I've been thinking about this and uh... if Jax secretly wanted to be a girl, then why doesn’t he react at all to being called "Jaxy boy" by Gangle, "Bunny boy" by Zooble and "Evil bro" by Pomni?
We see his mask break briefly when he thinks about Kaufmo's funeral, Kaufmo and Ribbit, and when Ragatha talks about him corrupting Pomni
Another way to communicate he's transfem is making him jealous of seeing Pomni for the first time because she spawned as a feminine character. Have Pomni bump into Jax like in the original pilot, but then make him walk away angrily and show him observing her from a distance with a scowl on his face, unlike the other characters, (including Kinger, let's not forget him), who'd be welcoming. I think this is a good way to establish that Jax is different from the others in some way (with the later reveal that both he and Pomni are mcs now making more sense)
Other rewrite suggestions:
Add a tiny pair of eyelashes to Jax’s design (I got this idea because I remembered the design of Usopp from One Piece and then I remembered TADC ep 5 where Jax is implied to enjoy anime) but keep his male-sounding voice (bonus points if he's also voiced by a trans woman, but I don't think this is necessary, since him being voiced by a cis man could reflect the expectations Jax’s parents put on him to be a man). This way, the design communicates that he's a woman deep down (eyes = windows to the soul) who's been forced to sound like a man. The eyelashes would also solve the "every person's character design shows who they really are no matter how much they try to hide it" issue I have with Jax's design. Because purple and red being "feminine-coded" colors is stereotypical. And here's the thing I've just noticed: Jax's head IS shaped like an egg, especially with his head being yellow like yolk when his skin is peeled off. But like... how did Caine understand this metaphor and create Jax's avatar this way because he's "an egg"
Have Jax's torture scene be him getting his "bunny suit" peeled off along with the eyelashes, only to reveal a pair of eyelashes still present underneath. The message becomes that he can't escape who he is no matter how much he tries to hide it
Don't make merch or joke about his gender dysphoria. Treat this topic with sensitivity and respect, especially if you wanted the show's finale to air during pride month AND have the closeted trans character commit suicide
Make Leeroy, Jax’s human counterpart, a woman. Or put "she/her" on his profile page. Or slap a trans flag on there somewhere
I wouldn't include the bow on Jax's mural because I'm not a fan of objects being gendered (pink is for girls blue is for boys... nah)
Paint Jax's regular face (with the still present eyelashes, ofc) and have the others go from he/him to she/her after Jax tells Pomni before his death that he's sorry for everything and how she wants to be remembered as the girl she always wanted to be
Do NOT, and I repeat not NOT keep the abstracted characters as animals/fish in an aquarium to be admired by the still alive (lucid) characters. That's dehumanising. Have Caine either delete them all, including Jax, or put them in the cellar as a metaphorical burial ceremony. I don't want the trans character or anyone else to be treated like zoo animals especially bc Goose said how the idea was for abstraction to be a metaphor for suicide. She said that outside the show btw... sigh.
No edit/montage of Jax right before her death. Let her honestly talk to Pomni instead about herself, her feelings, likes, dislikes. And don't make all of them "feminine"! If you must put a song in, don't use Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" because 1) No, she isn't, and the audience shouldn't be gaslit that she ever was despite her trauma 2) This is a song that a black man composed when his black daughter was born. Using the cover of a non-black man and putting it in the context of a "rebirth as a woman" (which in canon changes nothing abt Jax or Leeroy, neither are explicitly trans after it) scene doesn't sit right with me, especially since the finale aired on Juneteenth
Ribbit doesn't have to put her bow on Jax's head to symbolize transness because the audience would have already picked up on it long ago
Have Jax explicitly say smth like this to Ribbit: "The deep, personal thing I told my mom... was that I never felt like a man at all." The word trans doesn't have to be explicitly uttered, but you should still make it clear
Have a funeral for Jax where all of her victims talk about her and her mistakes and how much she's hurt them. That would give Jax's victims closure + screen time and not make it seem like this entire movie was all about Jax and no one else
Make the ending somber at first, then happier as the cast learns to move on from Jax's recent death and find closure. Don't make the circus instantly return its colors as soon as Jax explodes in white light (dies). I don't like what that implies
Man, it would be so cool NOT to turn Jax into a stereotypical, girly, misunderstood, innocent (Trans) Girl ™ Like get this woman out of this show her character's been destroyed too
And please Gooseworx, don't post a confirmation where Jax says how Ribbit and Pomni should f*ck each other's brains out after saying how transitioning would have fixed her. No, it wouldn't have fixed her. Imagine if, instead, Jax doesn't die while having a panic attack and instead learns to love herself, even the male voice Caine gave her, because it was all a part of her all along. That would also tie in with Jax being jealous of how Zooble could learn to accept all of themselves back in episode 7
I actually want ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about Jax to change on the outside (her appearance will stay the same from the beginning of the show until the end, her eyelashes will remain and so will her voice) because all she ever needed to do was learn to accept, forgive and love herself for who she was on the inside in spite of the abuse she's gone through, the guilt she always felt for driving Ribbit and Kaufmo to abstraction (suicide) because of her own personal issues and potentially killing her mother after she reacted badly to Jax coming out to her! The scene where Jax is just standing there with his clothes constantly changing (there's even one where Jax looks like a static TV screen which I interpret as him feeling empty on the inside, like he feels disconnected from the world and his own body/self) would then send the message that she could have been ALL of those parts of herself (the masculine, the feminine, and the in-between) all while living authentically as a girl
When Jax said "There's nothing more to me" and then we see that he has a yolk-like humanoid body underneath, I interpret how he thought that all that "Jax" was was the girl he tried so hard not to be and shame tied to everything he's ever done and is
But if you know who you are and were (even if it was someone who wasn't a good person) and fully embrace both, then no outside physical "stagnation" can take that away from you, and you can finally grow, make amends and move forward. But Jax realized all that too late
What just hit me is that Jax's arc has pieces of Pomni's (feeling like nothing), Ragatha's (having an abusive mother), Gangle's (masking), Zooble's (body dysmorphia), Kinger's (losing someone you loved) and Caine's (wanting to be loved) there's also the fact jax is "the funny one but not really" like kaufmo and comes from a conservative family like ribbit and the culmination of her story was, to me, supposed to be learning to integrate all of them into one "you" at least for a short while... except that TADC didn't go that deep. The show just gave us a TikTok montage and called it a day
Everyone in the cast who isn't Jax should have gotten their own fully fleshed-out arc before the finale btw
Jax failed to live as a whole person and died without getting the chance to put the life advice the others gave to each other into practice, but all the other characters/survivors, all the other "pieces" can still come together as a group and create one whole that Jax no longer has a chance to be within herself
Imagine if everyone (after their character developments that happened in earlier episodes) had gone inside Jax's mind to try to save her. Zooble did say Jax was still one of them in ep 8, and Pomni knew she might not be there later in the same ep. Then Jax could have finally learned to accept all of herself (Pomni is hope, Zooble is acceptance of identity, Gangle is emotional honesty, Kinger is grief, Ragatha is (self) compassion. Together, they "reconstruct"Jax as a whole person)
Meanwhile, in the void, Caine (who I think tadc wanted to parallel Jax) would be having a moment of realization that he did many horrible things and instead of pulling the Blue AI out of his head, he'd learn to accept himself as a whole being just like Jax, and once he rejoins the group, he'd stay the same, just more considerate of others and less selfish
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