a solemn stroll through the circus of my own pain
The Amazing Digital Circus and I Saw the TV Glow spoilers ahead. Please watch both and support trans feminine creators with all you can. We live in an increasingly openly hostile world to us. Our art is our message into the future; our resistance to the death at our doorstep. Those that seek our destruction want nothing more than to silence our voices and sweep us into the dust of history. Whether or not we can persist openly and publicly into the future, our words must be immortal.
One of I Saw the TV Glow’s foundational lines is “there is still time”. The idea is that there is always still time to accept yourself; always time to change for the better. While I think this sentiment fits well within the framework of the movie itself and that it is a valuable lesson for one who is quick to give into fear and anxiety, it doesn’t quite sit with myself. Cards fully on the table: I have engaged in abusive behavior in the past as a means of projecting my own various insecurities and anxieties. I thought that simply transitioning would fix this, but I was dead wrong. Transitioning into the identity I had long desired was just the very first step. “There was still time”, but that time was inevitably going to run out for me if my only recourse was to spread my own personal hell to others.
I recently watched the final episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, an indie animation production that has recently captured the hearts and minds of many across the globe and a cultural phenomena in its own right. I have not stopped thinking about it. I’ve been constantly posting about it and sharing fan art I find with my friends. I recently made a sort of half-assed short essay on the character of Jax being more complicated than simply “estrogen would have saved her”. I think I can better explain that here. A common refrain I’ve been seeing, particularly in response to celebrations of a what-if story where Jax fully becomes a woman and sets aside her self-destructive tendencies, is that transitioning does not fix what she has done to the other characters in the show. I know, I shouldn’t be taking this take seriously and neither should these detractors. These are cartoon characters at the end of the day. None of the people hurt by Jax within the contents of the series are real. Ultimately, it’s a silly little animation project with not-so-silly themes lovingly tucked into the same bed by series creator, Gooseworx, but…
I can’t help it, but to see myself in Jax. The scene where the other main character, Pomni, runs up to hug Jax and all she can do is just ask “why does anybody still care about me?” is literally a question I struggle with all the time. I’ve done terrible things. I don’t deserve to exist. Terrible people shouldn’t exist in a just world, right…?
Wrong. These are moral assumptions based upon carceral logic. “I’ve done something wrong. It is just that I be punished.” This is, ultimately, reactionary thinking. Do the victims of terrible people have every right to take action against their abuser? Yes, actions have consequences. If the people Jax hurt haunt her the rest of her life, that’s consequences for her actions. It isn’t so cut and dry, however. Does Jax deserve to abstract or die for what she did? No. To think otherwise, is to be a petty fucking fascist. What Jax deserves is to dust herself off, live with what she did, live with how people are going to respond to what she did, change herself and keep. fucking. going. The Amazing Digital Circus is a show about how it’s important to keep fucking going. Suicide solves nothing. Death solves nothing. It brings nothing but more pain. Why does anybody still care about you, Jax? Because you’re still a fucking person who exists in spaces with other people whether you like it or not. Pomni is not a petty fucking fascist. She’s demonstrated time and time again to be an extremely compassionate and empathetic person. People who haven’t forsaken empathy are the people who you should live for. It doesn’t matter if you tend towards being a sarcastic jerk sometimes or if you are just having a bad day. Ultimately, you cannot forget that empathy or you'll really hurt yourself and so many others.
It doesn’t matter what Jax did and it doesn’t matter what I did. I can’t keep doing this endless spiral of negativity and personal harm because it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t fix anything. The people who were wronged by me will still be out there either over it or not.
The sands of time almost ran out for Jax. On her figurative death bed, with one of her last true friends left beside her, embracing her in spite of everything she did, she comes to terms with herself. A powerful cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” booms out through theater speakers or headphones depending on the viewer. “Isn’t she precious? Less than one minute old.” This song was written in celebration of the birth of Wonder’s daughter. So to, is a new Jax born, just in time for a moment before dying to the monstrous abstraction. We’re left wondering whether or not she can hatch again from her wretched coffin as she did from her egg. It’s incredibly bittersweet and leads directly into the redemption arc of Caine, another character who served as the circus’s overloard or, perhaps more apt, its warden. While Caine’s arc lacks the specifically transgender concepts (I believe for good reason as most cis and tenderqueer reactions to complicated trans feminine characters is one of outright rejection and having a similar arc revolve around a non-trans character drives the point home for an otherwise stubborn and ignorant audience), it continues the through line of keep fucking going. Caine nearly abandons the circus after almost being deleted by the humans he so desperately wanted to impress. Time could have run out for him as well. He was able to reach back in to his own mind and find that empathy. He sat his toothed ass down and listened. Caine’s arc ends on a high note while Jax’s ends bittersweet.
I think... it’s time I abandoned the idea of punishing myself for what I’ve done. In all of his famous wise words Chester Bennington said before he tragically lost his own struggle with guilt and hopelessness, these stand out to me the most:
“Put to rest what you thought of me
While I clean this slate
With the hands of uncertainty
So let mercy come and wash away
What I've done
I'll face myself to cross out what I've become
Erase myself
And let go of what I've done”
Happy Birthday and Rest in Peace, you silly, beautiful, purple bunny girl.
Hopefully, a happier new life to myself.
Djynxx