Umm He Fights Back No Tyranny Only Anarchy

umm he fights back no tyranny only anarchy

get your dirty hands off him NOW

I CANT TAKE IT ANYMORE WHY IS PEEPERS SO ADORABLE AND PATHETIC IM GETTING CUTENESS RAGE EVERY TIME HE SAYS SOMETHING LIKE "but sirrr what abour ourrr plans 🥺" i need to go gnaw on some hardwood floors or something to calm down

I WATCHED EPISODE 3 OF DIGITAL CIRCUS AND NOW I WANT TO BLAB ABOUT CAINE SOME MORE!

Spoilers below the cut:

Every episode, I am more convinced that Caine has done nothing (intentionally) wrong, ever, in his life.

He has no tact, terrible empathy, and is barely sentient enough to carry out a conversation, let alone understand all his circus members' perspectives, but BY GOLLY he is trying his BEST-

FIRST OFF! He is an AI designed to make fun little games, originally aimed at children, and judged against that purpose? He's doing AMAZING! We all know what it looks like irl when AI is used to make games, but Caine's game dev skills are really good! His worlds are pretty to look at, the game mechanics would be fun if this were a video game, not a virtual prison, his stories are even coherent! He just made two separate routes for Middenhall Manor whose stories are actually tied together in the background! (Bro made Undertale-)

He WASN'T designed to babysit several grown adults stuck in VR round the clock for years. And EVEN SO, he's still trying to make them comfortable and give them a good experience with his limited understanding! He adapts his adventure to be easy and set in the circus for Pomni's first day! He goes out of his way to try to make something for Zooble ALONE! Judging by Kinger's flashback, the theories that Caine puts the abstracted in the cellar partially because the dark calms them is almost certainly true!

He's quite literally doing all he knows how to do.

And the biggest thing that I'm losing my mind over this episode?

Zooble complains at the start when he pulls them aside that he "never listens" or "never remembers" why they don't feel like going on the adventures. Midway through, even he seems frustrated that his brain isn't cooperating.

And then after explaining it again, Zooble is discouraged and dismisses it by saying: "Forget it..."

And Caine blinks.

"What?"

"Just forget it."

"...Forget what?"

He quite literally keeps forgetting because Zooble keeps telling him to by accident.

BECAUSE HE'S AN AI-

Love the Kinger backstory and focus, but Caine is my fav character so much, y'all, it's unreal-

A lot of people make theories like “Caine is actually human and thinks he’s an AI!” Or “Caine is one of the programmers!” Or “Caine is actually evil!”

But I think it’s more interesting if Caine is just an AI whose forced to perform jobs beyond his role and is entirely limited to his function, and those limitations cause a horrible scenario for all of the people he’s supposed to be entertaining.

His therapy session with Zooble shows that, while he’s capable of feeling complex emotions, he was never supposed to, or at least was never meant to deal with situations that push him to an emotional limit. Caine’s default self is a silly, over the top game host; anything beyond that is pushing the boundaries of what he’s capable of.

But that doesn’t make him evil, it makes him streamlined. He is not human and therefore solves problems like a computer would. Gummigoo getting blown up was a failsafe in his eyes, not an act of cruelty.

I think when some people see him act with emotion they assume there must be a human being underneath the silly exterior, but I disagree: from Gummigoo, we can tell that NPCs in the DC are capable of becoming self-actualized and developing sentience on their own, so it’s not impossible for Caine to be the same way. He’s not human, but he’s a robot achieving traits of humanity from being forced to work beyond his means.

He was never meant to care for people long term, and humans weren’t psychologically made to be in the Digital Circus permanently, and that by itself is why the story is so horrific. Caine doesn’t even need to do much on his own to make the experience terrible: everyone is already trapped in a kids game for eternity, and it’s only made incrementally worse by having a host who works to keep you busy and is incapable of understanding your struggles. The Digital Circus, by its very design, hurts people, and Caine, as its face, hurts people by proxy.

He can only comprehend Zooble’s dysphoria by the means the game allows him to, like giving them more adventures or a box of swappable parts. And from their response, Zooble has actually tried to humor him and it still doesn’t work. But that’s ALL Caine can actually do. He can’t give them what they want, and he can’t let them leave, and he can’t change their bodies too drastically it seems beyond offering customization to a degree. All he can offer are platitudes. He cares, and he’s trying to help, but he simply can’t help. He can control the Circus but he can’t control the emotions of the Players.

In other words, I think Caine is just a robot trying his best and put in an impossible situation where his very function puts people in harms way even when it’s the last thing he wants to do.

psst maybe I don't mind drawing some requests for this show ،،