#and she knows herself enough that she doesn't do things by halves lol. it's all or nothing for her

[swordmaid]

really do like shri'iia being an oath of the crown paladin when she was still in menzoberranzan meaning that she very much upheld the terror and status quo lolth enforced over her drows. she was kind of an inquisitor in a way, or a crusader, and she hunted down anyone who didnt want to follow lolth. she was very much a part of the people who enforced that fear and paranoia lolth particularly likes, more so as she was kept in the shadow so she just instills dread on others without them knowing. her name is supposed to mean 'silent chaos' btw and she did just that. but then the script flips and now suddenly she's one being hunted. the worst part is shri'iia never understood why anyone would want to defy lolth before, but now that she's seen the other side and she's seen the potential that they were robbed from, that's when she understands why even though they were raised in the dark, some still yearned to see the sun. that's when she understands why her own mother was willing to throw everything away and be an outcast so she's not under lolth's gaze anymore, and i don't think shri'iia regrets what she has done when she was still following lolth - more so that she regrets and scorns that she never knew there were other options besides lolth, and it's possible to live without that constant fear and dread that comes with serving the spider queen.

[aihoshiino]

i remember you mentioning your mahou au of ai.

please. tell us more. magical girl ai sounds magnificent. (any and all ai is magnificent ofc.)

HELLO ANON, SORRY FOR THE WAIT... i felt a bit nervous responding to something that would direct attention to my off-site stuff after some of the weirdo anons i got but. well i do really want to ramble about my mahous so here i am LOL

Anyway!!! My mahou AU for Ai is set in my magical girl setting that I created for an RP I run over on Dreamwidth called Beautiful Dreamer! The long and the short of it is that in BD's setting, the world is split into two halves - the Waking World and the Dream Sphere. The Dream Sphere is the world of dreams and was born of and shaped by the feelings and imagination of humankind. BD as a whole was inspired by Persona 4, Wonder Egg Priority and (most of all) Blue Reflection: Second Light, so if you sort of melt all those general vibes together, you get the idea.

Dreamers are the mahous of this setting and are the only people capable of traveling back and forth between these two worlds! While in the Dream Sphere, they take on their mahou forms and have access to all sorts of magic. Because of this, most Dreamers who awaken to their powers take on the responsibility of protecting the dreams of people when they manifest in the Dream Sphere. Negative human emotions create monsters known as Torments and Nightmares and if left to roam freely, they can cause damage to people's hearts and minds in the real world. So it's up to Dreamers to protect them!

There's no secrecy or masquerade in BD, so the existence of Dreamers and the Dream Sphere is common knowledge. There's a worldwide organization known as the Dreamer Union that's dedicated to assisting and managing the Dreamer community... and that's where Ai comes in!

Ai's AU backstory up to pretty much the start of the series is basically the exact same. The major divergence is that once she has her twins, the stress of the situation is enough to make her awaken as a Dreamer. Realizing how out of her depth she is, Ai ends up going to the DU in Tokyo hoping to find some help and ends up purely by chance being taken under the wing of one of the DU's founders and public face, Dreamer Swan who becomes a beloved senpai and surrogate mom to her. She and her husband help train Ai up as a Dreamer and eventually, Ai decides she's going to essentially dedicate herself full time to the DU - both out of respect and admiration for Swan and wanting to follow in her footsteps as her protoge but mostly to get a fresh start for her and the kids. To this end, she moves to the city of Yumemigaoka (the fictional city where the story is set) to start working at the main DU headquarters.

Things go really well for her in Yumemigaoka! She ends up building a small but close-knit support network of people who care for her, a lot of whom are close enough to her to know about the twins. Kamiki doesn't take her leaving very well at ALL so he ends up briefly stalking her to Yumemigaoka and getting scared off by her friends lol.

While in Yumemigaoka, Ai officially debuts as a solo idol, styling herself as 'Dreamer Ai-Doll' even in reality and basically making her whole schtick that she's 'the DU's idol'. As she grows up and gets more famous she shifts her image to be that of 'everyone's role model', someone who's warm, caring, reliable and good-natured. When Dreamer Swan retires, Ai fills her shoes as the DU's face and main PR woman and also starts taking Dreamers under her wing to mentor them too. So the image everyone has of her is that of not just everyone's role model, but the 'ideal' Dreamer that everyone looks up to and wants to emulate. Actually now I'm typing all that - it wasn't something I was aiming for while I was writing her in game but the best comparison for her public image is probably that she's inherited a lot of Tomoe Mami's swag when it comes to being a mahou senpai...

All this means that Ai's baggage is a bit different in BD than it is in canon OnK. Now she knows that the right people really will love and support her even though they know some of her worst secrets, a lot of her fears of being unlovable and unable to connect with people aren't as much of an issue. She's much healthier socially speaking and a lot of her issues with communication, she's been able to work on and improve - she's actually in her early 30s in BD now, so she's been able to grow into an older and wiser version of herself.

That said, she's still under crushing pressure to maintain her public image as the pure and perfect invincible idol of the DU. Since she's everyone's senpai and the one everyone looks up to, Ai places a ton of pressure on herself to be strong and not show any weakness so that she can support everyone else as much as they need her to. Even with the people she's closest to, she's still bad at opening up and being vulnerable with them - in the nearly two years she's been in the game, she's only actually told one single person about Aqua and Ruby's existence, a close friend who correctly identified that she wasn't telling him because she completely trusted him, but because he'd unintentionally cornered her into having no other choice. That's her biggest issue right now - for all she's learned, she still can't help but hold everyone at arm's length.

This is, uh, actually perfect timing because all this is coming to a head in game right now...! But that's in the process of resolving and require another big ramble so if folks are interested in it, I could recap Ai's mahou adventures a bit more closely and give everyone the full story.....................................