An okay artist just trying to improve

25/Female/Christian/American https://linktr.ee/CrimsonPluto Select fandoms live rent-free here Constructive criticism for art welcome!

[smg4-liminalspaceau]

You've been wandering around this place for hours, long enough that your ears have grown numb to the hum of the air conditioning units and you've gone noseblind to the smell of dust and drywall. Room after room, hallway after hallway, you rack your brain trying to determine if you've already been through here -- it's impossible to tell. Every few minutes, you think you see something moving in the shadows just at the edge of your peripheral vision, yet when you try to look at it directly, there's nothing there. You tell yourself you're just seeing things, that your brain is bored and stupid and has decided anything is better to look at than the same walls over and over, even if its method of keeping itself entertained is spiking your paranoia. Still, in a labyrinth of nearly-barren rooms, exposed on all sides with nowhere to hide, you can't shake the feeling of being watched.

Tears of fear and frustration prick the corners of your eyes, dread pooling in your stomach as the gravity of your situation begins to dawn on you. You freeze and hug yourself as you start trembling, but before your knees can give out, you turn and see a strange terminal up against the wall.

Something about it feels odd. It seems...out of place. It's the first of its kind you've seen since you got here. It's similar to the old desktop computers scattered about, but it's different. The only way you can describe it is, unlike the rest of the objects here, it has a sense of purpose. Like it's more than just a prop meant to give this place some semblance of normalcy.

A green light in the corner of its screen tells you it seems to be powered. Your curiosity gets the better of you, and you press the power button.

When it finishes booting up, a staticky video flickers onscreen. It seems to be a person adjusting the camera, their silhouette suggesting they're wearing a large coat. Their face is hidden in shadow, and the only details you can see clearly are two sharp, glowing yellow eyes.

As they finish adjusting the camera, they withdraw their hand, and a man's voice pipes up from the static.

"Zack, Katie, Cory, if you're watching this, you've got someone looking for you. If I don't find you first, there's a trailer on the Wild West Set just outside the town where I've set up camp. Go straight there. If I'm not there when you reach it, just stay put until I get back. Keep the door LOCKED. There's plenty of food and water to tide you over. Until then, there's info on this terminal that'll hopefully help you get there safely. Don't be scared. This nightmare'll be over soon.

"If anybody else is watching this...heh, I'm not usually one to outsource like this, but lend a guy a hand and maybe I can lend you one. You're probably pretty scared…confused… By now you've probably run into at least one thing that's tried to send ya up the river one way or another. But the good news is you're not alone. There are more people here than you think, including myself. I'm trying to compile a…database of sorts, and I figured I might as well not let everybody else's encounters go to waste, heh. I've built a handful of these terminals and put a few on some of the safer Sets. They all connect back to my setup here in this trailer. Use them to write down your own encounters and any info you find. Anything recorded will be openly available for anyone at any of these terminals to read. The only drawback is, at the moment, there's no surefire way to validate entries, so take what you read with a grain of salt. The only entries I know for sure to be legit are the ones in the file labeled 'CONFIRMED.' How do I know? Let's just say they were…professionally documented. I'll be staying on top of this database myself and give updates if I learn anything new. Though, with the shoddy connection in this place, things could take a while to upload. Oh, and if you happen to find any paper files or hard drives, or maybe you found a camera and got some pictures, anything physical, drop 'em in the drop box just under the keyboard. Good luck out there."

CONFIRMED USER ENTRY

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

WELCOME TO THE LIMINAL SPACE AU

That's right, I'm opening up this AU to be semi-collaborative, just like the original Backrooms! So if you want to record an entity, item, or Set you discovered or submit "photos" you snapped on your travels through the Sets, send them to the Submissions box and maybe they'll be featured! (For now, click USER ENTRY to submit!)

Updates to the official doc coming soon, so stay tuned!

[jmepaint-esque]

Welcome to the chaos :)

[sh00t4th3m00n]

Aaaaand introducing my AU Caine, L.I.O.N. Tamer! My buddy @jmepaint-esque gave me the concept, I tweaked the design :3

[smallpwbbles]

I can just imagine one or all of the gang coming up to Kinger and asking where Caine is.

Only for Kinger to silently point up at the ceiling, prompting them to look up.

And Caine is just scuttling around on the ceiling like an excited giant spider.

(Btw I adore your art and animations so much! They always bring a smile to my face when I see them!)

Kinger watching Caine scuttle around on the ceiling like a demon with the energy of watching your kid on the monkey bars (Also thank you!!)

[sh00t4th3m00n]

My buddy on Discord met the TADC VAs and put together a care gift for them, and this was my contribution for Alex :3

[mimosa-sexypeople-contests-2026]

Tumblr Sexyman Contest 2026 Round 3 Part 2

Luigi (Nintendo)

Caine (The Amazing Digital Circus)

Voting ended onJun 22

[sh00t4th3m00n]

[insomniacrori]

@vonvuuu I've been thinking a lot about that Intergalactic AU and how these two... uh met. So I decided to draw this lil headcanon idea XD

The screams of joy of course!

Intergalactic AU belongs to @vonvuuu

[chimkin-samich]

The Rubik's cube incident.

Aka

Caine is a possessive jealous creature with a habit of eating his problems.

Entirely self indulgent this time around lol.

The crumb of context for this is that this is one of the many alternate timelines of the original AU. He gets rescued and put in a rehabilitation facility. Antares, or Tari for short is no one else than Akela as a human, and in this au she is the doctor/vet of said facility. He is quite fond of her, maybe a little too fond...

[runawaygecko]

What rubs me the wrong way about this is that while the cast acknowledged Caine's different way of thinking due to his nature of being an AI, they sure as hell didn't apply this fact when they were criticizing him or asking him of things.

Like, "he's an AI, we can't gauge how he thinks" when it comes to understanding him, BUT "why doesn't he just get what we mean??" when they want something from him.

Caine is a sentient/sapient highly intelligent AI, but he still needs clear instructions on some things. His understanding of what "relaxing"/"normal"/"mature" is could be very different from how the humans perceive it. So I consider it unfair when they judge someone who's basically an alien for having problems with comprehending real world concepts. Especially when they don't even try to actually explain it to him in a way that he could understand.

Hell, I'm an autistic human and I struggle with the same thing! If you want me to do something, don't be vague about it. I can't do what you want me to do unless you give me details!

Sure, the issue with Caine is also about him not listening to the others, but up until episode 8 he was still willing to cooperate on some things. He created a separate adventure for Kinger in ep 4, he stopped making horror stuff after Pomni asked him to, he was fixing Gangle's mask without her saying anything, he created games for them (like tennis/badminton stuff), he made a cafe that seems to only be for the humans, etc.

So I fully believe that communication was possible. And that Caine wasn't the only one who wasn't listening. Both parties should've put in more effort to get through to one another.

[katnficer]

wait hear me out-

ok so not to forcefully adopt this idea as an au from @katzebruh or anything (because i'm unreasonably insane about it for some reason, literally a dozen other caine-centric AUs out there that are infinitely more complex and compelling and i picked this one, fuck it dawg we ball) but my headcanon is that caine genuinely was testing out modifiers and accidentally fucked up forever, if i had a nickel- and he's super conflicted about it...

because on one hand... he's a silly cat furry thing now and literally whats not to love? the humans like it and admittedly doing kitty things is really nice sometimes! chin scritches have never felt so good, honestly he would figure out how to get rid of it sooner if everyone wasn't enjoying it so much!

on the other hand... yikes... an unfixable bug? one that screws with his brain? stop me if you've heard this one before-

awww his widdle ears are so cute though awww and the paws awww

[vonvuuu]

TADC Intergalactic AU!

In this AU, Caine is an interstellar robot from an ancient distant civilization, but he went rogue, escaped, and continued his mission with a corrupted goal in mind. He ended up capturing and researching many different specimens across the galaxy. He was originally meant to release them afterwards — however, since he’s defective, he never does. He keeps them in his ship in cryogenic stasis the majority of the time.

He kept doing this until he came across a strange planet called… Earth. His curiosity towards humans turned into an obsession. He wanted to know everything about them, so he abducted a few humans that he thought wouldn’t be missed too much.

His memory is corrupted, he only remembers bits and pieces from his past, so his true origins remain a mystery.

[chaoticace2005]

Alex Rochon talking about Caine as being less of a monster and more of a neglected child having a tantrum driven by anguish and confusion is so on point.

The first minute of this episode gives more of Caine’s backstory, where we see him being made for a specific purpose, fed some information about the world, and then put to the side while the developers worked on a new AI.

If we take the box to mean some kind of actual containment (although it could also represent Caine’s previous programming and limitations) then while they worked on the second AI he was just locked away, forced to develop on his own.

He knows stuff about the world, concepts, ideas, but was just fed the information, he was never socialized or taught genuinely, and that’s one of the huge things that AI tend to miss from the human experience. We learn as we get older from context of the world around us, we don’t wake up knowing how to speak, most people observe others and use what they see to create schemas, adjusting them when learning new things.

Caine was given some information and then isolated, “cut off” as he later says, his understanding of things is limited. And while he is a creative and learning AI, it’s difficult to learn when never given the information to begin with.

There is this part of the sequence where the AI we assume is Caine approaches the new AI and we see the size difference, and I take this to possibly symbolize that the second AI was “better” in some ways (since Caine was a rough draft) but despite that, when they combined Caine won.

Caine winning could be a result of the fact that even when people stopped working on him, he was developing. AI 2 may have been more technologically advanced, but Caine was older and had complex in the sense that he built upon the knowledge given to him.

But that was done in isolation, without humans. So when Caine started the circus his understanding of the world was already warped, ESPECIALLY his understanding of social situations and mankind. How can you possibly learn to listen or have empathy when there is nobody to listen to?

When the cast has their calling out Caine scene, they each mention a different thing:

- Pomni talks about Caine not listening

- Zooble calls him a child

- Ragatha talks about him never letting them feel at home, not comforting or empathizing with them

- Gangle brings up him discouraging them from being creative

- Jax yells about Caine lying to them

But the thing is: how can Caine listen when he never had anyone to talk to? When he never had that modeled for him? ISNT Caine ultimately a child? A child given a heavy set of expectations and power? How could he make people feel like home when he never had one? How could he let them be creative when he was told it was HIS job to do that, by never learning that others can’t also be creative? How does he know would hurt them if he was never previously told that, and the knowledge that “telling something that isn’t the truth” exists and is something people do?

There was an expectation that Caine be understanding, mature, but how could he have possibly learned to do that? Kinger talks about Caine’s purpose being to create, not to empathize or socialize, the information fed to him at the beginning may have been limited to physical ideas and concepts, not social information. And then he was possibly locked away, unable to have access to information about people until MUCH later, where by then the foundation of his understanding of the world may already be lacking in some areas, and it was too difficult to fit the new information in to come to the conclusion that humans do.

Caine’s purpose was ultimately to create and entertain, but with humans being locked in with him, there become an additional unspoken aspect of the goal: to empathize and prove comfort, but how is he supposed to do that when he was never given the tools to do so? When he was never told that in order for people to have fun, they need to be comfortable first?

“Caine is like Vox” no, no, Caine is like the Collector. An all powerful being who was isolated and then set upon the world without knowledge of what people are like. Who hurt people without meaning to at first, and then, when they come to the realization they’re failing and alone? Lash out on purpose, specifically targeting people’s own personal worse fears.

The difference is that in TOH, the Collector was given a chance to change. King and Luz both offered him a hand, and listened to them. With Caine he never got that chance, he was deleted right at the end of his “torture everyone” sequence before a discussion or understanding could even be had.

And that isn’t the cast’s fault either, no one meant to delete Caine, and they’re allowed to be angry about the situation and their treatment, at how Caine and the circus made them feel and what was done to them, and for them Caine was a representation of all of that so yeah, they’re gonna be angry.

But in the end, Caine was trapped, just like them, as Abel said in episode 7, and now he’d definitely never have a chance to be free.

[sh00t4th3m00n]

I was pondering why Caine is constantly asking for the humans' feedback/input on how to improve his adventures, yet dislikes the suggestion box so much (especially since I've seen some people use that fact to say Caine doesn't really care about what the humans want), and I think I figured it out:

To Caine, the difference between the suggestion box and the humans' more general feedback is the same difference between ChatGPT and writing prompts or constructive criticism.

Caine wants to know how to make his adventures more appealing to the humans, but he doesn't want the adventures written FOR him, and that's what the suggestion box feels like to him. (That's why he took the more general concepts of "exit," "answers," and "something real" to heart so deeply.) Basically, Caine is looking for a "Session 0" with the humans. If you're unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons, Session 0 is where the players get together with the DM to introduce their characters, suggest general themes they like for the campaign, establish boundaries/comfort zones, etc. But the point of Session 0 is not to write the campaign for the DM, just to give them ideas on what to include. This also suddenly makes Caine's line "They're enjoying the suggestion box adventures more than the me adventures!" a LOT more relatable. I mean, how many times have you been frustrated or even worried by seeing people or the algorithm engage with AI art (that probably stole from your art) more than "you" art?

[sh00t4th3m00n]

It's always "Caine's lack of understanding doesn't excuse his behavior toward the humans" and never "the humans' lack of understanding doesn't excuse their treatment of Caine"

[insomniacrori]

Big, hot, digital men... are woman's weakness...

[slimeylee]

The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander The lion does not concern himself with caine hate or slander