If you haven’t read it, this linked page is the narrative behind Amari Elder and reading it first will give you context into the things I’ll try to explain and justify in here. Really this has no specific goal or purpose, just an unorganized collection of thoughts and feelings around creating the narrative behind Amari more than anything, so if this seems like a lot to read, I wouldn’t be bothered if you passed; thank you for the consideration at least.

To start things off, in the world of streaming, we’ve come to colloquially refer to the background behind a streamer or virtual avatar as “lore”. Quite personally, I think that putting everything in this one category is a disservice to the creativity and visions some creators have, but it’s also fair because having a common way to point to something and get a pretty solid idea of what it is really isn’t a bad thing. That said, probably the most common trend I’ve seen is this lore really bridging the gap between a character’s origin and why they’re streaming instead of doing whatever badass thing they would normally be doing. I’m no purist here in any way, shape, or form so personally, if people want to come up with these narratives to supplement or justify their design choices and what not, I think that should really be celebrated and enjoyed. Some people enjoy creating that kind of story for fun, some people use that background to inform other design choices like their overall theme, some people use it as a stage to introduce their character then essentially never defer to it again. All of these approaches are fine really, I’m not here to say otherwise, they’re just not a fit for me, hence the narrative summary I prepared for Amari.

Back when I was looking at starting streaming, I had a few friends that were already streaming and a couple that were considering it, but the idea was that we were going to be a loosely associated crew and stream together. I enjoy that kind of cooperative environment and my plans were to contribute essentially the technology solutions to problems, archive footage, edit together clips and stream summaries, the works. Well all of that fell through for various reasons and I’d be dishonest if I said I weren’t a little salty about it, but it’s not because my friends ended up taking separate paths, I was really looking forward to designing a world in which our characters could exist and interact. That interplay of narratives, figuring out how they’d interact in different scenarios, that’s what I love to consider when working on narratives. To me, those interactions can be used to not only tell an interesting story, but detail a character’s personality or motivations in more compelling and interesting ways than simply telling you about them (the kind of reading a list of traits or qualifications you’d do if you only designed lore). While most people like themselves or their characters to be the protagonist of their narratives, I personally find designing and working with support characters to be far more interesting. So originally I was looking forward to setting up a world then having my character be supportive of the other characters in it in some way or form. That’s where I’m comfortable, that’s the kind of story I like to tell. Even in my days of writing fanfiction for Phantasy Star Online, my character Netro Shine was always supporting and enabling other characters. Sure he’d have his heroic moments, but they were often in the service of others and if he alone were responsible for overcoming some massive burden, there was a long path of interactions that justified him getting to that point. With our original idea essentially up in smoke, that left me back to the drawing board with only myself to work with as Amari Elder. Clearly I came up with something and I like it all well enough, but it was challenging for me and what I’ve created is a summary of a narrative, not the narrative itself. The interactions between all the characters is really the magic of the story and the summary lacks that; maybe I’ll get to writing it, maybe not, but it’s a lot of work for me as one person especially considering all my other ongoing projects. But at least I have something concrete to share.

With all that exposition out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about Amari Elder. As a character, Amari really is what you would get if you threw me into a fantasy setting. Aspects of their development and narrative reflect real life experiences I’ve had in some way, shape, or form. I guess noting I referred to Amari by “their” is a note worth making; you may ask why I referred to Amari as “him” in the summary but differently here, and that’s one of the shortcomings of a summary like this. My experience with gender can be summarized as “how you perceive me can’t change who I am” with a splash of “nobody has ever asserted something ‘because I’m a man’ and been correct about it”. I will put on the apron and cook if people are hungry and I will build a shelter if people are homeless; to me, these limits on how people should look or behave based on how you perceive them are arbitrary and really do little other than to keep you from understanding people for who they are instead of how you think they should be. And I most certainly have never limited myself in that regard; as such I’m comfortable with any pronouns and have given that trait to Amari. One of the nuances a summary can’t catch is that cultural influences from the different groups dictates how they refer to Amari given their androgynous appearance; the empire assumes the demon’s a witch and she’s using her magic to do all these wicked things while Novara is pretty confident men can’t be that strong or elegant so obviously the overzealous Hunter is a woman and The King of Fire isn’t sure what to think of Amari because he thought Amari was male just like him but after connecting via the Mantle of Fire, their thoughts and feelings were so foreign it’s hard to think of them as anything other than straddling these lines he once thought were well defined. Since I was trying to just summarize key events, this nuance would only make it more difficult to follow, hence it didn’t make the cut, but if I ever get to writing portions of it, you’ll get to see that in action so joy I hope. Another key trait I’ve given to Amari is how quick I am to make personal sacrifices if it means an outsized benefit to the people in my charge. Every decision to sacrifice something was for a greater good that Amari understood, and picking up the pieces after that can be challenging and unpleasant, but we keep on pressing towards the future we want to build the best that we can. Hopefully the summary captured that well enough.

With all those notes in mind about Amari and the whole nuance of the narrative the summary is lacking, I did want to stress the point that the summary is just that, a play by play of only developments important to Amari. When I create narratives, I prefer living, breathing worlds, not settings built around moving some protagonist forwards. As such, there are other points in the narrative where Amari comes across other Representatives from Novara, the future Patron Saint of the Church, other empire Generals, and others, and you can’t get a feeling for those relationships from the summary, which is a shame really because those interactions are what I prefer to detail and I have fun things in mind. One of those ideas is an exile from Novara; the previous Countess of the Novara Council that was driven out after she attacked and killed several others on the Council. Amari has an uneasy relationship with her at first knowing what the Representatives are like, but they learn far more about Novara and their problems from her, developing sympathy for their challenges and unfortunate position (that position being in decline because of the members of the Council putting their own prestiege ahead of actually properly running and maintaining the town). Another one is while Amari initially clashes with the general that replaced the one in their local area they executed, the general eventually comes to understand that Amari is extremely reasonable, and works out an agreement to coexist, much to his soldier’s disdain (though they eventually come around as well). It’s messy, complicated relationships like these that make storytelling interesting in my opinion, and a lot of why I was so excited to create a narrative with my friends, because then some of that creative control is taken away from me and I can get a more diverse set of interactions going on for even more detailed and interesting characterization. So while the summary has some worldbuilding in it, there’s plenty more that I do and don’t have defined (also, I kept the summary somewhat vague even if I had a more defined idea to give me the flexibility to alter things later if necessary). Really the summary and Wiki are intended to allow me to detail some things without having to actually write anything out in full partially because I’d get completely lost in the interactions. While the summary feels like a disservice to the intended story I have behind Amari, it’s a necessary evil so I can convey that there is a story back there.

Actually, with the previous note about additional worldbuilding I have in mind and my earlier comments about my characters typically being support characters, that should give you a pretty solid idea of what direction I intend to go with the narrative. While Amari does have their own problems to deal with and address, the other characters within the narrative also have ambitions to realize, relationships to foster or forge, or major obstacles to overcome and often times Amari will be some part of the answer, whether that’s somebody learning from Amari as an opponent or Amari directly interacting and providing guidance on something enabling others through wise words or suggestions. I’m sure most people would prefer to be the focal point of a narrative they’re making, and that comes with a lot of bonuses when it comes to starting from scratch and building a narrative or world, namely you can define your points of growth and craft scenarios that build to that quite easily. My approach is very different in that I prefer other characters having their growth or development points and intertwining that with the growth and development (or other progress) my own character may need. Without other characters to interact with and work off of, this meant that I had to design all of those interactions myself. I think the patron saint of the church is the best example of that from the summary; she starts off essentially sheltered from the world under the protective guidance of her father given these directives without any real logic behind them in addition to having this horrifying magic she didn’t quite understand. Her interaction with Amari forced her to go through the introspection necessary to realize she had been fundamentally isolated from reality and the only way she would really learn to understand the world properly would be to experience it herself, thus she set on her pilgrimage. They both benefit from the exchange; she grew as a person and Amari became cognizant of the other souls within the Parasitic Reservoir. A lot of exchanges in real life also work in that way where we learn things about ourselves or the world around us via our interactions with other people, whether it’s things we couldn’t see before because of our limited perspective or viewpoints we needed to understand to improve our own introspection; I think that’s wonderful and try to replicate it in my own storytelling and design. But also, that meant that it took me like a year to really form solid narrative beats for Amari after coming up with the basic concepts, so win some and lose some I guess.

Anyways, thank you for reading if you made it this far. Really the reason I’m writing this is because I wasn’t satisfied with doing a summary of a good portion of the intended narrative, but hopefully everything before this point made it clear I was never going to be satisfied, but at least I now have something to share. Maybe I’ll find some time to write, though probably a more realistic short term goal would be to use the summary to build out more of the Wiki. It’s effectively barren at this point, but as noted before, filling it out would allow me to build the world without having to go through the effort of designing all the people, places, and events and tie them together properly all in one shot. If you enjoyed the summary and this senseless rambling, you may also enjoy this album of artwork related to Amari. It’s pretty much commissions all the way down, but I do like the initial reference Liese created for me.