Membership Spotlight: Arie Davion
Author: Taelinn Dolivras
The subject of this month's Member Spotlight is someone who seems to be everywhere at once, always enthusiastically involved in the goings on at TarValon.net. She also happens to be one of my Sisters, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview her for the June Tar Valon Times. Who is this Gray Aes Sedai?
Arie Davion, of course! Our Director of Marketing took time out of her busy life to answer my questions about herself, the Wheel of Time, and her time here on TarValon.Net.
Arie Sedai describes herself as a mom, a wife, a web designer, a tabletop gamer, a knitter, an artist, and a Spiritualist, in her own way. "But mostly," she told me, "I am a stay at home mom of two Toddlers (2 and 3.5) and that takes up the majority of my time. More so recently then it has in the past since they are growing and needing more and more attention." When she is not looking after her kids, she spends her time doing things for the Tower, running the Marketing department, serving as Amyrlin on grey-tower.net, a roleplay site, and picking up other various crafts (her latest endeavor being embroidery).
I next asked Arie Sedai about how she found out about the Wheel of Time series, and she revealed that she discovered the series through the first group of friends she ever had. "I was pretty lonely and unhappy most of my youth up until my neighbor's mom started to try to hook up her son with me," she said. "He introduced me to my first (and current) closest girlfriends, and my first real boyfriend. They were avid readers and D&D and Alternity gamers. He gave me the first Wheel of Time book, and a few others, and I noticed links to search for, and from there I searched online communities to just talk about the book and found Dragonmount and TarValon.Net. I wasn't done the books, and I wasn't 'that' hooked so I signed up for the other side."
The discussion then turned to her favorite book of the series. "My favorite book is Crossroads of Twilight," she told me. "Yup, I'm one of those people! I enjoy it simply for the intricate political and story set up in it, it's just beautiful." Perhaps not the most popular opinion, but certainly one she is entitled to. I then inquired about her favorite character. "I always favored Suain in the beginning," she said. "After a re-read I found myself relating to Egwene the most, but overall I like Galad the best. Doesn't matter if he is pretty, but just his character is fascinating to me and I'm never bored and always surprised." Finally, I asked her about her favorite nation. "I used to favor Tear," she told me. "Now I lean more to Cairhien but I really like them all. Amadician is probably the only country I dislike aside from the Seanchan." To round things out, I asked her how she feels now that the last book in the series has been released. "All good books need to come to an end," she stated, "and I like that there are still unsolved mysteries. It was a lifetime in those books even if it started at 17/18 for me. But just because the books ended doesn't mean its influence has." True enough!
Next, the coversation turned to Arie Sedai's time here at TarValon.Net. When I asked her what made her join the site, she told me that someone in particular got her to sign up. "Muirenn made me join," she said. "She was sort of nagging me a little about how everyone I liked on Dragonmount was over here and I should join. I stuck around for a short while and then got pulled away. A year-ish later, I went to DragonCon. I was smothered by TVers, met some amazing people and I felt a renewed interest in the community instead of my usual roleplay draw (which is my usual venue), and I haven't left." I also asked how she knew that the Gray Ajah was her home on the site. "Being online and on so many WoT forums, I had a really good feel about the Ajahs and how it's not about the Book Ajah but the people in it, so I wasn't looking for just the meaning of the Ajah, but how it was interpreted by those in the Ajah," she said. "Gray resonated with who I wanted to be, and what I once was before I spent years carrying the Green Banner elsewhere. I felt more at peace with them and accepted than anywhere else. And while I feel that my more... battle ready and political aspirations don't always fit in Gray, at the core it's where I belong. I have many many stripes."
One of my personal favorite things to ask people is how they chose their Tower name, and I was excited when Arie Sedai accepted to share the story with me. "My original handle, 'Arie Tarou', was my very first online name, one that I made up with random keys when I was 17," she revealed. "When I joined I was going through a renewed love of the character and how it related the most to 'me' (since she is a character). It helps that my RL friends do call me Arie although it makes it hard to move away from the character and just be me and leave the name behind even if I've connected more with other names since. That and it's hard to leave behind a name that means 'Ultimate One' even if it is a boy's name (so I learned years later)."
I then asked her if she had a favorite thing about the site, and like many others, it is the community by far. "I have never met better, more honest and genuine people in my life. We are family in so many ways and I treasure that, deeply so." When I asked her about her favorite memory, she had a harder time answering. "I feel like I need to make a list... a really long long list!" Arie Sedai has attended several Real Life Events, but is also unable to pick a clear favorite. "I have attended two Annis, 3 DragonCons and one JordanCon. JCon this year I think trumps as my ultimate favorite, but each even had something special and unique about it that keeps them also my favorite."
When I asked her about her position as Director of Marketing, Arie Sedai was very clear about her feelings and her ideas. "I think what I like most is that I can leave when I am ready to leave, and not before," she told me. "Going through roles, and other duties, I feel like all of them set me up to hold this position (on purpose, as I planned it that way) and I can take the department and my team and really help us all succeed, and it's very... satisfying. The growth in my team-mates and just the department has really helped solidify that this is where I am meant to be until I'm ready to move on to something new... In a few years or so." She is always on the lookout for new horizons, including within Marketing itself. Her plans for the future of the department are also intriguing. "Right now I'm most excited for the Social Media aspect that is starting to form," she revealed. "It's not my forte, at all, but what it could develop into could be amazing and I'm really excited to see where the new team will go with it! That and Department logos, once we nail down the Citizen and Junior Member logos."
And there you have it! I hope you enjoyed getting to know Arie Sedai a bit better, and if you are curious about that list of favorite moments (as I know I am) why not send her a message and see if she'll tell you about some of the best memories she has of her time on the site? Though a word of caution - if you do, after a few days you may find yourself agreeing to joining her department... she can be very convincing!
