#gods it turned into a longpost rather quickly lol

[cardos-talking]

What inspired you to create Meech? He's an adorable lil dude. Do you have any other oddworld ocs or oddworld head canons?

Oh, thank you! Actually a lot of things inspired me to create Meech! Other people's ocs, some songs, Oddworld lore of course. In his first concepts he actually was a simple Necrum worker, who got lost in the mines and he looked like this:

Which is not really far from how he looks now. This was the only time I drew him and then he was just in my head until this year. He also had some story with the sanctum and mudokon spirits and the Keeper and he wanted to cut his stitches but I forgot all details of this story already lol. Now fast forward to 2024. I love mudokon shamans, they are weirdos and they just roll with it and do what they want mostly. I thought "I wish I had a shaman of my own.." and then I remembered Meech! I didn't wanted to redesign him much and mostly kept his looks but now the source of inspiration for him were oddworld shamans, such as Big Face and the Keeper, and also Mudomo and Mudanchee tribes, who worshipped wildlife. And music, again. Especially Das Feuerordal and Die Nelke from ROME, I love this band so much. Obviously, Meech worships meeches and he spent more time with them than he did with any of his few mudokon friends (if there were any) so his behavior sometimes strongly betrays this.

So, started as a Necrum slave, now he's just a grumpy old mud with a lot of shamanic rutuals in his head. Maybe his Necrum concept is his actual (and very distant) backstory? who knows... As for headcanons, I actually remember having only one... It's kinda hard to explain but it started with my wife, she thought that when I die ingame (I was streaming oddworld: soulstorm and NnT to her) Abe doesn't really die, he just turns into birds, comes back and keeps going again and again, like there's no reset for him. So now I choose to think that Abe is aware of his deaths and is kind of immortal but not in the best way.