Just a schmuck who writes and draws

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it several times after, and I’m going to say it one last time because repeating myself after this point would drive me to insanity. Now, to make it loud enough so the people in the back can hear me:

JAX! IS! THE ANTITHESIS! OF! THE! STORE! REE!

Holy! Shit! It is not that hard to understand. If the point of the story is to say that a stagnant life isn’t too bad as long as you have human connections to keep you grounded, then Jax is there to prove what happens if you go too far in the opposite direction. And guess what: For a character like that to function well, you need to give him as much attention as possible to sell how far he’s fallen and the tragedy of someone like him. You can love it or hate it, and I know a good portion of you hate it, but the screen time Jax got in this series was appropriate for his character.

Jax starts off as, with no better way to put it, an asshole. Like, a realistic version of an asshole, not other popular cartoon a-holes who secretly have a heart of gold or a good side that you needed to dig down to see. I mean he’s a sociopathic jerkoff who found entertainment in the misery of others, be it NPCs or his fellow players. Every adventure he would find some way to bring pain onto others, be it letting a fudge monster sneak into a candy kingdom or throwing Ragatha into a frickin’ deep fryer like she’s a chicken nugget. If this was a Dungeons and Dragons game, Jax would be that one prick who’d kill the guy who’d gift your party the quest just because he thought it’d be funny. In fact, that’s the very basis of Jax’s whole character.

In Episode Six, we learn why Jax does all this shit to everyone: He believes that none of them are real people. They’re just a bunch of cartoons designed to entertain an unseen audience. As such, they each have their own part to play, with Jax believing that he’s the “funny one.” So he pulls what he believes are harmless pranks, really pushing the fact that none of them can die as far as it can go. Except that the problem with being the funny one is that he’s not really all that funny. And I don’t mean to the audience, I’m sure some sicko laughed at his antics. I mean that for the fellow people he was stuck with, almost none of them thought he was funny. Pomni laughed once at him mauling his evil clone, and that’s it. They all find his bullshit irritating, painful, and downright traumatic in Gangle’s case.

Jax’s idea of being the funny one is clearly a one-sided deal that no one signed up for. It’d be one thing if all he did was crack jokes that were easy to ignore, but he's forcing everyone to play along in the game of his own making. He often says this is all fun and games, but his reaction to the maid dress shows how transparent that mentality is. He’s your classic wannabe class clown who acts disruptive and annoying for the sake of a joke, but the moment the joke’s on him, it pisses him off as much as he pisses off everyone else. If he really was the funny one, he’d take a joke just as easily as he’d dish it out. But he doesn’t. Because he’s the one who’s supposed to be making jokes and irritating people. Anybody else doing it is breaking the norm.

That’s another important thing about Jax, where he doesn’t just believe he has to commit to the bit but everyone else does too. It’s why, when they try to break out of those roles, he either gets angry or feels threatened. It’s why he seems uncomfortable of the mere idea that Gangle could be happy, becomes shocked by Zooble saying he’s one of them, or gets freaked out when Kinger starts talking with some actual sanity. If they can go beyond the simple archetypes of being the sad, grumpy, or crazy ones, then that means they’re not simple cartoon characters. They’re real people. And they’re real, then he’s real. And he can’t accept that.

Jax has to reject his humanity. Otherwise, if he doesn’t, he has to live with the consequences of his own actions and accept that he’s given a shit deal like everyone else. And for a guy like him who’s done so much for so long, it’s chattering. And it’s not like he can sit down and talk about his feelings like everyone else did with each other. For one, that breaks the illusion he built in his mind. If he shows vulnerability, then he’s no longer the funny one. Two, it’s not exciting. Episode Four and a bit of Episode Five shows that being a normal, chill scenario makes him agitated because it leaves him with nothing but his thoughts and forces him to do nothing but talk to someone. And again, that breaks the illusion. And three, he can’t do it because that means making a connection with somebody, and that terrifies him.

Jax lost Ribbit, the Gangle to his Zooble and the Pomni to…well, himself. She was someone that made being stuck in the circus suck a whole lot less, only for them to abstract. And in this world, that essentially means…permanently giving up, to put it lightly. The pain of seeing that and losing someone who meant so deeply to Jax caused him to distance himself from everyone. The “practical jokes” he pulls might not just be him fulfilling a role, but him showing the others that they shouldn’t go anywhere near him. “You don’t think I’m all that bad? Well, how about I make a game where you all are animals on a safari and I shoot and maul each of you? Who’s not so bad now?”

That kind of thing, you know? So…Why did he try getting close to Pomni?

I think part of it is that he started talking to Pomni because he had no choice. He was bored, and because of that he talked to her. Both because she was the closest person there and because she was the only one who wasn’t sick of his shit yet. In fact, I’m pretty sure the main reason why he tried putting more of an effort was because she he knew it would piss off Ragatha, who was a little too desperate for Pomni’s friendship. So, he tried to act like they’re friends so that it would make Ragatha’s life even worse.

But then, at a certain point, it stops being an act. He genuinely enjoyed Pomni’s company, confiding in her about his trochophobia and seeing a love duet for the shared fun of it. He liked Pomni, and I’ll leave it to you to decide how much he liked her. Unfortunately…he catches himself. Jax is starting to realize that he’s starting to like someone, with that same person liking him too. One moment that sticks in my mind is that when Pomni hugs Jax, for just a split second, he looks happy. Hell, he looked at Pomni with a peaceful smile. Only to then snap into reality just as fast and pushes Pomni off him as though he was burned.

This leads to my absolute favorite scene of the entire show where Jax tries to deny him and Pomni are friends, trying way so hard to brush off everything they went through that day. Only for Pomni not to buy an ounce of it. Not even his try hard villain speech convinced her, as the way his voice broke and how he constantly forced a smile proved how full of shit he was with every syllable. In trying to push Pomni away, Jax only showed just how broken and desperate for love he is. And that’s before the show revealed he’s on the verge of abstraction.

Back sometime after the pilot premiered, someone asked Gooseworx who was the closest to abstraction, she responded with, “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.” And, yeah, if all we had to go off of was the pilot, it would be crazy to see that Jax was the one closest to “giving up.” He seemed so carefree and unfazed about a lot of things, to the point where a second friend’s death barely shocked him, that the idea of Jax abstracting seemed implausible. But after getting to know him, understanding his coping mechanism and the harm it does to him…Yeah. No shit that in a world where human connections are what keeps you sane, the one guy who thought to distance himself from everyone and refused to accept he’s human turned out to be the closest to inescapable insanity. Again, he’s the antithesis of the show’s main message, showing the consequences that come when you go against the central theme of the story.

Jax is a character whose psychology could be studied for decades. Every scene with him, now understanding why he turned out this way, is fascinating to dissect. And, you know what? The reason it’s so effective is because there’s so much focus on him. If Jax chilled out in the background, only speaking up to do or say something mean, it would have meant nothing if we found out he was the closest to abstraction. But by getting to know him, seeing his vulnerable side, and understanding his mentality, it not only makes you feel the shock of his near death more, but, in a way, almost feel bad for him. Some people don’t, and that’s valid, but you can’t say that Jax ate too much of the story’s focus. He needed every bit to make his role in the story feel as effective as it is. 

I’m sorry that your favs didn’t get more screen time. Hell, one of my favorite characters is Zooble, one I stand by being the heart and soul of the series. And, yeah, I would love a full episode that focuses on Zooble without forcing them into the B-Plot. But that’s not what Gooseworx had planned. There’s no missed potential or secretly amazing character she willfully ignored. She had a story to tell, gave each character their respective roles, and decided some were more important than others to convey her message. Like it or not, and I know that you don’t, but every character is at the fullest potential that Gooseworx intended. You don’t have to like it, but that doesn’t mean you have to call the show bad. It instead means that the series isn’t for you.