This piece is inspired by something I learned in astrophysics recently: Stars that burn up all the fuel in their core "dies", they shed their outer layer which turns into Planetary Nebulae, and turns into hot and tiny White Dwarf stars✨ a process that reminds me a lot of the doctor
a treacherous tale of obnoxious amounts of doppelbanging, 1manband naming conventions, and why i can't have nice things
So, 1manband is 2 very important things
1manband is deeply infatuated with himself, and this is not an exaggeration but a description that defines and is the entire point of his character. He's an arvent autosexual and would love dating his own clone, but the only thing he'd love more than dating 1 clone is 1 clones, only thing better than 2 is 3 - he literally can't get enough of himself
the Music Man portion of 1manband is less a robot, but more like a synthetic slimeperson - if given enough mass he could mitose, shapeshift, and if there was someone else like him, they could fuse.
And this has all been stewing in my brain since I ever made him and the thought of him ever meeting his clones eventually became "what if sansiverse's sans x sans shipping was like an integral and canonized part of the entire concept, though I don't even wanna say this is a worldbuild because the entire lynchpin of it (1manband getting clones) isn't explained, elaborated on, or even possible in-universe.
This part isn't even remotely important, but i like talking about it. you can skip to [/\/\/\/\/\] if pointless rambling on name conventions isn't something you wanna read
The original pun with 1manband is obviously "one man band" because bands, with how much coordination and instrumentation usually requires multiple people but there's only one person doing it, and 1manband is made up of two people who are trying to be one person who is a very Musical Man. 1manband isn't even his name in-universe, it's a meta description of when Nullguy and Music Man have become one person. But when I kept making 1manband AUs and kept thinking of hypotheticals of multiple 1manbands getting together i decided to break down the name as descriptors of aus, relationships and components?
When describing things in general, 1manband's name is composed of xyz, x being self-percieved quantity, y being species and z being their directive. THOUGH. Despite X and Z being SELF-percieved quantity and directive, I often say "#manband" when just referring to quantity or fusion size - "1manband" could technically refer to a fusion of 8294 1manbands and still be named 1manband in meta because they see themself as a singular musical dude, even if they're not even fused. That obviously leaves out a lot. bonus stupid: send me asks with this format and i tell you what 1manband that makes
So, backtracking to the original 2 concepts, with the fact that 1manband will always love more of himself than less of himself, I got kind of ridiculous with the idea. There's 1manmoon or (4×10^20)manband, who is so many 1manbands they form a celestial body and much of their technology and ecosystem are either 1manbands shapeshifted to be technology or genetically identical, nonsapient homonculi. Their directive is being a functional celestial body and they see themselves as 1 person, a hivemind the size of the moon. [/\/\/\/\/\] That one has a really cool opportunity to do some development but it's kind of on an overwhelming scale - The one that was significantly less daunting that I obviously ended up focusing on the most on was 1manvillage, who is a hivemind isolated from the rest of the current cyberpunk dystopia that is the rest of civilization. Where they reside, the environment is hostile, infertile, with extreme climates and frequent issues of pollution, not to mention they keep on getting in-universe pinkertons called on them in the attempt to reintegrate them into society or prosecute them for being weird communal hippies. That and doing weird cult hivemind shit.
1manvillage isn't a giant fusion of a village's worth of people... most of the time. They're mostly individuals and smaller fusions, though despite wearing the same "music man" as canon 1manband, any two individuals can look incredibly different.
1manband is only a slimeperson on the low-key because there isn't enough of him to go around - at his size, shapeshifting is too dangerous to do without severely hurting himself, there isn't enough buffer for him to rearrange all of his tissues like that. Bigger fusions (10manbands or bigger) with enough excess everything can very slowly shapeshift on their own but otherwise, specific 1manbands in 1manvillage get their looks from the Everyman.
The Everyman is a consistent inconsistent entity, it refers to the largest fusion at any time no matter the components, because they always end up as Everyman. 1manvillage hosts a wide variety of people with incredibly diverse personalities and views but they are a hivemind, due to their Music Man components being mitosed from Everyman. When a fusion reaches a threshold of being a 50manband or more, they stop being their own fusion and adopt Everyman's personality and mind. Everyman is usually around 5% of the village most of the time, though the percentage goes up every night, as many 1manvillage residents sleep as Everyman, and the percentage reaches its peak at winter when 1manvillage goes into hibernation as Everyman, with Everyman comprising over 90% of 1manvillage, the only ones unfused being a winter crew making sure that things will be functional in the spring.
The Everyman has the full power of any of 1manband's abilities, being able to shapeshift drastically on their own, shapeshift the appearances of their components when they unfuse, being able to reorganize their internals and being able to detox, grow organs or donate some parts of themself, being able to mitose and create a Music Man, and being able to drive people insane.
On the latter two: 1manband could technically mitose another Music Man, a 1:1 replica of himself with his memories included if he had the mass and energy. But he would never do that because that means... now there's a guy he doesn't know what to do with, that's also without a human component to be heavily codependent with. Music Man can shapeshift and reorganize himself and do whatever with himself, but he can't really do any of that with Nullguy. The base unit for an individual in 1manvillage is a suit-wearer duo, a Music Man and human component, and having a Music Man without a human component would be incredibly unethical in their eyes.
BUT a second issue still is that it can't just be any human they can pair up with. 1manband is particularly gatekeepy about his existance and relationship because being 1 person is a a choice that could've absolutely RUINED both Nullguy and Music Man mentally - Both parties have to give up their autonomy, their personhood and identity, to be 1manband is giving up your original self to be Music Man and in Music Man's case, giving yourself up to be controlled by someone else Kris deltarune style for most of your life, both have to tolerate and be incredibly non-judgemental of both parties involved because you also read eachother's thoughts 24/7, and that requires a LOT of determination and an insane amount of WANTING that the average person does not have. The only reason why 1manband works is because Music Man is willing to give up autonomy if it means loving himself in the end and because Nullguy is fucking crazy. Music Man is Nullguy's entire reason and drive for existence, Nullguy is a downright stalkerishly creepy level of obsessed with Music Man. The fucker kisses the ground he walks on and breathing in his air is a blessing. You can't just find this anywhere.
So you make it!
Despite everything above, existing as 1manband feels amazing. Nullguy loves Music Man and vice versa, so when you put that into one person it's bound to be good, and everytime either party thinks deeply about the fact they're 1manband, it creates a feedback loop that literally turns their minds into mush because of how ecstatic they are about the entire ordeal. The already incredibly strong effect grows and becomes more easy to access with fusion size - Everyman barely does anything in their free time other than squirming around thinking about themself and everytime they're not doing that, they have to do actively mentally push themselves to focus on doing anything productive. This ecstatic effect, due to their massive size, can be concentrated into beaming Nullguy's level of "music man crazy" into someone, which is how 1manvillage expands - Outsiders who pose a threat to 1manvillage are often involuntarily integrated into 1manvillage.
Extra stuff:
Hellpig is a 5manband who functions as 1manvillage's security and brings in the most outsiders for integration. He was gifted extra mass and metal to be armored and way larger than he would be for a 5manband. He works all seasons, though in winter he has a massive reduction in size (though he remains a 5manband).
1manvillage has technology, though they are a little behind due to the lack of an economy or imports, but sometimes people want to be the technology. There's knucklewalking Music Buses and cargo trucks that look like this, and 3manbands who function as supercomputers.
Casual and typical hexapodally-friendly 1manvillage clothing vs fusion-friendly 1manvillage clothing.
Both have giant sleeves to accomodate more or less than 4 arms, but the left sticks closer to the body as to not get in the way of knucklewalking while remaining incredibly simple to produce. The shoes are thumbed and the symbol on the left's shirt is actually a very basic guideline of DJMM's face.
The right's is open, the "bigness" and the adjustably tight kilt allows it to be worn even if the wearer experiences a change in size, i.e fusion. That and the openness allows some fusion to occur while wearing it. Though, nudity is less of a taboo, 1manband can willingly be ken-dolled and if not, everyone finds eachother hot, so it's not like that's really discouraged
