Fanfic Writer & Artist

wait hear me out-

ok so not to forcefully adopt this idea as an au from @katzebruh or anything (because i'm unreasonably insane about it for some reason, literally a dozen other caine-centric AUs out there that are infinitely more complex and compelling and i picked this one, fuck it dawg we ball) but my headcanon is that caine genuinely was testing out modifiers and accidentally fucked up forever, if i had a nickel- and he's super conflicted about it...

because on one hand... he's a silly cat furry thing now and literally whats not to love? the humans like it and admittedly doing kitty things is really nice sometimes! chin scritches have never felt so good, honestly he would figure out how to get rid of it sooner if everyone wasn't enjoying it so much!

on the other hand... yikes... an unfixable bug? one that screws with his brain? stop me if you've heard this one before-

So Ragatha has long been associated with knives-

Her character introduction video depicts her getting a meat cleaver thrown at her head, she gets stabbed multiple times in the show, and official merch frequently depicts her with a knife in some fashion. And in pretty much all these instances, her reaction is pretty nonchalant, implying that being stabbed doesn't cause her all that much pain. Her official pin even shows her happily waving while having a knife sticking out of her! From that, we can glean that it probably doesn't cause her much pain at all. I mean, she's a doll, how much is she realistically going to feel? Besides, she doesn't look bothered. She wouldn't be smiling if it really hurt, right?

Well, about that...

In Episode 8, we get a glimpse of what Ragatha's home life was like following her description of it in Episode 5. We see here her own mother being depicted as a looming shadow and watch as the knives begin moving all on their own, lodging themselves into Ragatha who is not smiling this time. With no one around to be strong for, we see just how much this is actually hurting her. She starts shaking when the first knife cuts through her hand and grimaces in pain with each accompanying one. By the end, she's so utterly paralyzed with fear that she doesn't even register that she's being stabbed anymore.

Now, Ragatha has never stated outright that her home life involved physical abuse and it's pretty unlikely that her mother was launching knives at her every night, so what we're seeing here is almost certainly metaphorical on some level. We're meant to understand that the knives are a visual metaphor for the abuse she experienced at the hands of her mother- regardless of whether or not her mother physically attacked her, Ragatha perceived every cruel word, every harsh criticism, and every insult as yet another stab in the heart. To put it simply, the knives are symbolic of abuse. With that in mind, the previous depictions of Ragatha being stabbed feel quite different now.

Though she's acting like it doesn't hurt, we know now that she does. She feels it.

She felt all of it.

But she's very good at acting like she didn't. Based on what we know of her background, she likely has a lot of practice hiding pain beneath smiles. Because of that, she established herself as someone strong, someone who can handle just about anything thrown her way, and thus someone that the others don't need to worry about. While we know that Kinger, Zooble, and Pomni all care for her, they're all so used to thinking of her as "the strong one" that much of the time they don't even register when she's been hurt, with Pomni and Zooble typically choosing to devote their attention to those they believe to be more in need of it (Jax and Gangle, respectively.)

Whether they realize it or not, this group is extremely dependent on Ragatha's quiet emotional labor. I mean hell, we all saw how awkward everybody got when she opened up in Episode 5! They're all so used to thinking of Ragatha as someone they don't need to worry about that they don't know how to respond when shown evidence to the contrary. And in Episode 8, we see her at her absolute breaking point, no longer able to keep a smile on her face and pretend she's alright for the sake of the group. And from what we've seen of Episode 9...

...she's not looking any better.