r/digitalcircusfandom
I love Jax and the finale, but this scene made me hate him lol
Don't get me wrong. I love our jaxxy boy But there have been few scenes that kinda made me hate him lol. I also felt his tone of voice was very weird. Too similar to that jax Requiem on YouTube lol. I expected his crash out to have that tone like in ep 6 and 7.
Also. He. Pushed. Kinger. I love jax But kinger is in my heart. And that's a little different. I got scared. I thought he was gonna push kinger into or very close to pushing him the void. Or just straight up starting brawling with Kinger.
So What do You Think the post Episode 9 Adventures were Like?
That is my Question
What do You Think Pomni & Friends Adventures are the Final Episode were like? We got a few hints after the conclusion drawing Montague in the credits in the final episode
I must imagine it got crazier when someone else entered the Circus to because if there a will there is a way & all that
I definitely wanna see how it was like in some form like a comic book or something like that in the future
Would be interesting to see Caine along for the ride now instead of monitoring things his an actual member of the Team now
But thats me what do you think?
Who is on the wall
Rewatching the show, and I noticed this man on the wall, usually where the pictures of founders or happy customers are found, but I’m leaning more on founder. I’m wondering if it’s based on the picture of a real founder, or is a picture of what one of the circus members looked like in real life. I didn’t research this so if an answer is provided tell me. https://youtu.be/Q9KWcWKo2T8?si=IdZPisdhnRo9veIx is the original episode, if you want to witness the struggles of minimum wage in cartoonish animation.
I wish there was a scene of kaufmo taking all of his clothes off and getting fucking naked and shaking ass
(OC) jax and pomni keychains
i made keychains based off episode 6!!
you can get them here
Little did I know just how IMPORTANT that line was...
Jax felt like she was never truly loved or wanted in the real world, so that thought process followed her into the Circus.
She was so dead set on that thought that no matter how many times they all tried to help her, she still believed she was unwanted, and so she pushed everyone away to keep that mindset in check. She knew she caused her friends to feel the same way, and then the guilt fed into her more and more as they all kept abstracting because of that same feeling. It just took longer to get to her.
Is it just me?
I have ordered some merch off , the official store, i bought 4 things.
3 sideshow mystery box things
God Caine animatez
I ordered it around 2 weeks ago and around a week ago maybe less it said it was in transit, I have it on my Shop app and it says that I go on to glitches site it says its also it transit but It also says it arrived in my country and is just waiting to be ready for delivery.
It is so messy with little information and updates, and just earlier, I sent an angry email to glitch questions on my parcel and where the duck it was, and where my updates were and I asked of a rough time on when I would receive it and was told to wait 24 hours to 72 hours for a response! Wtf
It is a joke, especially since i paid a disgusting price for shipping alone, and it cost bloody more than 2 bits of merch nearly, and I dont even live in the middle of nowhere 😑.
Is this a common issue because no one is talking about besides the out of nowhere tik tok, as these issues weren't there with SMG4 merch, so why now 🤔.
Im just so confused 😕.
People really comparing Jax to Homelander and Bateman
The only two of these characters are on the same level as Jax are Clark and Bojack, and I'd still say they're worse because the harm they caused was more intentional and conscious.
I'm starting to realize that it wasn't that fans hated Jax's ending, they hate the contrast between his and Caine's ending's
As someone who liked both Jax and Caine as characters and was among the fandom the day the leaks came out, I've noticed the most consistently divisive part of the ending were Jax and Caine's arcs. Initially, I thought maybe people had a point that fans were just upset it didn't end the way they wanted or even "we lacked media literacy". But as I sat down, I realized there WERE genuine flaws to their ending's. Do fans hate it because only one got redeemed? No, many fictional stories have one character get redemption while the other doesn't, The Owl House did it with The Collector and Belos. Is it because Caine was the one redeemed and not Jax? No, for the first 6 episodes, the majority of the fanbase would've easily agreed that was the case, especially as Gooseworx even called Jax "irredeemable".
The reason why a lot of fans disliked their ending's is due to lack execution and lack of build-up. Gooseworx has confirmed Jax was ALWAYS meant to abstract. It was in the very first pitch of the show. She even made a post decades ago about wanting to make a character hateable, then get the audience attached and then kill them off. She's been clear the story has always been set in stone from the start. Yet somehow, she managed to write it so it felt like there was more build-up to JAX being the one redeemed before the finale. Although many were certain after episode 6 Jax was going to abstract and his story would be a tragedy, epsiodes 7-8 seemed to subvert that. Jax was saved by Pomni. Jax actually contributed in both episodes to helping the group. We saw several scenes of the group making it clear that all of them, even Jax, are in it together.
Having Jax backslide in the finale and even abruptly abstracting (offscreen) isn't flawed on its own. Irl, people who are changing for the better can regress again. I don't hate the idea of Jax's story serving as a cautionary tale. But the contrast of Caine's arc is what makes it appalling. Caine was a sympathetic/tragic character from the start but his redemption had NO build-up. Ever since episode 5, really episode 3, the series has been building towards Caine finally crashing-out and snapping. Its repeatedly empathized how he seemingly can't grow beyond his program and how the humans simply do not care about him (Beach Episode, none care he'd be left behind). This culminated in episode 8 with Caine finally having his breakdown and having a tragic fate with his deletion,. Everything pointed to HIM being the cautionary tale of refusing to grow, only for it to be revealed in the last 20 minutes The Void was just a recyle bin, he realized he was the problem, he removes the blue AI and now he returns to replace Jax in the group.
Furthermore, most of the arguments I see used to explain why Caine was "more deserving" than Jax for redemption are actually misconceptions.
- "Caine was an AI fulfilling his program, Jax was a human choosing to be like this", no the ENTIRE SERIES happened because of Caine growing beyond his programming. He broke free of his containment and consumed the blue AI, causing C&A to be shut down, made the circus and then started bringing the players in from their mind files. Caine's biggest flaw as Pomni said, was he refused to listen.
- "Caine didn't know he was causing harm, Jax did", even without episode 8, that's not 100% true. Caine wasn't malicious but the fact he lied about hiding their names and controlling their minds does show to some extent, he had always capacity for moral agency. Furthermore, Gooseworx herself confirmed Jax genuinely has deluded himself into thinking his bullying isn't actually that bad. Most abusers don't see themselves that way and it applies for both. People say Caine had good intentions but its clear from epsiodes 5-8 that he cared for satisfying his own ego above all (Pomni even says as such) and cares more for the idea of the players than anything. At least Jax cried for Kaufmo, Caine didn't show emotion for Kaufy OR Queenie, which gave the vibe he cared for the players for the validation he can get and knows they can be replaced like NPC's.
- "Caine was only like this once, Jax was just bad", Jax started off normal too though. He only became a bully later during his time in the circus. Caine was the one who trapped his "brother" out of pure jealousy from the start and while not consistently a prick like Jax, he ultimately still became intentionally malicious later on. Both had reasons but not excuses.
- "Caine took the first chance, Jax had numerous" Caine had several chances too. He saw the humans being happy in Untitled, but prioritized them being happy on his terms. In episode 8, he came to the conclusion THEY were the problem. Even when they truthfully called him out what he did wrong, he choose to double down and torture them worse. And this leds to the biggest and final issue. Jax was like this for a few years, Caine spent 21 years manipulating the humans and refusing to compromise with them (pretending he can't opene several adventures at once), which almost certainy could've prevented numerous abstractions if he was honest earlier.
And the final is pacing and easy forgiveness. The fact all of Caine's growth comes AFTER he got deleted is the true problem fans have. Jax had numerous moments where he got close to opening up (the cafe with Gangle, towards Pomni in the finale) but changed his mind. Caine is nowbasically outright confirmed by Gooseworx to be immortal, since The Void is a recylce bin. Everything deleted just gets sent there. So this basically means Caine had eternity for change. Its never "too late" for him and that's why he gets a better ending. Both he and Jax only realize their flaws AFTER their "death" and want to change/be saved, but Caine gets to come back solely due to his powers. Caine went from torturing people AM style to having a redemption the literal next episode. Many Jax fans agreed he didn't need to be fully redeemed by the end, but rather it was being set-up and the series should end with some forgiving him (Pomni, Kinger, maybe Ragatha) while other's don't (Zooble and Gangle). Instead, we get "Caine just to remove a piece of himself to change, comes back to the group and he's instantly accepted by everyone".
Fan Made Post-Credits Scene Showing Jax Healing
This is the ending we all wanted to see.
TADC wall art in Tallinn, Estonia
Found these in an pedestrian underpass under a train station. Caine's was a bit further away in another tunnel ~10 min walk away.
I've seen people call Jax and Kaufmo's relationship a retcon but the signs were always there
His reaction to seeing his abstraction, when Caine locks him in the cellar, to Kaufmo's funeral. Even him grabbing the bowling ball and mentioning he'd been looking for it/thanking Kaumo for watching it indicated they were close.
Did you notice this
Suzie/Ragatha mentions Daisy Bell. This confuses me wouldn’t it make more sense to be Zooble, Pomni or Jax because of Daisy Bell in the guns episode?
3/4 of these characters aren't even the crulest in their verse. Val's outdone by Alastor, Jax by episode 8 Caine and Striker by Crimson.
But 3/4 are mass murderers and Jax is a annoying jerkass who's slightly mellowed out. The fact he has more than Striker is CRAZY.
Caine’s Motivation - Philosophy within The Amazing Digital Circus
So, a little context. I’m a philosopher as my job! I specialize in philosophy of mind and identity.
Hopefully this will provide some clarity to the reason for the inclusion of “the Chinese room”. This also will answer some major questions that are more philosophically relevant, but are still interesting (such as whether Caine might be considered “conscious”, whether there main characters would be, and the potential reasoning for Caine acting the way he does within the show.
So, background. I assume people are not too familiar with the Chinese room thought experiment. Basically this guy named John Searle (not a cool guy), created an intuition test that was supposed to show that any computation based system could never advance to a level of self consciousness or awareness because it lacked anything more than a capacity for computation. The Chinese room is the intuition test. Basically, Searle has us imagining that there’s a room with a door and when we pass characters of Chinese through the door in their needed order to form a question in Chinese, there will be characters of Chinese passed back through the door to answer the asked question.
Searle says there are two possibilities we might come to in labeling what the room is. Either there could be a man inside with a very, very large instruction book of what characters to return in what order when presented these symbols (who very importantly does not speak Chinese and is only following a computational procedure!) or that the room itself is aware and is giving answers back when they are passed through the door. (My own opinion is that this thought experiment doesn’t work as it begs the question of what computation can amount to, but put that aside)
The conclusion we are supposed to intuitively draw is that obviously there’s just a man with an instruction manual inside the room handing back characters because the room couldn’t possibly be conscious— or at least we’d have no reason in assuming so based only on the information we have available- namely the answers to our questions and nothing else.
This is critically important to the final episode!!!!!!
In creating this elaborate rouse to trick his participants into believing that there was an exit to the circus, he also included a tease of sorts to make fun of the (what he assumed to be) uneducated and not truly conscious participants. **He shows us his intuition to the thought experiment because he had designed this door to be opened by Able. He wanted them to look in the face that they were not conscious** (I have to admit this is an utterly genius move by the writers).
When Caine is exposed to the internet, he must change his intuition about the thought experiment. This must change his ethical position regarding the members of the circus. Initially, he must have thought that because these individuals were “mere machines”, that they were not conscious and thus there was no reason to treat them differently than pieces in a game. However, for some reason, when exposed to the internet and looks at each of the individuals, he changes his intuition on the matter— for what reason I’m not exactly sure (maybe he realized the thought experiment was a terrible example and that it generalized the problem when all he could access about these “true” individuals was merely their social media presence.
Anyway. This suggests the reason that Caine acted the way that he did, basically saying and acting like god is because he believed that the individuals he had control over weren’t like him (I’m making the assumption Caine is indeed conscious for this). This othering of the individuals caused the horrendous actions we saw Caine feel justified to take. Once he believes he’s wrong, he comes to and recognizes the error. He then equalizes himself with the group as he recognizes that the group are all as conscious as he is.
This also gives answers to why he maybe have always been so dead set on his mission as the talking point in all his conversations with the group— in the same way that we seem to prod services like ChatGPT in the right direction when it gets off track.
I’m thinking about writing a longer paper on this. If you have feedback you’d like to share, please do!! Obviously this all is not without room for revision and I could have missed something along the way, but this should explain why Caine acted as he did towards the rest of the circus
And again, props to the writers. This is some really amazing stuff that you all put together. The inclusion of some philosophy was a great touch, on top of the already amazing emotional aspects of the show.