My gripes with abstraction
Alright it's time for me to complain about how abstraction was handled in the series and also an excuse for me to compare it to media that had similar concepts and did it better in my opinion.
So in the pilot it's described as something that happens to a human when they begin to lose their mind in the Circus. Basically they hit their sanity breaking point, and somehow this turns them into glitchy monsters with dozens of glowing eyes. Said monsters are also incredibly dangerous to the people around them and cause some sort of damage that only Caine can fix.
I'm actually fine with how it's portrayed in the pilot, because Kaufmo's abstraction serves to introduce the stakes. In a setting where you can't die, you need something to pose a threat to the characters. Every story needs stakes, low or high.
My problem is when abstraction goes from a "loss of sanity" to a suicide metaphor. Now, before getting into the suicide part, I can understand why this change might have happened. If "losing your mind" makes you abstract, then it begs the question of how Kinger is still here. That man is outright stated to be insane, and even has similarities to abstraction in that they're affected positively by being in dark places. When I noticed this, I even had a headcanon that Kinger was in a constant state of partial abstraction, but that's fanon territory.
So one problem with pivoting abstraction to being a suicide metaphor: there's no clarification as to whether the act of abstracting is intentional or accidental.
For this particular scene towards the end of episode 4, a lot of people believe Gangle almost abstracted here. However, since this scene has no dialogue (until Pomni snaps her out of it) and is solely visual storytelling, we don't have confirmation if she was intending to abstract, or if it was going to happen outside of her control.
Same goes for Jax's near-abstraction in episode 7, which is more blatantly obvious about what was happening. We don't actually know if she was intending to abstract, or if it began to happen by accident. It doesn't become any clearer by the finale since she abstracts off-screen.
The reason I keep hammering about the idea of intent is because that's how suicide happens in the real world. No one commits suicide by accident. My problem with leaving the idea of intent unclear with abstraction is that, if it IS done outside of the human's control, then it totally fails as a metaphor. In real life, suicidal people typically plan out their actions, you don't die by bedrotting during an extreme depressive episode.
Secondly, if abstraction is accidental, that has horrifying implications. Do you abstract if you feel too many negative emotions? Do you have to shove them down and force yourself to be happy so you don't end up hurting yourself and your friends?
On the flipside, if abstraction IS intentional, it still has some really fucked up implications because of the logic of the setting of the Digital Circus.
This line from Zooble in particular seems to imply that abstraction is intentional, or at the very least that they believe it's done intentionally. If abstraction is intentional, then that means Jax did it knowing full well she'd become a dangerous threat to everyone around her. It even implies that everyone who abstracted before her didn't care about the physical safety of their friends.
Now, I can see the argument that they knew Caine would send them to the cellar and fix any damage they'd done, but that just makes Jax's abstraction even worse because she KNEW that Caine was gone and couldn't fix shit. It makes her abstraction come off as incredibly selfish. Because again, with actual suicide, you become a corpse. With abstraction, you become A DANGEROUS MONSTER THAT CAUSES PHYSICAL PAIN TO EVERYONE YOU TOUCH.
By the end of episode 9, nothing is done to solve the problem of abstraction. It's still THE major threat to the characters. It can't be reversed, and there's no permanent prevention. The most they get in terms of a 'solution' is building a fucking aquarium, apparently. We don't even get the tiniest explanation of how it's supposed to work.
Here's where I get into comparisons. The concept of "Character transforms into a literal monster after reaching a Despair Event Horizon" isn't an inherently bad idea. It's a trope, and all tropes can be handled well or poorly. Also now I have an excuse to yap about one of my big special interests.
SO. Final Fantasy XIV. Specifically, the Endwalker expansion. Spoilers for extremely important plot points for the entire storyline. I'm not going to go into a long yapping session explaining the lore so I'm going to do my best to condense this.
Around the early midway point of Endwalker, you, the player character, are forced to kill a godlike entity named Zodiark. What you didn't know is that Zodiark was the only thing holding back something called the "song of oblivion" that restarts the apocalypse known as the Final Days. What does the "Final Days" entail?
Long story short, when people are overcome with despair, they turn into big-ass dangerous monsters called Blasphemies (technically that name only applies to specific monsters, but for ease of explanation I'll use monster and blasphemy interchangeably). They cannot be fixed, and the only option is to kill them.
From the get-go, the question of intent is answered directly in the text. It's explicitly shown to be outside of the victim's control multiple times, such as the family in Vanaspati fleeing the destruction and end up turning into blasphemies right in front of you, thanks to their emotions upon seeing their home destroyed and witnessing their other family members turn into monsters.
Even a god damn INFANT almost becomes a blasphemy because she's a literal baby who's scared, confused, and just lost her parents.
Remember what I said earlier about the horrifying implications of abstraction being accidental? Those implications are followed through in Endwalker and are the major motivation for why the player needs to find a solution to this problem before it gets worse. You can't smile your way through life, and it would be a lot easier to deal with depression if it didn't turn you into a literal murder beast.
You succeed in doing exactly that by the end of the expansion's main story. You find the source of the song of oblivion, get it to stop, and now people are safe to tackle negative emotions without becoming a physical danger to everyone around them. It's an active threat in the story that's properly addressed and resolved.
Is it entirely fair to compare an indie animated series with one writer to a big budget MMORPG with multiple writers? Fuck no!
However, I do think it's important to talk about how certain tropes can be handled and how writers should consider all the implications of said tropes before finalizing them into their story. Writers should consider multiple angles of what these tropes could mean for their story. Writers should think hard about what they should explicitly state in the text and what they can leave ambiguous, and how either of those could be a benefit or detriment to the functionality of their story.
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