I'm with you with all this stuff - these are huge bugaboos that have been problems in the source canon forEVER, and it becomes really frustrating at times! And for my part, I've wanted to toss in answers to some of these questions myself - especially the off-time stuff. It's just that I'm horrifically busy and when that's not the case, I'm lazy. ha!
Some things I definitely think happen though - especially during the times when cameras and crazy game producers are looking the other way, filtered through being a heavy Zero RPer:
Trio has a long-standing tradition of Movie Night. The preference is for 80's action movies and, of course, ANYTHING humans make involving robots. There are usually "drinking" games. Axl usually has to be gotten extra drunk/overcharged so he doesn't start screaming about the way humans are using the guns wrong, failing to count the ammo, and generally making impossible shots. (However, the movie nights were started by Axl and it's his movie collection that gets picked from.) Each month, a different Unit is responsible for hosting. Much boisterous making fun of the bad tech, technobabble and mocking of robot stereotypes happens. X gets twitchy when robots and humans fight each other in the movies. Takes place in the 0th Comm since the event keeps getting bigger and bigger as the months go on.
Zero's hobbies are deeply Japanese - he calligraphs, meditates, reads the Hagakure like it's the Bible, practices sword/kendo, practices tea ceremony, and also has a pet bonsai that he's magically managed to keep alive through several base changes and several major uprisings. That and an ancient scroll of calligraphy that was gifted to him are his most precious possessions. He cooks - but likes everything 900000 degrees hot because otherwise he can't taste it, and he also can't be left alone in a kitchen because he likes the way fire looks on a stove. He is an ideal BBQ chef because it combines burninating things and cooking meat, which is one of his favorite 'human' foods.
He has been having therapy for his PTSD, and switched therapists not too long ago when he started talking more openly about his relationship with X and Axl, and detected that this honesty was making his therapist squirm.
Axl is starting to get into figure collecting because of X, but left to his own devices collects old weapons, particularly vintage pistols and ammunition of various weird makes. Will rant for HOURS if you start him off by discussing gunblades. Collects an abandoned shell or cartridge from every battle he takes part in (and survives) and has it engraved with the date. He's got a small bucket full of these.
Axl blows off steam by making (and distributing) porn, movies, comic books, songs and bits of media. He collects old media ravenously. He kind of acts like the inhouse Hunter storage cloud for all things unofficial and Hunter related. He also tends to spy on people through tiny insect-sized cameras he plants all over his surroundings - but the reason he does this is because he needs to know everything going on around him at all times as part of his ongoing need to have security by getting advance warning of all things. He's an inveterate (but discreet!) gossip, and knows what's going on with almost everyone on base at all times, but is also friends with almost everyone he meets.
He is also politically conservative in a way that X and Zero aren't, which has led to some interesting yelling matches at times. And he's a limited savant when it comes to math - when it comes to the necessary math that allows him to make sniper shots and pull off complicated feats of ballistics, he has the best math subroutines of any Hunter. He is terrible at doing day to day math, but he can knock up shots and take out targets with terrifying accuracy from ridiculous distances without even thinking about it. Additionally, his skills as a mimic allow him to catch the subtlest changes of expression and mood by reading people's body languages and faces, which can all combine to make it feel like Axl can mindread and is impossible to keep a secret from. If there's shenanigans he's usually not far away (or knows about the plans) but he also is deeply concerned with being taken seriously as a Hunter and a professional.
For me X is probably my least developed set of headcanons, and I tend to follow deniisu's lead on some of it - especially with X as figure collector as a primary hobby after Command Mission. I also headcanon that X really would like to get out of being a field combatant and move toward reploid medicine, feeling like this would be a more peaceful way to live with his 'children' in such a way where he could impact their lives more positively than he currently is. However, the Federation refuses to allow him to transfer or change roles. He keeps trying to go through channels to make this happen, but is reluctant to outright quit the Hunters for a number of reasons, including not wanting to leave Zero and Axl behind, and out of a grim awareness of just what happens every time he DOES stop fighting.
I headcanon X as being an enormously effective medic though, and he uses this on the field as well when he needs to. I see him jumping at the chance to do rescue missions and humanitarian work - these excite him far more than 'go kill all the Mavericks' missions. And as the prototype reploid with infinite potential, I feel there are a number of unexplored angles of his character still to be investigated - lately I've been fascinated by the idea of his being able to 'facilitate the evolution of robots in the same manner as life' and have been looking into ideas of how Reploids might reproduce without human intervention or 'building more robots'.
Our lil' fandom is WAY behind Transformers on this front, as an aside.
I'm also incredibly fascinated by exploring the ramifications of a sensitive, emotional reploid like X gradually giving into a subtler form of PTSD and simply cutting off his emotions. This to me should have been one of the core arcs in the series, it's miserable that it wasn't, and the journey from X to "Copy X" is worth examining in greater detail.
I would also rec "Rusted Gears" by skycompass - her new fic that shows the Hunters from the POV of a newb - we share a lot of headcanons about how the Hunters work, and some of the institutional challenges that everyday Hunters would face will likely show up in there eventually. One to watch ;D
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branchandroot
headcanon ramblings :)
Date: 2015-07-27 03:29 am (UTC)Some things I definitely think happen though - especially during the times when cameras and crazy game producers are looking the other way, filtered through being a heavy Zero RPer:
Trio has a long-standing tradition of Movie Night. The preference is for 80's action movies and, of course, ANYTHING humans make involving robots. There are usually "drinking" games. Axl usually has to be gotten extra drunk/overcharged so he doesn't start screaming about the way humans are using the guns wrong, failing to count the ammo, and generally making impossible shots. (However, the movie nights were started by Axl and it's his movie collection that gets picked from.) Each month, a different Unit is responsible for hosting. Much boisterous making fun of the bad tech, technobabble and mocking of robot stereotypes happens. X gets twitchy when robots and humans fight each other in the movies. Takes place in the 0th Comm since the event keeps getting bigger and bigger as the months go on.
Zero's hobbies are deeply Japanese - he calligraphs, meditates, reads the Hagakure like it's the Bible, practices sword/kendo, practices tea ceremony, and also has a pet bonsai that he's magically managed to keep alive through several base changes and several major uprisings. That and an ancient scroll of calligraphy that was gifted to him are his most precious possessions. He cooks - but likes everything 900000 degrees hot because otherwise he can't taste it, and he also can't be left alone in a kitchen because he likes the way fire looks on a stove. He is an ideal BBQ chef because it combines burninating things and cooking meat, which is one of his favorite 'human' foods.
He has been having therapy for his PTSD, and switched therapists not too long ago when he started talking more openly about his relationship with X and Axl, and detected that this honesty was making his therapist squirm.
Axl is starting to get into figure collecting because of X, but left to his own devices collects old weapons, particularly vintage pistols and ammunition of various weird makes. Will rant for HOURS if you start him off by discussing gunblades. Collects an abandoned shell or cartridge from every battle he takes part in (and survives) and has it engraved with the date. He's got a small bucket full of these.
Axl blows off steam by making (and distributing) porn, movies, comic books, songs and bits of media. He collects old media ravenously. He kind of acts like the inhouse Hunter storage cloud for all things unofficial and Hunter related. He also tends to spy on people through tiny insect-sized cameras he plants all over his surroundings - but the reason he does this is because he needs to know everything going on around him at all times as part of his ongoing need to have security by getting advance warning of all things. He's an inveterate (but discreet!) gossip, and knows what's going on with almost everyone on base at all times, but is also friends with almost everyone he meets.
He is also politically conservative in a way that X and Zero aren't, which has led to some interesting yelling matches at times. And he's a limited savant when it comes to math - when it comes to the necessary math that allows him to make sniper shots and pull off complicated feats of ballistics, he has the best math subroutines of any Hunter. He is terrible at doing day to day math, but he can knock up shots and take out targets with terrifying accuracy from ridiculous distances without even thinking about it. Additionally, his skills as a mimic allow him to catch the subtlest changes of expression and mood by reading people's body languages and faces, which can all combine to make it feel like Axl can mindread and is impossible to keep a secret from. If there's shenanigans he's usually not far away (or knows about the plans) but he also is deeply concerned with being taken seriously as a Hunter and a professional.
For me X is probably my least developed set of headcanons, and I tend to follow deniisu's lead on some of it - especially with X as figure collector as a primary hobby after Command Mission. I also headcanon that X really would like to get out of being a field combatant and move toward reploid medicine, feeling like this would be a more peaceful way to live with his 'children' in such a way where he could impact their lives more positively than he currently is. However, the Federation refuses to allow him to transfer or change roles. He keeps trying to go through channels to make this happen, but is reluctant to outright quit the Hunters for a number of reasons, including not wanting to leave Zero and Axl behind, and out of a grim awareness of just what happens every time he DOES stop fighting.
I headcanon X as being an enormously effective medic though, and he uses this on the field as well when he needs to. I see him jumping at the chance to do rescue missions and humanitarian work - these excite him far more than 'go kill all the Mavericks' missions. And as the prototype reploid with infinite potential, I feel there are a number of unexplored angles of his character still to be investigated - lately I've been fascinated by the idea of his being able to 'facilitate the evolution of robots in the same manner as life' and have been looking into ideas of how Reploids might reproduce without human intervention or 'building more robots'.
Our lil' fandom is WAY behind Transformers on this front, as an aside.
I'm also incredibly fascinated by exploring the ramifications of a sensitive, emotional reploid like X gradually giving into a subtler form of PTSD and simply cutting off his emotions. This to me should have been one of the core arcs in the series, it's miserable that it wasn't, and the journey from X to "Copy X" is worth examining in greater detail.
I would also rec "Rusted Gears" by skycompass - her new fic that shows the Hunters from the POV of a newb - we share a lot of headcanons about how the Hunters work, and some of the institutional challenges that everyday Hunters would face will likely show up in there eventually. One to watch ;D