The Amazing Digital Circus - Western Isekai that probably will become Hazbin Hotel killer

[Cave Fisher]

the abhorrent behavior of Jax toward Gangle and Zooble's interference in their abusive "relationship" is all designed to make Gooseworx look like a good person through the proxy of his self insert character. Jax's inexplicable abuse of Gangle is made much more clear once you realize the whole point of the abuse is to give Zooble the chance to swoop in and rescue Gangle from a dysfunctional "boyfriend" and becoming Gangle's new ""girlfriend.""

I always found it weird how Jax and Gangle's abusive dynamic isn't a way bigger deal despite the focus on Jax as the real protagonist when Jax was calling her "submissive and agreeable" as early as the second episode, like one episode has her explicitly afraid of what he might do since she's not on her team, why should I give a shit about the dime-a-dozen "unpleasant violent asshole, but he's secretly SAAAD while being an asshole!" having a panic attack because someone was nice to him, especially when there doesn't seem to be any reason he acts like that toward her specifically other than her being the saddest while simultaneously never being at risk of abstraction?

This is why people are going crazy with theories. It’s not that Gooseworx is some super-subtle genius; it’s that there’s barely anything to go on. That’s by design. There’s a lot of lore bait, sure, but even obvious information the characters should be asking about is intentionally hidden to stall things.

This seems like the kind of series where the writing is more of a writing prompt than an actual plot, because there's two episodes left and there's four characters that aren't real characters, with one of them having no design and abruptly being namedropped by the guy who's supposed to be insane in the light, but I guess not always, two of them almost certainly existing just to give Jax a sadd tragic backstory which is why they're the only ones with some focus, and one of them being Kinger's dead wife.
We don't even know where the circus simulation physically IS. Is this simulation that can seamlessly handle 6 human minds and one sapient AI (OR seven sapient AIs and more) while constantly making new maps and adventures on that old PC we see, or is it just connecting to some old server in C&A's building somewhere?

 

[Saxxon]

"submissive and agreeable"

That was just a wordplay on the submissive and breedable meme from a few years back so it was in all likelihood not meant to be taken that seriously, but I won't blame you if you didn't know or forgot about it because as I have said before this show is just too online and you can see how that sometimes influences the dialogue or characters.

Like I don't see how the "slip" that Gooseworx made on that stream that it all takes place in 2017 even matters at all, none of the cast acts or behaves like they have lived on different decades, someone here even pointed out how Jax in the newest episode explicitly uses the word yapping when that wouldn't be in his lexicon if he was trapped in the circus prior to 2017, it wasn't even a thing in 2017.

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Jax in the newest episode explicitly uses the word yapping when that wouldn't be in his lexicon if he was trapped in the circus prior to 2017, it wasn't even a thing in 2017.

Okay to be fair, "yapping" was very much a term well before the brainrot era. My grandfather used to complain about people that "yapped on".

Imagine if he said something like "sussy" though

 

[mirai gadget 8]

One of them literally reveals there was an extra person in this group of people interacting with everyone but he was always offscreen so you didn't know.

To be fair, you have to have very complex motives to understand zero time dilemma

 

[Moral Decay]

Tbh I think Jax is at least semi-genuine in his "this is all fake so it doesn't really matter if I'm an asshole" philosophy. He's basically a griefer in an online game, so why not pick on Gangle? It's not like it won't be "reset" later on. Obviously there's the actual psychological effect of his harassment, but I think from his perspective at least, Gangle is basically choosing to be a sad sack about it. After all, it seems like the masks don't actually dictate her mood, they seem like some sort of psychosomatic effect.

That said, Jax's problems show his way of thinking isn't really doing him any favors.

Remember that Nazi VTuber girl who ended up being a dude with a voice changer?

A Jewish man. That detail isn't relevant here, but it's too funny to leave out.

 

[Incorrigible Bigotry]

troon-Jax will make some self-sacrifice that is the key to all the other players escaping the Circus

Well if we're gonna draw parallels, Jax is pretty similar to Ted from I Have No Mouth in how he tries to convince himself that he's above it all and that he's the least psychologically affected by their circumstances, and we all know what happens to Ted.

 

[Local FloRida-man]

The problem with trying to call jax out for his abuse is that, if you take away all the offscreen "tell don't show" stuff, then we're just left with a less evil plankton from spongebob. It'd be hard to take a law & order SUV special about anything hes done onscreen seriously.

Plus... I'm gonna be real, the rabbit is my GOAT but he has been putting out Shaqille O'neal free throw numbers in the bullying department. Pomni has personally put a bullet in every cast member's head aside from jax (she just beat his ass), and stoner ragatha almost made gangle abstract with one conversation. Compared to that, we just might have to take jax's CHUD card if he doesn't step up in ep 8.

 

[Lone Star]

we just might have to take jax's CHUD card if he doesn't step up in ep 8.

I was gonna say he needs to call someone a slur to keep his card, but it'd just be censored and no one will know what he said.

 

[LucasSomething]

Tbh I think Jax is at least semi-genuine in his "this is all fake so it doesn't really matter if I'm an asshole" philosophy. He's basically a griefer in an online game, so why not pick on Gangle? It's not like it won't be "reset" later on. Obviously there's the actual psychological effect of his harassment, but I think from his perspective at least, Gangle is basically choosing to be a sad sack about it. After all, it seems like the masks don't actually dictate her mood, they seem like some sort of psychosomatic effect.

That said, Jax's problems show his way of thinking isn't really doing him any favors.

Because Jax doesn't actually believe that shit, he is a loser playing nihilist to cope and is clearly the most fragile of the cast. If Ragatha saying he has no friends is enough to give him panic attacks and nearly abstract, god forbid someone was actually mean and called him a faggot and told him to get the rope.

The problem with Jax's abuse is that the context of his trauma makes his previous scenes and talks bizarre as he was actually EVIL and not coping. Jax would torment gangle to a violent degree and this was seen as normal. As zooble says in the pilot, "Jax likes to fuck with people" as if that's normal but, like sparky lurker said, characters exist in this limbo of knowing each other for so long or strangers when necessary.

But we know jax is on COPE. He pretends to not care about anyone cause they might leave him too. Jax can be a good friend with pomni meaning he was a good person before right, or at least kaufmo and ribbit were on good terms with others? So how come no one ever wondered if Jax changed after his friends die? No one ever called him out?

In fact, hindsight makes pilot Jax looks like a nearly different character

You're telling me this is the reaction of someone who just found their best friend is dead? To mock the situation and do cartoony run away? His main priority right now is getting a bowling ball to throw at kinger? That this is the same character who later has a sequence of mental breakdowns over it?

Even with context characters don't talk like sane people. Ragatha is portrayed as a fake bitch for being too nice and that's valid but Jax being genuinely confused about why she's liek this is retarded. No one wonders that she could be sad about their dead friends, which i guess she isn't because she is toxic positive but was she always like that or only after people died?

Gangle's abuse was played for laughs but now this cast of zany cartoon characters became depressed millenials and by episode 4 Jax had already mellowed out and Jax is now more traumatized than gangle.

 

[WE'RE ALL GONNA]

I noticed they really upped the amount of merch they're selling. You guys think they're trying to make as much bank as they possibly can because the ending their planning is some stupid twist that will rugpull viewers and poison the brand beyond repair?

The simpler answer is that the show is ending soon and they’re still pretty popular so they’re capitalizing on the moment.

I’m gonna spoil the ending: according to Troongoose the ultimate message of the show is that there’s meaning to be found in a stagnant life. This implies that the fake-out exit adventure is more foreshadowing that they will never escape.

 

[Legalize Asbestos]

there’s meaning to be found in a stagnant life

Troons have to default to 'the world is meaningless but we mean something to each other' in their positive stories. It's the most 'optimistic' lesson available to a nihilistic worldview -even though everyone can feel the howling wind of the yawning chasm undergirding the logic.

One way or the other, troon-Jax will make some self-sacrifice that is the key to all the other players escaping the Circus

'No players, no game', you have my vote. It may be word for word what you wrote.

I don't see the writer doing that to Jax though. I just think he puts the words of 'an asshole' into the asshole's mouth.

I could see - if Jax has some crime in real life or is on death's door - him volunteering to stay behind like you said. 'Cain won't let everyone leave but agrees to do it if the rabbit stays with him' makes sense. ('Meaning is relationships, right?) Jax is the only character that needs to atone for something and has already demonstrated a desire to stay, so he'll be the sacrifice.

Although another trans-friendly outcome is that they are trapped forever in a false world, but it's okay because what's really real in life is you - the individual - and you can live, laugh, and love in a simulation just as easy as irl, silly goose. A lot of trans/secular ideas tend to bend backwards into pseudo-Christianity at times and 'you're here to grow as a person' is a corruption of 'the sojourn on Earth refines your soul.' So it has that element of truth that feels vaguely satisfying.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Well if we're gonna draw parallels, Jax is pretty similar to Ted from I Have No Mouth in how he tries to convince himself that he's above it all and that he's the least psychologically affected by their circumstances, and we all know what happens to Ted.

I just realized this means that Kinger is Benny, an intellectual who had his brains nerfed by AM.

So that confirms that Kinger was brainwashed by Caine.

In fact, I bet the very reason Caine brainwashed Kinger is because of his screwup in brainwashing Scratch and causing the first-ever abstraction, Kinger was a witness and Caine wanted him to forget. In fact, I bet he brainwashed Kinger in particular because as a staff member, Kinger has the ability to review and make changes to Caine, which might result in Caine getting deleted for his screwup. This might also be the reason why Caine is so obsessed with adventures, the less time characters have to reflect on things the less opportunity they have to abstract, just like how a cult keeps their members busy so they can't think about the internal inconsistencies of their belief system.

 

["Controlled Demolition"]

Spoiler: Possible spoiler for abstractions

View attachment 8303738

https://archive.ph/skT5c

That's not a spoiler for abstractions, it got implemented into Voices of the Voids (A) (along with a buyable plush of Gooseworx' self-insert avatar) after that tweet because that "game's" entire model is pandering to attentionwhores and "content creators" in exchange for a Patreon boost. Paid in exposure, except it works. Gooseworx shilling it is part of the e-incestuous cycle.

Also, if we're going with the "this is literally just a copy of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream except with a wacky AI", then:
Gorrister - Pomni, the largely unimportant storyteller.
Benny - Ragatha? There's no good fit for the sex fiend that becomes a caveman.
Ted - Jax, the self-sufficient odd one out who pushes everyone away.
Ellen - Zooble, the black woman to the tranny self-insert. The trauma may have been offloaded to Gangle instead. But the sexual harassment would be consistent with "not feeling comfortable in her body".
Nimdok - Kinger, including the backstory related to AM/Cain's creation
Kinger is the clearest inspiration, even in temperament. Similarly to (at least the video game) Nimdok, he's got conditional dementia and a tortured past partially involved with the AI itself. He's just not a hekkin evil nazi.

I'm keeping to the Occam's razor of the ending being nothing ever happens. There has been no particularly interesting or creative writing thus far, I have no reason to believe it won't end with the fact all of them can never escape, so they may as well enjoy themselves. A traditional heroic story would lead up to them "escaping" by committing collective suicide and shutting down the entire simulation to prevent any more victims falling for the trap, but this isn't that. Trannies are incapable of writing heroic stories, and especially not good ones. At best, there'll be the cop-out of Jax nobly sacrificing himself by "staying behind", therefore continuing the status quo of nothing ever happens and also leaving the door open for future seasons when, after everyone but Jax leaves, a new player pops in confused. Cut to black. The only thing that would surprise me if there isn't some kind of hook at the end for future seasons, starting 2027 with a new line of teaser merch dropping by December 2026.

 

[used_a_throwaway]

Remember that Nazi VTuber girl who ended up being a dude with a voice changer?

If your alarm didn't go off the second you heard "her" speak, there's something wrong with your perception. It was super obvious.

Ragatha is the biggest piece of shit of everyone.

I think you're reaching too far. Does she hold up a farce facade? Yes, but not out of malicious intentions. She DID choose to team up with Kinger because she genuenly cares about his safety, him being her schitzo friend and all that.
Good analysis otherwise, I especially enjoyed your TroonJakx prediction.

 

[Niggerphobe]

I thought of a neat adventure idea. House hunting but the characters make the homes

 

[ThisIsGonnaBeGood]

I was gonna say he needs to call someone a slur to keep his card, but it'd just be censored and no one will know what he said.

It's crazy that the two things that'll make a character 100% irredeemable in the eyes of most viewers are rape and calling someone a slur. They really do consider them equally unforgivable.

 

[The Wise Shaman]

I think the biggest flaw of TADC is how the first two episodes are different from the rest. Episodes 1 and 2 have a clear focus on the nature of the circus, revealing lore piece by piece. Episodes 3, 4, 5, and 6 (and even 2 to a degree) steer away from the lore and focus on character interactions and melodrama with almost nothing relevant to the story happening. The first two episodes create expectations for a different type of cartoon, basically. This is why episode 7 pissed off so many people (myself included), because the audience had clear expectations, and they were given a bad plot twist after nothing happening for many episodes.

Shows changing their focus happens all the time, but the way it happens is very important. Episodic shows becoming serialized is surprisingly common, but it works, as the episodic episodes do the worldbuilding and establish character relations, while the serialized episodes later on build upon these established ideas. This works. Meanwhile, TADC essentially halted almost all progress to the story after episode 2. In the middle four episodes, only Jax and Gangle go through any progression, and even those are minor. Basically, TADC started as serialized and slowed down to being episodic without having any conclusion to its story, and then it threw everything out of the window in episode 7.

I can imagine two ways this could have been fixed. One would be making Pomni more determined to understand the nature of the circus and how she could find an exit. Pomni is already a stand-in for the viewer; she knows as much as we do. The fact this was dropped after the first two episodes feels like a mistake to me. The other way to fix TADC would be just abandoning the lore aspects and making it more episodic and character focused. If the story sucks, why bother? You don't need a central story to make a good cartoon. Just take a look at Smiling Friends; it is really popular despite almost every episode being self-contained. If TADC didn't have lorebait, our expectations would have been different, and episode 7 wouldn't have been a controversial episode.

 

[PsychoJenny]

I watched a youtube video about how this shit is basically just a re-tread of SOMA and the people in the Circus are just copies of the people who put on the headset so there is no escape since they are just digital copies of a person.

If that happens then everything will be just a boring copy of better work and this series sucks. People are drawing comparisons to I Have No Mouth which I didn't consider before but it makes sense. Just copy other peoples work and slap your own aesthetic on it. It's about what I would expect from a tranny. I still like the series for the most part because the characters and their voice actors carry it so hard (except Caine hes just an annoying cunt with reddit humour) but I'm expecting an absolutely unsatisfying and shitty, derivative ending.

 

[WingsOfTarkov]

Spoiler: Possibly NSFW

 

[ThisIsGonnaBeGood]

Shows changing their focus happens all the time, but the way it happens is very important. Episodic shows becoming serialized is surprisingly common, but it works, as the episodic episodes do the worldbuilding and establish character relations, while the serialized episodes later on build upon these established ideas. This works. Meanwhile, TADC essentially halted almost all progress to the story after episode 2. In the middle four episodes, only Jax and Gangle go through any progression, and even those are minor. Basically, TADC started as serialized and slowed down to being episodic without having any conclusion to its story, and then it threw everything out of the window in episode 7.

Every "troubled artist" who uses their work as a form of self-therapy by basically just having the characters be a stand-in for them while they talk to themselves thinks they're gonna be an Anno or a Tomino, where everyone applauds them for using their medium to represent real-world trauma in such a unique way.
But for every HP Lovecraft, there are a hundred Dave Sims, where it just becomes a massive filibuster of the author's personal politics in a rather ham-fisted way that lacks all verisimilitude.
And at least Cerebus had based filibusters about how most women are creativity vampires rather than whatever kind of tranny self-image issues Goose is working through.