What really surprised me was how naturally Jean accepted Cody and Xavier. All it took was hearing how the other players referred to Cody, and he immediately picked up on their pronouns. I think some of the Trojans were a little worried about how a former Raven would react to that level of freedom of self-expression, considering he grew up in a place so rotten and so stripped of it. Would he get it? Would he react badly? But to me, Jean’s response goes beyond simple tolerance. And here’s what I mean. Tolerance usually implies a choice: you recognize that you could see something in a negative way, but you consciously decide not to. Jean doesn’t seem to go through that process at all. He’s more like a blank slate — like a child who takes in what’s in front of him without suspicion. He accepts it as truth. As something that doesn’t need to be argued or proven. When he sees the support Cody and Xavier get, it doesn’t even occur to him that there could be anything wrong with it. The first experience of the trans and non-binary community he ever encountered was one built on acceptance, so for him, that’s simply what’s normal. That’s why he doesn’t ask Xavier things like, “Why?” or “How did you feel before?” — not because he doesn’t care, but because he doesn’t feel the need to question something that already makes sense to him. Xavier’s feelings aren’t up for debate in his mind. He takes them at face value. And it wrecks me. This quiet, unquestioning trust in other people’s truth — the way Jean so easily takes it as fact. I think a lot of people could learn from that about him.