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okay well. just posting this here bc i need something to talk about for my daily 750 words thing and if i'm writing it there i might as well post it here. so i thought the finale was like. i dunno. okay? not okay? like. broadly speaking, i liked most of it? but i have problems with a particularly large and important section(The Part Where A Repressed, Closeted Trans Woman Kills Herself Off-Screen and stuff relating to that. (also i'm gonna she/her jax for this post)).

i guess for the parts i liked(bc they're gonna be faster to get through lmao) it's like. i don't know why ragatha keeps staring at the screen and just stating how i directly feel keeps happening but i had to like. physically turn away from the screen and go into full dissociation mode when she was talking about her feelings about jax's abstraction or else i would have started loudly ugly crying in the theatre LMAO. between that and her monologue in episode six it's like wow this ragdoll fucks me up. stop telling everyone my trauma. gosh.

uhhh what else. uh. hm. i felt like i liked more than that. oh i'm glad zooble and gangle fucked. was not expecting that to Actually happen, even if it was just like. an ending credits gag. their real life selves thing was also nice. like very much set up to give the characters and viewers some closure about real life speculation but also the scene with the bus is probably the like biggest fanfiction bait i've ever seen in my life. hey guys what if our real life selves met up in zooble's queer bar. wait jax what are you doing here.

i guess i do like the jax like... internal brain sequence? in a vacuum, too. i guess i should just talk about it now lmao. like everything about jax felt like it was from a different version of the show with a different message that had been written entirely differently. like it was well made but imo it did not fit with a lot of stuff.

like. jax's abstraction in the first place. so she goes up to pomni and tries to reach out and fails and walks away. and pomni just doesn't react? like, the girl who has always reached out to everyone, especially jax, at every single opportunity? it feels a lot like the whole idea of jax's abstraction and mindspace exploration was written very early, but then by the time the show actually got there, it no longer fit. like we have to watch ep8 that has pomni reaching out and going "be here later" and even zooble being like "you're one of us too" and all of that. then they just kind of forget she exists because they have to. like. couldn't pomni have at least been distracted or something? handling too many things at once? something? like literally anything other than being approached alone while she wasn't doing anything at all lmao. it's so hard to justify and it feels genuinely out of character.

and then it's just like "oh jax killed herself". like it just happens between shots. it barely has any weight. jax walking away and oh rip bye girl sorry you never got to transition. and then pomni goes after her and gets into her brain and so on and like. yeah, like i said, it's a good sequence. forcing us to watch through jax's eyes as she slowly drove ribbit to suicide was uh. you know. deeply uncomfortable. but like, in a good way, if you know what i mean. like "yeah, this is how destroying yourself can destroy everyone around you too, starting with the people you care about the most" i guess

the take i keep seeing over and over is "it's a cautionary tale" or whatever but like. it's not framed that way. the show up to this point has basically been about pomni building relationships with everyone and enabling everyone to find meaning in their lives through their connections together, with jax as the self-hatred final boss so to speak. even how shots in the finale mirrored earlier shots(especially mirroring pomni's abstraction nightmare shots from ep2 with jax, very much setting up for pomni reaching out and bringing her back) were working towards this. like yeah i know there's a post from goose somewhere where she said abstraction can't be undone(though she also said there wouldn't be romance and honestly between the stuff with pomni and ragatha and pomni and jax and inarguably gangle and zooble having Literal, Actual Sex, uhhhhh you know maybe things changed) but the episode feels like it's building towards pulling jax out of abstraction

like it doesn't work as a cautionary tale when everything builds towards something else and then doesn't pay off. and like. jax remains abstracted and everyone just kind of moves on while they keep her in a tent. it's very, very, Very easy to take the message as "if you kill yourself, everyone will move on and be happier without you"(though this like. in part feels like bc all of the characters(except kinger) mourning with different energies at different times. like zooble is understandably mild. pomni and ragatha. then the extremely long jax brain sequence. then gangle. bc the jax sequence feels like it's going to a point where it's going to result in reversing jax's abstraction, to the audience, it feels like the only mourning scene is gangle's. like we're barely given time to process "oh i guess she's staying that way" before we're taken to caine's thing and then everyone is happy again.). it just. sucks? like a tragedy is fine, it just feels very much like "it didn't work out. for reasons." it very much feels like pomni is able to save jax until she just kind of doesn't and then i guess they never try again.

like everything about jax just feels incongruent with everything else. like everyone grows and connects and becomes happy except the trans woman, who instead kills herself. like if i didn't know gooseworx was a trans woman, i'd have a much, much more sour take on jax lmao. like it's just so. aggravating. like "oh look jax, she knows all of your secrets and all of your sins and she is still choosing to love you. maybe you can still love yoursoh shit is that a flashbang that's still there from ep6 for some reason? lmao nvm" like was jax unable to be saved because she still can't accept help from others? does she carry too much guilt to feel like she deserves another chance? can she still not accept that she's trans? was it just too late? the tragedy would have been infinitely better and more impactful if it was any of these things and not a contrivance.

man though. that scene. the whole "you aren't supposed to be here. you weren't supposed to care. you aren't supposed to love me." jax saying "i don't want to go" after her allegorical suicide. the darumi of it all. "ria are you really bringing that here" i can find Them anywhere.

also this is more of a personal point rather than any sort of "objective" analysis but like. as someone who spent a very, very long time being very, very deeply repressed and dissociated from what i am, i identified with jax quite a bit. like, maybe i'm just looking in the wrong places, but it feels like nearly every trans story i see is just. filled with yearning. like "oh i always knew i was [gender]" and secretly experimenting and performing or whatever. not my dumb ass, though. i guess i'm more of a "i saw the tv glow" type of trans woman. no yearning, just slowly dying from the inside out and not understanding why. so seeing a character like jax who is showing more active repression was like "oh yeah, i get that. i can see myself in here a bit." so it's sad to see that story that i identified with end in such a sad and unsatisfying way.

though i wasn't an asshole like jax was, to be clear. i wasn't really much of anything, really. sometimes, it doesn't feel like i ever existed until about a year ago.

i guess i'm digressing a bit. though for all the problems i have with the execution, i still can't say it's totally bad? it's well-made at least. and it's making me think about stuff. like i see what happened to jax in an on-paper sense(someone who is deeply suffering and struggling to reach out while everyone struggles to reach out to her in return) and like. i just think of people i know who i see going through difficult times and struggling in their own right and i want to reach out and do. something. i don't know. i just want to help.

not that i would know what to do, i guess.

anyway my point is like. if it's making me think this deeply and have Strong Feelings about my own life, then it can't be all bad, i guess? i dunno. i just wish we could have a story where the suicidal character doesn't kill themselves. idk my thoughts are becoming less coherent so maybe i should stop here. maybe in 2 weeks there'll be some post credits shit for the youtube release that changes how i feel but idk. man i really hope this post doesn't show up in people's non-tag searches or get like any kind of traction LMAO edit: okay i just remembered another point i wanted to make. "what reminded you" blatant transphobia reminded me.

i'm kind of pissed that they didn't have jax stare at the screen and make the fact that she's trans explicit. like. they go so far with it. like there's that huge transfem jax evidence post right? all that shit. like girl's room is a giant trans flag. jax being a trans woman is so implied that you can clearly read the words "JAX IS TRANSGENDER" in the negative space left behind.

like if you're going to go that far, just fucking say it. the fact that they didn't now means that the internet is going to be flooded with hate spewing bigots acting like there's nothing queer going on at all. bc people like that don't give a shit about being media literate, they only care about being able to be bigots. avoiding explicit statements just gives those people ammunition to harass others with. "let's just let the idiots show how stupid they are and laugh at them!" like no bc even giving them the room to be that stupid in the first place means that we have to see a hundred little reminders of how many people out there would rather see us dead than suffer our passive existence. like i'm already seeing slurposting in response to posts just neutrally saying "oh jax is trans" because "jax isn't trans, you dumb [slur]s blah blah blah i'm dumb and illiterate".