A TADC critique (with love)
I know everyone is probably tired of listening and reading opinions about TADC and it's ending, but I have an issue that I haven't seen people talk about in depth. I don't know if I'm the best person to do this but I would love to hear someone else’s opinion about this.
(Also sorry if I make any mistakes, english is kinda hard)
But my main issue with the show is the “what does it mean to be human?” question.
Our characters are trapped in a computer with an intelligent and sentient AI. You cannot be killed and you cannot age, the only permanent change is something they call abstraction where you become a shapeless "monster".
Mortality has been a philosophical discussion for the longest time, and it has been a theme in multiple medias along history. It's clear, or it should be clear for everyone that mortality is something human, aging is human, and it separates us from gods and machines.
When you are put in a situation that questions your humanity, that's the question you need to answer. So when we start with this premise but the ending focuses more on a question of personal identity, it can feel kind of underwhelming.
Let me be clear, I don't think it is something that cannot be touched or developed in the story, it's just that you have to think very well the way you are going to do it because having these questions at hand, they cannot be ignored in a way that doesn't feel incomplete (in my opinion).
Normally, when you want introspection in a character so they discover or end up showing us something about themselves, you have something happen to them, you don't put them in a dilemma so big it overshadows their internal turmoils.
I am very conscious that the irony of Jax’s character is that she relied on the world that she is in being fake, so she can do a lot without feeling bad about it or living without consequences, but even in that situation she couldn't let go of the gender societal norms, insecurities and her past as a victim of abuse. But this irony doesn't work narratively, at least not in the way it was resolved, since this issue seems so personal and small in comparison with being stripped of your humanity and being trapped without a way out. It's a great problem to put one of the characters in, that they cannot let go no matter how they try, but this being the focus and leaving everything else with a vague resolution makes it feel incomplete.
Why put them in there if the question of human nature was not at hand? If Gooseworks wanted Jax’s story to be the main one, maybe this setting wasn't the best to do so.
Coming back to the main issue. Since the characters have been stripped of their humanity they should find a way to get it back. Immortality and living that immortality with the same six people is not a part of being human, so the fact that they are living eternally inside a fake world, happy, is very hard to grasp, but it's especially hard to digest since the story expects us to not question it.
It's kind of like if in the matrix you chose the blue pill. It's like they decided to conform with what they have, but that doesn't really work when you consider that it's going to be that way forever.
I feel like that's also why they decided to not go in depth with the lore because if you offer an answer there may be a possibility of getting out, and while that possibility is there the happy ending falls apart immediately.
It's really not possible for Scratch to have made the brain scans alone, so other people must have been informed.
They knew that Caine was dangerous, if not, why would they cut him off?
And if people knew about all of this, how is it possible that the company just closes and you’re not worried about the possibility of the AI losing control, or your consciousness living as a copy of yourself inside a computer.
Also, the morality of creating a sentient AI and a way of scanning brains to live forever in a fake world is also not questioned.
I have other things to say, possitive and negative ones, but this was my main issue.
