Art and Worlds

AF 2026 | 01 - Passing Encounter

An attack on diffraction-dragon’s nuclear space dragon, in revenge for an attack on Dalgiroth from last year!

Version without Phosa below the cut.

Pride | 6-30-26

Realized I could use my extra canvas space to expand these flats into quick and dirty updated half body refs for Art Fight!

I use he/him for both, but neither Space nor Ventro are male. They’re aliens; their genders are alien.

Ventro’s gender is drone, and he’s trans. What that means is that he was hatched and raised a soldier, and is soldier-sized, but his gender identity (and, now, hormones) is the small, brightly colored interitrask caste that carries eggs in their bodies until those eggs are fertilized and the shells have hardened.

Space’s gender is nonexistant, and his species is unisex. His social role is non-parenting grunt worker; if he ever became a parent, a leader, a teacher, or someone who held community life and death in their hands (doctor, clergy, mortician, farmer, environmental support systems engineer, sanitation worker, etc.), his social status and pronouns would change.

All of which is to say that I could change their English pronouns to she/her without changing a single other thing about the book,

And that this would absolutely change the vibe of the book for many English-speaking readers (including myself tbh let’s not pretend I’m immune to subconscious influence),

Balance Series concepts | 6-5-26

1. It lets me focus on a LOT of the things that I most enjoy researching, writing, and describing, in terms of both logistics and themes. (Queer themes, science-flavored magic, medicine, adaptation and cooperation to support differing abilities, adaptation after injury & disability, speculative biology, interpersonal dynamics in the context of forced proximity, ecological ethics, natural landscapes, survival skills, failure analysis, etc. etc. etc.)

2. The nature of the plot forces my characters to choose to confront personal issues that they otherwise could have spent the entire rest of their lives avoiding, because it sets up scenarios where continuing to avoid those things would be a betrayal of even deeper character traits. DEEPLY satisfying to me.

Take a Break | 5-23-26

A little comic of Diamond and Valien in their quarters in the Spire.

[Image description: Eilah, a cat-like humanoid Edeia, lies on the ground in eir Abstraction and reaches for a mote of information. End ID.]

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Birthday gift for my friend @ausp-ice ! Wanted to try something new in terms of angle/perspective. :)