my problem is I think I'm clever

‘Caine’s life sucks and he has spent his whole existence trying and failing to make things that humans like, and he’s incredibly lonely, so it makes sense that after failing and being rejected over and over again he would reach some kind of breaking point.’

Correct!

‘Therefore the humans kind of deserved it when he tortured them.’

In episode 2, Pomni ends up seeing personhood in an NPC, fully aware he was Created and different from the other Circus members, but made a personal connection anyway. This would have easily been a gateway to seeing further depth in Caine himself - if Caine's creations have personhood despite never having been human, it's easy to accept that something made by humans can be a person too!

He's dead. He doesn't get to see the end, he doesn't get to learn, he doesn't... He doesn't get that. Kinger misclicked, and he's dead and gone. He is erased from reality and all he can say before it happens is "wait-" because he needed more time to adjust he needed more time he needed an ending or closure or anything but he doesn't. Get it. He doesn't get it and it's awful and he was awful but he didn't deserve to die like that.

I finally decided to do a character-by-character transposition of that final screen to copy down EVERYTHING we can glean, and noticed something interesting.

For those unfamiliar with Command Line Interface (CLI), it uses a fixed-width font, so every letter is the same length. This allows us to count how long certain words are, even if we can't read the whole thing.

Additionally, users are defined as <username>@<domain>. You'll be familiar with your email address following the same pattern, and in this case it's kinger@circus. Any lines he types start with "kinger@circus:~$" to show who it is, where they are, the ~ means it's the home directory (not relevant), and the $ indicates the system was waiting for his prompt.

The system output lines starting with "$:" isn't realistic, as lines printed by the system usually start without any prefix. I think the $: was added for the sake of making it clear to viewers when the system was responding to Kinger.

If you look throughout every CLI segment in episode 8, almost every single line begins with either "kinger@circus:~$ " (17 characters long), or "$: " (3 characters long). I found exactly one that doesn't, though. It's very obscured so we don't see most of it, but this is the best shot I could find:

The "DELETE THIS M***********" line has a prefix 8 characters long that doesn't match any other line. It looks like all caps, if we make it a "fill-in-the-blanks", it really looks like "____LE: "

I don't think it's a stretch to say that was "BUBBLE" giving his opinion on that line.

Following that assumption, here's everything I could recover from that last couple seconds in the CLI (except I didn't bother with trying to format the WACKYTIME_LOCKOUT progress bars), using # to show the characters that aren't at all visible.

$: System selecting SAFEST option for stability $: Cancel automatic selection [Y/N] kinger@circus:~$ Y WACKYTIME_LOCKOUT: 50% loaded $: Which backup do you want? [A/B/C] kinger@circus:~$ C $: NONE selected! Interpreted as: DELETE###############NONE! $: Confirm deletion of current unstable############## kinger@circus:~$ N $: Negative response! Inverting to NEGATIVE per emergency protocols! BUBBLE: DELETE THIS M***, HAHAHAhahahaaaaaaaa kinger@circus:~$ N WACKYTIME_LOCKOUT: 80% $: IGNORED! Proceeding with ORIGINAL d########### $: Actually you're CONFUSED let me HELP #####nt module to EXIST? [Y/N] kinger@circus:~$ Y $: override instruction error falling back to default metric kinger@circus:~$ ./Switcheroo_realti### --daemon --target torment_injection & $: fusion --b####program1 program2 --####on $: Are you sure you want to delete caine? [Y/N] WACKYTIME_LOCKOUT: 90% loaded kinger@circus:~$ Y kinger@circus:~$./|ABORT Rollback --depth=1 --force --protocol G WVJI kinger@circus:~$ ^C DESTRUCTIVE WACKYTIME Lockout Load Sequence: COMPLETE

Perspective Practice.

also an extra excuse to show off my eyeball skills!!

THEY RELEASED THE COYOTE VS ACME TRAILER !!!!!

WE WON !!!

ONCE AGAIN. MAJOR SPOILERS. MAJOR. /MAJOR/

Also, word of warning to literally any post ever: Do not look at the comments section or reblogs of a spoiler "keep reading" post

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And like, yes media literacy. Trust me as a major Caine fan (and a minor Ragatha fan) I very much get it about people misreading things or only taking things at surface level value. Goodness knows I've found that frustrating when it comes to the broad fandom takes on some things regarding my favorite pair of Disaster Dentures

But I do genuinely think the way the "Blue Removal" scene was played out was... well it could have been done better. You have a guy act visibly emotionally erratic on screen, have him painfully remove something from his head, then he acts calmer/ more stable. I know it was far from the intent but what it brings to mind is something like a lobotomy.

Or that really annoying trope where the neurodivergent coded (usually robot) character seems immediately "fixed" and more understanding of humans and better regulated and better able to fit in the group by changing something in their "brain".

It does not help that Caine looked like he was arguing with another "personality" before it was removed. Not a great look for those who are Systems/ Plural.

Like I know none of that was the intent. But the way things were presented, that is very much what it immediately looked and felt like. Sort of just the way things were presented, and the order they were presented in created accidental Unfortunate Implications.

I do think the actual intent genuinely could have been communicated better. Not to have it spooned to us, of course. That is not what I'm asking for. But to have the actual intent of the scene communicated in a way that does not accidentally but strongly imply some rather nasty things about those who are Neurodivergent.

Scratch had a tumor. a brain tumor. with it being suggested that his bizarre ideas may've been influenced by the presence of the tumor in his head. the tumor obviously doesn't have a mind or will of its own but its presence still influences the host.

so to me it made sense that the BlueAI had been Caine's figurative brain tumor. it made sense that he stabilized and stopped glitching after it was removed.

I do see how it could've been better if he'd pulled it out of his heart, as one user suggested. Or his gut, or heck his mouth. But honestly I didn't have a problem with him pulling it out of his head.

What I did have a problem with was that whole Gollum-and-Smeagol moment, yeah. The visuals of the story had never before been coded to give the impression of two different personalities arguing, so I don't think that was the intent here, but it definitely comes across that way for this scene. Something needed to change there.

I think we should've seen him glitch before this moment. maybe when he first realizes he's in the void, that his worst fear has come to pass. Maybe when he questions whether this is what he deserves. maybe when he questions who is in the wrong. maybe he only stops glitching when he mentally shuts down upon realizing that he must've ruined things again.

then have his whole Jacob's Ladder moment play out as written, because I do think it's important that he doesn't stop being zany only when the BlueAI is removed; it's important that this is what he's like when he's alone, with no one to impress.

After his line about free will, introduce the glitching again, but make one small change: instead of having the glitches be the precursor for emotional shifts, have the emotional shifts be the precursor for glitching. And don't have the red and blue eyes remain static for whole lines of dialogue when they never have before, they should still appear but they shouldn't stay. Make it clear that this is one person's internal conflict made external, not an argument between two.

Because it's also important that Caine doesn't remove the BlueAI until after he's resolved his inner conflict. It's important that he reaches that conclusion while it's still in his head. It's important that he didn't fight it to do so. It's important that Caine's fear-born animosity was his own, and that he puts it to rest himself. I really do think that his "they already did" line is him letting go of his fear of failure, which is the reason he consumed the BlueAI in the first place. Because yes, they killed him, his worst fear came to pass...and it led to him learning so much more about them and rediscovering why he loved them in the first place.

MR. SPIRO: Do you give these lectures at all of your depositions? MR. BANKSTON: I do, and you can watch them.

is ESPECIALLY hilarious to me having listened to multiple depositions Mark has had to take in the Sandy Hook case, where he has needed to lecture EVERY. SINGLE. ATTORNEY. at some point in the case about how they're violating Texas Rule XYZ, because they all, to a one, did something seriously ethically questionable during the deposition.

But wait, there’s more!