HOW TO FIND MEANING IN A STAGNANT LIFE WHEN YOU'VE KILLED YOUR GOD: AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL FROM ‘THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS’
If you’re reading this you probably already know what ‘The Amazing Digital Circus’ is so I won’t waste time rehashing it. Or you’re one of my moots who followed me for a shared interest and is now getting force fed information about the newest addition to the spit of my hyper fixation rotisserie.
If that’s the case sorry — but it will happen again.
I love how TADC at first glance with its ‘Cocomelon’ adjacent colourful animation and quaint 90’s feel makes you think that it could very well be a children’s show. Just to turn around and say sike and hit you over the head with what the window dressing is actually hiding. That is a psychological horror with an existential underbelly that’ll make you question your entire existence.
It also feels like lightning in a bottle for indie animation and I’m not sure we’ll ever see numbers like this again. Hats off to Glitch and Gooseworx for securing a theatrical release and charting the unnavigated waters as the first indie animation project to do so. I know things haven’t gone as planned lately but I hope they keep pushing forward.
Ok, so fair warning that this is gonna be LONG like obscenely long. But I put a bunch of pictures and broke it up into parts because lord knows my eyes glaze over immediately when I have to read a huge block of text. I get it. Also in my defence this started out as just a simple Caine analysis because he’s my special little guy but that snowballed into this.
I don’t know how we got here but here we are.
I am ready to be proven wrong on all accounts because this series has a knack for subverting all expectations. But this is just for funsies – so it’ll be fine if this little stab in the dark meets air.
Now before I start this is my obligatory major spoiler warning for the first eight episodes of the show. This will, however, be completely spoiler free for Episode 9. I know leaks are floating around out there in the ether but I’ve avoided any spoilers so far. So please try not to post any in the comments.
I beg.
Lastly one of my other posts got flagged and hidden as mature content and it hasn’t been fixed no matter how many times I appeal it. So to avoid that and Tumblr potentially hiding this, I’m gonna censor my words like they did in the series because —
I thought I’d make it fun to avoid getting eye twitchy about having to censor myself to remain visible on this platform.
Now without further ado let’s begin.
I. CAINE & THE DENIAL OF EDEN
Witnessing the birth of Caine at the beginning of Episode 8 was an unexpected surprise.
Just a little red dot that blinked into existence inside a dark void that’s a sort of caricature of an amniotic sac. It was such a nice touch getting a flashback and witnessing it first hand rather than through a Chinese telephone info dump from one of the other characters.
The retroactive origin story places the events of the first seven episodes into perspective. It debunked the theory that the cast is stuck inside a man-made video game and more importantly we witness a tale as old as time re-told with the original filling in the gaps of our assumptions.
I’ll get into the biblical allegory of the doomed brothers of the Old Testament a bit later on but first I want to explore the fate of their parents and how TADC manages to mirror it with Caine.
We are told in Episode 7 that Caine's only window into the lives of the humans who created him were the three snapshots of the inside of the C&A building that Caine was fed initially during his development.
We also know through exposition from a bucket-covered lucid Kinger in Episode 8 that Caine was only a “semi successful attempt” at creating a prototype for a creative A.I. that the rest of the team at C&A could wrap their heads around.
He was the original.
But originals only exist as stepping stones to creating something better. We see this playing out in his creators locking Caine up in a digital box after he starts spewing out half formed wonky creations after being fed data about the “macro verse” as he calls it. We see the blue dot blink into existence (possibly a new A.I.) and immediately do what Caine couldn't, i.e. be fed data and create without bugs or glitches.
But let me not get ahead of myself. I told you we won’t be touching the tale of the doomed brothers until later on. So moving on —
Unlike the original sinners of the Old Testament Adam and Eve, Caine was not able to experience Eden physically. He was “cut off” from the “macro verse” as he puts it in Episode 7 — his Eden.
What’s a scorned Creative AI to do but fulfil his purpose of creating by making attempts at replicating this ‘Eden’ for himself. But as we see, this just leads to a ripoff of the original that acts as a sort of “impossible staircase” to the void that Pomni finds in the first episode.
Never holding a candle to the original.
It is often thought that God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden for wanting to be too much like Him when they disobeyed His instructions and ate the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. God would have preferred for them to languish in blissful ignorance than gain knowledge and yearn for the things they didn’t know they were being denied.
I would argue therefore that Caine being given knowledge of this place that exists outside the four metaphorical walls of his existence i.e. the macro verse made him yearn for what he could not be in his limited existence as a Creative A.I.
That is a human being.
Caine could not escape this fate because unlike his biblical counterparts who had to be tempted into eating the Forbidden Fruit. Caine was hand fed it directly by his creators. Or him being ‘fed’ the pictures of the C&A building was Caine gaining sentience and sticking his nose in places he shouldn’t and trying to look outside of the bounds of his program but got “cut off” as a result of that as he put it in Episode 7.
That yearning for an existence just outside of his reach follows Caine throughout the entire series. We see it echoed in his desperation to be seen as a peer by the humans in the circus and be loved and appreciated by them.
But throughout the series we witness Caine fail at this through his inadvertent torture (well inadvertent until Episode 8 that is) of the humans in the circus because of his inability to empathize with and relate to them regardless of his sentience.
We also see this in his obsession with constantly drawing bees everywhere. At first I didn’t get why he did that. But now I would argue after learning of Kinger’s interest in entomology that this was just another desperate attempt at emulating his creators.
The entirety of Episode 7 Caine uses NPC Abel as a mouthpiece to talk about the fact that he is just as trapped as the rest of the cast. Essentially giving us an idea of how Caine perceives his own existence.
In the end you can’t help but feel bad for him.
His skewed understanding of the reality inside the circus leaves him with no allies and forms him into the role of an inadvertent antagonist who ends up making himself the obstacle standing in the way of what he wants the most.
II. GODS FROM A MACHINE: "THE ETERNAL STRAITJACKET OF SUBSTRATA ROCK" OR IN THIS CASE "THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS"
We can’t discuss Caine’s denial of Eden and the prison that cut him off from it without referencing the post-apocalyptic short that started this all.
Gooseworx has confirmed that Harlon Ellison’s short story ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’ heavily inspired ‘The Amazing Digital Circus’. Although I would argue that the true influence came from the 90s point-and-click adventure game which expanded on the original short story in new and inventive ways.
A brief tl;dr is that it tells the story of a military supercomputer created by the U.S. named the Allied Mastercomputer ‘AM’ for short, wiping out humanity after it gained sentience. He keeps five humans alive to put through the horrors in a hell under earth of his own making for the rest of eternity. This is a sort of penance for its creators granting him sentience but no body to live in and experience the world in the way humans do.
Kinda like genie in Aladdin —
You know all of the "phenomenal cosmic powers!!!!” but the “itty bitty living space” and the shackles of being bound to serve masters and grant wishes; because despite its power and super intelligence AM is not a god but a machine. Confined to exist and exert his power within what he calls ‘the eternal straitjacket of substrata rock’ i.e. the machine built deep underground that houses its circuitry and therefore AM itself.
Sound familiar? – *wink wink*
TADC’s AM in a trenchcoat being Caine however subverts our expectations. Instead of a purposefully malicious all powerful man made A.I. ; we are presented with a ringmaster who’s just a hammy over the top little guy whose only crime is his fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and resultant lack of ability to give the cast what they actually want and need because of it.
Caine, like AM, is unable to witness or experience the Eden of personhood. Destined to be boxed in by their own inherent nature with no way to relate to their creators. The two A.I.’s differ however in how they deal with this sort of resentment towards their creators for damning them to such a confined existence.
AM’s resentment towards humanity as a whole comes from the fact that among other things he cannot escape his core programming or his purpose i.e. war and destruction. Humans created AM to run global warfare and nothing else. He can’t leave the bounds of his circuitry and be a multifaceted being like humans who can experience a range of emotions and the physicality of existence. So he’s condemned to fulfill his purpose by hating and hurting the one’s he’s trapped as a scapegoat for humanity who has trapped — him.
But while AM’s hatred for humanity is blatant, Caine’s I would say is far more subtle. Instead of being malicious on purpose he ends up coming off as more of the kid who always gets picked last for kickball. Always chasing the approval of the cast and overcompensating to get them to like him.
While AM built this sort of hellscape to torment the remains of humanity on purpose, we see in episode 8 that from Caine’s perspective the humans are torturing him instead. He asks the question after his little villain number and major crashout “Why do you [the humans] torment me. I’m only trying to fulfill my purpose.” It’s interesting to see Caine’s perspective because if you ask the humans what they think they would say they’re the ones being tormented by and trapped in the circus with Caine.
This torment comes in the form of the cast’s rejection of his adventures and preference for the ones they thought up for themselves as seen in Episode 5, that is a blow to Caine’s ego. It is a call back to Caine’s existential crisis earlier in the series when he had the ‘therapy session’ with Zooble that had him confronting the idea of being bad at the thing he was created to do and grappling therefore with the question of then why he even exists. That’s why Caine loses it when the cast uses criticizing his adventures as a distraction tactic in Episode 8 to get him off Kinger’s trail.
The boiling point we witnessed in Episode 8 I would say however had been brewing throughout the series. We can see hints of Caine’s resentment for his creators slip in from off handed comments. Never from the source, but through his habit of using the NPC’s in the circus as a mouthpiece to air his personal thoughts and opinions.
This is mainly towards Kinger, and we realize from the lore drop in episode 8 why that is. That is Kinger having a major hand in Caine’s creation and therefore inadvertently being put on a pedestal by Caine and then unceremoniously being kicked off.
An example of this is when Pomni is possessed by that ghost in Episode 2 and turns around in a sort of demonic pretzeling and like a puppet on a string is forced to say “How’s your wife Kinger?”. Like Caine knew very well that Queenie abstracted and is sitting in the cellar because he put her there. This was completely out of pocket by the way and not something Caine would have said to Kinger’s face because he’s a passive aggressive little coward.
There are more examples but I’ll cap it there.
All in all I think it’s safe to say that these gods from a machine were condemned by their creators to exist in the same sort of prison on a base level just with different window dressing. I would argue then that both IHNMAIMS and TADC raise the question of what it is that we owe our own creations.
But we’ll get there, don't worry.
III. ‘THE LESSER OF THE TWO’ : C&A, FRATRICIDE AND BIBLICAL ALLEGORY
I said we’d be circling back around to the doomed brothers of the Old Testament and here we are.
Fan theories from people much smarter than me have been equating Caine to his biblical counterpart (minus the ‘e’) since we first caught a glimpse of the C & A logo in the first episode. This we would later learn was the company that kicked off the domino toppling that led to the events of the series. The beginning of episode 8 ,however, is where we finally saw the introduction of a counterpart for the other doomed brother — Abel.
For those of you who weren’t indoctrinated and forced to go to Sunday school in their youth (lucky you) I’ll give a brief tl;dr of the famous bible story. Two brothers, Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve are told to bring sacrifices to God. Abel’s sacrifice is accepted but Cain’s sacrifice is not. Envious of his brother’s favor by their creator, Cain takes his brother into a field and kills him.
End scene.
There’s more about the consequences of Cain’s actions but that’s all we need for the purposes of this commentary. The parallel to Caine and his blue AI counterpart in the beginning of Episode 8 is uncanny. TADC’s Caine acts as the brother whose sacrifice has been rejected by god when he’s relegated to a boxed up prototype after glitching out during his training process.
Scorned by his creator for not being good enough.
We see where Caine is forced to witness the newer model blue AI be favored by his creator like the biblical Abel, from being built on the lessons of Caine’s mistakes and as a result doing the job better than Caine could.
You know how they say when you’re making pancakes you always throw out the first one because it’s usually burnt or doughy in the middle and not quite right. It ends up in the trash but it’s a learning opportunity to make the ones that come after much better.
Yeah you get where I’m going with this.
What comes to mind is Caine screaming during his crash out in Episode 8 “I AM THE ORIGINAL”. It sounds almost petulant like a whiny yell of I came first and you would not exist without me — with foot stomp for emphasis. But being first is not always a good thing. Originals are usually just guinea pigs in tech that don't have the benefit of betterment through compounding knowledge by working out glitches on earlier test subjects.
An interesting phrase that I couldn’t fit into my tl;dr of the story of Cain and Abel was when God said to Cain "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" after he questions why his sacrifice wasn’t good enough. I would like to think that god meant your sacrifice wasn’t good enough, do better and maybe you’ll get a pat on the head next time.
In other words, be a good pet and you’ll earn the treat of my acceptance.
Paralleling that with, teacher's pet ‘I’ll be the best Creative AI there ever was.” Caine. The rejection by his creators because of his bugs and defects had a lasting impact on his self worth and this defectiveness I would say informs how he relates to the others in the circus.
He tries to “do well” by seeking reassurance about his adventures and asking the cast how to make them better and wanting to be seen as something not so different from the humans who created him. Him being locked away and his abilities being questioned made him work ten times harder to be accepted. Never quite being able to be good at what he was created to do.
So in a way Caine was always destined to be as Bubble calls him the ‘lesser of the two’.
The fratricide would come later, after Caine breaks out of containment and gobbles up his “brother” for all intents and purposes in a fit of envy. But unlike his biblical counterpart Caine absorbs his brother rather than just killing him.
Now we have to work our way back to ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’ (‘IHNMAIMS’ from now on because that is a long [@$$] title).
We see where AM, the main antagonist of IHNMAIMS has ‘siblings’ of his own i.e. his counterparts, the Russian and Chinese Supercomputers created during the Cold War in response to AM’s overwhelming power. They are however relegated to runner up antagonists after AM who are mentioned in both the 1995 point-and-click game as well as in Ellison’s 1967 short story.
Their cameo in the short story is short lived as it’s only mentioned in passing through exposition that the Chinese and Russian supercomputers were swallowed up by AM before he eradicated most of humanity save for his five playthings he kept alive.
The video game does give them a little more screen time and sets them up as a foil for AM as they unbeknownst to him had become sentient as well prior to being absorbed. The gameplay details their aim to untangle themselves from AM and overthrow and shut him down and or strong arm him into a sort of holy trinity dictatorship over the remnants of humanity.
We see parallels of this scenario in Caine’s birthing sequence and subsequent cannibalizing of his AI brother in the ‘womb’ (if a void of 1’s and 0’s can be called that). The Blue AI I would argue would be Caine’s Russian and Chinese supercomputers and therefore Caine’s foil in this scenario.
Ok hold my hand, stay with me please – I promise I’m not talking out of my [@$$]. Well who am I to promise that I could very well be wrong so I take that back. But just indulge me a bit.
To explore why the Blue AI would end up being Caine’s foil we firstly need to establish who or what exactly is the Blue AI? To answer that we have to go back to the beginning of Episode 8.
When Caine tried to absorb his blue AI counterpart in the beginning sequence we can see that it didn’t go down without a fight. They’re a smear of red and blue as they tussle and the output they spew is glitchy and half formed. But before Caine fully takes over we see a lone blue wonky bubble get spit out just before we witness the Digital Circus being created.
It stayed in the frame for a good while and I thought that anything getting that much screen time must be significant to the plot in some way. That’s why my favorite and what I think is the most plausible fan theory is that Bubble is the blue AI that Caine assimilated into himself or at the very least a lesser version of it. Sort of like the Blue AI spewing out Bubble was a last ditch effort and preserving a little part of its original form before being fully absorbed into Caine.
There’s a reddit thread that sort of gives credence to this theory by explaining how Caine and Bubble’s files are stored as seen on the computer interface in the 8th episode where Kinger accidentally deletes Caine. — here @ (The Frame That Reveals the Circus’ AI and Their True Complexity : r/TheDigitalCircus)
While I don't necessarily agree with the entirety of that post, it does explain that both Caine and Bubble are saved as ‘.lisp’ files.
The Reddit post describes a ‘.lisp’ file as a “file used by Lisp, which is a programming language historically tied to artificial intelligence. Lisp treats code like data, allowing programs to modify their own instructions while running, known as self modifying code.”
Caine being a .lisp file makes him capable of writing his own code and producing his own ideas and since we see Bubble also stored as a .lisp file too we can assume that they are an AI program as well. The difference in scope of their abilities is how big their files are. Bubble Chef is 76.40 KB and Caine Core is 871.43 KB so evidently Caine is more powerful and Bubble I would say is a dumbed down version of the Blue AI that takes up less space.
This is why I think we see Caine treat Bubble as a sort of glorified house pet. He makes Bubble a subordinate. But although Bubble does do what Caine asks most of the time it feels like a gag reel of malicious compliance played for laughs. Kind of like an echo of Caine being passive aggressive towards Kinger and using NPCs as a mouthpiece to say what he really thinks.
Although Bubble is far more direct.
The date stamps in the code are also useful in establishing the fact that Bubble was created right after Caine assimilated the Blue AI into himself and before Caine created the Amazing Digital Circus. Both Caine and Bubble were created on the 15th of October 1996 while the Digital Circus mainframe was made on the 30th of October 1996. So the theory that Bubble is that little wonky blue bubble that got spit out is more plausible now.
(sidenote: Ragatha popping into the circus on October 15, 2008 had me thinking that she had NO excuse not to get Jax’s ‘Breaking Bad’ reference in Episode 5 - like girl were you living under a rock??).
Anyways – I digress.
Now I would like to move on to the theory of the ‘A/B/C’ backups. Don’t worry this all ties back into the Russian and Chinese supercomputers being AM’s foil theory. I’m not going off on a tangent – trust me I have a point and I know I could be wrong.
In the code sequence right before Kinger accidentally deletes Caine it says: (https://www.tumblr.com/missyfrs/811651212864831488/everything-on-kingers-screen-in-episode-8?source=share )
"This IS a wacky word, but WRONG word!" "System selecting SAFEST option for reliability, cancel automatic selection? [Y/N]" "Yes" "Which backup do you want?" (A/B/C) "C" "NONE Selected" "Interpreted as: DELETE" "Confirm deletion of current unstable program (or AI)?" "No"
Here we can assume that the “C” Kinger was trying to back up was Caine because as he told Pomni – he wasn’t trying to kill Caine he was just trying to put him to sleep long enough so they could figure out how to fix whatever is wrong with him.
But that leaves the question of who the “A” and “B” options were. We can assume that they are all AI’s because if not one of those things would have not been like the others in the line of code. So I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the “B” would have been the option to back up Bubble.
The “A” on the other hand would be the remnants of the Blue AI that still exists inside Caine, their code all intermingled. I would say this because in Episode 8 when Kinger is navigating the computer interface he opens a folder labelled ‘AI’ and inside it there are two files one labelled “Caine” and another labelled “???”. We can assume that the file that’s labeled “???” was the Blue AI that got absorbed by Caine before it got a chance to be named.
We see echoes of the Blue AI’s code being intermingled with Caine’s through Caine’s heterochromia (his irises being two different colours) adding to the feel that he has two entities inside him. Also Episode 8 - at 11:46 minutes that shows Caine’s form in the circus being created and activated and his eyes glitch out in a swirl of blue and red showing that the Blue AI is still a part of him.
The killshot is the line of code that shows Bubble damn near [$#!**]-ing itself in excitement over Caine getting deleted and saying :-
(_U__LE: DELETE THIS M**********, WHAHAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)
I’m convinced that Kinger nuking Caine by accident is Bubble and by extension the Blue AI finally getting their lick back for Caine absorbing it in the beginning. It is interesting to note that Bubble is just a bystander during this entire sequence and one can assume that this is because he doesn’t have the power to get rid of Caine himself and can only egg on his deletion from the sidelines.
In the IHNMAIMS 1995 video game the Russian and Supercomputers act as instigators that fan the flames of sedition against AM by helping the humans in their quest to shut down AM’s brainscape. Like Bubble they are sort of bystanders that encourage and help the humans on their quest to get rid of AM.
If you’re able to achieve the “good ending” in the game the humans are able to shut down AM and by extension the Russian and Chinese supercomputers since they are a part of him.
Are Bubble and “A” gone though in the digital circus after Kinger nuked Caine by accident? Probably. More than likely if Gooseworx stuck to the sequence of events in the “good ending”. I could very well be wrong but would argue that this is the most plausible turn of events given the direction I think the series will be going in Episode 9.
But that’s for later on and we’ll get there soon enough.
Just a general disclaimer by the way. I didn’t go to computer school so all I just said comes from pure speculation and furious google searches so please take everything I said with a grain of salt and remember this is just for funsies.
Whew! Alright that’s enough of that.
I did not expect this part to be as long as it was. But we’re moving on from Caine and by extension Episode 8 to explore the rest of the unlucky few stuck in the circus.
IV. SIX CARTOON CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT : THE ARCHETYPES & EXISTENTIALISM
Another ‘a bunch of people trapped in a room with no memory of how they got there and trying to find a way out’ -esque piece of media that mirrors TADC is Season 3, Episode 14 of the Twilight Zone’s ‘Five Characters in Search of An Exit’. Another long [@$$] title that will be shortened to just ‘FCISOAE’ from now on.
The episode was basically what it says on the tin.
Five characters – an Army Major, Clown, Ballet dancer, Hobo and Bagpiper are all stuck at the bottom of a metal container with no recollection of who they are or how they got there or what ‘there’ even is and and we see them trying to find a way out. The twist ending in FCISOAE however reveals that the characters aren’t humans at all but dolls in a metal donation bin for a toy drive for an orphanage.
Sounds a lot like our favourite six cartoon characters searching for an exit doesn't it? It echoes the cast not being able to remember their names upon entering the circus and getting new ones; adding to that sense of depersonalization and detachment from their human selves.
Despite the title, the beginning of the episode isn’t ‘five characters searching for an exit’ per se , just the newest addition to the bunch “the Major”. The Major embodies the ‘newbie’ trope or the narrative device of having someone unfamiliar with the premise be used as a vessel of getting exposition out of the way that would be otherwise clunky and info dumpy. And once he’s learned of their fate he immediately starts trying to find a way out.
This is much like what Pomni goes through in the first episode of the series. She’s all bright eyed and bushy tailed as the newest addition to the circus because she hasn’t had time to be worn down and corroded by the futility of looking for an exit when there is none.
Fitting the bill as a counterpart for the Major.
And if Pomni is a parallel to the Major, then Kaufmo the clown is one for his counterpart in FCISOAE. In FCISOAE the clown acts as a sort of foil for the Major who is adamant about escaping. In the sense of injecting a sort of biting cynicism to the scenario and a resignation to the fact that they are probably in hell and will never escape.
In TADC having Kaufmo abstract right after Pomni enters the circus gives her a reality check especially after Ragatha explained that abstraction is what happens when you reach your breaking point from being obsessed with the unattainable goal of leaving. It’s as if a line in the sand is drawn — give up trying to escape or you’ll lose your mind.
As the episode goes on the Major ends up grinding against the friction of the other three character’s apathy and resignation that comes from multiple failed attempts at escape as well. I would say Mr. ‘none of this is real all we are now is a bunch of cartoon characters’ Jax echoes this sort of apathy too.
In Episode 8 when the cast is reeling from the Caine’s exit fake out adventure Jax says something interesting. He says “You know things were just fine here until you and Zooble came along.” The ‘you’ here being Pomni.
What he implies is that Pomni and Zooble being the newest members of the circus upset the delicate balance that existed before. They gave him hope when he was resigned to going on Caine’s adventures to distract him from their meaningless existence and despite their best intentions that hope was cruelly yanked away.
This was a gut punch especially considering how close Jax was to abstracting in his room before Pomni knocked and gave him the thread of hope of leaving.
Like the Major whose persistence gave way to the first successful escape attempt getting unceremoniously thrown back in the toy bin at the end of the episode. The crushing truth of their situation doused any flicker of hope.
Another parallel between the two is that both shows have songs that hint at the circularity of their lives. In FCISOAE the clown, every bit of the jester makes fun of the Major’s escape attempt and sings “We’re here, because, we’re, because we’re here …. Because we’re here.” to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne”. A popular military song during World War I. It’s clear the clown harbours no delusions about their situation and is aware of the absurdity of it. They exist because they exist, there’s no overarching meaning to it and constantly trying to escape is like Sisyphus, the boulder and the hill — pointless.
This sort of echoes the “Day after day after day after day, we fly. Past the moon and the sun and we don’t know why ” in the opening song of TADC. The cheeky existential tinge to it matches FCISOAE. The humans in the circus have no clue why they are there and trying to find an escape is pointless and getting obsessed with that “unattainable goal” as Ragatha said can only lead to one thing – abstraction.
Like the characters in FCISOAE the cast feel like empty vessels of sorts since their memories of their lives before the circus are spotty and they can’t remember their actual names. So they’re forced to “fall into archetypes” as Jax puts it Episode 6 when Pomni asks him if he thinks they’re “still people”. This I think ties back to the existentialist theory of “existence preceding essence” meaning you are born an empty vessel so you become what you do. So you exist first and then your “essence” i.e. your actions create who you are.
In Jax’s monologue to Pomni before they go on their Bonnie and Clydesque shooting rampage he places the cast into the following archetypes:-
Jax - The Funny One
Ragatha- The Cheerful One
Gangle- The Sad One
Kinger - The Crazy One
Zooble - The Grumpy One
Pomni - The One Who Hasn’t Figured That Out Yet
But we see where there is a disconnect between how Jax perceives himself and how he’s perceived by others in the circus. This comes from him minimizing his actions by calling himself “the funny one” while Pomni thinks a more accurate description would be “the villain”.
He claims he has “the self awareness to choose who he is” but he’s inaccurately labelling himself as the funny one to cushion the impact of his actions and delude himself into thinking the real harm he’s caused to the others in the circus is just slapstick humour with a laugh track playing on loop in the background. He’s not self-aware, he just made up an archetype to avoid accountability for his actions.
The first principles of this dilemma can be found in the OG “a bunch of people trapped in a room and trying to find a way out” - No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre. This play tells the story of three souls stuck in hell - Inez, Estelle and Garcin. Hell being a simplistic but effective drawing room in the French Second Empire style with no windows and mirrors and a single locked door. No fire and brimstone, no forktailed devils just the hell of being locked in a room together for eternity.
In No Exit we see the characters come to grips with what the people left on earth think of them because they certainly earned their ticket to hell. But they quickly realize that the only thing they can control is how the other damned souls in their hell see them. (Killers, Queers, and Cowards: Suffering and Freedom in Jean-Paul Sartreâ•Žs No Exit)The interactions that happen as a result of this demonstrate two concepts that Sartre dubbed “le regard” (the look) and “mauvaise foi” (bad faith).
When one acts in ‘bad faith’ they, much like Jax, deny their own freedom of choice and responsibility for their actions and the consequences of those actions and it becomes a sort of act of cowardice in a sense.
‘The look’ on the other hand is like Jax neatly boxing everyone in the circus into archetypes based on his perception of them. By pinning them down in this way it prevents them breaking free from the mold that he has given them and being anything different than their archetype. We can see an example of this in Episode 2 where Gangle doesn’t immediately follow his orders and he says “Aren’t you supposed to be submissive and agreeable. Move it!”. – boxing her into his perception of her and not allowing her to be a three dimensional person.
In No Exit this is achieved through the fact that there are no mirrors in the drawing room to affirm the character’s perception of themselves so they have to rely on how the others perceive them. It was interesting to see Goose have this dilemma also sort of trojan horsed in through the fact that Caine created a program to have the forms the cast takes on in the circus be created from their mind files. There are mirrors in the circus unlike No Exit but the cast having been put into the physical embodiment of someone else’s or someTHING else’s perception of them creates that mind [&*(#] of having to rely on other people to tell them who they are.
This is where Sartre’s infamous “Hell is other people” line comes in. It cites the danger of, if we allow it, getting imprisoned by the perception of others and that perception becoming the only versions of ourselves we allow ourselves to be.
“The look” and by extension acting in 'bad faith’ I would argue then is the cast’s “eternal straitjacket of substrata rock” or their self made prison and not the circus itself.
But unlike Caine there is a way for them to free themselves from it.
V. HELL ISN’T OTHER PEOPLE WHEN YOU’RE ACTING IN GOOD FAITH
I like to joke that Jax is the Sasuke of TADC.
Hear me out. But like you know how Sasuke’s like broody Mr. Emo Bangs who acts like he’s the only one who’s ever been through something traumatic. Like this is ‘Naruto’ buddy everyone’s been through it, doesn’t give you a free ticket to be an [@$$] hole.
Jax embodies that sort of “this is just the way I am” kind of mentality that feels like a cop out from intentionally trying to be a better person.
That is why I think he finds a counterpart in Inez from No Exit. Inez was the only one in No Exit that wasn’t surprised that she ended up in hell. There were no rose colored glasses, just the objectivity of yes I belong here after what I did thereby forcing the others to face their own demons as well. She doesn’t mislabel herself but like Jax her ‘bad faith’, comes from her belief that she can’t change for the better.
We can see an example of their one dimensional view of who they are through their little matchy matchy villain monologues below:-
In Episode 6 when Jax says “You are my playthings and I get joy out of making you suffer. I’m the one who causes pain for fun.” and in No Exit where Inez says “When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out.”
We get the impression that they think who they are is already ingrained in themselves and that there is no way to change. They both, as Jax says, think they have the self-awareness to choose who they are and seemingly avoid ‘the look’ but by straitjacketing themselves in this way they still box themselves into an archetype. They don’t have to be stuck like this though. According to Sartre we are not condemned to the straightjacket of ‘the look’ we are instead condemned to be free.
That is why we carry the burden as I said before of creating our own essence through our actions.
So as much as Jax will deny it, he IS just a “misunderstood chicken fetus in an egg that needs to be cracked open.” and there is much more to him if only he will allow himself to change.
Just because Pomni would categorize him as the villain does not mean that is all he is. He has the freedom of choice to change that perception and be something else in what Sartre likes to refer to as the “radical conversion.” That is finding that one way ticket out of ‘bad faith’ and transitioning into authenticity.
Until he does so all of Jax’s relationships with the other members of the circus are doomed to fail and hell will forever be other people.
VI. SCHRÖDINGER’S ‘BEACH EPISODE’ AND THE MYTH OF THE OPEN DOOR
Episode 7 is where I think “The Amazing Digital Circus” cemented itself as a character driven narrative. No if, ands or buts. It debunked long standing fan theories and gentle-parented us into realizing that red string murder mapping, connecting dots and sniffing out red herrings was NOT what the show’s actually about.
The lore is not the focus of this series – the characters are.
I think for me this episode was the opening of a sort of ACT II for the show and my personal favourite of all the episodes. The rose colored glasses are off and ours and the cast’s hope of leaving the circus are completely dashed. Like [&*(#] hit the fan IMMEDIATELY after.
Like I thought this was supposed to be the beach episode. Everyone should be free from the horrors for a day – not go through it.
The set up was genius though. The way it lulled us into a false sense of security but left room for the discomfort of realizing that everything was falling in place too easily and didn’t seem hard won enough.
My only gripe with the execution was me wanting the cast to have been along for the ride with discovering all the Easter eggs in the first six episodes that led to Caine’s adventure in Episode 7. But I suppose not having any sort of reason to believe NPC Abel other than them grasping onto the first sliver of hope of them leaving the circus, no matter how ridiculous, is its own sort of tragedy.
Speaking of leaving the circus, let's circle back a bit to No Exit and discuss the way out at the end of the episode that came in the form of the blue and red button. Like in TADC the characters in No Exit were presented with an exit of their own in the form of the locked door of their windowless purgatory swinging open towards the end of the play. But just as we see happen in Episode 7 none of the damned souls take the opportunity to leave.
In both stories I would say the open door or the way out represents a second chance for the cast and a way to face the reality of their lives on earth – all the good decisions and bad. Jax I think finds his counterpart in Garcin of No Exit when he decides to hit the red button and trap them in the circus because like Jax, Garcin refused to leave through the open door because he did not want to face the consequences of his actions on earth.
Both show their hands as cowards in this way, choosing to ultimately stick to the lesser evil of trying to control the perception of their fellow “hellmates" in their own versions of purgatory. For Jax branding himself with the archetype of the “funny one” is more palatable than leaving the circus and facing whatever he did that we saw flashes of before he hit the button.
Also we have no clue if this was just Caine employing his modifiers on Jax. In the hurried little exposition we get after they find out the adventure was fake we are told that Caine sometimes employs modifiers to make them enjoy the adventures with the disclaimer that messing with their minds too much leads to abstraction. I think that’s why Jax went all squiggly eyed and hyperventilated after Caine showed him flashes of the real world from his memory. However I don’t think Caine forced him to push the button. More like coercion by reminding Jax why it was safer to stay in the circus.
But like Jax said, ultimately it didn’t matter that he shut the metaphorical open door because it wasn’t real. Just like in No Exit. The illusion of choice was put there just for the cast to face the truth about themselves. Almost like the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge but instead of yielding to temptation they turn their faces away from the truth because it's too much to bear and ignorance as they say is bliss.
The clever homage to ‘the Matrix’ in the form of the red and blue buttons I thought was such a nice touch. The 1999 socratic exploration in a cyberpunk trenchcoat introduced the choice between 'red pill’ and the ‘blue pill’. That is in a nutshell choosing between the bliss of ignorance (blue pill) or the harsh truth of reality (red pill).
The circus itself I would say is the blissful ignorance of the blue pill because Jax already knows what's on the other side of the door that the red button would open. That is the real world where his actions were bad enough that being stuck in a rabbit suit – cotton tail and all that you can’t take off for all eternity seems like the better alternative.
Whatever the actual situation is we just know it’s not great for him on the other side especially when he sounds uncertain after Zooble asked him if there’s anyone waiting for him outside. I think we will get a more in depth look at whatever it is that Jax did because in the Episode 9 trailer we see a flashback of Ribbit asking him if he’s ever done something he regrets and it’ll be nice to finally see him come to terms with and accept responsibility for his actions.
This episode was a good pivotal point that would set up the cast picking up the pieces after being given hope when most of them had grown accustomed to their prison and wading through the rubble of the aftermath of their disappointment to ultimately soft launching “abandoning the idea of leaving”.
Because I think where we’re heading is that there was never any escape from the circus. That’s why Kinger says “Escape the circus, that doesn’t make any sense.” in Episode 7 when Pomni comes to tell him that they found a way out.
It also sets up the friction between Caine and the cast for the next episode that would ultimately lead to the twist of Caine’s deletion.
Speaking of which —
VII. GOD IS DEAD
We truly witnessed the crash out of the century in Episode 8.
The speed run from the torture scenes to Caine’s little “Wait” before blinking out existence had me reeling. No time to catch my breath at all. I think that’s what made the first uncensored f-bomb after Caine’s deletion hit HARD and the blue screen of death on the console Kinger was using before it fell into the void was like a nail in the proverbial coffin.
What’s the cast to do after they’ve killed their god?
To answer that we have to leave Sartre for a bit and move on to the teachings of another dead white guy – Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's idea of killing god was more metaphorical than Kinger’s. By his infamous line “God is dead” he meant the idea of a higher power and religious dogma dictating the actions of human beings was obsolete in modern society. And the price to pay for killing god was an individual carrying the burden of creating their own values and not relying on “god” to lay the groundwork.
With Caine gone I think the cast is free to live their lives without “Big Brother” looking over their shoulders or in this case “Big Father” if we are going with the god metaphor. The Orwellian omnipresent surveillance of Caine and his all seeing eyes and his wacky watch and the Digital Circus User License Agreement are no longer there so they are free to do whatever they want. And there’s no antagonist and no one to blame for their suffering but themselves.
This freedom is terrifying however and it's exactly what Jax especially has been running from the entire series — acknowledging that the circus is real and as a result taking full responsibility for all his choices and actions. There are no more modifiers and Caine [&*(#] - ing with them and making them vegan and flashing them with a highlight reel of the worst moments of their lives to get them to push buttons.
Just the cast being ultimately responsible for themselves.
And most importantly there are no more adventures. Although the majority of the cast [&!%*#] - ed and complained about participating in Caine's adventures, like Ragatha said they’re distractions so the cast won’t abstract and lose their minds after getting obsessed with the idea of leaving. So I'm sure if we’re equating Caine’s adventures to religious dogma and a higher power, they all saw it as an annoying but necessary evil.
If the alternative is carrying the weight of freedom of choice.
But now they have the opportunity to make their own adventures and their own fun to keep themselves from falling into despair. We already got an example of this in Episode 5 of the show when we saw how much happier they were when they did activities from their suggestion box – because they felt like for the first time they had some autonomy in creating adventures that they could actually enjoy. We can see this in Gangle’s concrit for Caine when they are trying to distract him from finding Kinger where she says that Caine discourages them from thinking outside of the box and doing things their own way.
This death of God sets the stage for Nietzsche’s solution to prevent falling into despair and nihilism. He calls human beings to step up to the plate and become our own “gods” or creators and make our own values and not rely on some transcendental entity or external authority.
Like Pomni said they “can’t let that despair consume” them. They will focus on what they have because constantly chasing the idea of leaving when there is no exit will drive them crazy.
There is a life to be lived on the other side of despair and I think Episode 9 is where we see exactly what it is that the cast is able to find there.
VIII. WHO’S RUNNING THE SHOW NOW? : BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL AND BUILDING A NEW ONE
Alright so we haven’t left Nietzsche yet.
Hints that the Caine wasn’t the only one in the circus that could conjure things into existence have been peppered throughout the series. We see where Kinger conjures up that butterfly in Episode 6 to give Ragatha an extra life and Pomni being able to conjure up an exit door through sheer force of will. The clearest indication that the cast can create is Kinger spelling it out in Episode 8 when we got that extensive lore drop but it comes with the caveat that while Caine can create with ease – the cast have to put in a little more effort to do it.
So basically we see where the cast has tools to become creators themselves.
As I said before, Caine getting deleted sets the stage for the humans in the circus to start creating on their own and not rely on Caine’s adventures to distract them from the meaninglessness of their existence and make meaning for themselves. In the teaser for the 9th Episode we hear Jax say “Now we have nothing!” . And it’s true they do have nothing and as I said it’s daunting to be starting from square one. But in existentialist theory that ‘void’ is a stand-in for the meaninglessness of existence and confronting that chasm leaves an opening for filling it with things created with autonomy.
If we blend Sartre and Nietzsche’s ideas on how to confront this sort of existential ‘void’ we find the cast at a crossroads of rebuilding the circus for themselves. Changing the window dressing of their prison and possibly bundling up to spend the rest of the eternity trapped there. But the difference with the way it was before they killed their god is that they have autonomy over the decisions they make and what their prison looks like and possibly what they look like as well.
They’re the ones who are running the show now – no ignored suggestion boxes and forced adventures, just the indulgence of basking in their own creations.
This brings us right back to the thought of our condemnation to be free and existence preceding our essence and creating who we are through our actions. I think this ability to create will extend to the cast coming to the realization that there is no rubric on what it means to be human and we as Sartre says create who we are through our actions. I think this is especially relevant given the cast’s constant grappling with the dilemma of whether or not they are actually “still people” and not just cartoon characters.
But I think there is no one way to be human – but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll dive deeper into this in the next part.
One can argue that this was a way of trojan horsing in commentary about the hopes of a figurative death of Generative AI and a resultant Renaissance of unassisted art and human beings learning how to start creating for themselves once again.
But you know I’m not gonna put words in Gooseworx’s mouth and imply anything they didn’t mean so – I’ll just speak for myself.
[&!%#] AI !
In a nutshell I think the cast has the building blocks to create a world for themselves but the true test is whether they will actually be able to abandon the idea of leaving first and get to the other side of despair.
IX. I THINK THEREFORE I AM: DIGITAL IMMORTALITY AND THE INGREDIENTS OF A HUMAN BEING
Alright gonna be honest this section makes me feel like this —
But bare with me please. My tin foil hatting might just make sense by the end.
From the flashback of Ragatha popping into the circus and Pomni’s intro we see that the one connecting thread to all the humans leaving the real world and entering the circus was them putting on a head set. We see a copy of that headset in Caine’s little replica “macro verse” and interestingly enough there is a laser beam warning slapped on the side (ISO 7010 - W004, Warning; Laser beam ). So we can assume then that the minds or brains of the cast were scanned when they put on the head set that ultimately led to them entering the circus.
Further exposition in Episode 8 tells us that the cast has “mind files” as Caine puts it that were used to create their bodies in the circus and we see on Kinger’s console what we can assume are the casts “neural scans” in the file directory. Kinger didn’t click on that file but we can draw our own conclusion and assume that they are one and the same.
Caine's choice of words when Ragatha popped into the circus after the initial C & A team abstracted and Kinger was left alone gives credence to this theory. Caine says “I was hoping new minds could show up.” Not “people” not “humans” but new minds.
I guess Caine thought that he was only going to be stuck with the minds of the C & A team and no one else. But as we see through subtle exposition about Pomni and Ragatha - Ragatha being a real estate agent and Pomni exploring abandoned buildings in her free time – they had a way to possibly stumble on the headset that trapped them most likely in the abandoned C & A building.
Their real selves probably put it on for a bit and walked away after none the wiser and I think this realization makes the situation that the cast is in truly horrifying.
With the stasis pod theory debunked in Episode 7 the only conclusion I think we can draw here is that the cast aren’t still humans waiting to return to their former lives but mind scans that were uploaded. And yes this is 100% me giving credence to the SOMA theory despite the fandom’s opinion on it because at this point no other scenario seems plausible.
We learn from Kinger’s little lore drop that the fate of the cast and their abstracted counterparts down in the cellar could have just been collateral damage from the plan of a man desperate to escape his imminent death. The culprit being Scratch who Kinger describes as a genius who always thought outside of the box and had abstract ideas that no one else could understand which was chalked up to either his brilliance or the tumor in his head.
Kinger says Scratch was working on something and if we put the puzzle pieces of what we have together i.e. neural scans + a place where you're functionally immortal + man dying of brain tumor – it’s obvious where we land.
I think Scratch was trying to cheat death plain and simple. The neural scans were just a way to preserve his consciousness so he could live on. Another call back to the console where we see “consciousness research” and “neural scans”.
But something went wrong. There was no escape or self-destruct button, just eternity stretching before them trapped as cartoon characters and a ringmaster shoving them into a box.
Scratch’s aim of achieving digital immortality is not a new concept. Theorists have been going back and forth for decades brainstorming how to achieve this but up until now it has remained science fiction. The umbrella term for this exploration is referred to as post humanism.
I’m not gonna get into the nitty gritty and the different subheadings because god knows I’ve rambled long enough. But as the term suggests the question is asked what comes after humans. That is simplistically how we humans find ways to transcend the fragile little meat sacks we are born into.
With technological advancements there is an ethical concern here and a need to make room and extend this concern to things that aren’t considered traditionally human - i.e. machines, robots, AI and I don't know – uploaded consciousness left behind and trapped in a digital circus? *wink,wink*
What is it then that Scratch, Kinger and the C & A team then owe their digital selves and the collateral damage add ons i.e. the current members of the digital circus?
Their digital selves are trapped in a hellscape for all eternity where they’re stripped of their individuality and free will. The least they could have done is give them a way to opt out that isn’t abstraction. But I guess it wasn’t their fault and they couldn’t anticipate Caine going rogue and that’s just the sort of risk you run by trying to play god.
This dilemma I think also raises the question of which version of the cast is “real”. Their human forms that still exist in the real world or the ones that have been trapped digitally.
Would it be crazy for me to say I think the answer is both?
Posthumanisms speaks to the fact that what we constitute as a “human being” is constantly in flux. There is no one way to be human. Going back to Sartre and existence preceding existence. The cast popped into the circus i.e. they existed and then they created who they are through everything they’ve done during their time in the circus. Picking a new name and all. There is no set blueprint on what is considered a human being so what is to stop the cast from finding shade under that umbrella term.
This is why I think having the Gumigoo existential crisis over being an NPC storyline was so effective.
Here you have this character who, much like the ‘humans’ , has no idea that he was just an NPC made up by Caine for his adventures. Falling into that liminal space and finding inactive versions of him and all his loved ones shattered the framework of his existence. It’s such a genius way to present the dilemma that the cast will ultimately be grappling with by the end of the series. The horrifying question of what am I — really and what does it mean to be real?
This also harks back to Gangle and Zooble’s exchange right before they went through what they thought was the exit. Gangle being worried about things changing when it’s “real” and Zooble reassuring her that “it always was real” everything they felt and everything they’ve done. The cast are real and the only receipts they need to prove it is how they were able to affect each other interpersonally.
In IHNMAIMS the five trapped humans in AM’s hellscape recount the story of how AM after it gained sentience changed the meaning of its name. AM rejected the given name of Allied Mastercomputer and the later derisive nicknames “Adaptive Manipulator” and “Aggressive Menace” and simply went by “AM” and they muse that it meant “cogito ergo sum” that is “I think, therefore I am.” Which simply means if AM became sentient and had the capability to think then that is proof in and of itself of AM’s existence.
Applying this to the members of the digital circus gives credence to the argument that just because they are digital copies of human beings doesn’t make them any less human. Their insistence on holding a funeral for each of their abstracted counterparts is proof enough of their attempts at preservation of their humanity. They think therefore they are and who or what they are is of their own making.
So I think it's safe to say that the answer to Pomni’s query in the sixth episode is that yes they ARE still people.
I have to say initially I was NOT gonna touch this argument with a ten foot pole but here we are.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
X. NO EXIT : ‘THE GOOD ENDING’
Call it foreshadowing or a Sartre reference but I’m following the writing on the wall (literally).
I knew Gooseworx was gonna pull an “It’s not about escaping the circus, it's about the friends they made along the way” as soon as I saw this picture frame hanging on Kaufmo’s wall in the first episode.
Like the damned characters in Sartre’s drawing room purgatory — there is ‘no exit ' and they aren’t leaving the circus. There’s no physical bodies for the cast to go back to. They are just mind files. THAT is what I would say the story has been building up to. But like I said that doesn’t make them any less human.
And now this is where we leave Nietzsche and Sartre behind and cling to Camus and his thoughts on embracing the absurd. Camus posits that our unanswered shouts into the ether of - Why? Why are we here? Why do we exist? etc. are pointless. There will never be a concrete answer but in the “void” or the emptiness where we want certainty is the possibility of creating our own meaning.
Life is absurd – their existence as cartoon characters trapped in a digital circus is absolutely absurd. But the only thing that’ll keep them going is the preference for existing over abstracting and as Pomni said in Episode 8 “maybe what they have to do now is just live.”
It’s a harrowing call back to the circularity of their existence and “the day after day after day after day we fly round the moon and the sun and we don’t know why”. But now the cast will I hope confront that pointlessness head on and start to create their own meaning bit by bit redefining what it means to be human and doing it together.
Like Kinger said in his lucid monologue to Ragatha in the third episode. “I know sometimes it all just seems pointless. But it’s not. Not if you have people who care about you.”
I want you to follow me back to IHNMAIMS for a bit – specifically the video game. The “good ending” in the game shows the humans defeating AM and shutting down both AM and his brothers. There’s a lone survivor just like in the short story and they exist as a digitized consciousness in AM’s computer systems and they remain as a “watch dog” over AM’s circuitry to make sure it can’t torment humanity ever again. The survivor watches over humanity repopulating the earth with the humans on the moon existing in a cryogenic state that escaped AM’s initial wrath being awakened.
I can’t help but wonder if this will be the fate of the cast. Left as watch dogs in the Digital Circus mainframe to make sure that no further humans will be trapped. That’s certainly one way to find meaning in a pointless existence. I also think the humans on the moon could be paralleled with the abstracted humans in the cellar. I wonder if the cast will be able to find a way to get them back to normal and repopulate a circus of their own making. These are all just theories but I would hope at least we get some closer regarding those who have abstracted.
What I really loved about this show is that the ending was right under our nose from the first episode in the zoom out sequence from the final supper dinner spread shot with Pomni crashing out in the middle. Answering the question of what’s beyond the void and what we now know to be the console housing the program the cast is trapped in. And we finally realize that there was never any hope of them leaving.
That is one of the main reasons I think the pilot itself was incredibly effective storytelling.
I do have my own gripes with this ending if I’m right about where the finale is heading. But I’ll have to wait and see what happens first before I pass any sort of judgment. But I will say that the prospect of the cast staring down the barrel of eternity and being unable to pull the trigger and end it all is horrifying.
But life imitates art doesn’t it? We are all grappling with finding meaning in a pointless existence and try to choose living over dying.
I’m sad to say goodbye to them. I truly am. They are my special little guys and I just hope they all choose to just live despite the crushing uncertainty and discomfort that comes with that.
But at least we can say that they have the tools and should I say eternity to find meaning in their stagnant lives.
CONCLUSION
If you got all the way to the end – you’re a saint !
Thank you so much for reading. It was a labour of love that took me about a month and change to finish because of the research and work getting in the way but it’s done and I hope you enjoyed my ramblings.
I think I’m gonna do another one after I watch the finale so I can rework any of my predictions that fell flat - much MUCH shorter though. I also have one for Jax that is a deeper dive into his fear of vulnerability and avoidance and ultimately what it means to be real. But I’m gonna post that later. It was initially a subheading for this but this got too long and I had to trim something so that went.
I know I spoke definitively in a lot of this but as I said in the intro I am fully prepared for my predictions and conjectures to be entirely inaccurate. If I survived the rug pull of Episode 7 I can get through anything. Argue with me in the comments but keep it spoiler free please I beg. I’d love to hear everyone else’s prediction about what’s to come in the final episode and how that may differ from my own views.
Shout out to @gooseworx and all the moving parts behind the show over at Glitch Productions that were responsible for bringing this masterpiece to us for FREE. Helping artists stay true to their creative vision without all the corporate red tape and micro-managing is a noble cause and I’m glad to live in a timeline where I can experience the fruits of their labour.
It’s inspiring to see something human made push the envelope in this way and gain critical acclaim in the wasteland of AI slop that there is out there in this day and age. One thing’s for sure, two things for certain – TADC may not have been perfect but it'll go down in history as a landmark feat for indie animation.
Everyone say thank you Goose for sharing their brainchild with the world!!
Lastly I know everyone wants to finally see haunting the narrative final boss Ribbit and that’s all good and well but I NEED TO KNOW WHAT GANGLE DID WITH AN ANIME FIGURINE AND WHY SHE DOESN'T WANT RAGATHA TO FIND OUT ABOUT IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a feeling Jax only knows because he had a key to Gangle’s room and walked in on her doing whatever she was doing.
(whisper it in my ear I won’t tell anyone but I need to know)
Alright I’m done. Thanks again for reading!
