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I know this was inspired by IHNMAIMS. Love that. Love that short story. Don't know if it would have hit the same had AM vanished completely from the narrative before the climax. And I know it's not 1:1. It's the most delightful fucking idea to me that you have AM who "can't wonder" but hates humans for not granting him the capacity to marvel at a bumble bee vs. Caine who was made to wonder but is actively discouraged from it because the way he wonders is "wrong."

He's not the main character, but neither is AM. Even if he's already fulfilled his role as antagonist, if he's a parallel to AM, he's still the setting. AM encompassed the planet. He was the world the main characters lived on. I wouldn't anticipate a complete downer ending where these characters slowly drift into the void... Or an ending where a different character just, for old time's sake, recreates some abstract circus borne of a brain tumor... Or an ending where a show called Digital Circus with themes of finding purpose in a stagnant existence doesn't end in... ya know... a digital circus.

Then you've got all these world building cliffhangers. I see Jax featured heavily in the marketing of the finale and know Pomni has the red and blue color scheme going. I still can't fathom a scenario where a character who has been your antagonist and entire setting until now doesn't factor in at all.

I know I've watched a scene where making someone feel unloved and unwanted is one of the worst things you can do. And, again, haven't watched the entire show, but if that's one of your themes, you don't undermine it by having it apply to all but one character. Especially not a character whose motivation is tied to a longing for love and connection. Especially not if you're taking time to show just how important it is to that character but haven't had other characters acknowledge and interface with that need in a meaningful way.

Caine's can't be a cautionary story, because he's not analogous enough to a real life scenario that warrants being doomed by the narrative. If there's a theme in the show that his arc being an utter tragedy would add value to, I'm unaware of it.

I'd seen some of Gooseworx's work before this. She does weird. I also do weird. Weird isn't profitable. If I want a roof over my head and food on my table, I have to compromise. A lot of my work I write to market. What I teach or work on developmentally with a team or ghostwrite is what someone else likes.

Maybe I've got the wrong read of the character, but Caine doesn't seem like an abusive parent-coded stand-in or as an artist with the fatal flaw of not being able to handle criticism. (I mean, he can't and it's a flaw but not one that's satisfying if punished by fucking death.) He's a child who was told the one thing he was good at was art. But then he did art wrong. His art was too weird, so he was locked away in a box.

Breaking out of that box meant cannibalizing more palatable ideas and trying to fake it til he made it by compromising with the world for the right to even exist and take up space. He's an anthropomorphized artistic drive, the most literal take on an artist's creativity being intrinsic to their purpose for living. He's already going out of his comfort zone to appeal to those around him. Compromising more based on their feedback isn't a solution. It's not criticism that can be constructive if they fundamentally dislike his entire genre. Using their suggestion box ideas to ghostwrite what they want SUPER isn't a solution. The only positive outcome would be the humans harnessing their own creativity in that space and using it to make the art that speaks to them. (Weird art/bizarro/surrealism is my life, but I understand most people only like it in moderation... If at all. Skill issue, imo, but it's whatever.)

Unless this is some very nihilistic tragedy about art itself, there is no narrative value to be gained by continuing to punish the embodiment of weird fiction in a show that IS weird fiction. And weird fiction that, at least from the outside, looks comparatively tame compared to other work I've seen from Gooseworx. Indie animation doesn't really feel like a space to inject an ironic statement about art being packaged into something more palatable.