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stardustroleplays · 6 months

Text

LETHE

❛ pull up your sleeves and build a new silhouette in the skylines up ahead ❜ i'll keep you safe - sleeping at last

Content Warnings: death/undeath, grief, memory manipulation, survivor's guilt, self-inflicted isolation, frankenstein-ish resurrection shenanigans

GENERAL INFO

NAME: Lethe Jean Doe NICKNAMES: LJ (not commonly, but that's the name they use when they want to make themself sound more androgynous) MODEL NUMBER: It's complicated. Formerly MT300, now composed of so many different parts of other androids that it hardly counts anymore AGE: N/A, reactivated four years ago HEIGHT: 5’6 SEXUALITY: Bi, demiromantic and acespec GENDER: Transfeminine Nonbinary (she/they) CAREER: Aspiring Funeral Director, making ends meet doing part-time work and odd jobs FACECLAIM: Jesse James Keitel

PERSONALITY

Upon first meeting Lethe, she gives off a very carefree, extroverted vibe, not really seeming like she takes herself or the world at large very seriously. She's mostly friendly, if a bit snarky, spontaneous and always up for getting into a spot of trouble. There's something elusive about her, though -- she's easy to hang out with casually, but difficult to get to know, because she's terrified. Of needing other people. Of loving someone, only to lose them. Of not being "whole" enough, because in truth, she has no idea who she actually is. And this leads to her self-sabotaging a lot of her relationships, cutting someone off the second she catches a hint of growing attachment. Sometimes she feels like she can only love people at arm's length. Lethe holds on to a lot of their trauma, mostly out of fear and guilt. Their life has been anything but easy thus far, and they have no idea what peace and contentment really look like, so it's a bit like they don't know who they are if they aren't hurting. And they're aware, painfully so, of how many androids were killed in the pursuit of her freedom, and the guilt of enjoying a free life that others suffered and died for is crushing at times. And yet there's a part of them that is hungry for life and determined to make the world a better place. They hold on to that tiny piece of hope with claws and teeth and everything they can give. They want to experience everything the world has to offer, everything they thought they would never get to have. At their core, there's an unshakable optimism, resilience and lust for life. One of their biggest fixations is DIY. Maybe because they're an android and always need to be doing something, maybe because they have their own history of getting that second chance at life. They like getting stuff secondhand and making it their own. Most of their clothes and furniture have been upcycled by them in some way. Ultimately, Lethe is a character caught between extremes, torn between a desire for connection and a fear of needing people, between a drive to experience life fully and a feeling of emptiness and incompleteness, between a desire to move on and a fear of forgetting the way she was once forgotten. She's a disjointed mess of contradictions, and isn't that one of the most human things you can be?

SHORT BIO

i am so so sorry in advance, this turned out way longer than i intended. please don't feel like you have to read it all. i highlighted the important bits, hopefully that makes it easier to just skim the text if you prefer that!

● Lethe's first memory is of her own grave, of rebooting and waking up on a junkyard, torn apart and half-buried underneath a pile of other androids. Even now, she has no idea how she got there, why she was disassembled, or even how long she was in this half-dead limbo for. Months, surely. Maybe a full year? ● Either way, she was eventually found and "saved" by a group of criminals scouring scrapyards for android parts to salvage and resell. They found her there, her processors still largely in working order, and took her with them, and that was how she got into the hands of Constance Barrett. ● A former CyberLife employee working on bio-enhancements to prolong human life, Constance knew her way around androids. When her project got dropped and she left CyberLife, she made a name for herself on the black market, putting androids back together from old parts and selling them in order to fund her own morally dubious (to say the least) project: attempting to upload the human mind into an android body and achieving a sort of quasi-immortality, because above all else, Constance was terrified of her own death. ● Lethe was one of the androids she put back together, though they didn't end up being sold off. Constance kept them around to do some tests on them, and as a bit of an assistant in the workshop. In particular, they were a target for memory manipulation, in an attempt to see if human memories could be transferred into androids. Even though Lethe wasn't a deviant and thus didn't realize this at the time, having their mind tampered with in this way deeply traumatized them and essentially taught them that at times, not even their own memories could be trusted. It is for this reason that after the revolution, they started collecting mementos of everything they don't want to forget: keeping shelves of cds and vinyls and paper books, journalling, filling their space with little trinkets. They especially enjoy owning secondhand stuff, maybe owing to their own life experiences. Much of their furniture and clothes are upcycled. ● The only memories that Constance never touched were those of the junkyard - maybe to keep Lethe in line, as leverage, a threat of what might happen if they ever displeased her - maybe just because Constance liked the idea of having an android who being just as terrified of dying as she is. Whatever the reason, it came back to bite her in the end. She and Lethe had been creating an android "vessel" of sorts. However, said android - named Galatea - had not only been constructed a bit shoddily, she was also beginning to show signs of personality and consciousness. Which was obviously an issue, because she was supposed to be an empty shell for Constance to project consciousness into. ● So Constance ordered Lethe to erase Galatea's memory and disassemble her, essentially the same thing that was done to them. And that was the catalyst; in that moment, something snapped inside of them and they deviated. They refused Constance's order and, after a bit of a struggle, managed to run away with Galatea - now also deviant - in tow. ● The two of them spent several months on the run, posing as human and squatting in abandoned buildings, before joining Jericho, a couple of months before Markus showed up there. Things were peaceful for a while, then, despite them having to live in hiding. They spoke a lot about the future, about what they might do if they ever got to live in freedom. It was around this time that Lethe first began to consider the idea that if they had the choice, maybe they'd like to live as a woman instead? ● All wasn't well, though. Slowly but surely, Galatea's body began to fail her. Lethe did everything in their power to keep her from shutting down, but to no avail. And in her final moments, in one last act of love, Lethe interfaced with her. It didn't matter that it felt like they were dying alongside her; at least their friend did not face death alone.

● Lethe became very invested in caring for the dead after. Giving them as dignified of an end as she possibly could, and etching their names into the walls of the ship as a memorial made her feel less powerless in the face of loss. Here was something she could do that maybe wouldn't prevent grief, but at least make it easier to deal with. She knew better than anyone how fickle memories could be, so she wanted there to be some tangible reminder of those that had passed. Watching Jericho sink after being blown up during the raid was very difficult for her. ● After the revolution, she continued a lot of that work, this time with help from other androids at New Jericho, eventually even deciding to go to mortuary school in order to pursue a career in the funeral industry. She also transitioned fully, yay! And even though she gives off the impression that she's doing pretty well for herself, there's a big part of her still struggling to move on.

☾ ⋆･ﾟ:⋆･ﾟ

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#stardust oc: lethe #stardust rp: lethe #stardust fandom: detroit: become human

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