Bonbonnière

Because like, we knew he was upset about getting last. We knew he was sad, he was desperate, he was doing everything in his power to get people to pick him as the Favorite. The website got glitchy, full of pop-ups and confirmations that prompted you to tell him yes you were sure you wanted to vote for that character instead of him dozens of times over before he finally relented. Even Glitch posted that render of him looking the saddest we’ve ever seen him, brought to actual tears over his placement. Whether the ads and promos are canon is, of course, debatable - but the point stands that he was upset. He was hurt.

The thing is… the Caine from the favorite character awards and the Caine from episode 8 don’t feel like the same character to me.

Like - yes, in both instances he gets super controlling over the thing that is upsetting him. He takes over the website completely, every portrait of him and him alone, taking away our ability to choose who to vote for; he lashes out at the circus troupe, showing them point blank how powerful he is and that they should be more careful about how they treat him.

But the difference here, I feel, is that with the awards show, it felt manic, desperate. He could tell that his control over the audience was slipping. He got anxious that he was unloved, that every single other person in the competition was worth more attention and praise than him, and so he tried to make himself more appealing to voters - and when that didn’t work, he descended into chaos, pivoting from begging for attention to outright demanding it. But that still came from fear. From a clear and noticeable desire to be loved. To be the favorite.

In episode 8, it’s just… vindictive. It’s sinister, it’s control for control’s sake. Even in the flashbacks - that quick aside of “Seriously.” to Kinger after joking that he better not abstract too? That doesn’t read as lonely and seeking connection to me. It doesn’t feel like the Caine we’ve seen up to this point. This episode doesn’t feel like someone who loves and loves and loves so strongly to the point of destruction, of torment, when he realizes that love is unrequited; it feels like a character crashing out because that’s what the show wants to happen next. It feels like Caine is dropping an act, which I refuse to believe is true.

I don’t think the Caine from episode 8 is really him. I don’t. Whether that’s because he was lashing out because he finally reached his breaking point, and his anger made him act irrationally; whether it’s due to the theory that something else got a hold of his mind, and that terrified moment before deletion is him regaining control of himself and realizing what he’s been made to do; whether it’s all just a result of bad character writing that led me to believe things that were never going to be true; whether it’s fully me standing in front of a corkboard of blurry images and red string and thumbtacks, insisting I’m not crazy.

I don’t know. I’m enjoying all of the new character analysis coming from the episode, and I think examining him the way the show presents him - angry and bitter and vengeful and cruel - has its merits. I do love looking at his actions in episode 8 from the perspective that it makes sense for him to act like this, that this was the logical next step, because it’s sparked some genuinely interesting discussion and deeper examination of character motives and feelings. But I also simultaneously feel like this isn’t right. Like something’s missing, here. Like the character I thought I knew isn’t… actually who he is. And it’s really strange.

I'm know that I'm a person who projects a lot and reads a lot of sympathy into fictional characters I relate to and identify with because it's part of my own psychology ("i want the narrative to give a happy ending for this character because I want the world to give one to me"), and that leads me into getting attached when I shouldn't. But at the same time, I can't shake that feeling that something is wrong, even more than just "we're seeing him at his worst."

White lies 🐝

When Caine spoke his final line, he did NOT realize that he was about to be deleted. He said it because his agency was returned the second it was no longer being used by something else.

Aka a tadc theory for the heap :] With evidence!

One thing TADC does really well is play on the assumptions of the audience. That’s what makes the show nearly impossible to predict. It fills the episodes with all sorts of crazy plot twists that leave the fans collectively saying WTF at the end of every episode.

But of all the episodes that have been released so far, I believe episode 8 is the one with absolutely THE MOST red herrings. I really believe this episode—which works so hard to hammer the audience over the head with the supposed True Nature of “who’s running the show”—is actually the one that does the most heavy lifting in the exact OPPOSITE direction. It feeds the audience members a somewhat ingratiating version of the Amazing Digital Circus’ reality: that Caine (from the very start the obvious suspect for the role of the true antagonist) is all that we suspected and worse.

I believe it’s a lie. Although Caine is certainly an antagonist and nowhere near being innocent or even really benevolent, he’s not the true monster of this story. Because it’s someone else pulling the strings—which is stated quite literally through this scene’s visual language ⬇️

Caine, after his crash out, is laying on the floor before being lifted into the air like some hapless creature scruffed by the neck. The way his shoulders lift off before the rest of him—heck, even the sound design of the scene suggests this visual. Caine is in the clutches of something else. But this isn’t even the scene that first hints at the greater monster.

This is.

At first Caine and Bubble’s dynamic is normal enough. Caine is using Bubble as his sounding board and Bubble, even with his weirdness, is ultimately responding with positive affirmations. “Surely they don’t want to actually leave me…right?” “No way, Jose! No way, no how!”

But then suddenly, the dynamic abruptly shifts. Bubble’s supportive affirmations become antagonistic insults. Seemingly out of nowhere, but the change is actually marked by one specific split-second frame, when something else takes control and asserts its influence over Bubble. Who is very much a puppet to the whims of more advanced AI.

It preys upon Caine during his greatest moment of insecurity and weakness. And just as it did to Bubble, it latches onto the vulnerable areas of Caine’s coding to overwhelm him with its own influence. All to the same outward symptoms:

Glitching. After this, Caine’s emotions and impulses are being controlled by the unknown entity. Whoever it is, they have likely been using Bubble as their vehicle of influence for a while now. And they use Bubble during Caine’s own villain song, as though to wink in the direction of who’s really running the show. He hovers ominously around the ringmaster during these specific lyrics:

“To which degree who answers to who.”

Caine was unwittingly answering to someone else ever since the crash out scene in his office. He didn’t even realize that he wasn’t in control until the exact moment that his deletion was confirmed by the unknown entity’s tampering of Kinger’s computer. That was the moment that the entity no longer required control of Caine. The moment when all of its efforts paid off, and the madness that it induced in Caine drove the humans to get rid of the AI that stood in its way. And when it finally released its grip on Caine, he immediately recoils from hurting the cast. He makes this expression.

It’s not actually the fear of his deletion. It’s the face he makes when the entity’s claws retract from his code and he regains his own self agency. In that split second, he sees in vivid colors the torture that he has put the cast through, too horrendous for even his own flawed attempts at entertainment. Probably, this moment of clarity is the entity’s very last act of revenge against Caine. As Caine’s VA himself revealed, Caine is thinking,

“What have I done?”

And then he is gone. Leaving something else room to take the stage….