Your art is amazing. A comic with a cutesy art style involving uncomfortable themes always tickles my fancy. Could I ask a questin?
What inspired you to create Dotty and Atchkie. Both in design and personality?
Yeagh thanks. The styles not even really a purposeful juxtaposition. like it is I guess but itās also just what feels normal to me.
Dotty and Atchkie are weird cuz idk what exactly inspired them except for like, my obvious obsessions?
As a like 14 year old I was obsessed with the idea of what I call āinverted empathyā and which you might also call like, forced projection? The idea is youāre forcing someone else to feel what you feel. I thought this would solve a lot of problems in life and also cause a lot of fun new ones.
So I just made Atchkie specifically as a vessel to wield that power, though theyāre hardly the only one I gave it to. The idea was that Atchkie would walk around and use this power on people to like show off, or to try to find someone who had the same power as them, or just because theyāre kind of socially inept. A broken empathy emotion who couldnāt empathize enough to make friends, haha. Forgetful but exceedingly naive and childish. Very impulsive and very quick to regret that, but also often oblivious to what theyād done wrong.
And then Dotty was basically their wrangler, running after them and cleaning up their social messes and making sure people didnāt attack them for acting so carelessly.
in a lotta ways theyāve basically swapped a lotta personality traits over the years. I donāt remember the specifics cuz I was like 13 at the time but it was definitely different.
Atchkie was the one who wanted to go on this big adventure to find out what was wrong with them, and Dotty was kind of their tired guard/caretaker just along for the ride. Atchkie was outgoing but socially inept and Dotty always had to smooth things over, not because dotty was more socially adept but because dotty would like apologize on their behalf and be like ATCHKIE stop asking INVASIVE questions.
I actually put a lot of myself in Atchkie, in that they were annoying and friendless and never socialized right and felt like they were always wrong and desperately wanted to find a place to live and belong. And they were nice but had trouble connecting with people. Itās a conception of myself I donāt really relate to anymore, but I think it was born from trying to see myself as generally nice and harmless. Like I was a good kid. Like this!!
Dotty was not designed in any particular way, except to vaguely resemble me, I threw it in because I liked its design too much to make it my sona. (Fun fact it has used it/its pronouns longer than I have) Like it was too good for me sksksksks so I made it guard this idealized version of my younger self who really WAS just a nice innocent cutie who was very lovable if you were patient.
So dotty was a protector of sorts. I didnāt relate to dotty because dotty felt more adult to me. Dotty was likeā¦ it was almost a parent-child type of situation tbh. I should draw the ogās some time interacting with them now it would be so weirddd.
At some point Atchkie got more genuinely good at socializing or smth, and Dottys role as āguard & caretakerā almost likeā¦ flipped. Dotty considers itself Atchkies guard but in a very different way now. Like a guard dog. Dotty stayed basically as socially inept as always but with serious anger and impulse controls problem, and Atchkie now has to apologize for ITS behavior, lol.
And now Dotty is more obsessed with finding out the truth or whatever. Because I fleshed out the backstory more and. Well, sort of. Atchkie still wants to find a place to fit in, thatās the same, but their idea of what that means has changed.
But at the core itās still a weird inverted emotion and their bodyguard. I think thatās why I didnāt notice how far the personalities drifted until I read some of their old stuff, cuz their roles have remained the same. Just a different lens. Dottys āguardingā is kinda like.. overactive and disordered
And none of this even gets into Quinton, who is absolutely fucking vital to the story (even though they only just showed up). Quinton has probably changed the most, but also stayed the same out of all of them. Itās very odd. Basically everything about nas backstory has changed in a multitude of ways multiple times but their core personality and general goals have remained generally consistent. Itās kinda funny to think about. like there were times over the years where I basically didnāt even know what Dotty and Atchkie were going to be doing because I was so focused on Quinton so itās still very funny to me that yāall basically donāt know na at all. ļæ¼
As for designs, Quintonās clothing has changed the most, but the hair and arms and heads have basically stayed the same since the beginning. Dottys design is unchanged in every way, and Atchkie got a revamp because their original design was boring.
Atchkie got fatter because I wanted to draw more fat people, and they got curlier hair because I like drawing it and it just looked better than what I was doing before.
This is making me want to post more old art of loose stitches (which btw has always also been called āAtchkieā and āAtchkie storyā by me. In my mind theyāre the main character, but I think in practice Iāve kind of abandoned the idea of a single main character. Also weāre focusing a lot on dotty right now haha)
The unfortunate thing is that, although I used to basically daydream about people asking me this question, the vast majority of the design and storytelling decisions have been lost to time because Iāve had these characters since I was 13. the purpose of the story and characters shift depending on what Iām interested in talking about.
For example: the main thrust of the story used to be about Atchkieās inverted empathy power and exploring it and honestly nowadays I usually forget it even exists š
Anyway thanks for giving me something to rant about while waiting in the car for my friend š«”
