i've never watched that fucking circus show personally but like everyone i know has been huge into it for the entire years-long duration it's been airing and one such friend made me watch the ending to see the reason for their feelings on said ending. in spite of most of what i've seen cross my dashboard these feelings were negative and to be honest from everything i learned in those years of osmosis juxtaposed next to what i was directly shown executed as the official culmination of the story, i really am surprised that the latter sentiment voiced to me then isn't more common elsewhere too, because from a neutral and fandom-disinterested audience perspective it seemed like an ending that would go over very well with people who find the concept of putting in effort to change or achieve something so scary that they want to be reassured in the decision to not even try
it would've been nothing i would really notice or have particularly strong feelings on if it had been one thing. but like. the transgender rabbit commits metaphorical suicide out of self-loathing over feeling like an evil person for frankly objectively founded reasons to consider oneself an evil person, down to not just once but multiple times deliberately driving someone to suicide, which if i'm being honest, in relation to, you have everything you need to make the decision to stop doing and comprehend the weight of the initial decision to do so by the grief, guilt, firsthand understanding impossible to properly conceptualize before its actual direct experience, etc. occurring (and clearly intended to be present in this case) in the aftermath of the first time
but that happened to narratively unimportant people not dissimilar to the ones who were tormented all this time and who never do receive different, less cruel, less deliberately and actionably and knowingly hurtful treatment, because instead of improving suicide serves the purpose of giving a reason for sympathy just as well without requiring any actual confrontation or awareness of having done wrong, nor allowing the input of the affected others who, if being asked forgiveness or sympathy, are owed the ability to demand change to merit this for any reason that concerns themselves in the equation of "i'm sad and i want people to like me" by being given reason to provide that liking
so blah blah blah, psychonauts funeral for the bulk of the episode because the unrepentant meaningful cruelty inflicted without understanding or care for the personhood of its recipients pales in comparison to being sad while still very much having made the conscious choice to do said cruelty repeatedly and constantly to people with logistically rationally just as much interiority or capacity to experience suffering as the one who, in instead metanarrative framing, receives the bulk of the finale. versus for example ribbon guy with four lines all ep, two of which actually belonged to an imagined internal-fantasy version of herself in the rabbit's physically-delved-into mind palace serving, there, the sole purpose of being yanked away from a just-died freshly-grieved love interest to give up on that grief or attachment in the face of attraction to the fantasizer seducing her against her flimsy uguu protests
anyway once you get past that. the tooth guy is redeemed for different reasons that actually managed to make me even more disquieted to a startlingly effective, crawling, and seemingly unintentional degree that in spite of my best efforts to read otherwise appeared fully intended to be obviously, unspokenly good and positive in the narrative. he is able to be forgiven in spite of inflicting beat for beat no mouth homage torture at length immediately prior as a culmination of long-term uncaring, even if well-intentioned, infliction of misery on the entire case as an emblem of and enthusiastic warden in their imprisonment. because for whatever reason it occurs under watsonian terms, in doylist ones, there is a version of himself that contains all the evil and once it is ripped out it is killed
so only the good part and the part that everyone CAN forgive remains. because there was a version of him that was capable of this and now it no longer exists - there is no longer any remaining risk, any remaining potential to be anything BUT good, because the version of him that could be anything otherwise has been killed. and this is good. the change that occurs to him is violent and absolute in a manner reminding me very much of the attempted experimental goal in-universe held by dr. jekyll in the original novel whose ultimate message was the opposite of many of its adaptations: because at points jekyll only knows to make the distinction to hyde when he looks in a mirror and sees the shift to another appearance of the very same self that, as with all real people, has never had any one part extricable from the other
but the tooth guy self-lobotomizes into a harmless figure first shown silhouetted upper right in literal heavenly light who is immediately accepted back into the fold with an outright fucking inexplicable statement, even by suspended-disbelief standards maintained for good faith and to account for potential lack of context, of ''it's good to have you back'' that even with the most charitable viewpoint possible to assume of their in-universe reactions or circumstances has not ever been historically true at any point available at all for reference prior such that it would make practical literal sense to be said in this delivery in this context from these established characters
and then the facebook pages.
let me just say to sum up my stance on the entire ending segment. many many things in life are impossible to accomplish and incredibly hard to try even in attempts. but the combined sum of these things compared to the available breadth of our lives is so great and so ubiquitous that if you live a life without ever making the fruitless and exhausting effort of trying at something you know you'll ultimately fail, it will be infinitely less fulfilling than if you had suffered the failure of an effort you treasured or the expiration of a joy you loved, no matter how catastrophic, no matter how short-lived or overly soon
the rabbit commits suicide rather than make any attempt to become better than the objectively, in-universe correctly identified persona of a successfully suicide-baiting ceaselessly antagonistic fully-knowing knowingly-continuing exceedingly hurtful asshole. the teeth become better by removing the fundamental capability to act as anything else in any other way that would require prevention or mitigation to avoid the very same tremendous harm proven extensively and undeniably possible or probable before. everyone who finds out they never had a chance at leaving this place, everyone who finds out their efforts were doomed the moment they became conscious to want out at all, suddenly and unanimously realizes wholeheartedly that now that they know it's not possible, they no longer want to try
the chesspiece's wife is alive in the real world, where the version of him that left him in here for whatever reason gets to keep going and keep living the way he and the others didn't have any reason to know they shouldn't have wanted for themselves too. they show him her, himself, and their two children. of all the fucking reeling ways i felt insane seeing this play out for each and every one of a cast who were suddenly portrayed perfectly, beatifically at peace in giving up on having ever considered what they wanted so desperately for the entire series before this to matter, that one hit me so badly i had to pause the fucking episode. if he had had a mouth i have no doubt he would've hit the token little fanart-coding "see, the character's actually happy in spite of it all across the rest of their face" smile the others all had too
the end credits are a montage of them happy in the same place they had strived all series to escape. nobody wants to escape anymore because they know now it wasn't going to work. if it matters to any of them how they once spent so long and worked so hard to try, we don't get to see or hear it, because that's four minutes of forty-five better spent showing little baseball scenes and making pillow forts to demonstrate they've realized the error of ever caring about something they couldn't guarantee for themselves. everyone narrates their real world's social media pages without hesitation or awareness beforehand they were going to be bluntly struck with this information of the self they aren't anymore and can't ever be again. the finale of the incredible virtual circus is about giving up, because you shouldn't have had to try in the first place
