ezra

im putting the more personal and weird shit here so people don't find it out by just looking at my discord bio haha. hahahahahaha. hahahhahahahahahahhahahaha. it sure would suck if the people i knew could know more about me!

abstraction is probably one of the most blatant metaphors in the entire series, it's quite literally said by zooble that abstraction is "giving up," ragatha says it's "losing your mind," etc, etc. abstraction is a metaphor for either suicide or insanity; this is even presented visually by the abstracted being just a bunch of jagged polygons with eyes. as symbolism, eyes usually represent feeling watched, but more frequently represent anxiety.

people who have abstracted are seen as inhuman due to their inability to communicate and their tendancy for violent outbursts. as a result, caine puts them in the cellar, grouped together for the sake of containment.

this sounds a lot like the asylum system of the 20th century; people with mental illnesses were/are seen as inhuman due to their inability to communicate and their tendency for outbursts (not inherently violent). as a result, the government placed them into asylums, grouped together for the sake of containment.

we know, however, that people who have abstracted are not mindless beasts. in episode 3, we're shown that being in darkness calms them down, enough so to touch and recognize people. in episode 9, we are even shown the mind of an abstracted person, jax, and we can see that he is still as concious as he was before, but only in the dark.

the label of being "mentally ill" inherently changes how people see you as a person. when someone is deemed mentally ill, it's usually because either they reach out or they reach a breaking point to where they can no longer hide their mental illness. abstraction is a visual representation of this. even from the pilot, we knew that the abstracted were still human, but because they could not control their actions, we assumed they were just mindless beasts.

what made me think of this is the treatment of jax in episode 9. given the newfound ability to choose, and new understanding of the nature of abstraction, the group adapts to allow jax to live in his new form.

even the way that pomni tries to "save" jax somewhat reflects mental illness. before she sees into jax's memories, she is trying to reverse abstraction, but after she understands what it actually is, and that jax is still jax, she (i assume) proposes the idea to allow jax to continue living with them.

this too reflects the treatment of mental illness in reality. once we began to understand what exactly mental illness is, what caused it, etc, we realized that people with mental illnesses could still live with us, they just required more care than others.

the glitchy effect that touching an abstraction causes i believe is also meant to elude to this. it is meant to show that people can take care of this mini-form of abstraction, that anyone can abstract but that with care it is okay.

i think this is why abstraction is not reversible; it's meant to send a message. once someone is deemed "mentally ill," they usually can't go back. they can still continue to live, though. i think that's partially what "finding meaning in a stagnant life" means; it's not to say that the world around them is stagnant, because it isn't by the end of episode 9, but that they themselves can stagnate and still find meaning. that isn't to say that this is entirely what this means, i think it applies to a lot of things in the story, but still it's an interesting angle to look at.

in the past, being deemed mentally ill was basically the end of your life. in an asylum, you would either spend the rest of your days locked up, effectively in jail, or you would literally die as a result of the treatment. similarly, in the past, abstraction was the end of your life, as you were sent into the cellar.

now, however, being deemed mentally ill is almost an opportunity at another chance at life. in the case of depression, anxiety, or other disorders that may lead to suicide, being given treatment is somewhat literally being given another chance at life. similarly, now abstraction is another chance at life.

in episode 1, kinger is presented as entirely crazy. to a certain degree, every character is reduced to their base stereotypes in the first episode to give the viewer a "baseline" for how they act (with the exception of pomni). zooble is crass and uncaring, ragatha is overly nice, gangle is crying, jax is "comic relief" and kinger is the actual comic relief by being insane. as a result, there isn't really anything to look at for most characters here. kinger is just insane. i really like the line "kaufmosis" though. all we know right now is that he's the oldest member of the circus.

episode 2 kinger is mostly the same, however we see him become slightly sane towards tyhe end of the episode when putting on his bucket. the second episode is similar to the first in terms of development, mostly being focused on pomni's development as well as introducing the audience to the circus.

episode 3 is where kinger's arc properly starts, as we learn, no, he's not actually insane, but instead flips between sane and insane depending on darkness. something i really like about episode 3 in particular is how much foreshadowing there is within the episode. it's second only to episode 7 in that regard, where the episode has it's own narrative that foreshadows itself. in this case, we slowly see kinger become more sane before the reveal, and then he has a therapy session with pomni.

crackpipe theory time: kinger can't abstract. as established in episode 3 and 9, abstracted people become calm when in darkness, and this is when they are actually accessible. at the same time, we know from episode 6, 8 and 9 that kinger is especially good at conjuring. it could then be theorized that, in episode 8, when kinger said "no matter what, i'll always be with you" to queenie, he almost conjured himself immunity to abstraction, leaving himself in a state between abstracted and not abstracted. this is why he's only sane in darkness.

i'm going to rapidfire the rest so i can get to my main point. ep 4 - not there ep 5 - nothing new ep 6 - conjuring + ragatha therapy ep 7 - dev foreshadowing ep 8 - ok he's ACTUALLY a dev

what i wanna talk about is a scene early into episode 9. kinger has another sit-down chat with pomni, and says, line for line, "You're very strong Pomni. I know you'll get through this." this is the exact same thing he said in episode 3, but he doesn't know this.

kinger has not changed since episode 3 (and arguably since episode 1), only our perception of him has changed. he does not remember mildenhall manor, he likely only vaguely remembers episodes 1-7, only beginning to remember in late episode 8 when his bucket was returned.

that said, kinger does actually have a major character change once his bucket is returned, because he doesn't take it off. like, at all. it's just part of his character until the credits, meaning that the only time kinger has actually changed as a character is in episode 8 and 9.

that is such a cool way to write a character, because, again, kinger doesn't change at all for most of the series, and even then, he barely changes. kinger's character arc is moreso the process of solving the mystery of who he is, rather than seeing him change as we do with the other characters.

i cant stress enough how cool that is. normally, a stagnant character is one-dimensional and boring, but gooseworx was able to make kinger a fully fleshed out character by giving him different "modes," a proper backstory, and slowly introducing each mode to the viewer to make it seem like he's changing, when really the viewer is changing.

if anything, kinger's character is arc is more the viewer's character arc, which is REALLY FUCKING COOL.