This doesn\u2019t happen with everything. It\u2019s also not always that bad. My wife is stunned that sometimes we can sit to watch a movie; I\u2019ll lean over within ten minutes and then give her an accurate synopsis of the whole story without having been given any other information. A lot of it has to do with the principle of \u201cChekov\u2019s Gun\u201d, where because screen time is so valuable and everything is so expensive, if something happens on screen it almost has<\/em> to be important, and that means once you\u2019ve seen a few elements, you know they have to come up again and you can pretty well piece together the parts they\u2019d play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Longer works of media can violate this a little bit. A book is hundreds of pages, for example, and it takes so long to produce that sometimes a writer will put in an element that was<\/em> important in the first draft, but becomes irrelevant in later drafts. If it\u2019s a multi-volume series, sometimes the writer even forgets that they said something. One really funny example is when JK Rowling mentioned in her earliest book that Dumbledore\u2019s brother was disgraced after getting caught having sex with a goat, and then several books later he\u2019s supposed to be this critical character that everybody takes seriously. Then, she read that first book as part of a public event, and when she got to the line about the goat sex, she fell over herself, laughing, because she realized what she\u2019d done and it was all too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I enjoy a broad variety of fiction. I like non-fiction as well. The videogame \u201cDeltarune\u201d never really pulled me out of it mid-sentence, and when I think about what it\u2019s doing with its writing and what it might be going for, it\u2019s often after I\u2019ve closed the game and I\u2019m not actively playing. While I was reading \u201cA Song of Ice and Fire\u201d, I didn\u2019t spend a lot of time analyzing GRRM\u2019s writing technique (except for during Jon\u2019s chapters, because he\u2019s such a little Mary Sue, and he\u2019s a weird, upward-failing Jesus allegory). I did <\/em>analyze the hell<\/em> out of the \u201cHunger Games\u201d series (it was so bad I started annotating the mechanical problems and narrative fuckups, which I\u2019ve never voluntarily done before when reading for my own pleasure), which was written terribly but was popular anyway for reasons I\u2019m not going to get into in this essay*.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *Okay, look, I\u2019ll throw one** at you. In the first book, at one point Katniss says, \u201cI put on a green shirt and pants.\u201d I know those of you who don\u2019t write often figure this is fine, you know what the author meant. She puts on a green shirt, and then a pair of pants that probably aren\u2019t green. However, as a writer, this was a very frustrating line to read. She should have said, \u201cI put on my pants and a green shirt,\u201d so that it would be absolutely clear it was just the shirt that\u2019s green. The book was popular, some people loved it, I get it, but the book was not well-written. That particular line has buried itself in my memory for years now.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n **Sorry, I\u2019ve got one*** more. Right after the \u201cgreen pants\u201d thing, Katniss is discussing her theoretical combat skills with another character, and she demonstrates she can throw a knife with deadly precision. She explains that she throws knives sometimes in order to kill wild boars, which is insane. Boars are killing machines. They were known to run up the haft of the spear to reach and gore the person stabbing them. Clearly the author did not know anything about boars when they wrote this. However, I thought I could see what was happening here. Surely the author was establishing now that Katniss can throw knives, so that when she did it later the audience would already be informed she had that ability and they wouldn\u2019t get yanked out of the story wondering how long she\u2019s been able to do this. But then Katniss didn\u2019t throw another knife for the rest of the book and I\u2019m pretty sure the author completely forgot she apparently could.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ***In this same exact scene \u2013 and I am sorry, but they made three movies based on this book and that blows my mind sometimes \u2013 but in that same exact scene, another character named Peta explains that he\u2019s a professional baker who decorates cakes with frosting sometimes, and he speculates that this might be useful because the skill could be extrapolated to creating camouflage. This incredibly stupid and naive assumption then becomes plot-critical and is the sole reason Peta survives the rest of the book, because he creates a bunch of meticulous camouflage to hide himself****. This was the moment the author used to establish that Peta would know how to do this. Peta could talk about how he used to go hunting, or he was a conscript for a few years, or anything plausible, but instead the author had Peta say something profoundly childish that really just raised more questions than they answered.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ****I once got drunk and spent a half hour ranting about this to our waitress at a Denny\u2019s. She sat down at the table with us and kept encouraging me to go on, so I think she was having fun. That or she wanted to date my friend \u2013 that happened a lot, girls thought he was cute.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, where the heck was I? Oh, right. \u201cThe Amazing Digital Circus\u201d. So in the fifth episode of this thing, they\u2019ve clearly just run out of ideas. They\u2019re kind of blazing through a bunch of different scenes and settings and have no real desire to utilize them as much of anything. The first setting they come to is a safari game, but they are legitimately wasting their screen time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It goes on for almost a whole minute, which is going to be about a page of screen play. And I get it. It is easy to write out a page and think not much time is being wasted, but you can pack a lot of story into one minute. The only thing that matters is that at the end of the scene, everyone votes that Jax, the rabbit guy, should be vegan, and apparently it\u2019s a big revelation that they can do this because Cain had previously said he could not change anyone\u2019s personality nor their thoughts. However, Jax doesn\u2019t realize this rule has been violated until a later scene, and actually it tells me they could have cut this minute, and within a single line of dialogue could probably do that vote and have the revelation. They didn\u2019t need to do the safari at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then they do this skit where Pomni is the President of the United States, and it\u2019s just dead time. It lasts for two minutes and doesn\u2019t really serve any purpose. Now, the point of a character-driven show is that, often, you can place your characters into any scenario and the audience can enjoy how the characters react to that scenario. However, that would require having strong characters with really firm personalities, which Digital Circus does not have. Unfortunately, when Pomni is the president, she just does what she always does \u2013 she asks why she\u2019s there, asks what she\u2019s supposed to be doing, vaguely resists doing any of it, and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Pomni\u2019s character does is what we call a \u201cno sell\u201d. In pro-wrestling, a \u201cno sell\u201d is when another guy pretends to hit you, and you refuse to act like you\u2019ve been hit. You don\u2019t \u201csell\u201d the punch to the audience, you don\u2019t try to make them believe it. In a way, Pomni does have an excuse. She\u2019s supposed to be some random person who doesn\u2019t want to be here and who doesn\u2019t care about any of this, and that would be fine if we did focus on anything she did <\/em>care about. As it is, these episodes are usually 90% about things the characters don\u2019t care about and that they don\u2019t try to sell to the audience. If they won\u2019t really get into it, then we <\/em>can\u2019t really get into it. The bottom line is, the characters don\u2019t really care about this scene, they don\u2019t try too hard to sell it, and it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then we get to this. And you know what? The animation team at Glitch is phenomenal. I think if you\u2019re an artist or an animator, you could do some solid analysis and learn a lot from what these guys are doing. Digital Circus looks great in motion. It\u2019s very expressive, you can read actions really well, the framing is good, the composition is good, lighting is good \u2013 it\u2019s good! I think the animation team is carrying this entire production on their backs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sound is great too. Foley is on point, and the music evokes the right feelings. I think without the music team, the show could never get away with some of the stilted and vapid bullshit they keep throwing at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is such a nice use of color. It\u2019s a nice warm scene. Pomni looks cute. They\u2019ve got some sketches of their other shows in the background, but speaking of that \u2013 the writing in those other shows suck too. And this is the pattern I think I see with Glitch. They\u2019re an art and animation company that doesn\u2019t seem to have any real writers. Everything about them is professional except the writing<\/em>, which means that every time you look at something they\u2019ve made, the art gives the appearance you\u2019re going to watch some amazing show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead it\u2019s some crap about a prophesy and a girl with black blood, and beyond that it\u2019s just action and visual artistry. It all looks great, but there\u2019s no real substance<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The online fandom does sometimes project character into what winds up being blank dolls. For example, I\u2019ll see people talking about Jax having a \u201cgamer personality,\u201d or being depicted as a slim sexyman. Whatever appeals to people. The online fandom can just run with it, because there\u2019s nothing really in Jax while he\u2019s on screen, yet as an almost empty character you can put a large variety of thoughts and motives in him while he\u2019s not <\/em>on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s so\u2026 essential to the modern way media gets sold to us. The thumbnails look great, but it\u2019s up to social media to actually describe what this product is or what it means to us. It makes me wonder if the show were more clear with their characters and we all knew exactly who they were, would it actually have thirty million viewers in the first week?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another minute passes, and now we\u2019re trying to do a star-gazing scene where the characters actually discuss their motives and feelings, but it\u2019s clear the writer doesn\u2019t know how to do this, so instead the characters weirdly trip over these subjects like a toddler tripping over cracks in the sidewalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, heart-to-heart scenes are something Digital Circus keeps trying to do, and it doesn\u2019t seem to know how to do them. We\u2019re five episodes in and still struggling with it, and I\u2019m going to say the problem is that they didn\u2019t figure out who these characters were before they started writing the show. See, the thing with a character-driven scene is that it\u2019s sort of up to your characters how it should play out. You can\u2019t just put them in an empty room together and have one of them say, \u201cAh, now that I\u2019m the dark, my memory has returned and I\u2019ll explain my backstory,\u201d which is what happened in the third episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re a good character writer, then you should know how your characters would feel about things. Again, this is why a character-driven show is fun, because no matter where your characters are or what they\u2019re doing, you know how they\u2019d feel and can get a good sense of how they\u2019d behave. That includes a situation where they\u2019re having a heart-to-heart or a personal conversation. If you don\u2019t<\/em> know who the characters are or how they\u2019d feel about things, then instead you have to resort to weird external mechanisms, or odd segues into a topic nobody has any reason to discuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During this scene, Ragatha brings up something about how Jax doesn\u2019t have friends. \u201cNot anymore\u201d. This appears to anger Jax, who then doesn\u2019t want to talk about it. They kind of awkwardly stumble into this by saying lines that were clearly written by someone who wasn\u2019t the character. Then they kind of stumble out of it, awkwardly changing the subject. Then they stumble back into it a little, then back out again. The transitions in and out of the topic are extremely awkward and brightly visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When episode two came out, I talked about how it was sort of dumb for Gummi to exposit like he does, and this is still more of the same problem. This is telling the audience things without quite having the core emotions behind those things. We\u2019re telling the audience Jax used to have a friend. We\u2019re telling the audience this is some kind of conflict between he and Ragatha. It doesn\u2019t feel at all like a natural conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This scene could actually be a good time for Pomni to pull Ragatha off alone and talk to her in private. Not to receive an exposition dump about why Jax \u201chas no friends\u201d, but to learn what Ragatha is feeling. Even if she doesn\u2019t tell Pomni exactly what\u2019s going on there, Ragatha might tell half of the story, obfuscating the worst details to try to put a positive spin on it. Those of you who don\u2019t write might not see much difference between what I\u2019m suggesting and what the show actually does, but the difference is as broad as the one between \u201cI put on a green shirt and pants\u201d versus \u201cI put on my pants and a green shirt\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good writing is about figuring out how to do lots of the latter while avoiding the former. Conveying as much information as you can with as little time as you have. The former is great for the kind of bogus Youtube \u201canalysis\u201d that\u2019s rampant today. The line is badly written and winds up being ambiguous. Did<\/em> the author mean that the pants are also green? Compared to the second version of the sentence, obviously no, the pants are likely not green, but the shirt definitely is. If you wanted the audience to know the pants and the shirt are both green, you\u2019d write, \u201cI put on a green shirt and some matching green pants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good writing won\u2019t really be discussed as much in social media. It\u2019s clear what you mean. It\u2019s clear what you intend. The bad writing, however, is highly open to interpretation. I personally think that wearing a matching set of green pants and shirt would look a little silly, but maybe they could be different shades of green. Maybe the shirt has some design that sort of breaks up the monotony of the colors, and you can envision something that works. I don\u2019t know. We can disagree. We can fight about it on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is Pomni feeling at this time? Are Jax and Ragatha former friends? Do they care about each other? I don\u2019t know. The scene doesn\u2019t convey that. It doesn\u2019t convey any feelings very accurately. Jax seems angry about it, but he also seems willing to talk about it. Then again, he\u2019s not willing to talk about it. I can\u2019t tell you anything conclusive about this scene or what it means to anyone, but if you love social media analysis then we can absolutely jaw about this shit all day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we go to an \u201cintermission\u201d scene because Caine is having an existential meltdown about everyone enjoying the stargazing more than they like his adventures, and I actually think this is my favorite part of the episode because it\u2019s the Glitch studio goofing off and having fun with animation. As I mentioned above, they\u2019re good animators, so this whole section is pure joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving on, they go for a sort of noir bar scene that really nails the art direction and then just wastes a lot of time. They try to humanize Zooble a little more so that you remember she isn\u2019t just a sucky, misanthrope stick-in-the-mud, but that she was also a tattoo artist and a bartender on top of those things. She and Jax have a really bizarre back and forth that doesn\u2019t sound human because both of them feel like they\u2019re trying to wrap their dialogue in a mystery box that you can unpack in a Youtube analysis video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jax will say something like, \u201cI knew you were a bartender.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Zooble will reply, \u201cIt sounds like you\u2019re trying to imply something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Jax does say it like he\u2019s trying to imply something negative about Zooble, but honestly I\u2019m as confused as Zooble. You get the sense it\u2019s supposed to be insulting, but I also don\u2019t know, in that second, why you\u2019d guess someone is a bartender in a condescending tone like that. It feels like we\u2019re supposed to wonder about it, and wonder why Jax is talking like this, but you know what, Digital Cirucs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fuck you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m starting to get kind of annoyed with this. I don\u2019t watch the Youtube analysis. I\u2019m not invested enough in these characters to be reading the fanfiction that fleshes out their personalities better. If Jax is going to imply that she worked at a gay bar or something, then just have him accuse her of working at a gay bar and let them fight about it. I\u2019m not really sure what other kinds of bars you could be ashamed to work at, but I also think if someone worked at a gay bar then they might not be that ashamed of it, and that could have been an interesting character interaction that we didn\u2019t get because we want to be mysterious and promoted in the SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of having a real argument with real character conflict that would tell us a lot<\/em> about who they are, Ragatha exposits about her overbearing mother and informs everyone that the reason she tries to be so nice is because she doesn\u2019t want to be mean like her mom. Wow, Digital Circus, way to dodge an actual character moment so that we can once against feast on delicious hamfist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is almost the longest scene of the episode. It lasts about six minutes, during which Jax notes that Cain made him vegan, which was supposed to be impossible. There\u2019s some \u201clore\u201d gristle for the Youtube channels to chew on, so congrats for them. We also now know that Jax \u201chad\u201d a friend, Zooble did tattoos and worked at a bar, and Ragatha\u2019s mom was a bitch. Oh, and I guess Pomni worked in accounting but moonlights as an abandoned building explorer for Youtube, which is probably how she found whatever terminal got her into the Circus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally we just learn factual things. Unless you read more deeply into all of this and want to really<\/em> see characters where there aren\u2019t any, we don\u2019t learn all that much more about what these people are like. Having a bitchy mom isn\u2019t, you know, personality, exactly. It\u2019s not a voice. It also surprises me that Pomni enjoys the thrill of exploring abandoned places since her whole personality is just to \u201cno sell\u201d all the environments she\u2019s placed in, and she\u2019s never expressed a desire to explore around the world or check things out \u2013 which, by the way, WOW<\/em>. Imagine if they did<\/em> use that motive at any capacity and Pomni was curious enough about her surroundings to justify the show\u2019s setting. It\u2019s like a peek into what could have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then they play baseball and everything is just completely irrelevant, it doesn\u2019t matter. It goes on for seven minutes, and it probably would have saved them a ton of budget to have not done it at all. There are a couple of funny bits, like when they have a centipede using all of its feet to applaud enough to sound like a stadium, but I don\u2019t know if those bits were worth thousands of dollars and seven minutes of everybody\u2019s life. Clearly, the time you spend watching the baseball scene is better spent than time you might use watching almost any other content on Youtube, but that is such a low bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I get the sense that a lot of us who are invested in Digital Circus might be invested in it on that principle. As harsh as I may seem throughout this article, I\u2019d be even more upset if they quit producing it. As much as the writing keeps pulling me out of the immersion and even frustrates me at times, this is still a show that\u2019s obviously being made by artists who actually care about it and who are creating their own original idea instead of cynically cashing in on some algorithmic trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if this one show doesn\u2019t have the best writing, what if we got another<\/em> show? And another show after that? What if one of those shows had all the fantastic art and animation, but also<\/em> a compelling story that would move and inspire a bunch of people to make even more stuff like this? We don\u2019t want to not have stuff like the Amazing Digital Circus. We want creativity. We want new ideas. We want people to try<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, at the same time, I also wonder how much of this show\u2019s success can be owed to the very systems we\u2019re sick of. Digital Circus isn\u2019t really asking much of us. I have a young child, and none of this show seems to go over his head because there really isn\u2019t that much to grasp. Peripheral content in the form of Youtube analysis makes it seem deeper to those who\u2019d like to believe it is, but on its face Digital Circus is really just a colorful cartoon about nothing in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I said I wouldn\u2019t go on about why the Hunger Games was popular, but that book asked its readers what they would do if you were thrown into a world that told you to kill children for sport. It offered a lot of easy moral questions, and ways for the audience to say, \u201cno\u201d, so that they could feel heroic for realizing it was bad to stab an eleven-year-old through the heart with a rusty trench knife. It\u2019s very digestible, and its poor writing made it accidentally a simple read because of how unelaborate the whole thing was, but it grabbed people because it hit some emotional resonances and asked you a couple of really stupid, obvious questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess that the Amazing Digital Circus is asking its audiences, \u201cWhat would you do if you were trapped in VRChat with boring people, and all you can do is hop between worlds to keep yourself entertained?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I just wish it developed more on that thought. I tell you what I do \u2013 I explore worlds, and I pay attention to stuff the artists did to make the worlds interesting. And what do I do when I get surrounded by teenagers trying to get a rile out of me? I talk back to them for a while, tell them they\u2019re stupid \u2013 they just want the attention. Sometimes I let them know I\u2019m almost forty now, because the kids love feeling like they\u2019re getting one over on an old man. We can all have fun socializing for a while, just playing our parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n VRChat is a chance to play a character. To kind of present a fake, exaggerated personality. Over time, however, you can\u2019t keep up that fake persona, so if you talk to people long enough, eventually the mask comes off and you\u2019re just you, even though you might be wearing the avatar of a purple bunny or a stuffed doll. You can say, \u201cthe person I am in this digital world isn\u2019t really me,\u201d but it is you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s just food for thought. If you were going to write the Amazing Digital Circus, what would you bother asking your audience to think about? It doesn\u2019t have to be sophisticated, but if you know what you\u2019re trying to ask your audience, you can maybe start trying to write an actual story from there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The fifth episode of the Amazing Digital Circus has come out, and I really can\u2019t help myself but think a lot about how it\u2019s being written. It\u2019s like picking a scab. I know I shouldn\u2019t, but like an itch, the Youtube algorithm kept pitching the new episode to me. \u201cCome on, Greg, you know you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20260423230023im_\/https:\/\/dawnsomewhere.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image.png\")
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