YES YES YES YES. YOU. YOU GET IT.

YES YES YES YES. YOU. YOU GET IT.

It doesn't outright go "you need to be scared of this because monsters and murder and torture wooo" it emphasizes that horror in the circus is DIFFERENT FROM THE REAL WORLD.

Nobody's worried about the classics like dying or getting hurt because they only exist mentally - their digital forms aren't actually physical, so the horrors aren't physical either

Instead the horror parts of the plot focus on a NEW concept of suffering, a NEW way to scare the audience, and they do it in a way that just makes the circus itself seem so much more real

We're used to horror media. We're used to the blood and the gore and the murder and the violence and all that classic stuff. Sure, it makes some of us squeamish or scared, but we're USED to that kind of being scared, and that makes it a little boring to watch, no matter how well-written the rest of the plot is

But the digital circus just says "nah fuck that" and proceeds to show you their NEW FORMS being seriously harmed in a NEW WAY that unsettled us because we're desensitized to the common tropes in horror and aren't expecting such a new and interesting concept

THAT'S what makes the digital circus so special. It looks at the creepy monsters and the spooky jumpscares and the bloody deaths, then immediately turns around to make their characters experience something completely different (and arguably worse, considering they can't actually die and are stuck trying to cope with the digital version if suffering and horror since THEY USED TO BE IN THE REAL WORLD TOO)

I just realized the reason I love the Amazing Digital Circus is because it's basically doing what I was hoping the internet would do with the backrooms. And no I'm not talking about the Stanley Parable inspired bit.

Like the backrooms started with a focus on liminal spaces, and then combined it with simulation theory and boundary breaking/test environments in video games.

So immediately I was like "oh well if it's about breaking the simulation, then the horror will come from glitches and bugs and file corruptions affecting people who fall into the backrooms right?"

And then the internet is like. "What if we put scp monsters in there." Like. No.

I mean I guess it'd be fine if the stories/concepts were good? But it was stuff like "here's a jpeg of a creepy smile with spider legs who hunts humans". That's just disappointing tbh.

So yeah the concept of the abstractions? Fucking love it. Especially them glitching everything out rather than it being like "the monster murdered her with ✨️HYPERREALISTIC BLOOD✨️ splattering everywhere." It's a step up in quality the internet needed. Thank you for blessing us all, ye mighty Gooseworx.

going through the "humans are good" tag right now to hear stories and shit about, yk, how humans are good - I was LOOKING for stories and stuff like that.

honestly the amount of posts I've seen with like 0 notes/1 notes is making me sadder than I ever expected like PEOPLE. LISTEN. PLEASE.

I want everyone to hear how awesome we are DESPITE out problems. i don't want people to look through that tag like "these are all so dumb humans cause death and pain and destruction" yes we do all of that but can you see the GOOD?

it would be do much better if instead of sitting still claiming that we're beyond redemption we could get up and just. Be better.

go to that tag right now. Yes, you. Right now. look through ideas of happiness and hope and caring. look through stories of community and loving and helping each other. look through how amazing humans CAN be, and then look at the notes. At how many people are seeing what you're seeing.

because if you do that, and if everyone else does that, if we REMEMBER it and take in the idea that we can be good, then we can actually bring that out and become better as a community

...holy shit man

has anyone thought about what happens to the players PHYSICALLY when they enter the digital circus

because we know their minds are transported into the digital world, but what happens to their bodies?

they ALL put on the headset and immediately got transported inside, so I doubt they'd have time to take it off - does that mean they're still at least partially connected to their bodies, enough to stay alive but not quite conscious?

if we go off that idea, i feel like they'd just collapse on the spot when they put on the headset

imagine finding some cool headset in the back of an alley or maybe even in that C&A office with the computer and you put it on and just like faint

imagine FINDING some random mf unconscious in a sketchy place with a headset latched onto their head

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

I HAVE WAITED ALL YEAR TO POST THIS

when Caine talked about drowning in the digital lake that was absolutely a reference to a Jax prank gone wrong

I drew a thing

Eat up (yes I know the background is messy asf but whatever we can roll with it)

Also I have a headcanon that Jax can't swim. Idk why, he just gives off those vibes lmao