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Name: Lee Door: Door Pass (Submissive) Canon: Bones and All (2022 movie) Canon Point: ~⅔ of the way through the movie, after Maren leaves Age: 21 Appearance: here History: Lee was born in a small town in Kentucky in the late 1960s. Mom was a teacher, dad worked in a factory, all in all, a pretty average American life. Until one day, when he was still in grade school, a switch was flicked and he ate his babysitter, and he realized the reason for his father’s long trips and regular mysterious absences, previously attributed to an alcohol problem that was obvious even at a young age, is that he’s a cannibal covering his tracks. His father taught him how to kill, so he could feed, because if they’re not proactive about it, eventually the hunger will overwhelm them until the choice is out of their hands. When Lee was 17, that’s exactly what happened. His dad, while drunk, lost control and took a bite out of him, and during the scuffle he got violent with his younger sister Kayla, who missed the Eater gene, as well. Realizing that his sister won’t be safe with either of them around, he convinces her to flee the scene and get the police, so that he can knock his father out, and eventually kill and eat him. Lee is arrested, but since they don’t find a body, nothing sticks. The small town chatter is mixed between thinking Lee killed him and that his father was a deadbeat drunk and just wandered off, but either way, for his sister’s safety, he drops out of school and skips down, drifting around, feeding and fleeing, with occasional visits back to prove that he’s still alive. Four years later, in 1988, Lee meets another Eater named Maren in a grocery store. After initial hesitancy to be around another Eater again, they start traveling together in search of Maren’s mom, and in the process, fall in love as young people who are outsiders to all but each other are destined to do. During their travels, Lee lures a man into a cornfield under the guise of a sexual encounter to kill him so that the two of them can feed. Afterwards, they decide to go to the home listed on his driver’s license to sleep, only to find that he has a wife and kids. Lee defends himself, saying that he didn’t know, but Maren is distraught with guilt, and they argue. They argue again after finding her mother and discovering that she has the same affliction as they do, and passed it down to her as Lee’s father did to him. Lee argues that it’s better that her mother abandoned her, because that means she couldn’t hurt her, and it becomes one fight too many over their approach to this life, and she leaves while he’s sleeping. Lee returns to his hometown in hope that she’ll come back to find him there, living in a tent by a lake for his family’s safety. Eventually, they reunite, and Lee tells Maren about the events with his father. With a new understanding, they hit the road again and settle down in Michigan, where they live a happy domestic life until Lee is killed fending off another Eater who’s become obsessed with Maren and breaks into their apartment to attack her. Together, they kill him, but Lee’s lung has been punctured. With that realization, he asks Maren to eat him, so that his last act can be to feed her instead of killing a man. Personality: Sentimental: For as much as Lee claims that he feels more comfortable being a loner, the moment he feels understood by someone for the first time, and sees himself reflected back in them, he falls in love with her quickly. He grew up too fast due to his condition, and relishes finally having the opportunity to act like a dumb kid, dancing and singing and looking silly to impress a cute girl, taking her to the carnival and embracing a sense of young adult normalcy for the first time. He’s revealed to be softer than his punk antics would have you believe, mourning the breakdown of the truck he kissed her in for the first time, driving all over the country to keep his promises to his sister, and settling happy into a nice life of domesticity “like people do.” Ultimately, he wants to feel loved and valued in a world where he’s a major aberration, so to be treated like he’s something good instead of an outsider pulls his defenses down immediately. Self-flagellating: Despite his condition being unearned and unasked for, Lee seeks out ways to punish himself for the harm he’s done. He chain smokes, initiates risky sexual encounters, and denies himself a meaningful relationship with the most important person in his life, his younger sister Kayla, out of guilt and fear that he might one day hurt her the same way their father hurt him. He confesses that at one point after killing his dad in self-defense he wanted to kill himself out of remorse, and only decided not to for the sake of his sister. When the attacker, Sully, is killed in Lee and Marren’s apartment at the end of the movie, he is revealed to be carrying Kayla’s hair, implying that he killed and ate her in his search for Lee and Maren. This, Lee blames himself for as well, even as he’s bleeding out, pleading with Maren to tell him whether he’s a bad person before he insists that she feed on his body so he can atone. Reckless: Lee tells Maren shortly after his introduction, “When you weigh 140 pounds wet, you gotta have a big attitude instead,” and he lives up to it. A lot of it is due to the impulsiveness necessary to survive with his condition, the necessity of the occasional murder means he has to strike when the iron is hot instead of sit around and think about it first. It also manifests in the way Lee communicates, getting into arguments with his sister about where he keeps running off to in order to keep his nature a secret from her, or with Maren about the different ways that they choose to handle it. He tries to be good to her, but his knee-jerk reaction is to be defensive even when he doesn’t need to be. Avoidant: After letting the guilt from killing his dad eat him up for so long, Lee made a bigger effort to compartmentalize the killings and not think about them after they’re done, and for the most part, he’s successful. It’s simply business, nasty and fucked up business, but still business. The way he sees it, he can kill himself, turn himself in at a mental hospital, or keep doing what he’s doing, which is hard enough, so he doesn’t need to make it harder by mourning his victims in a constant cycle of grief. When he kills the carnival working with a family, the sticking point in his fight with Maren is that he doesn’t feel enough remorse about it and doesn’t see the point in doing so, even after ruining multiple lives all in one go. He shirks responsibility out of self-preservation, and worse, feels judged for doing so. Powers and Abilities: Eater: Lee is an Eater, which is his canon’s term for cannibals. It’s treated sort of like vampirism, in that it is a biological need. The time he can go without varies from weeks to months, but the stronger the hunger gets, the harder it is to control himself, which could lead to lashing out and biting the nearest person if it’s not handled before then. Human flesh is a necessary supplement to his diet, but in between, he’s perfectly capable of eating normal food. Eaters are also able to smell each other, how strongly and at what distance depending on experience. The man who eventually attacks him and Maren claims to be able to smell them from a mile away, but Lee’s nose is not so well trained yet. Canon is vague on the details, but over time he’ll learn to smell the difference between cannibals and vampires, and people who have to do it because of conditions like his and those who have engaged in survival cannibalism or are just weird creeps. This will of course come with an opt-out post for people who would rather keep their characters’ business on the downlow. Inventory: an old pocket knife a cassette player with Guns N’ Roses' Appetite for Destruction inside. Samples: One + Two |