Haven't The Foggiest

The thorny subjects of self-destruction and suicide get represented indirectly ALL THE TIME in fiction, so it's something we've all seen explored with metaphors before. It's something I always knew was central to the themes of abstraction, but I'd seen it so many times before that I never bothered analyzing it beyond the surface level. It was only after going back to rewatch the whole show post-finale that I've come to appreciate just how brilliant and multifaceted abstraction is as an extended metaphor. Allow me to break down each layer one-by-one:

Firstly, there's the experience of abstraction, which is intentionally contradictory. When we see Jax nearly abstract in episode 7, he enters a state of serene acceptance, only to be pulled from the brink in a panic with his heart hammering. This reminded me of a poem titled The View From Halfway Down, written for the Bojack Horseman finale. The poem was inspired by accounts of suicide survivors, and details the thoughts of someone leaping to their death. It starts out describing a sensation of release and clarity as the person starts to fall, only for panic and horror to set in as they glimpse that titular "view from halfway down," activating their survival instincts and filling them with panic and regret.

Abstraction derives its horror from its focus on those final moments of flailing against gravity. You become trapped within that view from halfway down; an animalistic state of instinctive distress and regret, forever unable to address or escape the pain that made you jump in the first place. Now, if this was all abstraction was, I'd consider it a solid metaphor about the folly of self-destruction as an escape, and leave it at that. However! Unlike similar metaphors I've encountered before, TADC goes a step further by giving abstraction a tangible aftermath. An abstracted individual doesn't simply vanish, they become a monstrous manifestation of the impact taking one's life has on one's friends, family, and even acquaintances: this inscrutable, destructive entity that hurts to even touch, attacking whoever has the misfortune of stumbling across it. That's an aspect of suicide that's explored much less frequently in media, and adds an extra layer of depth to the abstraction metaphor.

However-however! It gets even deeper, because Gooseworx takes this aftermath metaphor and further expands on methods used to cope with grief and guilt using the two primary methods of "treating" abstraction within the show!

Method 1 is the cellar, which represents avoidance and repression. After the initial awful confrontation in which everyone mostly flees or hides from the monster, they let it get locked away, hold a funeral, and pretend the monster still screaming in the cellar simply doesn't exist. This method deals with the physical pain abstraction causes, but creates absence instead of closure. The monster is never properly addressed, it's just sealed away in a place where nobody can properly confront it.

Method 2 is the pillow fort, representing confrontation and acceptance, given to Jax and (to a lesser extent) Queenie. Instead of fleeing from the monster, those that knew it lead it to a safe space where people can take turns confronting and coming to terms with its presence. Unlike the cellar, the pillow fort is something everyone has to build and maintain together, and getting the monster into it is a difficult job that requires a lot of teamwork and effort. Yet the additional cost of investment is rewarded in the closure it provides. The monster still hurts to touch, but it's no-longer aggressive or dangerous. People can sit with it and enjoy bittersweet moments together, in the same way true closure allows us to once more recount and enjoy our memories of the loved ones we've lost.

However-however-HOWEVER! The metaphor ALSO folds Caine into this extended metaphor by using him to representing societal avoidance of subjects like death, grief, and suicide! He sends each monster to the cellar whether people want him to or not, which everyone has come to accept as just the way things are. The flaw with this is first shown to us in episode 3 when Kinger recounts how in leading Queenie to his pillow fort, he "got to share one last moment together, before she was sent to the cellar." Kinger frames the cellar as an unfortunate necessity or unavoidable consequence, even though we as the audience are being shown for the first time proof that abstractions don't HAVE to be dangerous monsters that you lock away. Kinger was in his pillow fort actively confronting and accepting this living representation of his wife's death, only for it to be torn away by Caine, who offers no support beyond "don't you go abstracting on me, too!"

Indeed, must as Caine censored cursing, he also did his very best to undercut grief whenever he could, such as turning Kaufmo's abstraction into a joke with his "wHy diDn'T aNyBoDy tEll mE????" line. Even the funerals had to be hidden from him, as though they didn't address the aforementioned monsters left in the cellar, their emotional weight was still too much for Caine to really handle. People sharing a somber moment was something he'd register as a problem to avoid and distract from. Part of his redemption is finally learning to let people confront the monsters and the grief they represent, instead of trying to hide them. Hence why he doesn't argue with Pomni when she tells him they've worked something out with Jax's abstraction, and takes his hat off in silent respect during the presentation of Jax's real-life counterpart. He represents society emotionally maturing to recognize the importance of grief.

I've seen some folks unhappy that Jax couldn't be un-abstracted. Personally when I was watching this in theatres, my biggest fear was that they WOULD find a way to un-abstract people. In my opinion, it would have entirely undercut the intended finality behind abstraction if it could ever be reversed. The inherent tragedy of Jax's end is so much more interesting than any dues ex machina solution that leaves everyone happy.

As a game dev I had to rewind this moment multiple times, because they've used actual Unreal Engine style graph-coding for the shield's wiring layout, and made sure it actually MAKES SENSE! The shields aren't working because someone made an actually believable wiring mistake, and the way we see Kaboodle rewire everything is accurate, too! Someone over on Reddit was kind enough to label the specific nodes being used:

But what REALLY delighted me was how Kaboodle's technobabble here isn't babble! He's accurately describing a REAL rendering problem that goes on to have ACTUAL impacts! Allow me to break down the terminology, then explain what exactly he's saying:

"Texels" are a texturing technique used to render surface details on textures, and are generally used when you need to overlay an effect on top of a texture, like making something look wet/dirty, or in this case making the shield's texture display impact/damage effects when it gets hit. It's important texel density matches the underlying texture's "scale topography," because otherwise the visuals won't line up or scale properly. "Pre-baking" meanwhile refers to the technique of having the game engine run all the necessary calculations for an effect BEFORE the game runs, so you don't slow down the game by trying to calculate that stuff during gameplay. The trade-off of this technique is that every time the developer modifies an effect (like fixing the shield's faulty wiring) they have to take the time to re-bake it. "LOD" means "Level of Detail," and it's a technique where you create multiple versions of a texture/model with different levels of quality and swap between them depending on how close the camera is. This ensures you don't waste resources rendering fancy details the player is too far away to even see, but the trade-off is that they increase baking time, since instead of calculating one model/texture for each asset, the engine needs to calculate several models/textures of varying quality.

SO! What Kaboodle's saying here is that after he's done rewiring the shield's code, they'll either need to re-bake all its visual effects, OR figure out how to make all those effects cheap enough to run in real time without heavily impacting how they look. Both options take time which they currently don't have, and Kaboodle's concerns are immediately proven right when the ship gets shot down before the shields can finish rendering.

Oh my goodness.

So to preface this rambling little review, I've been a fan of Gooseworx for around a decade (I even read her old webcomic!) so if you're looking for an unbiased perspective you've come to the wrong place.

To begin with a broader observation, the finale was very strange from a pacing perspective; not in a bad way mind you, more-so an artistically exciting one... or at-least that's how I found it. For example, the decision to skip past the actual moment and details of Jax's abstraction was so bold, it left me reeling and utterly entranced. So many writers would never have had the guts to do something like that, yet in doing so it made the event feel like an inevitability that the rest of the cast were ultimately helpless to prevent. It emphasized that there was no single "moment" that acted as the tipping point, instead it was simply that gradual widening of distance that can so gently swallow us all.

Then came the backstory, which was probably the highlight of the entire show. It's as beautiful, sharp, and tragic as a shattered stained glass window. I've rarely experienced something that felt so raw and personal within the realms of fiction. As an effeminate man(?) who's struggled with masculinity and gender identity in the past, Jax's moment of openness was cathartic, and long self-destructive spiral all-too-familiar. While I was less harmful to those around me during my own phase of self-denial, I was so internally destructive that I managed to physically alter the layout of my brain to resemble that of a car crash victim. Had my support structure not pulled me out of that pit against my will, I likely would have ended up much the same way as Jax... and speaking of that, I love love LOVE how even though Pomni was able to grant Jax brief lucidity within ""his"" abstracted state, the rabbit ultimately remained beyond full recovery. It hammered home the message that some things simply cannot be undone. As Kinger said: Love and cherish those around you, because you never know when they'll be gone!

However there was one stark contradiction to that ethos in the form of Caine. As a student of narrative convention, everything that had happened up to that point I'd very loosely been able to predict, but not so with the ringmaster's return, and it's the one aspect of the finale I've mixed feelings on. I understand how it would have worked fine in the original draft of the script, back when episodes 8 and 9 were written as a single episode. Caine's "death" would have been fresh enough in our minds that its reversal wouldn't have felt too contradictory. However when allow to process and accept it for 6 months, the return without foreshadowing or explanation felt like it cheapened the impact of the previous episode's ending.

Were I writing this specific bit, I would have offered the explanation that since Caine is two AIs tangled together, he was only half deleted by Kinger's actions. This could have been communicated in a sequence of him desperately holding himself together in the void, gradually rebuilding and stabilizing during his long absence. As it were, I'm still happy enough with getting to see Caine's arc concluded that I was willing to overlook this minor oversight, and I'm also entirely willing to accept such errors as a necessary (and even vital) compromise if one wishes to experience a story this personal and unfiltered. If I wanted a perfectly polished story that never challenges any of my sensibilities or tried anything unexpected, I'd go watch Disney.

So we know Scratch and co arrived in late 1999, and Ragatha in late 2008, with probably around a 1-year period where Kinger was entirely alone (long enough to develop dissociative tendencies, but not so long that he couldn't still pull himself together for Ragatha). This means almost the entire original group didn't last more than 6 years in the circus, while characters like Ragatha have managed to last at-least a decade. I think there's some major reasons as to why that is:

1. They understood the true nature of their prison

Unlike everyone from Ragatha onwards, the original cast were all developers who understood on a deeper level what the circus was, and more importantly what THEY were. As it's been all-but-confirmed that the characters within the circus are digital mind scans with no bodies to return to, they started out understanding there was no escape and nobody was coming for them. The knowledge that they were nothing by artificial copies would have been existentially damaging, and made relinquishing their humanity all the easier.

2. They were real-world colleagues and friends

Now you'd THINK this would have been an enormous boon for their mental longevity, since they all already had bonds even before entering the circus, but I think it was actually a huge detriment. They could actually remember and remind one another of their pre-circus lives, which only reinforced how trapped they felt. Additionally, this shared experience would have made them SO tight-knit that the loss of a single member would have been emotionally devastating to the rest, likely leading to cascading abstractions.

3. Scratch's Abstraction

Despite what I said above, the original cast's bonds PROBABLY would have helped in the long run... had Scratch not abstracted when Caine tried editing his mind files (presumably trying to "cure" the cognitive impairment from his brain tumour). Witnessing someone they all knew and looked up to devolve into a monster would have been awful enough, but I'd argue the true horror would have been their collective realization that there was no cure. Before the cellar protocol was introduced, they probably spent a LOT of time trying to "fix" Scratch, with the repeated failures only compounding their feelings of hopelessness. Had they been able to accept that Scratch was gone in the same way the modern cast holds a funeral for Kaufmo, they could've grieved and moved on. Instead all they could tell was that their friend trapped in a form of perpetual, violent distress, and nothing they did could pull him out of it. The grief, frustration, and hopelessness of that is likely what caused the next abstraction, which only would have made things even worse.

4. They thought they were alone

1. They see a simple problem

2. They dream up a deranged sci-fi solution to that problem

3. They somehow make the deranged sci-fi solution a reality

4. They sit on it and SELL NOTHING.

An early example of this is the repulsion gel: they wanted to create a weight-loss supplement, so they developed a material that defies Newtonian physics. Sadly it didn't work as a weight-loss supplement, so they used it for in-house testing and moved on.

THE ENTIRE FACILITY IS LIKE THIS!

What's that? We can't afford to pay our employees? Let's develop AI so advanced that EVEN THE NANO-MACHINES are sentient, and use it for unpaid labour. Oh, are the energy bills getting too high? Let's build a dark-energy reactor and optimize our machines to run on a potato's worth of electricity. Hm, now material costs are a problem? Let's turn the facility into a closed-loop system by building automated recycling and manufacturing technology SO ADVANCED that the entire place could undo centuries of dilapidation in mere days. Also the oxygen pumps are getting pricy, so let's create lossless oxygen recyclers that turn a single room's worth of air into an infinite supply.

With Episode 8 confirming that the cast's bodies are reflections of their minds at the moment they put on the headset, I thought it'd be fun to dig into what that tells us about each character's psychology.

Firstly, it's important to note I'm going to be basing this analysis off a few assumptions:

1. The mind-to-body program uses people's conscious identity as a baseline. Nobody's bodies reflect who they truly are, instead they seem closer to how each person perceives themselves, meaning their bodies tend to reflect a lot of insecurities.

2. The mind-to-body program is flawed. This is obvious, as nobody actually LIKES their bodies. Specifically, the program seems unable to differentiate negative and positive ideas of the self.

3. The mind-to-body program uses a snapshot. Again, it doesn't encapsulate all of who someone is, only who they feel they are at the moment they put on the headset. This is important, because our identities are quite fluid, and tend to change based on external circumstances.

4. This was all written off-the-cuff, meaning I'm likely overlooking some important details. Please share your own insights in the comments!

With all that out of the way, here's my read on the "snapshot" the program took of each character's mind:

Jax

A cartoon rabbit who lies through his teeth. I think the most notable detail in Jax's design is that his mind is physically incapable of opening most of the time. He cannot "open up," and the few exceptions to this are moments of instinctive expression, such as when he's laughing, screaming, or choking. I said "lies through his teeth" because I think that's Jax's default state, or more accurately, that's what Jax FEELS like he's doing most of the time. Next there's his connections to Bugs Bunny and Cheshire Cat, two witty tricksters who are smarter than everyone else and toy with people. This is who Jax thinks he is, however an important distinction to note is that characters like Bugs only work because they never initiate conflict, they only defend themselves from bullies in clever ways. There's significant meaning in that. Jax's mind manifested as a sarcastic prey animal who's constantly fending off bullies.

Pomni

Pomni manifested as a diminutive jester, which I think signifies she spent a lot of her life feeling small, and like nobody took her seriously. This aligns with how she likely put on the headset while recording footage for a YouTube video that nobody would watch. Her large, intensely expressive eyes reflect her emotional openness, and her notably coherent and human-like design compared to everyone else aligns with her relative emotional stability. Notably, her body seems to be made of rubber. It's quick to distort in expressive ways when stretched or impacted, but is also highly durable and always snaps back to its default shape. It's a testament to her resilience and sense of self that her body is the ONLY one Caine can't physically disassemble.

Ragatha

A soft, spineless ragdoll that's been damaged and repaired many times. Ragatha is the most blatantly toy-like of anyone within the circus, and that means a lot. A ragdoll can be comforting, but is no replacement for a real friend. It's a plaything designed for children to dress up, project their feelings on, and eventually discard. Most significantly, ragdolls are traditionally fashioned out of old rags that have outlived their purpose, and are meant to be easily repaired when they inevitably take a beating. A "well loved" ragdoll is one that's been repeatedly torn and repaired over years of play. All this paints Ragatha as someone who lives for others while fundamentally devaluing herself. She's easily cut into or torn, but that's ok because she isn't made of anything valuable, and those wounds can be quickly patched over. She is something to be used, and if she isn't being used, she's a failure. I'm not sure it's possible to create a better physical metaphor for the mindset of an abuse victim, right down to her button resembling a black eye.

Zooble

Zooble's body is perhaps the easiest to read of anyone within the circus, as it's their relationship with their body that defines their insecurities. What I find especially interesting though is the way Caine's program seems to have struggled to interpret the unique neurology of a gender-fluid mind, which would have been quite confusing to something made by a static AI like Caine. Were Zooble simply nonbinary, the program would have had a definitive identity to draw from, however because Zooble's sense of self keeps shifting between male, female, and neither/both, the program seems to have ended up latching on to the only constant between these forms: Zooble never feeling QUITE comfortable within their body. Thus it gave her a form that is always changing, but eternally awkward to pilot. His face being limited to just a set of mismatched eyes is also significant, because he often hides his feelings within an abrasive exterior. It takes quite a bit for them to be vulnerable with others, and it's only though helping Gangle that they're able to come to terms with their own insecurities, and eventually open up enough to let Gangle help them back. And of course, the colourful and eye-catching nature of his body suggests Zooble was someone who considered herself difficult to ignore, which aligns with the sorts of social, expressive professions we know they had.

Gangle

Gangle's mask gimmick being baked into her avatar suggests she suffers from an emotional regulation disorder, but that's already been made clear by the show. Her body is notably the most intangible and flimsy of anyone we see within the circus, which aligns with her quiet and unassertive nature. Most interestingly, her body has the capacity to form a wide variety of shapes, which we see her use in expressive ways on those rare occasions when she's feeling confident enough to assert herself. This, coupled with her drama mask motif and her interest in art makes me think Gangle is someone who quietly dreams of being someone important and attention-grabbing, but lacks the confidence to place herself in any such position. This is supported by the way any degree of power or control tends to immediately go to her head. It's what she wants, but she's so unused to having it that she quickly gets carried away and is ultimately left feeling hollow and unworthy. Lastly, I wasn't sure where else to mention this, but Gangle and Zooble being the only two cast members without clothes feels significant to me. I think it suggests either that clothing played little importance in their identities, or that neither one had clothes that they particularly identified with, be it due to Zooble's fluid nature or Gangle's lack of self confidence. Or perhaps they were closeted nudists and I've uncovered the show's deepest lore. Who can say?

Kinger

Note, my observations regarding Kinger are directed at who he eas when he first entered the Circus some 20 years before the show's beginning, not who he is by the time Pomni arrives. Kinger's primary feature is how he entered the circus as one half of a whole. He and Queenie's bodies were literally made for each other, to a point where they can only be eye-to-eye with one another due to their wonky facial compositions. This reflects a real phenomenon that occurs within long-time partners, in which their brains gradually structure themselves to act as a single two-part mind. Say, one will remember names while the other remembers dates, or one will manage the pair's physical needs while the other manages the pair's emotional needs. It allows both minds to be more efficient, but comes at the cost of codependency. Should one mind be lost, the other will find itself unbalanced and struggling to function on its own. The fact that Kinger and Queenie's minds were so intertwined that the program gave them matching bodies perfectly encapsulates this, and also makes Queenie's abstraction all the more devastating. Besides this, other more surface-level observations can be seen in how both take the form of leaders, and what their specific pieces suggest about their relationship. The king piece is important but weak on its own, relying on the more powerful and independent queen piece for protection. The fact that they come from either side of the board could suggest they were mental opposites who fit well together. Their floating hands likely signify a degree of mental detachment from the world around them, their intense bloodshot eyes could suggest a degree of shared neurosis, and their lack of any other features could suggest that neither one was particularly social by nature.

And Bubble was originally the second AI meant to replace Caine

Throughout Kinger's hacking attempt, we see Caine's subconscious responding to his efforts, however there's a second voice mixed in there as well. One screaming things like "DELETE THIS MOTHER****** WHAAAAAAAAA!"

There's only one AI that talks like that.

Kinger tries NOT to delete Caine. It prompts him multiple times and he says no. Then something messes with the prompt and tricks him into answering "yes."

SPOILERS BENEATH THE CUT