Kept seeing other people do this OC template and I wanted to join in too since I have Hella Brainworms about this guy lately <3
Explanations for each pick under the cut:
Character: Nathaniel (Nate) "Chad" Chadwick Williams (you're getting an in game screenshot of his face cuz I don't have a good drawing of him 👍)
Flowers: Narrow-leaf Milkweed is a common flower in California, which is actually where Chad was born and lived until he was about 10 years old when his father's unit was abruptly stationed on the East Coast and his family moved to Boston. The flower is associated with renewal, hope and transformation which I think are 3 driving forces in his story, especially during his time in the Commonwealth.
Weather: (the picture used is an in-game screenshot I took in Far Harbor!) Rainy, foggy days where the sky is still mostly visible fit his overall half-glass-empty view on life. He isn't prone to depression but he is practical. There's no use arguing about what could be if the fact of the matter is that the glass is not currently full. He does get bouts where he's cold and quiet, like a gentle fall rain shower. Fog is also considered mysterious, and a lot of people feel that he has an air of mystery about him (up until they meet him and learn he wears his heart on his sleeve).
Color: A pale, faded blue not only echoes the past which is so far out if his reach that he can only remember glimpses of what it was like, but is also symbolic of his own perceived emasculation. Growing up in a strict religious household that held American Ideals and Religious Morals to a militant standard, he learned quickly how to force himself into boxes never meant for him to fit. Being gay wasn't an option, so he internalized his homophobia and his self esteem was made to suffer for it. His whole life he's felt he's come short in all the ways that matter: picked last to join the baseball team, asked out as a joke for prom, constantly picked on in basic training. The pallid nature of the color also symbolizes the near constant emotional exhaustion he feels. It's also the color of Nora's eyes.
Food: New England Clam Chowder. He wasn't much of a picky eater as a kid, but being pulled away from the only home and friends he knew to live on the opposite coast did a number on him. One of the only things that got him to cheer up during that first cold winter was his mother taking him and his sister to a diner after church on Sundays and letting him order a big bowl of clam chowder for lunch. It eventually became a staple at home, much to his sister's annoyance. If he had to pick one food that tastes like home, it's his mother's recipe.
Beverage: He's the type of guy who really wants to order a Sex on the Beach, but would opt for something a little less "frilly" and order a Long Island Iced Tea. The drink is also a misnomer; despite the word "tea" being in the name, there's no tea in the drink. Despite being a 'soldier' and a 'husband' at face value, there's actually a lot more depth to who he is and very little truth in labels that have been forced onto him.
Object: A Lone Wanderer motorcycle that has fallen into disrepair. Even prior to the war, Chad was good with his hands and one of his earliest projects was restoring a discarded Giddy-Up Buttercup for his older sister. This evolved into him enjoying working on cars. His skills got him a job as a mechanic in the army and after being discharged from the military, he ended up working at a Red Rocket. As a teenager, he always dreamed of owning a motorcycle after his uncle let him borrow his bike for a weekend. When he returned to civilian life he ended up getting one when a client decided to sell his trashed bike to the shop instead of restoring it and the manager let Chad have it as long as he paid for all the repairs and did them himself. For a good chunk of his story, whenever he needs to relax and be away from everyone, he can be found at the same Red Rocket he worked at prior to the War, still trying to restore his bike.
Place: (This one piggybacks off the one for object) A lot of people talk about having a home away from home, and Chad's is the garage of Red Rocket. It becomes his own sanctuary when Sanctuary itself gets too be too much for him to handle. Despite 200 something years going by, the place is still surprisingly intact, and it's comforting to have something that feels a little familiar when everything else is so different. Even Pre-War, he was always eager to pick up overtime shifts just to have an excuse to stay late and engross himself in work. It was a way to avoid his problems, and he knew it caused a lot of tension between him and Nora. When he catches himself falling into old habits over the course of his arc in my fic, he eventually remedies it by letting friends in to his garage. After all, a man is not an island (and the radio sounds a lot better when you're working on a suit of power armor with your friend).
Animal: I chose the Crab-Eating Fox mostly because the name is a bit of a joke about him living in the New England area and the prevalence of lobster and crabs, but I do think he would be a fox. He likes to take his time to think things through, but is often only concerned with how actions will affect him in the long run. It's a habit he has to learn to overcome the more he works with the Minutemen and Railroad. Foxes are sometimes associated with scheming, which given the details of his and Nora's marriage, feels apt. A fun fact about crab-eating foxes is they form monogamic pairs for hunting, which I think ties to his inseparable dynamic with MacCready and their tendency to go everywhere together when they can.
