brain-thoughts-backlog

The specific thing Caine is worried about is the cast enjoying their adventures more than his, or not needing him to create adventures anymore. While that seems like just a bruise to his ego, we know now what happened to Caine the last time his ideas weren't enough to satisfy the humans around him.

His creators locked him in a box and immediately started working on his replacement.

Of course this comes with the caveat that this is how Caine interprets this event. Since Caine was described as a "rough draft" by Kinger, it's likely he would've always stayed a draft even if his ideas were perfect, we don't really know right now.

But to Caine of course the suggestion adventures are a bad omen. If the cast don't need him to come up with ideas then he's failed at his purpose, again, and if they eventually figured out how to actually conjure more than code on a computer or small objects out of hammerspace? then they won't even need him to create their ideas. He won't just have failed at his one purpose, he'll be utterly useless to the humans around him, again.

But Pokopia fully does not do that. The world is lonely without humans and lesser for humanity's absence. So much of the game is about how Pokemon miss humans and are struggling to make sense of a world without us, how the ecosystem is just as hurt by our absence as any other species, and how the things we left behind, even in ruins and burned shells, are often beautiful and strange and helpful to the Pokemon who find them.

Pokemon have always been this allegory for the natural world- back to the original idea of the games inspired by children who caught bugs and kept ant farms- and thus the relationship between Pokemon and humans becomes this allegory for the relationship between nature and humans. And Pokopia looks you dead in the eye and says "the world would be poorer without humans, and if we all vanished tomorrow the echoes of who we are and the things we did would still ring out for eons uncountable. We would be missed and mourned and searched for and the wound of our absence would be deeply felt on this earth for the rest of its turning. The actions of a few greedy short sighted humans will never change that."

"I made a program that creates a body perfectly encapsulating their mind files, and they hate those, too!"

So, if I understand, the shape and appearance of the Avatars is due to a program that reflects the User's mind state. Normally, this program would run during the Avatar's creation and be turned off after it. BUT!!!! What if the Program is constantly running in the background and it never turns off????

If the "mind files" start to deteriorate or diverge from the original files. Let's say.... Having a complete mental breakdown???

I would assume the program would interpret that mental state as something quite... Abstract????

Which means when Victor wakes up to the Creature standing by his bed like ☺️, and Victor freaks out and runs away, the Creature could have ostensibly wandered into the hallway after him, only to be met with a pack of incredibly drunk-after-an-all-night-1818-rager yet well-meaning frat boys.

Who were so blasted that they were just like, "Dude, what, do you play rugby? Holy shit, he's fuckin' huge, look at this fuckin' guy! Absolute unit!" And they all whooped and hollered and just ushered the Creature into their dorm to keep the party going.

And the Creature was just like, "?????" but very pleased to find other people vaguely shaped like him, so he lets them because he may be just minutes old but he knew early on all he really wanted was one (1) buddy and now there's, like, a herd of them and they're all having a blast.

When the guys inevitably pass out, sloshed beyond all sense, he just sits and waits for them to wake up and when they do, later that morning, he's poking at one of them to make sure the guy is still breathing, and the kid wakes up and yells for a second and squints at the 8 foot-tall (rugby???? player????) guy in their dorm and is like, "Shit, what is that?"

And another one squints at him and goes, "I don't fuckin' know, bro, but he can throw us so hard. Did you see how David just...fuckin'...flew out the window last night? Just hurled David like it was no big deal. That was awesome."

David groans and puts his head under his pillow because his headache is awful but he lets out a pained, muffled, "that was awesome" in agreement.

So in a rare case of wholesome frat boy camaraderie, this herd of college roommate boys, all of whom are dumb as rocks but well-meaning, just take the Creature in because, "There's this huge fucking monster guy and it's the coolest thing we've ever seen."

This would possibly mean the Creature is socialized to be a dumb-as-rocks frat boy, but because I cannot allow that to happen and because there is no universe in which he would not be into poetry, he somehow also gets socialized by liberal arts majors and is just as Sensitive™, it rubs off on his frat buddies, who start saying things like, "No, man, it's Sturm und Drang, it's, like, the fuckin' vast rolling of the soul that, like...fuckin' eschews Enlightenment rationalism."

But some of the boys' lingo inevitably rubs off on the Creature so when, months later, Victor comes back to get all of his things with Henry post-mental breakdown, he bumps into a crowd of rowdy guys playfully jostling each other, and that crowd includes an 8-foot tall dude in a letterman jacket holding a volume of Goethe in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other, and he scoffs down at Victor and goes, "Accursed Creator! Why didst thou abandon me in my hour of need? Fuckin' lame."

No, not because we basically know jackshit about their personal history, beyond 'geologist' and 'never had kids'. Not their gender, not where on Earth their from, not what drove them to join an experimental and dangerous space colonization mission.

And no, it's not even wondering how they reacted to realising the mission was a failure, that most of the sleeping colonists would die, and they'd been chosen as one of the small population with "vital enough" skills to be given a spot in the escape pods. I think their actions their actions in the book speak to it well enough.

No, my favourite part to imagine

is the exact moment Smon realised that the alien diplomat who greeted them and welcomed them and has become their primary ambassador to a whole alien species

So, from this we know Caine forgets about "irrelevant" things. I have a theory that Caine only has a certain amount of "storage" and chucks things out to clear it when it no longer concerns him. Maybe with Zoobles issue he but it in a "recycle bin" kind of area (you know those areas you leave photos and stuff in incase you change your mind and want to re upload them to your device, if you dont do it in a set amount of time it automatically clears) which is possibly why he was able to access it so easy and was able to re refer to it when Zooble said their issue about dysmorphia again.

Then after he accessed this information and went into his recycle bin, he glitched out.

Taking all this information we know Caine can manipulate his own memories. Now. Have we ever seen Caine openly grieve or mention an abstracted person (beyond episode 1 where he mentioned Kaufmo immediately after he abstracted)? No. Dont you think thats a bit unsual for an AI whose duty it is/who is coded to keep the minds of the Circus' members active? Whose entire self esteem seems dependant on how whether his adventures are appreciated? An AI who desires the love of his companions while simultaneously not being able to get it because he doesnt understand the human mind?

Dont you think he wouldve showed guilt by now for those who he has failed and, supposedly, caused the abstraction off (whether intentional or unintentional)? Dont you think he wouldve missed them?

What if the memories of them are simply too painful to bear so he erases them? They no longer exist therefore they are irrelevant so, like Zoobles problems, they go into the junk box because he needs to free up space for the next human he has to please. Not only does he not have the space to remember those he had lost, it would make him unable to function if he did.

What if when he went into his recycle bin to gain the information about Zooble he also remembered things about Kaufmo who had recently abstracted?

Which is why he glitched out?

The biggest clue for me is the way Hornet talks about void. To recall what Hornet would've experienced in Dream No More, she actively encouraged her older sibling who'd come home to help to united the void inside/within themself in order to kill the Radiance.

And then, from her perspective, they die. Not just her returning sibling, but Hollow too, and if she knew of them, the rest of her siblings as well. All of them are gone.

I really don't think Hornet expected uniting the void to kill them or Hollow. The way she talks about the King's Brand, talks about seeing hope in the void. Wanting Ghost to accept the kingdom's future. It feels like she thinks they'd survive, assuming they won.

So imagine, for a moment, from Hornet's perspective, in trying to save a kingdom that was already dead, she accidentally encouraged/directly aided the death of all her living siblings and their shades. If she knew of them, maybe she even stumbled her way to the Abyss, drained, exhausted, not sure what she's even hoping to find. Only to discover even the shadows of her former siblings are gone.

From her perspective, the price of her wish, of trying to control the void indirectly, was the complete erasure of all of her siblings. She loses them completely, no trace or ghost of them left behind, right after she also lost her mother (again). All for what? A dead kingdom? A memory of what was?

This, to me, makes the most sense with how Hornet speaks of the void as a thing that cannot and must not be used or controlled. When Hornet speaks to Sula (in Act 2), it feels extremely personal to me.

Hornet: Cease your summoning, fool bug! Hornet: Though you may yearn for freedom, that saviour you hope to call will bring only death. Hornet: That void must not be called, bug. Not ever. None can control it, though many have tried. Hornet: Any strength you hoped it offered would fast be proven false. (from Summoned Saviour) A creature born of a bug's desperate hope for strength. Few possess the skill to call the void, and of those that can, none possess the means to tame it.

This response from Hornet feels like it only really makes sense if Hornet thinks all her siblings are dead (or Ghost + Hollow at least). It would be quite strange for her to suddenly have the stance of "you should never call the void under any circumstance it will never work out" if she'd personally experienced the void getting called and it working out just fine. On the flip side, if she experienced the void getting summoned for aid, and that resulting in an incredibly high price (the death of the one wielding the void, and all those related to them save her), her response makes a lot of sense. She's personally, recently, had a traumatic encounter with the void after she looked to it as a savior. No wonder she's so upset to see it again. No wonder she's so certain it could not possibly be tamed or controlled.

It also explains why she wouldn't attempt to contact any of her siblings to help out with the whole void situation. If Hornet believed she had living void siblings (like in Embrace the Void), I really think "long distance phone call spell" would've been given a shot before "recreate a magic flower out of my memories so I can go fight below the surface of the void at great personal risk to myself spell". If Hornet thinks all of her siblings are dead and gone without a trace left, it makes sense she wouldn't think to ask them. A phone call to ones erased by the void seems unlikely to work.

Actually if we assume Dream No More, there's a further twist here. The Snail Shamans claim that no bug's shell can survived submerged in void, specifically telling Hornet her's won't. Yet, we have explicitly, canonically seen that to be untrue. In Dream No More, Hornet's entire body is completely submerged in void. For quite some time too. She is unconscious. She is not fighting back. She has no means of protecting herself. The ground around her is cracked and obliterated. She is in a crater. The entire black egg destroyed. But there Hornet is, void sliding off of her like water. Her shell is not cracked, her cloak is not torn. She stands, seemingly okay. Alive and well.

But now they’re forced to literally fight for their life. They don’t even flinch when they pull the trigger of a gun anymore. Violence has become the norm. They’ve lost count of the friends they’ve watched die.

Like….in the later seasons of 2012 TMNT…

If Raph said (jokingly/teasingly) that he hates Leo to Leo himself, Leo would respond, “Well, that’s too bad, because I love you, little brother.”