Lamp snail

and here’s where i admit i’m not much of a reader, and i haven’t read the vast majority of these fics. but i love ocs a lot and this is my way of giving back to all this community has given me! these are all very neat characters and y’all should do yourselves a favour and check them out!

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percy from pot, kettle by @pastureghost. this writing is so good y’all. she really gets inside percy’s head and it paints the whole narrative and percy is just SUCH an interesting character. she does the socially awkward/insecure tav so well. just dropped a new chapter too, go check it out!!

styx from renowned AO3 commenter Artemis_the_gr8. she has left me SO many thoughtful comments. she truly gets astarion 🫀or at least my interpretation of him, haha. i had to simplify styx’s tattoos a lot for this collage; she looks so much cooler in reality and i hope we get to see fic of her someday 🫀🫀

mahina from rubies and whiskey by @rubyeyebabybat. i’m so gay for this tav lol. so cool and thoughtfully written and competent! she feels very realised in her backstory, personality and appearance, and it all ties together into a full character. and she’s hot and has a cool tattoo. the exact type of person i’d want to put out cigarettes on me.

effy from until you by @bloodinwine. my faavee🫀🫀 effy feels so fucking real. she’s so magical and wonderful and human and flawed and until you is the best thing written in this fandom—if you haven’t read it go do so. and i’m so proud to be able to call june a friend too she’s the loveliest.

myla from elegy to benevolent hearts by me. three raccoons in a trenchcoat. absolute disaster, tacky, smells bad. 0/10 but she’s learning!! bhaals school for hot white girl drow just didn’t teach you words like “i’m sorry i stabbed you again.”

jaz from made for this by @olivedrop. such a hottie i would make us both miserable during a summer fling. and olive! olive is such an effortless cool person that when i started reading made for this, i was convinced jaz would be cool as fuck. and kind of! at times! and at other times, a bit of a floundering mess haha. this fic is so sweetly written please go read. 

morwen from oathbreaker by @mellybaggins. if i could read, this is what i’d read haha. i heard so much positive stuff about morwen and her development! and just from reading about her on tumblr she’s very cool for being an high-functioning alcoholic. i love characters with depth and development and issues and all that and morwen hits all of the boxes down to the equivalent of a “no ragrets” facial tattoo.

erin from indelible imprints by @preciouslittlebhaalbae. another one i heard good stuff about their development from! honestly i think i had just drawn three characters with long black hair in a row and was looking for something different. and a little butterfly told me that the author was lovely! what can i say i love blue hair and pronouns.

eirwen from one last thrust by Matcha Mischief. it was love at first sight when I saw the pictures of this doll on reddit. look at her!! she’s so cute and and squishy and sexy!! and then you see the fics and it’s all dark fuckery fucking & she’s obsessive and wild-hot :> lovely gal.

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ban from whither thy beloved gone by @brabblesban. i have said before and i’ll say it again: visually, ban is my favourite tav with astarion. they look so good together!! and i am happy to say there’s a lot of images of them to chose from. ban has been so kind to me in this fandom, and she’s now making delightful 3d artwork, but started out as one of the big astarion writers. it’s not often you see longer fics being finished in this fandom, so please check this one out.

raven from untitled by @anacdoce. the raven longfic hasn’t been published yet, but you can read snippets on anacdoce’s blog, and, in the meantime, check out some of her other writing? plenty of astarion/reader to soothe your soul 🫀anacdote is an absolute sweetheart too, and raven herself has this lovely vulnerability to her that just makes you ache a little. she’s super cute too—exactly the kind of tav who makes you understand why astarion would trip over himself in a heartbeat. but im biased since she has the same in-game face as myla, haha.

dreya from stronger together by @endorennaao3. i made a reddit post from a throwaway account asking for complicated tavs, and endorenna sent me such a lovely dm that i had to draw dreya lol. it was just so overflowing with the love and thought she put into this character. and it is a delightful character too: dreya is brave, compassionate, and a little too willing to see the good in people. but under that strength she’s fragile, struggling with self-loathing and a patron who won’t let her go. 

irrae from please don’t make me try spell this darthiir lueth dhaerow by @schuldigkun. i briefly beta’d this fic for a while ‘cause the concept hooked me: a fleshed-out, well-researched lolth-sworn drow tav. irrae is everything you’d expect—ruthless, dangerous, delicious backstory—and then some. she’s fascinating on her own, but what really makes it hot is how she clashes and colludes with Astarion. two sharp, dangerous people circling each other with knives behind their backs? hella.

ellith from i call them friends by @litsenn. a durge after my own heart so naturally im obsessed ahaha. bloodthirsty, vivacious, and just a little bit silly—they got that sparkle that makes you want to follow them into very bad decisions. and  litsenn is brilliant—check our her astarion analysis posts, they have some interesting insights. and all the fics she has are of a length even my (lack of) attention span find appealing, so spend a few minutes checking ‘em out. you’ll come out bloodstained and grinning.

ofelia from with stars to fill my dreams by @xxnashiraxx. ofelia and nyari were the reasons this ended up as a 3³ thingie rather than a 5x5 with 25 characters like originally intended. i had drawn ofelia, wasn’t happy with how she turned out, dropped her in favour of another character—and then it was like suddenly i was seeing xxnashiraxx being so damn altruistic all over the internet. commenting on fics, being thoughtful in replies, sharing posts. i told @bloodinwine and she let me know that not only is ali an absolute sweetheart, ali had also made a series of tav portraits. and it’s much more involved than this is!

ofelia is cool too but seriously go show this person some love.

rhaenyra from noblesse oblige by @weirdmullosk. man what an unique tav. man what an unique concept (spawn astarion and her, in the underdark building an army). the fic is sadly not updated anymore but i still had to draw rhaebabe because i miss her & she can step on me.

halinae from under the sussur tree by @spacesunderstairs. i have since long stanned hal from afar. she feels like a lil rabbit, and i’m just a big fan of when they’re gentle, yet flawed🫀and im a big fan of drow, and especially drow that take the drow-ness into consideration! and this one has and hal still managed to emerge both kind and a bit cowardly. check ‘em out!

minx from as we were by @lamp-snail. not updated anymore but one of my fav fics :< time travel and all that. minx is hilarious and gods favourite soldier. she also had chemistry with absolutely every character, there’s no one i didn’t want minx to get with.

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hydie from all it cost me by @meeshrox. meesh showed up in a server of mine over a year ago, bushy-tailed and bright-eyed and immediately showed an level of note-taking and outlining that i had never seen before my entire life. it was insane y’all. and she was like “yeah i haven’t written anything like this before” but i have three books of this planned and mentally i was like “ok, sure. good luck i guess.” but she did it!! or she is still doing it; a year later and still regularly publishing updates! hydie is a delightful durge; an absolute freak but also someone that just feels older and world-weary and still pretty nutsy at times. check her out!

emily by @emilythecosmicbat. i just love this whole concept so much!! emily and xulia and astarion has such a unique thing going on—xulia is the durge and astarion’s wifey and all that and emily is one of their consorts—and they have so much rich lore and it just clicks all the happy buttons in my brain to see them. and emily-the-author is an absolute doll too and brings such good energy to this fandom and i hope everyone has seen her bats. the true batstarion queen haha.

tavitha from i wanna be yours by @vakariansyndrome. this is the only tav i had to redraw from scratch because i drew her too hot, let that speak for itself :> but that version was also missing the spunk this character has! and vakariansyndrome is so so so lovely and does so much for newcomers to this fandom 🫀

auri from kindred by @aevallare. this is the fourth version of auri i’ve drawn. i almost gave up and excluded her until next version of this project but last second i was like. no. she has to be there. alex has always been very kind to me, and very gracious in general whenever i’ve seen her join a server and immediately get hoarded by adoring fans. and something she said about astarion when i was just starting out trying to write my first chapters—that he is, first and foremost, a survivor—always stuck with me. hope these two get their happy ending soon 🫀

zhivraelle from these scars @motherzhiv. honestly? zhiv is the most gorgeous tav of them all. go look at the screenshots! and her and astarion go so well together; it’s one of those pairings where it’s like. yes. them. star-crossed lovers. both zhiv-the-character and zhiv-the-creator are absolute sweethearts; i have never before in this fandom met a person so grateful for so little. shoujo heroines, both of them haha.

coraline from chasing perfection by @roguishcat. so roguishcat followed me on tumblr pretty early on. and me, not understanding tumblr, didn’t follow back until today and instead just clicked their name whenever they liked one of my post since not a lot of people did. and their feed was always so supportive of others! i’m happy they had a fabulous tav for me to draw—cora is so fun, i love a bitching schemer that will outmanevoer instead of hit hard. also a big fan of when the absolute knockout characters are a bit vain about it; it’s hard work! such a unique tav please check her out.

evie ray from with your boots underneath my bed by @loserscardigan. coming in with a great argument for “save a horse, ride a cowgirl”; i just saw evie’s design when loserscardigan followed me on tumblr and decided that I Must Draw The Hat. the hat was a pain to draw, but evie was so much fun! i love how strong her entire character comes across and i’m so intrigued by the concept of her. she has a chip in her neck?? dagger chains?? a gladiator??? tragic lack of engagement on this fic with a character this cool and interesting; please check it out.

nyari from what binds us by @irondeficienttav. irondeficienttav followed me on tumblr and they had a tumblr header that resonated with me so hard that i immediately decided to draw their tav. but alas, i had a million tumblr windows open with tavs i wanted to draw, and they got lost… until i saw a post of theirs that just struck me as brave to write. so once more i was compelled to add nyari!righteous paladin trying to deal with aa; how could i not. i was trying to simplify the tattoo but in the end the simplified design ended up just as messy as the original one, haha. 

lilith from hellish rebuke by @bludazey. blu is one of those rare people that will reblog tav art that does not contain astarion and it makes my heart swell every time. my bread and butter as i hate drawing the stupid sexy vampire. lilith starts out fragile, but what makes her shine is how much she grows across the story. hellish rebuke is one of the big-name astarion fics in the fandom, and it’s completed, so you can binge the whole arc right now. and once you’re hooked? there’s a sequel already underway so go go go.

the creators of the characters are free to repost, use, and modify these portraits however they want. no credit is necessary, but if you do want to credit a fic link is extra appreciated! otherwise its njuta on tumblr, psykiatrin (elin) on discord and hyena on ao3. i really should solidify my brand a bit…