SkunkyArt | QueenFighterfly — Moon Rising: Yun Li

Full Name: Yun Li

SERIAL Designation: Model 3 Prism AiDroid #54618

Nothing I say here will make any degree of sense until I get this out of the way: Li is what I can only describe as a bio-tech android, a mysterious, fantastical blend of man and machine. He's more of a cyborg, really, but you'll hear him often being referred to as an android. The reasons are very depressing.

My guy doesn't know what his actual birthday is. As far as he knows, he was activated and brought online sometime in December or January? He doesn't fully remember, he dumped that info into a folder labeled 'irrelevant' a long time ago. If he's asked, he'll make it easy and just say December 3rd.

He physically and mentally appears to be around 24-26.

He's 6'4.

He's Chinese-American, though it's possible he may have some other ethnic lineage. What it is is unknown, though.

Li is Cisgender Male, uses He/Him pronouns, and his sexuality is a complete mystery atm. He does find women attractive, but admitting that scares him, so he'll just say he's aroace to shut down the conversation.

He'll tell you that he has no grand past or history. As far as he's aware, he sincerely doesn't have one. As far as he knows, he was just brought into existence at a production facility, and shortly after passing all of his diagnostics, was then passed around different owners of varying levels of kindness and cruelty, until he ended up under the control and ownership of Regina LeBlanc and Edmund Pembroke (primary antagonists in Moon Rising.) Service to others is the only thing he's ever known... supposedly.

If asked, he'll tell you that he was orphaned in infancy, grew up in and aged out of foster care, found a talent for hospitality and service, went to school for it, and just ended up finding his niche.

The unfortunate reality is that he used to live a normal life with a loving family. They were never particularly rich, pretty middle class, but he had two loving parents, an older brother and a younger sister. He was expected to have a very bright future, until he was his older brother were both abducted by an illegal, underground research and development team experimenting on human and animal cloning and augmentation; they were openly researching service androids for the disabled, elderly, chronically ill and veterans, but this was a front for their extremely unethical experiments. Although both brothers were mutilated and tortured during the augmentation process, Li's older brother escaped with some scarring, augmentation and faint memories of the event.

Li, however, underwent the complete procedure and had his entire identity and any memories or evidence of his past life either erased or suppressed; it's also possible that trauma repression blocked off a significant amount of his memory also. The team faked his death shortly after his brother escaped, so as far as the world knows, the person Li was is dead, and no one is looking for him. (...or at least, only one person is.)

He's worked for the Briarwood Estate just east of Chicago for the last five years. Officially, he's the Head Butler of the estate, holding a significant level of authority over the rest of the staff that works there. This is in name only, though, as he's completely bound to the whims and wishes of Regina, the estate manager. He's been forced to effectively become her lapdog; he tries to be reasonable and amicable, but he's designed never to disobey his owner's orders.

It's hard to tell where his AI programming ends and his human personality truly begins. Honestly, even he doesn't know, and to be frank, he's stopped caring. He's lived in service of others for so long, he has no clear concept of his own sense of self-identity, and caring about any of his preferences (for good or for ill) has only served to his detriment. He won't dare let himself express himself, lest any show of emotion be used against him somehow. Talk about having the worst case of identity crisis ever.

He's not a very expressive person most of the time. He's trained to adopt a neutral, professional and proper stance and tone in everything he does, which leaves little room for anger, fear, joy, sadness or annoyance. He actually prefers to manually shut these things off most of the time, as feeling emotions or encountering any sensation of his former humanity terrifies him. He also just finds that it makes people easier to deal with, and his first instinct has become the path of least resistance. He'll just... be whatever someone else tells him to be.

Of course, that doesn't mean he's completely devoid of emotion. Try as he might to suppress it, it's only worked so far when the people around him are cruel to him, ignore him, or cower away from him. He's never really been around normal-ass people up until now, and dealing with an extremely unpredictable autistic adult and her two equally unpredictable small children leads to increased difficulty in suppressing his personality and his emotions.

...Which normally amounts to the absolute deepest forms of baffled, confused, or exasperated.

Because of how his brain represses emotions and the way Venusian telepathy works, Kris, her kids and her family often finds themselves unable to read Li's mind due to a mental and technological block. The only times they can read his mind are the occasions where he allows himself to turn his emotions back on. Depending on who's side your on, this can be an asset or a disadvantage.

He does have traces of his own personality that seep through the suppressive programming every once and a while, though. Even when emotions are illegal, his right brain is usually staging a quiet revolution.

He tends to be bluntly honest, direct and to the point; never outright cruel, but never caring to mince words or spare others' feelings unless he deems it counterproductive. The way he communicates often leaves little room for misunderstandings or miscommunication, he says what he means and means what he says, which are oddly appreciated with Kris and her kids.

He would never call it a hobby, passion or even something he enjoys, but there are some chores around the estate he doesn't hate as much as others. He enjoys tasks others would consider tedious or mundane, like washing dishes. He also finds a strange level of peace in cooking, cleaning, and taken over for their elderly gardener; usually because these are very quiet tasks where no one is bothering him about something or telling him what to do. He also tries to find time to read when he can; usually poetry, non-fiction, classics or mystery thrillers.

His creative skills may be lacking under most circumstances, but he's bizarrely pretty good with children. It's hard to say where this comes from, whether it's pure instinct, experience with the staff's children, or just something he downloaded off the internet in preparation for handling Kris' kids, but either way, kids generally enjoy being around him for... some reason. Even he's not sure why.

When Kris prods him enough, and he feels safe enough, he does have a slightly dry, blunt sense of humor. He's rarely crass and almost never curses, so his sense of humor is most often expressed through wordplay or his delivery. He's found he can say even the most mundane thing in a slightly humorous tone and it'll make Kris or the kids laugh; tone hits them more than what's actually being said, which makes entertaining them even easier for him. He refuses to admit that seeing someone laughing with him instead of at him gives him this sense of pride and satisfaction; he's just doing his job, after all.

One would argue being a gentleman is just in his job description, but that's not something he's ever had to be forced to do (...more or less). He's very polite and a gentleman by nature; even if it weren't his job, he would likely be holding the door open for women, offering his seat to the elderly, or pulling out a lady's seat for her anyway.

He also tends to be pretty picky about the foods he eats. Does he need to eat? Does he get hungry? Unclear. Either way, he does eat on occasion and he's incredibly picky about it. He hates fake or processed foods, and tends to avoid anything too greasy or slimy.

When forced to dress casually or outside of his uniform for some reason, unless someone else picks what he's wearing for him, he tends to prefer clean cut, conservative and comfortable clothing that looks and feels nice.

He secretly has a huge affinity for games of chance, card games and gambling. He has the processing power to give himself the best odds possible, so it's usually not a challenge for him, he's just here for the fun of the game and the aesthetic.

Being an android/cyborg/whatever he is does come with its advantages and special powers he ordinarily wouldn't have, and this is one of the few areas where we can actually have fun and not be depressed and angsty.