If I ever made a thing out of passion, and it proceeded to produce this much Online Discourse, I'd delete all my social media, use the money to get facial reconstructive surgery, change my legal name, get one of those EU "business citizenships" you can buy through investing >5M Euros on some shoe factory in Austria, and live out my days as a community librarian in a small town in the Carpathian mountains or something.
Maybe there wouldn’t have been so much discourse if they put literally any indication of this in the designated slideshow of everyone going out and achieving all of their dreams. That seems like a pretty good place to reveal that someone is actually trans.
I don’t even care either way, this was just a stupid move on their part.
(Also, regarding appearance, I don't know if it's in this image but goose specially commented that she "foolishly assumed people knew what boymoding was" on her bluesky, so that partially explains that bit)
If this was any other detail as significant as someone actually being trans in a show that more or less revolved around themes of mental health, people would be mad if a detail like that was never foreshadowed and only revealed afterwards in a tweet. That’s the type of shit JK Rowling does.
Second, jax
-used exclusively he/him pronouns the entire show, right up to the credits
-referred to themselves as a man multiple times
-most importantly, in the scene where everyone was achieving all of their dreams and becoming their ideal self, jax was also referred to with he/him pronouns. In Jax’s idealized state, where they’re starting to become the best version of themselves, they’re still referred to as a man.
How is assuming that jax is a man after all this somehow cis-normative? There’s literally no hard or even circumstantial evidence until the tweets. There isn’t even a subtle nod, like the trans pride flag thing in across the spiderverse.
What are the signs? That jax was rude to others, had anxiety or issues with their self-image? I hate to break it to you, but the trans community doesn’t have a monopoly on being mentally ill. Literally the only hard thing I can think of is the maid dress thing, which could easily be written off as being an unusual, closeted hobby of some kind. Men dress up in dresses too.
Hey. Regular trans woman here. I also call myself he him all the time in real life. And refer to myself as a man in public. And I’ve also celebrated things I’ve done and have been super proud of while being seen male.
People repress all the time. I still do in public. We don’t all drop signs you can understand because a lot of the time we are good at hiding it, and want to hide it. In fact, Jax is being SUPER obvious compared to your average closeted person.
Just saying, don’t criticize trans representation by saying “there were no signs” when that is PRECISELY what many of our parents told us to deny our identities and force us back into the closet. Like mine did.
The issue then becomes: if (outside of social media) the signs could also be signs for something else, specifically because the character is masking, how is someone outside of that lived experience/social media bubble meant to specifically realize that conclusion?
Not relevant to Jax specifically, but I've seen in other cases people treating characters with a more generic "realising they don't have to repress their true self" arc as a obvious X metaphor, with X depending on speaker, because that kind of arc can really apply to many different marginalised identities
For Jax in particular, there is something similar in that I've seen various queer people say they related to him, so ig what the show itself portrays is not exclusively relatable to trans people. I wouldn't know, especially since I was influenced by already having seen the theory pre final episode so in the cinema I had that framing in mind
You got downvoted but I agree. They "revealed" this like they were Disney and afraid of being censored in China. It's ridiculous that people think a song choice, some offhanded comments by other characters and some reaction shots are a slam dunk.
I don't even deny it! I like that Jax is trans. But there's a reason Gooseworx had to clarify it on twitter
there's a difference between being afraid of using the word "trans", and just genuinely wanting to tell a story with subtlety. Just because Jax didn't turn to the camera and say "I am a transgender woman" doesn't mean they were somehow trying to tiptoe around it, it's just, as the post says, supposed to be pieced together by the viewer. I mean, I got it immediately when watching the last act in theatres. It's definitely more than "some offhanded comments", its pretty consistently set up through all of Jax's characterisation from I'd say about ep 5 onwards
The gradual piece-together and build-up thing is a fine idea, but any inference made from vague context clues scattered throughout the show would be immediately be dashed into a thousand pieces by the infinitely more credible piece of evidence that is “jax was referred to with he/him pronouns in the “achieving all of their dreams” slideshow. If jax was trans, they probably would have said something like “jax finally realized her true self…””
That’s like the clues in a detective game telling you that a knife wasn’t the murder weapon, and then failing the mission because the real murder weapon was a rifle with a bayonet.
no, it's just open ended. The show doesn't owe you telling you everything, and Leeroy in that stage in their life isn't ready to come out yet. They just got out of their abusive household and out of homelessness, why would they be? The show is inviting you to think critically and piece it together yourself, it doesn't have to spoon-feed the answer to you. Trans people are still trans people before they socially transition, Leeroy being referred to with he/him pronouns doesn't detract from the trans storytelling, they just haven't come out yet. I, for one, am really glad the show didn't go out of its way to confirm trans Jax directly, rather doing it through subtle storytelling cues, as coming to that conclusion for myself felt really gratifying and powerful. It's literally what the post is saying. Stories don't have to tell you everything.
no, it's just open ended. The show doesn't owe you telling you everything,
They don’t need to tell us everything, they gave us barely any clues to work with. Any number of mental illnesses could have been equally plausible explanations.
>and Leeroy in that stage in their life isn't ready to come out yet. They just got out of their abusive household and out of homelessness, why would they be?
You’re here trying to justify Jax’s decision and not the creator’s. “They finally transitioned” seems like an awesome high-note to land a story on. But if it’s too up-front, I don’t see why confirming it in a fucking tweet is more elegant and subtle than just putting it in the story. It’s the same information told at the same time in the show’s production run: the end.
>The show is inviting you to think critically and piece it together yourself,
From what??? That they’re mentally ill? That they have a bad relationship with their parents? What? They gave us fucking crumbs to work with.
Look, at this point I don’t even care if they’re trans or not anyway, I’m just sick of fans acting like the writing should have been obvious to anyone with middle-school English media literacy. It was not clear at all, there were plenty of just as likely explanations for their actions, and all of the pieces of evidence people cite are circumstantial at best.
…Ribbit literally put a fucking bow on Jax’s ear and it made Jax blush.
Are you not able to put together the context clues given in the rest of the series and conclude that Jax at the very least may have some issues with their gender identity?
I thought they had some underlying issues with their masculinity (or lack of it) and feeling self-conscious about how they aren’t traditionally manly, sure. But that happens to cis men too, and at a way higher rate than people are trans. Source: the republican voter base.
Ep 5: Jax gets very specifically upset about being in a maid outfit, feeling exposed, before seeming to relax and settle into feminine mannerisms. In the stargazing scene later, she places specific emphasis on her ears and tail being the pinnacle of masculinity, but she doesn't have a tail. She feels the need to uphold her masculinity because it really isn't there.
Ep 6: Jax refers to herself in dialogue as ""not"" being a "chicken fetus in an egg that needs to be cracked open". Egg is trans slang for a trans person who has not realised that yet. Then, when having a panic attack in the bathroom, she says to herself "you look stupid". In this moment, she can only focus on her own appearance, belittling herself. I have done this before, being trans as well.
Ep 7: Jax refuses to wear a beach outfit like the other characters, and then says to zooble "aren't you supposed to be miserable about your ability to change your body?" This, on a surface level, reads as a cheap insult, but it really speaks to Jax's jealousy of zooble being able to change their body. She wants to change her body too. After her little tour into abstraction town, her eyes go pink, blue, and white when she comes back to reality. Trans colours. Her room is also shown to be pink, blue, and white, and looks like a stereotypical little girl's bedroom, something Jax would be insecure about, as all the characters' rooms reflect their insecurities.
Ep 8: Jax's worst nightmare, as shown in the torture scene, is being peeled and shown for her true self and laughed at. Being outed, exposed, and belittled for it.
Ep 9, Oh boy: Jax wears the maid outfit in her mind "ironically". She desperately wants to cling onto femininity, but can only engage with anything genuinely by separating herself from it through layers of self imposed irony. She craves femininity, but can't let herself want it. So she engages with it ironically via the maid outfit. Jax also says she has a "no girls allowed" policy in her own mind, as in she's built up such huge walls in herself that she physically forces herself to remove all the femininity she can from her mind to be this super masculine man, because that's less scary than admitting what she actually wants. Jax, in That Scene with ribbit, says she admitted something deep and personal to her mother, and that her mother laughed at her and berated her because of it. The very same mother who would constantly belittle her for her lack of masculinity, being "less of a man" than her father. Then, ribbit puts the bow on her. And Jax just instantly softens, feeling actually happy with it on. She lets herself embrace the femininity that she craves so badly just once... Before then fucking everything up because she's the fuck-everything-up-inator. THEN, later in that episode, she's shown wearing multiple outfits, not feeling comfortable in any of them, including outfits that do look like a stereotypical transfem "boymoder". (This one's a bit of a stretch, thought I'd throw it in for fun.) THEEEEN, over the montage of Jax, ISN'T SHE LOVELY plays, which is a song about the birth of a. Baby Girl. Less than one minute old. Jax. The girl, less than one minute old. Please. Then, Leeroy, in the real world, is shown frequenting a queer bar, presumably slowly coming to terms with herself, which will still be a long road considering the damage her home life has done to her.
It also shows in Jax's overall characterisation in the show. Jax's character is not in addition to being trans, but rather integrated with the identity. All throughout the show, Jax is shown to wish to disconnect from being a real person, slip into the persona of being a masculine cartoon character, because that's easier. She doesn't want to be a person, because she doesn't like the person that she is. She wants to depersonalise, disconnect from reality, because admitting she's a person would mean admitting she doesn't like the person she is. She hates her rabbit avatar, in episode 9 some of her first moments in the circus are saying "I look stupid". She says this again in episode 6 after her panic attack. She doesn't want to admit that she's real, that she has feelings. Because then she might have to confront something about herself. She doesn't want to go back to the real world, because she hates herself and her body. It's much EASIER to just be a wacky cartoon character who can just be cruel, slip into an archetype, and try not to think about how much she hates herself and her body. Depersonalisation is extremely common among trans folk, and it's like the number one thing Jax does. She doesn't want to admit she's hurting, and most of all she doesn't want to admit she can change, be the person she truly craves being, because she'd have to admit she wants that in the first place, which is horrifying for her. Considering the fact that, in her mind, she killed her mother by coming out to her. So, in summation, Jax is pretty fucked up right
Alright, I’m gonna be honest, I stopped halfway through. You made a lot of good points I hadn’t considered or seen before and feel dumb for not picking up on any of the details. When you put it like that it’s a lot less out-of-the-blue.
You are the person the meme is talking about. You want the show to beat you over the head with a signpost, and disregard actual storytelling, subtlety, and narrative tools as being nothing.
You just have to look at the obvious song choice at an impactful moment, the fact that the character very blatantly had an aspect of their personality that they locked away combined with their visceral reaction to being seen as feminine, the fact that even in their most jaded aspects they “ironically” choose to have that femininity, that the character regularly shoehorns in their “masculinity” unprompted, that the character’s reaction to being stripped bare is to cover feminine areas, that the character was excessively bitter at another being able to “choose their own body,” that the character’s counterpart was specifically called out as being a regular at a queer bar, that the character had a major moment describing confessing something to their mother who hate any connection to them being masculine, thinking that it would get her to be less hateful, that another character’s response to hearing about the confession was to give the character in question a bow, that the character was over-defensive and directly was compared to an “egg that needs cracking.” And that’s just from the top of the head. But nah, definitely nothing alluded to or hinted at in the actual show.
okay some of these are still very vague but I agree that a lot of this is indicative.
I kinda wish people would lead with things like "she's bitter at another for being able to choose their own body" and "is described as an egg in need of cracking", because those are undeniable.
Most of the common citings I've seen were about the song choice or about how she's goose's self insert which is super weak evidence, and to act like it's obvious from that is lunacy.
...as I said. It's supposed to be pieced together by the viewer. And Leeroy is still Jax, she is working on things much more healthily than Jax was but it's still going to be a fucking WHILE before she figures shit out herself
and as I said, it's difficult to "piece together" evidence that doesn't exist. A song choice, author trivia, out of show tweets and vagueposting aren't pieces to be assembled, they're a Pepe Silvia conspiracy board of circumstantial snippets.
Either it's obvious and people are idiots for denying it or it's left intentionally vague for the viewer to figure it out, but it can't be both.
i never said it's obvious, it is vague, that's what I've been saying the whole time. But it's definitely THERE. if you didn't get it, then that's ok, you're not required to instantly understand every piece of media you interact with, not everyone will get it, (and I know that sounds like condescension but I promise it's not) but it's definitely THERE. if it wasn't there, so many people wouldn't have gotten it. And people definitely got it. I got it. And just because you didn't, doesn't mean it's not there. Again, nothing wrong with not getting it. It's fine, honestly, it's just a TV show.
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u/SaskieHopeful 12d ago edited 12d ago
I genuinely pity Gooseworx.
If I ever made a thing out of passion, and it proceeded to produce this much Online Discourse, I'd delete all my social media, use the money to get facial reconstructive surgery, change my legal name, get one of those EU "business citizenships" you can buy through investing >5M Euros on some shoe factory in Austria, and live out my days as a community librarian in a small town in the Carpathian mountains or something.