#jokerman

The Jokerman Font needs a kiss! 💋

5 — How did you choose their name and why? Was it simply based on vibes or is there any specific meaning behind the name? Are the reasons behind their name different in and out of universe?

YES omg thank you for this question, it's my favorite piece of trivia when it comes to Jacquemort. the name Jacquemort is relatively known in french literature as it is the name of the main character of the novel Heartsnatcher by Boris Vian, a book that i absolutely hated reading back then and that i still heavily dislike now (it creeps me out. otherwise i suppose it's probably very good but it's NOT for me lol). in Heartsnatcher, Jacquemort is a psychoanalyst without past who thinks he needs to psychoanalyse other people's lives and desires to absorb them into himself instead. for this Jacquemort, the idea of desir, of want, is not a desir in itself as it is only an obligation, aka the reason for which he was created (a mindset that is ultimately denied by the novel). the only thing that ties Jacquemort to a hypothetical past is the shame he feels for his father and his relationship to religion but because of a Freudian repression, he isn't able to talk about it—something that should indicate a trauma, according to my own interpretation of Freud and Heartsnatcher, but it's not really talked about in the novel itself.

for all that's worth i don't like Heartsnatcher and, although i can recognise how good his work can be, i don't like Vian's writing style in general. but god the name Jacquemort is so fucking cool and in the end i really wanted to like this character. so i stole the name and the idea of a possible trauma, as well as the idea of time as a distorted space that creates surrealist situations (Heartsnatcher is a surrealist novel that takes place in a locus in which time doesn't make any sense to the characters). so in my novel Jokerman, the trauma is the cause of the distorted time that makes it possible for my Jacquemort to come back after he dies. Unlike the one in Heartsnatcher, my Jacquemort is trapped in an ironic circle -> he always comes back but he can't talk about it + time makes sense for everyone else except him and, unlike Vian's character, my Jacquemort's role in the novel is intimately tied to a past that he remembers vividly but cannot make sense of/cannot let go.

and of course, the name Jacquemort has mort in it which means dead. so you'd think that Jacquemort is doomed from the get-go? nuh uh. because the dead bit is at the end of his name. it's a suffix -> it doesn't define him; it was added. besides, a name is initially something that is given you by someone else—here, the patriarchal nuclear family—which means that it defines you before you're even born thus it doesn't define you at all. Jacquemort might think that he's doomed from the start, that there's something inherently wrong with him, except it's only culture that makes him think that, and it's always possible to escape norms and create something better for yourself :D

anyways Jokerman is NOT a rewrite of Heartsnatcher, i don't pretend to it and i wouldn't even want to do that even if i could. but i was frustrated with the novel and i wanted to take inspiration from it and write something with my own ideas and themes. so here's Jacquemort's conception!!!

17 — Are there any motifs or symbols associated with the character? How are they represented, in their design, personality or in some other way?

visually, the idea was that Jacquemort would be associated with a dead moth or butterfly (a RGU reference! from what i personally understood of Utena, the butterfly motif is used to indicate when a child was abused) but i don't know if i made that obvious enough in my novel... there's also the dead animals and the dead plants that appear in the hospital where Andreas stays when Jacquemort is around. i remember one scene i wrote where the sun suddenly hides behind the clouds once Jacquemort enters Andreas's hospital room during a visit from Auguste and Walter, something that puts Walter on edge since he's already wary of Jacquemort. of course it's not meant to be taken literally in that case, because it's supposed to represent how the other characters perceive Jacquemort and not how he's seen by the narrative itself (at least that's what i was aiming for a few years ago LMAO). otherwise, i didn't put much thought into Jacquemort charadesign because i didn't think it was necessary and also it's not my strongest suit zjsjzzj. he's a normal looking dude, with an emaciated and angular face and greying hair. he doesn't look especially scary of soft either way. i think