Jack-O Crouch / Jack-O Challenge

About

Jack-O Pose or Jack-O Crouch is a pose performed by the Guilty Gear character Jack-O Valentine. The character makes this pose when they go into their crouching animation. Memes about the post have been made since 2019, most commonly with redraws of other characters being done to put them into the same position as Jack-O. In mid-August 2021, the Jack-O Challenge trend began circulating social media where participants take pictures of themselves doing the Jack-O Pose, often with humorous intent.

Origin

In May 2016 Guilty Gear Xrd REVELATOR released for PlayStation 3 and 4. One of the new playable characters was Jack-O Valentine, a young woman who fights with a ball and chain and several minions with a gameplay style inspired by the MOBA-esque entry Guilty Gear II. On April 5th, 2016, the official trailer for the game was uploaded on YouTube^[1] by the Gamespot channel, earning 217,000 views in five years (shown below).

One of the earliest known memes relating to her crouch came on October 8th, 2019, when Guilty Gear content creator @munchyjr_ posted on his Twitter and YouTube^[2] channel a video called "Absolute Queen." The video, which received 4 million views in two years, is a bait-and-switch where another Guilty Gear character, Potemkin, is shown doing her pose with the song "Ordinary Days V2" by Klaus Veen playing in the background (shown below).

Spread

On August 15th, 2021, it was announced on YouTube that the next character to be joining Guilty Gear Strive as a DLC character was Jack-O. She is the second character announced as part of the first season pass. Her design remains relatively the same as the previous entry, with the changes mainly due to the story events of XRD. The announcement was posted by the channel^[3] ArcSystemsWork, where it earned 540,000 views in four days (shown below).

With her re-introduction to the series, Jack-O was also re-introduced to fans and introduced to a lot of newer fans of the game, creating a reignition of her previous meme. On August 15, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @luulubuu tweeted a GIF of her crouch with the words "She is so normal," earning 7,700 likes and 1,000 retweets in four days (shown below).

she is so normal pic.twitter.com/0yzH7cnmtG

— Lulu🌈🎏 (@luulubuu) August 15, 2021

Later @Vitreous_Glassy^[5] quote retweeted the image with their persona in the same pose asking others to draw their 'sona in the pose as well, sparking a surge in the meme (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References