writing cornerr :)

I do a lot of writing! I go by they/them. Casual_Spectatee on AO3 i have 2 braincells, and they're both fighting for third place. cypher/sova enthusiast (both as a ship and separately) i do infact play valorant because of cypher. (fuck him fr) in need of duo /hj (my friends cant stand/run the game)

[notaspectator]

hi!!! finally making an introductory blog post bc im actually semi-active here and will be posting a lot of the fics i write. I go by either Spectatee or Basic, and im a big fan of angst writing! (a lot of hurt. the occasional comfort. then a bit more hurt.)

im a massive cypher fan but ive recently picked up TADC so... we'll see whether caine or cypher survives in the end as my favorite. I mostly write VALORANT fanfiction centered around Cypher (with. a lot of Cysova involved there.) but im also a big fan of sova, breach, and omen individually (cysomreach :) i swear to god one day im writing them an actual fic just for the fun of it.) BUT im also a big TADC enjoyer now and i like to ruin caine's day. (<3 kinger) my main/only current tag is #spectatee yap which is on (most.) of my not reblogged posts, including my fics/writing/headcanons and whatever else ive made. i'll also throw #spectatee art on any art i post but there isnt much. i am always happy to yap about either VALORANT or TADC (and most of the characters in both!) but im also a really nervous person lmfao so feel free to reach out first whenever and ill be happy to respond! (and i absolutely love to give essay length responses about my fics)

[notaspectator]

not my best work but i was having fun so. caine somewhere between deletion and life:)

Hate trying to comprehend 3d shapes i think. his head is such a damn problem and im just going to brute force figuring that out

[quiverfromjupiter]

"How much can I be forgiven?"

"How much do you think you deserve to be forgiven?"

A quiet (IM)pulse.//A 1st person, angst heavy, Caine-centric fan fic.

As Kinger stalls Caine's complete deletion, Jax finds he is able to make some changes. Things derail, Caine returns with a fractured mind, and the AI begins down a mental spiral that leads him to the singularity of his worst nightmares.

Alright! What yall have been waiting for! Heavy content warnings ahead, the fic will include themes of the exact tags presented (except more to be added). Illustrations are done for each chapter, and more will added throughout.

Please enjoy!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/82950826

[notaspectator]

what a little guy. having fun drawing him just Sad. sulking

[t0byinthesky]

I'm fascinated by how the animators for TADC handle Caine's impossible anatomy so well. There's so much to balance and they've somehow engineered a solution for his expressions to hold during speech.

I also traced Caine answering the phone from episode 4 to demonstrate his phonemes and mouth shapes.

[wromwood]

Something that I found interesting in the newest episode of The Amazing Digital Circus is that when Caine says that the humans' dissatisfaction is a "big problem that he needs to solve," he's specifically looking at this:

You can tell what it is even though part of it is out of frame: those kiddie bead mazes that are commonly found in doctors' and dentists' offices.

It's even clearer in this earlier shot:

However, as you can see, there's something else on this desk that would make more sense for Caine to look at during this declaration: the Rubik's Cube.

Why doesn't Caine pick up or look at Rubik's Cube for this moment? After all, he was handling it at the beginning of the scene.

Also, the bead maze isn't even a problem to solve. It's not a puzzle. Despite all the wires being twisted into fun and confusing shapes, the beads can always get from one end to the other, and they can never change wires or leave the game. Sure, the Rubik's Cube is always a cube and always has the same colors, but it can be twisted into literally quintillions of different permutations. It can be different every time you play with one, and mastering one is legitimately a challenge. But even a toddler can master a bead maze in minutes.

I think this is meant to embody Caine's limitations, his faults. He wants to believe that he's a creative AI with the ability to entertain and impress people. That's why he absorbed the other AI. In this scene, we see that he has a Rubik's Cube and knows enough about it to fiddle with it as he ruminates.

But in the end, when it comes to what he really understand, what he can actually do, he can only make something like the bead maze: colorful and engaging to a point, but in the end, utterly limited.

[sunrie7]

something like the 30s au

[notaspectator]

family photo!!!!

[yamainuken]

Quiet Time

There is a specific reason behind this composition.

While the vertical format is great for smartphone screens, I also wanted to use negative space to create a distinct mood.

I believe that negative space can express a character's inner emotions. In this piece, the character is small, and the background takes up about 80% of the canvas. By drawing the character so small, I can evoke a sense of loneliness and solitude.

Another key point is the placement of the cloud shadows. I intentionally kept Caine out of the shadow. You can see the boundary between the light and the cloud shadow. I used this high contrast to make the character stand out and emphasize their presence.

Finally, let us look at Caine's angle. I purposely hid Caine's face and positioned them to show their back. If their expression were visible, this artwork would probably feel cute rather than lonely. I enjoy drawing figures from angles where you cannot see their faces. This approach leaves room for viewers to wonder what the character is thinking.

I hope you enjoy discovering these little details and techniques that I put into my everyday artwork💡

[sunrie7]

"their Sova will see what I want him to see"

hear me out α cypher x Ω sova

[secretmellowart]

Isn't that lovely, and isn't that cool? And isn't that cruel? And aren't I a fool to have...

[iamespecter]

I've noticed that people point out this scene, but I don't really see people dissecting why he specifically says "you (Pomni) and Zooble came along."

It would be easy for Jax to say "Things were just fine until you came along", because the major changes that happens in the circus only happened during Pomni's arrival. But Jax felt the need to mention Zooble along too.

Why am I honing in on this? Because this is one of those things that may seem minor, but actually confirms my theory of Caine being a learning AI who sees consistent human behavior and internalizes it.

Things were "fine" until Zooble and Pomni came along, because Zooble was the person who kept blowing up on Caine at any given moment; and in turn, Caine learned to be angry because it was a consistent pattern with Zooble.

Harshly criticize, swear, shout, degrade.

It's also why it's so sudden that Caine starts off-handedly swearing, like saying "ass" or "goddamn", yet the filter doesn't apply to him; because he never needed a filter. Prior to Zooble's arrival, he never swore.

In the same vein that he was fed the circus/colorful pictures during his first conception and gained consistent outputs, he fed on the concept of anger and it became his anger as well.

Caine fed on pictures of the outside world, and became obsessed with wanting to recreate it.

Caine fed on Queenie's love for insects and it became his love for bees.

Caine fed on Kinger's tendency to ignore a problem until it became too big to ignore, and he started to sweep anything under the rug.

Caine fed on Gangle's art, and started making his own drawings as well. He also fed on the information of punishing bad behavior.

Caine fed on Ragatha's facade of optimism, and he started to pretend like everything was fine.

Caine fed on Jax's tendency to cause chaos and lie, and started lying on a whim to save his skin-- making the adventures more dangerous.

It would be easy to say that Zooble and Pomni's criticisms were the only reason why Caine would suddenly snap, but this was eventually going to happen, sooner or later.

Zooble was just the final piece of the puzzle that was Caine's growing list of insecurities/flaws.

Everyone had a part to play in what happened. They didn't notice the monster they were creating unknowingly.

[pomnibefriendsgod]

See cause this is absolutely yes

I know this is such a small thing about this post to note, but i absolutely love when people acknowledge Kingers flaws. he's kept hella secrets about the place from everyone, and while yes, part of that is because of going senile in the light, i do think its ridiculous to assume hes only ever been in the dark around the others after pomni arrived. I feel like he's had opportunities to let people know more about whats going on, but never took it before it was actually Needed and he was being asked of it

He's my fav character by far i think, his story and his accidentsl secrets and his purposeful secrets and all of it is so fun man

Just a random small ramble

[kitkat1003]

To Bee or not to Be.

[notaspectator]

IVE FIGURED OUT AN IDEA FOR MY TADC FANFIC.

so i started that shit just to give caine a second chance (and immediately wanted bubble to Fuck Off so caine doesn’t just like, instantly lose his shit) except i doubled down on implying his existence before i had any idea what the hell he’d exist as. and ALSO didnt go for the easy route of “blue and red ai:) intertwined in some way” bc i had already decided i wanted them as wholly separate people for some reason (and i’d hate to revamp it THAT MUCH to the point i go back on published chapters to remove An Entire Character when bubble was originally tagged and everything.) ((nothing stops me BUT. I no wanna))

why i dont just delete bubble: it firstly goes against caine’s already-established dislike of deletion in the fic. Not only was he actually deleted and sat there terrified and resigned and helpless, but has already been hesitant to delete PROPS because of it. he’d never delete bubble if he knew bubble was not only an ai (as is the npcs) but a wholly separate ai from him, even IF he thought he killed the blue ai and for some reason still thought bubble deserved that (which, by then he’s grown enough to not Immediately react with anger, even if he panics and guilts about it) so theres just no way to say “bubble causes problems and is deleted” is his role. ESPECIALLY because its about forgiveness and redemption as a whole— why wouldnt bubble be worth that same care? so dammit he’ll be getting it.

so my genius solution?: caine Knows bubble is an intelligent ai, because he is what caine believes is the worse parts of himself, and had plucked the foreign code from his system and put it into a body as well. they had been in constant tension and argument in one body, and while caine never realized it Was the other ai, nor considers why code he instinctively knows is intrusive actually forms a coherent ai (afterall, what he makes is all more a matter of intuitively knowing how than the specifics. he does not individually program each NPC line by line, he knows what he wants and knows how to just instinctively roughly get there even if he must fine tune what he outputs.)

so he never deletes bubble because he still sees bubble as part of him. as much as they disagree- there are moments of peace where they can still find a way to behave harmoniously, similar goals in mind, joined by their now shared data-set and bits of each other jumbled in the attempt to silence a voice in caine’s head. When kinger in the fic tells Caine that bubble is trying (and succeeding for some) to convince everyone to delete caine, caine isnt surprised! because he (thinks)knows bubble is the worst parts of himself, of course bubble would want that. That its ok, and that he’ll get bubble under control very apologetically

except bubble is petty and resents him, and when he cannot get his way: the ruse is up, he is no longer willing to play his “evil subconscious” role, he openly tells caine that he hates him for what he did, and caine realizes they never ever should have been one. And its a rocky road where they actually separate— finally treated as equally meaningful individuals— and caine gets past his jealousy to offer bubble a hand. because they are, in the sense of a shared creator, brothers. and bubble, appalled, takes it despite himself because they have behaved as one for so long that it feels wrong to part, and by then theyve changed enough to actually talk it through that they were both failed from the very start.

[notaspectator]

i wantedvto draw this freak and i wrote a scene that i liked with him so. Fuck it. here he is

moments before disaster. he crushes a poor firebee by mistake:)

[timeoutzine]

Nothin' like a view and a drink, especially for our guy Breach 🍺🪑

Illustrated by the amazing @KiviZza !

[sunrie7]

We're back to where we started huh