I think I have a theory for how Glitch is treating Jax as transfem, and if this becomes more of a pattern I'll flip my shit.
Leaving Jax's transness out of the narrative and ambigious enough to still have a Cis Man Jax for marketing and collaborations and a Transfem Jax for the fanbase feels like what is going on. You get all the benefits of a cis character, all it means is that the company and creator never explicitly say Jax is transfem. Jax being transfem is treated like fandom fodder while the company allows for misgendering of the character.
The fandom shouldn't settle for a company that allows their trans characters to be misgendered, even if a character dies in a closet. How Glitch is treating Jax's transness makes it feel like queerbait (or in this case, transbait) and like the company is only tolerating a trans character if they can misgender the character for marketing and promo purposes. I'm worried that others will see the success of Glitch with Jax and also treat trans characters like this explicitly to get around censors and the fact that explicitly trans characters won't often make as much money. There's a better way to handle characters that die closeted than constant misgendering.
You know…I think I’ve come to an epiphany about my issues with Jax’s character and where my standards lie.
There is a difference between queer characters and queer characters with culture. The latter will always be the former, but it won’t always be the other way around.
So let’s say Jax is trans fem. The reason why this is terrible representation, aside from the ambiguity, is that Jax has no community. Jax has no queer culture.
It’s easy to make a gay character. Honestly, it is. Whether they say it or not, making a character that is queer is not that hard. But the reason why those characters never landed for the queer community is because they have no queer culture. They don’t talk about being queer, they don’t talk about their community, you can never picture them in a setting being around other characters that share a similar identity. There’s many such queer character tropes like this such as…
“The lesbian who we know is a lesbian because they only hang around men”
“The gay man who is misogynistic”
“A bisexual character who talks exclusively about being willing to sleep with literally anyone”
“A genderqueer character who looks down on everyone else for conforming to a set standard/speaks exclusively about gender DYSPHORIA and never gender EUPHORIA”
And we can’t forget about “drag = comedy” and nothing more.
Can all these individuals exist in real life? Of course. Are they queer? Sure. But are they queer characters? Well…
A lot of my structure when I frame this argument is my own issues with Black representation in media as a Black person. Aside from the obvious factors which are their literal facial features and skin tone, I tend to get frustrated with Black characters who are Black in skin tone but then not written to be Black in culture. This can also be something presented as a metaphor or an allegory in some instances, but the writing has to be there.
My same issues lie with queer characters, in which I feel that a lot of them are just queer as a label and not as an identity they are fully immersed in. Alternatively, that label comes with a list of built in stereotypes which make them a Gay ™️ character, but not actually. I want to see more queer characters that are unapologetically queer, who talk about their experience with nuance and equal parts joy as there may be trauma. Queer characters who are welcoming to their siblings across different labels. Queer characters who are not transphobic/homophobic.
My standards for representation are to see more community. It gets tiring seeing everyone want to recreate the same “edgy gay” person that outright rejects everything gay around them, that rejects other gay people in Jax’s case. It’s hard to recognize this as representation when there is no community, and there is no discussion being had.
Going back to what this could say for the larger standard, well I’d hope not, but so many people want to see Glitch as the second coming that I can’t be sure. I can only hope that people will be inspired to write the stories that they want to write, rather than confine themselves to a specific guideline they think will produce a certain result. It is disheartening to see people wanting to emulate what I feel is the antithesis of indie animation by outright aligning with the status quo, but it is what it is now.
Also Jax wasn’t even confirmed like that, soooo that’s not even meeting the bare minimum.
