Basic Information (Required)
- Full Name: Margaret Erika Wolfram
- Preferred Name: Erika
- Age: 24
- Gender: Female
- Race: Ailor (Imperial)
- Sexuality: Heterosexual
Skill Information (Required)
Proficiency Points: 24
- +34 Visual Arts (+24 Proficiency Points; +10 Imperial Ailor)
- Common
Visual Information (Required)
The following is required when filling out your character application. Please use a Bullet Point list. Try to keep the information here as simple and confined as possible, it's supposed to be a short list.
- Eye Color: Green
- Hair Color: Strawberry Blonde
- Hair Style: Shoulder-length
- Skin Color: Fair
- Clothing: She prefers simple, middle-class clothing in vibrant colors.
- Height: 5' 5"
- Body Shape: Slim
- Body Fat: Low
Soft features dominate Erika's face and body. A thin, angular face with light freckles spot her small nose and dimpled cheeks. Her body is slender at the waist. Her hips thinner and not quite as robust as others of her age. Her bust is equally as modest, but is hardly noticeable beneath the medium painter's smock she wears.
Personality and Abilities (Required)
- How would your character respond to experiencing Fear?
- Margaret isn't a highly emotional or reactive character and as such, would likely hesitate in an attempt to process what she's experiencing before making any immediate fight or flight response.
- How would your character respond to experiencing Stress?
- Erika's ability to manage her stress is a weak point in her character. She has a tendency to bury herself in her work, which ironically tends to be the very source of her stresses in the first place. She rarely paints for herself and as such can rarely rely on painting as a therapeutic hobby.
- How would your character express feeling Happy?
- Beyond her reserved exterior, she can be a very talkative and outgoing individual. She's likely to become giddy and more excitable, which is often a drastic improvement over her normal character.
- How does your character view Law and Authorities?
- She does her best to follow the law and respects authorities, especially nobility. She tends to distance herself from lawbreakers since she values her reputation above anything and does not want to be associated with scoundrels.
- How does your character feel about Races other than their own?
- While fairly neutral toward various people's, she has an aversion to Allar and Slizzar as she finds their reptilian appearances very off-putting considering she has a fear of snakes.
- How does your character feel about Religion for themselves, and other faiths?
- Erika grew up in a traditional Unionist household and when asked, openly declares herself as a Unionist, although she only seems to practice passively as she doesn't pray in public and only occasionally attends the season festivals.
- How does your character feel about the Arcane and Magical in the world?
- She'd always imagined what it would be like to learn sorcery and study great magics, but this curiosity never made much of an impression on her. She simply hasn't been around enough magic users to have a definite opinion on their craft.
- How does your character feel towards their family?
- Margaret grew up in a happy home to a loving family who supported her dreams of becoming an artist. She maintains a positive relationship with both of her parents, although she has a special affinity with her father.
- What is your character's biggest insecurity?
- Her artwork. She's always been extremely critical of her own work and flaws and imperfections tend to be blown way out of proportion in her mind, leading to many bouts of creative fatigue. This critical nature over her artwork has translated somewhat onto herself as she tends to equate her self-worth to her skill as an artist.
- What is your character the most proud of about themselves?
- Graduating from the Regalian Academy of Arts with honors. She always tries using that fact as a subtle reminder to herself that she's not as terrible of an artist as she thinks she is some days.
- What motivates your character to move forward and better their life?
- A drive for perfection in her craft and her person. She knows that none of the legendary Regalian painters ever got as good as they are without being extremely critical of themselves and harboring some degree of perfectionism.
- What is your character's biggest fear?
- Being forgotten to history. Her greatest motivation is that one day she'll have crafted masterpieces that would cement her name in the annals of history as one of the great Reglian artists. The farther she feels from his goal, the more devastating her lack of self-worth becomes in her depression.
1) Praised by her peers for her artistic talent, she is often painted in a light of charity mainly in part to her kindness and unwillingness to participate in confrontation. People often hustle cheap work from her, even if she knows it's unfair, simply because she doesn't want to be seen as miserly, nor deal with any confrontation that might arise from declining a commission. People tend to walk over her.
2) Erika is incredibly self-critical, both of her artwork and of her person. She doesn't believe herself to be as talented as others claim, so she tends to undervalue herself and her work. She still believes that she's not yet good enough of an artist to attempt to work full time and as such, her ambitions are usually staunched by her own lack of willpower.
Erika suffers badly from depressive episodes, which tend to influence her work into more abstract, darker pieces with broad, contrasting compositions with a ton of negative space. Her depression can be linked almost directly to her self-critical views as well as the treatment she gets from clients. A constantly demanding work schedule combined with minimal pay gives her grief that she'll never be as good as she hopes.
3) She is a traditionally kindhearted soul. While she only keeps a small group of close friends, she's always polite with others and often gives off a friendly attitude that others tend to perceive as flirtatious, even when she's not.
4) Erika can be described as Neutral Good. She respects laws and authority and will generally go out of her way to help others. She could be considered naive, however, since she does tend to give people more chances than most might, even if she's constantly being burned by that decision. She wants to help people and always believes that people can change and might if she's allowed to help.
2) Erika is incredibly self-critical, both of her artwork and of her person. She doesn't believe herself to be as talented as others claim, so she tends to undervalue herself and her work. She still believes that she's not yet good enough of an artist to attempt to work full time and as such, her ambitions are usually staunched by her own lack of willpower.
Erika suffers badly from depressive episodes, which tend to influence her work into more abstract, darker pieces with broad, contrasting compositions with a ton of negative space. Her depression can be linked almost directly to her self-critical views as well as the treatment she gets from clients. A constantly demanding work schedule combined with minimal pay gives her grief that she'll never be as good as she hopes.
3) She is a traditionally kindhearted soul. While she only keeps a small group of close friends, she's always polite with others and often gives off a friendly attitude that others tend to perceive as flirtatious, even when she's not.
4) Erika can be described as Neutral Good. She respects laws and authority and will generally go out of her way to help others. She could be considered naive, however, since she does tend to give people more chances than most might, even if she's constantly being burned by that decision. She wants to help people and always believes that people can change and might if she's allowed to help.
Weaknesses (OPTIONAL)
- Submissive - Erika will usually bend to the will over whomever if given sufficient pressure to do so. She doesn't like to fight or argue and will consistently forgo necessities just to avoid it. Even if the consequences of doing so are detrimental.
- Socially Unaware - Erika has trouble identifying the subtleties of conversation that often result in her not getting what they're trying to say or her giving off unintentional mixed signals.
Life Story (Required)
Born in Calemberg to a humble smith and a baker, Margaret Erika Wolfram had a relatively quiet upbringing. While not affluent by any means, their family lived a comfortable, middle-class means.
She was not born an only child, but by her 3rd birthday, she had become one. Her elder brother, Jens died shortly after turning 11 with a flu-induced fever. Though she doesn't remember anything about him, his death devastated her parents and caused them to become much more attached and conscientious of Erika growing up. Try as they might to fill the hole left in their hearts by Jens, the Wolfram family suffered with infertility and never bore another child.
As time passed, Erika's affinity for the arts became more apparent, her parents, particularly her father, fostered her artistic means as best as they could. With her father's help, she learned many basics of drawing and would spend hours upon hours drawing in her sketchbooks.
At 17 years old, Erika was able to submit a portfolio of sketches to the Regalian Academy of Arts and nearly two months later, she finally received her letter of acceptance. With a newfound excitement, her parents did everything they could to save enough money to ensure that she would go.
Erika's life at the Academy was a mixed bag in her opinion. She wasn't very outgoing and tended to work on her own rather than collaborate with other students. Her professors saw this as a weakness, that not exposing herself to new ideas from the other students might stunt her growth as an artist, so for a while, she was forced to work with others, which was difficult to say the least.
Her skills as an artist improved dramatically over the years, but she didn't truly feel a calling until she'd discovered painting. Moving oil on canvas was a euphoric feeling of creativity for her and drove her to devote much of her time to studying lighting and shape.
She picked up the practice quickly, even her teachers were impressed by her affinity for it, but ensured that her ego never got too inflated. They always seemed hardest on her illustrations, not because they didn't like her, but because she was well advanced and assumed she didn't need the positive reassurance; that the raw criticism would be more helpful for a prodigal artist like her than encouraging words to help a failing student.
Erika didn't see this, however. She only saw the flaws, which drove her to work harder, only to be met with more criticism. Feeling rejected by her professors, she would strive painfully for their admiration, not knowing that they were only trying to help her grow.
Over her last year, this depression drove her style into darker territory. She would draw scenes of open fields with wide compositions and dark, highly contrasting features. She was painting with a raw emotion that impressed her peers greatly.
She graduated with honors among her class and her professors congratulated her work as inspiring, but she'd long forgotten the feelings of encouragement. Feeling her professor's words more as professional kindness than genuine insightfulness, Erika still felt as though her paintings were amateur and that she still needed a lot of work to get where she wanted to be.
She sought work as a portait painter for small means as she worked to develop her work into a form she enjoyed more. Constantly looking up to classical Regalian artists for inspiration, she continues to work to this day, though severely beneath her abilities.
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