Unwillingly

I used the theme of moths around my Moliana character a lot due to how selfish and ambitious she was, driven to pursue her desires even if it was extremely unhealthy and detrimental for her.  Since I wanted her to be a gothic character, I pursued a tragic story fitting to a lot of gothic literature that I studied in high school.

For Ilaria, there is association with the sea and her philosophy with Shorewalking.  Haunted oceans have always been an interesting concept to me, deep sea horrors are rather ethereal and mysterious despite it all being from our own world.  It's a great reference to the unknown and considering different viewpoints and perspectives to look at our own world, which Ilaria often preaches for people to do with existence and the influence of aengudaemons.  Given she was born seeing ghosts and teeters on the line of living and dead energies, I feel like I've done a good job in RPing her as ethereal and kooky without out right saying it (given other people have described her as those things often)

Ilaria's visual design is actually something I'm really happy with since it's taken a while to figure out, but now it just feels right :D perfect mix of ethereal elf and gothic, unsociable creature

Rezalisa is still a wip for me in establishing strong symbolism, I've only just recently figured out her visual design and feel happy/confident with it

light facial hair or powerful facial hair

With Deia's initial design, which is still pretty accurate to her current, I went for specific shapes and a silhouette that would make her unique and recognizable at a glance in art. A lot of the motifs that I keep for her are based on various iterations of Snow White, relating back to her heritage and her place in the world mentally (sort of a dark fairytale simplification, that is) with a sort of intentional naivete. In a lot of my drawings, even if it doesn't necessarily fit the style, I'll add things like vertical lines for blush that give a storybook aesthetic. Rosy cheeks lower on the face, wider hoop-like skirts, a rounded hairstyle and a bow on the top of her head are my checklist, and I find that she gives off a very different vibe if even one of those things is missing.