How about Lucy, for the character breakdown?
How I feel about this character
Absolutely under-utilized by the fandom, though I think that Lucy may have had a much more significant role in the older versions of the game where the rA9 religious subplot was much more prevalent. Like, I can totally understand wanting to cut rA9 out of your explorations within fandom because it's a dead-end plotline. But you've also got a healer hidden away on Jericho for all of your convenient post-mission patching-up scenes! So use her for that instead of designating someone else as Jericho's doctor! Seriously, bring Lucy into your Jericrew stories more often, guys.
All the people I ship romantically with this character
Lucy/North is definitely up there, and I'd probably give my left arm to witness a canon conversation between the pair of them. Lucy/Markus, Lucy/Josh, Lucy/Simon... Hell, just add Lucy into Polycho and you've got a winning combination in my books! Lucy/Chloe would also be incredible. And finally, Lucy/Tracy is my ultimate crack ship - because you can't prove to me that it didn't happen!
My non-romantic OTP for this character
I love writing scenes between Lucy and Simon in my fic, as I see Simon and Lucy as the only members left of a prior generation of deviants that inhabited the ship long before the rest of the Jericrew showed up. They're old enough to remember Jericho at its peak but also young enough to have survived through the rapid decline that occurred under Simon's isolationist rule, seeking solace in each other's presence because they're surrounded by all these younglings that don't know their people's history. They're both tired and worn down, but witnessing the changes made under Markus's tenure has sparked the memory of a Jericho they thought died with their friends - and that is why they fight so fiercely to maintain the dream they'd once thought was lost to time.
My unpopular opinion about this character
Lucy should have taken Simon's place as the Neutral/Failure Path representative. While Simon has the potential to be interesting if you stray away from the whole flower crown-wearing, cookie baking housewife interpretation that is Fandom!Simon, Lucy would have been a far more interesting person to slot into his role in the game. Not only do we actually know her backstory, but having her caution Markus to make the safety and wellbeing of their people his first priority would have worked perfectly with her role as Jericho's healer. As a doctor, Lucy would not want to cause hurt in any way, whether it's because you launched an attack on the police or stood your ground to allow your people to be martyred for the cause. Running away would be an understandable choice for her to make because she'd be the one dealing with the dead and dying in the aftermath of Freedom March, and making the choice to flee is the only option that allows you to leave the chapter without putting any of the characters that can die during the Police Block the March sequence at risk.
One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon
Do you mean, aside from giving her way more screentime than she got? Lucy's backstory and present-day character is in serious need of an update. Because this is the one that we got in-game:
Lucy is a KL900 model, specifically adapted for providing social care. She was designed to help broken families, victims of intense trauma or psychologically disturbed individuals.
After being violently assaulted by a psychotic patient, Lucy was left for 'dead.' Despite a severely damaged skull, she managed to come around and save herself when she remember an android who had told her about Jericho.
Whilst tending to Jericho's androids as best she can, she is gradually realizing that her psychological simulation model allows her to precompute upcoming events, offering her glimpses into the future...
First of all... Is David Cage legitimately incapable of creating a female character who hasn't experienced assault in one way or another? But also, creating a walking talking Black Priestess trope for a religious subplot that goes absolutely nowhere is just... not great. So let's give her some little alterations, why don't we?
First of all, Lucy shouldn't be some super-advanced future-seeing android with predictive technology. Lucy's going to be an ST300 model designed for office and desk work, similar to the various ST300s that we see in the game. That way, we are given multiple situations to run into androids that look like Lucy in the game and get an understanding of what her backstory is once we run into her, just like we can with North, Simon, Jerry, and Ralph. Next, Lucy's deviation doesn't occur under an assault but rather something a lot more 'mundane' as a way of showing that there are horrors to an android's enslavement that don't always have to be violent. In The Jigsaw Edit, I said that Lucy was confined to a chair for the first two years of her life, unable to move from her post behind a desk, and finally deviated because she decided to stand up.
Next, we need to talk about Lucy's actual design, because I absolutely love how otherworldly she looks but do not like the implications of how she ended up getting to that point. Therefore, instead of having her backstory include being assaulted by one of Cage's classic violent and unstable neurodivergent characters, let's just build off of the notion that Lucy has been living on Jericho as its healer for a long time and has seen it wither from a thriving metropolis of android culture into the dark and haunted tomb that it is upon Markus's arrival. As its healer, she sacrificed her own biocomponents to heal the sick and wounded, giving them parts of herself to keep them alive for a little longer.
And finally... let's just get rid of the whole 'Lucy can see the future' thing. Not only is it connected to the rA9 subplot that goes all of nowhere but it also places Markus's ascent to leadership in divine prophecy as opposed to earned merit. I think that this contributed to a lot of my initial gut reactions that I felt on my first playthrough about Markus almost being shoehorned into the position as opposed to him actually wanting to fill the role, as well as my later thoughts about how it's heavily implied that North and Connor's revolutions both fail because they weren't the #ChosenOne. If you get rid of Lucy's prophecy and the rA9 subplot, then Markus stops being 'the one we've been waiting for' while also setting up a narrative for any of the other alternative leaders that take over if he's dead/exiled to have a chance at victory - and that it's solely up to the player to meet the proper requirements to get them there as opposed to their failure being the result of destiny.
