#rm classic

[lightwily]

realisation

[lightwily]

NEVER KILL YOURSELF

[lightwily]

what gift would you like, my dearest friend?

[lightwily]

thanks to u, light and wily are my fav gays. someone send them to a couples marriage counseling or something

I'M GLAD I COULD MAKE YOU SEE THE LIGHT (haha). here's a silly for your trouble

marriage counselling would NOT fix them. largely because wily doesn't think he has issues keeping them at square 0 forever. but it would be Funny

also. tangential tangent:

I actually think about light's hands-off approach with wily's self improvement a lot. he seems to believe that reaching out over and over, that subtly exposing wily to the truth of their relationship (i.e. that light sees him as a dear friend [ahem] and equal) will simply. Fix whatever's troubling him. he places the responsibility of development squarely on wily's shoulders (good), but makes no real effort to understand him on a psychological/emotional level (bad). the closest he comes to doing so is in rm11, wherein he privately laments the impact his actions might've have had on wily's mental state/future behaviour, but, when confronting him, focuses on the possibility of rekindling their partnership instead.

when light says "we achieved this together" what he doesn't realise is that he's diminishing wily's personhood in a way. when light gives wily an opportunity to "join his side", he is, implicitly, apologising.

but he doesn't say sorry. he doesn't say that wily was right. this is perfectly normal, expected even, but important to me because imo wily only really registers this sort of thing when it's framed through the lens of explicit validation. if light can't bring himself to say it outright, wily is never going to listen. boulder meet hill.

[lightwily]

even in a wily redemption au, it's really hard for me to imagine lightwily actually. getting together, because while light does most of the """courting""" imo, it's so wrapped up in plausible deniability and cowardice that I wouldn't exactly fault wily for missing all the signs and speeding right past them towards "this guy thinks he's sooooo benevolent huh"

[lightwily]

I also have a second MUCH Weirder HC developed with a friend that Wily didnt mind being called a Monster because he didnt see himself as Human. One part of why he thought robots were Better Than People was that He Wanted To Be One. Something about how he only shows up in the X era when Zero is broken & when Zero shows He Does Not Care About This Shit he leaves to never to bother him again made us think that Wily is just... out there enjoying being a Reploid not being much of a problem.

this is the part where I gently put my hand on your shoulder and confess that I've been comparing wily to AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream for the past 3 months. that is to say you are definitely onto something when it comes to wily's resentment for humanity and preference for robots. I do think our reasoning differs though, and I don't quite agree with all of yours.

I am simultaneously the best and worst person to come to with this hc because while I agree with this to an extent (will elaborate in a second), I also categorically reject any and all assertions that wily and/or light are still alive in the x series. every time I'm faced with a theory/canon evidence that states Albert Wily The Person is still fucking shit up in the year of our lord 21XX I simply pretend to not see it (I might make a separate post elucidating Why I feel this way, but for now I'll just say that I think it's incredibly dumb, especially with how it's handled). feel free to have any opinion on this approach, I'm just petty.

anyways. now to actually reply to your ask:

I think wily has an extremely complicated relationship with humanity; it's only natural when, in his eyes, the entire bastion of them save for one have acted like he is worth nothing, no matter how much he asserts otherwise. I think he inarguably resents the vast majority of humans, and sees himself as better than them.

IN MY OPINION, this doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be a robot though. I also don't think he's okay with being called a monster because he views himself as inhuman; I think he's okay with the label because he knows that they're wrong and he's right. at that point, they can say the sky is green and he wouldn't bat an eye. it doesn't matter what people call him because he's going to prove them wrong.

Wily doesn't draw a line between humans and robots and place himself in the latter camp. he draws a line between himself, the superior intellect, and the rest of humanity. he doesn't believe himself to not be human; he believes himself to be a better human.

even in mega/gigamix, arguably his most misanthropic iteration, he's extremely dependent on human attention and validation; he needs to be praised, to be celebrated by human authority -- if he truly wanted to isolate himself from humanity completely, he wouldn't bother with keeping track of who they place on a pedestal.

a lot of wily's advocacy for robots, particularly in mega/gigamix, strikes me as disingenuous: not because I don't think he's capable of caring about these things, or that he doesn't, but because this advocacy is secondary to or in service of his own interests. the primary reason he even bothers with skull man at all is because he senses an opportunity to knock cossack down a peg. he's got a point, of course, and expresses genuine sympathy for skull man's suffering -- but he still prioritises human safety and interests (see: his hesitance when cossack tells skull man to shoot him) and seems completely unaffected by his passing (keyword: seems. it's possible wily could've visited his grave or something but. we don't see that so *shrugs*).

also, look at the way wily talks about robots in rm11:

he is simply not interested in human-robot companionship to the same extent that light is. he very concretely sees robots as tools. helpful, even sympathetic tools, but tools nonetheless. wily seems convinced that without taking advantage of robots' ability to surpass humanity, they will never be accepted by them. you could make the case that it's a projection of how he sees himself (useless unless he proves that he's great), but I wouldn't go as far as to say that he'd equate himself with robots or that he'd become a robot out of anything other than desperation.

... you know who Would want to become a robot though?

[lightwily]

I hope you dont mind but i have some HCs about Wily that i think are interesting & want to share. Idk why but Ive always read Wily as having grown up in a household where the parents would pit him & his siblings against eachother & would often belittle his academic achievements by unfavorablely comparing them to a siblings more "tangible" achievement. Something about how he treats his bots feels like he trying to be Better than his parents with them but doesn't really know How to? At least to me

AGREED 100% (at least on the upbringing front)

whilst I don't really have an opinion on the size of his family, I think Wily was 100% raised in the sort of environment that taught him to believe that no one would give two shits about him unless he was "the best". my personal hc is that he was severely neglected by overworked parents rather than being actively pitted against his siblings, but I can definitely see a mixture of both taking place. at the very least, I tend to lean towards the idea that his parents didn't really believe he'd amount to anything, which cemented a very strong sense of spite and competition in him at a very early age.

honestly I'm not sure what you mean by the second point? maybe I'm just reading things wrong, but -- presuming you're referring to mega/gigamix, since that's the iteration where the DWNs feel the most familial to me -- I didn't really get the impression that Wily was actively trying to parent his bots, if at all. he clearly tries harder to inspire a sense of loyalty in them than in other iterations, but I'm not sure if I would call that fatherly. not trying to disprove your point, I'd just like some elaboration on it. granted, it's entirely possible I'm misremembering/missed something.

I do think if he set out with intetions of capital p Parenting™ (with no ulterior motives) (if only), he'd probably try to do a better job than his parents (I can even see him "competing" with them mentally), that is -- of course -- if he thinks they did a bad job at all. unfortunately, Wily does strike me as the type of person to draw the wrong lessons from his childhood, even in hindsight, i.e. "my parents weren't perfect, but at least they taught me the value of independence/ambition/not to be a pussy" 😔

[lightwily]

ah, i see there is someone else out in this wild wild world who looked at Wily and Light and saw two ridiculous pinning old men

THEY'RE SO GAY IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY

every time I think I've seen everything I find some new tidbit or line of dialogue that makes me go insane

LIKE WHAT IS THIS. WHAT IS GOING ON

and that's not even mentioning the comics. the archie comic series took 5 years off my lifespan I think; whenever I thought I had seen the full extent of light's freakish attachment to Mr Worldwide Domination over here, he somehow got Worse. I even made a compilation to Cope:

overall, I think 90% of the conflict in this series could've been prevented if light just accepted that he can't fix wily and moved on with his life (I have more thoughts about his psychology and why he Doesn't do this but that's for a separate post)