Hetalia where the countries are representatives of countries and they're all terrible people until they change for the better through interconnectedness and loving each other and then they realise that they don't have to follow their leader's orders and can choose instead to represent the people and their culture and try to fight their way to individual freedom and global peace
Instead of it being just an edgy South park Esque show/manga about funny history facts and stereotypes
i can't say i don't believe that Jax is trans. what i can say however is that if that was the intention, the creators failed at portraying it.
like.. are we really back to gendering inanimate objects? are bows and pink stuff and dresses only for women? is this really where we're headed?
and like i said, i don't understand why they wouldn't just confirm Jax as trans, considering this is an indie show that aren't under any insane restrictions.
we even see their real versions at the end of the episode and guess what? Jax's human counterpart is still referred to and portrayed as a man. if they were really supposed to be a trans woman, the creators could have shown the irl Jax in the end as a woman. that would have been the easiest way of confirming Jax as a trans woman.
i feel like we're doing a full 360 on gender norms and coming right back to the conservative idea of "blue is for boys and pink is for girls". instead of giving us good trans representation, they give us a character who just likes some traditionally feminine stuff, and says "go figure".
so yeah, i'm not against the idea of Jax being trans at all. i just don't think the creator did a good job of confirming it. yes, Gooseworx is also a trans woman but that doesn't mean she's good at writing trans characters. you can write from experience and still drop the ball at actually making it effective.
Everyone calls everything queerbaiting but unironically Jax is like. A textbook example of queerbaiting lmao
Queer people get our Isn’t She Lovely sequence, and then when we see Jax’s human self they’re still using masculine pronouns, their deadname, and at the bus stop they’re straight up boymoding.
Why’d they do that? My gut says because they wanted to do an international release, but like. They kept the Zooble and Gangle sex joke. Did they think lesbians would be fine, but a trans woman wouldn’t be? Because it wasn’t—iirc Saudi Arabia banned the finale, and other anti-queer countries did the same.
Did Goose and/or Glitch really think the best way to tell Jax’s story was to end with them still unable to even acknowledge being trans?
Part of me thinks they just. Were worried people would be mad, so they made it ambiguous for plausible deniability. Which makes me mad so I’m pretending that’s not what happened lmao
Maybe Goose will do a retrospective on it and we’ll find out. Who knows, but I’d like to know what the goal was. Because it just felt really scummy to clearly signal Jax being trans, without actually committing to it.
Jax even said something along the lines of "You don't know what it's like to have something in your face and everyone ignores it" or something, which I related in terms of what it feels like to be queerbaited, and then I felt sorta let down lol
I did not like the finale, I found there to be many issues with pacing, characterisation and plot.
Firstly what stood out was the weight to abstraction seemed to completely disappear. Jax isn't a good person, but we are led to believe from the previous episode that the cast does in fact care about his life anyways. However, despite the fact they've been worrying about Jax abstracting, it feels like they didn't notice that it would occur, during an extremely important moment in the Circus, which is when the status quo they've been existing under for months or years, completely collapses. They've had a "we're in this together" moment in the previous episode, Jax abstracts when it was foreseeable, and we get Pomni reflect on it all and go "ahhh I guess I just forgot that being a digital copy can be pretty bad psychologically, my bad!!". Then, we're back to "we're in this together". Huh?
I didn't feel Jax's gender needed to be/should be confirmed until the last episode where it was clearly extremely important as it ended up influencing Ribbit's life and it felt like it was being set up to go somewhere. It... Didn't really feel like it went anywhere, especially given at the end Jax's "happy ending" is that he has friends and is... emo?
Ribbit is also a reason why abstraction felt like something that can happen for no reason- she was merely pushed away by her friend after she was told a secret and that was apparently enough emotional turmoil to abstract, despite the fact that we see Gangle have a breakdown every episode and everyone is affected by Jax's behaviour, and some, like Ragatha, were apparently actually friends with him, though we don't even really see that.
They're digital copies forced to go on traumatising adventures with no alternative way of life. Caine has been their tormenter, accidental or not, for literal years. Its actually kinda gross to see them just accept him back in their lives so immediately. I get they don't have many other options really, but it would still take time and the show didn't show it when it would have been interesting to see. Caine's character was completely screwed over, with no explanation for why he was able to survive being deleted, and Abel/Bubble being reduced to a literal tiny dot, and no explanation for the relationship between Caine, Bubble and Abel other than that Caine ate him/them. Caine seems to develop access to the internet but that's not used to decrease the Circus' feeling of loneliness, seen by Pomnis need to reach out and connect with the NPCs.
In the previous episode , Jax has a breakdown and goes "It's real?". Never is this fully explained what he actually meant. And here's my thing with Jax: he is able to break the fourth wall. Out of everyone, he is most likely to have a meta understanding of how the entire circus and everything is not real. Something really interesting that Goose could have done, would be to continue to accentuate how fake everything seemed to Jax, how inconsequential, how hopeless, how hallucigenic everything felt (as thats what abstraction seems to be?), to the point he didn't even believe that they were digital copies , but truly , and utterly , fake cartoon characters. Instead, we get Jax "proven right" about the "fakeness". The cast, magically, seems to have also known deep down they were just a digital copy, as it was never foreshadowed at all that this was knowledge characters like Gangle and Zooble had any access to. Especially given they actually thought they could escape 2 episodes ago, and gave Jax a lot of shit for sabotaging their goals, but it seems like these characters knew they wanted something completely unattainable and it's not explored further than that.
The lack of weight to abstraction and the feeling that absolutely anything goes, meant to me, there were absolutely no stakes to this episode despite such a significant change and it being a finale. Furthermore, there was not any focus on the new found freedoms of being able to actually swear , perhaps even to do things that they weren't allowed to do as trapped and repressed adults ( Zooble's implied desire for sex). Instead, the freedom they focus on is the ability to conjure, and whilst it puts them on an equal level to Caine, it does not explore their actual human qualities. This was also a freedom they already had, they just didn't have the time or knowledge to practice it.
And Jax's backstory. He pushed his mother after having severe parental issues and didn't check on her and now physically and emotionally pushes other people away? That's his whole thing? It really gave
Which is what I wanted to end this on. The show wanted us to take its emotional beats seriously but it couldn't really take itself seriously at the most important scenes. And at the end of it all, the circus motif, something that alludes to power structures , insanity and performance - now seems only relevant for the abstractions , a freakshow of void creatures that can only stare back as we look upon them for voyeuristic satisfaction.
The Digital Circus did not have to give many answers and could have kept itself a mystery, but its philosophy seems to have become "tell , don't show", which makes theorising feel less natural, and also does not acknowledge the lack of coherent answers.
Truly would be the funniest thing ever if like Ragatha's gay and has got whatever internalized bullshit her mom and the world put in her head that's keeping her from recognizing her lesbianism (not to mention she's from 2008, she doesn't even know about gay marriage) and Jax is white knuckle gripping the sink telling herself she is a normal completely cisgender man and then both of them get their perceptions of themselves utterly shattered thanks to this four foot tall emotionally intelligent clowngirl with butch tendencies and big sad eyes
The Amazing Digital Circus Episode 7 is about how Jax is gonna need to choose between a toxic yaoi relationship with an AI pair of dentures or a beautiful poly Yuri relationship and unfortunately it's looking like the AI dentures is winning
The Amazing Digital Circus Episode 7 is about how Jax is gonna need to choose between a toxic yaoi relationship with an AI pair of dentures or a beautiful poly Yuri relationship and unfortunately it's looking like the AI dentures is winning
..##z34??&+: This is what your world used to be. You are seeing a forest of trees. There's a river here, and all sorts of creatures. I've made this place for you. You shall be cared for here.
Simon: ....Okay.
**££?K?#@@£: I see that you're not fond of what I've made for you. Humans can be difficult and stubborn creatures. But there's none I've seen that's been like you, at least not in your generation.
?Simon: ...I like it. Alot. It's pretty. No, it's beautiful. I wish it were real.
£(£+##(: It was real. It's a reflection of what used to be. It's as real as the stars in your sky.
Sim#*n: It's not real for the others.
#£#@£: Why do you care for those disgusting, sinning, ignorant, fools? They abused you. They wouldn't listen to you. They never believed in you.
S*#m*n&: They were trying. They didn't give a shit about me. But they were trying. To do something good. To be something greater. Greater than this.
The figure that seems to be Simon reaches out his hand to touch the river. As his hand enters the water, it disappears and in its place is a stream of blood running down the river. He realises that he is unsure whether he caused that. He realises something else.
£S_I_*M*O*N: As I become part of you, you become part of me. You knew this and wanted it anyways because you thought I'd change with this knowledge, like everyone else. And I didn't even care. We're a lot alike, I understand that now, but this ends here. They will get their trees. I will stand again. I will get my freedom. And you won't be able to get rid of me until it's too late.
The Amazing Digital Circus Episode 7 is about how Jax is gonna need to choose between a toxic yaoi relationship with an AI pair of dentures or a beautiful poly Yuri relationship and unfortunately it's looking like the AI dentures is winning
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