#tadc character analysis

[caine-shrine]

do you think caine's requiem actually mattered in the long run?

to fans? yea

to Kinger’s character? no. we don’t see him struggle with it beyond a passing mention and it didn’t play as any sort of ‘I failed her but now I’m determined not to fail you guys’ like come ON there was so much you could’ve done with him beyond making him a wisdom vending machine and an exposition dump!!

to the story? maybe not strictly speaking, except we saw Caine lowkey freak out at the humans learning about Scratch, (which bizarrely, Gooseworx said it was benevolently intended, so why wouldn’t he try to defend himself about it??) so you can imagine that would be compounded if the humans found out he had anything to do with Queenie (either stressing her out to the point where she was driven to it or trying to glean some info w/o the intent of hurting her but Abstracting her anyway)

But since none of that was dug into, I guess that’s a ‘no’ functionally.

And because it was a dream, that further diminishes the answer. Like we don’t know if it’s close to what happened, or if Kinger was mostly responsible and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, or simply a fear of Kinger’s (which could be relevant!!! ‘Caine could decide to mine our minds for what he wants to find out about the real world’. Even if the actual Caine would never do such! That’s chilling! Living in constant fear and escaping it through light blindness is a good story!!)

So the overall answer is: it does matter in-world and it could’ve mattered narratively but as with so many things in this story, they did nothing with it.

[caine-shrine]

Do you think Caine actually knows enough about sex but for some reason (which can be that he's genuinely repulsed by it) avoids anything about it? /Gen

This is an interesting question, because IF the episode 4 joke about “adult toys” (which totally escaped my notice- #asexual- until other people pointed if out) was written by Caine, like the cereal joke probably was, that means he has to have at least a roundabout knowledge of sex.

It could be, however, that the joke was just the show writing being subtle and punning on “kids toys” at McDonald’s, and neither Gunmigoo nor Caine have any knowledge of sex.

On the other other hand, if you’re building an AI who has a function to censor, you have to necessarily tell it what to look out for, in order to stifle anything that comes up.

The way I read his involuntary reaction to the mention of sex (it did not look like he had any control whatsoever of what was happening, ergo cannot be “avoidance” in a conventional sense, intentional. And unless this is brought up in shorts going forward, I will hold fast to that) it is was merely somehow related to censorship protocols. Like his repulsion towards Moon having suggestive overtones to her voice in the pilot (which is all the more gross that it was never addressed and just played straight the RomCom Target of your Lowkey Harrassment Just Acknowledges Your Love at the End trope) and his discomfort with various things Bubble has said, the censorship programming makes him uneasy around sex talk.

(which leads me to believe that Gummigoo’s line was not in fact written by Caine WITH that in mind, and ergo is accidental in-world, a very, very subtle form of meta humor)

I’ve had one person suggest that Caine is a hyper-visualizer, so just saying the words “having sex” put stuff in his head, so then his system must automatically go back and erase it

That’s a pretty cool headcanon.

(Glad I’m an aphant)

Before we learned in 7-8 that he can’t interact with the players’ minds but briefly, and probably not casually read them, you might’ve been able to speculate that Zooble is “projecting” the thought so hard that it messes with his system, maybe not even because it’s about sex so much as a human’s resident’s mind is briefly becoming stronger within the simulation.

I could easily combine this with the notion I’ve generated that the reason that Zooble in particular could interrupt his Intermission sequence is because they are the most clear-headed, not needing adventures to avoid Abstraction, up to and including their mind is less immersed in the simulation as a whole, the total opposite of Jax.

Could be that not going on adventures itself keeps them at a distance, too.

I’ve also seen someone suggest that it was not sex itself, but his programmed desire to get affirmation and positive reinforcement as an art outputter from humans was conflicting with his other censorship programming, which would not let him grant it, which caused a contradiction in computer logic, and forced a reset.

Since the story does not explain how Zooble and Gangle suddenly have access (or alternatively, are just making the most of what they can get out of the bodies we see regularly) we have no earthly clue what it means for Caine.

Maybe the same way Kinger can conjure butterflies and the rest of crew conjured shapes, Zooble’s overpowering desire merely manifested the necessary parts with no input from the really uneasy Caine whatsoever.

I find that the most likely.

[caine-shrine]

Thinking again about how since Caine’s not a human man, and didn’t have a childhood, presumably nobody taught him that showing vulnerability is weakness, so how did he conclude such?

Why did he front and not show the humans his softer side while he was reflecting in his office?

It is of course fun to imagine that he somehow thinks putting on the entertainer role is his purpose, so anything else is unacceptable. That’s more interesting than picking it up from mere socialization.

But I don’t think the story thought about this at all.

Also, where the hell did he pick up the internalized ableism of “pretend we weren’t having a therapy session”

How does he know to be ashamed of that?

Scratch and Co, you have some ‘splainin to do !!!!!!!

Alternatively:

I think it would go more like this: “You’re getting therapy” “Oh yay we get to do the couches” “Wait … you don’t /actually/ know what

[caine-shrine]

Starting to get the super-super brainworms about what would happen if Kinger hadn’t fumbled and deleted, and if Caine hadn’t had Facebook handed to him on a platter. His whole back-and-forth with himself over what to do about the humans appears to have hinged on the understanding that they felt super confined in worlds that could not provide the same amount of complexity as the real world.

Which, given the way the Suggestions Box conflict was set up, that narrative choice doesn’t make sense because the humans were literally begging for LESS complex things to do, in multiple instances, (directly complaining about “convoluted” being the most obvious one) but sure whatever.

So, what would canon Caine have done if things hadn’t arranged themselves so conveniently? Would he have made some sort of concession, based on the fact of realizing he went too far? Would he only admit to the Torment Nexus being wrong, but not other things? Or maybe granted them some off time, and apologized for kicking them around, but still insisted on the adventures? Would anybody think of the compromise I’ve mentioned a couple times wherein they’d do the Suggestions Box sometimes and Jax-Caine type high-octane adventures on other days?

What would Kinger have done if he managed to contain Caine, but then discovered that there was nothing wrong with this code, only a bunch of thought-streams about feeling underappreciated and abandoned again?

What if Caine was still raring to vent his frustrations physically? Or what if he was coming down off of it, but containing him made it worse? (the self reflection about not enjoying himself being smashed to pieces over a digital show of force) Would Kinger have to make some sort of tough choice? How would the cast react to Caine being essentially dissected and having stuff excised? Would they even care?

If Kinger forcibly separated the Blue Dot, would e and Caine mutually want to get back together and defy the humans again (per his ‘darker’ self speaking with both red and blue in tandem in ep 9?) because his relationship to em didn’t seem all that contentious, just some sort of persistent operational incompatibility?

Would the humans care about this, or other excisions, only because they got to see his thought process? Or. Would they still not put together how cold they acted towards him in 7? (and pretty much before that, too)

And then, what would’ve happened if Caine did not have that Facebook perspective? Would he have decided to renig on adventures? (seems unlikely but maybe he thinks he needs to ‘make up’ for going off on them) But still kept all the humans under close observation by carefully controlled AI to prevent his deletion again?

And, of course, there’s still the scenario where he returned immediately as a lurker and observed them not throwing a funeral for him. But all moping about Jax the abuser. Where it was confirmed they never had the slightest bond to him. (that was only somewhat countermanded by Zooble going ‘it’s good to have you back,’ something they most likely would not say if that exchange started with the slightest bit of friction or resentment rekindled. Maybe they had had the thought it was weird not having him there, but it would not get expressed. So by all appearances, nobody gave a crap.) Would he come back with a vengeance?

Or still feel bad about the Torment Nexus thing, so fall somewhere between resuming the cartoon gag torments and normal operation (steamrolling them at his leisure, but not constantly)

I would personally like to believe that Caine would’ve come to the conclusion that “keeping them under his thumb” was bad in all timelines ……. but I don’t think the story clearly established that The Good Ending would’ve happened without circumstances intervening.

[caine-shrine]

I realised that in the ending montage we never see Caine at the memorials.

Humans painting a mural? He's not there. Goddamn Scratch is painted, there's something for Caine to look at (maybe Queenie too). No, he's absent.

The abstraction aquarium? He's not there too. I don't believe that he doesn't grieve them, that he doesn't blame himself for at least some of them.

For someone who "doesn't listen" those would be somewhat meaningful scenes that you could interpret as a growth or something and yet he's not present.

Small disclaimer, i of course blame it on the writing, not Caine as a character

That’s a totally fair take.

I, too, think the writing did not resolve his being dismissive of the Abstractions well at all, either. Canonically, having him take off his hat in response to RealWorld!Jax only does a little bit of the work.

We can extrapolate that this is because he got to know them all better through Facebook. Which, as I’ve said before on this blog, could’ve been done well, as it is, it only squeaks by in my estimation.

Now, personally speaking.

Concerning his lack of apparent grief earlier in the series.

I still like to interpret this as having naturally low/absent empathy. It wouldn’t even be a “disorder” to an AI, because he’s an AI. But it would parallel real-world humans who do share that singular trait among clusters of other traits.

I did that post about how he is explicitly not NPD, linked a therapist talking about it as well, and I don’t like the interpretations that he tracks even close to 1:1 with any cluster B disorders. He functions as an ambassador to cluster B disorders, but he is only similar to them as a relatively modest overlap on that Venn Diagram.

ADHD seems a better fit. And YES definitely ADHD people are sometimes mis-diagnosed as having BPD or some other ‘extreme’ neurodivergence. Especially if they are POC.

#medical racism

All that said, I am very fond of this interpretation of vaguely autistic-flavored low affective empathy. That he has to invoke cognitive empathy, and not affective empathy.

This is not strictly overturned by the taking off the hat thing, but it is wiggled a little bit. For lack of a better word.

Alex Rochon on his Twitter has said the phrase “Caine is ‘new to’ empathy,” which I think is problematic for so many reasons. Or rather, not problematic, per se, so much as he lacks the background to actually think through that statement. He’s not a psychologist. He’s a character actor. That’s actually fine.

I’m only about 1/8th of a psychologist, given my training. So, I can safely say I am at least a little bit more authoritative than he is.

Empathy can be consciously cultivated to a certain extent. We have studies that indicate slashing funding to the arts in education, for example, is followed by an ambient drop in empathy.

#education reform

#anti Betsy DeVos

And Virtue Ethics philosophy is foundationally built on the idea that things like that can be increased.

But some people just don’t have it. Autists. Other conditions. This does not mean that they can’t make good decisions, be moral, or decide to treat other people well.

#consequentialism

(I’m, in some small sense, going through that character arc myself right now.)

It is very apparent that the writing in this particular dimension does not concern itself with this question, and does not concern itself with what he is an allegory for or not.

So, to finally address the particular wording in your Ask directly. I envision Caine as not experiencing grief. This is shared with certain aromantic spectrum and aplatonic spectrum people.

Does he blame himself for them? That’s an entirely separate question, (shame and guilt are not only entirely distinct emotions from each other, psychologically speaking, but also separate from grief.) and one that is good to mine for angst. I do not know, canonically, that I have a strong opinion one way or the other.

Only that he seems very similar to aromantics.

I don’t think that’s just me projecting.

It really tickles me that people interpret that dinner as him being romantic, when he was clearly entirely oblivious to the context or what it might mean.

He constantly made references to his love for all of them.

He, of course, does not read as aplatonic at all, that was only a fitting interpretation pre-episode-7. (*glances at my Headcanons Doc) But aromantic fits him to the letter.

[caine-shrine]

Since canon has given us absolutely no indication of why Caine lied about the ability to influence minds…

… I can’t help but speculate some more. I’ve said a couple of times that what makes the most sense for him masking his anger after his rage fit is because he doesn’t want to be seen as overly scary.

And, I don’t see why the same wouldn’t apply for not alerting them to the fact that he had almost unilateral ability to influence their minds.

He is repeatedly presented as if he’s not emotionally intelligent, but does he understand that people would be less inclined to be his friend, to return the Lover Without a Heart’s love, if they knew just how much unsettling power he had? It seems somehow OOC, to grasp that, (still wrote fic about it regardless) but then a good bit of the things revealed in episode 8 seemed OOC. So IDK man. What do you think?

[redvexillum]

Jax and The Fandom 🐰

So between overtime at work and classes kicking my ass, I completely missed the golden hype window for the TADC finale.

Tragic, I know.

That said, I still really enjoy the series and I still want to decorate my blog with my little thoughts and analyses so Future Me can look back fondly at them (or cringe. Usually both).

One of the projects I had planned was a character analysis series for the entire cast.

And after some consideration, I've decided I'm not doing one for Jax.

Now before anyone starts loading the cannons: I like Jax. I have always liked Jax. FunnyBunny is peak OTP for me, especially after last episode.

The problem isn't Jax.

The problem is that after Gooseworx confirmed he was trans, some of the discourse surrounding the character became absolutely exhausting to witness. I've seen way too many people treat criticism of a character they identify with as a personal attack against themselves.

And that's such a disservice to fandom discussion.

Characters should be allowed to be messy. They should be allowed to be flawed. They should be allowed to be analyzed and criticized. That's half the fun.

"But why not just block people?"

Oh, sweet summer child.

I've been online long enough to remember entire hate campaigns, callout culture at its peak, and people threatening to dox others over opinions about fictional characters. This isn't my first rodeo.

At this point in my life, I simply do not have the energy to compete with the obssessive level of the unemployed, unhinged individuals who prefer to attack first and ask questions never.

My Tumblr is supposed to be a stress-free hobby, not a war zone.

So yes, I'll absolutely still be talking about TADC. There are plenty of characters and themes I'd love to ramble about.

As for our favorite purple bunny?

I'm respectfully leaving that one to braver souls than me.

See you all soon. 💖

[caine-shrine]

This is probably gonna be a spicy as hell take on the finale but

I think I might’ve preferred a narrative where the entire cast struggled with Gangle’s “why can’t I cry for him” thing … with Caine. And he remained dead. Maybe I would’ve liked to see that they related to him as a person too, more than what we got, which was no reaction whatsoever.

I clocked that Jax would probably only be wrapped up in the loss of adventures, instead of thinking about Caine at all

(in hindsight “now we have nothing” is a big OOF considering that technically means he considers the people around him nothing)

That he at the very least wouldn’t verbally express missing Caine is predictable, given he did his best not to be attached to the humans.

But the rest of them?

Zooble especially ???????

Ragatha especially ???????

-guy who you spend the most time with, considering you isolated from the adventures and everyone else for a good long while, dies

-guy who you’ve been around FOR YEARS dies

And if we’re to suppose that looking INSIDE Jax’s mind is complete, that still means Caine had no space inside his mind. None.

During the week where I had only seen the finale once, not the second time, and didn’t realize the redemption scene was technically a within-episode-span flashback and not continuous with him watching the cast (ie, he had not been watching them from the point of his death, which is what I thought at first. The Caine we saw initially and the Caine that was returning to the tent was the same.) I started thinking about him observing that they did not mourn him.

~No one mourns the wicked~

Except.

Of course they mourn THE HUMAN SADIST and not the AI who kept them from Abstracting for years.

In-world, Caine would be devastated by this.

A final nail in the coffin, that they really did not have the slightest connection to him.

Surely he would not have done all that mess for them if he had been observing and realized just how deep their indifference went, meanwhile watching Pomni struggle and risk the digital lifelong chronic pain just for a shot at reaching Jax, the unapologetic abuser.

“Wah wah im a bad person” you know people who harbor this thought STILL MANAGE TO APOLOGIZE, RIGHT???????

And the characters around him fold to this nonsense. Do you know what a Mary Sue is, dear reader? The (usually self-insert in fanfic, although there are examples like Bella Swan) one who, no matter how badly they act, everyone likes and/or fawns over? TADC took that trope, and made it LARGER THAN LIFE. If you look up “Mary Sue” in the dictionary now, it should have a picture of this trans woman. (or femme leaning. Or whatever she is). This is ofc hyperbole, there are other traits that make up a Mary Sue, none of which Jax has. But THIS particular trait. Is the one that stands out, goes above and beyond.

You had a great concept, somebody who leaned all the way into escapism in an environment that maximally enabled it.

You even had great cinematic ways to get it across.

But you fumbled with handling those around this character.

The hypocrisy is immense, by this point.

You’ll reach out to Jax AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN even after that she-rabbit beat up your heart in the most personal way possible, (inhuman levels of “I’m not mad about this mistreatment” which by this point are you a real person at all? Maybe Jax was right all along /hj you did get flattened by the archetype of “woman endures everything to emotionally save the man” just like Ribbit got halfway Fridged)(the narrative kept insisting they were all people, “still human”, but they don’t act like it) but never once thought to try to have a heart-to-heart with Caine.

Zooble, same thing. Jax DELIBERATELY abused zem and Gangle, no feelings involved except glee, as [he] takes out his problems on you, by no fault of your own, yet ze takes Caine to task loudly for acting out on directly hurt feelings.

Ragatha straightforwardly mourns Jax even after he’s aggressively shot her, probably put her through every single thing that Zooble mentioned him doing to zem and Gangle in ep 7, ie torture, BIZARRELY thinks “it should I’ve been me” instead of a TORTURER, ???!!!!?!!?!? will go out of her way to avoid hurting his feelings or assuage them (ep 5) EVEN THOUGH she HATES him (quote, ep 4) but it never occurs to her that Caine’s feelings matter or do anything but FAKE ‘list of what we like about you’.

Which Caine clocked.

Hell, go for another round of torture, my guy.

Clearly they don’t mind that much!!!!!!

When JAX does it!!

It only makes him a “pain in the ass”, not a torturer. Make it make sense!!

Yeah hypocrisy, having double standards, and indifference maybe “shouldn’t be” punishable by torture but for YOU IN PARTICULAR who got shoved into a box, and platonically spurned ALL YOUR LIFE, welp. What exactly does anyone expect.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”

but multiply it by like over 20 humans, 2 of which created you

and yet he wasn’t even all that furious, once he got his yelling in his office out.

#Caine glazer

Maybe THIS time around they’ll actually try talking- or begging- which is STILL a form of TALKING- instead of just concluding “oh we can’t communicate with him, we can’t gauge how he thinks” Y’know you could ASSSKKKKKK HIMMMMMM.

ask him what he’s thinking!

or even ask him questions like,

“is this what it’s going to be like forever?”

“is there anything we could do to get the previous adventures back?”

“do you just hate us now?”

^given his overall behavior throughout, and phrasing in 9, “was I really that bad” (NOT to mention Gooseworx’s word on the matter!) this question might’ve genuinely perplexed him!

Made him pause for a minute.

Make him go,

He’s just tossing you around a bit. Right. He’s not like. Angry. Just kinda put out at the whole mess? Hate? How would that …? Ummmm.

Since they picked the “right” button and he never mentioned being aware they wanted the other one, this should come as a surprise that he’s suddenly acting like this. AFTER YEARS. Or maybe one of them could put together that maybe he did see it and was naturally hurt!

You know, since this show is supposed to be about “RELATIONSHIPS”!!!

Or even, I don’t know, think about what he DID say to you and engage with it!!!

Make the slightest attempt at trying to understand him!!

Or heck, since Zooble is apparently AWARE his feelings were hurt (what happened to “we can’t gauge how he thinks”????) you already knew some of what the problem was!? right?

Kinger couldn’t have a discussion with HIS CREATION?

(I’m telling you guys, this could’ve made such a frigging compelling story if the cast actually did just think of him as “just an AI,” and didn’t realize he was a person until the final hour. As it is, they act like he’s not a person, anyway, narratively, until he comes asking for forgiveness.)

(Then magically, he’s a person!)

(“It’ll take time”, Zooble says, when it took 0 time for you to, with NO apology offered, nor olive branch, like Caine, basically welcome JAX into the fold.)

(As it is we have to contort our brains into coming up with reasons for all of this disjoint. Like is it the power difference? Or is it because they’re Othering him? The latter would make sense, but given the story had him conclude it was ALL his fault, the Othering doesn’t make as much sense in that context. Because then, narratively, the humans would bear at least some kind of portion of the blame.)

But in the scenario where he took extra measures to keep them all contained and not wandering around, after the attempt on his life, and decided, upon some sort of visual review, that Jax ignoring him at the dinner was how they ALL felt about him, so why in the hell go out into the Void on a search and break his back anymore for them-

(instead of the narrative handing you a solution that forced him)

(wait … does this count as a Deus Ex Machina?????)

(once again this all BEGS the question, WOULD Kinger have actually found anything wrong with his code if he had attempted some sort of “fix”? Kinda seems not!!!! Let’s see him deal with the implications that this is NOT a malfunction, but rather acting out two decades of emotional neglect!!!!!)

Maybe you all should actually try to DEAL with the central problem this time!

Never mind that any of this would ultimately only be forced by your own self-interest in escaping mistreatment.

What the f%#k.