#idreim

[runicmagitek]

thank you for existing! send this to 10 people who you think deserve a sweet and kind message in their inbox! ✨💖

Dawww thank you so much 💕😭 wish I could give hugs across the internet!

[runicmagitek]

Happy birthday you awesome person,you

Thank you so much!! 💕💕💕🥰🥰🥰

[ravel-puzzlewell]

@idreim replied to your post: wait sorry is this weird shading or chest hair?? i...

He has more body hair than the werewolf and i needed more time than necessary to process that

no spoilers plz

but like its kind of a weird look on obviously toreodor-styled vampire. and it’s so... scratchy and thinly spread? like is he balding or what. i mean i’m not into chest hair myself, but i think you need substantially more of it to get ppl who are into it excited

[ravel-puzzlewell]

@idreim replied to your post i’m failing at this game right at the starting...

omg you’re checking out wtnc? *runs to get some popcorns*

i was lookin for short a low commitment game and just happened to see u reblogging like 10 fanarts of it in a row while deciding, so i’m glad ur enjoying XD

[runicmagitek]

hey! just wanted to leave some kudos for your spotify playlists, i heard a bunch of them and they are great!! :D they all have distinct moods to get into and helped me discover some new artists, and i always have a good time listening to them :3

Awww why thank you! Distinct moods are definitely what I was going for with all my playlists. I’m glad you’ve been enjoying them 🥰🥰🥰 thanks again - this was so sweet to see!

[runicmagitek]

pine,overgrowth,sword ,fae

Thank you so much for the ask! :D

pine 🌲 - what’s something you’ve had since you were a child?

Not that much honestly. Off the top of my head, I have a mug that depicts all the characters from the Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme that I’ve had forever. Also have a couple pieces of wooden furniture my grandfather made since I was bitty. Aside from that, not a whole lot.

overgrowth 🌿 - what’s a fact about yourself you’ve never had the opportunity to tell?

Hmm, I had to think way too long on this one. A lot of said facts I haven’t “had the opportunity to tell” are kind of sad and sentimental... which is probably why I don’t share them willingly. But for something on a happier note - I taught myself Excel over the past couple of years at work and am now really good at it. I even had a newer employee this year ask me where I went to school to learn Excel and I was like, “Uh... I didn’t?” Makes me happy people are impressed with my new skills.

sword 🗡️ - is there anything you always carry with you?

My phone and wallet. That’s kind of it. If I have my backpack on me, I always have the following stashed away in it: lip balm, work badge, gloves, beanie, tissues, glasses cleaner, extra device chargers, pain killers, and laptop.

fae 🌠 - what’s a fact about yourself that you don’t know how to explain?

I have some pretty hardcore sensory processing issues, mostly with sounds but also with things touching me. It’s physically nauseating to listen or feel certain things and it’s really hard to explain that to people who aren’t fazed by such things. Like when I have to ask coworkers to please stop doing something because it’s excruciating to listen to and they don’t get it :\ 

[ravel-puzzlewell]

@idreim replied to your post Ari: 5, 18,26,33,35,42,48,49,50,53,55

Yes good this Is exactly What I signed up for��and about guilty pleasures, i guess i was curious bc her character is so centered about embracing others people’s projection so i guess i started wondering if she had any and what kind of relationship she would have with them; since usually they are harmless things that are frowed upon in various usually degrees, would this prevent her in engaging at all? Things like that

no, that’s really not a problem for her. Like, Ari is not out there keeping up 100% perfect performance at all times or smth, she’s not even finessing the details. The thing about conforming to expectations is that different people will have different expectations from the same role, so it’s not feasible to try and ACTUALLY embrace all expectations. that’s what Gann does, personifies someone’s ideal, but only for one person at a time and for a short time, bc that’s just not sustainable. Ari is an area of effect bitch, she’s is not fitting expectations, she’s pretending to, she gives people a framework, a larger than life image and lets them project the details by themselves. This is how she manages to be an ideal woman to both Bishop and Casavir at the same time despite them having wildly different ideals. i mean, she can finesse the details for like one dialogue to achieve the needed impression, but she’ll not bother keeping it up later.

People who are projecting onto her are doing most of the job of keeping up that image, tbh, ignoring, not noticing or explaining the details that don’t fit, because once you think you met a dream come true, you’ll cling to that dream. Rose colored glasses make all red flags just look pink, you know. So Ari doesn’t just gets away with little harmless slip-ups, but with shit straight up incompatible with the projected image. if Ari loses her temper, she will cut a bitch.

Ari is like a Monet painting that has weird close-up details, you need to step back to enjoy the view so you don’t want to look closer, but if you did, you’d see a skull in the water and that one of the lilies has a dick sticking out of it. and if you managed to notice one thing and it’s too much for you to explain away by yourself, when you confront her, she will roll that 20+ Persuasion or Bluff

[ravel-puzzlewell]

Ari: 5, 18,26,33,35,42,48,49,50,53,55

49. What are some themes tied to your character’s story?

“No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.”

— David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and other essays

Ari’s central theme is this precise struggle to establish a self, but under a pressure of being perceived in a world that enforces a bunch of roles and identities on her. Being a half-drow girl in a small-minded village and having a cold, judgmental father, she knew from a very young age that there are acceptable and not acceptable selves, and if you show the world the wrong thing, you will be punished. And not just show the wrong self, but if you perform the right self in an unsatisfactory manner, you will not be accepted either. Like, she was a small orphan girl being bullied, but parents never took her side, because she was a grey-skinned drow child of this weird elf loner and she didn’t dress or look or behave like little girls, because she didn’t have a female role model and Daeghun just dressed her practically and didn’t bother giving her “feminine” cloth. So she watched other girls like a zoologist studying an animal behavior and adopted the patterns like “Oh hey guys, check out what a Hyper-real Idealistic Femininity I’ve got there, I think I deserve some acceptance and validation for that, huh?” Of course this realization that it’s not enough for her be something, people will only treat her like that thing if she performs what they expect from it lead to her building up a lot of resentment. And she never got a chance to figure her true self out as the pressures and expectations were being piled on her, up to saving Neverwinter. So Ari felt like a collection of masks hiding an empty center, where she doesn’t even have a self, just resentful rage and a bunch of shadows. She only got to figuring herself out in MotB, bc MotB was not about saving a kingdom, but about saving herself, and to save herself she needed to first define it.

33. How have they changed over time?

in original NWN2 Ari doesn’t really change, just grows better and better at performing what everyone around expects from her and becoming more and more bitter and angry because of that under a ethereal sweetness that she coaxed over herself. in MotB she’s finally forced to confront herself and realize that she’s not actually a despicable monster incapable of love and good things that she believed she was her entire life. She also came in terms with her masks, and being able to find her “self” and so to distinguish what part is a role and what part is she, Ari is now much more in control of the performance instead of compulsory mirroring the expectations. If before the world was theater and she was the actress, now she is also directing the play. She… well, not calmed down, she’s still very Extra™, but she’s lost the self-loathing self-destructive violent edge.

48. What was their lowest point? What was their highest point?

Lowest point is def the end of act 1 start of act 2 of MotB when Ari thought she can’t control the hunger and also because all she could feel inside is raging darkness and she couldn’t tell apart where is she and where the soul-eater, so she was completely unraveling at the seams. The highest probably when she went back to Neverwinter and saw that people of the Crossroad Keep are still aggressively loyal to her, and Kana is keeping off Nasher from annexing the Keep with lawful bureaucratic nonsense like Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return.  

53. Expectations vs Reality: what did you expect and what did you get with this character?

I didn’t expect anything when I just started nwn2, I usually see what narratives and themes the game offers me and form a character I think would be the most interesting to explore them with. If we talk about defying the expectations, it’s probably that I expected her story to be over at the end of nwn2. I was  disappointed with the ending, but on some level I saw it as fitting - Ari didn’t have the character development as much as self-destructive spiral throughout the game, and she died after her biggest victory, she always wanted, but never could live for herself, ceasing to exist as Neverwinter didn’t need her anymore, a heartbreaker who was only loved for what’s projected onto her, a shadow disappearing when the masks covering it are smashed by rocks. And then Mask of the Betrayer happened, and gave me not just a story custom-tailored to the themes and development of Ari, but also with love interest having parallel thematic arc of performing vs true selves. Even the flaws of OC NWN2 were post factum justified, like characters being one dimensional because that’s how Ari saw them vs layered, complex characters in MotB bc she learned to let people have their own agency and not just as objects that she needed to manipulate in order to save. It was truly a poetic cinema moment. At the end of nwn2 I thought Ari would be a sad character from a mediocre game that never gave her space to grow, and she ended up as my absolute fav OC in motb.

50. What are some motifs associated with your character?

Masks, shadows, Fae glamour, flowing shimmering silks, mirages, lightning, sky, esp in transitional stages between night and day times, twilight or the blue hour before the dawn, labyrinths made out of lilac hedges with a monster in the center.

Her general vibe is this post: “She had the confidence of a well organized library and the haunted grace of a moonlit cemetery.”

5. Height and Body type 

Ari is tiny, like, not comically so, but pretty distinctly even for a half-drow. Half-elves are on average human-sized and shaped, and half-drows are normally just a bit smaller, but Ari’s mom was a half Moon elf herself, so Ari is actually just a quarter human. So if normally half-elves look more like humans with some elvish characteristics, Ari looks like a watered down elf. Still lithe and bony, with sharply defined features and elongated limbs, but the aggressive angularity is smoothed down. It’s most obvious when she’s standing next to pureblood elves like Sand or Daeghun, who are pretty much made up only out of triangles and straight lines, and Ari has some ovals and curves.

18. Have any special keepsakes?

Not really for herself, Ari is not sentimental at all. Her familiar tho collects shiny and interesting things like all magpies, and Ari has a designated pocket on her bag to carry it.

26. Guilty Pleasure

Interesting question for Ari. by the end of nwn2 original campaign she would technically classify as like high functioning alcoholic with also occasional drug abuse. But that’s just coping mechanisms, not pleasure. Having a breakdown and fucking several succubi in your Keep’s basement is also I feel like shouldn’t count as guilty pleasure, it’s just Ari’s equivalent of crying in the bathroom for 10 minutes, then fixing your make up and going out to get shit done. It’s “I can have a little drug-infused orgy, as a treat.” So for guilty pleasures… probably just junk food.

The ask meme