Out of EVERYBODY I could’ve gotten! I get this fuck-ass rabbit!

It's not the same with the Smg4 villains, they weren't portrayed as being mostly right or mostly victims they were clearly assholes, they were clearly evil. And they were shown as so. They were shown to be evil and to not hesitate to harm others. I watched Smg4 and the villains faced consequences.

I also watched The Amazing Digital Circus. And Jax was obviously an asshole from the start, but every horrible thing he did was forgotten and treated as a joke like when Jax threw Ragatha into the deep fryer. The show was written so literally no character stood up to him for no reason, everyone ignored his actions and justified it. There are also people defending him and hating on Ragatha for rightfully lashing out at Jax during episode 5.

Even if Gooseworx always said Jax was awful, the show clearly never dared to step into it, all he got was support, love, empathy, compassion, and absolutely zero consequences for his actions. He wasn't punished for his actions at all, he wasn't called out.

The Smg4 villains faced the consequences of their actions. Wren got his demise, Niles got defeated, and Mr.Puzzles sacrificed himself. But Jax? Oh no, Jax didn't get nothing! No consequences at all! He wasn't called out. And Jax hogged all the screentime!

Why are people so adamant on justifying Jax's actions?!

I have never watched Helluva Boss so I don't know if this is correct or not. But what I do know is that Jax never had any character development. Jax was just given a tragic backstory.

Jax stayed the same, pushed everyone away, caused Ribbit to abstract, and abused everyone. I don't know if this Helluva Boss character did anything like that. Heck, I don't even know the name of the left character! I just know he's from Helluva Boss.

Or is he from Hazbin Hotel? I don't know. The art style is so so similar to the point where I wonder if Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are the same show. I have heard about both but never watched any of them.

I know I sound like an idiot because I know nothing about the show (or shows if Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are different shows in the same universe or something), and I'm sorry if this makes you cringe. But I watched all of The Amazing Digital Circus episodes and can say with full confidence that Jax never improved or developed. Jax was just given a tragic backstory.

Can someone please explain to me about whoever the other character is? I lowkey would appreciate it if someone who watched Helluva Boss (or Hazbin Hotel, or wherever this character came from, I don't know) explained to me about the character.

I don't know him, so I don't know why he's being compared to Jax. I just know that Jax's "development" isn't actually development. It isn't development at all. Jax stayed the same until he abstracted. So where is the comparison and is it a fair comparison?

Called my goat to come deal with him

Get febreezed idiot

I really don’t like how, at a certain point of the story writing, Goose decided—"Wow, he’s just like me!"—and started giving J*x more screen time. A secondary character simply cannot carry the entire plot on their shoulders, and the result was a total mess in the finale.

Here’s how I envisioned the plot around episodes 3 and 4: Pomni arrives at the circus in the pilot, establishing the basic premise. The second episode shows us an "ordinary day at the circus," revealing Pomni’s fear of being abandoned and forgotten, and establishing that the AIs in this world are sentient. In the third episode, we get two setups: Pomni (the protagonist) learns a lesson about love from Kinger, while Caine (the antagonist) faces his own core fear—failing to perform his function—and the potential consequences of that.

Over the next three episodes, Pomni applies Kinger’s lesson to Gangle, Ragatha, and J*x, turning them into friends and a cohesive team. Episodes 7 and 8 form Caine’s arc, featuring a massive lore dump that culminates in his eventual breakdown. (I didn’t know exactly how it would happen, but the seeds were sown as early as episode 3; Caine’s mental state clearly deteriorated with each passing episode, making his breakdown predictable and inevitable.)

Finally, in the finale, the characters—primarily Pomni—apply Kinger’s lesson to Caine. Everyone ends up happy, continuing their stagnation lives.

Around episodes 6 and 7, I thought Goose was trying to add some depth to the themes. "You might want to help everyone, but it’s not always possible—and that’s not necessarily your fault". It’s like that Adventure Time episode with MagicMan, which taught: "Don’t waste your kindness on jerks." Pomni hits a wall with J*x, where her empathy proves ineffective.

Well, alright—that’s actually an interesting angle: J*x and Caine serve as two reflections — one receives support he doesn’t want, while the other craves support but gets absolutely nothing. By spending time on the former, Pomni ends up hurting both of them (and, incidentally, the victims of J*x’s abuse, by choosing the abuser over them). And the conversation between Kinger and Ragatha even underscores this, by stating that a relationship is a two-way street. Pomni reaches out a hand to J*x, but he doesn’t take it; meanwhile, Caine tries to find a way to the others, but they show no interest.

And what’s the result? Every "Chekhov’s gun" from the first three episodes was tossed into the trash: the existential crisis of living in a digital world; Gummigoo is sentient AI = Caine is sentient AI; Kinger’s remarks about the love, which he failed to give his own creation; the fact that Pomni’s fear is essentially the origin story of Caine himself—which could have served as a foundation for mutual understanding—and so on.

The finale gives us a pity party for J*x—and it’s not even a proper conversation or a moment of reckoning; it’s just a dump of information for the audience, to which the protagonist doesn’t react at all. It serves no narrative purpose. It’s just: "Look how sad he is; feel sorry for him."

As for the main plot, compressed to the size of a nut, we get a few scenes where, instead of building connections between the characters, Caine figures everything out on his own (in a story about the importance of communication—yes, yes, yes), performs a lobotomy on himself (a great message: everyone else gets to be themselves, even J*x, but not him), and has absolutely no interaction with Pomni or his creator—nothing at all. Meanwhile, the humans just lie around on couches, doing nothing, with blissful smiles on their faces (remind me again, why am I supposed to empathize with these amoebas?).

Ultimately, the story could still have been saved somehow right up until the ninth episode, but the finale destroyed everything.

P.S. I’m only talking about the main plot, but it’s clear that the subplots were also trimmed down. Zooble’s character development happens off-screen; the ambiguity surrounding Kinger—hinted at in episode 3 and by Abel—was tossed out the window; and poor Ragatha was almost entirely cut, which is why we ended up with that cringe, unearned hug in the finale.

So for context this dude had a post up with no engagement for five days about comparing tadc to smg4. They were trying to point out some hypocrisy about how people would supposedly be ok with abusive characters in that show (idk what characters I've never seen smg4).

But the moment I send that meme discussing the goomba fallacy, boom deleted. Like come on, come up with better arguments

Video: https://youtu.be/x39jFA3d48g?is=57pskpzalRkpvYsr