hchom

[hchom]

I've been playing No Man's Sky lately, and as usual, half the game is running entirely in my head. This is my traveller (a little more about them here, if you're interested).

[hchom]

Hi! I was meaning to ask, if you are planning to create your Dragon age Decisions Template for Dragon Age The Veilguard as well?

UPDATE: @chichiricatsan has updated the template for Veilguard! You can find that here:

I did promise, didn't I!

Veilguard didn't fixate me like previous DA games did (this is my own fault for assuming it would when really there's no predicting what we'll be obsessed with, even within an established world or series) so I've been spending my very limited personal art time on other things. I will get around to it when I can, but in the meantime please consider these templates open source, and feel free to alter them or add to them as needed in order to make them work for DAV and your Rook.

[hchom]

hi, ive loved your art for years, especially your fantasy food art! i was wondering, do you sell prints?

Thank you so much! I don't currently sell prints, but a few people have asked so I'll make a point of looking into it this year. Please let me know if there are any particular images you'd like to see, and I'll also post this publicly in case anybody else has requests!

[hchom]

December things. I went on a box-making tear this year, so everyone gets a box. You can see descriptions and photos for each of these of these here, here and here.

[hchom]

An old drawing of young (hot blooded and cocky TM) Solas from right after Inquisition's release. I actually forgot that I drew this one alongside the other Evanuris (under the cut) - I think I didn't like it for some reason and therefore didn't post it with the rest - but I'm pleased to see that I wasn't too far off with the haircut.

[hchom]

I don't know anybody in real life who is obsessed with Dragon Age on the same scale as I am, but I have some friends who get it in general, and on October 30th I'm going to lure them over to my house with the above feast, and make them toast me like I'm heading off to battle at dawn.

Full descriptions of the dishes are on my Patreon (no paywall, accessible to all), but highlights include this stuffed, grey, corpse-ish pumpkin, which I am calling “Ghilan’nain’s Cauldron”, pickled eggs (mostly sorry, but slightly not sorry), and a pavlova with pomegranate and poached pears, which I have named “The Emprise du Lion".

[hchom]

Brosca, Hawke, and Lavellan from my completed Regret world state.

Templates: DA:O | DA:2 | DA:I

[hchom]

I was tagged by @deedala (shoutout to the old BSN) for birthday themed questions <3

And since there's some overlapping relevance, here's my birthday want list from a few months ago, which just happens to contain a little bit of DA fanart (all my dragon age wishes were indeed granted, thank you very kindly).

When is yours? June 15th

Where were you born? Vancouver, Canada

How do you feel about your legal name? Are you using it online and/or IRL? I’m fine with my name – and I definitely use it online. I don't think it's ideal, but I’ve never come up with a handle that I like enough to stick with.

How about your sign? Do you feel it "fits"? No, although my main associations come from people in high school reading me my horoscope out of Seventeen magazine, and it being something along the lines of, “girl, you’ve got the gift of the gab! You’re the life of every party!” Thank you, Seventeen, but wrong on all counts.

What's your earliest memory related to your birthday? My parents hosted a birthday party for me when I was maybe four or five years old, and as soon as the cake emerged and everyone started singing “Happy Birthday”, I buried my head under my arms and refused to come out. And when you think about it, having a bunch of people all staring at you and smiling and singing your name in unison IS, actually, very strange and uncomfortable...

What's one of the best gifts you've ever received? Every shiny that anyone has ever sent or given to me!

How about one of the best you've given yourself? I think that an excellent gift blueprint involves choosing a book that you like (and which you think the receiver might also like), and then collecting a few treats that might pair well with it and turning it all into a small care package. Example selection: your favourite fantasy book plus a box/batch of cookies plus a package of nice tea or coffee plus a stubby beeswax candle plus a random treasure object (nice stone or little animal figurine or dried flower, etc.) And in case I misinterpreted the question, I think it also works well as a gift to yourself. (I made a Patreon post that expanded on this a while back, so I'll link it here, too.)

What's your favourite cake flavour? Dark fruit cake! 2kg of raisins drowned and left to rot in sin.

How about your favourite flowers? All the common weedy wildflowers in my area, like yarrow and foxgloves. I also I stop to smell every rose I see. Personal best practice.

Have your ever thrown a birthday party? If yes, tell us about your favourite one. No, and I pity anyone whose birthday pleasures rely on my party-throwing skills.

What's the ultimate birthday song? I’ll say “Come Undone” by Duran Duran, because “happy birthday to you” is in the opening few lines (and also because I love this song). Beyond that, I’m drawing a blank.

And last but not least, pick a celebrity with whom you share your birthday. Ice Cube!

I'm scared to tag anybody I don't know well, so with zero pressure: @klovharun and @unstablemable, who can at least tell me no in person.

[hchom]

My beloved inquisitor, Avriel, now enjoying my "Regret" world-state.

[hchom]

I'm boiling inside my own flesh after that trailer, so please accept this old, maybe objectively too creepy Cole drawing while I find time for new DA art. I can claim that it has a Haloween vibe, at least...

The reason it's so weird, by the way, is because I drew it using the poem "Wodwo" by Ted Hughes as a prompt. My bff @klovharun gave me the whole poetry book at the height of my DAI obsession because she thought "Gog" had Solas vibes; and it occurs to me right now that this has to be one of the best examples of friendship ever. Not just "I was thinking of you", but one step further, "I was thinking of your all-consuming fixation". She also made a Solas breakup playlist for me, which I still listen to. That is love!

Poems below for anyone who might like them.

Wodwo

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over

Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge

I enter water. Who am I to split

The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed

Of the river above me upside down very clear

What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find

this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret

interior and make it my own? Do these weeds

know me and name me to each other have they

seen me before do I fit in their world? I seem

separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped

out of nothing casually I've no threads

fastening me to anything I can go anywhere

I seem to have been given the freedom

of this place what am I then? And picking

bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me

no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it

me and doing that have coincided very queerly

But what shall I be called am I the first

have I an owner what shape am I what

shape am I am I huge if I go

to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees

till I get tired that's touching one wall of me

for the moment if I sit still how everything

stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre

but there's all this what is it roots

roots roots roots and here's the water

again very queer but I'll go on looking

Gog I

I woke to a shout: 'I am Alpha and Omega!'

Rocks and a few trees trembled

Deep in their own country.

I ran and an absence bounded beside me.

The dog's god is a scrap dropped from the table,

The mouse's savior is a ripe wheat grain—

Hearing the Messiah cry

My mouth widens in adoration.

How fat are the lichens!

They cushion themselves on the silence.

The air wants for nothing.

The dust, too, is replete.

What was my error? My skull has sealed it out.

My great bones are massed in me.

They beat on the earth, my song excites them.

I do not look at the rocks and stones, I am frightened of what they see.

I listen to the song jarring my mouth

Where the skull-rooted teeth are in possession.

I am massive on earth. My feetbones beat on the earth

Over the sound of motherly weeping....

Afterwards, I drink at a pool quietly,

The horizons bear the rocks and trees away into twilight.

I lie down, I become darkness—

Darkness that all night sings and circles stamping.

-Ted Hughes

[hchom]

Marin Hawke for my pre-Veilguard run (if I leave out the second "a", then it's not weird).

And continuing with our theme, here's an interesting little snippet on regret from Flemeth at Sundermount:

[hchom]

This is Alvo, my new canon warden in preparation for Veilguard. My RP aim for this run-through is to lean as hard as I can into the Regret theme, which (no surprise to anyone, I'm sure) makes for a rich and delicious read of all three games.

[hchom]

Davrin and Assan <3 <3

[hchom]

More on pastry crumbs, because The Lighthouse is already a fully live space in my head.

So as a recovered(ish) hermit, my experience is that keeping myself in isolation is the ultimate way to feel as if my life is under control. If everything within my space, literal and figurative, is kept just so, untouched by anyone other than myself, then nothing can hurt me, nothing can go wrong, etc. And that kind of certainty is really hard to give up, even if I rationally know it's false. I become reliant on it. It’s invisible to me. It’s like a fairy tale spell: it won’t break unless another being is willing to pass the overgrown barrier, and that intervention always feels initially intolerable and invasive, like I’m the evil witch who cast the curse and the sleeping victim, both.

Now, acknowledging that I’m projecting with all my might, here, I read Solas as somebody who is functioning within a similar system. I imagine he keeps his space very neat. He’s an artist, and his eyes (and his other senses, for that matter) want to rest on a beautiful, harmonious environment. All well and good, but if he’s anything like me, he also needs (whether he knows it or not) somebody to come over and cook fragrant foods in his kitchen, and leave their stuff on his couch, and disturb the dust of his existence just in general.

Can't wait to leave pastry crumbs on all his furniture.

[hchom]

I went through all my green rocks in an attempt to guess what Taash's horn might be made from. I didn't come to any strong conclusions (and it's probably a fantasy gem in any case), but I did get distracted and take a short video of my giant flourite, which you can see below the cut...

[hchom]

Can't wait to leave pastry crumbs on all his furniture.

[hchom]

I'm starting to think about potential Rooks. My default is always some kind of burly, androgynous elf (of course), but I do think it might be interesting to explore the possible relationship between Solas and a non-elf, non-mage Rook. If he has a chance to see himself in that character, I kind of want them to be somebody he might believe he has nothing in common with, who would be negatively affected by the veil coming down, who provides an interesting foil for my inquisitor, etc.

(Sorry for the image quality. I'm away from my scanner for another week, so this was photographed with my 8 year old phone.)