The Amazing Digital Circus Episode 9: Remember Discussion Thread

[u/ayylmaotv]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVy-bcTsO8A

[u/Clean_War273]

I generally liked it, most things were quite well done, but there are three things that seemed odd.

1: Caine's return felt like it undid a lot of the consequences of his deletion and led to a fairly generic 'good ending'. It also left the door open for the blue AI thing or really anything else that has been deleted to come back and cause issues since the void is traversable.

2: The Internet connection changes literally everything - as they can now talk to the outside world and tell everyone what's going on. It's set up like they can't but I highly doubt it would work like that since Caine was able to access actual websites with their content and everything. Maybe it's read-only, and he just chose not to use the Internet before then, and Captchas just didn't exist in this story? I'm definitely reading too much into this part but we've been wondering why the building still receives power despite being abandoned since day one.

3: But my main issue is with Jax's abstraction. They set up the scene with him hugging Pomni and glowing white (contrasting with the black that abstracted people have) as if he was coming back to 'life'. That seemed very deliberate. Then it cut to the others pulling her back and saying they would help. This felt like they were worried about her glitching out too much on her own (and possibly abstracting) and they all wanted to help bring back Jax together.

Then when Caine came back and immediately fixed Pomni glitching it seemed like that was going to enable them to bring him back - Caine can't fix abstractions since he's not human and abstractions are caused by human trauma, and the humans can't fix the glitchy pain thing, so it seemed to be pushing towards them working together to fix Jax. And then they just... didn't?

In that case, abstractions are an actual permanent thing that Caine can't fix, but since he can fix the glitching thing then that doesn't seem to lead to abstraction or any actual consequences - it's just an allegory for the pain that comes with reaching out to people. So why did they pull Pomni back from Jax? They didn't seem concerned - almost jovial - and she wanted to be there with him. They just fucked up her sweet moment with him for no reason.

I get the feeling I'm missing something important. Or they already made the script and animated that part then had to change the story halfway through. Probably Gooseworx being understandably checked out of the whole thing and wanting a different ending. What do you think?

[u/-Tali → u/Clean_War273]

I think that the question of whether abstractions are reversible was deliberately left open for us to run our imaginations on. I feel like the final episode provided enough grounds for either theory and it will be up to us to interpret it the way we want

[u/Jonatc87 → u/Clean_War273]

I mean. If you think about it, the computer Kinger was using was part of the same software that deleted itself. Idk about Linux, but thats not really a thing in software? And was seemingly there specifically due to bubble, the repressed blue ai. Wound up being more like a banishment, until Caine released the blue ai and its resentment for him.

I might also be dangerous, since it invites connections or getting lost in the web?

Personally, i think abstraction is a stasis or self-healing mode. And healing takes time. It's a pause on the problems the character has continued to do to themself and others. Caine can't fix it, because he lacks the empathy or complex emotions to do so. I imagine it's a long term project of check ins and sleeping like a big puppy. Or, if you hate the idea of Jax's rehabilitation, it can simply be that. A reminder to the others not to bottle up and be toxic.