mental issues kept me in a stunlock where i had to finish this before i could do any other artistic stuff. i wanted to explain my artistic choices, so if you want to see what you understand from the piece first don't read this yet.
this piece was made out of spite in a way. i guess i was just getting continuously frustrated that i couldn't ever seem to express how much depth i see in swatch in a way that was satisfactory to me, and i'm really over how other people see them. writing about them wasn't enough. so, here's an art piece as well.
on the top right, swatch is drawn with a stern face, a shadow over their glasses as they talk to someone off-screen. their arms are behind their back, not showing all of themself the way their glasses do the same. this is meant to show their typical demeanor, mostly emotionless, upfront, proper. queen is shown in her usual fashion, enjoying life, giving orders, celebrating herself and her subjects by commissioning art from her right-hand bird. below her are the swatchlings, those who swatch oversees and helps them keep things they way they should be. all meant to exemplify swatch's role and job here, and how important queen and the swatchlings are to them.
under that is the luxurious inhabitants of queen's mansion, with swatch and their close colleague tasque manager standing side by side. in their shadow are the common folk of cyber world, not considered on the same level as them. this is to show how they uphold a class system. to the right of these is swatch determining what isn't "correct", and to the left of these is swatch serving dark dollars, meant to signify their wealth and how money matters in cyber city. as a whole, this section is meant to incorporate their goofy-ass dialogue in chapter 5, showing that they have poor values regarding status and everyone's ""place"" in the world like ralsei does.
the lower portion of the piece is situated here to show the feelings that swatch pushes underneath their outward mask. swatch is drawn naked since this is what they're like without covering anything, their raw self. they look at the viewer in shock. you're not supposed to know what they're thinking.
under the cash is a line of swatchlings following a path, while swatch looks away from their direction. i wanted to show swatch having an interest in not following orders and in a way not upholding the status quo, since they're shown in-game to have displeasure in following orders. inadvertently, they're also looking to nobody/mettaton, the most likely candidate for who created the NEO robot in the light world.
i believe swatch is haunted by NEO like fucking crazy, but it's not something they want to think about. as much as they try, NEO is all they can think about sometimes. they can't push aside the way its abandonment left a hollowness inside them. this is why one of the wings of NEO is at the forefront of it all, nobody's tears forming into it, while the glitchy lost dream continues to leak downward, hitting someone else. their color swatches and papers that have been scribbled out float in this space, showing swatch's interest in creating art for themselves, a desire they feel to be selfish and improper. they look up at nobody with pain in their eyes, his divine light not quite reaching them.
spamton is the lowest point of this piece, colored in dark blue like the common folk of cyber world, a person of low status. swatch doesn't want to think about him, pushed all the way down. he represents exactly what swatch feels like they can't be, yet it's him who made them realize that a darkner could even stray away from what they're made for. they try to tell themselves that he's the one who's wrong, because what they're doing has to be right. there has to be something noble in abandoning him, something good in how they do everything they're told and uphold the status quo.
he turns around from his old addison self, what swatch remembers him as, suddenly shifting to his current form, whatever he was deteriorating from haunting them. is that what happens when you stray away? they don't want to know. they don't want to see the cruelty for themselves.
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damn all that for a side character-- yes. obviously.
It’s based on a story that is falsely attributed to Natives, usually but not always the Cherokee. It’s a settlers’ approximation of how we talk and what we believe. To parrot that phrasing uncritically is pretty anti-indigenous, and the fact that it’s so commonplace is indicative of how little thought it given to the mockery of Indigenous spirituality and how frequently it’s appropriated
sure heated rivalry has enemies to lovers but interview with the vampire has enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers to
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