š„ I would like to submit Jae for the questionnaire, please? š„ŗ
Sure thing!
1. off the top of your head: notes for characterization? what are the most essential traits of this character to you (personality traits, important connections/dynamics, voice)?
Jae is self-made in a way that very few regular people in the Imperium get to be, and her persona should feel artificial to reflect that. If you walked around Port Wander and asked the inhabitants there to describe what they think a person from the Koronus Expanse is like, or even more specifically, ask them to describe a Rogue Trader, you'd get answers that sound like Jae: boldly opportunistic, personable, clever, just as likely to make a deal with the vile xenos as she is to shoot them, and always spinning a thousand stories that can't be more than 60% true. That's the kind of person most people expect to encounter, and that's the kind of person Jae has made herself into since joining the Kasballica. Being around her should kinda feel like encountering a pulp hero in the flesh. You're aware that the persona can't be fully authentic, but she's not lying about her accomplishments, so don't ruin the fun by asking too many pressing questions. Okay, shereen?
Jae's theatricality is both part of the persona and a defense mechanism. Anyone who knows what to look for can clock where parts of her noble backstory don't add up, and she knows that. But, playing a Characterā¢ the way she does also helps keep some emotional distance between herself and all the fancy people she's suddenly coworkers with on this ship. It's really a coin flip on whether other people find this compelling or a red flag, so making herself entertaining to the former, yet hard to specifically pin down for the latter, keeps her in good graces and lets her bounce if things go south without too many pesky feelings getting in the way. It's also not something she can't easily drop on a whim, so closeness with Jae is more about reassuring her that she doesn't need to keep that wall up to maintain the Rogue Trader's approval.
Jas is an Iconoclast in the sense that her experiences have made her both very sympathetic to The Little Guys of Imperial Society and critical of the hypocrisy of its institutions. She generally approves of people desiring to better themselves, but isn't naive about the dangers of Chaos. She approves of technology as useful tools, and hates the regressive knowledge-hoarding practiced by the Mechanicus accordingly. She's wary of xenos, but doesn't have too much of a problem working with them when they're useful.
She's religious! Jae is the character for me that best represents the ways belief in the Imperial Creed (the Emperor is Divine and watches over Humanity, etc) ā Dogmatic (belief in the rightness of the Imperium's Institutions). Jae is a heretic by the standards of the latter, not the former, and is keenly aware of that divide in a way that heavily shapes how her iconoclasm manifests. Her beliefs in the Emperor are generally more humanistic than heresy-focused, since the Imperium itself does enough undue repression as it is. She's also not afraid to call out the Dogmatic companions (Argenta...) when they use their faith to justify their harmful decision making.
2. adjacentlyādo you think fandom does the above traits justice? why or why not?
To me, Jae's mischaracterization by the fandom is felt less in what she's included in and more in what she's excluded from. Jae gets recognized for being the witty, flirtatious, swashbuckling companion as her persona encourages, but deeper conversations about her Iconoclasm and faith in the Creed don't get talked about as much. I would say (neutrally) it's part of the fact that so much of the fandom is taken up by Iconoclast!RT/Mercy Path!Heinrix shipping as the nucleus around which the Fanon revolves, thus where Jae's deeper traits overlap, they either get absorbed or ignored.
3. throw this character at any other character of your choice to bounce off each other as outsider pov to each otherā regardless of timeline or logistics (crossovers allowed if you're interesting about it). why this combination? what insights would they have on each other?
It has been so long since I've seriously thought about Dragon Age, but Jae and Isabela. They have a lot of similarities in being the self-made hedonistic bisexual crime lady with a heart of gold, a grim past, and troubles over cargo. They're both besties with their respective party's Universally Bullied Mage, and they both have romantic arcs revolving around the MC getting them to be less skittish about love, even though literally everyone in the party but their mage!bestie is booing them and throwing tomatoes over it.
In the latter aspect, to take a little more meta lens, I think putting the two together is good for examining how much of a difference the writing of their sexualities is. Neither are perfect, but Jae is a much improved version of what Isabela could've been with kinder handling that didn't treat her sex life as a joke at her expense. Even when it comes to the aforementioned tomato-throwing from the other party members, with Isabela it reads like the banters were written with her-as-party-harlot as the starting point (the Anders one about her STI). Whereas, with Jae, the times it comes up either say things about the other companions, (Cassia being sheltered) and has other contributing factors beyond "icky slut bad" (Abelard and Vladaym believing she's conning the Rogue Trader for status and rivalry reasons respectively, Heinrix reminding her the Rogue Trader is right there, etc) none of which are written to make Jae seem abnormal.
That aside, I think Jae and Isabela could either get along really well or have a crime rivalry for the ages, it really depends on the circumstance they meet in.
4. how do you think you would react to this character in real life and vice versa? would you prefer be a million miles out of range, be amicable classmates, or fall desperately in love? (bonus: arrange a hypothetical date between yourself and this character. getting silly with it is encouraged (fakedate them! escape a dinner date through a bathroom window!))
I am a miserable square in real life, so while I do and would think Jae is really cool, if we're going to be honest here she would not even notice I exist.
5. ideal flavor of rotating for this character? crack them open and dissect themā do you want them tormented, pining, or being loved + comforted? do you have any specific scenarios you like to think about?
I do understand and respect what Jae's endings do and mean thematically for what Owlcat is saying about the Imperium. However, I do not care, and any and all rumors about Independence!Jae's downfall in the face of a cruel and uncaring Imperium are greatly exaggerated. I don't even know how the Imperium got past the NOMOS wall to arrest her. Any future Jae has in Cas' canon is one where she can do what she wants with all the authority of the Warrant without the actual document itself. In post-game canon, Jae is as close to a work-wife as a Rogue Trader can possibly have, and she occasionally steps in as Cas' regent and/or sanctioned representative when the need arises, since their decision making is usually as one anyways.
6. weave a web of dynamics through the cast for this character: which dynamics are you most interested in? both canonically and through extrapolation/speculationā which dynamics are the richest to you, and why?
The Rogue Trader- I love the mirroring Jae can offer in exploring identity and social mobility in the Imperium. Like, the Rogue Trader is someone who grew up in one role, only to be yanked into one of the highest strata in the Imperium by virtue of a sudden Warrant inheritance and suddenly is given the freedom and duty to do whatever they want in the Emperor's name. Meanwhile, Jae is someone who didn't have nearly that luck, abandoned the life the Imperium wanted for her in order to find her fortune doing many of the same things a Rogue Trader is supposed to do, but her lack of Warrant makes her a heretic and so she can find herself executed at a moment's notice if someone with more institutional power than desires it to be so. And the both of them have so much room to play around with self-concept and how to integrate one's past self with the role you inhabit now. Fun shit.
Idira- Jae and Idira have the best friendship in the game. Jae is one of the few who can regularly interpret the Whispers, and is realistic about Idira's powers without reducing who she is as a person down to her identity as a psyker. The two obviously bond over their mutual enjoyment of the privileges and luxuries being a retinue member can offer, while still not letting their status go entirely to their heads. Their regular card games take place in the mid-decks, not the Officer's Lounge, for example, and they're still very vocal about criticizing Imperial Dogma where it applies. They're also storytellers, Idira with her whispers and her recollections of Theodora, and Jae with her exploits as a Cold Trader, so they'd probably have a lot of long nights just going back and forth swapping tales. On a deeper level, I think their understanding of each other also comes from the fact they've both been dragged up from the social gutter to join the retinue, and both are fully aware of the fact that their usefulness is the only thing keeping them alive, much less employed. And so I love that (at least in my epilogue) both of them find success and fulfillment, respectively, with Idira's last stretch of life just being her and Jae exploring the Expanse together. I wanna believe they saw the space whales playing.
Vladaym Tocara- Outside the fact they don't like each other, we don't get a lot about his and Jae's relationship. There's still good stuff to work with though. They're both upwardly mobile from opposite directions, Vladaym having come up from the chaotic under-deck gangs of Footfall to become its Liege and Kasballica head in part due to being immensely controlling, where Jae came up as a miner-turned-Imperial Guardsman and abandoned that regimented life for one of chance and self-determination as a Kasballica agent. Conflict with Vladaym is also the first tipping point to Jae's character arc, ending either in her operating out in the open the way she's been agitating to do (and getting merked), or realizing the need for discretion and ending up as a more successful version of Vladaym. Either way, she's going to end up in a place where they'll probably be in contact again without the Rogue Trader's mediation, so how would that growth change how they see each other?
7. do you have particular niche takes on this character? defend those takes. (openly controversial takes are permitted, but also: hyper-specific headcanons which you believe in and no one else has considered enough to disagree with yet. pick a hill to die on.)
Related to the idea that Jae is a functionally a Rogue Trader without authorization, and credit to @lordcaptains my discussion buddy here but if we take Heinrix's description of his Baroness as truth, he and an alternative version of Jae with a Warrant to wipe away the Class Baggageā¢ would be just as potentially compatible as regular Iconoclast!RT and Mercy!Heinrix, romantically (platonically too). Granted and although, as much as RT!Jae might be Heinrix's type, I personally do not believe he would be hers. If I had to pick from the other romanceable crew, I think Solomorne and a RT!Jae could work....to a point.
In futures where Jae has any kind of open political power, she would do great as one of those Salon ladies. In the French "intellectual hostess" meaning, not the hairdresser one. She's not scared of poor people being educated, has a lot of progressive ideas that feel new to the Nobles (more than one husband!), has/had access to a ton of xenos knowledge and tech from her adventures, and already knows how to keep up an entertaining-yet-enigmatic persona. Alls to say, Jae could throw parties that would launch the next few decades of someone's career.
