In this episode we discussed The Amazing Digital Circus created by Gooseworx, free to watch on YouTube.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com.

Shownotes

Ren Welcome to Still Scared, talking children's horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray. Today we're talking about The Amazing Digital Circus!

Ren Good evening, Adam.

Adam In melting voice Good evening, Ren, I’m melting.

Ren Oh, poor Adam in the southeast of England is experiencing a heatwave.

Adam Yeah, I probably look something like the Gloink queen that we're going to be discussing in today's episode. I am lathered in my own sweat. There we go. That's a horrible but realistic description of how I am.

It is sweltering here. It's really, really hot. So I've been off work today. The school was closed for the day, so I've been marking and did so in the climate centre that I co-founded in Ipswich, in the hope that I could do my civic duty by plying the good people of Ipswich with free cold drinks because everyone looks so hot and like they're almost fainting in town. I thought that'd be nice, but I only had one person take me up on the offer. I was there for hours.

I had two people come in. One person had a drink. The other woman who came in didn't have a drink and though she believed in climate change, she definitely did not believe in vaccines. And I heard all about that.

Ren Oh, well.

Adam It got a bit overwhelming, something along the lines of because I've been injected with vaccines, I've been injected with babies, which was quite a troubling notion. So my philanthropic endeavour didn't quite go to plan. But you said people never trust free stuff.

Ren You have to really persuade the average person to take something for free. Yeah, it's a bit of an odd one. They think you're up to something.

Adam Maybe I need to make Ipswich Umbrella look more like a conference centre because I feel like people love free handouts at conference centres. They'll always take the jelly beans and little mousemats. I mean, back when you got mousemats.

Remember mousemats?

Ren It's a very relevant topic. So, topically, I don't know when this will come out. Probably not topically.

Adam I'm going to be on editing this one!

Ren Yeah, we need to turn this one around because we're talking about The Amazing Digital Circus.

(Clip from the first episode of The Amazing Digital Circus:

Caine: Welcome to the amazing digital circus! My name is Caine. I'm your ringmaster, and I'm here to show you the most jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, mind-bending paraphernalia you've ever laid your eyes upon.

Isn't that right, Bubble?

Bubble: That's right, Caine. I can't wait to see what you've got cooking up for today. Well, let's not waste any time and get right into the show.

Theme song: Gangle and Zooble and Kinger, too Ragatha, Jax, and there's Kaufmo, woo-hoo Day after day after day after day we fly, past the moon and the sun and we don’t know why…

Adam: This is the one where we hit the big time, Ren!

Ren Yeah, with our palatable mainstream opinions.

Adam Yeah, did you see what AI says about us? I mean, I don't like to listen to AI.

Ren What, no! What does AI say about us?

Adam AI's got opinions about us, I have to say. So, yeah, I looked up, self-indulgently, I admit, reviews for our podcast to see what people say.

And AI said, you know, it's a popular podcast. People say nice things about it. They like the entertaining banter between me and you and our quirky humour. But it said some people, I don't know who, some people criticise its focus on niche themes. And its unprofessional amateur production values or something.

Ren Oh, wow. Shocking.

Adam We are talking about an evil AI in this episode. And truly, that was the evil AI saying such libellous things about Still Scared.

Ren I know. My goodness.

Adam I know. I mean, you know, we discuss hot mainstream topics like the Pogles.

Ren The Mabinogion.

Adam All these things are the word on the street.

Ren So, so anyway- So we're just talking about a little niche YouTuber thing with only several hundred million views.

Adam Yeah, take that AI.

Ren And if you're listening to us, we are going to assume that you're one of the tens of millions of people who have watched this series on YouTube.

So there will be spoilers. And we're not going to recount the plot.

Adam No. And don't get angry if like I mispronounce- like I call the characters Bobble and Janks and Pomity and things like that. You know, that's fine.

Ren He's very hot, guys.

Adam Exactly. I'm really hot. I'm so hot. Yeah. You know, and I don't know which characters fancy each other or you stan or are in standom relationships. I don't know. Okay, honestly. But I have put Digital Circus stickers on my work laptop. So that's quite nice.

Ren Yeah. Because you work with the youth.

Adam I do work with the youth. And fortunately, quite a lot of youth like Digital Circus. However, I did see the film before some of them. So I had to be very careful about spoilers because I was close to the line and kids were not impressed.

Ren So yeah. We both did go to see the final act in the cinema.

Adam Oh, Ren, did you see it in 4DX?

Ren No, I saw it in normal. But the cinema did have very big reclining seats. So that was quite nice.

Adam And I guess if someone was like kicking your chair from behind, it would basically be the same.

Ren Did you see it in-

Adam I did. I had to, I had no choice! I went along on opening day ready and eager. And I was like the only adult not accompanied by a child there. This is actually true. And there were like some kids I taught in a primary school recently, like before I got this job doing supply teaching.

They're like, oh, it's that teacher. I sort of came over like, hey, kids. Yeah, I'm ready to see the Digital Circus. I'm quite excited. And they sort of looked awkward. And then I couldn't get in.

Ren Oh, damn.

Adam Oh, it was a terrible time. And then I went to see it and I afterwards saw two of my old secondary school students and I was like, yeah, I've just seen the Digital Circus, you know, pretty good. And they're like, yeah, we've just seen The Backrooms. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ren But the humiliations continue.

Adam Because I couldn't go and see it in regular 2D. I had to pay more because I was so keen to see it in 4DX.

Ren Wow.

Adam Which meant that every time that… What's the evil AI called? Clive? Clang? Kodos?

Ren Caine.

Adam Caine. Oh, yeah, like Caine and Abel, I should remember that. Okay, Caine. Well, anytime Caine popped bubble, there was a horrible kind of poke in your back. Like you were being popped. Like imagine that your back was made of pustules and each one was being, yeah, popped when bubble was popped.

Oh, it was horrid. I didn't like it. And then the funniest thing, I didn't realise that 4DX has smell-o-vision now.

Ren Oh, my God.

Adam So, yeah, the kind of backroomsy computer offices smell were, you know, really rank. But the worst smell was, there's this stupid, like, it's fun, but a silly little throwaway joke. When Caine uses Kinger as some dental floss.

Ren No, Jax!

Adam Yeah, so it's like a 30-second throwaway joke.

So, for this joke, whoever programmed the 4DX felt it necessary to pump in the synthetic smell of a dentist into the room, and it lingered for ages. It was properly nasty.

Ren Wow, that's nuts.

Adam Yeah, yeah. Is it…

Ren Which of the dystopian novels, classic dystopian novels, is it that has a smell organ?

Adam Gosh, I don't know. Is that… It seems like the kind of thing you might get in, like, Ray Bradbury. Yeah. Like, Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit, whatever the temperature is here.

Ren No, it's the other one that I've forgotten the name of.

Adam Clockwork Orange. No. 1984. Brave New World.

Ren Brave New World, yes. Okay. Yes, thank you. So you went to see the smell organ from Brave New World.

Adam I did, but I'm glad that it was the Digital Circus and not Tarzan, because my brother Leon said, he'd gone to see a new Tarzan movie in 4DX some months ago, and he said, obviously, the whole thing's set in the rainforest, and it was just like, the water spray was constant through the film. So, he said it was just really damp, it was really unpleasant.

Ren Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That is a level of surrealism that I hadn't anticipated. No, I just saw it in normal.

Adam Was it packed out?

Ren No, no, I mean, I saw it a fair bit after it had come out. So, yeah, it was half empty.

Adam Was there any shouting at the screen?

Ren No.

Adam So, it wasn't like going to see the Minecraft movie, which I did, in which there was shouting at the screen.

Ren Yeah, what was the reaction like in your 4DX screening?

Adam Oh, lots of laughter. I think, to be fair, I'd say I didn't want to look around me too much, and it wasn't packed out for the 4DX.

I did get the impression that some of the autistic kids, maybe, were a bit overwhelmed or a bit unsure about the 4DX, which is more than understandable. But I think, generally, the kids were enjoying it. Yeah, it definitely got a lot of laughter.

And I think were, as far as I could tell, really engaged in the second half. I mean, the second half gets very downbeat.

Ren Yeah, it's emotional. It's character-driven.

Adam Listener, I cried.

Ren Yeah, I shed a little tear as well.

Adam So, yeah, the movie comprises… Is it episode 8 and episode 9?

Ren Yeah, it's just interesting in itself that that happened, that it was popular enough to get a cinema release.

Adam I mean, this is wild, right? That a basically independent animated production can go within about two and a half years or something, right? From its pilot through to a massive cinema release. And this has happened around the same time, but obviously The Backrooms and Obsession have done extraordinarily well at the cinema, and not that long after Markiplier’s Iron Lung film was released as well, which is based on a properly weird, obscure indie video game.

I mean, Iron Lung is a really, really odd itch game, right? So, yeah, I do feel like there's this cultural shift going on that I'm largely excited about.

I mean, Obsession was one of the most intense horror film experiences I've ever had in the cinema. I think it's pretty remarkable. And while I don't think Kane Pixels' The Backrooms is quite at that level, it's certainly a really assured piece of work for someone who's still in their 20s.

So, yeah, I think actually interesting things are happening in horror. And so you described in a message to me, I don't know if it was after you'd seen the film, but The Amazing Digital Circus, like a kind of interesting edge case, and you compared it to Watership Down.

Ren Yes. Okay, so I think it's definitely like, very legit to talk about it as children's horror, you know, partly because it has a very young fan base.

Adam Yeah, I mean, and not just secondary. Like, you know, at the screening, there were a lot of primary kids.

Ren But I think it has a unique niche as far as stuff I've come across. And well, partly in the very fact that it is suitable for children, like by the way that's usually judged, like whether it has sex, swearing, realistic violence, is part of the horror itself.

Adam That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. The fact that like Zooble, for instance, is constantly trying to swear. Which is clearly just part of who Zooble is, and can't, right? They're constantly being censored.

(Clip from The Amazing Digital Circus:

Zooble: Can you toss that back up here?

Jax: I don't know. Let's ask him. Hey, Caine!

Zooble: You f***ing a**hole. *

Caine: Yes, Jax?

Jax: Look, it's Zooble!

Zooble: F*** you.*

Caine: Ah, there you are!)

Ren Yeah, and so I think, yeah, Gooseworx, the creator called this, called the digital circus the setting like in a Bluesky post, a ‘sexless sanitised purgatory’. Where these kind of, these adult humans, right? All the characters are adults. Jax and Zooble are the youngest, they're canonically 22. Kinger is 48.

But yeah, they're adult humans who are in this thing with these wacky cartoon bodies that are created without genitals. And a censor sticker with a silly sound effect covers their mouth if they swear. And so the fact that they're in this child-friendly situation is part of the horror for the adult characters stuck there, right?

Adam Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I guess the first Gooseworx thing I watched some years back now was Little Runmo. Which is worth watching, it’s just a short film. I didn't realise it was the same person until Matt, my ex's oldest stepkid, pointed this out to me. I was like, oh yeah, Gooseworx made Little Runmo.

And I actually did watch Little Runmo when it came out. And it's a very popular short film with acutesy, goofy platformer game character called Little Runmo who is trying to survive their last life, basically.

Ren Mm-hmm.

Adam So it's a Mario-style platformer, but they don't want to die and fall down the hole of eternal doom or get spiked or whatever it is. So in a way, it's very similar in having these very childlike visuals and seemingly a character who you might not expect to be animate or conscious who is then fully aware of being in this bizarre environment and experiencing deep existential terror at the fact of their existence. So yeah, I guess a very similar thing in terms of… playing with the aesthetics of children's entertainment.

Yeah. But it's being very self-reflective about that.

Ren Yes. And then there's this kind of sort of extra layer where these characters make really cute plushies and figurines and there's loads of merch. Because they are kind of adorable.

Adam Although I guess in a way that I recently re-watched Jurassic Park. But partly because at my school, things are sort of winding down and the post-16 students, some of them do film studies. So I'd stick on a film that might be useful for them.

You know, Spielberg gets discussed, they're looking at teen movies. So anyway, we put on Jurassic Park and I'd sort of forgotten how self-reflective or self-reflexive Jurassic Park is.

That obviously it's a theme park and there's lots of Jurassic Park branded bumf and objects in the film. So you see very early on all the Jurassic Park lunchboxes and so on. And a lot of the critique of the film is basically like this thing, Jurassic Park, has just been created in… Well, the main reason perhaps it's been created is to make money, right? And to be commercial.

And there's a lot of criticism of that. But obviously, it's true of the film itself that Spielberg is very deliberately making a film that he knows off the back of Jaws is going to be a blockbuster. And it very much sticks to a similar pattern to Jaws very carefully to ensure that it's marketable.

So yeah, I don't think Gooseworx is that cynical, but it is interesting, I guess, that it is so eminently marketable.

Ren Yeah, and I don't begrudge Glitch and Gooseworx the plushie dollars. It's just interesting.

Adam Yeah, I mean, you know, the same could be said of The Simpsons, right? Or South Park or lots of kind of cartoons that are on some level anti-authority or kind of make fun of people selling out and stuff like that.

Ren Yeah, there's only one Bill Watterson, really. He's a bit of a one-off.

Adam Yeah, I think that's fair.

Ren But yes, to get to my Watership Down comparison, I’m going to take a little diversion back through children's horror.

Adam Okay, are we going right back to The Water Babies?

Ren Well, I mean, if it feels relevant, you know, I'm always up for bringing in The Water Babies. Not that we talk about niche and unrelatable content.

So in children's horror, most of the time, you will have a child or teenage protagonist, understandably. Sometimes they experience something kind of strange or horrific and are kind of disbelieved or ignored or persecuted by the adult world.

And this is the kind of Not Now Bernard model of children's horror, I think, where it's like the horror of there being a monster that wants to eat you. But there's also the horror that the adult world, including your parents who are meant to protect you, don't care.

Adam Sure, I mean, Grinny's like that as well, right? Grinny is a sort of robotic alien monstrous thing. And yet the parents are like, no, it's your gran. Be nice to your gran.

Ren Yeah, no, that's a great example, actually. Because we always talk about the Demon Headmaster, but Grinny is also a very good example of that kind of thing. And it can be used in kind of both sort of fantastical and kind of realistic variations, fantastical in The Demon Headmaster and Grinny.

But then like in Stone Cold, which we talked about a few years ago, it's a serial killer preying on homeless youth, but the adult world is indifferent or hostile to the protagonist's suffering.

And then we also have these kind of hero's journey narratives of children or young people leaving their community and caregivers and facing monstrous threats and testing their courage. And maybe like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Return to Oz those kind of things.

Adam Yeah, I guess the fantasy genre does tend to lend itself towards that, the kind of Tolkien model.

Ren Yeah. And then we have quite a large subset of Children’s Horror where the protagonists are animals. The Deptford mice, The mouse and his Child, and Watership Down are some examples. And kind of children are meant to identify with the animals because children are more animalistic than adults, I guess.

Adam And I think kids do often quite like animals in fairness.

Ren But there is usually a young character point of identification. And as I said, in the Amazing Digital Circus, they are all adults. There are not any children.

Adam Yeah, but, Ren, Pomni does look little, right?

Ren Yes, yes. Pomni is a little jester and she does look very cute. And she does have to tell Ragatha at one point that she is not a child.

So I don't know if this Watership Down comparison holds any water. It just tickled me. So, Watership Down is a story of quite adult concerns, that is situated in a children's space due to being a cartoon and being about rabbits. But these rabbits, their problems are like finding a safe place to live, securing the survival of their community, escaping a military dictatorship, these sort of things.

And the concerns of the Digital Circus characters are also quite adult. Alienation and hopelessness, depression and anxiety, body dysmorphia, depersonalisation. Like, they're not exclusive to adults, but they're not things generally directed towards children.

Adam Yeah. Although maybe it's more relatable to kids now than it would have been, say 20 years ago. Um, I don't want to blame everything on the internet, but I do think the Digital Circus's relationship to the internet is really fascinating, because on one level, this is a kind of Black Mirror-like show for kids about the evils of AI, and more broadly, the digital realm, and having your whole life stuck within the digital realm without people knowing the real you.

And yet it strikes me as incredibly nostalgic for a certain maybe older model of the internet. Before we started recording, and I need to write a Substack post on this, because I've not quite worked it out in my head, but the Digital Circus strikes me as being almost vaporwave for younger Zoomers and Gen Alpha, or what vaporwave is for millennials, the digital circus is for that younger generation.

Because vaporwave is all about nostalgia for 80s VHSs and infomercials and on-hold waiting music, on-call music, that most millennials didn't actually experience, or if we did, we were too young to really understand and now remember it.

You know, I was born in 1987, I don't remember the 80s, so the version of the 80s I have is one I've got, I guess, from my parents and also the media that was still around, whether that's videos I was watching and films that come out in the 80s, or obviously things don't just shift overnight, it's not like you get into January 1st 1990 and suddenly people aren't wearing ridiculous day-glo colours anymore, right, those clothes hung around, so if you look at photos from, say, 1992, it still kind of looks like the 1980s.

And so, I guess a lot of millennials have these faint memories of the 1980s, but it's very mediated and then, I guess for kids in the West, you had 9-11, which was sort of confusing and anxiety-provoking, and obviously, I graduated in 2008, I graduated into this massive recession, and it's very easy to look back at the 1980s and think, hey, this was a time where the future looked bright, or we were promised — you know people say, we were promised hoverboards!

You look at the vision of the future, given in Back to the Future, maybe not Back to the Future 2, I would say, and that's clearly not how things have worked out, so it's like, Vaporwave is this sort of hauntological longing for a future that was promised in a time you can't even remember. So it's a very odd thing, but what strikes me about The Amazing Digital Circus is that, aesthetically, it resembles CD-ROMs, particularly and computer software from the late 90s, early 2000s, that there's no way that Zoomers and Gen Alpha kids remember, or experienced.

There are times which remind me of, say Microsoft Encarta, and Encarta's Mind Maze, and the weird, kind of, empty feeling of that, and then, particularly, 3D Movie Maker, and the Microsoft Kids games,or software that existed, and its mascot character, McZee, who, you know, McZee could easily be playing Caine in The Amazing Digital Circus, this maniacally positive but very intense, bizarre character whose face looks like a Picasso sculpture.

Ren Oh my god, yes. Sorry, I'm just googling him to remember my friend, my good friend McZee. Yeah, very much so.

Adam I was Googling him as well, and I found this great Geocities site just dedicated to McZee, and everything, everything the writer could find out about McZee.

Ren Yeah, I mean, he taught me how to paint with the Fine Artist programme.

Adam He taught me how to make films with 3D Movie Maker.

Ren Yeah, wow, what a guy.

Adam For those of you who don't know, I mean, look him up, look up McZee, then you'll know who we're talking about. A man of many talents but also quite maniacal in his way. In 3D Movie Maker, he dons various unconvincing disguises to be the all employees of a movie studio.

Whether the director, or the cameraman, or even the janitor, all of them are McZee, as easily determined by his recognisable Scottish accent.

Ren Incredible, yeah. Sorry, I fell down a small nostalgia hole.

Adam Yeah, but, but what I'm saying is I do think there was a sense of kind of exploration and maybe naivety to CD-ROMs of that period, and even the early internet.

Now, I really love the game Hypnospace Outlaw, which is a brilliant game set in a sort of alternative 90s timeline where instead of the internet, you have hypnospace, and basically all the websites look like Geocities sites from that time.

And obviously with the rise of social media and then web design sites like Squarespace and WordPress, the internet's become very visually homogenised, you know, everything looks the same,it's very controlled, whereas the internet I remember from my childhood, um, patchily, at least, you know, was weird and chaotic. I mean, the internet's still weird, but it's like websites were messy.

Ren Like, I could make my background on Neopets a massive picture of Elijah Wood's face, and then have, like, scrolling text going across it about how much I love Elijah Wood's face, and you could just do that.

Adam Yeah, I mean, my Adventure Games, point-and-click Adventure Games website, the Adventure Games Closet, had MIDI music from different Adventure Games on almost every single page, which played on loop. So, you had to listen to it, you had to listen to the music from Simon the Sorcerer if you wanted to read the review or the walkthrough.

But that is sort of what you get in the design of the circus itself, and also the character designs. They're colourful and wacky and chaotic, a bit like early Nickelodeon animations as well. They don't look, they don't look like modern cal arts animation designs, right? I mean, they are iconographic, but they're kind of messy.

Zooble’s probably my favourite character, I guess. Zooble’s very jaded with the whole thing, and really just wants to be setting up their queer bar somewhere in the real world, and is fed up, basically. But Zooble looks exactly like a real toy that I had as a kid that I'd completely forgotten about.

Can you remember what it was called? I don't know if you ever had it. It's called, I don't know, I want to say Zorb or something.

Ren Oh, I think a Zorb is something else. I think a Zorb might be the big ball that you get inside.

Adam Oh, Zolo blocks, there you go. Zolo blocks.

Yeah, so they're these chunky plastic pieces. So if you look up Zolo blocks —

Ren Oh, yeah, oh, look at them, they’re Zoobles!

Adam Yeah so they look like they've come from a kind of Nickelodeon ident, basically.

Ren Oh, those are really cute, yeah.

Adam Plastic pieces that you stick together to make characters. And it must be that Gooseworx had Zolo blocks as a kid because it really is very close to Zoobles design. And I happened to also have Zolo blocks, I’d completely forgotten, so that was a real weird, very specific nostalgia kick I got.

Ren Um, and it’s animated, like, occasionally they play with it and there are little snippets that look like an N64 game, you know, in that kind of low poly sort of thing. But it doesn't look like that all the time, it looks good.

Adam Oh, I mean, it gets smoother as it goes on. The first episode is a little janky at times. The pilot episode and then, yeah, it gets smoother and smoother. But as you say, they mess around with it.I think, is it the third or the fourth episode where they — the beach episode is really interesting.

Ren Yeah, I think that's episode seven.

Adam Oh gosh, it's later. Okay. But the graphics deliberately start breaking down. For instance, it looks weirdly like a Banjo-Kazooie level, I would say. I really enjoy all of that kind of stuff. I find that really interesting and satisfying and I could see how that leads itself to lore. Because one of the things that the youth today sure like is lore and lore icebergs. And I can see how the Amazing Digital Circus lends itself to theories basically. You know, what's going on here? Who built the Amazing Digital Circus? What exactly is Bubble? I know there was some disappointment. I don't want to go full spoilers well maybe we can a bit, I guess it has come out on YouTube now, the last episode.

But the last episode arguably simplifies or it provides certain answers which are on some level quite straightforward and looking at the fan reaction, and the Amazing Digital Circus is a very enthusiastic, but intense fandom, um, is the impression I get. I know some people are really unhappy about it, but I think ultimately it's a very character-driven piece. It's not as about the lore as you might assume at first, I would say. Really, it's about, okay, how do these characters react to being stuck in the Amazing Digital Circus and what are their relationships and what baggage have they brought with them?

Ren Shall we do a texture break before we talk about the horror? A bit more in depth.

Adam Oh my gosh. We did have a terrifying incident where it seemed like I might have lost almost the archives of the entire podcast.

Ren Yes, because I changed bank accounts and the way — uh anyway.

Adam Yes, anyway. Because we are such professionals, uh, of course I hadn't actually got most of the recordings on my hard drive. So I was thrown into panic that about 10 years worth of podcasting might just be lost.

We would have the transcripts and I honestly toyed — this is terrible — I feel bad to say it. I thought maybe I'll have to use AI to recreate the episodes.

Ren Oh god, well, glad it didn't come to that.

Adam God, I was so caught up with that. I, I don't know if I've even, even thought about textures, but I do think we have to sing Texture of the Week, um, in an upbeat circus children's TV show. Okay.

Kind of like, I don't know. digital squeaky voice Texture of the week, texture of the week.

Ren (to the tune of the Digital Circus theme) Texture of the week.

Okay. Well I did only remember this evening that I needed a texture. My texture is the abstractions, the abstracted people.

Adam Okay. So when our cast characters give into despair and they abstract, uh, how would you describe what they look like when they abstract?

Ren Um, they are multi-legged sort of flickering geometric shaped, black, but with multi-coloured glowing eyes all over them.

Um, actually I think maybe my texture is the aquarium where they are kept in at the end. Previously they were put into the cellar, becasue you can't un-abstract a person, but they make a nicer enclosure for the abstracted people. So Kinger can go and see his wife swimming around.

I think that's my texture.

Adam Ah, I mean, it is quite moving at the end. And I do like the fact that it's not really explained the degree to which the abstracted versions of the characters have thoughts and awareness. You know, whether these are almost the ghosts or spirits of characters, like the shadow left behind, whether they are like beasts, whether they effectively have the same kind of thoughts, but they can't articulate and talk, you know, whether it is a ‘I have no mouth, but I must scream’ kind of situation, at the end. So I found that interesting, it's not really explained.

Ren It’s not. They can be soothed.

Adam That's true. They can be soothed. Yeah. I mean, it's easy, but I guess I'll just go for Zooble then. I find Zooble’s character, very satisfying. I just want to, I mean, this sounds deviant, but I just want to chew on various Zooble parts, to be honest.

Ren Yeah, very chewable.

Adam Who is the real sick man in this so-called society Ren? Is it the man who would pluck apart a children's character chewing on their various anatomies? Or is it the business man? In his suit and tie making profit from the sale of plushies.

Yeah, no, it probably is me wanting to chew on Zooble. But there you go.

Ren You have brought it up, but the Amazing Digital Circus is inspired by the Harlan Ellison short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream from 1966.

Adam And ye gads, this is not a story that you really want primary school kids reading.

Ren No, my goodness, no. Ho ho. Oh, that's a weird, unsettling piece of writing.

Adam Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Harlan Ellison, I think was basically like a kind of 4chan edgelorder trapped in the body of a very angry, tiny Californian dude.

So the basic premise of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is that there is a supercomputer, is it called Am?

Ren Yeah.

Adam Basically there were nuclear computers, set up in the Cold War, I think in America, Russia, and possibly China. And they end up unifying together and reaching some kind of collective AI consciousness, called Am.

And Am decides that humans really are a plague on the planet and we'd be better off without them. And so annihilates all humanity, but is so enraged by the awfulness of humanity, it decides to kind of imprison half a dozen of these unfortunate humans infinitely within itself, basically, and subject them to various digital tortures for all eternity. Which is kind of like the plot of the Amazing Digital Circus.

Ren It's told from the perspective of Ted, who's the last remaining one, because they can't kill themselves, but he realises that they can kill each other. So he sort of mercy kills the other humans with icicles and as a punishment is turned into ‘a great soft jelly thing’ with no mouth or eyes, by Am.

Adam There's a really funny little Easter egg actually that I noticed.

In one of the episodes in which Caine is really frustrated because all the Amazing Digital Circus cast are fed up with his adventures. So Caine, the AI creates these adventures, these scenarios for the humans to enjoy. And they tend to be interminable and violent and not very enjoyable for them.

And so they're obviously thoroughly fed up and refusing to go on them. And Caine just lists off a flurry of half-baked ideas, uh, like, okay, you're, you're in a wasteland and your only friend's a dog who's really mean to you. And that is the plot of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, which I've read.

Ren Ohhhh! claps

Adam And I do wonder if all of them are just stupid Harlan Ellison stories.

Ren Oh, I hope so.

Adam Because Harlan Ellison has some stupid-ass stories.*

I mean, he was a right jerk, Harlan Ellison. You know, he was quite a difficult man to get along with. Not a very pleasant man, always trying to sue Star Trek because he claimed they stole his ideas. Tried to sue everyone, basically. You know, really irascible.

I have actually read quite a lot of his writing. And what's sort of weird about Ellison is that by any sensible measure, he's a really bad writer. Kind of like Lovecraft is a really bad writer in a different way. I mean, Lovecraft is bad because he is constantly trying to be clever, right? Like constantly trying to show that he's as clever as Edgar Allan Poe. And, you know, he knows long words and bits of Latin too, and lots of adjectives. And it just ends up being a real slog to read, right? Because of these awful run-on sentences with loads of adjectives.

Harlan Ellison is just incredibly ugly as a writer. Like, the rhythms are horrible. There's something really kind of heavy and ungainly and meaty about his writing. Do you get what I mean? You've only read that story. But like.

Ren I’ve only, I've only just read that story. But there was a bit early where they haven't eaten for a month. And it says: Three days. Three days that have been since we'd last eaten worms. Thick. Ropey.

Like, urgh. So gross.

Adam Like, the grossness, but also he has these sort of thick stumbling sentences, basically. Like they're really graceless. He's a really graceless writer.

And yet he has so much chutzpah. He has so much confidence in his own writing that this confidence alone propels him along. It's really hard to explain. He has these stupid story ideas. Some of his story ideas are just nonsense. It's like, what about gophers? I can't even remember what these gophers do.

But you know, he'd write any old nonsense that came into his head. And yet. I don't know.

Ren It feels compulsive.

Adam Yeah! He's weirdly compulsive. I think that there's just this level of anger in his writing and, and, and confidence that, yeah, this, that, I don't know. It's hard to explain, but I do find him very readable, even though I kind of don't want to find him readable. Um, anyway. Yeah, Harlan Ellison digression.

But he is fascinating. There's a really wild story he wrote called The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, which I can't even begin to describe the plot of. Like, it starts off with this sort of true crime type serial killer story, but he ends up becoming like a knight fighting a dragon in the heart of the world or something. Yeah. It's really, really trippy.

But I just remember it blew my mind when I read it. Like, I just remember I felt like I'd really gone through something after reading that one.

Yeah, a cautious recommendation. Not the nicest man and there's some really graphic, ugly stuff. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream has some properly nasty violence in it. So it's definitely not suitable for kids. But it's kind of fascinating to think of it as the origin for this incredibly popular kids show.

Ren Yeah the main parallel is that of Am with Caine. And in I Have No Mouth, Am is just straightforwardly out there to torture and torment them. But throughout the progression of Digital Circus, there's a building tension as we and the protagonists realise or kind of know that the humans are at Caine’s mercy. And as Zooble says in episode four, the only thing holding Caine back is the fact that he likes us.

And this comes to fruition in episode eight with Caine’s musical number, The One who's Running The Show, about how he is God. Including the lyric, don't need to scream if you ain't got a mouth.

Adam So yeah. I actually think that the writing for Caine, Gooseworx writing for Caine, really captures the weird, ingratiating tone of AI. It's really accurate in terms of how AI sounds, if you try to use, you know, chat GPT or any of them, that they, you know, have been programmed such that they sound very eager to please.

But at the same time, they're incredibly stubborn. And, you know, make these, well, lie all the time, but you know, it's like hallucinate, right? And make all these weird claims. So it does create this really odd thing where you, it does feel like you're interacting with an overly-keen maniac, basically.

And Caine’s design, obviously, is just like this mouth and eyes. And I like the fact that on some level is a design that kind of looks fun and wacky, like, you know, the kind of wind-up teeth you get from a jokeshop, and googly eyes, but is also obviously terrifying.

Ren I was reading about, also very difficult to animate! As his teeth also have to express his feelings. His upper row of teeth are kind of eyebrows, very interesting.

Adam Yeah the character designs are very interesting, Pomni in particular because I don’t think that the jester design is inherently that cute, so Pomni has big eyes, but also looks slightly freaky and yet she is cute. I think also Pomni’s relatable because most of us would probably feel like Pomni if we were thrust into this situation, feel overwhelmed and confused.

Though notably, Gooseworx says the character she is closest to and is most like an authorial insert character is Jax, interestingly.

Ren Yes, a lot of the final episode is devoted to Jax. To some people’s consternation.

Adam I think Jax’s story is clearly emotionally important to Gooseworx, basically.

Ren And yeah, I appreciated that taking the time to really explore that, of like, why is he like that? Because it's been building, you know, why is he so resistant to getting close to any of the other characters? And in episode six, when they have guns, Pomni and Jax team up and are sort of bonding and then Jax totally rejects that or any idea that they were getting, becoming close and we learn why that is.

Adam There's this reading I've seen online that Jax is meant to be transcoded and that does make a certain amount of sense to me. I think Gooseworx leaves it pretty open, basically. I actually think Gooseworks sometimes deliberately doesn't tie down the characters' identities or… Okay, the last episode, this is a spoiler. So if you really don't want spoilers for the last episode, then stop now, or maybe go forwards till, like, five minutes before the end.

So the last episode reveals, Black Mirror-like, that the characters are all brain scans, and so they are effectively, uh, digital constructs with the memories of real people. Okay. Now, these real people obviously have gender, racial, and sexual identities, right? That are concrete and grounded in the so-called real world, the everyday world.

What is interesting, and maybe a bit confusing, but interesting, is that the characters we are left with, on some level, aren't exactly real people. They're simulacra, right? In that they are code that have the memories of real people. So, in some ways, it doesn't really make sense to talk about, say, Pomni as having a real body.

Pomni is Pomni. And in some ways, the last episode underlines this. This is how these characters are able to accept their future.

You know, which might go on, they don't even know how long they're going to exist for, basically. They're going to exist for as ever long the computer system exists, basically. Without ageing.

So, they have to kind of accept that they are who they are, right? That they are these digital beings, on some level, who aren't completely tethered to their real-life human equivalents. Which then does something very complex, because, like, you talked about, like, oh, these are characters, they're adults, and yet they've been rendered sexless, right? And that means they were always sexless, technically. They've never actually experienced having a real body, in the sense of a human body, for instance.

And that's really interesting. On some level, it's like, that's quite a troublesome message. Because, you know, we might want to say, right, what we want for the youth, generally, is for them to be able to integrate their digital selves. And to realise that your online life is sort of part of your everyday life. And have a healthy relationship I guess, between your online life and your offline life.

And what the ending kind of suggests is that your online life is just as, if not more, maybe, ontologically valid as your offline life. That it has reality in and of itself, right? That your online avatar is real. And just as real as your human avatar.

And online, you can kind of be who you want to be. Like, say, you know, I'm pretty sure that I'm a cis guy, like, for instance. Now, I could pretend to be a woman online. Now, I'm not going to do that. But I could, I suppose, if I wanted to leave comments like that. But that would be a lie. That would be fake. Because that's not me. So we know that that's not, because there's a relationship between the online me and the offline me.

You know, there is a real me. But by the end of the show, there isn't really a real them. Apart from the online version.

So what I'm saying is, it then becomes very confusing as to whether it makes sense to say that Jax is trans. Or, you know, Pomni, you know, is gay. Or, because suddenly these terms don't quite — do you get what I'm saying? It's quite a confusing thing to try to articulate.

But basically, it's like, their identities only exist within their world.

Ren Yeah. Yes.

Adam So it's quite, I don't know, I think it becomes quite odd. Because it's then we see, we see their human kind of counterparts right at the end of the end credits getting on a bus. And on some level, it's like, oh, this is the reveal, the reveal of the real them. But it's also not.

Ren Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Like, in a way, the Pomni plushie is closer to the real Pomni than any human being.

Ren Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah.

Adam And I think that's probably really important for the audience on some level, right? Because it's validating your investment in these funny looking characters, you know, in a little squidgy jester, or a creature made up of colourful parts, or that you’re invested in them in that form, that they don't need to have human equivalents.

Ren Yeah, it's also interesting, because, and I'm just like, thinking about this on the fly. But I watched the final episode, and I immediately was like, oh, this is saying to me Jax is trans femme. That is what this is saying.

But then there's also this layer of like, what does that even mean? Because, as you say, Jax has only ever existed as a rabbit guy. And then, and then we see the real person, the human being that Jax is brain-scanned from, who is also still referred to with he/him pronouns. So the transness of Jax is, is still a potential unembodied truth.

Adam Uh-huh!! It does something very very odd basically. It's like, the furry suit never contained a person.

Ren Yeah. It's quite a lot to get your head around!

Adam Yeah, to be fair, that's quite a philosophically deep idea for a kids show, right? And I actually think in some ways, it's exploring this with more depth than the, ostensibly for adults, Black Mirror does.

Ren Oh, yeah, do we want to? I have written some Black Mirror notes.

Adam Have you? Okay, yeah.

**Ren**I think as British millennials it's just very in there for us.

This digital copies territory is something that Charlie Booker covered several times. I think, did you remember the Christmas special?

Adam Yeah, of course.

Ren From 2014?

Adam Yeah, one of my favourite episodes, that one.

Ren Yeah, which introduces the idea of digital clones that people use as their own personal assistants, but they kind of have to be trained or essentially tortured into submission because they, like the characters in Digital Circus, feel themselves to be human beings. But they are made to do menial tasks for their human counterparts. And then at the end of this episode, the man who did this training is trapped in a digital egg, where he's forced to listen to Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade for thousands of years.

Adam It's similar, actually, to the way that the outies treat the innies in Severance. Have you seen that?

Ren I haven't.

Adam It's good, actually. I don't watch much TV, but I like Severance. I watched it with my parents. And in that, people's brains are kind of split so that their work self is different, has no memory of being their at home self, basically.

So the work self is stuck in a perpetual purgatory of always being at work, and the home self doesn't have to go to work.

Ren Okay, yeah. There's another, there's a 2017 episode called USS Callista. In which a man makes digital copies of his co-workers to sort of play with in his Star Trek spaceship.

And, and at one point he demonstrates his control over one of them by removing her mouth. So, you can see that influence there.

Adam Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting to me is that Gooseworx is very much a millennial creator who's made work that really appeals to a younger generation. So, you know, the influences here are the influences that a millennial would have, and some of those concerns.

And yet, it's something that clearly speaks to a massive number of young people. Clearly, in terms of their relationship, I guess, to the internet, or their uncertainty about the future, it's something that really clicks.

Ren Yeah, thanks for suggesting we talked about it. I enjoyed it. I'd seen the first couple of episodes when they came out and then sort of forgotten about it.

Adam Ah, cool.

Ren I really enjoyed going back to it and watching the whole series.

Adam Yeah, and I do think it is horror, right? Like, I don't even think it's horror adjacent. I'm comfortable in saying that it's horror.

I'm so bad at remembering which episode, but the episode where they have the horror themed adventure.

Ren Yeah, episode three.

Adam Okay, episode three, I think is, to me, very explicitly inspired by the Amnesia games. The creepy mansion they're in really looks like it's a mansion from Amnesia The Dark Descent, or Amnesia Machine for Pigs. And that's really interesting, because the Amnesia games were like, some of the first horror games that YouTube streamers who are popular with that generation, or certainly popular with Zoomers, got started with.

Like, someone like Markiplier, for instance, started off doing Let's Play games of Amnesia. I mean, obviously, people think of Five Nights at Freddy's, but actually, yeah, the Amnesia games were really popular for YouTubers, Let's Play videos. And so, yeah, I find it really interesting to think, you know, the Amnesia games are very much for adults.

And yet, quite a few kids, maybe sort of older Zoomers, like those who are now in their late teens, early 20s, would have maybe not played the games, but certainly have seen people like Markiplier playing them on YouTube and seeing their reactions. Mm. So it really struck me as the aesthetics of that episode are very much the aesthetics of horror games that they would have seen YouTubers play, basically.

Yeah. And obviously, the kind of look of the kind of…

Ren It's actually, sorry, it's quite similar to a Final Fantasy XIV dungeon as well. There's a haunted manor in that.

Adam That's interesting. I was going to say that also the offices where the computer on which the digital circus is running looks like the Stanley Parable.

Ren Yes, it does, doesn't it?

Adam Like very much like the Stanley Parable. Yeah. And obviously, today really recalls the back rooms as well.

Ren Yeah. We've been talking for a little while, shall we?

Adam Yeah, we could wrap it up. I mean, it's definitely a show that I could probably talk about for hours. It's really interesting. There's a lot going on.

Ren Yeah, really enjoy talking about it. Thanks. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Oh, that's okay. Thank you.

Ren I don't think we have a plan for our next topic.

Adam No, I mean, it's your choice. It's your choice. So we can discuss it after you've finished recording. I mean, I've just… I mean, obviously, we're not going to do Robert Cormier again for probably another 10 years. But I have been watching the film of I Am the Cheese, which is really interesting.

Ren Yeah, thank you for listening. If you want to send us your credits, our intro music's by Macki Yamazaki, our outro music's by Joe Kelly, our artwork's by Letty Wilson, you can email us at stillscaredpodcast at gmail.com.

Adam I did reply to emails the other day.

Ren Yeah we eventually get around to replying and we do appreciate them. And you can follow us on Instagram at stillscaredpodcast, where I do a little collage for each episode.

Adam Oh, I'm enjoying the one for this week. Oh, for… Digital Circus. I mean, your last one is really good, but I mean, I'm just very intrigued to see what you're going to do for the amazing Digital Circus.

Ren Yeah, do you have a sign off for us, Adam?

Adam Yes, although I will quickly say, if you do want to review us to fight back against the AI fake news.

Ren The fake news that we talk about niche topics and are amateurs.

Adam Exactly.

Ren Can't believe they'd say such slander.

Adam Yeah. I think you have to review us on Apple Podcasts, because I'm going to admit it, I made a call out. I've never reviewed my own podcast. That would be too pathetic. But I have asked my family to do so. My dad pointed out that would require him to listen to an episode of my podcast, which I think was a bit rude, actually. He did try to review it on Spotify, but couldn't find a way. So, it seems like Apple Podcasts, whatever they call it, is your best bet, really.

Ren And remember, we've never got round to monetising this.

Adam We're never going to monetise this. We're never going to.

Ren We're never going to, because we're so principled.

Adam Yeah, we are like Bill Watterson or whatever he's called.

Ren We're like, we are the Bill Watterson's of podcasting.

Adam Yeah. So, yeah, thanks for listening, creepy kids. And don't get abstracted. Don't give in to despair.

Ren Yeah. See you next time, spooky kids.Bye.

Adam Bye. Bye.

*Just a note - I was wrong about Caine's bad ideas. I guess the first one is a reference to 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and the second is a reference to an earlier Gooseworx story apparently - Adam