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Goose Gets It With Jax Unlike Viv With Stolas

I love that Goose doesn't let her love for Jax blind her to what a pos he is while Viv lets her favoritism towards Stolas let him get away sexual abuse, emotional neglect, racist, classist, and a domestic abuser. Goose realizes Jax is an asshole with baggage, but has him pay for his actions. Viv on the other hand coddles Stolas so much he's treated like an angel and gets rewarded and babied each time the results of his actions are thrown in his face.

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Ep 6 was pretty good

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Abstradegy fans, how we feeling!

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Okay enough fluff, BACK TO SUFFERING.

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What does it mean to be "human?"

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Send "🎤" to catch my muse singing

Add “+” for the reverse

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Ragatha: Caine's been getting a lot more creative lately, don't you think?

Kinger: I try not to.

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Yep

Zooble is sexier than all of Viv's characters combined.

And Zooble has no parts.

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Same gun too.

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It’s funny seeing the contrast between Viv who throws a fit every time someone doesn’t view Stolas as the most sympathetic pathetic helpless boy in the whole world and Goose who gets genuinely frustrated by her fandoms’ woobification of Jax’s behavior.

It really is. Goose is out there showing aspiring character writers how it should be done...she loves Jax dearly, he's her favorite character, but he's a nasty little man and she makes no excuses for him and doesn't like when the fandom goes too far in doing so either.

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Okay, so I was thinking about the new TADC episode (25 million in just one day, impressive), specifically Jax, and then it hit me… Jax is just Blitz if he was written well.

Think about it for a second. Their main flaws as characters is that they act like assholes and self sabotage in order to avoid being hurt after already losing/damaging a previous relationship. Where they differ is in the execution of “show, don’t tell”. Blitz repeatedly, and I mean REPEATEDLY, explains this flaw every time it’s even tangentially relevant to whatever’s going on, to a point where it’s almost comical. Season 1, Episode 6??? Whole ass musical number about how he hurts others around him in order not get attached. Season 2 has so many of these moments that I don’t feel like listing them all, but you catch my drift.

Jax… doesn’t really do that. We’re slowly fed hints that there’s more to him than just being a dick, and in episodes 5 + 6, we learn through VISUALS that Jax had a friend that he lost to abstraction (implied that he MAY have some part to play in how it went down, but we don’t have those details yet) and that he’s trying to get Pomni to hate him so that he won’t feel that kind of hurt again. Just look at how he reacted when Pomni hugged him. For a split second, he enjoyed it, quickly realized he was being vulnerable, shoved her off, and quickly tried to regain his bully persona when she tries to shoot him (affectionately). And even when he’s arguing with her, he doesn’t go “POMNI I RUIN EVERYTHING, I PUSH PEOPLE AWAY BY BEING A BULLY SO THAT I DON’T RISK MAKING HUMAN CONNECTIONS AND GETTING HURT WHEN THEY EVENTUALLY ABSTRACT, WAAAA” He just keeps up the fecade to a laughable degree, cracks just a bit, and walks off.

It's such a welcome difference between how Viv writes and how Goose writes, like the first spring day with the window open. Viv writes characters say what she wants to say to the audience, Goose establishes how each character talks and responds to things and then has them do that.

(I deeply, deeply appreciate that Pomni called Jax out without once using the word "fee-fees." That one still makes my eye twitch.)

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In episode six of The Amazing Digital Circus — Jax gets too real!

In all seriousness, this was completely fantastic to watch. It was such a good depiction of self destructive behaviors and Michael Kovach was PHENOMENAL.

His instant reaction to pomni hugging him was super telling. He wants to get closer to her, his behaviors show that clearly, but he fears it as well.

His regret after the outburst is also extremely telling.

This did not go as planned. He did not expect to get so close to her and have to push her so suddenly away. He didn’t want to push her away, but felt in this moment that he needed to, at all costs.

As much as he wants everyone to believe his actions were planned, they were IMPULSIVE.

As insistent as he was on telling Pomni that he didn’t care, that it was stupid to think that he might, Pomni was right when she pointed out that Jax wasn’t fighting back. He DID care.

He never hurt Pomni for his own fun at any point in this episode. His actions directly contradict what he’s trying to make Pomni believe. He hurts the others, so she might believe him. But he didn’t want to hurt her. Not anymore. The only time he hurt her on purpose was when he felt like he needed to push her away. But otherwise? He has shown that he doesn’t see her as something to torment. Jax sees Pomni as an equal, a friend.

His words are hollow.

Even his reaction to Ragathas “accusing” him of making friends with Pomni was extreme. Initially his uncaring expression threw Ragatha off, but once she was eliminated you can see that this is the moment Jax realized he was going too far — far past even his own personal boundaries — in forming a bond with Pomni.

Jax was lying the whole time he tried to make Pomni believe he didn’t care. He used all his tricks. Deflected with jokes, brushed off the intensity of the situation, made fun of Pomnis attempts to befriend him, he even tried to make her push him away first with the traitor bit.

Actually, he seems to be obsessed with the whole bit thing, don’t you think? The archetypes.

He thinks that fitting into the role of the circus will help him survive.

As if trying to maintain humanity whilst being deprived of it causes abstraction.

So he picks the perfect role to extract himself of any sort of sincerity or responsibility.

The comedian.

He uses it as a shield even if it damages his relationship with Pomni. And he tries to use Pomni’s humorously chosen role to his advantage, to get her to leave.

Pomni’s prying would humanize him. He would be too open, too vulnerable, too human. He won’t be able to play his role anymore. Or use it to protect his sanity.

If he had nothing beneath his cruel exterior, he wouldn’t have to beg Pomni to stop looking.

Jax knows that if she keeps looking, if she helps him open up, if she pursues his friendship despite his protests, he WILL break, and he WILL show her who he really is. He can’t resist getting close with someone because he — like everybody else — needs a friend.

So he had to make her stop.

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PSA

TADC is MILLIONS times better than the Vivzieverse.

Great characters, excellent subversions of common tropes(Ragatha/Pomni), storyline is intriguing and the animation is so claymation-esque and fun.

Might actually see about crafting a Pomni cosplay, but with the color scheme of my fav baseball team…hmmm

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I FUCKING LOVED THIS EPISODE!! The daisy cover between jax and pomni was awesome! I had a sigh of relief when I saw kinger in the dark loser room with Ragatha because I knew that she was gonna be okay (I was prepared to ball my eyes out if anything happened to her) the way gangle talks about Jax is fucking devastating, it made me think of how much I cried about Harley Quinn and how she never really got that moment that gangle did with zooble in btas when I was a kid, it reminded me of the abusive relationships I had and how I was so scared of upsetting them. AND lastly I loved pomnis confrontation with Jax, It really solidifies that Jax is a bad person and her saying he wasn't the funny one and attacking him was cathartic, I'm so glad this show is holding an asshole character accountable unlike so many other shows that never do, because he really isn't the funny one, he's the evil one.

That dark loser room with Kinger was a treasure. If the circus had no lighting and Kinger was on hand as therapist all the time, pretty sure no one would ever abstract.

I don't think Jax is evil, but that scene (and the one with Gangle) definitely solidified that he's not the funny one either. He's abusive and broken and pathetic and miserable. No one who has to be around him thinks he's funny, and I don't think he believes it either.

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"The funny one?"

"Yeah! Ragatha's the cheerful one"

"Gangle's the sad one"

"Kinger's the crazy one"

"Zooble's the grumpy one"

"And you are the one who hasn't figured that out yet."

"We all just became archetypes. I at least have the self awareness to choose who I am."

"...the funny one..."

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how they initially just sing Daisy Bell just to mock Zooble only to progressively pay more attention to each other to where by the end they fully focus on having fun with each other is AHDHSHAUXDDCCISHBDBXJ