subwayfloorlicker1978

okay so given the fact goose has confirmed that there’s already foreshadowing moments in episodes 1-5 as of now… (aka we can infer there will be a TWIST of some sort later on)

i’m going to make a few predictions

1. JAX’S KEYS ABSOLUTELY MEAN SOMETHING!! THERES LITERALLY NO WAY THEY DONT!!!

2. there may be a deeper reason that jax has been constantly trying to talk to pomni pre episode 5 aside from him getting back at ragatha. considering the fact that the keys (again) probably mean something, i think jax knows more than everyone else about the circus and pomni has something he needs in order to fulfill a goal of his or something. i haven’t seen a lot of people mention this but he’s basically been trying to continuously brute-force his way into starting conversation with/talking to her since episode one and this is ESPECIALLY evident in episodes 3/4/5. but it’s subtle enough to the point where people are literally saying that they just “became friends out of nowhere”… they didn’t. jax just found the right time to strike

3. more indepth about jax knowing something everyone else doesn’t but the scenes in which he’s looking straight at the viewer/breaking the fourth wall a bit contribute to that claim

4. kinger’s memory loss (or at least the root cause of it; that being the fact that it’s dependent on the lighting he’s in) will be brought up later and isn’t just a one-off detail about him

5. you can kind of infer from gooseworx’s online posts that jax will inevitably do a big bad unforgivable thing and i’m calling it right now that said “thing” is related to his “goal” mentioned in number 2

6. i feel as though SOMEONE will abstract and/or die. someone’s life is going to end i can just feel it

7. the very obvious censoring of jax’s room in promotional material is related to whatever sketchy stuff he’s doing behind the scenes

I KNOW WHICH ONE IT IS.

i swear to god it’s this one. it lines up perfectly with when goose’s tweet was posted (the fanart in question was made like 2 weeks before…) also if episode 5 is the ragatha episode then hers HAS to be the baseball centric episode. and obviously her dynamic with jax says a lot about her character in general so i don’t see a reason to NOT put an interaction like this in her own episode. I SWEARRR TO GOD ITS THIS ONE SPECIFICALLY IT ALL MAKES SENSE. i literally gasped out loud when i realized oh my god.

like okay. if you haven’t noticed, goose has been foreshadowing this like a lot. the little detail of jax having keys that can open any door that seems a LITTLE too specific for it to just be a one-off thing. the clear implication that jax’s room is supposed to hold a secret of some kind (cough the pins). on her list of content warnings for tadc she literally put “jax” as one of the warnings. (presumably as a half joke but she’s very monotone so im not really sure.) apparently he “likes a lot of things he’s not willing to admit”, which is ominous as hell?? his dynamic with pomni is MESSY now apparently.

so my guess is that he’s going to do something absolutely, completely unforgivable in the future. or something really bad happens related to him or something idk. SOMETHING related to him contains dark themes, but the more i think about how the environment of the digital circus works, the more confusing it gets.

like. okay well he can’t exactly kill any of his castmates so that’s sort of out of the question. can he make someone abstract? possibly. maybe that’s what happened to queenie… but i think the rest of the cast would be WAY more unforgiving/cold to him if that actually happened. so probably not. i think with what we know now, maybe he could realistically set caine off so badly that it results in like… super dire consequences. like maybe the world starts glitching out and makes someone abstract bc of it or something. eyedeekay!

it’s also difficult too bc there’s so much we still don’t really know about the circus. like before episode 3 we had absolutely no idea that caine’s emotional state affected the “structural integrity” of the circus i guess.

also… and i know people are gonna disagree with me on this… i do not think we know enough about jax to have an “in character” image of him in our heads. like yeah his surface level traits are there but we really don’t know a lot about him. like at all. i think the closest we’ve ever been shown to “the real jax” (excluding the crumbs that goose has given us) are those scenes in episode 1 where he breaks character a little bit and looks super tired as if he’s putting up a facade. which i DO think he is, it’s just that his motivations are super important too and we’re completely unaware of what he’s actually planning on doing later on….

i think zooble's gender dysphoria b plot shouldn't have been in this episode either- that time would've been PERFECT for ragatha to talk about her problems with pomni to the other castmates and come to the conclusion that she's doing a few things wrong. zooble's problem is clearly too deep to have this little coverage in one episode and this format would also acknowledge both sides with ragapom's weird tension for the past few episodes. and it would definitely be a lot more effective too if ragatha was LITTLE more overbearing in episode 2 as well.

however that's if you want to resolve their dynamic within 3 episodes. which honestly i don't like the idea of, bc ragatha's treatment of pomni is connected to her desire to be the mom friend/depended on (and continuous failure to do so), and said desire ALSO causes multiple other problems for her too (cough toxic positivity and also her interactions with jax but thats a conversation for later).

i personally see her as the opposite. i don’t really view her as a wise older sister figure, (again literally the opposite of that) and yes, she does TRY to be mother, but she absolutely does not succeed in that endeavor whatsoever. she comes off as me in 7th grade when i tried cosplaying as the “mom friend” of my friend group bc i kinned kanaya maryam. that’s the best way to describe her vibe here.

and i think this connects to ragapom too bc pomni is CONSISTENTLY mischaracterized as this frail little “uwu cinnamon roll” who can’t fend for herself and is thus deemed the “bottom” in the dynamic bc tumblr. which pisses me off bc this is not 2017 anymore. but obviously since pomni has been given that role by a lot of ragapom shippers, that kind of just leaves ragatha to be deemed the more protective one (top? god i hate these terms sooo much) by comparison.

okay. you’re probably reading this title thinking “but subwayfloorlicker1978… what IS the medium in question????” okay the medium in question is being a lore filled mysterious series with twists and turns and having an emphasis on twists and turns just as much as its characters.

now. this baffles me a little bit bc even though one could get that exact idea of tadc just by watching the first episode (and the fandom ITSELF literally got that impression. i mean its even evident in the fanmade aus.) gooseworx made a twitter post a few months ago that apparently tadc is made up of. and i quote. 95% character depth/stuff/etc and like 5% of lore. which is… hm.

which also baffled me! because my GOD was there a lot of lore foreshadowing and spooky (if you want to call it that.) stuff throughout episode 1. like WAY too much of it, especially if your main goal of tadc is to have it be a series centered heavily on the characters. not saying you can’t have background plot things going on, but like… 95%? seriously? i’m definitely praying she hadn’t entirely thought out that ratio before pressing the post button.

and that’s why tadc unintentionally comes across as a series with super deep lore, literally to the point where i’ve seen certain people unironically call it a horror series (which is wrong btw. even if you’re taking the c&a scenes + caine’s suspicious moments into account). it quite literally spends like 1/3 of its main scenes in episode 1 putting SO much emphasis on the c&a lore and the abstraction and everything else.

and the thing is. i dont entirely blame gooseworx for this. obviously it would be very important to flesh out the environment/world that the characters are in during the first episode (LITERALLY your first impression), which obviously includes locations like the lore office area pomni was in or the cellar where caine banishes all of the crazy people to go to. (oh and also even the topic of abstraction itself via kaufmo) but like..... there’s a reason why tadc has a game theory episode.

i’ve said this before and ill say it again. tadc and the entire “digital circus” thing and the implementation of vr headsets + lore into the story is ONLY an excuse for gooseworx to tell a compelling story about compelling characters in a cartoony wacky environment. its basically a guaranteed way for the viewers to actually see these goofy characters in a humanoid manner. however… you can’t just implement characters with these vr headset backstories and existential themes without it sounding entirely ominous. AND you can’t just drop a huge bombshell regarding the lore of the show and WHY the vr stuff happened and then go on twitter and say that its 95% about the characters.

and with the direction of the cellar and office scenes.. im not sure if it’s even possible for someone to make a clean cut resolution to the lore tidbits while still fulfilling the “5%” lore thing and not having it come off as giving off the wrong expectations. the direction of these scenes is SO intense like. some of these camera shots clearly put emphasis on small little details and the tone of these scenes pale so much in comparison to previous scenes that it catches you so off guard.

which is what makes them very well written! however they pack so much content and foreshadowing into themselves that its such a far fetched thing to say that only 5% of lore will make up tadc. that combined with the prospect of past lives. and also with the clear foreshadowing of jax being a morally corrupt person. what about the extremely heavy motifs of exit doors? there’s no way THATS going to just be gone after episode 1. goose, what do you MEAN there’s going to be corpse imagery? all of this ties into each other. lore and tone tie into each other too. come on.

but these aspects can definitely be used to craft a great story. WITH character arcs and character deep dives throughout episodes. gravity falls literally nailed this. and theoretically tadc could too. emphasis on theoretically.

also if the “memory loss” thing was actually canon and not something the fandom thought was canon (again reasonable misinterpretation because obviously if you hear pomni say “HOLY FLIP I FORGOT MY OWN NAME!!!” you’re going to assume she forgot everything else.) that would also work well along with the theoretical lore stuff if it was more emphasized. literally think of the vast opportunities for foreshadowing. maybe pomni finds out something about the other characters via revisiting the office that THEY can’t remember. maybe do something with like… reflexes and muscle memory or something related to “the mind forgets but the body remembers”. maybe use it as a plot point in relation to jax’s keys or his weirdly implied secret or something. IDK! i just think a lore and plot driven story in this environment combined with character things (50/50…) would be marginally more interesting than what we will be given.

okay one more pet peeve in relation to this before i go. deep breath……. i really hate the cartoonish body language of the main human cast. GO AHEAD BOO ME. THROW TOMATOES AT ME. LET ME EXPLAIN OKAY.

one piece of media that i think does a GREAT job when it comes to utilizing body language in storytelling is duck season. it clearly humanizes the guy in the suit by giving him certain habits that seem undoubtedly human and make him feel very… alive. like whenever he smokes a cigarette but then quickly puts it out when the player gets near him bc he’s startled and needs to keep up a facade. like THAT. that’s what strikes me as a human behavior.