(Note: A review I wrote for my now ex-job back in August. I was never paid for this review, my contract having run out. If this seems shorter than my usual stuff, that’s because it is. These were just meant to be short little reviews.)
As August skims away into September, so does the summer inevitably fade as well. With vacations ending and people heading back to school, perhaps it would make sense to look at a recently released graphic novel about school. And with a social climate not so conducive to the rights of transgender people, Crystal Frasier’s Cheer Up! is a tale about gender identity, sexuality, and how cisgender people can look at trans people.
Annie is the smartest girl in the senior class at her high school, with no one coming close to her grades. The only problem is her anti-social nature, brought upon by years of bullying, which has caused physical altercations between her and her classmates. At the request of her mother and the principal, Annie decides to try out for the cheerleading team where she meets a former friend named Bebe. The latter is a transgirl, people pleasing to the point of harming her own emotional needs, all in order to keep her parents appeased to her transition. Their story is one of bonding, learning how Annie is just very socially anxious and Bebe is forced to be one of the “good ones” or fear retribution for being a “bad” trans person. And they wonder if their relationship is strong enough to withstand Bebe’s fears.
Cheer Up! has its roots in the bonds of different relationships: familial, platonic, and romantic. In addition, it also focuses on the attention being trans can push onto a person who simply wants to exist. Bebe would love nothing more than to just be treated like another girl, but rather the attention not only from her classmates but the state at large others her. This othering results in Bebe becoming extremely uncomfortable and forcibly becoming a people pleaser. Moments where she does get angry results in mockery of her putting on her “man voice” or being constantly sexually harassed by a popular male student. It’s only through changing relationships that she is able to finally begin changing for herself. Annie, a lesbian, seeing her romantically as a woman to her parents slowly accepting their daughter to the rest of the cheerleaders realizing they were objectifying her to be known as the team with a trans cheer captain.
Authors similar to Crystal Fraiser include Lilah Sturges and Kay O’Neil, prolific trans authors for the medium. One of Sturges’ most recent releases, Girl Haven, also has heavy focus on trans themes and those of gender identity. Extremely important in a time where trans people seem to be constantly under attack. O’Neil has written plenty of queer related graphic novels, most notably the Dragon Tea Society trilogy and Princess Princess Ever After, a seemingly common fairy tale that turns tropes on their heads.
The book is relatively short compared to contemporary graphic novels, but that just means that it accomplishes what it needs to without going on for too long. The main relationship is between Annie and Bebe, and it is very believable to see them slowly reconnect, as if they had never lost their friendship in the first place. The way that Bebe’s cis classmates react to her vary, in ways that do entirely make sense to trans people. Not everyone is targeting her, but the attention she has received magnifies her fears of everyone waiting to harass her. Her fellow cheerleaders are seemingly supportive, but also face their own inner biases against Bebe, to the point of purposefully leaving her out from non-school activities they all participate in. And doin this toward a girl who does nothing but attempting to placate them, solely so she can feel like it is okay for her to exist as a human.
I highly recommend this story for anyone, genuinely. The importance of humanizing trans people, specifically transwomen, has never been more critical than now. One may believe they are being an ally, but inherent biases can reflect how they may actually act to a trans person. Even Annie, who lovingly supports Bebe, steps over the line in her attempts to defend Bebe from anti-trans rhetoric. It does go to lengths to show how this negatively impacts trans people, who at the end of the day are people and worthy of respect from others with no caveats.
While short, the tale of Annie and Bebe is the perfect way to start off the school year and the fall. After all, they are commencing their own senior year at the beginning of the story. Even outside of its own romance, there is much more to grasp from it than just the base story. Another excellent release from Oni Press, that seems to always knock it out with what they publish.
One game that I’ve had sitting on my Steam Library, yet somehow never opened or played, for years has been The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories. This game released in 2018, and when it comes to talking about video games that revolve around queer issues and themes, I basically never see anything about it outside of initial reviews that came out after it released. Over the past two days, I decided to finally play it all the way through to see what it was about. This game was nominated for Game for Impact at the 2018 Game Awards, losing out to Celeste, which unfortunately is a hard game to beat and is another of my favorite games of all time.
That said, as much as I love Celeste and continue to play it even now, The Missing is a game that hit me so hard that I was reminded of the first time I played Life is Strange. The latter game helped me come to terms with who I am, so the fact that The Missing managed to inflict a similar feeling upon me is impressive. Like a lot of my favorite games, The Missing is a game dripping with symbolism and dream logic. Is this my new favorite game? Possibly. My favorite tends to rotate between Life is Strange and Celeste, depending on my mood, but The Missing is an extremely well written game.
So what is The Missing? It’s a 2D platform-puzzle game, written and directed by Hidetaka Suehiro aka SWERY. If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s almost definitely because Suehiro is most well known for his work on the Dead Premonition games, a pair of critically polarizing horror games that take a lot of inspiration from western works like Twin Peaks. The second game reportedly had transphobic content in it, something Hidetaka quickly apologized for, noting his English skills as poor and something he would work to fix. Considering his history, I’m inclined to believe he made a genuine writing mistake and this game is part of why I believe him.
This game will contain deep spoilers for The Missing, so stop reading her if you do NOT want to be spoiled about the twists and turns of the game’s story and contain some triggering elements such as talk on suicide and self-harm, along some other topics.
So right off the bat, I wanna talk about the gameplay. Normally, I forego talking about gameplay primarily because I like to talk about story and character content. But here I need to point out that the game’s 2D platforming can be frustrating, especially on a better hardware setup. I recently got a new laptop running a GeForce RTX 2070 Super, which is wonderful compared to what I used to have. However, the game was running so quickly that my inputs were being read incorrectly. I was unable to jump as high as normal, making the game near impossible at the point where I changed laptops. By limiting the FPS down to 60, the game worked normal. But it did show me how finnicky the controls can be at parts where you have to do some precision platforming. In addition, some actions require small cutscenes every time you do it resulting in the game slowing to a crawl. I do believe, however, that these problems are minute enough not to cause a problem. I completed the game, with all collectible donuts, in around 7 hours.
The Missing is a game primarily about two women: Jackie Jameson Macfield and her best friend Emily. The two are extremely close, and while out camping near their hometown, Emily suddenly vanishes and the island turns into a nightmare. JJ is struck by lightning, killing her, but she’s suddenly granted the ability to regenerate her body after she dies. The goal of the game is to find Emily while proceeding through areas and solving platform-puzzle challenges to progress and grab 271 donuts, the game’s main collectible. Grabbing every donut is important, since each one takes you a step closer in understanding JJ as a character via unlockable text messages with her friends and her professor.
Most of these challenges are not solved normally, however. As I said before, JJ can regenerate her body after being harmed. Of course, her body can be completely decimated with her having to horribly harm herself to remove limbs up to only being a head in order to progress through these puzzles. JJ can also harm herself in other ways, including setting herself on fire or breaking her neck in order to flip the area upside down. All of these self-harming behaviors are integral to the gameplay. The last gameplay type is running away from the Hairshrieker, a monster made of bones that chases JJ through the island with a giant box cutter. It’s pretty much just platforming with a monster that will kill you.
First Hairshrieker encounter
So far it seems like a pretty normal horror puzzle game, right? What could possibly be so deep and meaningful about it? Especially if it’s a queer game being written by a Japanese auteur. It’s weird, because I’ve played games by queer or trans devs that deliver authentic experiences to players. Now I’m unsure whether or not SWERY consulted anyone when writing this game, because it feels a lot like Tell Me Why in the aspect of being a game written with consultants in mind to produce an experience that feels genuine.
From the very beginning, the game lets you know that there’s something up with Emily. Hiding secrets and running away from JJ at every point, with JJ unable to ever catch up to her. As JJ collects donuts through the game, reaching a certain number will unlock text chains that JJ has previously had with people she knows ranging from friends to her professor to her mother and Emily, though the latter two unlock no matter what as you progress through the game. Each chain shows what kind of person JJ is around certain people. Around her punk rocker friend, Abby, she seems always willing to help as well as being understanding of Abby’s plight about being talked down to for her attitude and the way she dressed. With Philip, who is less of a friend and more an annoying classmate, is a rich kid who takes advantage of JJ’s kind attitude, even though JJ is fully aware she’s being taken advantage of. There’s Lily, a more feminine girl who seems to have an obsessive crush on JJ. And finally there’s Professor Goodman, a product designer whom JJ works for as an AI (assistant instructor.)
Text chains with JJ’s mother and Emily are probably the most important. Throughout the game, they will periodically update to reveal more of JJ’s personality. JJ is truly only herself around Emily, where there’s a stark difference in the way she interacts between someone like Lily or Abby compared to Emily. JJ seems to put on a mask for everyone else, only showing joy and her insecurities to Emily, who is always there to show JJ support. JJ’s mother, on the other hand, has a horrible relationship with JJ. JJ often gives her mom one word responses as the mother seems to push all her wants onto JJ, such as JJ becoming some sort of heir to the family. This implies JJ’s family is quite rich in some aspect, as the mother desperately wants JJ to inherit her deceased father’s legacy and often talks about how happy she is that JJ turned out “normal.”
Early on, the game wants you to believe that Emily has a secret. The secret can easily be interpreted as Emily being a lesbian and having feelings for JJ, who may or may not reciprocate them. At the beginning of the game, Emily attempts to lay her head against JJ’s, only for JJ to pull away making Emily quickly move away. However, JJ eventually relents and the two hold their head against one another. So is that the secret? Of course not. It’s very obvious that JJ and Emily have feelings for one another, but they’re both unsure how to process their feelings. All that matters, however, is that Emily loves and supports JJ unconditionally. Because it’s not Emily who has the secret, it’s JJ.
Throughout the game’s text chains, JJ will also interact with texts from FK, her stuffed animal she carries everywhere for emotional support and the mysterious appearance of a doctor with a deer head, speaking like he was straight out of the Red Room in Twin Peaks. Eventually Emily begins speaking like that as well, making things feel a lot more like a living nightmare. While JJ is always extremely angry and exhibits self-harmful behavior both physically and emotionally, FK represents a more innocent part of her. They represent the part of her that still has love and hope inside, but the anger, fear, and depression that JJ has often overpowers FK’s innocent pleas to try and help her. As the game goes on, JJ slowly calms down and becomes less hostile toward FK, eventually their words helping JJ stand up once more.
Talking to Philip doesn’t really do much, other than show JJ’s less than enthused responses to his spoiled nature. The other three, however, all slowly hint at JJ’s secret. Conversations with Abby often revolve around JJ asking her how she has the confidence to dress and act as her true self, and how she deals with superiors who question and criticize her. With Lily, it’s often talking about more feminine activities. And despite Lily often coming off as stalker-like, JJ continues to speak to her because there’s not a lot more people to interact with her interests such as baking and cooking. Her conversations with Professor Goodman often feel more like the proper parent JJ wishes she had, with Goodman often offering her advice as well as talking about his family and interests. He also reveals that JJ’s mother often attempts to divulge information about JJ from Goodman, which only serves to make JJ more uncomfortable about how much her mom pushes her to be “normal.”
As she gets closer to the end of her journey, texts from everyone become more hostile. This all begins when JJ’s mother finds out her “secret” after invading JJ’s privacy at the family home by reading her diary and questioning why there are women’s clothing in JJ’s closet. Phone calls from Emily slowly reveal that something is wrong, with text messages lining up with what Emily is saying to her. We hear distorted weeping as JJ follows after Emily up to the clock tower they loved as kids. We hears sounds of electricity, the distorted deer man’s voice, and a voice that continuously says things from JJ’s point of view. It all continues building up to her finding Emily’s body hanging from a noose, as well as a note on the ground.
JJ reads it.
It’s a suicide note.
It’s not Emily’s.
JJ weeps and hangs herself next to Emily, before her body breaks free of the noose and she falls off the clock tower. Her body is barely able to regenerate when it lands, and she slowly walks through the hallway of her small university. We see shadows mock and berate JJ, some people even becoming physical. She only just barely gets through all of this because of Emily always being there to support her.
Final text messages reveal a few things. With Abby, JJ attempts to bring something up to her several times, but she decides not to when Abby doesn’t reply. Abby does reply eventually, revealing she was busy setting up for a concert and becomes worried when JJ never replies back. Philip doesn’t even notice that JJ’s gone, only thanking her for telling him to follow his acting dreams. Professor Goodman invites JJ to share dinner with he and his family. And Lily? Well this text chain is important, because it pretty much reveals what happened that led to the events of the game.
JJ and Lily went to the library to study, with JJ covertly checking out a book about a certain “condition.” We’re not told what it is, but Lily reveals she saw the book and proceeded to ask other people about it. Those people didn’t keep their mouth shut and word about JJ’s “condition” quickly spread. In addition, once discovering JJ’s diary, her mother decides to send her off to a special kind of therapy that will make her normal again. With all of this happening, JJ has an emotional and mental breakdown to Emily. Her emotions spiral about how much of a freak she is, while her mind makes up stories that Emily only talks to her out of pity. Emily initially gets a little angry at this, before realizing what might be happening. JJ doesn’t reply for a while only eventually saying “goodbye” to Emily, ending the text chain.
So what is JJ’s secret? While it isn’t technically revealed until the last scene of the game, one can pretty much put all the pieces together at this point. JJ is a closeted transwoman and the only person she’s out to is Emily. The clock tower JJ goes to is where she came out as trans to Emily when she was younger, declaring that she was “Jackie Jameson.” And JJ was so happy when Emily didn’t abandon her. As JJ got older, she still presented as male out of fear of being harassed. It’s why she’s so locked up when speaking to anyone who isn’t Emily. It’s why she asks Abby how to properly deal with not letting people get to you or standing up to an abusive parent.
JJ suffers from horrible gender dysphoria, taking out a book from the library most likely about the subject. Lily was not attempting to be malicious, but her actions cause her to out JJ to the entire school. It’s implied JJ is from a place where being openly trans is a death sentence, since being trans in the United States has long been a favored target of harassment from conservatives, TERFs, and other bigots. And considering how 2021 has been nothing but the rise of the GOP targeting trans people with TERFs becoming more and more prevalent thanks to outspoken bigots like JK Rowling.
Harassment against trans individuals are very real, with bad apples often being used as “evidence” that all trans people are evil and bad. Though, I’d argue by that logic then all cis people would be the purest form of evil if we judged all cis individuals by the cruelties of every cis monster in history. It’s just history repeating itself, like if a convicted criminal was gay back in time, then homophobes would use a singular instance of one person to justify hating an entire section of humanity. I think it’s important, if you are cis, to have empathy for trans individuals during this time. Trans people just want to exist. We want to live our lives without having to live in constant fear that someone wants to murder us for just existing. For just eating lunch at a park without fearing that some cis man will come and beat us nearly to death for existing. People like the GOP or TERFs like JK Rowling are cruel individuals. They don’t care about humans or anyone else other than themselves. They just want us dead.
And that’s the mindset that JJ has. JJ believes that her mere existence will make Emily’s life worse off. That people will make Emily a target of harassment if people knew that the person closest to her was trans. JJ lashes out at her for a specific reason. To make herself feel more like the monster she believes she is, so that it will be easier for her to justify committing suicide to herself. To make a monster and make Emily hate her for it, something we see when JJ is fused into the Hairshrieker while Emily shoots a shotgun at her. A symbolic representation of JJ trying to make herself feel like a monster so Emily will hate her, and not feel bad when JJ dies. Of course, the reality of this is the complete opposite. Emily loves JJ, she is the single most important person in her life. It takes a conversation, after JJ realizes she is already dying, with FK to realize that even if everyone else hates her that there’s one person who doesn’t. There’s one person who loves JJ so much, that JJ dying will doom her as well. That JJ needs to live and be there for Emily the same way that Emily is there for JJ.
A final confrontation with the Hairshrieker shows JJ, in her dream, no longer breaking apart when she self-harms. It shows that pain is always going to be there, but with the resolve that Emily will always be there for her, she’s able to avoid falling apart into pieces as she eventually kills the Hairshrieker and finds Emily. She finds what she was looking for this whole time, a final text message to FK showing that JJ is starting to feel better. It was the fear of Emily dying from JJ’s attempt that drew her to confront her negative feelings, something we see JJ do when she believes Emily is dead.
The final scene is telling because JJ wakes up as how she looks in reality: closeted and presenting openly as male. Before her is a paramedic with a deer head sitting behind him in the room. The deer man being the paramedic attempting to save her life. FK, her beloved plushie, was pooling blood together and helping stop JJ from bleeding out after she fell unconscious. A phone call from her mother shows JJ, in my opinion, ready to say goodbye permanently to her. An acceptance that her mother is a horribly negative influence on her life, suggesting and nearly forcing JJ into conversion therapy. We found out that JJ eventually told her mother and she did not take it well at all, implied to be the straw that broke the camel’s back that caused the suicide attempt. Emily discovers JJ’s suicide note and finds her quickly enough to call for help, with Emily’s weeping and saying “you broke our promise” representative of JJ dying and leaving Emily, since their promise was to never be apart from one another. Emily eventually rushes in, and the two hug with JJ thanking her for always supporting her as well as telling her she’s reconciled with herself and found what she wanted. The game ends there.
But that’s not the end. If you had collected all 271 donuts through the game, you will be rewarded with several images that take place post-game. JJ is now openly trans and Emily takes her to try on new clothes, some of which resemble her dreamscape’s outfit. The two are shown happy together, moving forward from the tragedy stronger, that one person can make your life all the better by being there for you.
One of three pictures that’s a reward for collecting all donuts
The game hits hard. It hits hard in a lot of ways. There’s a scene where JJ describes her body mutilation in detail to FK, but it’s really easily seen as JJ describing the horrific extent of her gender dysphoria. And the gameplay reflects that. JJ self-harms and her body falls apart, a body she feels so gross and foreign in. How she hates it so much, and how no one else around her can understand that pain. How she lashes out because she can’t fully understand why it hurts her so much. She hates herself, she thinks she’s an overall negative factor to everyone else. It doesn’t help that she is this way because of her mother constantly drilling this sort of thinking into her head: that she is abnormal and must be made normal through conversion therapy. JJ would rather die than that happen, and she justifies this through depression-filled mental gymnastics to prove she’s better off dead to herself and Emily.
This game is not for the faint of heart, especially if constantly hearing bones breaking and body parts flying around is a trigger for you. However, the game does not pull punches in showing how cruel the world can be to a trans person. Even if not 100% of people are going to harass you, it can feel like that if there’s a big enough chunk causing you problems. JJ’s mother is the only person not supportive of her struggles. While the game’s ending does imply the mother feels remorse, and JJ forgiving her, I’m not so sure. That, to me, may just be JJ’s kind nature showing through in general. But I feel as though the problems her mother caused can not just be forgiven through a single call right after a suicide attempt.
There’s also the talk about whether or not JJ and Emily are in love, and I believe they are. The implications show that they are closer than just platonic best friends, but JJ’s self-doubt and self-hatred drive a wedge between their relationship evolving. This is something we talked about earlier, where JJ moves her head when Emily tried to lean on her. Being intimate, both emotionally and physically, keeps them from taking a step forward due to JJ’s depression and anxiety. By the time of the post-game, JJ is starting to become more accepting of herself and she’s able to be openly happy with Emily in public, showing they may be moving forward closer than ever.
Do I recommend this game? Yes. Even though the game is written by quirky Japanese auteur, it has this genuineness to it that feels a lot like Tell Me Why, a game that features a transman as one of its two main protagonists. Though this hits closer to me because JJ is a queer transwoman. Playing through the game, I noticed my behaviors parallel greatly with JJ’s drawing me closer to this story. I’m upset I didn’t play it sooner, but now that I have it’s certainly one of the best games revolving around being trans and why I think SWERY was being sincere in his apology about the second Deadly Premonition game. Because this was a game super understanding of the trans experience, how cruel people can be to trans individuals, how others are supportive, how outing someone (even unintentionally) is something that can ruin a life. But we are humans too. We just want to live life. And be happy.
Even though this isn’t a game made by a trans individual, it’s one well-researched and genuine in its ability to make others feel empathy for the trans experience while also validating the negative feelings a trans person might feel through their life. It’s a shame this game is barely talked about, because I highly consider playing it if you haven’t yet. An excellent piece of queer horror. Since I’ve done this, I guess it’s time I put effort into analyzing HWBM next, huh?
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