This took me a long time to do. It was actually the second task I ever signed up for, but creating all of the elements and putting them together in a form I was happy with, plus getting the necessary materials to display it publicly, turned out to take more effort than I'd expected. I'm quite pleased with the results, though.

I actually came up with two coats of arms. I like the first because I think it takes the traditional elements of a coat of arms and twists them, making them bolder and more dynamic.



(Relatively wordy description of why I used these elements; feel free to skip down to further pictures.)

The supporters at the bottom are ravens; they're unusual supporters since they're facing away from the shield, but I wanted them looking ever outward and further. Since Ravens were often used as messenger birds, and are correspondingly associated with transmitting information, I knew I wanted them in my coat of arms. I like to think of them as Huginn and Muninn.

The Mandelbrot fractal as escutcheon and mantling is certainly the most striking part of this design, and I think the gradient edges work really nicely. It's there to suggest the nature of that which surrounds us, the infinite in finite space.

Related to this, at the bottom, is a normal Gaussian curve, discretized--our models are continuous, but our measurements are always discrete. All that we do is an approximation, and we try to make it a good and useful one.

The dice in the upper left are also related: the results of tossing dice can be approximated by a normal distribution, though never exactly. In a sense, it shows the duality of quantization, that the continuous can be an approximation for the discrete. But they are also there to remind us of our choices in casting the dice, and that we cannot control how they fall (and to echo my earlier thoughts in my The Shadow is You completion).

The eye is there both as an off-putting humanizing element to the coat of arms, and also because of its role in observation and insight. "Thinking is more interesting than doing, but less interesting than looking."

The separations between the three sections are meant to be reminiscent of cracks in a mirror (to honor my Malkavian past, specifically the phrase "Break the mirror to find yourself." and the idea of looking through the cracks in reality). They are also there to suggest lightning; in accordance with the discretization and fractal, one of my favorite sayings of Mandelbrot's is "Clouds are not spheres. mountains are not cones. Lightning does not travel in a straight line."

Finally, a jester's coxcomb rests above as a combination crest/helm, to remember that we are all of us fools; we can be great fools, we can be fools for truth...but we should not forget our foolishness.


However, Kprime pointed out that the design was very unstable--there was no place for the eye to rest. While this is one of the things I like about it, I decided that I should try to make a more traditional coat of arms as well. And in the end, I came up with something I was happy with.



This adds a spider web for mantling and wreath, for obvious reasons. It also helps place the supporters, whom I really like. I think the shadow spiders work well, conveying an ethereal nature and subtle influence.

I created and added a warmouse, to indicate the great strength I get from the local Warmice community. Also, a mouse holding a sword is pretty cute.

Finally, the motto is "Mos Ut Requirire Sapientam", which, if I remember my Latin correctly (and I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit rusty) means "The Drive to Seek Wisdom".


In order to display my coat of arms, I had originally hoped to get a henna artist to paint it on. As the designs grew more complex, though, it because clear that this was unlikely (at least with artist Bex on the opposite coast). So I created temporary tattoos myself and affixed them, and went about my errands for the day. I took a couple of pictures as shout outs, too (I'll have to get some iron-ons and make a shout out to Aearrineth and Mitten, too). I also ended up with some clear plastic prints which I posted on my door and window (there's more than one way to publicly display). Descriptions of my day are with the pictures.