VERY very quick and messy, but this is Tantalus's parents pre and post spider-curse! till death do them part, or something.
minds get changed post-transformation in a similar way to bodies, which means a lot of new instincts to deal with. web-making, egg-laying, post-copulation cannibalism..... just normal spider things.
and the next generation of arachnids (who have never known being human) hatch from their eggs as dog-sized spiders. they go through several developmental stages: a swelling develops on their heads, which eventually moults off to reveal a child's torso, and from that point on they become more sapient.
before "puberty" there's nothing to distinguish a male from a female, but after their fifth moult, it's revealed! males have a blue-black colouration on their legs, whereas females are a rusty orange. the females also continue to grow, much more swiftly from that point on, until they're several times the size of their brothers.
the colour difference was based loosely on PamphobeteusĀ tarantulas, while the size difference is closer to black widows, so there's no one species that arachnids draw all their traits from.
one self-criticism! I do wish I'd made the final form more thoroughly 'fused', because right now it is just a grey human torso on a spider body, plus or minus a few eyes and mandibles.
I love how mutant and blended the hybrids of Bwusagi are, for instance! where it takes you a second to figure out what the fuck you're actually looking at, with the final impression being both "oh that's beautiful" and "oh that's horrific".
probably in a written format, these guys would be a lot harder to convey. it wouldn't have the same effect. but even still...... something to aspire to.
