Been Seeing A Lot Of People Talking About How Weird Jax Was In The Recent Tadc Episode, And I Wanted

been seeing a lot of people talking about how weird jax was in the recent tadc episode, and i wanted to share my thoughts about it

to me, this whole episode was about masking, both in a literal sense and an emotional sense, and what happens when people can't mask anymore. it was mostly focused on gangle, and how she's trying to keep herself together and happy despite not feeling that way, but i also think this theme spread to the other characters as well.

there are a handful of characters that i think mask, or hide themselves more than the others. starting off with zooble, who hides in their room because they don't feel comfortable with themself, being forced to interact with the others and do the adventure.

then, ragatha, who tries so hard to make others like her and saying what she thinks they want to hear, ends up drugged or drunk or whatever which takes away her filter and causes her to say what she really thinks.

finally, jax, who i think values control, which is almost impossible to get in a place where your whole life is controlled by someone else. so he acts a certain way and he does what he can to get whatever amount of control that he can over a situation to prove that the digital circus doesn't have full power over him. sometimes i think he acts like a jerk as a way to control what others hate about him, instead of them hating him for things he can't control. some form of coping mechanism or smth, but i don't think we know enough about jax to say that for sure. he might just be a jerk for the fun of it.

but he loses that control in this episode. gangle, the one person he has the most power over out of the group, now has power over him and when he pushed back against that, she sent him to the training room where he was physically restrained and forced to watch the training video. that's why i think he was so off this episode. because his way of coping with being stuck in the circus wasn't working and there was nothing he could do about it

but hey, that's just a theory