So I’ve been doing some thinking about the Neatbow colors and their distinctions. I feel that now we can finally assign apt descriptors to each of them and properly define our understanding of their thematic significances and possible use implications. I wrote more and less depending on the perceived complexity in understanding each color; if you have critiques or additions I would be more than happy to incorporate them.
So, let’s begin:
Irrigo - one of if not the simplest of the Neathbow colors to understand, since its effects are impactful and immediate; it is the color of something genuinely forgotten, of knowing there’s a hole in your head but not what’s supposed to fill it, of losing someone’s name or face and the panic it results in.
Violant - Irrigo’s thematic opposite, the color of a memory unbidden. It’s that earworm of a tune that keeps looping in your head, that sense of place and time whenever you smell a certain odor or hear a certain tune.
Cosmogne - the color of remembered sunlight, "remembered" being the operative word here: it’s the color of nostalgia, of what you think the past was, of the (quite literal, in the Silverer’s case) tinted shades you wear when you look back at the past.
Apocyan - Cosmogne’s thematic opposite. From the recent update to the Fire Sermon dreams we have a better understanding of this color: if Cosmogne is the color of remembered past then Apocyan is the color of envisioned future. It is the color of the possible and the potential, of the pathways of destiny that we can conjure and conjuncture.
Peligin - the color of darkest Zee and death, Peligin is the color of the "known unknown". We know there’s something out there in the black, beyond sight, beyond life, but we can’t see what it is, can’t grasp the shadows moving in the abyss, what becomes of consciousness after the physical body ceases. It is the color of mystery, of danger, and of fear.
Viric - Peligin’s thematic opposite. I had a tough time with this one until the recent Bizarre debuffing items; then it made sense, along with "shallow sleep" being used in its description. Viric is the color of "unknown known", of the perceived disregarded; of wanting to stay in bed for five minutes more instead of checking out what that noise was, of looking directly at the ghost and thinking "must’ve been a bird or something". It’s the color of comfort, satiation and pleasant inattentiveness.
Gant - the seventh, the odd one out. No parallels for this one, but it does touch on all of them in a way. "The color that’s left when all else are eaten" doesn’t give us much on its own, but it does provide us with a thematic link to the Mr. Eaten quest, which sheds its own (heh) light on things. Like Mr. Eaten, Gant is the color of something that you buried long ago but still nags at you, of the shameful thing you did that you don’t want to think about but which always comes back to haunt you, of guilt and sorrow that drown everything out. There is an important distinction to be noted between Violant and Gant: if Violant is the color of what demands to be remembered, Gant is the color of what refuses to be forgotten. To wit, Violant is troublesome but necessary - the links it provides are useful if irksome, but Gant is overpowering in its emotive resonance, drowning reason and usefulness in its wake.
edited by IHNIWTR on 10/11/2020