Why Trans Jax is Important, especially if you think it's wrong.

I should preface this by saying that I am not trans, I identify as Non-Binary, so if you must take this article with a grain of salt, I do not blame you. However, it seems there is a new discourse surrounding The Amazing Digital Circus, which on the one hand, my God can y'all find something else to get upset about? Valve releasing an overpriced piece of hardware? The United States continuing the whole fascism thing? I'm sure Konami is doing something stupid and shady that's worth getting mad at. On the other hand, I do love getting any chance I can take to talk about the Digital Circus so why the Hell not talk about this?

So, finale episode released on YouTube and everyone went crazy for one thing, it's been hinted at with subtle and not-so-subtle clues, but basically the finale confirmed that Jax was a closeted Trans person the entire time, and if the text of the show isn't enough for you, some of the voice actors have bluntly stated it and Goose has basically confirmed it without saying it directly. I'll admit, I was a bit averse to Jax being trans at first, largely because I was way too into the shipping wars to be thinking clearly, but even when I was saying "It's enough that Jax is gay", I still said "If Goose does make Jax trans I will respect that". Granted that isn't a great defense for myself, probably stuff I need to unlearn there, but the point I'm making is, even as someone who was in that denial camp, I was still picking up the hints that Jax was a part of the Queer Community.

This of course, brings us to the discourse, there are some people who not only deny that Jax is trans, but also outright hate the idea, why? Because apparent;y Jax is a worse trans character than Ida Davis from Family Guy. Of course, Jax has always been the target of disdain and hatred from the fandom because... well Jax was always an asshole, so some people may see this as an attempt to make Jax less of a villain. Let's examine that word before we go any further, "Villain", what is a villain? Some people may say that the villain is someone who is evil, which is a... frighteningly basic interpretation of the word. Like, yeah "Villains" in narratives have usually been evil, or had traits that made them look more immoral than the heroes. Certainly, nobody is gonna argue that Maleficent, a villain whose name is not too different from "Malevolent" is not evil, at least nobody with any sense would. That being said, there are plenty of "Villains" in stories that aren't necessarily evil. Amos Slade in The Fox and the Hound is not a totally evil person, sure he wants to kill Tod and is willing to break the law to do so, but from his perspective Tod is a trouble-maker who is causing trouble on his property and almost got one of his dogs killed, sure we know Tod isn't totally at fault, but that's because we're watching the movie from Tod's perspective, not Amos'.

You look closely enough in media, you'll see all kinds of "Villains" that aren't necessarily "Evil", nor even the more basic "Antagonists". The Grinch is a character who does something wrong, but on some level you do kind of understand where he's coming from, Hell, the entire emotional crux of the best adaptations of Treasure Island hinge on the idea that Long John Silver isn't as evil and heartless as he wants us to think, done best in Treasure Planet, done okay in Muppet Treasure Island. Of course, reforming villains throw the idea that nobody is beyond salvation into the mix, this has been a thing in storytelling for a long time, Yellow Submarine ended with the Chief Blue Meanie reforming, so what makes them all villains if they aren't entirely "Evil"? See, in order for there to be a narrative, there has to be a conflict and in order for there to be a conflict between people, someone has to be in the wrong. Obviously this could be in the wrong morally, but when you get down to it morality is kind of flexible. Les Miserable has a parole breaking fugitive be the hero and the police officer chasing him down be the villain, and it would normally be the other way around, if the narrative didn't establish that Jean Valjean stole that bread to feed a starving child.

In short, a "Villain", narratively speaking, is the character in a story that is narratively in the wrong.

What does this have to do with Jax? The idea that making Jax trans is meant to "Make him less of a villain" is not the correct way to look at either the character, nor villains. A lot of Jax's behavior does seem to stem from being a repressed person who bottles up their problems and emotions, the idea that Jax is trans because it somehow "Absolves him of any wrong-doing" is a massive misunderstanding of the work and character, especially considering that Gooseworx is a Trans Woman herself. Call me crazy but this is almost coming off like calling Rebecca Sugar a "Nazi Apologist" even though she was raised Jewish, almost.

However, the real reason I wanted to talk about this is because the idea that all trans characters have to be one-hundred percent morally upstanding is... well let me put it this way, if you aren't gonna give Jax any leeway because they're trans, why would you give any real person leeway because they're trans. Especially those who are insecure, projecting, lashing out, and depressed because they don't have that luxury of being allowed to be honest with themselves. I know a trans person in real life, have for my entire life, and pre-transition she did act a bit like Jax, especially that whole projecting thing. She didn't have that supportive of a network, so she was lashing out, but unlike Jax, she did build up that supportive network rather than push all of it away, and she is a better, and happier, person now. I think Jax resonates with trans people more than any squeaky-clean sterile stereotype that some people want to push.

Jax is in the wrong in the narrative because they are constantly pushing away their supportive network, and why? Self-loathing of course, why do you think they were upset with Kinger's blunder? It wasn't just that he deleted Caine, but if everyone can forgive him for that, then that means they can forgive Jax, and Jax doesn't want to be forgiven, they don't believe they deserve that forgiveness. Possibly because they grew up in a queerphobic time and place.

I think this idea that Jax can't be trans because they only show the negative side of it is, kind of dismissive of the struggle plenty of Trans people have to go through, and to see even a piece of those struggles in a character who sadly doesn't overcome them, that can still mean a lot. To be blunt, this sanding down of edges required for a Queer character of any kind to be accepted is harmful. Being trans is edgy, in that it is not a smooth experience to everyone and to demand that it be a smooth experience for characters that aren't even real is dismissive to the real people dealing with these struggles everyday. It's a similar issue (Though not completely one-to-one) that people on the Autism Spectrum deal with. The cutification of Autism has sadly overshadowed plenty of the struggles that people with Autism deal with, like sensory issues that can lead to self-harm.

Even as a non-trans person, I still relate a little to Jax, I to have been self-concious about the things that made me different, and while I had a somewhat decent support system (though it could've been better), I was still a terrible person, and a lot of that came from self-loathing which did lead me to having suicidal thoughts. Of course, none of it absolves Jax of their actions, nobody is saying it does, but it does show their actions in a different light, one that we can probably be a little empathetic towards, I mean even Gangle cried over Jax.

If all characters that represent minorities have to be squeaky-clean to appeal to a guilty white audience, it creates a lot of portrayals that cannot ever be lived up to, as well as a slew of harmful stereotypes that nobody will think about because they are "Uplifting Positive stereotypes" instead of "Nasty hurtful negative stereotypes". So to see a messy person who never really had the chance to be themselves, it can, and does, mean something. So, why is Trans Jax important? Because we need more portrayals of trans people that go beyond "Nonthreatening to a status quo that already hates them" and "So pristine and perfect they might as well be an inhuman robot", yes the usage of "inhuman" was intentional and not just a piece of redundancy.

Happy Pride Month Everyone! 

Fornite, GLITCH and the Leeching of Pop Culture

So, GLITCH productions is crossing over with Epic Games by having Pomni and Jax appear in Fortnite. Now, of course there are issues with this, largely Epic Games is a terrible company that is trying to replace a bunch of its human employees with AI slop and apparently fired an employee with Brain Cancer thus stripping away his life insurance, yeah Epic Games is not a good company... name me a company that is, and yeah I am disappointed that GLITCH would choose to work and collab with them, but I'm gonna be honest that's not the biggest source of my disdain with this announcement. Like, yeah they should be more incriminating with who they work with, but to play Devil's Advocate, it's Fortnite. Like, Fortnite is one of the biggest games in the world right now, the fact that GLITCH characters are appearing in Fortnite before anything like Minecraft, some Tetris clone, or even as a deck of cards, like that says something about Fortnite and by extension Epic Games. Yeah, I don't like Epic Games as a company, and frankly I don't care about Fortnite as a game, but I hold no ill-will towards GLITCH for this decision, you can all you want, but money's got to be made somehow, and maybe this is the first step to an actual video game, like a Murder Drones video game would kick ass. No, my disdain for this news comes mostly from the fact that... well, it's Fortnite, and I despise what Fortnite is doing to and with Pop-Culture.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine and it helped me really gather my thoughts on the matter, because the problem was more than just "Popular = Bad", I am a strong proponent that popularity is a good thing overall, like Pokémon has done nothing but benefit by being the most popular video game franchise in the world, and Minecraft ain't slowing down any either, so why does the Fortnite collab irritate me so much? Fortnite's current model seems to be... like the worst, most annoying autistic kid (Self burn, those are rare), like you know that kid who finds a new thing and makes it their entire personality, or if you were like me you probably were that kid, Fortnite kinda comes off like that.

Its business model seems to be less "Hey let's make a great game that everyone will want to play" and more "Let's load our game with licenses and have people come back for a skin-economy." Like I don't agree with what Yahtzee Croshaw said about Mortal Kombat 1, but like that does kind of apply to Fortnite, but Mortal Kombat's case they have characters that make sense for Mortal Kombat, they have violent action characters like Omni-Man, Robocop, Jason Voorhees, they don't have Peter Griffin and Pomni. On top of that Mortal Kombat has actual... y'know, characters, like you can name them and identify them, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Shao Kahn, Sub-Zero, Kenshi, you know most of these characters if you know anything about Mortal Kombat, Fortnite is not the same. I'm sure they have named original characters, but for the life of me I can't think of any of them, I don't know their names, I've never really seen much art of any of them out in the wild.

Yes, other games do this kind of thing as well, but most of them are not as egregious about it as Fortnite. Super Smash Bros is a game that works because the novelty of having Mario, Link and Pikachu fighting each other is backed by what is ultimately a solid platform-brawler, the kind of which has become so linked to Smash Bros that very few fighting games try the same thing, while Fortnite is just one in a sea of Battle Royale shooter games. Also, Nintendo can get away with it because most of the characters are Nintendo characters. I made this comment years ago about PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, but that game was never going to be as great as Smash Bros solely because Sony does not have that many first-party characters that are as iconic to their brand as their second and third party characters. Nintendo has so many iconic first and second party characters that a fighting game with just them would sell like hotcakes, and like PlayStation All-Stars, Fortnite is struggling in the original character department.

It's an attention grab more than anything else, they're saying "Look, we have The Simpsons, we have Cartoon Network licenses, we have The Amazing Digital Circus" they're doing this because they know it will make people play their game and spend money on cosmetics, it's a cycle; They add some license to their game, streamers play with the license and skins, rinse and repeat. Really the streamers only get the views because "Look at this guy, they're playing Fortnite as Danny Phantom" or "They're playing with the Peter Griffin skin", it's like a gelatinous cube in Dungeons and Dragons, catching I.P.'s and licenses and absorbing them while dissolving them of any actual value. Like there was buzz about ConcernedApe thinking about collabing with Fortnite, and I'm just thinking, "Yeah, Stardew Valley, the game about the connection with nature and community where the community has a strong opinion of players who choose the corporate route. That would be perfect for the license gobbling gelatinous cube."

I think the big problem I have with this is, and this is shockingly an actual problem, Fortnite is not ignorable. Like Marvel Rivals, that game came out, it's pretty popular, people still play it, it gave us the popular iteration of Squirrel Girl that... look I like fine but I want the dork that juggled Kraven with one hand that I fell in love with as a teenager. Still it's a Marvel Hero Shooter, I don't have to play it, I don't have to pay attention to it. Like, the only thing I know of Marvel Rivals beyond the game is that one of the voice actors was somewhat involved in a controversy involving his daughter that later expanded to involve BlackGyrph0n, Saberspark and a bunch of other crazy people. That's it, I can't even name all the voice actors in that game, I love it. I don't have to know anything about Marvel Rivals. The same cannot be said for Fortnite, I see ads for it everywhere, they had some kind of Halo collab and got Rooster Teeth to do something, they had YouTube ads for their Simpsons thing, the news that The Amazing Digital Circus was coming was shared by Toonhive, I cannot ignore Fortnite.

Fortnite constantly shoves itself in people's faces with these licenses, it's not even creating its own pop culture at this point, it's leeching off of the success and popularity of other properties, like Smash Bros is has still given us original memes, locations, stories, characters. The Master Hand, Final Destination, Subspace Emissary, Fox Only No Items, Smash Bros isn't just leeching off of pop-culture, one can argue that has created its own parts of Pop-Culture. Fortnite is reminding me a lot of Garry's Mod, where half of the fun of the game is just the flagrant usage of characters they didn't create, but like... Garry's Mod is a joke, it's a sandbox game where you can make Gordon Freeman and and Sonic ride a Minecraft Boat over a river in a Spyro world. Fortnite is Battle Royale Garry's Mod without the joke. It does not create Pop Culture, and it barely qualifies as celebrating it. Again, what are the names of the original characters? What is the name of the original location? Unless you are an avid player you probably don't know, nobody is making videos about how Fortnite Island is an underrated location like Nintendo's Wuhu Island. Fortnite really is on the same level as Garry's Mod in the Pop-Culture pantheon, except Gmod was partly used for things like SMG4 so even Gmod can arguably claim to have created its own piece of pop-culture.

Look, I don't care is GLITCH wants to collab with Fortnite, again that money's gotta me made somehow, it's the same reason I have no ill-will towards the actors in the new Harry Potter series, like yeah they probably should have reconsidered, but then again it's one the most popular franchises in modern history so those actors, especially those child actors, are basically set for life. GLITCH can collab with Fortnite, they can collab with Konami for all I care, but let's be real the collab can only happen because Fortnite is a license leech, and it only looked at The Amazing Digital Circus because it is so freaking popular that it licked it's gluttonous lips and salivated at the idea. If the Circus was so popular, we wouldn't be talking about this and instead be talking about Fortnite collabing with Bear in the Big Blue House, that would actually be funny.