A Certain Random Guy

So, the first half of the finale? Everything up to them getting Jax into the tent? I'd leave it exactly as it is. It's a good story and it introduces the actual important aspect IMO: the fact you can dive into an abstraction to see their memories and face what remains of the original person. I legitimately thought that, with that ability established, the players would then think of going into the cellar to find Scratch so that Kinger could do what Pomni did so they could maybe find a way to fix the circus or reboot Caine or whatever.

This would allow for some exposition about C&A, but that isn't all that relevant to me. What matters is that the players would find a way to dive into the void or create a new terminal or whatever and go into a quick adventure to find the remains of Caine and, instead of him just letting Blue go by himself, they are the ones that do it in a way that leaves Caine stable. Not that they trust him, but at least he's able to fix the circus itself and Pomni's glitching, which then leads to the big thing:

Imagine if, given time via Caine stabilising them, the players were capable to diving longer and deeper into the abstractions. Not to the point they are 100% healed, but just enough that all the remaining memories can be bundled together and they go back into a humanoid form, like all those de-abstracted fanart you can find all over the fandom. It isn't perfect, they still lost a lot of who they were, but better than being stuck as monsters.

So the rest of the finale would be them healing the abstractions in reverse order (we could even get a scene where Jax accepts being helped and that's the moment it works idk) until every character we saw in flashbacks is back, and it wouldn't be an universal happy ending because being brought back doesn't mean you just come back all fine and dandy and each character is clearly dealing with fundamentally losing a part of themselves, but it's something. In particular, the fact that it's something that requires Caine to work but which he could never do himself would serve as a much better "redemption" for him and would give meaning to the fact that this is a digital world.

But their abstraction ends up helping, in a twisted sort of way: the loss of memory means that there's a degree of separation from the pain, where they now know what happened but don't remember it all from their own perspective. And that's just enough for Ribbit to give Jax a chance to redeem herself and for Jax (after having Pomni literally dive into her mind and look at everything in there) to finally feel ready to open up.

this song is actually about them

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears