sierradee

[sierradee]

Alfred was as odd as his name and as old as the town around him.

Caught, unlovably, in the in-between of dwarves and elves, with the strength and prowess of neither.

—-

Stepping away from my obsession with hot female villains to bring you another barely legible headcanon. Alfred is a rare cryptid.

I mean, I love that alfred is just a weird little guy ™️ but also what if he was an earnest reprentation of the displacement of mixed raced people?

#oxventure #fanart #oxboxtra #illustration #sierradeedidit #Alfred Strangetide #npc d&d #I just like him #a small smooth-faced dwarf #finding joy with the one group of people he found genuinely oblivious to race and #leaning into immaculate vibes #digital art

[sierradee]

Victoria waits. Eager to begin again, at last.

Someone tell Andy I’m still thinking about her everyday.

—-

Also I bought Lucas Peinador’s brushes and textures, and they helped this one get much closer to the image in my head.

#oxventure #fanart #oxboxtra #oxventure deadlands #digital art #victoria #I love her #a real bad guy #a real victim #illustration #sierradeedidit #she should never come back into canon #but she will never leave my heart

[sierradee]

Dob only dreams when he’s alone.

Dob loves women who are powerful and selfish. He loves only the most unattainable, most reviled, and the moment they seem less than impossible, he critiques them senselessly. In fact the one time some got close to loving him, he destroyed it in a way that attacked not only her feelings, but her dignity.

Not by choice, Dob’s a man who never hurts by choice.

But he’s felt the lick of it inside him, not that long ago. The goblet that grants everything gave him a taste of greed, and the greed was good.

—-

Here’s my proposal that Dob is a violently escapist lover because I’m constantly and forever on the villainess’s side.

#oxventure #fanart #oxboxtra #illustration #dob the half orc bard #lady liliana #liliana #I’m ready to get yelled at #but episode one of this season Dob was wild #the man famous for never showering cares about dishes now? #see?I’m Right #sierradeedidit #it was really hard getting back into drawing #my favourite part of this is her knees

[sierradee]

The final LADS LADS LADS begins

#the vibe is so real #oxventure

[sierradee]

So I've been feeling 𝒫𝓇𝑒𝓉𝓉𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓉𝓉𝓎 lately about not being able to draw with all the sidequests happening in my life right now.

But seeing notifs for comments like these feel like injecting serotonin directly into my brainstem. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

#oxventure #fanart #involuntary intermission from me #thanks for the good feelings

[sierradee]

Best of Era the Vacuous

#oxventure

[sierradee]

Send me an ask on your favourite scene from today's battle royal, I have an itch for another Oxventure, comic-style, but I can't decide which one

#oxventure #fanart

[sierradee]

I tried to write a novel. Not once. Not twice. But about 12 times. Here's how that would play out: 1. I sit down and knock out 10 pages 2. I share it with someone 3. They say "It's goooood" like it's not good 4. I ask for critical feedback 5. They say, "Well....the plot just moves so quickly. So much happens in the first few pages it doesn't feel natural." So I'd write more drafts. I'd try to stretch out the story. I would add dialogue that I tried to make interesting but thought was boring. I would try including environment and character descriptions that felt unnecessary, (why not just let people imagine what they want?) Anyways, I gave up trying to write because in my mind, I wasn't a fiction writer. Maybe I could write a phonebook or something. But then I made a fiction podcast, and I waited for the same feedback about the fast moving plot, but guess what??? Podcasts aren't novels. The thing that made my novels suck became one of the things that made Desert Skies work. I've received some criticism since the show started, but one thing I don't receive regular complaints about is being overly-descriptive or longwinded. In fact, the opposite. It moves fast enough that it keeps peoples attention. I always felt I had a knack for telling stories but spent years beating myself up because I couldn't put those stories into novel form. The problem wasn't me. The problem was the tool I was trying to use. All that to say: If, in your innermost parts you may know that you're a storyteller but you just can't write a book, don't give up right away. You can always do things to get better and there's a lot of good resources. But if you do that for a while and novel writing just isn't your thing, try making a podcast, or creating a comic, or a poem, or a play, or a tv script. You might know you're an artist but suck at painting. Try making a glass mosaic, or miniatures, or try charcoal portraits, or embroider or collage. You might know you're a singer, but opera just isn't working out. Why not yodel? I could keep listing out examples, but the point is this. Trust your intuitions when it comes to your creative abilities, but don't inhibit yourself by becoming dogmatic about which medium you can use to express that creativity. Don't be afraid to try something new. Don't be afraid to make something new. You might just find the art form that fits the gift you knew you always had, and what it is might surprise you

#i spent years and TOO much money trying to be a watercolour painter #the day i bought a tablet is the day my opinion of myself as an artist changed entirely

[sierradee]

Threw together a collage of my oxventure fanart from last year while I watched the Kobolds episode. It's wild to look back and see how many I made (I couldn't even fit everyone in).

They have filled such a meaningful space in my life for so many years, I'm excited and bitter-sweet thinking of their retirement as a guild.

It's also funny to see I have the style consistency of a broken slip and slide.

#oxventure #fanart #oxboxtra #illustration #sierradeedidit #oxventure deadlands #oxventure in the dark #fanart recap #2023 review

[sierradee]

forever my favorite part of ox bitd…

#oxventure #always a hit - how do you never miss #teach me how to draw dammit

[sierradee]

Hey, remember how I have shifting hyperfixations?

Here's a drawing of vtuber ironmouse and streamer cdawgva on a trip around Japan for Christmas.

Also, I spent days trying to figure out how to draw mice for this.

#ironmouse #cdawgva #connor colquhoun #christmas #fanart #dont worry #my fixations are usually cyclical #so ill be back to my usual oxventure stuff soon #sierradeedidit

[sierradee]

took these screenshots for people like me who would rather just know how to opt out than read several paragraphs on corporate greed

[sierradee]

5 editor’s secrets to help you write like a pro

1. Sentences can only do one thing at a time.

Have you ever heard a four-year-old run out of breath before she can finish her thought? I edit a lot of sentences that work the same way. You need a noun, you need a verb, you might need an object. Give some serious thought to stopping right there.

Sentences are building blocks, not bungee cords; they’re not meant to be stretched to the limit. I’m not saying you necessarily want a Hemingway-esque series of clipped short sentences, but most writers benefit from dividing their longest sentences into shorter, more muscular ones.

2. Paragraphs can only do one thing at a time.

A paragraph supports a single idea. Construct complex arguments by combining simple ideas that follow logically. Every time you address a new idea, add a line break. Short paragraphs are the most readable; few should be more than three or four sentences long. This is more important if you’re writing for the Web.

3. Look closely at -ing

Nouns ending in -ing are fine. (Strong writing, IT consulting, great fishing.) But constructions like “I am running,” “a forum for building consensus,” or “The new team will be managing” are inherently weak. Rewrite them to “I run,” “a forum to build consensus,” and “the team will manage.” You’re on the right track when the rewrite has fewer words (see below).

(If for some insane reason you want to get all geeky about this, you can read the Wikipedia article on gerunds and present participles. But you don’t have to know the underlying grammatical rules to make this work. Rewrite -ing when you can, and your writing will grow muscles you didn’t know it had.)

4. Omit unnecessary words.

I know we all heard this in high school, but we weren’t listening. (Mostly because it’s hard.) It’s doubly hard when you’re editing your own writing—we put all that work into getting words onto the page, and by god we need a damned good reason to get rid of them.

Here’s your damned good reason: extra words drain life from your work. The fewer words used to express an idea, the more punch it has. Therefore:

Summer months Regional level The entire country On a daily basis (usually best rewritten to “every day”) She knew that it was good. Very (I just caught one above: four-year-old little girl)

You can nearly always improve sentences by rewriting them in fewer words.

5. Reframe 90% of the passive voice.

French speakers consider an elegantly managed passive voice to be the height of refinement. But here in the good old U.S. (or Australia, Great Britain, etc.), we value action. We do things is inherently more interesting than Things are done by us. Passive voicemuddies your writing; when the actor is hidden, the action makes less sense.

Bonus: Use spell-check

There’s no excuse for teh in anything more formal than a Twitter tweet.

Also, “a lot” and “all right” are always spelled as two words. You can trust me, I’m an editor.

Easy reading is damned hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

[sierradee]

Love through my eyes.

Oxventure play things very light-hearted, which I do like!

BUT there is something about this doomed romance that I think about late at night. If they all let their real acting chops fly, how could this have felt? Real, tense conversations between Dob and the guild and his fiance.

How to unpack the fact the woman they all decided would ruin his life was undoubtedly the one who was destroyed and humiliated, arguably for the second time in her life by the same people.

And then they ran away. Never confirming they were even in the right. Never really confronting the fact that Dob was about to marry someone with someone else in mind, and what that means for arguably the most morally vocal person in the guild.

Anyway, here's an illustration to try put all my feelings about this arc into something that makes sense.

#oxventure #fanart #oxboxtra #illustration #katie pearlhead #katie delacour #dob the half orc bard #sierradeedidit #digital art

[sierradee]

Please go read this amazing fic by @shutupeiffel. Also, here’s the art it was based on!

If I Loved You (I'd Let You Know)

Fandom: Oxventure

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Prudence/Dob, Prudence/Corazon, Prudence/Merilwen, general Guild Polycule shenanigans

Characters: Prudence, Corazon de Ballena, Dob, Merilwen, Egbert

Summary:

Prudence doesn't have feelings for Dob. She doesn't.

So why then does she keep staring at his powerful orcish arms? Why does she think about him so much? And what in Cthulu's name is she supposed to do about all this?

Read on Ao3

Notes:

This fic was written as part of the @oxventurebigbang and features art by the amazing @sierradee!! Go check out the other fics in the collection and Sierra's art!

#oxventure #fanart #prudence #illustration #dob the half orc bard #oxventure big bang #sierradeedidit #now imagine this as a poster in a dorm room somewhere

[sierradee]

Real talk: One thing my ADHD has taught me that helps me with the crippling anxiety - not seeing anything from someone I follow online for years or months use to worry me in that deep, parasocial need to know.

But now I have learnt to embrace my waxing and waning attention, so I now can see any extended absence of people I don't know as them likely being busy with something else instead of how I used to catastrophise.

All that being said, I'm currently getting my ass kicked by uni, but I've been so pumped reading the oxventure Big Bang pieces getting released. It was so amazing to be a part of, and it feels so precious to have my art tied to other people's stories.

@oxventurebigbang

#oxventure #im back #kind of #new drawing soon though #hint: ⚪️

[sierradee]

Helene Beland - Un capteur de lumière, 2012