i hope everyone can forgive my tadc posting but it just got good u guys.... spoilers for the most recent episode but if uve been waiting for it to get good before you actually get into it now is the time... if u read this whole ramble i love u forever
first of all, i LOVE love love this animation where he literally masks using the default expression of his avatar. honestly incredible, and it also tells us a lot about what is genuine coming from him and what's not based on his expressions.
HOWEVER!! something i noticed that i havent really seen ppl point out so far is this specific moment about 28 minutes into the episode, when pomni asks jax what he would do if she abstracted tomorrow, and when he very cruelly says he would just move on, she just says "okay" and turns around. and then this happens:
there is SO MUCH in this moment. you literally watch him wait to see what her reaction is, see that it didn't have the intended affect (he wanted her to keep getting mad at him, instead she disengages), become upset with himself for possibly actually hurting her feelings, and then he BACKPETALS. something that, up to this point, we haven't really seen him do.
what he's trying to do is to goad her into shooting him, metaphorically and literally kicking him out of her life. throughout their fight, every time she asks or insinuates that she might have done something wrong he shuts her down and redirects the attention back on him. right here we can see him actually get scared that she might be blaming herself for his outburst, and actively changing the intention of his comment to be shallow and mean spirited, rather than a personal attack.
because he doesn't mean it. and he doesn't actually want her to think she wouldn't be missed. he wants her to think hes an asshole, and he wants her not to worry about whether he would miss her or not. he does not want to matter to her.
jax says he's the "funny one", but i think there's also an argument to be made that he's given himself the role of the minor antagonist. the one that everybody can hate, that makes war so that the others can make peace. he is DESPERATELY grasping for control of his situation, constantly, all the time. he desperately fights to control his own narrative, to make himself a character, but he's not. he's a person, just like gangle and zooble and ragatha are.
so yeah i like this show and i think its really well written ty for reading
