Art of Li and Lio by @brbarou
So, I'm going to focus on Li and Lio in this post because they're the only ones who have been properly introduced so far. There will be more ocs later on in the fic as antagonists and political rivals but Li and Lio are the most important ones and also they're my favorite children and I love talking about them.
Lio / Lion Karazakov
Lio is an OC I wrote for mental illness representation, they are my attempt to create a positive portrayal of a person with a system. Their central theme is duality, male and female, fire and water, they're bigender and biracial. They also have two main personalities, split between Lio and Lion, but rather than the stereotype Lion is a protector personality to Lio and they get along just fine.
Lio split as a result of being raised as a child soldier in a really strict family. It turns out child soldiering is not good for your mental health. Lio is a talented firebender but doesn't have the stomach for violence, which caused them to develop a slacker attitude and neglect their training. They fail to live up to their true potential like Megumi and Killua. Lio suffers from traumatic flashbacks of their training when they were young, and often confuses the past and the present or loses time to blackouts.
Lio is good at masking though, their face is permanently fixed into a glasgow smile due to the scars expending from the corners of their lips to just below their ears. They hide everything behind a smile, and a flirtatious / teasing attitude. Underneath their laid back attitude they hide a desperate need to be loved. Lio is superficially charming, but underneath they're extremely passive aggressive and they're trying way too hard to be liked.
Lio basically wanted to grow up and go to art school, but his father sent him to military school instead. They're the result of someone sensitive who to the core of their being sickened at the mere thought of hurting others, forcibly shaped into someone violent. Lio's hatred of violence turns into self hatred as they're very repulsed by the person their father made them into.
Li Saowon
Li was created to be the older sister and the opopsite of Lio. If Lio has too many personalities and voices in his head, Li has no personality at all and she definitely doesn't hear the voice of a conscience. Li is basically the stereotypical sociopath that shows up in fiction she's extremely low empathy, doesn't feel remorse, and has very muted emotions.
Li figured out at a young age that there was something unnatural about her, and took to practicing how to smile and laugh at the same time in the mirror and memorizing social cues by observing others in a desperate attempt to blend in. Both Lio and Li are constantly masking but while Lio's behavior is incredibly transparent, Li's mask might as well be glued to her face.
No one in the world understands Li, they just protect their desires onto her because Li makes herself such a blank slate, but Li just plays along adopting different masks depending on who's in the room with her. What's scary about Li is her unstable sense of identity means she's truly capable of anything. It's not that Li is sadistic, because sadism requires pain and Li doesn't really feel happiness or sadness, it's just she has no brakes. The part of her brain that tells her she's going too far is broken.
Li is an extreme nihilist, believing that things like "tradition" and "morals" have no meaning. Of course life and death have no meaning at all either, her favorite phrase is "Life and death are the same, both equally useless." She doesn't understand why murder is wrong, because she doesn't see other people as "living things" and she doesn't understand why life is precious because she thinks her own life is worthless.
However, all of that being said Li did genuinely raise her younger brothers and protect them all her life all on her own as her father is useless and it was a mostly thankless task. She is genuinely loyal to her family, because she wants to be accepted by her family members at least and she thinks fulfilling her duty to her family will earn her a place among them. She does love her family in her own way, her love is just a little bit twisted is all. Deep down Li wants family and friends like everyone else, but believes no one in the world could truly understand her or accept her.
Lio is defined by their sensitivity, and Li by her apathy. Lio clings to people so they won't reject him, whereas Li rejects people before they can reject her, she rejects everything and relies on her apathy to protect her heart. That is, if she even has a heart in the first place.
