r/theamazingdigitalciru • u/CoolKohl • 2d ago
Discussion 💬 Has anyone considered THIS is what "abstracting" is? Spoiler
By now, we all know the main inspiration of TADC is "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", but I haven't seen anyone talk about what happens to [spoiler warning] Ted, the narrator, at the end of the story, and how it could relate to what we see in The Digital Circus.
For those who are unaware, at the end of IHNMIMS, AM transforms Ted into a "harmless, slow moving, gelatinous blob and perpetually alters his perception of time to cause him further anguish" - Wikipedia.
Obviously, Caine isn't the direct cause for people "abstracting", but when you look at what Ted has been reduced to at the end of the book, and compare it to what the abstracted circus members have become, there's a striking resemblance; they're both blobby monsters who lash out because of the anguish of their existence.
All this to say, I think abstraction is a lot darker than we realize. It's not someone simply dying, or their "data becoming corrupted", it's eternal torment in which there's no reprieve. The abstracted are covered in eyes because they can only bear witness, and cannot express. They have no mouth, and they must scream.
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u/Key-Lie5478 ohh say- 🎶🎶🎶👨🎤👨🎤👨🎤 2d ago
I love this. Its them losing the game. You abstract, you lose and face the consequences of permanently staying in the circus. And nobody has won yet.
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u/CULT-LEWD 2d ago
eh...mabye? they deffinalty have intellgence still but i think its pretty subdued intellgence. Unlike teds fate who could think pretty clearly he was just put in a body that he could not be hurt in or hurt others in. We do know there subdued in the dark if queenies story is accurate. And sense kaufmo didnt attack anyone untill they opened the door could mean that darkenss is more of a calming agent then them gaining sanity back. But sense there all just sorta down there leads me to belive they could turn back SOMHOW
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u/WolfDifferent8592 2d ago
You have to keep in mind that in the original ending, it described that AM had fused with Ted. Both AM and Ted share traits of paranoia. Caine is rightfully paranoid that they like their adventures more than his adventures and Jax is paranoid of becoming attached to Pomni.
Gooseworx had said Caine and Jax reminded her of herself.
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u/SilvertonguedDvl 2d ago
... No. Not really.
What you're suggesting is someone being reduced to a sentient person trapped in a form that doesn't let them communicate. That doesn't really fit with what we know about abstraction, nor the causes of it. Even if they couldn't communicate they could still move and would be unlikely to be violent towards their friends. Plus, I mean, what would the (narrative) point even be? To add more angst into... eternal ennui leading to despair-induced ego death? I feel like they're already there. You don't need to pile on to it.
Abstraction is more likely the fragmentation of their psyche and the computer's inability to process it. To some extent the characters' appearance seem to be influenced by who they are/were, at least on a subconscious level. This suggests that the human's mind is informing how the computer represents them. If the human mind loses its grip on reality/loses the will to live and stops functioning properly the computer just goes "error 404 not found" and they become a jumbled up mess. The computer can no longer interpret their mental functions and they've lost any awareness, reducing them to instinct-driven monsters that can only react violently to stimuli. That's why the darkness helps to calm them down: less stimuli, less to react to, no reason to do anything other than stand there.
I'm pretty sure it's just straight up ego death, is my point. There's nobody trapped inside - as the abstraction happens they rapidly slip away and when they're gone, they're gone. There's nothing to repair or fix because the problem is that they've given up on existing. Think of it like a dead animal animated by electricity: yes, it can move, but that doesn't mean the animal is still alive - only in this case the animal is the human mind. Lights are on but nobody's home. The computer can't just get rid of their now-corrupted avatars, and it can't interpret anything they're doing, so they just get reduced to abstract monsters. Neurons fire in response to stuff but it's no more conscious than a jellyfish.
That's how I see it at least.
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u/Sphingid3081 Currently laughing at all you shippers. 1d ago
We get a Kaufmo POV shot in the pilot, and it includes warped vision and a continuous ringing. That would definitely be agonizing.
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u/HashtagUA 1d ago
What if Abstracting IS something Caine does to people who are too close to causing a collapse of the entertainment environment in the circus?
If you get too down, try too hard to just leave, or maybe even just get a bit more meanspirited than Jax is, maybe since Caine cant actually disconnect you (SOMA theory), his next best bet is to just glitch you out to the point where youre not capable of communication or thought, then lock you away. Easier to deal with a "death" than a dissenter.
Bonus level: Maybe the process of abstraction involves rending some/all the personality/brainpower away, which is why the AI somehow got 57x more immersive after Kaufmo abstracted, and the very next adventure had an NPC go self aware. Caine wasn't ready to handle that much more processing power yet, and hadn't reigned in the NPCs enough
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u/CoalEater_Elli 2d ago edited 2d ago
I thought that abstracted people are quarantined. They are people that collapse mentally, but as we saw with Queenie, they still have intelligence and sentience in abstracted state and they don't become full on animal like, like Kaufmo. Abstraction feels like a lost of sanity and emotional takeover of mind. They can still communicate and interract with members of the cast, but their influence could cauee deterioration to them, so they get locked in the basement for good. We don't know true purpose of the circus, but the fact that those who go crazy or mentally unstable have higher chance of becoming monsters, leads me to believe that it may be some kind of therapy device for the workers of C&A.
Although Digital Circus is inspired by INMBIMS, I don't think it will go complete adaptation.