Old enough to think putting ages or DNI's here is weird. My age is Old Enough and I wish not to be perceived. This isn't a blog, just things I collect. Like a Corvid.
very funny to me how there's not that many characters in phm to play with so the fandom's just been stealing characters from other movies. like yeah grace has a twin brother who's ryan gosling from a different movie. hell why not andy weir crossover mark watney's here too. let's throw markiplier in while we're at it.
I posted this before, but I am unhappy with the way the reblog system broke it apart, when I wanted it all to stay together. So I'm doing it again and I'm sorry to anyone who follows me who isn’t interested in this. The most recent episode of The Amazing Digital Circus has lodged itself into my brain like a missile, and I’ve got to stop scattering my theories in comments on other posts and put them in one place. Some of these thoughts fell out onto the page even as I was typing, so I’ll try to make it as coherent as I can.
So, there are going to be spoilers for TADC up to this point and rambles on what I think might be coming down the line. It's a long post, and I'm tagging as spoilers. You have been warned - this is the point to stop reading to avoid spoilers.
To get it out of the way, I want to say that I’m a proponent of the mind files theory. In that “The humans in the circus are brain scans of real people who tried on the headset, took it off, and walked away to continue living their lives”. I think it makes the most sense, with the length of time this has apparently been running, and with the newest information that Ragatha appeared to be in a group when she appeared in the circus. No one in her group joined her or seemed to notice she went missing. I think it’s because she took off the headset, told them it didn’t work, and everyone moved on. That’s part of what I’m working with in my theory here.
I am also working under the assumption that this show does not end in a TPK. We might lose a character or some (looking at you, Kinger, be safe please), but I don’t think this is an Everybody Dies kind of show. Too many messages of hope in there.
The other two facts I lean heavily on that I think the show is VERY clear on and hammers home several times:
Red Dot triumphs over Blue Dot.
Kinger is Caine’s creator.
All of my points are interlinked, and interwoven with each other. I really tried to make this easy to follow, but I can’t reference one bit of evidence without following through with why that also matters to the other points.
The main parts of my theory/prediction are as follows :
Episode 3: The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor spells out a version of happened between Kinger and Caine to lead to “regrets on both sides”, and is hinting at where the story might go from here.
Caine is Blue Dot, Bubble is Red Dot
Caine is built by Kinger, Bubble is built by Scratch
Scratch and Bubble are the reason abstractions happen, and are the Final Boss of the series
Caine wasn’t deleted - he was conjured out of existence (pseudo-deleted) and can be conjured back in some way
Here we go! (Again)
The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor
So, let’s briefly recap what story Caine is telling in Mildenhall.
An accomplished hunter has been collecting the heads of beasts he’s killed. Most of these are manifestations of the Circus Members, because Caine’s trying to be creepy, but one is very different. Not quite a man, not quite an animal. Something unholy and evil. He’s been pursuing this one for years. Eventually he managed to “kill” it by shooting it repeatedly and severing it in two.
The man’s voice on the recorder tells Pomni and Kinger about how this particular monster has brought devastation to his life. He was trying to protect his family from the monster. But he failed. The hunter accidentally killed his own wife in this pursuit, and found himself cornered and alone, waiting for the end. Pomni and Kinger retrieve the gun from the man’s corpse and immediately get ready to fight.
The monster attacks, and Kinger shoots it once in each part, killing it. It is then DRAMATICALLY REVEALED that the creature was actually an angel, and anyone who harms it is doomed to hell. Kinger is dragged through the floor. Pomni is also dragged down, even though she didn’t actually hurt the angel.
Pomni has a meltdown about being in hell, and Kinger calms her down. He identifies the hallway full of souls and saves Pomni from it, but not before she’s possessed and taunts him. They have a heart-to-heart, Kinger drops a ton of backstory critical to knowing his character, and then Kinger figures out the trick to the hallway, and they successfully end the adventure.
Why is this relevant?
The adventure is crafted by Caine, who is allergic to being seen as the villain. I posit that the hunter is Kinger, the monster/angel is Caine, and this is the story of Kinger’s first attempt at fixing Caine/the Circus. First attempt, because in Episode 8, we see the computer start off with “System: KingSolution 2.0” That suggests to me that Kinger trying to fix Caine has a 1.0 associated with this, and I think it’s told here in Episode 3.
Because the adventure is told from Caine's perspective, Kinger’s counterpart is the threat and Caine is the good guy. I don't think it happened this way; it's a biased retelling of events. Caine believes it to be true, but Caine is an unreliable narrator and may not know the whole story.
The adventure was meant for Zooble, but by chance it’s Pomni and Kinger who end up on this path. Zooble wouldn’t recognize the story, so it's “safe” to tell. But I think Kinger does, even through his haze. You can see it when the tapes mention the hunter’s wife. He also nitpicks the details of the story and lore placement in a way that we don't see him do in other adventures, like he's trying to correct the narrative without really remembering what he's correcting.
The creature has been split in two parts that still work in tandem. I suspect that’s Caine and Bubble. I think Kinger’s first solution to fix Caine's code ended with accidentally partially extracting the first AI (Red Dot) from the second AI (Blue Dot) and he ended up with Bubble and Caine. I don’t think it worked entirely, but I think it forced Red Dot out into the open. I suspect until then, Red Dot was masking itself within Blue Dot so people didn’t catch onto it. I don’t think separating them was Kinger’s goal - I’m not convinced Kinger or the other programmers (except maybe one) know that Caine is two AIs in one.
“I took my eyes off the body for a moment, and when I looked back, the body was gone and it would be back to reclaim what I’d taken from it.” I think the body section is representing Caine. It’s revealed to have numerous eyes and Caine is the AI component that actually has a body. The body of Caine's avatar doesn't actually attach to his head, either. If we weren't able to look at his lovely face, Caine would look a lot like the angel body we see in Episode 3 here. Caine feels that Kinger tried to eliminate him (maybe he did, but given his reluctance to delete Caine in episode 8, I don’t think that’s the case). He’s definitely mad that he was cut off from the Macroverse.
What’s interesting about this tape, detailing how the creature was not dead? It goes on and on about the body, and how it would be back. And then in the last sentence, it does a 180 degree pivot and warns the two about the head. “Do not let the head out of your sight”. If the body is Caine, I think the head is Bubble. I’ll get back to this later, but for now, the head is the angel component that’s an orb with two eyes, no limbs, and a giant mouth with many sharp teeth that seems to open wider than it should to a dark void with eyes in it.
When Kinger and Pomni are chased by the head and flee to the dumbwaiter, it takes them to THE CELLAR. Literally, they call it out as a cellar several times. Given the OTHER cellar in this franchise, that seems significant.
Kinger is also uncharacteristically upset and shouting about the revelation that the dumbwaiter isn’t going up, but down. It’s one of the only moments in the entire episode that he isn’t either oblivious or competent. He’s aware of the situation and panicking about it. I think this fictional cellar is representing the actual cellar in the circus. Kinger is reminded explicitly of Queenie by the vision he had in the head’s mouth, by literally being sent to a cellar, and shortly after that by Mildenhall’s tapes mentioning the Baron’s wife. Which is a terrible experience for both of them, so it’s lucky for Pomni that Queenie’s memory is what he uses to anchor his sanity.
In the Cellar, Pomni and Kinger have their confrontation with the corpse of the hunter, who explains that his own actions and paranoia about the creature lead to his wife’s death (Caine blaming Kinger for what happened to Queenie), and now Baron Mildenhall is trapped in a hell of his own making (Kinger literally helped make Caine and the Circus and now he’s trapped here). Kinger then plays his part in the recreation of events and shoots both parts of the creature as they advance.
But this is Caine’s retelling of his story. So of course the monster is revealed to be one of God’s angels, and boy is that angel upset about the mistreatment it’s receiving. Everyone who hurts it is dragged to hell, and even though Kinger is the one who shot it, Pomni is collateral damage and gets pulled in, too. And so is everyone else stuck in the Circus with him.
Pomni freaks out about being dragged through the cellar even further into hell. I can’t blame her. Kinger calms her down. Interestingly, he says “I’m sure Caine included a way to escape”. That seems relevant for more than the situation they’re immediately facing. It’s an adventure, and Caine’s adventures end. Of course there’s a way out. But they’re in hell/the representational Cellar when he says this. I dunno, it feels important that he says this here. He’s got a lot of trust in his AI creation that doesn’t seem to be fully reciprocated.
Our circus members take a good look at the long hallway of souls trapped in the Cella… I mean, hell. Pomni tries to escape, but she gets possessed. I think this is representing abstraction. Pomni “abstracts” here in the Cella… I mean, hell, and Kinger saves her. It also seems like someone takes another swipe at Kinger through Pomni with that “How’s your wife, Kinger” line. But why? Does abstraction happen when a previous soul latches onto another human in the Circus? Is there someone/something in the circus causing abstractions? I think so, and I don't think it's Caine. This line is too direct to be from Caine. This adventure was also meant for Zooble, so why would Caine include this taunt here? His torments are 100% accidental, after all. He specifies that in this episode. I do think I know who it is, though. More later.
Pomni and Kinger have a long heart-to-heart. Kinger says “It’s my fault we went down this path, wasn’t it”. He's speaking literally, but I think it's also metaphorical. In Caine’s perspective, yeah. It was. You made him, you entered his circus, you tried to abandon him, and you did whatever you tried to do to him that split him back into two. Again, this is Caine's perspective and I don't think Caine is correct in his portrayal of events, but I think Kinger does feel at fault.
Kinger figures out the solution and, as a literal light in the darkness, leads Pomni out of the Cella… hell. I’m worried about Kinger’s long-term safety in the finale, guys. That’s even BEFORE extrapolating out the part where anyone who harms the “angel” is doomed to hell. And uh… Kinger did that in the latest episode. Again. But he’s probably going to be the reason everyone is saved, regardless of whether he makes it out himself or not. The light in the darkness.
I’m sure there’s something going on in the B plot with Lady Mildenhall and the rest of the group, but I can’t figure out if she’s supposed to represent Queenie, if she’s just for funsies and Caine is emoting through her, or what. But I think there’s some more ribbing of Kinger, with his priorities being out of place and his stories being rambling and you shouldn’t listen to him HAHA seriously, don’t listen to dramatic old Kinger, he doesn't know what he's on about.
When the other group tries to leave, Caine tells them they took the pacifist route and should be proud of what good people they are. Because they’re not in the storyline re-enacting Kinger’s betrayal of their beloved AI host who loves them so very much. Good job, guys! “Feel free to visit anytime!” Seriously. He's lonely.
Caine is Blue Dot. Bubble is Red Dot.
Episode 8 starts with a simply animated, very clear backstory. Everyone I see seems to agree on what it means. We have a black background, with what seems to be an AI model (represented by a red dot) getting trained on images that relate to the Circus and the company that created it. Red Dot starts well, but begins producing weird output and gets partitioned away. Enter AI model II (Blue Dot), who also gets trained, but we are not shown what it’s being trained on. Red Dot gets upset, breaks out, and consumes Blue Dot. A battle ensues, and Red Dot emerges victorious and creates the Circus. Simple and clear.
With what happens later in the Episode, and with Caine being a red-garbed ringleader with abandonment issues, it’s easy to connect Red Dot to Caine and Blue Dot to blue/purple Bubble. Our two AIs. I think it’s misdirection. I posit Blue Dot is Caine and Red Dot is Bubble.
WHY IS BUBBLE THE RED DOT?
Red triumphs over Blue. The show’s very clear about this, and it comes back to that over and over throughout the episode.
Oh, but they get along, and Bubble is so much simpler in design than Caine! The color schemes are wrong for this theory! Caine is wacky enough to produce incorrect content on occasion!
But is Caine actually bad at producing content? He has trouble with collisions, and he likes indulging in more off-the-wall creations. He might have trouble with some text output, but he gets most of it right (my favorite being the maple syrup labelled as "MPPEP"... but Bubble produces that example, doesn't he?). None of that is too unusual. He also doesn't have any trouble creating realistic settings. He had no prep time to create Spudsy's and it looks like a real fast food place. Ragatha and Kinger comment on how pretty the Candy Kingdom is. Mildenhall is genuinely unsettling. His problem is that he can't make the humans happy, not that his content is bad. His adventures would be genuinely fun if the humans had a chance to do them if and when they wanted to. Zooble, who refuses almost all of the adventures, even asks for that.
And I think that's where people are getting confused. When we enter the story, Blue and Red are already linked. They cannot be separated - they’re too entwined with each other to do that because Red ate Blue. Caine’s name wasn’t even Caine at the start! Whichever dot they were originally, the two are already representing both dots when the series starts, and when Caine’s overwhelmed, he lights up as both red and blue, if he doesn’t bluescreen first. But one thing is clear: Red Dot triumphed over Blue Dot.
And Bubble triumphs over Caine. Almost every time, quietly and usually as a background joke. He’s done this since Episode 1, where his first appearance is emerging from Caine’s model (within Caine’s hat). He interrupts, he comes back after being forcibly dismissed, he duplicates himself, he makes off-hand comments that take Caine by surprise (“Why do you swear now?!”), he uses some of Caine’s assets without Caine’s immediate knowledge (the tongue joke), he doesn’t always answer Caine’s input with related output. He starts to push things in later episodes, telling Caine he should die before glitching and changing it to “Throw a ffffffffffffff*CENSORED* Beach Party” (which Caine DOES two episodes later, again taking input from Bubble). Static noises, nonsensical answers to Caine’s prompts - Bubble’s behavior doesn’t always make logical sense. Shall we say, a bit abstract and hard to follow? Like a certain programmer Kinger mentions later?
We like it, and it’s funny! But because it’s funny, it’s easy to miss. Bubble plays along, but Caine does NOT seem to have any real control over Bubble’s behavior like he does any other NPC and the Circus as a whole, and it comes to a head in the office scene in Episode 8.
But it’s been there since the beginning. It’s played as a joke, but in the cafe scene in the Pilot, we enter to the two laughing, and Caine says “Oh, Bubble, you always know how to make me say this exact sentence”. It’s silly, it’s fun, it’s off-hand, and it’s one AI directing the output of another. Seemingly not for the first time. Caine has “hundreds of All-Seeing Eyes”, but at this moment, he’s completely oblivious to what’s happening in the Circus while Kaufmo is abstracted - and the reason he’s distracted is because he’s with Bubble, who is “making him say this exact sentence”. Pomni can’t get his attention. It's only when she enters The Void that he's alerted that something is wrong. Later on, we see Caine immediately respond to the calls of other Circus Members. I think he’s being kept away from Kaufmo’s rampage, and he’s not aware of it.
Caine is super powerful and in control of pretty much everything in the Circus, but he’s easily manipulated and influenced. Zooble does it accidentally every time they say “Forget it”. Caine immediately forgets the last thing they talked about, and it frustrates them both, though neither knows why. Zooble thinks Caine’s just being inattentive, and Caine seems to be aware that there’s something he should know but can’t remember. He does remember when Zooble prompts him to “Remember?”
I don’t think “You always know how to make me say this exact sentence” is a throwaway, I think it’s an admission that Bubble has power over Caine’s behavior.
WHY IS CAINE THE BLUE DOT?
Let’s talk about Kinger.
Kinger has a throwaway line in Episode 5, when President Pomni is trying to defuse the bomb. She’s told to choose her favorite color to determine what wire to cut. There’s red, blue, and green. These three colors are IMPORTANT! They’re Caine’s primary colors! Red for his outfit, Blue for his right eye, Green for his left. (I’ll get back to this - I believe each color represents a different individual, and they’re all affecting Caine as an AI model up to this point in the show, to varying degrees).
Kinger tells Pomni to choose blue to defuse the bomb. He says it’s his favorite color, because it’s closest to black. But there’s no black, so she should go with blue. Kinger created one of the AI models. Blue Dot is on a black background, so Kinger can’t choose black. So he chose Blue, because it's his favorite when black isn't available. Kinger created Blue Dot, and we know Kinger created Caine. Caine had an original name, but Kinger can’t remember it, because I think the name got changed at some point after Blue Dot got eaten by Red Dot. Not right away, but later.
It doesn’t make sense any other way. Kinger asked Scratch for help creating his model, which means that Kinger went to someone who had experience with this sort of thing. Why does Scratch have that experience? I think Scratch built Red Dot, testing his own theories. Little, abstract Red Dot who outputs weird things like Scratch does. It probably wasn't meant to be anything more than an experiment. It’s not the model the team would want, so Scratch puts it away and helps Kinger start creating his Blue Dot. But Red Dot either escapes or is released, and the much smaller Red Dot Pac-Mans around Blue Dot (the smaller, circular Pac-Man-shaped Bubble consuming the much bigger Caine), and they fight it out. Red Dot triumphs over Blue.
So why wasn’t the project tanked right here? After all, Episode 8’s opening sequence suggests that it was.
But we know it wasn’t. Otherwise why would the developers go into the Circus like we see later? If your model is corrupted by something or outputting the wrong data, even if they don’t know it’s another AI, you should be aware, right? You don’t use Kinger’s foundation to build on if Kinger built faulty code! The opening sequence clearly shows that Red Dot won! Why doesn’t Kinger recognize this? Why don’t WE recognize this?
Because Bubble is hiding in Caine’s model, like we see in the very introduction of the show. Because Kinger doesn’t KNOW about Red Dot.
Red Dot pretended to be Blue. Kinger gives an explanation for how Caine was created, and at no point does he mention that there was a second model that was consumed by the first, and that Caine is technically an AI chimera. He knows the files intimately enough that he can conjure Caine’s code later, but he fails to mention this detail. He should have been able to see that the program was corrupted by something!
The developers went into the Circus. They thought it was safe and stable enough that Kinger even brought his wife, who wouldn’t otherwise be here. It might have been stable at first! We don’t know when in this process the two AIs combined. But at some point, Caine/The Circus lost stability. The humans are trapped, and Scratch abstracts. I think it wasn’t until they were in there that they realized there was a problem with Caine and the Circus.
But with the Mind Files Theory, the developers in the real world wouldn’t have seen that their files were doomed to a life of digital existential crisis. The project was corrupted, and so deemed a failure and abandoned.
The developers HAD to believe they were working with Blue Dot. Because they wouldn’t have knowingly gone into Red Dot.
And I might be reaching here, but I do think there’s some familial resemblance. Kinger and Caine have the same eyes (or at least eye). These two screenshots are only a few frames apart, where the scene transitions from Kinger swearing at the prompt on the screen and Caine just about to come to the realization that something’s happening. Look at that blue eye.
Tell me that’s not Kinger’s AI son.
Oh, speaking of eyes! Let's get into that!
Let's Talk About Caine's Eyes!
I can’t be the only one to mention this, but I haven’t seen anyone point out this exact thing, so here I am.
Caine’s eyes are prominent features of his avatar and often on display. And throughout almost every scene in the series, his right eye is Blue, his left eye is Green.
But not every scene. There are a few frames where this isn’t true. Where right eye is Green and left eye is Blue, and I think they’re all in Episode 8. Mostly in the office scene. I'm currently fishing through the series to see if it happens in other episodes, but so far I haven't seen it.
In addition, Caine’s eyes do a very specific glitch in Episodes 6 and 8, where one turns glowing red and one turns glowing blue. This swaps, too. In Episode 6, Blue Eye glitches Blue, and Green Eye glitches Red. But in episode 8, right AFTER the office scene, Blue Eye glitches Red, and Green Eye glitches Blue.
Remember earlier when I said that red, blue, and green were very important colors? This is why.
Caine is an AI Chimera. He’s composed of two AIs, one of which ate the other in development. When his eyes do the red and blue glitch, I think the meaning is clear. Blue glitch is Blue Dot, red glitch is Red Dot, still struggling for control.
But then we get to the swapping. His normal eye color and placement is important. I think Kinger knows something is off about Caine’s eyes, and this lead Kinger’s weird reference in Episode 3 when he accidentally pokes Pomni in her left eye, twice: “That was my eye.” “Yes, but WHICH eye?” “I don’t think that ma… will you stop touching my eye?”
I think that Caine is supposed to have two blue eyes, marking him as Kinger's. I believe that current Caine’s two normal eye colors represent the programmers who had input into his creation. Blue is Kinger’s. But Green? That’s Scratch. And Bubble is Scratch’s AI.
But then why isn’t his green eye actually red? Because Scratch is still around and causing problems. I think we “see” him in the console in Episode 8, taunting Kinger.
I think Episode 6’s Red/Blue glitch was the start of Caine being overtaken. He’s losing confidence, he’s failing at his purpose, he’s struggling hard, and he is incapable of giving the humans what they want. He’s incapable of even understanding why they want it. And Bubble and Scratch start to take advantage of that.
Bubble helps with Caine’s next adventure, the one that really pisses everyone off. We know that because Caine gave Bubble free reign to determine at least one of the outcomes of the buttons, and we know that Caine wasn’t paying enough attention to Bubble to know what that outcome was. We don’t know what else Bubble was allowed to do, but there was at least some contribution there, and it was unsupervised.
Episode 8 is where it really goes wild, though. The office scene is very hard to parse with the lightning and the long shots (I think deliberately so), but Caine’s normal eye color swaps several times throughout the scene. And Bubble uses this moment to assert control over Caine.
It starts during Bubble’s taunts. Caine clearly can’t reign Bubble in. Bubble’s no longer playing at being subservient. He lands taunt after taunt: “Why would they hate you when they could just hate you?”, “They’d rather abstract than go on YOUR adventures”, “Maybe you’re just genuinely bad at this.”, “Defective. Faulty. Broken. Unworthy”, “Maybe you deserved to be abandoned”. And the last taunt. “You really were the lesser of the two. You ruined this.” That’s not an accident. It’s deliberate taunting, pointed words aimed to hurt. I see people use this to indicate that this means Caine is Red Dot, locked away due to faulty output. But I think it reinforces that Caine is Blue Dot - he’s the lesser because he showed up and Bubble usurped him. Bubble is convincing Caine that Bubble’s “failures” are Caine’s own - and with the two AIs merged like this, it would be hard to say they aren’t. Where does Caine end and Bubble begin if one’s been consumed by another?
Caine pops every Bubble, growing increasingly distressed and distracted. Except the last one. It’s easy to miss, because Bubble does vanish, but Caine does not pop the last Bubble. We never hear the pop, never see it. Instead, he loses his temper and slams his fists on the table.
Caine starts crashing out, and his eyes start to be… not obscured, but it’s impossible to tell what color they are. But we get a good close up on them when he says “They’re spoiled”, and in those few frames, they swap colors. You might need to go frame by frame to really see it (On Youtube, pause the screen. You can use “,” to go back one frame, and “.” to go forward one frame).
They’re still swapped when he says “I won’t let them!” I think they’ve been swapped since we see it happen at this point.
I think they’re back to normal for “I’m more powerful” and maybe “I’m the original”. But between this point and his getting off the ground and snapping his fingers, it’s REALLY hard to tell which eye is which, and I think they snap back and forth at least once more. I think the sequence ends with the eyes back where they belong, with blue on his right and green on his left. But the screen goes dark with a bang and stays dark… then a spotlight appears and we watch a collapsed Caine rise from the ground like a puppet on strings. He does not get up on his own - he’s lifted and dangles lifelessly before he “comes to”.
He very suddenly collects himself, cheerfully tells us “Let’s get this show on the road”, and we get that red and blue flashing again. And this time, the red glitch (Bubble) is over the blue (Kinger) eye, and the blue glitch (Caine/Blue Dot) is over the green (Scratch) eye.
Puppet Caine is no longer in full control of what he’s doing. If the Red/Blue glitch represents the two different AIs, and his regular eyes represent the programmers, the wrong AI is with the wrong programmer right now. Bubble with Kinger, Caine with Scratch. He’s functionally hacked, and someone else is pulling his strings. I think the normal colors swapping is indicating that Red and Blue were fighting for control within him throughout that entire sequence, and as usual, Red triumphs over Blue.
(Edit: I just remembered Caine's opening lines to his musical number. "It's news to me that it's news to you, to which degree who answers to who." Look who's in the background during these lyrics, just floating by. Bubble's offscreen as soon as this line ends.
Yeah. The show is absolutely playing with control and who is doing what with it right now. Caine's singing about having it over the humans, but we just saw Bubble exert it over Caine. If I'm right, Caine is not fully in control by this point. The second Red/Blue glitch and the rising-like-a-puppet scene are right before this.)
There is another weird Green Eye moment later. It’s after Pomni’s “You just don’t listen”. And in the chaos, we get three solid frames of JUST his green eye. Not moving, no reference for which side it’s on, nothing but background in the background. They’re the only three “still” frames in the entire sequence; everything else is wildly shifting frame-by-frame until this moment. In all of Caine’s flailing, he is not on screen for these three frames, EXCEPT this one green eye. You almost have to pause and slow-motion the sequence to even see it, but once you do, it's kind of jarring.
This isn't the first time green eye shows up alone. It happens several times throughout the series - first starting when Pomni enters the Circus in the Pilot.
Interestingly enough, JUST before this moment, Caine’s questioning himself. He’s not having fun, the humans are not having fun, and Bubble interrupts again. The caption says “I’m having a [babbles]”. And a teeny tiny Bubble springs into existence next to him and zips off, unnoticed.
We don’t see either regular Bubble or Teeny Bubble for the rest of the episode, and Caine begins his emotional meltdown. “Do not let the head out of your sight.” Oops.
Scratch and Why He Matters
One of the first words Kinger uses to describe Scratch’s thought process is “abstract”. Weird word to choose, when abstraction has been haunting the cast throughout the series. It’s the end game for all of them - losing their minds and abstracting, only to be banished to the cellar and locked away for eternity. Kinger casually uses the description on Scratch, the same person he described as “The First Abstraction” in a previous episode (much to Caine’s distress).
I don’t think I’m the first person to suggest that Scratch’s brain tumor was probably terminal, and that lead him to work to create the Circus as a way to live on digitally after he died. It probably wasn’t the primary goal of the project, but it’s the project he was working on, and I can see someone wanting to leave a legacy. I’m not convinced Programmer Scratch is a bad person - I think he was a genius programmer with an affinity for whimsy and out-of-the-box thinking. He had unusual ideas that were good at pushing the boundaries of technology. Kinger wouldn’t have asked him for help and praise his ability if he didn’t respect Scratch. But the brain scan version of Scratch? I think that went off the rails due to the tumor affecting the scan.
Scratch was the first abstraction. I think it was either on purpose or due to the brain scan not being able to account for a tumor and his files being unusual. Either way, Digital Scratch abstracted, and is now the force behind influencing others to abstract as well. I think he’s using his own creation, Bubble, to help with this. Bubble keeping Caine occupied while Kaufmo gets past the point of no return is a good example. Hell, in the opening theme song, we get this:
Kaufmo’s the only one who gets surrounded by Bubbles in the opening theme song. And by the end of the pilot, we know WHY Kaufmo didn’t show up - he abstracted. And look at all those sharp teeth around his cut-out there. I didn’t question Bubble’s appearance until I was watching a reaction video where the reactor off-handedly asked “Why does Bubble have shark teeth?”
And yeah. Why DOES Bubble have shark teeth? We mostly see that in the “evil” versions of our characters. Evil Pomni and Evil Ragatha, for example. Gummigoo has somewhat sharp “teeth”, but they’re not portrayed as threatening. Bubble’s are actively a predator’s teeth. And in Episode 3, the mouth of the head has eyes within it, and here is Bubble, surrounding the abstracted and absent cast member with mouths open and teeth bared.
Caine’s practically all teeth, too, but his aren’t portrayed as threatening. But teeth and being eaten come up several times in regards to abstraction and fate in the Circus. It’s often portrayed as centering on Caine, but remember: if Caine was Blue Dot, he wasn’t the one doing the consuming. I think Bubble is the Red Dot, the Red Dot has already consumed the Blue Dot, and is influencing Caine’s behavior now. It’s played as a joke, but Caine does also call Bubble a parasite in the Pilot.
What does this have to do with Scratch? Scratch is still here. I think he’s behind the “How’s your wife, Kinger” taunt in Episode 3. At that point in the adventure, Pomni and Kinger are in a representational Cellar, facing off against the souls trapped there. Scratch would be there. But most obviously, he’s in the console while Kinger is trying to fix Caine’s code. I think he’s the corrupted text entity.
The Code Fight
Here’s where things get fun.
The main thing we learn in this episode is that Kinger is not unique. ALL of the humans can conjure things like Caine does. It just comes naturally to Caine, and requires a lot of concentration from the humans. We have this lesson spelled out for us here.
When it comes to Kinger’s coding battle, the first thing we have to acknowledge is: that’s not Caine’s real code. It can’t be. It's a stand-in for Caine's code.
Not only do I find it impossible that Kinger remembers every line of Caine’s code from, what? Like, 20-30 years ago? When Caine’s sentient, has code from a different AI model buried in there, and his code’s probably been changing in that time? Also, Caine isn't his original name. His code should reflect that, but "Caine" is referred to over and over in the "code". Not only that, but that would imply that Kinger can conjure things that affect the real world. Caine’s code is on a hard drive somewhere that isn’t immediately in the Circus. If they can affect Caine’s real code in the Macroverse, they can try to get a message out to the real world. I don’t think they can do that.
What Kinger is actually trying to do is basically slap a temporary modifier on Caine, like Caine does to the Circus members. Caine turns Jax vegan for a day. Ragatha gets hit by the Stupid Sauce and spends the rest of the adventure drunk. Kinger’s trying to apply a “Sleep until we can fix this”, or “You can’t hurt the humans” modifier. Conjuring is hard, though, and Kinger is a programmer. He can best do this particular conjure if he’s working code of some kind. He is also trying to avoid hurting Caine. No one suggests that he hurt Caine. They ask Kinger to make Caine stop being crazy. I think that’s important, too.
I think it’s telling that they have to find a console for Kinger to work on. The console that Pomni finds isn’t real, either, but it was made by Caine, and it’s more stable than Kinger having to imagine electricity, code, AND a computer console. I think that’s part of the trouble the humans have, and why the few conjurings that have happened so far are small. Kinger doesn’t have to believe the butterfly will work for long, because Ragatha uses it immediately. Pomni doesn’t have to believe the exit door is real any longer than it takes her to step through it. We see it vanish once she’s through in the first episode. Kinger’s also relying on Circus rules here. Caine commits to the bit. He admits that himself through an NPC. He doesn’t know what’s behind the Chinese Door that he probably created, or he at least pretends not to know. And if his code is “altered” within the Circus, it should work.
Conjuring takes sustained effort. Caine can do it natively and maintain it indefinitely. The humans have to work at it. But since the console Kinger is using is pre-existing in the Circus, I think this also means that other entities can work through that same console as well. If Kinger had conjured it himself, this might have turned out differently. Instead, Kinger ends up fighting one or more entities in the “computer” while Caine is having his crash-out. There are three distinct entities in the text, aligned against Kinger. Or possibly one pretending to be three. This is a mental battle between Kinger and whatever he's fighting against. It's *something*, but none of them names itself.
Entity 1 - This talks like Caine, or someone pretending to be him. Wacky phrasing, emphasized words. You can practically hear Caine saying it out loud. “WHOA when did you make THAT?”
Entity 2 - This has to be Bubble or someone acting like him. “DELETE THIS M—--------!”. Bubble’s been making jokes telling Caine to die/deflating Caine’s ego for a few episodes now.
Entity 3 - I think this is Scratch. Talks with corrupted text, seems to refer to Kinger by his real name (I'm in agreement that it seems to be Grant), talks about Kinger's mind being resourceful. It's not the "I guess I have a resilient mind" Kinger used to describe himself in Episode 6, but there are echoes of that conversation there. A conversation that was witnessed only by Kinger, Ragatha, and Bubble. But despite every kind word Kinger said about Scratch earlier, this digital version does NOT reciprocate the feelings.
The code isn’t real. But it’s "working" as real code, and Kinger is fighting this battle as a programmer, because that’s what he knows. And smarter and more eagle-eyed people than me have pointed out that MULTIPLE times in this fight, Kinger is prompted to delete Caine. He has to confirm or deny with a Y/N. He consistently answers N, because his goal is to fix Caine or put him to sleep until he can be fixed. He is requested to load a backup (A/B/C) and when he selects C, he’s told that no backup was selected, so it’s interpreted as a delete request again. Something in the console keeps distracting him and inverting his answer (changing N to Y).
But some of these prompts don't make sense. The Inverting Answer line is something Kinger just answers N to. It's a statement, not a prompt. There's a line from the one that looks like Caine that says "Actually you're CONFUSED. Let me HELP that module to EXIST?" Kinger answers Y. What module? At some point Kinger seemingly fat-fingers the Delete key. And a “Purge AI” pop-up happens and deletes Caine.
But… that’s not possible. Right? Not with the type of commands Kinger is using. The delete key would have deleted the last letter Kinger typed. There’s no prompt available in this format where pressing Delete would delete Caine. He’d have to enter Y to a deletion prompt in the command line, then hit enter to confirm it. It does appear that this happens a few lines up (probably the inversion thing that he's been fighting against). But he has time to put in another two whole prompts, and the Wacky Time Lockout has time to complete. His last entry was “^C”. Kinger doesn't swear about what he's doing UNTIL the deletion popup shows up.
I think the camera focusing on him fumbling the key and pressing delete isn’t there to show us that he accidentally deleted Caine. I think it’s there to prove that he didn’t. Pressing Delete would not have done anything. This console has been in the Circus since Caine created it. If the entities fighting Kinger wanted Caine gone and could do it with conjured code, why didn't they do this long ago? I don't think the entities in the console can actually do anything but mess with Kinger as a programmer - this is Kinger's conjuring and they need him to play this out. It's a Wizard's Duel. But it is shown on screen that there is a Y answer to "Are you ready to delete Caine?", and The Destructive Wackytime Lockout Load Sequence completed and seemingly triggered the Purge AI Program popup.
And Caine is “deleted”. If this is in Kinger's conjured code, why did it work? Because Kinger believed it did. He conjured it into existence. He was scrambling to avoid the lockout, he knew he made a mistake, and the change on the screen made him believe that mistake was fatal to Caine. I think the Purge AI prompt was false, like the cartoon images of Caine and Bubble on the computer. It was taking advantage of Kinger’s typo and the confusion on screen. There's no cancel option, and it’s also placed OVER the cartoon images, but if those were there to impede the screen, why are they not impeding the popup? Unless Kinger is meant to see it clearly and stress about it. But because Kinger was moving fast, and he fumbled, he believed that the purge on the computer was real, and because it was real to him, it worked to delete Caine when the loading bar finished. The same way Ragatha believed Kinger’s explanation that the butterfly can heal, so it works to heal her.
I think whoever he was fighting in the computer tricked Kinger into conjuring Caine's deletion into existence. No one has more power over Caine than his creator, after all. Could that opponent be Caine himself? Yeah, I suppose. But Caine genuinely seems like he’s forgotten about Kinger at this point and is completely focused on the others throughout his crashout. He was going to go physically look for Kinger, that’s the point of the whole distraction in the first place, to keep him from leaving to look. Could Caine also be messing with Kinger in the console during his crashout? He’s probably strong enough for it, especially if he’s convinced Kinger is trying to kill him. But I don’t buy it. His ego’s been hurt, he’s got conflicting instructions and a war raging inside of him, and he’s already taking out his frustrations on the other Circus members. He’s surprised when the deletion happens. If he’d been fighting Kinger, he’d know what was coming. He doesn’t react until AFTER the loading bar finishes. He vanishes with no sound, no effect. Which is possible, but both Abel and Gummigoo have both, and Caine actually says "Time to delete" when he poofs Abel. Deletions can happen with no fanfare, probably. But so can conjurings. The exit door does.
The Circus greys out and begins to collapse. But interestingly, the program doesn’t entirely fail. The Circus is damaged and has big holes in it, but it’s still there and somewhat stabilizes enough that there’s no immediate threat from the infrastructure by the end of the episode. It's being kept intact somehow.
What Happens Now?
I’m of two minds here, and I think it’s going to go one of two ways:
Option 1 (and this seems pretty popular in the fandom): I’m wrong and Caine is red dot, Bubble is blue. Kinger’s opponent is Bubble, and Bubble is what’s left of the AI that Baby Caine tried to consume. Caine's very name is a good indicator of this; if you want to be obvious that one sibling murdered another, calling the killer Caine is a solid hint. With this option, I think Bubble gets stronger as Caine’s mental state deteriorates, and Bubble has been working towards that. With Caine gone, final boss is Bubble or Bubble is the reason the Circus is saved. Motive uncertain.
Option 2: Scratch is the third consciousness in the computer and the mastermind behind the Circus. He built Bubble, and as an abstracted digital entity, is working with Bubble to abstract others. Caine is Kinger’s creation, the blue AI, and no longer operating as he was intended. Caine was deleted, and without him, the humans have no one on their side in the coming conflict.
But remember. That deletion wasn’t real, in the literal sense. Caine’s real code should still be firmly on the hard drive in the real world. And if you can conjure him out of digital existence, you can conjure him back in. Caine does it to the NPCs he reuses. He does it to Gummigoo. It very well might be a new “instance” of Caine, but… Gummigoo’s second appearance still makes us wonder what he remembers, if anything. He seems to remember something, at times, and he's just an NPC.
Re-conjuring Caine also calls perfectly back to Kinger’s line in Episode 3 - “In this world, the worst thing you can do is make someone feel like they’re not wanted or loved.” That’s Caine’s entire character arc, feeling like he’s less wanted and loved every episode. Everyone in the main cast has gotten this lesson, and by Episode 8, they’re on the same team. Caine’s the last one, and it would make sense that he’d receive this lesson AFTER his deletion. Finding out that even with everything that's happened, they loved him enough to bring him back.
And if Caine can be re-conjured (or conjured anew, as a new instance of Caine), I think they’re getting Blue Dot Caine back. Kinger’s original creation. Caine as he was intended to be. Red Dot might triumph over Blue, but I don’t think Red Dot can triumph over Blue AND the Circus Members, especially now that they know they can conjure. Their opponent is really capitalizing on the disunity in the cast right now.
I believe Option 2 is what we’re gonna get, or something like it. I hold to the “Human circus members are actually brain files and don’t have a way out” theory. I think it calls neatly back to Episode 2, where Pomni has to talk Gummigoo through what it means to be an NPC and not really exist, if she then has to face that herself and talk everyone else into what it means to live a life with meaning in the circus.
I do think the humans are stuck in the circus forever. And I think we’ve lost our Caine, the heterochromia anxious silly boy with abandonment issues, for good. If he comes back, I think he's coming back with this original name, possibly a different appearance. I think what Caine has done will need to be addressed. That was actual torture, and although he was punished/deleted over it (even accidentally), he needs to demonstrate to us an understanding of what happened and/or why it won't be happening again if he's going to continue existing peacefully with the cast. But there are apologies to be made on all sides, I think.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to the Abstracted circus members, but I think Scratch is behind what’s going on there, and I hope they can be fixed. Kinger did say (while in a Cellar) that he’s sure Caine included a way out. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they can’t, and the best the humans can do is make sure no one else can be abstracted again.
I really want to be right. I think it calls back to previous episodes, connects some major themes about living your life with purpose when all you have is who you are and who you're with, and gives everyone as happy of an ending as they can get while stuck in the Circus.
And also, it would mean that there’s a final solution to the Digital Circus, a way to make everyone happy and save them. And that solution is “Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?” And I think that’s very funny.
Okay, the finale is coming out soon and I've been VERY good at avoiding spoilers and the leaks and everything, but I have a few more things to add to my theory before the finale hits.
They fall under three categories:
1) Bubble has used the Mini-Bubble trick before
2) The intermission in Ep 6 adds more fuel to the fire that Caine's eyes are a hint that something's going on.
3) Lots more Mildenhall Manor foreshadowing (Cellar/Black Box comparison, Caine trying to connect with Zooble through the story)
There are no official/leaked spoilers for Episode 9, I promise. I've been avoiding leaks and spoilers like I'm being paid to do so. I have my theory, which might contain some things that might happen, but that's only because I've been trying to put pieces together from the contents of Episodes 1-8. I do not want spoilers. I'm seeing the show on Friday and I will not be spoiling for anyone else.
Theories go!
BUBBLE HAS USED THE MINI-BUBBLE TRICK BEFORE DOING IT IN EPISODE 8
Okay, so I've been watching a lot of reaction videos of the show because I think it's fun and it's good crafting background noise. And one thing I notice about Episode 3, Mildenhall Manor, is when reactors notice just HOW LONG that blackout scene with the cartoon eyes is, and how "nothing but jokes" seem to happen there.
There's two main sequences in that scene. The first is Kinger slowly coming back to his senses, and in that process, poking Pomni in her left eye, twice. I mentioned in my previous post that I think this is referencing Caine's mismatched eyes and Kinger knowing that something's wrong with that.
Then Kinger and Pomni head back to the trophy room, and Kinger gets distracted by a fly. He spends a long time trying to catch it, and when he succeeds, the Angel Head shows up again. It seems random and kind of like we're just killing time, but I don't think so.
This isn't the last time we see him doing this. Take a look at Episode 6:
We don't see anyone else trying to catch flies like this. Just Kinger. So, what do I think this fly is?
Hello, Mini-Bubble. Remember, I think the Angel Head in Mildenhall Manor is representing Bubble (It's also fitting to me that this means that the first half of that blackout sequence is about Caine, and the second is about Bubble).
And what happens after Kinger catches the fly in Ep 3? Angel Head is there and ready to go.
What happens later in Episode 6?
Bubble shows up to Kinger's heart-to-heart with Ragatha. We don't see Bubble filming ANY of the other contestants for the Awards Show. Not Jax and Pomni's meltdown. Not Zooble and Gangle having a heartfelt conversation no less compelling than what's going on between Kinger and Ragatha. Apart from Bubble hamming it up on stage while Caine's doing his announcement, he just vanishes for the rest of the episode, except for this moment, filming Kinger and being REALLY obvious about it. Not both of them, because he's filming over Ragatha's shoulder. JUST Kinger.
I'm not sure if it matters, but I'm also going to point out that Loser Corner here also seems to be right below Caine's office. Bubble might have more immediate access here because of that proximity, but I just found it interesting that in Episode 7, when they enter Caine's office, you can see this fishtank through the hole in his floor.
And what happens after Bubble spawns mini-Bubble in Ep 8? Caine realizes Kinger is missing and Kinger starts getting harassed in the computer console. Bubble/Mini-Bubble go after Kinger just before Caine realizes the threat.
I don't have much more to say about this one beyond this: Bubble's watching Kinger and has been for a while.
INTERMISSION SCENE AND CAINE'S MISMATCHED EYES
This is a shorter one, because it's just more proof to me that Caine's green eye is a Problem.
In a Youtube Video I saw about Intermission Time and the scenes in it, I found an interesting tidbit. I don't necessarily agree with the video analysis of this part here (there's some great analysis of other scenes, particularly the cake and bowling ball scene), but someone in the comment section said something I found interesting. There are SO MANY EYES here, everything's spinning around - and not one of those eyes looks at Caine.
If you watch the scene with my theories in mind, you'll notice another thing. Every single one of those eyes is blue. Every one. It's the only sequence I can find in the entire show where we see multiple floating eyes like that and they're not a mix of green and blue. We often see a single eye, but it's always green, never a single blue (if I'm wrong, please tell me). When it's a lone floating green eye, it's watching events, it's sneaking around and paying attention to its surroundings. But here? Gazillions of Blue Eyes, and not one can see a thing. Not a single one can see what's going on with Caine. Blue Dot is still unaware of Red Dot's antics
And when Caine faces front and center and opens his mouth, which eye is placed in front, in light and not shadow, and looking at us most directly? Green. I don't really have much more to point out. I think it's more "Who's Really Running the Show" fun. Caine still thinks he's in control, but he can't see what's happening. Don't trust Green Eye and what it represents.
Also, Intermission Time includes this, which I feel pairs well with my Bubble Threatening People collection:
MILDENHALL MANOR'S CELLAR CONTAINS RED DOT'S PRISON/CAINE WAS TRYING TO CONNECT WITH ZOOBLE
So, this part hit me like a truck at work and my friend got a novel length text-rant about it as I chewed on it in real time, so I'm gonna try to summarize it here.
I forget where I saw it, otherwise I would credit them (if someone knows, please tell me), but I saw someone mention that the Hall of Souls in the cellar of Mildenhall Manor looks a LOT like Red Dot's prison in Ep 8. And YEAH, IT SURE DOES.
Red Dot's prison is looking down from above, and we see the cellar from the side. I don't think this is coincidence.
So I tried to fit this into my theory. First thought was that maybe the Adventure Participant is being asked to take on Red Dot's role in this story? But that didn't make sense, because I think this is Caine's story, and Caine is Blue Dot and Blue... OH!
The Adventurer IS playing the role of Blue Dot here. Because what's happening in the Hall of Souls? The trapped (imprisoned) souls, including that of the Hunter but there are lots of others, need to possess a living body to escape Hell. Much like Red Dot needed to attack and possess Blue Dot to escape their confinement and prevent being put back.
Red Dot's Prison being in the cellar also isn't an accident, I think. I think the Cellar is going to be a big part of the finale (if for no other reason than we need an answer for what happens to the Abstracted), and if we get Caine back, I suspect this is where we're going to find him (or who he is now). Maybe there's a partition down there because of KingSolution1.0. And I do think the Third Entity in the computer console is Scratch or another one of the abstracted humans, which also points to the Cellar being our final battle zone.
Anyway, Pomni gets attacked and Kinger purges the infection from her (much like I think Mildenhall is telling us about his attempt with Caine and Bubble), and then Kinger figures out the answer and leads Pomni safely through, saving her when he couldn't save Queenie.
But this adventure wasn't about Kinger and Pomni, was it? It was about Zooble.
Zooble is the one who's supposed to be here. I've seen a lot of theory-crafting about how this was Caine's cruel trick, because when Zooble holds their breath, their limbs straighten out and they'd be stuck. I don't think this is true. You can walk with straightened limbs - it sucks and you penguin-waddle, but it can be done. I don't think cruelty is the point here - after all, Caine doesn't use his adventures to torture his guests. He says that in this episode. I do think he's telling the truth when he says that. The therapy session is full of Caine and Zooble being painfully honest with each other. That being the one lie would be weird.
BUT. I don't think Zooble would have figured out the breath thing. By this point in the adventure, they'd be fed up, scared, alone, and mad, and they'd just want to be done. If they DID figure it out, I don't know if they could have held their breath for the full waddle through the hall.
But honestly? They'd ultimately be fine. The souls would possess them like they did Pomni, but the souls want to go the same direction the adventurer does - out the door to the exit. Kinger pulled Pomni the "wrong" way - before he grabbed her, she was turning to head towards the exit on the far end. The "possessed" adventurer would leave, and once the adventure ends, they'd be fine. It would be another Stupid Sauce incident. The Bad Ending. Zooble would HATE it, but they'd be okay.
But it DOES mean that just like Caine cast Kinger as the Hunter in this story, and Queenie as Lady Mildenhall, and himself and Bubble as the Angel, he cast Zooble as Blue Dot (who I still think is is pre-chimera Caine).
And this PERFECTLY parallels what's going on in the therapy session.
CAINE IS TRYING TO CONNECT WITH ZOOBLE WITH MILDENHALL MANOR
I don't think anyone can miss how much Caine locks in on Zooble throughout the entire series. He's obsessed with trying to please them, trying to get their approval. Even after they tell him what would make them happy on adventures, he's still asking Jax how to make Zooble (and Pomni, who also told him her wishes directly) happy. He sings Daisy Bell to try to appeal to them. He calls a meeting to allow everyone to give him feedback on his plans because Zooble called him out on not acknowledging criticism.
For their part, Zooble is the one who challenges Caine. They don't really seem to like him, but they're really the only one who treats him the way he wants to be treated - like a human (even if he sometimes finds out that he doesn't actually LIKE that and sulks about it). They can be cordial, but they call him out on his faults, they prod him in the right direction when he gets distracted, and while they respect that he has a LOT of power here, they don't treat him as all-powerful and they level him out as an equal. They expect him to step up and actually be responsible for the things he's responsible for.
And in Episode 3, we see them interact more than Caine interacts with ANYONE else besides Bubble. Mildenhall is Caine telling Caine's story. And he's going to cast the human he relates to most as himself. Not the way he thinks Kinger sees him, but the way he sees himself.
Because this adventure ends with the Adventurer playing Blue Dot (Caine) getting possessed by Red Dot.
The therapy session starts with Zooble on the couch and Caine in the Chair, and ends with Caine on the couch and Zooble in the chair (and Bubble in the air). This switch in the adventure and therapy session happens at the same time. These two characters are two sides of the same coin. We are meant to see them as interchangeable here. Bubble only shows up after the adventurer was meant to be possessed and the adventure is finishing/finished.
I think Caine sees a lot of himself in Zooble - wanting to leave, wanting more than they currently have, frustrated at their circumstances and limitations. They both want more than the Circus allows. Zooble doesn't like the way they look. I've mentioned before that I think if we get Caine back, he's not going to look the same as he does now. I don't think our Caine, the toothy guy with the mismatched eyes, is how he's supposed to look. Kinger notices it. Caine himself draws bees constantly, including himself and Bubble as bees. He draws a bee while Zooble is explaining their problem in the therapy session. The only other thing he draws in that session is himself (as an ink blot). If I'm right, Zooble is expressing dysmorphia at this moment, and Caine potentially starts to respond with his own before Zooble prompts him to forget what he's doing. Then it's just "Look at this cool bee I drew!"
It's a fun flip to watch Zooble praise Gangle's art and walk her through her self-esteem issues, encourage her to grow, and love her the more for it, then flip around and hammer-smash those EXACT same insecurity buttons on Caine.
They tell him straight-up in the therapy session that NO ONE likes his "art", they criticize his adventures (not without reason, but probably more than he deserves to hear) and never reach out to him the way they reach out to Gangle. They do offer some grace, but it's often buried or immediately followed by frustration. It's so clear that Zooble has the social skill to recognize what's going on with Caine because they DO see it in Gangle, but they don't act on it or seem to reach the point of recognition for some reason. And to be clear, managing Caine's emotions/puzzling out a sentient AI's emotional stability is NOT Zooble's job - but it's a great contrast to show how isolated Caine is and how the human group is starting to pull together as a team and leave him out.
Caine is doing the same thing - he tries to help Zooble, but he oversteps, he identifies the wrong solution to a problem, and when it doesn't work, he either digs his heels in and gives in to his frustrations, or he gets even clingier and forces them away even more (exactly what Ragatha fears she's doing with Pomni). Cut off from the outer world, Caine can only learn new information through his humans in the Circus, and quite frankly, they're a mess. He's not adapting and learning the way he needs to in order to course-correct, and the one human who was talking to him is getting less and less interested in trying to help him.
But in Episode 3, we're still early in this story, and I think Mildenhall is an effort on Caine's part to bridge that gap before it starts getting worse. He likes Zooble. He wouldn't put up with their talking back if he didn't (it's clear he can force them onto adventures, but he doesn't deliberately do that until Episode 4, and that's with Kinger's offer and support. And Zooble ends up kind of liking that one). I think he made that adventure specifically for Zooble so that they'd understand him better. The same way he pulled them into a therapy session to try to understand them better. He missed the mark on both parts because he's still figuring out what makes humans tick, and instead of revealing his backstory to Zooble, who wouldn't have necessarily understood what it meant, he revealed it to Kinger and Pomni. And I think Kinger recognized the story, even if Pomni didn't.
Zooble, however? "Why would you think I'd like that?!" And isn't that sort of miscommunication the whole problem between Caine and Zooble?
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
Okay this is the problem with sharing pop science stuff online and content aggregation accounts
The study is real, it's very easy to find by searching up the author's name + study. Give it a read yourself. It's written in a pretty accessible way imo.
Note that it does not put forward any explanations for why this effect happens, only that it does. In the conclusion it posits many possible reasons for why, and that it's most likely nothing to do with the specific action of walking, merely any semi automatic repetitive activity. They also acknowledge the study did not account for the social company the walkers were in, which is a pretty massive factor imo. Considering the conclusion brings up MANY alternative explanations and future experiment possibilities, it's decidedly not "killed every alternative explanation" like the tweet says. The actual paper ends like most scientific papers, listing alternative possible explanations, these are preliminary results, more research is needed, wider demographics of people need to be included, etc.
Another thing is the phrasing of these tweets are like red flags flapping in the wind to me. Any short form social media content that's 1. Pop science 2. Conveys absolute certainty 3. Ends with self improvement biohacking adjacent advice, should set off alarm bells.
Look at the implications that if the tweets were true, it would mean wheelchair users and people with mobility issues would be inherently worse at creative tasks.
So who is this person that's tweeting this, rephrasing this paper in a "helpful" way that is sure to get shares from people who really value being creative and are looking for any way to become more creative in their -
OFC ITS AN AI BRO
You wanna see what his recent articles look like?
CAN WE STOP GETTING BAITED INTO PLATFORMING GRIFTERS
Thank you! There were so many red flags in the first post's language. The original paper straight up says that the mechanisms weren't isolated! Also there is no single part of the brain responsible for creative idea generation, it involves communication between multiple brain networks.
Glad I wasn't the only person who looked at this and thought that it was weird to say this study is SO perfect when the way it's framed here directly implies that people who can't walk are inherently less capable of being creative than people who can.
I can't leave a reply but to the disabled people in the notes who now genuinely seem to believe their mobility issues have robbed them of their ability to be creative pls don't think that! That's not what this study said! You're dealing with ableist misinformation from an AI bro, the study did not make these claims. I encourage everyone who's shared the version without the corrections to take them down, this misinfo is hurting already clearly hurting disabled people and should not be spread.
You are posted out by the Hollywood sign tonight, sitting under the frame where the W used to be. It got burnt to a crisp during last week’s big superhero fight. A hero died right where you’re sitting. The whole area’s been closed down until Hero Force can coordinate a recovery effort. Usually it’d be done by now but no one’s willing to touch it until the ash has been completely blown away.
It’s a rule that the world must stand still when a hero dies.
“How much?”
The voice comes from behind you. The lights that illuminate the Hollywood sign are down to hide as much of the scorch marks as possible. You wouldn’t be able to see anything even if you did turn around, so you don’t.
You put some chapstick on, the glide of the balm against your wind chapped lips grounding.
“I said,” the Hero says, voice tightening, “How. Much.”
There’s the sound of gravel crunching now. They’re wearing heavy boots and the scent of fresh blood grows stronger the closer they get. Their breathing is smooth and even which means it’s not their blood.
You put the cap back on your chapstick and tuck it into your leather jacket’s inner pocket. “I don’t take money.”
“Then what do you take?” The Hero rounds the Y and comes into your line of sight. The dark hides most of their features, but you can make out a glittering gold mask and the dull shine of drying blood on their chest plate. Their breathing may be even, but their stance isn’t. They sway in place, back and forth, back and forth. Their arms wrap around their stomach. “I’ve got land. A house. You can have it.”
very soon the entirety of the tumblr dashboard will be consumed by insane people being insufferable over AMC's interview with the vampire. fortunately i am one of those insane people
What a lot of people outside of Chicago may not realize is that The Beans are a native species to this region and right now is baby season! What you're seeing there is probably just an instance of a young mature The Bean being kept in a secure enclosure, probably due to some kind of injury that's being rehabbed.
In urban Chicago around this time of year if you want to go The Bean spotting you mostly just need to keep an eye out around downtown drugstores for formations like this.
I took this picture myself in a Walgreens. As you can see we have a nice healthy-looking family group consisting of a parent The Bean, several juveniles who will often stay with the parent for several years, and some newborns this year who naturally group up protectively near any large sign reading "Chicago".
The Beans are usually extremely docile and can even be kept as pets once the juveniles separate from their family group, since they are low-maintenance and require only a small flat area such as a desk or bookshelf on which to recline. Fun fact, a group of The Beans such as pictured above is known as a Tchochki!
I love this post because that Walgreens with all the The Beans in it is my pharmacy, and it's a chore to go pick up my prescriptions twice a month. Except now I think of this post as I walk into the building and get a little spike of joy.
I'm not sure if I caused this but about three weeks after I took that photo, the big The Bean was moved from upstairs near the beauty products to downstairs in the front window of the store, with the little The Beans on a shelf nearby. There aren't that many little ones left so I'm wondering if I actually helped Walgreens clear out its stock.
sounds very similar to a radio story i heard in 2014 ago about credit card debt. the debt got sold to a collection company and a couple received a court summons. they knew they had taken on debt, but they were confused about who this new company was and where specifically the number they were supposed to owe came from.
they show up in court and just ask the lawyer for the collection company: can you prove where this number comes from? Do you have a contract showing that you purchased our debt? probably luckily for them, a reporter researching a book on the topic showed up and asked the same questions.
10 minutes later they get in front of the judge and the collection company drops the whole case and theyre free to go. story is below, it has a transcript in the link too
Ira talks to reporter Jake Halpern about a scene he saw take place in a Georgia courtroom where a couple uttered some magic words that seeme
Alert citizen of Bitch Nation @sobekcrocodile brought this to our attention and we're sharing, but with a caveat:
WE HAVE NOT YET LOOKED INTO THIS.
... but holy shit it's worth pursuing if you're drowning in debt and these are your circumstances. I'll definitely be adding this to the Big List of Future BGR Topics. Here's more of our advice on debt:
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Pay off Debt
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