jueves jester

anatomy study that i (also) turned into jester

y'all I'm so sorry for going missing. who knew getting a degree required work and attention 😭

have this (old) quick ghostroach sketch (?)

Glad you're enjoying them! :)

We use "you" as a singular 'you', and "xou" to mean "'you', in a general sense".

Thank you for the ask! I had fun doing these. (Also I'm glad you're enjoying the fic! I am sitting in my authorial hobbit hole with a big smile on my face.)

Aventurine

Clarifications (yellow boxes):

I don't see as many bad Aventurine takes as I do for Ratio, but I do think his rough edges often get watered down in a way that either justifies or ignores his canonical flaws. So "they got done dirty by fans" and "wow! they are a horrible person" both get soft nods because I think his character deserves to be both sympathetic and kind of an ass sometimes. (The other issue I see is people acting like he's vulnerable and helpless, which is just. fundamentally not true? He's not as secure in himself as he pretends to be, but he is a ruthlessly competent strategist, and he knows how to read people and give them what they want to see. He's a member of the Ten Stonehearts for a reason.)

"If they were real I would be afraid of them" alright let me explain. The 2.1 story did a masterful job of humanizing Aventurine, but his first impressions in 2.0 were fine-tuned to be unnerving, and it was really effective for me as a player. For a while I couldn't articulate why it made me uncomfortable, but @starcurtain did a great analysis on female influence in Aventurine's life, which touched on how his early interactions with the Trailblazer are designed to be intimidating and off-putting in a way that channels the sort of masculine dominance Aventurine has historically experienced at the hands of other men. Suffice to say: if it served his plans for me to be afraid of him, he knows how to do it, and it would work.

Also I forgot to mark "why do they look like that" on the bingo but I do think Hoyo should have given him more melanin considering how deeply Romani-coded his culture is. Everything else about his design slaps though.

Ratio

Clarifications:

"Wasted potential" is subjective because I've loved every moment we've gotten of Ratio onscreen, but damn do I want the game to delve deeper into his backstory and his dynamics with other characters (I'm still sad that so far Aventurine is the only character that has a voice line about him).

"Deeper than they seem" and "not as deep as they seem" exist in a paradoxical state for me because I do think some folks stop at the surface reading of "arrogant asshole" when he's got way more going on in his character stories and his actions in canon... but I also think some people err on the side of taking him too seriously, in a way that likewise takes something away from his character. Like, this is the guy who plays chess with himself and trash-talks from both sides of the table like a goddamn cartoon character. He owns at least one rubber duck and takes a bath with it every day. He likes all of Aventurine's social media posts and replies "Heh." to anything he finds vaguely amusing. This is not a serious man.

"Why do they look like that" okay I need to clarify that this is not a criticism. I love Ratio's design. The neoclassical vibes are impeccable. But it's also extra in a way that I feel morally obligated to call out, considering how much he rags on Aventurine for dressing like a peacock. Sir, you walk around in robes and sandals with an alabaster bust on your head; you have no room to talk about subtle fashion choices.

Ruan Mei

Clarifications:

Ruan Mei gets both "they are so cool looking" and "why do they look like that" because I love the theory behind her design (the DNA elements, the embroidery and floral imagery, the qipao paired with the pearl necklace) but she also has the unfortunate distinction of being a female character in a Hoyoverse game, so the more unique details fall prey to the homogenizing force of the male gaze.

Another case of "they got done dirty by fans" and "wow! they are a terrible person" existing in tandem, but in Ruan Mei's case I think some people reduce her down to her worst qualities without acknowledging the more complex aspects of her character. Her unchecked pursuit of knowledge leads to her doing Objectively Bad Things, but I don't think it's a fair (or particularly interesting) reading to portray her as heartless.

I thought about marking "wasted potential" because imo 1.6 wasn't nearly enough to delve into Everything Going on with This Woman, but it seems like they're setting up something for a future patch, so I'm content to wait and see what the writers have planned. I'm really excited to find out what she's doing with those leviathan fossils and Tingyun's wrecked ship.

Thank you for the ask, friend! I was feeling chatty so I did both, lol.

Logicality (Logan/Patton)

vomit / don’t ship / ok / cute / adorable / sexy / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

Not my typical ship, but I love their character dynamic, so it really depends. It’s one of those ships that I don’t write myself, and don’t actively seek out, but there’s some good art/fics out there that I’ve enjoyed.

I think my favorite interpretation of their relationship is where they’re both emotional support pillars for each other: Logan helps keep Patton grounded through the more extreme highs and lows, and Patton helps Logan process and vocalise the feelings that he struggles to identify on his own.

+++++

Intrulogical (Logan/Remus)

vomit / don’t ship / ok / cute / adorable / sexy / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

Underexplored in canon (partly just because Remus is still a relatively new character), but one of my favorite ships all the same.

Logan has so much raw knowledge to fuel Remus’s unfiltered creativity, which in turn gives Logan the validation of someone who not only wants to listen to him, but actively builds on what he has to say. Remus, meanwhile, needs someone who can match him without flinching, and respond to his darker ideas without judgment.

Also if Intrulogical were a person (I know they’re already two parts of a person, but shh) they’d be somewhere in the metaphysical vicinity of Brian David Gilbert, because no one embodies “extremely neurotic and simultaneously extremely feral” like this man:

i know