mimics inside

It’s intended as ironic of course, as deliberate camp. The musical is intended as a parody of old sci-fi and horror movies, mixed with a camp drag aesthetic inspired by the contemporary glam rock movement. The mad scientist villains in the movies being parodied were often queer-coded, and vaguely effeminate.

So to parody that, Frank-n-Furter goes far beyond the queer-coding, and is outrageously effeminate and evil. He rapes people, kills them with an axe and serves them for dinner and force-fems them to take part in his climactic stage show. He is a Frankenstein parody, who literally makes an artificial man in order to fuck him (a joke about Frankenstein I’ve seen on tumblr). And does it all while wearing stockings, a bustier and heavy make-up. He is deliberately the ultimate evil man in a dress trope, referencing Psycho and all effeminate mad scientists in media.

That Frank-N-Furter isn’t explicitly a trans woman doesn’t matter. The musical deliberately blurs the line. The line “I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania” is like a perfect encapsulation of how horror movies treat transfemininity. “Men in dresses” (transvestites) trans women (transsexual) and a symbol of predatory horror movie villainy (Transylvania) are all conflated, making a pun of out how they all begin with “trans”.

Of course, it’s intended to be ironic. It’s a parody of queer-coded villainy in old horror movies by turning it up to eleven, so that you can’t take it seriously. The whole movie has this drag show camp aesthetic that it celebrates, and the supposed representatives of heteronormativity, Brad and Janet are turned in the end. Frank-N-Furter becomes a symbol of a hedonistic queer liberation “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure.. Don’t dream it, be it.”

This is the clear intent of Rocky Horror, and it’s how it became a “queer classic”. Does it work? I’ll admit that I enjoy the movie version. The glam rock aesthetic is fun, the songs are catchy, and they keep coming at a quick pace. A lot of it is admittedly that I love the old horror and sci-fi movies it’s parodying, so my cultural touchstones are similar. I’m the kind of person to get a thrill out of knowing that Frank-N-Furter at one point uses the exact same prop that Peter Cushing used in the second Hammer Frankenstein movie.

That is a different question however from how well it succeeds at subverting the transmisogynistic tropes it handles. Even in the most sympathetic possible account of the musical, it’s doing the equivalent of handling live grenades. Is it the creators tropes to subvert in the first place? Is it the fans?

Let’s talk about Rocky Horror’s creator, Richard O’Brien. He is certainly a weird and contradictory person, he identifies as a third gender and “70% male and 30% female“, and is using estrogen. So arguably he is a transfem enby and thus transmisogyny-affected. But he’s also a transmisogynist who doesn’t believe trans women are “real women”.( I would like to know what exact percentage of “female” as a transfem person turns you into a bad fake trans woman.)

Of course the important thing about O’Brien is that he is rich. He is in a vastly different class position than the majority of transfems. So while he may be taking estrogen and living as a third gender, he is simultaneously isolated by his own wealth from the effects of the transmisogyny he bolsters in the media (see Caitlyn Jenner for another example of a wealthy transfem doing the same thing).

And O’Brien is rich because Rocky Horror is a huge success. The stage show has seen tons of productions, the original ran for 7 years in the West End, and the movie is a slow but certain money maker, with probably the longest theatrical run out of any movie in history. He is swimming in residuals.

This raises the more interesting question of Rocky Horror’s position in the wider culture, and it’s status as “queer media”. It’s a movie which is just not passively watched but celebrated and performed by its fandom. People show up in cosplay to showings, “shadow casts” perform while the movie plays. And of course the original stage musical is still performed.

So we have to ask ourselves, what are people performing? And who is performing it? And I’ve already answered the former question earlier. Rocky Horror is largely an ironic performance of transmisogyny. And the fact is, the majority of people doing that performance are not the main targets of transmisogyny. They are largely TME cishet, queer and trans people. It’s “ironic” transmisogyny to be sure, I think most fans of Rocky Horror who have any understanding of what it is doing view Frank-N-Furter as the true hero of the show. But is it really their thing to be ironic about? Are transmisogyny-exempt people really the people who should reclaim with irony and camp transmisogynistic tropes in horror media? I don’t think so, and that’s why there is so much resentment about Rocky Horror from transfems. And it’s creator doesn’t help, because while he’s arguably transfem, he also spreads transmisogyny in the media.

It illustrates a lot of things, for example how imprecise “queer” is as a description of people. It’s an umbrella term, and does group together people who have much in common. But it also erases the material differences within the community. Queer people aren’t all equally oppressed.

So Rocky Horror status as queer media, as a campy celebration of queerness and parody of anti-queer tropes in genre films is kinda grating. Because it enables TME queer people to perform and celebrate Rocky Horror, because they are queer and it’s about “queerness”, when there are specifically transmisogynistic tropes parodied in the musical. It isn’t really their place to do so.

It appropriates specific transmisogynistic tropes in the media by thoughtlessly subsuming it into the general anti-queerness which it is part of.

Of course there are transfems who got to explore their gender at Rocky Horror showings. But I think the reason they did that is because mtf crossdressing is accepted as part of a camp ironic performance in such a context. It makes it feel safer to perform femininity in public, because you can backtrack and say it’s purely ironic. That’s no different from the comedy crossdressing in American Halloween parties, and I think we can all agree those are often transmisogynistic.

And of course, Rocky Horror is an example of how cis men can perform femininity, and get celebrated for it in mainstream society, while escaping the effects of transmisogyny that transfems experience, and in fact often furthering that transmisogyny. It’s often a (negative) performance of transfemininity, in which actual transfems play no part and are mocked.

Tim Curry is a very good example. He made his career from playing Frank-N-Furter, and he probably couldn’t have done that if he was actually transfem, and not just crossdressing for an ironic performance on stage and screen. Like I don’t have anything against him in particular, quite the opposite, he’s one of my favourite actors, love him in everything from Clue to Muppet Treasure Island to Gabriel Knight. My objection is to the patriarchal and transmisogynistic system that favors cishet men like him.

Speaking of crossdressing on stage, the drag culture which Rocky Horror is inspired by of course has a complex history. It’s deeply rooted in both African-American and queer culture, and transfems have played major roles in drag. But Rocky Horror is if anything even an appropriation of drag culture. It represents drag’s commercialization and recuperation into the mainstream. It took drag out of the gay bars being raided by the police and onto the more respectable West End stage, making a lot of money in the process.

Rocky Horror beyond any qualities it has as a stage and film musical, due to its popularity represents a lot of complex issues. It’s important to queer culture, but it also represents the commercialization and recuperation of queer drag into the cishet mainstream. And within the queer community, it is a shining example of how TME queers can appropriate specifically transfem struggles as their own. It shows how cis men can gain wealth and fame performing transmisogynistic caricatures (even if they are ironic and don’t mean it).

The dog robots are supposed to be autonomous, threehalves is explicitly only for being piloted by a human. The giant horns make it difficult for this machine to enter through doorways, and that is the point. Coupled with the built-in weak points, it is very easy to disable this thing, so it can't be used by the police or the military effectively.

A new study published on neanderthal remains discovered in Iberia in 2024 appears to confirm a controversial idea: that devil blade technology was not unique to Homo sapiens.

The 59,000 year old remains likely represent a male of about 25 years of age. Isotopic analysis of his teeth from a previous study suggests a diet largely composed of freshwater fish and mollusks, and the intact parts of his skeleton reveal signs of healed fractures to his left arm and temple. Most significantly, his remains were found in vertically bisected halves deposited on their sides about a meter apart.

“When I first saw the photos from the excavation, all I could do was just say, wow, wow,” says Chunt Sanders, principal author of the study. "The fact that this man's body was cut this way was already striking, you know, as far as we know, this type of damage could only be performed with a devil blade, which itself made this a huge find. But it was the level of mastery that really struck me. It wasn't just a clean cut, it was a perfect one. I don't think even the best 30-year adept could split a human body from skull to groin so evenly, with so little fragmentation. This is the work of a true master."

While it may never be known whether the remains represent a devil bladesman who died in combat with a fellow wielder, the fine detail of preservation gives some clues to this neanderthal's last moments.

“Based on the positioning of the remains, we believe this individual was bisected by the blade wielder and continued to walk for a moment before his body slid apart in two pieces, probably spraying blood everywhere,” Sanders says. “His halves were then rapidly covered by silt, which allowed for this remarkable state of preservation.”

The fossil halves are in a near complete state of articulation and conserve granular levels of detail, allowing for microscopic analysis of the cut bones to be performed. The results are consistent with typical devil blade shear patterns, though further study will be necessary to estimate the exact size and weight of the blade.

The age of devil blade technology is heavily disputed. “We know behaviorally modern humans have used devil blades for at least 30,000 years, as evidenced by the Devil Blade Sorcerer of Chauvet,” Sanders says, referring to cave art depicting a composite bison-human figure decapitating a mammoth with a sword the length of their body. “...But it’s an open question when exactly we first developed the use. The evidence we have from upper paleolithic rock art shows that highly sophisticated techniques were already in practice at this time. The first human adoption of the devil blade likely occurred much, much earlier.”

Highly controversial evidence of early devil blade technology dates as far back as 350,000 years ago, with the finding of a fossilized antelope carcass in present-day Kenya that some claim suggests human butchery with a much finer, stronger blade edge than could have been produced with a Sangoan industry hand axe, though studies have been inconclusive due to the fossil's heavily eroded condition. Definitive evidence of devil blade technology only begins to appear on the archeological record much more recently, well into human behavioral modernity, yet the uniform global distribution of devil blade use in the upper paleolithic suggests potential for Homo sapiens acquisition of the tool occurring prior to dispersal from Africa.

Also debated is whether Homo sapiens had a monopoly on devil blade technology, or whether this tool is one we shared with neanderthals. Some eagle carcasses associated with neanderthal camps have been claimed to suggest butchery by devil blade to harvest wing and tail feathers, with some paleoanthropologists further speculating that the preferential use of such a physically taxing tool over equally capable flint tools may indicate a religious rite. More conservative takes dismiss the concept of neanderthal devil blade usage altogether due to a much more scattered and inconclusive record of the technology in neanderthals than in contemporaneous humans, with most unambiguous finds of devil blade butchery of possible neanderthal provenance occurring at sites Homo sapiens also occupied.

The exact origin of devil blade technology, and whether its usage was exclusive to Homo sapiens, has been a subject of heated debate. This finding sheds some light on the matter.

“The notion that neanderthals were too ‘primitive’ to use the devil blade is dead in the water. The notion of, “oh, maybe they had devil blades, but they were probably just using simple beginner techniques they could copy from watching training duels between young Homo sapiens”, is dead," Sanders says. "This is strong evidence of mastery by neanderthals independently of Homo sapiens, long before our species settled the Iberian interior.”

Sanders is confident that further discoveries - and re-examination of previous evidence of paleolithic devil blade technology - will shed more light on the deep history of the practice, and the role it played in the lives of neanderthals. She's also hopeful that this finding will mark a shift in popular perception of our closest relatives.

soliloquy by an immortal cave painter.

foxgirl martial arts: this one's all about feints, misleading footwork, tail movements, and having laid traps all over the battlefield a week before, as part of a tax evasion scheme. unfortunately, foxgirl hubris is more liability than asset in the wuxia genre.

doggirl martial arts: we make a lot of jokes about doggirls here but this one is actually incredibly deadly. spiritual pressure is generated the wagging the tail and then they ram head-first into you right at groin level. extremely painful.

birdgirl martial arts: they fly above you and drop things. no one has a counter so all of the other animalgirls just decided to stop inviting the birdgirls to their tournament arcs. but...how do you keep girls who can fly away?

scarecrowgirl martial arts: with scarecrowgirls, obviously. there's a lot of techniques for yelling at birds that don't have a lot of crossover utility, but the thing where they blow on a dandelion and knock every birdgirl in a flock out of the sky is pretty cool.

snakegirl martial arts: you'd think it would just be 蛇拳, or something about constructing, or like in five deadly venoms, but for some reason snakegirls are all about dual wielding maces. if they've got a long enough tail, they can build up some nasty centripetal force.

sharkgirl martial arts: there's not a whole lot you can do to improve on the basic sharkgirl bite attack deadliness-wise, so this is mostly just about figuring out less awkward techniques for getting up close to people and making jawing motions at them. it's what makes sharkgirls so smooth!

knightgirl martial arts: greatswords, broadswords, short swords, glaives, guisarmes, glance-guisarmes, and other weapons from back in D&D times. heavy armor techniques have largely been abandoned since cowboygirls first came on the scene; today's knightgirls are strictly chainmail.

megatheriagirl martial arts: spiritual energy is cultivated and conserved over the course of a lifetime of inaction, and unleashed in a single devastating strike. Once they use it, it's going to take a while before they can build up for another one, but the megatheriagirls are twelve feet tall. they'll manage!

squidgirl martial arts: eight arms. two tentacles. ten revolvers. six chambers per revolver. one bullet per chamber. a whole bunch of math and also several ink tricks, like the "calligraphy fist" (leaves a mean note on someone's face).

robotgirl martial arts: one of the more dynamic schools, as each generation of robotgirl iteratively improves on elements of past robotgirls or shifts in different directions of design. contemporary robotgirl martial arts generally focus on a combination of mentally linked combat drones and hacking your enemy's phone to send embarrassing texts to their crush, but older styles emphasize integrated gadgetry, onboard weapons systems, and allegories for depression.

binturonggirl martial arts: employs a combination of claw strikes, weaponized scent glands, and prehensile tail techniques for grappling, disarms, and sweeps. sometimes known as bearcatgirl style, although binturonggirls aren't very closely related to beargirls at all — their closest relatives are catgirls, civetgirls, hyenagirls, and mongoosegirls.

scorpiongirl martial arts: there's a couple of pincer and sting techniques, but this mostly focuses on convincing uber drivers to give you a ride despite the well-known story of the scorpiongirl and the froggirl.

the one I was looking for originally also has a summer variant. (artist is Frederick Charles Herrick: 'it is warmer below' is from 1927, 'it is cooler below' is 1926)