The Amazing Digital Circus

Jax does things to deliberately hurt people and gets mad if he's not allowed to do it. Caine tries his best to maintain order and safety in the Circus, albeit in an Obliviously Evil fashion.

Basically Caine is the Antagonist but Jax is closer to the villain.

I feel everytime fans try to Draco Jax, the writers will make him even more of an asshole.

In before Jax murders Caine,or the other way around.

I see it in the way of Jax has no empathy or chooses to ignore empathy. Caine just doesn't have a full understanding of how human minds work as he is an AI. When Jax does something reprehensible, I don't hold it against him because Jax's morality is that he is not a friend but a fiend.

I'm personally leaning towards Jax deliberately ignoring empathy rather than him completely lacking in it, entirely because of that split-second look of sadness on his face before he puts his metaphorical mask back up and leaves instead of attending Kaufmo's funeral.

I think he was always a Jerkass to some extent, even before the Circus, but that being trapped in the Circus for as long as he has led him to maladaptively cope with his situation (and avoid abstracting) by going out of his way to be as much of a dick as possible, both for stimulation (think of it like playing a game of GTA and going on a rampage when you're bored out of your skull) and so that he doesn't get attached to anyone else who might abstract.

I mean, what many people are interpreting as a split-second moment of sadness is so split-second it could very easily be interpreted as just him being in the middle of rolling his eyes. Honestly, I think it's far too soon to call whether Jax has a Hidden Heart of Gold somewhere in there or is just a full-on piece of shit.

Caine is the closest thing the show has to an antagonist (though also a Big Good at the same time) but Jax is the closest to the purely malevolent force of evil.

Funny thing about the show is that for the most part, characters are rather basic - Ragatha's nice, Jax is mean, Zooble's grumpy and withdrawn - but the context of the circus makes all of this much more complicated. Raggie is the most transparent about the whole "helping others to avoid thinking about your problems" but this applies to everyone.

It could also be interpreted as discomfort or fear that he will probably share Kaufmo's fate and won't be as fondly remembered.

Pomni already appears to have written Jax off, considering her nightmare where she falls and is grabbed by the group, and Jax's hands wasn't one of them.

Was Kinger's hand there or it was absent as well?

It was there too, just behind the rest of the hands to the point it's somewhat unseeable.

The opening scene was the only time we saw the other circus residents in Pomni's nightmare and it was only Caine, Ragatha and Jax there.

I think the arm that grabbed hers at the ending scene was Ragatha's so I'm assuming Kingler's just absent.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on May 7th 2024 at 11:05:46 AM

Gangle and Zooble's arms are also clearly present there. The four of them were grabbing Pomni.

Edited by Inky100 on May 7th 2024 at 8:08:32 PM

Who do you think would be the one to abstract next? My money would be on Gangle.

I guess Kinger would be too obvious?

I feel like it's going to be Jax.I think he isn't as composed as he seems.

Pomni, Ragatha, and Jax are our main characters, so I expect them to stay around for a while. Kinger seems to be plot-relevant, so we've got at least an episode or two left with him. That leaves Zooble and Gangle, and Gangle seems like the less stable of the two

Given that's it's been clearly implied Kinger knows more about the digital world than most of the others, I wonder if that's part of why he's managed to make it so long without abstracting; he understands how it functions and that makes the nightmare of being in the Circus marginally more manageable for him when he's actually lucid, as he doesn't have the total Mind Screw "what the fuck is all this" situation the others do.

I've been seeing a lot of speculation on tumblr that Jax is an NPC and I'm leaning towards that

I think if any of the main cast are NP Cs Gangle is the more likely candidate. She’s the only one with the gimmick to her personality. Jax, as awful as he is does feel more like a person, same for Zooble despite how little we see of them. But Gangle seems to only have two modes, happy if she’s wearing her comedy mask and sad if she’s wearing her tragedy mask. The others show a wider range of emotions. Gangle seems simple by comparison, that makes me think her personality is AI generated.

If Gangle is a NPC, does that mean that her drawings would be AI generated?

In the event that Gangle isn't an NPC, what I instead have to wonder is... can someone really be so vain, that their "happy mask" gets destroyed, and their ego is plummeted before long?

Generally when someone has a "mask of happiness" destroyed, it means that they were sad the entire time and trying to put on a brave face.

...also, what's being sad got to do with vanity?

...Like... vanity mirrors and stuff, wanting to look your best, and getting that brave face marred.