monty🐾🎞️🎸

I just watched the finale and I’m in tears but this specifically broke me. Tadc has flaws and an issue with not equally developing every character but I can’t say they haven’t developed and expressed jax’s character well. I’ve seen people equivalent abstracting to kil ling yourself and how pomni talks immediately after jax’s abstraction and this scene really solidify that idea in my opinion. Jax has pushed everyone around him away after being vulnerable and doesn’t allow himself to be vulnerable to the extent he was with ribbit ever again after they talked, with her or anyone else, he isolates himself and wants the other circus members to leave him alone even if it means they hate him, which is shown how he makes ragatha promise to not bring up ribbit, and when he strangles pomni until she runs away in his imaginary sequence. Similar to how sometimes prior to a sui cide attempt a person will try to make their loved ones actively dislike them so they aren’t as affected by their death.

All of this makes the scene above read to me like the type of talk you have with someone after a sui cide attempt. It’s something you can’t come back from and something you can’t fix or undo. He could’ve of talked to someone about the things that led to his abstraction, but he didn’t and this is the consequence of him refusing to be vulnerable. Which is why Pomni’s response actually made me sob, because she accepts it can’t be undone, that jax’s current state cannot be fixed but she still lets him know he can open up to her. They can’t change the past but they can live in the present and be vulnerable now. They can deal with the consequences together, he doesn’t have to take it on alone. She accepts he’s a bad person who’s done bad things, but still is open to helping him change and break his pattern of self villainising. This much of an in-depth portrayal of the sui cidal mindset is something I have not seen in any other media, which has made this episode feel incredibly personal and a wonderfully tragic portrayal of humanity in a setting that is devoid of it prior to caine’s self reflection. I think the overall theme of tadc is the optimism of the human spirit, the idea that no matter what circumstances humanity will prevail and grow to adapt, and i think that is portrayed beautifully in the series.