#myrenders (art tag)

I have seen SO MANY people claim that Pomni was about to abstract in episode 1, and that Jax prevented it. I genuinely have no idea what could lead people to think this.

Firstly, what Pomni was going through was essentially just an information overload. Ragatha was talking about how things are in the circus for a couple minutes, with Jax interjecting with some comments specifically to rattle Pomni and mess with her, so she had a moment of panic.

Second, Pomni's 100 yard stare-esque reaction was tailored specifically to make a joke for the audience.

Which brings us to thirdly, abstraction is a metaphor for suicide. It's not even a metaphor, really. You abstract when you lose your ability to continue on. Pomni literally just got there and is just having a lot of information thrown at her. She isn't even close to giving up, she's not even at the point where she's accepted her new reality.

In fact, we haven't actually seen any other characters who were close to abstracting. I've also seen people claim that the other characters were about to abstract in their focus episodes, but not really? Gangle is the closest we got, and she was just having an emotional breakdown, not considering suicide.

We know what it looks like for a character to abstract, and have seen what it takes to reach that point. One character abstracted after her closest relationship was shattered instantly, and then she was gaslit into thinking she was the problem, and the other abstracted due to him believing that he was about to discover a way out, but then having that taken from him. Not to mention, what everyone says to him informs us that he didn't have any close friendships among the rest of the cast, and they would only give him basic responses to things (fake laughing at jokes mainly), and he knew it.

I have seen a lot of people kinda write off Gangle as just a side character with no real character traits. However, I would argue something different. Gangle actually has a lot of character, as long as you're willing to look.

One of the most interesting moments with her is in the Fast Food episode (episode 4, I think) when Gangle goes outside and has a small breakdown without noticing that Pomni is right there as well. When Pomni asks if Gangle is ok, Gangle responds with "My comedy mask is usually broken by now."

That line opens up a whole bit of insight into Gangle's character. I've seen some people guess that Gangle is bipolar, hence the two masks, but I would like to argue that Gangle is heavily depressed, and the comedy mask is her trying to pretend that she's not. That's why the "tragedy mask" never breaks, that's not a mask, that's just her face. In fact, I do not remember any time it's ever called a mask. Everyone talks about the comedy mask, but nobody ever says anything about the tragedy mask behind it.

Gangle is sad about the comedy mask every time it breaks because it's her lifeline to feeling "normal". However, the comedy mask breaks as a sort of narrative symbol that Gangle can no longer mask her depression. It could be argued that Gangle is subconsciously conjuring the reason the mask breaks.

Fast forward to the episode in question, and Gangle gets a new mask, one that's plastic and thus cannot break. This, to me, rings of a coping mechanism that allows Gangle to repress the "negative" emotions and remain in the "happy" state she's in for a long time. However, over the course of the episode Gangle starts becoming manic and intense, until she gets a chance to take off the mask and have the breakdown. The mask forced her to mask her true feelings for too long and they started to bleed through, but the mask still tried to prevent them, causing an emotional overload.

Later on, Gangle gives her comedy mask to Zooble for safekeeping, showing not only that Gangle was becoming more comfortable being herself around the others, and specifically Zooble, but also she wanted to wait until there was something she wanted to do while being happy, so she specifically doesn't mask her feelings until she wants to, rather than as an obligation.

Another aspect of giving the mask to Zooble is that she trusts Zooble to an extent that she doesn't trust the others, since Zooble actually tries to help Gangle rather than just take her at face value. Ragatha and Pomni both accept Gangle as she is, but their attempts to help come more from a place of "This person needs help so I'll help them!" Rather than how Zooble helps from a place of "I empathize with the feeling of putting up a front and will help cope with that as much as I can" and Jax antagonizes her from a place of "I empathize with the feeling of putting up a mask, and that's something I hate about myself, so I'll take it out on you." And Kinger is insane most of the time, and never really interacts with Gangle.

We started off the night by watching Obsession together, which I managed to go into almost entirely blind. Which is fine, it's a very well made movie simultaneously exploring a manipulative relationship, as well as a toxically codependent relationship, both taken to some strong extremes. For the record, I called several things about the movie, and it heightened my enjoyment even further. I won't go into details though, it's still a new movie.

Anyways, after a very effective psychological thriller, we decided to watch an anime called "A Silent Voice" which was an absolute emotional rollercoaster of its own. Basically, a kid was a bully to a deaf girl to some pretty extreme levels, and years later he reconnects and tries to make things right. The movie explores how being a bully makes a social outcast of someone, to the point where I need to make a trigger warning about suicide attempts in this movie. But the movie also explores how a disability also creates a social outcast of someone, and they carry more weight than they should. There is a scene where someone points out that the deaf girl will always apologize for everything, regardless of fault, because she views the situation as being caused by her deafness.

For the record, both of these movies are great, and I do recommend them, with some heavy caveats surrounding potential triggers. They both deal with heavy topics, and after watching both of them my emotions are kinda stretched thin.

Think of how interesting it could be to have The Doctor meet someone and bring them along on the adventure as usual, and throughout the season there keep being these moments where the companion keeps referencing things they shouldn't really know, but always have some excuse for how they do. They're quirky in the same way as The Doctor, and they even play off of each other like they're longtime best friends. But the whole time, the companion is doing stuff on all of the adventures that seem shady, almost malicious.

Then, in the finale, The Doctor is incapacitated for some reason, possibly even killed and is preparing for regeneration, leaving this companion as the only one who can save the day against a foe that even The Doctor couldn't face.

However, it turns out that this new companion is actually the next incarnation of The Doctor, who had gone back in time to become their own companion, and has been planting the seeds for this moment the whole time. They do something that involves all of those strange moments from before and wins the day, and at the end of the story, The Doctor fully regenerates into that form, and we can get a story where we meet this new incarnation properly, and at the end of that episode we see the beginning of the season play out again, but from this new point of view.

Not only would it give a massive threat level to the finale, since it requires 2 Doctors and a bootstrap paradox to solve, but it also guarantees that a lot of people will rewatch the season with this new information and get even more out of it. And, also, it would play around with time travel in a different way than we normally see in the time travel show.

I have since decided that I don't like how my voice turned out (I have backslid a bit in my vocal training efforts) and then realized that the actual structure of the script is kinda bad.

So, I'm rewriting the script, which means I'll have to rerecord it, which means that I can't sync things up yet.