That’s a fair question and I agree that the ‘Jayce is dumb’ trope in Jayvik fic can be repetitive and, at times, carry biases people don’t consciously think about. In my body swap piece, that’s not what’s happening. Jayce isn’t written as less intelligent, the moments where he struggles in Viktor’s body are about unfamiliarity and adapting to someone else’s methods, not a lack of skill. Likewise, Viktor would face the same kind of disorientation in Jayce’s body, in areas Jayce finds second nature. Here we are looking at it through Jayce’s perspective. If I wrote this in Viktor’s perspective, you’d see him struggle too. There’s also a part where Jayce takes an experiment too far because he’s intelligent enough to reach that point in the first place. When Viktor says he’s ‘smarter than Jayce’, it’s meant as banter, not a literal assessment.

And when I described Jayce’s design as impressionistic, I meant it in the artistic sense. Broad-strokes, conceptual, big-picture thinking, not sloppy or “wrong”. His style is instinctive and visionary. Viktor says it could be better. And let’s not forget, that in my interpretation, both of them call each other out and both have moments where their work could be improved (Jayce mentioning how Viktor could be better too). It’s a balance, not a hierarchy and the differences in style are part of what makes their dynamic interesting to me.

And for the record, I’m a brown man in STEM, and my writing comes from my own professional and technical experience. I’m not here to dumbify anyone, especially a character that I resonate with because he’s a person of color as well. I’m here to explore these characters with the same complexity they deserve.