#he also used to be a heterosexual cis man. and a canon character (albeit a heavily divergent one). so. do with that what you will

[revunant]

I KNOW this guy has gone through iterations. What's something that used to be true about him as a character that isn't anymore as he's evolved?

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 (always accepting)

there are... a lot of somethings... i definitely used to be a lot looser with his characterisation and his motives and his backstory - i kind of just did whatever seemed the most fun. jean spent a lot of his early years as one of the Big Bads of the rpc i played him in, and in my experience people didn't seem to mind too much that i was impulsive and inconsistent as long as i was stirring the pot/creating dramatic conflict/giving them some angst fodder for their muses (all of which i had a great time doing, mind!)

i try to be kind to myself in hindsight, but i do kinda cringe about the way i did things back then. i leant heavily into a lot of clichés and magpie'd tropes & ideas & plot beats from whatever my current hyperfixation was (something i'm still guilty of, just to a lesser and more regulated degree) and while there's nothing wrong with that, i still..............ehhhh. jean's characterisation was sloppy and fickle. he did a lot of things "just because" that i had to retcon in motivation for years after the fact. even his undeath was me wanting to write him being killed (usually as consequence for the aforementioned Being A Big Bad) and continue writing him after without having to declare that death non-canon, and originally had no concrete cause or explanation.

i like to think he's a lot more pinned down now, even if the consequence of me filling in those previously unexplained footholds is that there's kind of a lot of information to take in (i promise you do not need to know all of it upfront). i only "finished" the retconning in, like, 2022, and i'm still finding shit that needs to be fixed, but he makes a lot more sense now. i think.

the biggest change is his morality, i think. he used to be fully chaotic evil, killed people just cuz he liked doing it, dentist from little shop of horrors kind of guy. very extroverted, not even particularly secretive about anything. yeah there are human organs in the fridge in his basement, who cares? whereas now even tho (in his main verses) he's usually true neutral, he usually ends up aligned with the Good Guys in any given conflict, even if he's a bit of a liability for them.