My Motorcity Phase; an introduction and the Red!Mike saga

So in the summer of 2012, Motorcity premiered on Disney XD and in its wake created an explosion of inspiration for the 20-somethings of the internet. The show had it all; fun and diverse cast, anime-inspired action scenes, post-apocalyptic world-building, a villain played by Mark Hamill! To top it all off, the show was set in Detroit, MI, where I'd been going to college. Everything about it just made me happy and the community that celebrated it was chock full of creative people more than willing to take the show and run with it. People threw out ideas and collectively, the ideas grew and changed with every new voice that brought life to it.

And then Titmouse, the studio creating Motorcity, found out about us and started trolling us for kicks. Bless their evil little hearts.

So okay, in the show, the protagonist Mike Chilton (squeaky clean, peppy, over-positive boy scout that he is) has a self-proclaimed nemesis nicknamed Red. Red never actually gives Mike their name, never really explains their motivations past "you ruined my life", never ever removes the helmet. The fandom liked Red a lot and there was a lot of speculation over who Red was and why they were important to the plot.

And then Titmouse released this image; an older Mike Chilton with a goatee, long hair, wearing Red's outfit. Obviously someone was just fooling around, but when it got posted there was a caption tagged on that was like "Red's identity revealed???"

shown; my immediate reaction

So seriously no wonder that the fandom blew a gasket. There was maybe five minutes spent going "OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS" before we all collectively agreed it was just them trolling. Then we started asking each other questions; is this Mike from the future? How does this change his motivations as 'Red'? Is he a clone? How can we make this sUPER FUN CONCEPT work? 

The hype around Red!Mike calmed down pretty quickly, though, and in its wake was this sudden interest in the cast as adults. He may not look it, but Mike is only supposed to be 17. There was a definite implication that Red!Mike was older, and pretty soon we started discussing the Burners (Mike's friends) as adults in a future where things may have gone very, very wrong. 

First phase directly influenced by Red!Mike's design, what with the long hair and the gross beard and the grumpy disposition. The rest of the Burners stayed far more positive than their leader.

And then, if memory serves me, someone drew older!Mike with shorter, kinda Dreamworks!Moses looking hair and this was my response;

The long haired blond (bishi) is Mike's best friend, Chuck, a programer who's a bit on the panicky side. I dunno if you noticed but there's a bit of a pattern between the two of them; age them up and one gets longer hair and one gets shorter hair. I fancy myself pretty clever. Long-haired!Chuck became a whole other story in and of itself, and thus deserves its own post.