Cosmic-Critters

The reason that this comparison is inaccurate is because humans have the ability to use reason and make logical choices, but cats don’t. Humans see a car coming and wait until the street is clear to cross. Cats don’t. Humans know not to eat strange food on the ground. Cats don’t. Humans can look up which plants are toxic and avoid them. Cats can’t. Humans don’t eat raw rabbits and rodents that may carry disease. Cats do. Humans who hunt follow laws that prevent them from killing endangered species (besides shitty poachers). Cats don’t.

A far more accurate comparison would be a cat and a toddler. They lack the ability to recognize danger and don’t have the ability to reason that an adult does. I’m sure a toddler would have a great time roaming around the neighborhood, but no one is going to argue in favor of that. People can understand that doing that is irresponsible and dangerous. But no sane person is going to lock their toddler inside and provide them with nothing to do; no one is saying we should do that for cats either. Play with them. Provide cat trees. Rotate their toys. Give them puzzle feeders. And if you want them to go outside you can leash train them. Or build a catio. The options aren’t let them roam vs. never provide them with entertainment. If it is unbearable to entertain and care for a cat that is kept indoors, you probably shouldn’t own a cat.

Would you let your dog roam? Or your bird? How about your rabbit? I’m sure all of these animals would have a great time running (or flying) around the neighborhood, but we generally recognize that this is a bad idea. It’s no different for cats. We are caretakers for our animals, so it is up to us to use our big brains to make logical choices about what they should or shouldn’t do. We have the ability to understand the risks associated with free roaming. Cats don’t. We can weigh risks and benefits before making a decision. Cats can’t.

Lol so yeah actually the phone line argument is a bit confusing because yeah the phones are down at first, but they obviously were fixed at some point since his family tried to call him from the airport in Paris or later on he wouldn’t be able to order pizzas or call the cops from his house at the end of the whole attempted robbery night, so there IS the question of why Kevin’s family doesn’t keep trying to call him daily.

HOWEVER, as people have already mentioned, Kevin thinks he’s a criminal due to stealing a toothbrush and has already been chased by a cop, he’s not gonna contact the police about the robbers.

Calling the police about his family leaving him? He’s not gonna do that because he doesn’t KNOW they’re in Paris, Kevin believes he magically wished his family out of existence the night before they left after they were all right dicks to him. He doesn’t know they have the power to come back, that’s why he asks Santa to return them later on, what use is telling the cops who (in his eyes) will probably blame him for it?

Also ppl be criticizing him for the booby traps like this isn’t the THIRD time Kevin’s had to chase these guys off his property? First he tried to fake a house party, they still came back, he tried to fake a MURDER, they spied on him and declared they were coming back again. Kevin’s given them two nonviolent chances to leave his house alone, they’re the grown men deciding they’re gonna come back and rob a house they KNOW has an eight year old in it. They announce their presence by knocking and taunting that they know he’s alone and “helpless” in there and that they’re coming in anyway, what their original plans for dealing with him were, we don’t know. After they spring his first traps, their plan switches from robbing the house to specifically harming Kevin in revenge.

These guys are trespassing on Kevin’s property AGAIN after multiple warnings, and they’ve announced themselves with a declaration of intent to harm him, he can’t call the police or they’ll discover he vanished his family and committed toothbrush crimes, Kevin needed to defend himself and he had FULL RIGHT to do so however he saw fit (which all proved entirely necessary seeing as literally nothing he threw at these men actually stopped them from trying to hurt him, they kept coming until his neighbor saved him)

theorising… i’ve already seen a lot of people say that jax in this scene intentionally pushes the red button to keep the gang in the circus forever, because he doesn’t want to go back to his real life and he’s willing to keep everybody else there with him to avoid it - which absolutely is a possibility. but i think there’s also something to be said for the possibility that he was aiming for the blue button.

jax hates the circus. for all his bullshit about not caring, about how it’s just a silly wacky cartoon world, we know he hates it. and in this episode, it’s only gotten worse for him, with an almost abstraction, and these constant flashes of something other, something that he can’t quite place and that are dark and creepy and unsettling and that he wants to stop. so i think there’s a real chance he was aiming for the blue button - not because he necessarily wants to leave, but because he wants whatever’s happening to him to stop, and leaving the circus is the only way to achieve that. he’s terrified, he’s in pain, he’s losing his grip on the world he’s in and the magic button to make it stop forever is right there. there’s a few shots that i think support this possibility, too:

for one, when jax is running to the console, the blue button is the one that stays in his line of sight the entire time. while this could just be coincidence because of the side of the room he’s on, i do find it interesting that he doesn’t seem to either look behind pomni at the red button, or shove her out of the way like he does to zooble.

second, after he’s pressed the button, his eyes kind of… flick between the two of them. which yes, is likely partially out of shock he pressed either of them at all, but i do think it’s also because the one he pressed is not the one he was intending to.

and third, the big one: the immediate anger at caine for messing with their minds. the first part alone, “you got in my head,” i originally read as jax being angry that, despite all his cynicism, caine gave him the first glimmer of hope he’s had in ages. but with the second part, the absolute fury of “you can mess with our minds too, can’t you?” makes me think of caine being a puppeteer rather than a manipulator. it’s not just that he messed with jax’s emotions, it’s that he shifted his brain (and his hand) to picking the opposite choice - not the one jax wants, but the choice that caine wants - for the gang to stay with him, for the gang to want to stay with him. the ending where a member of the team likes their life with him, because even if it’s by force, caine can lie to himself that jax chose it. it doesn’t matter to caine how the stay button gets pressed, only that it does.

Because to be clear: what he does to the Circus residents is abuse.

I mean, that whole test he constructed was so profoundly cruel. Caine clearly does know that they want to leave, because everyone has told him so. And despite knowing he can't (or won't) give them that, Caine made a fake version of himself to pretend to be their ally (against himself) and offer a fake potential escape.

Caine was testing his victims, seeing if they would leave him, and then was ready to reward them for choosing to stay. (Maybe also punish them if they would've chosen to leave.) All without any risk that they would actually be able to go anywhere. That was cruel, and exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from an abusive relationship.

I believe that Caine isn't keeping them trapped, at least not knowingly or deliberately, because his ignorance of the real world seems to be quite sincere. I can't say whether, if he could make the residents happy by letting them leave, Caine would do it, but it does seem like that's not even an option for him.

But instead of being forthright, Caine lies and obfuscates and does whatever he can just to feel a little bit in control. He clearly does know that the humans he's meant to be making happy are miserable with their current existence, yet he takes that as a personal insult rather than reacting with concern. And the idea of clear, open communication never occurs to him.

How much Caine knows, how much control he really has, how and why and to what extent he erases the resident's memories...well, that's still up in the air. But he's not a totally innocent or hapless victim, as Abel's distrust of Kinger showed.

At first I was thinking he did have nobody. It would explain some behavior. He had nobody in reality so he doesn't bother to have somebody here despite having friends at some point until after the Abstractions. But then we got to this, and my theory changed.

Because if that was it, and he secretly didn't want to go back to being alone, why is he so scared? Full blown panic attack.

So then I started thinking that maybe he had an abusive life (would also explain some behavior), or something along those lines. Maybe he lost someone and going back would mean facing the reality. Maybe he just ran away. Who knows at this point? The one thing we do know is that despite it's colorful appearance, the Amazing Digital Circus is hell, but he pressed the red button anyway.

I've seen a couple about him getting into a bad car accident or hitting someone, but I'm not too convinced that it's that. What I think it could be is Jax running away from something.

Details below read more, because this became long.

Mainly, because of the first clip.

Neither of these screenshots look like someone driving a car. It looks like someone running across the street. If Jax had gotten into an accident while driving, then it doesn't really make sense for the first images he thinks of to be running across the street.

If Jax was running away from home, then why was he running in the first clip rather than taking a car like we see in the second clip? He might simply not have access to one when he was running away initially. In fact, if he was desperate enough to run away he might have stolen one.

But that is simply speculation with no evidence to back it up.

So, what was Jax running from? I think he was in some kind of abusive situation. In the fifth episode, when everyone was talking about their lives pre-Digital Circus, Jax notably doesn't say a word about his life before. And when Ragatha brings up her abusive mother, he doesn't say anything. Instead, he looks away with a pained expression. Almost as if he has a similar experience.

Now, Gooseworx has stated that Jax's age to be 22, but when later asked if this was the age he entered the circus or if he was younger when he entered she said, "Don't you ask me questions I haven't thought about!", meaning there is a chance that Jax entered the circus at a younger age. Given how long he's been there if 22 wasn't the age when he entered the circus then given how long Jax has been there, that means he likely ended up there while as a teen.

Something else is that a very common trope within cartoons is a character running away to join the circus.

Does this mean that I think he joined intentionally? No. I don't think he had any clue what the headset was when he put it on. Instead, I think he was just looking for somewhere to hide out for a bit while running away.

If he were a teenager that was running away from home, then it makes sense that he wouldn't want to leave the circus. Not only, because if he leaves then he might have to go back to an abusive situation, but because he entered the circus as a teenager and would be exiting it as an adult he would have to deal with a very difficult adjustment to real adult life.

The instruction for the blue button is vague. "Disconected" sounds like when someone is hooked to a machine in a hospital and is decided they will not survive. If I read that, I would not think I would wake up in my old life, I would think it will kill me.

It was weird.

God of Death experiences catnip for the first time ever. 1 Dead several injured

A little lighthearted scene I drafted for Narinder's slowly being friendly with the cultists/repairing things with his siblings and to show the comfort that's between Lambert and him during the spring arc (before the war arc).

Play-Hunting

Thunder and rain. Sun and Storm.