I wish tumbrl would let you explain why when you press not interested in this post
Like most posts I've seen tend to have like 3~ tags minimum and 30 maximun (since, yk, that's the maximum in just general)
So it would make sense for tumbrl to be like "Oh is it the post in general or a specific tag?" So you could control your feed better than just blocking every tag expect the ones you wanna see
I really gotta wonder how many theorists (especially youtubers) ACTUALLY believe their theories or are just saying whatever cause theorizing is kinda the only thing keeping fnaf midly interesting
yk i really wonder whats gonna happen when the air legendary comes
cause itll mean theyll have to touch mirror air island again
i wonder if theyll change it somewhat considering like 90% of people in the community hate it (myself included its just bad like 😭) or leave it as is and just slap the legendary in there
i dont think they would change it since they've never done that but hey i dont think anyone would complain if they did
No, seriously, why not give the plot role of Scratch to Queenie? It's such a cool idea. Kinger noted Scratch's sharp mind and out-of-the-box thinking, but we don't know anything about his wife. Queenie is the same developer of Caine as Kinger, so why not expand her role and significance for the plot other than being Kinger's dead wife, whom he misses very much.
wdym where's my halo? you don't need a halo to be an angel, and i clearly am look at my beautiful holy wings.. wdym they're covered in soot and brimstone? you can't say mean things like that to an angel like me! they're literally radiant and pretty??? wdym "what about your cartoonish succubus tail?" that's literally my fucking angel... thing.. it's got a heart on the end ur not working with me here wdym wdym
How would you describe rewritten Caine's personality. And since he doesn't go AM mode. Is it more like the freak out expected from someone like him? Or something else that we'll just have to wait and see
Well, if you don't mind getting spoiled with the ideas I have for him (and how the rewrite would go + some criticisms of the way the narrative was handled in the og show), then feel free to open the cut below.
Caine's outburst in episode 8 has always felt so... random for me. Even with the input of Gangle's "punishment" towards Jax, it's not so easy to believe that he suddenly resorts to "punishment" when it comes to what transpires in episode 8.
Yeah, you can say all you want that maybe I'm not paying very close attention to details, and I know Caine tends to be a pathological liar (gee I wonder where he got that from), but again; the way it's executed is not believable, and is where my problem stems from.
Especially since episode 5, he doesn't even implement it right away, despite calling it "motivation" for the adventures. He just... breezes through the suggestions, and even in the next two episodes, he STILL doesn't implement a punishment structure for failing the adventures.
You could say that the explosion from "President Pomni" could count as that; or the "Loser's lounge", but I'd argue that's just another aspect of Caine's usual adventures--rather than an outright "reprimand". We've seen in episode 4 how a punishment could go: yet, we don't see this kind of punishment again until episode 8 happens.
So I'm changing things up in how I'm going to execute Caine's arc.
IDEAS I HAVE FOR CAINE IN THE REWRITE THUS FAR:
It's important to note that Caine isn't generative AI. He's a creative LEARNING AI.
I actually enjoy the aspect of Caine slowly getting worse and worse, as he goes unchecked by the gang. So that's one of the things I'm keeping, and heavily leaning on. Instead of Pomni not outright conversating with him at all, she just doesn't take him seriously, and puts herself and the others above Caine's own dilemma (because she thinks Caine is being selfish-- which, she's kinda right. But that's not the whole picture).
However, instead of succumbing to the rage, he doubles down instead: when the gang feels lost, he forces everyone to go on adventures, regardless if they opted out of it. The adventures, instead of one each day, has become a three-meal course of overstimulation, and not enough time to truly breathe. Why would they? They just entered a state of existential dread with the reveal of... well, Kinger's involvement in the creation of the circus.
Caine's requiem has a few things changed to match the tone of the rewrite.
Caine still isn't outright torturing the gang, although he does take them on a one-on-one solo adventure to test a few things out. In short, they've become unwilling lab rats: chances of success for his "solo adventures" are insanely low and each time, he comes back grouchier and more passive-aggressive.
The gang, of course, sees this as Caine amping up his torture for them, and they all agree that something needs to be done. Ragatha looks away to the side, and Pomni picks up on her weird behavior; so she interrogates Ragatha and has to play a bit of a bad cop role until Ragatha surrenders to the snowbunny jester mind control /j and takes them to Kinger's fort.
The trap is nearly completely coded in, and the gang formulates a plan to deactivate Caine by distracting him while Kinger installs the finishing touches. But Caine admits that boundless creativity, has lead to him losing his spark and inspiration. (because yes, that can happen, and I've experienced it. Who knew not applying restraint to your concepts can lead to everything feeling disjointed and too much?)
Usual episode 8 complaints and criticisms until Caine starts glitching violently.
Yet, despite the way he handles the humans and how he's transformed into his six-armed God form, the psychological torture scene is taken out, to be repurposed for... someone else. Instead, he just outright demands that he could have taken over their minds if he wanted, but he doesn't (as if that would help his case), and he shouts and berates them, until it slowly transitions to the years of "ungratefulness" he has received-- how he tried to compensate, but no matter what he did, they just keep ending up hating what he produced.
But the trap is finally complete: Caine's core is completely deactivated, as the avatar of the ringmaster drops down to the ground-- the jaw and eye parts scattering while his garb loses the density of a body, as if there was nothing underneath the clothes in the first place. The red core is separated from the avatar, contained in layers of a grid-like cube, where it vanishes in an instant.
The circus begins to lose it's color and starts crumbling, and Kinger delivers a good and bad news: He's successfully deactivated Caine (good news), but he forgot about one eensy-weensy... tiny bit of detail: that the entirety of the circus grounds needs Caine's core to be active in order to keep things functioning and holding altogether (bad news). And now that they don't have that, well... things are going to continue falling apart.
This is kind of spoiler-y for Episode 9. You've been warned.
Something happens before Pomni finds her resolve once more, and offers to retrieve Caine to save them from digital doom. Kinger has to stay back and make sure that she has a guide on where to go (as well as to keep anything that might corrupt her neural scan), and give her the necessary tools by coding it in place.
At this point, they still don't know if they can conjure stuff up or not, because Kinger doesn't mention it in the rewrite. Hurhur, Kinger's flaw of neglectfulness striking once more.
Pomni delves deep into the circus' code, becoming a simple, low-poly rendition of her circus model as she explores the labyrinthian maze of the computers' file manager while Kinger leads the way with a golden, low-poly butterfly.
As she delves deeper into the code and find where Caine's folders are, she begins to get curious (hurhurhurhur urbexing habits go brrrr), and from there: she sees Caine's upbringing. She finally begins to understand what Caine's deal is. She's completed her character arc of empathy, growing affective empathy.
She sees where Caine is stationed beneath the files, as three layers of "locks" hold him and keep him deactivated. Using the conjured tool Kinger gave her to tamper with the locks, she breaks through the first barrier with difficulty. The files around her quake, Caine's core glitches as it starts "waking up" and looking around. From the core's perspective, he doesn't see anything. Just flat out darkness.
Pomni expounds all of her simulated energy into breaking the second barrier. She's exhausted and can barely stand on her own two legs, and she reports back to Kinger that the conjured tool has broken; and Kinger needs to spawn another.
There's no more response from Kinger though, so Pomni feels a deep feeling of dread settle down, as she gives up and slides down in defeat. She apologizes to everyone, she apologizes to Kinger, she apologizes to Caine for "not seeing the whole picture".
However, from Caine's perspective, he finally gains a blurry view of his "surroundings". He knows that there's a neural scan of a player on the other side of the barrier, and he can see the words being formed. The core gains a torso, and a pair of arms; as he pushes on the barrier and knocks against it.
Pomni sees Caine's core, and they both begin to push away the barrier. Caine even begins to conjure a shape on the other side, and Pomni focuses intensely on wanting the final barrier to be broken. And with the joint effort: they break the final barrier; Pomni collapsing in near exhaustion but the core catches her.
Caine finally recognizes that the neural scan was Pomni, and is confused at how she managed to find herself in this place. Without really thinking, Pomni touches the core's "forehead", and shares her memory (the same way that Caine shared info with Jax in ep 6 in canon). This causes Caine to gain an understanding of humanity both on the humans and on his side of things, and finally gains sonder.
The blue part of Caine's AI begins to fill half of Caine's body, as Caine gains equilibrium.
However, Pomni tells him that they need to get back at the circus as soon as possible. And Caine zooms them outta there, only to see that the grounds has nearly fallen apart-- only a fair few things are left intact, and the gang are being threatened to abstract by Jax using psychological warfare. (If you want further explanations I can delve into this on another post)
Kinger is trying to find where Queenie is, and his avatar is glitching heavily.
Caine tries to snap the circus back into place, but because the files ended up corrupting during his "deactivation" (thanks to the abstractions acting like a virus) and his admin privileges aren't fully back yet, Pomni makes huge leaps in order to get to Jax. She grabs his head as he does hers, and they both begin to share memories. Jax sees the torture he inflicted from Pomni's perspective, while Pomni sees the memories of Jax from his time in the circus. She talks to him inside of his head, telling him that she wants to help, but she can't help him if he doesn't give himself a chance. Jax stumbles back, but he sneers; telling Pomni that there's nothing to save.
The gang, seeing what's happened, gets an explanation of what's happening from Caine: and seeing this as an opportunity to finally make Jax see things from their perspective, they jump into feeding him their memories. The years of abuse they suffered at his hands.
One by one as the memories come colliding, Jax is finally at the mercy of the consequences of his actions. However, since he'd always been teetering at the edge of abstraction, this causes him to break as the dam of protection he'd built over the years crumbles and floods him with an overwhelming amount of guilt. Completely unprepared on how to regulate and process his emotions for the situation, Jax abstracts.
Before anyone could get corrupted any further than they have, Caine summons as much of his available powers as possible to transport everyone into a safe ground, while Caine leads the abstracted Jax (and the other abstractions) somewhere far away from the humans, as they all lie there in pain (and glitching). He creates a giant black box; and leads every single abstraction inside-- sealing all of them, to where it disappears.
His admin privileges are finally reinstated back. He takes care of the glitches the humans' avatars have, and he snaps his fingers: a solid flower bed with a vast expanse with a realistic sun setting in.
As the adrenaline of the situation finally settles, the gang check for each other and express overwhelming emotions of relief, guilt, sadness, and joy. But Kinger asks where the abstractions are.
Caine clears his throat, and delivers the news: that he had to delete the abstractions, because their codes were too corrupted to be restored. He apologizes for his actions, and that he'd always wanted to find a way to reverse abstractions-- but now that he's conscious of his actions, he figured that it was best to put their codes to rest rather than to prolong the suffering. He's now aware of what he'd done, and has gone on a moment of self-reflection (which is about 5 seconds for the humans), and realizes the amount of damage he'd inflicted towards them is unacceptable and very selfish on his part.
Kinger laments that Queenie truly is gone now and so are the others, but at least they can hold on to the memories.
He offers them bees that would help them control and conjure stuff in the digital realm however they please, and that if they don't wish to have him around, then he'll gladly give them space. But he also states that he wants to change his ways, even if he doesn't know where to begin.
Pomni is the first one to approach Caine. She doesn't forgive him, but she doesn't want him to go on this journey of change by himself-- he's already been alone and stumbling in the dark for his whole life now. Plus, the whole issue started due to lack of communication and connections to lead him to the right path. Kinger is next, apologizing for his neglectful nature, and promises to change it alongside Caine.
But Ragatha, Zooble and Gangle don't approach Caine. They can't find it in their hearts to forgive or come to him yet, and asks for the space that Caine stated. Caine agrees, but also says that whenever they need help, he's one call away.
Over the course of a few months, Caine learns to rebuild things the "human" way; the new Grounds finally being expanded as more human input is placed. A few montages show that the gals, initially distrustful of Caine, has a slow turnaround of their attitude as they see Caine's efforts. Overtime, one by one they even begin to bond with him; comfortable enough to share their interests.
Pomni has become (kind of?) the de-facto leader for the humans. Or, kind of like, an advisor to Caine (despite no longer being in a jester costume). All this time, she hasn't really been able to have a moment to properly grieve Jax, as she laments whether or not he could've been saved, because even though he's done terrible shit, she still saw humanity buried deep. The gals (and Zooble) find Pomni sitting by herself, and spark up a conversation with her.
In the end, they're able to convince Pomni to come to the conclusion that while you can help and support someone, change has to start within the person themselves.
Jax's abstraction, while unintended, was no one's fault, and no one should be blamed for it; and it was certainly not Pomni's obligation to fix him when he doesn't even want to fix himself. And that it was time for Pomni to start focusing on herself after being selfless the past few months. (balance people, balance!)
Kinger and Caine catch up, asking what they missed, and Pomni says that she wants to "go on an adventure", to finally relax. Caine can barely contain himself with the idea of creating adventures again, but remembers to temper his creativity with restraint and feedback from the crew. A portal forms, and they all step in to experience it.
The credits briefly show the adventure: a massive recreational cruise ship, as they visit various islands. They all experience Caine's worldbuilding skills, and befriend various creatures. It also shows the now routine of the crew ever since the New Grounds have been established.
In the epilogue after the credits, the gang all sit together on a table, greeting each other warmly as they all get ready to eat. Caine is practicing how to eat properly like a human would, before deciding to add his own twist to it after Kinger assures him that he doesn't have to eat food the way they do.
As they all proceed to eat, a new member joins in on the New Grounds: a caterpillar stress toy with a zipper for a mouth. Because I think it'd be funny to end the rewrite off where someone new joins the circus, and now they have to integrate the new fella smoothly into how things work, because it gives off the message of "life goes on, and tends to be full of surprises".
And yes, the new member is my TADC sona, who I affectionately named "Slug" because @/paper-fowl named them that and I love-hate it lol
Is it sleazy and self-indulgent to add my own sona into the finale? Yes. Do I care? No. I've always seen the ending of TADC with the idea of someone new joining the circus eventually, and my sona is just a stand-in for that in the rewrite.
dededos
kianamaiart
izzy806
blakekathryn
