i. am so curious. to hear your thoughts. on the tadc episode. whenever you watch it. iiuasdhfjasfhdasjdfhasdjhfasdhf
okay i think i finally have myself together enough to form actual coherent thoughts on it. this is a mix of observations and theories. it's also really long
the 'milk and cigarettes pie' is on its face a gag about those being the main 'dad left and never came back' trope items, but i think deeper it's caine being a generative AI and erroneously combining the two concepts, trying to invoke a 'your guiding figure is gone and you're sad about it' trope. which backfires because no one likes him
i like how about 50 seconds in (RAGATHA: So, uh, what's the adventure today?) we have the simultaneous background actions of zooble like 'wtf why would you ask the teacher what homework we have' and pomni and kinger greeting each other. cute stuff
kinger laughing at caine's joke had me pointing at the screen instantly because i've been a 'kinger programmer' theorist pretty much since episode 2 and yeah, he would subconsciously find a Chinese Room joke funny.
on a rewatch caine is just. extremely obviously laying it on thick. the way he emphasizes that he doesn't know what's behind the door, the way he specifically brings up them talking to NPCs... really clear what he's doing if you didn't catch it on the first go around (or provides an 'ahhh' if you suspected the whole time but couldn't pinpoint it)
jax is also just. totally not there in the opening scene. probably in his room alone. and if you didn't notice that he was missing until his face was drawn on the watermelon, i think you're experiencing the episode correctly. he likely believes he would not be missed, and you're proving him right in an episode based around all his insecurities being proven right.
i love how fucked up those fish models are. call me an adult with the brain of a 12 year old boy but i love it when the joke in a 3D show is 'model's fucked'
zooble's talk to jax is very clearly them trying to shake him out of his archetype bullshit (ZOOBLE: Not needing to commit to one thing all the time.) but he's still too blocked off to listen. and tbh i think if he Did listen, it'd feel really out of place. i'm not big on therapy speak in shows but it feels in-character for zooble to use that tactic and for jax to not be affected by it
jax's whole room sequence... him being friends with ribbit and kaufmo has been known for a hot second so not much to say there. the hole in the corner and the fact that his hand specifically removes its glove is what i find interesting. we hear later that caine struggles with cube collisions, and rooms are just big ol' cubes, so it might be possible that this wasn't a hallucination? we've already seen in episode 2 that caine can fuck up level geometry sometimes, causing someone to fall through the map. the abstracted denizens are in the basement, which is presumably somewhere nearby, and if it's directly below, maybe it started to clip through? and the fact that jax seemingly removes his glove at will to touch ribbit is a curiosity, especially since no one else has been able to change their clothes (to my recollection) without the assistance of a device or a change of level. this also happened to his tail, though he wasn't in control of it then. maybe this could reflect his own opinions on his body?
i was aware that jax's body wasn't going to have anything (given that they seem to be in a PG game they absolutely would not have genitals modeled) but i Did still wheeze a little when they showed him all kendolled up. love this asexual jax. just platonic vibes
i kept trying to make out letters or hidden images in the fractals and failing. what i find More interesting about them is jax's previously established trypophobia. he initially seems freaked out, but once he can make out ribbit and kaufmo's faces, he calms down. imo a lot of the patterns, including their faces, should have triggered this phobia. this could have been an oversight Or. the sight of their faces again was enough to offset his fear and calmed him down enough to almost abstract
the way he touches his face when he wakes up, i think he has to know that's what almost happened. and the way the lighting in his room is the exact same as it was before the sequence began makes me iffy on how much of that was a dream. which i assume is the intent.
the room itself, however... the table having three chairs in his, kaufmo's, and ribbit's colors kills me, but i'm more interested in how it looks like a stereotypical girl's room. he's displayed misogynistic / toxic masculine traits in the past, so his room looking like That is very interesting. he seems to be ashamed of this, as he barely cracks his door open every time he pokes his head out, and tries to close the door on pomni without her seeing inside.
side note: i've seen jax transmasc And jax transfem theories and while i don't believe either (i Specifically think he's just a cis guy whos misogyny runs so deep that he finds any kind of femininity appalling in a really immature 'girls have cooties' flavor) i respect em both. i do see the argument for both based off this room (being ashamed of the girlishness of the room either from internalized misogyny or not being comfortable with his agab). the only reason why transmasc jax makes me raise a brow here is because i HOPE glitch would have the tact to Not release multiple pieces of maid dress jax merch if he Was because otherwise it's like. here's the Trans Man Gender Dysphoria Figure and that's kinda weird to me
jax being skeptical the whole time kills me, because this whole excursion has essentially reinforced to him that he bitterest and most despairing instincts are correct -- there Is no hope and he Should just lie down in his room and not wake up. it's not even that they Could leave and he barred them from it, it's that they Never Could and were being played the whole time. and even though the whole time he's like 'gahh this is a lie and will never work' he still has the hope that it Is real, so he essentially got strung along as much as anybody else did
kinger/caine having a ted/AM like relationship stocks are up babay
i know caine claims he came up with the whole C&A thing but i don't think he did. caine is a generative AI, infamous for stealing real life information and claiming it to be something new. he has images of an office space and claims he wanted more but they 'cut him off', and there's the fact that we see an office in Episode 1, which is outside the circus. i think, bare minimum, C&A is a real corporation and are responsible for putting everyone into the circus, either intentionally or by accident.
the fact that 'abel' / kinger are both made of wood to try and draw that visual connection... very nice
('ABEL': Caine is an AI. An AI specifically created to keep your minds active.) i could see this being true. personally my theory from jump has been that he's supposed to generate adventures for the sake of amusement because this is a VR game that boasts new and unique adventures every play and he's begun glitching because he's been forced to come up with these for years straight due to his programming
another rewatch bonus is 'abel' constantly bringing up how bad things are for caine and the gang just not giving a shit. ('ABEL': But he's just as much of a prisoner as you are. One that, uh... won't be able to leave with us.) ('ABEL': And forcibly awaken everyone who's hooked up. Well... obviously, except for Caine.) the latter also proves he's lying, if caine's an ai, he has no body to be hooked up.
when the plan pans out at 12:46 there is a bee doodle in the left margins, another sign that this is caine. there's also scribbled out text on the bottom right labeled "OLD C&A COWORKERS (NOT ABSTRACTED)". one of the scribbled out names is kaufmo. i don't know how accurate this is
('ABEL': I'm not a creation of Caine. I've suffered just as much as the rest of you.) lol. lmao
abel just kind of being a mouthpiece for caine makes his planning of jax's date with caine really interesting. did he want jax out of the way so his skepticism wouldn't bleed into anyone else, or did he genuinely think the date with jax would make him feel sympathetic enough to Not press the blue button?
('ABEL': I would love to be able to work alongside him again.) kinger/caine having a ted/AM like relationship stocks are UPPPP
i also personally count abel's locket as a foreshadowing for him not being a real person. i don't think a player would have a token of someone from the outside. kinger's only real token of his wife is her portrait on her door. why would this guy, who apparently has been overlooked by caine, get a whole locket? this to me is more caine being an gen AI stuff - he's going off the tropes of the type again.
rewatching the second date scene: yeah caine totally thinks this is going to change jax's mind on him. silly
love how kinger specifically springs away from the light and stays there when they open his pillow fort. he knows. he's still the GOAT
(KINGER: Leave the circus? How would you-- No, that doesn't make sense.) mind you he said this fully lucid. they might just be copies of consciousnesses. this could be a soma situation
(KINGER: Uh... who?) again, fully lucid. this is the moment they're really throwing The Twist in your face. and the absolute look of concern on his face as zooble and gangle leave... i hope everyone gets on the same page and lets him exposit in darkness soon
(JAX: What's the rush? You got someone waiting for you outside? ZOOBLE: Don't you? JAX: Y-yeah.) the two interpretations i back and forth on here are that he doesn't have anybody and he's upset about it or that his home life is abusive. i lean towards the former because the shot instantly after this shows him alone on the screen.
('ABEL': Giving Kinger access to the main console could be dangerous given his... mental state.) and who did that to him hmm?
(POMNI: I want us all to have one. 'ABEL': Alright. If you say so.) this to me is another indication that he's not a real person. he's following orders. i'd expect a human with real beef with kinger to put their foot down on bringing him with, but 'abel' has no such objection.
('ABEL': Yeah, when he uses it responsibly.) i don't know how clearer i can state it my stocks are so up right now
the way kinger was going to say something but went out into the light... someone please have a one on one with him in his fort
('ABEL': Make the right choice.) part of me thinks this could be wordplay, make the choice that's on the right of the console, aka the blue button
jax staring at the wintery world sphere And the photo of him and his friends holding warm drinks... kinda wanna bet that was ribbit's last adventure
jax Already about to have a panic attack on the way up to the office... man really doesn't want to leave. and then it's furthered by the text onscreen during his panic attack being 'The blue button will end the game and disconnect all players'.
then his panic attack images specifically being the car's POV of a medium-nice suburban neighborhood turning a corner, driving a winding and secluded hillside forest road at night, and then that same road turning into a bridge... i've seen multiple theories on this but i don't agree with any of them. personally i think he attempted suicide by driving off a bridge, jumping off a bridge, or at least considered it enough to drive that far out. and the memories emerging in that moment are a 'you don't want to go out there. don't you remember how bad it was out there? don't you remember what you tried to do in order to try to escape?'
and man the juxtaposition horror of the reveal is tastyyyy. im very convinced caine made that screen so fucking bright so kinger wouldn't start talking secrets though
(JAX: I was right? I can't believe I was right!!) yeah he truly thought this was real, no matter what he might have said otherwise. even if it was just the fear of being found out that made him consider it.
(JAX: You made me- You got in my head.) again, i think this is a play on words. jax could either mean this as caine's mental games, making him think the hope of escape was real, or that caine chose this moment to broadcast jax's flashbacks in order to prompt him to press the red button.
there's also the additional punch for jax that he just revealed to everyone that he'd rather they all stay trapped if it meant he doesn't have to go home, and he didn't even get to have a 'sorry, i'm the guy who fucks everything up for everyone!!' archetype moment out of it. he didn't get to play that off. i hope he at least found it cathartic somehow.
the messing with minds thing: very clearly telegraphed to the point i don't think it counts as a reveal. pomni saying he might have made them forget their names, though. that counts. my only question is why he'd take that and not their memories of their past. i can only theorize that them knowing their names is key to them escaping. like, maybe in order to execute commands they have to type their names into the console, and because they could leave that way, caine removed those memories (something like /boot user [insert real name here])
(KINGER: Scratch. The first abstraction.) this just further proves that it Is possible and he Has done it and it Did have horrific effects (frying someone's brain so bad in despair juice that they became the first person to abstract)
and then the final shot of horror on everyone's face... tasty. next episode is gonna be a trip. how are they gonna play off the ramifications of this. how are they gonna wrap it up in 2 episodes. i will be anticipating...
