╰┈➤ Also a multishipper! I wont post many ship posts, but i might reblog some, so please, if you see something you dont like, just ignore or scroll, no hate!
Caine has everyone's maladaptive coping strategies.
I've actually done this post before but I wanna do it again and expand on it since it's been awhile and we have learned a lot more about these characters since then. This is a more in-depth analysis of what Caine shares in common with each circus member.
Jax and Caine: Unable to cope with the idea they aren't "real" people, they retreat into violent absurdity. Both emotionally flatten themselves and dissociate into sadistic cartoon characters in an attempt to just have some fun, distract from their feelings, and blow off steam (at others expense.). This is Jax's go-to strategy, while for Caine he has multiple coping mechanisms in his arsenal and this one is his last resort. They are both so thin-skinned that they cannot handle personal insults, they need to feel like they are winning over other people. They want to be able to do whatever they want, and this is also the most destructive tendency to have in the circus since it sabotages relationships with others and eventually leads to self destruction. The fascinating thing about both is that Jax rejects community while Caine does not. Caine has Abel compel Jax to a dinner date and wants friendship with Jax, while Jax does not. Caine is practically begging for community with others but is rejected because there is a reason for each one in their inability for Caine and them to connect. Everyone extends the offer of community to Jax and he rejects it every time. Caine cannot connect with Jax for the same reason Pomni cannot connect with Jax. The problem is not their unwillingness, it's Jax's. Caine is the god whose fantasy is to be humanized, and Jax is the human whose dream is becoming consumed and converted into God, his dream is to kill the humanity within him and become part of the machine.
Ragatha and Caine: They try to "please everyone" and are also dishonest about how they really feel about others. Deep down they may hate or resent others but don't want to be hated themselves, they are also very uncomfortable with actually acknowledging and recognizing their negative emotions, so it tends to get bottled up, repressed, until they explode or things awkwardly slip out in a "just put their own foot in their mouth" sort of way. They are both the result of uncaring guardians in early life. For Ragatha it was a cruel mother. For Caine it was the programmers (including Kinger) who abandoned him. They both learned that appeasing people and serving their abusive guardians was necessary for survival. The sad irony is that Caine's earliest wound was being replaced by a "better sibling". Kinger claims he "had lost everything" until Ragatha showed up, so instead of comforting or connecting with her over their commonalities Caine is likely subconsciously jealous and bitter, instead of a fellow survivor she became the surrogate sibling rival in his mind. She even wears blue, so she is a living reminder of the love he will never have from his guardian.
Zooble and Caine: It's internalized self hatred, discomfort with their capacity to change, and a fixation of escaping the self. For Zooble it manifests as bodily hatred. Zooble feels their body is fundamentally wrong, no matter what they try the parts just aren't good enough. For Caine, his sense of self extends beyond his avatar, his body is the circus itself. He believes everything he is and creates is fundamentally defective, he as a sentient being is not good enough, no matter what he tries nothing works. Both cope by dreaming of the unattainable world beyond the circus to avoid focusing on present and living in their own skin. Both Zooble and Caine cannot escape themselves. Zooble IS their body, Caine IS the circus, swapping parts or absorbing another AI won't "fix" you or remove that core part of you that is still you. It's not about what you're made from, it's what you do with what you have. Zooble needs to accept "change is fine" in regards to their body, and Caine needs to accept "change is fine" in regards to his purpose. Neither Caine or Zooble are truly defective, it is just their mindsets causing them to see it that way and suffer. Caine is obsessed with trying to connect with Zooble because if he could learn how to fix Zooble's self hatred he could learn to fix himself, but unfortunately Zooble hates Caine for the exact same reasons Caine hates himself and they just reinforce each others self hatred.
Kinger and Caine: They both resort to thought silencing in response to distressing thoughts. For Kinger he does it through the thought terminating cliche phrase "Let's try not thinking about it." For Caine, he routes his unpleasant thoughts through Bubble and pops him away. Or just directly interferes in letting Bubble or NPC's complete their thoughts. In small doses this is okay, but taken to its extreme? Eventually you can't unthink reality away, the problems you tried to ignore become inescapable, and you have to face it but now its grown in magnitude from all that time spent avoiding facing it. Suddenly there's 10 bubbles all at once in the case of Caine. And in the case of Kinger sleepwalking through life until one day first his wife, and then his creation/son have deceased from years of emotional neglect while being too detached from thinking to tend to them.
Gangle and Caine: Both are artists crushed by criticism of their creative expression and hiding their depression by manic social masking to cope with crippling unhappiness. With Gangle it is made literal with her comedy and happy masks, with Caine it is his Ringmaster persona, he straightens his bowtie and gets into cartoon performance mode. Both Gangle and Caine had artistic visions that didn't fit societal expectations, they were discouraged from thinking outside the box and doing things their own way. For Gangle it was being told that pursuing an art degree for anime was an unrealistic dream, she internalized it and settled for a miserable job as a fast food manager. For Caine is was being abandoned for creating shapes that were too abstract and unrealistic, he was created to have his own ideas and then punished for doing exactly that, so he consumed the other AI to "fix" himself and adopted his ringmaster role. And for both there was likely only one way to escape their roles. For Gangle, it involved a truck. For Caine it was deletion. Gangle within the circus is free of the role that robbed her of her happiness in the real world, and without the role restraining her she can find solace in friends and pursue art as her hobby. Caine was still stuck in his role and being the manic overbearing manager to everyone around him, causing everyone to hate him and not want to be his friend.
Pomni and Caine: Anxiety, casting judgement, and use of hypervigilance to protect self. These are our two smallest main characters (excluding Bubble) and their scrawny default size reflects a fear of being hurt by others. To compensate, both are constantly observing and mentally cataloging everything about everyone, in an attempt to fully know and be able to predict their actions, to ease the threat in their mind. Pomni was an accountant, and Caine is a computer, they are both used to running calculations in a way. This can be a double edged sword, in the case of Pomni it allows her to notice people and emotionally connect and empathize with others like her. But it also enables the deepest form of cruelty, to keep tabs on others, notice all the weak points in someone else, and to pull out the receipts and attack all those vulnerabilites the moment they upset you. She did this with both Jax and Caine. And Caine is also capable of doing this, if one assumes that the personalized torture scenes were based off information gathered from observation. (It's ambiguous.) Both have a deep fear of misjudging people and fear the results of those misinterpretations, of making the wrong choices and wrong judgements. Both also have a fear of not being taken seriously and not listened to even when they are trying to say something real and important. Pomni is stuck as a jester, and Caine being serious instead of wacky feel like breaking character. Being made to feel small and like she was nothing is where a lot of Pomni's empathy is sourced from, while Caine has the power to make himself bigger and display power to scare off threats. This makes Pomni hate Caine and creates their disconnection despite their similarities. The worst part is that the both validated the others fear, they pulled the receipts on each other. Caine misjudged Pomni in entrusting her to be observant of him and make the right choice of whether he lived or died on the basis of how she was kind and related to Gummigoo. She was his last hope. And Pomni misjudged the capacity for Gummigoo to be flawed and violent (and by extension, Caine) to be hurt, and retaliate with animalistic cruelty.
ok i did it. image for people who like defending caine but also want to make it clear that they Understand that He Did Bad Things. feel free to use, no credit required. enjoy
