#andromeda lan

So her names Andromeda Lan, she goes by just Lan on a last-name basis. But, through red vs blue nicknaming logic, she gets called ‘asthenia’ sometimes (by the reds and blues) and hatessss it

Think, the vibe of Carolina, without as much of Carolina’s emotional toughness, and then issues like Caboose. She’s not social, she doesn’t really like new people, but she’s a bright person to others than Carolina is, and she really does latch on to the few people she comes to trust (like Dr. Grey)

She grew up neurologically impaired, like no one believed she could talk for a long time, no one thought she would walk when she was first born. I like to think this effects everything she does, no matter how much work she puts into battle skills, she’ll never be as capable as she wants to be, and she’ll never get out what she’s putting in.

This is the future, and there’s experimental treatments for her. It’s electro therapy, part of the treatment is targeting specific muscles and nerves on her body, the other half is targeting so specific areas of her brain that deal with motor skill and balance. As you can imagine it’s a very uncomfortable process.

So, very quickly, she’s more capable than she used to be. And people treat her differently because of this. And she’s just left thinking, why, why would they never have talked to me before? And she really really wants to push herself, even if she does push herself too hard.

Lan has relatively mild cerebral palsy, caused by birth complications, the treatment is basically just highly-effective and precise motor cortex stimulation, which very immediately improves her balance and motor skills. She requires only a few sessions for the effects to completely last a year, before there’s a steady decline to her brain’s original state over 1-2 years. Each session does improve her health even after the effects wear off, because she’s able to be very active over those years,, but factors like stress hits her hard, and causes her brain to more rapidly back-track to her default

The treatment had its own range of negative effects, poor memory, random pains, nerve issues, increased hypersensitivity. It has to be redone every few years in order to remain effective. But, she joins the military, she felt weak all her life, so she decides to do the most difficult jobs she can think of. She hides her medical history in order to enlist, and tries to pretend her health doesn’t matter anymore

She’s does well, she’s on good jobs, she’s trying to do the right thing. Then she picks up a distress call, and ends up stuck on chorus, a few months before the reds and blues.

She’s skilled enough, she pushed through what she can, but Chorus does not have the treatment she needs, and she feels herself regress day by day.

So chorus isn’t great for her— and Dr. Grey clocks it instantly. even though she hates the feeling of being accommodated for, she’s grateful when Dr. Grey hooks her up with some hidden mobility aids in her armor.

Kinda unprofessional to bang your doctor but Dr. Grey is everyone’s doctor anyways, so Lan gets some of that 💛

She keeps to herself mostly, It takes a long time for her to meet Caboose or the rest of the cast. Her and Caboose, Caboose likes her well enough, honestly she doesn’t really interact with the reds and blues often, but there is a ton of internal conflict in her after her few meetings with Caboose— internalized ableism and all that.

I also have this idea that, I kinda stole from my Kai and Grif fanfiction, where she joined the military in order to chase after a family member that went missing (Loco!! her brother is Loco, he’s just been off-grid). Her family drama goes hard, she does not trust one guy, none of em

Her main goals are to fight for Chorus, find her brother, and get back on her treatment. She can’t do all of these at once, and has to focus on the Chorus issue first, which becomes increasingly difficult as the treatment stops helping her, and her mind-body connection steadily decreases.