#swatchseam

honestly this one's hard for me to put into my own words, so i do apologize for that — the best answer i can give you is that you should read what i've written from their perspective, particularly this fic and, if you want what i feel holds up as a good portrait of their thought processes more generally, this fic. i feel it's a little easier for me to communicate a character's thought processes through writing them than it is through describing them. that said — swatch also has a bit of that "she's blessed, i'm blessed, we're meant to work as a well-oiled machine together, ect." attitude about them as well. they see themselves as her closest confidante and voice of reason, and know well that they're one of the few darkners she'd only take as her peon willingly. they don't really think anyone else is "good enough" for her, and they're incredibly jealous as a result. but unlike other jealous sorts of characters — the sorts who'll try to act as though they know what's best directly — swatch is more of the "i'll do as you ask even if i loathe some of the men you bring around, because i do respect you, just not him," type of jealous. it's by no means a good sort of jealousy — it's still jealousy, after all — but as i've discussed frequently before i don't think a single one of the darkner divorcees are particularly well-adjusted people due to the whole "being an object" thing.

what have you got about them!! I'm very interested!! I wish to ship them more meaningfully and I've no grounds to build off of!!

have a fantastic day!

AH yes i half-remember liking and commenting on your art a good few months ago! that aside though – i think i'm intrigued by it in part because my conception of it fits into how i tend to approach "shipping" as a concept. i'm less someone who wants to see a pair live happily ever after or stay together and more someone who enjoys the fact that characters can have a lot of past relationships with one another, often ones that are incredibly fraught and don't last. there's a lot of room for character exploration in that space and in those feelings and in those sort of relationships.

and swatch and seam's relationship specifically – i've talked about it a bit before but i'll do that a bit here again too. to quote myself; they're both in the same position of having a shadow crystal holder that was close with them and that they knew or know now of the crystal of – they're really the only darkners who can connect over that specific experience in this specific way. (queen knew spamton, and spades king knew jevil, but those relationships were different. more of being on the outside, close, but not close enough to quite look in.) but their attitudes towards that and towards being darkners in general are so opposed – which creates this incredibly juicy tension. swatch believes fully in their gods and in their purpose – even with the discarded body in the basement, they're clearly still very heavily used by the light, and are used in a far more direct way than even their lady grace. seam, meanwhile, is a complete nihilist, who doesn't care a hoot whether the light looks upon them or not. at the end of the day, they'll always be an object.

it's been a while since i drew them, plz be nice to me :(

theyre eepy

where do i even start? i really love the idea of them in castle town without the secret bosses around anymore -- they're the only two in quite the position they're in. their respective feelings on said situation, though, couldn't be more different -- with swatch believing fully in their gods and their purpose, and seam being a complete nihilist that's realized not only how inescapable the cycle of use and disuse is, but how awful it is, too. this drives a sort of mutual obsession and hatred similar to the one i write swatchton with, and i think that especially if this is taking place in a world post-swatchton, swatch's memories of spamton add more fuel to the fire, so to speak. they really only have each other to confide in about the madness they'd borne witness to, now that the secret bosses are gone and their worlds are destroyed, and their conflicting feelings about being a darkner and living in deltarune's hierarchy push the two of them apart just as much as they pull them together.

there's also a sort of cat-and-mouse (cat-and-bird?) game element to their relationship. seam's got knowledge of a lot of pretty odd things -- they knew what a shadow crystal was at least a while before knowing jevil had one, they deliver cryptically correct information based on their "hunches", they allude to other saves and all that comes with them through cryptic wonderings and strange dialogue. it's a part of the jrpg deconstruction deltarune's playing with -- here's someone to drop information about secrets you may have missed, assist you with questlines and tell you about powerful new items (and filling a different niche than ralsei, who acts more as a tutorial and guide). for swatch, i think this all adds a certain allure of mystery to seam on top of what they have in common and what they conflict over. why does seam know so much -- and why do they know about swatch's best-kept, holiest secret? it's haunting and drives them to try and figure seam out, even if seam's the sort of darkner one can't easily "solve".