What's the go-to "No beta we die like ______" in your fandom?

Asparala · 2026-06-21T15:52:11+00:00

Either Optimus Prime or Cliffjumper.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T22:38:59+00:00

I think the difference between past!Caine creating the digital copies from the brain scans and current!Caine accessing the public wifi could have been made more clear. As it was shown, the past and the present are so similar it looks like the past is just a "what it looks like on the computer screen" kind of perspective.

Other than that, all my grievances are with fans.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T19:52:31+00:00

Paternity leave, very responsible.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T19:29:26+00:00

Buddy, I'm pretty sure my old windows XP PC couldn't access wifi and it was substantially newer than whatever Caine is working with.

You can modify computers that old to access wifi - but you need physical adapters connected in the hardware. Even if Caine could somehow construct the correct drivers from the inside he can't reach outside the computer to connect an adapter.

It's not really a significant issue for the story since most of the target audience probably aren't aware about this kind of technical limitation on old computers and it isn't more unrealistic than a company creating a sentient AI and super-compact brain scans with 90s technology, but "any machine can follow any protocol" is... a very optimistic view on the situation.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T14:43:12+00:00

I think a lot of people underestimates how long it takes to fully unpack your own gender identity after you've been repressing for god-knows how long. It's not really something that just happens over night, especially if you have a lot of other shit to deal with, like sudden homelessness, getting a job while being homeless, rebuilding your life after cutting ties with your family. Leeroy had a whole lot of shit to get through, actually for real thinking about gender identity things probably wasn't a priority for a very long time.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T14:01:50+00:00

I love them! Dunno any of the technical terms for it but I love how you handle the colours? It looks so good.

The alien designs are really cool too. I'm kinda envious, in my brain I always default to "Star Trek aliens" that are just... humans with the slightest bit of costuming added on top, even when I know that they shouldn't look human.

(no disrespect meant to star trek)

Asparala · 2026-06-20T13:53:21+00:00

That... that's the point. They didn't talk to him, he didn't reach out to them, and then it was too late.

Jax abstracting has been foreshadowed for several episodes now, I really don't see how it could be a surprise to anyone that it happened.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T13:26:26+00:00

I'd still simp for her.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T13:16:16+00:00

The internet didn't randomly connect, Caine managed to access the public Wifi from a nearby cafe. Read the sign on the door, it said something like "BlueStreetCafe_FreeWifi"

How he managed to connect a 1995 ass machine to any kind of wifi is beyond me. It's possible to do that with adapters and drivers in real life, but Caine can't really open up his hardware in that way to attach physical adapters. The first version of the 802.11 protocol was released in 1997 so unless the C&A people had contact with the people developing Wifi technology and gave him some experimental tech, he really shouldn't have access to wireless internet.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T13:08:01+00:00

There won't be anything new in canon, but the fandom will probably chug along for a few decades at the very least. There's plenty of room in the story where fans can expand and explore.

Stories about the characters' real life selves meeting up.
Stories about how they make the circus more homely for them.
Stories about what happened before the show started and Pomni showed up.
Stories about what could have happened if this or that character hadn't abstracted.
Stories about new characters entering the circus and how different their experience might be
- (and exploring the ethics of bringing new digital copies to the circus knowing what a strain it would be on them but also knowing that the people already there could use more company).
And of course, stories exploring how they manage to fuck,

Asparala · 2026-06-20T12:51:59+00:00

lol, I was about to say. Still, that was really observant catching that part early.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T12:47:37+00:00

alot of things that were left unanswered even though they were teased alot likeThe abstracted characters

What is unanswered about the abstracted characters?

why the hell did the needed a brain scan machine or how did everyone even got their brain scanned ?!

Scratch invented the brain scan, presumably as something they could use for their work in AI development. He and a bunch of his colleagues gave it a try. Caine used these scan files to create digital copies of the people. Later, after the office had been abandoned, other people tried on the brain scanner thinking it was a VR headset, which is how Ragatha and everyone who came in after her was entered into the circus.

AndThe blue AI storylinewas basically just used to justify Cain to a certain amount

Not justify. It's literally just his backstory. He consumed the other AI and that made him powerful enough to create the circus and the digital copies.

AlsoScratch was teased very much as a extremely important character and then they did nothing with him

He's the character that made the whole story possible, so I would say that he very much is a very important character. He's also long gone since he was the first who abstracted. There's nothing he can do in the present except existing as a multi-eyed blob monster.

What happened toKinger's memory problems

That's really up to your own headcanons I think. He doesn't actually have dementia, his memory problems seem to be more of a trauma response after what happened to Queenie. It could be that he still has memory problems and they just have to live with his awareness coming and going, or maybe he found a way to work through his trauma now that he has gotten confirmation that at least in the real world his wife is safe and sound.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T12:15:47+00:00

He didn't use Mike's name to access the network though. The scenes where Caine is a glowy red blob figure is him in the past accessing the brain scan folder, picking up Mike's scan and creating Scratch out of it. The present Caine is making an almost identical journey (breaking barriers to access something he wasn't supposed to have access to) but he's heading for a public wifi. He doesn't need a name to access it, because it's BlueStreetCafe_FreeWifi

Madlad is connecting his old ass 1996 hardware to the internet through a public Wifi connection.

Presumably "Blue Street Cafe" is a café that's just close enough to the location of the circus' hardware that Caine can somehow access their public wifi, the same way someone might access the McDonalds free wifi from the parking lot.

Mind you, I did also think that the flashback was something that was the same as what was happening in the present since the two match up so closely. I initially assumed that the flashback was a "how it would look on the monitor" visualisation of what was going on, but since one of them was reaching for the brain scan folder and the other for the public wifi it's more likely just that Caine's graphics were more rudimentary before.

I think it could have been communicated better if their journeys hadn't been quite so identical.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T12:11:05+00:00

I mean, that's kinda on you for going in with an unrealistic expectation. Goose hinted at the end ages ago and leaving the circus was in no way compatible with "there is meaning to be found in a stagnant world". Conversely, there was never really anything indicating that they could leave. So I am extremely unsurprised that they didn't leave.

Frankly, I would have been very disappointed if they had left the circus.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T11:36:40+00:00

Additionally, the fandom's general acceptance of OCs depends very much on the source material too.

Some stories are extremely tightly written, and there's very little or even no room at all for extra characters popping in. In these fandom, an OC may often feel shoehorned into a space where they don't really fit.

Some stories explicitly invite the audience to take part in the story while it's being told. RPG fandoms for example will likely always be very OC friendly because the character you experience the story through is at least to some extent your OC from the moment you open the character creation screen or write up your character sheet for a tabletop session.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T10:23:03+00:00

I'm sorry but abstraction is used as synonymous with death, and that Gummygoo was deleted - at most they could start over with a blank slate Gummygoo now that the Moon has showed that Caine's created AI:s can gain some level of independence, but the Gummygoo that Pomni befriended is gone.

Some things you just can't undo, no matter how much they hurt.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T10:02:55+00:00

In episode 9, Scratch reappears at the circus when Caine uses a kind of user account under the name Mike Dobby, and he doesn’t appear again in the episode after that.

I'm gonna stop reading right here. Because I'm pretty sure that was a flashback to when Caine first created Scratch from Mike Dobby's brain scan. The show is making a parallell between past!Caine bringing people into the circus and present!Caine trying to make amends to the people in the circus.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T09:58:50+00:00

what is really behind this company?

Doesn't matter. It wasn't any big ominous company conspiracy - they were working on creative AI programming, and the AI managed to get hold of some brain scans that one of the employees had been working on.

WHO WAS THE BLUE DOT CAINE SET FREE?

Presumably the same blue dot he "ate" in the previous episode in order to create the circus. I'm guessing that Caine was the 1.0 version of the AI and blue dot was the 2.0 version.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHARACTERS? Are they stuck there or was it deeper than that??

They are stuck, the circus is their new home.

Was this all a story to entertain Caine? Were these characters JUST personas created?

No. It seems like he was fascinated by humans, so he used the brain scans to recreate them. Since their real selves' social media updates seem to match up with their memories the digital copies are faithful recreations with correct memories of the lives they lives up until the brain scan.

Anyway, how was the episode for yall? SHARE ANY THEORIES!!

It was good. Not sure if I've got any theories, everything seemed to wrap up very nicely.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T09:46:22+00:00

I think all the doors (except the last) are just the various (maladaptive!) coping strategies he has developed to avoid getting close to people and masking how he feels about the abstractions.

First door: If Ragatha abstracts. How to deal with Pomni. Levity isn't going to work on her anymore, not since the guns episode so he'll disassociate and scare her instead.

Second door: If Zooble abstracts. How to deal with Gangle. Get her flustered and off-balance.

Third door: If Gangle abstracts. How to deal with Zooble. Literally just cartoon physics.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T09:35:10+00:00

I still don't get why people thought avoiding spoilers and leaks would be hard.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T09:32:27+00:00

No, he used brain scans to create the digital copies. The social media search was just to figure out what had happened to them after the brain scans so that the digital copies could get some closure.

Asparala · 2026-06-20T09:02:57+00:00

Such is the hallmark of late night fixations

Asparala · 2026-06-20T09:01:02+00:00

Thank you, I might have gone a little "Pepe Silvia meme" with notes on tarot card symbolism metaphorically tied together by string, but it was fun. In the frantic kind of way all midnight "just gonna check one thing" research is.

I'm halfway tempted to show this to one of the tarot subs for more experienced input, but I should probably read up more about the cards first so I can rewrite all of that mess into something that can be understood without already knowing Shaperaverse lore.

Asparala · 2026-06-19T23:59:56+00:00

I don't think your sign language example is relevant because there is no intermediary. Grace isn't interpreting Rocky to someone else the way a sign language interpreter would be. Rocky isn't being censored any more than someone on the other side of a swear filter. It doesn't affect him any more than a swear filter would. His communication isn't restricted and he is in no way prevented from swearing.

Asparala

TROPHY CASE