#shelti rambles

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So… episode 8, huh?

After episode 7 I didn’t want to theorize what the ending would be because I had no idea, but after episode 8? I have a few guesses.

TADC has these fantastic character through lines which makes the show really worth watching in my opinion. And we really only started to notice it in episode three with Kinger and it’s only gone on with all the characters so far. This is ESPECIALLY true with episode 8 where we get callbacks to previous episodes in the torture scenes(knives/impaling, Gumigoo, mirrors/body parts, truck). So, what do we still need resolutions to?

Why does Pomni’s name mean “remember” in Russian?

Why is Jax the “master of keys/unlocking things”?

What are everybody’s names and why can’t they remember them?

What’s in The Void that would spoil the show?

And I think that ALL these questions have the same/a similar answer.

I think knowing “your name” doesn’t allow you to leave the circus, but it does allow you to conjure freely. Other than Kinger, who is aware that the world is a game, the three other people we’ve seen conjure with (relative) ease is Caine, Pomni and Jax. Caine is an ai, but he built the circus, Pomni conjured the exit door/offices in ep 1 and 8, and Jax was able to conjure his tail back after realizing it was gone.

What’s the similarity? They all are human names. Caine was one of the first humans, Pomni is a Russian name and Jax is a more modern twist on the human name jack.

But why does Jax have a human name? Everyone else has a name relating to their model, so why Jax? My theory is that Jax either is HIS REAL NAME or Jax REMEMBERS his old name. If knowing your human name is vital to control in the digital world, then it also makes sense for Jax’s character because he’s a “master of unlocking things” referenced in ep 2 and 7.

This manifestation likely stems from his mind files as it seems like he’s prone to running away which I think what his role in episode 7. Abstraction is a form of escape(suicide), the car scene towards the end of the episode is likely Jax running away from something(escaping) and his choice to NOT escape the circus is a form of escape from the real world. Which leads me to think that if he did know his real name he wouldn’t use it to escape, but would still be an available key to him.

What does Pomni need to remember? Her name. Or at least what a name represents. I don’t think everyone is going to remember their old names, but instead invent new human names to be able to conjure easier. TADC has had themes about reality and what’s that means and if something you experience is real if it doesn’t actually happen in reality. So the gang finding acceptance in the ending by choosing new human names(likely inspired by the character names) would encapsulate the show.

So what’s in The Void? Nothing. That’s the point. In episode 1 Pomni’s eyes get all big when she stumbles into the void and it looks likes she on the verge of realizing something or having her world shattered. In the ending of episode one we zoom out of the circus into The Void, into The Void again, and finally at the computer screen. Pomni was likely traveling into the second instance of Void, and that’s likely where she could conjure up her own world in the way that you wake up from a dream do your morning routine, but you wake up again because you were still dreaming.

When the circus crumbles at the end of episode 8, we can see its just sitting in The Void instead on the “grounds” the circus was on. The circus(Caine) was likely limiting their ability to conjure and escaping into The Void will allow that to happen more freely, but likely they have to go into the “second instance” of Void.

But these are just my predictions based off the themes and characters of the show.

Oh and also, Caine is going to come back. The gang will likely conjure him again but in a limited form and give him a different name to limit his abilities as an inverse of the situation.

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I just unlocked Eight’s palette yesterday and the additional challenge placed on this run specifically is really interesting from a story perspective with what was set up earlier in the DLC. So I ended up typing up this little essay on the intersection of gameplay and themes in Side Order. Slight spoilers under the cut!

Eight so far hasn’t gotten much attention at all in Side Order. Which makes sense for a silent protagonist, but I couldn’t help but see the narrative parallels with the gameplay associated with Eight’s run. Side Order is about confronting the fear of change and the fantasy of living in a bland, but safely controlled world of order. Marina gets a lot of guilt from the Memverse getting all messed up with her constant apologies, but maybe her desires and the ones of engineers aren’t the only key players in the development of Order and its takeover. 

It’s revealed in the Dev Diaries that Eight was always intended to be the first subject in the Memverse project. Which inherently makes her special since the tower’s creation at some point took her specifically in consideration. But then when everything goes wrong, Eight is trapped there. Even when you beat the DLC and can leave the Memverse, it’s always your player character that transitions between spaces, not Eight. And sure, (a piece of) her soul is trapped in the program, but so are Deep Cut’s, and all of them are able to give the pre- and post-run news report about the situation in Inkopolis. So why is Eight unable to leave the space? 

What I was surprised to find was that Eight’s palette wasn’t actually inside locker 36 like the game implied, but it was revealed that her palette was the lockers themselves. Like, all 36 of them. And even Marina calls out that it's “kinda weird.” Afterwards, the extra challenge of the final run reveals itself, a run with minimal hacks. The more hacks you have enabled, the less chip slots you are afforded. In order to have access to all thirty-six chip slots in Eight’s palette, you need to have zero hacks enabled, which resets you back to where you were in the beginning of the DLC after the tutorial run. 

The thing that got me thinking about how interesting this was from a narrative perspective is that this challenge is really hard. It’s very difficult, in fact, at time of writing I have not beaten it and I’ve played for multi-hour sessions. But this difficulty switch actually reflects the themes of the DLC, and possibly how Eight feels and what she’s experiencing. 

At the beginning of the game, the tower is chaotic and scary. You don’t know about the floors or their properties and the chips you can get are random. You don’t know what awaits you on that next floor and that could make you entirely start again from the beginning. And that’s exactly the fear that Octolings have about going to the surface. They are completely starting over at a game that they don’t know the rules of, or if there are any rules at all. 

But then there’s the introduction of the hacks. The hacks are a valuable and life changing modification to the challenges and randomness ahead. You want more lives? Sure! Take less damage? Go for it! More upgrades for the drone? The more the merrier! Are the prices at the vending machine more expensive? Here, have a discount! Oh, you don’t like challenges or the chips available for this floor? Just hand over some coins and we’ll spin the roulette again! You can even reveal the bosses ahead of time and reroll what you get if you don’t want a certain one. Runs get easier, and more forgiving. And as you get further, the tower gets safer, more secure. More controllable. If you know what you’re doing, you can even manipulate the entire program to get solely what you want. 

Except your memories. 

As a player, you have to fully clear the tower eleven times before even unlocking Eight’s palette. Which matters because once you’ve cleared it eleven times with different loadouts, you become pretty familiar with the mechanics and might even have reliable plans for specific floors. And that’s without the hacks. The tower becomes routine at that point, and with all the hacks, it’s likely you plan trips to specific vending machines on certain floors. I remember having specific membux amounts I wanted to reach and trying to save up to spend on floor fifteen. You watch your in-game timer on levels start to decrease and feel a bit of pride when the happy clear music plays and you see the little “updated!” next to your time. You know your way around the tower now. 

And Eight gets that experience too. Eight also experiences the repetition of each successful and unsuccessful run. The tower becomes familiar to her too, and maybe, comfortable. Eight gets to climb the tower, again and again, with her friends in an environment that she understands and can reasonably control. Pearl even has a line sometimes when you start a floor that echoes this sentiment, “let's hurry this up so we can go hang out with Marina and Acht some more!” And isn’t that the perfect fantasy for a freed Octoling? An environment of freedom, with a little spontaneity for spice? To be able to hang out with people you like, and aid each other in battle where the greatest punishment is that you get to enjoy this all again? Nobody controls you or tells you what to do. You call the shots. You pick the floors. You snap your fingers and decide how hard you want this to be. 

And that’s exactly what Order stands for, an unchanging, safe world. Born from the wishes of the Memverse’s engineers, ironically standing in the way of the point of the program. At least, that’s what Smollusk said. But this is a world that Marina designed, with Eight as an intended subject. Not the only, but an intended subject. The person who was supposed to be saved first, ended up to be the last you find to save. Interesting. But maybe Order came to life specifically from Eight’s desire.

Eight is special. When you reach the top of the tower and face Smollusk with Eight’s palette, it recognizes it. “At wast[last]!,” it says, “you finawwy bwought me THAT Palette!” And it even calls Eight out by name. Smollusk doesn’t have dialogue calling out or even recognizing specific palettes you’re using, but it recognizes Eight’s. And the thing separating the palettes from the player is the lockers, a piece of Eight’s soul itself, may represent Eight’s desire to stay. The reason to keep playing is because everyone’s palettes are locked in a piece of Eight’s soul, tucked away. Because if the lockers weren’t there, then it would be significantly easier to reconfigure everyone’s palette. And easier means faster. 

All of this would make the necessity of minimal hacks symbolic. Eight’s palette is resistant to Marina’s hacking, which serves two purposes for the narrative. One, it makes the game harder, which makes it harder to walk away from. If it takes one hundred attempts to clear that tower with minimal hacks, then that’s one hundred more repetitions experienced before it all has to eventually end. It’s another form of the lockers, extending the time of the evitable. 

Its second symbolic purpose is that Eight has to let go of her grasp of control and embrace chaos to reach the top and reconfigure her palette. And it’s hard. Both mechanically like previously mentioned, but it also makes you feel Eight’s frustration with embracing chaos. Disabling my extra shields and damaged swim speed and extra lives, going back to the hardest, least controlled phase of the game feels bad. Embracing that chaos is difficult. Just like how it would be for Eight. 

But it is possible, it’s just a slow climb up. Floor by floor. Facing nearly impossible challenge after nearly impossible challenge. And while you have the option to skip, it’ll cost you. But prices are much higher, the hits you can take are much more expensive, and you move much slower. But you still have your friends. Even if they can’t help you hack your way to the top, or drop five consecutive bombs, they’re still there for you. Keeping the elevator warm, and helping you resist gravity. Maybe they can’t exactly be much of help going up, but Eight’s friends can help her from falling back down. A team of four. How fitting. 

Now, I haven’t cleared Eight’s palette yet, I’ve already mentioned this. And the 2/3 secret Dev Diaries I got doesn’t spark confidence about learning more about Eight, unfortunately. And I’ve accidentally been slightly spoiled that she doesn’t get her memories back which is disappointing. I wish there was more specific emphasis placed on the characters in the DLC, to be honest. But as I was playing I noticed this little ludonarrative happening with Eight’s run that I thought was super interesting and probably the closest I’m going to get for Eight development for the DLC. I haven’t played the first or second game(I didn’t have the hardware at the time), I just watched them and I heard that the memcakes in Octo Expansion actually reveal Eight’s personality so I’m going to have to read those, because I haven’t. But I like Eight, and I liked this neat little unspoken story going on in Side Order, like the agent herself. 

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I finally had an hour or two yesterday to try out Side Order! I love how everything looks! Watching Eight’s colors shift is so fun! And her ink is glittery!!!

This is amazing. The aesthetic is immaculate.

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Today I saw the Barbie Movie after seeing multiple advertisements marketing it as “hot pink existentialism,” and I think it’s the best film I’ll ever see this year. If you are a woman, please see this movie. If you are a mother, please see this movie. If you have anxiety or depression, please see this movie. If you are autistic, please see this movie. If you have doubts about life in general, please see this movie. The movie currently has a reputation of being an edgy children’s film, but I assure you, it’s the most adult film I’ve ever watched.

I initially saw this film while going through a bout of anxiety. I was fine that morning when I booked the tickets, but an hour and half before I went I was having doubts about what I was doing in my free time. I was wondering if I should quit something because it is hard, even if it once brought me joy. I sat there, holding myself, as the movie began and in the first ten minutes  I knew it would make me cry. I ended up shedding a few tears throughout, but when they hit the ending, I was bawling. And I had crying fits on the drive back home. I had gone with my eleven year old sister who showed interest in seeing it, and she was confused about my reaction. She just wasn’t experienced enough to understand the underlying themes and messages about the film. 

Beyond the Barbie brand, the hot pink, the nice outfits, and the hilarious “two worlds cross” storyline, Barbie is a film about life. It is similar to Pixar’s Soul, in that sense. There are plenty of laughs, but it hits you with the hard “why are we here” question. Barbie is presented in the beginning to live a perfect life, and I do mean perfect, except when one morning existentialism comes knocking on her plastic skull. She has thoughts of death and panics when she discovers the start of cellulite, fearing her loss of beauty. She is then tasked to go find the little girl who is playing with her in the real world, the one that’s putting these thoughts in her head. But she is told that it’s not entirely the little girl’s fault, Barbie is responsible as well, though she denies it. 

When Barbie goes into the real world one of the impactful scenes is her sitting on a bench, and enjoying life in the real world. The wind rustling the trees, mothers spending time with their children, two men enjoying each other’s companionship, and an old woman sitting next to her, who’s representative of everything she was afraid of in the “Call of Adventure” scene. And Barbie thinks for a moment, turns to the woman and tells her that she’s beautiful. And the old woman responds back with “I know.” This scene is called back in the ending, when the woman returns and, spoiler, she’s Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie. That’s right. The Barbie movie has a talk-with-god sequence. Though, in the film, Ruth is not presented as a deity, but as a human. Her tax evasion along with her own mortality is brought up to show her flaws, but Ruth is really portrayed more as Barbie’s mother than her deity. Ruth literally points out that she named her human daughter “Barbara.” 

There are two scenes where Ruth talks about her creation, and both acknowledge that Ruth is extremely human. She is Barbie’s creator, yet does not know what form she will inevitably take. Her first scene is at her own kitchen table, where she invites Barbie to sit and drink tea. She says to her “you’re different…you look great.” And the second scene is at the end of the film where Ruth describes that Barbie is an idea, and unlike humans, ideas don’t have “endings.” And Barbie asks her if she can be human, asking her own creator if she’s okay with that. Ruth says that ideas last longer than any individual, and an idea can be anything. But before Barbie becomes human, she asks Barbie to take her hands and show her what it means to be “human,” and the scene where Barbie admires life plays along with other footage, presumably from Ruth’s own life. It’s all good memories. Because that’s what being human is about, enjoying life despite all the bad things surrounding you. 

Barbie largely portrays these “bad things” as the patriarchy, which go on to infect Barbie Land. The patriarchy is shown in direct opposition that Barbie Land stands for, women’s empowerment, women’s freedom, and women’s leadership. Nobel Prize winners go on to become lesser to men, to serve them beer, massage their feet and be objects to ogle at. Even the female President of Barbie Land is diminished under the patriarchy. All of this is presented as brainwashing, as programming. There is current criticism that Barbie is anti-men. But the patriarchy is only part of the driving force of bad things, the other half are intrusive thoughts, anxiety and depression, portrayed most prominently after patriarchy has taken hold in Barbie Land. But even before that happened, when everything was great in Barbie’s life she still thought about death. Before she knew that the real world was primarily controlled by men, she still had thoughts about existentialism.

When Barbie says at the end of the film, “I want to be human,” she, at that point, had experienced anxiety. Barbie describes it as “feelings that aren’t about or towards anything.” And despite that, she still wanted reality. She even described tears as feeling good. When I say this movie is about living, I mean it’s about how we chose to live even though it's hard. Everyday we chose to wake up and continue our lives. Barbie portrays fear and sadness as necessary to feel truly happy, that you need both to have fulfillment, to be alive, to be human. Barbie is about a lot of things, patriarchy, existentialism, feminism, motherhood, living and being human. 

Additional:

I thought about Greta Gerwing’s comment throughout the viewing, “the creation of Barbie is the opposite to the story of Genesis.” Instead of women being created to help men, Barbie was made first, and Ken was made as her boyfriend. Barbie Land is accurately described as “opposite to our world.” The entire senate is made up of women, the workforce is all women, all women live in harmony and friendship, but men are almost secondary citizens to women. Their relationship is described by “Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day when Barbie looks at him.” Barbie Land depicts men how Hollywood depicts women, as objects for the fe/male leads. The big climatic scene for the Kens is a war against themselves for the attention of the Barbies, which happens all the time in films and TV… between women. There’s always a scene where two women fight for the man’s affection. Ken’s resolution at the end of the story is to find an identity on his own, one that’s not dependent on his job, or his girlfriend, or any particular thing he does. It’s the traditional “woman moves on to not need no man” but flipped for the men. Any critic who claims that Barbie is anti-men, should also be claiming that a majority of films and TV are anti-women. 

The “patriarchy” in Barbie Land is portrayed as stupid men being in power, ogling women and liking horses because the doll world is inherently a heightened sense of our world, but backwards. Women in TV and film have long been stereotyped into liking shopping and clothes, being obsessed with our looks and waiting for a guy to notice us. So in Gerwing’s screenplay, she gave that stereotype to the men in the film. It’s satirical to show how stupid the gendered stereotyping on the screen is. The aim of the film was to be about women and their issues, so Gerwing brilliantly switches the gendered roles and the agency assigned to them. 

The movie ends the Ken storyline saying that “Kens will one day work their way up in Barbie Land to be at the level of women in our world.” The reason they aren’t placed as equals at the end of the Barbie Movie is because it’s a real world criticism and call to action for the audience. Telling everyone in the theater that If you were invested in the men of this world to be equal in Barbie Land, then you should be equally invested in women being equal in the real world. All of this was Gerwing’s way of trying to explain the stupidity of gendered roles and expectations. 

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Ughhhh Project Hail Mary was so goood. Two and a half hours of being glued to the screen to see two fast friends overcome language, cultural and scientific barriers. It was fantastic.

I went with my kid(young teen) sister and she was completely enraptured. Admitted she nearly cried five times.

Just. Ah. What a great film.

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Something comforting about the internet is that if you partially grew up with it, then it connects you with your generation in a way that maybe you wouldn’t have gotten without it. There’s a whole array of mannerisms and inside jokes you have simply because you were there and it can help bridge the gap a bit.

As someone who grew up primarily around older people who weren’t there, it feels like and you were told that you were terrible at social interaction and speaking to others felt like navigating a minefield.

But when I became an adult and actually started to talk to other people, especially people my age it was fine. Minimal issues. It’s crazy

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I was at lunch today with some family and the topic of public education came up because my sister said "twenty minutes a class period over a week isn't enough to write a seven paragraph essay." Now, the table's consensus was that this was incorrect. But where the conversation veered off is when I said "you just have to write a sentence, it doesn't even have to be good" about rough drafts.

Now the older folks at the table said the second half, "it doesn't even have to be good" is exactly what's wrong with my generation and that we're expected a million chances to get something right and how we're never going to be great with that attitude. "You're always just going to look for 'good enough'" was the wording. I tried to clarify I was talking about perfectionism, which was denied. So here's my full rebuttal/explanation here because sometimes when you're talking to someone who believes they're always right they don't want to listen to nuance and will refuse to. But I think this is important to say, especially my damning opinion on first drafts, so here you go.

I'm in college, but when I was in high school(~2020) I was in a special highschool that you needed applications and interviews to get into. Every class was harder than your typical and in junior year, me and several others were in a college-level British literature class. Additionally, 75% of the students in this class also took a college level history class at the same time that required a researched essay as homework every two weeks. We were established writers. Everyone in that room cared, and was both talented and capable. However, half the class struggled to write a thesis statement for an essay. A single sentence, and we had all week to do it. This is pretty bad right? Well, I think it was perfectionism that was the issue here. These were all really smart people, people who had been raised with the idea that anything less than an A or at worse a SINGLE B was world ending. I got a single C on a poem analysis and I broke down into tears and panic over it.

So back to my statement: "you just have to write a sentence, it doesn't even have to be good." Everyone in that class was good, if not exceptional. But we couldn't recognize it in our work. We knew how to do it, and do it well, but for some reason we couldn't. We had to live up to our expectations. Our level of "it doesn't even have to be good" would have already been good anyway! We just have to polish it into being great! All we had to do was take that first step. That's why I said what I did.

Now, everyone isn't good or even great at writing, or even art! I see you, it's okay. But you have to practice. And it's not always going to be good. It doesn't have to be, you have to experiment and fail. That's what it means to grow, after all. I think that's why that image became so popular this year. This one:

[Just make it exist first, you can make it good later]

It's interesting I'm writing this out today, New Years' Eve. 2025 has been a good year for me. I've been drawing so much more, and posting the results too. And I don't think they're very good, at least not at the start. But I can see my skills with specifically colors get so much better throughout the year. And it's because I tried and because I kept doing it. I even bought myself a tablet and clip studio paint for Christmas this year and I've been having so much fun.

But back to the start of all this. The person I was talking to was very successful. Top 1% level of successful. So I know they have good ideas and executed them. However, simply tearing apart words and taking them from "it's doesn't even have to be good" to "never aim for great" is just... shitty? No, missing the point. There's nuance in the context of that high level classroom, there's nuance in the people who have creative ambitions but are too scared to try. There's a lot of people who know how to be good or great, even, but they know they can't live up to it, not right now.

As we enter 2026 together, I want you to know that it doesn't even have to be good, it just needs to exist. Just draw a circle or write a sentence. The affirmations you say to yourself to keep going have the nuance of your personal experience and flaws. If you know you're talented but scared, know that it doesn't even have to be good, but it can.

[sheltershock]

Was going through a couple of my Pinterest boards and noticed the little “ai modified” tag in the bottom left and just went goddammit and went through and had to delete them.

Look, if I’m gathering reference images of things I’m not intimately acquainted with like stingrays or coral reefs or parts of nature that has been frozen over completely, I don’t want a robot to hallucinate what would make the image better. I want to look at what those things LOOK LIKE. If I wanted a vague, wrong image of what things look like I’d use dreams. God.