallway and into more danger, look at the bright red angel behind her, a reminder of the dangers of coming out and how it means death (change), and possibly losing those you love.

14:57 – She stumbles through the dark, only the now-blue light from the lamp surrounding her.

15:05 – Look at the way the footage here gets choppy, like it’s sped up to be unnatural, it seems like there’s frames missing. Everything is surreal and inscrutable.

Lisa looks up, face awash in pink and blue, awash in her own transness, as the green-blue dysphoria lightning strikes through the clouds.

15:16 – She’s in the forest, heading toward Bachelor’s Grove. As she walks beneath the gate and turns around to look at it, the sides of her face that are pink and blue switch. They flip opposite of how they seemed before. Multiple times. They change. They transition.

15:24 – The green-blue lighting flashes inside the cemetery, leading the way to Frank’s tomb, which stands apart and above the others.

15:29 – Lisa: “It’s you.” Look at the lighting on the statue, still holding her mother’s rosary, he’s been chained by her mother’s transphobia, where she left him. She touches the statue’s face. “I wish I was with you.” Supertext. There’s a bright flash of white, and then:

15:55 – Lisa stumbles into her house, but it’s allll blue. There’s a mirror on the wall by the door, as she enters and steps forward, the reflection fractures around the mirror’s border. More continued problems with mirrors for her, but also foreshadowing what’s to come shortly.

16:07 – In the bathroom, all these girly things are now all blue. Despair. She sees her reflection clearly in the bathroom mirror.

16:09 – We flash between Lisa and Frankenstein’s statue, pinks and blues all over Frank, we flash back and forth, until there’s another electric zap (remember Lisa in the tanning bed?).

16:10 – Lightning strikes, but it’s not that unique blue/green of dysphoria. It’s blue, and white, and there’s pink in it too. It’s pink, white, and blue! Have you… ever seen lightning like that? That was a choice that was made by the filmmakers. Hmmmm.

Lisa screams and smashes the mirror. Why is my REFLECTION so wrong?! Supertext.

16:11 – The instant the mirror shatters, the shot switches to the statue of Frank, specifically his face. And then the light radiates out from behind him in the same circular pattern the mirror glass fractured in. This is the face she wishes she saw in the mirror.

16:15 – We cut back to Lisa, looking in the mirror, her face entirely fractured.

16:20 – That green-blue dysphoria fills the sky as groaning is heard from the cemetery at Bachelor’s Grove. Signs of life of someone long thought dead! From within her heart!

16:22 – This is the first time we’re in Lisa’s bedroom, which remember represents her subconscious. There’s lots more to talk about here, but we’ll get there when we can see more of it.

Lisa wraps herself in blankets, all blue, the light from the window forming bars across the bed, she’s jailed and boxed in by trying to be the woman society says she is. Her eyes have blue eye shadow, her lips are extra pink. White light flashes across her face. Transness, babe!

From her makeup we can tell she’s been crying, and her mascara runs down beneath her eyes. The mascara is black. The first bit of black we’ve seen her in so far. Remember that in this film, black equals death, death equals change, and change equals transition. She’s begun the journey!

Why is Lisa all wrapped up in her blankets here. It’s foreshadowing of where this journey of change will take her! We’ll refer back to this later.

And you want to get to later, right? Yeah you do. So come back next week as Lisa dreams of a better future, and we see if her step-mom follows the same path Lisa’s mom did.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS – Part 4 is here!

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 2

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision rolls on in THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 2! This week we get into what chains our hearts, and how awful it is to be seen when you aren’t the real you.

Be sure you’ve read PART 1 before this, it came first for a reason and has context you need! On we go.

2:50 – The Promise by When in Rome plays, almost the entire song, until 5:00. Look at those lyrics telling you allllll you need to know about Lisa’s coming journey. That it starts when we see her love and infatuation with the “dead boy” says a lot. Read them as Frank, her true self, talking to Lisa, letting her know he’ll be there when she’s ready.

If you need a friend
Don’t look to a stranger
You know in the end
I’ll always be there
And when you’re in doubt
And when you’re in danger
Take a look all around
And I’ll be there

I’m sorry but I’m just thinking of the right words to say
I know they don’t sound the way I planned them to be
But if you wait around a while I’ll make you fall for me
I promise, I promise you, I will

Yyyyep yep yep.

2:53 – Lisa does a rubbing of the gravestone, to copy and remember him. She doesn’t want to forget him.

3:02 – She adds “Lisa”, with a heart over the I, in red lipstick above it. She’s infatuated with this dead (to her) man (inside), has feelings of love about him.

3:15 – Look at everything on this bathroom counter, makeup and hair products, a curling iron… things society tells us women and girls need to conform to the rigid gender binary, many of them the dysphoria green-blue. Things Lisa feels forced to use to be the person everyone tells her she has to be.

By the way, liking these things doesn’t make you a girl or a woman, and not liking them doesn’t mean you’re not… regardless of our feelings about them, they’re what society says we’re supposed to like as women.

3:20 – As she crimps her hair, look at all the green-blue around her, the yellow light right by her eyes (these things send warning signals through her, these are not for you), the pink framing the mirror. Bathrooms are a source of dysphoria and gender conformity. She sees herself in the mirror and averts her eyes, she doesn’t want to look at that.

3:23 – In this shot there’s even more green-blue around her, she’s surrounded by dysphoria when doing these things society says she should do, and liking the things society says she should like, because they told her she’s a girl.

3:35 – She spares little glances in the mirror just to try to do the girly things right, but the crimping didn’t work right, the makeup makes her miserable, none of it brings her any joy. She drops the makeup brush and averts her eyes from the mirror again, hides her eyes from it. See PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS to learn how difficult those can be for trans people.

3:43 – Despite the misery, Lisa’s trying to girl correctly again, when Taffy, her step-sister, enters. Taffy’s dressed in blue, being a girly-girl holds only sadness (in Lisa’s eyes). Taffy: “I don’t think that blush is your shade, Lisa.” A girl who does like those things tells her she’s “doing girl” wrong. Lisa looks at herself in the mirror, still miserable, touches her face like something’s wrong with it. Is it the blush Taffy mentioned… or it is that that’s not her face?

Is that the face someone makes if they put their makeup on wrong? Does her makeup even look wrong to you? She can do it however she wants. But dang, that hollowed-out despair stare is something you see in so many trans people’s photos from pre-transition.

3:48 – Lisa says she’ll probably just stay home. There is a gathering, a party, an event, and she’s not thrilled about going and being perceived. We see this same thing in THE MATRIX and REAL GENIUS, a thing that speaks truth about trans people pre-transition. Even if we want to be at a gathering or around people we like, it means being seen as someone we’re not and having to put on the act of who everyone says we have to be, and that hurts.

Watch in here how rarely Lisa looks at the mirror. She mostly keeps her eyes down, and when she does look up… she tries to look absolutely anywhere else.

3:53 – Taffy tells her this party is critical and “compulsory”! Like the compulsory cisgender heterosexuality our society foists on us all! See GENDERED CHILDHOODS for more on that.

3:55 – Taffy: “You know what your doctor said. You need socialization.” Lisa has seen a doctor for a problem she’s having, and a medical professional basically said “use more makeup, wear a dress, conform to who we say you should be and you’ll feel better! You only feel bad because you don’t conform!”

Like, medical transition care is real and needed for a lot of us, but allllso it’s basically treated as a “last resort” option they try to keep from us. They’ll try absolutely anything else first, even when we directly tell them what we need.

4:13 – Taffy wants Lisa to use her tanning bed. What is a tanning bed? A thing you use to fake a real thing you might otherwise have. It’s a way to conform to a visual aesthetic that society says is pleasing.

My friends, that’s gender-affirming care. Fine for the cis! Just not for us nonconformo transes. Check out CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO to learn more.

BUT—

Remember that the tanning bed is gender affirming care in metaphor, and watch what happens…

4:22 – Taffy turns Lisa’s head, forces her to look at herself in the mirror. Look at Lisa’s miserable face, again. Taffy: “You’re in need, babe.” Lisa is in need, but not of the lies society offers. Look at the difference on their faces. Lisa is not a person who likes what she’s hearing.

4:29 – Lisa opens the shed and is bathed in pink light. Using this will only force gender conformity on her (or so she thinks).

4:32 – The shed is awash in pink light, but there’s a lot of blue inside. Remember what the two together means? Yar, there be transness here!

The lights leading to the shed are yellow, red, and that same green-blue. The fear and danger of dysphoria have led her to this point. When you examine why you have those feelings, they can lead you to a solution… transition (here, in handy shed form).

More specifically, I believe this transition shed represents HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY. I’ll explain why toward the end of the film.

4:35 – Look at her bathing suit, clashing in colors and patterns. Her love of self, all the warnings she’s picked up on, her sadness, and her dysphoria, have brought her to this point.

Behind her, the blue wall with silhouettes of pink cheerleaders. Transness.

The tanning bed is blue and pink. Transness.

The tanning bed brand is Kiss of Life. Kisses equal love, and they bring true life. Loving yourself carries you to living your truth.

4:46 – When the tanning bed closes, looking much like a coffin, it lights up with the dysphoria green-blue. It zaps her and she screams! It didn’t work, because it was, in effect, set to the wrong hormones.“The Promise” stops playing with the zap. But that zap is important. It’s her realizing that trying to conform to this woman she’s told she has to be really is wrong for her.

4:52 – As they drive to the party, Taffy apologizes for her tanning bed electrocuting Lisa, who replies, “I’m fine.” Is she? Look at her face! She’s miserable! And no wonder, look at her top. The pattern on it is in the dysphoria green-blue.

Trying to be a woman (again) only covered her in even more dysphoria.

5:00 – Taffy asks how Lisa likes Brookview so far. Not for nothing, but I described my own GENDER DYSPHORIA as being “like drowning,” and other trans folks have likened it to similar things. In view of a brook means you can see the water, ie I have not escaped dysphoria even though I moved to a new place.

In the same dead monotone as before, Lisa again says, “It’s fine. It’s the same as my old school.” Running from your dysphoria doesn’t make it go away, it follows you everywhere. And it makes you feel dead inside.

5:17 – Taffy asks if Lisa’s hot for anyone, and Lisa whispers “Michael Trent.” Remember that Michael means “like god,” and “god is love.” Lisa’s attracted to him because she loves him… or is it because she loves the kind of man she thinks he is?

I don’t know how to tell you this, cis folks, but for a good number of gay/bi/non-straight trans people, part of the difficulty in figuring out we’re trans is in wondering if we’re into someone because we’re attracted to them… or because we want to be them? It can be both! See SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER for more.

Lisa’s going to struggle to figure out that very thing for most of the movie.

Lisa says Michael’s the editor of the school literary magazine. Do you remember what we saw Frank doing in the opening animation, besides playing the piano? Reading. Lisa sees in Michael something she recognizes from the man she has inside.

5:56 – Taffy talks about how great the party will be, and Lisa says it’s just off of Bluff Road (bluffs are lies, supertext), and they could have walked. Taffy says that’s too far to walk in jellies (they’re wacko shoes from the 80s kids, look ‘em up) and it would have hurt her feet. Taffy’s more concerned with appearances than functionality. Which, by the way, is what society forces on women all the time, with things like corsets and high heels, and makeup that makes it so you can’t hardly touch your own face without ruining it.

Again again again, it’s fine to like those things if you’re a woman! I do. But it’s wrong for society to make it a requirement for being the “right” kind of woman.”

Lisa says there’s a shortcut through the forest… through Bachelor’s Grove. Taffy says that’s the “haunted cemetery,” a place for dead things and tormented souls.

Lisa: “It’s not haunted. It’s just… abandoned.” Hey, that’s her heart, remember? Supertext. Then she smiles as she says, “Desecrated.” Is that a thing to smile about? She clearly likes something about whatever’s in there…

6:20 – Taffy says she heard the Heshers did witchcraft there, and that Gina Marzak dedicated her unborn child to satan there. “Gina” can be derived from several different names, but one of those is Virginia, which means virgin. Given that Taffy references the name in relation to an unborn child, it feels like a safe bet.

The cis view of the place where they force us to lock our true selves away from the world? Where people have autonomy (listen, people can do whatever they want with their own bodies even if you don’t agree with it)? It’s evil and no one should go there. According to much of our society, bodily autonomy is for (cis white) men only, whether you’re talking about abortion rights or trans rights (they are the same fight, see BODILY AUTONOMY.)

Lisa says she’s never seen anybody else there. Being trans and dysphoric is lonely, you might think you’re the only one who has these feelings, if you’ve not be taught that we exist. Which is why Republicans are fighting so hard to erase us from history and public life again.

There’s a long history of trans people being erased from, well, history. Learn more in TRANS HISTORY 1: HOW AND WHY WE NAME TRANS PEOPLE IN HISTORY.

6:30 – In a flashback, Lisa is reading at the base of Frankenstein’s grave, dressed in red, deep in her heart she knows she still has love for her true self.

Do note the flowers next to her, the small bundle of red and white daisies. I’ll remind you about them near the end of the movie.

She says she does wax rubbings of all the tombstones… Frank’s is her favorite. She does rubbings to remember him. She doesn’t want to forget him.

But pay attention to how his name is broken on the tombstone, so you can’t read it (and neither can Lisa). She doesn’t know his name, and won’t, until she becomes him and chooses one.

6:59 – In another flashback, Lisa now wearing green, she brings him a rosary with a crucifix that was her (dead) mom’s. Why would she bring that to the grave of a strange man, do you think?

Look at the beads… danger, fear, despair. There’s a crucifix attached, emblematic of sacrifice. That’s why it’s her mom’s rosary, and why she leaves it at Frank’s grave. This is when Lisa sacrificed her true self because of the fear, danger, and dysphoria her mother caused.

This gets confirmed in a bit!

And notice her top is green like the forest. By sacrificing her true self, she’s going to blend in to her surroundings. She’s gonna go GIRLMODE even if it kills her inside to do so.

Also, the book she was reading, and that she leaves him is titled, “Shelley’s Poems.” This is not just a nod to Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, it will also be relevant again at the end of the film. Just remember she left it with the man in her heart.

7:13 – Taffy: “That’s really weird, Lisa.” Cis people think us even talking about the smallest hint of our complicated gender feelings is “weird.” Lisa: “I just don’t think anyone should be forgotten.” That includes our true selves, buried deep inside.

7:22 – Taffy’s car is bright red. Danger, Lisa. Maybe not now, but beware. Head Over Heels by Blue Peter plays. Let’s have a look at those lyrics:

Swept away, I think I′m gonna fall
Late last night, when I got your call
Round and round my head, I still hear your voice
You said “Stay”, I guess I’ve got no choice

Just like a favourite song or a pretty face
When you’re gone, I’m still hungry for the taste
Building up the walls to keep the world outside
Out on the streets, we′ll take the world for a ride

The city’s on fire, we live for the smoke
I feel the heat when you get this close
Across the table, I light your cigarette
Just another story I could never forget

Head over heels
I′m falling fast
Head over heels
Will this romance last?

If we continue to interpret the “romance” as loving yourself enough to transition, you get a song wondering if there’s any hope for self-actualization in the future, and closing off from the world because being yourself out there is dangerous. Hmmmmm.

7:28 – Look at the lights at the party… they’re all green-blue. Dysphoria awaits you here. Taffy goes right over to other girls, they talk about hair and girly things. Lisa rolls her eyes and hangs back. Alone. Uncomfortable. THE MATRIX (see my book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix) and REAL GENIUS both feature this exact same event.

7:52 – Lisa walks past some boisterous jocks in red. Danger. She flinches at their stereotypical displays of tough man masculinity. But also those are often the types of people who punish us most for not conforming. There’s a boy in a pink and blue shirt just standing there, looking at them, following them around silently.

We already know she’s not into those kinds of guys. That’s not the kind of man she wants to be, or is. But she’s worried that she’d have to follow in those footsteps. For what it’s worth, BARBIE deals with that sort of bullshit on a macro level… if society says a woman (or man) is X, and I’m not X, does that mean I’m not “really” a woman (or man)?

8:23 – Look at Lisa’s reaction when she meets the kind of guy she thinks she does want to be, the famed Michael Trent. She’s panting! Excitement! An encounter with, seemingly, the kind of person she always wished she was.

Look at his shirt! A picture of Friedrich Nietzsche with the quote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

As in… living for the he you want to be, Lisa, can help you do things you never thought possible (see TRANS MOTIVATION).

Nietzsche was a philosopher and complicated person (to put it mildly). Among many things, he was known for claiming “…the Christian faith as practised was not a proper representation of Jesus’ teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did…”

Remember Taffy saying things in Bachelor’s Grove/Lisa’s heart were satanic? Remember Lisa had her mom’s rosary? These women who claimed to believe in “goodness” were themselves anything but (the bit about Lisa’s mom we’ll get to in a minute).

Nietzsche also “became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health.”

Okay listen. There’s trans things, and then there’s transy things. Supertext.

8:36 – Michael tells her she submitted good poems, even though they’re “pitch black.” Things are dark indeed from deep inside dysphoria. But remember Lisa and the color black is about change and transition. She was writing about her complicated gender feelings!

9:00 – Laurie, bathed in yellow firelight, asks Taffy what “happened” to Lisa because she’s “heard stuff.” Rumors that she’s, y’know… transy. Taffy says she can’t talk about it because she promised not to… but then does anyway. Gotta give that hot goss on us transes and not respect our privacy. Already we see the betrayal and why Taffy’s car is red. This foreshadows her later, much more severe betrayal.

That does it for this week! Next week we get into how horribly things can go wrong when we trust the wrong person to come out to, and how figuring out who we don’t want to be can lead us to who we do.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 3 is here!

THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 1

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision is back again to talk about the first explicitly transmasc allegory I’ve seen! Let’s dive into the delightful, the weird, the wonderful UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 1! This week: context, color, names, and more!

I’ve done a lot of trans allegory in media writeups, and they’ve kind of become what I’m most known for, thanks to the series on The Matrix films that became my book, Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix. If you’d like to check out alllll the others I’ve done, head to the TRANS MEDIA section of this site and have a browse!

These are easily the most popular essays and podcast episodes I do, you all seem to love experiencing them as much as I truly love doing them. But as a reminder, they’re exponentially more work than my usual essays.

Between watching the film and taking notes, turning those notes into this write up, sourcing screenshots, research, editing and revising, and recording the podcast version, I’ve put approximately thirty hours of work into this. And this is why I can only do them every so often. But hey, the next one’s here! Hooray.

When I first saw Lisa Frankenstein, I not only loved its heart and its humor and its delightful weirdness, but so much transness leapt out at me that it immediately went on my list of films to do a trans allegory deep dive on.

Especially since it’s the first transmasc allegory I’ve found! Some, like SILO (which as far as I know is entirely unintentional) and STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS’ “AD ASTRA PER ASPERA,” speak generally about transness, others like THE MATRIX and BARBIE and I SAW THE TV GLOW speak even more specifically to transfems. So I was really excited to dive into one for all the trans men and nonbinary masc folks out there. Especially given THE ERASURE OF TRANS MEN is a real thing that happens.

But I do want to say Lisa Frankenstein, like The Matrix and Barbie and I Saw the TV Glow, still speaks to the entire trans community in so many ways.

So what the hell is an unintentionally intentional trans allegory, Tilly? Well I’m so glad you asked, this is perfect timing because I was just about to tell you.

As far as I’m aware, no out trans people worked on this film. But in an interview with intomore.com, Lisa Frankenstein writer and producer Diablo Cody had this to say about the film’s queerness:

…the object of Lisa’s affection is literally in a closet for a lot of the film. …I grew up not just in the 80s, but Catholic in the 80s, at a time when people around me were encouraged to repress any queer feelings that they had. And this relationship in this movie is hidden, so I think you can read some subtext into that. And, you know, even though it is somewhat of a heterosexual love story… they’re definitely an offbeat pair… it’s not a relationship that would be fully accepted by society in any era…

From that alone, you know that there’s an inherent queerness to the film, in spite of its seeming cishet romance.

But here’s something super interesting, if slightly problematic:

The film’s director, Zelda Williams… played a trans man in a television show, Dead of Summer, in 2016. Here’s some quotes from her in an interview with etonline.com:

The thing I’m most terrified about is the transgender community being insulted by [Drew]. It’s great that [the public] will get to learn about a male-identifying transgender character as a lead in an ensemble show, but really, more than anything, he is for the transgender community, because they don’t ever get to see him. I hope that they’re happy with him, because I’m proud of him.

Although she was a bit nervous to take on her first-ever leading role, Williams reveals that in a lot of ways, she felt like she could connect with Drew. “Drew isn’t necessarily a far stretch from who I am,” she explains. “I’m not a girly girl. I never have been. I had a shaved head for six years.”

While a seeming cis woman playing a trans man isn’t great (see TRANS ROLES AND STORIES for more on why that is), she clearly got to experience some of what trans men go through in her prep and performance of a role. And that’s not to say playing a trans man and being a trans man are equivocal, but actors get inside the heads and hearts of their characters. That’s the job. They think about them and explore them in deep and intimate ways.

So while portraying a trans man is not living as a trans man, it does give her a perspective that most cis people don’t have. Especially when she was so concerned about not doing harm and getting it right. A cis person playing a trans character does do harm (again see TRANS ROLES AND STORIES for why), but I doubt anyone involved even realized that. It’s part of a long trend of cis actors playing trans characters, even though there are many out trans actors available, especially now in 2025.

And from those quotes, she’s maybe somewhat gender nonconforming, or at least lived that way for a while. And that also gives her some personal experience with the way society treats you when you don’t fit into the very narrow boxes they like to categorize us into (see THE FALSE DICHOTOMY for more).

So I think, when you combine a writer who’s trying to speak to queerness subtextually, and a director who’s intimately familiar with some of what trans people, especially trans men, go through… when you mix those things together, you get them intentionally making a very trans movie even if they might not have realized it.

I’ve mentioned in many of these allegory writeups how that’s absolutely a thing that happens. Writers (and directors, and musicians, and and and…) can often be exploring something subtextually in their work and not even realize that’s what they’re doing.

For years before I understood, could name, and accepted my transness, I was exploring gender themes in my own writing. There were always perceived men becoming or turning into women. Why would that happen? Nobody knows, it’s a mystery!

In fact, Jane Shoenbrun, who wrote and directed I SAW THE TV GLOW which I did one of these deep-dives on, said it was the process of making their first film, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair that cracked their egg (made them realize they were trans).

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is also a deep trans allegory, which Jane admits was intentional, because they were unpacking all their complicated gender feelings in exploring the theme of the film. But they didn’t know that’s what they were actually exploring through most of the process, even though they were intentionally exploring it. (I was on the Progressively Horrified podcast, with other fabulous guests, to talk about this film and all the ways it speaks to dealing with gender dysphoria, if that’s a thing you’re interested in).

This is what creating art is, we tell stories about people exploring feelings and themes that we want to talk about, sometimes without even being able to name or identify what those feelings and themes are.

And thus we arrive at Lisa Frankenstein, an unintentionally intentional trans allegory.

However… there’s some compelling evidence that it might not have been unintentionally intentional at all. Once we get to the end, and you have all the evidence, that’s something you can ponder. 😊

Just remember everything in a movie is a choice made by the filmmakers. Even when coincidences or happy accidents happen, it’s a choice whether to include those in the final cut of the movie or not. There is artistic intent behind it.

So let’s get to talking about the film itself! On the surface, it’s a Frankenstein retelling about a teen girl who’s a bit of an outcast bringing a dead body to life, making him whole with pieces from other humans, and falling in love with him.

But just like with The Matrix and Barbie, Lisa and the creature (this is how he’s referred to in the film’s subtitles, and is how the monster is referred to in the original Frankenstein) represent the same person at two different points of transition.

Before we go any further, I don’t like referring to someone who is, in effect, a trans man as “the creature,” so for the rest of these deep dives, I’ll call him Frank.

Lisa is a trans man who has denied their truth, like society instructs us to do in so many ways (see GENDERED CHILDHOODS and TRANS TRAUMA 2: SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING). Over the course of the film, she self-actualizes and becomes who she truly is, Frank the trans man.

It’s important to note this movie is not about her egg cracking (realizing she’s trans), this is about someone who did realize, but the world reacted so poorly that she suppressed and denied her own truth. And then coming to realize they cannot deny that truth no matter how hard they try, and finally accepting it.

So Frank represents her self-actualization, exactly the way Trinity represented that for Neo in The Matrix. And just like in the Matrix films, the “romance” between the two apparently cishet lead characters is actually about someone loving themself enough to do what they need to do in order to be happy… transition, even in spite of society working so hard to stop that.

“Lisa” derives from “Elizabeth,” which is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Elisheva” which means, “my god is an oath.” An oath is a promise, and though I’m not Jewish, if “god is love” holds true then Lisa becomes “love is a promise.” A promise to yourself, to love yourself. To be your true self.

Lisa’s last name is “Swallows.” Those birds are symbolic of homecoming (very supertexty for someone who rejected their truth but then comes back around to accepting it), but also of the protection and blessing of the divine (and if god is love, the love she has for herself is protected and blessed here in her heart). Swallows can also represent those who know the truth but refuse to accept it! So now it’s just SUPERsupertext.

“Supertext” is a term I coined  to mean the opposite of subtext, basically yelling the truth right in your face.

Lisa’s step-sister is “Taffy,” which in terms of names is the Anglicized form of “Dafydd,” which itself is the Welsh form of “David”… which comes from the Hebrew name “Dawid,” which means “beloved” or “uncle.”

So what the heck’s going on here?! Is the seeming gender-swap of the name important? I submit to you that no, it is not, and in fact I think the Taffy in Lisa Frankenstein has nothing to do with the origins of the name, and is instead there because of the candy. Because what is taffy? Soft, stretchy. Malleable. It can take whatever shape you mold it into.

And Taffy, the character, is everything society tells you girls should be. Pretty, overly concerned with her appearance, kind of obsessed with boys, ultra-fem. She’s everything Lisa doesn’t want to be. Though the fact that she’s someone who should, and seemingly does, actually care about Lisa (well, until she doesn’t) is also important.

Lisa’s dad is “Dale,” which literally just means a dale or valley. But what’s a valley? A low point that prevents you from seeing what’s around you. Dale is perpetually unaware of his surroundings, what’s going on, or even how to describe his own wife’s appearance. He’s kind of clueless, in the way so many cis people are about anything related to transness.

“Janet” comes from “Jane” which comes from “John,” which… okay, here we go… it’s the English form of Iohannes, which is the Latin form of the Greek name Ioannes, which comes from the Hebrew name Yohanan. And that means “god is gracious.”

But if god is love, why was this name given to Janet, the most cruel and evil person in the entire movie? Because Janet is a hypocrite in every way, which makes her name deeply ironic.

“Michael” is from the Hebrew name Miḵaʾel, meaning “who is like god?” or “like god.” Again, if god is love, then Michael is like love, but maybe actually isn’t love, which is important. Not just in what happens with him in the movie, but in what he represents for Lisa. We’ll talk more about that when he first appears.

As with The Matrix, and Barbie, and I Saw the TV Glow, all linked above, colors are used metaphorically to help tell the story.

The single most important color in the entire film is the very specific green-blue in the lightning bolt in the opening credits animation.

It’s the first color you see, it’s horribly destructive, and it shows up everywhere in the movie in very specific ways (which I think has to be very intentional for such a wildly specific color). This color is representative of GENDER DYSPHORIA, of everything wrong with the world when you’re not the gender you’re assigned at birth.

I tried to find a name for this color, and there are several that get close, but also because things like lighting and paints and fabrics are all colored in different ways, the color doesn’t always exactly match. So you’re looking for anything close to what you see in the screencap above. Trust it will be very obvious most of the time, and difficult to miss.

Pink is the color of gender conformity, which makes a lot of sense in a transmasc allegory. It’s the color the world forces on girls. And of course you can be nonbinary and like pink, you can be a girl and like pink just because you like it (like me), and you can be a boy who likes pink. But society says “pink is for girls” (see that GENDERED CHILDHOODS essay), and so in Lisa Frankenstein it’s representative of everything society forces on girls, and everything that transmasc folks may want to get away from.

Yellow is fear and caution.

Blue is sadness, despair, and depression.

Except for when you see pink and blue together, which is, you guessed it, indicative of transness.

Red is more complex, and has a double meaning. In the world, it’s a sign of danger.

But when Lisa is wearing red, it’s a metaphor for love. The colors Lisa wears conveys a lot about what’s going on with her.

When Lisa’s in black and going all gothy, well that kind of garb usually signifies death, or honoring death, respecting those we’ve lost. But as in tarot, many cultural beliefs, and many allegories, death is symbolic of change. The more black she wears, the closer she gets to the change of transition. And conversely, the more human Frank looks, the closer he is to being the fully realized man Lisa has always been inside.

I believe Lisa’s bedroom is indicative of her subconscious, and Bachelor’s Grove is a metaphor for her heart (which, yes, has a dude in it).

It’s important to note that all of the murders in this movie happen at the hands of Frank, and not Lisa, but more important is that each kill is a metaphoric rejection of what that person represents.

And just to be clear, though Lisa is a trans man, for clarity I will use she/her pronouns for her, and he/him for her true self, Frank.

Time for timestamps! Let’s. Gooooooooooooooooo!

0:58 – In our opening animation, we see Frank wake with a sigh, and the photo on the wall shows he’s alone. His parents disappeared from the photo after he looked at it. Maybe they died… or maybe they’re dead to him, and he to them, because they couldn’t accept his truth. It’s actually that second one, when you remember that Frank is Lisa’s final form, and what happened with Lisa’s mom.

1:04 – The food falls from the spoon, there’s no joy. Frank is reading, always reading or playing the piano. He’s artistic, inquisitive, soft. Not the stereotype of the manly-man, devoid of emotions except lust and anger, that the world tries to tell men they have to be.

1:18 – The woman blows a kiss at him, giving up her femininity and accepting him. This was Lisa’s egg cracking, realizing the soft, artistic guy that she really was.

1:27 – The pair are together on the bench in black and white, him on the left, her on the right, happy. Frank puts a flower in her hair, and she accepts it. This is her accepting his gift (his existence). And look how similar the silhouette of their hair is. Is that because they’re the same person? Yeah you betcha.

1:36 – The woman leaves Frank, when society still treats her like a woman, and you see the flower in her hair has been lost. She’s given Frank up, and it devastates her true self inside.

1:49 – The horse kicks a man off the balcony, and metal beams fall and crush a man (with a gun) on a boat. Masculinity is rejected and cannot fight for itself.

Note that Frank here is always walking from left to right. He was on the left of the bench, the woman on the right. He is moving from his true self back to the woman society said he was and had to be.

2:00 – He sits on the bench alone, forgotten, not whole, as a man and woman pair (representative of a trans person who’s accepted and reconciled who they really are) are blown away. Gone.

2:05 – And here our green-blue lightning of dysphoria strikes and kills him, the true man inside is dead (for now).

2:12 – On his gravestone it says “unmarried.” If the metaphor for a self-accepted trans person in this film is a man and woman being together (just like in The Matrix, and opposite of Barbie), then being unmarried means unactualized.

2:15 – The dirt falls into the grave, and the man inside is covered up and hidden from the world. Her true inner man has been buried deep in her heart… Bachelor’s Grove.

2:19 – The woman places the flower on his grave, she is sad to lose him, even though she gave him up to pretend to be who society said she had to be.

2:33 – Much later in the future, in the same graveyard, we’re in Bachelor’s Grove (it’s for the dudes!). And there’s Lisa, the woman, at his gravestone. In red. She still loves her true self, even if she rejected him.

2:39 – A closeup shows a gravestone reads “Frances Owens.” “Frances” means French. How are French men seen culturally in the United States? As “weak” or “effeminate,” artistic, not “real” men. Owen traces back to two different names in English and Irish, and both mean “born of.”

Here in her heart, where she has love for the man she truly is, her true self will be born! This is foreshadowing her entire arc, and the entire movie, right in front of you. Supertext!

We’ll wrap it there for this week, even though we’ve only just begun. Come back next week as we discuss what we’ve buried deep inside our hearts, and the horror of being perceived!

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 2 is here!

Interview with Cicada Queen V about her game “When Summer is Over”

You can play When Summer is Over… right in your web browser window. Please read and heed content warnings.

NOTE: This week’s update is a transcription of a live interview done as part of the Tilly’s Trans Tuesdays podcast. Special thanks to Kate Rascali for the transcription!

Tilly Bridges: Welcome to Tilly’s Trans Tuesdays! This week, we’ve got an interview with Cicada Queen V about her video game, When Summer is Over, an indie free-to-play game that’s so, so trans, right down to its core.

Tilly: Hi, I’m Tilly Bridges, your host, and I’m joined by my writing partner, my best friend, my wife, our token cis representation, the star that makes my summers last forever, Susan Bridges.

Susan Bridges: Hello!

Tilly: Our guest this week, you may have guessed from the episode intro, is Cicada Queen V, the developer of Cold Call and When Summer is Over. Originally from Florida, now living in New England, she turns her experiences of growing up in an increasingly hostile state and living situation into art to make others who went through similar experiences feel less alone. Welcome, V!

V: Hello, thanks for having me! I really, I really like that. Endless Summer, huh? That’s pretty cool.

Tilly: Okay, so we generally like to start this show off with a few questions so our listeners can get to know our guests. I wanted to sort of get started by asking how you got into making video games.

V: I’ve always liked playing video games. There was a point in my, I would say probably, later teen years, which I guess you could call my childhood still, that I kind of realized that video games could be art, and not just entertainment.

Tilly: Right.

V: And that got me even more interested, and for the longest time, I always thought I wanted to make them, but I just never…(you know, undiagnosed ADHD and all these problems) I could never focus to get far enough into. And then enough stuff happened in my life, I just had all this, almost want to say fuel, I guess. And finally this dam burst. I’ve tried writing, I’ve tried art, I’ve tried drawing, I’ve tried making music, and, like, nothing ever felt quite enough. So I thought maybe combining all of it together, try to do this thing that I’ve always wanted to do. I just found myself in the perfect situation this year, and I just decided, let’s do it, let’s finally try it. So I’ve been doing it, and it’s reached more people than I expected.

Tilly: Yeah, it’s really cool when you find the medium that fits your creativity the best, and you’re like, hey, this is home, this is the best thing that I can express myself through, yeah.

V: Definitely, yeah.

Tilly: Okay, well, before we get into talking about the game specifically, I wanted to ask, for you, what has been the best thing about transitioning?

V: That feels like a loaded question. No, it’s a good question. I actually really like that, because I think it helps to slow down and try to think about the good things sometimes, because sometimes it feels like there’s so many harsh and bad things.

Tilly: For sure.

V: It’s been hard, I’m not sure. I feel like my transition has been a little bit different than a lot of other people I’ve interacted with, but to me, just getting to get closer to who I really am, to my true self, you know? Even though I look in the mirror and I’m still a little uncomfortable sometimes.

Tilly: Sure.

V: I don’t have these episodes where I disassociate anymore, I don’t have these episodes where I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the person looking back at me. I feel more like me. And to me, whatever that shape is, whatever form you take. It’s always nice to be closer to that, and to me, that’s the nicest thing about transitioning.

Tilly: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that I’ve learned, especially from doing this show and from all the trans people I know, is that every transition is unique, and it’s different for all of us.

V: Absolutely. True, very true.

Tilly: Yeah, yeah, but that moment when you don’t see a stranger in the mirror anymore, even if it’s not fully you. You can feel it getting better, it’s so huge.

V: Yeah, definitely.

Tilly: Well, then let me ask, what do you think has been the most surprising part of your transition? Is there something that you totally didn’t expect?

V: Hmm… Surprising. I mean, there were a lot of things I didn’t expect. The hormones, when I started them, hit me pretty fast, and within 6 months, I was already kind of, like, very different. So I didn’t really have the option of trying to go undercover and stuff. So, I kinda had to come out a lot. And some of the things that surprised me were some of the reactions from some people that were… they either just didn’t care, which was nice, like nothing changed…

Tilly: Right.

V: But there were some people I didn’t expect to react the way they did. And, you know, people who would talk about things like “‘”being yourself” and, you know, “going against the grain” and all this stuff, and then when that happens, they’re like, “oh, you’re shoving yourself in a box for others.” Not the nicest thing to be surprised by, but.

Tilly: Yeah.

V: I suppose the way people have reacted, but to leave that on a positive note, my mother, things were a little bit rough at first, but she has since come into her own, and she’s been very supportive of all of it.

Tilly: Oh, that’s amazing, I’m so glad.

V: I’m grateful for that, yeah.

Tilly: Yeah, it’s weird, there’s this thing in our society, where our whole life, we’re bombarded with messages of, “be yourself,” and “break out of the box,” and “do things your own way,” and then when you’re like, okay, I’m trans, that’s what I’m gonna do. And they’re all like, “no, not like that.”

V: “No, you have to do it the way we tell you!”

Tilly: Exactly. “Break out of the box in the way that’s still inside the box that makes us comfortable.”

V: Don’t destroy the box!

Susan: There’s a whole series of boxes, and you have to fit into one of them, and when you don’t…

Tilly: Yeah, yeah, it’s terrible. All right, well, let’s get into talking about your game, When Summer is Over. You sent me a link to this game, and I played through it, and it hit me so hard that I had to have you on to talk about it. So, I guess to start off, do you want to tell folks a little bit about what the game is and why you made it?

V: Yeah, It’s funny, because everyone I’ve shared it with has had that same reaction, like, “this hit way harder than I expected.”

Tilly: Yeah!

V: And I made a joke with my friends about, like, I finally found my niche in art and games. I make the kind of games that people play, and then it makes them want to ask me, “are you okay?” But to start with the reason I made it… the game itself, the story, revolves around a trans woman’s last day in the only home she’s ever known, particularly in Florida. I grew up in Florida. I was born and raised there. There were a few years of my childhood I spent growing up in other places, but it was a very small portion of my childhood, and for the most part, I was born and raised in Florida.

I always had a sort of… it’’s hard to even call it a love-hate relationship with Florida. But things were always different and strange and complicated for me. A lot of people around me loved Florida for either reasons I didn’t agree with, which might sound weird, or they didn’t love Florida, and they hated it, and they wanted to leave, and I could never understand either of those. And then I realized I was trans, I started coming out, my time sort of came, and I started to realize this state is increasingly getting worse and worse. I don’t like this idea that I’m gonna be forced to leave, but I think I need to leave so that I can feel at least a little bit safer, a little bit more comfortable with myself, not worrying as much about things.

So I eventually left. It was not under the best terms, it was not the way that I wanted to leave. And, the first year that I arrived at the new place, as you mentioned, I moved up to New England, Vermont specifically. It’s been a hell of a ride. I’ve been very happy up here, but it’s been tough getting used to things. That first year, there was a lot of change, a lot of growth, whether I wanted it or not, and I sort of had the idea for this game. I wrote a lot of things down, I wanted to try to start working on it. I started to work on it that year, but I just was not in a good position for it.

Tilly: Understandable, yeah.

V: Yeah, so it got shelved for a little while, and then this year, I made my first game, which is Cold Call, which is a visual novel. It’s something really short compared to When Summer is Over. I did all the art, it’s not, like, pixel art. I did everything mostly black and white and stuff, and I made this thing, and I put it out into the world, and I was like, wow, I finally did the thing I’ve wanted to for my whole life! And I was like, okay, I’m gonna take a break. Then a friend told me about a game jam going on. And for folks who may not know what that is, basically the idea is, a community or a group of people set up a little thing where you have a time limit, and sometimes you might have something like a theme or, like, structure. And you basically go out and you develop a game in this time limit, and then you release it, and then a bunch of people play it, and they rate it, and they judge it. Some game jams will have ratings where they try to say, like, oh, this game got first place, this game got second place. Some of them will just be for the glory of making games and sharing it around.

And the theme, it was for an RPG Maker horror game jam, and the theme was “House of Remembrance.” And I read the description for the theme, and I was like, this is exactly When Summer is Over. I have to do this. So I kind of just dove in, and I made it. And, I surprised myself, because I made the game… I already joined the jam late, and I made the game in, like, about 25 days?

Tilly: Wow.

V: From the ground up, I pretty much didn’t use any of the assets that I had previously made besides just references and concept art stuff. And so I made it, and then I put some finishing touches on it, and it broke me in a lot of ways. But yeah, I put it out in the world, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of people started playing it and reacting to it in ways that I did not expect. Now I’m here.

Tilly: Yeah, I think it was this really genius way of putting the audience in your shoes, because a game is so much more active than reading or even watching something, right? The player is moving and causing things to happen, and so it’s more like those experiences are happening to them. And I think that’s a really brilliant way to get cis people, especially, to maybe understand a little better some of what we go through. Was that part of the hope with making it, or was it more just about getting out all of these thoughts and feelings that you were working through?

V: First and foremost, when I make something, I genuinely care more about art than anything. And to me, art is a conversation between two minds? And so it’s very possible that subconsciously I did have these ideas, because when I work, I never know all of what I’m feeling. I can get so lost in what I’m doing. And I sort of just make it, I get to the end of this tunnel, I share it with people, and then people say, “wow, that was really interesting, I got this out of it.”

I never intended for someone to get that out of it, but I really like that you saw it in your own way. So, to me, it was always just being honest about my own experiences, my thoughts and feelings, and hoping that in whatever way that that could reach people, if it reached cis people who wanted to try to understand more, or who could learn, they could try to understand more. Or maybe some of them, maybe it even changed some of their minds. That would be amazing. That wasn’t the initial goal by any means, but that would definitely not shy away from that.

Tilly: Yeah, I think all art is really like that. Like, we put so much of ourselves into it. Susan and I here, we write scripts, comics, movies, TV, and it’s always the same way. You never know how someone’s gonna interpret your art once you put it out in the world. It’s gonna change. Every single person will view it differently, because they all bring their own baggage and experiences and feelings to it. And so, I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about art, is that you never know what somebody else is gonna get out of it. And that’s kinda cool.

V: Yeah, I think it’s beautiful, honestly. That’s one of my favorite things about art.

Tilly: I wanted to ask you, Susan, because you played through it as well.

Susan: I did.

Tilly: As a cis person.

Susan: Yes.

Tilly: What was it like for you to play through something that was so, like, deeply trans?

Susan: I thought the plants were a great metaphor, kind of. Because, like, I feel like you’re a plant nerd.

V: What? Me? No…[laughs] Just a little bit.

Susan: So there’s, like, oh, these plants, and I love the plants, and then later, like, the poisonous sort of plants are in the house and everywhere, and it adds an interesting thing about the mixed feelings about loving and hating and all together. I thought that was cool.

Tilly: But did you feel the transness of it, the bits that sort of relate to, like, dysphoria and things? Like, how did that feel for you?

Susan: Yeah. Definitely, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was clear to me, but I’m married to you.

Tilly: You are.

V: Actually, I think one of my favorite things about it, is that some of the cis people I know, some of my friends, who are very supportive, they may not understand as much about things, but they do understand the state of the world, this country and some of the sad things going on, and they’re very supportive.

It was really interesting to see how they could relate to those trans struggles, and in their own ways, the things that they go through. You know, being uncomfortable looking in a mirror, it tends to be something trans people talk a lot about, but it’s something that anyone can experience, and having issues with family, or feeling unsafe somewhere, or not feeling comfortable, no matter what clothes you wear. Like, you know, these are all first and foremost, as I know them, trans issues. But a lot of people experience them in different ways that aren’t trans. I think to relate on that level, to realize, like, oh, yeah, we do go through similar things, you know? We’re all human. It’s really nice to see that.

Tilly: Yeah, like, cis people may not know what it’s like to not feel like you are the gender that the whole world has told you that you are, but there’s so many things… because we’re all just humans, you know, struggling through this world. And there’s so many things that I think cis people can relate to. You may not know exactly what it is like to have gender dysphoria, but you know what it’s like to have expectations laid on you by society or your family about who you’re supposed to be, and feeling like that’s not you.

I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about making art like this, is that it helps the whole world understand better, and that’s really cool.

Susan: I guess, yeah, also, parental garbage. I mean, we both have a lot of experience with that.

Tilly: We do!

V: That was something that struck the chord with a lot of people, yes.

Susan: Yeah, because my mother, growing up, was very unpredictable. So everything was trying to figure out what her mood was and when she was going to explode, and there was no real way to always be able to figure that out. And not being able to have an opinion about anything because it was just gonna be turned against you, or… conditional love, and all of those things. Which I definitely grew up with.

Tilly: I wanted to ask, was there a reason that you chose to go with the older 8-bit style of Game Boy-type graphics?

V: I’ve always really liked surrealism as an art movement. I’ve also been weirdly attracted to absurdism and certain philosophical ideals and things, and how they translate to art. And one of my favorite things, obviously, is how those art movements might translate to things like video games.

Tilly: Sure.

V: I wanted to pick something limited because I wanted it to feel nostalgic for a lot of people, even people who may not have played Game Boy games back in the day. I actually did get the chance to play a few Game Boy games on an old-school dot matrix Game Boy. There’s just something about the older, more limited styles that tend to breed this nostalgic feeling, for bad or good.

I wanted to do that because the whole idea of this game is looking back on this hazy memory, and this was another reason I really wanted to make this game relatively soon after I moved. Which was February of 2024. So I wanted to make it before I forgot. It’s hard to imagine myself forgetting, but I found the more and more I live in life, the more I forget things that I later am surprised that I forgot about them. I wanted to do it while they were still relatively fresh. And to me, this idea that it had to be this memory. And the best way to do that was something limited.

The other thing about limited art, colors and palettes… my previous game was mostly black and white. I’m still working on my art style and my art, and I find it much easier to work in a limited color palette. Which is very interesting, because I’ve had other artists tell me, like, “I don’t understand how you do it, my brain breaks when I look at it,” and to me, it makes much more sense, I feel less held down by the art I’m making, when I specifically choose a limited amount of colors.

Tilly: Yeah, I thought it was an excellent choice for the game, not just because of the nostalgic reason that you mentioned, but I feel like those older-style graphics, 8-bit style, they’re not trying to be realistic, like our present-day Xbox and PlayStation games.

I think that they cause us to use our imaginations more. We’re filling in the blanks that the graphics don’t give us. And in a game like this, that is so intimate and personal. And it’s a horror game. To me, that made it even spookier, because I’m seeing your representation of the tree, but my mind is filling in the rest of what that tree looks like, and what’s going on, and what’s happening on the ground at the base of that tree. And your graphics were great, but then my mind is like, oh, but I bet… it’s filling in all these tiny little details that the graphics don’t have, and so, to me, that made it even more of a personal experience.

V: Yeah, That’s actually really interesting. I never thought about it, but I do think that’s one of my favorite things about games like this. I played a lot before making this game. And I like reading, but I have a hard time with novels and books, though. But if you put me into a game, and you give me a ton of stuff to read, I’m all about it. I’m gonna read as much as I can. And I always loved games that gave you just enough art to sort of form the basis of the image, but then the rest of it is sort of obscured, and you have to think about it. I agree, one of my favorite things about horror is when you don’t fully understand the horrors that you’re experiencing?

Tilly: Yes, exactly.

V: There’s a mystery behind it.

Tilly: Yep.

V: So, definitely, that makes a lot of sense.

Tilly: Yeah, it’s like in the, like, original Alien movies, you know, where you never get a really good look at that alien and so your mind is filling in what it must look like, what it must be like, and that makes it even scarier, because everything we’re imagining… they couldn’t make anything that freaky on screen, you know? Our imaginations run wild with them.

Susan: I think the art style, like, gives it a little bit of a childlike quality, which very much plays into how we deal with our parents. Like, we never stop being treated like the child we were versus who we are now. We might as well live on Mars. My parents just can’t fathom the people we are. Like, it’s just beyond their understanding. But it feels very much like when you’re suddenly faced with things from your childhood, or interactions with parents, like, it puts you back in that place.

V: I very much tried to do that. So to hear that people did feel that way is a really nice feeling. Making this game was very hard. There were times I was very uncomfortable as I was writing things, and I thought, should I change something? Should I change this? But, I really wanted it to be raw, and the only way I could really elicit and put people in those feelings was to just, you know, be as transparent as possible is a good way to say it.

Tilly: Sure.

V: Yeah, within the confines of this type of game, of course. There were things that I couldn’t do that I wish I could have done. But with the time limit, and with the idea of just wanting to finally make this thing that I’ve been thinking about for a year, I definitely did everything I could to try to give a sense of, one, that powerlessness that you feel when you’re a child, and even if you’re an adult, if you interact with a parent that still doesn’t acknowledge who you are or accept who you are, which, for a time, my mother was like that when I was older. And it just puts you right back there. The yelling and screaming, or the- there’s no sense of identity, or this idea that you can’t choose for yourself. You can’t make your own decisions, you can’t be your own person, you have to be this person that they know you are, or they say they know you are, or whatever.

Tilly: Was it hard, then, to sort of relive all of the things that you were talking about? Or did you get a catharsis from it? Or was it just mostly, “hey, I’m reliving my trauma, this sucks.”

V: This is a great question, because one of the reasons I wanted to make this game was this idea of catharsis. And then once I finished it and put it out into the world, and saw all these people reacting to it, and playing it, and streaming it, and making videos, and making comments… and I’d watch the videos, and sometimes I’d sit in on some streams and I’d realize, this isn’t really doing anything! So, I do think it was, in a way, a type of catharsis, but it’s something that didn’t feel cathartic, if that makes sense? It was something I needed to do and I’m glad I did it, and I don’t regret doing it. But a lot of it has been reliving, in an unpleasant way, those things, which might be a little bit complicated. I don’t think that’s a horrible thing. But I wouldn’t want to get lost in that.

Tilly: Sure.

V: I think I got a little bit depressed near the end when I finished it, and put it out into the world, but lately I think I’ve been doing a little bit better.

Tilly: That’s good. Yeah, it can be so tough when we’re getting so personal. We’ve written scripts or whatever where we pull bits from our lives or from our past, and we’re sort of reliving those emotions, and sometimes it can help you process them, and sometimes it’s just like, “I’m just going through it all again.” And, yeah, it can be really tough.

I have to tell you that the movie theater level kind of ruined me, in a good way. It was so good at capturing the actual feeling of what it depicts. I’m not gonna spoil it, but, I wanted to ask how you approached the horrors that we experience in this real world, and translating them into the fictional horror of your game. Were you worried they would come across the way you hoped? Because you put these artistic liberties on them, which is great, but that’s what you have to do. But were you worried about how people would interpret those?

V: I actually wouldn’t necessarily call it an artistic liberty.

Tilly: Okay.

V: I know that might sound a little bit strange, but to me, the way that we experience the world, I’ve been in some weird situations, and sometimes it feels like the offenders in those situations don’t feel like humans. And maybe that’s what I wanted to portray. So, in that way, I wouldn’t use that term, but that doesn’t make it incorrect, and now I’m being a little bit nitpicky.

Tilly: It’s your game, nitpick all you want!

V: Still, I don’t want to be too much. Actually, just to clarify, and not to spoiler anything, I just want to make sure I 100% understand… you’re referring to the bathroom segment, correct?

Tilly: Yes.

V: Okay, and I won’t say more than that. What happened in that segment is not something I have experienced directly. Which I’m grateful for, but it is something that I was constantly terrified of, living in the state that I was.

Tilly: Sure.

V: And I knew people who experienced it, and I read stories about people who experienced it. And I actually remember, a couple of my friends were playing the game and they had this reaction to it during that sequence, that they were laughing. I realized that they were laughing because it’s so ridiculous that this is actually happening in the real world, these kinds of things.

It was kind of a weird catharsis, in a way, to be able to have someone there to laugh with me. Like just how insane and ridiculous that these things are happening and so, to me, that’s what they are. It’s one of the most insane things that could happen. So, I wanted to portray it that way, as just this senseless, nonsensical, like… what even is this thing?

Tilly: Which you did very well.

V: Thank you. When I was writing, the dialogue was probably the hardest part for that sequence. What’s difficult for me is that I know some people and some artists who are very good at obscuring and translating things into metaphor and poetry and this beautiful art, where it doesn’t come out and say what this thing is, but it is able to portray it. I don’t think I’m really that good at that kind of thing, and I also realized in the moment as I was writing it, that I don’t want to obscure it and risk it sounding like anything else other than what it is.

So to me, there was a moment of… this is something that’s really important to me. And actually, funny that you mentioned the bathroom scene, that was not originally going to be in the game, in any shape or form. It was actually near the last week as I was developing the game, that I had the idea for that scene. And I realized, with everything going on and the stories I was reading about the ridiculous things happening, what this game is and what it represented, it was a very necessary thing to put in.

Tilly: Yeah.

V: So when I was writing the dialogue, I actually became less worried that people wouldn’t be able to pick up on what it was. I became more worried that people might think it came off as… how do I describe it? Preachy? But then I kind of realized if people think that, then they are not the ones who know what’s going on, and maybe they need to see something like this and think a little bit more about what’s going on, because it is.

Tilly: Absolutely. I think there’s this danger sometimes when we’re making very trans art, where if you don’t explicitly say sometimes exactly what’s happening, so many people are going to miss it.

V: Yeah, absolutely.

Tilly: When we made our short film, there’s a line in there from one of the characters that says the lead character’s mother was transphobic. And that word is said, and we had this big discussion with our assistant director and our producer over… should that line stay in there? Is it too blatant? Is it saying, “look, everybody, what’s going on?”

But then, without it… right? That was the only thing that was 100% confirming, right, that this was a trans story. The rest is there. They’re talking about this trans woman, and her father refers to her as a boy as a child, but it’s like… people are going to miss it, and we need to be sure that it is said and seen and heard and understood. Because so many times, even in work that we’ve done, we’ve had it stripped out, where it can be nothing more than metaphor. Executives get scared, or what have you, and they keep pulling it back, and then people miss it.

So many people that need to see that, to know that they’re being represented on screen, or in a game, or wherever, or they’re going to miss it. And so I like that not only did you make it very clear, but there’s even a spot somewhere in the game where the character talks about her transition. And I love that it was just right there, because it’s a normal thing that some people do, right? And it’s a thing we can talk about.

V: I’ll get this thought out, just because I’m bad at holding onto my thoughts. I’m really glad you brought that up, because when I was initially developing the game and writing the dialogue, there was no mention of the word “transition.” It was, like you said, sort of obscured, and sort of metaphorical. And I looked at it from the top, and I realized, “I can hand this to a trans person.” And I handed it to many of my trans friends, and they read it, and they were like, that was so deep, that was so powerful, I really felt that. But then the more I thought about it, I realized, like, I think this is gonna go over a lot of cis people’s heads.

Tilly: Yep.

V: And I realized something, you mentioned Alien earlier. I tried to do a little bit of digging when I heard about this a while ago, and I think it might be true, I never actually confirmed it. You might know, you might have more information, but I believe in the second movie, Aliens… there’s a very blink-and-you-miss-it reference to one of the previous characters in Alien that is trans in the movie?

Tilly: Yes! There is.

V: I remember finding that out, and I loved Alien and Aliens. I loved both of them for two very different reasons, like Aliens are obviously not much of a horror

Tilly: They’re very different movies.

V: It’s more of a sci-fi action, but I love sci-fi action, and Alien is just such a great horror movie.

Tilly: Right.

V: And when I found out that there was that kind of blink-and-you-miss representation… I found out about that when I was early on in my transition, and there was something about it that was very comforting to me at the time. But as I got more and more into my transition, I kind of started to get a little bit upset. And I realized, you know, there’s plenty of that kind of stuff out there, and I think we need more blatant representation.

Tilly: Yeah.

V: That word that you use, blatant, and the whole execs problem, I kind of realized making this game I don’t think being blatant about things is that much of a problem, and I think we should actually not shy away from doing it more. I think maybe when it comes to art, there are times it could be very helpful to others. And to ourselves, especially in these times that we’re dealing with.

So, I deliberately, as I was starting to actually make the story, put things together, work on the art, touch up the dialogue, I started to deliberately make it so that there were many things that made it very obvious that she was trans. And at first, I always get this little fear in me about, like, oh, is someone gonna see it, and someone’s gonna misgender my character and be mean to her, or whatever. And I was like, you know what? No. I wanna be true to it. If someone’s gonna be that mean, that’s their own problem, that’s not on me. This is about portraying this in art, and that’s what I wanted to do. And, I’m very happy I actually went that route, because I wanted to try to be more poetic in obscuring everything at first, but I realized it just wasn’t right for this story.

Tilly: There are so many times when we aren’t allowed to be blatant. Like, when you’re making an indie game and you’re controlling everything, that’s the time when we can, right? Because we have been told on projects, we can’t say the word “trans,” that’s a bad word. We’re like, “No, that’s just what we’re called.” It’s not a bad word. We can and we should say it.

And so, I think especially in these times that we’re living in, when so many times we only can get our stories told through publishers, or past executives, where it has to be allegorical. On those times when it doesn’t have to be, when we can actually say it, we need to. Because there’s not enough of that, and we need to be sure that it is obvious representation for the people who need to see that, “No, you can be the lead character in a really cool video game. You can be the lead character in a TV show, or a movie, or a comic. You belong. We belong.” You know, we’re just human beings, and we can be those people, too. So, I love that you did that. It was a wonderfully bold choice, and we needed it really bad.

V: Yeah, absolutely, that whole thing about indie- indie art specifically, that gets the chance to do the things that the big exec arts don’t. I think subconsciously, something inside me knew that. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve always loved indie art, experiencing it and making it, because it’s not held back by, “oh, well, we need to be prim and proper, and we can’t use this word,” or whatever else. It’s like, it’s a raw experience from the heart.

Tilly: You talked a little bit about this before, but I just wanted to ask, have you heard from more people who’ve played it? What has the response been like? And have you noticed any differences between trans people and cis people who have played it in their responses or the things that they’ve thought or said about it?

V: Yeah, I have seen a lot of people play it, and see it, and one particular thing that comes to mind is that trans people, or as sometimes I like to call some people, “trans-adjacent” people… I have a couple of cis friends that have trans partners, they’re very supportive, they’re very deep in this stuff. They work on these things with us, they’re the kind of people and support that we really need at this time. Trans and trans-adjacent people can tell right away that it’s a very personal, raw story. They can tell that it’s something from the heart, and these kinds of people will often be the ones writing comments, like, “if an ounce of this is true and it happened to you, I’m so sorry for what you went through.”

And I’ve noticed that cis people, some of the cis people who’ve played it, have… they’re not quite as quick on the uptake about it. So some of them don’t realize right away. They can appreciate it, they can realize the visceral, raw, real story, but they don’t realize how analogous to real-life situations, it might be.

There was one particular streamer who played it, and then messaged me afterward about it. I think he saw a comment about how I had mentioned that I was originally from Florida, and he sort of made the eye-squinting gif reaction kind of thing. He messaged me, and it was like, “so, did any of that stuff…” I don’t remember all the details, but paraphrasing, “did any of this stuff actually happen to you, or is it…” And I’m like, I will be real with you, it is almost a one-to-one analog telling of things that I’ve been through.

There are plenty of things in there that I didn’t go through, and plenty of things that I exaggerated, plenty of things that I know other people went through that I discussed with them, but a lot of it is very personal. And he was like, “wow, I feel so bad for all the jokes I made while I played it! Sorry.” And I told him, please don’t be sorry, because to me, humor is one of the ways that we cope with things. And that’s incredibly important to me for people to be able to make jokes and laugh about things. I would never want to silence something like that, even if they made a really dumb joke that I didn’t like. So, that has been an interesting reaction.

Overall, you know, comments-wise, from what I’ve seen from the comments and the people who have played it, they’ve been so surprising that people were like, “it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful art, it’s a beautiful piece of this visceral story, it’s so personal.” Let me see if I can find this comment real quick… it said, “yes, I love this!” This person commented on the game on the itch.io page. “It feels like a direct glimpse into someone else’s mind. Deeply uncomfortable inner debates about identity and what to let go of made real, and then brutal recounts of abuse.” So, I’m really grateful that people have really seen and felt what it is, what I meant for it to be.

Tilly: Yeah.

V: And I’ve been surprised by some of the ways that people reacted, some people pointing out things that I didn’t notice or didn’t think of at the time when I was developing it. Almost everyone I’ve seen who’s made a comment or posted about it or talked about it had a positive thing to say about it, usually a very positive, personal, thing to say about it.

Tilly: That’s amazing, and well deserved. So, what is next for you? Do you have, like, a new project that you want to tease or talk about or anything?

V: I am… I’m working on a lot in my personal life, in my work life, because I make these games and projects for free, and it was very important to me that they are completely free, I care very much about the accessibility of art. Unfortunately, I have a day job that I have to go to.

Tilly: We still need money to live.

V: Yeah, exactly. There have been some stressful, difficult situations I’m trying to work out. I’m trying to see if I can get to a better place where I can be more comfortable about things and work on things. But even now that I’m done, and I’ve been taking time to rest, the ideas are still just assaulting my brain.

Tilly: Yeah, that’s how they are.

V: I very much have plans to work on more things. I will say that in the future, there will be a sequel to this game, and it’s going to be something that’s going to be very different and important. And I can hint that the girl has finally chosen a name for herself, so we’ll actually have a name for her in that game.

But, in the meantime, I’m planning on working on a few more, I want to say, smaller projects. They may be larger than When Summer is Over, but still smaller than for what my goals are for the sequel. And it’s funny you ask, because a couple of friends of mine pointed out now I can try to make something cute, a palate cleanser, something like that. I was like, yeah! But as I thought about it more, I’m afraid deeply personal and dark is all I know, so all the next ideas I have are for more things that will revolve around that kind of stuff.

At the moment, I’m mostly trying to just rest and recover a bit, because this game took a lot out of me. But once I find my bearings again, I’ll be working on a couple of smaller projects. I wanted to make another visual novel type game, similar to what Cold Call is, with a bit more interactivity to it, some point-and-click aspects, and some branching, narrative story lines. That game will particularly be pertaining to women’s issues with stalking and some other things, which I want to try to portray carefully. I am familiar with some of those issues, and I know that they can be very frightening to deal with.

The other game I wanted to make will be another similar game, like When Summer is Over, another RPG Maker game where I want to actually explore some more RPG map aspects. I want to make it more gameplay heavy, I want to have some more puzzles and some combat sequences and things to kind of prepare. I can’t say too much about those yet. I have overall ideas for the storyline and stuff, but, you know, things change as you write and work on them. But, yeah, I will definitely be working on more projects.

Tilly: Excellent. Please keep me informed, I would love to see them. And don’t feel bad that personal dark horror games feel like your wheelhouse. We all have our wheelhouse, and the thing that we feel best writing, and that’s where our creativity lies, and where we want to work. So, it’s cool that you have found what that is for you. Don’t let anybody pressure you to make a cutesy game if you don’t want to.

V: I really appreciate it. I do like that some of the people pointed out how cute the art in When Summer is Over is with the sprites and stuff. I do like the overworld when you’re moving around, and the little old-school, kind of almost 8-bit style sprites.

And I actually did feel bad at first, but I’m really glad you said that, because the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized there are so many different kinds of games I like. And I kind of had this hard thing in my brain for a while that told me, like, if I like something, that means I have to also want to try to make things like that. And I kind of just realized that’s not how it works. Within the last two games that I’ve developed, I have found my wheelhouse, and I’m happy with that. And that doesn’t mean that I can’t also continue to like and enjoy the other kinds of games that I do like, that are more entertainment, or silly, or cute, or whatever. So, yeah, absolutely.

Tilly: Well, thank you so much for being here, and for making When Summer is Over, and turning something that was so personal into this, like, amazing piece of art that speaks so well to trans people.

V: Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate the time, and I really appreciate talking about it.

Tilly: Of course. And to the folks listening, you can play When Summer is Over at the link in the show notes, but please do read and heed its content warnings. It is a horror game, but it’s also a really beautiful piece of art that you should experience if you can.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Transcribed by Kate Rascali – summerknights.bsky.social

THE INTENTIONAL (!) TRANS ALLEGORY OF STRANGE NEW WORLDS’ AD ASTRA PER ASPERA, part 3

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Look out, here comes THE INTENTIONAL (!) TRANS ALLEGORY OF STRANGE NEW WORLDS’ AD ASTRA PER ASPERA, part 3! We wrap up the story of Una and the Illyrians, and let’s see if this hopeful, accepting future can show our present reality a way forward!

Here’s PART 1 and PART 2 for you, because starting with this essay would be a very confusing and bad idea. Don’t do it! Trust me for once, geez.

Let’s go!

36: 15 – Una takes the stand. Neera: “How long have you been in Starfleet?” Una: “Twenty-five years.” Neera: “Would you call this career your life’s goal?” Una: “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Neera: “You knew you were Illyrian, thus genetically modified. Didn’t you think you might find yourself in this position one day?” Una: “I had been warned, yes.” Neera: “So why join Starfleet?”

And here we get to the heart of it.

Una: “Ad astra per aspera. ‘To the stars through hardship.’ It was the Starfleet motto before the Federation. …I knew it meant we must endure hardship to get to the stars. But I like to think that it also means that the stars could deliver us from anything. That in the mystery and vastness of space, we might not just satisfy our curiosity, our need for exploration, but that in it, we might each also find… salvation.”

No no, I’m not crying, you’re crying.

37:24 – Neera: “Why would you need salvation? Was your childhood difficult?” Batel objects. Neera: “I’m simply establishing context. If Una Chin-Riley is to be tried for being an Illyrian, then the court must understand what it means to be an Illyrian.” Do you think any of the courts banning trans people from public life, and banning our healthcare, have even an inkling of what it means to be trans? Do you think they even care?

But this is fiction, and the Federation and Starfleet are aspirational. And so, here, they do care. And isn’t that beautiful?

37:50 – Neera: “You grew up in a Federation colony in the Vaultera Nebula, correct?” Una: “Yes. We were given provisional membership in the Federation the year before I was born.” Neera; “On the condition that all genetic modification was to cease. …But that didn’t happen, did it?” Una: “It did for some. But for other families, like mine, it was our tradition. Our heritage.”

Her family believed in supporting and affirming trans kids, regardless of what laws or society said. That’s what good parents do. That’s the job.

38:19 – Neera: “What was life like for your family under the Federation?” Flashback to young Una with voiceover. Una: “We no longer discussed our customs. We performed our rituals only in secret.”

Don’t tell anyone you’re trans. Utilize do-it-yourself hormone replacement therapy.

This was the very real history of trans people in our society.

Una: “Those who could hid their modifications. When new children were born, parents sought out friendly doctors to deliver them.” They found gender-affirming docs to help kids when possible.

Una: “We knew if we were ever found to be genetically augmented we would be arrested.” Neera: “Did that ever happen to anyone you knew?” Una: “A boy I went to school with. …Some of us have immune systems that can glow. Someone must have seen him. He came home one day to find the word ‘augment’ on their door. We had just learned about augments in school. Opinions on them were… clear.”

Their school taught them to hate augments. Society absolutely does teach us these biases, though usually through more subtle means. But also, sometimes, directly as fact.

39:18 – Neera: “Did anyone defend him, his family?” Una: “Some. But there weren’t enough voices.” CIS APATHY ALLOWS IT TO HAPPEN. If you do not stand up for trans people, nothing will ever change for the better. And, in fact, you are a vital part of the machinery of our oppression. Again see my book BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX for more.

Una: “[He] and his parents were arrested in their home. He was ten years old.” Neera: “How did this affect your community?” Una: “Some families moved to other planets that weren’t Federation.” This is just leaving red stats for blue ones, or leaving the US for countries with better trans laws.

Una: “And those of us who stayed, we were persecuted. Circumstances became extreme. The anti-augmentation laws seemed to give people freedom to act on their worst impulses.” WELL! I don’t think you need me to explain that one. The rise in bigoted violence correlating to a certain person being elected President (whose name isn’t worthy of being mentioned by me) is very clear. Bigots see it as permission to act on their hate.

Una: “First were the insults. ‘Augment.” ‘Moddie.’ ‘Freak.’ There were stores that wouldn’t serve you if they’d heard you’d been modified. Even the rumors could be dangerous.” Didja see the news story about a cis lady fired from Wal-mart because someone accused her of being trans?! This shit literally hurts everyone.

“I remember when the attacks began. We feared for our lives. …There was a fight at school one day. One boy accused another boy of being an Illyrian. I tried to stop it. My leg got broken. It was such a simple fix. So easy to treat with modern medicine. But my parents wouldn’t take me to a hospital. They were afraid.”

So here’s the thing. I don’t feel safe going to red states in this country. And one reason is if I am in a red state and I have to go a hospital, are they even going to help me?

Are they going to hurt me?

If I had to be admitted, would they keep up my HRT?? Nope. They’d medically detransition me.

For cis folks out there, imagine if you had to go to a hospital and if you happened to be in one of the 50% of states who has legislated hate against you, they would force the wrong hormones into your body and call it “for your own good.”

LITERALLY STOP READING RIGHT NOW AND IMAGINE IT.

Una: “Despite my modifications, my leg became infected. If we hadn’t found an Illyrian doctor willing to see me in the middle of the night, I would have died.”

Neera: “Was this normal for such a common thing to become life-threatening?” Una: “It was for kids like me, yes. Civil unrest became so great the local government decided to divide us into two cities: Illyrian and non-Illyrian.”

Segregation. Separate, and not treated equal. We’ve all seen exactly how that plays out. It’s just legalized discrimination.

Una: “My family, we went to the non-Illyrian city. You see, some of us could pass.” There it is again, right on the surface. Supertext. Again see MISGENDERING AND PASSING for more.

 “We could blend in, so we did. We left everyone else behind. Our families. Our friends. We left them all. I regret it to this day.”

41:59 – Neera: “And yet, after all of this strife, you still wanted to be a Starfleet officer. …How did Starfleet find out that you were Illyrian? You managed to keep your status a secret for so many years, it’s surprising they found out now. …Who turned you in?” Una: “I turned myself in.” Neera: “Why would you risk your career, the life you built?”

Why come out publicly? Why tell people you’re trans? Why risk all society has rewarded you with for conforming?

Una: “I was so sick of living a lie, of pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I wanted my crew to know me for who I really was. I thought maybe if they did, I would finally be safe. And Starfleet would finally understand Illyrians better.” The more of us come out, the more our profile rises, and the more people understand us. But of course, that sadly means the more we are attacked for it.

43:12 – Neera: “So, after all of it… you still wanted Starfleet to accept you. Why?” Una: “When I was five or six, I remember a Starfleet crew visited. They were all so… different from one another. So many crew members from so many planets. It was beautiful. I thought if all those people from all those worlds can work together, side by side, maybe I could, too. Maybe I could be a part of something bigger than myself. Starfleet is not a perfect organization, but it strives to be. And I believe it could be.”

Our society, of course, still has bigotries of all kinds. That the human-led Federation doesn’t is, perhaps, the biggest (and most hopeful) fiction in this entire franchise about spaceships and aliens.

44:03 – Neera: “You’re saying that… is why you turned yourself in? …Because you believe in Starfleet.” Una: “Yes. Ad astra per aspera.”

44:43 – Vulcan Admiral Pasalk cross-examines. “That was a very emotional story. However, emotions are irrelevant. Facts are not.” Fuck your feelings, eh? But not my feelings. Just yours.

Pasalk then tries to implicate Pike and his entire crew for not turning Una in, and punish them for being accomplices. Pasalk: “For four months, the captain of the Enterprise engaged in a conspiracy to conceal the Illyrian Una Chin-Riley.”

46:47 – Pasalk: “The defense wants you to ignore the facts in favor of emotion. But the only matter of import today is the law. Una Chin-Riley broke the law and lied about it, as her own testimony has proven. Further, her actions will likely lead to a court martial of one of Starfleet’s most decorated officers [Pike]. She is clearly toxic to Starfleet in both action and inaction. Therefore, the only logical response is to find the defendant guilty of all charges.”

47:27 – Neera: “Captain Batel, are you familiar with the Starfleet Code 8514? …Would you mind reading that code for the court?” Batel: “’In extraordinary and extreme circumstances, if the following conditions are met: 1 – any person fleeing persecution… or fearing for their life due to political or religious beliefs, cultural engagements or biological truths,” like TRANSNESS, “may, 2 – seek safety within Starfleet… and 3 – upon revealing themselves to authorities and making a request, may be granted asylum. …Starfleet captains must exercise discretion in judgment when offering asylum. Status is confirmed by a Starfleet tribunal or designated authority.”

48:36 – Neera: “Fearing for their life, one may seek safety within Starfleet and request asylum. Starfleet has a long tradition of performing rescue missions. How many distressed peoples has Starfleet aided? How many lives saved? Una Chin-Riley knew this. She believed in the best of Starfleet, and that through it she could find salvation from the hardships and danger of her everyday life. Danger she faced just for being born an Illyrian. Dangers born of prejudice, spurred on by laws against people like her. But through her hardships, Una saw the stars. She joined Starfleet because she believed it was the only thing that could save her life. She fled persecution, and within Starfleet she sought safety. And then, by turning herself in, Una fulfilled the third and final requirement for asylum. She asked for it, and Captain Pike granted it. Like all good Starfleet captains, including Admiral April… he exercised his judgment and gave her asylum. All this tribunal needs to do now… is confirm that status to absolve them both.”

Also sad that this part is fiction, because we should be offering people persecuted for who they are asylum, and freedom, and acceptance. If only we could be that Federation.

50:35 – Neera: “Do you know why I love the law? Because a law is not a mirror to society. A law is an ideal. A beacon to remind us how to be our better selves. And you have the opportunity today to do just that.” Imagine if our elected representatives and the judicial branch all operated on that guiding principle. We might just find our way to a utopia.

52:09 – The judge: “I think we can all agree that the issue of genetic engineering is a nuanced one. The laws prohibiting it exist for very good reasons. And regulations must persist so we may not one day face another crisis like the Eugenics Wars. But this court also believes that these reasons cannot and do not allow us to treat every individual augment, Illyrian, or other persons with modified DNA the same. Lines must be drawn, but they must also shift when necessary. Perhaps someday Starfleet and the Federation may change its views, but today I’m afraid all we can do is consider what the defense has asked. That we judge the defendant’s specific case and unique circumstances independently.” And then they grant Una asylum. Justice for Una, but not for all Illyrians.

53:55 – Una: “I’m sorry we didn’t do more for Illyrians. This was a technicality.” Neera: “It’s a start.” And it is. Now there’s precedent. It all has to start somewhere, and no matter how small the victory, they all add up.

54:21 – Neera: “…I am not the biggest fan of Starfleet. But I am looking at a starship crew that proudly serves under an Illyrian commander. So, like I said, it’s a start.”

Even having people who will proudly stand by us, stand up for us, fight for us, and defend us is a start. And we need that start.

We need you, cis people, to be part of the change we need to see in this world.

And I want to mention, this allegory was certainly visible to the episode’s star, Rebecca Romijn, who plays Una.

“Even though we have this utopian, futuristic world in Trek, sometimes we still grapple with these very human issues like prejudice and persecution. That episode really puts the spotlight on that. I think that the message that Una wants to send is, just because I can hide doesn’t mean I should have to. And I would like to think that’s what a lot of trans people feel like, too.”

And if you want to see just how much this episode means to me, check out UNEXPECTED CHANGES FROM TRANSITION, with an adventure I had at San Diego Comic-Con that’ll show you the lengths I went to in order to get a little piece of something from this episode, a pin that means the world to me.

In fact, my lovely wife Susan knows just how much this episode means to me and got me this incredible necklace for my birthday.

I wear it every day.

Star Trek has long been one of the most inclusive shows and franchises around, and with each passing iteration it gets closer to living up to its own ideals, just like Starfleet and the Federation.

And in very real ways, through history, Star Trek has helped push us to be better. TV’s first interracial kiss! One of TV’s first lesbian kisses! Ever-growing racial, ethnic, body type, and gender diversity. We can be better, if we choose to be.

My wife and I are writing a Star Trek comic. We had a Star Trek vow renewal (see A TRANS RE-WEDDING). We met writing Star Trek fanfic. We’ve also written for the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game (see TRANS TABELTOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES for more on how important those can be to trans folks) .

And it’s no mistake that one of the bits we wrote for the game was from Una’s perspective, and based on this episode.

Thank you to Dana Horgan and the entire team who made this episode, and said “trans rights are human rights” loud and proud.

Being trans shouldn’t be difficult, but transphobic society ensures that it is.

Who do we want to be?

Who do you want to be?

To the stars through hardship.

Ad astra per aspera.

Let’s boldly go.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com