The Amazing Customs Circus (In draft)

"Gooseworx wanted this theatre to happen!" no offense to this fandom but judging by her response, i'm pretty sure even she herself didn't want this whole theatre release to happen in the first place, as she said "i just wanted to make a show for fun".

Meaning she wasn't asking for popularity, she just wanted to have some fun making a show, a theatre release wasn't necessary for her.

Speaking of that, why Glitch even thought about it if their first concern were the leaks?? You're telling me these guys were so busy making it happen all this time, just for the idea of a leak came to their minds and that's when they realize "damn, wait- maybe this isn't a good idea to make it global"?

"It's just them being unprofessional" you mean to tell me it's been like, what? 3-4 years since Kevin talked about the mismanagement going on at the studio and yet, he and the others didn't bother to improve their professionalism in order to make the company feel safe? managed properly?

With the allegations going on, i won't be surprised if even Gooseworx was also mistreated by them.

This ask goes in a multitude of directions.

This isn't a space where I feel like making excuses for Gooseworx or defending her in any capacity. All parties involved were grown adults, and they should be treated as such. There is no such thing as a person who "makes a show for fun" and said show is then picked up by a company with the capability to release that show into a global market. Just because a person says something, doesn't make it true, and I've already talked about the fact that this particular SECTION of the indie industry is largely comprised of the same few individuals, so I often take their comments about the industry as a whole with a grain of salt.

To be honest, the parasocial attitude surrounding Gooseworx is largely her own fault, as well as the writing of the show itself attracting specific demographics of people. There are also many factors involved, namely racism and a very flimsy concept of social justice at best, that lead people to feeling entitled to her show proceedings and her feelings, because it directly contributes to their very limited worldviews. Once again, while it may be possible that Gooseworx might also be a victim to Glitch's malpractice as a company, any of their other victims could've told you that. Many of the Black people already feeling uncomfortable by Glitch's evident refusal to do background checks on who they work with could have told you that. I don't see why Gooseworx needs to be treated as more important.

Ribbit has an hourglass body with a frog head. Her aesthetic is reheating Jax’s nachos

Queenie is female Kinger

Princess Loo and Martha are just human women but candy and ghost respectively.

The Gloink Queen gets called disgusting by Jax because she isn’t a hot or cute cartoon girl and is instead a fat slug.

Oh, boo hoo! My best friends got abstracted!

Zooble! That's so mean!

so, zooble. outside of the show it was stated that they go by any pronouns. within the show however, they/them is used exclusively for them.

so, as it stands, they're not representation for people who go by any pronouns since it's literally not anywhere in the show and you wouldn't even know it if you weren't online enough, and they're technically not representation for people who go by they/them since it's not canon.

and it feels like fence sitting to me. like they tried to have a cake (a non-binary character) and eat it too (no you can't misgendering them actually, don't think about their pronouns at all).

and what about many of tadc's official dubs, especially in gendered languages? this is such a good opportunity to represent neopronouns non-binary speakers have created to finally have a space for themselves in their own lang- she/her & feminine grammatical gender exclusively.

they could've done better.

THEY DON'T EVEN DO FUN SHIT WITH THEIR GENDER IN THE OTHER LANGUAGES??? Oh my GOD they fucked up with Zooble's representation in that regard. The fact that it's exclusively fem too is... hm. I guess we know what their AGAB is after all 💀

Another thing that would have been cool in the gendered dubs is if they made Zooble a non-binary character who still uses gendered pronouns (whether solo or interchangeably) and outwardly specified their queerness. There are genderqueer people internationally who still comply with their DGAB pronouns or picked their opposite gendered pronoun. Either because they don't mind or the lack of gender neutral and additions of neo-pronouns as options in their language structure.

This was a MAJOR oversight from Gooseworx and GLITCH for the international genderqueer fans that reeks of the team's whiteness and westernism. Much like everything they do.

In my personal opinion, watching the backrooms made me realize how simple everything is. The characters in tadc are kinda one dimensional, the plot handwaves weird things and doesnt interrogate plotlines at all. Its a fun time though, its fun dont get me wrong, i just think its pretty simple(not a bad thing) I think sometimes the plot lets the fandomlike love for its characters get in the way of them being interesting and hides the best part of its lore and characters in favor of the arguably worse jax and pomni plotlines. And on that note, i dont think being indie necessarily excuses overly simple writing. I think indie productions like pretty please i dont wanna be a magical girl, and iron lung, and the original kane pixels backrooms show, adding onto that knights of guinevere radically outclass it in terms of symbolism and storybuilding.

i think that it doesnt explore any of the existentialism of being Trapped in A Digital Worlf beyond the pilot, and any horror plotlines are set aside. Episodes 3 and 4, adding onto that 5, and in some respects 6, where it focuses on fleshing out character dynamics that havent been explored for the first time(even WITH JAX who needs to be explored but not to this degree) is where the writing is at its strongest, but in the latter episodes i feel like jax's nuance is exchanged for fandom interactions.

The show CAN be just excellent at times. Kinger and his wife in episode 3, gummigoo and pomni in episode 2, gangle and the truck in episode 4, caine torturing in episode 8, the final feast scene in episode 1 with pomni, the scene with jax crashing out in episode 6 before he goes all "i LIKE watching you suffer", and so many more works excellently but just some of the scenes are just jingling keys, and i would have preferred more of those kinger and his wife style scenes, because the writing can lean overly tropey and archetypal, until it is specifically EXCLUSIVE to the setting, like ragatha and the stupid sauce, or kinger and his wife. In the last two episodes the show leans too expositiony, and its not clever like episode seven where its a satire to shut down last theories before the finale.

I would have preferred all the lore dumped on us in episodes 8 and 9 to be hinted at or revealed more throughout the show, and i would have preferred jax not just be an asshole sometimes. Like yes having a straight up bad character is good but the writing is so inconsistent and it doesnt interrogate jax's actions with gangle zooble or even pomni enough for it to feel like theyre making him a bad person for any real narrative payoff.

It is very infuriating to see as much as people criticize the racism of everyone in the production of TADC, they refuse to check themselves. They still engage with popular fan creators who didn't call out the racism and prioritize engagement with the racist colorblind casting, which reinforce racist stereotypes. In the end, the choice to depict the characters as white or in close proximity to it is insulting, despite supposedly being people of color now.

Maybe it isn't obvious to you-- but for us, it is.

I've noticed the stark contrast between engagement with my creative works vs others tends to boil down to people's lack of care/interest in reimaginings that center exclusively on POC/marginalized experiences.

People will pat themselves on the back for interacting with a piece of media that includes POCs without ever questioning whether it was actually respectable rep. If it's just another portrayal that whitewashes the COC "casual rep" or skims through the topics without them having to do any retrospective work. They hardly challenge their preconceived notion of race and culture outside of their own. This also goes for POCs who still prioritize whiteness over themselves and solidarity.

Even when The Amazing Customs Circus was only headcanons, I'm aware that the discrepancy in engagements between my POC designs and others and when I share art similar to their canon designs.

A bit detailed but still short answer: Gooseworx is one of the many white people who has a ton of deep rooted bigotry to unpack and also appropriate things in relation to other cultures because she as a white person doesn't question herself and the white culture she's in.

Okay so with the obvious out of the way first-

It is baffling to me that Caine doesn't have a Black voice actor despite his many Black-coded elements. Queenie being one of his creators, ties to the old 1920s aesthetic, the Jazz performance, his voice/personality performance being reminiscence of Black showmen, and his "too human to be AI, but to AI to be human" multi-racial coding.

I'm not sure how to feel about this because all racial commentary with Caine is definitely accidental yet surprisedly fits well with the existentialism horror of the circus and his themes.

However I think it's obvious from EVERYTHING Gooseworx shouldn't be handing any racial themes (shout out to the asinine color blind TADC cast + her co-workers). Also the implication of a (possibly biracial) Black coded man essentially enslaved to be an entertainment service for a bunch of white people during the decades, where he was constantly othered and dehumanized until reaching of a breaking point, in which he was seen as the aggressor for lashing out until receiving a happy ending of still being stuck in servitude with the same racists who discriminated against him but this time "he'll listens" is.... no..

You know what this reminds me of? Hazbin Hotel.

Walk with me through the bullshit for a second.

So at the bottom we have Husk, a black man voiced by Keith David at that, who is enslaved to Alastor. Alastor is mixed race so he’s above Husk but is still enslaved by…Rosie the British white woman ?? Like 😭?? Do they know that the page was blank?? Alastor ain’t even voiced by a biracial black man at that so..😒

Granted Vivziepop could’ve avoided the latter half of this predicament had she kept Alastor as her original concept, which was a white man. But that still leaves her with the glaring issue of this white man practicing (terribly mind you) “creepy African voodoo” and still enslaving a black man and Asian woman. Again. The page was blank.

Do I think these were intentionally racist decisions? At least with TADC, I would say no. But intention isn’t the problem, it’s ignorance. A resigned ignorance. An ignorance to assume that anything and everything stems from white culture and a failure to take other cultures into consideration. I touched on this topic briefly in my SU post yesterday. Just white people gravitating towards imagery of enslavement in a way that doesn’t really belong to them(?).

“You can't claim enslavement imagery!!" I can actually. Especially if y'all keep wanting to do it in THAT way every single time.

I guess the bigots can't resist!

A bit detailed but still short answer: Gooseworx is one of the many white people who has a ton of deep rooted bigotry to unpack and also appropriate things in relation to other cultures because she as a white person doesn't question herself and the white culture she's in.

Okay so with the obvious out of the way first-

It is baffling to me that Caine doesn't have a Black voice actor despite his many Black-coded elements. Queenie being one of his creators, ties to the old 1920s aesthetic, the Jazz performance, his voice/personality performance being reminiscence of Black showmen, and his "too human to be AI, but to AI to be human" multi-racial coding.

I'm not sure how to feel about this because all racial commentary with Caine is definitely accidental yet surprisedly fits well with the existentialism horror of the circus and his themes.

However I think it's obvious from EVERYTHING Gooseworx shouldn't be handing any racial themes (shout out to the asinine color blind TADC cast + her co-workers). Also the implication of a (possibly biracial) Black coded man essentially enslaved to be an entertainment service for a bunch of white people during the decades, where he was constantly othered and dehumanized until reaching of a breaking point, in which he was seen as the aggressor for lashing out until receiving a happy ending of still being stuck in servitude with the same racists who discriminated against him but this time "he'll listens" is.... no..

You know what this reminds me of? Hazbin Hotel.

Walk with me through the bullshit for a second.

So at the bottom we have Husk, a black man voiced by Keith David at that, who is enslaved to Alastor. Alastor is mixed race so he’s above Husk but is still enslaved by…Rosie the British white woman ?? Like 😭?? Do they know that the page was blank?? Alastor ain’t even voiced by a biracial black man at that so..😒

Granted Vivziepop could’ve avoided the latter half of this predicament had she kept Alastor as her original concept, which was a white man. But that still leaves her with the glaring issue of this white man practicing (terribly mind you) “creepy African voodoo” and still enslaving a black man and Asian woman. Again. The page was blank.

Do I think these were intentionally racist decisions? At least with TADC, I would say no. But intention isn’t the problem, it’s ignorance. A resigned ignorance. An ignorance to assume that anything and everything stems from white culture and a failure to take other cultures into consideration. I touched on this topic briefly in my SU post yesterday. Just white people gravitating towards imagery of enslavement in a way that doesn’t really belong to them(?).

“You can't claim enslavement imagery!!" I can actually. Especially if y'all keep wanting to do it in THAT way every single time.

Like, "he's an AI, we can't gauge how he thinks" when it comes to understanding him, BUT "why doesn't he just get what we mean??" when they want something from him.

Caine is a sentient/sapient highly intelligent AI, but he still needs clear instructions on some things. His understanding of what "relaxing"/"normal"/"mature" is could be very different from how the humans perceive it. So I consider it unfair when they judge someone who's basically an alien for having problems with comprehending real world concepts. Especially when they don't even try to actually explain it to him in a way that he could understand.

Hell, I'm an autistic human and I struggle with the same thing! If you want me to do something, don't be vague about it. I can't do what you want me to do unless you give me details!

Sure, the issue with Caine is also about him not listening to the others, but up until episode 8 he was still willing to cooperate on some things. He created a separate adventure for Kinger in ep 4, he stopped making horror stuff after Pomni asked him to, he was fixing Gangle's mask without her saying anything, he created games for them (like tennis/badminton stuff), he made a cafe that seems to only be for the humans, etc.

Images have ALT text.

TACC Ribbonfloss is my endgame, and you better believe I'm going to make it work! I am determined.