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Jet Blog Entry |
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August 30, 2024, 12:00:07 AM 8/30/24: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's characters from my anthro WWII storyline are siblings Jet and Jade. They're on the 2002 character list as French partisans but other than that were never developed. I'm starting to come up with their story only now; there'll be more about them later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding their design, Jet is likely (though not necessarily) melanistic, whereas Jade is obviously albino--the second character to be such, after Doomsday Rat. There's a scar across Jade's nose to bring a bit of individuality. Certain design notes would be a spoiler, so see the Tumblr entry for more. TUMBLR EDIT: I'll cover both siblings under the same entry and truncate the latter one. Jade's and Jet's original bios from the 2002 character list are thus: JADE: French partisan, sister of Jet. Appears in sequel JET: French partisan, brother of Jade. Appears in sequel Judging by Jade's character design, this may be rather confusing. Aren't these drawings of TWO male rats...? Well, there have been a few changes. As I said, these are much older characters who were never developed beyond the above very brief bios, for some reason--if I had any other ideas for them, I never took note. They've been sitting there untouched for years. I determined to draw them despite having no clue of their personality/history...they then finally opened up a little. The following is rough and vague and still VERY much under development, so may change in the future. Here's what I have so far. The Trench Rats have occasion to meet with Sergeant Major Champere's partisans. Relations between the two groups have long been strained, since Champere received advance notice of an impending German attack on Trench Rat Headquarters yet failed to warn them, even despite certain of his men, such as Papillon, begging him to do so. He did provide aid afterward, but there's been some bad blood between the two factions since then, as well as between Champere and Didrika's partisans. (Didrika and her guys did NOT know of the attack in advance, yet sent help as soon as they could; when Didrika learned of Champere's hesitation in getting involved, she outright rebuked him as a coward.) Considering that Champere's guys were the first allies to come into contact with the Rats, this was a pretty big deal, and Papillon spends a lot of time acting as mediator, trying to smooth things over between the two groups. Anyway, a small group of Trench Rats meets with some of Champere's guys, including Etienne Laurent, and sibling partisans Jade and Jet. The latter two are more involved in covert-style activities, though Jade's physique makes it clear the pair are no strangers to physical combat as well. Jet greets the Rats; Jade, who towers over him and, while being lean and athletic in build, also sports some rather buff musculature, says nothing. Explains Jet, "My sibling doesn't talk much." Jade seems rather distracted anyway, staring at Lance Corporal Doomsday Rat, who, uneasy with being the center of attention, peers back. They're both albino, and they're both the only other albino the other has ever seen. While the Rats and Jet discuss plans and arrangements, D-Day keeps peering at Jade, and every time Jade smiles back. Making him flush and quickly turn away. It's one thing to come across someone else like him--something else entirely to have such confusing feelings. He's never experienced them before, whatever they are, but they have him all flustered. As the group wraps up discussions, he excuses himself to stop by a nearby stream to cool himself off. He lifts his face from the water and gasps, jumping back--Jade is right there, he hadn't even heard the approach. Before he can say anything, Jade grasps his face and kisses him. D-Day just blinks, bewildered, feeling like he should shove Jade away and get out of there, yet he doesn't; he does try to hastily excuse himself when Jade starts disrobing, yet can only stammer incoherently. Then suddenly he gets a good look at Jade without any clothes and all his protests abandon him and the inevitable happens. Afterward, D-Day summons the words to ask what is pretty obvious by now: "You're a woman...?" Because right up until she removed her clothes, he--and the other Rats, he's sure--had assumed that Jet's sibling was male. D-Day's never really been attracted to anyone, but he's pretty sure he's not interested in guys. So yeah...all the weird feelings he had previously make a lot more sense, now. Yet he could have sworn Jade was male--she's tall, well built, her head is shaved bare, she even seems to have plucked her eyelashes. She wears cloths wrapped tight around her chest, but doesn't really need them to pass. And when she answers him, even her voice is deep and could ALMOST pass for a man's, though there's a certain slight, feminine lilt to it. D-Day has seen her naked...and more than that...but he's still mystified. Jade smirks a bit and says, after that, does he really need to ask...? D-Day flushes again--since his return from Project Doomsday he's been pretty lousy at personal interactions--and says, well, obviously she's trying not to pass as a woman, why is that, why does she want people thinking she's a man? Jade nods back toward where the others were gathered and replies, "They would not take me seriously." When D-Day tries to insist of course they would, Jade counters with, "Would you?" And D-Day has to stop and ponder this, because his world is based on facts and evidence, not feelings...yet he realizes it's true...if he'd known from the start that she's a woman, he would have judged her differently, would have had a far different opinion. It really bothers him to realize he has the potential to make such erroneous judgements based solely on societal expectations--it's terribly unscientific--and Jade can tell from the look on his face that he's bothered. "See, most people wouldn't stop and think like you just did," she says, "and that's why I do this." The two talk and learn a bit more about each other. Jade makes it clear she very plainly considers herself a woman--she doesn't feel at all like a man--she just can't do the tasks she wishes to do, or be taken seriously, as the gender she was born as. She binds her chest, shaves her head, plucks her eyelashes, all merely as part of a role, a disguise, a persona--an act. She's just naturally masculine in appearance; she has no opinion or conjecture on whether this has contributed to her feelings and others' reactions to her or not, simply that it benefits her in passing as male. She's always been taller, stronger, more athletic than her brother. Does he know, D-Day asks?--does anyone? Jet knows, and Laurent (he found out on accident but has kept her secret), and now D-Day; she thinks Papillon suspects yet has said nothing; she's felt no need to inform anyone else so far. "You will tell...?" she inquires; no, D-Day replies, he won't. Jet, despite publicly going along with the act, was actually the one to argue the strongest against her decision; he worries that others may hurt her if she goes picking fights pretending to be a man, she can still do plenty of useful things as a woman, yet she retorted that she could be hurt just as easily otherwise. At least this gives her the chance to serve in the war effort as she sees fit, and there's nothing Jet can say to dissuade her. She'd really rather just be open and be herself, yet for the most part, she's content. Jade expresses interest in knowing more about D-Day himself. D-Day's always been painfully uncomfortable talking about himself; Jade manages to wheedle out of him why that is. The truth is, he honestly doesn't feel there's anything to discuss: He has no memory of his life before being captured by the Nazis and exposed to Project Doomsday, and since being rescued, it's like there's nothing there to describe: "I don't know how to explain it," he says, "I just remember enough to know things were different before, but after, it's like...there's just nothing there, I feel like an empty glass. There was something in me once, now there isn't anymore. I don't know what became of it." Jade furrows her brow, says well obviously there's SOMETHING there, he has a personality, he has thoughts and feelings and opinions, he's holding a conversation with her, is he not? D-Day just shrugs: "Everything I do, every time I talk with someone, it feels like an act." This time Jade is the one to ponder a moment before musing, "Perhaps I understand after all." The Trench Rats start preparing to head back to HQ. Jade invites D-Day to stop by and spend time with her whenever they're in the area; say what he will, she's enjoyed their time together and wouldn't mind seeing him again. She places her hands on his face again, towering over him, and murmurs, "I'd really like to get into that fascinating brain of yours." "I really don't think you would," D-Day replies, feeling a bit nonplussed, yet agrees to keep their prospects open. Honestly, Jade has made him think, and thinking has made him uncomfortable...he doesn't like feeling uncomfortable, meaning he now believes he should examine the situation more indepth, try to get at the root of his loss of self, no matter how painful it may be. He can tolerate pain; he can't tolerate not understanding why he feels so hollow inside. See Otto Himmel's Toyhou.se profile (starting with, "Himmel enlists Kolten's aid to keep an eye on Doomsday's progress...") for a hint at what's going on with D-Day. (D-Day's page isn't written up yet, neither is Dietmar Kammler's--I imagine Dr. Kammler's page will ultimately make it plain what happened in Project Doomsday.) This is a relatively recent development that takes a bit of liberty with the medical timeline, but not much. I wanted to figure out what, besides torture and conditioning (and the Doomsday serum), might have resulted in D-Day's complete amnesia for his earlier life as well as the personality change his fellow Rats, such as Indigo and Turquoise, report on once he's rescued. I don't yet have a concrete explanation for Kammler's decision, yet his actions aren't always medically sound, and he often does things just to be an a-hole. So maybe he needs no explanation. Anyway, back to Jet and Jade. I don't know much else about them yet; Jet is the less developed of the two, really all I know of him so far is he's rather intimidated by and jealous of his sister's strength and abilities, and this likely fuels some of his overprotectiveness of her (what she tells D-Day about him urging her to stay in her place). He does love her and mean well, however, and is likely insecure that far more often, she's the one who ends up protecting him. He obviously struggles with some old-fashioned thoughts, though honestly, they're the norm in this story, Jade's behavior is what is unusual. I already have various characters who defy the time period's ideas about gender and gender norms (Trudi Detzer, Didrika), as well as characters of various shades of LGBT+ and all the complications that entails (the effeminate Klemper who regularly yells gay slurs at other guys, the prim and closeted Rosina Kestler and Paul Wozniak, Lars Franke and his fetish for drag queens, etc.), and characters who try to abide by yet struggle with the unfairness of such norms (Eva Heidenreich's abusive marriage, Silver and Reseda trying to figure out their feelings), yet something I haven't much touched on yet is a masculine woman. Hilda comes close--she's big and domineering and imposing--yet she's not actually masculine aside from that. I stepped a bit outside my comfort zone and stylistic constrictions in designing Jade. Unlike all my other female rats, she has no head hair (though she would have it if she didn't shave--judging by her eyebrows, she's a full albino in that her hair would be white rather than blond); yet even more noticeable, she lacks the eyelashes I give literally EVERY female character, and do not give ANY male character (not even girly ones, unless they're literally in drag). This was a challenge, yet it needed to be done for her to "pass" in my art, and I needed to explain it. Presumably, she pulls them out. Eyelashes aren't so distinctive of male or female IRL, yet they are in my art--they are literally how I distinguish male and female characters when I draw. I refrained from making Jade a transman as I already have a trans character, and really wanted to deal with someone who fits their birth gender yet doesn't fit societal expectations. A masculine woman is a character I haven't really done yet; even General Aku, from my adult Ameni Chronicles serial, while being quite muscular and domineering and taking on a traditionally masculine role, is very obviously female. (The rumors and stories that spread about her leave her gender open to doubt, but once one meets her it's pretty clear.) I remember feeling some perplexity and discomfort when basketball player Brittney Griner first entered the news upon her arrest in Russia. I don't follow sports, had never heard of her, knew nothing about her. To me, she looks like an androgynous woman, similar to a lot of female basketball players with their particular stature and musculature. Then I heard her talk, and got confused. I learned pretty early on that she's lesbian yet couldn't understand why there was no info on her being trans. I dug around the best I could and learned it's because she's NOT trans--she may have some sort of undiagnosed testosterone issue (I saw one interview where she mentioned she hadn't had her testosterone levels tested), yet aside from that, she's simply a masculine woman. My discomfort vanished upon this clarification--it was the not understanding, the ambiguity, that struck me. I get LGBT people. I get transpeople, I get asexuals and all that. What I have trouble comprehending is nonbinary, fluid, ambiguous things. That's on me--it's no one else's issue but mine. I have nothing against such people. I just feel discomfort not being able to fit something under a particular label. For this reason I try to be very careful with pronouns because I don't wish to harm even if I'm not always sure what applies. I faced, and overcame, a similar issue regarding gay couples a couple of decades ago. What resolved my issues was writing characters who fit this mold. Jade isn't nonbinary or fluid, I'm not yet at the point of believably creating a character like that, but she might, like Griner, help me understand how certain people who technically fit the norm still might not quite fit, due to our misperceptions of them. And maybe after I work through that I'll find out how to work on the rest; I don't like being ignorant. Anyway, I've likely dug myself in a bit of a hole admitting to all that, in the tiny chance anyone reads it, PLEASE understand I have no issue with how people present themselves, it's my own lack of understanding that bothers me. Jade's character (and to a lesser extent, D-Day's conflicted feelings regarding her at first--and then the way she brings out his conflicted feelings regarding himself) is partly a character in her own right, partly an attempt for me to understand. I don't know yet if Jade and D-Day become a thing or not, or what additional role Jet may play; these are all details that will likely emerge later on as I continue mulling over their development. Please see also JADE'S ENTRY, which, I know, is where most of this info would fit better, yet I have to infodump in the first post and that's Jet's, sorry. [Jet 2024 [Friday, August 30, 2024, 12:00:07 AM]] |