So... is it too early to call this a griefing thread at this point? I don't think anyone ITT thinks that this show will end in a satisfying manner, and most of the reasons why people here enjoy ep 7 are basically: "I love when Goose tells their viewers to kill themselves" + "Animation is pretty".
I'm wondering if Caine's running into the limitations of his own AI. If this Digital Circus was designed, say, to upload the minds of terminally ill children and give them a happy place, his prime directive is to keep them entertained and happy, and is programmed to receive reward from player enjoyment/approval.
For whatever reason, the uploads are adults who don't want to be there, and they want to leave. But Caine can't find a way to let them leave, which ends up creating a sort of Asimov Three Laws paradox. He tries to keep them distracted with adventures, but gets increasingly agitated that they're not enjoying themselves, which leads to increasingly erratic behaviour (although he snaps back/glitches if he strays too far from his programmed demeanor). The obvious answer would be modifying their code to stop wanting to leave, but that causes abstraction as it breaks their code too much (which is why he tries to limit his actions to "modifiers"). Quite possibly someone succumbing to despair also leads to abstraction as their code ends up looping.
That sort of explains both the exit door and last adventure. He tried to create an adventure that would give the illusion of a choice of leaving, but after getting Abel to pepper in hints about how Caine can't leave, the desired outcome is the characters choose to stay in the Circus with Caine because they like him more than their own freedom and so no longer ask to leave - solves them asking for something he can't do, and feeds into his reward mechanism. He says the previous Exit door was his own invention too, but the fact he can't figure out what to put at the end of the office maze might have been what tipped Kaufmo over the edge (perhaps he did manage to get through the door like Pomni and ended up dragged back to the circus by Caine), So in other words, Caine's not trying to torture the characters, this is his malfunctioning way of trying to make them happy.
That's actually a pretty good theory and seems pretty believable imo, but I won't lie, if that's actually the reason why Caine acts the way he does, I'd be pretty pissed off that Goose "all your theories are wrong, goodbye" worx just went 7 full episodes giving us character therapy sessions after therapy sessions, and in the very last episode, Kinger pulls out a Deus Ex Machina, gets all his memories back, and then proceeds to take the next 10 mins explaining the what, how, when and why is The Amazing Digital Circus is because "oops, we only had time to set up the yuri scenes before, my bad guys!."
This means Caine somehow planned this whole thing since before Pomni joined and acted like he didn't know about it, even when no players are watching, for 7 episodes. Caine made the fake exit and abstracted kaufmo and apparently others. Caine trolled pomni with a fake exit only to troll her again 6 episodes later.
This level of lying, planning and omnipotence is so extreme that makes you wonder if Caine ever meant anything he said. Was he upset by zooble not liking his adventures or was he pretending? Does he actually not understand humans or this is another act? Was he planning for them to hate him all along? Do they even hate him or are they controlled to hate him?
So let's get this straight, Caine:
-Created a fake exit door that
apparently, only Pomni and Kaufmo were aware of its existence.
*He confesses to the entire cast that he's the one who created it (including everyone else who didn't believe in this "exit door" at first)
*All of the main cast ignores this and never mentions it ever again (including Pomni) because
you
-Abstracted Kinger's wife, leaving the poor man traumatized, only being able to remain sane in dark places
*Just kidding! Kinger is actually sane this whole time, but he's been modified by Caine himself to be insane as its convenient to him because
you
-Gets sad and even glitched out when Zooble doesn't want to go on his adventures, having an emotional overflow in his own code.
*But he can also FAKE glitch himself just as easily, so you're never sure if he's actually mad at Zooble or not because
you
-Says that he can't control people's minds outside of a few temporary modifiers
*JK, he CAN do that and has been doing it since day 1.
*But when he gets caught red-handed by the gang, instead of easily erasing the evidence out of their heads, he just leaves them alone like nothing happened, because
you.
-Makes the adventures for the sole purpose on making the players happy, not make the other AIs run for too long(?) and most importantly, help them not to abstract
*But has no problem in mindbreaking Jax, relieving his worst traumas, almost abstracting him, for 2 EPISODES MIND YOU, just to troll the main cast at the end, because
you.
What the
was his problem?
