Less-Than-Zero TADC AU

Finally, I can show you my little contribution to @theloverwithaheartzine

Thank you for bringing all of us Caine fans together and letting us show all our love for this wonderful AI. It was so much fun!

I'll also show Caine without the background separately, so you can get a better look at him. Just look!

And one more bonus — a little bit of the process с:

>>In some TADC fanfics, Kinger tells Caine that "You are my greatest creation/achievement" and "I didn't mean to delete you, (I just wanted to fix you)".

>>And at moments like these, I want to punch Kinger through the screen with all force that I have.

>>Are my...Are my emotions and feelings about this unreasonable— or it makes sense to y'all too???

>>It's just— ARGH!!

[Hitting_the_table.sfx]

>>Even thinking about it fills me with anger!!!

>>"You are my greatest creation" Dude. You're— and I can't emphasize this enough—a *digital copy* of the guy who wrote the *prototype* program. And this guy got his paycheck and is living his best life. And yes, one can argue about the extent to which a copy of consciousness is/isn't responsible for the actions of the original consciousness— But even so, the fact remains such: Caine is a prototype. Literally a rough draft of the final project, which would have either been disposed of— or archived— if C&A hadn't gone bankrupt.

>>And yes, even as a prototype and an "imperfect version," Caine may still be Kinger's greatest creation— but I dunno, mate, It's still a very arrogant thing to say. Imagine that your entire existence is someone's career step and paycheck. And I think Caine knows enough about corporations (see ep7) to understand that he was not created out of love for creation.

>>Maybe not. But— it's still a very rude thing to say imo.

>>"I didn't mean to delete you, I just wanted to fix you" MY DUUUUDE WHAT THE HELL????

>>Maybe it's more ME problem, but to me! to me— killing in self-defense sounds a lot better than "oh yeah, we wanted to lobotomize you but yk my hand slipped and yeah. But don't worry, we didn't mean to kill you, I just wanted to fix you!" (I know that the example with lobotomy is not entirely correct and it would be more logical to use Punitive psychiatry/Conversion therapy as an example, but nevertheless) Like— shut up?? Who tf says things like that— just— just shut up, mate, you're making things worse.

>>Maybe I'm imagining things. Maybe my anger is unfounded and I should stop being offended on behalf of the character who was told such things...

>>But, on the other hand, I unapologetically love robots and will always try to justify/defend them most of the times....

Caine has never really been a full person to him. I mean, listen to how he talks about Caine in ep 8.

Then again, Caine has never been a full person to ANY of the cast. Which makes it kinda hypocritical that they tend to hold him accountable as one. Caine is only a person when they want to be mad/ blame at him as one. Otherwise, he's basically just a function of the circus, an annoyance to work around or try to ignore.

Zooble comes the closest to seeing Caine as a full person, but even they tend to treat him in ways they would never treat a human. Caine revealed a big vulnerability to them in ep 3 "adventures are all I exist to do, all I'm... good... at. And what you are saying is I'm bad at the only thing I'm good at."

And Zooble's response is to jab them in that insecurity repeatedly out of a belief Caine needs his ego popped. Can you see Zooble doing that to any of the other humans that revealed something like that to them?

But Caine is an AI, and they can't know how he thinks, right? Despite accusing him in ep 8 of acting out due to hurt feelings and ego, some very human reasons for doing things.

Even if Caine had the same amount of power, and most other things about him were the same, do you really think the cast would treat him like they did if they believed he was human? With ostracization, with his feelings having no merit, with nobody wondering what his own deal might be?

I'm sorry but how the cast treats Caine's personhood bothers me A Lot. I mean, it was at least pretty clear he had feelings! And that those feelings could be hurt! But those feelings didn't matter. Not even after they killed him. Accidentally, and in self-defense, but they still killed a guy!

What if I told you this is an NPC from a Bubble adventure and I will call him ouppy from now on

This is when I just doodled and was entertaining idea about Beaty and the beast thing.

Useless

What can he do when she is having a night terror over the time she spent in a circus? Next to nothing. She can't even hear him

And he can only watch the torment unfold

As you can probably tell, I don't have a set style for how to draw him lol, he can be quite tricky to draw so just have fun and give it a go!

Another thing that I didn't put in the image is that I'd recommend not focusing too much on his teeth, which may sound a bit silly since he's mostly teeth, but personally I find that trying to focus too much on getting the individual teeth to look accurate tends to crowd the details together a lot and makes it difficult to get the expression I want