#bomb rush cyberfunk headcanons

[mechanical-magician]

What do you think are the biggest fears of all the devil theory members? They can be silly and serious!!

Took a bit to think about this! It's a good question

Osiris

Surface level fear: being trapped. Not claustrophobia, because he's fine with small spaces. He specifically doesn't like being in a situation where he's confined in some way: physically held, handcuffs, locked in somewhere, etc.

Deep fear: not being able to provide for his team. He may be extremely rough and has a sadistic streak, but not towards his team. Osiris fears the day that any of his boys get arrested and he can't get them out. He fears someone getting sick and not being able to get them the proper care. He fears them going hungry and cold.

Beezlebub

Surface level fear: stuff on really tall shelves. He's just got that itch that something's fall down and crack his head open. He recognizes that this completely irrational.

Deep fear: he's fairly fearless, and it takes a lot to shake him up, but he really REALLY doesn't like hospitals. Beezle hates the idea of being stuck in a sterile, depressing environment. Doctors are terrifying harbingers of pain in his eyes, and feels like the halls of hospitals are "choking with death". Everything about hospitals from the unusually eerie quiet to the reason someone would be in one just freaks him out. He definitely doesn't have a traumatic past about this (wink wink)

Pluto

Surface level fear: the Bermuda Triangle. He heard about this as a kid and just never really had that mysticism go away in his eyes. He would then say that quicksand is below that, and that Bloody Mary is below that.

Deep fear: being rejected by his team. Whether it's because they learn about his relationship with CUE.mp4, or because his more sweet nature is exposed, he's just terrified of no longer being with his friends. Pluto sees himself as not being as tough or cool as the other 3. He has nightmares about the day that the cruel nature of his teammates, especially Osirirs, turns on him.

Hades

Surface level fear: drowning. This is very ironic considering the location of their base. Yes, he does regularly fear falling off the structure into the ocean. No, he's going to tell anyone about this because he doesn't wanna be seen as wuss. Yes, the other 3 know about this despite his efforts.

Deep fear: being irrelevant/forgotten. He fears the day that gangs are truly squashed by the government and the culture dies. Hades wants to forever live on in the game of being a writer on the streets with healthy competition. Being a writer is all he has, so if the culture disappears or he's arrested or some other thing that makes it to where he can't do this anymore, Hades would genuinely not know what to live for.

Anyway hope you liked this! Thank for the question, sorry it took me a hot second!

[dragonmarquise]

Super Indulgent Canon x OC Ship, Part 3: Rise and Sai

FINALLY the last one of these!! For the first BRC ship I started shipping in earnest, Rise with my own Devil Theory OC Sai! This can be summed up as, “Two people who didn’t like each other start fake dating in order to mess with each other, but then it eventually turns into real dating much to their surprise (and initial denial)”, lol

Like with the others, starting with the long series of events of them getting together. Which will also effectively be an outline for the fic I’m planning for them, if my other two posts are anything to judge me by. :P

Before we really get into it, a bit of a disclaimer, that hopefully I don’t need anyways? But still: This is NOT a “I can fix him/her” type of situation, nor a “I’ll fix myself for him/her”. There is no fixing! It’s moreso them realizing they get along better than either of them expected, once they get some things straightened out on both sides.

Also Sai goes through his own character arc of being a better person (or at least not as much of a jerk like with pre-Algo Devil Theory; accepts that what they did was wrong, not pretending to be a good person just to get people’s forgiveness, etc.) before getting together with Rise. I’ve mentioned that several times before in regards to my Devil Theory OCs anyways! :u

With that out of the way:

Before the events of the game, Rise managed to get permission from Devil Theory to hang out on Pyramid Island. Though only because 3 of the 4 DT members are her fans and follow her online.

The only one who doesn’t already know her is Sai, because he’s not really “into” social media. He also doubts her reputation as a writer, thinking she’s just faking it for views and fans online.

This is actually what makes Rise interested in Sai in the first place. It’s definitely not a crush, moreso her trying to puzzle out how the hell any writer in New Amsterdam could not already have heard about her! Not to mention him not believing she’s skilled at all. She does have a bit of an ego, sure, but she thinks it’s justified given her skills as a writer. She may not be All City material, though mostly because she doesn’t care for it as long as she has plenty of people still respecting her talents.

So anyways, in regards to Sai, she’s taking it as a challenge to convince him she’s a top writer, and make a Rise fan out of him!

Some of her attempts to impress him: Tricks and combos far more complicated than Sai would do, tagging difficult to reach graffiti spots around the island (and not get frustrated by the island’s layout like most others), and even convincing him to help her with an impromptu photo session, similar to her little “side-quest” in the actual game.

By the end of all this, Sai mentally acknowledges that Rise is a skilled writer, but externally he never admits it out loud, and is still very cold towards her. He’s not stupid, he can tell what she’s been doing, and he’s not going to start fanboying over her just because she wants him too.

Rise is frustrated, not to mention genuinely insulted, that Sai still isn’t lavishing praise and compliments on her, like her fans and most other writers would have by now. Not even one compliment? How dare you! At the least, she decides to leave him be (for now) and enjoy her time on Pyramid Island.

Then eventually the events of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk happen!! Rise joins BRC shortly after the whole Project Algo fight, and Sai joins sometime after that. He had originally only joined in order to get revenge against BRC for DT losing Pyramid Island. But they all got that sorted out through the power of friendship! Also no holds barred beatdowns between Sai and Red.

(The previous bullet point is a whole separate fic outline. Also yeah Red and Felix as separate characters! Long story short, that ends up happening due to Felix accidentally finding a mind that’s in need of both a cyberhead and body, while trying to put the Red cyberhead back together to use as his new mask. This is also a whole separate fic, but now I’m getting off topic. :P )

But yeah, Sai joins BRC and becomes a (slightly) nicer person because of the experience. He’s still friends with his DT homies though, just to be clear.

Also him and Red having sparring matches sometimes! Mix of martial arts and wrestling moves, and just in general fighting. Most of the rest of BRC are cool with this, and watch as if it’s an actual event. Bel and Cueball even like to act as MCs for these matches, lol

With Sai now part of BRC, Rise decides to try again with her attempts at converting Sai into one of her fans. Asking him to join her for graffiti sessions, one on one score battles, and even feigning interest in Sai by complimenting his own skills, both as a fighter and a writer.

Unfortunately for her, Sai is still not stupid and sees right through her. At first he’s content with just ignoring her, but eventually starts insulting her. She starts insulting him back, and the two of them are trading jabs and getting more and more frustrated with each other.

Tryce eventually steps in and tells them to knock it off. Either they sort out whatever issues are going on between them, or he’s kicking them both off the crew. The writers of BRC need to be able to work together to keep the crew on top, and they can’t do that if they’re wasting time fighting each other!

Things are quiet between them for a while, but Sai can tell Rise is probably planning something. And that turns out to be true when she approaches him with a proposal: fake dating! If Sai hangs around Rise as her “boyfriend”, he’ll see that he could benefit from associating with her.

Obviously no actual romance will be involved, they’ll just make other people think they’re an item, and then eventually “break up” but still be friends. Even after the fake break up, Sai’s reputation will skyrocket! Or so Rise claims. Not to her own level, but still. The way she sees it, what kind of writer would pass up the chance to have their skills acknowledged and respected by more people?

In truth, this is of course just another attempt to get him wrapped around her finger as yet another loyal fan. She fully acknowledges that, but only in her mind, of course she doesn’t want Sai to know that or he’ll refuse the idea.

To her genuine shock, Sai actually agrees to it! He says Rise has been (annoyingly) persistent, so he figures he could at least give her one chance with something like this. Plus getting more respect/rep from people would be nice, so why not?

Of course that’s not why he’s actually doing this. He’s only agreeing to this because he wants to mess with her and teach her a lesson about bugging him so much. He’s hopeful that this will finallyconvince her to leave him alone for good.

And so the fake dating commences!!

Sai at first considers acting like a gross pervert to chase off Rise, but decides that’s a low trick. Not to mention, harassment like that will just get him kicked out of the crew, since no amount of “I was pretending to be a pervert to make her leave me alone!” would justify it. So he tries to gross her out in a different way, with food!

At first he tries with Latino food, specifically a lot of the Puerto Rican dishes he makes for himself and his DT friends. Most people around New Amsterdam seem terrified of food that isn’t what they consider “normal”, from his experience at least. Too bad for him, that doesn’t work because Rise loves it!

Then Rise gives him a recipe to try and make for her, jollof rice. He makes two batches of it, one that follows the recipe and the other that he’s sabotaged to taste horrible. He meant to give the ruined one to Rise… but then gets them mixed up and gives her the good one by mistake, lol

He does like that Rise is enjoying the food after all, especially the compliments to his cooking skills, but of course he doesn’t admit to that out loud. :P

Then Sai tries rambling at her about video games and anime and manga, thinking she’ll just see it as nerdy crap and want to break things off with Sai to save her own reputation.

She doesn’t have as much interest in it as first, basically just politely listening but not actually paying attention while Sai rambles. But eventually she actually shows some interest, especially once he gets into stuff like sea monsters and ocean/water-themed things (like certain Pokemon and Digimon).

Sai is weirded out that she’s specifically interested in the ocean fantasy stuff, but is moreso just annoyed that his attempt to scare her away with “nerdy crap” didn’t work.

Meanwhile Rise is trying to impress him with her skills and reputation again. She tries to speak to Sai in Spanish, but he can tell she’s mixing up what she probably learned in school (i.e. Spanish with a Spaniard accent, since this is still Europe) plus whatever she managed to get Rave (who is half Dominican in my headcanons) to teach her.

Sai teases her about it, saying, “What, can’t even afford a bit of time with Duolingo or somethin’?” Rise is annoyed and embarrassed by that.

But, he does end up rambling a bit about Spanish, especially the differences between his own accent and others. Even ends up teaching her a few words!

She also shows off her social media, showing she’s got a huge following and tons of interactions on her posts. Sai pretends to not care, though he is genuinely shocked that she’s that popular after all, at least online.

Rise also mentions she sometimes does modeling work. The money she makes off her socials (mostly from fans giving her donations and stuff) is more than enough to live off of. So her modeling stuff is more of a part-time thing for her, she genuinely thinks it’s fun to get dressed up and have amazing photos taken of her. Not to mention the praise she gets for looking gorgeous!

Sai continues to act not-so-impressed and Rise gets annoyed by this. However, he ends up slipping that he admits it’s neat that she’s a model, “I guess”. Rise jumps on that opportunity and shows him a few of her photoshoots!

After a while of looking, Sai realizes, “Wait, shit, she’s actually kinda hot??”, but absolutely does his best to not show it all at. Too bad for him, he’s blushing and Rise has already noticed, hee hee. She tries to scratch him under his chin at this point to tease him over it, but he calls her out on it. Personal space much?! She has the good grace to at least apologize for it.

In another attempt to impress Sai using her status, she invites him to hang out for a night at an exclusive club in Mataan. Sai decides to ruin the evening by getting drunk, even though he actually hates drinking too much. They both get kicked out once drunk Sai starts a scene and gets into an argument with Rise.

Rise decides to just drag him back to the hideout (Sai is too drunk to give directions to where he lives, and he probably won’t tell her anyways) and hopefully sort things out tomorrow.

Unfortunately, during that trip to the hideout, Sai continues to insult her, and actually manages to hit a nerve without realizing it. He points out that, from his point of view, there really isn’t much to her besides status, reputation, fame, getting attention, being popular. Yeah, she’s got great skills as a write and she looks hot, he can (drunkenly) admit that much. But what else is there? Interests, hobbies, favorite things? To him, if you remove all the glamour and skills from Rise, there’s no one left, just a shallow person who cares about what others think of her and using that to her advantage!

This really pisses off Rise, but she tries to keep her temper under control. Once they’re at the hideout, she just leaves him on a couch to pass out.

The next day, Rise tries to get him to apologize for what he said while drunk. It takes him a bit to actually remember what he said, but once he remembers he defends himself.

He asks again, what else is there about Rise? He doesn’t even know about her hobbies and stuff like that, since Rise has been focused on only “sharing” her status and what other people think of her. If he only looks at her socials and how she’s been acting so far, she seems pretty damn shallow. Not to mention petty and egotistical.

Rise gets pissed off at this and tries to force an apology out of him, but Sai continues to refuse. He knows Rise has been trying to make him like her, but she needs to just accept that the way she’s been doing it isn’t going to work on him like it does with her fans. And if she’s still determined to “impress” him, then she either needs to change her tactics or just give up already.

Internally, Sai is hoping this is what finally gets her to leave him alone. He’s also a bit annoyed at himself for not trying something like this sooner.

But to his absolute shock, she does admit she probably did come off as “a bit” shallow. Especially compared to how Sai was at least willing to share with her things like his Spanish skills, his cooking, and even his hobbies with anime/manga games.

(Even though, at least for the latter two he mean to use them to chase her off, and Rise herself has suspicions that he probably meant it like that.)

Anyways, she does decide to share at least one interest she has with Sai, but makes him swear to never mention it in front of anyone else. That interest is marine biology! She starts off slowly, mainly going over facts about starfish. With encouragement and genuine interest from Sai, she starts rambling about other types of sea creatures.

She stops at one point and says if Sai wants to make fun of her for all of this, then he should get it out of the way now. Sai insists he’s not gonna do that. He thinks it’s neat that Rise knows this much about marine biology! He admits he probably won’t remember much of this afterwards, but he can tell Rise really enjoys talking about this kind of stuff.

Also, he says it’s only fair that he listen to her rambling, after she did the same with him and his anime/manga/game rambling. :P

Rise appreciates that he’s being nice/polite about this. She also tries to scratch him under the chin again, but he flinches in annoyance and she stops.

But they do end up having more talks like this! Sai rambling about and showing Rise his interests and hobbies, and Rise opening up more and doing the same with her own interests and hobbies.

Plus, they’re on better terms now! Sort of? They haven’t yet done the “fake break up” yet, but they’re starting to consider each other friends at minimum.

At one point, Rise jokingly bets to give Sai a kiss if he can beat Red in their next sparring match. He ends up surprised at himself when it actually motivates himself to beat Red after all!

Rise holds up her end of the bargain, even if she only meant it as a joke. To Sai’s surprise the kiss is on the lips, with Rise commenting, “What, ya thought you’d get just a peck on the cheek after going all out like that?”

She lets him kiss her back to make them “even”. He kisses her on the cheek, but she teases him about it since he did it so gently she barely felt it!

Other friendship-building activities going on between them:

Rise gets caught by the cops at one point, and Sai manages to save her. Later on he gets his skateboard broken while the two of them are fighting off cops and trying to get away. She buys him a new one as a thank you for last time! She also makes it clear that this is just a thank you gift, and isn’t expecting him to pay her back.

Sai helps her get to a hard-to-reach heaven spot, and Rise asks him to help her with her piece. They start having graffiti sessions every now and then afterwards!

They go see a horror movie together, mainly because each of them assumes the other will get scared, and they think it’d be funny to see it. Not only do neither of them get scared, but they end up just heckling the movie until they get kicked out for it, lol

Around this time each of them realizing how much they’re enjoying spending time with each other. And they both get worried it might be actual love. “No no no, this is just platonic love, right? Right??”

The two of them find themselves holding hands or sitting/standing closer to each other, when neither of them meant to. Also Sai is finally letting her scratch him under his chin, though he tells her not to look into it too much.

At another point, Sai offers to help Rise home after a long day. They almost have, gasp, “a moment” between the two of them, but stop each other at the last second.

Eventually they’re both getting frustrated by how things are going and decide to try and rip off the bandaid. Sai and Rise accuse each other of being “in love” and to just admit to it, but of course neither of them want to confess!!

Sai even leans in to almost kiss, sees Rise’s reaction to it, and points it out as proving his point! She denies it.

They have a huge argument about it, one trying to force the other to confess already, and they “break up” for real.

But of course, that’s only temporary, especially since they both end up feeling awful about how they handled it. They talk things out, apologize, and finally be honest about how they feel.

So then after that they’re officially dating, for real this time!

And now for lovey-dovey activities!~

Okay admittedly they’re only really lovey-dovey in private. The most they do in public is hand holding and quick hugs/kisses, otherwise they kinda act like “just friends” in front of the rest of the crew. Which confuses the crew because of how Rise made a big deal about the apparently “fake” dating, but yeah. :P

Also Sai sometimes effectively acts as Rise’s bodyguard. She sics him on anybody who annoys/threatens her, even if it’s their crewmates, lol

Sai sings for Rise! He mostly likes to sing ballads and salsa songs, both English and Spanish. He’s better at it than most people would expect. That being said, he hates singing in front of other people besides Rise, so he only does it in private when it’s just the two of them.

There’s also dancing! Not like cypher dances, but more like dancing together like with salsa or tango. They both find this a lot of fun, but this is another thing they only do in private (in this case they’d both hate to do this in front of other people).

Rise has a very deep love for homemade gifts, seeing them as something incredibly special and unique. She even cried a bit when Sai gave her a bracelet with seashell charms he made for her!

Sai finds out that Rise has a weakness for puns. He starts carrying around a notebook of pun jokes he can tell her. Rave and Shine (both being Rise’s friends in my headcanons) also contribute to the pun book, along with a few other BRC members who are made aware of it. Rise both loves and hates this.

Also she especially loves puns that can work in multiple languages when translated right. Sai has a field day with this using certain jokes in English and Spanish. Like, where do cats go when they die? Purrgatory in English, Purgatorio in Spanish, lol

Related to the last points, Rise sometimes snorts when she laughs! Inspired by one of @mechanical-magician 's headcanons for Rise, hee hee. Rise thinks it’s embarrassing, while Sai genuinely thinks it’s cute.

The two of them still ramble about their interests with each other, and even sometimes about general gossip/news/movies/shows/etc. Rise rambles about marine biology the most, but then she starts looking into other science stuff too just for the love of learning. Sai doesn’t always remember everything, but he still loves to listen to her being so passionate about something!

Sai willingly cooks for Rise now, and is even teaching her how to cook stuff too! Rise is the type to need very precise instructions and measurements while cooking (“The hell is ‘a pinch’ and ‘a dash’ supposed to mean?!”). But she’s been getting better at it!

Sai also starts teaching Rise fighting moves too. She now knows how to properly suplex people!

Rise is also learning more Spanish between Sai and Rave, and is getting a lot better at it. Especially since she practices by talking with them in Spanish.

Sai tries flirting with/giving compliments to Rise but keeps getting embarrassed by it. Mainly he feels like he’s not making it sound genuine, thus he thinks he’s being cringey. Rise asks him what about it makes it feel “less honest”, and Sai says it just sounds weird in English. So she tells him to do it in Spanish instead, and it works! Sai feels like he’s being more sincere with his love, and Rise gets flustered by it but genuinely enjoys it~

And of course Rise flirts/compliments him back too. Sai is not the kind of guy that’s used to getting compliments at all, so he’s even more easily flustered by it!

They have pet names! Rise calls Sai “wolfboy”, it’s a joke from her calling him “the Big Bad Wolf” when they first met on Pyramid Island. Otherwise, Rise calls him “love” and Sai calls her “amor”. :3

Rise getting more into anime/manga thanks to Sai! But mostly she ends up focused on Pokemon and One Piece the most. Also anything else with mermaids, the ocean, etc. :P

She also gets into video games! Mostly she’s of course focused on ocean-themed/-focused games (Dredge, The Wind Waker, Abzu, Blue Ocean, etc). Sai like to watch her play these sometimes.

And then all the nerdery eventually leads to… cosplay. Rise gets cosplays made for her to wear at local cons, and she has Sai tag along as her personal photographer! Also Rise mostly dresses up as characters that Sai has admitted to having/had a crush on, which is her way of teasing him for it, lol

They do more photoshoots for Rise’s socials too!

Rise is trying to get Sai more “into” social media, to at least promote his own art and get more clients that way (he’s a freelance artist). It does work, and he thanks her for her help of course!

Rise is also trying to improve Sai’s wardrobe. He’s mostly a t-shirt + basic pants + hoodie kind of guy. Sai reluctantly goes along with it, but eventually appreciates the new styles she’s having him wear. It’s nothing too flashy, but still stuff that Sai thinks look cool on him too! She also bought him a really badass-looking leather jacket at some point, and he mostly wears that one for their date nights.

On that note, they usually split the bill for meal dates, unless it’s a fancier (and more expensive) place that Rise picked. In those cases, she covers the whole bill since she knows she has the money for it. Sai feels bad about it at first, but Rise insists it’s fine and he shouldn’t worry about it!

Also, Sai is still not quite wrapping his head around the fact that he has a rich/popular girlfriend now. He sees Rise as a wonderful, smart, and beautiful woman, with “rich” and “popular” being just extras on the side. Rise says it’s better that way, especially since she’s had past exes who were only with her for her money and/or rep. (including Faux, unfortunately)

OKAY THAT'S IT!! I think this is a lot longer than the posts I made for Vinyl x Nunchaku and Cueball and Bō. But tbh, it's mostly because I've been shipping Rise and Sai a decent amount longer than the other two, even if it's only maybe a handful of months difference. There's been more time for the ship to cook, y'know?

Anyways! Finally done with my self-indulgent ship ramblings! Will maybe-hopefully do more BRC headcanon posts as before, but otherwise I'm open to people sending in asks/replies with what they might like to see from me next. :D

[marquisegallery]

This took me. So long. To finish. I had hoped to finish it sometime in February, but now here we are. :u

Anyways! Much like the Devil Theory headcanons post I did a long while ago, this is a headcanons post for DOT EXE! All frickin' 8 of them!! Suffice to say this is going to be incredibly long, so keep that in mind before you jump into the Read More. You have been warned!! :P

(Also much like with Devil Theory, some of this might be based on stuff in the game, but a lot of it will just be "I personally think this would be neat!!")

There are going to be very many sections here, so I'm splitting them up to keep things organized and easier to follow. :u

The Overall Crew:

First and foremost, names! Plus heights, because I finally decided on heights for the individual members now :P

2 = Twoson (172 cm / 5’ 8")

4 = Fourside (173 cm / 5’ 8")

5 = Cinco (186 cm / 6’ 1")

8 = 8-ball (192 cm / 6’ 4")

9 = Neun (182 cm / 6’)

10 = Jūrō (178 cm / 5’ 10")

14 = Quatorze (196 cm / 6’ 5")

And then the cue ball member is just… Cueball, lol. He is 190 cm / 6’ 3". I was originally going to make him more-or-less the median height of the crew, but changed my mind later.

I know the 10 and 14 members found in the code aren't "official" members, especially since they seem to be just extra palettes for a potential playable 8-ball. But you know what, I made characters out of them anyways!! :P

Starting off with DOT EXE in general:

As mentioned in the game, they’re a group of full-cyber writers and breakdancers!! They also have a bit of a reputation as hackers, though truthfully it’s only some of them, specifically 8-ball, Neun, and Cinco. They’re the ones who came up with the name too, they just wanted something computer-y. It was originally just the three of them, and the others joined over time. In order, Quatorze and Jūrō were asked by 8-ball to join, then Twoson and Fourside asked to join after they went full-cyber, and then Cueball was the last to join.

Their writer aliases/street names are of course based on the billiard number shown on their screen faces. Which person gets which number was originally based on the actual number of letters in their real given name, but that doesn’t apply to Cueball, Twoson, or Fourside.

They have a reputation of being pretentious and stuck-up assholes (though at least not violent assholes like Devil Theory). They basically look down on most other crews as noobs, about the only writers they respect are DJ Cyber, Felix, and eventually BRC in general after the end of the game.

Of the current big crews in New Amsterdam, they’ve been operating the longest (with varying number of members of course), for about 2 decades at this point! However, them being an actual “big name” crew has only really happened in the past couple of years. They mostly stick to their own territory in Millennium Mall.

On that note! They literally own the mall. All of it. They collect rent from the various stores and companies operating in the mall. They keep the rent super low for local businesses so they can afford to compete with the big brands (especially huge international ones) that set up shop here. Meanwhile, said big brands are charged like five times more in rent. Of course, they’re never actually told that’s the case! Those companies even assume it must be the same for everyone else in the mall. The way DOT EXE spin it to them is along the lines of, “C’mon, don’t you want the prestige of having a store in the one and only Millennium Mall?!” Basically I imagine the Millennium Mall is a huge deal in that way, hence why the big companies don’t suspect anything’s off. :P

So yeah, DOT EXE make money that way. Even after taking out whatever has to be used for proper maintenance of the mall itself, for the most part they end up with a lot more than any of them need (especially since, being full-cyber, they don’t have to worry about food and stuff, just electricity and occasional maintenance/repairs). A lot of the money is saved for emergencies and fun stuff (like hobbies), and then they donate the rest to local charities.

The local businesses are aware of DOT EXE being the owners of the mall, and honestly don’t mind them being writers either! DOT EXE are also more reliable than the police when it comes to asking for help with a problem. In the case of shoplifters in particular, DOT EXE don’t even really punish the thieves, they’ll pay for whatever was stolen and ask if they need additional help (like if they only stole because they didn’t have a job and need help, etc).

The crew hate that the police can intervene at the mall, especially with the helicopters and walking tanks, not to mention the police tube things. They’ve tried to complain to the local government about it, but have been shot down every time. Now they will at the least sabotage the tubes and turrets whenever they can.

The mall is so big that there’s basically a huge solar panel farm on top. Whatever electricity doesn’t get used up by the mall ends up redirected to other parts of New Amsterdam that need it.

There’s also a whole community greenhouse up there! A rather illegal one actually, with New Amsterdam (currently) having some very strict regulations on larger-scale gardens and such (given there’s only one tree in the actual game, and it’s been dug up from Old Amsterdam). DOT EXE do not give a fuck about that clearly, and keep it operational. Especially since it’s a great source of food for a lot of people! DOT EXE managed to hack the local government offices to give the mall’s greenhouse an “official exception”, so the police have to (very begrudgingly) leave it be. Half the crew like the greenhouse since it’s such a great benefit for others, and the other half like it because they know it annoys the cops.

Their hideout is a small part of the mall that’s been sort of sectioned off just for them. Basically behind some pulled-down grates, a bunch of the stores behind said grates have been converted into rooms for them, and is collectively their hideout! There is an actual part of the mall in the game that looks like this, see below:

The rooms of the hideout are as follows: a main meeting/living room area (which also has a disused kitchen, since they don’t need to eat), a main rec area with a ton of custom arcade cabinets and hacked game consoles, a storage room, and then 4 personal rooms for the members, shared between a few of them. One for Cinco and Neun, another for Twoson and Fourside, another for Jūrō and Quatorze, and the last for 8-ball and Cueball. Though since 8-ball was killed, it’s been Cueball’s room by himself.

So yeah, they all live there, whereas pretty much every other crew has their hideout but then individual members (usually) live elsewhere.

They actually aren’t all the same age as the Oldheads, it’s just a cover so people don’t try and figure out any personal info about them. Specific ages/age ranges will be mentioned in individual sections, but really only 8-ball, Neun, and Cinco are around the Oldheads’ ages. Quatorze and Jūrō are actually a good chunk older than them, while Cueball, Twoson, and Fourside are all much younger.

Cueball in particular will always hide his real age, since part of it is related to how he went full-cyber. He will lie to most people and saying he's around the same age as 8-ball, Neun, and Cinco. He hates the pity he gets from people otherwise (more on this later!!).

Twoson and Foruside don't lie about their ages when asked, but would just say they were inspired by 8-ball, Neun, and Cinco to go full-cyber to keep being good dancers and writers. Meanwhile, Quatorze and Jūrō are pretty honest about why they actually did it (again, more on this later!!).

Their voice, outfits, and billiard screens are also covers for their identities!

For the voice, the idea is that there's a "default" voice all the DOT EXE folks use in public, but they still have their own voices based on how they sound from before going full-cyber (Twoson and Fourside are technically exceptions to this, but yeah, more on that later). Their actual voices are only used when they’re going around as “civilians” rather than writers, or otherwise in private at their hideout.

The tracksuits are basically just their costumes, similar to the costumes the other crews wear. So they do wear clothes besides the tracksuits. Sure, they don't really need to, but they like to! Especially when they're not out doing writer stuff, makes it easier for the cops to not suspect something. Each of them has their own personal style, which will be noted in the individual sections!

The screen face can be changed to different images. When they're out and about as "civilians", they tend to change their screens to sort of robotic faces, kinda similar to what non-screen cyberheads have. Those specific faces will be shown in the individual characters’ sections, with their "DOT EXE face" on the left and their individual faces on the right.

Combined with the difference in clothing and voices, it does a good job of actually hiding who they are from the cops!

Note that Cueball is an exception on the voice and screen thing, but I’ll get into that more in his section!

They are all gamers to some degree, otherwise why else would they have a rec room with so many games? They each have their own favorite genres, but overall play a wide variety of them. They’ll play by themselves or with each other depending on the game. The whole crew can get pretty competitive about high scores too, especially on the arcade cabinets!

They also each have their own hobbies outside of gaming, but again, another thing to mention in their own sections.

They all have the capability to communicate wirelessly like computers and phones, i.e. send messages directly to one another instead of to their phones. However, they don’t do that anymore. Mainly because the one time they tried to use it more often, Twoson, Fourside, and Cueball spammed so many memes to Neun that it caused him to crash. Hence why they still rely on text and calls like full-flesh writers, though some of them still do direct wireless messages to one another sometimes. Basically equivalent to whispering to someone so other people don’t hear them.

As full-cyber people, they all have sensors all over their bodies which can act the same as nerves. Detecting damage/pain, temperature, pressure/being touched, and even textures to a degree. The only difference is that these can be turned on or off, or even set to varying “levels” of sensing in between. Usually they turn down the pain/temperature detecting part of the sensors while they’re out (especially while doing writer stuff; basically just detecting damage/temperature without causing actual pain to them). They only turn them fully back on once they’re safe at their hideout.

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8-ball, Cinco, and Neun in general:

They are basically the only ones that went full-cyber to be able to dance better for the most part, though they also did it to be able to get better as writers. None of them were particularly good at either of those before then, though they all clearly wanted to improve at it.

All three of them met and became friends via a transhumanism forum online, hence them going full-cyber together. The actual process is finished up around their 30s or 40s, and they're in their 60s by the time of the game.

Cinco is from Honduras and Neun is from Germany (or so he claims...). Meanwhile 8-ball was born and raised in New Amsterdam, though his father (who he shares with Cueball) had long since moved away to somewhere in the United States.

Both Neun and Cinco did writer stuff in their respective home cities, but 8-ball talked to them a lot about the writer scene in New Amsterdam, especially a lot of the big name writers at the time. That influenced all of them to want to get better at being writers, no matter what.

Once Neun and Cinco moved to New Amsterdam, 8-ball and them formed DOT EXE! They were all full-cyber by then, and practiced together to improve their skills, eventually becoming fairly big names like the other crews.

All three of them act (or acted in 8-ball’s case) as the IT people for the whole mall.

Them getting into hacking and computer stuff mostly started after they all went full-cyber, especially since all their augmentations made it a hell of a lot easier to do.

All three of them love rhythm games, but also have other genres they particularly like. They had rhythm game competitions between the three of them, and even with 8-ball gone, Neun and Cinco still do that from time to time.

On that note, yeah, in my ideas/AU/whatever you want to call it, 8-ball’s death is very much permanent. See this post with some further details on why that is, in particular how, just because his mind’s been digitized, doesn’t mean it’d be any easier to recover.

8-ball specifically:

8-ball refers to Cueball as his bro in the game, and I like to think they’re actual brothers and not just brothers-in-a-friend-way. For my headcanons, they’re actually half-brothers, but refer to each other as brothers anyways. 8-ball is the older of the two!

He’s a bit egotistical. Just a bit.

Kind of a daredevil too, compared to the others. He was like that before going full-cyber, but then after the conversion, being “effectively” invincible just made him more reckless. Dangerous stunts! Tagging more and more high up heaven spots! Getting heat up just to be able to fight the police! So on and so forth.

He is the one who designed the team’s graffiti in-universe, hence why their small tag is more related to him that the team overall. Like I said, bit of an ego on this guy!

He is the one who managed to get ownership of the whole mall, and then just splits the management and collected rent with the others. He actually managed to win ownership of the mall in a (very) risky game of poker. And he didn’t just made that up to sound cool, Cinco and Neun were actually there to witness it!

For his normal fashion style as a civilian, basically he just focuses on looking “cool”, in particular with cool jackets. This usually means jean jackets or leather biker jackets. Also tends to wear jean pants, and shirts with cool designs on them. Which is often stuff like sharks, wolves, dragons, volcanoes, lighting bolts, tornadoes, etc. Also cool shoes of course!

For his personal favorite video game genre, he likes playing shooters, but moreso arcade style shooters and SHMUPs instead of FPSs. Still kinda ironic, given what happened to him…

Real name Frederik Visser. He mainly got into transhumanism just because he thought it was cool, and eventually took it seriously and ended up on the forum where he met Neun and Cinco.

Cinco specifically:

From Cueball’s point of view, he’s the fun uncle!

Fluent in Spanish, speaks it with a Honduran accent. Sometimes uses Spanish words when talking casually, usually terms of endearment for others. Or insults/swears, because he finds it more satisfying to do so in Spanish, lol

Knows a ton of jokes, including puns, in several languages.

A charming guy, very outgoing and friendly with just about everyone!

Also a “he has your back when you need it” kind of pal to DOT EXE in general, but especially 8-ball and Neun. After 8-ball died, he got a bit more protective of Cueball too.

For his fashion style, he likes wearing patterned button-down shirts and sports shorts. For the shirts, of course that includes what’s called Hawaiian shirts, but really anything that has some sort of fancy/detailed patterned will catch his eye. Also tends to wear sandals/flipflops, or crocs.

He really likes racing games, also sports games in general!

Cinco was a bit of a jock type before going full-cyber on that note, playing a lot of sports back then too. He tried to get into various professional sports but never got very far. He’s good at whatever he plays, but evidently just not one of the best for it. Also doesn’t help that he never tried focusing on one particular sport at a time, to the point where he stretched himself thin after a while.

Occasionally plays basketball with the Franks, he’s actually good pals with them because of it!

Likes sports and muscle cars, though mostly driving them and not the maintenance part. He may or may not participate in drag races using stolen cars. Not that it’s hard to steal a car in New Amsterdam, there’s a lot of rich people with “smart” cars who don’t change the default passwords…

Real name César Hugo Raúl Garcia-Flores. On both sides of his family there’s histories of genetic illnesses, and after a certain point he was starting to show some early signs of them. This of course started affecting his health, and with his focus on sports and also wanting to get better as a writer/dancer, he ended up on the transhumanism forum to hopefully find a way to handle all that.

He genuinely didn’t intended to go full-cyber, just wanted to look into “less intensive” cybernetics. However, becoming friends with 8-ball and Neun and going over what they were planning themselves basically led Cinco to decide, “You know what? Might as well go all the way with this myself!”

A note on his full name, if people ask about it: he’ll say his parents couldn’t decide between the two middle names, and just gave him both. Meanwhile, neither parent was backing down about giving him one family name or the other, so they decided to just hyphenate it. But then they had an argument over the order (Garcia-Flores or Flores-Garcia), so they flipped a coin on it… that all being said, Cinco always says this like it’s another joke, so no one’s entirely sure if it’s the real story or not.

He had a boyfriend before going full-cyber. They broke up because of him hiding the fact he was planning to go full-cyber at all. Then again, them breaking up over that was inevitable anyways, because said boyfriend was the type of person to see cybernetics (especially full-cyber stuff) as something unnatural and disgusting. By the time of the game, Cinco has long since gotten over it (for the most part).

May or may not end up dating Escher, hee hee

Neun specifically:

From Cueball’s point of view, he’s basically the stern uncle lol

Has a bit of a “neutral” accent when speaking in his actual voice. It’s clear he’s hiding whatever his “real” accent is supposed to be, but no one knows what he naturally sounds like, not even 8-ball and Cinco. His voice gets shockingly deep when he’s angry, which is very rare.

Fluent in German and Spanish, having grown up speaking both languages. Claims to be from Germany. Though, he’s only ever spoken Spanish with Cinco in private “for some reason”...

… The reason being that he’s actually Argentinian (of German descent, hence him learning that language) and very much has the accent when speaking Spanish. Cinco clocked him as such when listening to him speak Spanish one time. Neun doesn’t want people to know that about him, so he’s sworn Cinco to never speak of it to anyone, even 8-ball. More on why later...

When in public, he basically puts up a front and acts the same kind of “dudebro” kind of way the rest of the members act. Outside of that, overall he’s a very serious and kinda cold guy, but he does genuinely care about his friends (and eventually the rest of the crew, though it took him a while to get there).

Between him, 8-ball, and Cinco, Neun is basically the “friend in charge of the one collective brain cell” kind of guy. It’s also why he’s second-in-command of DOT EXE, becoming the leader once 8-ball is killed.

Also the crew’s accountant, mostly in charge of sorting out collecting rent from the businesses in the mall. He gives a lot of leeway for local businesses if they’re late on rent, but gives no such mercy to the bigger brands in the mall.

Likes to stay organized. He will pick up after the others if they leave a mess, but will also complain and berate them while doing so.

Not exactly a fan of jokes or pranks. He dislikes puns in particular and finds them genuinely annoying (not in a “Damn it, I wish I thought of that myself!!” kind of way). He makes an exception for Cinco’s jokes, but mostly out of politeness as a friend. And even then it’s not like Neun will laugh, he’ll just politely stay quiet and shake his head.

For his normal fashion outside of the tracksuits, well, Neun can be described as looking like a stereotypical nerd. This means collar shirts and khaki pants, lol

Neun likes playing RPGs and strategy games, though he’s very old school and picky about what he plays. If it doesn’t have some sort of hard mode, at the very least a hard mode that can be modded in, he won’t bother with it. Just as an example, he likes playing Pokemon games but only with modded super hard modes and with Smogon-style strategies and team builds.

Claims his real name is Sebastian Jäger. He was originally just on the transhumanism forum out of curiosity, not really taking it seriously. However, at one point he had a mid-life crisis related to mortality, especially after having to deal with a string of family deaths around the same time. With him wanting to be a better writer and breakdancer, at that point he felt like he had limited time to even live at all, let alone enough time to improve at either of those.

Hence why he started being more active on the forum and looking into full-cyber conversion in particular, and that eventually led to him becoming friends with 8-ball and Cinco. He’ll never admit to this though.

He’ll also never admit that he accidentally crossed the wrong people on his journey to both go full-cyber and move to New Amsterdam. He’s convinced they’re still looking for him, even if the chances are incredibly slim. Thus why he’s hiding at least part of his origins...

His actual real name is Sebastián Montero, but again, he’s basically in hiding right now. "Jäger" was apparently the family name of an ancestor of his.

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Quatorze and Jūrō in general:

Quatorze is French, and Jūrō is of Japanese descent, both born and raised in France. Both can of course speak French, with their real speaking voices having a Parisian French accent. Jūrō is also fluent in Japanese.

They were both big time writers in their youth, with stories about them being what inspired 8-ball to become a writer in the first place! Then him talking about them to Cinco and Neun is what collectively pushed all three of them to want to get better at being writers.

They are a married couple and still consider themselves married as wife and husband, even after going full-cyber together (technically they are considered legally dead and thus no longer married, but screw the laws man).

On that note, surprise, Quatorze is actually a woman! Thanks to the default voice for the crew and the tracksuits, everyone just assumes she’s a man without hearing her real voice. That’s intentional, I’ll get into it a bit more in her specific section.

They are very, very loving to each other. Think Gomez and Morticia Addams, just without a morbid humor angle. Jūrō basically praises and is encouraging of everything Quatorze does, and Quatorze love to compliment him for anything he does too. Though sometimes it does get on her nerves, and he apologizes when she asks him to dial it back a bit. But also they have the mushiest pet names for each other.

They are both willing to kill and be killed for the sake of their spouse, but of course each of them would prefer that the other not going that far.

They see 8-ball, Cinco, and Neun as their peers. Meanwhile, both of them dote on Cueball, Twoson, and Fourside like their actual kids/grandkids. Cueball finds it annoying but secretly likes it, meanwhile Twoson and Fourside outright call them Granny and Granpy respectively.

Real names Marie-Madeleine Lucille Perrault, and Maximilien Théodore Perrault, respectively. Their backstory of how they went full-cyber is connected, so I’ll just go over it here: Tragically, in their 70s, Quatorze got cancer at some point, a kind that was unfortunately very hard to treat. She had the option to go full-cyber instead of continuing risky treatment just to potentially die due to being weakened by said treatment. And her husband Jūrō also went full-cyber to be able to stay with her!

Unfortunately, their kids were not happy with that. For some of them, there was confusion about how inheritance would work (eventually finding out that Quatorze and Jūrō would be considered legally dead anyways, so it was “fine”). For others, it’s moreso that they had already accepted that their mom will die, only for her to choose to keep living in the most “selfish” and “unnatural” way possible.

Suffice to say, Quatorze and Jūrō have not spoken to their kids since then, and they haven’t seen their grandkids since then either. They’re more torn up about not seeing their grandkids (they weren’t exactly happy with their kids fighting over inheritance and criticizing their parents’ decision on how to keep living). For the most part they’ve come to accept they’ll never see them again, but Jūrō is secretly holding onto hope they might see their grandkids again someday…

After the two of them went full-cyber, sometime later 8-ball reached out to them, having heard about what happened to them. He was basically like, "Hey you guys were big inspirations to us as writers! Wanna join our new full-cyber crew??" (at that point it was just him, Cinco, and Neun). They responded, "Well, we're not sure how to spend our retirement now, so sure! :)" So by the time of the game’s events, they’re in their 80s.

Quatorze specifically:

She’s basically the team mom! Very caring towards everyone in the crew, but also more than willing to put her foot down to get them to behave when needed.

Before going full-cyber, she was an actress. Her pretending to be a man when out and about as a writer is mainly to hide her identity. She was fairly famous at her peak, so even with her being “legally” dead, she doesn’t want people to find and bother her, especially not any overzealous fans. She does look back on her past work with fondness though, some of her favorite roles was getting to play as hammy, over-the-top villains in cartoons, animated movies, and live action movies.

Though as an actress, her pretending to be a man while in public as DOT EXE (including using the default voice the same as the others) is also just another role for her. She finds it a lot of fun!

She knits, as well as crocheting, weaving, and other crafts involving threads and such. She will knit you a sweater/scarf/hat if you ask politely!

For her civilian fashion, she likes wearing sweaters and long skirts. Sometimes she wears sundresses with a nice sunhat during the summer months, even if it’s not really necessary as a full-cyber person. She has fancier dresses she wears for date nights with Jūrō.

Her favorite kinds of video games are puzzle games and ‘slow’ platformers, mainly things along the lines of Klonoa, Kirby, Mario, and Banjo-Kazooie.

Jūrō specifically:

He’s basically the team dad! Very supportive of his crew mates. He leaves being the “stern parent” to Quatorze though, especially since Jūrō tends to be too soft on someone if they messed up or started issues with the rest of the crew. It was the same when they were full-flesh with their kids and grandkids, he’s mainly just afraid of seeming too “mean”.

Unfortunately he can’t do dad jokes, but at least Cinco has that covered, lol

He worked as an accountant, but didn’t like the work very much. He was able to be a stay-at-home dad once Quartorze’s acting career really took off!

He likes to garden, and he’s the one that works the most on the mall’s greenhouse.

For his civilian fashion, usually wears nice pants (like the kind for suits) + long button-down shirts. Also wears sweater vests that his wife makes for him! He has full suits and waistcoats for date nights with Quatorze.

His favorite kinds of video games are life sim games, such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley (“If only growing plants were this easy in real life!”). He also likes idle games, especially ones that don’t demand his attention too much.

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Twoson and Fourside in general:

Yes, their names are references to the Earthbound towns of the same name. They picked out their own billiard numbers to specifically make that reference, lol

Twoson is agender (they/he) and Fourside is nonbinary (also they/he). Note that they were like this long before going full-cyber, since some people may assume it happened because of the transition.

For their voices, they actually only use their real voices when they’re alone together in private, and no one else knows what they “really” sound like. When out as civilians or in private with their crewmates, they use different synthesized voices from the one used for DOT EXE. Their specific synthesized voices will be noted in their individual sections.

For their civilian screen faces, these two will actually change them to express certain emotions, usually with very anime-esque stuff (eye shines, exaggerated evil grins, etc). Other members will just keep their faces static and express themselves through their voice and hand/body movement.

They are both pranksters, they love to cause mischief and mayhem! Not even their own crewmates are safe.

They get along with Cueball in a sort of sibling way. Sometimes getting along great, other times being at each others’ throats (i.e. Cueball vs. Twoson and Fourside, the two of them are deep friends and have never really fought each other).

Jūrō has taught both of them Japanese. He insisted on it after hearing them talk (or rather, trying to talk) in Japanese once, they were really horrible at it before his lessons. They both also know a bit of Spanish from Cinco.

Between the two of them, they have a huge anime and manga collection! I will mention some of their individual favorite genres for that in their respective sections.

They make video games! Just as a hobby, so all the games they make are free. Said games are mostly in the form of super hard ROM Hacks, or weird/eccentric/trippy games (think along the lines of Yume Nikki, OFF, Hylics, Space Funeral, Goblet Grotto, LSD Dream Emulator, etc.). Neither of them can code very well, so they usually convince/force Cueball into helping them with their various projects. What they provide for said projects themselves is mostly the ideas (both of them), music (Twoson specifically), and art assets (Fourside specifically).

Suffice to say, the games they make are not ones that any of the other DOT EXE members normally play. Neun has played some of the ROM hacks they’ve made for RPGs though, mostly because of the ridiculous challenges they put in.

They both have similar tastes in music, usually stuff that is fairly “eccentric” compared to mainstream music. Basically along the lines of Caravan Palace, Will Wood, Lemon Demon, Jack Stauber, GHOST and Pals, Vane, and R.I.P.. Also enjoy a lot of Vocaloid and Synthysizer V songs, especially the more creepy and macabre stuff.

On that note, they’ve definitely hijacked the mall’s sound systems to play their favorite songs as pranks on people more than once.

They both really like horror games. With poorly made ones, they only play them to riff on them and make fun of their game design. They may or may not have a YouTube channel dedicated to this. They may or may not also do streams as vTubers on that note…

Honestly they like horror content in general. Movies, novels, games, anime, manga, comics, TV shows, art… they’d probably get along great with Daishō!

Real names are Beau Driessen and Robin Zaal respectively. Like with Quatorze and Jūrō, Twoson and Fourside’s backstories are connected. Twoson was severely injured in what was ruled an “accident”, to the point of only having two options: go full-cyber, or just stay bedridden for the rest of their life. Meanwhile, Fourside went full-cyber in order to bury their old identity, after having taken care of the people who caused the “accident”. Both of them going full-cyber happened in their late 20s, they're both about 35 now.

They were both writers before going full-cyber, and the “accident” was caused by some rivals they had to deal with. After the conversion, they heard about DOT EXE as a full-cyber crew, and decided to join up with them.

They are very protective of one another. Fourside in particular will get very vicious against anyone who tries to hurt Twoson, even if it’s another DOT EXE member.

They’re also the type to use insults to show affection to each other, “You nerd!”, “You’re such a dork!”, etc. Towards anyone else, it’s genuine insults.

Twoson specifically:

The voice they use when going around as a civilian is an androgynous synthesized voice that’s a bit on the higher side.

Twoson is the nicer of the two, for what it’s worth, but still tends to be obnoxious at times. They also like to be fakely sweet sometimes, especially when trying to get a favor out of someone else.

For fashion, Twoson likes wearing a jean vest covered in a ton of buttons. They also like to wear skirts over cargo capris, tie-dye shirts, chokers/collars, and headbands which have been modified to fit over their head.

They like to do craft stuff sometimes, like origami, needle felting, papercraft, and clay sculptures. They also make the buttons and tie-dye shirts that both themself and Fourside wear.

They make music! The best way to describe it is very weird and also sometimes creepy. Basically ranging from quirky digital/midi music, to dreamy but still unnerving drones and tones, to Silent Hill 1 industrial scary noises.

Besides horror video games, they really like dating sims and visual novels. They have a whole menagerie of what they call their fictional spouses.

Twoson likes the magical girl genre in particular for anime and manga. They actually really hate shows like Puella Magi Madoka Magica that try to subvert the genre or otherwise do an intentionally “edgy” take on it. A lot of magical girl series already have dark themes anyways!

Fourside specifically:

The voice they use when going around as a civilian is an androgynous synthesized voice that’s a bit on the lower side.

Fourside is the meaner of the two, for what it’s worth. They’re more quick to genuinely insult people and use a lot of sarcasm. However, they will be respectful when it counts, usually only for other DOT EXE members.

For fashion, Fourside also likes wearing a jean vest with tons of buttons and tie-dye shirts, like Twoson does. They also wear a skirt over skinny jeans, lots of bracelets, and beanies that Quatorze has made for them.

On that note, Quatorze made some of the thread/string bracelets that Fourside wears, and she showed them how to make bracelets on their own too. So the rest are the ones Fourside made! You can tell which ones were from when they first started out, and which ones are more recent and thus better quality. They’ve also made some of the collars/chokers that Twoson wears.

Fourside does digital art in the form of 3D models and complex MS Paint stuff. They mainly do this just to make weird stuff and put it out their for people to enjoy. A lot of it is very abstract and weird, with a sort of “old-school Internet” vibe a la ENA/Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou/Disillusion ST/Hylics/etc.

Besides horror video games, they really love beat ‘em ups and fighting games! Do not challenge them to some of the big ones (Street Fighter, Tekken, Smash Bros, etc.) unless you want to lose.

Fourside has no particular favorite genre for anime/manga, but tends to like series that end up categorized as shōnen. Also really enjoys superhero tokusatsu shows and movies (i.e. stuff like Super Sentai/Power Rangers, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, etc).

Cueball

He’s the lovable goofball basically. Lots of joking around and teasing people, especially his friends! That’s basically how he shows affection a lot of the time.

Though he’s also fiercely loyal to his friends and crew. Mostly because despite being friendly and outgoing, he doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends outside of DOT EXE. Eventually that changes once he joins BRC, but he still cares about and hangs out with his old crewmates.

He’s from the United States, and 8-ball helped him with moving to New Amsterdam.

He loves cats! Before he went full-cyber, he was very allergic to cats and wasn’t allowed to have any because of that. After going full-cyber, he eventually realized he didn’t have to worry about allergies anymore. And so he set out to adopt ALL the cats, lol. It got bad enough to be a hoarding situation, and the rest of DOT EXE at the time (8-ball, Cinco, and Neun, this being before any of the other and Cueball himself joining) had to step in for an intervention. They got the cats rehomed or put in adoption centers/cat shelters, and Cueball decided to just volunteer at those shelters to help out. A much better situation for everyone involved, especially the cats!

Cueball owns a ton of blankets and pillows, and likes to make his own pillow forts and stuff in his room for Extra Comfort. Also sometimes throws them in a clothes dryer to make them warm. With the thing about body sensors for full-cyber people I mentioned earlier, Cueball is of course the one that takes full advantage of the sensors whenever he can!

Quatorze has made whole blankets for Cueball. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he does appreciate those blankets, they’re very comfy.

His favorite kinds of video games are action, action-adventure, and search action (a.k.a “Metroidvania”).

Cueball hates his real voice for the most part, and he’s the only one who will keep using the default DOT EXE voice even when alone with the rest of the crew. They do know what he sounded like before he used that default voice (he only started using it all the time after he joined DOT EXE), but it’s been so long that most of them have forgotten it by now.

When it comes to fashion, Cueball’s “style” is more about comfort than anything else. Hoodies! Sweatpants! Sweaters! Oversized t-shirts! Comfy socks! Super comfy sneakers! Sometimes various winter hats if he can find any that will fit over his head lol. He has a ton of stuff that Quartoze has made for him, though he feels embarrassed to actually wear them outside of the hideout.

As mentioned previously, he doesn’t bother changing his screen face to a different one from his billiards face. Though he will change the red triangle in the middle to different emojis or reaction images/gifs for expressions. Or otherwise to mess with people.

So Cueball is the only one who doesn't bother with the voice changing nor face changing. The only thing different is his clothes. If a cop suspects he's the same Cueball from DOT EXE, he basically goes, "Oh? You think I look like a criminal just because I'm full-cyber too? Prejudice much?!" and that actually gets them to back down most of the time lol

He used to do programming and other computer related tasks (including messing with servers and hardware) as a job after going full-cyber and before eventually joining DOT EXE. He’s still good at those things too! But at least now he keeps up with those more as a hobby, which he honestly prefers. He thus tends to refuse to help with the IT stuff for the mall, he’s sick of doing that kind of thing for work.

He wanted in on the crew mostly because he was sick of feeling “left behind” by everyone else whenever they’d go out to do writer stuff. By the time he joined, Quatorze, Jūrō, Twoson, and Fourside had already become part of the crew.

He’s the only DOT EXE member with no prior experience as a writer (especially before going full-cyber), and so he’s had to put in a lot of practice with the rest of the crew. Due to his lack of skills, he was only really allowed to join because his older brother 8-ball let him join, and even then only after Cueball begged him about it a lot.

On that note, and as mentioned in 8-ball’s section, Cueball and 8-ball are specifically half-brothers. They cared about each other, and 8-ball very much tried to help out his little brother whenever he could. Back when the two of them were still full-flesh, they weren’t too close, but at least kept in touch via email and sometimes actual postcards despite the age difference between them. Mostly 8-ball wanted to be sure Cueball had another adult he could turn to if he was in trouble, because he knows how their dad is.

After moving to New Amsterdam, they did get a little closer as brothers. Cueball has a lot of admiration for his older brother because of his writer activities, though sometimes Cueball would be annoyed or even hate 8-ball for (in his eyes) “babying” him when 8-ball was just trying to keep him safe. Eventually, sometime after 8-ball died, Cueball mostly just regrets not really knowing 8-ball that well in the end.

Cueball starts trying to get into rhythm games after 8-ball’s death, and he even tries to join in on the rhythm game competitions with Cinco and Neun. He’s getting pretty good at it!

He does a lot of pranks with Twoson and Fourside. Also prank wars between the three of them! Neun makes a point to have plans outside of New Amsterdam for the weeks surrounding April Fools Day, while the rest of the crew just roll with it.

Besides Twoson and Fourside, Cueball gets along fairly well with Cinco, Jūrō, and Quatorze. For the last one, he has accidentally called her mom once, and he had her swear to never tell anyone else what happened.

He’s dating Bō! Cueball is really big on physical touch as a show of affection. He is thus incredibly cuddly and big on handholding and hugs! He also cuts back on the jokes and teasing just for Bō (for the most part).

He used to do a lot of cooking and baking before he went full-cyber. Once he started dating Bō, he actually go back into cooking to be able to cook stuff for his boyfriend! He still remembers all of the recipes he tried out, plus reads up on new ones to try. Unfortunately, due to of course having no sense of taste now, he has to either use recipes that don’t need tasting in between steps, stick with recipes that he already knows Bō likes, or otherwise make sure Bō is around for taste-testing.

Bō is the only one who knows what Cueball’s real voice sounds like, and even then Cueball only uses it when they’re alone together in private.

Real name Ernesto Alberto Visser. Cueball got Covid when he was about 15. The resulting long Covid was bad enough that, in his early 20s, he decided to just go full-cyber instead of continuing to suffer. His older brother 8-ball helped him out with that. At first it was just helping him move to New Amsterdam to get better medical treatment (and to get away from their dad and Cueball’s mom for that matter) once Cueball turned 18. Eventually that lead to helping Cueball with going full-cyber once the treatments proved ineffective. He did so sometime after 8-ball, Neun, and Cinco went full-cyber themselves. Cueball is about 43 during the time of the game.

Cueball originally had plans to become a chef or at least a baker, but when he got sick, part of the problems from his Covid infection was that his sense of taste got completely messed up. He was originally going to do programming as a hobby thing. But once he went full-cyber, he did programming as a full time job since he didn’t have anything else going for him, until eventually joining DOT EXE many years later.

Because of why he went full-cyber, he is distrustful of doctors (due to both the quack doctors his parents forced him to see to pretend that his Covid symptoms “weren’t that bad”, and the actual doctors later on who knew how serious his condition was but couldn’t do much for him anyways). He insists on accompanying his full-flesh friends to their doctor appointments to make sure they’re safe!!

[monkiinart]

(batting my eyelashes trying to spread the good word of coil x shine)

[roseltheteacup]

“RED” /// POST-GAME /// RE-BUILT AND RE-ACTIVATED

A more fully-formed sequel to my headcanons post, along with the postgame outfit I designed for him!

“Red” was born from necessity. He was Felix’s response to being reanimated and losing his memory, and Red simply occupied the front seat in Felix’s mind, climbing towards All City as the real Felix reformed subconsciously. Red was essentially Felix’s line of defence without even realising it.

Red is also represented by the cyberhead. Since that cyberhead didn't have all of its components removed to fit Felix’s head, aspects like its memory chip remained intact to document everything Red experienced on his journey, making it possible for him to remember things once he’s reactivated in postgame, where he receives a true machine mind and AI.

It took time before the crew understood that Felix wasn't Red. While still lending himself to the BRC, their teammate was… different, than they remember. Tryce and Bel know that the change happened somewhere in Mataan, but due to everything that was happening at the time, never got to confirm it with Red/Felix himself.

It took two weeks before Red was back in working order, and in those weeks, he was basically between life and death. Everyone: Prince, DJ Cyber and even DOT.EXE pooled all their efforts together to reanimate their friend and bring back the person known only as “Red.”

And so, Red was given the chance to live as his own person and as a true cyberhead, without fear of his life only serving as a liminal space between where Faux ended and Felix began. He is no longer temporary.

Red uses Faux’s discarded body as a base, but due to some wounds being too severe, more than half of his limbs had to be replaced with cybernetic prosthetics, including a modified spine. Being fully AI, Red adapted to this quicker than most humans do, but still required time and physical therapy to get back on his metaphorical feet again (and his literal feet.)

When looking at his cyberlimbs, he does feel a sense of… completeness. Red was born from a collage of other people, and throughout his existence, has struggled with the concept of being “temporary.” But his body, now, proves that he wasn't so. He is more than the sum of his parts, sewn back together by people who love him, and owning a life that he owes to no one but himself.

He lets everyone sign his prosthetics. Bel started it first and signed in an obvious spot, and annoyed Tryce until he did the same. Felix signed in a more inconspicuous spot (knee) because he likes giving Red the space to be his own person.

Red and Felix are like siblings in the sense that Felix is supposed to be the responsible one and Red is (mostly unintentionally) the annoying gremlin.

Probably nonbinary but also likes the category of “dude” and “guy” so he doesn't really give a shit.

“I don't really care about all this.”

“You don't?”

Works part-time at the Domino's equivalent in the Bomb Rush universe and always brings his board to work. If you see him performing tricks in the kitchen: please don't tell his manager. He's very proud of this job.

He likes watching those “Isopods eating food” videos.

[treemintart]

faux headcanons/observations cause i looked way too deep into a character xd

cw: abuse mention (nothing graphic)

under a readmore cause of spoilers for the end of the game

TL;DR: i think that faux is just a guy whos too chained by his roots and couldnt escape so he took it out on everyone around him in the absolutely worst way possible

Long version: i personally feel like faux has a LOT of unspoken issues, which is kind of hinted at in some dialogue/cutscenes

this entire conversation really felt like he had to uphold a perfect image so he wouldnt (couldnt) tarnish his fathers reputation. he had to do what it took to survive, even if it meant throwing his fellow writers under the bus. his perception on being a writer starts to warp and change because of this, turning into what he is now. also immediately being put into a machine he didnt have time to cope with anything, his anger just got worse. (i think that the death of Berlage was his doing as a way of having control, as he probably felt that he couldnt escape his roots and his ties to the police.)

i do find it interesting that he starts stuttering and panicking, which to me felt like a last ditch attempt to be accepted and understood in some form.

this line really stood out to me, as they are (assumed to be) similar in age. i think that maybe he went through abuse (presumably by his father), so that he views his body as aged.

i think that he really did trust felix, and felix became an anchor for him; in a very unhealthy way. when felix left to go solo, he felt that his stability went with it and was betrayed and angry. so he took it out on him in the worst way he could.

he didnt want to be left behind again, to be abandoned by his crew, so he tried to make it so he was the only one left. so there wasnt anyone around that could betray him.

[phoneyotc]

any hcs surrounding all the crews around New Amsterdam?

Ohh ohhh I have so many 🥹🥹🥹 here are some of my HCs for my favs ↓

DJ CYBER - demi-aroace + gay, nonbinary, they/he/she, autistic, jamaican irish, fat, 6'1, 26

FELIX - bicurious / questioning + arospec, cis man, he/him, autistic + adhd, dutch german, fat bear, 6'4, 24

FAUX - gay, trans ftm (with top surgery), he/it, autistic + adhd, dutch british, twink, 5'7, 22

TRYCE - bisexual, cis man, he/they, autistic, british, athletic muscular build, 5'11, 23

SOLACE - gay, trans ftm (binding), he/they, autistic + adhd + hypersexual, dutch, twink, 5'3, 20

BENNI - pansexual, cis [or trans ftm (nonbinding)], he/him, autistic, african american, fat, 5'9, 31

DOT EXE (EIGHT BALL) - omnisexual, cis man, he/they/it, adhd, mexican, slim, 5'10, 21

ESCHER - bisexual, cis man, he/him, neurotypical, mexican korean, wide but lanky, 6'7, 47

these are just my favourite characters, as coming up with HCs for non favs is really difficult for me !!

[unrestrainedbalderdash]

Thinking about aro Bel. Thinking about how the skates are more a part of "you", since they're the shoes you wear, instead of something more external you get on like the skateboard and bicycle. Like not needing something to complete you. Like aromanticism - you are whole without needing another person.

[slasherfreakz]

Solace hcs becuz i wanna.

Its been 1 week and ive seen ppl baby him. Grr.

Anyways more hcs

He/they

Bisexual no pref

Transgebdr……

The crash thingies are stickers

Perverted and has no filter (will say wild ass shit like it normal)

Looks like hes constantly constipated for some reason (anxiety… wah)

Either Vietnamese or Indonesian i cant tell which one i wanna make hkm

Autistic ass cat bru

[cool-superwolfycat-posts]

HEADCANNON TIME FOR DEVIL THEORY!!

Imma start with them entirely then one by one! LETSGOOOO

*they all had the idea of becoming a gang after seeing the big three do their thing (before the big three broke up)

*they all live together in a big apartment inland, they all pay rent but most of them sleep around the pyramid

*they chose to use onis as their looks cuse all of them are giant nerd (sun most as he was adopted by an Asian family)

*they have made themselves law enforcers for the streets before DJ cyber did, they got banished after they confronted DJ Cyber about his suppose killing of felix (rumors by faux)

*for a side job they foster kittens (they have two cats of their own named Lu-Lu and Professor K)

*they all work at the pyramid so their banishment just made them work more XD

*all of them got mechanical legs cuse of Big devil losing them from a work accident and sun making the great idea of all of them losing their legs to make him feel better (it did make big devil feel better but he was so mad)

*All of their bad rep is from Sun as he is the most short tempered out of all of them

*for age it goes Big devil, Pluto, Lil devil and then Sun

*none can take a complement from anyone, if you do be prepared for a curse word and them booking it

*after losing their legs they had a hard time controlling how strong their legs where for months, but now they can kick people into next Tuesday with how hard it is now

*after the faux Project Algo incident Big devil was put into critical condition in a hospital as he was the one thrown, it really messed up the devil theory moral (mostly to pluto as hes the leader)

ok time for them individually

Pluto! *he was given the status as leader from beating Big devil in a point fight around the pyramid

*under all that brooding and seriousness he is a goofball

*he use to use inline skates before losing his legs, but now he skateboards as its easier on him

*his family is from Mexico so he will and can scream in spanish at you if pissed off enough

*has bad posture but is getting it fixed by the others yelling ay him

*he sneaks to the millennium mall to meet up with someone ALOT (i ship pluto with Cue from DOTexe)

*after the Project Algo incident he went to cyber to personally say sorry to him for the entire Devil theory gang, Cyber did forgive them as he knew they arent all bad

Big Devil (Aristotle) *he takes second in command as he knows Pluto need it

*does have heterochromia (but tents to hide it with a brown contact)

*he is like the dad of the group keeping them all together

*Big devil never really liked his name so he kept his nickname devil for everyones sake

*Never like Faux or how the cops worked but only followed as pluto said to

*he was friends with eight ball from DOTexe before the sniper incident, now he goes to where they hung out once to think of memories

*Hes taught all of the Devil theory members how to use their spray paints well, so they arent covered in paint all the time

*hes the real scary one out of all of them but hides it under alot of chill vibes

Lil Devil!(Socrates) *Him and Big devil are both brothers (blood brothers)

*Lil is known to join chaos if their is any, will stop it after the others come over

*lil is known to tattle on the others to Big devil if need be

*lil has copied his older brother alot and will do it by reaction now as they done it for the longest time

*may be the second youngest but acts alot like big devil if need be, he has yelled at people older then him for doing dumb things

*him and big are both from new Amsterdam, so they got the ropes

*He has on many times chose to kick people if they didnt listen to him to show what their dealing with

*He was the one to name professor K and never regretted it

*became even more short tempered after Big devil went into the hospital after project Algo

and finally Sun!!

*Sun was raised with their sister(shes part of futurisum) by an Asian family so they tend to do things by the book somewhat

*Sun had made all of the devil theorys outfits in a wild spree of inspiration and maybe 10 monster drinks, they are mostly made of metal to protect them from bullets

*Is the one most people think of when the words Devil theory are spoken as he is a short tempered lil dog who can and will bite

*Has a degree in engineering but never really uses it unless its for modifications on DT's legs

*has alot of old games stashed in their apartment and will not let anyone touch them, they are his babies and he will tell you so

*before joining the Devil theorys he had a way worse temper and ran away from his family cuse of it, he now thinks of Devil theory as his family now

*Sun has once bitten and torn someones flesh from being really mad, one of the main reason they were banished

*Pluto loves calling sun the nickname Sunny just to mess with him and so he gave pluto the nickname dwarf planet

[mechanical-magician]

Doodled the leaders of each crew

[dragonmarquise]

Wren's Very Long BRC Relationship Headcanons Post

Emphasis on very long, there's a lot of them listed here. Not just romantic ships, but also friendships, rivalries, and even exes!! Some of these I only did a little blurb about, others have a paragraph in their own right, lol

Like I mentioned last night, I want to write at least some oneshots of some of these (especially some of the romantic ships, you can probably guess which ones 😈), but I don't know where to start since I have given myself Too Many Options. :u

So if there's a particular one you want me to ramble about, feel free to send in an ask! If anything I encourage it, since I'm hoping it'll help push me in the right direction to eventually write some fics about these. One relationship per ask please, and note that some of these I'll have a lot more to say than others!

Friendships:

In general, I think in each crew, the crew members get along with each other well enough to call each other friends. Probably the only exception is Veronica of FUTURISM, given I made her the one teammate that the rest don’t like. :u

Bel, Mesh, and Shine are the kind of people who try to be friends with everyone, or at the very least make a conscious effort to get along with everyone in the Bomb Rush Crew!

Mesh & Cueball in particular as friends is one I wanna point out here! Cueball starts out being suspicious of Mesh, because he doesn’t realize Mesh is just being nice. Poor Cueball has no friends outside of DOT EXE, and even then he didn’t get along with them better until after Eight Ball’s death and Cueball leaving that crew to join BRC. Him and Mesh eventually become pretty good friends, and that leads to him getting along better with the rest of the crew too!

Eventually Mesh and Cueball also become friends with Sai too! Sai being my Devil Theory OC who joins BRC. He was kinda in the same situation as Cueball, being suspicious about people being nice to him, but they win him over eventually. :P

Rise, Shine, and Rave in particular end up being a trio of besties~

And the “Core 5” members (Tryce, Bel, Felix, Vinyl, and Solace) are besties too!!

I’ve mentioned this in the past, but all 4 Devil Theory members were friends for a long time before forming their crew, and still remain best friends!

Rivals:

Daishō vs. Tryce, mostly the former trolling the latter, such as specifically putting graffiti over Tryce’s own pieces. Tryce tries to not let it get to him, emphasis on “tries”.

Sai vs. Red, as a friendly rivalry where they fight each other in sparring matches. Note, Red is a separate person from Felix in my headcanons after the events of the game (I’ve changed how Red exists in my headcanons since the last time I talked about him; long story short they find a writer’s cyberhead mind that’s in need of a new cyberhead, and Felix had been rebuilding the Red cyberhead for himself as a replacement for his old mask, so…)

Rietveld vs. Nunchaku (Nunchaku being another Devil Theory OC, she’s a trans butch lesbian!), this one is kind of a one-sided thing on Rietveld’s part. Basically at one point Bel has a crush on Nunchaku, while Rietveld had a crush on Bel, and thus thinking a rivalry is gonna happen. But thankfully for Rietveld, Nunchaku turns Bel down (Nunchaku is more into other butches). The “rivalry” basically fizzles out after that, especially once Rietveld was finally able to ask Bel out. :P

Okay, so now getting into the romantic ships, I'm breaking them up into 3 sections, one with just canon characters, the second with canon characters paired with one of my OCs, and the last being canon x OC with the OCs in this case being ones I haven't even drawn yet, lol...

Romantic (Only canon characters):

DJ Cybr x Felix; Cylix, Cyber Kings, whatever you want to call it! I like to think both of them keep shuffling their feet on it for a long while, with flirting from DJ going over Felix’s head sometimes, and one being convinced the other just wants to be friends, etc.

Bel x Rietveld (inspired by some of @supraandhergoreshia's doodles of them, like this, and this, and also this one, and this really cute one ;u; )

Shine x Coil (inspired by some of @monkiinart's art of them together, such as this, and this one, also especially this one ahh)

Mesh x Solace (inspired by KOMAP's art of them!! Like this, and this, and this! There's more doodles of these two on KOMAP's Xitter too :> )

Romantic (Canon x OC):

Rise x Sai (Devil Theory spring palette), fake dating turned into real dating oh no, lol

Bō (Devil Theory winter palette) x Cueball, computer nerds dating each other, though also as Cueball puts it, “Nerd boyfriend? Jock boyfriend?? Pfft,” *gesturing towards Bō* “Get yourself a man who can do both!!”

Vinyl x Nunchaku (Devil Theory summer palette), butch lesbians together!!

Daishō (Devil Theory autumn palette) x Vela (Eclipse spring palette), or rather Hiro x Sara (i.e. their respective real names), since each of them don’t know the other is a writer… yet

Quatorze (14-ball DOT EXE) x Jūrō (10-ball DOT EXE), though that’s a given since they’re a married couple. Together and still in love, even after going full-cyber!!

Escher x Cinco, old man yaoi basically lol. And I do mean actually old man, Cinco is in his 60s, and I imagine Escher is either around the same or in his 50s at the very least.

Nyx (FUTURISM spring palette) x Aquila (Eclipse summer palette), as discussed in a previous post of mine!

Veronica x Faux, but they weren’t actually dating, she just had a major crush on him. She swears she’s over him after the whole Project Algo thing, but nah, she’s lying, #1 Faux stan right here lmao

Romantic (With OCs that I haven’t even drawn/talked about publicly yet, lmao...):

Rave x Cuervo, he’s a former member of the Umbra Apex crew I made a long while ago

Red x Cress, I’m not even sure how much I can say about this character without spoiling for future potential fics. Red meets them under very unusual circumstances, I’ll say that much.

Lyra (Eclipse autumn palette) x Cherry, an OC who works in New Amsterdam as a tattoo artist. I actually have a few ideas for “new NPCs” for the game to add additional features and minigames, Cherry being one of them.

Michael (Franks autumn palette) x Monica, OC who runs this sort of skate/stunt park for writers in Millennium Mall. She’s also one of the “new NPCs” I mentioned before. Her skate park would basically be a minigame area for getting high scores in exchange for stuff you can display at the hideout. Also-also she’s Tryce’s aunt :P

Exes:

Rise and Faux, absolute disaster of a relationship, not even in a fun way. My version of Faux makes for a horrendously selfish boyfriend, lmao. After the relationship finally ended, Faux referred to Rise as “an egotistical uppity bitch”, and Rise still refers to Faux as “the most insufferable white boy I’ve ever had the displeasure of dating”.

Sai and Daishō, they dated back in secondary school (i.e. roughly high school), because they figured they love each other platonically as best friends, so why not romantically? Unfortunately, things get awkward real fast for two reasons: First, Daishō realizes he’s definitely straight (Sai in comparison is bi), and second, despite the previous point Daishō actually forced himself to keep up the relationship because he really didn’t want to break Sai’s heart. The truth came out eventually and they managed to talk things out and go back to being best friends. Which is probably a miracle that they were able to stay as friends at all, considered what happened and how awkward things got for them for a while there.

Tryce and Bel, the idea being that they tried dating when they were younger (they were not friends previously, so this was something arranged via a dating app or something), but then Bel realizes she’s a lesbian and they have an amicable break up and stay friends afterwards. They only went on one or two dates at that point, and found they got along but just not in a romantic way (and also, again, Bel is a lesbian). So then, this is a far less awkward version of Sai and Daishō’s temporary romantic relationship. :u

Other:

Twoson (2-ball DOT EXE) + Fourside (4-ball DOT EXE) will flip flop on what exactly their relationship is, and give different answers every time either of them is asked. Best friends, friends with benefits, romantic, queerplatonic, etc. They definitely have a deep relationship and care about each other, with Fourside in particular being very protective of Twoson if things get ugly. Still, neither of them likes putting any particular label/definition to what’s going on between them.

[marquisegallery]

I FINALLY managed to finish the Devil theory pics!! Just barely before the end of the week like I hoped I would ;u;

And so, finally, my very rambly set of headcanons for these gremlins. They're my gremlins now I guess, I have hyperfixated too much lol

(This is going to be long. Incredibly long. And very headcanon-y because these guys don't exactly have a lot going for them in canon anyways. I'm warning you now. :u )

There are some of these borrowed from/inspired by @mechanical-magician's excellent Devil Theory and other BRC headcanons, I will point them out when they come up! :>

Starting off with Devil Theory in general:

The crew name is something all four of them came up with to sound threatening yet badass. With their reputation, it works well!

Their aliases come from the types of weapons most commonly associated with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (for the most part). Daishō is named as such because naming him “Katana” probably would have made the connection too obvious.

He was originally going to have them named after famous Japanese swords/swordsmiths (since it would probably fit the samurai-theming of their costumes better), but decided on the TMNT weapon names because he thinks they flow together better anyways. And secretly, he named each of them after the weapon of the TMNT member they're most similar to.

Plus, he finds it amusing to see other people’s reactions when they find out, lol

The other members themselves did not even realize the themeing until much, much later. Sai and Bō were annoyed by it (Nunchaku still thinks it's hilarious), but by then they were all so used to their aliases that they didn't want to bother coming up with new ones. :P

I personally like to think the gravelly voices they have in game is a sort of "character voice" they do to sound more threatening most of the time.

The only person they genuinely respected before the events of the game was DJ Cyber, though they wouldn’t admit it publicly. Also it’s mostly due to the fact that he can kick (and has kicked) all four of their asses in a 4-against-1 fight. In game, it’s mentioned they were kicked out of Mataan, and in a way I like to think they were quite literally kicked out of Mataan by DJ Cyber himself.

After the game, they do have some respect for BRC overall too. But kind of begrudgingly, and mostly because BRC managed to beat Faux and save the whole city.

On that note! Before and during the game's main plot, they just liked to be heels/assholes for the hell of it (not exactly true, but it's what they tell people if asked). It wasn't until get backstabbed (and almost killed) by Faux as Project Algo did they start reconsidering that, hey, maybe they can afford to be a little less assholish. Sucks that it took that much for them to change, but hey, better than nothing I guess??

So they did manage a sort of Heel-Face Turn… but mostly in that they stop pushing the Code of the Street to the limit, and of course they’ve stopped ratting out rival crews to the cops. They still have their own "heel personas” while in costume though, and still continue their activities as writers. Also occasionally still physically fighting other writers anyways, but its fine, probably!

None of them expect the other crews to forgive them for what happened (especially, y'know, the snitching thing), and indeed no one offers any sort of forgiveness. The feelings from most of the other crews and writers towards Devil Theory ranges from "Well, at least you got what you deserved and learned your lesson. You better make good on your promise to be good or else, alright?" to "I don't fucking trust you and I'm gonna keep an eye on you assholes."

Devil Theory have enough grace to accept this judgement, because hey, it's understandable. And on a more selfish perspective, it's either this or stick to being such unapologetic assholes that they get kicked out of New Amsterdam altogether!

Each of them do feel genuine guilt over the snitching thing and working with Faux behind everyone's backs. Sai was the only one who was opposed to it all in the first place, only being convinced by the others and Faux that it would be "fine". So besides guilt in not pushing back harder, there's also a bit of, "I fuckin' called it that this was a bad idea. I only went along with it because you guys said it'd work out, and look what fuckin' happened!!"

Meanwhile... Daishō is the one who feels the most guilty about what happened, since he's basically the leader, and had convinced the others to go for it. So he feels like it's his fault first and foremost for trying to cheat, as well as for trusting Faux in all of this just because he was one of the Big 3. Not to mention all of his friends nearly dying because of Faux, especially with Sai being the one slammed against the statue in Mataan... If any of them died, Daishō definitely would not be able to live with himself after that. He has not admitted this to anyone and is still personally grappling with that guilt. Nobody knows because he's (unfortunately?) very good at masking these kinds of things...

Sai is the member who ends up leaving DT for BRC, though mostly out of revenge against BRC (and specifically Red) for the crew battle back on Pyramid Island. He gets that out of his system eventually, and sticks with BRC as a genuine member (I have a fan fic idea for this bit of story, hee hee). He's still friends with the remaining DT crew of course, they've all been friends for a long time. (I'll touch on this more in a bit)

So then after the events of the game and Sai joining BRC, as a show of good will, Devil Theory let other writers (and especially DJ Cyber) know how exactly they managed to sic the cops on people: Basically hijacking certain police signals to send in false tips. Because otherwise interacting with the cops directly would have just led to them getting arrested too. (It's something that Faux told them how to do in order to gain their trust and make a "deal")

Everyone thinks it might be at least good as last resort free distraction against the cops. Send in a false tip, something like "Ignore those writers, there's a bigger emergency that is conveniently on the opposite side of the city!!" No one's sure if the cops have the ability to actually trace back the false tips to the source (like what happened with DOT EXE finding out about Project Algo), so writers only use it for emergencies. Still, coincidentally, arrests against writers has gone way down after this!

This also leads to a new addition to the Code of the Street: Any writer found to be abusing the false tips in order to get another writer/crew arrested, will be ratted out to the cops themselves. An eye for an eye! DJ Cyber was considering doing this to Devil Theory as well, but figured them getting pummeled by Faux towards the end of the game was punishment enough.

This one comes from a Mech headcanon: Devil Theory has their own hideout in the shipping container maze on Pyramid Island. The confusing (and frankly rather unnerving) nature of that area means their hideout can stay secure from anyone who doesn’t know how to get there.

My personal addition to this: There are different routes to the hideout based on whether or not it’s Tuesday, raining, a bank holiday, or any combination of those factors. Also, the crew (and even the dock workers of Pyramid Island in general) have not ruled out the possibility of there being any sort of Backroom Beasties in the maze. Sometimes you can hear things in there...

Sai is still invited to hang out at their hideout. Anyone else has to have approval from him and the remaining DT members before they're allowed to visit.

Also based on a Mech headcanon: They have pet crabs they keep at their hideout. Me personally, I like to think they're specifically hermit crabs! So then the crew paint designs onto any shells brought for the crabs, and will let visitors paint one too.

Back to the topic of all four of them being friends for a long time, more specifically: Sai and Daishō have known each other since very early childhood, and then they became friends with Bō and Nunchaku during middle school (i.e. around ages 12/13). Nunchaku in particular was living in California at the time, so it was an online friendship with the other three, eventually moving to New Amsterdam after turning 18.

They may or may not have started an anime-manga club during their time in school, which is how Sai and Daishō met Bō (and with Nunchaku as an honorary online member). All four of them refuse to admit to it these days, lol

Truthfully, the main reason all four of them have stuck together for so long is because they have had rough childhoods in one way or another, mostly due to their respective parents. This is what lead to the four of them becoming friends and wanting to protect/defend each other (sort of like a found family kind of thing), and thus forming Devil Theory together later on. However, they are more likely to admit to the anime-manga club thing than any of this.

(I might elaborate more on how rough it was for each on them in a separate post. Or just save it for a fan fic, if I can manage it...)

All four of them learned to fight mostly from watching wrestling shows and martial arts movies. “But wrestling is fake, those moves probably wouldn’t actually hurt someone--” “Only if you hold back.”

Both Sai and Bō have face scars. Sai has it over part of his lips, while Bō has a mark on part of his jaw. Both of them got these from injuries while trying to learn how to skate and freerun in order to be writers.

With Bō in particular, he outright passed out when it happened, causing the others to panic. They had to take him to the Flesh Prince to get him fixed up (hospitals would ask too many questions for their liking).

For Sai, the only people who know about how he got his scar are the rest of Devil Theory (and eventually he tells Rise too). To anyone else, he just tells them he got it from fighting 3 walking tanks at once. Rise says he should tell people it was 5 tanks at once to make it sound more impressive!

All four of them have cybernetic lower legs (from looking at the in-game models, it definitely looks more like cybernetics/prosthetics than just armor, at least to me). Long story short, each of them lost a foot or part of a lower leg (sometimes on both legs) for one reason or another. It eventually got to the point where Daishō went, "You know what?? Fuck this, we're clearly cursed, so let's just get this over with." And paid for all of them to just get what's left of their lower legs upgraded to fancy cybernetics, as seen in the game!

This is at least another reason for them becoming writers ("With these legs we could probably manage it pretty good, right?"), and then of course eventually forming Devil Theory.

Some more specifics on the why for each member:

For Sai and Daishō, it was directly caused by their Respective Bad Parents. (Like I mentioned earlier in this post, I may go into further detail on that in a separate post. Especially since it gets pretty dark...)

For Bō, it was an accident out in New Amsterdam. Basically there was a failed test involving one of the police's walking tank, resulting in Bō and other civilians getting injured. Some of them fairly severely, and of course Bō being one of those. None of them (including himself) know what actually caused the accident, not even that it was caused by a walking tank.

For Nunchaku, it was a factory accident. This was back when she first moved to New Amsterdam and needed a job. That led her to having to work at a shady factory with unsafe work conditions, and which was taking advantage of new immigrants like her who don't 100% know their rights or who to go to for help right away. Her accident in particular was one of the worst at the factory up to that point, with several other employees getting hurt as well. They all of course quite after that, including Nunchaku herself.

Sai's incident was the earliest to happen chronologically, while Bō's was the last one.

Daishō and Sai tried dating each other at one point in high school. Emphasis on “tried”. Turned out they were incompatible, at least in terms of sexualities: Sai is bi, but Daishō is straight.

At the least, it wasn’t the worst relationship either of them have had, just awkward once Daishō realized he's straight. So they broke things off and were able to stay friends afterwards.

And now for each individual member! With bonus head pics. :P

Sai

As previously mentioned, he's the member who joins up with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk in the postgame.

Also as previous mentioned, he at first only joined BRC for revenge against Red, but they sort it out after a while!

Has some anger issues, but since joining BRC (especially after a final serious fight with Red) he’s gotten a much better handle on it.

Eventually after that previous point, he starts dating Rise, there is a whole outline for this I swear…

He and Red still fight each other, but it's more like sparring matches. The rest of BRC end up treating it like actual sport matches, basically cheering on one or the other! Cueball and Bel even act as commentators for these matches, lol

He is fairly stand-offish most of the time, and takes some time to open up to other people.

He can cook, as in cooking without necessarily following a strict recipe. He cooks a lot for his former crew, though it takes him a while to open up and cook for BRC as well. You will not be disappointed if you invite him to a potluck!

He can sing quite well, but he hates singing in front of others, even his own friends (they've only ever heard him by accident when he didn't mean for them to hear him at all). He eventually opens up to singing for Rise at least.

I have a personal headcanon that DJ Cyber will occasionally take suggestions for mixtapes he's working on. Sai suggested several reggaeton songs/remixes, though he expected none of them to be picked. He was super stoked when he found out the DJ actually included one of his suggestions (the AGUA remix) in the particular mixtape that plays on Pyramid Island.

Works as a freelance graphic designer/artist as his day job. He takes commissions on the side. No, he does not take requests and will not draw your OC for free.

He is the one who designed Devil Theory's graffiti in canon, Daishō paid him for it too!

He's Puerto Rican, he moved to New Amsterdam as a kid.

Fluent in Spanish, he has a noticeable Puerto Rican accent when speaking Spanish.

Daishō

He is the leader of Devil Theory!

He let Sai leave the group to join BRC because he started getting sick of Sai’s anger issues (it had been growing worse until the BRC crew battle, at which point said issues were at their worst).

Once Sai gets a better handle on his anger, they go back to being friends, even with Sai staying with BRC.

Fairly chill guy (though also arrogant and snarky at times) out of costume.

While in public as the Devil Theory leader, he can be ruthless (as seen by how the group pushes the Code of the Street to the limit). He can also be dramatic sometimes, almost playing it up like an anime villain/wrestling heel at times. At least he’s smart enough to not let himself get distracted by monologuing.

Though if you genuinely piss him off, he can be incredibly petty and cruel, regardless of him being “in costume” or not.

Daishō wears contacts while in costume, but just normal glasses outside of that

He’s the one who designed Devil Theory’s costumes. He has experience with cosplay before forming DT. Heck, he's still into cosplay, specifically crossplay (i.e. crossdressing and cosplay at the same time).

He’s also the one that came up with their Hip-Hop dance. He’s particularly proud of the “criss-cross hop” part of the dance, but this was also the part that the other members had a hard time getting right. (I say this as someone who has attempted doing the dance IRL myself, and also had problems with that part :P)

On that note, he's a pretty good dancer in general, with both freestyle and "formal" dances with specific steps.

He's a straight guy who's not afraid to be feminine! If the point about him enjoying crossplay doesn't already tip you off. Though, to clarify, he's not afraid to look/act feminine outside of crossplay too.

He supposedly has enough money to just live off of for the rest of his life, but he continues to be a writer for the fun of it (and as an outlet/destressor). He does still work part-time though, as a secretary for one of the companies in Mataan.

He's a theater major and part of a group that holds plays in New Amsterdam. He loves to play as the villains, especially in musicals. Villains always get the best songs!! That being said, his actual singing is about 100% confidence and 65% actual talent. Him singing villain songs is already great, but anything else is usually "just" alright.

Big fan of horror movies, mainly slasher/splatter and body horror. Also the kind of guy who goes looking for director's cut versions and deleted scenes. He will ramble for hours about his favorite horror movies, especially about the acting and special effects! Though he will also rant about genuinely awful horror movies just as much. He has opinions!!

Claims to have a girlfriend, but he never names who he’s dating or goes into any specific details about her, and the other DT members have never met her. They have a running joke about her being his “theoretical girlfriend”. (She does actually exist! But she doesn't know Daishō is part of Devil Theory, and she has a secret herself...)

This one gets its own subsection because it's pretty long lol:

Daishō is terrible with names. In general it takes a while for him to learn other people's names, and he tends to mess up by getting close-but-not-quite with names. And with him being the leader of Devil Theory, most people assume he's just being a jerk and making fun of them. :P

Some examples:

Tryce = Tricycle, Trace, Tracy, Trance, Trick

Bel = Bell, Beth, Bev, Ring (like a ringing bell lol)

Vinyl = Vine, Vino, Vinny, VHS

Solace = Soul, Solis, Crash, Test

He doesn't have this problem with people who are basically celebrities to him (DJ Cyber and Felix being two-thirds of The Big 3, and he knows Rise because he follows her on social media). So then otherwise, the only thing that helps is coming up with mnemonics/associations. "Bel's hair kinda looks like a bell", "Vinyl works at a record store", etc.

One of the rare times he managed to remember someone's name easily is Red. Because, y'know, literal red head. :P

And yes, this also applies to his own friends, at least with their real names. He had no trouble with their street names, but only because he was the one who came up with them, lol

He's half-Japanese and half-Peruvian, born and raised in New Amsterdam. Fluent in Spanish and Japanese. He has a Peruvian accent when speaking in Spanish, his mother insisted on teach him herself (and to avoid him potentially ending up with a Spaniard accent, lmaooo).

As mentioned much earlier, he has known Sai since they were kids in elementary school. Basically Sai latched onto him because he was the only other Latino at their school, and Sai was already being alienated by the other kids because of that. They eventually realizing they have a lot in common anyways (like same favorite manga at the time) and became friends.

On that note! He only got into anime and manga in the first place out of spite towards his dad, who basically looked down on it as "everything wrong with my homeland these days". Dad only very begrudgingly got Daishō stuff in the original Japanese, choosing to see it as at least a way for his kid to learn Japanese more easily.

That leads to a more genuine love for anime and manga, and then forming the anime-manga club, becoming friends with Bō and Nunchaku, and of course eventually all four of them forming Devil Theory. Funny how these things work out!

Bō

Rather stoic while in public as a Devil Theory member, but outside of that he tends to be fairly nerdy and polite.

Arguably the way he acts in and out of costume is probably the biggest difference among the rest of the DT members. Which tends to be rather jarring to most people…

The tech person of the group, bit of a hacker too. He was the one who figured out the false tips thing with the police signals, and frankly he finds the police force's security systems to be insulting pathetic a lot of the time.

His day job is as an IT tech, though he often gets forced into doing stuff outside of his job description, especially since his damn coworkers keep pushing their own work onto him. He even has to take care of coding things as a programmer/engineer, which is even more outside of his job description!

Being a writer is basically a destressor for him at this point. Do not ask him to troubleshoot your tech problems when he’s off the clock, he hates that. The rest of DT know this and don’t ask him unless it’s something genuinely serious (and only after they’ve done their own troubleshooting).

He's a gamer, and especially loves games that he can mod himself.

Related to the previous point: he has strong opinions about how the game industry is going these days (Little-to-no official support for preservation of older games, going after emulators when they won’t even help make their games more accessible, awful dev crunch especially from larger companies, etc.). He will rant about it if you let him!

He can't handle horror content very well, be it movies or video games. And I mean genuine horror stuff, especially with gore. Silly scary stuff like Luigi's Mansion is fine, but getting into Silent Hill and Resident Evil is where he starts genuinely freaking out. He'll at least watch his friends playing through survival horror games, not playing it himself, but he'll insist on having all the lights on.

One time the others did manage to drag him through a haunted house attraction. He ended up freaked out badly, and afterwards got into a fistfight with Sai over it (it was his idea to do that in the first place). Lesson learned!

He has attempted at least once to get a piercing like his friends, but he almost fainted while doing so (he might have a fear of needles). He hasn't tried since.

Knows how to fight like the rest of the DT members, but some people may underestimate him because they assume the tech guy isn’t that strong. Also, Bō is admittedly built more for weightlifting than outright fighting like the others. So he's a big guy with body fat and muscles, though some people assume he's just fat. But that doesn't mean he can't kick your ass!

On that note, he hates when people underestimate him in general, or otherwise think he’s naive.

Inspired by Mech's own CUE.mp4 and Pluto: Bō eventually starts dating Cueball (the DOT EXE member who joins BRC in the postgame). Admittedly at first I was like, only lightly considering something similar in my own stuff, like "That'd be cute, but it probably wouldn't work for these two in my AU/headcanons, ha ha" but eventually after more thinking I realized, "Wait a minute, this could work after all." lol

He's gay, would probably be considered a bear maybe, though he doesn't use that label himself (he doesn't hate it or anything, just doesn't want to use it).

His family has lived in New Amsterdam for generations.

Knows enough Spanish to follow along with Sai and Daishō when they have conversations in Spanish, though not necessarily respond to either of them in Spanish (or anyone else for that matter).

Nunchaku

In case her real name in my headcanons didn't already tip you off, Samus Aran surprise!! Nunchaku is a gal named Roxanne! She can pull off a gravely “character voice” like the rest of DT, and even her normal voice is a bit rough/raspy (think kinda like Rainbow Dash, but maybe a lower pitch).

She goes by Rox as a nickname out of costume/with friends.

"Wait so is she cis or trans--" Originally I handled this by saying, "Would Rox herself be comfortable answering that question? I don't think she would want to answer at all, regardless of being cis or trans." BUT, after thinking it over and discussing it with friends, I've decided to just pick one and stop leaving it up to interpretation.

So anyways, the answer is: she's a trans butch lesbian!

Overall a very positive and friendly (and energetic) person outside of Devil Theory, but can be surprisingly underhanded when in costume.

Though either way, she tends to be very high-energy. She is in fact the team member with the highest gremlin energy!

Her ears are pierced, but that was something her parents forced her into doing. She refuses to use earrings and stuff even as an adult, though she did eventually get that piercing on her nose.

She likes spicy food! Also has a tendency to add hot sauce to certain foods just to kick up the spice factor. Sai and Nunchaku used to have small arguments over her adding hot sauce to the food he cooked for her (Sai sees it almost as an insult, as if she’s saying it doesn’t already taste good enough). By now they’ve come to more of an understanding, and Sai just side-eyes her whenever she adds hot sauce to her food.

Was a bit of a kleptomaniac as a teen, and these days she still steals things on occasion. She’s good at it and manages to not get caught (a lot of the time).

One time she went to steal a new TV for the Devil Theory hideout. She saw the store she was hitting had a buy one get one free deal on TVs, so she stole two and gave the extra to BRC for their own hideout!

She works as a mechanic as her day job, mainly fixing cars, though also other kinds of large machines and equipment (washing machines, fridges, trucks, construction vehicles, etc). She’s in charge of fixing the crew’s skateboards when needed.

Adding onto her job backstory: The shop Nunchaku works for as a mechanic is owned by a guy who originally mentored her back at the factory she worked at (mentioned a lot earlier on this post). Basically he'd seen a lot of violations and other shady crap, none of it getting fixed despite multiple complaints and reports. And seeing so many people (including unfortunately Nunchaku) end up hurt at once was the last straw. So he quit, opened a repair shop, and offered Nunchaku and other former employees of the factory new jobs at his business. They're all happier to be away from that crappy factory, which has since been shut down due to the accidents and violations.

Nunchaku is crane and forklift certified. She figured it would look good on her resume, and hopefully be impressive to the ladies. Hopefully. It hasn't worked yet.

She has been interested in learning about welding, especially given how much money those types of jobs make, but for now she's happy with her mechanic job.

She likes to take things apart in order to put them back together again. She finds it's the easiest way for her to understand how something works!

She has a personal goal of someday taking apart DJ Cyber's spider tank thingamajig in order to figure out how it works. And ideally being able to make one of her own. Basically imagine the following: Nunchaku: "Heeeey, Mr. DJ, do you mind if I take a look at your tank thing? I promise I won't take long!" DJ: "Hell no."

She has a crush on Vinyl, but gets too nervous to actually ask her out. Nunchaku also keeps going to the music shop that Vinyl works at to buy records (she doesn’t even have a record player) just to talk to her. Note that Vinyl working at a music shop is inspired by Mech's headcanons for Vinyl! :>

Nunchaku's impromptu "record collection" is growing out of hand at this point, a lot of it for genres she doesn't even like, lol

She once tried to learn how to juggle knives in order to impress ladies! That ended in a trip to the Flesh Prince (again, hospitals would ask too many questions), and she hasn't tried that since.

She knows how to pick locks though! Most of the time it's just using one tool (more often than not the single-sided jiggler) to jam everything until they open. She gets excited when she has to pick a lock that actually requires genuine work to get open.

American, as mentioned a while ago she moved from California to New Amsterdam a bit after high school

Fluent in Japanese (she learned it due to being a weeb, lol); in terms of Spanish, she’s in the same boat as Bō, knowing enough to at least follow Sai and Daishō’s conversations in Spanish

---

SO THAT'S EVERYTHING!! For now. Maybe.

I'm gonna go hibernate like a bear for a while. Feel free to leave snacks in front of my cave if you want, loool

[glitteraffe-art]

Why Does Escher Sound Normal?

Unlike the other NPC cyberhead characters who have voicelines (like DOTEXE, or the cyberhead Classic Oldhead, or cyberhead civilians you can run into…) Escher has little to no robotic voice filter over his voicelines. 

https://youtu.be/dxqQAeN2kwo Escher voicelines

https://youtu.be/MskVzMtpFtU DOTEXE member voicelines 

Honestly, the cleanest explanation for the voice difference is, “Cyberheads can just choose how they want their electronic voices to sound, and some want it to sound more electronic--and Escher just wanted to sound less electronic”. However, I’m not looking for a clean explanation here- I very much like making up shit that could be plausible. 

Long-winded headcanon explanation(?) under the cut for length and also due to spoilers for the plot of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk:

Given that the standard cyberhead appears to be able to support a fully functioning human head inside of it, while more or less being able to work like a normal cyberhead (vision through the four eyes, breathing, etc) it may be possible that individual cyberheads may have differing amounts of head left depending on how they got beheaded (intentionally or otherwise). Getting guillotined by a (insert bladed thing here) doesn’t have to be the One and Only way of losing your mind. 

Anyways, I imagine  that Escher has enough of his body’s original head to have a functioning larynx, mouth, and nasal cavities/passages, which would allow him to  sound more like a regular human. 

Let’s take a look at some headcanons in detail:.

How could you lose only part of your head in such a way that leaves, more or less, the entire rest of your mouth and nose intact? Since Escher is a sniper, perhaps he (or whoever had his body originally, depending on whether you interpret him to have the downloaded memories of,  or be a completely different person from, the original owner of the body)  got detected on a mission and, unfortunately for him, got hit by a headshot above his nose/mouth (though, it’d have to be angled to not hit the lower parts of the mouth and throat, and also be from a weapon with a smaller caliber--if it was too large his whole head would be uh. vaporized)

With a fully intact body but the brain turned into naught but a fine mist, he’d probably be  a prime candidate for a cyberhead… (something something even death may not free you from the military-industrial complex something something)

On to the cyberhead itself. With little to no use for the remaining cranial cavity and any remaining chunks of eyes, excess parts of the skull could be cut away. The AI and other mechanical components could be placed where the brain was, though some nerve and artificial muscle connections would need to be made to ensure the lips, jaw, and tongue move correctly, as those are needed in forming sounds. Additional connections would need to  be made between the AI/other components and the spinal cord, other nerves down to the body, so on and so forth. Just add a small mic with no modulation to get over the “muffled” sound of a person with something like a helmet over their face and voila- 

a cyberhead who sounds very human.

But wait a minute… if he has a mouth that works, could he eat normally? 

Well, probably. I’d love to get deeper into oral, enteral, and parenteral nutrition in cyberheads, but that’s a topic for another day. At the time of writing this, I still need a bit more research to familiarize myself with the topic before presenting any in-depth headcanons. 

If there’s anything I can say about the subject, I’ve seen several people present the headcanon that the two plates making up the “face” of the standard cyberhead are hinged and can swing apart, like so:

This definitely would allow eating, albeit awkwardly, since the plates are big enough to totally block vision towards the center of the face. Eating in this way would mean he’d be unable to see what he’s putting in his mouth directly, and instead would either have to hold food slightly to the left or to the right of the central faceplates, or angle his head to see it.

(Any activity that blocks the vision of a sniper is not ideal; I wonder if there are sniper-specific cyberhead configurations, military-produced, that don’t have this problem?)

Whatever’s left of his face in there is probably not pretty, either- I imagine he isn’t the kind to eat in front of other people, though there may be individual cyberheads with a similar head model and face configuration who Don’t Care About That and are 100% fine with opening their face plates to have a snack in front of anyone.

WAIT. Could he… kiss?

It would probably be difficult and more than a little awkward for everyone involved, but probably yes? The hinged faceplate configuration as described above would make it difficult- opening the faceplates so they extend parallel to the chin would make it annoying for another person to get their face in closer; opening the faceplates further, to be perpendicular to the chin, would completely and totally block his vision. Maybe just kissing someone’s hand may be a little easier given the faceplate configuration? Not that it’s any of my business.

Hey, what about Red? If Red and Escher have almost the same cyberhead, wouldn’t Red have, at some point, figured out how to open the faceplates?

Even though they both seem to have standard cyberheads, it’s possible that individual standard cyberheads could be customized based on the needs of the beheaded individual, with a variety of different customization options. I get the feeling that purchasing a cyberhead for use is a little like buying a car- an expensive purchase with a lot of customization options for different needs or wants, with more customization increasing the price. Since Red’s head was apparently from the Versum Hill scrap heap, maybe it was originally for a 100% beheaded individual who didn’t have any need for hinged faceplates, who could take in food via tube. 

One last note: Though Red/Felix has a fully functional head with a functioning larynx and mouth hidden within a standard cyberhead, he sounds very electronic. But, given Flesh Prince and DJ Cyber wanted his existence to be kept secret, it wouldn’t be too far out to say that they intentionally added voice modulation to more closely get him to resemble a regular cyberhead.

[roseltheteacup]

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: Story Headcanons, Faux

Major story spoilers under the cut.

Faux has undiagnosed schizophrenia, but I'll be talking about his anxiety as a result of the psychosis he experiences, specifically.

Despite how suspicious others seem to be of him, I personally can't see him always being as cruel as we see him at the end of the game. He definitely knows how to sweet talk people and get them to trust him, but he never had any grand plans to kill all writers. At worst, he felt no remorse in letting other writers pay for his crimes. His charisma played a part in convincing his father to keep his record clean, but he gradually grew to regret and detest this. Faux was always aware of how others would treat him if they knew his father was a cop. Too aware, in fact. It weighed him down and pulled at him and caused him to see many of his relationships as strained for the fact that he couldn't let anyone know of his background.

Regardless if he was doing it to himself or not, Faux was haunted by thoughts of his peers discovering his roots. Of the community he thrived in plotting to overthrow and abandon him, and he tormented himself by not reaching out to his two closest friends: DJ Cyber and Felix.

Felix, of course, discovered Faux’s roots anyway. He did not tell Faux about this.

He still saw the Big 3 as comforting, though. Cyber and Felix were, naturally, the furthest you can be from the police, so it gave him a rare peace of mind whenever they were together.

It didn't last forever. The day Felix announced that he would be going solo for All City was the day that Faux broke. All of his fears, to him, were true. Felix abandoned them. He abandoned him. Surely, it was all because of what Faux had done, and he would go on to plot the end of Faux’s career as a writer. To Faux, that was surely what it meant.

Perhaps Faux was in love with Felix. Perhaps, he was in love with both of them. Whatever it was, it only made Felix’s choice hurt more, and Faux’s mental state worse.

Faux’s downward spiral was kept entirely to himself. He practically disappeared off the face of the earth once Felix went solo for All City. That was until Felix finally got into contact with him again and asked Faux to help him throw up some graffiti one night, assuming that it would be casual and low stress for both of them.

I still don't believe that Felix’s death was plotted intricately beforehand. The combination of Solace being present, everyone's opinion on Faux, and how him and Felix were so close to the building Cyber and Prince were located– all of this just leads me to believe that the murder was an impulsive decision, spawned through everything that had been on Faux’s mind. A psychotic episode. He just couldn't take it anymore, and reacted in the worst possible way he could have because he simply didn't know what else to do. And he had to live with that. Or, at least until Cyber presumably killed him that night at the police station.

But Faux did not die. He was captured, and made to be the test subject against his will for the unseeable future. Time scraped by him while he was hooked up to Algo– painful and unrelenting, where he could do nothing but sit as a pathetic human head and think about everything that had led him to his situation. Whatever shreds he had left of a coherent mental state soon rotted away as he began to lose his mind.

His operation to kill all writers was also not planned. Initially, at least. Throughout the first half of Red’s journey, Faux merely provided misinformation in order to get more writers arrested and injured. He was also, at the time, still trying to retrieve his body. Reports of a “stolen body” began circulating because he really did want his full self back.

By the time the BRC challenges DOT EXE in Millennium Mall, Faux is set on killing any writers who get in his way, and he establishes control over the police force using the same technology that they had used to flay his mind for information. Faux is, to his credit, dastardly cunning when he wants to be, but it just so turned out that this time it was to every writer’s detriment. Through this control, he could call in as many officers and mecha as he pleased, and it even extended to him being able to contact Devil Theory for a deal, in which he would unceremoniously double-cross them once he got what he wanted.

Faux has Berlage killed and begins modifying himself, finally making his escape from the bureau’s basement inside the mecha tank we see him piloting after Futurism is defeated. In Mataan, he's determined to kill all writers, regardless if they've crossed him or not.

About Rietveld; I initially gave Faux the benefit of the doubt that he spared her, but given how far gone he is at that point it's more fair to say that Rietveld is just incredibly skilled at self defence and managed to escape him alive.

Despite all of his plotting and bloodlust, when confronting the writers in Mataan, a single thread of composure holds Faux back. That is until he attempts to kill Felix and gets sprayed in the face with paint. It's no holds barred at that point. Faux is both out of his mind and intoxicated with spray paint fumes, and it leads him to scrap whatever humanity he had left– transforming into a horrifying beast of metal and wires. He becomes the monster that he thought everyone saw him as.

It's clear that he still intended to return to a human form after wiping out all writers, though, because he kept Solace alive.

Faux fights and screams until his final moments and spends his last line still trying to communicate how he feels.

But nothing changes.

[neep-neep-neep]

Tryce Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is gay but so cursed to have terrible taste in men tbh. He falls for one bad boy after another and Bel eventually pre-screens enough of them for him to have a good guy but. Man falls for the first "pretty boy" he sees aka the evilest one of all time?? 🙈