✰ 22 | Artist ✰ Woman ✞ Christian ✞ Into: Invader Zim, Mario, Wander Over Yonder, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, MHA [I don’t do commissions] TikTok: @midoriyasgloves
I’ve been like passively paying attention to tadc but not truly invested. I liked the fan content more than the show, and I pretty much only cared about Kinger and Caine, but I have some thoughts and opinions I haven’t seen many other people share, so I wanted to say something about it.
FINALE SPOILERS BELOW
I thought the end of episode 7 was very good and that they were setting up something really cool character-wise. The trailer for episode 8 sounded great as well, but I wasn’t a fan of what actually went down. Maybe I didn’t have as good a read on him as I thought, but with all the desperation, I really didn’t expect Caine to break down with anger and pride, then come at the humans with confidence and torture. I could be totally wrong, and I probably am, but the switch-up felt a little too fast to me. And a lot of it is probably just the torture, like sure he can be mad at them, but torturing them right off the bat for being too hard to please?? I get it towards the end when they all criticize him, but It’s not super believable for me early on in the episode that he’d choose that instead of just business as usual + not taking any feedback or criticism, and from that perspective, it feels like having Caine torture the cast was just an excuse for the narrative in order to get them desperate enough to get Kinger’s help in shutting Caine down.
And on that topic, Pomni knew about the thing with Kinger’s sanity and the light, but she only ever tried to talk to him or show the rest of the cast now? Just makes me feel like they don’t care about him lol. Or, it feels like yet another plot convenience. They know none of this stuff until now solely because Pomni and Ragatha(?) never wondered (or cared?) enough to try talking to Kinger intentionally outside of when they happened to be in a dark room. And Pomni didn’t try to make everyone else, who’ve known Kinger longer and would probably care, aware of this either.
Even with all this, it was definitely a lot better than the finale.
Actual finale spoilers:
When the episode was leaked and people were saying it was terrible and confusing, I was very curious. I hold no stakes, and I enjoy looking at how something is written and seeing the whys. I easily and instantly found the whole thing on TikTok and watched it; it was bad. I’m not saying this because of soma theory; I think that was incredibly obvious if you think about the logistics of everything, more like just the handling of everything else.
First of all, as I said, plot convenience. My main thing is Caine, so the fact that he comes back just makes it feel like a great bit of this drama and deleting him was just so they could find out about soma theory. I know that’s how a narrative works, things happen in order that the characters can get somewhere or find something out, but the way it was handled really makes you ask about everything else.
Firstly, with the way episode 8 was handled, it doesn’t feel right for Caine to come back. His exclamations of “I didn’t ask to be created! I just wanted to fulfill my purpose!” To me are trying to reinforce the idea that “oh, this non-human character was created with some extreme flaws to his quality of life and existence, and is also upset to be trapped in the circus forever, so it’s very tragic, but maybe it’s for the best that he’s gone.” (Obviously, this does not reflect how I see real people. We’re talking about a fictional ai. I shouldn’t need this disclaimer, but I know how things are online.)
So skipping to Caine coming back, I guess the implication was that deletion put him inexplicably in the void? (Without Bubble) And he’s had time to learn and think and grow, off -screen. And “oh oopsies! It wasn’t the true Caine who felt all that violent anger; it was actually the blue ai the whole time! And after he lobotomizes himself, he’s totally fine, normal, sane, and happy!!” (Maybe I was correct in my thinking that his initial torture and anger was a little ooc? Vindication?? Or suffering via bad writing?) Now we don’t have the official English dialogue, only a pretty bad translation, so I can’t speak too much to the intention behind this scene, but that’s how it seemed to me.
Now maybe finding those social media profiles was supposed to give him some sorta weird closure about this whole thing and about human nature and such, I don’t see anything like that, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
I wasn’t paying a ton of attention to these parts, but it sounds like from other posts that when the Circus has color again, nobody questions it?? So it’s either supposed to be that the cast was able to restore the color and light, or that it came back via Caine’s return, and nobody thought anything of it. They probably should’ve indicated something about it.
But anyway, when Caine comes back, we see some defensiveness from the cast, but Zooble ultimately says that it’s also good to have Caine back, which seems a little quick. I know he told them he’d give the control of the Circus, but being relieved that he’s back seems a little insane, considering the last thing he was doing was torturing them all with their insecurities and fears. This whole scene just happens really fast.
I didn’t care for the social media post stuff. I don’t have an alternative, but it feels a little too-easy too-happy.
Obv it’s cute seeing Caine do little activities with everyone. I think everyone wanted to see something nice like that, but it still feels incredibly unearned. It’s like he didn’t get a conclusion to his character arc; he just realized his mistakes all on his own and reversed his own deletion all on his own. He feels a little like a cardboard cutout of the original; he’s completely changed and seems fine and happy to do it.
I’ve seen a lot of fan works that seem a lot better at handling his characterization, and the kinds of struggles the cast would be going through with all this. Such as: the human-brain cast grappling with the concept of how Caine relates to humanity or not, is he really sorry? How can an ai feel sorry? How can an ai know right from wrong? Does this ai actually have human emotions? How do we know we’re safe from harm again? Etc.
But no. Nobody tried to understand Caine in the first place, they accidentally deleted him, and when he came back he had no consequences.
Anyway idc about most of the cast or about Jax. I used to enjoy some funnybunny fan content, but after this finale I just hate Jax too much.
A few questions: how does the circus even have wifi (especially to keep the computer running) if this is an abandoned building? I know they got their “happy ending,” but is it really fine that anyone else can just wander into the circus to have their brain-map trapped too? We’re not gonna try to make it so no one else can ever be trapped or anything? If Caine has control of their mind-things and lets the program he made create them an avatar and such, could he just not upload someone who’s new to the circus? Would he do that? Are we ignoring Kinger’s sanity issues? How did those even come about if he’s just an uploaded brain-map? Can they actually be content in this purposeless computer world forever? (I guess from a worldview where you think everything is purposeless, I can see why you’d be fine/content to just do whatever you feel like doing all the time, but I know first-hand that isn’t fulfilling. It’s about to be Squidville up in here.)
Don’t take this too seriously, I’m not really in the fandom and these are just the unedited ramblings of someone who didn’t pay as much attention to the show as real fans.
What does Zim know? What does he suppress?Personally I believe he’s too confident in himself to think his mission might be fake, he’s absolutely delusional and mentally ill, but asking what he does know and does notice is pretty interesting. There’s a few instances where you can tell he is straight up lying to himself and/or The Tallest about his own performance/goals/failures. So I thought this edit would be fun, even if it’s just teasing the question about Zim’s capacity for the truth. Hopefully it’s acceptable.
No idea when it’ll be done or how good it’ll be, video editing for me is just trying until I find it acceptable, and sometimes giving up.
Imo editing feels like doing a puzzle except you don’t know what the completed puzzle is supposed to look like, you don’t know if you even have all the pieces, and there’s a few other puzzles mixed together with the pieces you do have.
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