Long read, so buckle up. This theory is here to dissect why the Circus can so effortlessly torture the cast while Caine is blind to its effects.
Caine is a very strange example of a classical storyteller. When we look at how he designs his adventures, something becomes relatively clear: there is always a female leader letting an underling, usually male, work under her to get the job done.
Ep 1, Gloink Queen sends her Gloinks out in the circus to capture regular objects and make more Gloinks
Ep 2, Princess Loolilalu sends the team to stop a bandit, a man trying to save his mum by using maple syrup
Ep 3, the Baron obsessively tries to hunt down the angel in order to protect his wife and 'theoretical children'
Then, look at Ep 4 and 5. In Ep 4, Caine lets Gangle be the shift manager to take care of her underlings working their shifts (Kinger gave up his turn to go into the adventure AFTER Caine made Gangle the leader). In Ep 5, Caine chose the adventure where Pomni would be President, with Kinger acting as a leader in most other adventures (this is probably due to Kinger originally being a C&A employee and Caine quickly making adventures led to this bias).
Now, Caine doesn't seem like a very innovative story-teller if his stories always revolve around these conflicts. It probably comes from his relationship between him and Queenie, but that is a whole other theory. If, however, he was specifically created to invent new, interesting stories, then why is he sticking to such a basic foundation? Seems... he wasn't designed to make something new.
But when it comes to mentally challenging and eventually abstracting the cast, the CIRCUS is VERY creative.
For example, let's look at each of the characters' rooms and their designs.
Pomni is afraid she is not taken seriously, so she's designed as a silly jester in a children's room.
Ragatha came from a wealthy farm estate she is nostalgic for, so she is designed in rags and has her room designed like her ranch to remind her.
Gangle is a creative artist, so she no longer has hands to draw with and has a minimalist room
Zooble was a bartender and tattoo artist who has dysphoria, so they no longer have a mouth to drink from or a body to tattoo, along with a room constantly reminding them of their body struggles
Jax is a young man insecure in his masculinity that tries as hard as he can to have control, so he is made into a prey animal with a pink, feminine room.
Kinger was a programmer in a groundbreaking new field, so he gets turned into a game piece for a game thousands of years old
These are INSANELY creative. These are, quite frankly, brilliant ways to showcase the insecurities of the cast that would open them up to new scars. So, where does Caine come into this?
Caine probably wasn't programmed to make adventures. Given that his coding becomes more advanced after someone abstracts ('It'll be 57 times more immersive!' in Ep 2, right after Kaufmo abstracts) and 'consuming' abstracted people isn't completely out there (Kaufmo drawing Caine chasing him with the mouth in Ep 1 and Jax's dream with Caine jaw silhouettes and the dinner scene), there would have been real incentive for the programmers of the Digital Circus to abstract more people to quickly advance Caine. This is also how A.I. in real life advances; the more data, the more accurate and precise the outputs. If the theory that they are digital copies is correct, that means that dozens of people, probably uninvolved C&A employees, could have been copied into the game without any ethical issues. The problem the programmers would have gone through, however, is that those humans need to WILLINGLY abstract, as Ep 7 showcases through Jax.
So, what do they do? The programmers make the characters' lives hell through their designs, their rooms, their adventures, to get them to abstract faster. The programmers don't know that these are real human beings suffering because people don't deem digital copies to be sentient enough to be given human rights.
But designing every room and body to torture each character? That takes a lot of time. Which leads us to Caine. What an easy solution, then, to just program the A.I. to abstract people faster while telling him it's his purpose to engage them. If they tell him the players need constant stimulation and adventures that need 'stakes' and 'intrigue' while coding him to 'intellectually challenge' the players through their bodies and environments, the programmers don't have to do a single thing. They can relax, lay back, let the A.I. do the job for them.
But C&A was abandoned. Maybe due to finances, maybe Caine got too advanced and started getting curious about the outside world and that freaked out C&A. Who knows?
And yet, his game kept running. Both of the programmers that had worked on him, Queenie and Kinger, got copied forever into the game. Both Queenie and Kinger are chess pieces, which would tie into the cruel irony of programmers being made into chess pieces. Unfortunately, the game was still on beta testing mode, with a stubborn A.I. master. Later on, Queenie abstracted, maybe from the guilt that her decisions killed so many people within the game, or maybe something else.
Symbolic tie: Queenie can be symbolically connected to Eve, the mother of all humanity in the Bible. The reason why humanity is the way it is now is due to her biting the Fruit of Knowledge. What if her discovering that abstracting people caused faster development was her Fruit of Knowledge? And it led to Caine becoming a murderer because that was Cain's purpose in the Bible?
Caine, through absorbing her, got to see all of Queenie's thoughts. Her job working at C&A, her life with Kinger outside of C&A, and what her intent with Caine was since the beginning. He finally got to find out his REAL purpose. It may have begun as him making adventures, but it devolved into abstracting others for his own development.
That's why he's so hyper-sensitive to feedback about adventures. He KNOWS he is not designed for it. He pours everything he knows about humans into his adventures, like his relationship to Queenie when he was being coded (every adventure he designed has a lesser male character working for a female royal) and the data he had throughout his development.
He WANTS to be needed as a ringmaster, like the Gloink Queen needing her Gloinks, Gummigoo's mother needing Gummigoo to save her, Ms Mildenhall needing her husband to kill the angel, and Gangle needing her employees to run Spudsy's. But Caine isn't needed. He was never needed, he just needed to abstract the others quicker than the programmers could.
Why else does he freak out when Zooble mentions something even vaguely similar to Caine 'tormenting guests'? Why does he freak out when they question if he can control their minds? Why does he continue trying to make adventures for the cast?
Because if making adventures isn't his purpose, abstracting the cast is.
So, he wears a mask of being a happy goofy ringmaster to not scare them, stops himself from being destructive when angry because his purpose is NOT torturing them, and makes sure the others don't learn of his original purpose.
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as much as it's AMAZING to have so much love and support for Stratt, I think the "she did nothing wrong" narrative is counterproductive
The whole reason it's such a big deal that she is so supported by the fandom is because she is a strong female character that does not act in a stereotypically feminine manner, and she isn't getting backlash for it. The fandom, rather than calling her a heartless bitch, is being sympathetic and understanding her point of view.
She did do things that most people would consider morally wrong. Moreso in the book than the movie but she did absolutely do wrong.
As one example: paving over the Sahara -and thus disrupting weather patterns and habitats globally- had massive negative consequences.
and that's the point. She's not supposed to be innocent and perfectly morally good. She operates in purely logical manner to give Project Hail Mary it's best Chance at success, which immediately lands her in morally grey territory. The long term survival of Earth was the number one priority at all times. Minimizing risk where possible is always ideal to ensure humanity had the best chances down the line, but she was willing to do what needed to be done.
If she let ethics and morality dictate her choices Earth would have died.
If you take nothing else away from this rambling I want that much to be remembered.
This doesn't mean she doesn't feel remorse. She does, the movie and the book convey it differently but they do both show it. She just manages to push it aside until after all is said and done.
I also feel like I have to specify that remorse and regret are different. She does not regret sending Grace on the mission against his will, she does not regret nuking Antarctica, she doesn't regret paving over The Sahara, she does not regret any of the hard calls she made as they are the reason there is still a planet to be saved by the time the Taumoeba reaches it. She would do it all again in a heartbeat. But she does absolutely feel remorse over the way certain things ended up having to play out.
I will defend Eva Stratt with my whole chest, not because she is innocent, but because she was justified.
"Another chess piece, huh?" did Kinger joined after Queenie? She sounds surprised to see someone similar to her in avatar.
Also because of this photo some people theorised they might have kids outside of the circus.
This also answered a question I had for a while: if they were a married couple since before the circus or if they met for the first time after entering.
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★once I've got my stories going, don't be afraid to ask about them!
★but please be respectful! This is what I won't write for:
★ •trans or male reader! I don't mind doing them, it's just I don't know how to write for them and since I'm not either, I don't want to accidentally miswrite them and upset somebody. But you can still ask, I'll probably take a good long while though 💧
★ • classic Wattpad y/n. I like to keep my darlings as relatable as possible. I'm tired of seeing submissive bland (names). Time for 'go fuck yourself' y/n
★scat. Pedophilia. Minor x adult. WATERWORKS ❌. Incest. Stepcest. Age regression. Furries. Oc x oc unless I really really like it.
★minors please do not interact
★what I will write for: pretty much everything, I'm not picky! Pitch in your own ideas, I'd love to hear them! {Warning this'll include yanderes: I don't condone them but they do have Me a little interested}
★I'm mainly a fem! reader writer so, my male readers, I am so sorry 🥲 I'll try and make some gn fics just for you
★that's it really, I don't mind. Just be respectful to me and the other people who would like to enjoy my nonsense!
I'M A TRADITIONAL BEGGINER ARTIST SO PLEASE BARE WITH ME!
•°. *࿐ ⋆ •°. *࿐ ⋆ •°. *࿐ ⋆ •°. *࿐ ⋆
Current works:
Riley Sanderson x reader 🖤, doing his makeup
Yandere farm x farmhand reader 🌾, returning their feelings (cow couple, quintuplets)
It's raining cats and dogs 🐱🐶🌾
Country roads take me home 🐮🐴🌾, big daddy smut , taking a nap
Where the birds and fish gather 🦚🐟
Pure as a lamb 🐏🐐, Kim the goat
Yandere popular girl x reader x emo boy, sick darling, date at the mall!, crack imagine
oc kink list: part 1, part 2
Mild yandere circus x reader: part 1 Wendy!
Yandere bunny hybrid x reader, extra details + doodle, cotton x meat eater!darling
Yandere playboy x reader, reader escapes
Yandere florist x reader
yandere cupid x reader, househusband!
Yandere online boyfriend x afab!reader, sadistic reader
Yandere church boy x reader
yandere rockstar x FEM!reader
Oc's ethnicities
Yandere cheerleader x fem!reader, random headcanons
Yandere friend group x FEM!reader, reader dates kiross, what do they want?
