Digital Circus "Daughter Theory"

OKAY OKAY episode 3 of tadc has made me go insane and I cannot stop thinking about it. so!! I'm gonna point some stuff out here that I haven't really seen anyone else point out (yet). spoilers for episode 3 under the cut!

1. "Forget it."

during the scenes where caine tries to have a "therapy" session with zooble, they finally admit (assumably not for the first time?) that they don't like their body, that they want to find something that feels right. after caine "helpfully" tells them he already fixed that problem with the box of limb attachments, then immediately rounding back to the subject of his adventures, this happens:

he literally forgot the conversation, because zooble told him to. remember, as far as we know and as far as the show has told us, caine is an ai who was given certain instructions for the circus (remember his comment about making adventures being "all he exists to do"). assuming that's true, zooble basically gave the prompt "ignore the previous prompt I gave you." he keeps forgetting because, presumably, zooble gets frustrated with trying to articulate themselves over and over and gives up by saying "forget it" or "can we talk about something else," and caine does exactly that because it's what he was told to do.

(I could even stretch this a little more by saying that this applies to when zooble said "you're probably not even listening right now," and caine promptly drew a bee.)

2. The cellar...

these next two will be a bit shorter but I wanna talk about them anyways. remember when pomni and kinger fell out of the elevator? pomni asked where they were, likely rhetorically, and kinger answered with "I'm not sure..."

which, in this case, it does look like a cellar! I find it interesting, though, that this is where he starts to gain lucidity. this place, shrouded in darkness, which he specifically calls a cellar...

hang on. isn't the place where caine sends the abstractions also called a cellar? isn't that place also shrouded in darkness?

I'm not necessarily claiming that kinger saw the cellar directly, but I think this implies that there's more to triggering his memories than just darkness. I think it also has to do with the actual environment, the tone of conversation, etc. remember the bucket on his head in episode 2 and how he suddenly remembered what ragatha was like when she first got to the circus? I think the context really determines what things he remembers. which... is sorta obvious, but I thought it was interesting regardless.

3. Queenie

okay so this episode was a HUGE win for all the queenie x kinger shippers/believers. I can't help but notice something interesting about the flashback scene, though. of course, kinger said himself that this wasn't the full story since his memory is still spotty (and having your wife abstract is likely a traumatic experience that your brain would want to repress), but in the first, he said that she eventually was "calm enough..."

very sweet! but... didn't episode 1 imply (if not outright confirm) that touching an abstraction led to glitches?

why didn't kinger glitch here?

now, there's a bunch of possible explanations for this, but I'll just list a few I can think of:

kinger was so caught up in the moment that he was glitching; he just didn't notice it (I don't think this is the case personally).

the glitching that ragatha experienced only occurs if the abstraction is aggravated in some way. since queenie was calm, there was no risk of glitching.

kaufmo made ragatha glitch because he had the actual intent of hurting her (maybe not to that extent, but in some way). she did state that they never got along, so maybe his abstracted form amplified that dislike of her to an extreme? and because queenie didn't want to hurt kinger, again, no risk of glitching.

not entirely sure what happened there, but I think it's at least interesting that not all abstractions act a consistent way.

4. Very "matoor!"

this one is more of a small detail that I remembered as I was writing this, but on rewatch, I'm pretty sure that caine actually might've turned off the censorship that usually occurs for swear words or obscene gestures for this adventure, specifically in the "scary door" section! while introducing the adventure, caine says this:

I can't quite remember if "hell" was said or censored at all in the first two episodes? but kinger and pomni were able to freely say that in this episode, and kinger said this:

no censorship at all! and I'm sure that if they wanted to say fuck, they could. I'd imagine they were just too caught up with... everything else to realize they could freely swear.

although caine still doesn't quite understand why zooble just doesn't seem willing to do adventures (even after they explain it to him), it's somewhat sweet that he tries to make a specially curated part of the adventure just for them.

rambling aside!! I'm pretty sure that only 2 people will see all of this but I wanted to get my thoughts out :)

“it’s not you.”

Me when I project my autism on two different characters and they don't get along because of it

Danny Phantom if it was more horror driven like The Witcher :)

They’re on a mall date! 💯 I love these two idiots

He’s a phantom 👻

always what I imagine ghost speak sounding like

The only good use of AI in art is generating funny outfits to give to your OC

So I present to you, what Cole's wears to work! Unlike the other Hollows, he doesn't have a uniform. The only requirement when it comes to his outfit, it that it has to look as human as possible. You know, so he doesn't scare off any new... arrivals.

While he's never actually seen an authentic human suit, he thinks he did a pretty good job replicating them based on what he knows.

The one on top kinda covers the other two, so here's a version were you can see them better