PhotoMatt is a piece of shit. Disaster Bisexual. Some gender, probably. Currently using they/them pronouns. 27 years old, until I'm suddenly not. Don't expect consistent content. Please read something I wrote or watch something I made.
It’s kind of annoying how many people still use links to tweets as evidence of basically anything. I deleted my basically useless Twitter account years ago, and these days Twitter just does not fucking function if you aren’t using an actual account. Half the time, I can’t even see the actual tweet in question, and I definitely can’t see any threads or comments about it.
The experience of going to a Crane Wives concert is that before the show even starts, a few dozen people will hold up their phones to show the crowd fictional characters and real life white boys, and the audience erupts into cheers every time.
You know, I don’t think that Transfem Jax will be canon (not because I don’t believe the theory, it’s mostly just pessimism), but now that we know the finale is coming to theaters…
Can you possibly imagine what kinda riots are gonna happen if it’s true?
So, I've been thinking a lot about TADC this past week (which, go figure, Episode 8 was a doozy), and I've seen a lot more people supporting the Mind-upload/SOMA theory for the show.
If you aren't familiar, the basic gist is that, rather than the human characters somehow being pulled into the machine or still wearing the headsets against all reason, they're actually just digital copies of individual brains, which Caine (or possibly C&A? Not so much post-episode 8, but that part was pretty heavily assumed before that) somehow downloaded to his system. Meanwhile the real humans are still out in the real world somewhere, just going about their lives unaware of what happened.
Now, before anything else, I wanna say this: I absolutely admire and respect the people who came up with this theory, either communally or individually. Whatever else I might feel about it, this is an incredibly solid and respectable theory, backed up by serious evidence, which does have genuine merit both as a literal interpretation and as a thematic analysis. It makes incredible sense with the plot as presented thus far, and has genuine potential for heartbreaking character beats. Hell, I think it could genuinely be a full reveal in the upcoming finale, and any criticism I have is gonna leave egg on my face; I mostly trust the team behind the show to make it work, and it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about popular theories.
I say all of that to qualify this uncomfortable fact: I really, REALLY hope this isn't the route the show actually takes.
Probably the best grounding for the theory its plausibility as a plot point; it explains why the "disappearances" weren't already known about by anyone we've seen thus far, what happened to the player's physical bodies, and while it's still definitely a sci-fi concept, it's a lot more believable than a video game company having dozens of stasis pod (like we were baited to believe in Ep. 7), and especially the player's actual bodies somehow just disappearing into the headset.
Pretty much the only hole I can poke in the theory plot-wise is that, quite frankly, I don't think C&A would somehow have been able to miss that this was happening. Like, how would this seemingly small but dedicated team of developers miss that an entire virtual world had somehow created itself on their servers, and then over a decade later I guess leaked onto the internet to snag Gangle? The more plausible explanation is that C&A were also involved somehow, possibly editing their own copies' memories to forget about it, but even that seems out of character from what we see and hear from Kinger.
But, even then, that's not really my main issue with the theory. I think the plot holes could absolutely be resolved.
My main problem is what it would do to the story, especially certain character arcs.
Look, whether you like the greater focus Jax has gotten or not, the fact remains, not only is he one of only eight major characters in the show, he's been established as one of the three leads since the pilot episode. He's been important from the beginning, and both Ep. 6 and Ep. 8 have made it clear how much of his arc revolves around him not viewing the world or people around him as real.
In Ep. 6, he sums up himself and the other humans in the circus as simple character archetypes; he's the funny one, Gangle's the sad one, etc. When he and Pomni have their falling out, he continues the dehumanization, referring to the others as his "playthings" and saying that there's "nothing more" to him. Hell, even in Ep. 7, his ultimately correct theory about Able and the adventure hinges on none of it being real.
Then, of course, in the latest episode, he has a major crash-out, the kind of panic attack we haven't seen from him since the Awards Show, over Kinger's story because, and I'm quoting here, "This is real."
So, it's pretty clear that the audience is supposed to disagree with Jax about his whole "none of this is real, none of this matters" talk. This is not the kind of arc that you'd want to resolve with "Actually, it turns out you're right; none of you are actual people, this was all an elaborate simulation, who cares?"
Now, granted, that's generally not how subscribers of the theory would frame it (it is real, and it does matter, even if it is a simulation), and the show has done interesting things with Jax being surprisingly right before (the climax of Ep. 7 in particular). But personally speaking, I don't think it would be very satisfying if one of the last big character arcs left, the one in focus since Ep. 6 at the latest, ends with a "Well, technically yes, but also no".
It's not just Jax's arc, either. Gangle and Zooble's relationship (platonic or romantic) is a core part of their characters, to the point where those two have had some meaningful connection shown in every episode save 2 and 3. So, the resolution revealing "Actually, the real humans you two are based on probably never met, will never meet, and never had that impact on each other" would feel incredibly weird, and not necessarily in a good way.
Similarly, Zooble points out in the latest episode that, even with the time they've spent in the circus, they still always wanted to leave, because they wanted to live, to leave some impact in the world, to matter. It's a big moment, then, for them to partially accept that just their relationships and impact on the circus did, in fact, matter. So, how would it feel to have the reveal, "Oh, actually, you DID live a life in the real world where you could leave an impact, just not the version of you we've been following for nine episodes and three years."
And that, I think, comes to the core issue I have with the theory. For all its plausibility, for all its depth and complexity, and for all its intriguing propositions, at the end of the day, you can't have a theory like this without raising one fundamental question: which versions of the characters do we care about more? Which version actually "matters"?
Because if we only care about the human, real-world versions, then, cool, we basically just reinvented the "it was all a dream" reveal. The versions we're supposed to care about aren't the versions we've been following all this time, who have years or even decades of differences from their real-life counterparts, but instead these essentially brand new characters with a few personality traits in common with them.
But if we only care about the digital versions, the versions we've been following this whole time...well, then what does the reveal actually add? At best, some of the characters might get satisfaction from knowing some version of them is still out there, but that doesn't really change anything about their actual circumstances. Their own lives are still basically where they were before, just now there are other people out there with some similarities to them.
I don't know, maybe I'm not making any sense. Again, I don't think this is a bad theory, and I want to believe that, if this is the ending Gooseworx came up with, it's still going to leave us all satisfied.
But personally, I just think it's a lot more impactful if these are the only versions of the characters left. Especially if they don't get the Hollywood happy ending.
That question of whether the TADC cast’s canon ages are from when the entered the circus or at the time the story takes place is suddenly much more important
Because either Ragatha ended up in digital purgatory at 21 years old, or Kinger is experiencing this finale as a 66 year old man.
Seen quite a few people interpret Ragatha’s “torture” scene to mean her mother literally destroyed her eye. I don’t think we’re necessarily meant to take it THAT literally, but also, if it is true, or if she just lost that eye through other means in the real world
Holy shit, how fucked up were her friends to make her put on a VR headset???
Having both sensitive hearings and auditory processing issues is so fucking stupid. Oh, yeah, I heard all of that, I heard everything you said, and everything everyone else around us said too.
On the topic of incredible covers people made of my music, I can’t believe I never shared this on here!
The first ever cover of my music, complete with a better music video than I’ve ever made. Credit to Yokinzitos for this, and thank you so much to them!
Went to see Iron Lung in theaters tonight. Not a huge fan of Markiplier, never played the game for myself. One of the best movies I’ve seen in years. If you like horror, go see this movie. If you like independent films, go see this movie. If you like seeing one guy going through The Horrors™ for approximately 2 hours while an eldritch abomination whispers in both your ears, go see this movie.
A fun thing about fiction with large casts of characters is that sometimes you'll have a Spicy Bananas moment where every single character has an identical yet wildly atypical experience of some very mundane thing, and slowly you realise that the author isn't Making A Point, they just think that's normal.
Time is fucked, man. My parents were in college already when the NES first released; their parents were born years after Disney became a company. Half the bands and artists touring today started after 9/11; the other half are older than most of the millennial generation. Every decade since the 20th century started can be defined by world shaking and devastating news events; there is no such thing anymore as “not interesting times”. How the fuck are you supposed to stay sane in these conditions?
It's weird to think there's a direct link between me getting into poly shipping years ago and me effectively outlining a video game in ridiculous levels of detail.
Jesus fucking Christ, I take maybe a couple hours to myself off of YouTube and Tumblr, and find out that while I was distracted the US is apparently at war with Venezuela and kidnapped their president?! What the actual fuck?!
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