#am I trying to distract myself from the fact that my preordered New Pokémon Snap didn't arrive on time?

[hitodama89]

I found a bunch of neat questions meant for Esk characters/community from dA (/originally from Discord) and decided to fill in some of them, skipping the ones I wouldn't have any interesting answers for. I'm sorry in advance if the read more -cut doesn't work, because this will be a loooong one!

“For your esk who in some way or another form words, how do you hear their voice? Accents, age, speaking mannerisms?”

Weary's voice is slow, low and masculine, Elsie's somewhat high, girly and uncertain, Song's happy, chirpy and androgynous in childlike manner, Curse's raspy, hissy and something you could imagine hearing in a bad horror movie, Poe's fast-paced and androgynous until he gets nervous and his pitch starts to rise fast, Nessie's so incredibly low that the voice is more felt rather than heard.

“Is there a particular song (or something related) that you associate with your esk?”

I'm bad at finding fitting songs for my characters, but there are a couple ones:

Elsie: Running by Kállay-Saunders and Fireflies by Technicolour

Song: pretty much every song that sounds anything like these

“What do your esks think of strangers entering their domain?”

Weary follows them warily from a distance, Elsie is afraid of them, Song tries to make friends with them, Curse tries to scare them away or even harm them, Poe wants to interact with them but often is too timid to do so, Nessie doesn't care or is amused by them.

“One of the things mentioned on the guide is that esks tend to have a habitual way of affecting their environment. How do your esks shape, influence, or damage the world around them?”

Weary has tried to keep its environment clean (in the expense of its own wellbeing), Elsie makes things like rock arrangements around her haunt pond, Song collects trinkets to their home, Curse protects all felines in its territory, Poe makes notes like arrows and symbols in the ground, Nessie has inspired a lot of legends among the humans that live close by.

“Gender is largely not something an esk thinks about a lot or has to worry about in their daily life, but if your esk has any opinions on how they present/gender views how do they feel about it, and would they be accepting of any revelations time might bring?”

All of my Esk could be called agender, but some of them are that more firmly than others. Poe and Elsie are the only ones who feel drawn to the concept of genders enough to use gendered pronouns, but even they wouldn't really straight-out call themselves male or female; the pronouns are more like a remnant of their past lives that they don't want to let go of. Then there's Weary, who seems pretty masculine by its appearance, voice and demeanor, but its conscious mind doesn't care about such matters at all. (But maybe in some level it does associate itself with masculinity, as I'd assume Esk's mind does affect the form they take when they are transformed.) And the rest of the gang, Song, Curse and Nessie, are completely agender in every way. Gender has never been important to any of them and likely never will.

(As a side note: the reason why all of them are more or less agender is because I myself don't understand genders all that well and I find the idea of gender not really mattering for eternal ghosts pretty comforting.)

“Who are your Esk's friends, why do they hang out with them/ Where? Why are they important to that characters development”

All of my Esk are tangled into each others' lives in some ways. Elsie was tranformed by Weary and their lives have since gone very much hand in hand. Song and Poe were both transformed by Nessie and all of them are friends with each other, even if they don't hang out with each other all the time. Curse is the only one who is still somewhat of an outlier, but even it is already aquinted with Poe so I'm sure it'll get to hang around with the rest of the gang eventually (even if it likely doesn't want to, hahah).

I've tried to build relationships to other people's Esk as well, but so far those haven't gone further than one or two pictures of them hanging with each other. I know it's mostly because I'm intimidated by the group's Discord and don't hang around there plotting stuff together with people, but what can I do.

“What if your esk suddenly reverted back to their original form? How would they feel? How would it affect their surroundings? What would they do? Do they blend in with the current period, or is there a woolly mammoth in town square now”

Oof, that would be a bit nasty experience for most of them! Nessie as a Plesiosaurus would be the only one outwardly completely out of place, but none of the others would be having good time either. Curse would hate being just a regular small cat again, without powers to torment those who it bears grudge towards. Weary and Poe could technically continue living their lives as humans, as they were both adults when they were transformed, but Song and Elsie were just kids during that so blending in to society would be likely pretty difficult for them, as they wouldn't be able to live on their own just like that.

“If your esk was a human, what time period did they live in and how did this effect their design? Are they strong? Cowardly?”

Out of all of my Esk Weary, Elsie, Song and Poe were humans before their transformations. Amusingly oldest of them is Song who went missing during 1940s. After that comes Poe, transformed in 1970s, then Weary who became Esk somewhere around 2010 or so and finally Elsie, who canonically has been an Esk for a year or two by now. I don't feel like the time periods really affected the designs of their Esk forms, as I've mostly created their Esk designs first and only then built their characteristics around that.

“Does your esk have a unique communication tic, verbal or otherwise? Must they begin or end all their sentences with specific words or phrases, or is the mental imagery they project always tinted with something or features something unnatural?”

I'm not really sure what counts as a "tic" in this sense, but they all definitely have their quirks. Weary doesn't really see Esk as living creatures and talks about all of them as "it", Elsie stutters easily by repeating letters and syllables, Song tends to have difficulty separating facts from fiction and telling completely made-up stories as if they had happened to them for real, Poe rambles a lot and stutters by repeating whole words, Curse stretches S-letters like it was hissing and Nessie mostly communicates by sharing visions and feelings through telepathy instead of words.

“Why does your esk look the way they do? do they resemble their past species? does something in their manifestation reflect their state of mind, or ironically contrast with it? is their nature feature significant to their story? did they go through form changes and if so, why?”

The meta answer of course is that they all look they way they do because that's what I wanted, hahah. But all of their appearances do have some correlations with their stories, too: Weary was climbing to a mangrove tree in order to escape from a crocodile that attacked it before it got transformed. Elsie's link is more mental than physical: she was a scrawny kid stuck in a devastating home situation and she spent a lot of time dreaming of the day she'd be a gorgeous adult woman who would have the power to leave all of that behind, so she turned into a graceful, lithe Esk. Song's father was a sponge diver and human-Song was looking for the sponges that had been killed by a deadly algae bloom when they got lost. The white spots on Curse are the same ones that got burned by mean kids when it was still a helpless cat. Poe got his heart broken by his friends so as an Esk he manifested an Enchantment called Guarded heart. Nessie was, well, a Plesiosaurus.

“What are your esks relationships and/or opinions of the wanderers of their biomes?”

Weary is intriqued by Seventh, Elsie fears Seventh like crazy, Nessie is good friends with Makoa. Rest of them don't know much if anything about their respective Wanderers.

“How do your Esk relate to their familiars and what made them manifest in the first place?”

I haven't mostly given much reasons for why my Esk sometimes manifest new features; it's just something that happens over time. For Elsie her fireflies are with her almost all the time and she tends to feel really lonely without them. (Btw I draw them usually as just simple glowy dots, but I always put at least some thought into their placement and what they are actually doing in the picture!) On the other hand the betta fish she only manifests in her Haunt is more like a pet to her rather than an extension of her own spirit and she likes to spent time watching it do its fishy things. Song doesn't really think of their sponges as anything more or less than what they are: immobile simple creatures that are part of the Esk, much like their nature features. Then there's Curse and its ghostly cats. They are very strictly under Curses (uncoscious?) command, going to places where the Esk wants to go and tormenting those it wishes to harm.

“What object from your esks past resonates with them the most? Up to date what object do they now have a connection with? Does it have a connection to the past, present, or future?”

Quite morbidly the only keepsakes from Weary's past it has kept around are its own human bones that lie in the heart of its Haunt. Elsie on the other hand incorporated the feathers that were attached to her backback into her Esk form, so they must've been quite special to her. (In the process the feathers of course turned from physical ones to incorporeal.) Song doesn't have any items from their past life, but unlike my other Esk they have gathered a ton of trinkets during their adventures as an Esk and they treasure them all dearly. Poe's dearest possession is a notebook he got during a mysterious quest: he is sure it's connected to his past somehow, but he hasn't yet figured out how exactly. Curse and Nessie don't really have important items, worldly or otherwise.

“When your picking an esk's boundary and biome do what makes you drawn to that location? Do you like spreading your esks around the globe? keeping them close to home? Or putting them in one area so they can interact?”

All of my Esk (except Nessie who is an Abnormal and can move around freely) live in Everglades because I want them to be able to interact with each other naturally. I don't really remember why I originally settled on Everglades specifically: Weary's, my starter Esk's, boundary is mangrove swamp, but I of course could've picked a different swamp or even an imaginary one if I would've wanted to. I guess it was just the easiest to settle on a real-life location because I'd need to be googling a lot of stuff related to the vegetation and such of the habitat anyway, and maybe Everglades was the first mangrove swamp I could remember by name from the top of my head? I have never been in Everglades as I don't live even in the USA, but amusingly I've learned enough about it that I once even recognized its shoreline from a map I encountered randomly on the internet.

“Whats the meaning behind your esk(s) name? Do they have any nicknames or things that were called behind their back? when naming your esks do you stick to human names or things in nature? How did your esk find their name?”

All of my Esk have longer full names and a shorter nicknames that I mainly use while talking about them out of convenience. Weary's full name is The Weary Eyed One. It's just a descriptor that other Esk have used when talking about it for long enough to be turned into an actual name, but canonically Weary can also introduce itself as Tired or Sleepy or anything along those lines; it doesn't really feel the need to settle on any one real, permanent name. Elsie's name is Someone Else and it was made up by Weary after it had transformed her. Elsie doesn't actually like the name but she adores Weary too much to say it out loud, but when encountering new Esk without Weary's presence she tends to call herself just Elsie, as it sounds more like a human name to her. Song of the Abyss named themselves after deciding to dedicate their afterlife to exploring all the corners of the world's oceans. It also tells something about their relationship with life and environment, as when they say that they are "a song" they mean it literally: they aren't a singer, but the actual voice of the ocean, in a way part of the ocean itself. (I have never been able to put into words what I mean by this an a truly satisfactory way...) Curse's full name is Cat's Curse and it was given to the urban legends inspired by its haunting by humans. Poe's name Just Poe comes from his habit of introducing himself humbly as "just Poe"; irl it comes from the fact that I had trouble figuring out a full name for him and I asked in my mind if "I could really call him just Poe?" And then there's Xilladenanessfeali, whose name is supposed to evoke the feeling of language being something very different back in the day millions of years ago when they were named.

The names of my Esk tend to be quite wild because I find the idea of naming them with human-like names extremely boring; intead I wanted the names to hint at how different an Esk's existence and sense of self must be compared to that of humans or animals.

“What do you imagine would have happened to your esk if they were never transformed?”

(First of all a depressive text warning; in all of my Esk stories getting transformed was a salvation for them, so their lives without it would've been pretty miserable.) Weary woud've died either from the crocodile bite or the unnamed illness they had pretty soon. Elsie would've lived to become a timid, depressed adult who would've wasted her life away by not having the courage to shape her life into what she would've truly wanted. Song would've likely drowned, but if they had drifted to shore in time instead they would've been eventually returned to home and continued their life pretty peacefully albeit, sadly for them, away from ocean. Curse would've died slowly from the burn wounds it had sufffered. Poe would've either ended his own life (that was his plan) or lived on to become a "suffering artist" who never had much money or security in his life but at least lived doing what he loved. Nessie would've soon died piecefully of old age.

“What are your esks thoughts on transforming or retransforming? Blessing? Curse? Creative endeavor? Instinct?”

For Weary and Nessie it has been a mix of an instinct and doing what feels right for them. For Elsie it seems like a scarily huge responsibility that she isn't ready for yet. Other's haven't yet have a need to ponder on the subject that deeply.

“do your esks time travel? if so where do they go and what to they spend their time doing? do they do transformations in the past or would they rather not? When visiting the past have your esk ever thought about trying to see their past self's?”

Honestly I haven't have them do any time traveling (aside from that one quest) because that proposes so many questions I haven't yet been able to answer in my mind thoroughly enough. =') Like what are the actual rules I'd follow, where to draw the line in some difficult subjects and how the heck to even keep track of it all! For example what exactly prevents them from going to meet themselves in the past and what can and cannot they affect. Like... What if Elsie decided to go into the past and turn her abusive father into an Esk when she herself was just a baby - how the heck would all that work?!

“If your esk's boundary overlaps multiple biomes, what was the reason your esk resonated with one biome over the other?”

The reason is, a little bit boringly, that I've mainly used the biomes I myself am most drawn towards. Weary, Elsie, Song and Nessie are all in water-related biomes while Curse is in Developed and Poe is in Plains. Poe came with a pre-determined boundary which mostly dictated where he was going to be in, while with Curse the other option would've likely been Forest and I just feel like a feral cat belongs more to the Developed environment.

“How does your esk interact with rain/weather? Does it pass through them? Do they let it get them wet? Does it create steam on contact?”

I have drawn them being physically affected by weather because that's more visually fun than having the rain and stuff go through them. Which actually gave me a really neat art idea just now, hmmh...

“What is your esk filled with, internally?”

I am not sure. They do not have internal organs, that's for sure, but other than that I haven't completely made up my mind about that. The roots of Weary's trees as well as part of its transformation crystals do go inside the Esk's body, but other than that it's either empiness, maybe black goo or something completely else. I've also made a point to never draw my Esk crying tears, because I feel like them secreting such substances would hint at them just having normal internal organs which they in my mind do not have.

“How do you like to write about/picture esk transformations in your mind?”

Outwardly I think it looks like the transformee is shining a bright light until their body has either been shaped into a new form or their soul has been sucked out of the body and turned into an Esk (which one happens depends on who is doing the transformation). Although I don't think I have ever illustrated this? All of the transformation art I've done has depicted more of how the transofrmation has felt rather than the physical appearance of it.

“who was your nursery esk and why did you choose their ID? For those who didnt get a nursery esk, who was your first esk and why did you choose to acquire them/what do you like about them?”

Weary my beloved! <3 Back then there were much more people interested in getting their first Esk than there ever were available nursery IDs, so you couldn't really think too much about what ID you were going to grab. Which is why I still to this day don't understand how I managed to get an Esk so fitting for myself! Weary was (and is) everything I ever wanted from my first Esk!

“What is your single, favorite Witherings Esk of all time if you had to pick only one, and why that Esk in particular?”

I have a huge soft spot for the Original Esk, I adore Seventh so much and I of course love Poe to bits, but aside from those here's my top 4 in a numerical order because I can't place any of them above each other:

177 208 507 742

I can't really tell why I like them so much; it's just about that very subjective sense of beauty I guess.

“hey guys what’s your favorite masterlist number of the esk you own?”

I love most of them, but Song's 1101 must be my favorite. That's just such a nice looking number!

“Who wants to share their early twwm experience? Whether it's when you joined or how you learned about it or someone nice you met right off or the first esk you ever saw!”

Hoo boy, me and Esk go way back! I even made a quick reference doodle of the Original Esk like 10 years before the times of the ARPG. (Back then I used to always make them before drawing the creatures traditionally, although I don't think I ever actually drew anything else featuring the Esk in the end.) To the actual group I managed to somehow find my way into when it was still in beta and I joined pretty much instantly, which is very much out of character for me. I just loved the species so dang much! And I still do of course.

“whats everyones favorite morph?”

It's a tie between Ocean and Seafloor morphs.

“What are some TWWM works that blew you away and challenged your notions of what art made about funny little plant ghosts can do?”

All the video games, interactive stories, music videos and longer animations! Those are always just so awe-inspiring and they make that imaginary world seem so incredibly alive!