"My darling, my life, my dear love. I forbid you to be miserable, I love you." - Letters to Véra, Vladimir Nabokov

i agree

In lieu of @hazerun3 ‘s gorgeous swad and swan art, here’s the one of the original, older idea/arts that inspired the swapdreammare chapter.

Swad flares his wings and Swan thinks he’s going to be attacked, so he swings for the kill-only to be protected from falling debris by Swad as his knife sinks into his chest.

An excerpt from the old one-shot for it: (cut off because it gets spicy)

i fucking love eye patch crown dude. its one of my favorite design things to do to nm! i also love swan’s ‘mare’ configuration, the dynamic of swad and swan completely turns on its head ! :3 i feel like swad’s unhingedness can be mainly attributed to the power corruption, but he (and swan) honestly both have that same unnamed obsession with each other that is controllable but becomes extremely difficult to temper after the power corruption inflames them.

i love seeing how scared or roughed up swad gets because he typically is depicted caught or something. my headcanons though are that swad wouldn’t run from swan (even if his life was endangered) because of his upbringing (people pleasing, self-sacrificial, codependent) but it’s really fun as an idea…

swan (corrupted, potential nickname: wane? wan?? black swan??? odette??? idk) has a lot of interesting potential in becoming corrupt in that his normal qualities are much more… passive or laid back compared to swad. i think as a corrupted nightmare, he would be rather similar to dreamtale classic but in terms of tactics, would be more like a ‘wait and bait’ guy. whereas dream (swad) is more aggressive or smothering, i think nm (swan) is more calm and strategic. doesn’t like running around and would rather have someone else do it or lay a trap and come retrieve. it’s literally just canon nm tbh but less sinister/theatrically villainous and more chill and terrifying imo