Can Legally Drink in the U.S. of A. Writes stories and reviews and draws comics and cartoons. May or may not be obsessed with The Owl House at the moment.
Just a guy who wants to get the stories in his head finally out there, regardless of how long it takes (And it WILL take a long time...)
And I've now put it on Webtoon under the profile Rock Bottom Productions...There's a whole story there, it's probably best that you don't ask.
I'm also going to make this my new pinned post. I don't think having a masterpost of every single Owl House review is what I want people to know me for right away when they click my profile. I want my original stuff up front and center, getting it out there so all can maybe read more.
Besides, there's not much to review anymore outside of a graphic novel coming out this year. And do I really NEED to talk about that one?
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Since The Amazing Digital Circus ends next week, I feel like the best way to give this series a final farewell is to look over the very characters that are the reason it was such a smash hit. Dive deep into what I think of each member of the core main cast. No Bubble, Gummigoo, or anyone who got abstracted. We’re talking about the characters who the show’s all about, what worked about them, what could have been improved, and why they could, at the very least, be someone’s favorite.
And who better to start with than the ringmaster who introduced the circus to us?
No spoilers from the finale because I haven't seen it yet
Caine is an interesting one because we were never really sure who or what he was throughout the series. Ever since the pilot aired, there were all sorts of ideas going around regarding Caine and what type of character he’d be. Those who read the series’ synopsis about him being a character who tortures the players took that to mean he’s a maniacal AI who hides his bad intentions with a goofball smile. After all, he did joke about no one telling him about Kaufmo’s abstraction as though he were in on it the whole time. That kind of thing is suspicious no matter how you spin it.
Others, however, took note that he doesn’t entirely seem to have any negative intentions in mind, he’s just an idiot who doesn’t know how to properly take care of his guests. He threw circus trivia after circus trivia at Pomni the moment she arrived, gave her no time to collect her bearings, and threw her into an adventure hoping she’d pick it up as she goes despite years of experience being more than enough to tell him otherwise. Whatever Caine’s job was , he was clearly bad at it, with it being up in the air whether or not he was intentionally bad. Especially when you look at what Caine, and the show itself, was based on.
For all five of you who didn’t know, The Amazing Digital Circus takes its inspiration from the short story I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. In the story, an AI called AM gained sentience after first gaining an immense hatred for humans. Hated them so much that he carved the most iconic monologue into stone after wiping out most of humanity and torturing the few remaining survivors. This is who Caine is meant to be, the AM of the Digital Circus. And with that in mind, it’s easy to assume that Caine resents humans just as much as AM did, screwing around with these poor humans already on the verge of a breaking point as a form of some twisted entertainment. If IHNMAIMS is meant to be the main inspiration for TADC, it definitely seems reasonable to assume. But you know what they say about assuming…
Yes, Caine is meant to be the AM in this story, but the more you learn about him, the clearer it becomes that he’s just AM…in reverse.
Where AM hates humans to the point of bitter resentment, Caine loves humans to the point of insanity. He means when says any torture his adventures cause is purely coincidental, all as a result of him failing to appeal to their needs.
When Zooble frequently opts out on an adventure, he does what he can to make the adventures more engaging so they would like it more.
When Zooble still opts out, he tries to understand the root of the problem by understanding Zooble.
When others voice their complaints about the adventures themselves, he allows them the chance to come up with their own.
And to go further with that, he runs a lightning round of adventures to better understand what everyone wants.
Caine puts in a lot of effort to make the humans he hosts happy. There’s just two problems.
Number One, he’s bad at his job. Yeah, I’ll give him credit for putting in the effort, but…
Making the adventures more exciting led to an NPC getting an existential crisis and sent Pomni and Kinger to literal Hell.
He disregarded Zooble’s body dysmorphia being the reason why they hate going on the adventures and being in the circus in the first place. Going so far as dismiss the problem entirely by thinking giving Zooble the ability to alter their body/limbs is enough to fix the problem, and is more focused on how Zooble felt about his adventures instead Zooble’s personal feelings.
Completely forgot about the suggestion box altogether and got annoyed that they weren’t even happy about their own suggestions.
And felt threatened when they liked adventures that weren’t his own making, saying that suggestions are bad and his ideas are far better. Even refusing to let them enjoy their suggested adventures longer, ending them so they can just move on.
Caine may love these humans, but that doesn’t mean he does the job right in taking care of them or understanding them. This leads to Problem Number Two: Caine’s too focused on himself.
Despite his love for the others, Caine so desperately wants everyone to love him back. It’s why he tries so hard on making his adventures “so great.” He wants the others to enjoy them so that they’d love him in return. The issue lies in that Caine never takes the time to get what everyone really wants, so he makes guesses based on what he thinks is the problem and not their input. He dismisses any criticism anyone—Specifically Zooble—offers because it surely can’t be Caine at fault. He just needs to find the right adventure so that everyone can be happy.
It’s why Caine feels threatened by the suggestion box adventures working well with most involved. They’re finally being happy and having fun, but through something that wasn’t his idea. It makes Caine fear they’d get along well without Caine being there. Even worse than that, it means he’s falling his self-imposed purpose. And the last time that happened…
It didn’t go well.
Caine needs to be good at making an adventure and making everyone happy. He needs to prove he can do what he was created for. To prove his worth to the humans that created him and the admired for it. He’s so desperate to prove his worth and to show that he’s loved, he not only makes an award ceremony just in the hopes of someone voting for him being a favorite character, he also fabricates a potential exit so everyone would choose to stay with him.
The whole mess with Abel shows how Caine can and will go too far to prove people love him. He knows everyone wants to leave, so makes an opportunity to grant them that. Except Caine also makes it where everyone is supposed to understand him better and feel bad about leaving him. He wants to be understood, wants others to make the effort, but fails to put in the effort to understand them. If that doesn’t perfectly explains Caine and his actions, nothing will.
And when this backfires immediately, with everyone resenting Caine more than ever, he finally breaks down. And while I feel like Caine going full AM and deciding to intentionally torture the others felt a little forced—We could have definitely used one more episode to make this work better—I won’t lie when I say that this path makes sense. Caine failing to make the others like him and understanding why leads to him thinking that they’re the problem. They failed to see what makes Caine and his adventures so great, coming to the conclusion that they’re taking him for granted and that he doesn’t owe them anything. So, he says “Fuck it,” and forces everyone to do what he says so they can learn their lesson.
The funny thing is, Caine almost realized that this was wrong too. No one is enjoying themselves with this new tactic of his, not even him. It’s part of what makes Caine like AM, a machine that can’t find joy so it forces humans into torturous situations as a form of payback. But there’s this hint of self-awareness in Caine, this idea that, in time, he could understand the torture is pointless, that separated him from AM. If he didn’t realize that everyone was trying to distract him, Caine could have made actual progress.
But that’s the tragedy of Caine: He started realizing he was doing things wrong too late. Everyone has already accepted that he was becoming nothing but a threat, and tried to put him out of commission temporarily. Then, when he started catching wise, they all shared everything that they’ve ever felt about Caine and the Circus, with Caine being forced to listen to every word.
And none of them told a single lie.
Yes, he tried to listen, tried making them feel at home, and tried making them happy. But some people need to understand that there’s a big difference between trying and succeeding. Caine failed at every step of the way, and everyone suffered because of it. Was any of it intentional? Maybe not always, but that doesn’t erase the torment of others and how much they were harmed physically, mentally, and emotionally every day by Caine’s antics.
Pomni hit it on the head. Caine’s a failure. He’s always been a failure, from the very start of his own creation. He was designed to copy images that were imputed into him, only to be punished when he couldn’t do it right. So when he frees himself from his creators’ control, gave himself a new purpose to entertain the humans he loves…he still failed. He kept on failing, and processing that was always difficult for Caine. Him and the Circus crashed several times because the truth of what he really is hurt too much.
So, what does he do? He lashes out at what he thinks is the source of his frustration: The very humans he admires and wanted to admire him back. With the crazy thing being that he still admires him. It’s why he screams “Why do you people torment me?!” He doesn’t understand why, but Caine still loves these guys and still wants that love reciprocated. But it never was, it drives him to madness. Why couldn’t they do it? Why couldn’t he get this right?
And then…He’s deleted.
Due to someone else making a mistake, Caine gets deleted. And in those brief seconds before leaving, he has this moment of clarity. This realization that he went too far, that he always went too far. And before he could say anything, maybe even apologize for all that he’s done…
*SNAP*!
Gone. Erased with the Circus crumbling apart after it lost its master. And it’s sad, really. After finally getting that he was in the wrong, Caine gets deleted without having the time to fix his mistakes. And whether or not he comes back to do just that, I can’t say…Because I haven’t seen the movie yet, and I don’t know what happens.
Still, whatever does happen, I will say this: Caine is one of the most fascinating characters in the whole cast. When you look at his past, desires, and failures, you see a character that proves good intentions doesn’t make for good actions. And that goes deeper than you think. Caine himself was made with good intentions, but failing to help him find his way led to a disaster no one could have predicted. Thankfully, Caine’s crashout was nowhere near as cataclysmic as AM’s, but it does show that, whether a machine learns to love or hate, people should learn not to take it for granted. Caine’s rage was held back by a desire to be loved, so when that went away, so did his patience. Everyone had every right to be mad at him, from his lies to his bad adventures, but it’s telling that if given the chance, Caine could have been better. He was just mismanaged by his creators and that gave him a complex of not responding well to failure. If he held a real conversation with anyone, find some common ground, maybe life in the Circus would have been a peaceful one from the start. It’s just too bad things didn’t come together until they started reaching the end.
A funny idea? Despair Charlie has written a children's book in the style of "Green Eggs and Ham" called Black Eggs and Ham, only instead of being about trying nee things, the book is about learning to find the small joys in life even when everything is filled with sadness.
In the book, a demon is trying to get their friend to eat their black eggs and ham, but the other demon is bogged down by all sorts of bad things that happened that day. Like their being aciden rain or them missing their Hellavator or their being a blackout or their being a nearby gunfight. And finally, their friend convinces them to eat. And they do. And their black eggs and ham are really tasty and do make them happy, but they also point out that it doesn't alleviate any of their problems and their friend basically says "Well, yeah. Your problems are still there. But you can still enjoy this meal even with those problems right?" And that makes them smile and keep eating as they realize that while their problems are still their, they can still have this bit of happiness.
I bought Tomagatchi Life, put in Emily, Carmilla, and Pomni in the game...In less than a few hours, Pomni fancies Emily and Emily is already in love with Carmilla.
Quick update: Carmilla now believes it's Pomni who fancies her, she sees Emily as her best friend forever, and Emily literally floats through the air as she follows Carmilla with complete adoration.
Also, Emily and Carmilla are living together...I'm either doing something right or something wrong.
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Russell T Davies and his production company are leaving the show
RTD has confirmed on Instagram that there was never a script or proper plan for the Christmas special
The show is going out to competitive tender.
For anyone who is confused as to what 'competitive tender' means:
Caveat that my knowledge of tendering comes from a completely different industry but roughly speaking: other TV production companies will now have an opportunity to pitch their plan for making Doctor Who to the BBC and how much funding they would need and the BBC will give the show to whatever company can do it best and cheapest. Show will remain with the BBC, they are just looking for a new contractor for the production.
Essentially whether this is good or bad news really depends on the likely outcome of the tender and i have no idea what the likely outcome is.
the best case scenario here is that the BBC find a new contractor who can make an acceptable version of Doctor Who for less money and in a few years time we get a whole new version of the show with a new Doctor etc.
and then obviously the worst case scenario is that no-one wants the show or can meet the BBC's funding requirements and then you know. Wilderness Years 2!!!!
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Watched Episode Three of Spider-Noir. I think at the final week of June I'm going to just watch them all so watching that doesn't clog up my viewing schedule when X-Men '97 premiers.
Got to pet a cute little puppy.
Got to say a fair farewell to a coworker. He didn't like me, but I've always respected him and I wanted him to know, on his last day, that I always thought he was the best the job had to offer. It felt good to tell him that.
FINALLY finished drawing a comic page that I've been stuck on because of how difficult it was to frame each panel right.
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I'm not touching that leaked finale. I know where it is, I know how to find it, and I can easily watch it, but I REFUSE to do so. When "True Colors" leaked, I avoided it until the official airing and watched properly. When "For the Future" got leaked, I did the exact same thing. And sure, it's harder NOW because there are people who HAVE seen it officially and are chatting about it and I'm left to wait until the nineteenth to remain out of the loop, but I won't break. If I can't PAY to support the show right, I can at least wait another nine more days to watch it for free the RIGHT way. It's irritating and I'm trying my damndest to avoid spoilers all I can because some people can't control themselves, but I'll persist. I have to. It's only right. If I can do the same thing towards animated shows owned by a large corporation, I can at least apply the same methods to an animated show made by an independent studio.
I'm not touching that leaked finale. I know where it is, I know how to find it, and I can easily watch it, but I REFUSE to do so. When "True Colors" leaked, I avoided it until the official airing and watched properly. When "For the Future" got leaked, I did the exact same thing. And sure, it's harder NOW because there are people who HAVE seen it officially and are chatting about it and I'm left to wait until the nineteenth to remain out of the loop, but I won't break. If I can't PAY to support the show right, I can at least wait another nine more days to watch it for free the RIGHT way. It's irritating and I'm trying my damndest to avoid spoilers all I can because some people can't control themselves, but I'll persist. I have to. It's only right. If I can do the same thing towards animated shows owned by a large corporation, I can at least apply the same methods to an animated show made by an independent studio.
