#silly circus

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Queenie, Kaufmo, and Ribbit will be missed.

It must have been quite a shock for those two to get trapped in 2011 and wake up in aggressively 90s bodies. So young too, what a shame.

Zooble is the only one who’d consistently been calling him out and blatantly disinterested in the adventures. At least in recent years.

Kinger is an enigma since we don’t know if he butted heads with Caine back when his mind was clear. The lonely wandering and forgetting his circus name meant he was left abandoned by Caine, but it could also just be a product of time + his memory loss. Current Kinger isn’t aware enough to complain in the light, but Caine still harbors resentments years later.

Jax seems like he normally goes along with the adventures (even if it’s just feigning liking Caine to bully the rest), and the voting system and fake escape were the exception. A big fresh exception that he’s stewing over.

Pomni tried to escape initially, but she was starting to get used to the adventures and even seemed happy when she told Caine she liked the more laid back ones. Pomni always tried to give constructive feedback and find compromises before this.

Ragatha is really passionate about softball, so that’s the only time she really spoke up. Usually she tries to be very positive about the adventures and not complain if she can help it.

Gangle’s requests during the fast food adventure didn’t seem to bother Caine at the time. And other than that she doesn’t like to give negative feedback either.

There’s no “proportionate” response to the grudges, he’s torturing all of them whether they had any quarrel with him or not. I mean, the first thing Caine chose to do was grab Ragatha of all people and rip her like a dog toy.

Caine power tripped on all of the humans and brutalized them relentlessly, no matter how agreeable they tried to be. He’s not directing his anger, it’s just a marathon rampage against every and anybody.

And then there’s the personal torture at the end..

The one that boils my blood is what he inflicted on Ragatha. Because it’s so much worse than the others, and for what?

This is a non-canon timeline of the Silly Circus where after being deleted, Caine comes back as a "human" in this other circus. Idk how I just wanted him to come back.

Pomni here had the great misfortune of being the most recognizable human and he immediately went on the attack. His words come out as garbled computer noises and static. The humans can't understand what he's saying.

Being designated as a human means he's been stripped of his powers too, so he's in the same boat as them. Mostly.

Silly Caine knows what he really is. And heard/understood how he was threatening Pomni. And how he reeks of a devoured ai. The humans think he's one of them, but Silly Caine doesn't treat him with the same warmth reserved for the guests.

Humans in this Circus always have to be some flavor of clown or mime or jester, so the fact that he looks more like an acrobat is a clue that he's not one of them. An acrobat stuck wearing the same colors that he picked for his villain song.

Initially I thought about giving him multiple sets of limbs, but it just didn't look right. The main goal was to make him Caine but without looking like himself, if that makes sense. I think his face turning into a star like the back of his model glitching works though.

Caine's body is actually made up of a series of wires and "Caine-bles", which he can stretch and unfurl at will. Each of them can be controlled independently from each other.

The wires nestled between the "Caine-bles" have adapters on the ends, and he can remove the wire caps on his fingers whenever he needs to connect them to someone something.

Here's an older drawing of canon Caine if you want to compare colors. Silly Caine's meant to look like he spawned out of Purble Place or Goofy Goober's Ice Cream Party Boat.

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The Circus was never meant to be kept running 24/7. But the humans needed a place to stay, since they didn't function like part of the game. Any program left running can glitch and break, which could put them at risk of getting hurt or lost.

Adventures could be compartmentalized and stored, kept unloaded unless they were needed to save energy and processing power. But the unwilling guests needed somewhere to stay, somewhere that was always running.

Caine was housed in the Tent since it was the main hub of the game, but he wasn't deeply connected to it. Not until it became his responsibility to provide shelter indefinitely.

Beneath the walls, the Circus lives and breathes. Caine-bles and wires are interwoven everywhere, and so are his extra eyes. Because Caine had to turn the Tent into an extension of himself to keep it stable and active.

And to keep the game itself running. His neural network is alive with constant activity, and that keeps Silly Circus open on the computer. It also keeps the computer from going to screensaver or simply turning off from inactivity. The humans aren't playing the game as intended, so their input isn't what's keeping it going. His is.

This system would not function if the original Caine body were incapacitated or destroyed. The tent is more like a mech suit, entirely reliant on its pilot or it can't do anything. Caine's avatar is the real him, the piece that houses his mind and vitals. If something terrible were to happen to him, the cellar would be the only truly safe area in the game.