>>149978588
To be completely fair, things like the stupid sauce does raise a bunch of questions already regarding the game's supposed family friendly limitations, it's just a straight up drug; what's interesting is how it is more of a recreational type of drug instead of some mind manipulator thing so it's really no more damaging to their minds that a concussion which they already get plenty of, I imagine.
With Gangle's mask, I think it's more of an acting thing. They 'work' on her because she's masking with them and playing the roles that come from them (happy mask means be all smiles and happiness, plastic mask mean fake upbeat attitude). But she's coming to learn that she doesn't need to have a mask to express a certain emotion, she can do that with her own tragic one. She clings to the Happy mask still because it's really difficult to let go of old coping mechanisms. Something that is curious aside of that is that her portrait depicts her with the happy mask as her default expression but we know the tragic mask is her default one underneath, makes you wonder if the mask was something she appeared with since the beginning and simple adapted her irl problems that way or if it came to be as an accomodation Caine made for her. I'm thinking the former personally.
The Jax issue is how prone he becomes part of the gags and how many of them are related to messing with his mind. He might have been unto something when he said it was better to become a caricature but what he doesn't seem to know is how by allowing yourself to be less human you just start to integrate as another cog in the wacky machine that is the circus, which sucks immensely because then you realize you aren't taking the reins of anything nor have any substantial power, you just become another play thing for Caine to manipulate for the sake of funny