Every so often, I think about this Ratio voiceline:
About Self: True Appearance: I don't mind revealing my true colors if it helps me teach students and treat patients. But in my experience, it's usually counterproductive.
Considering it says "true appearance" and him canonically being described as attractive multiple times ("The face under the strange alabaster head sculpture is apparently unexpectedly handsome."), you can read this voiceline as him basically saying he needs to cover his face while teaching or else people get too distracted by his beauty, and he also says that he wears the headgear partly because he doesn't want to look at idiots, both of which are very funny lol
But I would also like to point out this other voiceline:
Knowledge: The beauty of truth is that it never changes, even when no one understands it. Well, that's true for me, at least.
In this voiceline, he talks about truth, yes, but also himself. This is especially more obvious in other languages where the last line translates to something more along the lines of "That applies to me too." He's saying that his true self doesn't change, even when no one understands him.
If you can apply this voiceline to his self, if you're meant to do that... Can't you do the same for the previous voiceline too?
In his character stories, which consist of excerpts from a book called "Wisdom as a Privilege: Decoding Dr. Ratio" and are all entirely told through the perspectives of others, Ratio is described to be "as contentious as his research". It is said that there are no less than eight documentaries detailing his legendary exploits, and over a dozen memoirs about him, and yet, despite the plethora of commentaries, none of them seems to provide a compelling perspective.
Ratio being/considering himself an ordinary person is one of the biggest parts of his character, and in his final character story, the author of the book wonders why Ratio calls himself mundane, asking whether it's a form of submission, mockery, or a declaration of war. Similarly, in his B's Log interview, the interviewer asks him why he calls himself an ordinary person.
His statues which represent him in the 2.7 photo event are described as "appears legion, but fundamentally united." His technique is named "Mold of Idolatry", and it is him placing a statue that taunts all enemies and makes them solely pay attention to it, makes them attack it, while his real self can roam around unnoticed.
His skill name "Intellectual Midwifery" (as well as a few other things about his character) is a reference to Socrates, who famously did not author any of his own works and is known mainly from the accounts of other people, which are often contradictory. This is known as the Socratic Problem. I'll attach this excerpt from Wikipedia:
In historical scholarship, the Socratic problem (also called Socratic question) concerns attempts at reconstructing a historical and philosophical image of Socrates based on the variable, and sometimes contradictory, nature of the existing sources on his life. Scholars rely upon extant sources [...] for knowing anything about Socrates. However, these sources contain contradictory details of his life, words, and beliefs when taken together. It has become apparent to scholarship that this problem is seemingly impossible to clarify and thus perhaps now classified as unsolvable.
...Meaning that Ratio being someone who is not understood, who is seen differently by many people, is an apparent theme in his character; one which he talks about, in his Knowledge voiceline. "The beauty of truth is that it never changes, even when no one understands it."
In his character information, it is said that Ratio often conceals his appearance with the plaster head. According to his character stories, he even wore it while at university, and he was already a prominent figure in society at that time. His plaster head also shows up in his Cosmodyssey board encounter from 2.1:
The IPC's academic representative, Dr. Ratio, is the walking epitome of a "people-displeaser." Everyone's first impression is focused on his creepy head covering that radiates a vibe of *antipathy*. Maybe you can also try getting a plaster cast head of your own...
The creepy head covering that radiates a vibe of antipathy, which is the thing everyone first focuses on...
Then, doesn't the literal mask Ratio wears - concealing his human face from the eyes of others with the head of an unliving statue - sound like the representation of the metaphorical mask he wears...?
Keeping this in mind, read the first voiceline I talked about again.
About Self: True Appearance: I don't mind revealing my true colors if it helps me teach students and treat patients. But in my experience, it's usually counterproductive.
Again in his character information, he is described as sharp-tongued, and this is clearly true with the way he talks to people ("Zero points! Fail, get out!" lol). In his character introduction post, the disembodied voice of who I suppose is an interviewer says "I heard you're strict on your students...", which Ratio responds with:
"There are students of mediocre abilities, students who think too highly of themselves, students who waste their talents... There are too many kinds of students, and the ones among them who are talented and dligent are few and far between. Those filled with vim while vacant a thought remain a horde.
"As for the passing rate being 3%... You should know the beauty of truth is even if no one can truly understand it, even if the pursuit of it demands tremendous effort, the truth itself will not change... therefore, the initial filtering process is extremely important."
Disregarding how a passing rate of 3% is kinda crazy, this answer happens to highlight the teaching method Ratio believes in and prefers: Criticism. And he is not someone who's only critical towards others and the world, but also himself - highly valuing knowing oneself and recognizing one's own folly, of making people recognize their own folly. ("So, ladies and gentlemen, turning a blind eye to the folly of others is not an etiquette, but a wicked worldly practice. To spread knowledge, we must first make people realize their folly. The same surely applies to the scholars of the Guild.")
In Mundane Troubles, he speaks of this too. "Pursuit tinged with negativity is still pursuit, and it is capable of leading us to the right conclusion. For the masses of the mediocre to reach a level of awareness — this is a necessary rite of passage." Ratio is someone who critiques, who lays down questions, puts people in a position where they have to think critically, so that they can realize their ignorance and improve themselves with their own capabilities.
Naturally, due to this demeanor of his... he is sort of insufferable lmao, or at least is often perceived that way. He is very much aware of this as well, saying in one of his Express visits "I'm aware I'm not the most endearing person." (which I actually like to look at the CN version of because online translators translate it to "I know I'm not likeable." and that makes me feel more like 🥀)
This sharp tongue of Ratio's is part of his personality, yes, but like I said, it is also connected to his role as a teacher. And Ratio is almost constantly acting as a professor, or as the supporting character. In 1.6, in 2.1, in the 2.7 photo event where he gives photography advice to March, in the 3.5 bartender event where he's there to answer the questions Sushang keeps bombarding his inbox with... Similar to how Ratio is said to often wear the bizarre plaster head scultpure.
On the flipside, the personality Ratio shows to the world does not only breed contempt from others, but idealization as well. He's a famous/infamous public figure, he canonically has a "Dr. Ratio Fan Club (Insane Version)", students who are from the university he gratuated from pray to him as if he's a god to be able to pass their exams, the livestream chat freaks out when he takes off his alabaster head in 4.2 etc.
The most noteworthy part is, like I said earlier, his technique named "Mold of Idolatry", which is him placing down a statue that resembles him and taunts all enemies.
Ratio puts on that mask, he places down that statuesque image of himself, and that is what people see. People project onto that image, see what they want to see in it. They may hate it, get taunted by it and attack it, or they may idealize it and treat it like it's a divine being. Idolatry - the worship of a physical object as a god.
All the while, Ratio firmly considers himself merely an ordinary person... But he's an "idol" and everyone views him differently, nobody really seeing the unchanging truth of his real self ("At that time, Ratio was already a prominent figure in society, but there were varying opinions about him among his teachers and peers.").
So then, if Ratio's demeanor is connected to the supporting role he places himself in, and he conceals his true colours because in his experience, revealing it to his students and patients tends to be counterproductive, and he implies that he has a true self (or what he considers to be his true self) that exists and never changes regardless of whether other people recognize it... I wonder what Ratio truly is like when he completely takes off that "mask" and shows his "true colours"?
*Grips Ratio's shoulders* Ratio is your sharp tongue not only a part of your personality and an extension of your preferred teaching method, but also a defense mechanism and mask born from the expectations and many eyes of others that were placed on you since a relatively young age due to you being a gifted kid, which is perpetuated by the supporting role you purposefully put yourself in ("I'm just doing what a supporting character should do."), which can be seen as a way you distance yourself from other people ("Yet, from my perspective, I am invariably the teacher, and [Aventurine], along with you and every other individual, is the student."), and you're fine with not being understood or being disliked by everyone as long as those people can learn from you ("It doesn't matter if you know me or not, but you should know yourself and the data I sent. That's very important."), which all of that is also perpetuated by your feelings of self-deprecation related to being unable to gain Nous' recognition and the reality that you likely never will no matter what you do, how much you try? Ratio answer me rn
Anyway, I would also like to link this fanart from my bookmarks which brought this on in the first place, where Trailblazer asks Ratio wouldn't it be better to not wear the plaster head. Makes me wonder what kind of experiences Ratio could have had to start covering his face, to say that revealing his true colours tends to be counterproductive and just as he doesn't want to see idiots, idiots don't want to see his face either...
In general, the topic of Ratio's "true" self, his perception of that self vs others' perceptions of it, and how it all wonderfully ties together with all the other themes surrounding his character is one of the most intriguing things about him, I think
