#maintenance on this guy... mechanics working on checking all the wires and circuits and touching all the sensitive nerves and neuron flies

[xenomorphicdna]

Flames,, blanket boy, my beloved

I gotta draw more art like this of him, he's such an odd creature I love him so much

There's so much to his character that I never talk about aaa I'll make a lore post eventually

[tiptapricot]

I’ve been having a lot of Evil Robo BnT thoughts recently, so here’s a bunch of them! This ended up pretty long just as a forwarning djjdjd

Post DeNomolos, Evil BnT are forced to do a lot of self exploration and discovery

They’re two robots from the far future, stuck in the past with each other and the two humongously important historical figures they were not only sent back to kill, but also physically made to look and sound exactly like, with no way back to their own time and no further reason to carry out the mission they were created for

It’s a lot to adjust to

(Three uses of the f-slur near the end in a canon compliant/reclaimed usage context, and implied sexual content, but extremely mild)

It still doesn’t have much of an impact on them at first though, besides some anger and annoyance. They don’t feel emotions in the same way or to the same depth that humans do, so they kind of fall back on: this sucks and that guy was a dick, guess we have to live in the stupid past now, and that’s the extent of it

But they’re also AIs, and AIs learn and grow

They hide out in a cheap apartment for the first few months or so back, going out to steal money to pay for rent and to pick up movies and stuff, but it’s exposure to the world, it’s living. And the more they interact with people, the more media they consume, the more the rigid walls of their programming break down and expand

And that’s when things start getting complicated

Because that’s when things like morals, sense of self, purpose in life, and, to their horror, real emotions start coming into play

Their evil edges start corroding, things stop being as straightforward, and they start developing into their own complex people

Being Bill and Ted with a few glorified descriptors stuck on the front starts feeling… weird, especially when they inevitably end up running into them again and being around them more

Because they’re supposed to be Bill and Ted, but they aren’t, and yet they can’t completely deny the parts of themselves that are….. it’s frustrating

As a first step in both asserting and exploring their individuality, they choose their own names

Evil Bill chooses Willis, or Will for short, and Evil Ted goes with Theoneous, Theo for short

It’s different enough to feel like their own thing, while still appeasing the ingrained itch to take BnT’s place

There are gaps like that, a disconnect/mental dissonance between their consciousnesses and the knowledge that they’re robots, circuitboards and wires and code, like a separation between what they feel is them and what they feel is the robot

That’s an experience that continues as they grow, especially as they try and figure out what to do with their lives. It’s tough sometimes, to figure out where the programming ends and where their own wants and drives begin

They’re the only ones familiar enough with future tech to help each other when they experience technical issues or need repairs, and the only ones they feel comfortable being that physically vulnerable with

It leads to them being kind of codependent, but it’s warranted in a lot of ways

They also naturally stick closer to each other, because even though they grow to have emotions and are able to care about people, they aren’t totally mushy

They don’t get as upset about things, or as excited, and while they form their own kind of love for the people they end up caring about (without admitting it), they’re still never able to connect with humans in the same way they connect with each other

It’s this inherent wall, a difference in how they experience the world

Their forms of affection are machine based, just like how humans are human based. They’ll give each other cold packs when it’s hot or they’ve been moving a lot, they’ll do evening maintenance on each other, chatting while one of them has their hand in the other’s chest cavity, and they jump on each other or bang their shoulders together super hard, because they can’t feel a thing and they’re durable enough for it, and that’s fun to them

That doesn’t really carry over to human interaction though, and a lot of times they end up coming across as cold or mean

They generally have a rougher seeming relationship than most humans. There’s a lot of teasing and insults and slapping, which turns most people off from them, but that’s how they show they’re comfortable (it’s also how they show they don’t like people, but there’s a subtle and meaningful difference there, AKA that they won’t purposefully try to harm the former party)

Robots process sound differently too, for them it’s more of a physical experience than just listening

Will’s guilty pleasure is that he likes to listen to piano (secretly), especially Debussy and other classical that sounds similar. Something about it makes his circuitry feel good and fuzzy and calms him down

He doesn’t feel comfortable telling Theo about it, it still feels like a dumb pussweed thing to be into (plus it continues to make him have some most non metal thoughts about kissing and That’s DEFINITELY not something he can share)

They also both really like death metal. Though they were loosely programmed with the knowledge of BnT’s music taste, it’s not quite their style, and they lean towards the more intense stuff

They do that in most fields though, since it usually takes higher energy stuff to get them going/excited/into something

That’s why they roughhouse a lot, and mess things up, and drive recklessly, it forces their mechanics to process more things more quickly, and as a result gives them their own form of dopamine/adrenaline

Sometimes things backfire, they’ve fucked themselves up accidentally on more then one occasion when stuff goes too far or isn’t what they expect, but they’re always there to patch each other up

When their synth skin gets ripped or torn they don’t always bother to repair it, and underneath there’s a layer of see through hard plastic and their bodies look like those clear case electronics that were popular in the 90s (idea cred to @juiceboxfrog !)

They also have inspector gadget-like telescoping stretch arms at their wrist and ankle joints, but they don’t use those much because they’re unsettling to most humans. Definitely a leg up when they want to climb places the shouldn’t, though (idea cred to @showbiz-za !)

Theo is more prone to needing fix ups than Will, since the extra wiring that was installed for the time and space spanning camera DeNomolos gave him made him more susceptible to short circuiting, over heating, and other glitches

After awhile he just takes his left eye out and leaves it like that, keeping his hair in his face to cover it. It doesn’t do anything for the internal parts of it he still has, but it’s not like it’s a loss. The connection port kept sparking, and it was uncomfortable and kept fucking with his vision, so it wasn’t worth it

Plus he didn’t really like that it used to be a camera… or still could be

One of the things Will and Theo both have to get used to is actually valuing their own privacy and autonomy

When DeNomolos was around they were just his tools, tools that he didn’t even like

They honestly grow to resent him pretty fast, both with his treatment of them, and, when their emotions are especially out of control, his creation of them

They don’t talk about it much, or when they do it’s mainly anger, not addressing or showing the more raw parts they do feel, because that’s still foreign to them, and their circuits weren’t designed to process or understand more complex stuff

Complex stuff like how being around Ted more makes Theo develop a certain… insecurity

It’s not like the connections are hard to make: he looks like Ted, he sounds like Ted, he was meant to be Ted, Ted has a dickweed of a dad, and Theo had a dickweed of a creator, Ted has Bill and Theo has Will

But Theo doesn’t have Deacon

And while he doesn’t want to be exactly like Ted, part of him also does (it was made to). Part of him wants to be human, to have those natural connections and someone to watch over

But he doesn’t and it’s weird*

He tries to ignore it, chalks it up to his drive still attempting to put him on his original track of replacing Ted, and therefore making him more aware of the family roles Ted has

For all he knows that is what it is, he’s just a robot after all

Even though they aren’t really ones for mushy love, Will and Theo do love each other

You can’t not when you know the other person inside and out, literally

They joke a lot about that when they’re doing repairs (“Dude you’re holding my heart, pretty faggy of you.”), and though they laugh, there’s an unspoken intimacy to it, something that sits warm in their wires and goes beyond platonic; something (though they would never describe it as such) loving about getting to take care of each other, and getting to get taken care of

The jokes also stop being jokes after awhile and take on a charge, morphing into unofficial flirting

Eventually that charge sparks, and their relationship becomes a different kind of physical. That’s new, too, a type of exploration neither of them are familiar with, but it’s nice, it’s good, and it’s easier to write off as casual and not meaningful than anything else (for the record I do think this works/plays out different for them than it does for humans, but I will nOt get into that here or anywhere lmao)

That arrangement doesn’t last forever, though, because one night Theo has a bad malfunction that cause him to completely power down, and it sends Will into a panic

It takes him almost an hour to fix the problem and for Theo to reboot, and when he comes back Will can’t stop touching him and checking in and it’s weird

“Why are you so worked up dude, this’s happened plenty of times.”

“Yeah I know you just… you fritzed out and went limp and it freaked me out dude.”

“So? You know this is nothing to worry about. I don’t get why you’re kinda acting like such a pussweed dude.”

“I didn’t know what was wrong! That’s plenty of reason to be fucking worried!”

“Not for you! Not for us! Why the hell do you care so much this time?”

“Because I love you, asshole!”

And then there’s silence, and staring, and then Theo cracks a smile

“Heh, fag.”

Kissing after a confession, as it turns out, makes both of them short circuit, and they wake up three days later still tangled up on top of each other, half falling off the apartment couch

“Y’know… I think we’re both fags now dude,” Will whispers, and they chuckle in the space between their mouths. “I did it first though.”

*he does get this later with Billie and Thea, but that’s a whole separate post

(As one last thing wanted to add that Love Came Along by Pansy Division perfectly encapsulates the vibes of Will n Theo’s relationship to me, AKA something casual and almost humorous while still being super intimate and emotional, so def check it out if you’re ok with suuuuper explicitly sexual lyrics bfgjgfdfg)

Headcanons masterpost