#vulpixelates

Thank you for the berries!! 💜 Will answer for Vince!!

🍓He grew up as an only child and as far as he knows has no family left in NC, the NUSA, or any neighboring states/countries in North America. But he had cousins roughly his age on his father's side of the family in Japan - but no contact to them anymore for over a decade now. He's sure they would neither recognize him nor want anything to do with him, and he has no desire to reconnect, either, if they're all still around (probably working corporate jobs for Arasaka, like almost everyone in his family).

🍓 His first tattoo that he got at 16 was a stick and poke done by a boy he had a big crush on at the time. It's the Ursa Major constellation on his right arm. It's small, it's wonky, it's in a weird position, but he doesn't have the heart to get it covered up.

thank you sarah! :)

What would your character wear if they were told they had to gussy up?

will do jórunn for this one as i had a lot of fun imagining her thalmor embassy outfit. my main inspiration was this dress made by historical fashion youtuber bernadette banner. she recreated this (i think?) 15th century dress on the right, using historical methods, and i thought the result was gorgeous.

for jórunn's dress i imagined the colour to be different, like an aubergine purple in place of the red. and for her hair i was picturing something like this. :)

What gift would your character give to someone they didn’t like but felt obligated to?

this goes for all my Dutheri characters, as the family would be expected to present gifts to visiting nobles and dignitaries. for velothi recipients, i can see the Dutheris bestowing either a worthless title or a 'tamed' kagouti upon recipients they didn't like. the kagouti would be expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous to try and maintain, but to turn it down or renounce it would show weakness.

for non-velothi recipients, i think they would gift them with either a relatively cheap or commonplace commodity (assuming that the foreigner wouldn't know any better), or a velothi 'delicacy' that foreigners tend to find unpalatable :)

yay!!!! Oksana my beloved ruthless criminal baby

🌻- What's this oc's mental health state?

bad! basically it's this at all times

🌴- Who is this oc's favorite person?(Can be another oc, a fictional character, a celebrity, anyone)

Her dad :,)

🌟- Is this oc good at expressing themself through words or do they have to use other means?

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

yeah! if i sit down to draw deliberately i’ll usually either have a show on or play the audiobook of whatever i’m reading. but sometimes i’ll just get a whim and grab my tablet and end up drawing for hours in silence, and then i feel silly for it when i do come up for air

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing

this one’s a little hard, because mostly i do just draw what i find fun ! maybe animals?? i’m not bad at them but i have to stick so closely to references for them that it doesn’t feel very expressive or imaginative. but i’d say that means im NOT good enough at them yet

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

ooh, there’s a lot of those since i don’t do detailed lineart or rendering myself, so i admire artists who are skilled at that.

lately i’ve also been rly taken with the religious artwork from dragon age. it’s so figurative and unearthly like

@icylook and @strangerpsyducks

How I feel about this character

Hehehheh… Do I need to spell it out? Pixel Perfection. I mean, I am a Zev slut and y’all know that. He is so well written, and his character arc so painful and fulfilling – wanting to die, getting a second chance, believing in his own worth and finding purpose, bringing change to the Crows. I just love everything about him, from his shameless ‘hypersexuality,’ his ‘immorality’, his cynicism, his endless donning of masks (a lot of that just listed is actually 80% just for show and/or self-protection), his fierceness in actually fighting for the vulnerable (the mages, the elves), his open-mindedness, his sense of humor, his optimism paired with realism resulting in cheerful doom-saying, his boastful cock-sureness, his people smarts (honestly, he is so aware of how people tick, and he sometimes pokes them the wrong way simply because he’s an insufferable shithead), to his unending loyalty! I love his romance so much… I can’t possibly list everything I love about Zev because I’d have to recap every single scene and dialogue and nuanced aspect of his character. Say what you will about David Gaider, but he gave me Zevran Arainai, and he nailed it. 

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Alec Surana! XD lol, yes, that’s number one. But, I ship him with all Wardens who treat him right (I have a particular preference for Surana, Tabris, Mahariel and Brosca), Isabela, Leliana, Fenris, Iron Bull, Shianni, Hawke, Varric…

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Leliana/Zev and Isabela/Zev. StabBI rogues rule. I think both Leli and Bela can understand Zev well, have fun with him, and not judge him. 

My unpopular opinion about this character

On the one hand, people who are not obsessed Zevmancers tend to read him as too immoral and too hypersexual. 

Half of his flirting serves a purpose other than taking people to bed – eg. Wynne. And I mean, most of my followers love Zev so I hardly have to point out how big he is about consent, how clear he is in his intent with the Warden, how honest he is about his loyalty to them.

On the other hand, people who love Zevran  tend to make him too nice and too monogamous, and I don’t buy it.

He is not “so good he can do no wrong owo.” Honestly, he is an assassin and yes, he might regret some of the people he had to kill – and especially having to do it on other people’s biddings, – but he has no issue with killing. He gains approval for killing Owen (the blacksmith in Redcliffe) and Lloyd (the tavern owner in Redcliffe), for instance. Two people who technically aren’t the enemy. He is in favor of making deals with demons, extorting and stealing. Besides that, he is also a shithead. He mocks Morrigan (takes on a bet to soften her through dishonest flattery), Leliana (laughs at her vision), Alistair (ridicules his flirting and says he’d charge a ‘bastard’ to kill him) and Wynne (the whole bosom flirting just to make her uncomfortable and get her to stop nagging him), so he really is insufferable when he wants to be. Anyone excusing all of the “not nice” he’s done as “it was the Crows who made him do it” isn’t really seeing all of his character. 

Nuh-uh. Zevran is a piece of work and I love it.

He is not monogamous either – He can be, happily, for sure, but he is canonically poly (Rinna/Tali/Zev? Staying with the warden even if they married Alistair/Anora? Threesome with Bela?) and very sexual. He just needs everything to be clear and consensual between him and everyone involved.

And I think he and Alistair would make an awful pair, sue me. (don’t sue me. just ignore me and go do your thing happily cuz I’m just a rando behind a computer and what I like and don’t like should not affect what you like and don’t like). Alistair is super judgy and Zev would always feel like crap in a relationship with him unless you write Alistair as (cue John Mulaney) “getting real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly.” (even then, I’m not going to read it bc zevstair just doesn’t do it for me).

One last unpopular opinion -- I read Zev as being a happy switch who prefers to sub in bdsm scenes! I mean “I have never succumbed to an interrogation. You might have to beat it out of me,” the approval he gains when the warden tells him they make the rules? When he tells Hawke to tie him, gag him, and beat him? ;)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I want an entire Zevran/Rinna/Taliesen DLC!! I also wish Zevran had showed up in Dragon Age Inquisition. Yes, they would have ruined him like they ruined him in DA2, but it is so SAD that he is THE ONLY ONE who never shows up in comics, and didn’t show up in DAI, and it’s so unfair I am forever bitter! T_T

Also really really wish the discussion of his own bisexuality had been handled better in canon. The way he explains it to the warden sounds like he thinks he was made bisexual by the Crows – and he might as well think that’s what happened, but we know that’s not how bisexuality works. T_T

31. “You’ve got something on your lip, here let me.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Mattie lowers her burger back to her plate, frowning at Staci across the table. Staci, the little shit, is smirking at her as he pops a fry into his mouth, making her wait as he chews, then as he washes it down with a needlessly deep pull of his beer.

She wipes at her cheek with the clean back of her hand. “Do I have something on my face, or...?” She lets her question trail off as Staci nods, then she tries to wipe at her face again.

He laughs and shakes his head at her. He wipes his fingers off on his napkin before he reaches across the table. She watches, eyes narrowed, then glances around at the other customers in the Spread Eagle.

None of them are watching, none of them are close enough to hear him say, “You just have... something on your lip. Let me.”

His bent index finger presses against her chin, holding her in place as he wipes his thumb across her lower lip, dragging harder than it needs to. Her lips part as a thrill goes through her against her will, then she snaps her jaw closed as his hand comes away with a smear of ketchup on it.

“That was real smooth, Stace,” she says.