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RIBBIT DESIGN WE GOT THE OFFICIAL RIBBIT DESIGN THIS IS NOT A DRILLLLL

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sighhh

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The Tension

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this exchange 😭💀

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wanted to talk ab this little detail in this scene that i find Sad

ragatha’s first instinct here was to panic and brace herself for some kind of verbal backlash because of the outburst earlier. pomni didn’t even sound mad or irritated in her delivery, but ragatha’s expression still 100% reads “she must be upset with me for yelling”

whoever said that her feigned optimism is a fawn response instead of toxic positivity hit the nail Right on the head i think.

her mom must have been pretty awful

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I believe that Caine sat and made a mashup for intermission time beforehand

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this took me to much time

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Ragatha drops some lore on where she grew up, and what her family was like. And by her own admission, her mother was...well..."a lot". Enough that Ragatha gets visibly shaken when talking about her.

Ragatha: I'm sure she doesn't miss me. I certainly don't miss the yelling...and the berating...and guilt-tripping...and the...[quickly downs her drink and laughs unconvincingly]'' Yeah. Just kind of a farm girl. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Notice that unlike all the others (Jax included), Ragatha is never asked to talk about her life, she’s the one who brings the subject on the table. You can feel she’s craving to be opened about her true feelings to someone, but because everyone else sees her as the "happy-go-lucky" one, they don’t even bother asking, and after she talks too much, she brushes it off like if she did something wrong.

Take note of Jax's reaction after hearing Ragatha’s story. He doesn't tease her about any of this, like he did with Zooble's own past. He just quietly studies his own drink, as if he recognizes that this is a sore spot for Ragatha and doesn't want to mock her over it.

It's hard to not feel bad for Ragatha after what happens throughout the episode: After the series of adventures, the other Circus members all go hang out with each other, with Gangle, Zooble, and Kinger together, and Pomni and Jax starting to bond with each other, leaving Ragatha all alone. Because Ragatha embodies toxic positivity to the point where the others are uncomfortable around her due to finding her positivity to be annoying or insincere, combined with how she desperately craves love and affection from the others around her, this scene shows that deep down, Ragatha doesn't have any true friends.

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Also, some of yall gotta stop infantilising Pomni as if she isn’t a grown woman who can make her own choices (aka deciding who she wants to be friends with.)

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Its already clear that the VR headset in TADC is way more advanced than the headsets of today, but just how advanced?

Well, its established that you can experience pain, eating, drinking, and sleeping (without gaining any benefits from it), and that once inside, you can't take the headset off or exit the game.

This has lead many to suggest that the circus has made virtual copies of each character and that the real people have moved on, or that it's managed to suck each character inside Jumanji style. But I don't think thats the case.

You see, TADC was meant to be a product, and judging from Kinger's comment (Well, not really, cause we don't need to eat, drink or sleep in this digital world. So the digital food here only gives off the virtual sensation of eating without any of the nutritional benefits.), this was part of the game's appeal.

What I think is going on is that, similar to Sword Art Online, everyone has been put into a coma from the moment they put the headset on.

You see, in order to give players the "virtual sensation of eating", the headset would need access to the parts of the brain that control that, as well as the pain receptors and the brainstem (which regulates sleep). You can see what would happen if any of the connections to said parts of the brain were meddled with.

So playing this game would be a delicate process, and the best way to ensure that nothing bad happens, is to turn off the outside stimuli in a way that wouldn't affect the player experience. Ergo, a coma. But what the people making the game failed to consider (or weren't able to do before work at C&A stopped), was how the players were going to exit the game.

This would have to be a delicate process due to all the connections to the brain that the headset has, a process that nobody on the outside has figured out yet (or if they have, they haven't done it to the cast for some reason).

And as for abstraction, like I said, its an extremely delicate process to detach yourself from the circus. So, trying to sever the connection without care to your well being would... not be good on either end.

Think of it like trying to peel an old sticker off the wall. If you do it the wrong way, you'll leave remnants of the sticker on the wall, or the sticker may take some of wall with it (like paint). You can fix the damage to your wall with some extra paint, but you cant fix what you did to the sticker.

I guess you could say that the brain is the wall, the sticker is the game, and abstraction is the remnant of that connection.

Let's hope that in the upcoming episodes, everyone is able to sever that connection the correct way.

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Carrying on from their brief conversation in the previous episode, there are multiple instances where Pomni and Jax genuinely get along with each other, with Jax being more open and vulnerable than he usually is around her and Pomni making a genuine attempt to understand him in "Untitled".

During the bartending segment of the adventure, while Jax pokes fun at Zooble, he legitimately asks Pomni about what she did prior to ending up in the Digital Circus. Beyond some friendly snark, he doesn't mock her for being an accountant or for the urban exploration (and recording of said exploration) that she did on her off-time.

Also during softball, the group voted to put Jax in a maid uniform, much to his displeasure. However, Pomni is notably the only one besides Jax to vote against doing it. Throughout the softball game, Jax and Pomni can be seen casually talking, and at the end Pomni even smiles and laughs at his antics. As much of a jerk as Jax can be, it's still nice to know that he may now have a friend that can see him as more than just that.

When Jax's original self reemerges and starts devouring the Evil Jax, Ragatha and Pomni are left bewildered. But Pomni's reaction changes to laughter at Jax's behavior, which catches Ragatha's attention, leading to an awkward moment as Pomni averts her gaze while Ragatha stares at the jester in disbelief.

At the end of episode, Jax, rather casually, offers to show Pomni something in the hallway that he suggested earlier, which she actually takes him up on.

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I cannot stop thinking about Episode 5 of TADC because Ragatha is, however unintentionally, one of the best examples of how isolating and difficult it is to interact with the world as an autistic person I have ever seen. To the point it genuinely makes me sad to think about her. I need to make a post expanding on this at some point but rn just. The way everyone assumes there’s some sinister hidden meaning to everything she does and says but she’s literally just trying to be nice and she doesn’t understand why it’s not working. The way she tries so hard to make connections but it constantly falls flat, she says things that hurt without realising how or why. She follows the rules she’s been taught will make her friends — she’s kind, she’s forgiving, she’s accepting and apologetic when she messes up, but for some reason it’s just not working. She tries to mimic other people, she tries to laugh at past experiences, tries to open up about her past like everyone else is doing, but now everyone’s uncomfortable and looking at her like she’s crazy and she doesn’t get it!! She doesn’t get it!!! Jax is a jerk and he’s mean to everyone but for some reason Pomni likes him and she doesn’t get it, she doesn’t understand! Pomni tells her it’s okay to be a jerk sometimes but Ragatha doesn’t like being mean, she wants to be nice to people, but she does it anyway, she gets mean like Jax and Zooble do but now Pomni’s looking at her like she’s done something wrong but she just did what she asked her to!! She doesn’t get it!! At the end of the episode everyone goes off into their groups and Ragatha is left alone, after having tried so hard to make friends and fit in and make people like her, she’s still alone, and everyone thinks she’s weird and unapproachable and she just has to give up and accept that she is inherently unloveable. Her evil alter ego tells her she’s going to die alone and nobody loves her and the only thing she corrects her on is the fact that they can’t die here. The few that might like her when she’s around don’t miss her when she’s gone, because there’s nothing to miss. Ragatha has spent her whole life systematically stripping away everything that makes her different and unlikeable in order to make herself more palatable to others, and in the process she has made herself a personalitiless blank slate with no unique identity for others to latch onto and appreciate. She has nothing to add to any conversation because she’s too afraid of being disliked to have a memorable personality beyond being generally polite and nice. And just. God. Someone get this girl some noise cancelling headphones and a therapist on speed dial, being this good of a representation of what it’s like to be autistic, especially to be an autistic person with trauma, is not good for the soul. That final shot just destroys me right in the heart. My poor girl.

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Abstragedy Nation We Have Been Fed

The way Zooble looks at her 😭💘 Their chemistry was nuts this episode

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Really bothering me that people are calling Ragatha toxic, fake or abusive when in reality she is just a traumatized people pleaser who has her fair share of flaws, but in the end is not a bad person. She's trying, and she clearly does care about the others, even if there is also an element of fear she has that they won't like her if she doesn't act nice enough.

Ragatha isn't even in my top three favourites of the cast. But it bothers me how shallow and unnuanced some people are being about her character. I love Jax and his character is so rich and interesting to me, but I can still blatantly acknowledge he's done some pretty nasty things, and gets defended too heavily because of a few softer moments. Yet Ragatha has a few moments where she acts out (PAIRED with context that she's experienced emotional abuse her whole life) and all of a sudden she's the fandom's punching bag? It's so weird to me. Double standards. Kind of reminds me of the Gangle hate we got post episode four, but worse.

Attaching an image from Gooseworx's Bluesky to kind of sum up the second half of this post:

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New additions to my treasure hoarde

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Caine and Zooble core:

Lol