In one of the last times I played, some invader had broken through my defenses and killed a couple of highly respected dwarves (one of whom was a skilled fighter), but finally came face to face with a young girl dwarf who confronted him in one of the dining halls and, though she lost a leg, managed to kill him (eventually recovering to grow up to be a skilled craftsdwarf). I had a some statues made of her, and most of them came out depicting the heroic deed in different levels of detail (so of course the best one was put up in that dining hall).

There's also a sort-of-exploit related to this, where if there's a stranger in your fortress whom you suspect of having a nefarious background, you can commission artwork of them and sometimes it will reveal malicious traits about them if you examine it. The artists always seem to have perfect knowledge of their subjects.

So you begin to do other things, mega projects are a common one.

ASCII version will get the new UI Soon™

Personally I don't think the new look they're going with will be problem with imagination for me - the new look adds just enough detail that you can spot dwarf by their look alone but there is still plenty of space to imagine how exactly the described things look