In the first part of the story, there was a brief description, "(Reader).. witnessed a tall creature draped with beautiful deep blue robes.. it seemed over seven feet tall."
"It's face face was smooth, with large, opal colored eyes eyes in a hard shelled face. There was no nose, or lips, on its black and purple iridescent face."
Kirtch's exoskeleton is black with a purple sheen under direct light. I imagined him to be thin and regal, rarely slouching. Beautiful in an inhumanly possible way.
The design of Kamakiri’s face (the teeth) bothered me so I decided to make him more buggy
[Image description: A digital sketch Kamakiri. He has a bug-like appearance due to his mutation quirk. He’s rendered in a 3/4 view and side view, with a highly reduced jaw, the bottom of his face replaced by insectoid mouthparts and framed by his oversized blade-like mandibles. Soft, implied chitinous plates segment his pale green skin. He has bulging, pinkish mantis eyes and a fluffy mohawk-mullet. End description.]
I'm still kinda shocked that it even happened because I was just wandering in the woods, and it was just.. there? And then it just fluttered to me. Oh my goodness, I love insects. People should appreciate them more.. they're pretty.
B U G S !! THEY COMIN’. Update is Saturday at noon (MST/Boise). All bugs are up on my website for preview. There’s so many fun colors I can’t even pick a fave!
You know, what? I feel like I've developed a strange, strangely special something with cockroaches. They're endemic where I live, and they're hard to get rid of. The apartment building I used to live in was infested top to bottom with them. But even though they're so reviled, I kinda like them now. I largely stopped being afraid of them years ago. Plus there's a bit of spite there. People used to hate and fear me when I was very young, because of my chaotic temperament and screwed-up face from the effects of extreme nerve pain. Like the bugs, though, it never crossed my mind to intentionally disgust people. It was just a consequence of things that I couldn't help. Plus, that they're so hard to get rid of, so am I. I aspire to their level of collective staying power, a special kind of stubbornness.
I just think about the world too much from a non-anthropocentric point of view to be able to hate them as a moral stance. I still entirely understand the ick factor when it comes to insects and arthropods in general. It's still odd that their skeleton is on the outside, the opposite of us. They do look kinda creepy, but their biology is actually so fascinating. And I'm too curious about everything to let something like a social phobia hold me back.
So I've decided. If there are people dead set on hating me, I'll just be like cockroaches and you won't be able to get rid of me.
Also, fun fact from when I was in the sixth grade. It was the year with just a fuckton of cicadas out all at once. I've talked about growing up in the woods before. I was kinda weirded out at first, but also found them extremely fascinating. So after a short while, I started keeping a gallon sized ice cream bucket full of cicadas I'd collected around the property. On the porch. Mom didn't really like it, but I just kept on until either I was told to stop, or they went away. I don't remember that part. It did get me really interested in biology in the end, so I call it a win.