#gall week

In honor of gall week I wanted to talk about my bug #mybug Quirk, because I guess I only post art on here and have never actually talked about them, and everyone seems really excited about galls right now (yay!).

Quirk is an esk from the Those Who Went Missing art RPG--essentially a being that got lost and then was transformed into a ghost creature with ties to its natural environment.

Quirk was Amphibolips quercuspomiformis, a live oak apple gall wasp. These wasps gall coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) among a few others, and have two alternating generations. The summer generation is all-female and parthenogenic, and are where their common name comes from as they are large and round. The spring generation makes the gall you see above, almost mushroom shaped.

A wind storm blew Quirk away from the coast live oak she emerged from, and out into a broad savanna populated mostly by blue oaks (Quercus douglasii). Gall wasps tend to be somewhat particular about their hosts, and cannot induce galls on just any tree or even any oak. These blue oaks were unsuitable habitat for the little wasp.

Another esk found the little wasp in distress, and transformed it into the Quirk we see today. It was fused with the blue oaks in its new environment and manifested its own community of gall wasp familiars suitable to blue oak to adorn its leaves.

I made Quirk as a bit of a love letter to my home and the little creatures who live in it. It's filled with curiosity and wonder and a desire to explore, and particularly has an interest in insects and other bugs. Being so small means the world is infinitely large and full of things to discover; this is how I feel about the realm of bugs, where the world is full of a dizzying amount of life carving out existence in every available space.

It's about the closest thing I have to a 'sona at the moment; every time the subject of esksonas comes up in the community and I consider what traits my own would have I end up with something very like Quirk. It's very easy to copy/paste any of the things I love about where I live into Quirk's life as an avenue for exploring and doting on it.