TADC Theories

It also seems weird that the main cast kind of doesn’t check on anyone or wondered why each character who abstracted were isolating in the first place but at the end of the day Jax was blamed for every abstraction. Including his own even with Pomni’s inaction. The main cast learns nothing from the other abstractions and it really annoyed me. They aren’t fully to blame but still feels like they just kinda let stuff happen, get sad a bit, and move on as if nothing happened at all. They react almost as a unit instead of individuals. Not sure if I worded this well but I tried.

I get what you're saying, anon. You worded everything fine.

That's a good point! Kaufmo not being funny was a gag from episode 1, but it was portrayed as more of a joke in episode 9 than a serious red flag leading up to his abstraction. In Jax's flashback, there wasn't really any indication that Kaufmo was a jokester? Of course, it's possible that Jax perceived Kaufmo differently because he was his second closest friend in the circus.

I wish this series touched on the toxic positivity and the general avoidance of the circus members. Nobody talks about the abstracted people ever once they abstract. Nobody seems to talk about their real world selves except in episode 5.

I hate that Jax was the one that abstracted for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is that the people in circus had every right to not pursue him when he walked away.

It seems like letting people that are about to end themselves self isolate to death is a normal thing in the circus. It's totally understandable that they did that with Jax, but it seems like they would (and have) done it with everyone.

That was one of the many problems I had with the finale.

Episode 6: Jax thinks that everyone is just a bunch of cartoon characters. This is why he tortures humans and NPCs alike. He doesn't view them as people.

Episode 8: After Kinger reveals the C&A backstory: "Oh my god...this is real."

Episode 9: Everyone learns that they're brain scans. Jax rightfully crashes out. Frankly, he had the most realistic reaction.

The problem is in episode 8, his viewpoint slowly changed to acknowledge that he was a terrible person that hurt real people. In episode 9, it was confirmed that he was actually right and that he wasn't a "real" person.

Those are two very conflicting viewpoints that deserved their own screen time.

Jax's flashbacks in episode 9 combined with the abstraction eyes between each scene led to me believe that those things led to his abstraction. Notice how none of them included NPCs. That means Jax at least thinks the humans in the circus are different from NPCs, and he has no remorse over hurting the NPCs, but he does deeply regret hurting the humans.

You can read them as platonic or romantic. It's ok if you didn't read it the same way as me since it was meant to be subtle.

I think the part where they stared at each other for a little bit was romantic, and Jax blushed when Ribbit put the bow on her.

The blush

I wish they gave us a clear answer why she thought that way. There are lots of logical explanations on why Pomni didn't pursue Jax in that moment, but since she does have a history of trying to save him, I think it would have been more beneficial if they told us what she was thinking.

I actually wrote about this in this post!

Jax's interaction with Pomni was the ultimate display that he was ready to change. Jax acknowledged that she was a bad person, that she hurt people and isolated the people who only chose to love her, and most importantly, she was denying her own identity as a trans person.

On top of everything you said here, Jax hugged Pomni! IMO Goose was trying to set up a contrast between episode 6 and episode 9, as well as Jax's backstory.

Jax came out to his mom, she verbally abused him, hugged him, and then he pushed her and ran away.

In episode 6, Pomni hugged Jax and Jax pushed her away. Something that hinted that Jax WAS going to do better this time is the fact that Jax didn't run away this time. I like to interpret that as his mind betraying himself. He desperately wanted to be close to Pomni while pushing her away.

We see everything come full circle when Jax chose to hug Pomni back after he came out to her about EVERYTHING. When he came out to his mom, he ended up physically pushing her away. When he came out to Ribbit, he emotionally pushed her away. He finally stopped pushing...and then he died?

I understand that the "Isn't she lovely" sequence is trying to tell us that Jax finally accepted that she was trans and that she was being reborn as a girl, but how can you be reborn if you're...uh...dead?

I have a lot of issues on how suicide is handled in the show but that's another conversation.

I know that abstraction not being healed is supposed to be more impactful but I think that's undermined by the fact that Caine came back.

So much of this episode tries to tell us that humans and NPCs are the same in the circus, but I think the choice to bring back Caine really messes with that narrative.

I also want to remind everyone that NPCs have "died" and come back before. Yes, there's obviously Gumigoo, but there's also the Gloink Queen, Orbsman, Ming, Disappearing Guy, etc.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I can acknowledge that Goose wrote Jax as a cautionary tale about accepting yourself. I can acknowledge that Jax was a representation of how her life could have been.

I acknowledge it, see what she was trying to do, and still think the writing for the final episode was bad.

I understand that Goose was not trying to send this message, but when I watched the finale, I thought "So it was better for everyone that Jax offed himself, right?"

We spent so much of the series wondering if Jax would be reformed. He was ON THE RIGHT PATH until the final episode. I mean this genuinely. He was hanging out with the group more and actually helping everyone with the adventures rather than constantly antagonizing them all.

Episode 9 felt like it undid a lot of that progress (other than Jax coming out to Pomni) and his whole arc in that episode felt like Goose's personal vent about the traumas she's endured. That would have been fine if it wasn't so... obvious? Preferential? Tragic?

We spent all this time with Jax and her ending felt unresolved. That's my main beef with how the finale went down.

It has to be "His acting is phenomenal. It's hard to believe he's vegan."

A close second is "Have I ever told you it's my dream to get eaten by you."

I think Goose had multiple possible endings planned and decided to go with the simplest ending to execute. There was still a bit of foreshadowing.

Caine ate Bubble.

Caine is god, and he glitched and turned cruel. I think it's similar to the cellar scene in episode 1 as well as Caine's crashout in episode 8

So that was foreshadowed.

I suspect that this means that Pomni and Jax were the closest to abstraction. The bowling bowl belonged to Ribbit, then Kaufmo, then Jax, and now probably Pomni. Kinger rejected the ball, so he didn't end up abstracting.

No idea what's up with the cake, but I think it's a reference to "The cake is a lie." I'll skip the meme history and just say that it's implying that there's no way out of the circus.

Jax's abstraction, obviously.

That's... a really good question. I looked back over episode 9 and I found this

The final sequence where he's wearing the bucket is during the human reveal scene.

The next scene he appears in is this one

Maybe the hat provides enough shade to make him sane?

The next is in the aquarium, where it's nice and dark. I don't have a problem with this.

The final 3d shot of him is without the bucket, so maybe he took it off of his own volition? I really have no idea if he's cured or not.

Combing through the animated scenes, it actually looks like Kinger either wears a hat most of the time or the adventures take place in the dark :O

Caine said that he was obsesses with the "macroverse" aka the real world during episode 7. He yearns to know more about the world that the humans came from

The internet contains all of that knowledge and more.

I made several posts about how Jax and Caine are very similar characters. They both torture the people around them because they're insecure of their perceived lack of power. They both end up dying as a consequence of their cruelty.

The difference between the two is that Caine chose to acknowledge his wrongs and try to make amends right away. In the face of everything Caine ever wanted, the ability to access the real world, he chose to stay in the circus and use the internet to "come clean" about the humans' identities and apologize.

Jax kept running until he hid a dead end. He's literally a monster of his own making.

Meanwhile, Caine fixed things and was given a second chance at life because of it.

YES! That was my main problem with Jax's backstory. Quite frankly Jax is the only person that demonstrates depth. Nobody else in this series does bad things except him.

I was really hoping it was something like "Jax tried to save Ribbit but she rejected his help, which led to both of them isolating." It was mentioned that people become unpleasant to be around when they're close to abstraction but...they aren't. Just Jax. It's always ONLY Jax.

When I saw the backstory, I could only think "Why was this pushed to the last episode? It doesn't tell us anything new about Jax."

We knew he was bullied. We knew he was an avoidant jerk. Hell, plenty of people figured he was trans. We didn't need a huge chunk of the precious finale to tell us these things.

IMO it's symbolism for his transness AND his love of Pomni.

For transness: Jax talked about his ears and tail being the pinnacle of masculinity...and then he had no tail. Presumably, the tail went away after Ribbit abstracted. Ribbit was the only person that found out Jax was trans, as far as he knew. He violently pushed himself back into the closet and pulled away from Ribbit, thus the tail disapeared.

For love: Jax had his tail with Ribbit. It's no secret that they had a romantically charged relationship. Ribbit was probably the first person that knew him so intimately outside of his family. The tail leaving him was a symbol of heartbreak and a symbol of him growing colder and more cruel.

The joke about his tail being a symbol of masculinity wasn't just about being trans; it was also him being able to make fun of his own masculinity to Pomni. We know Jax is DEEPLY insecure about his gender, so this is HUGE.

Pomni reminded him that he didn't have his tail. She made him acknowledge the person he became, essentially.

Ok, so literally what happened? We don't know. We have no idea how Jax lost his tail. Hell, even he was confused by it.

I think it was the mom thing.

It's a lot easier to accept that your mom was being unreasonable and manipulative when you're not distracted by "did I kill her?"

Leeroy was able to grasp that his mother's behavior was wrong and move on from what she said, whereas Jax internalized it.

No worries! I leave anon on for a reason.

Yeah, my best guess is that Leeroy found out that their mom actually did not die and that she was manipulating him to feel bad.

I guess my greater question is why Goose wrote our Jax as irredeemable and Leeroy as redeemable. It's more of a narrative question. Why did he never truly settle in the circus but was able to find a home and family IRL? What message is Goose trying to portray? Was Jax doomed from the moment that she entered the circus? Or was she just unlucky with the course of events?

It makes the message feel like that the circus was so unbelievably stressful for Jax and her mother's fate was constantly looming over her, she chose to never adopted a new family.

I see the paths as:

1.) Jax enters the circus-> Jax never finds out about her mom -> Because she never gets closure on her mom, she never accepts her identity-> She brings everyone down with her an ends up ending her own life

2.) Leeroy stays Leeroy->She finds out that her mom survived->she allowed herself to find a home with a friend-> She accepted her transness and is happier for it.

I guess my question/criticism is this: why make the choice that Jax's entire life trajectory is based on whether he finds out that his mom survived? What message is Goose trying to send? Was it really just "Jax got unlucky with entering the circus and she was always going to self destruct because she never found out about her mom."

I wish we got an explanation why and how why Leeroy's life went in a different direction than our Jax.

My assumption is that our Jax never accepted his queerness and Leeroy did, which is why he hangs out at an LGBT bar regularly.

But why? Why did our Jax never accept herself as a woman? And why did Leeroy?

The fact that Goose hasn't ever posted any drawings of the cast as humans makes me suspect that she probably wasn't thinking too hard about what they looked like prior to the last episode. I think she said in a post somewhere on social media that she picked the actors based on vibes.

Goose may be trans, but she does have some blind spots as a white woman when it comes to some choices on the show. I'm sure there were plenty indie VAs that were talented enough to voice the POC characters and there are definitely trans people that could have played Jax's part both in live action and as VAs.

They made some odd cinematic choices in the last episode, like Pomni's voiceover, Pomni breaking the 4th wall, Pomni seeing Jax's memories in first person, and then it changed back to third person during that conversation with Ribbit for a little bit, then back to first person.