ok so heres the deal theres this dog game 2017 that people have been talking about and. youre not gonna believe this. its real. like look at the photos its like actually real. you can play it. soon. i think. on summer 26th. or something. its got sound in it and everything its gonna be really cool so like. uh. watch out. dog game 2017 coming to, uh, to your neighborhood. just make sure you... wash your hands before you play it. cuz like. uh. sanitation. its important.
theres also like music by the way. and some other things but uh. i actually dont know if the other things work all the way which, uh, is why its not released... yet... i mean its gonna be soon. like watch out. heyo. anyway. um. see you soon. this summer. yeah.
Some art of the gang ahead of the finale dropping in theaters tomorrow. I can't believe this is the last time we are all waiting for a new episode together, I feel quite sentimental. What a ride it's been. If you're seeing it tomorrow, godspeed. And remember, be good to yourself and be good to others <3
*takes a bite of my cigarette*...... heh. the character...... *walks into a small puddle but it swallows me up like the ocean* *i am found dead years later in maine*
want some of my tadc final episode thoughts? here are some of my tadc final episode thoughts. you aren't allowed to read this if you haven't yet seen the final episode of tadc. sorry. you can read it after. why am i posting this now? because if i don't i am going to die. im not sure whether or not that's an exaggeration. ok here we go.
GOOSEWORX? DID YOU REALLY JUST DO THAT? YOU WERE NICE TO US? WE GET THE GOOD ENDING WHERE EVERYONE IS HAPPY? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Ok. Ok. Human words. How's this for a start? Jax is trans. I said before that if it's not canon, it's a brilliant allegory. Well now it's canon. How else do you explain the entire sequence in Ribbit's bedroom? Jax is trans. I really didn't think they were gonna explicitly make it canon. But they did. And I am so so so so so so so so so so fucking happy they did holy shit Jax is canonically trans. And now I have to make the decision of what pronouns to use. Normally you gotta wait for the person to come out on their own to change pronouns. It's for them so they get to choose when and what. And in the show all the characters continue to use he/him to the bittersweet end because Jax doesn't come out, doesn't get the chance and probably wouldn't anyway. Good writing. However Jax is also not a real person and is in fact a fictional character, so I think I will make the decision to use she/her without fear of outing a real human being. I'll keep calling her Jax though since we don't have another given name (although I do love Jaz as an alternative and am tempted to use it but I've got to draw the line somewhere on staying close to canon). Am I overthinking this? I may be overthinking this. Maybe I'm underthinking this. I can't think at all so this is what you get sorry. Jax is trans and that's so important for her.
Ok. Another thing about me is I am and have long been firmly in camp 'Abstraction is an Allegory For Suicide'. I've got reasons, I can argue my point, but so I don't fall to pieces arguing that here you'll have to take it as given. I can argue it later. For the two people that will read this. Why would I do that? Y'all might agree with me. Y'all might not agree with me. Sorry I'm not feeling coherent right now. This is what you get. Anyway.
Anyway the way Pomni and the others talk about her just reinforces it. Wondering if they could have done something more. Blaming themselves. Wishing they had less complicated feelings. She just killed herself and they are left to deal with the body. And it's so so tragic, because it truly feels like there was nothing any of the others could do. She had others around that cared for her, that accepted her, would have accepted her, said to her face that they accepted and loved her. It did not save her because her core traumatic memories from the real world taught her that vulnerability was dangerous. Even from people you love and trust. If I'm reading it correctly, her relationship with her mom was complicated, and at the time her mom died(?) she still likely had much love and trust mixed into the fear and hurt and hatred. Mix this with the circus trauma pressure and you kill a transfem.
We learn at the end that Jax's human counterpart (very much still appearing closeted, definite hoodie lover, hides her face in photos) spends a lot of time at Zooble's human counterpart's bar (sorry I'm just horrendous with names I can't remember their real names after just hearing them once), a place where people can 'be themselves' (very on the nose implication there). She is slowly becoming more comfortable and hopefully on the road to coming out as herself. But she still hasn't done it because her life experience puts so so much pressure on her to stay closeted.
However, the circus puts extra pressures on her that close off this slow road to healing and instead lead to her abstraction. She only has a limited pool of people to interact with. She builds up enough trust to let her walls down, but does it before confronting her trauma enough to stand by that decision, and when she tries to undo it, she doesn't have anyone else to go to, the pool of people is exactly four and she's all scared because they are all close with the person she is too afraid to trust. Oh no #1. Then the other horrible circus trick comes in: when someone has a bad enough day the consequences are permanent (or, going with the earlier analysis, it's way easier to kill yourself, either on purpose or on accident). And so while in the real world, the montage of Jax working up the courage to knock on Ribbit's door could have led to her eventually apologizing and working with Ribbit to heal after a time, in the circus there is no going back. Oh no #2. Not only is Ribbit gone, Jax now has to also cope with the knowledge that she is almost certainly directly responsible for that. And now there's really no going back. Trauma upon trauma has locked her on this path where now she knows that being vulnerable only harms her and leads her to make decisions that literally kill the people she loves, and the only solution she can think of is to be completely and utterly unlovable until she dies, and to suppress her feelings until she is not a human being anymore. We see multiple attempts to help her, but ultimately she is so unstable that Pomni only needs to not check in on her once and it's too late. Tragedy. Tragedy. Tragedy.
(my god the recontextualization of her staring at her hand after pushing Pomni away in the gun episode is sending me AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)
But here. Gooseworx does something. Just today, I read a post about how projecting traumas onto characters is healthy, as it lets you process them and allows you to change the ending if you so desire. And that's sort of what is done here. I say 'sort of' because the ending isn't changed. Jax reaches the point of the suicide allegory; the evil fate has won and the trans girl has tragically given up in a room full of people who would have dropped everything to help her, have said as much out loud to her face. No, what is changed is that Jax is still in there. The difference between abstraction being a suicide allegory and it being suicide is that Jax is still alive. And Ribbit. And Scratch, and all the others. Pomni talks to her. Pomni says to her that she can still reach out, and she almost does. Jax even says something about it being too late which Pomni denies. And at the end, the abstracted Jax is still milling around in the tent, an ambiguous ending in her future. I firmly believe that Goose left the ultimate fate of the abstracted people vague on purpose so that fans can believe what they want and be right. So goddamn, I'm going to believe that the cast finally cooperating with Caine find a way to undo abstraction, and that she gets a happy ending where she can outwardly be herself and live in harmony with the rest of the cast in their idyllic final credits scenes. Or even if they can't reverse abstraction, that she lives happily within her abstracted body. But I prefer to believe the former.
Holy fuck. One person with three endings. A closeted, traumatized trans woman. In one world, she slowly gets back on her feet and takes the long and arduous road to transitioning (i speculate). In another, she is launched onto the fast track and is tragically killed by her circumstances and the decisions she makes. In that same second world, after all that, her friends finally, finally manage to reach her and she is saved. Or whatever you want to think. But that's what I want to think and I'm tearing up thinking about it.
Augh. I could go on but I'd probably just start talking in circles. Enough about that. I must say enough about that or I'll never stop writing. I need a new topic. Sympathetic villains. That's a new topic. The redemption of Jax and Caine, while awfully optimistic and kinda kitschy, is so great. Because they are not just blanket forgiven for their crimes. In the case of Caine, we are kinda told not shown, as Zooble just straight up says something along the lines of "the road to your forgiveness will be long due to the immense pain you have caused us but I believe in your intention to change and will honor it", then we get a timeskip montage of this happening ending with the cast treating Caine as one of their equals. We also get to see that the problem all along truly was Caine's obstinance and refusal to internalize anyone's opinion but his own, that if he had just gotten over himself and truly sat down and had a think that so much of the plot could have been avoided. But he also doesn't just 'have a think' out of nowhere, it takes the cast literally accidentally attempting to murder him for him to sit down and say "I think I actually am the problem. I do need to reinvent myself around the relationships I want to have rather than the end goals of my creative vision. I do need to do serious research and compromise on my ideas in order to get the relationships I want". It makes his redemption believable. I would be mad that they resurrected Caine otherwise, it would have just felt like needless caving to the fans, 'ha, you thought! anyway here's your blorbo back'. But because the attempted murder is the crucial piece in his redemption, it is actually so satisfying.
And with Jax, even though I stand by everything I said about her being a victim of her trauma, the show still condemns her for the decisions she made and the actions she took. Yes, she was in pain, but she actively chose to harm others and herself in the pursuit of alleviating it. Zooble reminds her of this. She tells Pomni this at the end of the abstraction sequence, that Pomni has seen all the pressures on her and the choices she made. It is made abundantly clear that Ribbit's abstraction was either in part or all her fault. We see Gangle struggling to process first her abstraction, then the fact that Pomni and the others are attempting to save her. She was bullying Gangle from literal day one, she went so far that Gangle sometimes felt inhuman. This is not easily forgivable. The trauma doesn't forgive it. The trauma explains it, but does not forgive it. And, most, MOST importantly, the reason the other cast members still try to help her after she abstracts, is not because they forgive her. It is because their love for her is unconditional, and they are willing to help her even when they are still working through trying to forgive her, or even refusing to forgive her. Iirc there was I line in the finale basically confirming that, from Zooble maybe? But I can't remember it. Hopefully I'm not making that up out of thin air. In any case, that is how I understand it.
So in the end we are left with this. The early stages of the show were little vignettes of character exposition and development, and the latter stages build up to this treatise of sorts. The takeaways I have from this are not just what Gooseworx said, 'there is meaning to be found in a stagnant life'. We of course, see plenty of that with the characters slowly processing that they have been split off from their real world counterparts, learning that their counterparts all got (or seem to be going towards) happy endings, and accepted their situations, finally with the tools to start controlling their own destinies and work towards their own happy endings. Possibly the most happily ever after soma theory could have possibly become i love it i love it i love it i was so hoping for this. But beyond that, I take away this strong idea about not just the power but the terms and conditions of unconditional love. That they require accepting and working past horrible personal harm at times. That sometimes (as in the case of gangle and zooble) it works out the box and makes things better. That it doesn't always work, that anything less than perfect can in some cases still lead to tragedy (but also in this case that unconditional love can do some groundwork to reverse the tragedy because why must all fiction be total downers? we can have some happy endings!). But that unconditional love allows people to regroup after tragedies and trauma to rebuild something better, even though in the middle, they kinda fall apart. Oooooooooooooooooogh. Oooooooooooooooaaauuuuuuiiiaaiiieeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaooooooooouuuuuuugggghhh. I'm not gonna be the same again after this show guys. I think y'all who knew me could already tell though.
God. And now the realization that this is the end. The show is wrapped up in a neat and pretty little bow and I now know everything that happens officially in canon. I love that the ending leaves some unanswered questions that the fans can answer. Imo this show has had enough tragedy so I'ma subscribe to the most hopeful and positive answers so that I only have to cry once a day for the rest of my life instead of twice. God. I'll still probably engage in fandom space and may even write an analytical essay or two, but this is the last time I'm gonna be surprised by Gooseworx's new tadc loredrops. My god. It's so bittersweet. Auuuugh. This show. 15/10. Changed my life. Made me feel feelings I'd never felt before. Convinced me conclusively that the most accurate word to put between "I" and "have autism" is not "probably" (true story). Will forever be a memorable mark in the timeline of my life. Really hit me in the guts with episode 4 which hilariously enough is a common least favorite episode of many of my friends but it still meant a lot to me because different things mean different things to different people I guess. To Goose and all the Glitch team, fantastic, fantastic job.
And finally...
GANGLE AND ZOOBLE HAVING SEX LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"why are you up right now" is such a beautiful question because you are almost always committing the same crime as the person you're accusing. just blatantly professing your hypocrisy. i kean yeah sometimes timezone shenanigans apply but in my experience the one asking the question is almost always the worse offender
