「 HR 6819 Col. 」

You can try to resist Try to hide from my kiss But you know, but you know that you Can’t fight the moonlight

Lookit!!! I gots a commission from @lame-girl-under-a-rock!!! 🥺

Ehehehe! That dispatcher is daydreaming about the mysterious hero that infiltrated his team again…

Dividers by @/pixopix

imagine you and your f/o going through a revolving door, and they're lost in thought or conversation and get confused on where exactly they are in the door, so they try to get out too soon and walk straight into the glass

At first it seems that community is how you survive the circus. Isolating yourself like Kaufmo and Jax is how you abstract.

Then Jax has people remain by his side even through his toxic behavior, and he keeps pushing them away. Which yeah! People certainly do that! And that seems to be the tragedy of Jax’s character.

But then you have Caine. Caine gets… completely better in a vacuum. Quite literally! No one reaches out to him, no one encourages him. The only thing he gets from the humans is criticism and instruction. It seems the moral of Caine’s story is:

“Do the self improvement on your own and when you are better you will be worthy of community.”

No one knew Kinger becomes sane in the dark, so it's possible that Ribbit never had a close relationship with him. Gooseworx herself said that Kaufmo was in the dark, so for the sake of this argument he is off the list of people who can help.

Ragatha was close enough with Jax to ask about how he was feeling after Ribbit's abstraction. How was she not close enough to Ribbit to check up on her before things went this far?

Even then, Pomni was there for Jax, Again and again, and it didn't save him. While I agree in real life, too many things get in the way from actually saving someone. But here in the circus? It's so insulated that I can't see a reason for why this didn't save Jax. Even that moment where Jax tried to talk to Pomni but he ended up pulling away. Did it really come down to Pomni not pushing further? Is the point of that scene that Jax wouldn't have abstracted if Pomni pushed further? Everyone knew he was at risk of it, even Zooble made a comment about it.

For example, Pomni’s heart-to-heart with Gummigoo in episode 2. I thought it was a setup for a future empathetic discussion with Caine, since both Gummigoo and Caine are computer programs that struggled with identity and purpose.

Pomni’s iconic line “I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re nothing” established a theme about the value of community support and revealed to us that Pomni is a very empathetic character.

This theme was then beaten violently to death with a stick when she yelled at Caine in Episode 8. She literally called him a failure, a horrible host, that he doesn’t make any good adventures, and essentially telling him his efforts/and life’s purpose are worthless and futile (they’re all going to abstract someday).

Even with Jax being very cruel to her, denying their budding friendship and triggering her worst fear by saying he would move on and forget about her if she abstracted the next day, Pomni was trying to help Jax. She pointed out that he was scared of showing real human emotion, but at no point did she mock Jax or attack his worth as a person. She could've easily called Jax a loser or a coward, and these would even be very fair assessments of Jax. But she never did it because as shitty as Jax was she was taking his feelings into account.

With Caine? Pomni was never calling Caine out to help him. It just started as a gambit to buy Kinger more time (to access Caine's code without his consent, no less), and went on to be a rant of her greivances against him. She had no issue calling Caine a failure, among other things that implied he was completely worthless. At no point did she even remotely consider Caine's feelings.

And mind you, Caine's deletion only happened because he subconsciously willed it. We basically saw Caine being triggered into committing suicide on screen.

here's two thoughts i have that could've made Pomni's character more relatable or interesting:

we saw Abigail's life before TADC.

though it's understandable, we don't have a precise reason to feel the panic Pomni does when she joins the circus.

i think what would've driven this feeling further is if we saw Abigail's life prior to waking up as Pomni. i imagine it's a slow, distorted, B&W filter through her eyes, showing she's living in the mundane and stagnant. perhaps colors would show when we see a snapshot of her thrill-seeking, showing she finds energy and importance in this.

you can still keep the struggle to remember things, such as her real face and name, with distorted sound or visuals ( or both ), so the mystery to who she is can still be there.

just something to give us ground and expectation before we're thrown into the situation Abigail / Pomni is.

or...

Pomni is excited to be in TADC.

with the aforementioned mundane life and thrill-seeking, i think it would make sense if Pomni was hyped to be a part of something with so many adventures. it'd be a stark contrast to everyone else's views and would give more opportunities for dynamics, esp with Caine.

what if Pomni was reckless and the VR game ( i refuse to take the AI ) allowed her to be self-destructive, but she doesn't see it as a problem? she could sort of mirror Jax, in that sense, but without the whole "abusing the non-men" trait.

Pomni not exactly being in denial, but not quite caring about her own health if it means she can feel something more.