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Name: Arian Emelyn Laith

Nickname: Ari, Rian (acceptable) or RiRi (mega disliked - it sounds like a girl's name)

Age: 18 (looks about 15/16)

Birthday: February 11

Sign: Aquarius

Gemstone: Amethyst

Blood Type: O-

Fav. Food: Home baked cookies (His cousin Saffy's sugar encrusted molasses spice cookies are the best) and mini cupcakes (the more sprinkles the better)

Hated Food: mayonnaise and canned tuna

School: DCU studying a degree in Jewellery and Silversmithing (formerly Meadowview)

Hobbies:

Jewellery-making -- Arian's always had a fascination with beads. In fact, one of his lasting memories is of the strings of beads worn by his granny Nain. After a Design and Tech lesson where the class got to make and string their own Fimo (polymer clay) beads - Arian left his in the oven too long and burnt his - an interest in jewellery making was born. Not that it’s been plain sailing - burnt Fimo beads aside - Arian's early 'creations of genius' pretty much consisted of stringing some beads together on a piece of string. Over the years however, he’s worked at improving himself to the point where he’s gotten pretty good and these days he even sells some of his pieces via Etsy in a shop co-owned with his cousin.

Library Affectionado -- Arian loves libraries. There’s nothing quite like curling up with a good read for a good hour or so in a place full of choices without worrying about Saffy nagging him about books permanently cluttering up what space they have at home. It’s not uncommon for him to check out the odd jewellery-making or cookery book and anything that catches his interest is usually photo-copied so he can take it home and experiment with it. Arian's favourite genre is probably fantasy and while at High School many a stolen hour that should have probably been spent on homework was been spent at the library escaping into the world of the storyteller. As he’s gotten older he’s largely grown out of his habit of only reading stories which have happy endings (although he still skims the endings of certain books before making a decision on whether to read through them).

Baking -- It started off as very much the guilty secret buried deep in the closet, but over time Arian’s become a little less embarrassed about this particular ‘little hobby’ of his (although it’s still not exactly something he broadcasts). Cookies, cakes, cupcakes, meringues... As long as it's sweet, then Arian enjoys baking it. Ingredients-wise he's a bit of a food snob - unrefined sugar, organic eggs... Well you get the picture.

Don't expect him to be the next Gaston Lenôtre though - pastry's one of those things that he's never managed to master. Trust me the bin's no stranger to his failed pastry attempts. Baking is a good way of gauging Arian's mood as he tends to bake a lot when miserable - he bakes choc-chip cookies and pigs out on them (after all there's nothing like fresh baked choc-chip cookies just out of the oven to right all your woes). He also still quietly donates some of his stuff to a few local charities (he rotates amongst them) for their bake sales roughly once a month.

Aikido -- Aikido’s something of a relatively new hobby for Arian and one that he’s only been at for about ten months. Since starting classes last October he’s picked up a knack for being able to properly break his falls, along with a few other things although he sometimes feeling like an elephant lumbering through the moves compared to his other classmates. Despite this Arian honestly enjoys the classes and diligently attends each Thursday evening over by the community hall near the park.

Virtues:

Promise-keeper -- If Arian gives you his word then he’ll do everything in his power to keep it. As far as he’s concerned promises are for keeping and whatever else he’s not he’s no promise-breaker. Incidentally he’s also pretty good at keeping secrets. Not anything he considers a serious crime – that he does draws the line at – but he considers it no skin off his back to keep his mouth shut on anything else (both good or bad).

Hard-working -- Arian has a great deal of enthusiasm and is happiest beavering his way through the current personal project of the moment. He’s a usually a good person to have around when working on stuff with fine details, as when it comes down to detail he has a pretty good eye for it. He might not always be on board with things, but when he puts the effort in then he tends not to do things halfway. Arian will always do his best by anything he commits to, as he personally feels that if he’s going to use valuable effort in doing something, then he should probably give it his all. After all – what’s the point of starting something, just to do it halfway?

Courageous -- Arian would be the first to tell you that he’s not brave – to be brave you have to be fearless and he feels just much fear as the next person thank you. Despite his words however, there is a core of inner strength beneath his quiet persona and a need to do his best to try and protect others from harm. He strongly believes that people shouldn’t have to face trouble (or worse) alone and will do his best to step up to the plate in spite of his own fears and potential risk to himself. Arian might not necessarily be the first person to rush in, but nor does that mean that he’s the type to stand on the side lines while others do.

Flaws:

Detail-orientated -- To put it bluntly Arian is a bit of a perfectionist. Well ok – a huge perfectionist. He has a picture in his mind of how he wants things to be and has the tendency to nitpick everything he does to death in an attempt to make it fit that picture. He truly is his own worst critic and it’s rare that one of his projects ends up managing to meet his self-imposed standards. Often this leads to a lot of late nights, with time wasted on trying to perfect even the tiniest of details, even on things where just a rough approximation would do. Arian is the sort of person who hates being asked to do something that needs doing quickly – he’s hopeless at it and usually ends up simply stressing himself out.

Tunnel vision complex -- Be it a new piece of jewellery that he's putting the finishing touches to, or a fantasy story that is extremely gripping, Arian can get so caught up in the thing at hand that it often completely slips his mind that he's probably supposed to be somewhere else at that point in time. Unless you’ve managed to get an explicit promise out of him that he’ll be somewhere at certain time then Arian could turn up any time from ten minutes late to an hour late – there has even been occasions where he’s forgotten to turn up at all. When he focuses on something Arian tends to focus on it absolutely and finds it hard to drag himself away before he’s done. It doesn’t help that Arian can be very effective at filtering out the outside world - he’s often sworn blind that he’s not had any phone calls, only to look bewildered and apologetic when he finally gets round to checking and finds all the voice mail messages. This could cause problems if you need to get hold of him urgently and he’s not actually physically in front of you. As a general rule if you need Arian for something it tends to be best to corner him and pretty much ‘drag’ him along with you.

Underneath the underneath? What's that? -- Arian’s relatively straight up as a person (or so he tells himself) and he tends to think that everyone else is that way too. As such, as long as it’s not something patently ridiculous, then you can pretty much tell him anything and he’ll take you at your word without stopping to think that hang on maybee there’s some kind of underlying motive here. He has the tendency to relate things back to how he would react or deal with the thing at hand – as in 'if I wouldn’t do ‘so and so’ and I’m a pretty good person, of course they’re not going to do ‘so and so’ either' and thus end up overlooking people’s true colours. This is compounded by the fact that once Arian makes his mind up about someone, it can be hard to shift his opinion of them (whether good or bad) often to his own detriment.

Character tidbits

~ Arian's never drunk alcohol. He doesn't intend to either.

~ Arian looks young for his age and can easily pass for around two to three years younger than he actually is. He's convinced himself it's because he's short (5'3" isn't exactly tall). In reality though he has a young-looking face.

~ Arian is very polite. He’s the type of person who will remember to have a 'please' somewhere in the request if he needs something from you and he’ll actually remember to thank you for it if you choose to do that something for him - this politeness also extends to people who he dislikes even though any 'thank yous' will most likely be through gritted teeth (he is only human). Incidentally he’s also one of those people who hardly ever swears - this is not to say that Arian never swears, but rather that this is unusual and he would have to be either extremely upset or extremely shocked.

~ Arian likes experimenting with things (he calls it 'playing around with stuff'). Although some of this has led to disasters especially on the baking front coffee and stout does not make a nice tasting cake, it has also led to some fun discoveries - beetroot and chocolate make an awesome set of cupcakes and you can make some pretty nifty earrings with watch gears.

~ Some people are good with money and some people just aren't, Arian falls into this latter category. He's often broke and somehow seems to manage to spend money like water which is why his cousin is the one who handles the financial side of their etsy shop. Arian is the sort of guy who, if you gave him $30 for the week, would somehow manage to spend it all by day 2.

~ Since finishing High School and moving onto to University, Arian's not had the time to run as much as he used to. He made the decision not to try out for the DCU team although he hasn't stopped running altogether. Indulging in the odd weekend run (generally in the park) here and there