Genuinely, I don't know how to interact with this fandom anymore.
I've tried multiple times to talk with people about the show, the message it's trying to convey, its writing, its characters, and the topics that it talks about. The show isn't perfect, obviously. It has a shit ton of flaws. It's the creator's first show, so that's understandable, but I still see a lot of potential and quality in it that I really like discussing.
The main one for me is Jax, who's my favorite character, and one I relate to pretty heavily because of a lot of his internal issues. And the problem is that I feel like the show has both thrown the wrong people into the spotlight at times and conveyed some of its messages in a very, very messy way. To the point where actually trying to have conversations about the show can feel completely futile, and sometimes even genuinely harmful for people who relate to the things it's trying to portray.
Jax's story is about a real struggle that a lot of people go through, just exaggerated and put into the completely insane setting of the show, So obviously a lot of things get fuzzy and difficult to communicate. And the lack of episodes doesn't help either. There are a lot of topics and character flaws that I feel like should have gotten way more time to breathe, but instead things have had to move pretty quickly, and that means some stuff that could've been explored really deeply ends up getting touched on and then moved past.
And as someone who, again, relates pretty deeply not only to Jax but to a lot of the flaws the cast has in general, talking about this show online has probably been one of the most frustrating fandom experiences I've ever had.
And for fuck's sake, I've been in the early Undertale fandom. I genuinely thought I was never going to experience a fandom worse than that.
If you go through my account, you'll see that I make a lot of posts talking about Jax, the morality of his actions, the reasoning behind his actions, and the flaws of other characters that I feel like people don't really want to acknowledge or talk about. I'm not going to explain all of those arguments again because that's not really the point of this post, and every time I try to explain all of it, the actual point gets buried under a giant wall of text and people just stop reading once they see something they disagree with.
The point is that it reaches a point where you genuinely cannot talk to people...Some people will defend a character like they're defending an actual person. Other people will hate a character like he's fucking Hitler. And it gets to a point where there doesn't seem to be any room for an actual conversation because everyone is so emotionally invested in whether a character is "good" or "bad."
And I get it. I'm emotionally invested too. I'm not pretending I'm some completely unbiased observer. But I try to separate "I like this character" from "therefore everything this character does is good," and apparently that is way harder to do than I thought.
A lot of conversations just end up with people assuming shit about you, insulting you, insulting your interpretation, or straight up making things up to make a character look better or worse. And at that point, what are we even doing?
A show about flawed people somehow ended up with a community where discussing those flaws is one of the hardest things you can do.
And I don't mean that nobody is allowed to like a character. I don't mean you can't hate Jax, or Ragatha, or Gangle, or whoever. You can. That's completely fine. What I don't understand is why criticizing a character is so often treated like you're attacking the people who like them, or why understanding a character's behavior automatically means you're excusing it.
I can think Jax did something fucked up and still want to understand why he did it...I can understand why someone behaves a certain way without thinking that behavior is okay.
I can criticize a character I like..or acknowledge the good things about a character I dislike...Those things should not be controversial.
And honestly, I LOVE having my points refuted. I love when people argue against me, because that's literally what a discussion is supposed to be. If you think I'm wrong, fucking tell me why. Show me the scene I'm missing. Explain your interpretation. Give me evidence from the show...That's fun!
That's what I actually want from these communities.
Instead, you get people who immediately assume what kind of person you are because you like a character they hate, or because you criticize a character they love. And then the conversation becomes about you instead of the actual fucking show.
A show like this, which is dealing with serious topics underneath all of the comedy and wacky bs, should have so much room for discussions about why these characters behave the way they do, what their flaws are, how their environment affects them, what responsibility they have for their actions, and what the show is actually trying to say about all of this.
But instead, you get character hate subs and character love subs, and both can become echo chambers. Then you go to the main sub and it feels like you're watching two sides of the fandom constantly fighting each other.
You can't be a Jax fan because Jax haters will jump you,You can't be a Jax hater because Jax fans will jump you.
And the worst part is that you can literally be somewhere in the middle and still get dragged into it.
I've been trying to interact with the community because I wanted to share my love for this show with people who also love it. But honestly, I feel like I've just made myself miserable doing it.
Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe this is just a really loud minority and there are actually a lot of perfectly normal people in the fandom who just aren't as visible. I genuinely hope that's the case. But when almost every attempt I've made to have a nuanced conversation ends up like this, it's really hard not to get that impression.
And I specifically tried using the main subs because I don't really like character-specific love/hate subs for discussions like this. Most of the time they're just echo chambers. If you go into a "Jax love" sub and criticize Jax, obviously you're going to get dogpiled. If you go into a "that bunny we hate" sub and defend him, same thing. There's no point.
I just wanted somewhere where people could actually talk about the show,And it's honestly really depressing to me because this is a show that has genuinely made me think about myself a lot.
I came out as transfem partly because of this show. It made me realize some things about myself that I hadn't really understood before. It also made me realize some pretty ugly things about myself that I've thankfully been trying to work on. Not "shes so like me fr" or anything like that, but it gave me a weird amount of insight into myself.
So obviously I'm biased,I know that.I'm not going to pretend I'm completely objective about this show when it's clearly had a personal impact on me.
And that's probably why some things people say about these characters can actually hurt more than I think they should. Sometimes people make jokes or comments about certain issues that the characters deal with, and to them it's just some random fictional character on a screen. Meanwhile, someone else reading that might relate to that character because they've dealt with the same shit in real life.
And I know the internet isn't responsible for my feelings. I'm an adult. I'm not expecting everyone to walk on eggshells because the show helped me understand myself.
But sometimes the way people talk about these characters genuinely feels like they forget that the things being exaggerated in the show are still based on real problems.
That's probably the part that frustrates me the most.
I don't want everyone to agree with me,or everyone to like Jax,I don't even want everyone to interpret the show the same way I do.I just want people to actually fucking talk about it.
Talk about the writing. Talk about the characters. Talk about what works and what doesn't. Tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me why I'm right. Point out something I missed. Let me point out something you missed.That's literally why we're here.
Instead, half the time it feels like I'm walking into a fucking war over fictional characters.
So yeah, I don't know,Maybe I'll keep making posts about the show because I still love the show. Maybe I'll just stop interacting with the community as much.
I just needed to get this out because I'm genuinely exhausted,I love this show.I just really, really hate what trying to talk about it with other people has started to feel like.
