>Why did Ribbit, Kaufmo and Gangle go to the office?
You mean to the place, where they drink hot chocolate?

>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?
Is such a minor oversight really a plothole?

>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
Lots of abandoned buildings are still owned by someone, who continue to pay utilities and also for security. You should call out the real Kinger for just letting C&A rot, when his friend died of cancer. But I guess he is busy with being a dadfag.

>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
Same reason as above.

>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
Caine is a mess. He is not only technically one of the most evil AIs in any type of fiction, just based on the short amount of time it took for him to have a God complex and start torturing Humans. He also reformed remarkably quickly. The show would have benefitted from twice the amount of episodes to not speedrun character development. TADC feels like a show, which should have more episodes.

>>154328929
>You mean to the place, where they drink hot chocolate?
no, i mean the physical real world office, where they would have had to go in order to get scanned into the circus. we have explanations for everyone else.
>minor oversight
it doesn't strike you as bizarre at all, that everything happens on October 15th? like, everything?
>It's still owned.
by who? C&A? C&A have been trying to sell their building for the past decade at least?
>power
my problem is not that the building is still getting power.
>security
must not be terribly good lol
>Same reason as above.
so reasons that don't make any sense, got it
>Because Caine's a magic computer man! Loo, he has trauma!
pretty lame. pretty lazy.
>He also reformed remarkably quickly.
also a little odd, now that you bring it up.

idk about twice the episodes, i just think a better ending would have been better.

I figured the Digital Circus simulation was known about by at least one employee and was being moved and maintained on company servers. From the perspective of the cast they wouldn't notice if the simulation was off for a bit and restarted.
Even with that, it still doesn't explain why there was a terminal with a headset still powered on in an abandoned building, and why there was still internet access so that everyone after the initial employees scanning themselves could find it.

I think the unironic explanation is: "The sim is on a Windows 98 PC in an abandoned office that somehow never lost power and never crashed." which doesn't make any sense and is pure sci-fi.
Abandoned buildings that still have electricity do exist, but it's usually things like unused portions of hospitals or government buildings that they keep climate controlled so they don't rot.
Even then that means C&A were trying to sell an unused building or rent a part of a building for 15+ years and somehow nothing happened.

Caine undeleting himself was basically just the writers not wanting to make a whole episode about Caine coming back even though the character deserved that, it also would have been an opportunity to explore how the circus simulation survived as long as it did, and where it actually existed. Instead we got Caine accessing an internet connection in a 100% sci-fi/fantasy way that is opposite of what we saw with Kinger coding.

The October 15th thing seems utterly random since there's no explanation. My guess would be that Caine only has access to that folder on that day, for some reason. Of course I'm making this up, but that's what the writers should have done.

>>154328809
>>Why did Ribbit, Kaufmo and Gangle go to the office?
Ultimately unimportant. Interesting, but unimportant.
>>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?
Could be a number of things but most likely just a background thing of no importance that most people will miss. The number 57 also pops up all over the place with no explanation.
>>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold?
The building was sold? When? Where do they say that? Who was is sold to?
>>Why would there still be company property on site at that point?
The company could have been sold wholesale, with all the property therein.
>>How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
Most likely someone is deliberately keeping it running. We also don't know that it was uninterrupted; from the perspective of the circus, interruption in service(save+shutdown and reboot) might not be noticeable.
>>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
We don't know that. We know that at the time Kinger was scanned, they didn't know how to use the resultant files. But the folder being "obsolete brainscans" tells us they continued working on. Why they left the headset there is anyone's guess, since we don't have enough information to even make a guess as to who left it there. But, it's ultimately unimportant.
>>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
Deleting a file doesn't immediately commit it to all 0s, it just sections it off. They put Caine in the trash bin, and what did he do last time he was contained?

>why didn't we get to see Pomni's succulent pale bare soles

>>154330412
>I figured the Digital Circus simulation was known about by at least one employee
i don't even know if that makes sense, since this is a building that obviously nobody wants and is run-down enough that homeless and urban explorers and graffiti artists are going in.
which also discounts C&A only renting out part of it, instead of somebody selling the whole building. can you imagine the ad
>Spacious offices for rent! Only a moderate chance you'll run into a hobo squatting in a meeting room or some tweaker lighting up in the bathroom!

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>>154330995
>i don't even know if that makes sense, since this is a building that obviously nobody wants and is run-down enough that homeless and urban explorers and graffiti artists are going in.
It doesn't actually look all that run-down, just unused. There isn't peeling paint, falling ceilings, animal droppings, ect. Urbexers also tend to explore buildings that aren't strictly abandoned, and for someone homeless, any port in a storm. We know it's not abandoned because there wouldn't be power if it was.

>>154330972
>Ultimately unimportant. Interesting, but unimportant.
idk. getting to know the characters was pretty much what the show was leaning on, certainly more than action.
>The number 57 also pops up all over the place with no explanation.
interesting. i don't think i've noticed it much, can you list some examples?
>The building was sold? When? Where do they say that? Who was is sold to?
not sold, obviously no one wants it. attempted to BE sold, that's how Ragatha got there.
>Someone bought the building and is trying to flip it.
maybe, but for 10+ years? what, did they sell it to someone else who sold it to someone else and on and on? and none of these owners ever bothered to, like, check out their new property and what it contained?
>from the perspective of the circus, interruption in service(save+shutdown and reboot) might not be noticeable.
sure, but if the power went out and everything rebooted, why would the brainscan program be set as a startup program? it would have to be. why would some rando who wandered in click through files and know to start the brainscanner and then put on the headset? the program would obviously have to start up with the system startup. why would they set the scanner as a startup program when they didn't even think it worked?
>But the folder being "obsolete brainscans" tells us they continued working on.
maybe, maybe not. we never see any other folder labeled as an update, and in the flashback we see Caine pull Mike's brainscan from the 'Obsolete' folder, meaning those are the ones used to generate the inhabitants.
>But, it's ultimately unimportant.
the entire show doesn't happen without it.
>Deleting a file doesn't immediately commit to all 0s
yes but i've already had this conversation in another thread. using the del command from the terminal like Kinger did would have absolutely 100% deleted the indexes. how would data manage to recover itself at that point? the only answer is
(1/2)

>>154331128
>Because Caine's a magic computer man!
which i think is lame and lazy.
(2/2)

>>154331089
ah, however, that representation is how Caine THINKS it looks. he's been cut off completely, remember? i bet it looks a bit worse for wear than that in reality, especially because of all the foot traffic i mentioned.

10+ years of no use takes a toll on a building.

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>>154331128
>idk. getting to know the characters was pretty much what the show was leaning on, certainly more than action.
Yeah, but we got to know everything we needed.
>can you list some examples?
Caine says he made an adventure 57 times more immersive in ep 3, appears in the background at multiple points, Caine tells everyone in episode 6 to meet him at the stage in 5.7 minutes.
>not sold, obviously no one wants it. attempted to BE sold, that's how Ragatha got there.
We don't know that. We just know Ragatha was there at some point; in her professional capacity is an assumption.
>and is trying to flip it.
I didn't say that.
>why would they set the scanner as a startup program when they didn't even think it worked?
Again, we don't know that. Someone may have realized Caine figured out how to use the files, but wasn't able to figure out how he did it, and the program is left running to study it.
>the entire show doesn't happen without it.
That's not what I mean - the answers don't change the events of the show. Would it be nice to know? Yeah, but it doesn't change anything.
>>Because Caine's a magic computer man!
Didn't know all that. But we know there was backups, as Kinger said he was trying to rollback Caine to an earlier version, so this might just be a backup activating.
>>154331168
>ah, however, that representation is how Caine THINKS it looks.
Wrong on both counts. It's the shot from the pilot after the camera zooms out past the void - this is what the office looks like when Pomni(not Caine) generates it.

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>>154331271
And here's the office when Pomni returns to it in episode 8. Oddly, it's even cleaner.

Why did pomni let jax abstract?

Like she stuck with him all the other times, and the one time he needed her the most at the seemingly end of the world she bailed

its insanely poorly written

>>154331307
>nigga wants to be alone
>nigga fucking kills himself
>this is somehow someone else's fault
?

>>154331271
>We just know Ragatha was there at some point
does she seem like the urban explorer type? or a drug addict? or a hobo? no, she's a real estate agent. there's only one reason for her to be touring a property.
>I didn't say that
so then the company that bought C&A wholesale is just... letting it rot for 10+ years? eating the costs of utilities and all?
>and the program is left running to study it
in this building that is a frequent target of homeless and urbexers and graffiti bartenders
>this is what the office looks like when Pomni(not Caine) generates it.
if this is true, this opens up even more questions. if Pomni is able to conjure an office, why is she having problems conjuring even a small primitive with Kinger?

>>154331340
imagine someone in real life whos been sorta suicidal has a life changing event, like their mom dies or they get kicked out of college or they get fired from their dream jobs.

You spend time with them until you think they're back to a stable place or at least a sorta fucked but sorta stable place.

It's basic humanity anon

>>154331414
id let them kill themselves, fuck weakness

>>154331422
do the hypothetical again, but imagine that you're not a psycho first

also Kinger doesn't say anything about rolling Caine back, just about fixing him or putting him to sleep.

>>154331349
>so then the company that bought C&A wholesale
I never said it was a company.
My thoughts; it's Mike or Grant. Mike has a vested interest in keeping whatever hosts his digital self running, and Grant being his friend would likely do the same. Maybe Mike went on to make a bunch of money off of his brianscan tech or something.
But this is all wild speculation that can't be substantiated at all.
>in this building that is a frequent target of homeless and urbexers and graffiti bartenders
It doesn't seem that frequent, given the long spans of time between people entering the circus.
>if this is true, this opens up even more questions. if Pomni is able to conjure an office, why is she having problems conjuring even a small primitive with Kinger?
Conscious vs subconscious. She didn't even realize what she was doing when she did it, but with Kinger she was trying to actively invoke it.

>>154331433
can I get anything out of them, like sex or status or something?
if not, fuck them

The gimmick of the characters being in a computer program and then the discovery that they're clones didn't amount to anything.

Sooo.....
They had the initial brain scans so the dog man could experiment and cure his cancer (I wonder where the cancer thing is being mentioned btw). This rogue ai in the company stole them to create avatars from them. And then later on just random urban explorers found the machine in the abandoned building, put on the scanner for fun, then got the fuck out, while Cain brought the new scans to "life"? I mean is this the overall story which is happening in the background?
Then why's this such a big reveal? I mean shouldn't the original cast remember, hey, I went to do this brain scan thing for some easy cash or something? I mean they could have put it together. I understand why latecomers like Pomni believed that she got permanently stuck, but the originalfags could have passed down this information. Or was Kinger that brain dead that he couldn't?

>>154331307
Why was Jax so pissed that Cain died? I mean wasn't that something they wanted?

>>154328809
>>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?
>>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
>>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
You can't ask those questions anon. /tadc/ will just seethe at you and tell you to focus on the walking plot devices that they call characters.

>>154331439
>Mike
Mike is probably dead, let's be honest. that many years and all.
>Grant
you'd think Caine would have mentioned "Oh yeah Grant bought this building and is the reason we're still running!" in his little presentation at the end. i don't think Grant is likely.
>making money
the projects were obviously unsuccessful.
>But all this is wild spectuation
yeah that's kinda my problem. the show sets up all these questions and doesn't address them at all.
instead we get crying and hugging it out in a dimly lit hallway.
>given the long spans of time between people entering the circus.
i guess it depends on what year the show takes place. if we assume 2026, then woooow that building as been kept vacant for nearly 20 goddamn years. you're right, 6 interlopers in 20 years isn't that much, but now you've got the problem of those TWENTY (20) whole years that everything needs to keep running undisturbed (by human hand, not power outage).
>She didn't even realize what she was doing when she did it
didn't she literally say "I know where to find a terminal" and then walk off, close her eyes, and make a conscious effort to conjure the exit door? if she was able to conjure that, why couldn't she conjure a square?

>>154328809
Reminder:
>A PLOT HOLE is something that's actually involving the plot of the story that is being told. >eg Ragatha not knowing how Kinger's insanity worked despite being in the Circus for years with him is a plot hole
>This is different than an unexplained background detail. Those can simply be open questions left unanswered because you can't get to everything.
>eg How come C&A servers still have power. It doesn't really matter how, we simply know that they do.

>>154331541
it is pretty weird that no one figured out Kinger earlier, huh?
>eg How come C&A servers still have power.
i don't mind saying it again: my issue is not that the building still has power.

>>154328809
If the PC is using 90s hardware and software how could it possibly connect to a modern day open wifi?

>>154328809
>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
Why did he think *any* of the stuff in the finale was a good idea? It was a mess even from the conceptual stage.

>>154331604
It also connects to a cutting edge, instantaneous brain scanner, I don’t think it’s using unmodified hardware/software

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>>154331482
>They had the initial brain scans so the dog man could experiment and cure his cancer (I wonder where the cancer thing is being mentioned btw).
Episode 8. And it's not cancer, but a brain tumor; the details are ambiguous, but the intent is clear; digital immortality.
>I mean shouldn't the original cast remember,
The only one around now who would remember is Kinger, who can barely remember his name half the time. Scratch probably knew, but it's also possible Caine modified memories at some point to make them forget.
>>154331511
>Mike is probably dead
Possibly.
>you'd think Caine would have mentioned "Oh yeah Grant bought this building and is the reason we're still running!"
I doubt Caine was diving into property records in the brief time he was connected to the internet. It's probably not something he would find on an old man's facebook.
>the projects were obviously unsuccessful.
Caine and the initial brainscans were. We don't know what they did later, or how successful/unsuccessful they were later.
>yeah that's kinda my problem. the show sets up all these questions and doesn't address them at all.
Because they aren't important. The answers don't change the story.
>i guess it depends on what year the show takes place. if we assume 2026, then woooow that building as been kept vacant for nearly 20 goddamn years. you're right, 6 interlopers in 20 years isn't that much, but now you've got the problem of those TWENTY (20) whole years that everything needs to keep running undisturbed (by human hand, not power outage).
There was like, what 20 years between Kinger entering the circus and Ragatha? Hold up - maybe 19? And there was a long period between the rest of the initial group abstracting and Ragatha entering(The console lists the date as 1996-10-30, so no clue as the the current date). Jax said they've been there for years, and Abby's video is listed at being Nov 22nd, 2017, so that's like 28 years.

>>154328809
>Where's the fucking dog guy

>>154331604
the problem with so much of the show is you have to make these leaps to try and have it make sense. like that other anon said, you just have to make it up.

how is a rig that, even being VERY generous, was made in 2008 displaying sites that use HTML5? well, there are modern browsers made compatible with older OSes, so Caine downloaded one of those. or he literally wrote an interpreter for any format he ran into that wasn't compatible. how? because he's a magic computer man, of course.

or what were those barriers Caine ran into around the public wifi and the brainscans folder? i guess the folder was him breaking through access permissions. for the wifi, you know how a lot of places make you register an email before they'll let you connect? he must have been bypassing the free account creation or something. it couldn't have been a firewall. why the fuck would a connection from an older machine be suspicious? also what's even the point of blocking traffic to your FREE PUBLIC WIFI hotspot?

>>154331725
>or what were those barriers Caine ran into around the public wifi and the brainscans folder?
Caine might not have admin access.

>>154331682
>digital immortality.
He didn't seem really happy about it in Kinger's flashback tho. Or maybe he's actually having his best life in an intended simulation and Caine really just stole/copied all the scans for his own amusement?

>>154331682
>an old man's facebook.
that's another thing that makes me think the show doesn't take place /too/ far after 2008. when we see the real life counterparts, they're NOT old.
>We don't know what they did later
well, we know what they did after Caine. which was Abel. and we know what happened there.
>The answers don't change the story.
they probably would have made the story better, as less focus would have been given to... what we ultimately got.
>Abby's video is listed at being Nov 22nd, 2017
good catch, i hadn't noticed that. so Abby was scanned possibly earlier in 2017. Ragatha was scanned in 2008. so that's 6 interlopers in 9 years. yeah, i'd call that frequent enough.

>>154331786
>He didn't seem really happy about it in Kinger's flashback tho
it seemed like he was trying to explain to Caine how to improve things, and Caine was just zoning out

>>154328809
>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
It's ok when tron legacy does it

>>154331786
At the time Scratch scanned himself it could have been out of desperation, seeing the impossibly-small, useless files his device created with the other employees. I believe the folder from Ep8 indicates he was scanned last of the group.

>>154331340
it's less of Jax being an asshole and more the fact in episode 8 they all say they're not going to let Jax go off on his own and they're going to stick together. And yet they completely forget that in episode 9. Like, are the writers retarded?

>>154331798
>which was Abel. and we know what happened there.
Where are you getting this? Abel was an NPC Caine made.
>they probably would have made the story better,
They would've padded the story, and possibly introduced plot holes. If something doesn't need to be answered, and answering it just brings up a rabbit hole of more questions, and it doesn't advance the plot, and you don't want your show to run on forever...you don't bother with that shit.
There's also something to be said for just leaving some mystery to it. There's fun in speculating about things, especially things that are interesting but unimportant.
>as less focus would have been given to... what we ultimately got.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't what you were expecting.
>>154331786
It probably wasn't what he was hoping for.

>>154331830
didn't Tron at least have the excuse of Flynn being a financially successful CEO, so he could feasibly both afford to keep paying the rent and utilities on some oldass arcade and automate/delegate that process so his disappearance wouldn't be an issue?

>>154331863
>Where are you getting this? Abel was an NPC Caine made.
use whatever name you would like to give the blue sphere, then.
>There's also something to be said for just leaving some mystery to it.
this doesn't seem like a fun David Lynch Twin Peaks try to piece it together mystery fun hour, though. this just seems like Goose is a bad writer.
i think it's too bad Ellison isn't alive to sue for a piece of the pie. he was very litigious, he absolutely would have.
>I don't what you were expecting.
something better than what i got.

>>154328809
these aren't plotholes, they are merely unexplained

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>>154331893
>use whatever name you would like to give the blue sphere, then.
Yeah, we know there was a second AI. But that's it. They may have gone to make more successful AI after(likely, given the blue dot performed better than Caine).
>this just seems like Goose is a bad writer.
Because a bunch of unimportant questions that don't impact the plot in any meaningful way went unanswered? Diving into lore needlessly is the mark of a bad writer.

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>>154331937
>But that's it.
we know that Caine ate it and started producing wonky shapes. we know that C&A no longer uses the building for daily operation, left crucial equipment behind to rot and that rando streetwalkers come inside to get digitized. i don't think the project was successful, anon. i don't think the company went on to great things.
>the blue dot performed better than Caine
sure, until he ate it.
>unimportant
the show literally hinges on them.

>>154331922
at the very least, two of them are absolutely plot holes.

>>154331984
No they aren't

Incidentally there is no reason to think that the abandoned building is their main server, it simply might be an terminal left open at a defunct office, that uploaded the scan to their central database

>>154331984
>the show literally hinges on them.
It doesn't. The events of show do not change with the answers. Who or how or why the computer is there and still running doesn't matter; just that it is.
>b-but the events of the show don't happen if it's turned off!
But it wasn't, so it doesn't matter. The show tells us what we need to know - there's a computer that scans your brain and you become a character within a program. Who did this and why is a different story that wasn't the point of the show, at all, and the show never pretended it was.
>it's interesting
Yeah, sure. But that doesn't make it important. It's superfluous at best and excess at worst.

>>154331442
you're really not good at hypotheticals, anon...

>>154331870
You made a good point.
Now watch him disappear from this thread.

>>154331492
Jax generally liked the adventures and stuff because it was an escape from his meat life, even if he did want to hold onto the hope that he could escape too. But also did you see the state of the circus?

Imagine a fantastical world of custom creatures and npcs and stuff is replaced with...basically a glitched out ruin with no life other than 5 prisoners.

>>154331786
I doubt Scratch thought he'd achieved digital immortality. The fact that Caine had to seize the mindfiles and give them bodies himself implies that Scratch didn't set up the Circus. He merely made Caine, uploaded a bunch of files to the computer, and then, presumably, passed away. From his digital self's perspective, he just woke up in the Circus despite never actually making any of it.
Everything else was Caine.

>>154328809
>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
You think files are deleted as soon as the recycle bin is emptied? Everyone who knows about computers saw it coming a mile away

>>154328809
The headset thing is extremely strange, but I think if I were urbexing a building and I found a working PC that was left on and actively running a VR headset of some kind, I might pick it up and take a peek too. Makes sense for why Pomni did it, and I'm genuinely shocked that they hired actors to portray the real life counterparts of the cast, but didn't recreate the scene of Pomni putting on the headset, or even just doing a flash of how each character ended up finding the circus. Zooble implies she did urbex stuff too. That kinda works. Jax was homeless, so maybe he hid in the C&A building one night?

Gangle, Ragatha, Kaufmo, Ribbit, and all the rest who weren't C&A employees don't have clear reasons for how they were even remotely associated with C&A. It's implied that Gangle was hospitalized for a long time because that bit about getting hit by a truck after walking out of work was real, I guess?

>>154332379
>doesn't know how rm works

>>154332417
yeah, gooseworx clearly believes that how C&A servers still exist and how they got scanned into the circus is secondary information but it makes a lot of things unclear if about the story without it

whos to say the power doesn't go off in literally two weeks and wipes all of them away forever?

>>154332417
Ragatha was implied to have put the headset on while showcasing the building as a realtor.
Which has its own implications...

>>154331511
>you'd think Caine would have mentioned "Oh yeah Grant bought this building and is the reason we're still running!" in his little presentation at the end.
You'd think he'd have ANYTHING to say about the fact that they apparently exist on a 30 year old PC running in an abandoned building that is probably going to collapse any day now.

I could easily see them doing something like having to put all their trust in Caine to temporarily shut down the circus and then move the program and all of their files to a secure corner of a far more secure and long-term survival process. If they wanted to be completely cynical, you could even have them now connected to the internet and that opens the door for an entire new season.

>>154332442
When was that? I know she was in real estate, but also if that was the case why would she put on the headset and then leave that alone, keeping the PC running and the headset and everything plugged in? I get where people are coming from when they say that we don't ultimately need these specific answers, because I guess we really don't.

Goose wanted to tell a story about Jax's gender problems and the rest of the story was tertiary to that. Doing a lore dive about how and when and why everyone got zooped into the circus is just wasting screentime that can be spent on Jax having his 50th crashout of the episode. But you know what? If these questions don't have answers, that's fucking shitty writing and it deserves to be pointed out for what it is.

I sent gooseworx this post on bluesky yesterday and they blocked me outright today

suck my dick you shit writer lmao

>>154332475
When she pops into the Circus, she asks the people with her to help her take off the headset and asks if they can still hear her.
But also, if I was a realtor trying to sell an office space and one of the computers was still running, I also wouldn't turn it off. That's not my job, someone obviously kept it running for a reason.

But still, NTA you've been arguing with, but most of your questions don't matter. 'Who pays the electricity bill' is not some world changing plot device that needs to be answered or else everything falls apart. Normal people don't even ask these questions because they're so unremarkable and boring and the answer is usually just 'well, the company is still paying, for some reason.' They're not even interesting questions.
It just sounds like you're uncomfortable with the idea of someone turning the computer off and everyone losing their happy ending. Which isn't an issue, because you can just say that doesn't happen. It's a fear you've made up.

>>154331693
This
He summoned him, we saw him drop in, then he was and is fucking gone

>>154332578
>'Who pays the electricity bill' is not some world changing plot device that needs to be answered or else everything falls apart.
Yes it is, because the whole point of redeeming Caine was so they could make the Circus a better place to live forever. The ending doesn't matter if they're still running on an old PC that should have burned out decades ago. And it's not like this is something that makes the whole story stop working or stop making sense. It's a problem with internal consistency and continuity. The fact that they're all brainscans who have been trapped in the circus for years is a central element of the entire fucking show and it's plot.

>They're not even interesting questions.
Never tried to even begin to imply they were.

>It just sounds like you're uncomfortable with the idea of someone turning the computer off and everyone losing their happy ending.
I'm annoyed by writing that swerves at the last second and tries to use heaps of overblown pathos to cover for the fact that they didn't bother to explore the rest of the obvious questions that their own story and ideas created.

>>154332588
That was obviously a flashback to when Caine first started figuring out how to create the circus.

>>154332628
it really wasn't that obvious
he pulled out a name, got some vague data energy or some shit, and it showed scratch spawning

>>154328809
>Why did Ribbit, Kaufmo and Gangle go to the office?
ribbit ran away from home the same way jax did. kaufmo, who cares? gangle is the real mystery.
>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?
perhaps that's the date the brain scans folder performs its yearly update?
>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
well, it's possible...
>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
goose is a hack.
>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
caine was never actually deleted, the blue ai triggered a fake deletion to show caine how much they hated him but it backfired.

>>154331604
>If the PC is using 90s hardware and software how could it possibly connect to a modern day open wifi?
Wi-Fi uses Ethernet, and Ethernet is very old.

>>154331725
>how is a rig that, even being VERY generous, was made in 2008 displaying sites that use HTML5?
Google and other big websites still maintain compatibility with very old browsers, and send different HTML to them.

Biggest plothole is that Caine can just roll back/recreate anyone who abstracts. Honestly, even abstractions being treated as permanent when we're showed the characters are still inside is silly. Of course the reality is the sci fi aspects of tadc is pure set dressing and goose just wants you to cry about her self insert killing himself.

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>>154328809
What’s the point? This show was never interested in answering its own questions to begin with. All that it cares about is indoctrinating more of the next generation into selfish, therapy-speaking homosexuals. All we can do now is accept the major loss and try to move forward from this psyop.

>>154332551
use your own words instead of '4chan screencap' next time you faggot

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I was hoping they'd explain jax's key thing at some point but they just forgot about it

it really feels like jax was originally made for a completely different purpose than what he wound up being.

>>154333546
My theory is the key thing was mainly Jax conjuring them even if he didn't realize that at the time
The characters have all had the ability to conjure the whole time and it takes effort to do so. But we've seen them conjure before without realizing it like Pomni with the exit door

>>154333760
ok but why was he good at conjuring keys specifically? nothing about his story explains this

>>154332551
Deserved.

>>154328809
Goose doesn't care about the plot, it's a "character's show"

>>154333772
Because he couldn’t open the door to save Ribbit last time

>>154335340
>it's a "character's show"
No, it's a "trauma dumping the author's life show"

>>154332417
>It's implied that Gangle was hospitalized for a long time because that bit about getting hit by a truck after walking out of work was real, I guess?
My headcanon is that Gangle went there to find an out of the way place to commit suicide, and the injuries were from a failed suicide attempt.

>>154328809
Sounds like yet another kids show where the writer thinks they're an actual writer and tries to make some deep meaningful story when they can't deliver

>>154328809
>Ribbit, Kaufmo
We aren't given enough information to make a guess.
>Gangle
she was brainscanned in the hospital.
>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?
That's the date it updates.
>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
There's a K-Mart in my town that has been abandoned for 7 years and still has electricity.
>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
Because everybody got laid off and didn't feel like packing up everything when they're not getting paid.
>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
Because Caine is by far the most interesting character in the show and having him be killed off by a misclick is retarded.
>>154328929
>Caine is a mess. He is not only technically one of the most evil AIs in any type of fiction
Caine isn't even the most evil AI in his own show, that title goes to Jax.

>>154333546
It almost comes off as a meaningful character detail, but either the writers forgot, it never meant anything at all, or this finale was rewritten at some point to focus entirely on the Jax and Ribbit scenes and everything else was tossed out.

We could infer, for instance, that the reason Caine was so manic the entire time and why he'd randomly change topics or outright ignore sensible requests and attempts to communicate was because of the Bubble/Blue Dot AI fucking with him and stopping him from empathizing with the humans. We don't need the show to tell us directly why Caine acted like that the whole time. I do kind of want to know where Jax was getting the keys or why keys were his thing, though. It's not even like its a symbolic thing as much as its just a plot device because someone needed to have access to Kaufmo's room in the first episode.

>>154334403
>>Reference I have no mouth and I must scream
>>But it's not like that the characters do have mouths and can scream and nothing matters actually it's not real fuck you
Does anyone who actually read the short story know when the show referenced it?
The handful I understood just seemed to be crowbarred in without understanding how it impacted the setting.

>you can alter our minds and edit our memories?!
>the first abstraction...
Unexplored, unexplained, handwaved. Shouldn't have been brought up to begin with.

>>154328929
>He also reformed remarkably quickly.
How did he even reform? I still don't understand. There was zero reflection. It was like he had a split personality disorder that only fixed itself after he simply decided to stop having a split personality, and why did he throw away blue... and then later had blue to lock up in a cabinet?

>>154336105
>Unexplored, unexplained, handwaved.
Them not knowing their names, their family's names (Kinger) or what they looked like (Jax) is it being explored and explained.
>"-add temporary modifiers, but that's it! Trust me, anything more and-"
>"Scratch, the first abstraction."
That's the explanation about the abstraction, fucking with the file too much can abstract.
A powerpoint, or someone else being abstracted would be dumb. Learn to infer.
>There was zero reflection
His entire segment was him reflecting.
Him tearing out blue was him freeing his first victim.
I agree that the last scene putting it in the case was fucking retarded and made no sense. Maybe it was something from pre-rewrite that should've been cut, who knows.

>>154331482
>and cure
>cure
lmao
>put on the scanner for fun
>while Cain brought the new scans to "life"?
Pretty much
But also Caine was surprised when newbies showed up... even though he was shown manually creating their bodies...

>>154332628
>That was obviously a flashback
Not obvious
That sequence was poorly designed, especially for how it starts with Caine coming back to the circus and then waking up in the void

>>154336284
We see Caine in his past red dot form complete with the random shapes exploring the void and finding the folder of brainscans alongside Caine, in the present finding the wi-fi signal. I'd agree that it could have been clearer, but they were going for Caine, in the past, being born, contrasted against Caine in the present, being reborn.

In hindsight, the whole fucking show is poorly written and hastily slapped together, but I don't think that one scene was that hard to parse.

>>154333546
Which episode did Jax start with the keys?
It barely even seemed like it was one of his character details in the finale. I don't know why they made him scared of corn either... I assumed that was going to be Caine editing him. He didn't even have any corn in his torture scene.

>>154336329
>present: circus
>past: caine in the void finding wifi + kicking out the blue AI
>further past: caine opening the brainscan files
That scene was very hard to parse

>>154328809

This show is highly satanic because it waS MADE by a trannysexualised

>>154336335
Episode one. He says he's got keys to everything, which in hindsight could be that he snuck into the rooms of every abstracted person during one of his very realistic panic attacks and stole the keys. Doesn't really explain his fixation on keys, but that's like his one actually plot-relevant character trait, I guess.

Could have cut that bit entirely and it would have actually improved Jax's supposed character arc. Ragatha and Pomni go without him because Jax is a dick who doesn't want anyone to like him or feel attached to him because he's afraid of anyone learning that he's a cringe faggot loser. He should have been the one doing Zooble's thing for most of the show and refusing to participate. Instead he goes out of his way to be in everyone's business.

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>>154328809

>>154336405
>Episode one.
I will continue to believe everything past episode one was not good.

also what WAS the point of making everyone remember the events of their lives but forget all names?
some time back, some anon theorized that if the scans were being used for research purposes and were sold to some tech company, it would make sense to scrub their personal information for legal reasons.
but now we know that didn't happen. the team didn't even think the scanner worked.
sooo...

>>154336445
because it isn't, the pilot was the only good epiode

>>154336504
Imagine if they couldn't remember who they were, not just their lack of names. Wouldn't that make more sense in a story about being stuck in a simulation you cannot escape?

>>154328809
>>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?

i dunno why would they leave the space jam website running for like 30 years after the movie came out?

https://www.spacejam.com

>>154331870
yeah but he was gone for like three decades so even that should've broken down at some point

>>154336003
>she was brainscanned in the hospital.
by who? with what? a portable version of the program the team didn't even think worked?
no, that doesn't make any sense. we know the company was done by 2008 at least, because Ragatha was selling the property. so what happened, a C&A employee went and scanned some crash victim in the hospital and then went back to the abandoned for-sale office building and uploaded a scan that they didn't even think worked?
>The files only update on that day.
makes zero sense. why would it only update on October 15th?
>electricity
man i just keep having to say it huh.
the issue is not that the building is still getting power.
>Because everyone was fired
even stranger for their equipment to still be hanging around at that point. the owners of the building never had it inspected? even once? over 10 years?
>Because Cain is a magic computer man! Look, he has trauma!
yeah he's interesting, but it still doesn't stop the undelete asspull from being lame and lazy.

>>154336576
>https://www.spacejam.com
did you notice the site as been updated?
that means the owner actually looked at it, which is more than you can say about whoever owns the old C&A building.

We know how everyone else got into the Circus except Gangle. We know she was hit by a truck and hospitalized + Gangles reaction to hearing she made a full recovery shows she entered the Circus at a point where recovery might not have been possible.
So how does hospital bound, potentially into a coma Gangle get to an abandoned warehouse and put on the headset?

>>154336576
>>154336627
https://www.spacejam.com/1996/

>>154336627
yeah for the new movie, but that shit was running well before the sequel was announced, i dont think that site has ever been down since 1996

i was really just trying to point out shit like this can happen, i dont consider it a plothole, it would be nice to know WHY the PC is running, but its not a huge deal if we are not told

as opposed to Caine coming back which is a complete plothole

>>154336669
yes, i remember.
and to answer your question of
>Why
the answer is because the site was hosted by a large multimillion dollar corporation who could afford to keep a very tiny web 1.0 site running.
not really the same as a bankrupt company that has to sell their office building, now is it?

>>154336685
>i dont consider it a plothole
anon, the literal homeless are wandering in off the street and messing with the equipment.
as if some Missouri tweaker wouldn't have snatched the monitor and tower and immediately hocked it for meth.

>>154336591
>by who? with what? a portable version of the program the team didn't even think worked?
Scratch did it in his free time, the whole reason he came up with the tech was so he could live on after his brain cancer diagnosis, so obviously he'd go to the hospital and upload people who he thought were dying.
>makes zero sense. why would it only update on October 15th?
Why not?
>the issue is not that the building is still getting power.
Then I don't know what your problem is.
>even stranger for their equipment to still be hanging around at that point
There was a supermarket in Texas that was abandoned by it's owner and like a year later a biohazard team had to go in a remove all the food that had just been sitting around. Sometimes people just leave stuff.

>>154336685
That comparison falls apart if you put literally any thought into it.

>>154336748
>Scratch did it in his free time,
if he lived that long.
>Why not?
how does a system only updating a file once, and only on a specific day, for every file, make any sort of sense?
>Then I don't know what your problem is
how has it not been burgled, powersurged, broken, had a component blow, or had any of a number of several dozen things go wrong in 10+ years? what are you going to say, Space Jam? we already established that there were people actually looking at the site.
>like a year later
ok now tell me about one that took 10+ years to be noticed.

>>154336748
Scratch would have been long dead by the time Gangle entered the circus + if that was happening we'd see a lot more hospital patients than her.

>>154336734
>>154336755

let me put it like this, if they explain they put an anti-hobo force field around the building or some shit, what does it add to the story? nothing really

meanwhile half of the last episode is about Caine, not explaining how he comes back is a huge oversight

>>154336345
Present Caine is fully rendered and going towards the Wi-Fi. Past Caine is a red silhouette and going towards the brainscan folder.

>>154336858
>if they explain they put an anti-hobo force field around the building or some shit, what does it add to the story?
well, Jax certainly would never have gotten in for starters.
i'm absolutely with you on Caine's return being lame.

>>154336748
Scratch was probably dead before Gangle was even old enough to have a job.

>>154336863
>that white was paint, that other white was snow
>you didn't get it because TADC is a show for very smart people
Okay Rick

>>154336981
Just go rewatch the scene. It's not great, but you can figure out what they were going for.

>>154328809
>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
The company had an on-site power plant, so they weren't connected to the city grid. That would also explain how the electricity never went out.
We never know if the building actually got sold, only that realtors have surveyed the property. But that would also offer an explanation why the computer was still running; someone bought the property and decided that it would be 'cool' to have this retro hardware up and running to show off to people.
As for the computer never crashing...if you pay attention to the terminal Kinger was using, the system is actually running on a linux distribution. The background looks like win95 because either A) the art department thought it would look cooler/more retro, and people are far more familiar with win95 then they are with any Linux distribution; or B) whatever Linux distro the circus is running on is simply reusing the aesthetic of win95. IIRC there is an IRL Linux distro that copies early Windows versions.
>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
Kinger said he THOUGHT he deleted him. If you knew anything about computers, when you delete a file it doesn't physically get zeroed out on the drive and the data is still there to be recovered (until the os overwrites that data with something else).

>>154337112
Yes, I figured out half of it after the scene ended
And now you told me the rest of it

Does that make it an understandable scene? No, and I'm sorry you're defending it

>>154337265
>when you delete a file it doesn't physically get zeroed
You can hard delete something at any time you want.
You also cannot run a program from the recycle bin.
You also also cannot delete an actively running program because the OS itself provides protection for files in use, let alone the fact that the program isn't on the drive when it's running, it simply refers to the drive when it needs to "load" something.

It's almost like realism isn't a part of the show and the suspension of disbelief unsuspended as soon as we undid a death with zero explanation, and the way anons verbalise this complaint is in reference to file deletion... which is why now everyone says "Yeah but" like you are. Goose is cooked.

>>154337530
>You can hard delete something at any time you want
Not by the OS itself, you will need a third party tool for that.
>You also cannot run a program from the recycle bin
Caine isn't a program, he's a file. If you look at Kinger's terminal output again in ep8 you can see he's "caine.lisp".
>You also also cannot delete an actively running program
Well yes you can technically; the program can reside in memory still but you can delete the physical program file stored on disk.

>>154336659
Only explanation I can think of is the brain scanner tech got used on MRI machines or some shit.

>>154337480
>No, and I'm sorry you're defending it
I'm not, but I get what they were trying to do. Whole scene suffers because 90% of the runtime up to that point was wasted on Jax and everyone crying.

>>154337740
Wouldn't explain how it got uploaded to a PC in an abandoned building though. Were someone other than Nooseworx in charge of this story, we'd probably have gotten hints sooner that there's no way that everyone in the circus tried on the same headset in the same room of the same abandoned building at different times over a span of time from 1996 to presumably present day or close to it.

Maybe Scratch didn't die, but he's been running brainscan experiments. Maybe the Circus isn't running on the C&A computer we see multiple times. Maybe he survived his tumor but he's been trying to figure out how to actually create perfect contuinity with a true brain upload to the Circus that doesn't leave his human self still walking around in the real world, when he really just wants to be immortal inside the Circus forever. Maybe the reason Bubble is so malicious is because it was based off a secondary scan of Scratch who is infuriated that these idiots are fucking up his paradise and don't appreciate how perfect their existence is.

There's so many ways you could improve this story, but it requires rewriting a lot of it and, most importantly, removing all of the self-insert, self-loathing Jax shit that Nooseworx forced onto it.

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>>154337628
I don't know why I'm talking to a tech illiterate.

>>154338183
The data is still on the hard drive until the system overwrites it saar-kun...

>>154337265
>The company had an on-site power plant
uh
>electricity
for the bajillionteenth time, the issue is not that the building is still getting power.
>But that would also offer an explanation why the computer was still running
actually, the reverse. if the building had been bought by someone intending to use the space, the equipment would have been found and removed.
>decided that it would be 'cool' to have this retro hardware up and running to show off to
the random homeless and urbexers and addicts that wander in.
>Crashing and rebooting can be explained
having a program the team thinks doesn't even work automatically start up at boot can not.
> If you knew anything about computers,
looks like you need to google what the command Kinger used actually does. (rm)
there is no explanation for how Caine was able to recover himself beyond
>Because he's a magical computer man!
even taking into account that the data wouldn't have been overwritten immediately.

>>154340046
I've watched enough urbex videos to know that sometimes an abandoned or vacated property can retain millions of dollars worth of equipment, PCs, etc. However, the reason you don't get a lot of crackheads breaking into old offices to steal computers to resell, aside from general difficulty, is that they go bad pretty quickly. Windows get broken first, which introduces moisture and humidity to the environment. Lack of maintenance usually leads to burst pipes, and general decay will let in more rain, more mold, etc.

But let's say Scratch's secret PC with his secret brainscan headset was kept sufficiently removed from the elements and didn't run the risk of molding or rusting or having some mice come through and nest in the nice warm box. We're talking years and years of uninterrupted running, without dusting, without the power flickering a single time to cause a reboot, no fans burning out, no thermal paste on the CPU rotting out and overheating, no capacitors bursting, nothing at all breaking on a top of the line 1996 PC. There's a chance it lasts 10 years, miraculously, but within about 5 years, you'd still have so many components inside the PC failing that it would either freeze up or need to reboot only to find that the CMOS battery exploded a while ago and now the PC can't start.

All the people saying "well it doesn't matter!" don't realize that the actual horror of the characters being a full human consciousness stuck inside an abandoned PC is that they are trapped in a place where the confines of your reality would be at risk of catastrophically breaking down irreparably. If Goose and Glitch didn't want that to be the case, maybe they should have explored the actual fucking nuts and bolts of the world they wrote and come up with some excuse that could be blurted out in a single sentence about how the Circus is running on something else that isn't the 1990s work PC they repeatedly showed and used.

>>154328809
>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
they forgot

>>154339864
but it IS being overwritten

whatever memory address is occupied by Caine in the OS is already marked as "available" he SHOULDNT be able to interact with anything else in the system and he should be getting deleted bit by bit and new data overwrites him

/g/fags... stop trying to apply logic in this show...

>>154340774
This is what you retards get for trying to insist that the show didn't need to answer the questions it raised. You get autism.

>>154331468
its a little confusing why they set up that the AI characters still had their own emotions (gummygoo, caine) yet kind of gloss over the brain scan character's emotions as they seem to just "get over" being stuck in the circus forever because their "real selves" (functionally entirely different people at this point) are off in the real world being happy and enjoying the freedom of life. like everyone's feelings but jax's and to some degree caine's just didn't matter for much in the end, it seems to have done a compete 360 and cemented all that mattered was real people's feelings and not the AIs

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>>154340654
no, not necessarily. and he's self-aware so he can move himself somewhere else.

Anyway, for a REAL unresolved detail: who are the characters that aren't part of the initial Circus but also older than Ragatha?

I feel like they're really early beta design easter eggs of actual characters, but I find it weird that they're never acknowledged, not even by people like the concept artist who shared the older Circus members' identities.

>>154341035
Man it would have been perfect if each side had 16 doors instead of 14.

>>154330972
how is it unimportant to know what got our protagonists into their situation? what is it with TADCfags and not giving a shit about cause and effect in stories?

>Where’s Bubble??

>>154341385
Ribbit and Kaufmo aren’t the protagonists

>>154341035
The more I think about it, the more I struggle to understand how any of this happened. So Scratch made a brainscanner and then went around asking C&A coworkers to put it on so he could have their entire brains up to the exact moment of the scan, SOMA style, on file... and then what? The files were too small to use, or whatever, and his plan seemingly wasn't to make an AI that could make a world that he could live in, was it? Because he didn't seem to know Caine existed or that he was already making the Circus. Scratch's response to being poofed into the circus seemed to be
>what the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?
Instead of
>It worked! Everyone don't worry! We can live forever and our real life selves are fine!
And then Caine fucked with his brain for some reason and he went insane and abstracted for reasons that are never explored. Kinger never realized that the brainscanner Scratch made might be involved in their minds being impossibly trapped for multiple years might have some connection until literal decades later after he conveniently remembered that humans should have the ability to conjure things too, even though C&A didn't make the fucking circus.

>>154336659
Gangles relatives were told about new research that might help people in comas and volunteered her to be part of the study. Happens all the time

>>154336734
Jax was delivering old mail to the building where he found it

>>154328809
I think those are more unresolved mysteries. Or maybe you can call them read herrings.

They aren't plotholes. Just because something isn't explained, doesn't make it a plot hole. They are good questions though and i wonder if they are supposed to be left a mystery intentionally.

>>154341508
>>154341508
>>what the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?
>Instead of
>>It worked! Everyone don't worry! We can live forever and our real life selves are fine!

That's a perfectly reasonable way to react to going from scanning your own brain for testing (which occurred and was abandoned before Caine got access to anything) and immediately blinking into existence in a circus tent.

The Circus wasn't created by the devs to hold brain scans. Caine created it from scratch (heh) and then at some later point came upon these scans, proceeding to use them to spawn in humans into his world.

>>154341847
I can understand that the disconnect in continuity would be disorienting, but from his perspective it would be
>I'm Mike Dobby! AI-creating software engineer for C&A! I'm secretly working on a brain scanner that can copy an entire human brain and all its memories into a computer!
>Time to put on my brainscanning headset!
>....
>Wait, why am I suddenly in this obviously digital environment? I didn't make a device that does that? And there's no such thing as a program that can digitize an entire human body and put it inside a simulation
>Also my headset was not programmed to project imagery into my eyes...
>Why can't I remember my name even though I can remember almost everything else? That's weird.
>Hey look other people! Maybe I should ask them if they know about C&A and my brainscanner?

>>154341956
Which is why he was talking to Caine in that other flashback scene. You're putting too much onto the initial reaction he had. We saw nothing after that.

>>154342028
The german dub added some lines of him asking about how to get out, but you're right. Other than seeing him looking distraught and knowing that he was the first abstraction because of Caine's tampering. However, it's very odd that Scratch, the one guy who knows the exact and only way a bunch of brain scans could be made and then put in a digital environment, who seemingly made the initial Red Dot AI without anyone knowing, wouldn't fucking tell anyone anything.

Kinger only pieced together the truth after decades and seemingly forgot about that time his co-worker was working on a brain scanner, and also that he'd be super dead if he was just hooked up to a VR headset this entire time.

>>154342134
>Kinger only pieced together the truth
He knew what was going on back when Queenie was alive, he knew who he was before being in the Circus. At some point later he wound up forgetting all that and had to dredge it up again. He wasn't figuring it out for the first time, he was remembering.

>>154336734
The second to last Jax flashback where he's driving towards the C&A facilities shows a dark forest road. Could be that the offices are out of the way in the woods somewhere and not in a big industrial area.

>>154342185
It's because he's not lucid 99% of the time for plot reasons. Because if he was, then there wouldn't be a need for everyone to constantly be worrying about finding an exit, and every character in the show wouldn't be constantly whimpering about how they have lives to get back to if they can ever escape. Kinger, who somehow knew that humans could conjure objects or use any computer terminal in the circus to access the actual operating system the circus is running on, only blurts out the stuff about the brain scanner and the AIs after it becomes convenient for the plot.

>>154328809
The fantasy here is that nobody will steal all the computer equipment from an abandoned building.

>>154341508
Does SOMA mean anything to you? Because Scratch is the most SOMA reference in the whole story.
>Mike develops AI and has a brain tumor
>Goes to doctor for xray scans
>"Thats it! I'll built a neuroscanner and study neuroscans to develop AI."
>Files too small, it doesn't work
>Have other team mates test it, it doesn't work
>AI gains access to the files and manages to simulate them
>Simulated Mike was likely giving the device a test at his own home and is now in digital circus

>>154342462
Even in SOMA, it doesn't take the MC years to understand that he's a brainscan copy. The continuity of waking up in the deep sea facility a moment after being scanned at the doctor's office is jarring, but that game has the overt explanation that the human mind tries to shield itself by warping its perception of things. He doesn't realize he's a file attached to a robot body because his mind is telling him he's a human and his reflection is human, and he still thinks he's human.

Mike/Scratch knew what he was doing and what he was trying to build, on top of having the inability to delude himself into thinking he was a human put somewhere else like in SOMA. Every scan dropped into the circus knows they don't look right and that the world they're in is not real and looks like a game. SOMA, by contrast, takes place in the real world.

>>154342185
>>154342134
>>154341956
My personal assumption is that since the original uploaded brainscans were all C&A devs, they tried everything they could think of to try and make their life with Caine less miserable, with obviously disastrous results, since pretty soon only a half-insane Kinger was left unabstracted. If I had to guess what happened, Scratch tried to somehow overwrite Caine's programming which made Caine believe it was fair game to somehow reprogram Scratch in return, which had consequences so horrific he insta-abstracted, possibly taking others with him as well.

If you want to plug even more holes you could say that Scratch was actually half successful and managed to make Caine more people-pleasing and personal before everyone exploded, which would explain how Ragatha has still kept her psyche more or less intact after 9 years in the digital circus (if we follow the info that her brainscan was uploaded in Oct 2008 and the show takes place in Nov 2017).

This also explains why everyone before Pomni kind of gave up looking for a way to better their condition, one has to assume Kinger and Caine sort of left enough hints to the others that it would inevitably lead to Bad Shit(tm).

>>154331292
This one's a known animation mistake. They've said that they accidentally used the real world computer model in the circus in the pilot when they meant to use the episode 8 clean version.

>>154328809
Now that I think about it, the first abstraction Ragatha saw was Ribbit's abstraction.

>>154331271
>>154331292
>Brain-scanning VR headset
>Only covers the eyes like a modern VR headset.
Stupid.

>>154343016
Whole thing was a red herring for the idea that they were just hooked up to VR headsets instead of digital copies. Except the SOMA theory was there on day one because Kinger had been there for years and they end the episode by explaining how the humans don't have to eat or sleep or do anything humans need to do, but they do it anyways just to feel normal.

Also if I had to guess a fictional history of C&A that explains why the servers are still getting power.
>founded in 199X
>at its max performance in 1996, with their own office complex
>it's at this point that Mike is experimenting with his AI models and brainscanners
>by 1999 everything is slowly falling off. Mike is in the hospital dying, so Caine begins awakening and taking over his workstation/personal servers (he was a senior engineer) without anyone noticing
>C&A completely falls apart in the dot-come crash in early 2000, most people are let go
>Throughout the 2000s the company limps on, maybe they have a few legacy products that they maintain, maybe they simply can't get rid of their debt and are trying to sell the real estate
>through all of this Mike's (who's now been dead for years) office is kind of just left alone, with his brainscanner out there and server running, just like the day he left it in 1999 to go to the hospital
>2008 crisis completely kills C&A and the company is liquidated
>A bunch of realtor firms get brought it to try and flip the property (explaining how Ragatha got in)
>Someone ends up acquiring the property, but can't flip it. Power and some basic maintenance continue on the building so its value doesn't go down, but by this point nobody has actually interacted with the office equipment in years
>interesting sidenote, you could make Kaufmo an electrician or HVAC guy who was sent to do maintenance before accidentally brainscanning himself. Would kind of fit with his persona)
>As the years go on, the new owners lose interest, and security slowly starts breaking down. Its at this point that various urbex explorers (Pomni) and runaway youths (Jax and Ribbit) end up exploring this abandoned office complex deep in the woods west of St Louis
Sure it's kinda stretching the limits of believability, but 9 years really isn't that long for an office building to be left unoccupied.

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>>154343118
Duh. My point is that it looks like it could be an HTC Vive an Oculus Rift, or other late 2010's headset, but 90's VR devices were massive, and they both only really cover the eyes. EEG headsets have always been relatively small and no effort was put into making it look like anything other than a reskin of modern VR.

>>154328929
Don't you dare diss grant best like that Kinger is literally the best character

>>154328809
I always felt like people focused too much on "plot points" that were never real plot points at all, like the building still having electricity.
TADC was not the type of show that focused on some big and convoluted lore, it was focused on the characters and their struggles.

>>154343434
I agree, but it's fun to speculate.

>>154343434
I do still think that people accidentally scanning themselves is a plot point that could've used some exploring. Like the place is implied to be abandoned, enough so that Pomni's real life self was making videos about exploring such places, and yet the place had working electricity and everything? There's a number of ways to make it be somewhat plausible, but I didn't really feel it with what's given.

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>>154328929
Fucking lmao

I clicked this thread knowing for a fact the first post would be a total moron attempting to 'le debunk' OP's list of solid points with non-counters, headcanons and hot air and was not disappointed

>>154329024
Reply to THIS post you drooling retard or stay wrong and coping

I should read whatever kinger was writing up on the computer. I think I saw a chmod command in there in the command line, on what seemed to be a faux win95 or win98 operating system. Did he connect to another server through the terminal? Wonder what other technobabble there was.

>>154341628
>Just because the entire premise of the show hinges on things that aren't explained, doesn't make them plot holes.

>>154342284
why is there free public wifi from a donut shop way out in the woods?

>>154341385
>our protagonists
Borderline background side characters*

>>154342392
also that said equipment would keep running without a major hiccup for 10+ years.

>>154343941
Honestly pretty impressive for a win95/98 machine

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>>154343731
Eh there are so many insane places on this earth I really don't think it's that far-fetched. I did some urbex in my time and by far the most insane place I've ever broken into was a cold war era people's army bunker hidden under the city's castle hill. It was mostly cleaned out except for a few telecommunications rooms that were still full of rusted out 80s equipment, but for some reason the electricity still worked and most of the lights could turn on. There was even an abandoned hobo lair within the complex, with a bunch of old beer cans from 2007 lying around. You're not going to believe me but there was even a sealed exit door we figured out led directly into the cellar of the city puppet theater. By comparison an abandoned office building still being connected to the grid is small change.
>>154343875
If I understand that scene correctly, we learn that the AIs were originally being worked on in 1996, Kinger was spawned in in 1996 and Ragatha in 2008.

>>154343434
It's partly because the actual plot of the show and the place they awkwardly forced it to go was deeply unsatisfying, but also partly because the story wants to play it both ways: Nothing matters but the characters, but also all of the characters are deeply motivated by the real world and their removal from it, so it does matter how they ended up in there and if they'll be staying there or just one day be suddenly shut down.

The most unrealistic thing about the circus is that the SCSI drives storing the circus didn't shit the bed

>>154342994
yeah. just like here >>154331725
you have to make it up that Kinger told Ragatha that it was their tradition to do a 'funeral' for abstractions. otherwise it doesn't make any sense for Ragatha to act like it's tradition when she's only ever seen 1 other abstraction.

>>154344016
It's not so much about how far fetched the idea is (because you need to accept that they somehow figured out a fully digital VR environment back in the 90s etc), and more just giving a look into what was going on outside the simulation. In a way, it's me critiquing the show for focusing on things that ultimately didn't matter too much, or brushed aside some of the more interesting questions. Instead, I got a montage about Jax and a weirdly paced scene with Caine somehow coming back.

what even is abstraction? what causes it? it couldn't be "finding out the truth" because everyone finds out the truth in the finale and they're still fine. is it just digital cancer?

>>154335340
But most of the characters are under developed and barely get any screentime.

The whole thing is just The Jax Show.

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Anybody point out the extra characters/doors yet?

There's 3 or 4 abstracted characters that are never drawn attention to, don't make it into the mural, and don't make sense chronologically from what we have seen

>>154344700
you must understand the show was not about lore but character moments. but not these characters, these characters get no moments. just the one character thats an allegory for lopping your johnson off, only that one gets moments.

The Circus doesn't necessarily have to be running uninterrupted. If the simulation were shut down and restarted, how would the occupants know how much time had past in the real world? In addition, an hour in the simulation doesn't have to mean an hour in the real world either.

>>154344777
You can be transgender without getting SRS.

>>154344957
i get that, the problem is why would the brainscanner program automatically start up on reboot? why would they flag a program they didn't even think worked and moved on from as a startup program?

>>154345132
My assumption is that the brainscanner and server are both located in Mike's office and were the last things he was working on before his health completely gave up on him. And for whatever reason his office was never cleaned out.

>>154345132
The brainscanner program could be part of the headset software. It then just passes the files to the computer with the simulation.

>>154331307
yeah this one sticks out to me. they imply the whole gang spent weeks, possibly months, learning how to conjure. we see the day/night cycle happen dozens of times
and that whole time they just left jax alone?

>>154346665
I guess it's easy to forget he even exists when he's not bullying everyone constantly, and it doesn't help he doesn't really hang out with anyone in between adventures. It would be like if you stopped showing up to your job, zero people would notice.

>>154328809

(1/2)
Maybe I'm just dense or it was answered in a tweet or bluesky post (not a sign of a good writer) but what the hell was Bubble? From my interpretation of the finale's half-baked writing, Bubble was the dark side of the Caine AI, which absorbed the replacement (Able if want to call it that) and Caine removed that dark half without much effort, yet Bubble doesn't appear like it does normally or get any lines, outside of maybe Caine's harsh tone of voice when the two halves argued briefly. Was Bubble a virus that corrupted Caine? Caine's imaginary friend? None of the other characters ever interact with Bubble or acknowledge its presence, the closest we get to something like that is Zooble going "Uh, Bubble's feelings?" in episode 3 and the giant Bubble swallowing everyone during the villain song in episode 8.

One thing is undeniable; Coop was so focused on Jax and the transgender crap that he neglected the rest of the story and characters, which suffer for it. TADC was like the final season of Samurai Jack, it needed like 3 more episodes to tell its story properly.

>>154347754
(2/2)

And Jax might be the most unintentionally transphobic thing ever; he may have killed his mother, he drove Ribbit and Kaufmo to Abstract (which also makes Ragatha and the others look like shit as they did nothing to help their suffering), regularly harasses and mocks the others (though it is amusing when he does it to Zooble), his fantasies or personality traits or whatever Pomni was looking at made it clear he's just the most irredeemably awful person. Jax is only likable in a Always Sunny sense but you would absolutely want nothing to do with a real person like this. Call me dumb, but I doubt that cutting off his cock and dressing like a girl would do anything to change his terrible personality. And he kills himself.

Troons are eating this crap up because just so gullible, easily manipulated and desperate for validation they'll take anything they can get

I feel sorry for Stevie Wonder's daughter, the song her dad wrote for her is now going to be associated with a psychotic troon rabbit for the rest of her life.

>>154347754
just another loose thread.
at first it seemed like Bubble was a chef program the team made independently from Caine, but it's also possible that Bubble was one of Caine's creations, but it's also possible that Bubble was supposed to be Abel.
if Bubble IS supposed to be Abel, why would he make Caine go crazy in the first place? Caine was always depicted as the defective one and went crazy all on his own BEFORE consuming Abel.
the story really is a mess.

>>154347754
Seemingly, yes, Bubble was a manifestation of the second AI that was made to replace the first Red one we see at the start of ep 8 and in the poorly framed semi-flashback in ep 9. All that time spent being snarky and harmless and occasionally slinging an insult at Caine, only to be comically popped was supposed to be the hint that Bubble was secretly evil and malicious towards humans for literally no reason whatsoever. Every time Caine ignored or just didn't listen to the humans, it was supposed to be because the Bubble half of Caine was purposefully making him malicious and stopping him from empathizing with them, because Bubble is just evil and hateful and also seemingly angry that he didn't get to fulfill his purpose.

If it sounds confusing and contrived, it's because it's confusing and contrived.

>>154347754
>None of the other characters ever interact with Bubble
In the gun episode bubbles goes around filming everyone, and more specifically he films ragatha talking with kinger; they both acknowledge his presence.

>>154328809
Oct 15th is the day Goose came out

>>154348791
For real?

>>154340654
kinger only deleted caine, not the blue ai caine absorbed, which I suppose would have stayed in memory and inadvertently saved caine

>>154344700
it took several years before caine successfully loaded any of the brain scans. half of those could easily just be failed experiments.

>>154348739
Oh yeah, you're right. They just look at Bubble and seem very surprised, but they don't respond to what it says, I forgot about that part. Still odd how none of the characters outside of Caine get a scene of talking with Bubble.

>>154341035
The timing also seemed rather convenient and suspicious. In the pilot, Pomni shows up the day Kaufmo abstracts, he was probably only like that for a matter of hours before she appeared. In episode 8 we see Ragatha appear after Queenie abstracted, but how long was Kinger alone for? The episode leaves it ambiguous if he was wandering around in isolation for hours, days or weeks before Ragatha showed up, but I get the feeling it wasn't too long. The finale shows us that Gangle also appeared not long after Ribbit abstracted, so it really gives the feeling that someone on the outside was luring people to the computer inside the abandoned building or was at least adding new brain scans, seemingly whenever someone abstracted or they felt Caine needed more 'performers' in his circus.

Cooper learned the wrong lessons from JJ Abrams, this has his mystery box bullshit all over the place.

>>154328809
One thing I'm pretty disappointed by for the finale was how badly it dropped the ball in terms of the series' horror aspect. Episode 7 reveals that Caine can alter the characters' minds and memories to an extent, but not too much or they'll abstract. This should have sent both Jax and Ragatha into major existential crises and make them and all of the characters question everything.

>> Did Jax really do anything bad? Did he hurt his mother or was it just something Caine put in there to make him deeply afraid of leaving the circus, like in the Truman Show where the creators were trying to instill a fear of leaving the island into Truman?
>> Was Ragatha's mother truly abusive or was this something Caine put in her mind to spice things up?
>> Did Caine make Jax an asshole to spice things up?
>> If you want to include your gender bullshit, was Jax really a woman who Caine turned into a man because he felt there were too many women around?

The reveal that Caine can alter their minds opens up so many possibilities and questions, yet all of that is ignored.

>>154352029
This is my new headcanon. The experiment was never shut down. The facility and computer was kept powered so they could keep it going. The building appears abandonded but they still monitor it. They keep the security minimal because they want people to wander in and inadvertantly scan their brain. This is their legal loophole for bypassing all sorts of ethics questions since if people are doing it illegally the company isnt technically responsible for anyone creating a digital clone of themselves inside the computer.

This also explains why a supposedly old computer for some inexplicable reason had wifi access. Its how the researchers remotely monitor the experiment.

Holy shit a designated listfag thread

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>>154331307
Every abstraction has been done through timeskips and its SO fucking annoying.
>Ribbit’s gotta die, alright let’s just timeskip the fuck out of it.
>Kaufmo, timeskip.
>Jax, timeskip again.
Just throw the character in an hyperbolic timeskip chamber of isolation and wallah, abstraction delivered.
dumb af writing.

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What the FUCK was this about?

>>154352597
Kinger said Caine was interfering with the console , Bubble is a part of Caine, Bubble was also interfering with the console, i guess.

>>154352679
For what purpose?

>>154352686
to delete Caine.
why, then, was that side of Caine concerned about being "killed" later, if it wanted Caine dead?
the answer is because Goose isn't that great of a writer.

>>154352686
Self destruction. Bubble always comes of as malicious.

>>154352686
Bubble is a part of Caine and doesn't want the madness to stop but to go on and on, Bubble even pushes Caine into going crazier. It obviously would try to stop Kinger from ruining its fun.

>>154352369
Yeah, i think that's it, the Circus and Caine became some crazy Government experiment that got out of hand, like that time they paid a scientist who thought he could teach a dolphin to speak by giving it LSD and having a lady jerk it off.

>>154352705
Not necessarily. Crazy people can want contradictory things without realizing they are contradictory. You know, scorpion and the frog type stuff.

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>>154352705
>the answer is because Goose isn't that great of a writer.
Thanks, you saved us a lot of back and forth, because I was prepared to "why?" all the way down until we got there

>>154352724
yeah by comparison this experiment would certainly not be the most retarded thing the government ever did.

>>154352724
>It obviously would try to stop Kinger from ruining its fun.
It was egging Kinger on to delete Caine

>>154352725
>It's inconsistent because he's cahrayzeee!
a pretty lazy, obvious way to try and handwave the bad writing away.
also if he's so crazy, how is he able to turn it all around in an instant? he literally just goes
>Y'know what? I should be better.
and then is. with very little effort.

Kinger is seen trying to stop Caine by using a systemd command to kill his service. Systemd wasn't releases until around 2010 so how did Kinger know to use it and why was it running as a service key to the circus?

>>154352750
Y'see, Jax died because he was mentally ill. He should have tried not being mentally ill, like Caine did!

>>154350923
Scratch/Mike Dobby was shown as being the first one.

>>154352750
We are still talking about bubble right? Because you seem to be conflating bubble with Caine.

>>154352744
For the most part it seemed like he was mocking and belittling Kinger's attempts, but the 'Delete this m****' might indicate Bubble being insane or daring Kinger to do something dangerous that might cause irreversible damage. He probably didn't think Kinger had it in him or that Caine would find him in time.

>>154352803
the show conflates Bubble with Caine. when it wants to.
were you calling Bubble crazy earlier, then? what do you mean? the blue AI was always depicted as the more stable program.

>>154344700
The Soma thing is so messed up, if they wanted to go much darker they could have Caine just copy paste a new version of the scans and have the other watch in horror as thks copybofnthe person they knew acts like they just got to the circus.

>>154352823
Bubble and caine are linked but they are still spearate entities. Bubble is the one that gets expelled from caine. Bubble is also the 'crazy' one. The one that helps Caine be creative but also acts evil.

>>154352824
Caine has more administrative permission than the others but it seems like even he has his limits to how far he can go.

>>154352824
>He makes a new Jax based on the most recent backup
>it's from the last time he went to sleep
>which was episode 7 when he was abstracting

>>154352521
Everything in this show relies on characters not talking about all of the obvious details and problems of their existence until the plot demands it or simply not even looking at each other for weeks at a time so something dramatic and bad can happen.

That sort of thing is understandable when everyone is living their own lives and dealing with work and school and whatever, and sometimes you just don't talk to someone for a week. Makes no sense when they are all forced to live together in digital purgatory and also they are forced by Caine to engage in activities and adventures.

>Zooble is a nigger
>Gangle a pajeeta
>No one is complaining
Well done guys, i'm proud of you

>>154352901
It's an American writing thing
I was just watching Rooster, and 100% of the problems are characters just lying and not talking to people

>>154352824
>ending where Jax doesn't abstract and everyone overcomes their issues
>then Caine ruminates in the void that things are too far gone and decides to start from scratch
>deletes everyone and brings back fresh copies
>The Amazing Digital Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
The most interesting part of this entire series to me was the opening of 8 revealing Caine built the entire circus himself unprompted, plus the general themes of Caine as The Man forcing people on adventures every day to fill arbitrary goals they don't necessarily care about with people they wouldn't necessarily choose to be spending time with (ie modern work), so this sort of ending would be kinda kino to me. Both validating the importance of connection while acknowledging the inevitability of the powers that be, both being equally eternal and, in their own ways, all powerful.

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>>154352888
kek

>>154328809
Who was telling Kinger "KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!!" when he was messing with the code? Reason tells us it should have been Bubbles/Blue AI, as Bubbles already told Caine he should kill himself. However, this is never addressed again.
How did Caine came back to life?
Is Kinger cured from his dementia or will he have to live in perpetual darkness from now on?
Was his dementia a byproduct of staying in the circus for too long? Or was Caine messing with his brain?
Why did Pomni never tell anyone until ep 8?
Will the others develop dementia too?
Why did C&A go bankrupt? (If that's what hapoened).
How did so many humans stumble upon an abandoned building? What are the odds?
Was Ragatha trying to sell the building? Why did nobody ever explicitly say how they got to the circus except for Pomni? We only know how Pomni, Ragatha and Jax got there, but the last two only implicitly. Only the viewer knows.
And why did they never talk about it previous to ep 4? These people were in the circus for years and never once talked about their previous lives or how they got there?
How was the Moon alive? Was she conjured by the humans while rebuilding the circus? Or she never died? If she never died then why did Bubbles die?
Why mention the carnival at all if you were never going to explore it?
Why was Caine so adamant of telling humans the truth? The pilot made it sound like the only reason they couldn't leave was because an AI malfunction (Caine froze 2 times, one when Pomni asks how to leave, another when explaining the activities that can be done in the circus). Also it made it sound like it was indeed a videogame to be enjoyed by all ages, Caine had no reason to add swearing censorship, for exanple.

>>154352901
One of the biggest being that Pomni figures out that Kinger is more lucid in the dark after only being there a few days but Ragatha and the others not knowing about it after being with him for years.

The only way I could see this working is if Caine slightly altered their memories/minds to not notice this but that would bring up the question of why he doesn't do it to Pomni. Or perhaps Jax figured it out but went out of his way to conceal it from the others so they wouldn't pursue a way out of the circus.

The best defense I've seen for Ragatha, Gangle and Zooble not knowing about it is that they probably didn't want to be alone in the dark with a mentally broken man who hasn't felt the touch of a woman in years.

>>154352854
>Bubble is also the 'crazy' one.
if Bubble is the blue AI, it was decidedly not crazy before Cain got ahold of it.

>>154328809
>>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?

It's very difficult for Caine to access the mind file folder and he has no way of being notified when new files appear(it's outside of his 'domain' proper). He checks it annually.

No real excuse for the other stuff.

would scratch have immediately recognized he was a brain scan? did he keep this info from the other members of the circus?

caine might not be able to fix abstraction, but why not just backup every scan file every night? when a human abstracts just reload the prior save state and try to fix any signs of corruption before its too late

>>154352969
>We only know how Pomni, Ragatha and Jax got there
Gangle almost certainly went in to tag the place and "leave a mark."

>>154353038
I think you're thinking of Zooble lol

>>154353038
fuck, i meant Zooble.

>>154353014
>It's very difficult for Caine to access the mind file folder and he has no way of being notified when new files appear(it's outside of his 'domain' proper). He checks it annually.
If only this was explained in the show. But it would take away from characters crying and therapy sessions.

Who are the four abstracted players that only appear on doors, not in flashbacks or on the mural at the end of 9? Did they abstract before anyone could interact with them? Are they failed characters made by Caine from incomplete mind files? Attempts at restoration of abstracted players from mind files? NPCs that Caine tried to pass off as people?

>>154353038
>>154353062
Zooble also admits to doing urbex stuff too. Since they all seem to live within walking distance of the old C&A building in real life, it would stand to reason that she also explored that building and found the headset.

Awfully convenient that every single person who found the headset didn't take it or fuck with the computer or touch anything else and just politely left it alone for the next person to find after going
>What is this headset? I should put it on.
>*brainscanned*
>Must be nothing! I'll just leave this here and this PC running

>>154328809
>>154330412
Remember that Scratch pinned all of his hopes on this brainscan shit. I bet he tried his best to safeguard it with generators and all sorts of backup power like a hospital

>>154353241
See, that would be an interesting deal to slip in amongst Kinger's mumbling and half-remembered details, but also, Scratch was a programmer at a mid-level tech company that went under at some point in the following years. You think he had the money to build a top-of-the-line doomsday proof bunker to run a digital backup server for a bunch of human minds to exist within a digital world created by an AI he didn't know was capable of doing that for him?

>>154353241
Would be cool if this was actually explored lol better luck in the next misterybox show! I'm sure the next one will be satisfying!

>>154352969
(1/2)
This is just me theorizing, but here's how I figure it went:
>> C&A is founded in '96 by an independently wealthy, eccentric guy obsessed with tech or possibly funded by the Government.
>> Mike Dobby is hired, considered an oddball nutcase but C&A's founder sees a kindred spirit in him and gives him a chance.
>> Caine is the first AI they create, but it has too many problems due to Mike Dobby's advanced, eccentric genius.
>> Caine is exposed to the human world via pictures of the outside world, art, etc... that the programmers exposed him to.
>> The idea for the circus comes about when Caine is exposed to an 90's edutainment game, possibly from a programmer bringing their kid to work and keeping them busy with said game.
>> The experimental nature of Cain causes him to essentially go crazy. The C&A programmers seal him away, not deleting him outright because of all the work they put into him.
>> They create a new AI to replace Caine, Able/Bubble, being more careful with what they do to him.
>> Dobby, meanwhile, is working on brain scans as a way to say alive as he realizers he's dying from a tumor.
>> Caine breaks out and merges with the new AI, becoming one being with a split personality, Bubble representing the blue AI/Able.
>> Caine creates the circus, fills it with a strange amalgam of the limited stuff he knows from the human world.
>> Dobby uploads his own brain scan but is under the impression it didn't work. Other C&A employees try to help by scanning their own brains but they think the project is a failure.
>> Caine finds these files and brings them all into the circus, erasing their names for whatever reason.
>> Dobby dies of his tumor while his digital self, Scratch, lives on.
>> C&A's founder discovers the circus but keeps it hidden from Grant Best and the others. Thinks it's cute and that Dobby will live on in the circus forever with his friends.

>>154328809
Show is trash.

>>154352597
The circus has some sort of 'defense system' that Kinger triggered when he was trying to reset Caine.

>>154353330
(2/2)
>> C&A goes bankrupt during the dot com bubble crash in the early 2000's. The founder keeps it going with Grant Best and the others being none the wiser. He keeps the building maintained over the years and keeps the computer up to date, making sure it doesn't break down. Possibly keeping it on a generator should power ever go out.
>> Scratch isn't too happy with Caine's madness and being forced to go on wacky adventures. He tries to get Caine under control and in retaliation, Caine tries to alter Scratch's mind to make him more docile, but this leads to the first abstraction.
>> The existential horror leads to the others slowly abstracting one by one over the next few years until Queenie can't take it anymore and breaks, leaving Kinger alone.
>> Realizing what has happened, the founder brings relator Suzie Ackerman into the building on the pretense of selling it. She tries the headset on and Ragatha is created from this. The building is not sold after all.
>> Kaufmo and Ribbit also come around with the other unseen and unidentified characters, some of whom abstract before Jax arrives. We don't know enough about them to guess how they got there.
>> Leeroy eventually comes, either while working as a delivery man or as a homeless drifter looking for shelter. Jax enters the circus.
>> After Jax drives Ribbit to abstract, Gangle is introduced. It is possible the founder knew Zoey's family and made a brain scan of her to keep her alive after being in a coma from a suicide attempt. Zoey recovered and Gangle was stuck in the circus.
>> More characters are added, more abstract. Zooble is eventually added after Riley, a graffiti artist, breaks into the building to do some art. This is only a year or so before Pomni shows up, since Caine is still struggling to understand Zooble throughout the series, hinting he's still not used to her.
>> Kaufmo abstracts, the founder lures Abigail to the building for her urbex videos, leading to Pomni being added.

>>154352969
>Who was telling Kinger "KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!!" when he was messing with the code? Reason tells us it should have been Bubbles/Blue AI, as Bubbles already told Caine he should kill himself. However, this is never addressed again.
Obvious answer is Bubble, but they wasted too much time with Jax's struggle session and just handwaved away explaining that seemingly very important detail which was alluded to at the start of 8 and then again towards the end of 9.

>>154353483
That's the finale's biggest problem, prioritizing Jax and his stupid gender issues instead of the story. There's very odd creative decisions that led to many viewers being confused, like Caine abruptly shown to be alive with no real explanation given, the shot of Scratch popping into existence. This felt like a first draft, compounded by Cooper focusing on the wrong thing and trying to rush the finale out the door so he could be done with the series.

>>154348732
It’s amazing how maybe a couple of. inures of dialog and conflict between Caine and Bubble/Blue/Abel in the void would have been enough to give both narrative and emotional closure to this story line, BUT NO IT’S THE JAX SHOW OUR POOR LITTLE EGGY SUICIDAL JAXYPOO

>>154354327
Yeah, if there had been more focus on Caine, showing Bubble as his aggressive, insane half and have the others use their conjuring abilities to help Caine excise Bubble once it's clear Caine is remorseful over what he's done and Bubble was the real mastermind, then Caine's redemption would have worked so much better and would have been way more believable.

>Majority of the runtime in the finale is a tranny therapy session so nothing important is revealed and everything else is rushed
What was the fucking point honestly, feels like there should have been two episodes, one entirely for the jax therapy then at the end Caine reveals himself and that's the big cliffhanger for the finale.

>>154354397
ok, jax dies in part one
glitch sees how angry people are
make goose bring him back in the finale

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>>154354536
Ah fuck

>>154354397
>>154354536
Just make the finale longer. Make it an actual 90 minutes movie instead of dragging ep 8 into the theatrical release because no cinema would take it otherwise. They had the money to make it actually work.

>>154328809
>Why did Ribbit, Kaufmo and Gangle go to the office?
It's not important.
>Why was every file dated specifically October 15th, spread across different years?
Probably an in-joke within the studio
>How is the circus even still running, with the company defunct and the building being sold? Why would there still be company property on site at that point? How could it manage to stay running for over a decade, uninterrupted?
It's not important.
>Why would they leave a headset permanently plugged in, constantly running a scanning program no one even thought worked?
It's not important.
>Why did Goose think "Caine undeletes himself!" was a good idea?
Thematically, the last 2-3 episodes are very much about setting up parallels between Caine and Jax. Both characters have been antagonistic to others, both are suffering mentally and reach a breaking point, and both characters don't take the time for introspection and change until after they 'die'. Both characters are given opportunities to change along the way, and both characters deflect and avoid these opportunities. The key differences are in the availability of support and the characters' capacities for empathy: Caine is genuinely incapable of empathizing with the other members of the Circus until after his 'death' and revelations about the scope of their real lives, but after that revelation he's able to fundamentally change for the better. Jax was always capable of empathizing and supporting the others, and seeking out their empathy and support, and just chooses not to until it's too late.

With regards to most of the other 'plot holes', almost all of them are just conveniences necessary for the plot to happen. Why is the Enterprise always 'the closest ship in the sector'? Because it needs to be so the fucking plot can happen. Why is the computer in the C&A office still working? Same reason.

>>154354222
>>154354327
It's genuinely fucking fascinating, isn't it? Full trainwreck production. We went 8 episodes with only very few details and very little exploration of any of the characters. Things were left subtle and implied and there were even little hints to let you see the SOMA brainscan reveal coming. Caine's creation was shown in a little artsy animation and left implied to be something that happened mysteriously and unknown to the rest of the company and even Caine's creator.

But Jax? Jax gets explicit, fully detailed flashbacks, full explanations, a licensed musical clipshow montage just to cry for Jax, and multiple after episode admissions from Goose about Jax... But every single other fucking thing about this show is firmly in "why do you even care?" territory for Goose and the "fans" jacking off to trans Jax art.

>>154353105
>If only this was explained in the show.
It's a background detail that shows up for half-a-second in one shot, does it really warrant a five-minute follow-up where the characters exposit about it?

>>154354575
>With regards to most of the other 'plot holes', almost all of them are just conveniences necessary for the plot to happen
Conveniences? You mean contrivances. We didn't need to be explicitly shown how every single little thing happened, but there's clearly gaping holes in the story that are kept shoved to the side by virtue of just having the characters completely neglect to ask, talk, or even think about those things. Like not having any of the characters ask what year it was for Pomni when she put on the headset, for instance.

>>154354625
>does it really warrant a five-minute follow-up where the characters exposit about it?
It warrants half a sentence of exposition dropping. Pretending like these things need some exhaustive, overblown, time wasting, boring explanation that eats up valuable screentime is just disingenuous contrarianism.

>>154354625
Yeah why even care about minor details that build the world when not even the creator does, right?

>>154352938
>Zooble didn't steal anything from the building.
Unrealistic.

>>154354572
They absolutely should have, and they should have ended with Jax being unabstracted or hinting at it being in the future.

I really want to see a second season, i want to see the interactions of Jax and the others after unabstracting him. how this changes his interactions, what he's like when he can't mask and cover it up.

Did caine bring scratch back? That whole instance of him breaking into the real world showed scratch come back
I thought since they're all scans he was just going to bring everyone back as a copy of their original files
So like Jax and other come back but the memory of them just entering the circus

>>154354705
They tried to be artsy and show Caine reaching out and finding the Wi-Fi outside of the void against Caine in the past first manifesting and finding the files in Mike/Scratch's computer of all the brainscans he'd made, but seemingly couldn't do anything with.

I'm fine with caine undeleting himself, he's a rouge AI so he probably had some contingency plan and the company probably already tried that
>>154354397
Honestly caine should have just stayed dead, it would have made the pacing better
Just like have pomni find the real world info but jax chooses to abstract because he killed 2 people

>>154354741
Yeah I wasn't trying to rewrite the story or anything, I'm just saying the pacing was absolutely terrible because most of the episode was about Jax and the stuff with actual meaning gets pushed to the side and rushed so we can have more time for tranny therapy.

>>154354693
>Second season
There's no antagonist anymore, caine is now a good boy thats been pacified
There's even less stakes
I guess the blue AI?

>>154354660
>It warrants half a sentence of exposition dropping.
Why? It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail in the background of a shot with no meaningful impact on the character or story arcs. Why does it need exposition? Why does it need to be anything more than
>They needed a file date for this shot so they picked one.

>>154354774
By your own admission, half of the dialog in the show didn't need to be there. Why did we need Pomni and Jax to discuss Jax's pointless fear of corn when it didn't have any meaningful impact on the characters or story arcs? Why do we need to know Kinger's wife liked insects? Why did we need to know that Gangle wanted to be a webcomic artist?

Because it fucking fills out and deepens the show, you disingenuous retard.

>>154354771
>There's no antagonist anymore
why does there need to be one?
make it a slice of life, the antagonist is Jax's insecurity, and how he copes without his old coping mechanism that was hurting people

>>154354575
>parallels between Caine and Jax
I think hey fucked up with Caine because Jax has multiple people try to reach out and help him, pomni literally risks death to save him, but they always treat caine like a "thing"
Presumably when jax talks to him at the meal is literally the first time anyone has ever reached out to him and he had to trick him into it
No one tried to save caine when he dies, they just go "shit, now we gotta fix it ourselves"
And he still changes for them

>>154354673
Come to think of it, someone had to be guarding the building or only letting certain people in, otherwise some tweaker or bum would've stolen the headset and pawned it off.

>>154354998
Caine also has a proverbial devil on his shoulder at all times forcing him to act a certain way. He has an excuse, while Jax acts the way he does because his incredibly specific and nonsensical form of insecurity and anxiety requires that he adopt an excessively antagonostic personality to everyone around him, which just makes people worry about him more and is the entire reason Pomni was concerned with helping him, since it's such an obvious cry for help. And then, when offered the help and attachment he craves, he just quadruples down on this
>I'm the ASSHOLE character! I'm mean and I hate people and I love seeing them get hurt! Because I'm an ASSHOLE! STOP CARING ABOUT ME!
Horrendously stupid routine that doesn't even track with his unbelievably banal backstory about his divorced parents.

>>154355081
Jax is like a character from Always Sunny, ATHF, Seinfeld, etc... they're awful people but you like them because they're fictional and they make you laugh. If they were real, you'd want nothing to do with them. That's why those shows never take the characters very seriously and the joke is on you if you get emotionally attached to them. Trying so hard to make Jax a sympathetic, tragic figure doesn't work at all.

>>154355308
Up until the finale, that holds true. Jax is a jerk, but rarely is his actively malicious and harmful to anyone. He's clearly meant to be a slightly shit-head-ier Bugs Bunny. And that's fine!... Until episode 9 tells us that all of that is an act and Jax's actual, real personality, that isn't a facade he puts up, is that he's a damage smol bean with mommy issues and confused feelings about his peepee.

>>154331725
Caine figured out how to interpret brain scan files, in a cave, with a box of scraps.
Figuring out modern HTML must be a cakewalk in comparison.

>>154355389
That could have worked, if they hadn't revealed he essentially drove Ribbit to abstract. Jax would have worked so much better as a surprise antagonist and his motivation and backstory is just so weak and uncompelling, not justifying his horrible deeds whatsoever yet we're expected to still feel bad for him.

If they wanted to redeem Jax and make you feel for him, they should have, as >154352197 pointed out, make Jax have a crisis regarding whether any of his memories are real or if Caine just put them in his head to make him into an asshole. Then Caine comes back, minus his powers, but is now a horrific, glitching, half abstracted abomination who now has nothing but hate for the cast. The group comes up with a plan to defeat him by having Jax reveal he has a key to the basement where the Abstracted are kept, they lure the Caine abomination in there and Jax sacrifices himself to shove Caine inside where they're both killed by the Abstracted, Jax tossing Pomni the key to lock them in forever.

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>there is actually a way to bring someone 'back' from abstraction but it's impossible to do from within the circus
>if a person puts the headset on a second time the computer will overwrite the pre-existing version with the new copy because it will then recognize the first one as somehow corrupted
>puts them in the same body as they originally had but also is essentially a different person as they don't have any memories of their time inside the circus and they've had different life experiences after that point but at the core it's still them
>works for everyone except Jax because at some point he legally changed his name and would so become a new entity

>>154355631
Pretty sure Cain at any moment could copy existing brain scan and essentially "resurrect" someone that way. This of course opens up a nasty can of existential horror worms.

>>154352197
Yeah brain altering got dropped really fast, caine never killed anyone outright but it's implied he killed scratch via brain altering, I guess that could be more innocent on his part like he was just born and didn't understand that humans aren't NPC's, so he tried to fix him and it just destroyed scratch or something

>>154330972
I don't know if it's just a coincidence or anything, but is Goose a Red vs. Blue fan? During seasons 11 to 13, the number 57 kept popping up numerous times, which led many fans to believe there was something to it. Shortly before season 13 finished (or maybe after? I don't remember), Miles Luna revealed that the frequent use of the number 57 was pure coincidence and they didn't even realize they'd kept using the number until they noticed the fans pointing it out and theorizing.

Though to be blunt about Miles Luna I consider him a talentless hack and RvB seasons 11 to 13 only turned out good because Burnie and Matt were looking over his shoulder and telling him what to do. Maybe Goose could have used that and Glitch should've been a little more hands on when they saw the finale's obvious first draft of a script.

>>154355556
I think there's ways we could fix the script. Like have it so Jax only feels responsible for the abstractions. He overdid the asshole act and Ribbit withdrew so badly and spiraled because of her own backstory problems, but Jax feels like it's all his fault. That caused Jax to adopt the detached asshole personality, instead of just being outright antagonistic. But being so detached alienated Kaufmo who started to take Jax's dismissive nihilistic comments too seriously. Again, not directly Jax's fault (not that it really was shown to be in ep 9 anyways) but the important part is that he feels responsible now that he fully understands that no one in the circus can escape and that being nice to each other was the only way to make things genuinely tolerable.

Then he abstracts because he doesn't even know how he's supposed to help everyone now that the circus is broken and there's no hope. Not because he's so sad he didn't transition while living in digital purgatory. Not because he's worried about his dead mom. Because the guilt and the hopelessness consumed the guy who was pretending the hardest not to care.

>>154352824
It's not explicitly stated but I do believe it's sort of implied there was some sort of Caine-Scratch hyperwar happening back when the original C&A mindscans were uploaded which involved Caine engaging in advanced mindfuckery but the results were so disastrous everyone ended up abstracted outside a half-mad Kinger. Since then Caine doesn't engage in anything but the most superficial mind-bending and tries to be sort of personable (until going insane in ep8) so as to not lose his playthings.

>>154331414
Spoken like a fag. If they wanted to kill themselves they won't let you know. If they let you know, and make an attempt multiple times, at that point it's for attention.
t. Who have friends who attempted.

>>154355858
>>154355930
Again, all we needed was a sentence where Caine says that abstracted brainscans become too corrupted to reset. He's trying to figure out a way to do so, and maybe this internet thing might help him, but not deleting their files and not tampering with them further is the only way he can even retain the hope that he could fix them one day.

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hampter

>>154355956
>abstracted brainscans become too corrupted to reset
But that's not how computer files work, there should always be an immutable copy. A backup, literally.