the parallels between jax and caine after episode 7 + character analysis + theories
(tldr: jax's humanity reminds him of his fears/meaninglessness, so he tries to ignore that he's a human and lean into being a cartoon character as a means of escape from his human vulnerability and caine's lack of humanity reminds him of his fears/meaninglessness, so he tries to ignore that he's an ai cartoon character and lean into his obsession with humans/the outside world as a means of escape from the circus. jax hates how much he can feel as a human and caine desperately wants to experience that ability.)
part 1: jax character analysis
jax is trying so hard to lean into this idea of "character archetypes" and him being "the funny one" because it lets him divorce himself from the reality of what his life was like outside. despite this he doesn't actually follow the character archetype assigned to him by the circus (which would be "the girly/positive one" based on his room), instead he creates an entire new identity as "the funny one" that seems to be at least partially real, even if it's exaggerated to push aside his more vulnerable characteristics.
he knows this isn't the archetype assigned to him, he’s just using the idea of archetypes as a flimsy excuse to try and escape from his past life + self by creating a new identity within the circus as a coping mechanism so he doesn’t have to feel real and process his real past traumas, while still feeling somewhat in control by choosing the archetype he's going to embody.
as horrible and soul-sucking as the circus is, its implied that whatever his life outside of it was worse and lonelier, which is why he refuses to talk about it.
like, based on this scene he either:
a) has no one waiting outside for him or
b) does have people waiting who he wanted to get away from and dreads the idea of going back, which could be part of the reason why he looked so uncomfortable during the bar scene when ragatha talked about her fucked up home life, instead of him just being uncomfortable she wasn't conforming to her "archetype".
and if he has no one he wants to go back to in the real world, its a safe assumption that ribbit and kaufmo could very well be the only real friends/loved ones he's ever had. ironically, even though the circus is place that purposefully tries to strip you of your humanity and individuality by compressing you into the box of a silly cartoon character, for jax, even though he's trapped, getting that separation from his original life and self could have been the first time he felt truly free enough to be able to connect with other people, and where he deeply cared about someone (both ribbit and kaufmo) for the first time too. granted, i think that in the beginning of his time at the circus he likely did struggle with wanting to retain his real world self and humanity, because he didn't know anything different, but eventually he realized that he had been given the opportunity to completely remake and separate himself from his traumas, which he readily and eagerly took.
i think the two personas he portrays in the circus are both painfully fake and painfully real at the same time, and both portray his incessant need for both the control and company he likely lacked in the real world.
his first persona, the "funny one", is the most genuine imo, and likely the kind of person he wanted to embody before the circus but couldn't because of a lack of autonomy or audience. he enjoys doing/seeing funny things for his own amusement, yes, but i think he originally wanted to be "the funny one" to make friends and make people laugh. i think a large part of he, kaufmo, and ribbit's relationship stemmed from joking around, pulling pranks, and laughing together because kaufmo canonically was something of a jokester, and in this photo they're clearly pranking each other with "bunny ears", which is a little bit of a dig at jax, but he doesn't seem to mind them laughing at him because they're his friends and its good natured.
after they both abstracted, i think his "jokes" and "pranks" became more self serving and at the expense of others, because he had none of them left to share the joke with, and laughing at other's pain was the only way to distract from his own. after getting closer to pomni though, you can see his jokes slowly shift from being at the expense of others (for example throwing pomni from the candy truck, dropping ragatha in the deep fryer) and towards making her laugh, even if its at his own expense (like making fun of his ears and tail being feminine during the stargazing adventure) because he craves that connection and companionship.
he started to fall into the same sort of tendencies/friendship with pomni that he had with ribbit and kaufmo, and once he caught himself doing that, he freaked out because he was terrified of making and loosing another friend, and terrified that he lost control over his emotions and let his guard down. so, in an effort to push her away/reisolate himself, he slipped into his second persona : the edgelord, i-have-0-feelings mastermind "villain".
since pomni saw through his facade, he completely lost control of the situation, conversation, and her perception of him and quickly tried to cobble together a mean, hurtful enough persona based on her earlier suggestion that he was "the villain" to scare her into not looking any deeper at his vulnerable side that he hates acknowledging because it exemplifies his lack of control over both his own emotions and his friend's safety/survival in the circus, and control, something he likely lacked irl, is still the one positive thing left about the circus for him, and if he loses that then he has almost nothing left in or outside of the circus, which is why the only times we see him get truly upset is when his control is taken away (for example the vegan thing, him being forced into the maid outfit, the fight with pomni, his tail being taken, etc) and also why i think he avoids cursing because he doesn't like being "controlled" by the censors.
this complex around control, in addition to the fact that we can assume the only relationships/memories/people he ever truly cared about were in the circus, means he straight up does not want to leave, which is very obvious throughout all of episode 7.
he constantly drags his feet, and seems disappointed rather than excited about the prospect of escape. which makes sense, he has nothing good to go back to, and clearly is still very attached to his memories and abstracted friends. in caine's office, he stares, like, longingly at an orb containing a past winter cabin adventure (likely the same adventure the photo of jax, ribbit, and kaufmo was taken in because of the hot chocolate)
the threat of losing the circus means he'd also be leaving not only his entire self but also the only relationships and memories he seems to value behind, with no photos or anything to remember them by, and no hope of ever seeing them again, even if that means abstracting with them and going to the cellar to "join" them, which is why i think he looked so peaceful on the brink of abstraction.
all of this cumulated in jax's breakdown during the big "red button or blue button" scene, where we get a few flashbacks to his life in the real world, which he is clearly terrified of returning to to the point where he legitimately looses control of himself and presses the red button, even though he seems mostly convinced the whole "escape plan" is just an adventure, the mere thought of him possibly being removed from the circus makes him crash out.
at this point, he blames caine and says he "got in his head" and "made him do it", but i don't buy that for a minute. i think jax is horrified at his own actions and unable to cope with the fact that he did in fact make the decision to trap everyone in a fit of panic, and can't deal with the repercussions from his fellow cast, so he chooses to pass the blame to caine as soon as the option is available. (i'll circle back to this scene in the caine section later)
part 2: caine character analysis + parallels to jax
where jax is a human who is desperate to (at least partially) detach himself from his meaningless life in the real world/humanity via playing into his "cartoon character" persona in a place where he can get attention playing up his chosen archetype, caine is an ai who's insecure about performing the one thing that supposedly gives his life meaning, making adventures, who deeply, desperately wants to be and relate to humans.
caine is literally an anti-AM from i have no mouth and i must scream.
AM, a self aware, sentient AI, was created by humanity and hates it, because even with infinite power in his world, he's still trapped and unable to ever truly feel, experience, and connect the way humans do. he becomes obsessed with taking out his frustrations in demented ways by endlessly torturing the humans because he himself could never be one, and resented humanity for creating him.
caine, also a sentient self aware ai who's effectively trapped in the digital circus who was cut off from his creators (like how caine in the bible was cut off from god, his creator), becomes equally obsessed with humans and humanity, but in the complete opposite direction as AM. instead of purposefully torturing his humans like AM does, caine genuinely seems to try to make them happy with adventures, but struggles to understand the multifaceted desires of the cast, and balance them with what he’s been programmed to do as an ai, which is to make compelling, interesting adventures with high stakes.
in episode 5, during his conversation with the moon where he realizes that the humans like their adventures better than his.
he starts to believe that him not understanding how to make his humans happy or what they want is confirmation that he not only can't perform his only job as an ai, but that he also is too far from humanity to ever understand them, no matter how hard he tries or how much he wants it.
as an extension of his interest in humans, caine has obsession with the pictures of the C&A office, his only idea of what "the real world" looks like, and i think its very interesting that both jax and caine keep photos of the things they associate as their "ties" to humanity. jax keeps photos of his friends, and caine keeps photos of the office. he also blatantly admits his obsession with the outside world and says he wishes he had more info so he could accurately recreate it.
because of this obsession, i think that the "exit" caine made in the pilot episode wasn't for the human cast at all. i think it was for him.
even though a lot of the "lore" that "able" dropped was likely made up by caine, he's very self aware, and clearly used the "human" persona of "able" as a way to express some of his deeper feelings the cast might not have listened to otherwise, most notably the bombshell that he feels just as trapped in the circus as them and laments the fact he has no physical body in the real world to return to (cough cough, hello AM).
he wants to experience the real world and humanity so badly, and besides the people in the circus, those photos are his only frame of reference for doing so, so he does everything in his power to make whatever mediocre version of an escape/exit that he can, and i think his inability to do so in a way that the human cast accepts as valid only reaffirms his fears that he fundamentally will never be able to be human enough, or seen by the human cast as human-like, despite how much he wants it.
knowing that, he knows his only other connection to humanity is through the human cast, which is why he's so desperate for their validation, particularly zooble and pomni who openly criticize him. his desperation for their love and approval drives him to come up with the "adventure" to alleviate his fears of being hated, worthless, and abandoned by his human cast, the same way he was abandoned by his human creators. the whole thing is him begging the cast to see him as real and to care about him, and he doesn't even realize how messed up it all is because of his disconnect from the human psyche.
this brings us back to the "red button vs blue button" scene at the end of episode 7. the cast staying was "the good ending" for caine, because he needs them.
first off, the scene of him deleting able because he was getting "too smart" is very intriguing.
caine has mentioned before that leaving intelligent ai's to run for too long is a "bad idea", without ever clarifying why, and i think its because he is what happens. he's an ai that's been left running for years, long enough to gain sentience, become existential, and lament his own lack of humanity, and as selfish as he can be i don't think he wants that for any ai he creates, because he already hates that his creators did that to him.
now, pivoting back to jax and the button. as i’ve said i fully believe jax hit the button himself in a fit of panic with no influence from caine. but look at how caine reacts when he’s accused of altering their minds beyond the “temporary modifiers”.
he knows it doesn’t end well because he’s tried before, but i don’t think it was malicious and i don’t think he’s ever tried again. directly after his outburst, kinger brings up scratch, the “first abstraction”.
the “kinger was a game dev” theory is all but confirmed, and i also think that the first few players were “test players” that were either employees at the C&A company like kinger, or their family members, like queenie.
additionally, “scratch” is the name of a very simple, block based coding language used primarily to teach children how to code.
i think that scratch was either
a) an C&A employee like kinger who named themselves scratch as a tongue in cheek reference to how complicated of a game the circus was while still being “blocky”, colorful, and childish, like “scratch” the coding language, or as a reference to how they felt dumbed down into a childish cartoon by being trapped there in a blocky cartoon body
or b) more horrifically, scratch was an actual child, possibly kinger and queenie’s, who was in the circus either for what was supposed to be temporary fun , or to survive a terminal illness, and them abstracting is what caused kinger to go insane, and later caused his wife to abstract. (realistically i don’t see this one being canon because goose has never put a particular emphasis on age/ageing in the circus, which i think would be way more important if a child was going to be referenced, unless if scratch was kinger/queeie's adult child? idk, again highly doubt it's going to be canon, but i still think it’s an interesting idea to entertain) a more realistic option is scratch being a young worker/person kinger/queenie kind of viewed as their “work kid” maybe?
on top of that, i think that whoever scratch was, one of two things happened:
either a) they were very, very upset at some point in the circus, and caine, newly created, new to his powers, and unfamiliar with their limits, likely tried to alleviate scratch’s negative emotions and “fix” their sadness/fear/etc in an effort to make his humans happy, but ended up accidentally abstracting them in the process.
or b) kinger witnessed scratch abstracting, without any interference from caine, and the guilt over blaming himself for the circus’s creation as a game dev sent him into mental breakdown so bad that he either asked caine to fix him, or caine tried to fix him himself without being asked, which is what scrambled kinger’s brain.
either of these scenarios ended very poorly, making caine never want to truly effect their minds ever again. he seems to be terrified of kinger remembering what he did and sharing with the cast and seems to feel guilt about it. the scratch incident could be the "falling out" abel alluded to between himself and kinger, since we know that able was effectively caine's mouthpiece.
(side note: this could also be why some of the characters now have “avatar gimmicks” that can effect their mental state. caine can’t safely directly mess with their minds enough to cure depression or body dysmorphia, or dysphoria, but he can give gangle a mask to make her happy, and zooble a toy box of options to change their body with, because he wants to help even if he can't fully understand their problems enough to empathize or personally help zooble during the therapy session. these two characters have the most “simple” mental issues to fix, and for caine to at least vaguely understand, so avatar gimmicks work, but characters like ragatha and jax and kinger have problems that are far too complex to gimmick away)
i think all of this stuff about jax and caine, and the lore of the circus as a whole is left intentionally vague, mysterious, and sometimes misleading so that at first glance, the audience (us) will have the same feelings/reactions as the human characters in the circus have. the “holy shit there was no way out this whole time and caine lied”, “caine controlled jax into pressing the button”, "caine controls our minds”, etc, all serve to turn the cast against caine, and part of the audience as well who have been lured into the same headspace. even though all these statements have grains of truth to them, and it’s understandable why the cast feels this why, and why a viewer would at first glance, if you take a closer look i think it becomes immediately obvious how much more complex the situation is, and caine, though he's still an antagonist, becomes very, very different from the malicious villain the cast is starting to see him as, and is very easy to empathize with, which is absolutely incredible writing on goose’s/glitch’s part.
anywaysss, that's all folks! lemme know your thoughts please!
(also this other post of mine elaborates more on this from last episode if u want to see more of my yapping lol)
