(intended references here to budget bigshot, factory settings au, and that one common? headcanon to where the blue addison is haunted by the garbage noise phone call. also the orange addison is there)
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okay so it turns out there were at least 6 addisons, not 8. but i still like there being two pairs of each color because there's ample wiggle room for headcanons in that direction, rather than just the 4. that said idk how much i'll do with my own hc designs here but it was a fun design exercise nonetheless
the older/senior addisons are NOT named after their colors, i wrote those down before i colored them in so i wouldn't lose track
are these guys family members? a company? friends? lovers? enemies? some kind of flock? the answer is, they're addisons! all they do is advertise!
...but yeah these 8 are some ambiguous collective at the very least, and familiar with one another. the junior addisons are very much adults here, it's just that the senior addisons are older + have seniority. they're their industry mentors and generally try to look after and over them, but have been mostly letting them fly free.
the senior addisons are far more established. comfortable i think is the best word to describe them: their advertising style is calmer, more elegant, and they don't feel as though they always need bright colors to make a statement. (they've also naturally lightened up with age--not that being lighter is specifically a trait associated with aging. coughs at you-know-who.) junior addisons are very comparable to how you see the in-game addisons behave lol
i don't have... too many ideas on individual facts on all of these guys.
i don't have gender/pronoun headcanons on these guys in general, EXCEPT that junior pink addison uses he/him.
if anything the senior addisons didn't/don't have much of a concept of gender outside of the newfangled "targeted ads" trend, senior pink is kinda masc and senior orange is kinda fem but even then they're all gender neutral tbh
though they weren't the closest, i'd like to think junior pink & spamton were like brothers. all the junior addisons miss spamton a lot but they are not going to talk about that
i'm torn on where i want spamton to stand here; i like the idea of him being the "oldest" junior addison, or the "youngest" senior addison. either way he's older than the juniors but younger than the seniors
senior pink is the best magician. senior orange is the best socializer. (and probably loves drinks/is kind of an alcoholic...) senior yellow probably focuses on apps and that's why s!yellow wasn't around much c2. senior blue was visually inspired off of sans so make of that what you will
the color pairs look similar because of the same reason gems of the same species in steven universe look the same. they're just formed with similar templates. all that said i love the idea of s!pink and j!yellow being definitively related
s!pink went out there as the sole seller in weird route on purpose i think. do not ask what the reasons were,
okay so here's the Senior Addison headcanons! i have spent way longer on this than i meant to. they are living rent-free in my head now.
way more things of note under the cut:
oldest to youngest: Pink Sr > Blue Sr > Orange Sr > Yellow Sr; then Spamton > Pink Jr > Yellow Jr > Blue Jr > Orange Jr
the 8 (once 9) of them are a collective, but aren't in a formal company or business together. the seniors are all independent, and the juniors figured that they needed to do the same (though they've all done their fair share of working with each other/under the seniors)
they're... ambiguously but not quite a family. Pink Sr is seen as the collective's patriarch/matriarch--having raised basically all of them but Blue Sr in various ways and lengths of time--but even then relationships on a definitional front are vague and messy. It doesn't help that the seniors don't bother defining them, aside from Yellow Sr self-declaring as the big sister of the collective.
Through adoption or through shared code--it's uncertain--Pink Sr and Spamton considered each other father and son. (Pink Jr was jealous of that relationship, despite being very close to the both of them.)
i like to imagine pink sr & blue sr started out in paper ads (outside of Cyber World) as junior addisons, then later got digitized/naturalized in Cyber World. they were also around before tenna popped up so they're oooold farts. they look as "young" as they do because "advertising doesn't age" or something.
a junior addison can become a senior addison after time, experience, and """other factors""". i imagine them being similar in nature/relationship as upgraded enemies, i.e. hathys & head hathys, werewires & werewerewires, so on. maybe it's pokemon evolution or something?
(yellow sr used to try and cheer spamton up about his size, as yellow sr used to be around his height before becoming a senior.)
you'll notice i refrained from giving any of the senior addisons pronouns (or even names). i have a dumb hc where none of the seniors started out with a grasp on being "personalized" outside of their jobs. pink sr in particular is the most old-fashioned, thus doesn't use a name or pronouns even now. the others think it's fun, though, and picked up on it from the juniors. (blue was the first to do it after the juniors.)
feel free to use whatever pronouns you have in mind for the other seniors, i sure as hell don't know what to refer to them with
even just one of the senior addisons lingering around tends to make the junior addisons behave more--they don't want to come off as unprofessional around their mentors/superiors. however the senior addisons take advantage of their kissing up to just play around with them. (the seniors are successful enough to not feel the need to tear each other apart: that, and ever since spamton disappeared, it really put things in perspective...)
in C4 they're trying to help raise the juniors' spirits during the internet outage by moonlighting their stand. however they also set up the ralsei rancher for fun and profit because they thought it'd be funny
while the seniors have their own complicated web of histories, arguments, and biases... they're all very close and loyal friends now at this point. pink & blue in particular. they worry that their juniors won't be able to pull through, but aren't entirely sure how to talk to them about it. no one junior addison is incredibly close to another one, especially after spamton left.
didn't have names for the junior addisons, in part because i really like the headcanoned names other people gave their own addisons haha. because of @manofthepipis's fanfic ouvre the blue addison will always be named Survey to me (sorry for the tag it's the most convenient way to link to you). [Color] Jr/Sr is not any of their names!!!
i'm incredibly entertained by the popular headcanon that the yellow addison is chronically unemployed or in-between jobs so i'm employing that here. he wants to evoke yellow sr's whole deal but he is, um, doing his best.
pink jr has a severe case of chronic tryhard syndrome , and it is terminal
orange jr is a bit of a shrinking violet, but is trying to keep up with everyone else. i like people headcanoning the orange addison as being a seamstress of some kind so that ties in here; but this addison isn't confident enough yet to model their own fits. a bit of a copycat
blue jr has been more morose since everything with spamton happened. i don't have too much to say on blue jr yet unfortunately, but i imagine they try to make excuses constantly in order to stick around other addisons/not be alone. if something were to happen to you, wouldn't you want someone else to see it?
i love own-flavored tea, it's such a cute way to reflect on character relationships in-game. i would like to take this opportunity to be annoying about it.
Not a good artist but drew a black baby Addisons for you :)
no way. this baby is socute.
the quality of your art doesn't matter so long as you enjoyed yourself, or are proud of your creation. it brightened my day to see this; thank you for drawing it for me. that was very kind of you to do.
edit: i could have sworn i saw the arms when you first sent this, but due to the low brightness of my screen i tricked myself into thinking the addison only had wings. i am so sorry for misrepresenting your baby
realized this was sitting in my drafts and i nearly forgot about it. and having it sit there is gnawing at me so you get these now. some updated spritework and brief senior addison info under the cut
maybe i should sprite the rest of them. or find a way to sprite the senior pink addison shorter because wow do i prefer the junior version
i have named all of the senior addisons. aside from the pink senior addison, who has chosen to not go by a name.
Blue Senior: "Sev-5", short for Munsell 7.5B 8/6. look up the munsell color system it's interesting (they/them, no pronouns, any pronouns)
Orange Senior: Valencia (xe/xyr, he/him)
Yellow Senior: "Plic" or "Cate", short for A Plicate Addison. (she/her)
i also finally figured out how a (junior) addison becomes a senior... i'm not sure how to explain the long of it, so i'm making it a plot point in the orange addison's muse AU to tackle the nuances of it.
the short of it, however, is that an addison has to "capture the heart of a lightner" several times. establish a connection and all that jazz... darkners are affected and molded by the dreams, play, and projected personification that lightners have with them. issue is, people have feelings towards ads in general but not as often towards a specific ad... and not usually positive feelings, either.
not that an addison needs to capture all positive feelings from a lightner in order to become a senior, but they need have a profound and lasting impact. very rarely, an addison can become a senior through one lightner alone, but typically they'll need multiple. (no definite number.)
often, an addison (regardless of junior or senior status) will be strongly influenced by the first (or one of the first) lightner(s) they connect with first. their personalities and priorities can change ever so slightly to drastically--for better or for worse. usually for the better...
(my headcanon within this headcanon here is that spamton was never able to connect with any one lightner until noelle. whether or not he was affected by this... well, he had more important things to worry about with regard to personality changes)
sev-5 stayed relatively the same during their transition into seniority, though whenever they were directly connected with a lightner they tended to get more neurotic. this was because typically the lightner projecting onto sev-5 was a college student and we know how teenagers/college students are.
valencia was a lot more serious and focused, but one day a young toriel got fixated on one of valencia's posters (a flyer advertising a party--either a college party or just a general young fun party) and saw it as her ticket to breaking out of her shell. toriel ended up meeting some very close friends at that party and kept the poster as a keepsake: the love and hope toriel imbued valencia with was his first connection with a lightner, and those feelings inspired valencia to change. toriel was also a big reason why valencia ended up becoming a senior addison.
plic hit the ground running when it came to lightner interactions, so she's a rare instance of an addison who was (personality/motivation-wise) unchanged from her evolution into a senior from the get-go. she got a lot of lightner connections by virtue of advertising apps, but she does hold a few lightners close to her chest. asriel, for instance, she adores because he really fixated on a notes management app in high school while preparing to go to college--and he was her biggest defender/proponent. he made her feel really important lol
pink senior started out as a war ad so i uh
fun relationship things
so the collective's seniors worked together to mentor the juniors, but often the seniors would choose a specific one to take under their own wing. so that looked like:
pink senior: valencia, spamton, ceres
sev-5: a plicate, cliq
valencia: capri
a plicate: orange
spamton didn't want to live with his parent, so he ended up rooming with plic until she very quickly became a senior herself. part of it was that he wanted to live off his own successes and felt a bit suffocated by plic's own overwhelming success. the other part of it was that plic and spamton were no longer the same size and plic needed to move into an apartment that accommodated her better. (she offered to let spamton keep the apartment/move in with her but that was rejected.)
i imagine when cliq first joined the collective, he moved in with sev-5 and also felt so damn weird about it. i am sure spamton and cliq bonded over this and nothing strange or petty happened at all
plic was the last to become a senior and no one else has become a senior since her (back in the early 2000s). to be fair, becoming a senior is rare and not expected, especially in the current day. folks really thought that spamton would be next, but...
