u/NobodyElseButMingus

I was a hardcore doubter of the transfem Jax theory while the Digital Circus was airing, thinking it was grasping at straws and wishful thinking. One finale and a few days of reflection later, I finally came out as transfem after a decade of repression.

Between the new content in chapter 5 and revisiting old chapters with this perspective, I’ve flipped. I sincerely think Toby is building up to Ralsei having a coming out arc, and the foreshadowing is all intentional.

I say this half as an admission of “lmao my bad”, but half to remind everyone of the human behind the screen. If trans girl Ralsei ends up confirmed, I won’t lie and say some fans won’t act willfully dense or even hostile.

But many others will instead admit they simply didn’t see where the foreshadowing was leading, or that they didn’t have the context to view the hints through a trans lens. I ask that, as happy as we’d be to see this payoff, to avoid running victory laps over those who hadn’t seen it coming. You never know what a person is grappling with inside.

Let me lead by saying I do not think that Jax is an irredeemable person. I obviously think that what he did to Gangle, Ragatha and Ribbit was terrible and deserving of severe penance. All the same, I wanted him to heal and recover from his trauma, and was heartbroken when he hadn’t.

Even still, I’m glad Goose kept him abstracted.

Let’s start by discussing what abstraction means in the narrative. It’s obviously not a total personality death, as shown by the abstracted humans remaining docile and even friendly in the dark. Cast members like Alex have also stated that it is not a literal representation of suicide, but the fact that they need to specify does suggest the audience is meant to read it as at least comparable.

If abstraction is meant to be analogous to suicide, I think Goose approached the matter respectfully and responsibly. In the real world, suicide often comes as a shock to those around the victim, and though their loved ones wish it, nothing can take the act back. It would have been disingenuous and naive for Pomni to simply love her friend enough to bring them back from abstraction, and would send the wrong message about how irreversible suicide is. The characters and the audience wish Jax could be alive and whole, but the most we get is closure and a chance to say goodbye.

Now, here is where I expect this analysis to become controversial.

I interpret Jax as a repressed, closeted, transgender woman. I know fans are split on the matter, and even statements from multiple voice actors haven’t convinced everyone this is the correct or only interpretation of the character. I mention this anyway because I believe Jax’s suicide and gender identity cannot be separated thematically.

While the statistic gets passed around as a mean-spirited joke in some circles, it is no joke that suicidal ideation and action are an epidemic in the trans community, especially for young and newly transitioning people. Being a trans woman who has blogged about her struggles with depression, I cannot see Goose as naive to how rejection and the fear thereof contribute to trans suicidal ideation. By her own admission, she wrote some of her worst traits into Jax, and it’s evident her experiences with depression informed Jax’s own.

There are obviously many factors that pushed Jax to suicidal depression: the fear of having harmed their mother, guilt at having pushed Ribbit to her own apparent death, shame over mistreating Gangle and especially Pomni, and a crisis over recognizing their actions hurt real people. All this said, I don’t think it was a mistake of the writing that the first domino we were shown falling was Jax rejecting Ribbit’s apparent acceptance of their gender identity issues. It is too central a scene for the narrative not to ask viewer to really analyze Jax’s motivation in the scene, and where it all went wrong.

Why, though? Why would a trans filmmaker spend a series building up a closested trans character, only to have them die by suicide? Doesn’t that send the wrong image about trans people as emotionally fragile and unwell?

I think Goose was telling a cautionary tale with Jax. When you bottle up your emotions, allow the fear of being hurt to win out over accepting personal intimacy, it is ego-shattering. Jax had a chance to become the person they wanted to be, but instead flinched at the memory of familial rejection, and became their own worst enemy by stomping these feelings out. It ruined multiple lives and became something Jax could never forgive, and eventually ate away at them so badly that they gave way into despair.

To viewers who can relate to Jax’s repression or fear to come out, the finale was a life line. It aimed to say that it is not too late to reverse course and accept yourself, and become emotionally available again.

On a purely personal level, this happened to me. I saw myself in that bedroom scene, and reflected at how stupid it was I’d let one moment of rejection shape the rest of my life. For that, I can never disagree with the finale keeping Jax abstracted, as it reminds me of what tamping down my feelings could do to me and those I care about.

But god, wasn’t she lovely?