Going Rampant

My theories were blown out of the water. I expected a big twist akin to those in Evangelion, which Gooseworx indicated was an influence, but it was more of a simple plotline with deep introspection like a play. Which is fine. If I want to explore those ideas, fanfiction is right there, and I suspect the finale was written knowing people would write fanfiction following up on loose plot threads.

There's an interesting tone shift, so it's less cartoony and more real, visceral. It's like after they realize they're uploaded minds, they feel more human than ever. The Jax actor feels like he's not doing a Jax voice, just sounding like a guy in a Jax avatar. Which makes Jax's insistence that he's a cartoon character feel like an even more desperate excuse to cover up his insecurities.

Or, rather, her insecurities. Jax being a trans woman is heavily implied if not explicitly stated. A song using female pronouns plays over her big scene, so the plot frames her as a her even if she refuses to take the plunge.

Jax... is a piece of work. Sympathetic, someone worth saving, but such a terrific asshole, you don't particularly want to put in the effort. Which is, of course, the point. Deeply insecure people drive people away to protect themselves from the potential of feeling hurt, but they really want a friend to fight for them. The problem is, the insecure people become more intensely unlikable to further push their friends away, and if they don't push through that, the insecure people only take it as confirmation that they should be closed off and descend into deep depression and aggression. Such it is with Jax and her friends Ribbit and Pomni.

I've met people like that. I might have been someone like that in my more intense stages of mental illness (there are memory issues, so I don't know for sure). It's a trait of BPD, among others. It's a plotline I've seen in Haibane Renmei, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Steven Universe, and this is the first time I've seen it... fail. Jax refuses to be saved by the power of love and descends into the depressed purgatory of abstraction, only showing the slight sign of possibly getting better in the future when the abstractions get put in a comfortable environment and stop being aggressive. And that's more realistic. It's sad, but that's what people are like; they need to go at their own pace.

One of the backlashes to the finale is people thinking Jax is too cruel in employing social ostracism to push Ribbit away, which, along with one of Jax's personalities strangling Pomni, makes Jax look like a sadistic psychopath not worth saving. That is what Jax wants you to think. That is her armor, guarding her insecurity at feeling something. Pomni pushing through that is also what Jax wants.

Because Jax never explicitly says she's a woman and employs misogyny as a means of pushing people away and refusing to address her own femininity, cisgender audiences frame the character as unambiguously male and interpret Jax's abuses in the framework of a man abusing women, but it's more like she's an alpha bitch Regina George type using feminine bullying tactics and pretending at misogyny. Denying Ribbit friendship as revenge and to feel safe from the possibility of Ribbit hurting Jax through gossip is extremely feminine. That's the form female abuse often takes. Jax therefore cannot be judged as a male villain, just a complicated female villain.

Interestingly, Reki in Haibane Renmei is the only other BPD-coded character to push people away using such tactics. When Willow tries to push away Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she uses more masculine tactics of physical violence. So does Steven when he turns into a kaiju in Steven Universe. It's Jax to take the feminine form of bullying, and she is more biting than Reki. Maybe that seems worse when it comes from a character seen as male just because men don't typically act like that with that degree of efficacy.

Anyway, trying to delete Caine was apparently the kick in the teeth needed to get him to realize that he was abusive, and he does the work necessary to recover and mend ties with the group. I guess Bubble was the blue AI, and by disentangling himself from him, Caine (the red AI) loses his AM tendencies.

People in my mentions: Okay, but what if the Jews are actually bad this time?

Me: Cool rationalization, still Nazi.