I just can't say goodnight ☀️

In the abstraction flashbacks, you can hear the wall go up. When Jax first arrives in the circus, her voice sounds, well, human. But after that night with Ribbit, the Raggedy Andy impression gets stronger & stronger, symbolising Jax hiding behind a false persona.

With Caine, it goes the other way. I think it’s important to note that we mostly see Caine drop his “cartoon” voice when he’s NOT with the humans. It’s much less pronounced when he’s talking to Bubble in his office in ep 8. It’s barely there when he’s first alone in the void in ep 9, and it’s basically cast aside when he’s talking things through with himself/his brother after he learns more about the wider world.

I’m not saying that Caine isn’t naturally wacky — of course he is! But it’s not like people usually make their masks out of whole cloth. Rather, we hide behind parts of ourselves. We take a small part of our personality and use it to shield the rest. But that’s not really all that we are.

Caine made his world a circus. He put on a show. Now he can finally unmask and be his full self.

Now yes, when he first appears he is clearly walking on eggshells. The last time he saw them, if you’ll recall, he physically and psychologically tortured everyone. But Zooble (and it’s important that it’s them in particular) says that they’re glad to have him back. They follow him to the stage to accept his olive branch.

Pomni choosing to keep her circus name feels like a bit of an olive branch as well: accepting the circus for what it is and, by extension, accepting Caine and the place he has had and will have in their lives.

After that, the final montage is progressing through stages of the group healing and coming together:

• Caine taking notes, listening, nodding along, feeling overwhelmed and nervous to stand up for himself. If this remained static, I would understand the issue, but it’s step one. He needs to catch up on his listening skills. He needs to learn how to put the needs of others before his own sometimes. It makes sense to go too far the other way at first as you’re building trust and making up for past mistakes (sorry to my own url I guess haha but it’s possible that mayyyybe he did one or two things wrong, actually)

• Playing D&D, clearly invited to take part. Gangle reaching out and making Caine feel welcome. She has some experience with masking herself and I’m sure she knows from experience that roleplaying games are a great way to open up and let loose in a safe setting when you’re having trouble doing that irl. When Caine rolls that 12, you can see that Ragatha & Pomni are tense at first. They’re worried about what might happen if Caine gets upset and, truly, that’s fair! But he has the cutest little crashout ever and they can laugh about it together, with Ragatha clearly comforting him and Gangle sticking to her guns as DM, which tbh seems like an act of trust — not treating him different from the others and giving him a safe space to practice negative emotions in. And Caine doesn’t hold that disappointment back — the way his model stretches here feels like that cartoon side of him coming out organically. He’s clearly expressing himself honestly here, I see no mask.

• Gangle bonding with him over art, inviting him to draw with her. They are in her room here, she’s letting Caine into her private space. Again, that’s a sign of trust. From the sketches around the room, it looks like they were drawing together — Caine’s bees are here. But Gangle has a more developed understanding of drawing, I would anrgue, and the way Caine is leaning in with his whole chest, he’s curious about it and wants to learn from her. The first page she shows him is a full comic — we know Caine loves telling stories, so I could see him being interesting in putting his bees into situations, but not being sure how panel layout etc. works. The fact that he probably asked her for help is huge, honestly. He was so afraid to show weakness, to admit that there were things he couldn’t do, so afraid to be bad at anything because he had so much trauma around being cast out for Getting It Wrong. Admitting that there’s something he wants help with shows that this trust flows both ways — he’s not worried that Gangle will think less of him for not being perfect at art. Gangle’s mask is fully down in this scene too: she’s getting visibly excited, going “oh wait, I need to show you this too!” they’re both sitting on the floor together. Come ON this is adorable! Their body language is screaming “friends who are comfortable around each other”

• Softball scene is just funnyyyy, i was crying so hard i needed a laugh okay? But also yea softball is clearly significant to Ragatha and we saw earlier how she reached out to Gangle by teaching it to her. Now Caine is a part of that, down on the diamond and not just watching from above.

• Building up trust with Zooble was almost certainly a major endeavour. With most of the circus cast, Caine simply never built any trust at all. With Zooble, he broke their trust. See: the therapy session. He *was* probably masking around them for a while after he came back, really trying to not make them mad. I think it might have even taken Zooble a minute to not get upset at Caine over little things that reminded them of the past, even when it wasn’t really fair in the moment. But this scene at the bar shows that this arc has a happy ending! Zooble remembered his drink from They All Get Guns, they’re leaning into their avatar gimmick using extra arms to bartend like a champ, they slide that drink over and it was made just for him and from Caine’s face that’s clearly a significant step for them! The beginning of a proper friendship. • I’m sorry but there’s no way to square that final shot at the dinner table with the “Caine’s a nervous wreck masking and walking on eggshells forever” take. He and Ragatha are both leaning in toward each other, Caine is the one doing most of the talking, highly animated, smiling, taking up space, getting a genuine laugh. He’s finally become a part of the group. He has friends. It’s real.

And that’s all before the end credits my GOODNESS! Matching Xmas sweaters, gloink ornaments on the tree, jumping into Gangle’s arms when he gets scared of a monster on an adventure, EVERYONE EXPLORING THE DIFFRRENT WORLDS TOGETHER, and the final image we get of the digital world being Caine proudly putting an orb on display. It warms my heart, okay? I love it so much! 🥹

I was incredibly nervous for episode 9, on a Caine level. I was so ready to accept crumbs and be content to bolster them with fix-it fics. And then Goose went ahead and made all of my brightest hopes and dreams for this boy CANON BAYBEEEE!

At the end of the day, I think that my fellow Caine stans deserve to be happy. We were all correct about him being a sweet, little guy who was always coming from a good place, even if he was maybe, arguably, SOMEWHAT misguided once or twice… (sorry, old habits ;-) )

So yeah, that’s my personal take on it. Feel free to continue to disagree, and thank you for reading all the way to the end no matter how you feel.