🇻🇪 Thymosnova

Its alright! Stressful times, apology accepted, no hard feelings ヽ(･∀･)ﾉ

And I fully agree with you on many things, I believe creators should have some degree of responsibility for the type of messages they’re trying to deliver, same as I believe Jax’s whole ordeal was handled a bit too sloppily lol

I also fully agree, Jax SHOULD have apologized to Ribbit, Gangle, Ragatha, Zooble, Pomni— he hurt all of them, all because he was genuinely a piece of shit that lashed out at the people around him that dared to care about him, or abused and mocked characters that expressed themselves freely, specially characters that felt comfortable with their identity (Ragatha, Pomni and later Gangle in the beach episode).

I personally believe his way of thinking internally was something among the lines of: if I can’t be happy expressing my own identity, then people who are confident in it should be shamed. Alongside with some toxic masculinity and ideals, and the whole escapism thing related to the circus.

I think his upbringing, his terrible coping mechanisms, and the shame he got from his mother after opening up deeply scarred him to the point he turned into a horrible, horrible person that needed to hurt or mock others to feel grounded, as well as building this confident and cocky facade of his to remain sane in the circus. As they say, hurt people hurt people.

I think I mostly believe this should be valid representation because in the end, Jax was a bad person, one that just so happened to also be trans. Any sort of sexual orientation, race or identity isn’t related to one’s morality after all.

I do believe the ending of the show tries to show us a different side to Jax’s story to explain why he turned out like that, but i wouldn’t fully say it attempts to redeem him. Sympathize yeah, but mostly with his past self ,not with his present— we feel bad for past Jax, the one who hadn’t reached the circus yet, and was in a pretty unsupportive household, but not as much for present Jax— like many people have said, Ragatha also had a rough upbringing, and while she isn’t perfect she isn’t hurting people; she lends a hand whenever she can, even if her methods don’t work for everyone, strives to build positive relationships with those around her, and more.

In the end, Jax is representation of what happens in the worst of cases— what happens after repressing your feelings, what happens when you don’t let others support you, what happens when you attempt to open up and get mocked for it only to be hurt at your most vulnerable moments and when you let that define your whole experience. And I think its okay to also show those bad parts of different life experiences, even if they’re somewhat connected to gender identity or sexuality

I really hope and wish people don’t take it as an excuse to be openly transphobic, or assume that’s the universal experience of transfemmes, because it isn’t and shouldn’t be— as well as it should not be presented as something good.

If you wanna water down what i just explained on my post to me thinking “GRAHHHH I THINK ALL TRANSWOMEN SHOULD BE ASSHOLES AND SEXIST BECAUSE THATS EXACTLY WHAT TRANS WOMEN ARE”, or, alternatively “ALL TRANS WOMEN SHOULD BE PERFECT AND WHOEVER ISNT SHOULDN’T SHOW THEIR FACE TO THE PUBLIC”, you’re free to do so. I am not stopping you, nor am I here to ‘teach you something’, nor do I believe i am superior to you in anyway. We are both humans capable of debating respectfully.

If someone believes a group of people behaves exactly as a character shown on media, they aren’t prepared for the real world and should experiment the wide array of human experiences the world has to offer, both outside and online diversity is the key to learn how to understand and tolerate each other.

I’d be more willing to cordially and respectfully debate this with you, but you’re making a gross claim of my personal beliefs and the public’s understanding of complicated topics. I have some bad news, but someone who already had a radicalized view on trans women will do everything in their power to keep believing and spreading their own hateful propaganda. They will at nitpick everything so their (notably uninformed and ignorant) ‘arguments’ don’t crumble. They are people unwilling to change, therefore no matter how good the representation is, it will not change those people’s way of thinking.

Also, just in case its needed to be said: I do not believe all trans women are all misogynistic pre or post HRT, nor do I believe they are violent in nature.

I understand your anger anon. I know being part of an already criticized, hated and scrutinized minority makes it hard to get normal representation— you know, being shown as normal people trying their best instead of rancid caricatures. But you also have to understand that not all experiences are pretty, and you also have to understand that those experiences have the right to also be represented AND rightfully criticized without questioning whenever they have the right to exist or not.

Jax is not, neither by the narrative, the creator, nor the characters, shown as being in the right or lacking culpability.

Some experiences aren’t comfortable to see, some are pretty grotesque, violent, tragic, saddening or even enraging— whenever Jax’s character works as a cautionary tale or not to people shouldn’t invalidate the fact that his [her] experience is real. It is not “invalid” or “valid” as people claim, because there is no such thing as a parameter that decides whenever an experience is worth sharing/discussing or not, for better or for worse.

Yes, there is good and bad representation of trans folk in media, but it shouldn’t revolve around the morality of the character. It should rely in whenever the character was made with actual nuance and if the creator actually did the research needed for the topic, or if its just an stereotype of a group of people made without any actual thought put into them.

Isn’t this what you wanted? [W.I.P]

[ENG] The forced romance subtone of the weird route is not lost on me. Im really invested in seeing how in plays out in the future regardless of how unnerving it might be, kinda like seeing a car crash where you know everything’s horrible but you can’t stop watching.

I’ll turn this into a digital drawing soon, liking how it looks so far but i need to improve the posing and anatomy first!

[SPA] El romance forzado subyacente de la weird route es un concepto que no puedo perder de vista. Me intriga y perturba saber como irá la cosa más adelante por más turbio que se vaya poniendo, algo así como cuando vez un choque y sabes que está fea la cosa pero no puedes remover la mirada por esa curiosidad mórbida.

“Drown in your sorrows and fears!”

Drawing i did really long ago with the song “Scylla” from Epic the musical in mind