Title: Watch as I thrash our enemies with the mighty power of floral arrangements! Feel my thorns, darkspawn, I will overpower you with my rosy scent!
Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins
Rating: G

You all saw this coming, right?



( Or... it could just be a rose. )

I have an aversion to some fandoms-- not because of the people in them or anything to do with the fandom itself, but because I feel that expanding on what already exists disturbs the sanctity of the source material for me.

It's odd because I obviously don't feel this way about all fandoms, only some; I've been trying to determine what exactly it is that makes it feel this way and I think I arrived on an answer.

Basically, games wherein the protagonist is an avatar of the player will instill an aversion to the fandom for me. The reason why is fairly simple: Mary Sue. The game places the player in an integrative situation, which is a great thing, not a bad one... but when it comes to fanfiction and fanart that involves the PC, it's 120% shameless self-insertion. And there's nothing actually wrong with that, it's just something that I like to avoid in fandom I guess, because it feels like an invasion of privacy: especially when I read someone else's smutty first-person PC POV fanfic (wow, uncomfortable!).

I'm still willing to draw for it (uh, obviously, see above) but any fanstuff that incorporates someone's PC just grosses? weirds me out bigtime. It's like a big long awkward moment. The exception in this particular case might be art utilizing the "canon" (term used so loosely it's almost inappropriate) main character in the cinematic trailers.

So I still like to contribute fanart, I just avoid drawing and looking at certain things.

I guess the other thing is... when a game has fully developed characters and a rich story that integrates the player completely, I like to stick to what's there instead of making up / searching for new stuff. Maybe that's me being uncreative.

Basically, this only occurs for me with games that have player-created main characters. If the protag is generated by the game, it's no holds barred. XD

...Does anyone else feel this way?

Also, I guess it's important to point out that I'm absolutely willing to discuss all sorts of fangirly things, I just can't really look at certain types of fanfic or art without cringing... that's really all it is, I suppose.

...you're in luck.

Enough other people also wanted the option to have a romance with Alistair when playing as a male player character and at least one of those people was a modder, sooo...

You can make it happen IF you have the PC version of the game and you install a certain mod.



If you have the PS3 version though, I'm afraid you're SOL. He's straight as an arrow, canonically speaking.

I don't think I've found a video game character I liked as much as Heat until Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins.

And thank you, BioWare, for not giving us a carbon copy of Carth.

Everyone likes to make fun of him, especially regarding sex. :P



If you're playing as a female, your relationship with Alistair results in some of the most difficult and affecting choices in the game.

WARNING: Mild character interaction spoilers in the comments!

Happy Holidays!

I didn't have time to do cards this year... I'm sad about that but it just couldn't be done.

In lieu of cards (I know it's lame in comparison since I'm not sending any hard copies of anything, boo) here's my holiday drawing this year.

Title: Let's not hate each other today...
Fandom: Digital Devil Saga 2
Rating: G



( Click to view )

Whether you celebrate a winter holiday or not, you have my best wishes for the season and the years to come!

PS: New twitter (purged old account to clear the record): @AgapeAndEros

Also, have a fortune cookie and a Magic 8 Ball (both are pointless results of goofing around with programming arrays).

( Pump action pumpkin disposal )

This is how we disposed of our Halloween remnants. Very satisfying.

So: does anyone hunt?

I actually don't, but since I've gotten so into shooting sports I was considering trying bird hunting. As of now, I've never shot a living thing in my life: I enjoy target-shooting with my 9mm, plinking with my .22LR, and shooting skeet (and, uh, fruit, dead stumps, and other fun objects that produce a nice splatter) with my shotgun.

Members of my family hunt deer, but I think I'd prefer to start small. Out of curiosity, do you or have you ever gone hunting? What did you think of it?

And because I am the Ultimate Geek (and am also not afraid to show it!), here's my newest technological acquisition:

( Droid )

Why am I posting a picture of this?

Lucasfilm Ltd. happens to own rights to the word 'droid, so Motorola and Verizon had to pay royalties. All their packaging, websites, and promotional materials disclaim: "DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license."

I think George Lucas has become something of a monster (and not in a good way), but I couldn't help paying homage to the phone's classic namesake. YES. I AM A GEEK. This is the chick who has a Millennium Falcon blueprint tattoo, remember. :P

(BTW, the phone? Is awesome. Google Android rules.)

I know I've photoblogged here a little bit in the past, but this community was originally installed as an art and sketchblog (with occasional website updates).

However, I don't have nearly as much time as I would like to draw anymore. :( As a consequence, updates here are very few and far between.

I do, however, take quite a lot of pictures. They mostly constitute daily life and random objects and rarely have any real artistic, photographic merit.

Would you still be interested in following my photoblogging? I generally just post the pictures to twitter, but I'd like to be able to use hellburnt more often than the current circumstances permit (art-wise).

Of course, I could also decide to put up more photos and webdesign work and those of you who are uninterested can simply skip the posts... but I appreciate input, so please let me know if that would be interesting to you.

LET ME DEMONSTRATE what kind of silly ridiculousness this photoblogging might entail:



( Lightsaber laser pointer )

Version 9 is now LIVE.



It's a bit of a departure from previous designs, but I went for typography over graphics this time. (It's a phase I'm going through. :P)

Version 8 is still online (just hidden); I'm considering making it an available viewing option, but I'm not sure this site even generates enough traffic to bother doing something silly like that.

The Metanomicon has been launched!

It's basically a public blog about nothing in particular. I just wanted to make a typography-based Wordpress theme as a Times New Roman experiment. :P

In any case though, I haven't been using or reading LJ much lately, so I'm hoping to update The Metanomicon fairly regularly (might be a pipe dream, but we'll see!).

If you should want to follow it for whatever reason and you can't / won't / are too lazy to set up a feed-reader, LJ has not-LJ syndication capabilities for paid and permanent users. Go to the bottom of this page and enter the following URL into the field: http://www.metanomicon.com/feed/

(I can't set up an LJ-friendly syndication because, alas, my paid time expired.)

But didn't you know? All the cool kids these days follow blogs via RSS anyway!

Title: Reach
Fandom: original
Rating: G? PG? idk

Prompt: (from previous post) maddie_hatzer: Androids! ANYTHING androids! With like fucked up limbs.

PS: I know they don't make any sense. They're not supposed to make sense, I just drew random shit in place of limbs.

Honestly I think the adult ended up with the light beam leg thing because I was originally thinking I might draw Jedi. It slipped in subconsciously after I decided to draw androids instead. lol



( Lineart )



( Color )

Guys, I haven't drawn in so long I think I've forgotten how.

Please help me out by providing a little bit of inspiration. If you have any fun ideas rattling around, feel free to hit me with them.

I can't guarantee I'll even do a single one (I've been too busy and hung up to draw or play video games for many many months now), but maybe it will help to jumpstart something.

As a general interest update, even though I'm not active in the fandom anymore Megaten will never die for me... and you can probably add Canaan and Ponyo to the mix. And maybe FMA, but it's been years and years since I drew automail and the lazy part of me says I don't really want to. e_e

Also as a sidenote, I've been having hand problems (pain, stiffness, soreness, pinched nerves) as a result of a combination of factors so please don't expect anything too involved. :(

Samples:



Credit is ♥ (hellburnt please)

( It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination. )

I finally built my first Wordpress theme.

I've been meaning to do this for a really long time, but hadn't gotten around to it until recently. Now that I've done one, I definitely know what to do and what not to do on subsequent themes. :P

I'd like to get efficient enough at this to sell some premium themes on Theme Forest... lol.

I want to replace those shopping bookmarks with links to my friends' sites! If you've got an art site and would like to exchange links for publicity and whatnot, let me know! (Just keep in mind this is going to be a pretty public site, so XXX art galleries might not be the best for linking, orz.)

I have a paintchat at last!

Hosted on my own webspace, not running off my computer like last time (that was inconvenient and convoluted to access).

Because I spent SOOOO much time struggling through Google searching fruitlessly for public pchats with short logs and empty rooms, this one is not going to be public except during open sessions (which I'll announce here).

I'm going to bed right now but I'm leaving it on all night for a few people-- twitter followers have the URL. :D

I just have to share this E3 stage demo. I'm looking forward to this game so much, and it looks fantastic. I expected it to be great, but the demo looks even better than I expected-- and granted, I had really high expectations so that's saying something!


The graphics are a given, and the scale of it... just amazing. It was beautiful and vast even on the PS2, but on the PS3 it's epic.

The chimera and its attack patterns after you injure the animal parts that it's composed of? Wow.

And finishing off Helios? Oh man. I'm so excited. I can't wait!

As a long-time Greek mythology nerd, I'm so happy that they still saved some of the best for last. They really didn't run out of tricks and I'm thrilled to see more key players coming to the field, in terms of the Gods, the Titans, and the very famous and well-known mythological creatures.

And of course, it's God of War. These games are pure gold-- they're tremendously fun to play, beautiful to look at, and hey-- they've even got cool stories thrown in. Even after setting a ton of industry standards with the first one, they're still at it and going strong by the third.

It's going to be awesome!

So last night I had this dream about the White Rider.

I haven't even met the White Rider in DSRK2 yet. (Hey, I was gone getting married and having a honeymoon for two weeks. I'm only on the beginning of Chapter 2.) It's just that a couple different people on my Twitter were saying they were getting their asses kicked by him.

Anyway, you know that DSRK2 chant/song/poem? The one that goes, Stop the fretful baby's wail (etc)? (I'm strongly reminded of Alice in Wonderland, by the way)

...I had a dream that I had a newborn baby, and whenever it would cry the White Rider would show up to kill me. At least it wasn't trying to kill the baby... just me.

Uh.

Haha.

It was an awful, terrifying nightmare. D:

Warning: guro / vore

( finals are over! celebratory doodle that has nothing whatsoever to do with academics )

omg I haven't drawn in a really long time and I also couldn't remember what the uniform looked like but I was too lazy to find a reference.

metanomaly.dreamwidth.org

Thanks to delphi, I have a Dreamwidth account! I'll probably move this artblog over there instead (I think?), so feel free to subscribe to me.

If you don't want to pay for an account and need an invite code, try here.

Poll #1394171 What browser do you use regularly?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 67

Check the one(s) you use the most:

I have listed IE6, 7, and 8 separately because IE is the least standards-compliant browser. Six, 7, and 8 render differently from each other-- and for developers, this is something of a nightmare. IE8 is the closest to compliant that Microsoft has ever come with a browser so far, and honestly I'm impressed. Since its release, I haven't had to use any conditional comments or hacks to fix problems in IE8 (6 and 7 require extra work).

To anyone who still uses IE6, btw, shame on you. IE6 is an outdated, non-compliant browser. You're the bane of webdesigners and developers around the world! PLEASE UPGRADE TO IE8. Or switch to Firefox. PLEASE.

Opera has some less problematic issues, but Firefox (and other Gecko browsers), Safari, and Chrome are your best bets for the most aesthetic, compliant browsing experience.

I'm inclined to assume that people who spend time browsing LJ might be in the slightly more tech-savvy population, but I'm curious to know what you use. (If you check "other" please comment specifying.)

PS: For some reason my MSN account stopped working, so I had to create another one. If we were MSN buddies, please re-add me at msn(at)kim-maida.com. Thanks, and sorry! Go ahead and delete the old name permanently, I don't know why it won't authenticate anymore... I won't be using it again.