#threadbare tag

so I should preface this with the fact that I didn't work out Petrei's design in advance. I definitely had an image of him in my head, but the panels in Threadbare are the first times I drew him. so the biggest reason he looks like that is because it's what I could draw quickly and shittily.

second biggest reason is uhhhhhhh

The Archive is an offshoot of the Endlings which are an offshoot of me wanting to make some WH40k Mechanicus-type guys that I could play dolls with. they're kind of walking backwards into this, the Archive being visually closer to the source material, but deviating more than the Endlings from being machine animists, what with their disdain for the secutors they rely on.

With the Imperial Archive, I think it's important for them to take themselves very seriously but look goofy while doing it. I struggle to find a good balance between making them feel goofy, but not too endearing; brutal and inhumane, but not too competent. it should be easy to make fun of them, but it should also feel a little dangerous, because they are fragile people with big egos and bigger guns. probably that's why I keep taping knives to every available limb. I'm taking another page out of warhammer's book. it's an inherently goofy setting, and the more bad actors try to co-opt it into being "cool", the more goofy it becomes. tape a knife to a gun. tape a knife to his legs! and he has bonesaws for wings because fuck you i guess

Designing around this tension between goofy and banally cruel is difficult sometimes, because there are a lot of ways we can unconsciously punch down when we design villains... making them "ugly," old, gender-nonconforming, giving them disfigurements, equating extensive robotics and prosthetics with inhumanness, etc. In retrospect, Petrei sorta resembles this statement and is a weird primer for what an Archivist looks like. I think of the archetypal Archivist as a conventionally beautiful person who is just, like, vacuously brittle and empty inside. but Petrei isn't in the business of worrying about his appearance. He has other insecurities to deal with. He's also head of the Archive's bioengineering division, and I felt like it would be a missed opportunity for him not to be a giant mechanical weevil man.

(Aside: The Doctor studied under Petrei before working with Markus, so that's another source of design symmetry. I thought it would be fun that they resemble each other.)

Anyway, I found myself thinking a lot about about body image, disability, and transhumanism with Petrei, because of the aforementioned considerations, and also because this has emerged as a running theme with Chief + the R.A. and Threadbare and I'm stumbling to keep up. I think the Archive rides the fringes of what is socially acceptable / desirable among the imperial elite. but they also are maybe the most sensitive to others' perceptions of them because they're in the business of manipulating hearts and minds. so, the mundane self-image problems that everyone has get magnified to the extreme in them. they're too mired in the loneliness and misery of cruelty to be able to see themselves clearly... not to say they are unhappy people necessarily. probably they are doing the same mental gymnastics that we do just to get by, and it has become too normal to be anything but background noise in their lives of comfort. but they are certainly yoked to maintaining power/control/security and I think they are forever missing something because of that.

Perhaps Petrei feels insecure about his dainty frame or his masculinity, and feels the need to appear bigger than he actually is. maybe he doesn't want to be perceived as, ahem, "flamboyant" like certain other Archivists. Being the Archive's head bioengineer also means he's very Visibly a guy who is artificially extending his lifespan like a living mummy. He interacts more intimately with death than the other Archivists, and maybe his own mortality hangs over him because of that. I mean, all Archivists tend to be obsessed with their own mortality, because they had to kill to get into office, but perhaps Petrei is insulated from that, because he hoards knowledge on his trade and creates secutors, something every Archivist needs. this leaves him time to self-experiment and guard himself against the more inevitable specter of age hanging over him. does he hide behind layers and layers of robes and wires and biomechanical augments because he feels fragile? maybe it's fitting that his proximity to death makes him a little "weirder," less brittle, and more vulnerable/accessible than other Archivists. maybe his self-image could benefit from the fact that there are people who will see being a 15 foot tall centipede weevil man as a feature and not a bug (hah) but I don't think his ego needs inflating. he chose lobotomizing people over love, and he gets to deal with that.

Speaking of weevils, we'll get his personal monologue for modeling himself after them later. mine is that I think they're cute (goofy) and it's easier for me to design machines after insects than anything else because I'm better with creatures than I am machines. The centipede origami came later when I had the idea that it would be fun if he was actually tiny under there.

He did end up resembling the Col more than I wanted him to, but I can live with tweaking their designs later. we can't both show up to the party with centipede legs. how embarrassing!