I like bugs @give-bug - Tumblr Blog

Seeing an artist I like get into a fandom and being cursed with the knowledge that the creator is a pedophile but they're dead so it's not like they're at risk of hurting anyone else so there's no reason to bring it up and aaaaa.

#iykyk #sorry if this is how you find out #it's not TADC btw #just saying because I've been TADC posting

I honestly feel like the show would have been way better if Jax had abstracted in the first couple episodes. Hell, have her replace Kaufmo as the catalyst for Pomni's fears of being forgetten, with Jax being someone who the other circus members have complicated and largely negative feelings about and might actually want to forget.

It might have even made Jax's part in the overarching themes stronger, being an actual warning for the other characters of the consequences of stagnating in their insecurities instead of a ticking time bomb that really doesn't affect anyone else's opinions on staying or leaving or playing nice. Have her haunt the narrative with Pomni being a newcomer into a group that's in a very weird headspace as they grapple with the aftermath of their abuser dying tragically.

It just feels like Jax's arc came at the cost of everything else about the show, to the active detriment of even her own writing.

#tadc crit #tadc spoilers

I'm on the fence about insisting people use she/her for Jax, because while I personally believe she's transfem and I think the last episode definitely supports that, I also don't blame anyone who doesn't. If it were a network show or an older movie I'd be screaming that *of course* she's trans they made it as obvious as they could within the restrictions they had how can you not see that!!! But the problem is that tadc...doesnt have those restrictions....? There was no real reason they *had* to make it as ambiguous as they did, and it just feels weird when tadc is a show that has, up until now, been so open about having queer, non-cis characters or characters that were gnc. In a show where a character is explicity nonbinary and has gender dysphoria (and also has *heavily* implied gay sex with another character in the end credits), it feels intentional to NOT do the bare minimum of confirming it in a more concrete way other than jax blushing when ribbit puts a bow on her head and the song choice when she abstracts. It would have been so easy to show Jax's human form (the version thats thematically supposed to have gotten the life she always wanted) as transitioning or fully transitioned, but that isnt what we see at all. So its either implied that human Jax isn't trans or she's still miserable as an egg (but somehow confident enough to go to a gay bar and no longer has internalized misogyny?) which just. idk.

tldr I totally agree that Jax is transfem but I think if we're gonna police her pronouns within the fandom space we need more concrete evidence than just a few trans-coded things that can be explained away, especially when the show had no reason NOT to confirm it

Honestly, I don't think the issue is that people don't understand that Jax is trans. I haven't seen anything in the tadc crit tag where someone finds this confusing. I have seen people outright acknowledge the scenes as confirmation of Jax's transfeminity and then continue using he/him. It honestly seems like people just want to hammer home the misogyny around Jax's character, which I get, but it reflects poorly to have to misgender the character in question to get that point across.

#tadc crit #tadc spoilers

no offense, but how are we supposed to know jax is a trans woman? the only indication is goose’s non-canon social media posts and ribbit’s bow scene that was so vague, barely anyone knows what happened.

his irl self presents as a cis man who goes by he/him, uses the name leroy mateo, the ending narration by pomni refers to jax with he/him pronouns, and no official tadc affiliations use she/her to address jax.

The Ribbit bow scene really isn't vague. It's very weirdly done, but putting a bow on the head of a cartoon character is the single most common way to show that they're meant to be a girl. That, and again, the scene where Jax double-dies has a song called "Isn't She Lovely" playing over montage of Jax scenes, there's no other "she" the song could be referring to within the context of the scene*.

Everything after that point just kind of drops it, which is very very weird (my best guess is that Pomni was supposed to say something about how she can't share Jax's internal thoughts when Jax can't say things for herself anymore but then Gooseworx just. Forgot to actually write that. Maybe she thought it was implied.), but that doesn't negate the very unsubtle way that Jax is shown as trans. The Jax mindscape scenes genuinely just don't make sense through any other lens.

*I'm aware the actual song was Stevie Wonder singing about his newborn daughter, and I definitely have thoughts on using a cover by someone who's very comfortable sitting with racists for your nonblack abuser character, but specifically within the context of the show this is clearly about Jax.

#tadc crit #tadc spoilers

For all my negative feelings towards TADC, I really don't like that people are using he/him for Jax.

Jax is a trans woman. It is not subtle. Poorly handled? Yes. Actively misgendered in the show after the reveal? Yes. Ambigious? No. Just because it wasn't said directly doesn't mean Ribbit putting her bow on Jax in a way that is near exclusively used to indicate a character is female or having a song that explicitly genders her as a woman playing as she double-dies are subtle hints.

Like, it isn't about the show at that point. You know the character is a trans woman, why are you intent on misgendering her? You can acknowledge the misogyny in the writing without being transmisogynistic.

#tadc critical #tadc episode 9 #tadc spoilers #transmisogyny tw

so, as soon as i got into tadc, i went and rewatched gooseworx's other, earlier projects. runmo, elain gets adopted, for example. tadc's finale didn't surprise me for being kind of like a kick in the face to all of the set up before it, because that's gooseworx's humor, rug pulls and flipping off the audience for expecting there to be some grand reveal, when it's about the experience, the little messages. this isn't necessarily bad writing, it's cheeky, and it's cheeky to a fault that'll generate engagement, and that also speaks to unrealized biases. my criticism lies with the carelessness to do with writing about misogyny, abuse, and how the writing itself is rife with misogyny, transphobia, ableist views, and racism. finding out arin hanson was involved afterwards felt spiritual, when i saw that photo with him before seeing the finale my soul sunk down to my damn toes. i can understand having irredeemable characters, but must these characters always be trans women who must commit suicide or be killed for the world to be okay again? three other popular things with that narrative, now this, in the year of 2026??? we need a show telling kids to at least think about the potential humanity of AI, and brandishing the inhumanity of this trans woman as a warning about not opening up, in the midst of the extermination of trans people, and a push for AI to replace all but the elite? i loved tadc for a lot of reasons, but at this point, it's uncomfortable at best for a hundred reasons more. the show is "feel good, fandom friendly ihnmaims" according to my brother, which i can't disagree with anymore, and only disagreed with to begin with because ihnmaims has a fandom

Personally, I think that Gooseworx's other projects work better because they're self-contained. She's very good at writing single scenes, and she can string those together into a single short story, but going off TADC it seems she doesn't have the focus or the skill to pull off the follow-through on a larger narrative. I think that's also why Jax is just so extremely awful, she had an image of Jax in her head as a repressed trans woman who takes out her emotions on other people, she thought up a bunch of scenes that individually felt really good and emotionally satisfying, but then she never went back and considered how those scenes put together create an image of a stagnant character who's screentime is largely spent abusing women with no narrative payoff.

That's not to say I disagree about the underlying biases, though. Especially looking at her apology for the nega thing, it seems like she falls under the unfortunately common philosophy that racism is when you do a hate crime and not a systemic and pervasive underlying set of biases that must be actively worked on.

Tangent, and this is a personal issue only somewhat related to TADC, but oh my god people need to be more willing to call out their shitty friends. I swear, look at literally anyone with even a tiny internet presence and they're at most 2 steps removed from some flavor of absolute shithead.

I do disagree on two things. One, TADC is not and has never been for kids. It's not super adult, but it's never advertised itself as being for anyone younger then like, 14. Two, Caine is so removed from real GenAI that I don't think there's any real connection. He's AI in the sci-fi sense, and sci-fi loves its philosophy regardless of real-world application.

#tadc crit #tadc spoilers

Reminder that while the TADC cast's racism is obviously more in the public eye at the moment, Gameoverse is worse. Like, unimaginably worse.

TL;DR: apparently being in proximity to a black person caused Arin such distress that he felt the need to say N***er 30 times the moment they left.

#tadc crit #glitch critical #glitch crit #Youtube #gameoverse #gameoverse critical

It's driving me a little insane that people are saying that people who hate the finale just lack media literacy. Like, you're free to feel however you want about it, but ironically it seems most of that particular criticism is coming from people who can't bear to face the idea that the thing they like might not actually be very deep or well written.

Like, just a brief list of basic criticisms:

-Why was there so much set up for exploration of the humanity of AI when this was just going to be dropped? Caine's ep 8 breakdown and inability to understand humanity isn't a deeper reflection of the fact he isn't human, he just needed to remove the evil blue orb! The moon might be sapient, but she and Caine are the only AI in the circus! For some reason!

-Every woman in the show's characterization is warped around Jax, endlessly forgiving and coddling her, only for her to turn around and abuse them while the narrative says you should feel very bad for Jax because Jax has a tragic backstory.

-Seriously, the entire show is just warped around Jax. Sure, Jax is one of the two main protagonists (something only established late into the series by sidelining other characters), but this goes beyond that. The actual main character, Pomni, completely drops her arc about halfway through the show and instead spends all her time trying to fix Jax (like all the women before her). Apparently Pomni is especially resiliant and one of the fastest people to ever adapt to the circus, according to Kinger. Why? Never explained. The only thing we know about the main protagonist is that she was an accountant and likes urbexing. Jax, on the other hand, has her backstory take up half of the finale, as well as being a driving mystery throughout the entire latter half of the show.

-Pomni never tells anyone that Jax is trans. Jax didn't ask her to do this. Does she feel it's disrespectful to reveal something so personal when Jax can't advocate for herself? Does she simply not care? Who knows. Never explained.

The entire show set up a whole bunch of hints and implications to things, only to pull back the curtain at the end to reveal that it all meant nothing. Gummigoo being sapient? Makes Pomni sad but the greater implications of sapience are relegated to the moon saying "I love you" at the very end. Heavy implication that Caine was directly responsible for the first abstraction? Literally just a plothole. Jax saying that people are "not fun to be around" when they're about to abstract? Just a lie, her friends were both pleasant with her right up until the end. Everything about Caine and Abel as a company? Irrelevant.

I'm realizing as I write this that Gooseworx and Scott Cawthon have the same approach to writing and I'm not sure how to feel about that.

#tadc crit #tadc critical #tadc episode 9 #tadc spoilers

People who hate pitbulls are literally just racist oh my godddd.

#can you tell I just saw some bullshit #they're just dogs!

Feels weird seeing RTTS posting knowing JayRockin dropped this on their personal acct and never apologized

Incredibly condescending way of dismissing people talking about things like the disproportionate rate of sexual assault and loss of community for transitioning to the "evil" gender.

#transandrophobia #transandrophobia tw

s1llyl0g1cl0v3r

I can't find the post but I saw someone saying they notice that they don't commonly see transmascs over the age of 18 and where are they going because they likely did not all collectively detransition. and now I'm wondering if I am going to be killed when I'm older?

give-bug

I think it's because you're a minor and the over-18 transmascs aren't generally hanging out in the same spaces as teenagers.

ohnoitstbskyen

I deleted the ask, but someone wrote one basically saying "why do you post reaction videos to Helluva Boss? Don't you know the show exploits its workers and they're overworked and get burned out?"

And, I mean, I love your energy, person who asked, definitely hold on to those values and speak up about this. But also, I am afraid I might have some bad news for you about literally the whole entire animation industry.

As near as I can make out from the sparse journalistic reporting that's been done on SpindleHorse -- and as a sidebar, please for the love of god read actual reporting about these things and not just callout posts and fandom discourse -- as near as I can make out, SpindleHorse as a studio is neither all that much better nor all that much worse than basically anywhere else in the industry on their level. It seems like it is (or was? Hazbin Hotel seems to be run differently) a studio mostly run by contracting people on a project-by-project basis, which leads to a crapton of turnover, and a huge need for organizing and onboarding, which according to the reporting I have read, the producers and freelancers have struggled to balance and manage properly, which has negatively impacted a number of the workers.

Top that with the usual catty, clique-based backbiting, sniping and poorly managed conflict resolution that's just kinda endemic in creative environments mostly staffed by twentysomethings and stressed out freelancers, and you have the recipe for a workplace where a lot of people are going to have a great time and feel creatively fulfilled, and a lot of people are going to come away feeling justifiably burnt the fuck out and exploited.

All of this is... not especially unusual for the animation industry, or indeed for any creative industry. Which is not to say that it is good, or that it should be allowed to be normal, or that it shouldn't be reported on and criticized (and please for the love of god support unionization efforts because that's the only thing that will actually address these kinds of systemic problems). It's just to say that if those kinds of issues are the line in the sand you draw where you refuse to engage with a studio's output...

Then, for starters, say goodbye to basically all of anime, because the Japanese animation industry is actively in a state of crisis trying to recruit new talent because its working conditions and pay are so astonishingly abysmal. And the horror stories that escape from that industry make the issues at SpindleHorse look like summer camp at times.

But you also have to say goodbye to a lot of American and European animation. Please do not imagine that Disney and its subcontractors, or that Nickelodeon or Warner Bros, are benevolent employers. They exploit their staff brutally and are currently trying to crush the labor value of animation with threats of generative AI being used to replace jobs. But those corporations also have extremely well-funded PR departments and the ability to silence employees with NDAs and threats of blackballing, so you don't get to hear as many of the horror stories as you might from a smaller independent studio that's less able to silence criticism by holding people's careers hostage.

All of this is to say that 1) it's valid and important to have criticism of both large and small-scale animation studios, and to keep the well-being and happiness of the workers higher in your priorities than the output of Products™.

And 2) if you're going to have a principle for what kinds of problems make a studio's output morally untouchable for you, and what kinds of problems you think should make a studio's output untouchable to other people, you do need to apply that principle consistently to the entire industry, and not just to the independent animation studio that happens to be surrounded by the internet's most inflammatory fandom discourse.

If you don't apply that principle consistently, maybe don't send reproachful messages to strangers scolding them for not living up to your standards, and even if you do apply that principle consistently, maybe still don't do that, because it's mostly quite annoying, and doesn't really do anything to support animation workers struggling for better working conditions.

The Animation Guild in the US is currently in the middle of a bargaining process with their industry, and they have a social media press kit as well as relevant talking points on their website which you can use to post in solidarity with the workers. If it comes to a full industry strike, consider donating to their strike funds to help them maintain pressure. Outside of the US, try and find out what (if any) local unions exist for animation workers, and maybe sign up to their mailing lists. They will let you know what kind of support they need from you.

give-bug

I know this is 2 years old now, and maybe you've changed your mind since then, but this feels really dismissive of the problem.

Spindlehorse was the studio that started the indie animation boom of recent years. They had the option to go against the standards of the industry and not exploit their workers, to make a difference, and they decided that exploitation was an ok sacrifice for a cartoon.

This isn't Disney, Spindlehorse is not an old studio with more money then God that needed to immediately make 1,000% value for the shareholders. Spindlehorse isn't even an especially big studio, there is a pretty direct line of communication from Vivziepop (the CEO) to the animators. Even if you want to argue that it's no longer in Vivziepop's hands because of Amazon, she very much did have the choice for several years not to exploit her animators.

Personally, I think that we should be especially critical of how indie studios treat their workforce. It will take years upon years for any real change to happen in the big studios. We simply cannot vote with our wallets or our social media posts hard enough to have a major impact in a short span of time. The same does not go for indie studios. We can absolutely have an effect on how indie studios treat their workforce, and saying that the big studio practices aren't ok starts at the small.

#hazbin hotel #helluva boss #spindlehorse #vivziepop

give-bug

People are so weirdly acidic when it comes to Jax's gender.

Just, to lay it out, here is all the evidence regarding Jax's gender (in any direction). I'll be using he/him pronouns when referring to Jax generally since those are his current canon pronouns.

-Jax doesn't like getting close with people.

-Jax responded extremely negatively to being put in a maid dress

-Jax's room is girly looking, with lots of pink/purple (unclear in the lighting) and shooting stars with rainbows.

-Jax's hell scene involves his outer rabbit-skin being peeled and revealing a yellow, mannequin-like creature underneath.

-Jax generally seems to avoid introspection.

-In 2024, Gooseworx posted a bunch of drawings with one featuring Jax holding a bottle of Progesterone and saying "I read somewhere that taking progesterone makes you better at gambling".

With that in mind,

If Jax is a cisgender man:

-Jax's identity issues are self-worth based, existing even before he entered the circus. He hurts other people to avoid confronting the fact that he's not a very good person. Entering the circus and having his body replaced with that of a cartoon bunny made his issues worse. He has a strong need for control.

-Jax is heavily disassociating. He doesn't want to confront that his actions are actually hurting people, and that the people who've abstracted are actually gone.

-In episode 5, Jax is already on the back foot with the vegan thing. He's losing control, and being forced into a maid dress with the express purpose of humiliating him is shoving that in his face even harder.

-The rooms are based on their character appearances, not what they want/are insecure about. That, or Jax has toxic masculinity issues and it's an expression of his fears of embarassment.

-The skin peeling is a metaphor for what he thinks will happen if he loses control. As @curoopeez pointed out, without his rabbit skin, he loses his smile. He can no longer hide his insecurities with humor, he is forced to be sincere and risk being laughed at for it.

-These are other drawings on the same canvas as the progesterone one.

These seem flanderizing to the point of being out of character. I don't think these were intended to be canon.

I think everything I said above could be or is still true, even if Jax is trans. I think him being trans just adds to those feelings, not replaces them.

If Jax is a trans man:

-The maid dress thing is dysphoria.

-The room is his gender insecurities.

-The skin peeling is him being forced to expose himself as trans and risk being seen as lesser for it.

If Jax is a trans woman:

-The maid dress forced Jax to express something she wants, but is afraid to confront, in front of people who hate her.

-Jax wants to be more feminine, but is afraid to be. The skin peeling is her being forced to expose what she wants and risk being judged.

-The drawing is canon, or at least based on future canon information.

My point isn't "Jax isn't going to end up being trans" (though I do think that'll end up being the case, given how a trans reveal would reframe the maid dress and skin peel merch). I just think that, given current info, any interpretation is valid, and saying that one interpretation is objectively incorrect or even bigoted(???) Is weird and toxic.

give-bug

Coming back to this, I am now more in favor of transfem Jax, but that's almost entirely due to outside-of-show context. Reminder that most people do not read Gooseworx's blog or even watch the merch ads.

diaryofsaintdymphna

Maam she's 15-16 and looks like this. What are you on

ouroborosparadox

full screenshot from my boyfriend. hello?

transmisandrysucks

In light of FLAVOR FOLEY's jamie p's comments about an underage character I will be changing my pfp to a crunchwrap supreme