Chess motifs. Media loves them. You can tell things are getting serious in a story when a character (Roy Mustang, Vincenzo Cassano and Jang Han-seok, several metric fuckloads of characters from stories about or set during the Cold War) pulls out a chessboard and starts making extended metaphors while considering strategy, sacrifice, and what the hell might be going through their chosen opponent’s head. Bonus points if they knock one of the pieces over and watch it roll around on the board while they contemplate someone’s incapacitation or mortality.
It can also be a fun game on its own without making any broader points about the narrative in which you find yourself, but we’re all about the drama here at Quijotescx Production Studio Corner.
I started drawing this in 2019, stopped, and finally finished it in 2020 once I got over my fear of solid ballpoint ink shading. I’m going to revisit the theme in the future, because who doesn’t love a good chess knight? (No disrespect to all the other pieces, but the knights just tend to look more interesting.)
[Image description: Illustration of two chess knights stylized to look like horses, one black and one white, on an old library checkout card bearing card catalog information for “Chess Players.” The horses are butting heads and snarling. End description]
