The Ponk

"Hi Zooble!!" The most DARLING Gangle in the entire world.

The Chinese Room! I had to have this explained to me. I totally didn't get it at first, but luckily I have a programmer friend in a server I'm in who was like "WHOA COOL" I guess it also explains why Kinger thinks it's funny.

CUTE COSTUMES FOR EVERYONE

Okay listen the sun in this is accurate to the real life sun. You know I'm right.

These fish are so fucking ugly. I hate them. They're so like old video games though, like they're a good reference.

Zooble actually reaching out to Jax is nice. I like that they took the time to. Even though they did it by dumping a bucket of water over his head...it's pretty harmless.

THE SHRIMP NPC! I love the shrimp NPC. I hope nothing bad happens to the-

I forgot that Jax's break comes so early in the episode. I really like the sound here. The shuffling of his feets, the bedcovers, and the low, ominous rumblies. He has nine polaroids on his wall. I wonder what all the others are of. All we get to see is this one. Kaufmo, Ribbit, and him, having hot chocolates in the cafe.

Again. I love these rumblies. They get much louder once he looks at the photo. And his eyes are SO BIG. He is definitely not here.

Ok, I'm gonna let this scene play without stopping and then replay it and make some notes because I've been dying to see this scene again.

Whoooooof. Okay. So. I noticed one big thing and a couple little things I wanted to get down. First of all, when the void in the wall appears? Jax's breathing picks up. He's laying there on the bed staring at the void and his chest is going CRAZY. Genuinely it makes me emotional.

He looks at the wall. Eyes are HUGE. Void opens up. Eyes are PINPRICKS and he's scared. He's breathing heavily. That poor bunny.

The sounds. The way the humming changes from the camera looking at Jax's face to the void in the wall is so fucking unsettling and cool. It reminds me of the Backrooms videos, or some of the old VHS/analog horror things.

And then the wibbling and slapping and dripping and wet sounds that Ribbit's arms maaaaaake. EWWWW.

And then there he goes. Off into Abstraction land. Which reminds mme of like..the old visualizers on music programs? Or some old screensavers. Lots of colors. People also have already brought up how happy he looks, too. How peaceful it seems for him. Floating off into the stream of colors and warm light. Wheeee.

And then the doorbell wakes him up, his eyes flashing colors, panting, and his heart going NUTS. God. What the fuck.

Bleh. Okay, hello Abel. Fucker.

The big tip-off here I guess should have been that they didn't involve Kinger. If he'd tried to involve Kinger, then everything would have been spoiled right away, wouldn't it? I was so on the fence when I watched this the first time, because I was HOPING they'd be able to find a way out. I WANT that for them. But it really is too good to be true, ain't it? I agree with people that they should have asked him to curse. It's the, like, surefire way to make sure he's a human.

Ooh, yep, like I wrote before, all these keys are pretty realistic looking! They're all metal, even though they have funky shapes. :P Just a little thing.

Yep OK I said the Kinger thing too early. That's the biggest red flag for sure.

OKAY. OKAY. Listen. I want to know exactly how much of this speech that Abel has is real and how much is fake. How much did Caine have to make up and how much was true? Because, like...the thing about Caine specifically working to keep their minds active sounds SO plausible. But NOT the bit about them being hooked up to machines because they stumbled on things C&A were doing. They're all so different, I don't think any of them were C&A employees. So could he have been, like...cherry-picking what to tell them? Does Caine even KNOW any of this stuff? Is he just bullshitting ALL of it?

Red flag number two, as much as I hate it. Emphasizing that Caine is just as much a prisoner as the rest of them, and being very sad that he won't be able to leave with them. Ugh. I hate it because I love Caine but you gotta face facts, here. I'm of the belief that Caine might be just as much a prisoner, mainly because of the opening sequence of episode 8. But...in the end, he's a computer program.

It is SO complicated in my head because I fucking LOVE Caine as a character, and I GENUINELY feel sorry for him. He never asked to be made. He never asked to be created THIS WAY. All he was doing was what he was told he was supposed to do, what his programming says he is supposed to be doing, what he was TOLD to do. And no matter what he does, he does it wrong. He can't get it right. He was the flawed and imperfect first try.

But on the other hand, as wifebat CONSTANTLY reminds me- he is not a human. He never was. He's a computer program. He doesn't have feelings. And he was doing genuinely horrid things to the humans in the circus. For years.

GOD. IT SUCKS!

We know now that Caine has been playing the very very long game with this one, and that Jax is right. But in the moment when this came out? When people had been seeing the weird blank mannequin guy in the background of other episodes?? It was totally mindboggling. I don't think he's in every episode but he's in a lot of them, hidden in the background barely visible. It's Bill in Gravity Falls all over again.

Freaking. Caine doesn't know when to shut up. He doesn't listen. If he were human it would be so infuriating. It's infuriating anyway, but in a different way because he's a fucking computer program. You ask the opinion of the humans and then NEVER LISTEN TO ANYTHING THEY SAY OR TAKE ANY OF THEIR ADVICE.

Caine blue-screening is hysterical. I feel like that sometimes, ngl.

"That's a weird thing to say and want."

There's more of Caine's photos of the "Macro-verse". The ones on the table are very clearly the office that Pomni found in the pilot. Or one very similar.

Caine just want to be a human. He just wants to know what it's like to be like us. Unfortunately he can't. He just plain can't. It's impossible. And that SUCKS. For everyone.

"I really am trying my best to make you guys happy." I have NO DOUBT IN MY MIND that this is true. HE THINKS he's doing his best. HE THINKS he's doing the right thing. But he's falling short, and he always will fall short because he's an AI.

Kinger not only waving different at Gangle than he does to Zooble but ALSO saying "Hi Gangle" when he's looking at Zooble and "Hi Zooble" when he's looking at Gangle is priceless and precious and Kinger I love you I hope nothing bad ever happens to you ever.

That's so telling. "What's the rush?? What, you got someone waiting for you on the outside?" "...Don't you?" "....Y-Yeah." Mhm.

Man, I wish we could have known what Kinger was gonna say to Pomni before he got fucking flashbanged by coming out of his fort. Also I think people were right, he already had an administrator pass tucked into the pillows in there.

Ohhh Jax wants to believe Pomni so bad. "Everything's gonna be okay." The way he looks at her. Ugh. My heart.

Red flag three. "MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE." Jfc way to be cryptic and suspicious all in one go.

I love Caine's office. It's beautiful. With all the orbs that hold the previous adventures? And the neat staircase and the cool bendy windows? It's awesome.

There's our biggest clue about Ribbit, Jaufmo, and Jax. Jax staring at a snowy orb, and a muffled, almost unintelligible...argument? Conversation? I know people have attempted to decode what it says. I can't do it just listening to it straight, it's way too muffled. But you can definitely hear Jax yelling, and you can hear another voice, which turns out to be Ribbit if you read the credits, yelling back. I looked it up real quick. There's something about "best friends" from Ribbit, maybe "both best friends!", Jax yelling "I don't care about that!" and then "You're lying!" from Ribbit and "I'm not!" from Jax, right before he says "I'm...great" in reply to Pomni. Possibly also Ragatha telling Ribbit to chill? Wild.

Jax refusing to hold everybody's hands makes me so sad. Just let yourself be loved, bunny boy.

"It always was real. Everything we've done. Everything we've felt. Everything we are. It'll never leave us, and I wouldn't have it any other way." Zooble. Gangle. I love you both. I really do. You're prefect for each other.

Ohhh, Jax is panicking. He's already beginning to lose it. I bet he was already starting to panic even before they went into the office. But now he's breathing hard and, like...really getting there.

The red button will close the console, and keep all players inside the circus.

The blue button will end the game and disconnect all players.

Wow.

I genuinely am proud of Pomni for asking to take a second to talk. "What if there's something we don't know?" You're RIGHT. Like. What if this was worse, and the "wrong" choice would KILL them all or something. Granted, she's the only one who had "Abel" look at her and ominously go "Make The Right Choice", so...it makes sense that everyone else is like "?!"

Jax is panicking.

Jax is...really panicking.

Jax is seeing flashes of "Real Life" images. A neighborhood twice and a back road of some kind.

Jax is...not okay.

He's crazy panting as he runs forward and just SLAMS his hand on the red button. Whoof. Oh my god.

The panic goes away from his eyes and he catches his breath as soon as he realizes what he did.

"What did you just do?!" Everyone looks so betrayed. UGH.

COOOOONGRATULATIONS MY LITTLE CATTYWOMPUS CUCUMBERS!!!! Jax was right. It was a trick. An Adventure.

He was right, and it was the worst time to be right. So Ragatha asks about the pods, and Caine says it was a fabrication, made by his impeccable world-building skills. My question still stands though, the pods was obviously made up but was all of is made up? Was some bits of it true, did he draw from "real life"?

Jax starts to laugh. Losing his absolute shit.

The other button would have taken them to Shrimp Town. Thank you...Bubble. Thanks.

So here goes Jax. Realizing that Caine can, in fact, mess with their minds. The stupid sauce messed with Ragatha. He was able to turn Jax vegan for almost an entire episode. "Who knows what else?"

Caine looks nervous when Pomni brings up them not knowing their names.

"I may have the ability to add temporary modifiers to make adventures more interesting, but that's it! If I did anything more...trust me. It would not end well."

Kinger comes in. Sounding Together. And he's staring into a bright white screen. An incredibly bright room. "Scratch. The first abstraction." (And we know NOW who Scratch is, too)

UGH GOD WHAT. My BRAIN. I feel like we have almost all the pieces but I don't know how they go together cause there's no picture on the box! xD

"STAY FRAGNANT! HAVE A GOOD LIGHT! FRAGRANT! NIGHT! BYE!"

WHoooooooooo.

Okay small thing before I'm done. Something I genuinely love, knowing the episode that comes next, is that...nobody seems to have any hard feelings against Jax for pushing the red button. Like. That's not a thing. I definitely thought there was going to be more pushback against Jax for pushing that button but there really wasn't. I think it became more of a..."Okay now we know we have to be a team together" thing. There's no more room for fracturing, we have to stick together because we're human, that's the only way we're going to survive this" type thing.

"Jax may be an asshole but he's our asshole".

I cannot believe I'm seeing the TADC finale tomorrow. I'm so nervous. I really hope at least some of these questions get answered, but I'm genuinely not going to be upset if only a couple things are and the rest is left up in the air. That's what's so fantastic about a story like this, is it pushes you to think and do the puzzle. Y'know?

I'm really glad I decided to watch this show. And I'm so fuckdamn excited and scared for this finale.