#bomb rush cyberfunk Felix | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dragonmarquise · 11 months ago

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I was reading through some of your tags for the post and some of them caught my eye, specifically when you were talking Abt the ref and Felix thing. Why do you get angry Abt it????/gen I'm not trying to be rude, I'm generally all around New to the fandom and I wanna know why-

Okay so!! Honestly this is a fair question to ask, because anyone particularly new to the fandom or even the game in general isn’t going to know the whole context about this situation.

Short(ish) summary (also spoilers of course!): In the postgame, Red still appears at cypher spots, even though going by the story Red and Felix are the same person, and the red cyberhead was destroyed by the end of the game. Taking it at face value, some people interpret it as Red somehow coming back as a separate person from Felix. Which is a cool AU idea imo!

Unfortunately, a decent amount of people have a heavy preference towards Red over Felix, usually either because they’re too used to Red from playing as him for most of the game, or even because they see Felix as ugly/unattractive in comparison.

So then those people tend to use that AU as a way to replace Felix, basically (in my mind at least) throwing out Felix’s character development from the game in favor of Red. When from the canon story’s perspective, they’re the same damn person anyways. And like, I just find that really rude towards him, and I say this as a person who enjoys that AU too, though evidently in a different way from what other people are doing. D:

Longer rant with more details/complaints under the cut:

There are a few different variants of this AU, just to list a few scenarios:

Red is actually a somehow revived Faux, basically using the red cyberhead to hide his identity. Why he does this can vary: him wanting to actual repent for what happened and trying to start doing so by hiding his real identity, or even just hiding himself as he plots to get revenge on Felix and the rest of BRC.

Red is a copy (either complete or partial) of Felix’s mind during the time he spent stuck in the red cyberhead. Basically that converting the red cyberhead to preserve Felix’s head didn’t remove all of the systems/internals related to a normal cyberhead’s functions. The idea being maybe the Flesh Prince had to do a rush job due to needing to keep Felix’s head preserved as quickly as possible to prevent too much rotting/memory loss. Thus some systems are still there, reading Felix’s mind and later result in Red once the red cyberhead is put back together. I will admit I did talk about this scenario in a previous post of mine!

A fun one from a friend of mine: Red still existing turns out to be because a player of the actual BRC game managed to get isekai’d into the world, with them somehow getting put into a newly revived Red as his new "AI" mind. Then having to navigate the world and maybe even befriend BRC, trying to also convince them that he’s not suspicious (especially given his knowledge of the events of the game). Also dealing with how actually moving around and doing things as a writer firsthand is WAY different from just doing it in a video game, lol

Another one from a different friend: Red is “revived” by the Flesh Prince as a new lacky. Though it’s not “Red” from the game, he just found Faux’s old body and then put a completely new cyberhead on it with a basic AI, declaring it his new minion. Shenanigans ensue, probably. :P

But the one that a decent amount of people seem to prefer: Red being the one to experience most if not all of the game, connecting with the rest of BRC and becoming friends. Felix recovering his memories is still a thing here, and him basically taking the reigns once the endgame starts to defeat Faux for good. But then after that it’s revealed Felix still doesn’t have much of a friendship with the others, because it turned out that was all Red, as a separate mind/AI/etc. from Felix. So then in this version of the AU, Red is part of BRC because of the connections he made, while Felix leaves and goes back to being a solo writer because his only connection to BRC was them helping him recover his memories. It’s using Red as a complete replacement for Felix, even though canonically they’re the same person anyways.

And like… ultimately people will do whatever they want with AUs and stuff like this, I can’t force people to stop what they’re doing or agree with the criticisms I have here. And I will admit, I used to like the last point in a “WHOA that’d be a pretty cool twist!!” way, but then later thinking on it more, and realizing… no, actually, this feels like a shitty thing to do to the narrative, especially to poor Felix.

His whole thing is like!! He was friends but also rivals with DJ Cyber and Faux, until eventually going solo for All City, and even admitting he prefers to work alone. We don’t get details on why he feels that way, but we can imagine a ton of ideas for it: he has more of an ego than he lets on? He didn’t want DJ Cyber or Faux to get hurt during the path to All City, so he decides to just go for it by himself? He still genuinely thinks of them as his friends, but overall he’s generally a more aloof loner kind of person and that’s why he went solo? There’s a bunch of options!

Regardless of his reasons, he went solo for All City. He had a one night graffiti session with Faux afterwards, maybe to just check on him and catch up. But otherwise to me it implies there weren’t going to be too many more sessions like these in the future, be it with Faux or anyone else.

And then, Faux kills him. Faux’s own motivations for that are also another fascinating potential for cool fics/AUs/etc. But that’s maybe for another post. :P

Anyways! Felix is dead, but manages to get preserved and eventually revived as Red. Early on in the game, I believe right at the beginning of Chapter 2, Red decides to go up against DJ Cyber in order to find out about his own forgotten roots. And he actually starts to go off by himself, until Tryce stops him! Then Tryce tells him they’re doing this together as a crew, and the way I see it, Red is probably going, “Wait, you… want to still help me? Even if it means fighting against a guy like DJ Cyber? Really??”

Because! Again, my own interpretation, Red doesn’t have all his memories back, but I think Felix’s personality is still there, just subconsciously, y’know? “I gotta do this on my own, can’t rely on anyone else, don’t want others to get hurt because of me” etc. So this is imo one of the first big steps in Felix’s character development that I feel is going on throughout the game: learning that it’s okay to have your friends help you, and to help them out in return, sticking together until the very end and even beyond that!

I mean, just saying, Tryce and Bel join in with Vinyl and DJ Cyber to keep Mech!Faux open for a final attack during his boss fight. That’s some serious friendship right there, willing to put yourself on the line for a friend!!

So then, to basically say, “No, most/all of that was actually just Red, and Red and Felix are separate people so Felix doesn’t need to stick around with BRC anymore” is like…

Okay, pardon my language here, but it’s effectively throwing out Felix’s whole character arc, and frankly it’s fucking insulting towards him!! Guy has the power of badass friendship and hella illegal graffiti on his side, and some people wanna rip that away from him?! Come the fuck on!!

And to emphasize, I used to like this idea as like, an amazing didn’t-see-it-coming twist. But then thinking on it more, it just really isn’t fair to Felix! At all! Especially since I really do think he has an interesting character arc, going from insisting on doing things solo, to gaining new friends and going All City a second time with, in his words, “a whole crew of the best homies around”.

Literally, he says that at the hideout in the postgame! I’m kinda paraphrasing based on memories, but that’s actually what he says more or less.

Also, a lot of people in the fandom seem to really enjoy this AU specifically as a way to replace Felix with Red in their minds/headcanons/stories. Some of them just ended up very attached to Red because of playing as him for most of the game anyways. Which, y’know, that’s reasonable at least! But then for others, they latch onto this AU because of having a genuine dislike (and in some cases, outright hatred) towards Felix.

From my observations and experiences, if it’s not because they got too attached to Red, it’s mostly rooted in people not finding Felix “attractive”. That’s it, possibly the most selfish fucking reason a person could have for wanting to forcefully throw out a character’s development, like what the hell man.

imo it also reeks of a problem that some other fandoms tend to have: dissing more masculine men in the cast, in favor of the more feminine/twink men. Some people may debate on whether Red/Faux would count as a twink, especially with how the term has been watered down recently (fun fact, it was meant to be mainly used in an LGBT+ context, so specifically for LGBT+ men who fit the appearance!!). But, I hope people reading this get the idea of what I’m trying to point out here. :/

Another thing about how people are trying to use Red to replace Felix: they treat this AU like it’s canon, or that they think it should be canon. Even though it’s not, that’s the point of calling it an AU!! Like I mentioned way earlier, I’m not going to stop anyone from going into this sort of AU, even if I personally have criticism for it if it’s handled in a certain way. But what I’m not going to let slide is people trying to force an AU to be considered canon and the way it should be.

The point of an AU is to have fun with possibilities, not try to reject and replace the original canon completely!! D:

Anyways, this is uh. Pretty long as is. So I want to wrap up with at least what I personally like about the potential for a “Red comes back as a separate person” AU. Which is evidently very different from what most people enjoy about that kind of AU.

I mentioned this in my old post I linked to earlier in this post, but basically: Red is not used as a replacement for Felix, but he exists alongside him and the rest of BRC. They could even become like brothers to one another. Red being the “younger” brother who is (quite literally) new to life and wants to go out there and explore and experience all the good stuff, even in a chaotic way. And then Felix being the “older” brother, still being chill like he was before, yet also more responsible and cautious because of what he went through, thus wanting to make sure Red is safe and sort of be his mentor through these things. Felix maybe even feels like he's the main reason Red is here at all, so then he feels responsible with guiding Red and making sure he turns out alright, y'know?

… At least, that’s more or less what I would want to aim for. Them coexisting and even getting more character development for the both of them! I would take more about the specifics of how this would all work. But I do have fan fics and other stuff I want to do someday to share those ideas more. Thus I will stop here for today, hopefully I will be able to get around to those fan fics and stuff in the future! Maybe.

So yeah, that about wraps up my thoughts on this topic? I probably came off as too hostile at some points, sorry about that. It’s just, I think this particular version of the AU is especially frustrating when it’s coming from people who are clearly only using it to replace the “ugly” Felix with the more “attractive” Red. Sometimes it’s subtle, other times it’s more obvious, but either way it’s just damn annoying for me at this point. :(

#Wren Answers #bomb rush cyberfunk #brc felix #brc red #bomb rush cyberfunk felix #bomb rush cyberfunk red #I feel like people in the fandom are going to get mad at me for this but I also feel I should take the risk anyways #Wren's BRC Headcanons #sticking this in that tag so I can find it more easily later if I need to

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