TADC LAST ACT/EP 9 SPOILERS BELOW
these are just my thoughts on it after seeing it. in short, i thought it was a pretty good ending.
*update as i type: this is. also pretty much an entire summary including my thoughts. major spoilers lol.
first things im glad they didnt do: 1, jax... never ends up getting "forgiven" by *everyone* ((of course pomni does but anyone could have called that from her)) partially because he's literally abstracted but like. whatever. small wins
i remember being super wary bc i saw a spoiler analysis (that was tagged, lmfao. i went into that knowing what i'd see but i wanted to know anyways) of jax's "dream" (thought? fantasy?? not sure. whatever that piece of him was) where zooble's dead and he invites gangle to his room after the funeral.
i dont know if im giving him too much credit there but it feels a lot closer to intrusive thoughts to me? hell. i can't even fucking remember enough to cite anything to defend this but i dont know. he DOES do cartoony acts of violence, he IS inconsiderate, and he WILL push people away if it makes him feel "safer", but he's. never actually expressed anything near interest beforehand (and he seemed to be pretty normal, if super insecure, with ribbit. i would find it weird if he suddenly changed *that much* for the worse when she abstracted) so it reads to *me* more like they're unwanted thoughts of *actually* hurting people rather than the "haha, lean into the cartoon bullshit of this world:)"
but* still. just because im not reading this as "jax is a bad person at his core" DOES NOT MEAN he should be forgiven. it's established they CAN feel pain, so jax HAS hurt them all in ways that have felt painful. ESPECIALLY how he harasses gangle with her drawings as blackmail, SHE SHOULD NOT have to forgive him.
(and besides, his death let her character stay intact. she could be conflicted over grief for someone who caused her pain, but didn't have to just Forget everything he did. im glad for that.)
onto 2!!: im glad the abstractions stayed dead. as soon as pomni hugged him, i was like "DAMN. we're just going to bring them all back. really. Really. Alright. and you'd fuckin think kinger could have gotten his wife back back then." but NO! they actually left the abstracted gone. that surprised me in a good way!!
the abstraction aquarium <3 i wonder which 2 of them that kinger was watching. (or... might have been 3? a group of 2 and 1 solo? who knows.)
3: CAINE!!!!! everyone in the theater fucking GASPED. i sat the fuck up. no one was loud but we saw his ass peer around the wall and everyone gasped. i gasped. i thought he WOULD STAY DEAD. but NO!!! /positive
HIM CHOOSING TO STAY IN THE VOID. he CAN leave, but he CHOOSES not to until he's reflected! he even fucking knows he was deleted. this is fascinating
it's not that KINGER brings him back. they all think he's dead. caine knows/thinks they tried to (and it's never explained to him otherwise, lmfao. makes for an awkward conversation at some point in the future.)
he's either great at talking to himself OR holding a conversation with the blue ai (...bubble????? bubble Wasn't shown i dont think. but he flips between "i deserve this" and "THEY'RE UNGRATEFUL") and seems calmer when he and the blue ai are separate. interesting! seems like caine, the red ai, stayed Mostly seperate from the blue bc he remains entirely intact after and doesn't seem very distressed about it. odd?
okay onto my nitpicks/what i wished wouldve gone better:
4: ….blue ai???????? where?? where go???? it just fucking drifted away in the void. goodbye??? i?? hope it's happy somewhere out there? circus 2.0 in progress in the void? who knows. blue ai may as well have been shot and killed for all the relevance it has after caine splits them.
5: jax not being fully forgiven by everyone being my biggest positive surprise is mirrored by CAINE being fully forgiven LMFAO. he didnt even fucking APOLOGIZE???
i understand he timidly drifts over to say "i understand i've done wrong" and that he offers to help them make the circus into a place they ACTUALLY want to be in, and i figure he'd apologize through actions more than words. but zooble squares up for not even 30 seconds before they relax and say "forgiveness is going to take time."
i guess i can forgive jax because fuck, i guess they're all getting the "forgive and forget" treatment. SURE, they've probably had time while he sat in the void, but be fr. caine could not have been there for any significant stretch of time without losing his MIND (because NO ONE can just sit and stress and panic and worry all alone/fighting with oneself for any longer than a week, tops. sure he's AI, but technically THEY ARE TOO at this point, so like. if they're replicas of a human on code, he can recieve human enough treatment to me.)
okay, i can SEE kinger or ragatha forgiving him
kinger because it's probably all a blur to him anyways AND he's known caine from the very start to know that caine HAS NOT DONE THAT for a very fuckin long time, and that caine just snapped. that what caine did wasn't normal for him, and that caine didnt typically want to hurt anyone.
ragatha,,,, similarly to kinger by sheer time, but also because she's just. very forgiving. she has seen him try and she doesn't WANT to hate him. she'd forgive him because it's better for HER mental health to do so. (not that the movie showed how that happens.)
gangle might forgive him because she also doesn't WANT to hate him. better for her mental health (they could bond over drawing, i suppose, to bridge the gap between them. i could see it.)
zooble? ........ maybe. thin ice. i guess zooble forgave jax before. i Guess drowning in a.... sea of ur own limbs..... is. mild. (..........) not that i think zooble's a bad person but that zooble doesn't feel the need to forgive someone to feel better, even if they wouldn't bother fighting caine about it. i guess if i assume there was more skepicism between the ending scenes than is shown.
POMNI? (i say but she forgives jax for anything) literally ALL POMNI HAS SEEN from caine has, unfortunately, been him close to his last straw. abstraction first day. he kills gummigoo. mildenhall manor (nothing specific there it just sucked) i guess the guns weren't TERRIBLE? then the exit adventure and whatever forced adventures caine put them on??? shes literally seen NOTHING except him being inconsiderate and cruel?? (which, yes, jax too, but jax also didnt have control over her entire reality?? idk. i think it's worse when someone in a position of power acts insane than someone whos equal with you. jax at least couldn't literally force pomni to abstract. not that i think caine would/did so with scratch, but like. He Could.)
im overall happy that everyone Did get along and caine came back and they got to settle in and live how THEY wanted to live, but still. i cant say i'd want or wouldve expected another episode between this and the last where they're all getting back on good terms but still it was super sudden how quickly caine was sharing drinks with zooble (which is kind of funny to me bc that implies either zooble compromised with "okay. fine. all drinks are virgin." or caine compromised with "FINE. you can have your MATURE RATED DRINKS.")
i still like that caine gets his second chance canonically. that his story doesn't end in tragedy. i suppose im also glad we got canon names lmfao im sure that'll make it easier to deal with "real life" au's of them. i like that its not a *perfect* happy ever after.
(as a fic writer, im also glad this doesnt change much of anything. nothing big came from it except the fact that caine as we know him IS majorly the red ai, and the blue ai is MOSTLY its own thing, that, and that caine has Some kind of failsafe against deletion.
