[hider=Aran][center][img]https://urcdn.eu/forum/8bff4c47-2e89-4341-8896-19840ad5ebfa.png [/img][/center] [table=] [cell] [center][sub] [img]https://urcdn.eu/forum/6ee1d220-3cd6-4d1c-800c-c0ca665d390b.jpeg[/img][/sub] [color=456593] _______________________________________________[/color] [color=adb80e]|[/color][sub] Aran “A.J” Ahmadov [/sub][color=adb80e]|[/color] [sub] 22 [/sub][color=adb80e]|[/color] [sub] cis male [/sub][color=adb80e]|[/color][sub] bisexual [/sub][color=adb80e][b]|[/b][/color] [color=adb80e]|[/color][sub] college student and drug dealer [/sub][color=adb80e]|[/color] [color=456593] _______________________________________________[/color] [img]https://urcdn.eu/forum/ff271663-0f9f-4526-b99c-f5b0c57d707a.png[/img] [img] https://urcdn.eu/forum/13fd5dad-d9d7-4ee6-b781-9ca73387f7ef.png [/img] [/center] [/cell] [cell] [color=adb80e]APPERANCE[/color] [color=adb80e]____________________________________________________________________________[/color] [indent][color=silver][sub] Standing at 6’3’’, Aran is lanky and long. He stands like an Enderman, with long arms reaching out to grab things. He wears round glasses that manage to soften some of the features of his face, especially because he’s made of long, harsh lines. On top of his glasses, A.J. has dark brown curly hair. It’s often in his face or forming a strange halo. Usually, Aran can be found wearing big, hefty sweaters with his favorite red low-top Converses. He’s a simple guy, and he dresses like an indie kid, even during the apocalypse. [/sub][/color][/indent] [color=adb80e]PERSONALITY[/color] [color=adb80e]____________________________________________________________________________[/color] [indent][color=silver][sub] Bubbly [color=adb80e]|[/color] Attentive [color=adb80e]|[/color] Intuitive [color=adb80e]|[/color] Organized [color=adb80e]|[/color] Calm [color=adb80e]|[/color] Over-protective [color=adb80e]|[/color] Big-mouthed [color=adb80e]|[/color] Finicky [color=adb80e]|[/color]Deceptive [color=adb80e]|[/color] Eccentric As the glue of his college friend group, Aran is extremely aware of other people's needs and opinions. He ensures anyone and everyone feels welcome and loved. Believing in karmic justice, Aran does this in hopes of people reciprocating the kindness he spreads. Suffering from a sub-par high school social experience, he knows what it's like to feel left out, so he has a tendency to organize every social event and D&D game to a T. Aran can't have a brunch without giving everyone a place card, attempting to mix up the group and keep everyone in touch with each other. He's the one who’s always messages the group chat first, asking everyone for an update on their lives. He would never exclude anyone, and he expects to be involved. In fact, he'll make himself involved. On top of being hyper-involved with everyone's lives and ultra-supportive, Aran is a calming presence. Perhaps it can come across as uncaring to the unfamiliar eye, but he's incredible at quieting a room of everyone's worries. In addition to this, he's able to read a room quickly, picking up on the minute details and intricate emotions. Because of this, he's the type of person to hug someone without needing to know what's going on. Due to his family's tendency to ignore him, Aran is an expert at making people feel loved and understood. He believes in being supportive without being pushy (or so he thinks). Aran doesn't need to know why you're crying, even if he's going to grill you once those tears dry up. Aran chooses to call his intense involvement in his friends' lives being over-protective. A less conservative judgment would be that he's overbearing and controlling. It comes from a good place, but he can't reel it in to a normal level. Oftentimes, he'll get into fights about what his behavior is classified as. So maybe he spent two hours Insta-stalking that girl you mentioned finding cute in your Psych class or he emailed your professor about you being sick... that just means he cares! He'll defend you to the very end, but he can't promise he won't cause bodily harm to the one who hurt you. Unfortunately, Aran also suffers from being a massive gossip. He can't seem to keep everyone's ideas to himself. This comes from his tendency to be "too much" when it comes to caring for others. He just needs to discuss with his nearest confidant about how to deal with your choice in significant other. There's an inherent attempt to do good with this also, but, obviously, he's telling everyone other people's business. On top of Aran's intense involvement in other people's lives, he's extremely particular about how things are done. He feels compelled to control everything, and if it isn't done the "proper way," he'll take over the entire situation. Aran will fix anything he feels wasn't done right. This makes him awful in group projects, but it can also annoy his friends, especially when playing D&D. He hates it when other people mess with his narrative, convinced his creativity is enough to create a magical experience for everyone. Overall, Aran is an awful collaborator. Aran can just... be a lot to handle. He's lovable, definitely, but he tends to be over-the-top about everything. Simple isn't a normal appearance when it comes to Aran. He prefers to call this eccentricity, like the type a billionaire who invests in flamethrowers or Beanie Babies has. Still, it's often more annoying than anything. He comes to every D&D meeting with mood music ready, a powerpoint of aesthetic pictures, and even props if he has the time. At his apartment, he has a collection of those plastic babies that are a meme except he paints them all and creates specialized name tags for them. They're essentially his form of an old woman's tchotchkes. Perhaps some of this is a strength, but it intensifies his other faults. Even before the games began to infiltrate his life, Aran is a master in the art of deceptiveness. He's able to live two different personalities simultaneously, and, when he gets caught, it tends to piss people off. He's either this hyper-organized, over-bearing, lovable geek or he's dealing weed at the next frat party. This makes him a fantastic liar by default. Aran can easily slip from one personality to the other, and he often feels terrible about it. He isn't a compulsive liar, but he does what he can whilst suffering a massive identity crisis. As one of the more classically nerdy people of the group, Aran still holds onto a lot of his freshman year passions (despite not really being that guy anymore). He's a Trekkie, rages about GoT (especially that last season), reads the books before the movies/tv shows, and frequents various fan-theory Reddits. Another remnant of his younger and much more innocent self is his "go-get-'em attitude". He doesn't use it for acing exams anymore, but it's still a huge part of Aran's personality. Now, he uses it to keep his double life a secret from his family and friends. Flying by the seat of his pants, Aran manages to be in two places at once, it seems. Determination is a guiding light for Aran, and he uses it for good and bad (depending on your interpretation). Spending a large amount of high school friends-less (or with shitty ones), Aran wore the label of "nerd" as a badge of honor. Although he's definitely grown past limiting his identity to one thing, he's still seen as the smart one by his peers- despite failing half of his classes this semester. Witty, without the wool pulled over his eyes, and a problem-solver, Aran is still as intelligent as he was in high school. Knowing that there are people much smarter than him, Aran has a tendency to overcompensate by being the leader of any function. Although his glaring flaws have the capability to make a group project or outing miserable, he's still the best one for the job. Unwilling to let obstacles get in his way, Aran will ride into the storm first, leading the pack into war. In a more practical sense, he's the type of guy to order water for the whole table at a restaurant so nobody sits in awkward silence and glaring at the waiter. [/sub][/color][/indent] [color=adb80e]BIOGRAPHY[/color] [color=adb80e]____________________________________________________________________________[/color] [indent][color=silver][sub] Living in Chicago his entire life, Aran has had only a few different places he's called home. His mother and father moved the family only once during his adolescence. And they only moved down the block to a bigger home after his father got a promotion. The wildest his living situation ever got (outside of living on his own) was when they lived with his dementia-ridden grandmother, for three months during their second home's renovations. A true bohemian, his grandmother was Maude from [italics] Harold and Maude [/italics] to the core; her house was shrouded in plants (a trait he picked up), sage-flavored incense (to which Aran question why she didn't just burn sage) constantly burned, and she read people's fortunes for a little extra retirement funding (which she promptly spent at the casino). His parents would call this the worst three months of their lives, but Aran calls it the best and the most formative. Aran suffers from classic middle child syndrome, and as a result, he often craves being the leader. Otherwise, he feels a bit lost in his role in life. However, this go-getter attitude also makes him the glue in many friendships. Aran is astounding at planning events and bringing everyone closer. He is always ready to put on a show for his DnD group, which is why it is a shame he was never good enough for school plays and musicals. Always the lowest-level tech assistant, never even a supporting character . . . But that is all behind him now. He has turned expectations around by being a masterful DM. The silly voices, the elaborate puzzles, the tricky plot twists ━ it's all there. There are just a few small problems. Aran is from a very relaxed, happy suburban life. His parents, Moon and Kasem Ahmadov, work respectable, middle-class jobs. His siblings, Akara and Venus, have never gone off the deep end. His family doesn't even have a black sheep. Unless . . . he's the black sheep? As the only one to attend University of Chicago, Aran is the king of subverting his straight-laced parents' expectations. Akara, his older brother, is currently a first-year grad student at Harvard Law. Venus, whose name comes from the insistence of Aran's grandmother prior to her passing, is on the road to being a world-class pianist. As the only one predicted to have a sub-par career, Aran knows he's the odd thumb of the family. No one will acknowledge it, but he senses it's on everyone's minds, despite only communicating with his family via FaceTime and their group chat. As a teen, Aran always struggled to be seen. Even amongst his siblings, he felt ignored by them. Since there are a few years between him and Venus, they never really communicated about anything important. He was overly protective of her, as he is with all people, but she never understood his nerdy interests, only entertaining them when she had nothing else to do. Closer with his brother, Aran and Akara were troublemakers as children. They enjoyed playing harmless pranks on their schoolmates, parents, and especially their baby sister. However, as the two got older, they began to grow apart. Akara, despite having lackluster grades compared to Aran, was the star of the family, the prize. He was student body president all four years of high school, and he won several orator scholarships, leaving more than enough money to pay for Aran and Venus' college diplomas. Like Aran, Akara is also a problem-solver. The only problem is this has always outshone Aran and what he views as his most valuable asset: his ability to orchestrate everything. Even though he was valedictorian, his parents only gave him a pat on the back. Despite all this, he was close to his parents at one point. Before Venus was born, he was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kid, and his parents were always entertained by his antics, even when they got him in trouble. They used to stand by Aran and defend him against principles, critical relatives, and his own brother. "He's too sensitive... too nosey!" was a common complaint, but Kasem encouraged his youngest son to ignore them. "Most people just don't like that you know your ass from your mouth," he would tell Aran. His mother always encouraged him to be the person he is today, although perhaps a little less big-mouthed, saying, "Most people don't care... you do. Don't change that." All of this changed after the '08 crash and the family gained a member, only to lose a whole college fund's worth of money. Now, Aran is expected to find a money-making job to relieve all the stress of working extra hours (even with Akara paying largely his own way) so he could go to school. It was in high school that Aran faded into the background of his family, and he wasn't listened to anymore. All he got was criticism, the type his parents used to defend him against. As his only champion, his grandmother hosted Aran on days where he couldn't stand his parents fawning over Akara and Venus whilst no one talked about his working-a-job-and-getting-all-A's-feat. She picked up the torch his parents dropped, but she added her own twist. Encouraging him to abandon all hopes of impressing others into loving them, his grandma left an imprint on Aran forever. He'll often think of her when he lies to his parents over FaceTime, telling them he's happy and "staying out of trouble." His grandma always lived her life truthfully, even when it pissed off his mother or their extended family. As the only one who still embraces counter-culture, she is the spark that has led Aran to this double-life he lives, where he doesn't know if he's a geek still or if he's a party animal, pot-dealer-turned-filmmaker. Because of this, as one might imagine, losing his grandmother during freshman year hit Aran hard. However, it inspired him to live a fuller life. Knowing his grandmother would hate him mourning her or living a false life, he settled for an in-between. Following in his grandma's bare-foot, toe-ring studded footprints, Aran started his own cannabis business, or, as the layman would call it, he's a weed dealer. Growing it in the closet of his apartment, he's made the majority of his friends this past year through attending various ragers. In fact, he's only barely managed to scrape by the past semester because of trades of weed for free tutoring or straight-up cheating. He's made a decent amount of money from his business, and he's excited to use the money to backpack around Italy... Well, not anymore. Now, he’s got bigger fish to fry. [/sub][/color][/indent] [color=adb80e]OTHER AND HEADCANNONS[/color] [color=adb80e]____________________________________________________________________________[/color] [indent][color=silver][sub]Unknown | [color=adb80e] #adb80e[/color][/sub] [list ] [*] [sub] Character is disposable.[/sub] [*] [sub] [url=https://www.pinterest.com/wisforwumbo0120/double-sided-branches-crawling-up-my-neck/] Pinterest [/url] [/sub] [*] [sub] Speaks English and Siamese[/sub] [*] [sub] Drinks Arizona Tea religiously [/sub] [*] [sub] Has glasses that make him look like Thai Harry Potter, but he doesn't wear them much, opting to reuse the same pair of contacts for weeks on end because he can't afford to go & pick up the ones he ordered last month [/sub] [*] [sub] Likes to mix vodka in with his mango slurpees. However, he reserves this for sad drinking, alone, surrounded by his plants [/sub] [*] [sub] Favorite game is Left For Dead… ironically [/sub] [/list][/color][/indent] [/cell] [/table] [/hider]