A forest grotto

What's a goat-spider? What's it do? How'd it come to be?

They're this centauroid thing in 2022 when I was deeper in the spec-bio community. Here're the only two gs characters I drew back then, Show-off (left) and Fencer (right).

I did a soft re-design in 2024, with fewer eyes and a smaller torso in the front. They never felt right, though, so I've tried (and failed) to redesign them several times since. Now that I'm drawing one for a sophont group picture, I'm trying my hand at them again. It's funny how the firmest grasp I have on their design is specifically for their earliest, lobopodian-esque ancestors in the top-right corner of the left pic↓. Everything after squiggly noodle stage just feels off.

I now realize I've shrunk them down to the size of like, an Aussie. Look at how tiny Fencer's gotten!

What's driving/motivating you? What are you basing stuff on? Are things allegorical, literal, something in-between? What do you love about it?

This piece is informed by new lore BUT! Let's not think about that. Instead, the OG lore reads:

We saw a half-dragon that day - towering over the hunters, it tore through our men like we were air. There wasn't a blade nor bullet dense enough to pierce its skin. We managed only to take down its elder before the slaughter. I was in the midst of claiming the head when it attacked us. Six it took, all hunters of great renown, all heads of families now left in the hands of boys too young to lead. Only I survived, half-dead, barely awake to see the dragons pick up their spawn before our backup team reached our position.

____________

After nightfall all the devils crawl out of their holes and head for the loudest den they can find. They've such an insatiable lust to spread their dark sire's influence that they'll even perform their vile rituals without a victim to corrupt.

I've witnessed such a ritual before, if only once - a hundred beasts crowded around a flame, each eye echoing the blaze they'd born from. Some held ritual tools; strange bows with strings of metal and barrels they'd stretched men's skins over. Whatever they were, I knew they held their victims' souls; each string a wail of a man fallen, each skin an echo of the heart once beating beneath. I saw the devils pound and claw at their possessions, the pack a shrieking, growling, writhing mass of something so perverse, I cannot begin to describe the horror it aroused within me. Horror, and... and pleasure.

are you brave enough to present me with one?

I don't understand why Shuri has to move to the Capital. He said its for studying, but why can't he do that in our school? Rasha goes to our school, and all my cousins, too.

Mom said it's because the Queen says he's smart enough to study in the Royal Academy and become a royal botnasist, but she's always telling us that you can't learn between brick walls because you need to go out and look at things yourself. What's up with that?

_________________________________________________________

I had to dig Ish out from under the ramp again, all squirm and screech before he ducked under my cloak to tug at my pouch.

"I'll come with you," he cried, "I'll be really quiet, I promise."

I had to sit down to force him back out from under me and when I did, he was white to his ankles, his face achurn with a mottled veil. My reds burned to match the expression but with great effort I managed to keep the grief polite. "I'll still come back each week," I promised.

It took a while and repeated promises 'til he was red again, and he followed me quietly for the last hour of my packing, only cracking a white muzzle once I'd closed the carriage door.

"Shuri?" he asked, "before you go, can you help me with a thing? It's a really small thing, I promise."

"If it's just a reeally small thing," I smiled, and allowed him to lead me back indoors.

"It's this game," he told me as he lead me to the living room where our sister had spent the last week furiously grinding through the catalogue of video games I'd be leaving behind, "Rasha and I tried to play it but it has a part that was really hard." He pointed at the screen across the room where I was met with a thousand hours of button-presses between two silent pairs of eyes.

"Can you help us?"

What was I supposed to say? No? I must leave while the road is light? It's just one small part.

I'm forever worried that all anatomy I've ever drawn is horrible and everyone's secretly laughing at me.

. ̡ ̖˶̷˶̸ ͠ ͉˶୵̷́͡৲̈৲̖̰ ̷͉͜ଚI্ৄ̳॑৽ಡੁૺ ಡੁੋিং ༚ૈ ֊ 'tis the anxiety . ̥ ̏͛˸Ξ̸ ̷̵ ̤̆ ̢̋͜ ̵̢͊ ̢̏ ৈ̆ ̥ ̡̩.̷͟ ̶̪͟ ̶̲̄͟ ̢̲̏|̪̚̚ ̳̚̚ ̚ˎ̚|̺|̓́ ̳̚|̪̄͟ ̶̲ ̶̪ ̡˞˗̢̡

I wove myself a face to fit in

too thin

With the power of renderitis, even a simple ten-minute doodle can be transformed into a 13-hour effort!