✨Bee!✨

• I was so caught off guard by the direction Jax’s story went. I didn’t even register what had happened at first until I heard several people in the theater gasp and whisper “Jax? Is that—is that Jax??”

• They really spent this hour letting the characters feel out their emotions, and personally I loved that. All the crying, the tight hugs, the heartfelt moments; all of that was so important to this finale and you were really made to sit with it

• I liked the sequence of Pomni going ‘inside’ of his mind (?) and getting all of this context/lore for his character and personality. It went long but for all the buildup Jax has had across the series I felt like it was justified. His flashback sequences almost make me wish we had a miniseries of just him, Ribbit, and Kaufmo, and all the shenanigans they got up to

• Also kinda seems like the adventures were fun/chill for a while when the cast just consisted of Kinger, Ragatha, Kaufmo, Ribbit, and Jax?? No one seemed to be especially traumatized. Ribbit was having fun and it certainly wasn’t at the expense of anyone, not as far as we’ve been led to believe.

• I also noticed that Caine in the background in one of the flashback scenes just sort of…pinwheeled his entire body out of frame. Idk if anyone else caught it but I was hysterical

• “Your secret’s safe with me” TRANS JAX CONFIRMED and executed so elegantly. Nothing more needed to be said. No one had to say outright ‘I think I’m a girl’ or ‘are you trans?’. Kind of a refreshing take

• I was so delighted to hear Arin Hanson’s voice come out of Kaufmo that I punched the air in excitement

• It took the theater a moment to react but I cannot believe they snuck the f-slur in there

• Personally, as someone who has always had a hard time getting a read on Jax, I think his end suited him. He always had people in the Circus who cared about him, but when he tried to be vulnerable and open about his feelings he would put his walls back up as quickly as possible, and doing that so many times again and again ultimately led to his downfall. By the time he realized his mistakes it was too late to come back from abstracting. Self sabotage is real, it can happen to anyone; sitting in your anguish is a hell of a lot easier than confronting it and asking for help, but it won’t lead you anywhere

• That didn’t stop literally everyone in the circus from still trying to help him, even after everything, because at the end of the day he was still worth being loved. Even if abstraction is permanent, the rest of the cast made it their mission to make him comfortable and feel safe. It was physically painful for them to do so but they did it anyway. That’s love. Sometimes we don’t see it when it’s right in front of us.

• Where the hell did they get the license to play a Stevie Wonder song. How did they accomplish that. I love indie media.

• And oh, Caine. My sweet boy Caine. I may have been the only one in the theater who wasn’t surprised to see him peeking around the corner since I went in clutching so tightly to my ‘Caine is still alive’ theory it was like a life preserver

• The sequence of him in the void was so, so excellent. I can’t wait to see the animation bts of it. When he fell out of the sky, tumbled onto the ground, and immediately recovered to keep sprinting…what fucking fantastic animation.

• As someone who really only recently fell deeply in love with Caine as a character, his entire, mostly wordless experience out in the void was everything to me. It was spectacularly animated, dripping with symbolism, gorgeous visuals.

• That whole sequence felt like such a full circle moment for Caine, supported by the parallels of his basic model/red dot flashbacks when he first brought the original brain scans to life (I was confused when he brought Mike into the circus but I’m pretty sure it was just meant to act as a mirror to what he was doing in present, or something like that)

• I was surprised to see that ‘Abel’ was actually quite small and underdeveloped as a program, it means that Caine absorbed him very early on. Even still, Abel was a strong enough program to give him the boost he needed to create the circus and reign over it. Taking Abel out and letting it go was him willingly giving up his strength in favor of working with and developing a deeper relationship with the humans 🔵

• 🎩 “I never programmed you to say you loved me.”

🌙 “I know.”

Says one sentient, human-like program to another…but also, says the creator to their creation. I am you and you are me. We are intrinsically linked. Go and know that you are loved.

• (Symbolism aside I still do like Bluetooth tbh. They should get to kiss)

• Given that Jax and Caine, according to Gooseworx, were created with their own personality/inner demons in mind, I think both of their story arcs suit them. They ended up occupying similar spaces in the narrative but having completely different, totally opposing endings.

• I was really, really surprised by the inclusion of their ‘human’ selves, as in ‘we hired real actors and made fake social media profiles for every single one of them’, but again, I kind of liked it? It creates a necessary degree of separation between the ‘fake’ and ‘real’ worlds. These are two very separated realities, but both humans and ‘toons’ exist and thrive in the worlds they are thrust into, despite everything they’ve endured.

• There is an element of ‘what does it mean to be human?’ that gets explored in the finale that I think boils down to ‘I’m human where it counts. All that matters now is what I do with that, and how I maintain that humanity in the face of adversity’

• In the end, Kinger really was a certified girl dad

• The montage sequence was just so…heartwarming. It’s rare that an ending to a long-running story like this one can leave you feeling so…happy. Endings are so hard to get right and I do feel like they were successful.

• The main takeaway I got from the finale overall was compassion and vulnerability. Being vulnerable sucks, especially regarding personal issues, but it’s such a huge and necessary part of being human. It can be scary and daunting and not seem worthwhile, and it definitely feels that way a lot more often than not, but it’s still worth it in the end.

We will make mistakes. We will say or do the wrong thing. What matters is what we do with the information we’re given, and how we can continue to extend compassion even when it’s hard, even when it seems impossible. Even when it doesn’t feel ‘deserved’ or ‘earned’.

• I’m sure many of us did this; I waved back at Pomni at the end.

Zooble and Jax likely don’t want anything to do with him, though I feel Zooble would be more willing to put their feelings aside for a little while in favor of maintaining the sanctity of the circus. Jax, on the other hand, paints himself as a loner who doesn’t need anyone or cares about anything but himself, so he’s probably just getting dragged along for this ride tbh 😂

(He’s also always been a difficult character for me to get a solid read on…like what is bros problem)

Ragatha and Gangle, while not outright forgiving of him, aren’t going to be as quick to throw Caine out. They understand that not only is the circus at risk, and thus their livelihoods, but they also feel somewhat sympathetic towards Caine in the wake of his sleep mode activation. He was parading around like a god, and then got reduced into helplessness. There’s a desire to protect, even if they feel conflicted about it. They both have a lot of personal feelings to sort out!

Pomni I think is a mix of both: she really doesn’t want to get involved with this and would much rather be completely rid of Caine…but that’s not practical, and it wouldn’t benefit anyone if he got absorbed by Abel. Her motivations are about preservation more than anything else. She’s probably got the most complex view of Caine.

And Kinger…well, I’m a sucker for parental Kinger content. He didn’t experience the torture but he will hear about it. He’s also more lucid than ever though, and he can see pieces of his past again. He can see Caine for what he really is, can remember the joy of getting to see him come to life. Can remember the regret of creating sentience and stuffing it away.

I don’t think anyone is going to ‘forgive’ Caine, but they all are going to see him in a different light.

APPARENTLY ITS NOT THAT STUPID ANYMORE I GUESS??

Anyway. The theory I have cooked up is that, while the Caine we’ve come to know may be gone, there are other versions of him that could exist.

It stems from this idea: on the computer screen in episode 8 when Kinger is trying to break into Caine’s files, he’s presented with three backups to choose from, and he tries to select option ‘C’. Having three backups stood out to me, I just thought it was an interesting little detail.

But the more I thought about this moment, and other moments across TADC’s entire story arc, the more I thought about how clever Gooseworx is with writing/character design/color palette/etc. The show is filled with small details that not only enrich the world, but show that a lot of thought and care has gone into it.

…which spiraled into the idea that, maybe, there’s a detail related to those three Caine backups. Maybe there are three versions of Caine. And if that were the case, wouldn’t it be a clever idea if those three versions were color-coded in a way that calls back to those old CRT screens?

Obviously there are other colors on this desk toy, but the framing of this shot is really interesting. It directs your eyes to look specifically at the red, green, and blue squiggles, with the green one being the highest and first one you see.

There’s another detail about the color green that I always found odd, and it’s the most obvious one. If Caine is a mix of the original red and blue AIs, why does he have one green eye? It’s a cool design choice to give him heterochromia, but why green specifically?

And then there are the bees.

So it was established during episode 8 that there was no circus before Caine consumed the blue AI, he made it all himself from the ground up. He’s literally the beating heart of the entire circus world. If there’s no Caine, there is no digital circus, plain and simple. And he certainly didn’t instigate his own death; maybe Bubble had something to do with it, maybe not. So I believe that there is someone or something pulling the strings here, someone who knows Kinger’s real name, someone who’s been keeping the servers running long after C&A went under, which has allowed for new people to enter the circus at a steady drip.

And if that’s true, just how much control does Caine actually have? If there’s an outside force keeping the circus running, are they making certain choices?

Is there any reason that Caine, the self-proclaimed god of his world, hasn’t once changed his appearance, even though he probably has the ability and would very much like to?

So with all that, my theory going into episode 9 is this: Caine, or a version or Caine, gets resurrected, purely because the circus cannot exist without him, and there is very likely no real way out of it. If the cast is going to continue living there, he needs to be there in some capacity…and a less powerful backup of Caine would be advantageous for the rest of the cast to deal with. Starting him off from scratch not only levels the playing field, but it also allows Caine to rework himself from the ground up. Maybe he can have some free will, just like his humans do, and maybe he can use that free will to decide what he actually wants to be.

Apparently the ending of TADC is supposed to be hopeful, and the takeaway from the show is meant to be that there is joy to be found in a stagnant life.

I see Caine as representative of the pursuit of a creative career, and if the show is meant to evoke hope and joy, I think it would be cruel to leave him out in the cold. It would send the wrong message. I don’t think Caine is going to be the main focus of the finale, but I do think there’s a chance he gets the opportunity to recreate himself, view his ‘art’ from a different perspective, and work alongside other creatives to shape their world into one that feels like home.

His outfit is heavily inspired by this design that was circulating and some very talented artists who were doing their take on it. I’m a sucker for a shoulder cape and gold fringe, what can I say? I also love when people draw Caine with big billowy sleeves, I think it suits him

Sparkly hat & bow tie as a callback to his musical number outfit, plus a gold feather from the outfits the cast members were wearing during that sequence 🎩🎀

Instead of the ribbon I wanted to make a little pin that keeps the capelet in place. Initially it was the C&A logo, but it felt too impersonal, so I doodled a bit and came up with the butterfly chess piece. That design is also one of the two filler stickers that come free with the Caine sticker, I liked how it came out that much! (Who knows? Maybe an enamel pin is in order 👀🤔)

+the blue moon belt buckle. Self explanatory 💙 and blue does contrast really well with the red and gold, unfortunately for Caine

Genuinely love drawing the TADC cast with what I lovingly call “Putt-Putt Eyebrows”