#keetah

SO I WAS TALKING the other day about a possible cat allegory for the Hollow Knight world. It’s based off the real world thing where some species of burrowing tarantulas will keep tiny frogs under their protection because the frogs eat the ants that targets their eggs. So I ran with it, especially since my waifu said she’d be a tarantula tiny frog breeder in this universe.

So like cats, I imagine frogs domesticated themselves. Once bugs got together and started to farm and store food, it would ultimately attract pests looking for an easy meal. Frogs noticed the congregation of prey items and moved into these stone silos and store houses. There they would devastate pests because if you ever owned a frog, you know they will eat until they can barely move. Sapient bugs are much too big to be threatened by these frogs, so they allowed them to stay and do the work for them.

Eventually they started getting into houses and into rooms where larvae and eggs are kept. Feral bugs who usually would prey on these eggs and helpless young would find themselves getting pounced on and eaten before damage could be done. Again, said eggs and larvae are too big for these frogs to prey on. If they are smaller it was learned that by bonding with them, they’ll recognize who is and isn’t food in a short while. They aren’t too smart, but they are smart enough for that at least.

They became companion animals and also started to be professionally bred in a wide array of colors and gill patterns. Some are large, some are bred to fit into tea cups. A lot of these very fancy breeds were lost when Hallownest fell, but the hardier stock closer to their original ancestors fared very well. Many of them became strays and they didn’t realize much of a difference, save for not being pet so much. They still are primarily working animals. 

If you want to know what they sound like when startled, here you go. They scream like budgett's frogs which is hilarious.

Design wise I combined them with cave salamanders to give them a more fantasy flair and give them the traits needed for a mostly wet cavern. They can also secrete a mucus that makes them immune to acid if properly fed. 

I imagine that Hollow would love these and be a magnet for them and be covered in happy little frogs that scream if you try to remove them.

SOMEONE WAS MEAN TO HIS SONS GOD HELP THEM

I love my large wife ;v;

In the Hollow Knight universe my fiance is a tarantula :3

quick doodle of me and my gf’s hollow knight self insert oc things. I’ll see what she thinks so it may be subject to change. She’ll probably make her own art that I will adapt in but I just want to post stuff in order to keep my brain going and not succumb to my lack of current meds.

For this I made her a greenbottle blue tarantula. Very very beautiful tarantulas but can be very ‘spicy’ for new world tarantulas. I thought it would be a nice contrast between a bright cool colors and a earthy warm colors in terms of characters. I’m more ‘soft’ and she is willing to box with god if she has too. lol. Hence her nickname, ‘Snappy’. 

In universe she said she’d be a tiny pet frog breeder so I mixed frogs and blind cave salamanders/axolotls to make a more kinda ‘fantasy’ spin and make them something unique to the world. They exist as in universe cats and will eat pests that threaten egg clutches and food stores. It’s based on real world burrowing tarantulas letting tiny frogs stay in their burrows to protect themselves and their eggs from ants, and in return the tarantula protects the frog. 

YES, YES I WILL BE MAKING A POST ABOUT THE HALLOWNEST TINY FROGGO INDUSTRY. ITS TOO CUTE NOT TO.

Working on my hollow knight self insert/oc thing.

Mostly figuring out what a species with a fixed face/proboscis would eat in something like Hallownest. Most types of invertebrates have some sort of chewing or cutting mouthparts. Even spiders have something called chelicerae, which are sharp bumps between their fangs that pulp food so they can suck up the juices from their mouth parts. So we have various species like butterflies, moths, mosquitos, and some fly species that do not have chewing or movable mouthparts, but instead have rigid or flexible proboscis. So they'd mostly be confined to a liquid diet.

My sona is a beefly, a bug that primarily eat pollen and nectar (but as grubs they eat other bugs and are parasitic!) so I'm hashing out how she'd regularly eat and communicate. I figured it would just be easier to drink tea with a shitton of honey/sugar and maybe mix pollen in it? Or just blend everything up and slurp it up lol. Tongue is like a hummingbird tongue in that there are prongs that act as a fluid trap, allowing fluid to keep flowing without having to expend the energy trying to extract it. Of course this is a game about magic bugs and gods so you CAN give your moths and your butterflies actual mouthparts and just give them a big ol' long tongue to sippy sip. I just think beeflies are fucking adorable with their little beaks and I want to keep that :,3.