#big data compiles information on everybody — meta.

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RELATIONSHIP META - DOLORES & CALEB (PART II)

[PART I HERE]

In The Mother of Exiles, we catch up with Dolores and Caleb, cementing their bond as revolution bros by doing what bros do best... Going shopping together! They need to look flashy enough that they don't seem out of place while infiltrating the 1%, but also not draw too much attention at the same time. Caleb doesn't wear many suìts in his line of work, so he feels a little hopelessly lost when trying to pick a convincing outfit. Luckily, Dolores is good at this sort of thing, so she helps him out.

DOLORES: Did you choose something? CALEB: (Groans) I don't know where to start. It's not really my style. It's not really my social set, either. DOLORES: It's tribal. They use plumage to identify themselves...which makes them easily fooled. CALEB: So who is it? That we're going after? DOLORES: The person who took your future. But first, we have to take his...and to do that, you have to pretend to be one of them.

I always saw Dolores's use of "They" in this context as being about "The Rich." As in she doesn't associate Caleb with the rest of them because he possesses more humanity than most of them, but also because he's a working class guy who would, under normal circumstances, never have any business interacting with anyone in this particular tax bracket.

Dolores and Caleb leave the store and Caleb expresses some concern that the guy whose money they stole to buy the suit will find out about it, with Dolores assuring him that they won't get caught. Even if they were to get caught, the guy they stole from won't even realize his money is missing until it's too late to do anything about it.

Uh...You know I think this is just- this is two friends running totally normal rich people errands here. What's a little light murder among friends? Doesn't really look like anything to me.

Okay jokes aside, though... Dolores kills this man, a financial manager by the name of Michael Tritter, who manages Liam Dempsey as a client. She takes a syringe and fills it with his blood, which contains an encryption key in the form of a unique blood marker, and then injects it into Caleb.

They travel to The RGGR Centennial, a bank designed specifically for the financial elite in the world. The job here is to transfer all of Liam's money out of his account and covertly into Dolores's possession. To do that, Caleb impersonates Tritter using the blood marker, and Dolores uses Liam's personal hash key, which she acquired earlier with the help of Connells-Dolores.

CALEB: I thought we were going to a bank? DOLORES: This is a bank. For a certain social set. Blood marker should be good for another fifteen minutes or so, but try to stay calm. The faster your heart beats, the faster the marker degrades. CALEB: What happens if it degrades too fast? DOLORES: We do this the old-fashioned way. CALEB: The old-fashioned way? DOLORES: I kill everyone.

Fortunately, things at the bank go fairly smoothly and nobody has to die, although for a minute it feels like a very real possibility.

Caleb is nervous and it makes his hands sweaty to the point that the blood scanner can't get a clear reading on his ID. Seeing Dolores start to reach for the gun she has concealed in her handbag probably doesn't help with his nerves much either, but she hands him a cloth and after he wipes down his hands, the scanner is able to get a clear ID on the blood marker and the money transfer is successfully taken care of.

The next part of the plan is to intercept Liam at a masquerade event, where sex workers and models auction off their various services to wealthy patrons. The proceeds from the auction sales are donated to charitable organizations.

One of Liam's friends passes him a vial of an experimental drug known as Genre, a virtual movie marathon that is meant to be marketed as "The Poor Man's W/estworld" and allows its user to experience reality as seen through the lens of popular movie genres. Liam pockets the drug for later, and attempts to enter the auction so he can bid on a girl, but he discovers he has no money, not knowing Dolores has it all.

Dolores and Caleb move in to catch Liam, but her old friends Bernard and Stubbs reach him first, thinking Dolores has already killed and replaced Liam with a host copy, or is planning to, to gain control of Rehoboam. They escape from the auction hall. Dolores passes Caleb her gun and sends him ahead in pursuit of Liam, while she stays behind to fight and subdue Stubbs.

DOLORES: Stay on Liam. I'll handle this one. CALEB: You sure? DOLORES: Take it. I won't need it.

As has been pointed out by the lovely @copiesofme [in this post], Dolores's fight with Stubbs is never intended to kill him, nor is it fought on bad terms between either of them. It's only fought out of necessity and Dolores does everything she can to fight fair and not hurt Stubbs too badly.

I will also point out, Dolores giving Caleb the gun in this situation speaks to just how much trust she has in him! As Connells-Dolores will tell Bernard just a little bit later in either this episode or in the next, he's the only host they can't replace. Meaning that if Caleb had felt threatened or at all like he had to shoot Bernard, then Dolores's grand plan would've probably been fucked. But Dolores knows this, and she can trust that Caleb won't bring Bernard to harm.

Their friendship remains pretty unchanged from the end of Mother of Exiles to Genre. Partly because there's not really anywhere else to go for now, Caleb has already committed himself to helping Dolores. He has seen her kill and as concerned as he was about "what the fuck are you doing??" it didn't discourage him from wanting to keep helping her.

Toward the beginning of Genre, Caleb gets drugged by Liam with the dose of Genre he was given previously, which also sort of stunts how much growth Caleb can achieve at this point. If he's not making woozy faces or shooting worried glances at Dolores, he's busy trying to help her keep Liam alive.

Caleb does have A moment (or two) where everything becomes rose-tinted, time slows down, a romantic piano melody plays in the background, and he finds himself staring, eyes wide and glassy, mouth agape - at Dolores while she fires a gun at Serac's men. It's all very silly and lovey-dovey at a first glance.

I think this does reflect, as do ALL of the Genre phases he experiences, what Caleb is feeling in his subconscious (he goes from the pensive mystery of film noir, to a cheesy action hero in the thrill of battle, to romance, to drama, with a brief interlude of reality before finally arriving at the finale of horror). But I'll also say that from start to finish of the romance sequence, he never speaks a word. He just looks. To me, that's the most honest telling of his internal feelings being externalized. He doesn't act on or expect any romantic feelings to be reciprocated just because he might happen to feel them.

I don't ship Caleb and Dolores in the romantic context. I think all the potential was there for it. I don't know, maybe there will come a day where I change my mind on this, but after what happened with both William and Teddy respectively, I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting Caleb through anything similar to those experiences, and even more importantly I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting herself in that kind of situation again.

So I've kinda avoided talking about this for over 3 years because I genuinely didn't really know how to put it into simple words until now (also at some point early on someone had like. anon messaged me saying my caleb with my main dolores was their otp and i was like 'uhh you mean the relationship that isn't romantic in any way whatsoever on our part?' but. that was a long time ago i'm trying to get over it okay. It did put me off from wanting to talk about things for fucking ever tho).

Anyway, romance rant over I didn't mean to write an entire essay there oops. Caleb manages to snap himself out of the daydream and get back to fighting even though he's definitely not at the top of his game. By the end of the scene he starts to look over at Dolores again with the love theme reprising itself, only to be interrupted again, this time by Giggles popping up to tell everyone he knows exactly what drug Caleb is on. Ash sarcastically refers to him as Loverboy, and then everyone quickly moves on.

The group makes their way down to the LA Metro station and Dolores makes the final preparations before sending the entire world their Incite profiles, which will radicalize them against Rehoboam. Caleb has all kinds of conflicted feelings about seeing the real world as Dolores sends everyone their profiles detailing their various fates. It's chaos and anarchy which he's not the biggest fan of because innocent people can and will get hurt, but it's also people acting out and rebelling in the realest ways they can against an unjust system, and that part of it is very appealing in a world that had no free will before.

Dolores moves in front of Caleb, shielding him from taking these bullets and killing the enemies who seemed like they were after Caleb specifically? But they're not dressed like Serac's people so maybe they were just random criminals. Maybe the bounty that got put on him in episode 3 is still up? He did see some suspicious-looking guys when they first entered the Metro station and seemed pretty convinced they were bad news considering how quickly he alerted Dolores to them, so maybe these two enemies were working with those guys.

Whatever the real reason is, Caleb experiences the shocking revelation that Dolores is not a human, because she just tanked 5 bullets without a thought and didn't die. Dolores just. zips up her jacket to hide the wounds because we are not talking about that right now we have other matters to take care of. Caleb, still in disbelief, follows right ahead.

CALEB: Back there... The shooters... DOLORES: We can talk about it later. We need to get to the airfield. (Gesturing to Liam) We don't need him anymore. What do you want to do with him?

At the beach, beneath the same pier where Dolores first brought Caleb to show him the truth about his world, things take a turn. Liam begs the group to let him go and whines that they've taken everything he had. He claims that the system isn't the prison and that people don't have a choice in who they are by nature. Caleb tries to confront Liam directly, but experiences a PTSD flashback. Ash shoots Liam, angered by his remarks, and Caleb tries to stop Liam from bleeding out, reminded of how he watched Franci die.

There's nothing he can do for Liam here, so Liam dies.

After Dolores and Caleb arrive at the airfield, Caleb has some doubts as to whether or not they are doing the right thing. His hands are still stained with Liam's blood, representing a sense of guilt for what happened, as well as foreshadowing what he'll learn the next time we see him, in Passed Pawn.

CALEB: Maybe Liam was right. Maybe people shouldn't know their own fate. DOLORES: People have the right to know. You wanted to know, right? CALEB: Well, maybe I'm not like other people. DOLORES: Neither am I.

Dolores boards the jet and Caleb has a moment of hesitation, as if he's maybe thinking about leaving instead, before ultimately choosing to board the jet and continue on with following and helping Dolores.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #am i the bad guy? is that why you picked me? — dyn | dolores & caleb. #relationship meta. #long post. #flashing gif cw #tw death #tw blood #tw guns #ask to tag #a meta that is what. 5? 6 months in the making ?? sfjsdfdshfds #it nearly killed me 4 times in the past 3 days but yknow what? fucking worth it

[cagedchoice]

"I can help you get dressed. Or I can step outside. Whichever you prefer. Or...we can stay here a while." // "Well, aren't you just the cat's meow? I'd love to take you upstairs and show you my-"

I think Caleb does understand that these two hosts are just playing the roles they were given. They're designed to seduce guests like him, but their attraction isn't real, they don't really have that choice. And yet, at the same time when they get up close like this and make their advances toward him, it all must feel very real and that would be weird and difficult for anyone like him to process. So much of Caleb's character is based around seeking what is "real" and holding onto his own idea of what real is and finding meaning in all of that.

But it's not like he thinks the hosts can't be real. He has had more than enough experience while working alongside Maeve and Dolores before to know that they CAN be every bit as real as he is and that what they feel is genuine, even though they are not human. And Maeve is the one who gets him out of these scenarios, she waves off both Sophia and Knockoff Clementine with a "your services won't be necessary" but as she does so she has a realization where she has to ask herself if this is something Caleb would really want her to do, to act for him in saying "no thank you", or if he's no different from other humans she's known and might go along with it after all. There's also a sense of protectiveness, even jealousy in how quick she waves them off that he picks up on.

#* big data compiles information on everybody / META. #no idea if this is gonna show up in any fandom tags or not but uh #IF YOU ARE NOT AN RP BLOG PLEASE DO NOT REBL0G MY META #I DO NOT WANT TO BE PERCEIVED BY PERSONAL/FANDOM BLOGS LIKE THAT

[cagedchoice-a]

i was literally about to go to bed but then i randomly remembered that almost everybody who calls caleb "cal" aside from his mom seems like they do so in this disarming way to try and make him feel like they're more familiar than they really are and now i am wide awake

#❝ i’m an underachiever ❞ —— ooc #❝ big data compiles information on everybody ❞ —— meta #like...maybe aside from francis too? #but the only time we ever hear the real francis say it is when he's trying to convince caleb he's totally not about to murder him #'he's playing us cal' #everybody else tho-- the therapist; the francis therapy callbot; dr. greene; estefan?? all call him cal as a way to get him to comply #so maybe that was another tip off for him that francis was never gonna refuse the assassination #the only other person i can think of who calls him cal like out of genuine familiarity is ash and she's good

[cagedchoices]

The gifset you just shared - TALK TO ME ABOUT IT!! What’s going on in Caleb’s head !!

( in reference to this post! )

oh god okay on every level Caleb is a mess emotionally both here and in the scene before this, where Hale-Dolores revealed he's the 278th copy of himself. I'd love to get into discussing all of the fidelity testing stuff some other time but I'm just. gonna keep it simple and keep my focus here for now. Or try to at least.

He knows he failed, because obviously the original Caleb was killed before he could stop her — but he's still in a state of disbelief that Hale has already won that war they were fighting. That it's been 23 years since it happened in the first place.

This scene in particular pays homage to the Woman in the Red Dress scene from the M/atrix. It's just that instead of a digital training simulation, this is the real, physical world.

All Caleb really knows right before this moment is that he has to get out of the Olympiad building and get away from Hale and that's what he tries to do, running away in a blind panic while Hale and her guards slowly pursue him.

In a previous reblog, I once noticed that when everything freezes, it's like Caleb instinctively freezes too, but he realizes pretty quickly that he's not stuck in that state because he's not a human anymore and he's not controlled by the tones anymore either.

It might just be the residual band geek in me having a field day here, but one thing no gifset can capture is how powerful the music scoring is in this particular scene setup. I literally can't get over how good it sounds.

When Caleb first runs out of the room where Hale is sitting, his motif plays, faster and more disjointed than we've ever heard it before, and here it's accompanied by a suspenseful drum rhythm to highlight the anxiety of the situation. The melody stands out almost triumphantly at the beginning, like it's Caleb's last hurrah in the struggle against Hale, but as it continues on with him being locked in flight mode and feeling desperate to escape even though it's ultimately hopeless here, that same motif takes on almost a...muddy, messy feeling with the way it starts to fall underneath the drum fill.

The motif tries to establish itself again with that first note blaring as a pedal tone when Caleb gets out onto the street and pushes through the crowd, but it fades away quickly, as he starts to understand what the reality of the situation is. Once he sees The Tower, everything is quickly overwhelmed by command tones and static, which he can hear now that he is a host himself.

The music drops out almost entirely by the time everyone in the scene freezes in place, and that's where Caleb gets his moment of clarity and understanding — All of these people are humans, they're all infected and under Hale's control. They do whatever she commands them to do.

She won. She won and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it now.

@spiderwarden i love u 💕

#spiderwarden #big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #META!!!!! #i don't think this is as good as the first one. that my computer ate ;-; #BUT i didn't have all this stuff about how r/amin's scoring reflects caleb's emotions through this before #and i think that was a better addition tbh sfjsdhfhdsfg

[cagedchoices]

caleb really is so gentle in dealing with hale during generation loss up to a point like. sure he puffs himself up a little to try and look threatening, holds a shard of broken glass to her throat. but he doesn't really have any aggressive intentions to hurt her or make her suffer when he does it and he doesn't take hardly any of his frustration or anger out on her even though he could. when he threatens her it's a real threat, but he doesn't want to escalate and act on it at all unless that is done as a last resort. he's also careful about putting handcuffs on her and he throws his makeshift knife down on the ground, instantly shattering it since he doesn't feel like he needs it anymore.

now maeve on the other hand? she very much takes her anger out on hale and it is highly personal. hale is the one who destroyed hector, whom maeve was in love with, and she would've destroyed clementine and hanaryo as well only she didn't have enough time before she got caught and had to flee for her life. she came back for them later on and had henchwilliam kill them. she tried to have caleb killed too at least three times by that point so whenever maeve handles hale, she does it very roughly and without much regard. she jerks hale around and leads her by the handcuffs or by yanking on her arm, or by jabbing her gun into hale's back to shove her forward. right after caleb gets stabbed by another human under hale's control, maeve slams hale's head against the side of a car and then flings her in the back of it like a sack of russet potatoes. she genuinely hates hale SO much for harming people she cares about.

afterwards maeve dies and caleb is heartbroken by it and it is the exact same reaction jesse had watching andrea get killed in b.r.b.a don't @ me and so hale antagonizes him and then, and i think only then, caleb actually decides for a minute that he wants revenge. he tells her "i will KILL you for this" but he unfortunately can't actually do anything about it.

#i'm an underachiever — out. #big data compiles information on everybody — meta.

[cagedchoices]

adding on some commentary to that last post but keeping it separate bc that's how i roll now: i love caleb's quiet reaction to hearing the temperance version of maeve recite these lines. he's heard them before, but only in parts, and not with much context. it probably didn't really occur to him that they were scripted dialogue lines until this moment happened and the way he looks down for a second before looking back across the table at maeve gives off this vibe that he's like '...huh.'

i haven't seen anyone gif the part of this scene where two alpha bro guests try to intimidate temperance maeve which makes me think it's gonna suck for me to even try, but i might just try to gif it because the next part goes something like

ALPHA BRO: Hey there. Whaddya say about a two-for-one? We can be done with ya real quick. CALEB: My God, I can't believe you had to put up with this shit. TEMPERANCE MAEVE: (cocking and aiming a handgun at the alpha bro and his friend) I'd be happy to do you both right here. Rest assured, it'll be very quick. MAEVE: See? Don't feel too bad. Even dumbed down, we can still take care of ourselves.

and i just think it's neat because having that realization a little bit earlier that he's heard maeve's lines before didn't make caleb think 'oh so none of this matters.' if anything, it just made him feel more sympathy for the hosts in response.

#i'm an underachiever — out. #big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #didn't actually mean for it to become a meta but thibgs happen

[cagedchoices]

i don't have a lot of particular gripes where i really wanna compare season 3 to season 4, but one thing i will say is that i'm glad s4 gave caleb's shooting proficiency the attention it deserved on screen

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #tw guns #tw shooting #tw blood #flashing gif tw #ask to tag #yes i'm counting toy gun shenanigans among his overall accuracy. fight me

[cagedchoices]

Host consciousness as it is presented in Westworld seems to be largely based off of Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotion. Plutchik proposed that humans experience 8 basic, raw emotions and that those continue to grow outward to form other emotions. Or, based on the appearance of this chart, that emotions can start from the outer edges and work their way in, in much the same way that the hosts are meant to find their way through the Maze.

As Dolores's memory of Arnold says, "Consciousness isn't a journey upward, but a journey inward. Not a pyramid, but a maze. Where every choice you make can either bring you closer to the center or send you spiraling to the outer edges, into madness." Arnold's theory of consciousness in the hosts mostly hinged on them being able to surpass certain milestones. Memory, improvisation, and a third step that he never figured out and is never explicitly stated.

I think if I had to put a name to it though, I could either call it self-interest or survival. Self-interest would fit with what we know about hosts fighting back to protect themselves when they react to severe trauma, but there is a special handful of hosts who really don't care if *they* live through the trauma or not because they already know dying is not the end. They would still seriously harm anyone who tried to mess with the people they love, though.

Survival might be more fitting since it doesn't have to be solely their own survival they're concerned with. It could just mean survival of hosts as a broader species, survival of friends or those who act as family to one another.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #faffing about with westworld thoughts at 11pm on a tuesday and what abt it #also lowkey plutchik's wheel is kinda cool to look at for writing reference

[cagedchoices]

Okay listen everyone knows that I think that Caleb is a cutie, and most of y'all also seem to agree that this is true, but I have a thought that's been nagging me all day because it's relevant to a few drafts I've been trying to work on: Does Caleb himself actually know this?

When someone compliments him and calls him cute, handsome, kind, a good man, a gentleman, etc. how does he actually feel about it? I imagine that he has pretty low self esteem and a low opinion of himself and I tend to write in that direction pretty consistently, but low self esteem isn't always the cause for someone not accepting compliments. I made a list of canon moments where he's given a compliment of some kind and he's mostly just 🧍🏼‍♂️ about it, otherwise he quickly tries to find a way to change the subject:

Dolores tells Caleb he is a good man after he helps her fight the RICO ops who pulled over the ambulance.

Caleb's mom tells him he's a good boy after he brings her a stack of her favorite books.

Maeve tells Caleb Frankie must be a credit to Uwade's genetics. (Caleb smiles and kind of chuckles at this, but he leans into what Maeve said with his own "She and her mother are the best thing that ever happened to me." Like he had 0 influence on Frankie. Despite the fact that he HAS had a ton of influence on Frankie.)

Maeve sorta checks Caleb out while he is dressed in a tuxedo and says "You don't look entirely awful". (Caleb returns the favor with "You don't look too bad yourself" which is really just. both of them telling each other they look great.)

Temperance Clementine caresses Caleb's face, saying "Well aren't you just the cat's meow? I'd love to take you upstairs and show you-" (Being propositioned for sex is not something I would really consider a compliment and especially not in this context but. Caleb's reaction, or lack thereof, is interesting to me.)

Maeve tells Caleb "You weren't half bad out there." referring to his ability to handle himself in a fight while he was protecting her. (Caleb actually looks quite touched by this for a second. Maybe the first compliment he has actually thought about accepting?? But he immediately shifts the focus back to Maeve via "You've saved my life before. Happy to return the favor." while healing her bullet wound.)

Caleb definitely doesn't take compliments well in practice. He probably won't argue against you because that's like, Your Opinion. But he will probably try to change the subject or ignore the compliment in that sort of "if I don't acknowledge it... maybe it will be forgotten about" kind of way.

#i'm an underachiever — out. #big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #less of a meta and more just. random thoughts floating around in my head #but there is like. canon evidence here to support the claim that caleb can't take a compliment

[cagedchoices]

FIDELITY - STAGES OF DETERIORATION

I read an article way back about the work the makeup department had to do to ensure the general continuity of 4.06 - Fidelity and I was just thinking about it recently so I thought it seemed like a good time to go ahead and be a little unhinged about host-hybrid Caleb. The stages of deterioration are never explicitly defined besides stage one, so I'm just guesstimating based on the different conditions we see within this episode.

STAGE ONE

Elisa March, the head of the makeup department, mentions that when we first see Caleb here, he's at stage one and he's "pretty perfect." So more or less, he shows minimal outward signs of physical or mental deterioration. He looks and acts like a normal healthy guy. It is worth noting, however, that despite being in this brand new stage in Generation Loss, when Hale revealed to him that he's a host copy, Caleb still demonstrated signs of cognitive plateau, stuttering over words and displaying a broken head movement under stress.

Aaron Paul said in a Behind The Scenes featurette that Caleb sometimes forgets that he already knows he's a host, so it could be that he appears stable when he's not thinking about the fact that he is a host, but in reality he is always degrading and confronting the truth/especially seeing other versions of himself, is what really sets off that decline in mental and physical health.

STAGE TWO

Though not officially defined as such, I believe that shortly before escaping his cell to approximately right after he kills a drone host, Caleb enters into stage two deterioration. Stage two is where we begin to see a few physical signs that he's breaking down, little by little. His right hand develops an infrequent but painful tremor, and he starts to feel weaker and weaker as time wears on. Getting hit, thrown around, or falling hurts more than it typically would and he doesn't recover as quickly. It also could just be a minor difference in lighting or the fact that he's covered in soot, but I could swear his eyes and cheekbones are meant to look more gaunt and sunken in here.

STAGE THREE

This stage seems to involve more pronounced physical symptoms which bear a strong resemblance to acute organ failure. Caleb begins coughing up blood, shaking uncontrollably, and his eyes become more glassy and lifeless, with the sclera more bloodshot. Liver spots and other blemishes on his face become much more noticeable and I imagine if you were to reach out and touch him his skin would feel all clammy and gross due to fever.

STAGE FOUR (TW FOR GORE AND SELF-HARM)

We don't see Caleb 278 get to this point, just the unspecified previous attempts, but I believe this gory mess is the fourth and final stage of deterioration. The mind rejects the physical body completely and he begins to exhibit self-harming behaviors by repeatedly digging his nails into himself. In terms of mental state...these hosts have almost completely lost themselves. If they speak at all, they speak cryptically, in riddles: "The only way out is death...dying is just the beginning...you must burn. If you succeed you run, if you fail you hide... I only know what I told me." and have limited motor functionality.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #tw injury #tw gore #tw body horror #tw self harm #ask to tag #think i've covered everything i need to??

[cagedchoices]

thinking about how Rehoboam controlling Caleb's life actually tried to manipulate him into living a narrative of toxic masculinity by rewarding him for being angry and violent and unemotional (with drugging/the use of limbic tablets) and essentially punishing him when he was kind, gentle, emotional, compassionate (allowing him to care for his sick mother, but forcing him to suffer financially as a consequence of that and embrace criminality to feed back into that idea of being A Man = being violent and angry) and this is one of those times where i think the writers might actually have been the most inspired by j.esse p.inkman in b.reaking b.ad whether they intended that or not.

like everyone made all these jokes early on like 'haha Dolores is the new w.alter w.hite for this guy. just manipulating him into destroying the world for her' but No, that's not it. it's Serac and the system he created and the fact that he's essentially trying to define and control humanity from an incredibly narrow and rigid perspective of what he believes anyone is or isn't.

#i'm fighting off a headache and so far losing bc instead i think of shit like this and go down the rabbit hole but #yknow #big data compiles information on everybody — meta.

[cagedchoices]

NAME ETYMOLOGY

Originating from the Hebrew word כֶּלֶב (kelev), Caleb is a name which loosely translated means "dog, dogged, faithful, or loyal." Reportedly, an alternative translation connects it to the Hebrew form כָּל (kal) and לֵב (lev), meaning "whole-hearted."

In the Old Testament, Caleb is the name of one of the 12 spies Moses sent to scout ahead into the land of Canaan before the Israelites were meant to enter. Of the 12 spies, 10 called to abort the mission, believing that taking the land would be impossible, for the Canaanites were many and strong and the Israelites were too weak to fight. Caleb and Joshua were the only two spies who believed the land could be conquered, having faith in God would allow them to prevail in their mission. The nonbelieving generation would get lost and perish in the desert wilderness for their lack of faith, and Caleb and Joshua alone would survive to enter the Promised Land.

Also interesting to note is that Caleb was chosen to represent the tribe of Judah, which would later become known as the line of kings. Rehoboam succeeded his father Solomon as the king of Israel, but his subjects eventually revolted against him because of high taxes. This led to the divison of the kingdom into Israel and Judah, with Rehoboam ruling over Judah.

Nichols, on the other hand, is a shortened version of Nicholas, a Medieval English form of the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos), meaning "to conquer" or "victory of the people." Derived from the Greek νίκη (nike) "victory" and λαός (laos) "people."

Caleb Nichols is first introduced to us with a particularly ambiguous background, one that led to a whole lot of people anticipating that he was secretly a robot all along. While I didn't agree with this, I did wonder, especially after looking into the etymology of his first and last name, if he would become a host later on, or have something to do with the Sublime.

The hosts who made it into this virtual world at the end of Westworld Season 2 were promised safety and freedom apart from humanity, and were not unlike the Israelites in the Exodus. Most of the ones who did not make it into the Sublime were permanently decommissioned and later destroyed, with only a select few being spared.

This is also paralleled with the concept of human outliers in season 3. Many outliers are killed outright, others are placed in cryogenic storage, and a select handful are successfully brainwashed and reconditioned to the point that they are allowed to reintegrate into society to a certain degree. Caleb, I think, serves as someone who was meant to potentially bridge these two worlds.

Instead of his existence ending at the moment he died, he gets brought back again and again as part of this immortality project. The reason we're given is that Charlotte-Dolores is bored and Caleb is the closest thing she has to a real adversary anymore and she is both repulsed by and yet so fascinated, even obsessed with him. He was the first human able to fully resist and fight off her mind control, and even though she has long since conquered the entire world, the answer to the question of "how did he do that?" still plagued her enough to want to bring him back close to 300 times over.

He doesn't have unwavering faith in a benevolent deity, but he does have unwavering faith and loyalty in love, in hope, in his family.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #i don't know how this happened #one minute i'm just. whittling away at replies?? #then the next thing u know it's 2am i have 8 tabs of name meanings and old testament studies open and i'm rambling #tw religious themes

[cagedchoices]

COSTUMING META - PART II [SUITS (REDUX)]

OPERA ATTIRE

Until the late 1880s, opera was traditionally a white tie event, with the black tie dress code only starting to gain popularity enough to replace it in the late 19th century and into the 20th. This was largely due to the innovation and popularization of the tuxedo as formal menswear by wealthy socialites, which helped it gain a positive reputation as a sleek and stylish fashion choice for evening events such as formal dinners, weddings, balls, and theatre showings.

The tuxedo steadily climbed in popularity, reaching a new peak in the 1920s Jazz Era. In accordance with the black tie dress code required for opening night performances at an opera house in our modern world as well as in Westworld's universe (which in Maeve and Caleb's timeline would've been somewhere around the year 2065), Caleb wears a classic black tuxedo in 4.02 - Well Enough Alone. I am still convinced Maeve picked for him just based on this: "Did it really have to be a tux?" "Now far be it from me to limit your sartorial choices." line as well as knowing that Dolores did pick an outfit for him last season.

1920S PARK SUIT

In episode 4.03 - Annees Folles we enter Hale's 1920s downtown Chicago mobster-inspired park. Caleb is clad in a timeless three-piece suit, an overall accurate portrayal of the men's fashion popular during this era. His suit components include a white button-down shirt with dark blue pinstriping, button suspenders worn over the shirt/under a waistcoat, suit jacket and matching trousers, black leather oxford shoes, and a gold watch chain which is presumably attached to a pocket watch sitting in the right side pocket of his waistcoat.

When I went researching pocket watches, I stumbled across a guide on how to wear one properly and it mentioned that pocket watches are supposed to be worn on the side of your non-dominant hand, so that your dominant hand always remains free for other uses. Caleb wears his watch chain to the right, but as far as I could tell his right hand seems to be his dominant hand so this might be something the costume department wasn't aware of. Or maybe Caleb just in-character doesn't know watch etiquette because he's never had a need to.

Most three-piece suits in the early 1920s were double-breasted, but single-breasted options were available and would increase in popularity over years to come. Suits were commonly made out of fabrics such as wool, flannel, linen, tweed, or blended fabrics. The one Caleb wears looks to be made of wool, and the shirt most likely would be cotton, linen, or a blend.

In episode 4.04 Generation Loss, the jacket is removed from Caleb's suit, leaving the waistcoat and shirt sleeves visible. After Caleb is attacked by a guest under Hale's control, he removes the waistcoat (and tie) and holds it under his arm, using it to hold pressure on his stab wound and try to stop the bleeding. I'd never really noticed this before and I thought it was a neat little detail when I caught it.

The suit from what I could gather is often mistaken as being a black suit due to lighting and color filter struggles, but it is actually dark blue. Once again, the color blue is often representative of a virtuous character, symbolizing ideals of freedom, loyalty, compassion, honesty, intelligence, confidence, and reliability.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #'mel didn't you already talk about suits-' yeah i did but when i went back and reread the post it was absolute nonsense?? #so this something hopefully better #costume study.

[cagedchoices]

Today's random hyperfixation of the day is determining locations and mathing out how long Maeve and Caleb realistically would've had to drive to get to the senator's estate and back to Los Angeles in season 4 episode 2 - Well Enough Alone. They take off during what appears to be the middle of the night, probably around 10 or 11pm, but it could literally have been anytime from that to roughly 4am honestly.

I'm pretty sure all of the real locations used to film these particular scenes are based in Southern California, but I'm headcanoning that in-universe the Senator's home is located in Northern California, a lot closer to the state capitol in Sacramento.

If Maeve were to drive mainly I-5 Northbound from Los Angeles to Sacramento, they would get there in about 6 to 7 hours, pending traffic and weather conditions and excluding any rest stops or detours used.

I don't think they would've made any rest stops. They were on a tight schedule to try and get to the Senator before William could, and Maeve doesn't really *need* sleep as a host in that it doesn't provide any of the restorative functions it does for the human body. She does choose to sleep sometimes, but I would sincerely hope not while driving a car. Caleb on the other hand appears to be just waking up from a car nap right here, but I don't think he would've been asleep for the entire journey. It reads more like he's trying to continue an earlier, unseen conversation with Maeve that probably could've gone something like Caleb asking 'where have you been all this time?' and Maeve giving a vague-ish answer like 'oh in a quiet little cabin in the woods somewhere cold'.

I couldn't find any info about where these two particular locations are based but I am still generally assuming "somewhere in SoCal" and once again, setting it in NorCal in-universe anyway. These make up the exterior of the estate owned by Senator Ken Whitney and his wife Anastasia Whitney. Another interior/exterior location features the barn at Will Rogers Historic State Park in Pacific Palisades and serves as the stable where the real Anastasia is being held under Hale's mind control.

They head back to Los Angeles to attend the opera opening at Angeles Arts Pavilion (which is actually the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts located at CSU Northridge). That's another 6-7 hour drive back and this time they would've stopped at a tailor to obtain Caleb's tux and Maeve's gala dress.

So collectively, Maeve and Caleb would've spent somewhere between 12-14 hours on the road driving to the Senator's estate and back. Almost immediately after they get back TO Los Angeles they then get shuffled away again by a secret train headed off to Nevada for the unveiling of the Golden Age park.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #sorta?? #mostly just an excuse for me to point out that the duo spent 14 hours in a car together #and muse about all the possible bestie talks they had

[cagedchoices]

RELATIONSHIP META - CALEB & UWADE

In canon, Caleb first met Uwade while he was recovering in the hospital following surgery for a near-fatal gunshot wound to his abdomen. I've estimated the time he spent comatose to be about 5 weeks max, but it's possible it was a bit less than that. In a memory Caleb has during Fidelity, we learn that Uwade was the first person who saw him after he woke up and she checked over his vital signs. She began to flirt with him and from there they eventually fell in love.

Given what context we have, I headcanon that Uwade got pregnant before they were married and then Caleb married her once they found out they were expecting. It's the most logical explanation I can see for why their last conversation together happened the way it did.

We don't know anything about Caleb's father so I kinda just assume he was never in the picture and that it's a source of insecurity for Caleb because there's always going to be a what-if question that can't be answered; What if he's just like that? As well as he gets another dose of that same insecurity because his mom was mentally ill and abandoned and forgot about him, and there's the fear of what if he winds up doing the same thing to Frankie?

UWADE: So you're leaving. CALEB: Only for a little while. UWADE: You promised you'd be a father. CALEB: I am one... Everything I do is for you...and for Frankie. UWADE: You're gonna get yourself killed. CALEB: Hey, I will come back to you. I promise.

There also seemed like there was a touch of maybe-jealousy from Uwade toward Maeve, just in the way that Uwade was watching her from the bedroom window while Maeve was loading her SUV and getting ready to leave. She already knew that Caleb would jump at the chance to team up with Maeve again and go fight.

Uwade doesn't understand Caleb's trauma struggles. Her approach to helping him manage his PTSD is basically just to tell him move on and stop worrying, and that's the most un-constructive advice you could ever give to a trauma survivor. She treats it like he doesn't have anything to be depressed or anxious about solely because he has a family, a house and a job and it should be enough. She also calls him paranoid, and acts like he is consciously choosing to stay traumatized.

In the past, Caleb was often told he needed to move on without ever actually being given the tools or the freedom to actually learn how to move on and genuinely heal, because by design he wasn't supposed to. He was in a therapy program that insisted the goal was getting him to move on, but they never actually did anything other than tell him "you gotta move on."

Caleb's instinctive response to that is to sort of shut down and refuse to talk about it any further. There's no point. No one really understands except for others who have seen war up close and personal. And that was the purpose in isolating him further and further until the system predicted there would come a point where that feeling of hopelessness would reach its absolute limit and he would take his own life because of it.

When Caleb first leaves, Uwade definitely seems to feel resentful toward him specifically, such as when she found Frankie using the radio to try and make contact with him.

UWADE: Frankie, what are you doing out here? I told you we need to go back and pack. FRANKIE: I'm trying to reach Dad. UWADE: Come on, let's go inside. FRANKIE: No. I'm staying. UWADE: Carver, do you mind helping me bring some of this stuff back inside?

She didn't really acknowledge Frankie's explanation or her feelings of concern, she just went to picking stuff up, starting with Frankie's teddy bear. Later on, Frankie's sitting out on the patio and sulking, and Uwade again kind of ignores her concerns.

FRANKIE: I don't wanna go with him. I want daddy. UWADE: I know, but your father can't be here right now. So he sent Carver to help. FRANKIE: He got Bear-Bear dirty. UWADE: Fine. If you won't pack your things, then I will.

After Frankie discovers that the real Carver has been murdered and replaced by a host copy and alerts her mom with proof, this attitude changes drastically, and Uwade steps up for Caleb in a huge way.

She becomes the leader of the resistance and makes it her mission to free as many outliers as she can from Hale's world before they're hunted and killed.

UWADE: You were so brave today. You reminded me of your father. He really would've been proud. FRANKIE: It's almost time. UWADE: Go. Tell him I love him.

She doesn't ignore or invalidate Frankie's feelings this time, she tells her that she is so much like her father and that Caleb would've been so proud of her if he was around. She lets Frankie try to establish radio communications with him, even though I think she figures he had to have been killed to be kept away from them for so long.

For Caleb, when Frankie tells him what happened to Uwade, it's a harsh blow for his cognition and it threatens to destabilize him even faster than he's already breaking down. His hands are shaking so badly he's having trouble threading a needle.

FRANKIE: You can ask, you know. CALEB: Ask about what? FRANKIE. Mom... Cancer. Wouldn't have mattered even if you had made it back. She hung in there for as long as she could... She had a mission. Everyone that wasn't infected, or who woke up and got out, owes that to mom. She carried your torch. CALEB: Your mother was...extraordinary. FRANKIE: So were you.

But then he's able to center himself using the love he has for his family. Uwade may be long gone physically, but her memory lives on through his own recollection and more importantly, through Frankie.

#big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #i will come back to you…i promise — dyn | uwade & caleb. #tw mental illness #tw terminal illness #ask to tag #i'm just in a meta mood this week apparently #relationship meta.

[cagedchoices]

Hiiii I'm really sorry to bother you but I noticed on your old blog you used to have a rule that said not to treat your character like Jesse Pinkman. I think I get why its a concern but I'm wondering why it doesn't say that anymore and also I'm curious to know about what you think the differences between Caleb and Jesse are

omg ok first of all bb, you are certainly not bothering me by asking questions. i appreciate being asked thank you 🥰

secondly uh, i removed that disclaimer from my rules bc i felt like i didn't really need it anymore. it does still apply but i really only had it up bc when i was still fairly new to writing caleb i would get a lot of anons making br.ba jokes. so naturally there would be a lot of people pretending to be fuckin walter white in my inbox trying to tell caleb "let's cook" and like "jesse stop screwing around with robots and get back to work" and shit and like. yeah it's a fun little joke. ONCE. 😬

when you're seeing it multiple times a day/week it loses charm real quick. so i decided to be kinda petty about it and be like 'y'all know that caleb is NOT jesse right?' and i did two things. i flat out stopped responding to br.ba anons and i added that warning to my rules. and it seemed like it worked! i stopped getting flooded and my inbox was allowed to know peace again. but like i said, i don't think i really need it anymore because it should just be kind of a given, right? i mean i'm sure this has happened to other people before and will continue to happen bc that's the internet and unfortunately some people have no concept of boundaries and others just struggle with understanding that they might be making someone uncomfortable without intending to.

but like. to think of a popular example which i'm sure has happened before and will surely happen in the future i just think of a mun who writes joel from the last of us and maybe they like using pedro pascal's portrayal and they enjoy using him as an fc. now imagine that rper getting an inbox filled with anon messages treating joel as totally indistinguishable from the mandalorian. telling him he's gotta go find grogu or asking him why he abandoned his son for ellie or something along those lines. there are some GLARING differences between joel miller and din djarin. they're clearly not the same character.

so it might be funny to the person sending the messages and they're probably just having fun like. i'm sure they don't mean anything bad by it. but lemme tell ya, it's not as much fun to the mun on the receiving end. and in my case it sent me into a lil bit of a writer crisis like 'oh fuck is caleb nichols just a carbon copy of jesse pinkman is that how other people i write with see him?? what can i do to make him stand apart and be different without pulling him away from westworld canon too much??'

so anyway that's the rant over with. to answer the second half of this, caleb and jesse are different people. they just are. they do have a lot in common ranging from appearance to basic personality traits to the way they use body language, but they aren't completely the same. they come from different backgrounds which were influenced by various different factors.

jesse is more creative, he's an artist at heart and he has an artist's mindset and that's a kind of freedom to him. he expresses himself mainly through aesthetics. he draws, he wears a colorful wardrobe that really makes him stand out, the first time walter tells him that cooking crystal is chemistry jesse argues back that it is art and he has his signature style and he resents that walt forces him to change it. the reason jesse got involved in the drug trade is predominantly because it's the one place he is allowed and encouraged to express himself freely through art.

caleb on the other hand, is a soldier and he has a soldier's mindset toward most things. he is/was for the most part content with being told what to do next, following orders, sticking to a game plan. he expresses himself mainly through acts of service in canon, particularly to family as we see with his mom in the hospital and when he leaves his wife and daughter behind to go try and put a stop to the war that's coming. he wants to help, he wants to keep everyone safe and the only way he really knows how to do that is to fight.

i'd also say that while jesse and caleb are both highly empathetic and sensitive to the feelings of others, caleb is more stoic about it. i'm not totally sure if that's just how he is naturally or if he's so wracked and troubled by traumatic experiences and was trained to swallow those emotions in the military or otherwise learned to shut down but like. where jesse is always emoting something and never just sitting completely still and blank, caleb seems more comfortable with staying quiet and not always necessarily showing what's on his mind at a given moment.

and there are or course many more things i can say about specific differences but i feel like i've made this post long enough and gone on a scattered tangent so like. i might explore it way more in depth at a later date. ❤️

#anonymous #big data compiles information on everybody — meta. #i guess??