Digital Circus AMA Notes
Digital Circus is getting a season 1 at some point!!!!
#webcore aesthetic board for the series design
Pomni was going to be a frog originally. 🐸
90s toys Zooble inspo
Caine is an antagonist, but not by active choice, he doesn't know he's not helping. He doesn't feel a whole spectrum of human emotions (he's an AI).
"Caine canonically just lets things happen if he thinks it's funny."
Characters eat like Chao in Chao garden in Sonic. The characters can eat the food, but they can't digest it.
Jax's favorite food is spaghetti.
Pomni likes salmon.
Q "Was the ending a 'Last Supper' reference?" A "in a very superficial kinda way yeah." Religious stuff is sometimes just used for the funny.
Gooseworx tumblr sketches MAY or MAY NOT be canon to the series, so it's up in the air for every single one.
People can abstract from feeling too much pain if it breaks their mind from it being too much. Characters feel pain from things, but not as intensely as they would in real life.
Zooble is gonna swap parts every episode (implying they have spare parts) except their body & head.
Jax chose his own name & gooseworx likes to think he chose Gangle's name.
Ragatha was named "Emmy" originally.
They (the cast of characters trapped in the circus) can't change their clothes but Caine can. It's part of their skin sorta kinda.
There's empty space under Pomni's hat because video game model physics.
Spamton was partially inspo for Caine, Caine's VA did Spamton dubs.
Gangle only has 2 masks. Why's it (her hapiness mask) break all the time? Mental state, but the "real her" is "harder to break."
Kaumfo was gonna be part of the main cast originally before Jax.
Kaufmo's model has nothing below the waist at this time, but was made for that promotional image on twitter.
Q "What kinda person was Kaufmo?" A "He was the same as Ragatha in a sense, goofy & cheery, sometimes toxic levels of positivity."
I'm paraphrasing for the sake of note taking in real time, go watch the stream playback for more context & details if you want.
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Okay okay, but what if- Talia is the doctor that Catherine goes to when she starts getting sick. Maybe Jason is interning at the same hospital Talia works at (she moved to Gotham for Bruce but they're...not working out) when it starts getting bad and so he brings Cathy to the best doctor he knows. Technically, Talia is supposed to do any of these procedures for free. In fact she could get very fired for it, but she's the best damn doctor in Gotham and her work son needs help. So she agrees, and it's a very good thing because without intensive treatment Catherine would certainly suffer until the gruesome end.
Well, they go through with the treatment, and somehow manage to hide it all from the higher ups (likely with bribery), and Talia starts getting to know her patient. Catherine is...a lot. She's sharp and clever and sweet. She used to bring coffee and pastries to share for lunch before she was confined to her bed. She likes braiding Talia's hair since her own is too brittle to touch these days. Sometimes she asks Talia to do her makeup, to make her look a little more alive than she feels.
Talia thinks they both know that the treatment isn't going to work for long, at most Talia can keep her on enough painkillers for it to be painless but time is running out. The most Catherine can hope for is making it to Jason's graduation. Sweet, worried Jason who visits Catherine as often as he can, diligently doing his homework at her bedside as if he can rush his graduation anymore than he already has. Maybe he knows that she doesn't have much longer too. Catherine hopes so, because she can't bear being the one to tell him. Talia thinks it might ruin her as much as Jason if she has to tell him their Cathy has a scant few months left.
Ra's doesn't mind sharing for a good cause, the pit is constantly regenerating itself after all, it's not like he's really losing anything. But Gotham isn't exactly known for birthing people who are pure of heart, he fears what a corrupted soul might do to the pit. He demands to meet the woman Talia is so insistent on saving. He knows better than most that his daughter's heart can be soft, often for people who don't deserve it. It's that same love that stole her away to the cursed land to begin with.
And Jason insists on coming with, naturally. So for the first time in months Catherine is out of bed to go on what might be her last trip if this experimental, vague cure doesn't work. Her last trip as her if it doesn't work as intended. She's nervous, and not just because she's never been on a private jet before. She agrees that Jason can come but she refuses to let him in the room. She doesn't like the sickly green glow beyond the door and she won't risk him getting radiation poisoning,nor worse.
Ra's as it turns out, is far more interested in Jason than Catherine when they get there, which Talia is hardly surprised by. Damian is still a baby, just beginning to toddle around and while he just adores his grandfather, babies aren't the best company. The fact that Jason is a humanities buff and a child prodigy certainly helps. Talia hardly has to convince him of anything, he's ushering them into the basement before the week-long trip has even reached the third day.
He insists he be the one to conduct the procedure, however. Jason and Talia are left to sit on the stairs at the end of the hall as Ra's wheels Catherine into Lazarus room.
Talia has to put her full weight into holding him when Catherine starts screaming.
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You're so right about the racist and imperialist bullshit, and something tragic to me is that this does not feel in the slightest like Zelda. In BOTW at LEAST, she's shown to actually be very smart, and while it's understandable (although not excusable) that she would have this worldview due to being raised thinking Hyrule is always right, it just really feels like she should be examining this more closely and seeing problems with it. But Nintendo won't do that, in no small part because they're cowards.
I would talk in detail about how mad I am at how they portray Ganondorf and the Gerudo, but I will spare you the 50 page essay
NO COME BACK I WANT THE ESSAY
Okay but in all seriousness though, idk, I do sort of feel like this is still fairly in character for this Zelda. I found BOTW (and Age of Calamity) characterized her as someone who is very... I don't know, traditional? To an aggressive degree, even when that adherence to tradition is actively hurting her. I mean, the closest she ever comes to actually trying to defy her fate is when she gets mad at a rock that one time. Which comes at the end of her having spent about 60% of her entire life standing in ponds and praying at said rocks in the hope that maybe this time it'll work out, because that's what she's supposed to be doing. It's canonically mentioned somewhere she almost killed herself accidentally as a kid, because she refused to get out of the damn prayer pond until she collapsed from hypothermia. Like yeah, it's fucked up that she was expected to do that... but she never thought there was anything wrong with her having to do that. She just figured she was the problem for not getting the magic at the right time.
And the narrative backs her up on this, because once she has her divine powers, BAM, all her problems are solved. She's a calm, confident leader who knows exactly what to do in every possible situation, no matter what. BOTW Zelda is an extremely passive character tbh; she seems very determined to be exactly the person she is expected to be, and she's not remotely interested in actually examining if those expectations are correct.
(though in regards to her being smart they did kinda do her dirty in TOTK; why the hell did Mineru need to fix the knockoff sheikah slate for her. zelda canonically is interested in sheikah tech. why tf does an ancient person that's never even seen a sheikah slate before need to repair it for her, NINTENDO EXPLAIN)
Anyways, and in regards to her morals... I gotta say, while she was at the point of being able to do the hard work to self examine and walk it back, BOTW Zelda definitely read as a possible baby nationalist to me. I mean, let's be real here, she is incredibly priviledged; she's the future ruler of the damn kingdom by Divine Right, and has spent her entire life being told that. And at the same time, she has really low self esteem... and no inclination to try and change the situation that's ruining her self worth. Which is how you get that one memory of Zelda using her privilege to abuse her indentured servant (indentured, because let's be real here, Link does not have the option to just quit his miserable job), knowingly tries to get him in trouble (if she runs off alone and gets hurt, it's Link's fault for losing her in the first place), and is disturbingly cool with dehumanizing him for being stuck doing his job ("It seems I'm the only one with a mind of my own around here"). And she uses her station to publicly humiliate him at one point, because that ceremony at the sacred ground was fucking painful to watch, and let's be honest here... there's no way in hell it was only the four champions attending this apparently really important ceremony; there was totally a crowd that was cut to avoid having to model all that shit.
Not that she was actively trying to humiliate him, but like... she's the one with all the power in this relationship. Link is a knight of the kingdom, and she's the soon to be Queen. Link is going through all those memories well aware that Zelda can and possibly will destroy his entire life the second she gets the chance. My point is, Zelda is extremely privileged, and it's her responsibility to understand that and be careful not to abuse her power. But the game never even suggests that she notices or cares about it. I mean fuck, even after she stops actively abusing Link, I still don't think she treats him very well. I mean for fucks sake, that one memory with the frog is really upsetting to me - she's certain her and Link and friends and everything is fine, but the power dynamics have not changed. She's still got him at a massive disadvantage, but she doesn't even hesitate to demand that he eat a live frog on the spot so she can see what happens. I liked to think that she was actually trying to make amends with Link for her mistreatment of him, but the game never really shows proof of her trying beyond the most shallow gestures possible (really? you gave him some food, and that makes up for abusing your indentured servant? that's the whole process?).
And all things considered, in TOTK, I... do not see any evidence of her having gotten better. She's just gotten worse, and I can see that as being a trauma reaction; she's basically lost everything, and now she needs to rule a kingdom after a century holding back an apocalypse. I understand why she wouldn't be in a place for self growth after that. But the unfortunate fact of life is that trauma and terrible situations can bring out the absolute worst in people - not to bring real politics into this, but after WW1 Germany was absolutely ruined, as the winners of the war imposed some completely impossible demands on them. People were starving and desperate, and that drove the country into fascism. So that's how we get TOTK Zelda - someone who is absolutely certain that divine forces make her the single most important person in the room at any given moment, Hyrule is a perfect and superior kingdom that can do no wrong, and anyone who disagrees is pure evil and must be destroyed. As for her treatment of Link... I honestly don't see it improving much. She still treats him as more of an object than a person, at least as far as I've seen - the last she saw of him, he'd suffered a horrible and traumatic injury, and yet she just takes it as a fact that he will be perfectly able and willing to take up her fight in the future; what else could he possibly be doing if not serving Zelda? That's his only purpose in life, of course he'll still be willing to do exactly as she orders.
Also jesus christ, the cult of personality built up around Zelda in game... there's so many red flags there. Despite all the genuinely monstorous shit that the fake Zelda pulls, nobody even considers being mad at her for it, even when they're still certain she's the real deal. She's the Divine Princess, of course she can torture and brainwash her subjects without consequences if she wants to, and her victims will still love her for it because they're certain they deserved it. No matter how dark things get, nobody even gets annoyed with 'Zelda' for hurting them. They're just scared that they've done something wrong to upset her, and worried they might not be able to serve her well enough.
(Can you tell the whole thing with Yunobo and the Fire Temple pissed me off, because that was infuriating)
It's good if a ruler is loved and respected by their people of course, but the level of blind devotion she's encouraged is... worrying. Of course, that's only there because the writers love Zelda and can't have let anyone question their precious favourite character, but I'm looking at this from a Watsonian perspective, and that perspective makes for a very disturbing picture. A good leader wants their people to feel safe contradicting them and asking questions. But instead we have people putting so much blind faith in her, they're completely willing to strip naked and walk into monster dens without weapons, because they think that was her orders, and they would never question Princess Zelda. And in universe, a group of researchers being ready to commit suicide on her orders is framed as being a touching sign of their devotion to her. If she was actually a good leader, then she would be horrified that her research team almost killed themselves over misheard orders; but Penn happily comments about how great it is that people would slit their own throats for her amusement, and Link never tries to correct him, suggesting that yeah, she actually does want her people to be willing to kill themselves at her command. Or at least Link finds that completely believable and in character for her.
And at the very least, things like that show that she's not interested in building an environment of equal communication and responsibility. Zelda is rebuilding a Hyrule where the royal family is the ultimate authority, and people should be willing to die before they even consider questioning her orders. So of course Ganondorf is pure evil and must be destroyed - he had to be asked repeatedly before he would kneel before the Hylian throne. Doesn't he know he's an outsider, and therefor inferior to the Divine Royalty? He refuses to accept that his race is inherently lesser to the Hylians, so he must be evil.
I mean, that in of itself is a pretty interesting story; the Hyrule established in TOTK is dark, and the entire culture is genuinely horrifying. This setting is extremely bleak, and I'd be interested if we could actually explore the implications of Link being expected to uphold this dystopian nightmare, and slowly turning against Zelda as he realizes how she truly sees the world.
But that's a nuanced and interesting story, so that's never going to happen; instead we just get this absolute shitshow of a plot, and like 75% of the fandom firmly ignores the racism and imperialism, because what kind of madman would actually want to be immersed in the story and worldbuilding of a role-playing game.
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