#comet posting

I do wanna clarify that from a narrative standpoint I think the finale was quite good. It hit all the points it meant to and communicated its message well. I personally do not it like it for the following reasons. If you do like it that’s ok

A random transgender suicidal ideation survivor’s perspective on the finale is inevitably going to be very different from, say, a Shakespearean tragedy scholar with a BA in literature’s. I try to be unbiased most of the time, but here I’m not even making the attempt because I don’t think it’s possible and because I think my unique perspective is actually pretty valuable.

What they did with Jax’s character was emotionally devastating to me. I’ve always been attached to them, I resonated with a lot of character traits (I was never an actual bully, but I did push a lot of people away during the heights of my depression and struggle with accepting love and believing I deserve it, and I also was raised with a narcissistic mother to add salt to the projection wound), to the point I knew no matter what happened I wasn’t gonna be able to ever claim I wasn’t biased as fuck in Jax’s favor. But now that I’ve actually seen it I can say with 100% certainty that even if I didn’t like Jax, I would still be disappointed with the ending they gave them.

Abstraction, as far as our current understanding, has been likened very closely to death and more closely to suicide. The pre-abstraction symptoms are really similar to major depressive disorder (isolation, hopelessness, loss of interest, etc) and other mental health conditions. Jax has been very heavily implied to be genderqueer at the very least, most likely being a pre-transition trans woman.

As a trans person with debilitating mental health issues, I had a lot of hope for this finale. Time after time I see characters like me — suicidal, queer, with unhealthy coping methods that make them a hard victim to love — die on screen, and since this was an indie show made by a trans person I couldn’t smother that little spark of hope that just this once they’d get to live.

When Pomni and Jax had their friendship is magic moment, I spent the rest of the episode with held breath. I was on the edge of my seat for them to show me the outcome of that. When Jax finally, finally started reaching out in a tangible way I was so so ready to see that big screen success for the first ever time. Only for them to do nothing with it.

Jax died, and I got strung along with a desperate kind of longing that I have never felt for a fictional story before. The crushing disappointment and…betrayal, almost, that I felt afterwards was so bad I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to interact with TADC again.

These feelings of disappointment have only grown as I read the takes of my peers, as people point out the emotional incest Jax experienced with their mother, the way so many questions were left unanswered (and while I don’t agree with everyone on that point, as it wasn’t relevant to the story Goose was trying to tell, I do sympathize with the frustration born of so many interesting concepts going unexplored and plot lines being dropped). As I’ve thought more on it, and realized even more things that I wish were explored or addressed, about what message I can see in the story.

Now, I know the message of the story, but only because I know what Goose intended. And I think she succeeded on her main point, at least. I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying the finale. The message that I can get from Jax’s story was probably supposed to be a cautionary tale about not reaching out for help. But the thing is, that’s not the message I can see. The message I see is that recovery, being better, getting to move on and live your life after your worst moments, is impossible.

Again, it’s entirely possible this was heavily influenced by my bias, but…if this message was intended for people like me, to encourage us to seek help and rely on others, doesn’t my bias matter? If I’m the intended audience, and all I could feasibly get from that is an ‘abandon hope, all queers with suicidal tendencies’, doesn’t that mean that someone just like me who isn’t on the road to recovery might think similarly?

And it hurts especially to look back at previous episodes and see Jax begin to reach out, to see Zooble and Pomni reach out, only for episode 9 to shove all that down the drain. (“We’re not gonna wander off and let you abstract”/“be here later”/etc.)

Because of all these thoughts and opinions, I’ve had a really hard time deciding what I wanna do with my own future in the TADC fandom. I tried avoiding it, but that only hurt me worse, made me think I’d have to lose this thing that matters so much to me. I love TADC. I love Jax, and I love Pomni, Caine, Gangle, and Zooble. (And Rags, but she reminds me a bit too much of my abusive mother LMAO). I don’t want to give up on something that made me so happy for so long.

So, instead, I let myself think about it. Went back to my favorite fanficitions, rewatched clips I enjoyed and the moments that made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe, and I came up with so many ideas. I have, like, an entire 3 page doc full of ideas and AUs and concepts for what I could do with this story now that it’s in the hands of the fans entirely.

I’m not here to debate about the ending. Love it, hate it, it’s all equally valid to me, and nothing anybody says is likely to change the extremely personal and emotional takeaways I have. There’s a lot about the finale I did like (not to brag (lies) but I had that same idea about them seeing their social media feeds, like, before episode 6!) like Gangles reaction to Jax’s abstraction which I thought was beautifully done. I can see the narrative value in a lot of the decisions they made. So please do not try to convince me to worship Goose as the next Shakespeare, or that the TADC finale is actually the height of media and I am simply a philistine. My opinion won’t be changing in all likelihood.

Enjoy the fruits of my heartbreak, and I hope you all continue to love and create in the TADC fandom, even if you were hurt the way I was. We can overcome our own pain to embrace the mountains of joy we can still get from this story we all cherish so much, if we do it together.