ulises

✰ personality/mannerisms

practically defined by being soft-spoken and a little odd. she keeps herself energised and in good spirit by finding humor and joy in small stuff, and said upkeep is very self-motivated - she doesn't mind how miniscule and insignificant stuff is, she'll find worth in it even if it seems odd to others. generally speaking, she's got shifting activity in conversation and will frequently get lost in her own thoughts. often has to pause and think of the best way to reply to something, but once she's got a thought she'll dig deep into it. she speaks quite quickly in a way that makes it seem like she's perpetually about to forget what she's thinking of lest she says it aloud. in general ulises is quite inattentive and struggles to keep herself engrossed in her work after certain spans of time. to mitigate this she's picked up a handful of hobbies mostly in the form of puzzles and board games, displayed on screens at her side whenever she's in her lab. an extremely important resolution she's picked up since establishing this setup is to somehow overcome ai chess (regarded as archaic tech in-story lol) and if that proves to be fruitless in the span of the next decade, she's orienting herself toward making a magic-based chess program that can beat the old ai.
she's beyond compassionate though in a manner that often lends itself to extreme secrecy and overdevotion. to translate she holds a lot of intrigue in the octants, recognising that humanity could be invasive. to protect them she pits herself between the two to make sure no one can interfere, to the point of being willing to lock herself on the train forever to reduce access. she doesn't trust the general public to not make demands for expansion that could harm the natural octant equilibrium, and knows that itll happen if the train ever returns. hence she lies about the plausability of using octant teleportation to return home, being unwilling to even test it. it's the same with how she regards demeter - she works herself to the bone to ensure demeter isnt regressing into helpless pessimism, that they're always distracted enough, etc. she's put more trust in them over the years and doesn't worry as much but she's never really let go of the notion that she's fully responsible for demeter's wellbeing. in short ulises has good intentions and thinks of herself as the piece de resistance of all possible fruition. this is, evidently, just a little bit somewhat maybe self-destructive.

✰ relationships

has been dating demeter for at least 6 years now. they found one another about two months after arriving on the train, and demeter kind of just spilled their experiences with míra and mazin and the entire ordeal that led them to fornax. sensing their resulting fatalism, ulises asked them to help in their research, back then being far more rudimentary studies of the train's properties. over time with ulises' help, demeter regained some confidence and the two become close working as a pair... eventually they started dating. nowadays demeter's the one person who can ignite sense into ulises when no one else can, most often demonstrated by them prodding at her to get decent sleep from time to time.
long friendship with sabri. redundant to state go read about it on sabri's page.
gets along exceptionally well with dalisay... octant uncompliant ends semi-notwithstanding.
besties with faris, helped her come to terms with her lack of lycantrophy/conversely faris offered help with octant investigations. by this tandem also friends with valerie, and furthermore olzhas. all 3 of them have allowed ulises to study their abilities and code, which were huge contributions to affinity early on.
acquaintanced with peixin since it stuck around her when it first arrived on the train in an effort to understand the nature of its dreams. a lot of this lead to ulises questioning the principle of fornax resistence and whether or not it was wise to let people travel into other dimensions.
^ all notable ones. loosely friends with everyone else or at least on polite terms.

✰ misc

✰ among the various sciences she's studied over the train years, the most notable are probably phytology (in collaboration with sabri) and endocrinology. her experience with prior sciences has kind of let her catch on to stuff quickly but she very heavily leans on the references the train provides her with while conducting experiments. that is effectively her process i suppose
✰ she doesn't really like to sit down and play chess normally and claims darting between scientific work and moves is what actually makes it fun for her. alongside the experiment potential. but it's not something she's gonna sit down and do in her free time. conversely though her favorite out of the board game/puzzle/whatever catalogue is actually nonograms.
✰ she plays the guitar :+) started learning when she was around 16, and ever since has made it a point to lug one around to any place of residence - she likes to play random riffs and songs to burn off anxiety or boredom. since arriving to the train she's summoned a customised one (which she's further modded by hand) though her original guitar's preserved somewhere in her train room.
✰ tangentially she's very good at rhythm games and plays them when she has the time. usually prefers ones with peripherals that actually resemble real instruments... so yes she's very much into guitar hero.
✰ her favorite kinda music is power metal, speed metal, that type of shit. though she can't always stand music playing while she's working she tends to gravitate toward fast digressing tunes with plenty of weird sections in them, which forms somewhat of a jarring contrast when she's working in her fancy lab decoding multidimensional data lol.
✰ ulises probably holds a bunch of speedrun records for highly obscure shovelware games. its funnyyyy
✰ she knows how to perform various surgeries ranging from basic suturing to very specialised procedures, mostly self-taught on the train.
✰ she was raised in el paso and earnestly holds a lot of nostalgia for it... but she usually distracts herself away from her memories, preferring to focus on her work.
✰ prior to the train she used to go on yearly hikes/camping trips by herself, finding the break away from other people particularly fulfilling. though she mostly went on fornax for the chance to witness new esoteric magic tech i think the general seclusion of the journey and the octants themselves were a point of fascination for her as well. though she's been on the train for years she still feels that reminiscence profoundly.
✰ she's fluent in english, spanish and nahuatl.
✰ extra information on affinity

✰ train room

most of it is dedicated to her lab lol... looks somewhat clinical but there's a bunch of checkered patterns and colored lights here and there which give it some personality. plenty of desks with computers, lots of industrial tech, parts of the walls are just fully covered in wires... just imagine a vaguely messy sci fi spaceship room. basically.
there's a doorway leading to her actual chambers which are far more indulgent and colorful - she shares a bedroom with demeter and in terms of patterning it's very much like... reminiscent of famous abstract art, kind of blending together demeter's painterly theme and uli's polygon-heavy motifs. most of the 'living area' of ulises' place follows abstract retrofuturistic interior design. hopefully that paints a miniscule picture

✰ role

big things planned for her but right now the definitive stuff... she champions the whole sympathy for the octants storyline and is effectively The Person To Talk To regarding all that. along with marjolaine her arc revolves around the pitfalls of magic and the way it can be used maliciously, although uli's comes from a more self aware external angle. she's probably like the most important character across different routes just because her eventual sidequests where you help her 'seal' the octants dictate the ending you get and serve as the 'limiting' end condition. her sidequests also require more effort than everyone else's due to them mostly being... the affinity experiments themself and uniquely, you can close them off early. ill get more in depth when i figure things out proper
she's probably also an alternate source for quickly rejuvenating ego/flare, though this function eventually locks in the endings where you side with mazin or the mutiny. meeting her is probably how the stat itself unlocks so you start off with it at 100% lol

✰ motifs

evidently a chess theme mixed with some other board games and stuff. the conception of that was initially to contrast with demeter who was going to have a mosaic theme but i gave up on the latter point and now i think its like a fun way to show how ulises is extremely smart and clever whilst also being easygoing. you know like puzzles are a leisurely thing but require a lot of practice and effort. the checkerboard thing now also reflects fornax instead which works

✰ title

skeuomorph is a technical term referring to imitation of old-fashioned design in modern objects. or some other more elegant definition, go search that shit, what i'm getting at is ulises epitomises a lot of the future tech in ccs she gets a word that reflects that. it's meant to compliment her quaintness as well.

✰ inspirations

✰ first thing to note. project 'affinity' is a haken reference. thankee
✰ to continue the prog rock trend she has a heavy basis in the mars volta, and in particular frances the mute just because i was getting into that album HARD around the time i was developing her...
✰ mad scientist tunes but i dont want to call her part of the archetype itself -_- ulises herself is way more collected and the weird stuff about her moreso shows in her mannerisms... she's very conscious about the humanity of what she tests so to stress.
✰ also just the general concept of like. the idea of isolation from humanity in the pursuit of science... specifically via the lens of autism and already being 'cast out' per se. additionally this being done with someone who is relatively positive and cosmically romantic as a somewhat-subversion of the cold calculating scientist trope
✰ that being said she is also kind of a 'universal man of science' joke though she stays within biology (and particularly botany i guess) for the most part. only reason she knows about hormones is because she's trans gender and so is like everyone else on the train of course she's gonna pick that up
✰ genre of 'all the weird scientists that i like' which is to say faust guiltygear dedusmuln hylics alphys undertale and kasukabe drhdr. slight floofty bugsnax influence but dont worry about that yet
✰ additionally some influence from cecil and carlos from wtnv.... complete commixtion.
✰ shares some milla vodello dna with valerie. i think ulises is more like how shes written in the second game though

✰ external

✰ artfight profile
✰ solo playlist - skeuomorph
✰ duo playlist - with solecism

✰ description

hair: teal-ish blue, but her roots are heavily grown out. natural hair color is very dark brown. reaches down to her waist. bangs are overgrown. usually tied up with a pink bandana.
face: long square-ish sort of shape. prominent aquiline nose. has a goatee. wears earrings in the shape of knight chess pieces - on the left ear is black, on the right is white. while experimenting wears a set of square-shaped goggles, wherein the left lens has a rubik's cube like-lens and the right has a checkerboard lens.
main outfit: most importantly wears a black labcoat; with a high collar, buttons and puffed sleeves; on the chest, leftwise bearing a pocket with tic-tac-toe patterns and rightwise chesspiece silhouettes; at the bottom, leftwise is a green-and-white pattern depicting a checkers board, rightwise first is a grey chessboard and underneath a backgammon pattern. the labcoat is left unbuttoned at the bottom, and she furthermore wears a belt with white chess icons over it. she wears a pink dress, with the skirt reaching her knees - beneath, loose blue checkered pants. boots are dark teal with heels resembling chess pawns. the foot is divided in two, being seperated by a black rounded rhombus-like shape. she also wears blue-ish lab gloves.
general fashion style: formal casual, more or less. likes jackets and dresses, and particularly enjoys wearing heeled boots. most of what she wears is heavily covered in board game and adjacent patterning. her fashion sense is kind of just a spin on the general 'formal' style that's nondescript trendy right now in-universe - compared to others her clothes are TOO heavily patterned so it's kind of gaudy. she does it on purpose.
other: postaxial polydactyly on right hand - extra finger stems from little finger.