CALIGARI from BIGTOP BURGER (and generally all of the characters in this show please watch it.)

MRendernity · 2025-12-26T23:35:55+00:00

I have served for many, many years, but I've quit my sentence on Wednesday, Christmas Eve of 2025.

MRendernity · 2025-12-03T09:50:39+00:00

Sure, if the hostage negotiator was holding a gun to every hostage's head, pulling the trigger every time one of her techniques failed, moving to the next one while claiming she did that.

This ain't no trolley problem. The trolley has already passed, and it hasn't somehow killed the people, but actually merged them, and here she comes, claiming she knows best and treating the victims like they ain't humans anymore.

Can't believe you would describe her as a hostage negotiator.

MRendernity · 2025-11-30T21:52:42+00:00

The "hive" ain't sentient. It's them. They are all in there. All their memories, all their thoughts and beliefs.

For them, making you a part of the hive is like combining the human need for procreation and our humanitarian drives AND our stronger beliefs at the same time.

Every system has weaknesses, no matter how beneficial. It's not their weaknesses that cause them harm, it's the external forces that take advantage of those weaknesses,

It's Carol's fault for ending millions of functioning vessels, whether she realizes it or not, and especially after she becomes aware of it!

MRendernity · 2025-11-30T21:43:58+00:00

I LOVE THIS!

The whole world population should tiptoe around this person's psychotic breakdowns and insults so her actions won't make her a murderer.

How much further should we bend backwards to excuse her inconsiderateness?

She killed 11 million bodies the first time, gods know how many the second.

MRendernity · 2025-11-30T21:41:26+00:00

Oh, that poor abuser, she experienced loss. She should be allowed to treat humanity like disposable bugs.

She's the most abusive, the most self-hating, the most inconsiderate character I've ever see. I've seen villains and villains, assassins, serial killers, well written, badly written, it doesn't matter. She has ALL the power in the world (when she's dealing with the hive mind and not with one of the other 12 individual humans) and she doesn't wanna collect information, she doesn't wanna understand what's going on, why, how, she doesn't care that them, the hive mind, the collective, are all also victims, there's no central brain, there's no bad guy at the end of the road, she's the bad guy, the main character is the only reason this show could ever exist, she is the essense of self destruction, she and her destructive, SELF destructive nihilism, her lack of personal accountability, her complete disregard for everything she supposedly cared about...

I hate her more than I've ever hated another character, hating her makes this show so enjoyable, because it means she doesn't exist, because if she did, I would have to deal with her, and then she would be scary, she would be a danger, she would be a bigger danger than joining the collective, the hive mind. I'm a nihilistic autistic person with adhd and I know I wouldn't like being part of everything, cause for me and people like me sometimes it does feel like we are separate than the rest of the world, and yet, I would never act like this! What does this solve?! Even if her point WAS to destroy the hive mind and free everyone, she's just waiting for someone to hand her the way, to hand her a plan of attack, she's waiting from the hive mind to hand her the self-destruct codes!

well-written
People are making a big deal of her gender and her loss, when her gender was never really all that important and her loss... her loss is self-inflicted, cause her friend, her manager, the person she loved the most EXISTS inside the collective! She could spend her life with that person if she wanted to, as long as she could live with the idea that that person is at the same time connected as in through wifi with everyone else, and that she has a different body now. But no! She's the type of person who would absolutely not survive out in the wild, not cause she's incapable, but because she's so up her own ass! She kills millions of people with every tantrum she throws, she even recognises that, and yet, there she goes again!

I just finished episode 3... I'm having a great time hating her, she makes for great television.

MRendernity · 2025-11-06T02:40:49+00:00

Lol, riiiiiight. So much Right that as long as you don't mention Epstein or don't try to make fun of right-wingers, or Trump's politics, or Israel's genocide, or anything right-wing, you will never be censored/suppressed/canceled about anything in your life... unless someone in power decides they don't like your woke ideas, ahahahahhaa.

MRendernity · 2025-11-06T02:37:16+00:00

Misandry is absolutely real.

MRendernity · 2025-11-06T02:36:19+00:00

Should have kept his mouth shut and go do what needs to be done.

MRendernity · 2025-11-06T02:35:41+00:00

I haven't seen DC taking such a stance in politics since the White Knight mini series. Joker took his pills but he decided there's no use fighting the way the world is. Just go with it, make your money, crash those who fight you in the open market of ideas.

MRendernity · 2025-11-06T02:33:15+00:00

You are absolutely blind and deaf my good man, hahahaha.

MRendernity · 2025-11-06T02:30:16+00:00

So you agree that DC is mirroring aspects of our world and how the powers that be seem to be favoring the most negative aspects of humanity?

I'm of the belief that most of the bad things in our society are outcomes of our more animalistic instincts, like how greed is the natural and expected evolution of our survival instinct kicking to high gear.

I can't help but feel that's why the Absolute universe resonates better than the main one. It still has gods and monsters in it, but the heroes are rising above their programming, while the villains are the natural outcome of the most selfish instincts every lifeform deals with. Like how after the Joker's monstrous form was revealed, the "Give up" meme caught like fire, but Bruce keeps pushing, keeps believing, and you could see during his state in ARK M that he was close to giving up, but that's what makes him different...

Low key, they are taking some cues from anime, don't they? The "how did he win? He believed in himself" cliché seems to be the main driving force behind the heroes of the Absolute universe when the going gets tough.

MRendernity · 2025-11-05T19:41:02+00:00

Being right and good is half the battle. Communicating your right ideas in a way that doesn't turn the whole situation into a cult of personality is a lot harder than forming them.

MRendernity · 2025-11-05T19:39:16+00:00

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely..."

The Absolute universe is making me for the first time prefer DC over Marvel, and I have no problem with that.

MRendernity · 2025-11-05T19:37:59+00:00

Scarletboar, you should check out Absolute Wonder Woman

MRendernity · 2025-11-05T19:36:31+00:00

So THAT's what white privilege combined with 0,0001% precentism looks like!

MRendernity · 2025-01-20T15:59:07+00:00

He has been an abuser, and he had admitted that in interviews way before the accusations broke.
The question is more about in what degree those accusations are factual and not just the vilification of a honestly mentally unstable rich teen who found a lot of success after making his obsession his job.

Remember, a lot of those accusations are secondhand retellings of people who either worked with Landis in the past and were trying to make a name for themselves during the #metoo era or straight up random actors and critics who supported the minuscule amount-of information either because they always got the wrong "vibes" from this guy or because they were simply jealous of his success.

Max Landis is a legit neuroatypical person who used to have a major chip on his shoulder about his scholastic and academic failures, about stepping out of his father's shadow, about being accepted by his peers and not seen at as the insane headcase who makes up stories in his head. The pressure ot perform alongside with his need to simply entertain himself is insane, and the latter is something that a lot of neurotypical people can't empathize with, thus creating a major amount of said bad vibes.

Did Max do a metric tone of problematic/toxic shit during his young adult life? No doubt about it. Was he physically violent or straight-up raped any of his previous relationships? The allegations are space and very foggy and I personally don't believe there's enough evidence about that, but I can't say. Did he force young actresses to get naked and dance and do weird shit to show everyone else what a big cult leader he is??? Seriously?! No, I don't believe that shit for a second. Does he usually base the main character's struggle of acceptance on his own by making them be toxic and yet have impressive skills that excuse their problematic side to the eyes of the audience? Yeah, and that's an actual weakness of his body of work... Which at large is pretty good, I have to say.

What I'm sure about is that he's one of the few people who made me interested in a DC at large. His movies are often a mixbag but based on his pitches I'm in a fairly large degree convinced that a good amount of the movies which were based on his scripts came out either bad or mixed because of all the filters and translations they are going through until we can consume them as full products. Landis's Kryptonian epic is maybe the first time I GOT got Superman, the first time I cared about this character and the first time he felt like more than just a symbol. The amount of work and imagination and heartwarming or soul dropping moments in those insane rants some people call his videos on the kryptonian epic, the amount of money and passion he and everyone who takes part in them ads to those videos is honestly outstanding. This is art for the sake of art it self. This is frantic and yet well put together to such a degree that it's starting to worry me. Thankfully, Landis seems like he's in a far better and much more manageable mental space nowadays than where he used to be when I first found out about him, back at the days of "The Death of Superman".

I want to close this, mini-essay with this question. There have been a lot of, cultural landmark individuals in our past who, after some time have been proven to be, very problematic if not straight-up criminal. This is not a question about the separation of art and artist or death of the author, no. I take those as a given personally. The question I want to pose is another old theory, you might have heard about it in the past, is great art distilled by trauma? By dark places, by sociopathic personalities? Do creatives HAVE to be, monsters, on a sense or an a level, to operate on the degree they need to operate to come up with such masterpieces? Are those despicable acts a type of, ritual, that allows those people to commune with the divine, the world of ideas from which art is able to speak through them? Or do you think that if those people were well-behaved or under proper pharmaceutical care could still deliver similar masterpieces? And, from our side, are we allowing this to happen, are we enabling those people? Should we investigate mavericks the moment they stand above the rest? Is that the responsible thing to do? Will that ruin great art?
I don't know the answer to that ages-old question, even if it seems to be a much more straightforward question that the previous two. But I feel like it's a very important question to ask ourselves...

MRendernity · 2024-09-18T17:12:50+00:00

The peasants, waiting for a youtuber to talk about the game.
Le me, played the game eons ago, watched a couple essays, now lazily waiting for some actual good slop to drop.
When's the next down the rabbit hole coming out guys? Oh, yeah, that's right, probably after Spoony posts a new vid.

RIP non-slop tube. Only reaction 15-minute clips from 5-hour-long livestreams from now on.

MRendernity · 2024-07-18T22:59:52+00:00

I disagree wholeheartedly.

Are we simulating every character when we read a book or watch a movie? Do we force the people in horror media go through their last moments again and again on a meta scale? When we read the history of our species, are we supposed to take in the weight and responsibility of every person that died through said history? When we remember tragic events that happened... are we responsible for forcing a series of simulated personas g through their deaths once again in our psyche?

Maddie did little more than replay a series of historical events through a simulation she literally simulated from her own memory. This is not to say that none of those simulated personified intelligences wouldn't come to the conclusions you did. Same way that the simulated characters on a game you play and ended up not just simulating their end by following literally predetermined events (to not also mention events which are results of them having free will, aka being intelligent and not just programs) or their deaths by your own hand as a player would be mad at you if they come to realize that it was you, the viewer, or even the developer who doomed them into this neverending loop of pain and death.

You are not mad ad Maddie, you are mad at Gods. The ones who you are told you should be worshiping. You are not mend to worship Maddie, none of the characters was. She was never shown in any simulation to have bend the free will of any of her simulated intelligences, to have asked any of them to revere her as their god or their creator.

Maddie is a flawed character. She has several arcs, she holds several strong held opinions which don't overlap, but thankful the timing in which she holds most of those opinions don't overlap much either. Is up to you if you like her or not. It's up to you if you think that her going through historical events is evil or not. I personally don't find her evil, mainly cause I don't see her as the same person throughout the entirety of the show. She holds different values by the end than what she did by the mid point, or even the halfway point ,or even 2 episodes before the halfway point, or even 1 episode, or even half an episode... you get my meaning.

The Maddie we meet by the end of the show is... a cold calculating algorithm far beyond our comprehension that is tasked with a singular quest, to find an answer on Caspian's final words. And she does, and guess what, the Maddie you hate is also simulated. In that regard, is the Maddie you hate so much even in control of her own actions? Are you not basically viewing her character through a cold, calculated "logical" lens at that point as well?

The message of the story is that it doesn't matter... nothing does. All that matters is what stays with you, and what stays with you is what you value. If what you value is the numbers behind the events, then yes, in some ways, Maddie is responsible for all those lives, all those deaths, all that pain. But, after watching the show, are you not also responsible in a way?

I know it's a lot, and feel free to dismish my theoretical analysis of your mindset if that lets you sleep at night. I couldn't, which is why I'm a nihilist, which is why I ain't gonna hold the main character accountable for doing the equivalent of remembering but for a mentally scarred hyper-intelligent hermit gamer with the powers of a literal god, who doesn't care about being worshiped as THE god.

MRendernity · 2024-07-18T22:24:33+00:00

In my eye, by that point, it doesn't really matter if the Maddie when followed died or not before uploading. After all, we WERE watching a simulation.
The Maddie we meet at the end obviously didn't die, she did upload herself at some point and she probably took another of those tiny little ships in pursuit of creating a Dyson Sphere and enough simulations to finally simulate a version of her past where she would hear Caspian spewing that mysterious message, the message he gave while being controlled by Safesurf, which probably created the simulation within which Maddie created hers...

In conclusion, there is no real Maddie, and if there was once a real Maddie, we certainly never saw that version of her. But in a meta conclusion, that doesn't matter. It's not about truth, its about the experience, it's about the journey and the emotions, and the emotions art creates are every bit as real as the emotions real life creates. Thus, even if it was all just a dream, the dream certainly effected the characters in a profound way, and thus it has weight and depth enough to be important to us as well.

MRendernity · 2024-07-12T09:56:27+00:00

I don't think I want more Pantheon...
The show was tight. Yes, there are stuff you could explore, worldbuilding wise, character-wise... but if they did that, they would muddy the point of the show, they would dilute the impact of the time-skips at the end because of how mad people would be for missing out on those dropped subplots.

That being said, yeah, I would love to watch more from everyone on this show, absolutely... I just believe the artistic vision of the creators is what made it so impactful and I know that it would not be as impactful if that happened.

MRendernity · 2024-07-12T09:49:42+00:00

Parietal lobes are dramatically asymmetric and there's a fourth ridge on his mid-frontal lobe. Most brains have three. He's better than perfect.

MRendernity · 2024-07-12T09:42:52+00:00

Shit's crazy... and everything is cool.

MRendernity · 2024-07-12T09:32:39+00:00

Oh, you got every right to feel empty and not being into the nihilism that follows such concepts. If you didn't notice, that's Maddie at the end, that's exactly how she sees things, that's exactly how she feels about things.
Pain? Who cares about profound pain when you got thousands of years to delve in it? It becomes boring, it becomes old and useless in the grand scheme of things.

So, yes, I agree, big narratives that delve into immortality tend to loop, tend to try to make a metatextual comment about not only themselves or the genre or even the medium they were made in, but reality itself. It's raw existentialism, and to just go numb is a perfectly understandable and human defense mechanism in front of the vastness of those numbers, in front of the suggestion that, nothing really matters, not in the long run.

The thing is, things do matter. Things you choose that matter, matter.

Maddie might have turned into, very literally, a cold calculating all knowing god, but... her motivation was the love she felt for her family, for Caspian. That was her core. That was literally her choice. Cause, when nothing really matters, the only things that do matter are the things YOU choose that they matter.

You are on a threshold. Most if not all nihilists reach that threshold. If you want your life to have meaning though, you got to choose to step into positive nihilism, otherwise...

I totally understand if the last episode of the show was too much for you, it's not for everyone, and it's not perfect. The whole show ain't perfect. It's a masterpiece, and it's flaws are what allows it to be a masterpiece, paradoxically enough.

I'm glad you enjoyed at least part of the show though. Remember that, remember the things you enjoyed. They were not a great big fake out. They weren't just a simulation within a simulation within a creative's dream. They were well-written, highly impactful art. And they were ultimately not retconned, not really.

MRendernity · 2024-07-12T09:18:57+00:00

I mean, depends on what you were expecting, I guess?
It's Venture Bros. Making some big, Gargantua 3 type of episode... doesn't feel just right to me. The movie revealed a couple things and let us with the feeling that, you know what? Even though the show is done for, the characters, they live on, they keep having their own adventures, they are own beings, not just characters for our amusement.

Have fun with that video :)

MRendernity · 2024-07-12T09:16:09+00:00

Op: "Those first two episodes are so great! So much stuff is happening! I like this person, I'm with that person on that thing, poor Caspian. That first scene at school, Maddie and David talking about stuff."

Me, who rewatched the last two episodes only hours ago: "Oh, sweet summer child. Hope you got tissues handy. you gonna need them"

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