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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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-
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.
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.
Just like Pomni says. She twists this knife, unknowingly it’s already a gaping wound.
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.
You have everything. Everything.
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.
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?
You asked your God for this.
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.
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?
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.”
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.
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”.
