Imagine expecting the guy who wrote an mpreg Homestuck song to have writing that’s 100% serious all the time when his games have never been that.
I know it’s probably because I’m older than the average vocal Deltarune fan, but it’s so funny how opposite I feel about Deltarune when I see takes like this.
I actually prefer the lighthearted parts over the darker parts. I am so, so burnt out on the barrage of self-serious writing flooding the media landscape at the moment. Not everything has to be some deep humorless mysterybox about trauma 100% of the time. I mean, yeah, the game obviously has some pretty serious story elements but if it was only that it would be god awful. The humor balances it out.
If anything, the world needs this 2010s tumblr ass silliness at the moment and I find it to be a breath of fresh air against how performatively mature and dark a lot of writing for stuff is at the moment.
Im sorry but every interaction Jax has with another person is her(? Never watched the movie but I think its revealed she’s trans) antagonising or victimising someone. She is a mean bully, and saying “Oh but she has trauma” doesn’t negate that she takes joy in other people’s suffering.
Jax is a bad character in tbe sense that her presence makes the show worse, as she basically just exists to create conflict for no reason and then do puppy eyes when called on it, but she’s also a bad person.
There’s nothing there there.
You can’t be a mean bully to literal cartoon characters whose eyeballs pop out of their heads when they get surprised. You can’t be a mean bully when shooting someone with a literal gun does nothing but create a comedic explosion of cartoon body parts that are immediately find 5 minutes later.
It’s very obvious within a single day of meeting Jax that there behaviour is a front for coping, and that it’s fine because cartoon world is completely ridiculous and shouldn’t be taken seriously anyway. Most of the things Jax does are no less serious than when a player intentionally kills their coop partner in Portal 2.
The shit that actually goes down to cause a real negative outcome with Ribbit always gets Jax villified as
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“Jax killed her” but on paper Jax didn’t even do anything that was strictly bad. One, throwing a ribbon on the floor. Two, calling them manipulative the next day to create distance. Three, no longer talking to them. These are pretty minor things that, unfortunately, lead to a very negative outcome because Ribbit ends up alone, but it’s hardly correct to say Jax should hold responsibility for it when that’s all they do on paper, cutting ties and creating distance with someone as a defence mechanism is not some huge “they bullied them into suicide” take like the internet makes it out to be, it’s literally not what actually happened.
The takes about the show online are always something like “a show about how one nice person can make everyone’s lives better” when Pomni’s actions objectively get 2 people killed, accidentally yes but saying that Pomni caused it is actually significantly more accurate than saying Jax caused Ribbit’s death. Jax didn’t cause Ribbit’s death, loneliness caused Ribbit’s death and Jax simply wasn’t capable of being emotionally available. That isn’t Jax’s fault.
Hard disagree with the internet on Jax. With what they know it’s ridiculous to take the circus seriously.
Hard disagree with you there. Social ostracisation and bullying are still bad things, and within the show they are still presented as harming the feelings and being traumatising to the people who experience it.
Systematically sabotaging someone’s self esteem and then going “But i’m funny” is bully shit, and it doesn’t stop being that because the person has a funny face
Edit: And comparing it to team killing is odd both because this is explicitly what these people’s lives are now, and also because cyberbullying is real bullying. Taking every available opportunity to denigrate someone and ruining whatever moment of happiness or pride they could have is still shitty even if you’re doing it online.
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She isn’t ostracising Ribbit. She distances herself from Ribbit, he does not go out of his way to try and make everyone else distanced from Ribbit, she ends up doing that to herself because she wants to be close to Jax.
I think there’s much more to this Gangle stuff too because they’ve engaged with it intentionally, for 20 years they’ve been choosing to be Jax’s partner in adventures so I don’t know how much is really genuinely serious bullying and how much is a layered interaction of 20 years of bond. I think it should also be counted that there is back and forth there, the fast food adventure for example has complete role reversal with Gangle dominating Jax and doing the forced “training” hypno session. Not to mention that the end of the fast food episode shows Gangle being genuinely happier when she removes the fake mask and becomes free from the corporate masking, she’s sincerely smiling while wearing the drama face, at least up until being unceremoniously hit by the truck. Then there’s also the maid costume, which again is Gangle behaving in a back and forth way with Jax. It’s hard to fully judge the depth of the “bullying” between two characters without accepting that they’ve been adventure partners for twenty years. I “bully” certain people I know all the time, that doesn’t mean there’s real bullying occurring though, there’s a dynamic in the relationship that goes beyond a surface level “this is bullying” take. My phrasing is probably a mess here but my point is that in the 9 days of insight we get into these character’s lives we see back and forth between them rather than anything completely one sided, with 20 years of interaction between them that exists and things being ok (Gangle not abstracting) I’m not really willing to say that it’s just outright bullying rather than a unique dynamic they both fall into.
She is not distancing herself, she constantly pushes a person who shows her nothing but love, support and understanding away and that super visibly fucks that person up. This is part of a recurring pattern that she also shows towards Ragatha, Kaufmo, Gangle and Pomni, just to a lesser extend because these do not know she is trans. Yes, they are cartoon characters who survive whatever they are put through unless they are completely broken in the way that she completely breaks Ribbit and arguably Kaufmo, that does not change the fact that Jax openly revels in acts of pyhsical violence against them while the others do not.
You can argue that the absuse that Jax shows towards everybody in the Circus is a result of her internalized transmisogyny and that she only does that to keep repressing, but here’s the catch: IRL Jax takes a completely different trajectory. She is in her boymoder phase and constantly hangs out at Zooble’s queer bar. She will almost certainly come out in about a year or so whereas the Jax in the Circus just breaks after having hurt everybody around her over and over again.
The interesting point is not how to judge the actions of Circus Jax vs IRL Jax, it is obvious that one is “a huge piece of shit” (Gooseworx’ literal assessment of Circus Jax’ character in the tweet where she shows how Circus Jax could have looked post transition) and the other is troubled, but on the right track. What is interesting here is what makes the difference between these two instances of the same person.
No? She just puts up a wall between them. There’s no “constantly pushing”. All that occurs is Ribbit trying to reach out to Jax and Jax responding with the emotional wall, rejecting the attempt to reach out. There’s no “constantly pushing”, just a big emotional defence barrier placed between them from that point onwards.
Have you ever distanced yourself from anyone in your life then? Have you ever lashed out at someone when emotional?
If you do those two things and then someone later commits suicide do you think that it would be right for the internet to blame you for that person’s death?
I don’t. I’m not close to a lot of people that I used to be close to, some of them extremely close. Moving on from them in my life doesn’t make me responsible for them dying after I do that. We do not have a moral responsibility to stop everyone we’ve ever met in our lives from being lonely after we decide that our connection with them is unhealthy. Especially in Jax’s case where the entire emotional freakout they have with being trans could have caused them to abstract. Going into their shell was a defence mechanism, not an act of evil. It has a horrible outcome because Ribbit eventually snaps from being alone and wanting that connection, but that outcome isn’t on Jax and I wouldn’t put it on you if it happened to anyone in your past that you’ve ever distanced yourself from either.
I’m not even sure if Jax was an asshole before this happens because we don’t really see much of anything before the Ribbit history. Jax becoming really mean and jaded seems to have occurred because of the trauma of this event with Ribbit and the self-blame and guilt that occurs. This makes me even more empathetic about it as a tragedy rather than something they should be blamed for.
I am not talking about ribbit. I have not watched the movie. I am talking about her interactions with Gangle, Kinger, Zooble, Ragatha and Pomni
Then I don’t know what you’re talking about because I don’t see any specific ostracisation occur with any of those people. Can you be more specific?
I mean I don’t know what to tell you. Her treatment of Gangle is such obvious bullying that she is repeatedly called out on it by Zooble. Like that’s the focal point of Zooble’s arc.
She doesn’t have a single interaction with Gangle that isn’t Jax bullying Gangle of which I can think. Except like when Gangle is made middle manager of the fast food place??
The maid costume vote was Gangle.
Also you’re probably missing some context here because Gangle cries real human tears for the first time ever when Jax dies (instead of the fake mask tears) so there’s definitely something more complex there between them.
Yes that thing is likely human empathy. A trait Jax lacks, as she repeatedly bullies Gangle.
I genuinely cannot take the idea that what happens between Gangle and Jax isn’t bullying seriously. If you don’t clock that as bullying you’re just wrong. She hurts Gangle, laughs at her pain, and Gangle instantly forms a strong bond with the first person to genuinely stand up to Jax.