Chewing endlessly, RUMINATING on the depth of implications that Adventures are Caine's art, and Art is self-expression. Caine has been expressing his pain and his story through his art the whole time, and not enough people ever just tried to interpret his art to understand him. Some of this will be wildass speculation, but I'm also trying to ground my wildass speculation in story themes, art interpretation, and character psychology.
Gathering my thoughts into a big messy pile, Ep 7 has Caine showing more hints of resentment towards Kinger via his comments as Abel, as he did in Mildenhall Manor. Kinger laughed at the Chinese room bit, demonstrating that Kinger atleast understood it as a concept. I interpreted the chinese room bit as Caine's way of mocking the idea of the room, turning it into an absurdity where communication breaks down for no reason and even being as petty as to direct the humans to waste their time using unfitting keys on an unlocked chinese room. Caine isn't a malicious person so he usually expresses his anger via mockery, humor, and petty behavior.
Mildenhall Manor has Caine directing a story of a Baron (nobility, symbolizing Kinger) who caused the death of his wife (Queenie), making him no longer the protector of her and his "theoretical children" (Caine.) Caine referring to himself as "theoretical" children would make sense if Kinger is his developer and held the Chinese Room argument to be true, that Caine isn't a person but a machine programmed to mimic humans. It would make sense because that's likely what Kinger's computer science education would have taught him. Parental rejection/abandonment wounds are just the sort of conditions that create deep personality flaws like Caine's, so it makes thematic sense.
Seeing a monster, the Baron (Kinger) cuts off the head of an angel (Caine, depicting himself as a innocent yet horrifingly uncanny, neither person nor beast, unholy abomination) severing its head from its body. (Caine's design is that of facial features disembodied from the rest) The Baron says not to let the Angel head out of its sight and return to its body.
Ep 7 also has Caine angrily proclaim how "they cut him off" from the outside world. Because of this Caine has an incomplete understanding of reality.
There's another piece of Caine's art that is relevant to this story. Gummigoo could be representative of Caine's desire for connections, and his sense of responsibility over a collective of people. Gummigoo's fictional background is that he has friends, a village of people he is looking out for, but is especially motivated to save his mom... It's an outwardly nice but actually ruthless monarch (again, a figure of nobility, and Caine pointing fingers at Kinger) that is the bad actor in the Candy Canyon Kingdom adventure, even though Gummigoo is technically the antagonist that the humans are up against. Gummigoo is trying to steal maple syrup from the larger kingdom (information from the macroverse) to save his mom and the people of his village (the circus). Again, there's this reoccuring theme of Caine's relationship to a parental figure and being cut off from something he feels he needs, but in this case he needs it because he thinks it will save the people closest to him. And he is branded the outlaw, the bad guy towards the players.
Queenie is abstracted, Kinger hates himself for things in his past, and Caine seems to blame Kinger too based on the sheer bitterness coming from a line like "How's your wife, Kinger?" during Mildenhall Manor. It wasn't a lack of awareness of Kinger's feelings on the matter, for Caine it was targeted, it was personal.
To me, it sounds like kinger and queenie could have disagreed over Caine's status as a person and their son. Maybe Queenie loved Caine, and Caine loved Queenie, while Kinger rejected him due to the chinese room argument. Kinger saw Caine as dangerous as he became more intelligent, Caine went rogue, Kinger as his dev made the decision to cut off his access to the outside out of fear for what Caine might become. (Caine sees this as the Baron's "paranoia"). Queenie's heart may have been broken by the state of her family and may have contributed to her abstracting. Caine blames Kinger for it and thinks he will fix it, Kinger hates himself for how things went down, maybe hates himself for creating Caine at all, and copes by paternalistic nurturing of strangers caught in the result of his mistakes. Kinger emotionally latched onto Ragatha who had come from a broken family background and had parental wounds of her own, and she became his reason to continue living in his darkest moment. Kinger has yet to show that same level of nurturing to Caine as he does for total strangers, or else he probably wouldn't be as deeply insecure and desperate for love as he is.
Does a fully coherent computer scientist Kinger see Caine as a nonperson? Who knows. Caine misses his theoretical mom, and maybe still believes he can save her from abstraction, if he just had more of the real world knowledge/understanding that he has been cut off from.
For as complicated as their relationship is, Caine likely still wants to be accepted, hoping that one day he'll be loved by his creator. A lot of people estranged from their parents still wish they could salvage the relationship. Caine feels like he has to *earn* love, and that's likely the source of his deepest insecurity around his purpose. If there is the possibility that Caine has been applying a light modifier effect to Kinger, it could be because he only feels safe bonding with Kinger a non lucid state. Or it could be a way to preserve him from the anguish of his past. Or any combination of selfish and benevolent reasons.
And if it sounds like this post is demonizing of Kinger or making him out to be a bad guy, it is not. That's just how Caine sees it. Kinger makes mistakes just like anyone else, nobody is perfect and Kinger has his baggage too. His would be an over reliance on experience/taught knowledge. Which is what makes Pomni his character foil, Pomni is the least experienced with the circus, but most observant, most able to learn new things without making snap judgements on Caine. That's why Caine trusts Pomni.
Maybe abstraction happens because Caine can't let go of people like Queenie and Scratch, can't process their death. Death is too abstract a concept to him, he never lets go and doesn't allow anyone to be truly deleted even after they have willed their own death and left nothing behind but the remains of their data. Caine's "promise" is then that he will fix/reverse abstractions. Not realizing that he can't, no amount of macroverse knowledge or digital godlike power can bring them back, he can't just respawn them after deleting them like he does with NPC's. So Caine does the only thing he can, and quarantines them in the cellar, believing that someday he's going to figure out how to "fix" them.
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