Face your daylight horrors!

Walls of text, really. Walls of text. Unless you bring an elephant, then cooing. Also, soul hugs!

Real name: Tess
Birthday: May 28th
Location: Sweden (Which means non-native English speaker and plenty of cultural differences. What do you mean, you do not have fermented fish and soup made from blood at home..? Not even blood pudding? HOW DO YOU LIVE LIKE THAT?)

Tumblr name/any other blog or site URL: I am either Combination-NC or Combination_NC kind of everywhere. Like on AO3 (home of the things too wild for FFnet - the porn goes here!) where the enhanced editions! of my writings are available. There is a lot of Anders and Karl there, although not always together as I have a great weakness for rarepairs as well as outright crackpairs. I like to call it deadpan crack and sometimes I feel like some kind of crack dealer, lurking the vanilla corners of the fandom offering pairings like Karl/Niall, Karl/Fenris, Flemeth/Maric and Karl/Duncan like it makes sense and make it make sense. Then for some reason I keep writing Anders and Fenris attempting to be civil towards each other. It is one of the greatest challenges of the ages. True story: when I was new to fandom, I knew way, way more about cars than shipping portmanteaus, and was deeply confused by the way at first glance, people seemed to be oddly interested in car parts. It was a strange time.
I might have joined DeviantArt with the sole motivation of looking at all the forbidden boobs butts mature content tasteful nudity. (BOOBS.)

Any advice/warnings about your blog? While it is mostly safe for work it is not always so, but what is not is tagged as such and in the case of my writings, either placed under a cut or linked to AO3 (unless it is writing for a picture, but I rarely manage to work up the courage to ask permission to write for peoples’ art although I love to do it). Aside from the Dragon Age fandom I am also into Murdoch Mysteries, one of the best things ever. I am an emotional and enthusiastic person, so there are a lot of feelings fluttering about on my blog and I am always very open about what I feel about a lot of things, sometimes to the point where it might be kind of bordering on emotional TMI, but I tag that! (I tag everything.) At least when I am aware of that I am doing it. Sometimes I am not and then there are surprise intense feels all over the place, and I have this habit of posting what reads like awkward love letters all over creation. That is just how I roll. Or rather, flutter. Speaking of fluttering, I wonder if I could have a career as an Exposition!Fairy? I can kind of see it, like a little Pocket Combo you can prop up in the palm of your hand to explain all of the things. What does that have to do with this, you might ask? Oh, for warnings! Sometimes I post things when I have not slept well. And then It shows.
It is also often an elephant and manatee appreciation blog, especially baby elephants, because they are just the cutest cuddlechubsters ever, yes they are, yes they are—

A few of your favourite Dragon Age things: The Fade and all the noses and beards and the atmosphere and feel of the world, the characters and all their potential to be so many different kinds of people. How we are shown enough of them to have a more or less solid base to build upon but there is room left to explore, room for interpretation, how there is room for doing such different things with the characters while still keeping them in character. In the first game we were given so much of the world itself and how it lives and flows and I loved that, but in the second one it really are the characters that carries the story. Hawke being the bright light in Kirkwall? Not for me! The companions add the colour and the light to that place, they are what make the second game shine.

Recommend some fanfic or fanart or writers or artists that you’re squeeing over right now: Well, there is a1879 who does both and never backs down from a challenge. She constantly finds new ways to challenge herself and grow, both when it comes to writing and art, and I admire her tremendously. Her steampunk AU An Analog of Aether is one of my favourite Dragon Age fics of all time; it has the greatest world-building I have ever seen in a fic, and I am so impressed that it is written in her second language. Another person writing in a second language is ilikemyscars, who I greatly admire both for her work with Isolde’s Alphabet and other things. MsBarrows is another fandom hero of mine, as is Impressioniste for fic and meta both, and Cherith writes such beautiful, beautiful things that moves my heart and Toastybluetwo swept me off my feet with her Dagna Alphabet and vision of the future of Thedas and the Mage Rebellion - so much so that I actually just got chills just mentioning it! Then there is stealyourshiny with her Tests of the Maker series, and pendency/ellnyx has such a haunting and unique style that grabs me every time and Serindrana breathes such life into the characters she writes and Rhiannon42 writes great AU’s and Justice, and when anonymouscatastrophe updates I get filled with more joy than I might ought to for sad stories, but she handles them all with such maturity and raw beauty that I cannot help myself, SakuraTsukikage writes fluff and angst both so, so well and I recently discovered the writings of fragilespark, moodymarshmallow, ohmercyme221 and jillyfae and am so happy I did, and there are so many more, I just.. I have to go write some fic recs right now because I cannot fit everything and everyone here! There are just so many, many fantastic writers and stories around, and so much meta, too. I already mentioned Impressioniste, but there is also Defira85 for Justice meta (and fics, of course), and katiebour, and I just, this is such a wonderfully creative place, it overwhelms me. Like wadebramwilson’s  thefandomappreciationblog that is a thing of joy and beauty, full of talented minds to find!
For fanart, some of my favourites, in alphabetical order are: a1879 (who shows us her wonderful journey of art), Aivopesty (who has such a distinctive, eye-catching sensual style), djkaeru (who draws the cutest, sweetest things), givethemhorns (who makes such a beautiful, realistic Anders), hawkeward (the rarepair champion and bringer of Justice, and also glorious beards), iheartapostates (such mesmerising eyes and captivating details!), jabberart (KOSSITH!), ladymalstroem (makes one of the best Anders), muutant (who colours beautifully and writes such beautiful, emotional things), pollencount (whose storybook-like style captures my heart again and again), roryseviltwin (who tries out so many different, fun things) rustedchild (with a colourful style that is so joyful that even the sad pictures brings the good times to mind), teapirate (always makes me think of Greek statues), thesilverfeatheredraven (who writes lovely things as well) - you know what? I cannot fit enough of my favourites in here, either. There are just so many great artists around that I love equally for so many different reasons, for the way their images calls to my heart and makes stories take form and want to come out, for their use of colour, for the details, for what an image suggests in what it does not show, and so on, there is just… so many different kinds of beauty, from so, so many. So, in short, if I follow, reblog, click like, comment, any of that? Then it has moved me in some way, and I am looking forward to see what more you will create. You all rock!

Shameless self promotion! Anything you’ve done that you’re proud of and want to share:
Karl’s Alphabet is kind of how I found myself as a fanfic writer, so that fic is very, very close to my heart. Every time someone tells me they liked it my heart does this fluttery joyful thing. a1879 has made some illustrations for it!
Anders’ Alphabet is the mirror to Karl’s, and it is my headcanon alphabet for how Anders ended up as he did. It is much darker, but I am glad that I have been able to write it. F is for First and L is for Light are the ones I am the most proud of, and so, so happy I was able to write. Light especially as I have always wanted to dig into the head of a Circle mage (oh my goodness that sounds creepy) to explore how the guilt trip that is the common interpretation of the Chant of Light might affect one.

Is it okay to randomly strike up a conversation with you and make friends?
Yes! I can be found on IRC/gchat/AIM/Skype. I am often awkward and find it difficult to start conversations, but it is something I am trying to overcome and I absolutely love getting to know people! For all the wonderful art and fic that I have encountered in the fandom, the people in it are the ones that have made me the happiest to be here. At some point in the far off future I might move on from Dragon Age, but I could never move on and away from the wonderful friends I have met through it.

Anything else you want to add:
You are wonderful.