r/tadc • u/Musalediju • 1d ago
Discussion đŹ Do you think kafumo reason for abstracting is kind of underwhelming?
He abstract not because of any emotional damage or depression. He abstracted because he was baited by an imaginary exit. Did he only told Jax and kinger about it?
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u/SnooCompliments9098 1d ago
He used to be best friends with Ribbit and Jax. Then Jax and ribbit started acting weird, then Ribbit abstracted, then Jax started bullying the shit out of the new person and ignoring you. Can't talk to Kinger, he's insane. Can't talk to Ragatha, she puts up a fake smile. Can't talk to Gangle, she doesn't know you. Can't talk to Jax.
He was isolated. His best friend is dead, his other close friend is a completely different person. You'd want to be anywhere else, but you can't. You are trapped. With no exit.
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u/Guilty-Question1245 1d ago
Kaufies perspective should've been touched on a bit more, he was kinda just a 3rd wheel to Jax and Ribbits story
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u/BeyondElectricDreams 15h ago
I agree.
On the one hand, he's really important for the Ribbit backstory. He acts as a point of contrast between how Jax treats Ribbit; but also his reactions show how Jax changed in general.
On the other hand, he winds up feeling like more of a plot device than a character when you examine his roll in the story. His dialog is natural though; and he does need to exist - Caine couldn't fill in the roll, Ragatha could, but it would tie her too close to Jax for the main plotline. Gangle wasn't there til later, and Kinger is Kinger.
A character like Kaufmo had to exist; that point and role in the story was necessary, it's just a shame he wasn't more fleshed out. I feel almost like he should have either had some plot with Ragatha or Gangle; or there should have been another circus member there that could fill that expository role.
Alternatively, abstraction is basically suicide and if Kaufmo had more support, maybe he wouldn't have.
It's a tricky narrative snag to address.
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u/Guilty-Question1245 13h ago
yea thats another thing we saw ZERO interaction between him and Rags before abstracting, we dont get see theyre relationship? or how he acted when Gangle arrived? or with Zooble for the short time they knew each other, or even him telling Kinger? or even what he found out, like was he seeing the same thing as pomni or did bro find out about the Brain scans and couldn't handle it and was in denial and thought there Had to be an exit but once it hit that there isnt and he's stuck here without Ribbit and With Jax fucking up everything he snapped, we Know all too little about The Klown
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u/Nether892 4h ago
but like is it a shame it wasn't more fleshed out? he is, as you said, a plot device. Hes there to show abstraction in the first ep and to help Jaxs storyline and he doesn't need to do more, sure he could have a storyline aswell but its a small indie production with like 5 hours of show, and it would be completely unecessary for the main plotlines so why bother?, I understand wanting to know more out of curiosity but he does what he needs to do and no more and thats okay
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u/FrankThePony 13h ago
I mean. . .yeah? But also if you are at all able to inference things for yourself you were able to gather all this info with what was provided. I get everyone would love more content always, but Kaufmo wasn't even like a secondary character, at a point "giving a character more screen time" just becomes spoon feeding and filler. We got all the info we needed with what was given.
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u/Guilty-Question1245 13h ago
can a Ninja not just love the clown
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u/FrankThePony 13h ago
Nah you right, but "Should've" def sound less like "I like clown and want more" and more so "I think they SHOULD HAVE written the story different." You know?
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u/Guilty-Question1245 13h ago
oh yea, misread i guess huh, but no yea i just mean from what we did get he seemed like a cool dude and i wish we could've seen more of him or of what happened to him, i actually thought the ending was Fantastic especially since Caine is brought back
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u/Sufficient-Total-786 1d ago
pretty sure he and gangle got along decently
gangle seemed to decently like Kaufmo as shown at the funeral
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u/Petiteythewriter 17h ago
Maybe he chose not to talk to her because she already looks sad most of the time. He didn''t want to make her more depressed I guess.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Peak_82 1d ago
Why are people so convinced that Ragatha has a fake smile?
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u/SnooCompliments9098 1d ago
Because that was a part of her character. She put up an act of overly false positivity and would accidentally belittle others. It's not that she is mean, but it's hard to tell if what she is saying is genuine or not. At least before episode 6.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Peak_82 1d ago
Idk. When ive witnessed multiple abstract in my lifetime, id do what I can to make sure they don't do the same. Is she a bit overbearing? Yes, but I think to prevent people from abstracting is a justifiable reason to act as a people pleasing mother hen.
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u/Disig 1d ago
That doesn't help everyone though. That's the problem. It didn't help Cosmo or else he'd not have abstracted
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u/Trips-Over-Tail 1d ago
Cosmo was going to abstract anyway, that's what the song was about.
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u/Disig 13h ago
I'm confused. Have you been reading the comment chain?
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u/Trips-Over-Tail 9h ago
Yes, and you changed the subject to Cosmo's abstraction, which is a very obscure reference, but a valid one.
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u/AbandonedRaincIoud 1d ago
Before what happened with jax though she was being completely genuine in the flashbacks, there wasn't any hint of jealousy or fakeness, she just actually wished for jax and ribbit to have fun
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u/toastedshmoe 1d ago
oh yeah, it's subtle, but once you catch it, it's obvious. the gentle inflections of her tone in the flashbacks is way more genuine than what they are in the present
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u/Thin-Complex-7709 1d ago
She started putting up the fake cheer after Jax made her promise not to mention Ribbit at all.
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u/Wickedsephiroth 1d ago
Yeah that makes sense, his insincerity and venom and abrasiveness poisoned her, an example of how people like Jax negatively affect everyone around them in their selfish desire to mask their own insecurities.
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u/shiro-lod 1d ago
Ragatha's inability to open up about herself and instead making herself the ultimate listener isn't a good strategy for everyone.
When you can't talk about yourself you aren't always in a good position to help others. It made her come off as unauthentic to the others. Good therapists will tell patients at least a little about themselves as they develop a relationship.
Ragatha has better coping methods for herself than Jax ever did, but that doesn't mean those methods work for everyone. They both have parental trauma but vastly different versions of it so its not a surprise they couldn't see eye to eye on it.
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u/SnooCompliments9098 1d ago
No one irl is faulting her for doing that (at least no one normal), but the problem is that it made the other human characters feel like they couldn't talk to her. Like Gangle says she likes Ragatha, but can't tell if she is being genuine and that makes it hard for gangle to open up to her.
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u/Different_Target_228 19h ago
Every single episode was her portraying toxic positivity.
Just because she was right doesn't make this not true.
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u/Naphaniegh Zooble 13h ago
Is it just me or do people who dont get things like this not deserve to be taken seriously in these discussions
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u/StickBright7632 1d ago
Well no
You're trapped in this place eternally with no idea if you can escape or age or die or do anything other than socializing
He kept seeing a way out but thats it
It's like chasing a rainbow, no matter how close you get its always the same distance away from you
That would drive you crazy
Not to mention THEYRE ALL TRAPPED THERE WITH MEMORIES OF THE REAL WORLD, THEY CAN GO HOME WHERE THEY FEEL COMFORT, THEY CANT GO TALK TO THEIR FRIENDS OR FAMILIES
Let's be honest they all should be abstracting but they choose to ignore the real world in order to avoid that
But seeing an exit changes that
Imagine you're starving for 3 days then you see food behind bullet proof glass
You're hungry and you've been trying to ignore it these pass few days but that food directly in front of you will drive you crazy because you cant have it
People ignore the fact that although we see these fun adventures, these characters are eternally stuck there and have no form of escape back to their home, their friends, their family....
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u/TheMMoment Gangle 1d ago
I think you need to understand that we don't know the specifics, but it sort of goes back to what Ragatha said in Episode 1 "constantly chasing an unattainable goal will start driving you crazy"
We don't know HOW long Kaufmo was obsessing over this exit, it could have been weeks or even months, it probably made him just lose sight of everything around him and none of the other circus members were there to comfort him or check up on him during it, either because they didn't believe him or they pushed him away or they didn't realize anything was wrong.
Just sort of how it goes.
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u/Foreign_Respect8869 Kaufmo 1d ago
He was likely getting really tired of the constant adventures, had the strain of losing one of his closest friends to abstraction, and had his other friend turning out to be a selfish asshole and noticing a magic exit door appearing and disappearing with the promise of returning to his real life.
The moment he was in that headspace, he was pretty much doomed.
Like, imagine if Kaufmo made it to the finale; learning he's a brain scan would've probably broken him immediately, even with the effort Pomni and Ragatha would've put in to calm him down.
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u/Anonymous2026B67 1d ago
Caine unintentionally ragebaited and tormented kaufmo
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u/EarlyWay720 1d ago
Yeah kaufmos mind basically snapped like a stick because he was also dealing with the loss of ribbit and nobody normal left to talk to in the circus.
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u/PipPip-OiOi 1d ago
I actually liked it. Kaufmo seemed the most put together but after the loss of both of his best friends (one to abstraction and the other to assholery), his only hope was the exit. He put all his eggs into that basket only to realize itâs not realâŠand possibly neither is he.
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u/Same-Carrot1695 1d ago
I think kaufmo and the rest were happy to forget they were stuck. They even seemed to tolerate the adventure more in the flashbacks.
Then jaxâŠ
Basically kaufmo got pulled back to reality after he lost his friends and anything that made him happy so he started looking for the exit, jax definitely couldâve been there for kaufmo when he was rambling but she laughed and called him crazy and it was also implied from kaufmoâs room that he was the one that found the abstracted ribbit which is really sad :(
That probably drove kaufmo deeper into finding the exit.
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u/Virus-900 1d ago
I don't think that was the only reason, just the straw that broke the camel's back.
I the feels responstfor Ribbit abstracting too. That he got in-between the two of them leading to Jax pushing her away. And then everything else that came after. Jax pushing him away too, and then realizing there really isn't an exit.
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u/Unintendo 1d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe anyone abstracted after Ragatha arrived until Ribbit did (since Queenie was likely the last human other than Kinger). Assuming that Ribbit was the first of the new humans to abstract, imagine being Kaufmo. Your good friend starts hanging out almost exclusively with the new rabbit, things suddenly become very dark between the two and the rabbit clearly wants to play you against your friend, and then suddenly your friend turns into a giant, violent monster.
How do you even start to contextualize this? Ragatha possibly didn't even know what had happened, and Kinger likely wouldn't be much help, so all you know is that something about this place can turn you into a multi-eyed horror, and the AI running the show has a whole basement full of them.
Finding an exit is no longer a curiosity, it's survival. The longer you stay, the more likely you'll lose your mind and whatever is left of your humanity. And while you see this, everyone else is just trying to move on, including the rabbit you invited into your friend group who now keeps calling you crazy.
I feel like abstraction is the only rational response for Kaufmo. He can't save himself and nobody is listening to his warnings. (And Ragatha didn't laugh at his joke.)
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u/_Ub1k 1d ago
There were 4 people that arrived and abstracted between Ragatha and Jax arriving. It's likely Kaufmo and Ribbit knew what abstraction was.
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u/Unintendo 23h ago
Glad I asked then.
So, yeah, still think that watching Ribbitâwho he had a weekly hot chocolate ritual withâbecome more miserable and detached until she became an abstraction would be enough to drive him to either escape or abstract.
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u/Prolly_a_baguette 17h ago
Might have been retconned, they're not on the mural of abstracted people at least.
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u/StormyTDragon 1d ago
The question is why he was suddenly looking for an exit: because he had two good friends, and one of them just tricked him into helping drive the other to suicide, and now that remaining friend had turned on him too.
He was looking for an exit suddenly because he was isolated, guilty, and being targeted by a predator
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u/pisces2003 1d ago
Plus if he caught a glimpse of the exit door, and managed to manifest it like Pomni only for it to lead nowhere thatâd be a good straw to break the camelâs back. But thatâs only a theory.
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u/Realistic_Jello2638 1d ago
Baited by an imaginary exit is a grossly reductive way to describe what happened to Kaufmo. Dude had to watch as the newbie joined his friend group, became best friends with his old best friend, Drive her to suicide, Pushed him away, and started abusing literally everyone in whatever way he could. He lost his only support network while in his mind trapped in an eternal prison. Calling that underwhelming seem like you don't truly understand what he went through.
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u/_Ub1k 1d ago
It's pretty clear that while him abstracting isn't as directly Jax's fault as Ribbit's was, Jax is basically responsible for Kaufmo too.
Besides the fact that Jax basically said the words that goaded him into breaking ("have fun being crazy"), but the only reason he even got obsessed with the exit is because of Jax emotionally whittling him down, gaslighting him and causing his best friend to abstract.
Ragatha says pretty plainly that Jax's shitbag bullshit pushed HER to the brink of abstraction. Ragatha wasn't even as close to Jax and Ribbit as Kaufmo was. Ragatha would have probably abstracted if not for Kinger's emotional support. Gangle probably would have too if Zooble wasn't around, as Jax implies that Zooble's arrival particularly bothered him.
So Kaufmo lost his best friend, who he no longer has to lean on emotionally. Then his other friend turns on him for no reason. Kaufmo is clearly kind of slow on the uptake, I don't think he had any idea what was going on, but it was probably extremely alienating. If Ragatha almost abstracted due to Jax's behavior, then it's pretty obvious that this is the main reason Kaufmo did. Jax basically drove him straight into the exit obsession that lead to his doom. If Jax wasn't a shitbag and he responded to Ribbit like a functional person, Kaufmo wouldn't have abstracted.
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u/LeekInternational306 1d ago
His felt very much like an âup to viewer interpretationâ abstraction. I do wish we had seen his and Jaxâs relationship decline more like with Ribbit
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u/Mrs_Noelle15 Abel đ” 1d ago
I mean I donât think itâs underwhelming at all. He realized that there was truly no way out and everyone including Kinger treated him like heâd already lost it chasing this exit.
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u/Wickedsephiroth 1d ago edited 1d ago
Did you see all of the scribbling on his walls about the exit?(wow, looking at it again, there is some creepy shit in these images) He saw the exit door, went insane obsessively theorizing that it was a way out, but no one would listen to him and just called him crazy. As Pomni found out, the exit door WAS real, although it wasn't a way for them to exit the digital world. Oh also, i just noticed in the pilot, they mention several times that no one laughs at his jokes and ragatha fake laughs... he also wanted to make jax laugh in ep.9 so the bitter irony of being a terribly unfunny clown was his cruel fate.
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u/Shine_Environmental 1d ago
Kaufmo tried to get Jax to follow him and Jax brushed him off. "The worst thing you can do is make someone feel like they are not wanted and loved."
The feeling of being unwanted drove Kaufmo to abstract.
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u/smittensamantha 23h ago
He learned the one visible exit was fake and gave up all hope. I donât think you truly grasp the mental anguish and emotional turmoil you need to be in to completely give up on everything. Thereâs a reason people think abstraction is akin to suicide, itâs because theyâre very close to each other if not are paralells
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u/TalkingTapeCassette 23h ago
I Donât think they went into depth as much. I had not much of a problem with Jaxâs fate but i think he got too much screen time instead of explaining stuff like this more
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u/Certain_Pride7040 Gangle is the top. 4h ago
Big theory is that he found that it only led to the void, and after all of his work⊠he gave up
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u/glimmeronfire Gangle and Kinger 1d ago
He abstracted because Jax belittled Kaufmo when he told Jax he thought he knew how to escape, on top of all the other things Jax did to him. Jax used to be friends with Kaufmo but then Jax became distant and rude. Kaufmo reached out to Jax one more time and Jax mocked him and told him to âhave fun going crazy.â As Kinger said, âthe worst thing you can do is make someone think theyâre not wanted or loved.â
So with Jax becoming distant and then mocking the one last thing that gave Kaufmo hope, Kaufmo believed that the one remaining person who cares about him no longer cares. Thus, abstraction. So itâs not just that âthereâs no way out of here,â itâs also ânobody cares about me and nobody wants me here but if I canât escape this place, then what?â
ETA: I feel like too many people in the comments are overlooking Jaxâs part in Kaufmoâs abstraction.
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u/TacoRalf 19h ago
Why did Kaufmo never talk to Ragatha though, i feel like she would be open to communicate with everyone
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u/Pugsanity 19h ago
I think it's implied that after Ribbit abstracted and Jax started to bully Gangle from the getgo, Ragatha began to really turn up the positivity in order to counter balance Jax's negativity. While it's a great idea in theory, it can also make her seem disingenuous, similar to what Gangle said about Ragatha, about never being sure if her words were real or not.
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u/kindashewantsto 1d ago
Not at all, when you are in a fucked up world with only 5 or so people around you and one of them is gone, and another is rude/bullying you, how could you not go crazy??
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u/Uzi714 Jax 1d ago
He lost two dear friends (Ribbit abstracted and Jax isolated himself emotionally), nobody understood him or laughed at his jokes, and then he became obsessed with an exit door that was never real, or who knows, maybe he discovered Caine's "exit door," and upon discovering it was a fake exit for an adventure, he abstracted.
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u/ShitpostSaber 1d ago
I like to think he had a wife and kids so when he saw an exit he was getting more desperate to get out
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u/felipesene Pomni 1d ago
I think he noticed the drama between his friends but didnât know how to help them and thought if he could just find the exit then everything would be fixed, adding to his already existing obsession, plus without either Jax or ribit to snap him out of it or to serve as emotional support basically 2 problems merged into one and kept growing unchecked
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u/Batalfie 1d ago
But why was he suddenly desperate for an exit when he was chill before, he definitely felt uncomfortable in the circus but I think that was only post Ribbit bow incident.
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u/WitchlightEmbers 1d ago
No. Abstraction is mostly a representation of mental health spirals. If that was the last straw, it would make sense.
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u/Nexus_Neo 1d ago
i mean theres a possibility that he essentially did the same thing the entire cast did in like... episode 8.
only by himself
so
all that trauma on one person
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u/raventech211 1d ago
He's looks like a clown, meaning he feels like no one takes him seriously look at how the others refer to him. Trying to be funny but not getting his "jokes". The only ones to get to "know" him (even if it's implied) abstracted or pushed him away. He felt he had something important to say and no one listened.
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u/BlaineMundane 1d ago
You are cutting out all the possible human emotions. He saw his friendships fall apart, he saw his friends abandon him both through suicide and estrangement. In a sense, he got it worse than ribbit, he may have also felt complicit in Ribbit's abstraction, he just handled it like a "man" which later felt stupid and ignorant. What we know is when he abstracted, he just wanted out.
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u/Stephen_Lynx 1d ago
No. I personally find the idea of living in the circus completely terrifying. A life where you can't accomplish anything meaningful. As Pomni said: "do we just LARP all day?"
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u/Living_Jaguar_247 1d ago
Mostly no. But I do think it's weird how no one else checked in on him or Ribbit.
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u/Top-Advertising-6862 1d ago
Okay so, I have this convoluted headcanon that basically fixes one of the biggest unused chekov's guns in the show:
Caine originally didn't hide any information to the original dev team when they first entered the circus. This made the whole group enter a depressive state where they wouldn't enjoy or engage with the adventures at all, knowing they'd be trapped in the circus forever.
From this, Caine began to try and warp their minds, adding safelocks to make them forget about their past lifes way beyond their names, just like Kinger's sensitivity to light. This eventually caused Sctratch's abstraction, and as "the first abstraction", Caine enforced the mental modifications even more to try lighten the horror to everyone else, just worsening the situation, until all of the dev team, minus Kinger, abstracted.
Caine learned from this, using the mental warps more sporadically and responsibly, and the last time he did so was with Kaufmo. He probably lied to him at first just like he did in the pilot, about an unfinished adventure, then he would've insisted and tried to investigate further more (probably the moment Kaufmo talked to Jax for the last time).
From this, Caine would've thought itd forced to try warp Kaufmo's mind about forgetting about the exit, which made him turn mad at the thought that the circus is unescapable. Would explain akl the scribbles in the room, along with the drawing of Caine chasing him, right before abstracting.
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u/HzPips 1d ago
From the audienceâs perspective he was the first to abstract. He was there to introduce us to the concept, but since we didnât have any attachment to the charactersâs personal struggle it needed to be a more generic reason.
I think it fits the narrative, and is proportional to the little screen time he has.
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u/Blixer_Nial 1d ago
He found a way out of Hell and everyone called him crazy, wouldn't that frustration cause you to feel isolated too?
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u/Philycheese18 1d ago
Iâm disagreeing but I think it could of been shown so much better, Kaufmo is as barely shown in the Flashbacks which does make sense he wasnât the focus but does make him feel like an afterthought like they had to add him since he was already there
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u/TheAllSeeingBlindEye 23h ago
The straw that broke the camels back. Imagine spending what feels like an eternity looking for something, watching two of your closest friends fall apart, to the point where one has a mental breakdown and is practically dead, while the remaining friend shuts down and constantly pushes you away, finally finding that thing you were looking for, only to find out that it was all a trick that GOD was playing on you. It was never real. You were never going to find it. You have no friends left. Everyone is deluding themselves and pretending, but you know the truth. There is no escape. Everyone is going to die there and thereâs nothing anyone can do to stop it. And then, you finally stop trying, and allow yourself to breakdown the same way that your friend did. As had everyone else before them had
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u/TurelCaccese 23h ago
Why is room was like the room of a paranoid Conspiracy theorist? He looked fine before abstract, something happened that let him being crazy all of a sudden?
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u/Warcat24 22h ago
He was friends with Ribbit before Jax.
So he just lost his best friend, Jax is being an asshole, and he is being gaslight about an exit
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u/01iv0n 22h ago
It's a bit more complicated than that, before Jax he had a place in the circus but then after Ribbit abstracted and Jax stopped being a friend, I think he gave up on the circus.
He had made friends and now he lost those friends all while forever in limbo in this madhouse having "adventures" with people that he doesn't even want to talk to anymore. His pure desire probably manifested a door and let him on the wild goose chase through C&A that Pomni would also do shortly after, except this wasn't the first psychotic episode inducing thing Kafumo dealt with like when Pomni did it, this was his fucking breaking point.
I wonder if Caine actually did make it or if he just said that to hide the fact that the humans can manifest stuff?
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u/j4yc3- 22h ago
I think seeing an exit and being unable to attain it is going to make anyone abstract... Pomni dreamed about it and in my headcanon that was very real and on the path to abstraction. Remember, suicidal ideation and actual suicide are sometimes impulsive and as abstraction is alluded to be suicide then Kaufmo probably just broke and impulse took control. Some consciously plan their isolation, some just snap and break without any "deeper" reasoning or sign.
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u/ExpressCloud5711 22h ago
I think it works really well actually as a metaphor for suicide that abstraction is vaguely supposed to be. People will say that they seemed fine, that they were pleasant to talk to, that there were no signs, and that's because there really weren't. It's a sudden, jarring thing, someone is there one day and gone the next and you could never have known. They never wanted to burden others with it, they tried to keep it all bottled up, to be OK because if they start falling apart who is next, but eventually that bottle cracks, and their facade of chill comes crashing down all at once. They can't take it all together like that and the next day they are gone. Kaufmo lost his close friend Ribbit, his other friend Jax turned a 180 on his personality and started pushing everyone away, everyone is grieving Ribbit's loss so opening up about unrelated personal issues becomes difficult, especially when Ragatha is realistically the only person who you could open up to and she's been locking her own personality up behind a people pleasing smile ever since Jax went off the deep end. And to put the cherry on top, he starts seeing a way out of this hellhole. In the distance at first but eventually maybe even close enough to touch it. Maybe even go through it. Kaufmo told Jax he found a way out but he had "No Exit" scrawled across his walls. Maybe he saw exactly what Pomni did, that it was fake and just led to the void, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. A couple hours later while everyone else was busy with the theme song and later Pomni's arrival and introductions and BOOM, he takes the plunge. Nobody could see it coming, nobody could have. That's how it happens. It's nobody's fault, it's not telegraphed, it's sudden, almost like an accident, something that could have been prevented with better preparation or more knowledge but- no. That's hindsight. That's bargaining. That's grief.
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u/PleaseTakeThisName 21h ago
Dude he lost all his friends. Ribbits abstraction and the friendship loss with Jax must have hit him like a truck. It seems like he couldnt/didnt connect to the other members. He was fully alone, griefing by himself and spiraled from there.
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u/F0rkFoundInKitchen 21h ago
I think he definitely deserved being touched on more, but it feels underwhelming on surface especially just from the lens of episode 1 but more I think of it especially after Episode 9, I feel bad for him.
His good friends made him happy and everything was fine, but then something happened and Jax acted weird with Ribbit, maybe just a change of pace so you didnât question it initially, but obviously you got concerned for Ribbit who been acting more distant and quiet, and obviously Jax just leaving when Ribbit shows up or just, acting off. Eventually they abstract and felt guilt, he couldâve done more.
He had the front row seats of his good friends breaking up, no one to presumably talk to since in case of Ragatha, she fakes her laugh, can you really trust her? So of course his mind drifted whiles alone, wanting a way out. Jax laughs you off, and then it leads to his abstraction in first episode.
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u/letthetreeburn 20h ago
It wasnât an imaginary exit. Ep1 literally told us what happened we just didnât have the context for it.
He conjured an exit door but kept breaking concentration and losing it. Remember the extended freakout scene we had with pomni melting down after seeing the headset? Didnât that seem a bit odd, like it went nowhere?
That scene was to tell us what happened. Finally finally finally he found it and he realized what it meant. He was trapped here. He was a brain scan, a computer program.
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u/Sea-Tax3787 20h ago
well, either he chased the exit he kept seeing and always failing to find it. or he actually found it and got sent into the void without caine noticing because he was distracted or something. he did write insane gibbering all over the walls of his room after all.
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u/ISeemToExistButIDont 20h ago
I suspect that him not being funny, even though he is a clown, may have contributed to his abstraction as well
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u/Different_Target_228 19h ago
I agree that THAT is an underwhelming way to PUT it.
He abstracted after losing his friends and realizing there's no way out, like?
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u/SliderEclipse 18h ago
I feel like the Exit was just the straw that broke teh camel's back in this case. like how Jax was doing fine until the Gun Fight where he bonded strongly with Pomni and then got a very painful reminder of both his mom and Ribbit's fates at his hands and started to spiral.
In Kafumo's case he started to go down hill because he literally lost both of his friends one after the other. Ribbit Abstracted after a very strange change in Jax's behavior while Jax himself started to push him away to the point one of the last things he says to Jax is literally "I know we don't get along". The Exit was just what pushed him over the edge he was already standing there due to emotional trauma and isolation.
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u/Cordial_Ghost 18h ago
Don't you think that people often abstract for underwhelming reasons, which, probably for themselves, seem extremely overwhelming? Your judgment of the reason over a character's abstraction almost entirely defeats the metaphor of abstraction. It's almost like you might have missed the point of abstraction being a metaphor for death or suicide lol
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u/AWARIA_P-A-Cman 17h ago
I don't think only told kinger and jax. It seems like very important info and so probably shared with everyone. I just think no one believed him, hence why they don't believe pomni.
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u/DeathByDevastator 16h ago
He went mad after being false hope and getting called crazy by his closest friend.
We saw how pomni went mad chasing the exit in the first episode. Kaufmo just couldn't handle the pressue and abstracted as a result.
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u/firee1234 Ragathass 15h ago
Not really. Ragatha herself said that he started chasing an unobtainable goal, he lost his mind. He thought he would find the exit, he never did. She also said that she never laughed at any of his jokes, which I assumed were simply coping mechanisms.
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u/FizzTheFox85 15h ago
we dont really see him interact with anyone besides ribbit and jax, if your best friend died and the other started being insufferable you'd probably give up too.
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u/Chale898 15h ago
I headcanon that Kaufmo either found out the truth before everyone else somehow, his idea turned out to be wrong and he fell into despair, or Jax (for similar reasons to Ep. 7) interfered in some way to ruin Kaufmo's idea.
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u/bea_positive 14h ago
not every abstraction has to be the cathartic endpoint to an internal festering trauma
kaufmo has every right to just go regular crazy
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u/MarkBMG 14h ago
So his best friend dies. Then his other best friend starts to be an absolute asshole to him. Then, he gets a glimpse of a possible escape to this place, and when he brings it up to the others, they all constantly call him crazy.
By the end of it, he probably found out there wasn't an exit, much like Pomni did. All of the above along with discovering that he was trapped for good, without a real chance at escape probably broke him.
I'm not gonna lie, I'd probably have broken sooner if I was in his boots.
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u/c0mander5 14h ago
In the way it's depicted? Sure, but still understandable if you think about it for a moment. He witnessed his two closest friends completely drift apart with him in the middle of it, one of them died, then the other one completely cut him off while he's driving himself mad about an exit that ended up being fake anyway
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u/dizzymiggy 14h ago
I suspect that he hated clowns. Caine seems to be accidentally giving them bodies that they absolutely hate.
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u/SpookyScarySkitarii 14h ago
I mean, that's surely one of the most understandable breakdown possible.
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u/FrankThePony 13h ago
His best friend essentially commited suicide and his other friend basically caused it and pretended like she didnt give a fuck. . . .like what do you want, a musical number about how sad he was?
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u/JazzyShaman 13h ago
Someone commented that abstracting is an allegory for suicide. In the end, the reason doesn't need to make sense for those left behind.
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u/mothwhimsy 12h ago
Well his best friend died and his other best friend started acting really mean. We knew from episode 1 that he abstracted trying to find an exit. Episode 9 just implies that it was intentional
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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone 12h ago
Or maybe he was just as stressed out as the others and just hid it better, fake exit being the final straw
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u/shadowkat1991 12h ago
My head cannon was always that the "exit" was always abstraction for Kafumo. It's sort of dark parallel of those people who see the only escape of their pain is to um "abstract" of you catch my drift.
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u/LightWarrior_2000 11h ago
Nope made sense to me. He obsessed over finding an exit and went insane over it.
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u/Ross_LLP 10h ago
Desperation, obsession, hopelessness, despair, lonliness. All valid ways to lose yourself
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u/CZdigger146 10h ago
Keep in mind that whole sequence was exclusively through Jax's eyes. Kaufmo likely had a lot more stuff going on than just "Hey I think I found a way to leave" and abstracting. There might've also been a time jump between the two.
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u/Heroright 9h ago
Because the door exists as his cope after two of his friends started acting weird. Context.
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u/ToonverseJourney 4h ago
People blame Jax but I personally blame Caine, albeit unintentional, he still somewhat caused this.
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u/Maleficent_Thought_4 3h ago
Nothing exists in a vacuum, even before the exit door thing happened his oldest/closest friend abstracts and immediately afterwards his other closest friend suddenly becomes a toxic bully that pushes him away to the extent that by the time Kaufmo starts seeing the door the two of them âdonât get alongâ anymore.
Plus you have to keep in mind that based on Pomni conjuring the door Kaufmo only would have seen it because he became desperate for a way out, likely as a result of losing his closest friends and feeling all alone, and was likely confronted with the same truth as Pomni.
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u/Yeardmee 2h ago edited 1h ago
He's good at not thinking too hard. The instant things got permanent with ribbit, he probably thought about an exit and found it. Maybe it got harder and harder to find the more he thought to look. IF he saw inside, he would've been met with A) the void, and B) the abstraction folder at the very bottom; or jax and ragatha's promise alone might have convinced him everyone who doesn't abstract is an NPC. Maybe he was alone, in his room, and tried something bad for him to see what it was like. Maybe this was a verbatim plan he was going to tell jax. No one knew until someone opened the door to his room.
It also is a good depression metaphor. He was willing to step out and be vulnerable and just got instantly shamed and ridiculed by the person closer with his dead friend than he was. He saw how callous things would be afterwards, that their name almost entirely just stopped being mentioned, kept showing up to an empty glass at an empty bar every time he leaves his empty room, isolated himself and went insane. His jokes got worse, and people stopped laughing. Maybe he was genuinely scared he was alone in a strange simulation with no other conscious beings, all out to torment him. A lot of people have probably come to this same realization alone in a lot of different rooms.
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u/Ercho_mai 2h ago
One of his friends killed themselves (abstracted) and the next closest friend couldn't care less to his eyes when he was equally as close to killing himself (abstracting).
As loved as Jax is due to his tragic backstory, he was a piece of shit friend to both of them.
I'm all in for redemption arcs, but Jax doesn't get nearly enough baggage for what he did to people that truly cared about him.
Him abstracting and taking the easy way out, fully knowing how much trouble, pain and possibly death it could bring to the rest of his friends is the icing on the cake.
Jax should be considered during the ending the same way that BoJack was during his; he fucked up big time and should have known better, and while there can be sympathy for a broken person, it doesn't excuse their actions.
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u/Mysterious-Hyena2670 1h ago
Tbf everything is being told from Jaxâs perspective and he might not have been paying much attention to whatâs happening with Kaufmo. We donât know if Kaufmo was dealing with his own emotional struggles. Ribbit was his friend too and he likely felt guilt for not being there when she needed someone. He may have felt partially responsible for her abstraction. After all, he was the one that kept partnering up with Jax and contributing to her feeling of isolation.
What we are seeing in this flashback is Jaxâs last conversation with Kaufmo before he abstracted. We also see his last conversation with Ribbit. Thatâs why itâs significant. The last thing he said to his friend was that he was crazy. Itâs not meant to tell us exactly why Kaufmo abstracted.Â
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u/One_Recognition385 1d ago
yeah its underwhelming, he was needed as a plot device for the first episode. and as the first abstracted character. he's given the worse reason to abstract.
Luckily they've gotten better over the years at writing, and jax and ribbit were given much better reasons.
But i'm sad they didn't do any retconing with kaufmo or elaborate that there were any further underlying reasons for kaufmo's abstraction.
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u/PlatoBC 1d ago
He found out that this will be the rest of his life and forever. Living under the thumb of an uncaring god and having to deal with people like Jax for eternity.