Art By Philippe “Manchu” Bouchet‬

Glass and Sprocket doodles! Been thinking about these two as a duo a lot lately. So much time spent together, wandering the desert, scavenging the sands...

Some context for the first little sketch (harmonized humming): the glass bots communicate exclusively via different pitched hums. The range of these goes outside of what humans can perceive, so for the most part, Glass communicates with Sprocket and others through sign language. But Glass has also been teaching him what ey can of eir own language. (which ey VERY much enjoys, and in return Sprocket has been teaching em a kind of morse code language he knows. which again ey very much enjoys.)

And the way Sprocket's sensors work means he doesn't pick up a lot of external stimuli, but he is more sensitive to vibration and larger impacts that can make their way through. So this has become a way of showing affection for them!! Glass can express eirself in a way that feels natural, and Sprocket can pick up on and try to reciprocate these sensations that are one of the few things he can actually feel.

The bottom right sketch is titled "One robot teaches another how to be human" The piece of text next to the more complicated part gives a description of what it is and how commonly it's found, while the bottom part with the toaster simply reads "I have no idea."

Taglist: @glacierruler

if you're trying to get into the head of your story's antagonist, try writing an "Am I the Asshole" reddit post from their perspective, explaining their problems and their plans for solving them. Let the voice and logic come through.

Flight of the Starmoth Digital artwork by me, 2023

Intro!

Hey I'm Duck! (it's a nickname) I use they/them and ey/em pronouns, no preference but it does make me happy when people use the neos. I'm a big fan of all things sci-fi, surrealism, western, and supernatural. My biggest passion is writing, but I also like to draw, paint, and embroider!

This is my art/writing/oc/kinda just generally creative side-projects blog, stuff I feel like keeping separate from my main. If you do want to follow my main, it's @duck-in-a-spaceship (i have a theme going). I mostly post fandom stuff over there, but also just whatever else I feel like.

My main project right now is a worldbuilding thing called Deslotair! Just wrapped up the main character introductions

This will get more link-filled as we go on and I want to compile things, but right now it's gonna be pretty empty!

Tags~

#reblog for reblogs

#planet deslotair for that project

Trigger warning will be tagged with "tw ___" I'll cover the obvious ones, but let me know if you need something tagged!

First Drop

On Deslotair, the storm cycle breaks every three years, clearing the skies for off-world ships to make a rare visit to the planet. But for every ship that can make the landing, another falls to the unfamiliar conditions and dust-laden atmosphere. Scavengers watch the ships as they crash, ready to strip them to the hulls for all their worth.

Taglist: @glacierruler

I was scrolling through your blog and saw a yellow themed ask game. Are you still taking questions for that?

Yeah go for it! I don't really consider ask games to have an expiration date, as long as I remember what you're talking about lol

“Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.”

Emily Henry, Book Lovers

"She's a walking fucking warning is what she is. Something you can tell your kids about so they don't go fucking with the transport vehicles, so they stay away from the facilities. I mean, she should have died, but I guess this makes a better story, huh?"

Desmona (she/her), the outcast turning to the desert to survive.

Info:

Was the third to join the group, initially it was just her, Sprocket, and Glass

Used to live in a mining town where they were drilling the liquid, magical energy substance that sits mostly under the surface of the planet

During an accident where one of the vehicles transporting this substance crashed, spilling out its contents, Desmona came in contact with a high amount of it

Instead of killing her, as it most certainly should have, it became a part of her

The energy is wild, impossible to control. It bursts out of her randomly and destructively, and she was driven out of her town as a result

Sprocket and Glass found her not long after

Glass is immune to the magical energy she can't help but wield, and Sprocket is somewhat resistant towards it

She latched onto them quickly because of that, glad to be around people she couldn't hurt

Sprocket and Glass eventually made the armor that can help contain the magic

Desmona is fairly withdrawn, especially around new people

When the group needs to travel into towns, she usually keeps to herself

She knows her mask makes her look somewhat strange and off-putting, and she's VERY happy to lean into that

She's very sweet though, despite all that

She gets along well with both Sprocket and Glass, but she's especially close to Glass

Since Glass is very curious about humans and different cultures and food and languages, Desmona is happy to teach em what she knows. She picks up on sign language pretty fast so they can talk without having to go through Sprocket.

They do a lot of cooking together

She also learns how to wield a spear from Glass

Desmona is very much a pacifist, but she knows it's important to protect herself, and it feels good to be able to do that in a way she can control

She doesn't want to hurt anyone, and hates the fact that now it feels like some kind of default state for her

Gonna be doing nanowrimo this year! If anyone wants to be buddies drop me an invite I'm collecting as many little writer friends as possible.

nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo

Some covers of my nano project I threw together in canva! Thought it would be fun to try and get a rough idea for some of the visual language and ideas that might make their way onto an actual Raven's Rock cover, and then the newspaper one was mostly just for fun. Although I do like the idea of eventually getting something more landscape-y, like in that first pic.

Summary:

Raven's Rock is a small mining town in the Barren. It's strange, and quiet, and kind, and the people there lead strange, quiet, kind lives.

Then, they dig too deep, they strike something new, and days later their mines explode. The people of Raven's Rock no longer know quiet and kind, it is all strange and stranger.

Emanuel Rye is the sheriff of Raven's Rock. He listens to the wind like it has something to say, and he'll fix his town or die trying.

Ramona buried her sister yesterday, and she spends her free time sitting over a haunted grave. She's going to fix things, and she'll break this town trying.