izzy stupid?

[in this post i’ll be using she/her pronouns for jax. this wasn’t used in the show but she never got to talk about pronouns so unless someone like gooseworx comes forth and says to used different pronouns this seems most appropriate]

soooo. yeah. i’ve been holding this in for 2 weeks. i saw the last act on june 6th.

the theatrical release started with a clip of the orange fish from episode 7 saying like “hey there, iconic digital circus character orange talking fish here” and reminded is we were watching episodes 8 and 9, said he hoped we’ve seen the previous episodes cause we have about 30 seconds to catch up. he reminded us to turn off our phones and not spoil or pirate anything we see. he said caine usually does these things but can’t cause he’s dead (and did a prayer for him) and also to stick around at the end for a link to a finale version of the store for access to exclusive merch.

it was followed by caine’s voice giving us the amazing digital recap of episodes 1-7.

we then watched episode 8 on the big screen and i swayed back and forth to the one who’s running the show. immediately followed by episode 9.

now i went into episode 9 believing jax would either come out or something bad would happen, she’d abstract or something before finding out and we’d get confirmation in the post-credits scene or something.

so it was somewhere between the two. she abstracted but we found out in a memory flashback.

apparently a few people saw this movie with cis friends who did not even realise, i’ve even heard some trans women not realise.

maybe people were expecting her to look at the camera and say “i’m a trans woman” which like i’m sorry but have some basic media literacy skills and realise there is something deeper.

i’ve been a believer for a while cause it’s practically spelled out in the show primarily with episodes 5 and 6. something traumatic happened which caused jax to push everyone away so they could never find out this side of her.

and then we got to jax talking to ribbit. she said about how her mother was after her father left and that when she was fed up with it she told her something deeply personal to get her off her back but it turned to personal insults that went on forever.

it was immediately obvious to me what this deeply personal thing was. and if you need more confirmation, ribbit proceeded to put her bow on jax’s head and say “your secret’s safe with me” causing jax to to blush a lot. it was clear the bow on her head was a typically feminine thing.

additionally, as a trans woman myself who had my father walk out when i was young and now forced to live with with my mother for over 20 years with a deep fear one day she won’t wake up and i’ll have no choice but to run away and become homeless. jax’s experiences feel very real to me.

then came the scene with jax by the streetlight with pomni slowly approaching. she says “you’re not supposed to miss me, you’re not supposed to love me, you’re not supposed to care about me,” which feels like my own words. if it weren’t for the fact i met someone who’s stubborn the way pomni is, i’d have been left not allowing anyone to love me.

finally we have jax explode with a cover of “isnt she lovely” over memories of jax. i think the choice of isn’t SHE lovely really adds a final layer on top.

jax is a pain in the [boink] but they won’t let her go. especially pomni.

it was a deep reaction this gave me. i was crying with a hand over my mouth in shock. eyes glued to the screen.

i talked to my friends after this about the real world counterparts at the end and one said it's a shame real world jax is still repressing herself but honestly it was said leeroy and her friends frequent riley's bar so i reckon that'll give her a suitable environment to get her egg cracked.

anyway. my friends weren't originally convinced about egg jax, hell one of them tried to tell me zooble is more of an egg. i had to be the one to tell them that they were she/her-ing zooble incorrectly, that egg is already cracked zooble is pretty explicitly non-binary and uses they/them had we been watching the same show????? regardless, when the movie ended the other friend that was there turned to me and said "it looks like you were right" cause even they saw how clear it was now.