#my guess is that xf will go by “zero” but that is a complete vibe check with no backing evidence

[accirax]

wait the altdrdt characters have names? who's who? which one is xf?

oh, sorry, i forgot that folks who either weren't around when the characters were first introduced or just forgot might not know which altdrdt cast member is which! i'll clarify for you.

so, to be clear, none of the altdrdt characters have official names. this is (currently) stated on the FAQ page. however, to make talking about the characters easier, DRDT fans on Tumblr (at least) came up with some code names with which to refer to the characters. there were a lot of them floating around, but i think the ones that most people settled on were made by xmicrophonyx and pastelclownkitty. you can find all of the basic info you need in that linked post, but i'm going to keep talking to go into a little more detail as to why the names were chosen, and show the updated cast photo with the few sprite changes.

so, from left to right:

Swirl: this is because of the swirls in her hair.

Soundwave: this is because of the audio level-like decal on his shirt.

XF: this is because of the logo on their jacket and the pin on their tie, which matches with Min's-- symbols of the XF-Ture Tech company.

Dandelion: this is because of the dandelion in his hair.

Scale: this is because of the scale pattern on his shirt.

Teacher: this is because his talent is all but confirmed to be the Ultimate Teacher. in fact, as of the Christmas 2023 comics, this codename may be canon*.

Bullet: this is because of his belt buckle, which is reminiscent of a truth bullet. the dog tags also imply that he may have a connection with the military.

Ram: this is because of her goat-like pupil design and hair arranged to look like a sheep's horns.

Fire: this is because of the fire pattern on her shirt, her apparently fiery personality, and to match with who we assume to be her twin brother, Ice.

Ice: this is because of the snowflake pattern on his shirt, his apparently cold personality, and to match with who we assume to be his twin sister, Fire.

Crown: this is because of the crown pin in her hair.

*although not confirmed to be canon, there's a decent chance that the characters in this fangan will canonically be referred to by code names, as opposed to their real names. this is because two of our prior attempts, naming the characters "one" through "eleven" and naming the characters by Greek alphabet letters, were shot down. the Greek alphabet may have just been due to personal distaste (DRDTdev said he found the names "arbitrary"), but the numbers were vetoed because one of the characters' names was confirmed to be a number (here's wist-eri's screenshot of DRDTdev's comment). combined with the fact that Teacher refers to himself as, well, Teacher in that comic, if one character goes by a number and one goes by Teacher, it's possible that everyone will be using words in place of names. however, it's also possible that someone goes by a number name for separate reasons, and Teacher was just referring to himself as that for the sake of not giving us spoilers/in the same way that anime characters sometimes just call a character "sensei."

anyways, if you want some additional reading about the altDRDT cast, you can check out my initial guesses as to what their talents might be, and/or gleamingtempest's super cool theory that the characters will be based off of the 12 animals of the lunar calendar zodiac (which i also hijacked 😅). there are plenty of other great speculations and pieces of art in either the #altdrdt or #drdtalt hashtags, too!