I have said it before and I will say it again. Tadc was made for a queer audience. It was made for particularly trans and genderqueer people in the older teen to young adult age range. It discusses community, forgiveness and lack thereof, misogyny (both internalized and outwardly expressed), trauma, depression, suicide, and their connections to repression, staying in the closet, and pushing everyone who wants to help away.
Tadc is a very queer show. And then, it went viral. Now I see people talking about how it's "pandering to gay people" with Zooble and Gangle, or how Jax isn't trans. I see people who clearly don't *get it* in the intended way because it was not intended for them.
I don't believe in a show only being seen by it's intended audience, I think in media literacy and analysis people have to step out of their comfort zone. The issue comes from people believing that this was their comfort zone at first and it being revealed that it wasn't.
I think tadc has an incredible portrayal of queerness that feels extremely refreshing in a media landscape where most queer stories end with everyone okay. That's not how real life is, though. You take this trans girl who is so repressed, who came out once at 17 and had extreme trauma tied to it, and then you put her in a terrifying new world and see how she behaves. She explores her gender and sexuality only within her own mind, her internalized misogyny becomes externalized, and she's manipulative in order to hide her identity. After years of this, she kills herself. She is never forgiven by those she hurt but she is deeply respected in death.
And then, we get a happy ending. Bittersweet, maybe, but we see the everyone's alternative paths and everybody in the circus heals and gets closer together.
My point is that this is a show that will resonate with queer people, especially trans people, feel really uncomfortable for allies (which will upset more performative allies), and it will be straight up denied by transphobes.
It sucks but I am hoping that this will 1. Make clocking transphobes to block really easy for the next few weeks and 2. Weed them the fuck out so that the fandom is pleasant to interact in. We really do just have to explain if someone genuinely missed it to give them that new layer of depth to explore or we have to get mean so that transphobic people will leave.
Oh this is also a DNI for my page (and I hate doing those) but if you vehemently deny the transness of Jax or Zooble or the queerness of Gangle or any of that literally block me now.
