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Okay here’s where the fictionkin crap goes. Yeah, to make this even more humiliating, it’s a ~kin memory comic~. You can reblog this without reading it. I don’t care. Or just treat it like spoilers for the rest of the comic.

I…kind of freaked out after Caine brought up the “You can’t remember your real name” thing, like oh fuck even this whimsical circus-themed nightmare is telling me that what they named me will always be my “real name”,

And realized that. I could remember the girl names. Because I never really thought of myself as them, never managed to apply them to me—and it’s only because of that cowardice that I was able to remember them. It’s only because I was too evil to deserve them. It’s only because none of them were my real name

But at the same time, like, fuck it. If I can’t call myself one of these names in a stupid hunger dream at the worst point of my life then when can I. It’s not like things could get worse. I’ll just take a bite outta someone and wake up and feel stupid and gross and empty again. Big deal

So I did actually try to say one of the girl names. For real. It was Jacqueline. Or Jackie. But I never even said them out loud before, so I kind of mumbled it and then did the, stupid hissing-through-teeth thing…and ended up as Jax. Because I flinched!

Human forgetting is nothing compared to cartoon forgetting. When cartoons forget things, it’s like they didn’t even happen! It doesn’t matter that the short ends with Bugs Bunny and the hunting dog endlessly falling off cliffs ’cause Bugs is right back for the next show (And so is the dog, eventually). It doesn’t matter that the Eds’ cul-de-sac is carried away by aliens ’cause it’s all forgotten in time for the movie. It doesn’t matter that Zim and Dib become bologna at the end of Bolognius Maximus ’cause they’re back to normal in seconds, in the next segment. It doesn’t matter that Lyman disappears from the Garfield comics ’cause no one speaks his name ever again (Just don’t look in John’s basement). It doesn’t matter if someone abstracts as long as everyone forgets about them. The circus is still a kinda crummy cartoon, so this won’t undo what you’ve done to them what’s happened to them, but it’ll stop ripping chunks out of you. It’ll stop mattering. So you enforce forgetting on yourself and others.

Jax is the one trying to be a cartoon. Trying doesn’t mean she’s good at it! She can’t stop all of her cringe emotional responses...but she will do anything to stop the Viewers from Viewing them. If there’s some obvious narrative focus, you get away from it and hide somewhere boring, somewhere the camera and the audience won’t see you. You’re still vulnerable to flashbacks, but you just have to keep it the kinda cartoon that doesn’t have flashbacks. The kinda cartoon that forgets. And you’d better make sure you don’t leave any hints, or reveal anything in your behavior patterns, or the damn fanbase will put the pieces together and figure you out anyway. They might even write [tumblr] posts about it! If you know the rules of the show, you can play by them, you can exploit them, you can hide in the places it won’t look for you.

But being unseen has its consequences. Abstraction only happens when people are offscreen, offstage, offpanel. They aren’t on an adventure, or having some dramatic ~abstracting moment~. They have to be alone, in their bedroom or something, not participating in the show, forgotten by the camera. There was no way Jax coulda abstracted in the beach episode, because the audience of The Digital Circus YouTube series was watching the beginning of her abstraction with her. She only abstracted for real when the camera was gone.

Abstraction is the logical end of being a cartoon. It’s the ultimate forgetting. You forget your boundaries, you forget your body and gender and self and the tortures enacted on it. You end / The Heart-ake, and the thouſand Naturall shocks / That Flesh is heyre to. It’s all the futures unhooked / from your chest and slipping / back into the lake like a fish too beautiful to keep. It’s the curtains closing. It’s the end of the movie. It’s wherever cartoon characters go when the show gets cancelled. It’s becoming lost media, misplaced or corrupted or ruined. It’s opting out of being a toon an actor an agent a person. It’s what happens when you decide you don’t wanna be in any more episodes.

...Of course, it isn’t just death. Death is an escape! Abstraction isn’t. You’re still in the circus. And you can’t reverse or undo or cross the same river twice even if ya regret crossing it, but stories can be brought back, retold, replayed, fanficced, deconstructed and reconstructed, sliced up and...