The Mother Tree Sings

Yet another Ender related piece

The Hive Queen

"You wanted to see her."

This is based on a scene from.... Xenocide...I think. Xenocide is the third Ender's Game novel. In it, practically the first thing that Valentine does when she reunites with Ender is to go meet the ressurrected Bugger Queen. When they first see her, she's killing her own workers to feed new larva queens. It's an awesome scene but I'm not going to spoil why. This is pretty much what I saw in my head when I read the book. (Maybe a little redder.)

The novels never really went in to too much detail, but a couple of things forced me to totally rethink my interpretation of the buggers.

The toughest thing was the rainbow reflection on the slime covering the wings, and to give her the disgusting majesty described in the book.

Bugger

So, for the first time since high school I read through Ender's Game during spring break. It was my treat to myself this christmas break and while it is fresh in my head, I decided to make some images. Mainly because I don't see much Ender's Game art here on dA, or at least Ender's Game art that I like.

I love that book, and don't read it as often as I should. I remember when I first read the book in like the mid to late 90s I was all like "FUCK YEA!" at one point, and then by the end that moment is retrospectively depressing and every subsequent read through I've always "baaaaaw'd" at that moment.

Poor buggers. This image is an approximation of what I imagine the average bugger looks like. I'm tempted to draw a queen. Only in making it do I realize I make them look alot like shadows from babylon 5.