Caine creates NPCs more human than himself and that's fucking tragic
So like. Caine tries his best to understand humans, right? We see this in him trying to make his adventures appealing to everyone, trying to comfort them (however bad he is at that) and in him improving the AI of his NPCs to make it more immersive.
Right. More immersive. Improving. Let's. Let's back it up. How the fuck does he even do that, right? Like, what kind of work goes into this? Like, he made an AI human enough to have an existential crisis over it not being real. Human enough to bring comfort to an actual human being.
I imagine it's comparable to when there's, let's say for example, a writer. They want to make a character, that plays the guitar. They want it to be as accurate as possible, so they do research on chords, they memorise guitar parts, watch videos of people playing the guitar, look at how it's held. With all of that, they make a description of playing a guitar, that is so accurate, that people congratulate them and praise them for it! But the author themself has never played the guitar once in their life, so when they try, nothing good comes out. Because they have theoretical knowledge, but lack actual practice.
And that's exactly what Caine's situation here is like. He knows what goes into being a human- emotions, thoughts, opinions, personality, facial expressions... he knows they can be complex. But that's all there is. He is not a human and the humans he knows don't really spend time with him. They don't give him actual feedback. He looks at Pomni, who's laughing during a breakdown and goes "oh, laughing means... that she's happy! That's good! I'm gonna go drink water!" When he saw her distresses after he blew Gummigoo up, he semi-comforted her by giving his understanding and then an explanation to his actions. Because that's what he knows you're supposed to do. Except he doesn't know how to actually do it well. Because noone ever told him he's doing it wrong. He may feel that something's wrong, but. What is he supposed to do? He's doing all that he knows.
And people in that circus hate him for it. It's a perpetum-mobile of lack of good communication due to Caine not understanding humans enough and Caine not understanding humans enough because of their lack of communication. He needs to be told straight, that he's doing something wrong and WHAT he's doing wrong.
