Celebrating Dragon Age Day 4... and the Risk (and Thrill) When You Take a Leap

“That's what happens when you try to change things. Things change.” ―Hawke

"Mass Effect has N7 Day. Dragon Age needs something too! What if we did something ourselves, maybe on December 4 as 'D4,' and tried to do something good while we're at it?"

Those were the words of my good friend Teresa "I'maSithDuh," otherwise known as "T," chatting with friends October 2018, and the next thing I knew, she'd put in motion her idea for Dragon Age Day as an actual thing, with me and some other passionate and talented close friends from the fandom pitching in right from the get-go. 

It wasn't organized, exactly. T immediately had her idea and saw the need for a group. She asked us if we'd help, and we all felt the same way—that she was right, and instantly that we should do something. So we set forth with T, a tiny crew including Savvy B., Alistair SM James, Ghil Dirthalen, and Andrastini, and we were instantly a group, and galvanized! And we were so excited to do something new in the world, something that would celebrate the world of Thedas we loved and that would also genuinely help make a currently darker world a better place.

We got to work. Picked a charity (our first one, that year, was Child's Play). And somehow we made it happen. Somehow, we'd started something good!

Daring to be Great

Helping T form this group challenged me. I knew what to do from my work in PR, marketing, editing, etc., and now I could do it for FUN. I'm really shy, so I had never really enjoyed reaching out to people for PR (which is ironic but true after 20+ years), but now I could do so for charity, for something I loved! And somehow that made it easier.

So I was in. And I'm grateful to T, not just for the chance to help build Dragon Age Day from the ground up, but because she dared to think big. She taught me something with that. It was my first lesson in what happens in life if you just think of something and say 'what if?'—even if you don't feel important enough to make it happen, if you try hard, sometimes it happens anyway.

We just had this idea and started doing what we could. And I thought it would be fun to reach out to celebrities because, coming from PR, I knew how this could really boost our visibility. So I started researching reps and managers, getting information on who to reach out to as respectfully as possible, then making contact, convinced inwardly that nobody would probably ever respond, but it was worth a try. 

But of course, people did respond. And miracles started happening almost right away. Incredibly, people listened, responded, and donated. T's idea had become a real thing.

Flash Forward

And now here we are, and it's four years later, and our event has raised over $50,000 to benefit charities we care about (with 100% of all proceeds going to those charities directly). Andrastini and Ghil bowed out after the first year, and who could blame them—it was exhausting, and because we hadn't thought to incorporate postage (hey, we were new at this), our team absorbed all of the costs of our launch and it took years for some of us just to pay off postage and other assorted fees. We founders still cover all expenses—website, hosting, printing or shipping stuff to celebs where needed, but we do so because it's worth it. And we like that nobody will ever wonder "will my money actually go to the charity?" Our answer can be clear and short: "Yes. 100%."

But we got smarter and kept going. T, Savvy, Alistair and I kept on going, and soon our thing just kept on being a thing. We got the attention and unofficial support of EA and BioWare, who donated both funds to our charities and swag to our efforts, helped to boost our signal, and who have also provided their time and input to help us make the fans feel appreciated and loved on this special day of the year for years now.

As a group of Dragon Age fans, this attention was all we could have asked for, and continues to be a dream come true.

Lessons Learned

I've learned a lot over the past four years. Like what I can do if I have to. 

I'm really shy. But I've learned that I can overcome my shyness enough to talk to people, to even email celebrities and people I admire if the cause is great enough, like charity, and somehow they sometimes respond, and miracles happen.

And there's more. I don't like looking at myself, honestly (although I'm working on that). But I've learned to overcome that because somebody had to get on camera and ask the questions, and it turned out to be me. So now, for better or worse, there I am, annoying the universe in person, a human Muppet occasionally flailing at moments, but putting myself out there.

Those of you who read this blog know that I had a brush with death recently, and I'm still learning to manage life with heart failure. And that's been a learning experience too that's also been a direct part of this Dragon Age Day for me. Every time I thought of my terror at being on camera, or my fear of making a fool of myself, I thought about how happy I am simply to still be here, to still have the chance to grow and risk like that.

And then I go ahead and Do The Thing. Because this isn't the Fade, and this is all the chance we get. 

Celebrity Secrets...

I've learned from our celebrity supporters too. I've learned that in addition to her beauty and talent, you're never going to find a kinder person than Sumalee Montano, and that Jon Curry is just as funny in real life as Zevran. I've learned that Gideon Emery is a Renaissance man who can do anything (act, paint, sing, you name it), and that Ramon Tikaram writes as beautifully and elegantly as he speaks!

I've learned that Alix Wilton Regan is basically a real-life Inquisitor whose passion and drive could fuel the world, and that Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir aren't just great writers, they're great talkers who are inspired by the same books and shows that inspired so many of us fans (and that there's always room in life for a little snark). And that Nunzio is a nice person when his interviewer utterly panics and unforgivably and mysteriously loses the ability to speak or pronounce his name.

I've also learned that Steve Valentine is as witty as Alistair, that Gareth David-Lloyd is so generous he would probably tear down the Veil for charity, that Mark Hildreth is incredibly nice even when your cat invades his interview, and that Corinne Kempa and Alec Newman are also really kind people who are willing to donate their time and effort just because they appreciate the fans and want to make a difference.

Basically, I've learned that sometimes, the people you admire for their talent and brilliance will  actually turn out to be even kinder and cooler people than you could have imagined, which is what happened when I got to interact with Patrick Weekes, Karin Weekes, and David Gaider, as well as the rest of the BioWare team, including the responders to our "Silly Questions" each year, like John Epler, Sheryl Chee, Lukas Kristjanson, Mary Kirby, Brianne Battye, and so many more!

Sharing Friendship and Fandom

I've also learned that working on something with friends can be amazing, especially when you're all fans of the same thing, like Dragon Age, and that when you bring on fellow fans to help (our volunteer team is now over 30 dedicated, amazing people) those people quickly become your friends as well. 

I've been so grateful for our incredible Dragon Age Day team because you're never gonna find a sunnier, kinder, more hardworking group of people. From T's passion for kindness and justice, to Alistair's superb management and tireless cheerleading, to Savvy's warmth, art, and graphics, I'm always inspired by my fellow founders and their leadership and support.

And that's just the beginning, because I also have to spotlight our team's rock stars like Azkabella, Nik, Rachel Hoover, Lumi, Kristen, Binky, Lady Iolanthe, Jessica, Jen, Janette, Liz, Cafe!, Felassan, Dymme, Jasmine, Gabby, Kala Elizabeth, Ashley, Sherry, Kemvee, Joanna, Morgan, Noire, Madeline McQueen, Sara, Zayne, Tina Cloud, César Allori, Andarateia, and many more!

We're just a group of fans, having a great time, celebrating Thedas, and supporting each other while try to bring a little healing elfroot to the world. And I've learned from every one of them.

Just Going For It

Most of all, I've learned that you have to risk and be brave to make a mark on the world.

So the next time you have an idea that seems impossible to you, or too big to risk, I'm here to tell you to DO it. Go ahead and try. 

Take me, for example. In the past three days, I got to interview some of my favorite artists on the planet, and spend some time in conversation with them—from writers Christina Weir & Nunzio DeFilippis (Blue Wraith), to actor Mark Hildreth (Resurrection, The Looming Tower, V, and Sten in Dragon Age Origins). I got to DM a Honey Heist game live, with a group of wonderful players including Eugenio Vargas, Karin Weekes, Patrick Bly, Josh Hood, Anjelica Grey, and my friend Teresa herself. As the icing on the cake, I tweeted a plea to Critical Role to support our cause and was absolutely floored when it was retweeted by Matthew Mercer and Dani Carr (and then Critter-hugged to a wonderful degree).

Again, it's a great reminder to go ahead and try for stuff. Just to go for it. You never know what will happen next.

I'm so happy with the lessons I've learned over the past four years. I'm so honored and proud to be part of Dragon Age Day, to work with my hardworking cofounders and our incredible team, and it's been amazing to watch it grow each and every year.

Thanks for being a part of Dragon Age Day, and here's to the next one. We've had our most successful year yet, and we have a lot of plans to continue to grow our event and charity outreach year round, as well, so stay tuned!

Now I hope you'll go forth, all you Wardens, Hawkes, and Inkies! And be brave! Take that risk. You never now what will happen next, and some dreams don't just live in the Fade. Some dreams become reality.

The State of Dumped, Drunk and Dalish—and Upcoming Expanded Content!

Hello, you!

I hope this finds you well. 

I wanted to update you on some new changes you'll see to my blog here, and on future plans for blog formatting and organization, as well. I'm gonna be doing some new things here!

Cleanup and Organization

First off, I know there's a lot of content here to try to wade through, and it's a little confusing, so I've done some housecleaning to try to make stuff easier for you to find.

I've now organized Dragon Age posts by topic, and in smaller groups so that you can more quickly find what you're interested in. 

These new categories include:

• Useful Dragon Age Lore Analyses
• Dragon Age Trailer Analyses
• Dragon Age Interviews and Transcripts
• Solas: Character, Goals, Romance
• Iron Bull and the Qun
• Friends, Enemies, Companions (Analyses)
• Personal Updates, Silly Stuff and Flights of Fancy
• Additional Dragon Age Analyses (Alphabetical)
• Dragon Age Fandom Links...

Eventually (see way down) I will be mirroring this blog onto a section of my new website that will enable me to sort everything in a more logical way, but I hope this helps in the meantime.

Dragon Age Content Going Forward

I also wanted to let you know that I am going to be committing to at least two Dragon Age posts per month going forward. It's really important to me to maintain that.

With this in mind, here are some post topics I have in progress:

• Cole at the Crossroads (Spirit or Human)
• Leliana Character Analysis (arc across all 3 games plus Trespasser)
• The Choices of Thom Rainier
• Meaningful Banters: Viv Plays Tamassran
• Solas's Romance, Part 5 (THE WORST DATE EVER)
• Fenris Analysis (Dragon Age II)
• Alistair: The Hidden Prince
• Plus tons of "Trespasser" character analysis

But what do YOU want to see that I haven't covered yet—or that I haven't covered enough? I know I have characters I haven't addressed yet, and I will get to each of them! Eventually.

I am also going to be putting a lot more work into my poor barely launched YouTube channel, so more on that later, and I hope to be posting some video versions of my most popular posts here, as well as some interviews with other Dragon Age fans and analysts in our community that I will release as videos and podcasts. So, lots of great stuff on the way!

Going Beyond Dragon Age (New Content)

Meanwhile, I'm kind of excited and nervous to announce that I am also going to start posting new content on here that is not directly applicable to Dragon Age. 

This doesn't mean I'm gonna stop writing about Dragon Age—never! But I have a lot of thoughts about a LOT of things, and they are interests shared by a lot of you folks, too.

So let's talk about more than Dragon Age! 

With this in mind, I am going to be regularly adding columns about Critical Role—all heavily spoilered posts, and on all campaigns past and present, and which will eventually move to its own section.

Note: I'm working on a new website that will encompass Dumped, Drunk & Dalish as well as my upcoming Critical Role analyses and other fandom writings, so thanks for bearing with me until I get that done.

Other fandom subjects I'll be writing about here will include a bunch of potential topics past and present, just wherever I see resonance to current news or reason to reexamine:

• Mass Effect (all games)
• Loki
• The Lord of the Rings
• Gaming
• Supernatural
• Killing Eve
• Community
• Shadow and Bone
• Marvel Movie Moments and Characters
• Doctor Who
• The Witcher
• Penny Dreadful
• The Mandalorian
• The Magicians
• Into the Border Lands (and other streamed TTRPGs in addition to Critical Role)
• Sherlock Holmes
• Fandom ships and shipping
• Fictional Villains (and Why Are They So Damn Hot?)

(Yes, more bullet points. I can't help it. They're so ORGANIZED! Sigh.)

Meanwhile, I'm gonna talk about my health stuff again for a few moments, so bear with me below. Or skip to the next section! I won't judge...

Inspirations and Motivations (the Point of All This Stuff)

So here's the thing. As you probably saw from my earlier post on this, I almost shuffled off this mortal coil back in March when I went into heart failure. And it was one of those things that happens where (if you're me, anyway), you go, HOLY SHIT, I HAD SO MUCH I WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT! I'm not kidding. I was pissed.

There's nothing fun about lying on a gurney near death and thinking about all the things you didn't get to say or do. It affected me very powerfully, and still affects me now—and I swear, I know, I know, I keep talking about it! I promise this is the last time! But this is important for me to share because it is what has inspired me in these latest blog changes going forward.

Over the past three months, I've had to learn how to walk all over again, I'm still on oxygen, and after hours of physical therapy, have only just graduated to using a cane for short distances. Recovering from this has been the hardest thing I have ever done. I never knew exhaustion that went all the way through muscle and bone. I never knew that simply walking across a room with a walker would feel like hiking a mile. I'd never imagined a level of tiredness so deep that I didn't have the mental or physical energy to write a text. That trying to keep up with my freelance work would feel like scaling Everest (because I'm a freelancer, I was working the day I came home, as best I could, to try to keep myself afloat). Even writing short e-mails and updates was challenging. 

The tiredness was just all-encompassing. My first month home from the hospital, I was so tired that I fell asleep constantly and hilariously everywhere—living room, kitchen, bathroom (overshare! BUT SO FUNNY), dining table, at my desk, during Zoom meetings (luckily I wasn't on camera, wasn't snoring, and evidently only nodded off for a few seconds at a time). Seriously. Everywhere. 

But slowly I've gained back strength, and man, has that been humbling. I will never, ever again take walking or mobility or independence for granted. The first time I was able to walk in the hospital? I cried. Because I'd spent seven days contemplating the very real possibility that I would need months of rehab before doing so again, if I ever would at all. So—on the positive side, every step forward since then has been literal, and something for me to celebrate.

Although heart failure is a permanent condition on some levels, there's a lot I can do, and have been working toward, to get to my best possible prognosis. My physical therapists are fantastic people and making them proud has been a huge achievement for me. Thanks to this effort, and their help, eventually I will be back to nearly full health and mobility, and will ironically also end up in my best physical shape of the past decade or so. It's awesome! 

Except for the scary statistics emphasized by my Terminator cyborg doctor a week ago. Not to get maudlin, but while I'm doing great and working really hard to recover physically, the fact is that while I'm young for congestive heart failure (it was a perfect storm of combined factors exacerbated by lockdown—watch your salt intake, peeps!), it doesn't change the fact that 50% of people with my condition are dead in the first year. 80% of those diagnosed with it die within five years. 

Meaning, I have a 2 in 10 chance of seeing 5 years.

Freakages and Flailings

Did I freak out about these statistics? Yeah. I did. I'd already done a hell of a lot of soul-searching over the past few months, and this just kicked me into an even higher gear of evaluation and goal-setting. 

So if I seem to be a little all over the place lately—if I seem like I'm oversharing right, left, and center, well—apologies. But yeah, I am. And I'll probably keep doing it. Because I just want to be however I am. I want to be a little more honest. I want to cut down on the bullshit that doesn't matter. I want to enjoy whatever time I have and do so being myself and expressing myself. I want to champion wonderful people and causes, I want to be brave, and kind, and engaged. I want to end every day knowing I did my best to live fully.

Please know that I'm going to work really hard to stick around, but no matter what, I want to write things I'm passionate about, that I care about, and that are fun to discuss and analyze. I'm also going to be working a lot harder on my outside stuff—my fiction (including fanfics), plays, et cetera. 

I don't have kids, so my words are the only legacy I have, and they mean a lot to me. I want to be remembered.

Expanding Horizons

So that's part of it. I want to write and discuss all these characters and ideas we all bond over, and I hope some of these new topics will be fun or interesting for us to discuss together, too!

The other part of this is that I really want to earn people's support in a bigger-picture way, if they want to act on that support (no pressure!). Meaning, stuff like Patreon or however else you or anyone wants to support or share my work. I have not been a good Patreon artist thus far, but that is changing NOW, and if you already support me, hang in there, and I will come through for you with stuff that's only for you. 

Ultimately, I've spent two decades prior to this like most freelancers, writing content I was extremely proud of, but that didn't touch my heart. I've waited long enough. The more I write, I hope, the more  I will connect with all of you as well as new audiences. And, if I earn it, the more support I'll get. Everybody wins!

I am passionate about magic, about genre fiction in all its forms. I love fantasy. I love other worlds. I want to play them, watch them, read them, write them, and explore them. And then I want to talk about them with fellow fans and friends like you.

So I hope you'll support me and come along.

A Little Magic in a Stressful World

Thanks for this chance to update you, and for bearing with me on this very strange, scary, yet often wonderful journey over the past three or four years. You have no idea what it means to me to have gained your attention and readership, as well as (in so many cases!) your friendship and support through some difficult and dark times. 

The past few years especially, as we've all battled COVID restrictions, fear, isolation, and more, I have watched the Dragon Age community come through for each other, mourn losses, show kindness, and share lightness and humor when we all needed it. I've watched Dragon Age writers and artists tirelessly answer questions even when the questioners were rude or dismissive (luckily, a minority). I've watched Dragon Age team leaders champion the fan artists among us every single day. And I've been so humbled by how many at BioWare have supported our celebration of Dragon Age Day and helped us achieve our fundraising goals even when many of these people were exhausted already from work, deadlines, and COVID.

So we're in a pretty comfortable little corner of our fandom at the Herald's Rest, and I feel lucky to be a part of that. Those of you who read or follow me, you're amazing. And you're the reason so many of us in our community (including me) got through lockdown as semi-unscathed as we did.

Ultimately, I hope the blog updates and changes mean you'll stop by here more than before, not less. But we'll see how it goes—and I hope you'll let me know your thoughts on what I can improve, what I can add, and what would mean most to you.

Thanks as always, and take care out there...

Angela