#jacques headcanons

Some random thoughts and headcanons for Jacques because I enjoy bringing in inspiration from real life animals into his behaviors as well as certain things that actually will fit with him because of what he is.

First off, Jac likely has a more ‘snake like’ jaw structure when he is full on dragon form. Meaning that he can basically unhinge his jaw if he needs to and the like, granted it’s likely far more complicated than this in terms of how I vision it but that’s the basic idea for it. This also means that he likely does a lot of ‘big yawns’ while as a dragon to help reset his jaw back into place if he has to do that level of unhinging. I’ll be delving into more ideas for this though as I want to make it a bit more unique and tailored to what Jacques is and his dragon form in general which plays heavily off of Bahamut Zero’s/Bahamut Fury’s looks in the FF7 world.

The second thing is that whenever Jacques gets injuries, specifically to his scales or scaled areas, he will go through repeated sheds to heal these injuries. Jacques naturally sheds his scales in both his Au Ra and Dragon forms and he often times needs a lot of help due to certain areas of his scales having been damaged in the past (His back and sides specifically) and scales will get stuck and because of this they tightly form around new scales growing in and bite into his skin pretty nasty, so he generally has friends help peel off trouble scales and does very long soaks to ensure that stuck scales don’t happen often. However, if he takes some serious damage to a scaled area then his body will go into overdrive to heal those areas. Instead of shedding out say, once every few months he’s likely to shed out every few weeks depending on how severe the injury is. 

Jacques wants friends. He gave up long ago on the septics being his willing friends, because Marvin made sure they never trusted him. So, his goal is really just to take care of them and cater to their needs. He’ll provide Jackie food and video games, and Jackie of course is not stuck, he’d be allowed to go out and about, provided he returns to Jacques when he’s done.

Jacques isn’t a puppet master, he doesn’t have quite the charm needed for that. He just wants friends. And since Jackie is so readily willing to cater to Jacques’ control, Jacques sees an actual potential there. So of course he’s going to have a little bit of excitement, of course he’s going to be attached.

Thanks to @talechaser-ffxiv​ who sent me this so that I can share it here finally! Hope this helps with Jacques and once I get his backstory and history/what have you done so people have the general idea of where he has come from and what he has suffered through! Seriously this woman is too good for me I swear

1. Dragons have been shown to be able to change their shape, as well as their size (Midgardsormr).

2. Dragons have been shown to be able to fall in love with mortals under certain circumstances (Hraesvelgr).

3. It seems to be possible for Spoken races to turn into some form of dragonkin, though there mostly seems to be a prerequisite for them to have consumed the eyes of a dragon or be descendants of people who have (everyone in Ishgard).

4. Ishgardians who drink dragon blood do eventually change back into their normal form but develop an addiction to the dragon blood.

5. The Allagans are known to have been doing experiments in regards to cloning (Solus), creating life (Ixals), and dealing with Primals (Bahamut), as well as having had Tiamat restrained for a long fucking time, providing a sample of Dragon that is readily available for experimentation.

6. The Garleans have been shown to be replicating the experiments and technology of the Allagans.

7. There are Garleans out there who actually want to find a way to harness the Primals (Zenos), meaning that it’s quite possible for there to be others (likely bankrolled by Zenos himself, or others with the power to do so) interested in this technology

If a detailed history is needed to make this more lore-friendly: it’s quite possible that Jacques has someone in his bloodline from ages and ages and ages ago who had the ability to become a dragon, and possibly in said form ended up conceiving a child, making the dragon blood more potent in the bloodline.  This bloodline (if Ishgardian) then somehow ended up mixing with Xaela blood until the Elezen blood was minimal, leaving predominantly Au Ra features and a smattering of dragon blood.  The Garlean experiments likely made the dragon blood more potent.

This is something I sorely needed because I am always terrified of all the things involving Jacques’ past and his history. For the most part he was thirteen when his parents were killed in a Garlean invasion and then he found himself at the mercy of people in the labs where he suffered through a lot of experiments that were done to him for twenty years more or less canonly. 

I’m always scared to just... bring anything like this up in any form (Asks, RP, etc.) because I am scared people will well attack me (like people did from my past) because of it. It’s why much of Jacques’ information at times is kept private or is literally non-existant at the moment save for details scattered about through the blog itself (that I likely forgot about). I’ve slowly been getting better about sharing more and more about Jacques, but I continue to have this fear of what might happen or what could happen if people do not like it.

“Phobias...? You mean... things like fears right...? I... well...”

Jacques suffers from several phobias that all tie into each other overall and these phobias spring up from the events that happened during the Vault when Haurchefant dies his heroic death. He has certainly gotten better with his fears but every so often Jacques will fall back and regress in certain situations (Such as with some recent events) and that really fucks with him in the long run. His biggest fear would be his fear of failure and his fear of insanity. Both of which play on what happened when he couldn’t save Haurchefant and lost his mind where he blew up the back half of Foundation in his broken state due to having lost a true friend.

Jacques is terrified of failing people, he’s terrified of not being able to save or protect those that he loves or those that he has come to call friends. He’s terrified that he will slip up again, that he’ll not be there to take the blow for a companion and that they will die trying to save him. Deep down Jacques knows he is strong enough to take most attacks that could easily kill a normal person, he’s a powerful creature (even if he keeps that side of himself more or less hidden) and he’s gone toe to toe with many primals and has single handedly killed many of them (after all that’s what he was created for). So he’d rather be the one to take the attacks and dive in to protect his companions than let them do it for him. 

His fear of insanity simply comes from what he did to Foundation. Because he lost a friend he ended up losing his mind to blind anger and pain which meant that when he did transform (for the first time) even if he focused the blast towards the person who took Haurchefant out he still did DEVASTATING damage which resulted in innocents being injured and some being killed. And that terrifies him just as much as failing his companions. Going insane means that he could easily become the next Calamity, losing his mind means he could do SO much damage in so little time that no one will be able to recover from it. He could hurt innocents, he could kill so many people and that scares him. He’s already suffering from twisted mental images of Bahamut and Midgardsormr (And sometimes even Nidhogg as well) who constantly torment him and try to drive him to madness so... yeah the fear is very much valid.

The other one would be a fear of injections and well after going through twenty years of being an experiment for Aulus can you really blame him?

“My one wish...? To belong...”

Jacques is a creature who has endured so much throughout the course of his life. From a young age (when he was thirteen) he spent the better part of twenty years being an experiment for the Garlean Empire with Aulus mal Asina being the lead person to run the experiments. When he escaped, he was a completely feral and wild animal that was scared, alone and didn’t understand anything of the world he was in. Thankfully Jacques has met people who have helped him overcome his past but he still doesn’t understand things or how to be ‘normal’ as one might put it.

The ultimate wish that Jacques could ever want is to simply belong... he wants to feel like he belongs in this world and he wants to live a life where he isn’t afraid of what he is or what he could potentially do if he is pushed too far. To understand, to know himself and to just... be a part of things without fear. That’s all he could ever want or wish for. Jacques has gotten better obviously over the course of time that he’s been free, thanks to his companions (IE: @talechaser-ffxiv @theaetherhealerffxiv @jarethnunh @skyysinger and a little bit of @benes-diction) he’s gotten a grasp on how to live but he’s still got a long way to go.

Right so more musings for you lovely people! This time some anatomy for our friendly neighborhood dragon man! Jacques doesn’t really have one ‘set’ type of scale for him in either Dragon or Normal form. His body has them broken down in sections and the scales basically work with his anatomy.

This post is going to be fairly long with lots of pictures so I’ll keep it under a cut to avoid a HUGE wall of everything in your faces :3

“What’s my health like you ask? Well... this could get interesting. You might want to have a seat my friend.”

Despite everything that has happened to him when it comes down to it Jacques is an extremely healthy individual who is what one could say the ‘prime’ of his youth. With all of the experiments that were done on him, the augmentations, etc. he’s likely going to be living for a very long time (plus dragon). He’s not really missing any organs (there was little need to remove anything when he was being experimented on) and so he has basically everything still in one piece and intact, as for extra things... honestly I wouldn’t see him having anything extra as far as organs really go. So much of what I base Jac’s appearance on, his overall structure and anatomy is related to real world animals and specifically reptiles in question. I don’t think a lot of reptiles have any extra organs or anything truly out of the normal though, not that I can think of anyway. Jac gets a lot of his traits from things like Crocodilians, Lizards and Snakes (Scales and the like) and a lot of other animals as well (Purring like big cats, flight from things like HTTYD with Cloudjumper since he has 6 wings as a dragon, etc. etc.)

When it comes to strange features however... HO BOY does Jac have many but most of them are easily seen on the outside when he’s not completely covering himself up. Most people will easily be able to see that he has more draconic feet, but one thing they may not see is that he actually has toe pads and pads on the bottoms of his feet (HE HAS THE TOE BEANS FOR SQUISHING!) and then they might not ever see that his back is completely covered in scales (Since he generally keeps himself fairly clothed) and his Wyrm Eye which can easily be ignored, not noticed at all or seen as just an odd eye color. Overall, Jac’s got a lot of strange features that are not typical for most Xaela and he doesn’t really hide it much anymore. He looks drastically different in my art of him compared to what we have in game XD If I could mod... I would see about getting him to look more like I draw him >>

Because my brain never shuts off as I’m trying to sleep... it went into hardcore thoughts on the Phases for a Trial involving Jacques... (Especially after seeing @lockeff14 mentioning wanting to post about their OC as a FFXIV fight, I second @benes-diction DO IT! I WANNA SEE!) so... I wanted to write this down while it was still fresh on my mind. It doesn’t help that the Trial Text that I made for him is also fresh on my mind now as well >>

Phase 1 - Family Bonds

Jacques himself will take on a form that is similar to how we have seen Nael deus Darnus in the Bindind Coil. However, with him would be a ‘Shade’ of Bahamut, something akin to the Summoners own summoning of Bahamut. This add will not be targetable at all through this first phase of the fight and players would have to avoid various attacks from the Dragon while also focusing on getting Jacques down into the next phase of the encounter. This would be the generic, let’s learn the major mechanics that will be going on through this fight phase.

Phase 2 - The Return

Once Jacques is brought down 25% of his total HP he will ‘flee’ the Arena to gather energy. During this phase, players will be faced with a more powerful form of Bahamut, one that while it seems to look like the Elder Primal it’s not the same. Players will take note that this ‘Shade’ lacks the Allagan pieces that the Elder Primal had and it’s scales are of a vivid silver hue. While Jacques is channeling his energy he will occasionally launch attacks however the players main focus is burning down the Shade before Jacques reaches his full energy, if he reaches full energy the entire party will wipe. This phase is all about placement and avoiding the AOE’s that both the Shade and Jacques will be using.