Cheryl Sakurai

London, Ontario, is a small city. Unlike its ever traversed British counterpart, with its skyscraping buildings, bustling social scene 24 hours a day, and rich cultural heritage woven into each inch of its fast-paced neighborhoods, the London I know has always been more reserved. 

Few buildings in my hometown are tall. The handful of skyscrapers and apartment complexes higher than 30 stories are relatively new developments - and messy ones at that. Much of the city still isn't built up, either. Indeed, stretches of grassland and trees litter the landscape of a partially completed suburbia.

To call London, Ontario a tourist hub would be a ludicrous lie. There is hardly anything one could call a "nightlife," for starters, unless you count the generic university and college student parties that sometimes spill over into town. Most touring artists with a functioning budget wouldn't dare touch this city either. 

During the daytime, a potential tourist's main entertainment sources only lie in the monuments of obscure Canadian history scattered across town: colonial houses, low-budget collectors' museums, the artifacts of designated heroes here and there. There are adequately tended parks, but they do not possess any notable natural wonders or festivals to distinguish them from the municipal parks of many other suburbs. No matter how much the city council tries whitewashing things, you are much better off going to see the tourist traps of Niagara Falls or the overcrowded attractions of Toronto than deciding to stumble into London, Ontario, for its name.

This is not to say I resent my hometown. Far from it. My school, Oak Ridge High, is a wonderful building with solid education - at least for university pathway students. The teachers generally do their jobs, and the textbooks and equipment are more than functional. 

My two best friends - Glen and Blossom - also attend with me. We aren't enrolled in many of the same classes, but we hang out whenever we can. They are sometimes quite the personalities with their portal fantasy obsession, but it is a fascination I mostly share as well. We might not really have any friends other than each other, but that's fine by us. Except for a certain Jared, we get along with our classmates perfectly fine during assignments.

The shops are also sufficiently varied. There are well-stocked groceries, dollar stores, fashion vendors, woodworking suppliers, and computer fixers like in any other generic suburb. The cashiers are nice, and the guest services are reasonably helpful.

Nothing of note happens here. 

I like it that way.

April 1st, 2026

It is an ordinary spring Wednesday. There are plenty of clouds and some moisture, but no rain yet. The sun peeks out from behind a few blots of grey, but it's not enough to bring the temperature any higher than six degrees.

Of course, the weather doesn't really matter when I'm spending much of my day in school. Oak Ridge High might have far too many windows for its size, but its yellow-white lighting obscures the outdoors for the most part. In the meantime, I'm fresh out of a law class I don't need for anything other than maintaining my GPA and filling one of the generic elective slots required for many universities like the one I'm set to attend this September - Waterloo.

As with most school lunches, I meet up with Glen and Blossom in our shared locker bay. Most years, we've ended up having our lockers in very different corners. For our senior year, though, we're lucky to have a common space.

I walk in on Glen and Blossom playing a life simulator game. Their matching keychains - with pride pins and face emojis - dangle out on the floor. Blossom is in the middle of creating a new avatar with dyed green hair and gothic pale skin.

"You keeping her ageless?" Glen asks Blossom.

"Probably," Blossom smiles.

Glen sighs and scratches his chin.

"Do you really want to keep her in Grade 12 forever?" he snarks. "You always make your OCs ageless."

"Chill," she cheekily retorts, "it's just a game. Besides, it's more fun."

I chuckle along with Blossom.

"See?" Blossom exclaims. "Cheryl agrees!"

Next to the two, I notice a few of Blossom's drawings lying around. They're mostly too folded for me to make out anything except for part of one indigo haired anime girl. As Blossom restarts on her art, Glen shows off one of his latest sculptures: a painted ceramic figurine of a cartoon animal in a dress.

"Like it?" he asks Blossom.

"Ehhhhh...." Blossom looks up from her drawing. "It could use some more purple."

"Agreed," I muttered.

Glen glances at me.

"Alright then," he says. "Geez, I'm gonna hate repainting all of this!"

Upon taking a closer look, I realize what Glen had recreated: a certain fellow named Jax in a maid dress. 

...

One of the portal fantasy shows my friends and I have latched onto is The Amazing Digital Circus - or TADC for short. The premise is essentially what would happen if the Jumanji franchise swapped out "jungle" for "circus" in the video game setting and then made it several times harder to actually escape the gameworld in question. 

Among the six unfortunate main players of TADC's circus is Jax. An anthropomorphic rabbit upon entering the circus, Jax is a deeply messed up person. He is a bully, abusive, and a borderline sadist. He delights in causing chaos for fun to numb his own emotional pain and grief, destroying property and engaging in all sorts of cartoon violence and insults that luckily don't cause a whole lot of physical pain. He rarely shows remorse to anyone except himself. Ultimately, he is the high school jock temporally grown up - but without the emotional maturity his age should bring.

Of course, like all notable bad boys in fiction, Jax has plenty of fans in real life. Some, like my friends and I, enjoy his lurid antics and development. Others sincerely believe he's done no wrong of his own, a claim both my friend group and virtually every other sane Jax fan find worrisome. 

And then there are the people who believe Jax is secretly a trans woman.

Despite the fact that Jax is the epitome of toxic masculinity, there is a surprisingly large cohort of TADC fans who believe that "he" is actually a "she." Perhaps it has to do with his briefly shown pink room. Or the extremes he'll go to to prove his manliness. Or the show creator's trolling on social media, or heck, even just the hefty clue scouring the show and its fanbase often encourage. Regardless, Glen and Blossom are two of these theorists.

I personally never really got the transfem Jax theory - or the Daisy theory, as its proponents often call it. Jax always seemed more likely to be transmasc than transfem to me, with his aggressive behaviour being a way to compensate for being dysphoric - if he was even trans at all. Besides, the guy hasn't come out eight episodes into a nine episode series. 

Nonetheless, the thought of such a rogue masculine personage being trans and comfortably a woman does amuse me. I find it so deeply antithetical to his character, even at his best, that it circles back around to fascinating. Perhaps one could call it situational irony. 

No matter what, my friends like to indulge in the theory. And as long as they're happy with it - I'm happy.

(Tumblr version: https://www.tumblr.com/talesfromasnarkylisa/823160295581171712/the-daisy-theory-chapter-1?source=share)