#cyfaux

Faux has undiagnosed schizophrenia, but I'll be talking about his anxiety as a result of the psychosis he experiences, specifically.

Despite how suspicious others seem to be of him, I personally can't see him always being as cruel as we see him at the end of the game. He definitely knows how to sweet talk people and get them to trust him, but he never had any grand plans to kill all writers. At worst, he felt no remorse in letting other writers pay for his crimes. His charisma played a part in convincing his father to keep his record clean, but he gradually grew to regret and detest this. Faux was always aware of how others would treat him if they knew his father was a cop. Too aware, in fact. It weighed him down and pulled at him and caused him to see many of his relationships as strained for the fact that he couldn't let anyone know of his background.

Regardless if he was doing it to himself or not, Faux was haunted by thoughts of his peers discovering his roots. Of the community he thrived in plotting to overthrow and abandon him, and he tormented himself by not reaching out to his two closest friends: DJ Cyber and Felix.

Felix, of course, discovered Faux’s roots anyway. He did not tell Faux about this.

He still saw the Big 3 as comforting, though. Cyber and Felix were, naturally, the furthest you can be from the police, so it gave him a rare peace of mind whenever they were together.

It didn't last forever. The day Felix announced that he would be going solo for All City was the day that Faux broke. All of his fears, to him, were true. Felix abandoned them. He abandoned him. Surely, it was all because of what Faux had done, and he would go on to plot the end of Faux’s career as a writer. To Faux, that was surely what it meant.

Perhaps Faux was in love with Felix. Perhaps, he was in love with both of them. Whatever it was, it only made Felix’s choice hurt more, and Faux’s mental state worse.

Faux’s downward spiral was kept entirely to himself. He practically disappeared off the face of the earth once Felix went solo for All City. That was until Felix finally got into contact with him again and asked Faux to help him throw up some graffiti one night, assuming that it would be casual and low stress for both of them.

I still don't believe that Felix’s death was plotted intricately beforehand. The combination of Solace being present, everyone's opinion on Faux, and how him and Felix were so close to the building Cyber and Prince were located– all of this just leads me to believe that the murder was an impulsive decision, spawned through everything that had been on Faux’s mind. A psychotic episode. He just couldn't take it anymore, and reacted in the worst possible way he could have because he simply didn't know what else to do. And he had to live with that. Or, at least until Cyber presumably killed him that night at the police station.

But Faux did not die. He was captured, and made to be the test subject against his will for the unseeable future. Time scraped by him while he was hooked up to Algo– painful and unrelenting, where he could do nothing but sit as a pathetic human head and think about everything that had led him to his situation. Whatever shreds he had left of a coherent mental state soon rotted away as he began to lose his mind.

His operation to kill all writers was also not planned. Initially, at least. Throughout the first half of Red’s journey, Faux merely provided misinformation in order to get more writers arrested and injured. He was also, at the time, still trying to retrieve his body. Reports of a “stolen body” began circulating because he really did want his full self back.

By the time the BRC challenges DOT EXE in Millennium Mall, Faux is set on killing any writers who get in his way, and he establishes control over the police force using the same technology that they had used to flay his mind for information. Faux is, to his credit, dastardly cunning when he wants to be, but it just so turned out that this time it was to every writer’s detriment. Through this control, he could call in as many officers and mecha as he pleased, and it even extended to him being able to contact Devil Theory for a deal, in which he would unceremoniously double-cross them once he got what he wanted.

Faux has Berlage killed and begins modifying himself, finally making his escape from the bureau’s basement inside the mecha tank we see him piloting after Futurism is defeated. In Mataan, he's determined to kill all writers, regardless if they've crossed him or not.

About Rietveld; I initially gave Faux the benefit of the doubt that he spared her, but given how far gone he is at that point it's more fair to say that Rietveld is just incredibly skilled at self defence and managed to escape him alive.

Despite all of his plotting and bloodlust, when confronting the writers in Mataan, a single thread of composure holds Faux back. That is until he attempts to kill Felix and gets sprayed in the face with paint. It's no holds barred at that point. Faux is both out of his mind and intoxicated with spray paint fumes, and it leads him to scrap whatever humanity he had left– transforming into a horrifying beast of metal and wires. He becomes the monster that he thought everyone saw him as.

It's clear that he still intended to return to a human form after wiping out all writers, though, because he kept Solace alive.

Faux fights and screams until his final moments and spends his last line still trying to communicate how he feels.