so ep 7 of tadc came out last week ~* on my birthday *~ no less and that was a fun little treat 💃

but i've seen musings of like, oo how scary caine is and oo he hates kinger and oo he's so fucked up and evil for this the entire cast is gonna jump him next time they see him and like

to Me, if anything, it seems evident how LITTLE caine, like. Gets It. irt how his actions affect the troupe in a deeper emotional/psychological way.

he does NOT seem to understand the full depth of what he's doing--i don't know if he's fully incapable or anything on an AI-programming level or something, but it doesn't make sense to me that his main interest would be appreciation and admiration from the humans, yet with full understanding that some of the things he does on adventures can hurt them emotionally/psychologically long term and actively does not care.

we're literally seeing nothing but "how much he wants to be accepted and praised by the humans" these last couple of episodes and what a detriment it's having on him not to have it--obsessing over zooble's feedback of his adventures, telling jax how much he just wants to treated on the same level by the 💞💖 beautiful humans 💞💖--yet supposedly coming to 'hate' kinger? or purposefully 'taunting' the troupe with the premise of an exit?

speaking of which, there's also like--on one hand, i don't think he has full control or keeps complete watch and monitor over every npc all the time; gummigoo, for example, or even the possession of pomni bringing up kinger's wife. where im at, this doesn't strike me as 'let me get a jab in because i hate this guy', he seems like he's floundering for 'whats something poignant to make this adventure more immersive', or something like that..

honestly, i don't understand why he would hate kinger; sure, there's probably some yet-unspoken lore about kinger's time as a C&A dev, but i haven't seen what makes people think caine would hold an opinion of disdain towards it--if anything, we see him fawn over pictures of those offices. it's easy to assume 'ah he hates the devs for giving him life but trapping him in the circus' or something, but that just feels like a headcanon to me rn--i can't think of any in-text evidence to support it. abel (by proxy, caine) keeping kinger in the dark about the latest 'exit' adventure didn't seem like this, either, because caine would know kinger would know its fake; he kept him out of it and told the others not to tell him as to intentionally not 'ruin the surprise'.

speaking of npcs and abel--on the other hand, i do think he had a more direct hand in abel's dialogue and actions--butyou could argue that it's because abel was the only npc he needed to keep an eye on and be involved in, vs. a whole adventure with several. obviously abel was so Very explicit about 'caine cannot go with you', 'make the right choice', 'he's a prisoner here too', etc etc--i could see this as caine all but Begging the crew to consider him after the events of the last episode left him feeling unappreciated, completely unaware of how callous or ridiculous that ask may seem to them after all they've been through, or how messed up it is that he's stoking hope in them only to rip it away as 'it was never real' to begin with.

and then--'scratch, the first abstraction'. caine's quickness to leave after this is brought up--obviously you don't want people who you want to impress knowing about your mistakes. also, this being brought up right after he explicitly says 'i cant alter your minds, that would be Very bad'--

if caine understood why people abstract, why wouldn't he try to prevent it? why would he disregard it, aggravate it intentionally with adventures and npcs that hurt the players?

like, the most he can do is throw an abstracted player into the cellar when it happens; he doesn't even know how to undo it. his love of humans wanting to be admired by them directly contradicts the idea that he has to capacity to understand that he's hurting them and leading them to it; at worst, no one ever joins the circus again, and he's left with a bunch of abstracted humans that he can never interface with again. that's the opposite of what he wants. i just think folks might be a little too quick to assume he's doing any of this on purpose; hes the 'antagonist' of the show, but i don't think willingly so like at all.