#made the thang. derive as much gender from my designs as you like

[houndfaker]

Are mercury byte and pluto part of a story or are they more like standalone OCs? They're all super cool I'd love to hear more about their personalities if you've anything you'd like to share :]

iiiii. wrote so much in response to this forgive me.

they ARE part of a story that ive been on and off working on for a little while (development extremely slow and very 'this only makes progress when im REAAAALLY feeling it') to keep things loose given so much of it is still liable to change in development, its about robots fighting and exploring a world with autonomous machines living alongside organic life?

slipping most of this under a cut since im gonna be wordy

mercury is the protagonist, they were created by dr. lumen, a retired hero having sought to make something of a child that doubled as an aid/bodyguard for themselves in their old age. mercury quickly became much more than that as they became familiar with lumen's past as a hero and sought to take lumen's place as a local hero. mercury is relatively young and as a result is a little bit foolish and overconfident. they are extremely well-meaning and love to help people, but theyre also wrapped up in this desire to be adored as a hero and theyre going to have to contend with what parts of being a hero actually appeal to them, what they are capable of realistically and what compromises they'll have to make, and how to mature as a person. they're curious, excitable, and eager.

you didnt exactly Ask for these but i'll throw in funfacts for each character that i like to share

mercury curates a small collection of retro gaming tech; their favorite thing to collect is gameboys!

mercury also curates a physical library of their favorite music and they love dancing. They also often create tunes in their spare time. All of them use some sort of old game soundfont.

mercury has a small camera behind their head's lense! They use this for their photography hobby, and can open up/connect to a small port in the back of their head that lets them download the images/recordings onto a computer.

mercury does not verbally communicate (robots using verbal communication is common in this world) but is able to emit a variety of beeping sounds. (i actually have examples of what this sounds like as i had to create them for a bomb rush cyberfunk mod that puts mercury in the game!)

byte is mercury's adoptive sibling. he kinda has a 'born all alone in a wet cardboard box' thing going on; he's a half-baked computer program (programs are semi-corporeal, able to move between machinery and the real world) that was set for deletion but forgotten about so quickly that he winded up worming his way out of the computer he was made on! hes one of the very first individuals mercury saved after deciding they wanted to be a hero, getting rid of some feral virus entities that were intending to eat byte. merc had lumen smooth out byte's gnarly code and he wound up pretty much adopted afterward. he looks up to mercury but is also their little brother and is thus a little bastard about it. hes also loud, emotionally unstable, scares easy, and loyal to a fault.

surprisingly a huge fan of origami and does it to calm down from stressful situations. mercury keeps emergency folding papers for him in a compartment on their body.

he loves cartoons and animation and will ramble without a second thought if you watch something with him

pluto i have admittedly ironed out the most despite it being the most recent design of the trio, which means i have The Most context to give regarding it. it is the eventual deuteragonist, an old robot that was once a member of the story's main antagonistic faction, DEADSUN, a robot assassin group. pluto was initially built as the perfect champion of an unsanctioned robot fighting ring, but after being cheated out of its purpose, attacked and killed numerous participants, both organic and not, in a blind rage when no one would believe it. after this, it was scouted by a member of DEADSUN that had been observing it. not long into its time as a member of the group, though, it was deemed too reckless and untrainable, and it was forcibly deactivated and left in a basement of the group's headquarters at the time to be eventually used for scrap parts.

pluto was forgotten when DEADSUN transferred to different headquarters. the original base's site became a junkyard. after a planned story beat where mercury unleashes a burst of energy in that specific junkyard after losing the trail of an antagonist, the energy surges into the depths of the site and jumpstarts pluto back to life. it claws its way out of the abandoned facility and instantly tries to pick a fight with mercury because it wrongfully identifies them as a member of DEADSUN.

pluto is my favorite so far as you might be able to gather from the above. it is a machine with anger quite literally written into its soul. DEADSUN was intending to “tame” pluto in a sense. this backfires because pluto never regretted its previous actions. it never rejected its anger. it embraced it, owned what it was; a dangerous and powerful machine with no master. it still doesn’t regret what it is. it feels its reasons were justified. it expects people to be deterred from it when learning what it did and who it is, and therefore kept as few friends as possible. its blunt, rude, and doesn't take any shit. but at the same time, if it trusts you, its very personable and playful.

it likes skateboarding but due to its low capacity of patience it has snapped numerous boards and is always seen with a different one.

its feet are bendy; its able to jump really high and deliver kinda devastating kicks. its body is built to be pretty agile despite the bulk of its arms. it likes parkour and urban exploration.

its wholeheartedly accepted and even cared for by mercury and byte and lumen. without the strings attached for once. it hates mushy shit, but its grateful for them and shows that by being deeply protective.

and to cap this off i'll leave some misc doodles involving the trio. since ive poured my heart out regarding these three i might as well give a peek into their dynamic directly on the post yknow