Also, it feels as if the finale did try to make some point about rehabilitative instead of carcereal justice, with the abstractions no longer being locked up in the basement, but being calmed down and floating around peacefully. And i'm fine with Brainscan Jax not having a full redemption arc, there was no time for that. But i do think the limited time they had was spent too much on her and too little on the people she abused mercylessly, especially Ribbit, Ragatha and Gangle, to a lesser degree also Zooble and Pomni who at least got some more amount of screentime.

I watched the finale with some close friends of mine, all of them trans, and literally every one of us has gone through some form of abuse. We were all in agreement that it felt wrong and hurtful to see how Ragatha badly needed comfort and reassurance and almost all of that was, instead, focussed on her abuser. I get that the show would have needed more time to get into this, but it's telling that the pity for abuse victims is just sidelined completely while their abuse was largely treated as a form of comic relief by the general audience, at least up until the finale. I agree with the need for rehabilitation instead of punishment, but there also needs to be restorative justice for this to work. And we did not have that as more than an implication that Pomni will be there for Ragatha after she has recovered from taking care of Jax.

That may sound kinda harsh, but it was our immediate reaction. I also think that Jax is a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of how repping can turn an egg toxic, it was super fucking painful to watch the entire scene inside her mind precisely because it felt so true. I think that was my I Saw the TV Glow moment. I was obviously never as bad as Jax to others, i was especially less misogynist than her, but i've had failed coming outs, i've repped brutally and for way too long, i've done a bunch of stuff to overcompensate that i'm not proud of and i had to confront that hard. And i also liked that Brainscan Jax and her IRL counterpart developed so differently, that one dug herself deeper and deeper into denial while the other is very obviously at most a year from coming out, constantly hanging out at Zooble's bar, looking like the most obvious boymoder and probably already using she / her pronouns and her chosen name online.

It really drives home the point that people aren't onthologically evil, that in spite of both of these "instances" of the same person sharing a common gender identity, socialization and trauma, one of them was able to start healing and the other wasn't, entirely due to both of them living under vastly different conditions and making different choices.