aita for making my boyfriend go to prom with a girl I felt bad about bullying and accidentally causing her to destroy the entire city and kill him and hundreds of people? I didn't know she had the power
oh my god my sweet baby boy? my darling? in all his angry spider glory?
love love love how clear the emotions are here...caine's distressed rage and kinger's confused, terrified concern...i love all the poses and all the jagged edges to caine's form, this avatar is not comfy for him :( i like. the shading??? my vocabulary is failing me i like how shadowed caine's eyes are like this. sdfghjk they're both trying SO hard and it's all gone to hell despite that. everybody's scaring everybody else and no one is having a good time. the instant regret on caine's face as he drops kinger. god. it's all exactly how i pictured it. beautiful.
Thank you so much for drawing this, it means the world to me! <3
(Do you mind if I link to this in the relevant chapter?)
“I bet you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger…”
*very ooc self-indulgent holy hell
“Go ahead! Guess whose body this is——If you ever want to see him again.” [1/2] This is so ooc I’m never drawing another one after this(I only wanted an excuse to draw Kinger holding his shotgun
The idea is that Caine locked his permission away before anyone else, which caused Cavin to lose all of his admin privileges too——including things like flying.. So everyone’s in survival-mode now. PvP enabled(bruh
(I didn't expect so many people to like my villain AU but hello!!! Idk how long this hyperfixation will last, but for the time being, welcome to my cardboard box!! Feel free to pick it up and shake it with me in it!!!)
And if you have any questions or prompts for Pulse(Villain Robert) i welcome them because my brain is tiny and filled with woodland creatures.
Sorry for the delay, this is short and late but I just need to take this out before I keep remaking the ending...
Like this is the fourth draft of what I wanted to do, I'm mildly happy with how this turned out, hope I didn't make all of you wait for too long... Glup.
I've been reading over this comic so much. For the past 30 minutes, I have just been rereading it over and over and I am just utterly fascinated about every part of it. I absolutely love Caine's portrayal here. The writing of this comic in general is incredibly high quality. It's well thought out. It's illustrated well, too. There's so much visual clarity. The shapes are so fun and the limited colors really make everything pop. The lineart is stellar!
I cannot get over the way Caine reacts to the box. The screaming, the crying- I know in the caption, it's explained that the glitching effect on the box and Caine's dialogue was just an effect that they ditched halfway through because it (supposedly) looks ugly, but I cannot get over the fact that in the third part, the box is STILL glitched out. The implication that Caine freaked the hell out so badly that he warped the box and glitched it out is fascinating to me. That's such a fun detail, intention or not.
Caine screaming all of that dialogue stated in that flashback is so interesting to me. Of course, on the surface level, Ragatha takes it as an apology for being upset and that he's scared of simply being alone or trapped by himself. What about the rest of the dialogue? When this is over and she thinks on it more, I wonder what she'll assume he meant by "I can do it better. I can do it right! I can fix it!" Of course, she has no context for what this actually means, so she'll probably come to the conclusion most others probably come to- that he is an autistic man who was probably horrifically abused and never received any actual help, support, and accommodation. Which is both hysterical to me and also deeply touching. So much of this AU and it's fancontent centers around the circus believing Caine to simply be a very Autistic and Sheltered individual, which is fair, but it also make Jax's antagonizing even more insulting and poignant. Jax likely believes the same of Caine and is fully just bullying the crap out of someone he sees as intellectually disabled. The line "See? He's too stupid to get mad!" makes my skin crawl.
My absolute favorite part of the comic is Caine picking himself up off the floor. It calls back to Episode 8, after Caine has his breakdown in his office. He's laid out on the floor, only to pick himself up, adjust his bowtie, and put the mask right back on. He does the same here. He picks himself up, smooths out his coat, gets into a resting position and puts the mask right back on. To me, this seems to be analogous to his 'resets' and blue screens he experiences as the ringmaster. The ticking and ring of a timer really evokes an unnatural feeling to this process. He did not simply shove it all down, he didn't just calm himself down- he reset himself. Likely not in the way he used to be able to, but in some way. It's offputting. It's creepy. It's unnatural, and the other's pick up on that. Not even minutes ago, he was crumpled, sniffling, murmuring mess on the floor, and now he's back to the loud, boisterous, energetic roar. It's an act, always has been, and he's just resuming it.
I am especially interested in Caine saying "Understand... what? There's nothing to understand here, silly!" This almost exactly what Jax says to Pomni in Episode 6. "There's nothing more to me, so, please, just stop looking." That is exactly why Jax is so disturbed by Caine's sudden switch in behavior- he recognizes it as his own. Jax does the exact same thing that Caine does here. He shuts down, he dissociates, and he puts the mask back on. In this comic, we don't see Jax feel remorse necessarily for what he did, but he does feel disturbed. More notably, I think he's scared. I think that he is threatened in some way by Caine's reset because he sees himself in him. The notion that someone has a similar experience to himself is a terrifying thought that he doesn't know how to cope with. So he doesn't! He puts on the smile, finished the scene, brushes it off, and leaves. He no longer finds this scenario fun or purposeful to his role, so he leaves. And he leaves upset. It wasn't nearly as fun as he had hoped.
I am absolutely IN LOVE with this comic, as am I with this AU as a whole! I am so so so so fascinated with your interpretations. I want nothing more than to see more of these stories. This is by far my favorite comic I've read from this fandom.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful commentary of my work! I'm very flattered that you liked my comic :')
I won't go into too much detail on everything I did or every decision I made for this work, since I think the most fun part of reading something is creating your own interpretation.
But for you, and your kindness, I'll share some things (including things I cut/changed from the comic) :D
I don't have much for the first part, as it was the most planned out. buuuuut-
For a moment I thought about making the comic in full render but... Yeah- no... yeah...
So instead I tried to focus on the ambient and line work to compensate for the lack of color :D
For the second part, I still have a conflict with the glitch effect...
When I first did it, I used the default one the program I use has and...
This....
At surface level might not look that bad. But it was confusing to read and looked strange overall, so I decided to dilute it!
That being said, even though I didn't like it, I fid found a narrative use for it!
The box glitch in the third part is very much intentional.
Even though Caine can "fix" himself with ease after a collapse, he's incapable of repairing the wounds he inflicts in people and, in this case, his surroundings.
Cute Ragatha expression I ended up not using.
I also really like the way this Au recontextualizes his experiences. The way he acts and his "upbringing" are so odd when they are not surrounding a machine.
Like, discontinuing a program in favor of a more useful version of itself is standard.
On the other hand, attempting to kill your kid and replacing them with your younger one because he can't recognize shapes, is kinda insane.
---
Part two and one were planned to be published together, but, as I explained in the two posts, I had no idea where I wanted to go with the plot.
As seen in this discarded page, all the cool moments of part 2 were gone!
I'm really glad I decided to extend it tbh, characters interactions are the reason I live for!!!
I had the opportunity to highlight a point from the original series that I really like. Which is that Caine has some similarities with all the members of the circus.
They are hurt and feel in similar ways, but both sides are blinded, ignorant and incapable of empathizing with each other....
Anyway, next part is a little more light hearted, I hope you like it ;p
No one knows how to cope in this circus!! They all need a therapist!
This commentary is nothing but messy so srry about that hahaha
2087
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
