Man, I was staving off the ios liquid ass update by refusing to free up space for a long time. So far I cannot point to anything that has gotten better than before.
Yes please, make the watch, the most important thing on the lock screen, as low-contrast and stupid looking as possible.
Was able to fix this, most of my time with this ui has been spent trying out settings that mitigate the damage they've done to it
Trillion dollar company, folks