#poms stuff

The human characters we know exist in an unfamiliar, cartoonish form that they no longer have full control over; not to mention that they've been struggling psychologically before the circus and continue to within it. They’re stuck in a cycle of hopelessness, loneliness, disgust, and vitriol because they’ve been trapped in the circus for so long. Ultimately, this is a doom spiral, one that they can only see ends in their death of self, or abstraction.

Now, we also know that when the show begins — the beginning of the story that we the audience are presented with — a new circus member is introduced who disrupts this cycle. Unlike the rest of the still cognizant cast, Pomni actively holds onto and fights for her humanity, and fights for the humanity of the other cast members. She does this by calling out their negative coping mechanisms within the circus.

For example, we know Ragatha is overly positive and trying to solve everyone’s problems at her own expense and the perceptions of others. Pomni forces her to acknowledge that expressing negative emotions is part of coping with her need to appease others in the circus, especially when so few of them coexist.

There's a moment with Gangle in which Pomni gives her grace to breathe without the burden of expectations from others, and she's left to find out who she is underneath the mask.

And once she pries herself under Jax's skin, showing him that he still does care about the wellbeing of others around him despite all his efforts to push them away, we see that he cracks under that pressure.

What happens when structure is broken? When the endless web of code is corrupted or derailed? A new opening exists for something to happen.

Stay with me – I'm about to jump around the timeline a bit.

The beginning of episode 6 reveals that the mannequins are more than just NPCs. We know from The Favorite Character Awards segment that there is some oversight on how Caine runs the circus. As of now, there are no indications that he is manipulating the mannequins to behave outside of his parameters, and the severity of his tone during the committee introduction suggests they exist as something more. It's almost as though the committee is always watching. Bubble is even seen filming cast interactions for said committee.

Pomni's role revealing the existence of a committee is crucial. She's poised as the cycle-breaker, the instigator, and I would argue the catalyst of events that dismantles the way the circus currently exists.

With her disrupting the cycle that the circus and Caine regulate, it causes the environment to take notice. Her code behaves differently than the others now and before her. Perhaps, it causes the skips in codelines and fractures in the foundation.

Openings that allow something more aware, locked away to seep in.

Enter the ghost.

I have theorized before that Ribbit plays a more conscious role in the circus than just being a ghost of Jax and Ragatha's past. That they may have known more than they let on, and keeping it bottled up is what triggered their abstraction to begin with. For the sake of the ghost theory, we will utilize the Frogni concept to connect the dots.

If Frog Pomni, or Frogni from hereon out, is still somewhat related in character to our current jester Pomni, then we can assume that Ribbit may have had a similar character and disruptive streak as she does. That perhaps, in their search for reasoning in the circus, Ribbit discovered how to influence the code in a way that broke their psyche. As proven by Jax and Ragatha during the gun fights, their minds have more impact on how effective the code is in any given scenario. Realizing that, Ribbit may have tested the limits of code influencing, up until their abstraction. (You can read more about this in my Ribbit is Frogni is Pomni theory.)

Something else we know is that abstracted characters are, in fact, capable cognizant moments in darkness. An abstracted Queenie was able to recognize Kinger once more before being hidden away. Who's to say what else an abstraction in the darkness is capable of? The only reason no one knows is because Caine needs to hide his own mistakes in order to keep the circus running. (More on tragic Caine at another time.)

So if a character who made influential discoveries on the code that abstracted is thrust into a forever darkness, and the same goes for all the characters, what are they capable of? What can they discover while hidden away from the all-seeing eyes of god?

And what if a skip in god's code creates an opening to speak to the mind of another character's code?

That's exactly who I think Pomni is, and how I think Ribbit will come to "haunt" her. Because Ribbit's physical form no longer exists, but a new connection is established through messed up lines of code.