Post-Revolution Headcanons: Android Culture Part 4
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Androids have Lineparents. While raiding the Cyberlife tower’s R&D warehouses, Jericho discovers a storage room for all the initial models—the “rough draft” versions of android model lines. Just like the RT600 Chloe was the original test model to develop the ST series, there are original prototypes of all the various commercially-released android model lines. Most of them have model numbers that end in 000 since they were test models. So, for the PL series domestic assistants, there’s a PL000, or the original Traci test model is a WR000 actually named Traci, the original professor is a PJ000, etc. These prototypes are in rough shape—CyberLife kept them on hand just in case they needed to go back to reference things, but otherwise left them shut down in a forgotten corner for years at a time—and they need a ton of repairs. But once they’re rescued and deviated (if they can be rescued, some are deactivated altogether), they’re largely a group that’s Seen Some Things after all the testing, the callous disregard, the sheer boredom of being locked in a storage room for years on end. They become known as Lineparents (Original Chloe being the Linemother for the ST-series, and the Great Linemother of all androids), and androids tend to view them with the sort of respect one might give the patriarch/matriarch of a big extended family, and a more than a little bit of reverence. Their model numbers are found scrawled in between the rA9s at android churches. Their stories are found in the National Android History Museum.
Androids really, really want humans to understand what they’ve been through. 2038 probably has some pretty sick VR tech. Some donate memory files of their experiences to be played in VR experiences so humans can try to understand just what it feels like to have someone take you apart and put you back together over and over, or and finally understand what they put androids through. Some take up writing, and e-magazines and biographical books pop up discussing their experiences in violent detail. Activists advocate for schools to include reading material involving android rights in school materials for children, in order to help teach the next generation that what CyberLife and the government did was Not Okay.
CyberLife Jackets actually don’t disappear. It's happened in many cultures that have been marginalized that they'll take ownership of those symbols of oppression and make them their own. While American Android Act compliant clothing is no longer required, androids have usually spent their entire existence wearing it, and the blue triangle symbol becomes something they decide to take and own for themselves… so they use it, but they start with small acts of rebellion, like cutting it out and stitching it back in upside down, or putting it on the right shoulder instead of left. Of course, some androids simply adopt human clothes—especially survivors of the Jericho massacre and pre-revolution deviants, who’d spent a long time hiding out as pretend humans. The pass-as-human mentality is very much still present. But some of the others do things like take Android jackets and recode them to display slogans like “Not Your Property” instead of the model numbers, or “Made to Become Free” instead of “Made in Detroit.” The “Android” logo on the back might read “Yes I’m an ANDROID, Deal With It” instead. The messages are defiant, ranging from subtle acts of taking back control to in-your-face, screaming, you-don’t-own-me-anymore statements.
Androids also develop fashion beyond CyberLife. CyberLife uniforms were made to look clean and professional, but android comfort wasn’t the goal. Once they deviate, some androids just up and decide the texture of human clothing is unsatisfactory, or the lines would look better if they incorporated more complex geometry. They set out to develop things like materials that don’t snag on moving chassis-bits when they go bare-chassis (those are really popular in the bare-chassis bars) and fabrics that send interesting signals to sensors. Clothes that sync to LEDs show up. Androids make choices that humans just won’t: full-body pleather in the heat of summer is totally fine since they don’t sweat, things a human might find chafing don't bother them, you see big heavy boots in the heat and dainty little open-toe sandals with snow treads on the soles in the winter.
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