Land of Cays and Sun

"It’s never too late" is the message for the *entirety* of the Digital Circus, not just Jax, in my opinion.

For Ragatha; it’s never too late to move on from a suffocating environment. It’s never too late to find your social circle. Ragatha had accepted, very regretfully, that she was still stuck with her mother in the macroverse when the brain scans were discovered. when she found out that she got out and had friends, and then realized *she did the same thing in the circus*, she really learned. It’s never too late.

For Gangle: It’s never too late to love yourself, or to follow your dreams. Her whole deal was hating herself. I know Jax probably didnt help that in the circus— then the brain scans leading her to believe she was still miserable and stuck at her fast food job all on top of recovering from injury. In the circus she did slowly learn to love herself even for her flaws thanks to Zooble combatting Jax’s words, and then learning of the macroverse showed her that she did actually succeed with her dreams of making a comic and being an artist. Something she came to do by becoming more assertive in sharing her creative ideas and even running a dnd campaign. sure its not 1:1, but shes still following her dreams of making art and stories for others to enjoy.

Kinger is a bit harder to explain but I see it as: It’s never too late to recover. He had something akin to dissociative amnesia id say? maybe dementia. anyways. Regardless of specifics, people still have moments of awareness, which consciously could be an upset with the self about not being more to help or losing yourself to your illness, which i think a lot of disordered people struggle with. yeah, its hard to get out of it, especially since its something you cant control, but you can still become more than what it tries to define you as, you know? The macroverse also helps that because i do feel like Kinger had a lot of uncertainties when it came to C&A, what happened to it, knowing that he doomed his wife and all of the staff are now stuck here— the macroverse was closure that everything was okay and so he could move on. im not the best versed in talking about this so im sorry if this comes off as weirdly worded.

Zooble is another example of It’s never to late to love yourself and follow your dreams: we see this throughout the entire show. They hate their body. They hate themselves. They hate the stupid gimmick they were given. But slowly, they learn to accept it. Maybe not fully, but even so they can even help others with those same issues because they know what its like. The macroverse also shows that they did get to make a name for themselves *and* be a space for others to accept themselves or be comfortable which is something they themself needed. and now thats something theyve done in the circus too.

Pomni is: it’s never too late to help others. which i do think is a struggle a lot of people have do to their own insecurities. I think its obvious that thats what pomni wants to do but is insecure about for the entirety of the series, and of course she has her breakthroughs at times but ultimately i feel like shes pretty.. scared of overstepping. but. she literally helps jax after it is seemingly already too late because she abstracted. and pomni helped anyways. and now we have a stable abstraction who has the narrative ambiguity of being able to recover post-canon, and with the metaphor of abstraction being more like a psych ward than actual death it makes it pretty damning evidence that yeah, its never too late to reach out. i feel like thats just as important as jax’s version of the message.

Caine is obvious i think: its never too late to change. its nigh identical to Jax’s storyline. In that foil-y kind of way. but the entire time hes letting his trauma define him, and *finally*, when he gets literally almost killed, he realizes he needs to change how he acts. its bad enough that a near-death experience is the only thing that snapped it into him that he needs to change his ways, but at least it worked. He was almost to the point that it *was* too late. And instead of letting that happen he sppedran the five stages of grief and turned around for the better. i could probably word this better but ive said so many words already