BlepThe13th

I've been wanting to write this for a few days but I've been really busy with it being the end of the school year and finals and such. I watched the episode in theaters on Thursday and the theater experience wasn't bad at all like people were saying and the audience was pretty respectful and quiet.

My thoughts on the episode

It wasn't bad at all but it definitely felt rough kind of like a draft rather than the final. Things weren't explained the greatest, the cuts were weird and jarring, it felt rushed, and many questions were left unanswered. I know a lot of people were upset about it being so Jax focused but I don't really get that cuz that's what the story is about and how the author wanted to tell it. I feel like a lot of people struggle to enjoy stories and have a lot of shallow criticisms like obviously the story is flawed but it doesn't have to be exactly how you wanted it to go. Anyways I liked how we got to see more into how the characters feel and come together and complete their character arcs. It was interesting to find out what happened with Jax and Ragatha and I liked how we got to hear about Ribbit and Kaufmo. I think it was interesting to see Caine realize his mistakes and see the characters come to terms with not being real and to see the real version of the characters and what their names are. I also love how we get confirmation about Gangle and Zooble in the credits. Overall it was a pretty good ending though it leaves you feeling empty and I also wished they had more episodes to cover some of the things they didn't touch too much like how abstraction works and what really happened and why or how the characters ended up there and probably more things I can't think of at the moment.

Jax

I really like how they decided to portray Jax as this misogynistic homophobia transphobic general asshole but then you start to see cracks later in the series and realize they're actually really terrified then you get the finale and you see why they're like this. They're a really great complex character who shows a great depiction of internalized transphobia and how your own selfhatered and insecurities can affect how you treat others. They're afraid to open up because they're afraid they'll just be made fun of like what happened with their mom and they live with survivor's guilt thinking they might've killed her. They hate themself and want everyone to hate them too because they see themself as a horrible person beyond redemption. They say horrible things to further make people keep their distance and they also do it to push this fake version of themself and hide the parts of themself they don't want people to notice like when Zooble tells them they thought they'd be into that when they made them wear the maid dress. They're terrified of reality. When they have the illusion of an option to escape they choose not to because they're too afraid to face reality. They choose to dehumanize the other members of the circus reducing them to just caricatures in his mind as a way to cope and convince themself none of it's real. Jax's efforts to keep to themself ultimately lead to their downfall and abstraction. So yeah Jax is a really great depiction of how selfhatered can effect people and is a good realistic depiction of a closeted trans woman. remember no one's experience is the same and there is not just one singular way to depict a whole group or even a single person. The best representation is a variety. Anyway I love Jax's character so here's some crappy art of transfem Jax that I rushed to draw.