Elly is not an "avatar just created to have sex with Zoro" like I'm pretty sure some folks are thinking when they see these pages (as well as the fanfiction page). She's actually a fully-fledged character with her own background and seperate comic/story on my professional art website air-lobster.com.

It's seriously non-canon for her to be with Zoro since she's really with someone named "Wasabi". But I fangirl for fun, roleplay with my husband and goof off with friends. My husband's more like Zoro than Sabi, so we're always seen together in that wise rather than him portraying the real character Els is paired with! She sometimes gets confused with an espeon (for fanworks she sometimes gets changed into one). But she is not that either, and has always been "her own animal".

Elly Roronoa Sketchit is what is known as a nekomata in Japan. It was believed that after a cat grew to be a decade old, it would develop profound magical powers, typically exhibited by either a tail split halfway down or even splicing into two seperate tails. By gesturing with this tail, a nekomata can animate and control the dead to do their bidding and other various types of magic. Elly is a talented demon cat. She can turn human, anthro, quad, and kemonomimi. She usually has spiky purple hair with two forelocks that hang down in front of her ears, giving her an elf-like appearance sometimes.

It's a joke that she looks like an espeon from Pocket Monsters, and she does get drawn as one in fanart sometimes. Els even likes Pokemon, so the joke goes even farther. But the nekomata is an actual Japanese mythological creature. The Pocket Monster franchise drew their character to look like a nekomata. Not the other way around. Els has different ears, different forms and a lighter shade on her belly and tailtips (not to mention she has hair).

She learned the hard way not to show people what she is. Elly was born a long, long time ago in Japan when people believed Gods, Demons and Spirits roamed the earth. She was taken care of by a well-to-do family who were lower-class nobles. She lived to nine years old and on the eve of her tenth birthday the family threw her out, fearing what she might become. Sad and completely confused, she stayed where she was until a pack of dogs chased her into the streets of the town nearby. She would have been killed if a larger dog had not suddenly charged out a side street and chased the others off. This dog turned to her and all she heard an echo of laughter, tinged with bitterness. It turns out the Gods were hanging around with mortals. The strange red dog was Loki, taking a cruise around Japan for a change. He found it enormously amusing (and ironic) to change her into the creature her former family had feared so much. He gave her the form and powers associated with the nekomata - the ability to control the "dead" with a wave of her tail. She could also now change form to several different variations, including one so human she was able to walk around undetected in the streets.

Els is older than she looks when she's human and has a sarcastic sense of humor. She's around 5' 5" and is kind of chubby sometimes for her height when she's human (her furry form is bulkier and the mass doesn't go away when she's human, it just gets redistributed). This generates into a something rarely seen nowadays: a well-rounded woman, not a Barbie figure. It doesn't help that she loves to eat and drink - she has a tendency to look much fatter than the average "anime" chick.