A decent chunk of the fans, despite supposedly being fans, don't tend to actually know anything about the supposed thing they are fans of. AKA media illiterate, whether intentionally or not. It's a consequence of being a "shallow fan," of only liking something for a specific reason & only on their terms so any deviation from that version they made up in their head is believed to be bad. They don't actually try to see what's being told to them or interpret what is in front of them & instead go with what they want to see (regardless of how obvious the answers are).
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, tbh, people can have their own opinions on things regardless of why & especially if kept private BUT the problem is this kind of thing tends to VERY much come from fan entitlement over a creator's work that they will choose to voice publicly & make it other peoples problem. For some reason, fans tend to think they know & deserve these characters & stories more than the creators themselves who made them & form these parasocial relationships with them. Treating them like they are almost real human beings but treating the real humans that made them like shit *insert Alex Hirsch's tweet.* With TADC The Last Act reactions I'm reminded of this phenomena. People are allowed to not like the last episode but it does annoy me when their reasons aren't very good reasons especially if they don't make sense with the story being told.
I'm not a Jax fan, and while I did like him better after the ending I also still wouldn't say I'm a fan of his because personally i had my own "Jax" (a repressed/closeted queer kid with a not great home life who took shit out on others) in my life when I was young, not NEARLY as bad as him of course but regardless they were kind of shitty to me. So, I have never personally been a fan of characters like this since I have been a victim of them & because normally they usually tend to be excused or forgiven in the easiest way possible. However, when it came down to the series I didn't feel like they excused him, explaining WHY he was the way he was does not equal being excused and what happened to him was not a punishment either or maybe it was but one by his own hands though, one he chose because ultimately he was always meant to be a cautionary tale. He chose to go down a self destructive route & demolish everything & everyone who got in his way instead of improving despite all the people around trying to help, because ultimately you can only do so much for someone who doesn't want help.
I know the ending is getting criticism from all directions from the fandom but regardless this story was made by a queer person for queer people ABOUT queer characters but a LOT of people aren't analyzing it through that lens which is a shame because the dynamics and such really do change if you do. But, it's not just that though, it's a tale as old as time that people are more critical of queer media (especially when it's made by specific kinds of queer people) that isn't squeaky clean or dares to be a bit messy or different.
