User:RD/9k/The Amazing Digital Circus (Q618)
Main entry
- The Amazing Digital Circus
- fake research / (9k) -> this is halfway in between "fake research" and real research. it's a very good show, so it has a couple of actually significant ideas.
Number
- A world of dragons is a world of adventure -> (definition of the purpose of a fantasy world)
- rebuilding civilization after apocalyptic war -> huge war happens in "I have no mouth and I must scream"
- The Amazing Digital Circus -> this is a slightly weird position to put it at but it's meant to be next to "end of the world scenario" in the sense of "heaven"/"Narnia"/"fantastical world that exists after the real world exists". the former, "end of the world scenario", is appropriate to "I have no mouth and I must scream", while "superstructural fantasy world" is simply what the thing is. it has nothing to do with the entries on Christianity except that — and I mean this in a neutral tone — the bible is a kind of mythical world where epic things happen (superstructural fantasy world) and a digital world is also that in its own way.
"9" is the number of episodes, which for better or worse came to define the narrative structure of the show. - The wolf shall dwell with the lamb -> Garden of Eden as utopian (yet aspirational) fantasy world
Characters
- Pomni (Amazing Digital Circus) -> she has the most positive outlook of anybody in the circus so she escapes the horror swatch.
- Jax -> about five reasons he gets the dark green swatch. no mystery here.
- Gangle -> Gangle is literally a tragedy, although ironically not the most actually tragic character on the show.
- Ragatha
- Kinger -> by the time of the last episode it becomes clear one of the best descriptions of him is "halfway scrambled".
- Scratch -> I'm giving him the Gaster swatch because as of episode 8 he is now tightly linked with Deltarune and Tunic in my mind
- Ribbit
- Kaufmo
- Caine -> he gets the math swatch because he's a computer program. in one sense which only comes up at the end, digital creatures in the circus are divided into life and unliving chaos, so, in that specific sense Caine is more in order than in chaos as long as he hasn't been destroyed.
- Bubble -> Caine's weird little unhelpful assistant. weirdly little is said about Bubble in the show.
Motifs
- abstraction (Amazing Digital Circus)
episode 1
- 1
- day after day and we don't know why / day after day after day after day after... / day after day after... (sense CC) -> one of the most thematic lyrics in the theme song.
episode 2
- 2
episode 3
- 3
episode 4
- 4
episode 5
- 5
episode 6
- 6
episode 7
- 7
episode 8
- hjsakldfhl ( 8) [1] [2] [3]
- virtual tyrant / digital tyrant / (generic) -> I don't think Omega Flowey also counts as this motif. see below.
- since when where you in charge? (Amazing Digital Circus) / character within digital simulation informing player they are not in control of it / since when were you the one in control? (Undertale-Deltarune)
- split muffin -> some people thought this was some kind of reference to Scratch getting scrambled, or, the more obvious idea that occurs to me is Caine being a combination of two divided things. I see the muffin next to Kinger and I vaguely start thinking about how he was separated from his wife? and then became degraded. so you can see the progression from split muffin to Scratch if you put them in order
- his ideas were bizarre and abstract / That man was a genius ... his ideas were often so bizarre and abstract that the rest of the team had no idea how to work in his language (Kinger, Amazing Digital Circus episode 8) /
the way he thought was... abstract(misquote) - Scratch's project / [Scratch] was trying to make something... what was it? (Kinger) -> I watched this show to the end and I still don't really know what this was
- nonsensical office hallways -> when Pomni took control of the exit door, the layout of the office hallways was weird, almost a bit like in The Stanley Parable.
- day after day and we don't know why -> this concept gets flipped on its head in episode 8 (?) as the characters realize that there's nothing normal or inevitable or even fulfilling about "accepting" Caine ruling their lives. I liked that moment because it was one of the moments you could see there was actual thought being put into the show and its overall story arc. honestly, it gave me a bit more hope for what episode 9 would be than I should have had. this was a superbly promising moment that I thought was going to continue, but then... it kind of wasn't really pushed in episode 9, and was more put aside and everything reset to before it was brought up, and in a way was the exact reason episode 9 was subjectively "underwhelming". I still don't think the ending was bad exactly, I think like any of the episodes it was still pretty good for a YouTube video and this is more of a complaint that it was 'good' instead of 'great'.
- Caine more surprised by brutal honesty than attempts to please him
- malfunctioning swearword filter
episode 9
- 9
- since when where you in charge? -> Caine manages to fake being deleted so successfully Kinger thinks it's a real glitch or something he did.
- We can't fix the world around us but we can still do what we can -> I should be raising exceptions to this kind of thinking but Kinger is too likeable, the scenario is too, so I'm not saying it this time.
- I can fix you!
- character getting split into multiple versions -> it seems like each of these is a timeline where one of the other characters died.
- ominous locked door hiding secret -> I feel like this motif is technically in Deltarune. or maybe even in Undertale, if that one locked door is actually meant to be a nod to Deltarune like a number of other things... it's right next to Gyftrot. [4] (wow, I really did remember that right. I'm surprised.) and there are Waterfall mushrooms in the cave.
- images of Jax vanishing -> this felt like some sort of representation of how all the pieces that made up Jax went away over time leaving the worst ones, and how there is a connection between Jax being destroyed and Jax being solved. like when Jax says he is not to be cracked open because there's nothing to find, he is basically correct but not in any way you might think of, more in some other way.
it's almost like there's some sort of weird cautionary tale planted specifically right here except that it's all distorted and scrambled and I don't even know what the 'message' is.
Theories
Scratch fought for the Communists
/ Scratch fought in World War III for the Communists / The Amazing Digital Circus directly adapts the third world war that happened in "I have no mouth and I must scream" between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, [5] and as a result, there is a global war within the macroverse and there are three major ways that countries attempted to end the war, and Scratch participated in a project to unite all the world's minds into one Childhood's End style in order to end the war; this is to imply but not require that Scratch is a Communist-ally coded character because he willingly participated in something that in other stories has been a metaphor used to discredit Communism ->
I don't think I believe this theory but god Scratch is my favorite character already and I can't believe you managed to improve on that. I just love it when superstructural fantasy worlds rupture and somebody with control over the underlying reality takes control of them. I love it even more if somehow that becomes a weird metaphor for Materialism or Communism. if and only if Scratch is fighting for the Communists then I'll take a World War III 'Caine is ' theory
Subjective themes
- Jax is token representation that is harmful to queer people; it doesn't matter if a repressed trans woman made the show -> I find it disappointing people have taken all of this so literally. my immediate thought watching episode 9 was that the show was referencing old cartoons from a decade or two ago that carefully hid queer characters from the censors without endorsing that, because Caine had them trapped in this censored falsely-bright nightmare and stuff. [6]
- Fiction exists so people can safely experience dangerous or tragic scenarios / Fiction exists so people can experience dangerous or tragic scenarios without them being real; this is to say that, for example, a story can include transgender suicide if it is believably accurate to the characteristics of a real life incident more than it feels like any kind of dismissal or mockery of the character [7] -> surprisingly levelheaded opinion from a commentator who doesn't think art has a particular meaning.
- content farm invents Jax's evil sister, fans eat it up -> this made me burst out laughing. it shows you who are fans of the show, doesn't it. not people with sky-high standards on story and character design, but given an actually good show they love it anyway.
this is part of what we lose when people argue against LLMs in stupid ways. of course they're bad almost all the time, but it's much more interesting to observe the one or two times people get duped by something that might or might not have been created by AI and why they think it's actually good
Related
- I have no mouth, and I must scream [8] -> major influence on The Amazing Digital Circus.
- The Matrix -> didn't see it coming that this would be relevant but I probably should have. yeah the Digital Circus is basically The Matrix, on a thematic level
- Philosophy can only take place in a vat / Philosophy can only take place inside the Amazing Digital Circus -> I saw somebody actually try to argue like this . I'm tired.
Caine, this is an equation of a cone. this means determinism is real, even if there's no material world and you can change everything. shut up. - The concept of "community senators" (demographic-identity senators; gay population senators) is blue / (9k)
Ideologies, fields, or genres
- / superstructural fantasy worlds
- / psychological horror
- / fiction about artificial intelligence
- / Liberal-republicanism
- / existentialism