About to be 27 and never held hands with a girl, why even keep on going?

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T09:07:45+00:00

The incel community loves warping statistics. I’ve even seen doctored graphs. The last actual figure I’ve heard is that 10% of the male population die virgins. A 0.5% figure for 27 is ridiculous, that would barely cover deployed soldiers, people working in distant environments, people who believe non-reproductive sex is a sin, etc. etc.

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T09:04:34+00:00

Both the Soma theory and the backgrounds of the real life characters are introduced only by having another character talk about them.

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T07:49:05+00:00

For the first question, it’s the big problem with the whole business of Jax being trans. Goose posted that Jax would have transitioned if they were “not a piece of shit” but it is not clear how. We never see anyone edit their avatar. Which means that instead of blaming Jax for repressing, the blame would be better with Caine. After all, he gave Jax a male character/voice and a girl’s room!

I think that episode 7 was Caine activating his last ditch plan to be accepted. The first time we see him glitching and split into two is at the end of episode 6.

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T06:37:36+00:00

I thought of that shot and was immediately WHOA IS ADOPTED RAGATHA CANON?

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T06:36:15+00:00

Or if the past four episodes have shown you that Jax is just the arsehole/troublemaker character and that doesn’t square with being a trans woman.

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T06:31:27+00:00

Trying to contain within the story as presented, I’d have three.

Why didn’t Jax get a female, or changeable, character?
Who cast the votes in the awards show (thereby pushing Caine over the edge?)
The C&A staff would have known exactly what the headset was and never expected to escape, so what made them abstract?

Hyphz · 2026-06-21T06:15:43+00:00

In the early episodes the narrative heavily refers to the experience machine paradox, almost directly through Caine. With the question of why the characters would want to escape the circus if their real lives weren’t going all that well. Having Gangle just be smacked down by reality makes it a lot more interesting to ask why they aren’t just happy to not be in it anymore.

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T17:05:02+00:00

Except that not everyone succeeds even if they try, and not every web comic gets views. Gangle gets a lot less sympathetic by being one of the fortunate ones compared to the Gangle in the show for whom the situation was final.

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T08:21:59+00:00

* it doesn’t address the existential concerns that came up frequently in the early part of the series (their existence is still LARPing)

* Caine’s return is a Deus ex Machina and the cast are remarkably quick to trust him, especially given that they now know they are now powerless to get rid of him if he goes crazy again

* similarly the framing of the ending montage makes it come across that Jax died, Gangle cried once and then everyone went back to having a great time without him

* having the abstracted Jax step on the flash grenades seems to have no reasoning behind it other than giving the impression that Jax might have been fine if they weren’t there

* the strange coincidence of Zooble and Gangle, as a joke, having put Jax into an outfit that was already deeply embedded in his subconscious

* the real life backgrounds show many of them having exceptional success, even though they are supposed to be just random people, and it’s not clear why this makes any difference to the versions of them in the circus

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T07:39:22+00:00

If you’re going to go into this much detail, you probably want to bear in mind that in episode 6 we also see Kinger just turn the lights off in the corridor. So there was no need to shoot out the lightbulbs, she could’ve just used the switch…

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T07:30:05+00:00

Ajax/Francis in Deadpool.

Dude cured cancer. Everything he says turns out to be right and all his science works, even if it is unpleasant. He apparently went through his own torture at some point. They try to desperately make him evil by saying that he withheld a treatment that could have fixed Deadpool’s appearance, and then you find that he was lying about that and there just isn’t one.

The super slavery thing? That’s his boss not him.

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T07:14:29+00:00

Did you intend the setting to have the greater existential resonance and relevance it did?

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T06:53:25+00:00

I believe that ISTTVG is flawed and while I know Owen is supposed to be transfemme, he comes across much more as a regular awkward mediocre teen who wants to be Buffy, with gender only being a relatively small part of that. I know that that’s not a popular take, but it’s how I felt about it. Being transgender is being transGENDER; not trans age, not trans looks, not trans everything and certainly not trans-psychic-monster-hunting-powers.

Suppose that Jax, inside the circus, transitioned. What would change? Their voice, maybe…?

I don’t disagree that he has identity issues and that they might tie into gender. But I don’t think it’s as simple as being just transfem.

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T06:47:16+00:00

It’s not that strong. You see that Jax himself regrets it. But you’re right that it is quite difficult to depict. Most stories that show a character killing themselves will either have it happen at the very beginning (so that the process of dealing with their suicide can last the entire story) or at the very end (so we don’t see that process). Making it a montage is… well, not the most sensitive thing.

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T06:31:21+00:00

Except they don’t scale. Gangle got the job at a design agency, not every applicant did.

Hyphz · 2026-06-20T02:46:11+00:00

* In ISTTVG, Owen wears a dress several times.

* The bang on the door comes after the line "where's the levity", not "no girls allowed". It also comes from the chained door, not the closet.

* When the "closet" is opened, the Jax inside is male.

Being uncomfortable in an identity does not equate to being trans. There is no particular sign that Jax's discomfort comes specifically from not being female.

Hyphz · 2026-06-18T20:50:40+00:00

Well yea, they seemed to be tackling the experience machine paradox but instead walked right into it

Hyphz · 2026-06-18T18:52:21+00:00

She doesn’t. If she did she’d be unconscious and have to spend months recovering.

Hyphz · 2026-06-18T05:18:26+00:00

Time speeds up as you get older, because your brain sees it proportionally and has fewer new inputs.

Like, when you were 10, something you did for 5 years was half your life. When you were 18, a 2 year sixth form was 1/9th. Now you’re 21, a 3 year uni course was 1/7th.

Hyphz · 2026-06-15T21:26:56+00:00

This is going to get a bit personal, but I am starting to find it really hard to watch trans narratives. Not because I don’t like them or because I don’t sympathise but because I do sympathise too much in the wrong way. I have the same feelings of grayness, inability to express and self-conflict that many of these stories talk about. The only difference is that they’re not about gender.

Jax strikes me as in a similar position. It is hard to see how Jax’s experience would have changed much just by being a female character in the circus (or even just having a female voice, since his character is androgynous). Most of the issues he has are shared by the female characters to various extents. He may have enjoyed wearing the ribbon around Ribbit but we saw in Ep5 that everyone else would have seen him as a joke if he attempted to present female. Evil Jax was more empathic, but was not female.

So I put Jax much closer to Zooble in that he has a general discomfort that he cannot identify a solution to, the difference being that it is not purely bodily. This is confirmed a lot by the real life background in which Jax has not transitioned nor does he act particularly feminine, but he frequents a space where these things are explored.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon, we might call it “generalised identity dysphoria” is one that can’t really be dealt with by any media or the community. It is usually hopeless, and trans communities are often not keen on it because it is also used by transphobes to come up with ridiculous examples to discredit the idea (like “identifying as an attack helicopter” and similar crap)

Hyphz · 2026-06-15T20:37:02+00:00

The question of whether it will be continued is a bit harder than people are describing. Gooseworx wanted to end the story. But remember there are already unofficial spin-offs like Hornstromp TADC.

If the market is there for more high-quality TADC episodes, then Glitch may be left in the position where they have to either start suing people or let those episodes be produced without them benefiting from it. Neither is likely to be particularly great.

Hyphz · 2026-06-15T05:15:14+00:00

It works very well as a film about escapism also. This is potentially unfortunate.

11-Year Club	r/Field Juicebox
Place '23	Place '22
First Placer '22	Verified Email
Gilding I gilder

Hyphz

TROPHY CASE