(Also first post. Hi guys)
I assume many people still think the NEO body was made by Mettaton (even the Wiki still notes he likely made it on his page) but, after what we learned in Chapters 3 & 4, that's just not true. And we know this because of the two Darkners that talk about the NEO Body: Seam and Swatch.
Both of these Darkners are very intimately tied to December. Starting with Seam:
Seam describes the NEO body as the old machine, not an old machine, meaning they were already aware of it. Seam makes a very concerned expression when thinking about the “certain Lightner” that made the NEO body. They almost reveal who they were thinking about then deflect to “just a hunch” at the last second. They know who made it and omitted it for a reason.
Seam is an abandoned plushie in the unused classroom. If it was Mettaton who made the NEO Body then that would mean Mettaton went to this school and was either Seam’s owner or close to their original owner.
That's simply impossible, Asriel has a picture of Seam on his computer which certainly means he either was Seams owner or knew their owner. Mettaton acts like he never even met Kris before the start of the game, so he was not close to Asriel. On the other hand, Dess was very close to Asriel, and she has old yarn and buttons in her box with 0 plushies in her room to use these on. Seam belonged to her.
Now for Swatch (and Queen, and Jevil):
In chapter 3, we learned from Ramb that Kris and "that girl" used to steal Queen from the librarby to play pretend with a bunch of other toys, including King and Jevil ("that girl" is Dess, I can explain a little more indepth but I wanna keep this brief).
Queen may be a public laptop, but she was certainly most used by Dess and Noelle, so of course these would be the two lightners her and her court are most attached to. We see her attachment to Noelle throughout chapter 2 but we also see signs of Dess's past influence, like her (randomly) using baseballs in her attacks.
Swatch is an image editing app on Queen and we know Dess liked drawing, as we see she made hand drawn posters for shows that may or may not have ever happened and there's the poorly traced dragon under her bed (Asriel keeps HTDD because it reminds him of her).
We also learn from Ramb that Swatch had a mohawk, he was a totally different guy from the collected and polite butler we see, he was a punk just like Dess! He probably changed because Noelle "adopted" Queen after Dess went missing, so the Mansion Darkners were reshaped by her influence and care.
The way Swatch describes how the Lightner made the NEO Body ("Splashing color from the motion of their hand") is similar to the flavor text for when the Knight is charging up it's final attack. Some other flavor text in the Knight's fight references Jevil's theme and there is a tangible connection between the Knight/Dess and Jevil, as he was there for those play sessions (Seam also mentions Jevil being the only one who could match them in "the games" they played).
The NEO Body having been made by Dess also explains one other thing: The basement lock.
Either Noelle or Carol could've put a lock on the NEO Body image to preserve it, since it belonged to Dess.
Anyway, thoughts?
