Post by Nathan Armstrong on Aug 21, 2016 19:59:18 GMT -5
*NathanEdwardArmstrong!
••
••
}bring me home in a blinding dream
through the secrets that i have seen
wash the sorrow from off my skin
and show me how to be whole again~
through the secrets that i have seen
wash the sorrow from off my skin
and show me how to be whole again~
*whoyoucontrol!
full name: Nathan Edward Armstrong
nicknames: Nate (a nickname used in his youth that her prefers not to be called by now)
age: 32
birthday: May 5th
sexual orientation: hetero
occupation: Self-defense instructor at Wei Qiang Gym
living arrangement: Nate is currently staying with his sister Natasha and her live-in boyfriend Evan
vehicle: Black 1994 Chevy Silverado that he calls "Betty"
*lookscankill!
appearance:While not as tight and trim as he was in his youth, Nathan still has the body of a man with considerable strength. A jock in his youth, his physique was transformed further during his time in the United States Marine Corps. His sandy-brown hair is kept "high and tight" and within regs, even though Nathan has been a civilian for the past two years. His daily morning run has kept the pounds off, while his trips to the gym have kept his muscles in good form though, admittedly, he does have a layer of "cushion" that seems to accompany every aging man, no matter how much he works out. The most significant physical change Nathan has undergone is the Exo 3D-printed titanium prosthetic that replaced his lower left leg when he lost it while on deployment to Iraq.
style:Just as his body has matured, so, too, has Nathan's wardrobe. While his military dress blues are safely stored in the back of his closet, Nathan has managed to acquire a suit or two as well. While he still loves his old worn-out jeans with holes in the places that would cause the average person embarrassment, he has also taken to wearing casual slacks and even khaki shorts.
play by: Channing Tatum
*removethatmask!
general personality: Nate is an excessively confident and self-assured young man with a thick-headed stubbornness that would put a stick in mud to shame. He has an over-inflated opinion of his own likeability and attractiveness--both physically and personality-wise. Adorably oblivious to the possibility that someone might not find him, his sense of humor, or his attitude attractive, Nate tends to come on too strongly.
Lacking a social filter between his brain and his mouth, Nate has a tendency to simply blurt out whatever thought pops into his mind, no matter how blunt, tactless, conceited, or unabashedly crude it may be. Far from being the smooth, charming lady-killer he thinks he is, Nate’s pick-up lines are often stale and obvious and are more apt to get him slapped than land him in the sack. Yet, though he appears to be a womanizer, Nate’s man-whorish ways are fueled less by a desire to add notches to his bedpost and more by an uninhibited love and appreciation for all women.
Persistent to a fault, once Nate has decided what he wants or what he wants to do he doggedly pursues his goal with near religious fervor. This is a trait that also lends itself to his stubborn loyalty to friends--especially his best-friend Ben--and family.
Despite his more questionable personality traits, Nate has proven himself to be a fiercely dedicated friend and shows unwavering fealty to those close to him.
*homesweethome!
spouse: Mia Armstrong•ex-wife, Nurse
children: n/a
mother: Stephanie Armstrong•Homemaker
father: Nicholas Armstrong•USMC (retired)
siblings: Natasha Roberts•Teacher
other: Evan Roberts--brother-in-law•Bar Owner
hometown:Warrenton, OR
*waybackwhen!
history: Born in Walter Reed Medical Center, Nate began his life as the child of career Army officer Nicholas Armstrong. His early life was spent moving every two years to another part of the country--or to a completely different country altogether. As the baby of the family, Nate was always precocious and with his mischievous nature seized the spotlight with relative ease. Nate always pushed the limits, which in turn got him into more than his fair share of trouble in the many different schools he attended in his childhood.
When he was eleven, his father was stationed in Oregon and Nate, along with the rest of his family moved to the state where he would spend the rest of his life growing up. A month after the Armstrongs moved onto base, ten-year old Ben Buchanan moved into the house next door to live with his father. Outgoing Nate quickly broke through quiet Ben’s exterior and the pair became fast friends.
Not one to shy away from a new ‘adventure,’ Nate moved to Los Angeles on his own after graduation and got a job bartending at Kai Seda’s club, The Globe. Previously unaware that his best-friend was also in town, Nate reconnected with Ben shortly after the death of the latter’s grandmother and subsequent loss of Grace Behr.
Nate’s care-free attitude seemed to give Ben permission to loosen up and deal with his feelings on his own terms as opposed to being forced to talk about them with his family. Nate eventually acquired a new roommate after Ben’s aunt Charlie--upon finding Lila Buchanan’s living room littered with beer cans--tossed him out of his Grandmother’s house. The arrangement took some getting used to as organized Ben and the more messy Nate worked out the kinks in their living situation.
Nate’s current love life or, more appropriately, anti-love life, prominently features two women:
Isobel Martinez--The sister of Nate’s friend and work-out buddy, Javier, Izzy is sweet, beautiful, a little naïve and--more importantly--limber. Unfortunately for Nate, Izzy is a virgin and has strong convictions about when and with who she will first have sex with (i.e. with her husband…AFTER they're married).
This difference of values has caused more than its fair share of tense situations, leaving Javier--who initially warned his friend away from his sister--in a difficult situation. The Problem: Nate thinks Izzy is both crazy and cruel to expect any man to set aside his needs and wait (possibly for several years) until marriage before taking her to bed. Izzy, on the other hand, thinks Nate is an immature, immoral man-whore with no clue what a woman wants nor any idea how to treat her (and she‘s not completely wrong).
Beth Barker--Nate met Beth first at the Globe while he was working, then later at Shooters when she was eating with her friend Kristen and he was simply out perusing for women. From that moment on, every encounter between Nate and Beth has involved fireworks and, on occasion, violence. Instantly attracted, Nate has pursued Beth with his typical persistence--as well as his typical lousy pick-up lines. A quick-tempered firecracker, Beth has emphatically rebuffed his advances--and the interventions of her friends Wes and Kristen--but finds herself frustrated by Nate’s inability to ‘get the hint.’
Despite a handful of one-night stands, including one with one of the disc jockey's from work, Nate has continued to navigate through life as a single man. His flirtations with Izzy Martinez slowly died off while his pursuit of Beth Barker continued unabated and unrewarded.
Throughout the following year, Nate continued to stick by his best friend Ben. While he and his friend--and former co-worker--Dean attempted to encourage Ben to move on after his break up with Grace, Nate eventually gave up and teamed up with Grace's friend Tami in an effort to reunite the errant couple. The plan appeared to be working up until the night of the wrap party for Grace's show, Walk of Fame, when Ben was arrested for killing Grace's boss, Ian O'Shea.
Ian O'Shea's death put Nate in a tight predicament. Determined to stand by his best-friend, Nate found himself in a moral dilemma when he was subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution against his best friend. Nate felt that, by his testimony, he'd be betraying Ben, especially as the prosecution twisted the facts to suit their own theory of the case. However, between Grace's testimony and Charlie's legal expertise, they were able to instill enough reasonable doubt in the jury and Ben was acquitted.
With Ben free and, seemingly, back together with Grace after over a year apart, Nate turned his attentions to his own love life, or lack thereof. Following a "friends with benefits" arrangement with co-worker MJ Middleton that ended after a bout of too much honesty had MJ declaring Nate to be "undateable," Nate turned his attention back to the girl who had been continuously spurning his attention ever since they'd met over a year ago: Beth Barker.
After managing to finagle a date out of the, normally, resistant Beth (in a fit of insecurity, she all but demanded Nate ask her out), Nate pulled out all the stops, even soliciting advice from his big sister, in an effort to impress his date. While the day went without a hitch and Nate "did" seem to improve the blond store-owner's opinion of him, their scheduled second dated ended with Nate being stood up and, eventually, with Beth effectively killing any prospect of a future relationship.
Rejected for the second time in just as many weeks, Nate retreated to lick his wounds when his attention was drawn back to his best-friends troubles. Ben, having borrowed Nate's truck, had stopped by the Globe to pick Nate up from work when Ben was attacked and kidnapped by a serial killer that had been plaguing Los Angeles. Nate interrupted to event, resulting in a tussle which left Nate laying on the pavement bleeding with multiple stab wounds and Ben missing.
Nate spent much of the two weeks Ben was missing recuperating from his injuries and, when Ben was finally discovered alive, was one of the first ones in the hospital waiting room praying for his best friend to be okay and comforting Ben's girlfriend, Grace. It was comfort he would find himself having to give to her long-term as Ben woke up from his brief coma without any memory of the last four years of his life. Believing he was just seventeen, Ben had forgotten everything about his life in Los Angeles, including his grandmother's death, his friendship with Allison, and his relationship with Grace altogether.
As if Ben's memory loss weren't enough, Nate found himself in a pickle when he found out Grace--whom Ben had been avoiding as everyone kept trying to push the pair back together--revealed she was carrying Ben's baby. Nate bit his tongue and kept the secret from his best friend for as long as he possibly could until, after a heated confrontation, Nate let it slip that Ben was going to be a father.
Meanwhile, after deciding that no one was ever going to take him seriously and that everyone would always look at him like a bonehead idiot, a ten year-old trapped in a man's body, unless he did something with his life, Nate enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and, after undergoing basic training at Camp Pendleton, was eventually shipped off to his first duty assignment in Korea. This permanent station would be the first of many was Nate re-embraced the military life from which he had come. It wasn't long, in the world in which he lived, before he was sent on his first deployment to Iraq. Fraught with danger and with the risk to his own life as well the lives of his comrades always prominent, being in a war-zone had a profound effect on Nate and quickly forced him to abandon his light-hearted, rarely serious attitude and finally grow the fuck up.
After returning from his first deployment, Nathan--abandoning "Nate" in the Iraqi desert--met, fell in love with, and married young woman, Mia, who was working as a nurse with Doctors Without Borders. It was a whirlwind affair that seemed to consume them both and Nathan was, for the first time in his life, convinced that settling down, becoming a father and growing old with a woman who loved him was what he'd wanted all along. He was determined to put the bone-headed playboy behind him and become a real man.
The marriage, unfortunately, was not to last. Between the demands of the US military and the needs of Doctors Without Borders, Nathan and his bride spent more time apart than together and, after Nathan's third deployment (his only deployment to Afghanistan), he and Mia divorced and went their separate ways. Perhaps it was because he wanted to get away from the house that he'd barely shared with his wife or perhaps it was because he was still grieving the end of his marriage or perhaps it was a nihilistic fear that he would die alone, Nathan can't really say anymore but when a fellow Marine was called up for deployment, Nathan stepped in and offered to take the tour for him.
It was on this tour, however, that Nathan would lose his closest Marine buddy, Mark Foster along with the lower part of his left leg. While traveling through the sands of Iraq as part of a convoy carrying supplies, his group's vehicle struck an IED which exploded, killing Mark and two other men instantly and severely injuring Nathan and another Marine.
Awarded the Purple Heart once he was shipped back to the states to for recovery and rehabilitation, Nathan spent his final days as an active duty Marine undergoing physical therapy, psychological therapy, and getting fitted with and learning how to walk with his new prosthetic leg. It took some months for Nathan to "bounce back" and become somewhat his old self again but with the support of his parents and sister and closest friends coupled with his own resilience and determination, Nathan finally began to discover what his therapist called his "true self": a combination of the light-hearted, wide-eyed young man and the disciplined warrior.
After spending a year in Oregon with his parents to get settled back into civilian life, Nathan jumped at an opportunity to move back to LA when his buddy Javier phoned him and informed him that there was a position available at Wei Qiang gym for a self-defense instructor. It would mean working for his old boss, Kai-ling Tsung again but, given that Nathan had actually liked the young woman last time he'd worked with her, that was hardly going to dissuade. After making arrangements, Nathan packed up what little he had and made his final move back to Los Angeles.
*thepuppetmaster!
name: Brandon