Tripp

*gets shot in the chest and fucking blown up*

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Sketch I made of what I think the prototype looked like pre-experimentation lololol

- I drew this over the official render for sizing

also my ideas and things

By @cl3lly

I feel that

theorising… i’ve already seen a lot of people say that jax in this scene intentionally pushes the red button to keep the gang in the circus forever, because he doesn’t want to go back to his real life and he’s willing to keep everybody else there with him to avoid it - which absolutely is a possibility. but i think there’s also something to be said for the possibility that he was aiming for the blue button.

jax hates the circus. for all his bullshit about not caring, about how it’s just a silly wacky cartoon world, we know he hates it. and in this episode, it’s only gotten worse for him, with an almost abstraction, and these constant flashes of something other, something that he can’t quite place and that are dark and creepy and unsettling and that he wants to stop. so i think there’s a real chance he was aiming for the blue button - not because he necessarily wants to leave, but because he wants whatever’s happening to him to stop, and leaving the circus is the only way to achieve that. he’s terrified, he’s in pain, he’s losing his grip on the world he’s in and the magic button to make it stop forever is right there. there’s a few shots that i think support this possibility, too:

for one, when jax is running to the console, the blue button is the one that stays in his line of sight the entire time. while this could just be coincidence because of the side of the room he’s on, i do find it interesting that he doesn’t seem to either look behind pomni at the red button, or shove her out of the way like he does to zooble.

second, after he’s pressed the button, his eyes kind of… flick between the two of them. which yes, is likely partially out of shock he pressed either of them at all, but i do think it’s also because the one he pressed is not the one he was intending to.

and third, the big one: the immediate anger at caine for messing with their minds. the first part alone, “you got in my head,” i originally read as jax being angry that, despite all his cynicism, caine gave him the first glimmer of hope he’s had in ages. but with the second part, the absolute fury of “you can mess with our minds too, can’t you?” makes me think of caine being a puppeteer rather than a manipulator. it’s not just that he messed with jax’s emotions, it’s that he shifted his brain (and his hand) to picking the opposite choice - not the one jax wants, but the choice that caine wants - for the gang to stay with him, for the gang to want to stay with him. the ending where a member of the team likes their life with him, because even if it’s by force, caine can lie to himself that jax chose it. it doesn’t matter to caine how the stay button gets pressed, only that it does.

- Despite what he's done and said, they still care about Jax in particular Zooble and Pomni, trying to include him in things

- Abstraction seems blissful not painful

- Abstraction isn't based on emotion, instead being a result of the number of 'modifiers' that Caine adds to a human

- Everyone has at least one modifier (that makes them forget their name) and Jax is in danger because of the recent increase in 'modifiers' that Caine added (making him vegan, rewinding his memories so Caine didn't have to repeat himself, possibly even the dress thing) not because of emotions as stated

- Jax can in fact genuinely express himself and isn't as chill as he acted (but we knew that) he also seems to be afraid of returning back to the real world

- He was close to both Ribbit and Kaufmo and misses them both equally

- Zooble and Gangle are so gay

- Jax knows what vore is, Caine does not

What we don't know:

- If there's an exact number of 'modifiers' that cause abstraction or if it depends

- WTF was 'added' to Kaufmo, Ribbit and Queenie (and who knows how many else) which caused abstraction

- Did Ribbit and Kaufmo abstract in a short frame of time, meaning that Jaxs seemingly nonchalant attitude to Kaufmos abstraction was because he was still recovering from Ribbits and didn't want to go through the same thing he did with her?

- Jax mentioned that people become awful before they abstract, is that because the 'modifiers' literally change who they are?