RangoTangoBango

i plan for this to go into effect in October since that's the month the pilot came out, but i really wanted to share this so... i present to you...

each day over the course of October, you have to draw the topic described on the image above and post it with the hashtag #TADCDrawChallenge (and also tag me, 'cause i wanna see it)

the most obvious comparison is taking one's own life. this is the way it's largely framed in-universe, and the way that the characters seem to think about it. people only do it when their mental health is at a breaking point. neither we nor the characters ever witness it happening - it's something that people only do when they're alone. those who remain stable hold funerals for those who've abstracted. and of course, there's the phrasing of Jax's final words.

while this reading is straightforwardly supported by the framing the characters give the events, attempting to read it exclusively through that lens results in contradictions that are too significant to prevent the reading from being completely accurate. most importantly, we know as soon as we've seen Queenie post-abstraction that the mind of someone who's abstracted isn't gone, it's just altered. an abstracted individual isn't able to communicate, nor are they able to act as they once did, but them or some part of them is still there. in this way, i think it's also analogous to having a disability, particularly one that makes the disabled individual be seen as "not valuable" to society at large.

the circus is structured around being able to participate in, and derive enjoyment - or at least socialization - from Caine's adventures. anyone who isn't able to do that is not considered to have worth, and seen as a problem to be "fixed," which we see firsthand in Caine's psychologization of Zooble. in this lens, abstraction is also a social death, as someone's who's abstracted is structurally prevented from participating in adventures. we also see this in the fact that other people avoid people who've abstracted. that social death is then compounded by the fact that Caine sends abstractions to the cellar, where they cannot be seen by others or interacted with. i see this as transforming that social death into something closer to a physical death, as the abstractions are quite literally buried and made impossible to interact with again, even if others might nominally want to do so.

thus far, i've been focusing largely on the mental effects that abstraction has on the abstracted. this is not to say that the physical effects - the corporeal transformation - associated with abstraction is insignificant. this transformation is a physical disability in its own right. however, i think fully understanding abstraction requires recognition of the fact that it is neither solely a physical disability, nor a physical disability that is decoupled from the mental disability. if it was either of those, it would be something that Caine would be able to fix, given the degree of physical manipulation he's able to exert over others. he himself says that he doesn't have that level of control over minds - and as much as he's shown to be an unreliable source in that he does have some control over minds that he is unwilling to admit, i believe he's at least mostly telling the truth here. throughout the majority of the show, his central motivation is shown to be to keep as many human minds as possible as engaged as possible, so i believe he would choose to reverse abstraction if he was capable of doing so. given all that, i think it's most accurate to say that the disability associated with abstraction is one that starts as a mental disability, and then subsequently and additionally asserts itself as a physical one, while remaining inextricably linked to the mental aspect.

tangentially, i also find it interesting that abstracted individuals tend to be aggressive when in well-lit spaces, and calm or even sleepy in dark spaces. i think it's likely that this aspect is also an important consideration for a full understanding of abstraction, although i don't have enough to say about it myself to incorporate it fully. the most concrete thing that i think i can say here is that, to me, it suggests a potential altered emotional response and difficulty with expressing emotions other than anger. the emotional response seems easy enough to understand as a reaction to the mental and physical trauma associated with abstraction, but i'm not entirely sure what to make of the fact that darkness is soothing to abstracted individuals.

All roads lead back to sci-fi , blonde haired, glasses, and sent to save humanity

I sound crazy, but this image says otherwise

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

Here ya go

For good reason, we're talking a lot about Jax, but I wanna analyze this scene with Caine for a second. His scene is very symbolic, and I think when he connected to the internet here, the scene of him almost walking through the door shows that he had a chance to leave. Caine could have escaped the computer and gone into the internet, but he hesitates at that door, and then stops and just stands at the barrier and decides to search everyone's names.

I think this is silent bit is Caine considering leaving, but then he decides that he can't until he's made things right. Instead of running away, he's going to go back and do what he can to fix things, even if it means they hate him. Even if it means he has to change.

Bubble did not do that on purpose..... But have a colored version of Caine's pajamas