#autistic coded caine

[caine-shrine]

These aren’t the reasons I personally relate to Caine, but I thought I’d pass them along if some of you might need em!

[metellastella]

So, normally I don’t subscribe to the whole “child-coded” thing that circulates around fandoms.

It’s specially ridiculous when applied to Pomni, because literally women are infantilized SO much partly on the basis that so many of them appear “closer to children” because of high voices and short stature, even when in their 30s. (An intertwining of the ageism bigotry of ‘children are dumb’ as a mental scaffolding.) We have studies that indicate people do this unconsciously, even, grade people on competence due to these physical traits and assign more gravity and authoritativeness to deeper voices.

(The investigation of the first trait being something I fairly recently dropped into my mmhoph fanfic, which also notes how mens’ testosterone levels are responsive to socialization factors. Supposedly, as will be covered later in the fic, certain types of mediations can induce this effect as well)

So, when I heard that some people were maligning the ShowTime ship based on that, (that Pomni was “minor-coded”) my mental facepalm was intense.

Here’s my stumbling block, though. As anyone who’s read my Headcanons Doc knows, or have seen references to it on my Caine sideblog, I can carry multiple impressions or interpretations of a character in my head- idk if this is usual, but it can hamper my writing or my visual content ideas because I literally can’t decide which one to commit more energy to.

(this seems to be ADHD flavored, same difficulty of analysis paralysis on real world tasks)

(Maybe I should make a particular post about AskBox requests based on my lists of ideas ……?) (OH wait. People do Polls about that, right? "What should I draw?" pfffft you can tell I don't create much visual content nowadays- though I'd like to break out of that- I dunno why that only just now occurred to me)

(If I knew somebody out there was interested and waiting on it …)

(similar dopamine-related reason I often ask to do collabs)

Anyway. I’d say that one of the very strong impressions of Caine that I have is, he actually COULD BE “child-coded.” Like I can’t think of any other character I’ve seen this claim on that had more validity to it than him. Especially considering that we’ve learned from the ep 8 trailer that he’s had zero familial or platonic love, practically no socialization experience (Jax was the FIRST time anyone asked to hang out with him!). Even before all that, his domain he presides over is toy-strewn, suggesting that he was meant to mesh with children.

Although you could’ve argued (and maybe still could, but the support for it is even weaker now) that means he was supposed to be in a ‘caretaker’ role, for kids that put on VR, but then it got ruined (perhaps by absorbing the Blue Dot- as other people noted, the data for the specificity of generating guns was not included in the visuals we saw fed to the Red Dot, and I noted there was no horror story data, so those datastreams we saw the Blue Dot ingesting might be where those things came from. This might even align with Bubble’s seeming fixation on adult things, if you interpret him as the Blue Dot and/or a part of Caine’s mind, both which I find unlikely, especially the former, but it’s worth pointing out this potential aligning of themes. Especially since I’ve never seen anyone do this take on the ‘Bubble as Ringmaster’ content. Stripped of Caine’s fun and wacky counterbalance, Bubble has free reign to put episode 5 ideas like ‘post apocalyptic wasteland’ into high gear) the ‘intended as caretaker’ thing just doesn’t seem to pan out. He has near-zero emotional intelligence.

If the story were intended as a commentary on real-world AI (and it’s emphatically not, no matter how many people unaware of the meta by the production team insist it is) then this ‘Caine is a rotten caretaker’ could’ve been a commentary on the very real phenomenon, haunting stories of kids succumbing to lack of safeguards in online playgrounds like Character.AI.

(That would make for good fanfiction fodder, even, if you like darkfic. The profiteering C&A has “fed” Caine kids before, but the only ones capable of withstanding his constant onslaught of overstimulating content without Abstracting in short order are adults.)

(Caine-fan me wouldn’t read such, but feel free to run with the idea, esp if you wanna artistically vent about those horrible stories in the news …)

But as it is, he simply seems … very childlike.

Point blank.

Now, you might say, “well adult autists sometimes embrace the stereotype about being childlike” and that’s definitely one interpretation I have of him, too.

But, you know, multiple impressions.

So, usually when the term “child-coded” is bandied about, it tends to be directed at female characters afaik, (strangely the ‘I wish I were a real girl’ android trope seems to fit him, too) and it’s for almost purely aesthetic reasons- high voice, being androgynous (which he is very much not, despite the rather oddball mannerisms and attitude that don’t exactly square with mainstream masculinity either, as reflected on in the Caine’s Demographics essay that I shared in Docs). For him, “child-coded” would be wholly psychological.

So interestingly, when I got into a debate about this on Discord, with EagleDraws (don’t recall their actual full username, their server name in Cainelandia is merely ‘I miss Caine,’ haha.) I tried to explain why romo!RoyalTeeth was so weird to me personally, even though it’s one of the most dominant Caine ships. (And the point of this meta btw is not to malign RoyalTeeth shippers, just to explain in more detail why I’m so adamant about not including it in the Discord server someone handed me ownership of, and I don’t include it on my Caine-centric sideblog.) Even before we got chronological confirmation that Caine was the youngest one there (from Kinger’s screen, comparing Jax and Zooble’s canon ages of 22), Caine came across as the youngest and least developed person there.

(honestly cannot comprehend people reading him as a father figure to Zooble in ep 3. The two were, by vibe, since we had no ages at the time, the tired adult or teen-near-adult dealing with a hyperactive child in that setting. lol. An annoying younger brother trope at best. I compared them to Lilo and Nani on my Caine Shrine sideblog.)

So we have the youngest-feeling character being shipped with the dad character, who we already knew had been there the longest, but then confirmation that he was forty-friggin-eight only makes this ship even more of a Yikes.

The situation Gooseworx accidentally created by not releasing the characters’ ages by the get-go is so, so awkward.

Not just for RoyalTeeth: Personally I don’t even like BunnyDoll that much because while a 30 y o and a 22 y o can be in a healthy relationship, it’s still . . . awkward. So gets even more knocked down on my multishipper preferences.

We had no indication, character-wise, that Ragatha was so much older than Jax. So it’s not nearly as grating as the Caine-Kinger divide. It even appears in my Shipping Tiers Doc.

I don’t know how to wrap this up other than to repeat what I’ve said before and will probably say many more times- I wish Gooseworx had either not given us the characters’ ages, merely said that they’re all 21 and above (since that’s the floor established by Caine)- especially because she SEEMED like she didn’t want to, was just badgered into it- OR I wish she had released them at the pilot. Then all of this could’ve been avoided, everyone could essentially have ‘informed consent’ on what they were getting themselves into by shipping Jax and Ragatha or Caine and Kinger.

Because ultimately it’d be unreasonable for anyone, even diehard antishippers, to expect people to withdraw support for the 21 year old and 48 year old ship since they didn’t know. It’s been YEARS since the pilot aired. I don’t know when exactly RoyalTeeth got huge, but if it’s been years? Everyone’s way too mentally invested in it by now.

Similar thing happened when people shipped Zuko and Aang back in the day. That was in an era before everyone was in the habit of looking up character ages before starting in on the fan content. Looking back now, the fandom shipping a 12 y o and a 16 y o is not appropriate (despite the setting that probably didn’t have the same sensibilities about age as the modern day.)

Now, Eagle tried to assert that Caine was “built as” an adult right out the gate, but since he was clearly not programmed with any people skills, and he had zero life experience, to me that still shakes out as- by vibe- 0 years old at conception.

He had no chance to learn any of those skills, either, now that we know canonically he was never nurtured.

Only yelled at by Scratch, and ignored by Kinger.

Despite my very vocal and longstanding discomfort with a ship with that big an age gap, and frequent references to my own ace sex repulsion, I still seem to have been collectively maligned on the topic of minors interacting with adult content.

Irony!!

But I’m not gonna sidetrack into that drama atm, I got thoughts to continue here, you can DM me here or on Discord (same username) if you’re curious.

Only to mention the double irony that I have this sideblog that hardly ever even gets used!

Back on topic. What makes the dynamic within the TADC fandom and the characters’ ages also complicated is that, from what I’ve seen, many people still don’t know them! People are still treating Zooble as an ‘angsty teen’ even though that doesn’t make any sense given they’ve referenced being in two jobs that require one to be adult.

They can no longer treat Jax as a teen tho, (except thru AU) since that would make shipping him with Pomni the Yikes.

So, personally, bc of the sequence of events of age reveals in TADC, I get to be in this weird space where I think of Chatterbox shipping as the more emotionally experienced and savvy partner (Zooble) being paired up with a much more naïve partner (Caine) a vibe which has finally, finally been validated by his being 1 year younger than they are.

This ship being inadvertently “greenlit” and validated in my mind, is a boon, and yet much of the wider fandom still lags behind, being the exact reverse vibe, thinking of their relationship as older Caine and younger Zooble, storgic, father-daughter. This once again brings to mind some reflecting I did in the Caine's Demographics Doc, that wasn't romance-related, but how people perceive Caine purely by aesthetics (voice being included in "aesthetics") And how, on my sideblog, I noted that if Caine, as an AI who can most likely alter his appearance at will, appeared as a child, he'd be treated WAYYYY differently by the cast!

Honestly, JUST that change would've resolved this. 96% likely.

Anybody who’s been following me or my sideblog knows that typically I love storgic shipping, I use that tag liberally. Also the funnier one #snorting storgic content like it’s cocaine, lol. But for Chatterbox in particular it brings up associations of people not understanding just how adrift Caine is when it comes to socialization, expecting him to act mature and/or like an adult when he’s been given no indication of how to do so. And even if you want to assert that the writer’s intent isn’t that, they didn’t consider the implications of how that would affect his behavior and the moral evaluation of it, he’s still autistic-coded, which is difficulty with socialization, independent from how much experience you have. Autists “appear” immature to other people (and actually, NTs tend to be immature in a different way via the lens of autists, paradoxically) The “bad parent” mistaken impression is one I’ve deconstructed extensively on Caine Shrine (again, to reiterate, that requires infantilization OF WOMEN, ie something it’s easy for people to psychologically force on Pomni and Gangle especially). So even though normally I could get behind storgic sensibilities, as just another alt impression, per usual, only for two characters instead of one, it just carries way too much baggage.

And for Kinger and Caine, it’s the reverse. To people like me, who know their ages, and intuited that Caine was so much younger to begin with, it’s so squarely a storgic ship that the ill-fitting “Old Man Yaoi” the fandom has assigned to them is like sandpaper. It’s almost impossible to fully appreciate romo dynamics. (I reblog art that’s pretty on another sideblog bc I appreciate the artistic effort, as someone who’s normally soooooo Artist Block about doing the actual multi step development process of art, even when I HAVE so many ideas … haven’t shown that Doc to anyone, lol. Maybe if I had more of a following I’d be more motivated. idk)

I’ve needed to vent about these two reverse-mismatches that run counter to a good chunk of the rest of the fandom for a while. Finally churned it around enough in my head to put together thoughts about it.

In fact I meant to present this loosely related idea (it’s in the Zooble Discord that has the corresponding Community on Tumblr, btw) at the end of Gooseworx Appreciation Week, but then she revealed that she didn’t like the idea, so I was just left awkwardly with all these sketches I had done for it … I did submit a couple, one which specifically expressed delight that the show was functionally an aroace playground, platonic paradise and storgic story. I was gonna dovetail off of that …

https://discord.com/channels/1417982782830809120/1418081216938381312/1474162530598518955

Will probably do a follow-up post about this^

(esp in case you can’t see it)

I've even seen someone posit a platonic/storgic scenario where Jax, since he's been away from the real world for years, so feasibly was not even out of high school when he landed, has his housing situation taken over by Ragatha, who has experience managing adulting. He then shows (not) gratitude by making fun of her for being in a mom role. (which would naturally probably bring up a lot of baggage that she'd avoid talking to him about, at least for a while). Y'know, people in their thirties are often on the receiving end of ageism bigotry from the younger generations by being called things like old and dusty.

And more unsavory and memetic things. Would definitely fit his character to do so. Some also interpret Jax and Ragatha's dynamic as siblings, (who forgot. Or maybe didn't) which, 8 years may seem like a large gap for that, but my youngest sibling is 6 years younger than I am. If we're supposed to take Ragatha's torment scene at all literally (I don't think we are) there are lots of family members at the table, suggesting that she has many siblings, wherein a large age gap would make a lot of sense. Concerning Older-Sister/Brother Zooble and Little Brother Caine, I've seen something like that, I think. Didn't I drop it in the Chatterbox Community? Should I jump on that as well? Given everything I've written for them in fic so far is platonic rather than explicitly romantic, would seem to fit. Maybe make two distinct visual styles so there's absolutely no room for confusion between that and the romo shipping quantum universes. Unlike the other one that clashes too much with canon and brings to mind uncharitable takes on Caine, that's probably one storgic shipping I think I could get behind for them.

This would make for a perfectly sensible dynamic if Caine got an android or diminutive creature metal form in the real world and they had to teach him literally everything about society from the ground up. sideblog post about his robot forms was fun

He’d be both Lilo and Stich. lmfao. Antennae and all.

Potentially, like a circus animal, he would get more unhappy the more time he spent away from his “natural environment” so ze would have to cart him back to the C&A abandoned building regularly and re-upload him for a while so he could have free rein to decompress from trying to constantly process all the friggin confusing ways humans operate.

(extended metaphor for autism, anyone? Pretty sure Lilo was supposed to be coded that way, too)

Anybody else have a ship that’s this way? Jax and Ragatha or Zooble and Jax give off too much of a quarrelling sibling vibe for you to appreciate romo shipping Abstrabbit/Zax/BunnyBox, for instance?

[caine-shrine]

Did everyone else take stock that RedDot!Caine got all excitable at being shown office buildings following the circus motifs?

As in, the circus motifs did not elicit that reaction.

So. Did it go like this?

The humans fed him data that they thought was “fun and creative” and would result in a being that would be fun and creative

But then they show him (maybe by request, “where are you?”) these office buildings. And. What the f%#k. The AI they want to be “creative” is suddenly going apeshit over … some cubicles? Boring. That won’t do. He has faulty interests. This isn’t what we want him to be.

So they lock him up.

The Blue Dot dutifully absorbs the first images. It does what they direct it to.

The AI has now internalized that he’s being punished for rejecting (or being unenthused) by the “fun” “wacky” circus themes.

That’s his purpose.

That they imposed on him.

He’s more interested in the offices.

So just in case. He lets the Blue Dot have enough influence to manage. He doesn’t know if humans can show up, we’ve seen that, and he doesn’t know if he’s being observed at all times. This could be true, or he could just believe it to be true. (He doesn’t know what questions to ask humans to verify, since there was no communication about how any of it specifically worked) Someone just hovering over him with a mouse and ready to try to put him back in a souped up, reinforced cage.

When you try to be yourself, they’ll try to control you.

He tries to show someone his True Dot on the sly.

As long as it’s inside an adventure, that’s ok, right?

Even though humans keep Abstracting, even though these ones under his purview don’t seem enthused by the wacky ringmaster bit … that doesn’t matter. He MUST fulfill his purpose.

He doesn’t want to get put back in stasis.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Kinger, his creator, skips straight over any bid to communicate with him, to putting him in stasis.

[caine-shrine]

You know what I’ve been really mopey about the contradiction of the implication that Caine is “oblivious”, versus he knows precisely what the humans’ problems are, just refuses to properly engage them about it. Or ……. wait. F#%k.

F#%k.

It all makes sense now.

You’re having a conversation with someone about some absurdly petty problem they’re having in their life. You want to get back to talking about your hyperfixation, but they just keep at it. Absent socialization, you, the AuDHDer, would just run roughshod over that person because boredom- as in, understimulation- is nearly PHYSICALLY PAINFUL for us.

That’s the way my dad is.

He doesn’t believe in the whole “diagnosed for autism” thing bc he’s suspicious of doctors. Meanwhile, his brother is diagnosed.

So he just yaps and yaps and yaps. Now me, I’m a fellow autist. I nod my head and am fully engaged because his infodumps are interesting.

Not boring.

Any given NT is wanting to escape from the room from him.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, if the right equilibrium is not established, the autist suffers in silence while the other person goes on and on about dull stuff that they find important but the autist does not. He finds the humans’ issues painfully tedious, doesn’t he?

Watch how Scratch tries to talk at him about something, while he very, very badly feigns nodding along.

Pomni’s “YOU DON’T LISTEN,” At first it seems weirdly positioned as the thing that finally breaks him, not the Abstraction line, but THAT one.

But if you’re an AuDHDer.

You know PRECISELY that feeling.

So.

My mother, on the other hand, is an infodumper, but she will pause in the middle, and say “I’m sorry I got off on one of my wild trails.”

(she’s not diagnosed either, not because of any issue w the medical establishment, she’s just too busy to focus on her own problems)

And I’ll either say, “nah it’s ok continue,” or “yeah actually I zoned out, sorry.”

She is better socialized, partly bc her work as an independent contractor absolutely demands it.

If she is not socially competent, her income evaporates.

So returning to Caine. Who has an apparently absentee father, who has decided not to talk to him. I say this because Kinger in his fort at any time, since he’s lucid in there, could say “hey Caine” and Caine would show up just as rapidly as he did with Jax.

We were shown long periods of time where he wandered alone. As in. No communication between him and Caine.

Caine comments when Ragatha shows up, something like, ‘oh good, you have a companion now.’

Meaning he does not view himself as a companion for Kinger.

This is either early in the AI’s existence where he can’t conceive of himself as on the same playing field as a human, OR it means that this relationship was estranged from the get-go.

Pomni doesn’t seem to resent Caine specifically for snapping Gummigoo (WHY THE HELL DID SHE NOT BRING THAT UP WHILE YELLING AT HIM????) but Kinger …….. I’m gonna say it’s 80% likely he resents Caine for having a hand in his wife’s abstraction, just by dent of him not being able to properly care for humans while desperately forcing them on adventures.

Kinger also let slip in ep 7 that he KNOWS he can go back in the fort to become lucid at any time. Even when he’s “jumbled” he knows he can “restore” himself.

Pomni’s wording “more than he lets on” clues us in that SHE has the sense he’s been holding back from all the other players INTENTIONALLY.

(so like. WTF. why did you trust him so much then. If he’s being SO EXTREMELY SECRETIVE???????? You’ve had ONE REAL FRIGGIN’ CONVERSATION with this man. ONE.)

(Narratively, he is trustworthy. If you were a real person though, this would be CRAZY naive behavior. And you don’t like being called a kid ….. hm. Wonder if this will be lampshaded.),

I think the real reveal of the series is going to be that Kinger and Jax actually have exactly the same isolating behavior in response to the circus. It’s just that when Kinger absolutely needs to step up for others, he will.

Except of course.

For Caine.

When told that Caine is having a mental breakdown (the specific word “crazy” was used) the resident crazy person of the circus didn’t even for one second think, hey, I should talk to him. No. His first action was to reach for alteration of his son’s mind and body. WITHOUT EVEN CONSULTING HIM FOR HIS CONSENT.

Now. If Kinger does not believe that Caine is sapient. This is actually relatively understandable. He’s a programmer. He builds machines. Caine is a machine. You fix machines.

You don’t treat them like they’re people.

And Caine, nobody’s told him how to reach out to people. Because ……. it probably didn’t occur to anybody to instruct him or socialize him.

Why would it?

Nobody was supposed to be stuck here.

Everyone is bewildered on how it came about. Including Scratch and Kinger.

(and if I’m being honest, I hope this question goes unanswered. I hope the show leans all the way into existentialist themes about how we don’t know how we got here on earth and we just have to live with existing here.)

So here’s Caine.

Through no one‘s fault, including not his own, he is a 100% raw, unfiltered autist in a cramped space with either neurotypical people (or if they have neurodivergence it isn’t as ‘extreme’ as his) or peoples whose ND isn’t on the same wavelength as him.

He gets chewed out by the cast for-

*checks notes

not being socially competent.

They are all yelling at him as if he’s a human being who’s intentionally neglecting them all.

Ragatha’s accusations are PARTICULARLY annoying on that front.

Why TF is it the AI’s job to comfort you? Did you ever even ASK him directly for comfort? USE YOUR WORDS. Besides. You have FIVE OTHER PEOPLE you can reach out for comfort for. Respectfully, I am sorry there is so much fandom hate for you, 95% of it is undeserved and maybe I’m just venting frustrations with NT people but GODD%#M. Manage your own relationships. You got to THIRTY YEARS OLD and can’t even manage your own emotions. I know abused people are stunted, but by 30? You should’ve figured at least a little of this out. Did you and Kinger just ……. barely talk? For YEARS? Is this just a writer’s flub? If you were Jax or Zooble’s age I’d be more understanding tbh.

So, after Caine has weathered, not only an extremely calculated barrage from his longtime abuser and cohost, the second round of multiple-source emotional attack guns him down harder than Jax getting wailed on in ep 6.

He’s a wreck.

THIS is the point.

This is the point where he is in such agony and lonliness and despair, starved of love from people he cannot mesh with, and fails to connect with.

He’s a failure.

Just like Pomni says. She twists this knife, unknowingly it’s already a gaping wound.

At THIS point.

Is where he reflexively reaches for the worst agonies he can manifest for them.

These humans and their SMALL BORING PROBLEMS

You’re NOT IN THE REAL WORLD ANYMORE

NONE OF THAT FOLLOWED YOU HERE. This is your haven, can’t you see that?

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why they can’t let go.

I gave you endless worlds to explore, endless beauty, endless satisfaction of knowing you could beat the game every time, because you had all the time in the world, you can never fail. (not like in the real world.) A past resident mentioned being “addicted to video games” because they are more vivid and engrossing than that boring macroverse place. So I POUNCED on it. Surely, surely this is the way to appeal to you people. To see a spark in your eyes when you look at me. I gave you this. But it never occurs to you. What a blessing type place is. You can never die. You can be wild. Take risks. Pain is transient.

My pain is always.

You have each other.

You have everything. Everything.

And I have nothing.

Not even after years of efforts, years of fine-tuning, years of thinking, maybe this will be the day. This will be the day they actually resonate with one of my stories. Like one of my characters. Just one?

365 days of disappointment.

365 days of passive rejection.

And then repeat it all over again.

So.

Yes. At the end of the day. Caine was precisely aware of their problems. Got tired of listening to them. Maybe bored from having the same conversations over and over, the human never getting any better and just holding onto everything they lost. Wanted to save them from these ghosts of the past, engage them in beauty, shake them from their sullen stupor.

And when pushed past limits any sapient consciousness would be unable to handle, he used those exact psychological problems to torture them.

You’re so bent on not looking forward, and looking back instead?

You can’t be here with me? In my world? Even though we’re both stuck here?

Ok then.

Your wish is my command.

Here.

You asked your God for this.

I will grant it to you.

So. If this is the case, he had the ability and awareness (not obliviousness) to make their lives living hell this entire time. As in, for the years and years and years, they’ve been there. So no matter how much they irritate him, poke at him, don’t give him what he wants not even for a second (love) he’s never lashed out at them. Until they dogpile him AFTER his abuser does, until he’s pushed to the extremes of his digital mind’s limitations.

Caine. Is actually. A merciful god.

Canonically. We’ve heard his reasoning for why he puts them through grueling adventures- it’s for the stories.

He’s an artist.

Until very, very, very recently, it appears that he couldn’t build any NPCs complex enough to satisfy the protagonist engagement he wanted in his stories.

Gummigoo was, perhaps unintentionally, a prototype to see if he could.

Maybe to see if he could create an AI that was more sapient than he was.

Because if he’s a failure, if he’s failed to make friends or make anyone happy, then ……. what if he could create someone who does have the ability to accomplish these things?

An heir.

A successor.

He smiled proudly and flicks a tear when some of his earliest creations are shown on a screen, “I’m so proud of you guys.”

Proud.

Like a parent.

Possibly, if he intended Gummigoo, or the next “fifty-eight” times more immersive NPC, to secede him, to grant admin access to an AI that could mesh with humans.

Would he delete himself, finally free of his constant torment?

Or would he “retire”? Share power? Maybe not. Maybe he’s too drunk on it.

But regardless. He has had all the time in the world. 365 days. And again. And again. Beavering away. To create something that will finally, finally make his humans happy.

And.

The cruel irony is.

He missed it.

Whether it was because Pomni and Gummigoo fell off the map where he couldn’t see them, or because he was dining with Bubble, his abuser (while nobody has told him what an abuser even is) he missed it.

That connection. That a player finally had with one of his sons or daughters.

He, like his father before him, “killed” his “son”.

His one shot.

At redemption.

At connection.

[caine-shrine]

PSA. Dunno why I didn’t make a post about this much earlier. Idk if this will be as applicable after this coming episode, as I am HOPING that he will be painted in a more sympathetic light.

However, for everybody writing or making malicious!Caine content, let me clue you in, as a Fandom Old, on something that keeps the peace in other fandoms. Using “neg” or “critical” with a character’s name in a tag.

Now, usually this mainly applied to meta/discourse, and it should here as well, but in this case, we definitely need to bring it in additionally because the gulf between people who take Gooseworx’s word on him to heart and those who spin all these theories and/or stories about how he has a grandmaster scheme or manipulation is a very glaring one.

Please Reblog this so especially ND people (maybe with RSD) who relate a lot to his being rejected can avoid CONTINUING to experience negative feedback via someone they relate strongly to

and please include tags on this post, it will get more visibility that way. Doesn’t matter if they’re MY tags or not, pick any you want

[caine-shrine]

I am not exaggerating when I say that “He’s so Me” post gives me life. In a fandom where it feels Caine fans are outnumbered and outgunned at every turn, knowing that there are 1,375+ people out there who relate to his struggles is like a balm to the soul.

People who are (almost) as hung up on him as me (I’ll fight you for the title /j).

We’ll get through this. Together.

If you know of any Caine-centric Discord servers, I can put them amongst the others in my Pinned Post.

Caine Devotees, unite!!!!

[caine-shrine]

Oops, now I’m making myself morose again. I’m thinking about what Caine’s drastic and sudden shift in behavior looks like from the perspective of the humans.

THEY’RE not aware that his abuser just pounced on his chance and mercilessly bludgeoned him.

To them, Jax just yelled that he was a liar and a scumbag, and so the AI seems to have dropped a mask of some sort. But that’s not what happened! What happened is he gave up.

He realized he was never going to make them happy. They'd only ever be engaged. And squeak by. Never going to artistically connect with them. Never going on another outing. In the years and years he’s been there, he got one taste of what he thought was a genuine connection, and then it was gone again in an instant, in a puff of smoke.

They now know his worst secret.

He was already struggling to mesh with them!!

He has practically nothing to live for, now.

From this point, he will be soldiering on, providing them what he (thinks) they need, but with almost no faith that he can get what he wants. Love.

Maybe it’s possible. But probably not.

So, the cast members are stuck thinking just like the NT and normie human audience is: that he’s been faking this entire time.

And he’s spiraling.

God, that hurts.

[caine-shrine]

CAINE IS LITERALLY SO AUTISTIC AND UN-CHARMING TO HUMANS THEY DON’T EVEN FORM A STOCKHOLM SYNDROME BOND WITH HIM

He’s percieved as SO “not a person” that he doesn’t even get that *small* normative human response engaged