I ain’t got a Scooby-Doo, mate.

Pomni being a wingjest for Caine is an adorable silly concept

You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.

Wish we could've gotten more short tempered Pomni moments siiiigh

Caine is sorry for what he did but the anger and sorrow about it is still there. Kinger stopped him from continuing cuz it doesn't feel right getting info from Caine he most likely wouldnt give if he wasnt so inebriated.

IM CRYING, THE VERTICAL ROLLING

Some of my favorite shots of Caine being heartbreakingly apologetic when he reunited with the humans 🥺

Silly scribbles of a post-episode-8 AU where Caine gets a character arc & eventually joins the gang as Just Another One of the Guys. Zooble has trouble learning how to conjure things for some of the same reasons they have trouble with the circus in general, and goes to Caine because Kinger says he also "used to have trouble making things in the past." Hijinks ensue. Shenanigans, even. you see the vision.

This comic is here to be Goofy, but I do think Caine's whole deal is meant to tie into the series' overarching trans themes [even if he's not canonically trans.] I think the show's trans themes are broader than a few characters; it's a show about people who are forcibly assigned bodies & names they don't want, forcibly assigned "archetypes" & roles that don't reflect their real selves, and struggle to express their despair around this because their bodies & roles are so ridiculous that their despair is easy to mock. It's safer to play along with your role, when exploring the alternatives can easily make you an object of ridicule. Caine fails to understand Zooble in episode 3 because he is constantly performing the role he was assigned at his creation, and doesn't allow himself to acknowledge his deep insecurity with it-- so he's confused that Zooble can't simply accept the thing they've been assigned. After all, he's accepted what he's been assigned. He refuses to recognize that Zooble is dissatisfied in a way no "adventure" can fix, because that would mean acknowledging the possibility that he could be dissatisfied in a way that no "adventure" can fix. So instead he throws himself into performing an inauthentic caricature of the role he believes is "all he exists" for & is not allowed to ever exist outside of, even as that performance just leaves him feeling "used" "broken" "defective" and overall extremely unhappy. The parallel to the series' Gender themes feels very clear to me. But anyway, I believe all these little guys can figure themselves out eventually.

I think this shows the core reason why Caine failed & everything fell apart. Caine's problem is not, actually, that he is a "broken" machine that needs to be "fixed." Caine's problem is that he's a sentient being with real feelings, who-- like Jax-- aggressively pretends that he isn't. As a result, Caine ends up forcing people to treat him in the dehumanizing way he treats himself. This is not the humans' fault; the humans are generally kind forgiving people who are able to sympathize with others, even when they do bad things. Kinger even does [despite everything] view Caine as alive (he says he "killed" him, not "deleted" him.) But Caine is the one who violently backs them all into a corner and refuses to let them treat him as a person. He aggressively plays the part of a shallow cartoon archetype, and mocks them for "melodrama" when they try to ask questions & understand his actions. So it's all like a horrible form of self-sabotage. Caine in episode 7 clearly wanted Jax to see him as "not so different from you beautiful humans." But in a fit of paranoia and insecurity, he drives the humans to the point where their only option is to treat him in the same dehumanizing way he treats himself.

the catalyzing moment of tadc's ENTIRE narrative, the thing that started everything, was a small, scared child, surrounded by nothingness, using every resource at his disposal to make sure he wasn't alone.