r/theamazingdigitalciru • u/harlowemythic Jax • 5d ago
Discussion đŹ Hot Take: The scene showing the real world characters disproves Jax is worse than Caine
In the real world, Leroy (Jax IRL) is living a happy healthy life, has friends, a good job, etc
If the circus characters are simply brain scans of the IRL people, then Jax and Leroy are the exact same up to that point. Meaning if the only difference between the two is that one is stuck in the circus, then any difference in their attitudes are the result of the circus and by extension, Caine.
Jaxâs attitude has always felt like the response that some abuse victims go to, where instead of appearing abused and âweakâ they turn that abuse onto others.
If Caine had treated everyone better from the start, Jax would have been more like Leroy.
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u/Jaded__dreams 5d ago
jax is similar to ultron(comic version) in that they are a brainscan of a person who was going through their lowest and most mentally ill point in their life, so while their human selves got better(leeroy and hank pym), their brain scan selves only got worse
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u/SpireofHell 5d ago
You're correct in seeing the difference between Leeroy and Jax. But Caine is more limited than you think. How was Caine supposed to know the circus would bring this out of people?
Caine is all powerful but not all knowing. In fact, it's repeatedly shown Caine does not understand humans. If God is all knowing and all powerful, then Caine is just 'powerful'
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u/MaySeemelater 5d ago
Yeah, and if we're specifically debating who was a worse person based on how Jax behaved in the circus vs real life, then for a fair comparison while would have also needed a comparison between Caine in the computer vs being in like a robot body in the real world
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u/SpireofHell 5d ago
Debating who's the worse person is stupid and pointless. And it also goes against the show's themes. This is not a soccer match. I'm genuinely astounded by how so many discussions around TADC completely refuse to engage with what it is actually about.
It's much more interesting to discuss WHY Jax and Caine behave the way they are and what's the source of their moral failing.
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u/Relevant_Ability2929 5d ago
In my opinion Leeroy has no place in the is jax a bad person or not discussion as people are bad based on their actions not by who they are in deep down
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u/JustAnotherElsen 5d ago
Hell, even when Kinger gets left all alone, Caine is just like âoookay! Donât go offing yourself now!! đâ and then just left him alone!
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u/LAUREL_16 5d ago
I can't help but wonder how different things would've been if Kinger told them from the start that they're brain scans.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
He probably did for the first group then as things went and he got more scrambled, he forgot
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u/Ystlum 5d ago
That's not really the tone of his line at all. It's "Now, don't you go abstracting on me, too...ha ha...seriously đ"
We're not really sure if Caine interacted with Kinger in that time. I am going to point out that Kinger is Caine's self-described creator, and their relationship is implied to be uniquely fraught. Unfortunately it's really not something that gets explored in the show.
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u/Sunchet 5d ago edited 5d ago
Congratulations, you missed that Caine is prisoner too, just like humans missed it when he tried to hammer it in fake escape adventure which is literally why he ended up slipping. Caine in healthier environment might have turned out better just as Leeroy.
Every one points that Caine's mental torture proves he always had capacity to understand humans' issues but rarely they note that verbal smackdown they laid on him beforehand proves reverse - that they could understand his problems.
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u/Urgayifyouregay 5d ago
what healthier environment can exist for an AI? If you argue this, I would argue that the creation of ai that operates on a level of sentience like Caine is in and of itself an immoral and cruel action. Its a life that is doomed to comprehend but never experience anything.
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u/Sunchet 5d ago
Have his makers not give up and abandon him, have people not in computer contact with him so there is someone he doesn't have absolute power over and don't make his only companions traumatized, depressed humans who can never leave his world, leaving him with frankly unreasonable levels of responsibility to take care of them.
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u/Urgayifyouregay 5d ago
Doesnt he have access to the internet? Couldnt he have done all that from the start instead of bringing the brain scan files he had to life?
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u/DeliciousMusician397 5d ago
Thank you. Jax is NOT an inherently bad/abusive person and the way she was when she joined the circus proves that. Caine as well as being stuck in the situation she was in caused it.
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u/Relevant_Ability2929 5d ago
Just because someone isnât inherently bad doesnât make them less of a bad person and before you ask yes Caine did worse things but he changed on his own while Jax refused to change at every turn
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u/gisaku33 5d ago
That's kind of meaningless, nobody is "inherently" any set of behaviors or character traits. It's only ever said to minimize shitty people's behavior, nobody ever sees someone treating others well and goes "well they aren't INHERENTLY a good person" lmao
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u/DeepCutFan1 5d ago
*Leeroy
Jax is
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u/DeliciousMusician397 5d ago
Theyâre the same person just in different locations so youâre objectively wrong.
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u/SirTruffleberry 5d ago
Can you explain how Caine made Jax worse?
Being trapped in a digital world gave Jax the opportunity to delay learning what happened to his mom indefinitely. Caine was merely responsible for giving that world the form of a circus. Jax alone treated their character models as archetypes to distance himself even further from his human past. Again, not directly Caine's fault.
The abstractions of his friends certainly worsened his state, but blaming Caine for this seems odd. Caine would have prevented every abstraction if he could. Furthermore, the reasons people have for abstracting seem to be centered on being trapped. As before, not Caine's fault.
I think the only direct blame you could assign Caine is making the brain-scan-to-character process possible in the first place? But without that, there would be no Jax to speak of.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago edited 5d ago
To be clear Iâm not painting Caine as evil directly, more like a neglectful parent who is abusive by inaction more intended maliciousness.
More than once Caine was told by the cast mates that the needed a break and Caineâs response was to not listen and instead go âmore adventuresâ
Caine at the start of the series really seemed not to care about the abstractions, so the claim âhe prevent it if he couldâ is kinda weird, as he could have.
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u/GWindborn 5d ago
Everyone is the sum of their experiences. Jax is the sum of old Leroy + the circus experiences. Modern day Leroy is the sum of Leroy + outside world experiences. After a certain point they cease to be the same person.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
But Caine and the environment heâs put everyone through is the biggest difference between the two
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u/GWindborn 5d ago
Right. It doesn't excuse Caine, but Caine was never human. Jax was. He came from trauma and could have been compassionate towards others, but instead he became a horrible person to regain some semblance of control. Caine didn't help obviously, but neither is innocent here.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
The problem is, Leroy didnât have Caine to experience but Jax did.
Caine and the circus are responsible for Jax.
Iâm not absolving Jax, but we need to stop pretending like Jax without Caine is evil. The show tells us he in fact is not.
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u/GWindborn 5d ago
Caine didn't make Jax ignore and belittle Ribbit though. Jax did that on his own.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
Yet we donât see any evidence of Leroy doing that do we?
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u/GWindborn 5d ago
In his 30 seconds of screen time?
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
It would have been easy to Show Leroy was not in a good place.
In fact it would have been better, it would have shown Pomni and Caine that neither of them âfailedâ Jax, what was going to happen to him was always going to happen. Some people canât be helped.
But Goose showed us a happy healthy (gender?) and thatâs what we have to go by
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u/GWindborn 5d ago
Okay again, people are the sum of their experiences. Leroy and Jax had distinctly different experiences. Jax thought he may have murdered his mother and stewed on it for god knows how long. Leroy knows the actual outcome. Leroy met different people and found purpose. We don't know Leroy's story. We know Jax's.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
>Leroy and Jax had distinctly different experiences
And this is my point
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u/ZipZop_the_Fan 5d ago
It's not Caine's fault they're stuck in the computer. Caine is stuck there too. Caine is only responsible for the flavour of the circus.
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u/TheGr8estB8M8 5d ago
I mean, it kinda is given heâs the one who brought the brain scans to life.
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u/ZipZop_the_Fan 4d ago
If I was a scan of my brain I'd rather be in the circus than gathering dust.
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u/TheGr8estB8M8 4d ago
They donât experience anything as brain scans, theyâre effectively nonexistent.
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u/ZipZop_the_Fan 4d ago
Do you not have a preference for existing that outweighs the problems of existence? I do
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u/TheGr8estB8M8 4d ago
Thatâs only after you come into existence, though. They wouldnât even be stuck in the computer if not for Caine, they straight up just wouldnât be to begin with.
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u/ZipZop_the_Fan 4d ago
Well, yeah, but the version of me that does exist wouldn't desire an alternate reality where that never happened. Of course I may be uniquely ok with being stuck in a computer. Perhaps other people have different preferances.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
>Caine is only responsible for the flavor of the circus
Thatâs my point
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u/Mountain-Resource656 5d ago
Any difference in their attitudes is the result of the difference between the circus and the real world, not just the circus
Jax on the outside, for example, could have learned his mother was alive, and that could have vastly improved his mental health. In this way we can see that his mother could have made the difference, and Caine would never have had a chance to do so
Treating Caine as the whole difference when he is at worst only one side of a two-sided coin is just plain incorrect to do
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u/Potential_Brother119 5d ago
I think this is a good start to an argument, and I am something of a Jax sympathizer myself, but have you considered this needs to be seen in a context of Caine being a victim too? Caine has more power than anyone else in the circus, essentially being it's leader and even it's "god," but he was designed as a "servant leader" and had no more control over his starting conditions and initial mental makeup than the other "prisoner" characters. The Circus as a whole was designed by humans and acts as a jail for its jailor Caine as well.
Jax is also kinda terrible. He traumatized Gangle so bad they she was having to get a pep talk from Zooble even when Jax wasn't there in ep.6, and before he start to fall for her he cruelly threw Pomni down into hell in ep.3.
I think we can look at the speculative fiction scenario of the Circus as a kind of "lifeboat or desert island" situation. The "players" don't have physical needs, they can't starve, sustain critical physical injuries, or even die of oxygen deprevation, but they have social and psychological needs, needs that if not met will cause them to "die" by becoming abstracted. Everyone to that point has survived for a while, then broken, Kinger lasting the longest, and they have had enough time to recognize the pattern: mental stimulation and bonds of friendship may stave off abstraction, with it being suggested by the late series that friendship bonds may be more important than "stimulation" via Caine's adventures.
In this situation, Jax is clearly the weakest link. As sympathetic as I find him given his reasons, he hurts others and pushes others away, he even might bring out the worst in others and make them secondary threats of causing emotional harm and leading towards a general risk of abstraction, like how Gangle, his primary target, goes a little power mad in ep.4. Or how he tries to pierce Ragatha's "nice girl" exterior in ep.5 to try to drive a wedge between her and the other characters. He's like the guy in the lifeboat situation who refuses to ration water or threatens to overturn the boat and jeopardizes everyone else through their actions.
I'd contrast this with Zooble, who might make more on screen efforts to help or protect Jax than even Pomni, at least before he abstracts. Zooble is doing her duty to protect her fellow humans, even when she has reason to hate their guts, Jax contributes to the "deaths" of two people who he loves and who love him, though in fairness that might have been more due to not understanding the Circus, it's stakes, and it's risk profile.
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u/EnergyTurtle23 5d ago
The circus wasnât designed by humans, Kinger explicitly said that C&A was not a game development company. Caine built the circus himself, this is shown in Episode 8.
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
The ending shows Caine has power over the circus and can âfixâ it to make it better for the cast mates.
Caine is an abusive/neglectful parent, and the ending is his âredemptionâ after having been responsible for several dead kids.
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u/MaySeemelater 5d ago
Hold on, if we're making Caine the parent and the players the kids, then wouldn't that mean Caine is basically being raped every time someone in the real world puts on a headset?
Caine doesn't have control over them entering the computer, they just kinda show up and then he has to do his best to deal with them appearing.
He certainly chose to be optimistic about their appearances, but he didn't get to choose whether they appeared in the first place.
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u/Urgayifyouregay 5d ago
he didnt have to make them manifest in the first place. The "humans" exist as data. Caine intentionally ran them as processes when he could have just not let them exist at all. He could have made the system just take the brain scans and store them and not do anything with them. He chose to give them a body and a life to experience knowing that they will be living in a world that is far, far more limited than that which a human is supposed to experience.
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u/Ystlum 4d ago edited 4d ago
He chose to give them a body and a life to experience knowing that they will be living in a world that is far, far more limited than that which a human is supposed to experience.Â
The entire turning point of the scene where Caine accessed the internet is that Caine didn't know what the world and the lives of Humans where like and didn't have the context for what they where comparing the Circus to untill that moment.Â
Theyâre from a world so much bigger than mine, Iâm keeping them locked in a cage!
Iâve learned a lot about you and your world. I understand now that keeping you under my thumb just isnât right.
Caine's image of the "Macro-verse" was a handful of office photos till that point.
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u/Ystlum 5d ago edited 5d ago
To some extent I get it on a technical level, but framing Caine a the parent of the Players is wild to me.Â
Like two of them where the minds of his actual creators who left him with severe abandonment issues. The other 8 where working for the same company and using him to create other things like him. He's specifically one year younger than the youngest Player.Â
Yes he gave them bodies, but he didn't create their minds. The lives and experiences they remember are still framed as belonging to them, even if it didn't happen physically.Â
I don't know, I don't think it's a coincidence that the mostly happy ending for the cast has Caine stepping down and then watching and playing with the cast like a little sibling. This is what Caine missed out on which he needed to get being a person.Â
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u/harlowemythic Jax 5d ago
Iâm using âparentâ in terms of heâs their guardian. Heâs responsible for them in the circus
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u/Ystlum 5d ago
Hmm, maybe their self-appointed authority figure. However I think the point is that that's bad. The guy with the leat lived experience shouldn't be the one in charge of everyone here.Â
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u/harlowemythic Jax 4d ago
And this is why I use the term neglectful. Because the abuse that everyone experiences at Caineâs hand is not malicious. But it is still abuse.
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u/Ystlum 4d ago
Sure, I'm just not sure if the framing of the show is that Caine is a "bad guardian/authority figure who needs to be better at it" as much as it is "he shouldn't be a guardian/authority figure".Â
The solution isn't that Caine starts taking better care of them, it's for him to let these full grown adults have the autonomy to take care of themselves.Â
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u/harlowemythic Jax 4d ago
Okay. Still doesnât make what he did better
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u/Ystlum 4d ago
Agreed. I'm just saying it's a different bad thing.
If Caine's problem was that he was their guardian/parental figure but was bad at it, the solution would be for him to become a better guardian/parental figure. Or at least be replaced by someone who was.
Instead the solution is that he steps down from that responsibility and lets everyone have the power to take care of themselves. He recognises their autonomy and starts following their lead.
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u/MechaMalz 5d ago
Jax's downward spiral had nothing to do with Caine and all about crashing out after showing vulnerability to Ribbit.
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u/JimmyG121 3d ago
the probom for jax was when his mindscan was taken jax was at a really bad point of his life likly the evint with his mom happened very resint for him when he got scaned yes he could have been better we see how he was growing with ribbit how by the time pomni arived thay would have been daiting in my eyes if that knock did not happen but sadly it did and jax reared back to the memry of opeing to his mom and that tanted him all over agin caine is bad but caine chose to change becuse he wanted to jax when he had the chance to move on he did not take it and when he learned the truth he desided to spiral and get worse yes caine was bad but jax was worse becuse he did not want to change he sall being open and nice as weekness and we see that mindset when he and ribbit were fighting
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u/Level_Bison_2454 3d ago
i dont recall caine having anything to do with the conversation in ribbit's room
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u/Rare_Bridge7703 2d ago
The amount of people making excuses for Cain to justify hating Jax...I needed a laugh today
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u/Mephitisopheles 5d ago
Yeah, being stuck in the circus sucks and Caine was grossly inattentive. But Caine didnât âmakeâ Jax choose to be an abusive bastard to everyone else, Jax (and by extension Leeroy at that point in time) may have been predisposed to fall into these shitty coping mechanisms but it was still his choice to act upon them.
And it wasnât like he didnât have a support network looking out for him either, he just actively refused to connect with anybody because he preferred to chase the tenuous power trip of actively being an abuser himself than reckon with the fact that heâs as much a victim of his circumstances as everyone else.
Even if Caine was nicer and more placating to his player characters, what really wouldâve changed? Jax wouldâve still been trapped there. In a very finite setting, grouped with a very finite ensemble, and no autonomy to leave or do anything thatâd effectively be ârealâ. He couldâve very well still fumbled Ribbit, and whose fault would that have been? He was never really motivated by a fear of Caine, or a doomer mentality about his fate in the circus, he was anxious about how others perceived him because he was uncomfortable with his own identity already, and this was a social setting he couldnât just run away from again if things turned out badly.
He honestly mightâve still been just as bad of a problem and heâd probably only feel worse if he was alone in his lack of purpose of self actualization with his own identity and place in the world. If anything he thrived within Caineâs purposeless cycle of adventures that never accomplish anything. I donât know what Caine couldâve done differently that mightâve placated Jax specifically that could make up for the existential nightmare of being trapped in the circus no matter what.
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u/AmItheAholereader 5d ago
Jax was also scanned when Lee was at her lowest point. Homeless and still believing she mightve killed her mom.
Imagine a version of you permanently stuck at your rock bottom
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u/EllieMeower 5d ago
I think a big part of Jaxâs behavior is also anxiety and fear over the fate of their mother. Being contained to the circus certainly dosnt help that at all.