Bugs - Blog Posts

Being an idiot on main again

From: @peridots-pixiwolf

To: @mothmanagement

From: @nixtetic

To: @peridots-pixiwolf

Hive Awakening

so I wrote hive knight fanfiction

(Under the cut, it’s relatively short but I still like it enough to post, takes place post-Embrace the Void)

The Old Light... was fading.

My Queen.

She stood there at a kingdom’s heart, arms crossed in eternal rest. Stood, watching over her beloved Hive just as she had been since...

She had been there for far too long. Uncountable days, him staring up at her in wonder, him reporting whatever notable feat had been accomplished (of which there weren't many, the bees were tense and more restless than ever, though the stasis Hallownest has fallen into in recent times impacted even the ones who wished separation from it), holding one claw raised in a salute as if nothing had changed, him resting by her side and wondering when her dreamless sleep would end...

But the golden heresy seeping into the corners of his mind and vision had left him.

And his thoughts were only his own again, whispers of forgotten light gone now and forever, and he'd had to admit it. The Queen... Queen Vespa, the one he had waited to protect for so long, it was all for nothing, for she was dead. 

Some part of him knew. The same part that had already given up. But he wouldn't, not when he and his kin were dependent on her return. Not when there was a threat to their colony, a pale little wanderer bearing a silvered nail…

He hadn't heard from it in some time. It held no significance now.

With her unmoving form revealed a corpse, the Knight of the Hive couldn't bring himself to stay any longer. It'd be some form of torture, keeping the reminder of his failure fresh in his mind.

He needed to leave.

How could he? That would be the most selfish thing he'd ever done, leaving the Hive in disarray without their most skilled knight to figure out what in the Queen's name they were supposed to do now. He was her protector, though almost equally her second-hand. Every worker had their own part to play in keeping their Hive strong (though it was easy enough to hide from a citizen of Hallownest, it was obvious to those who shared his blood that his duty was not one of a drone), and the Hivelings were content with carrying out short tasks while the rank of a Soldier or Guardian called for their unwavering loyalty, defense for their weaker kin. The Hive Knight was Queen Vespa's closest thing to a diplomat. He wasn't occupied with anything other than the promise of cutting down any foe who'd dare to hurt their dear Queen, leaving him free to be granted the highest honor of the more important work, that which concerned Vespa herself.

The thought of him now being...possibly the most important living bee in the Hive by any standard at all was one that hurt almost physically, seemed to leave a pain in his thorax to wonder, considering what he had to lose.

The most important...

Queen Vespa could produce no more heirs, a fact that should go without saying as of her status. New adults were emerging slower than ever, and the number of eggs was gradually dwindling as more were raised to replace them.

A Queen, in her youth, is no different than a worker. A royal diet is all she needs.

If the Hive were to survive, a new queen must save them.

The Knight sat up. He offered one last, pained and prolonged goodbye to the Queen he'd been willing to lay down his life for.

It had been a while since he'd left her chamber. Longer than usual by...what must've been a few days, a few weeks even, he couldn't judge. The warmth and droning buzz of his sisters' wings comforted him, calmed his tumultuous mind. A Hiveling quickly accompanied him, brushing her soft setae against his own, smelling of honey and... and lacking something else.

The orange haze seemed to have lifted.

The radiant sickly-sweetness of Hallownest's blight no longer bombarded his senses upon his departure from the Heart of the Hive, leaving only traces of what once was.

He whispered a command to the Hiveling, who drew her antennae down in a brief nod, before taking off.

Perhaps the Hive would be alright without him.

Perhaps, he would wander. He would return to serve the new Queen, wouldn't he? The Knight's allegiance lasted longer than the reign of one ruler.

Perhaps Vespa was wrong, and the Hive would not be killed so quickly.

I was messing around with doodles that don't fit my artstyle

Had fun and liked how they turned out :D

Gave my somewhat-old Hollow Knight OCs a new ref

Since all the text on that is annoying to list in alt text, or if my handwriting is too hard to read, here it is below instead (paraphrased/edited a bit):

To the right of Hawksbeard reads “Hawksbeard, he/him, Grasshopper, Mosskin”, text to the right of Molini is “Molini, she/her, Millipede”, and to the left of Caramel reads “Caramel, she/her, Carpenter Bee”. Hawksbeard’s section notes that both his fluff and mask are removable though he never takes off his mask, he can jump absurdly high (around eight times his height), he always spends his time alone by experimenting, recording, or collecting, and he lives in Kingdom’s Edge. Molini’s section notes that her face is in fact an actual face and not a mask, her eyes glow, she lost the left arm on her third non-head segment down, and she lives in the Ancient Basin. Caramel’s section notes that her wings are frayed, she can take her mask off but also usually doesn’t, she earned the mantis claw from a Traitor Hunt with her sisters and has been fighting with it since, and she lives in the Queen’s Gardens.

Was drawing a thing with Tiso, stopped myself multiple times from inserting more Real Bug Anatomy than was necessary, so I started drawing a different Thing With Tiso. I did plan on doing more once finished but didn't have the inspiration, so take a dude with more realistic insect anatomy than he normally has

- Horns (spirally/twisted flat horns especially, as of late)

- Insect-like antennae/antennae-adjacent structures

- Long, expressive ears

- Dragons, but mammals and/or with fur (and one or more rows of scales centralized along the back)

- Long tails or insect abdomens

- Six limbs (middle pair often more resembles the front pair. used to be centaurs but now just four-armed creatures ig)

- Wings (usually insectoid, draconic or feathered)

- Insect-looking mandibles but they’re actually just modified teeth (likened to tusks)

- Five digits, opposable thumbs able to grasp stuff (to some extent) with sometimes paw-like feet

- Long necks

- Ocelli/smaller eyes that act like eyebrows

- Long canine teeth, four canines and eight incisors like humans (rest of the dental formula does not matter)

Some of the creature design tropes I always find myself circling back to are:

whiskers/barbels

birds with ears

toed hooves

long torso/ bi-to-quad movement

parrot, because i think their skull is freaky

small.

and more??

What traits do you folks find yourselves adding to a lot of your creatures?

Drew this with the eight true gods of Myrialore (the area which MM/Mostly Mollusk takes place in, encompassing Taranoake, Citadell, Kelsik, Renin and Anemone Reef among others) to figure out their personalities and relationships a bit more

(It is Very Messy but I don't care :D)

Interestingly, the new flower god (Solif) is the only one not native to Myrialore and was instead created through the collective belief mostly of bees, wasps, beetles and assorted colonies further inland.

Both of my mad scientist characters, but drawn as the video game characters they were most inspired by (Ne'Mon as Monomon and Tawny-Buzzard as Doctor H.B)

Much zooming in will probably be required

Forgot about this

I'm planning to do three fake-screenshot-like drawings of gameplay swaps (HK played like BFTES, as shown here, BFTES like UT [probably Kabbu facing off solo against the Beast] and UT like HK [Frisk against Asgore]) because...why not?

I will ~definitely edit this later~ partly because of the pretty obvious difference in the background and not-background (caused by me not knowing exactly what parts of the art style will stay the same?)

Uh.

I just found a bug? And have no idea what it is?? ??????

Under readmore because I listed everything I could about it (not including colors which are instead described using actual images)

-Winged/adult insect

-Setaceous antennae same length as body (using below measurement)

-15/16 of an inch (2.5 cm) exactly from head to wingtips

-Four straight wings folded over back, hindwings significantly longer than forewings, forewings are nearly 1/2 an inch (~12mm) while hindwings nearly 3/4 of an inch long (18 or 19 mm). Hindwings curve into a long bottleneck-like shape past the end of the abdomen, stretch 6/7mm past abdomen

-Two black compound eyes less than one mm diameter

-Head 2mm long and about a millimeter and a half wide

-The thorax (or whatever portion visible above the wings, though likely the full length) is just barely noticeably thinner than head and presumably between 2/16 and 6/16ths of an inch (I don't have an underside view so I can't see exactly where it ends) (3mm to 10mm)

-Abdomen roughly between 1.5 cm (9/16 inch) and 1cm (6/16 inch) depending on previous thorax debate, what seems to be a visible black ovipositor half a centimeter long, two tan cerci about a mm and a half long each

-Relatively long, thin mouthparts greatly resembling an Orthopteran's

-Hind legs assumed equal length to hind wings, mid and forelimbs have a tibia and femur of equal length and are about 7mm long total--all legs are smooth rather than serrated

-Wings are opaque but with visible veins

-For clarification, after I got as close as possible to a wingless view the thorax and abdomen are assumed to be equal in length

-This Specific Individual isn’t really moving much except its (her?) antennae unless prompted and hasn’t opened its wings at all.

Conclusion: The insect it most closely resembles is a grasshopper, so it’s probably part of Orthopterida if not simply Orthoptera but I am still left with so many questions

I was going to wait to take a better picture (and probably will update with a better picture) hence me not posting earlier, but it was my first time carving a pumpkin two days ago (with two of my friends who also like hk) and I'm pretty proud of it

The last three currently (also tags cropped from the previous post) (also I forgot to actually label them lol so here are Descriptions)

Part 6A :

-Ven (with and without mask)

-The OG Drawing (currently Lumi is the only one with a character description, however short it is. Also features pretty much Monomon and the White Lady but as cnidarians)

-Tan

-Pando*

-the Cast Shell Pit/Pando's Tree*

-The Agora*

-Just some lettuce slugs*

-Kritto, Gorge, Rantan, and Lidii (clockwise from top)

-Those four again and Ceras

Part 6B :

-Sketchpage of mostly Rantan but also featuring Lidii, Kritto, Gorge and the Arbiter

-Azent, Monti and Kee (featuring Ceras and Machula)

-Ghost (hm wonder what two characters I could have possibly based them on)

-Ne'Mon

-Left-to-right in top-down rows, Bidibi, Pard, Cranton, Claws, Machula, Nell, Quinn, Carmine and Kalanchoe (but in bug form), Blue-Gills, Tawny-Buzzard, Dune, Allibel

-Ganellak

-Left to right, the Champions Tenaram, Amarmallus and Magtauran

-Allibel and Sepinti

Part 6C :

-Cren, Terret, and Aphids (x2)

-Body language (mostly shown using antennae and mandibles and sometimes the white pseudo-pupils)

Part 5 - Part 6A Here - Part 7

Gallery.

Keep reading

~Mostly Mollusk~

Part 1 Here - Part 2

Summary.

It's said world (of which is hopefully going to be a game? someday?) I've been working on with one of my closest friends!

Basically one day I just decided "sea bugs" and this happened:

Later in the week, me and Friend went to the beach, and proceeded to make an awesome sand bug city, worldbuild for 13 hours straight, pass out at 2AM, then worldbuild some more.

We tied in the above drawing and both wrote it all down in a Google document (and are still writing more!), so there's a lot! But here's as much of the entire 22-page current draft of the doc as Tumblr will let me post, spread across some number of posts, including the random bits of information we haven’t yet...officialized? I guess? As this consists of plans for a future game and some of the “meta” stuff relating to it?

So yknow summary/table of contents

-----

Coastal Cities

-Taranoake

--Architecture

-Citadell

--Architecture

-Renin

--Architecture

Marine Structures and Settlements

-Kelsik

-Cranton's Abode

-Anemone Reefs

-The Ruins

-Anchor

World

-Species

--Coastal

--Marine

-Daily Life

--Government

-Language

--Telecommunication

--Actual Communication (With Bugs)

-Veneration

-Known Characters

-Gallery

Extras/Misc

-History...?

-Quests

-Dialogue

-Soundtrack

I have made my own October drawing prompt for the fun of it (mostly for my own use but it's free to use of course) (inspired by bugs and some typical Spooktober things :>)

Edited/redrew some of my oldest HK art recently

I stand by the Cloaks are Wings headcanon for both the Pale King and vessels :>

I made an animation :>

(Featuring three Gods, in the world shared between me and one of my friends, in order:

Ven, deity of life and death, patron god of Taranoake

Ganellak, deity of pestilence, considered by those of Taranoake to be the sacred enemy of Ven

Ne'Mon, deity of knowledge, patron god of Citadell)

I will post more information on said world...someday?

I had to

Tiso: Do you remember when Quirrel made that romantic dinner for me?

Cloth: …Tiso, he microwaved pizza for himself and you stole it from him.

oh boy I am memorizing Too Many Species Right Now!! Most of them are because I have bug characters

Here is all of the information I can gather directly from my mind right now:

(mentions of lots of arthropods and a cnidarian under the readmore!)

Sphecius convallis - the pacific cicada killer wasp, closely related to but not to be confused with the more well-known eastern cicada killer, in the same genus with the species name speciosus. It's a tannish-orange color with yellow and off white markings, primarily on its face and abdomen.

Parides montezuma - Montezuma's cattleheart, a black butterfly with bright red markings on the tips of its forewings and on its abdomen, grayish stripes also marking the latter.

Dynastes tityus - the eastern hercules beetle, one of the horned beetles in a dull greenish-yellow, with black freckles on the elytra, as well as a black elytral/prothoracal "margin", prothoracal horn and head. It has tan fur on the undersides of said horn, as well as thorax and abdomen. As with most (all?) horned beetles the horn is only present in males.

Apis mellifera - way too prevalent for me to forget ever, the western/european honeybee. This is the bee that is normally and widely domesticated for honey. It has a light brown head and thorax and (in workers) a yellowish and dark brown banded abdomen, and is one of the rare social species of bees. While western honeybee numbers are in fact decreasing, they aren't close to extinction and are competing with native bees, who ARE indeed endangered.

Polistes olivaceus - commonly referred to as the yellow paper wasp, yellow oriental paper wasp or Macao paper wasp. Yellow, with thin and numerous tan, brown or black bands all along its body.

Sphex pensylvanicus - the great black wasp, or great black digger wasp. It's pretty notable for being all-black with metallic, dark blue wings, and was probably first examined in Pensylvania, U.S. considering the species name but can be found in several places that are Not There in the country. I found a dead one on the side of the road and I put her in my house

Tachypompilus ferrugineus - The rusty spider wasp. It's one that preys on spiders (several? only one?), dragging it (them?) back to her nest to lay eggs on. I've already nerded out about this for a reason, because seeing a red wasp with metallic blue wings drag a wolf spider 2x her size across your front lawn into a hole of unknown depth is a memorable experience.

Polydrusus impressifrons - A weevil. It's sort of pale lime green, sparkling with yellows and darker greens in the elytra chitin, which notably to me is not smooth but rather has straight thin "valley"s carved through it from end to end? I'm sure there's a better word for it but I can't currently remember.

Pleurobrachia pileus - A jellyfish called a sea gooseberry along with the other member of its genus. ...It looks like a drop of water.

Myrmecocystus mexicanus - An ant in one of the genuses holding those known as honeypot ants, but it's not really said if the species itself is in fact one with modified honeypot workers, so I assume it probably isn't? Workers are a light golden-tan, with the head being a bit darker.

Cranjon cranjon - It's a thin light brown shrimp, that iirc is often caught for food. I just think the name is cool

Vespula maculifrons/germanica/vulgaris - three very similar-looking species of yellowjacket in the same genus, the former called the eastern yellowjacket and both the latter called european yellowjackets, though germanica is also called the german wasp while vulgaris is called the common wasp. They're basically what the average person thinks of when hearing the word wasp, with striking bands of black and yellow. They construct papery nests despite not being part of Polistes, and I can't exactly remember their differences currently? There's a tree in my area they were all swarming around about a week ago and I fed them italian ice before one was carried away and eaten mid-flight by a larger bald-faced hornet. Fun times.

I can't remember the scientific name of this one, but it is most commonly referred to as Avispa de caballo (Horse's wasp, not to be confused with horse guard wasp) and it bears close resemblance to cicada killers, due to them both being sand wasps.

Megaloblatta longipennis - one of, if not, the largest species of cockroach. I don't know why I remember this?

Lampyris noctiluca - a species of lampyrid beetle, of which is otherwise known as a firefly or lightning bug, or a glowworm for the larvae and the larviform adult females. The species is one of the most commonly seen fireflies, I believe?

Coenagrion puella - a damselfly species. The male imagos are blue, while the females are green or brown, and both have black abdominal bands and thoracic stripes. It's one of the species that folds its forelegs up near its head.

Strategus aloeus - the ox beetle. It's chestnut brown, with the males having one long forward-facing prothoracic horn and two smaller ones facing back. It doesn't have haired elytra like Pygopleurus, but the underside sure is fluffy!

And that's not even counting all the times I nerded out while writing this, like about how cockroaches are actually most related to termites and that taxon is the sister group of mantises, or how brush-footed butterflies (including monarchs!) do the same thing (as puella) with their reduced forelegs tucked up behind their head so they stand on fours, or how odonates have such large eyes and great vision that they catch their prey 90% of the time, being the most successful hunters, and can predict said prey's movement. Or counting the many nudibranchs I remember the appearances, but not the names, of in vivid detail

Anyway. Uh. Writing this felt way shorter than the time it took. Goodbye

Oh wait I just remembered this exists. Now in two terrible versions!

(greatly inspired by this meme of hk characters eating kitkats... link)

I started this quite a while ago and I might add more later, but I'm good with posting just this for now.

Quirrel and Cloth from Hollow Knight in a Bug Fables art style, and Leif from Bug Fables as an HK moth.

Bee/Wasp appreciation post

BUGS!!!

math was so boring today..hi...

a rogue pipe cleaner.... escaped from the craft supplies

I made a thing :DD

It’s a longtail skipper ^-^

Smallest bug I have ever caught!

Here you go my bug loving mutual @fivetrench

whats your favorite sea creature

That’s a hard question and depends on the week you ask but currently am obsessed with Shipworms (who live in mangroves and wood in marine environments so close enough to me), which are actually bivalves like clams and oysters and not “worms”…

Also love Conches, cetaceans, frogfish, stingrays, echinoderms in general..