[ the curse - full res view advised ]

design-wise, jian has a lot of elements at play. he's occupying the same sort of mostly-humanoid area as the disaster curses, but notably less human than even those four in appearance, more akin to an animal dressing up as a human. he's very tall and lanky, build more like an arboreal monkey than a man, with very long limbs and an even longer tail. subconsciously, the change in size/proportion and loss of an extra limb for balance is hard to adjust to - that's why he's an awkward fighter in a human body. his tendency to slouch is because he's often too big to stand upright in normally sized buildings! with the memory loss, he's having to readjust to a different body plan all over again.

[ the internal domain - full res advised ]

horizontal dotted lines indicate multi-generational gaps! colour-coding the body-hoppers was necessary to keep this thing even remotely legible.

VERY good question!!! diagram under the cut, but !!! jian's scars align to extremely traumatic or distressing injuries, and are very easy to feel - the one on his belly is all the more apparent because his fur is much thinner on his lower stomach. he has another around his throat that not even naoya has noticed because he doesn't like that area being touched much and he's much fluffier there. his outfits vary a lot but he's always got both covered.

naoya doesn't have the throat scar yet, because he doesn't really have the traumatic impression of that injury, but the stronger connection with the c-section scar means he ended up with an impression of it Very early on. it's just a flat marking, though, like his 'eyeliner', not actual scar tissue.

they aren't REALLY his kids, but here's a quick jian-POV on his not-children

as for pregnancy jokes - jian is most likely to do this big solemn sigh and go 'ah, if only i were so blessed by the gods' or something self-depreciating and no one really knows how to parse that but he seems REALLY bummed about it. more like in a very resigned sort of sad. he sometimes unprompted cries over the idea. it is not a joke that would land.

nope! jian isn't ever truly separate from his host until they die - the physical form he conjures is more akin to a shikigami! he's got a lot in common with rika, in that sense, and being summoned tangibly outside of his host body is a constant energy drain on them both. there's no offsetting that, even with freeze frame active.

he does! sort of. it's a much more gradual change - like wearing jewelry that stains your skin over the course of several months. parts of him just sort of slowly seep into a vessel the longer he's in control.

hypothetical jian-possessed yuji, for example, since we're so familiar with his design - even right off the bat, the red glint to the eyes and the permanently scruffy appearance is pretty apparent, but over time his markings and expressions kind of become etched into the body :

(though some of it is also how jian likes to style himself and dress.)