Fox

a blog for my bees (thoughts) || occasionally an artist but mostly a bee wrassler || most of my bees are related to TADC at the moment (and probably for the next fifty million years || 24

[cassettric]

i wish this freak would realize that he doesn't have to be miserable. come on man.

[krevetichh]

[riceballart]

pomni, we are SO fucked.

[daialune]

touch

[cassettric]

I'm sorry but the people who try to demonize Pomni for "choosing Jax over Ragatha" drive me insane. Y'all need to view this story through a different lense.

Imagine you're Pomni now. You're in the circus. Your entire life has been stripped away from you in an instant. Your existence is a mockery of existence itself. There are rules to this new plane that you now inhabit and you don't know what all of them are, but you know that life and death still effectively exist. You know (you assume) that you are still alive. You know that you can "die". You know that you are not alone here, that there are five other people trapped in here with you. You know that they can die, too.

Like it or not, Jax is one of your lifelines. One of the last ties you have to your humanity. He is a person, just like you. And he is not doing well.

So what do you do?

Do you idly watch him spiral downwards? Do you gleefully cheer him on as he dissociates further and further from reality and inches ever closer to a purgatorial end that you can safely assume is worse than death? Do you intentionally push him closer and closer to that edge? Do you laugh and tell him that he deserves it?

Or do you try your damndest to make a friend?

[cassettric]

DO YOU PEOPLE HAVE ANY IDEA HOW VINDICATED I FEEL RIGHT NOW.

[whaliiwatching]

he’s been waiting for someone to say that for a loooooong time

yea the funnybunny got to me. also transfem jax real (she has a dewlap)

these are redesigns/gijinkas!! not what i think they’re like on the outside. i don’t think we’like ever get to see them outside the circus tbh

[cassettric]

ain't he just a silly little guy

[cassettric]

A lot of TADC fans do Ragatha a major disservice in the ways that they criticize the other characters for how they interact with her and I need to talk about it.

I've seen a lot of people get suuuuuper up in arms about this scene (specifically at Pomni for not standing up for Ragatha) and it bugs me. Because it very much needed to play out exactly the way that it did.

(Before I go any further, please understand that I truly love Ragatha as a character. None of what I'm about to say is meant to be read as criticism towards her. She is fantastically written and painfully relatable and the writing does her so much justice and it saddens me that people aren't seeing it.)

With that out of the way.

Ragatha is a chronic people-pleaser, which means that she places all of her self-worth in her relationships with other people and how they perceive her. Interacting with her is unsettling and difficult for the other characters because this deeply rooted insecurity is palpable in everything she says and does; that whatever they say to her is going to have a massive effect on her psyche. That is a lot of weight to put on another person (especially Pomni, who has known Ragatha for the shortest amount of time compared to everyone else). It is not cruel or unreasonable for the others to struggle with trusting her, because her motivations in every interaction are focused more on herself than anyone else. And they can feel it.

I know this because I used to be this.

Which is why it's also not cruel or unreasonable of Pomni to not take Ragatha's side when Ragatha intentionally starts that moment of conflict with Jax in the softball segment. I mean, we can all see (especially with the added context of episode 6) that Pomni knows what she's doing when she interacts with Jax. He's not corrupting her; she's way too smart for that. But Ragatha can't see this because she's too worried about how Pomni sees her to see how smart Pomni actually is.

And let me say this really loudly: people-pleasing tendencies are not healed by "pleasing the people".

Pomni taking Ragatha's side after Ragatha put her literally and figuratively in the middle of her conflict with Jax would not have done Ragatha any long-term good. It would have only reinforced Ragatha's beliefs that "if I do such and such, this person will like me and I will have value". Which is the exact opposite of what people like her need to hear.

And it's why this conversation between her and Kinger happened in episode 6.

Kinger is the only person in the circus whose approval and good favor Ragatha isn't actively vying for at all times (excluding Caine). Which makes him the exact perfect person to comfort Ragatha and remind her that her true worth as a person isn't found in what others think of her. THIS right here is the ideal for her character. THIS is what gets through to suffocating insecurity and people-pleasing tendencies. THIS is her character being done justice and being written with beautiful, masterful compassion.

[cassettric]

Gonna sound harsh but I don't care, I actually have no patience for any fans of TADC who refuse to feel sympathy for any one of these characters. This goes for both Jax haters and Ragatha haters. I have no interest in your interpretation of any part of this story if you refuse to understand any one of these characters past surface-level.

(and this goes double for people who think Pomni is a boring audience stand-in.)

[amaznificentasticliciousful-dea]

This was such an insane thing for him to say because she’s not coming on to him and he actually is the one who has been coming on to her

[cassettric]

pompom expression practice

[thegreatgoatby]

Help girl im drowning based on that one anime image.

[cassettric]

I'm sorry but the people who try to demonize Pomni for "choosing Jax over Ragatha" drive me insane. Y'all need to view this story through a different lense.

Imagine you're Pomni now. You're in the circus. Your entire life has been stripped away from you in an instant. Your existence is a mockery of existence itself. There are rules to this new plane that you now inhabit and you don't know what all of them are, but you know that life and death still effectively exist. You know (you assume) that you are still alive. You know that you can "die". You know that you are not alone here, that there are five other people trapped in here with you. You know that they can die, too.

Like it or not, Jax is one of your lifelines. One of the last ties you have to your humanity. He is a person, just like you. And he is not doing well.

So what do you do?

Do you idly watch him spiral downwards? Do you gleefully cheer him on as he dissociates further and further from reality and inches ever closer to a purgatorial end that you can safely assume is worse than death? Do you intentionally push him closer and closer to that edge? Do you laugh and tell him that he deserves it?

Or do you try your damndest to make a friend?

[daggerstarlight]

as a rule for my blog, you may always assume anything Pomni and Jax related I post is funnybunny

[teashteinn]

Kinger doesn't need to dress :)

[cassettric]

I think that Ragatha saying that she "failed" Jax is referring to the fact that she (and everyone else) can see how close he is to abstraction.

He's not the only one who knows what people are like before they abstract.

I think everyone has seen the signs and have all basically given up on him (except possibly Kinger). I think they're just as guilty as Jax is of disconnecting from someone so their inevitable fate hurts less, albeit in different ways. Jax is also aware of this, and makes it easier for them to disconnect from him through his behavior on purpose, so that he can continue convincing himself that nothing matters and nothing anyone feels is real.

Which is why Pomni's refusal to back down and pretend to not care about him rattled him so hard.

[cassettric]

beloved girl. still trying to figure out her hair.