Zhiqiang "Zak" Guan

[zak]

[atrb=border,0,true][bg=212121] Welcome ★ Zhiqiang Guan, Take the even, take the odd, I would not sleep here if I could except for the little green leaves in the wood and the wind on the water. Personal ★ Information,

[/b][/color] Zhiqiang “Zak” Guan
★ AGE: 31
★ GENDER: Male
★ SEXUAL PREFERENCE: Heterosexual
★ HEIGHT: 5’ 8”
★ WEIGHT: 155 lbs.
★ JOB: Bartender
★ RACE: Human (Evoker)
★ FACTION: Undecided
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Your ★ Beauty,

Appearance,

[/color] Average height, average build – words Zak has used to describe himself since the advent of the interwebs. He makes no effort to maintain his relatively trim figure; he eats like a pig and does little in the way of exercise, but even in his fourth decade, his metabolism has yet to let him down. Nevertheless, the lack of activity has left him a soft, doughy kind of slender that he gets self-conscious about in his weaker moments.

While Zak isn’t a traditionally handsome man, he does exude a cheerful charm out of his otherwise unremarkable features; his chocolate-brown eyes are warm and friendly, and his tight-lipped grin is equal parts guileless and mischievous. He wears his solid-black hair an overgrown short, as he will oftentimes let his hair grow out for months at a time before getting it properly cut. Once upon a time, he would use a fair amount of gel to spike his mane up and out, but those days are behind him; he just lets it do whatever it wants, and it’s been relatively good to him since.

In his twenties, Zak styled himself a bit of a punk, and he retains fragments of that persona; while he’s since ditched the half-used jars of Manic Panic, he still wears a pair of leather-strap bracelets and his old chain wallet. From his bartending days, he retains a dazzling array of T-shirts ranging from mildly inappropriate to horribly offensive. His limited collection of pants consists of bar-stained Old Navy cargos and jeans, and footwear is restricted to either a pair of heavy black boots or sandals, with the former being by far the favorite option. Every aspect of his wardrobe is well-worn, and not by design – Zak will wear something for two weeks after it’s been completely worn out.
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LIKES +

[/color] Junk Food (Fried Chicken and Tacos in particular)
★ Video Games (BioWare RPGs and the Rock Band series)
★ Naps
★ Cooking
★ Irish Whisky
★ Playing the Piano
★ Properly Executed “That’s What She Said” Jokes
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DISLIKES -

[/color] Loud Noises
★ People with False Senses of Entitlement
★ Talking on the Phone
★ Bourbon
★ Liver
★ Improperly Executed “That’s What She Said” Jokes
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POSITIVE TRAITS +

[/color] Amiable
★ Easygoing
★ Intelligent
★ Unflappable
★ Dexterous
★ Easily Amused
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NEGATIVE TRAITS -

[/color] Lazy
★ Unambitious
★ Careless
★ Shy
★ Over-sympathetic
★ Easily Distracted
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OVERALL PERSONALITY

[/color] Zak is an easygoing guy; it doesn’t take a lot for him to be happy, and as a result, he finds himself in a good mood almost all the time. He has a knack for putting people at ease, likely for his generally cheerful worldview and openness during conversation. Despite this, he is a quiet fellow and tends to keep to himself, only engaging when spoken to first. This aspect of his personality tends to skew when he’s behind the bar, however; Zak overcompensates for his shyness by putting on a brash, foul-mouthed and flirtatious persona while he’s at work.

Despite having lived a life of numerous stresses and tragedies, Zak has always maintained an even-keeled outlook on life, often taking devastating events in stride long enough to ensure everyone else involved is stable before allowing himself to grieve. Without having studied any of the Indian traditions, Zak holds a very karma-based outlook on the universe; he strives to do good, and has faith that the universe will treat him accordingly. When asked, he will say that he is a non-denominational Christian; while he believes in the fundamental philosophies it espouses (namely, the benevolent ideals outlined in the New Testament), being raised in a Catholic household and studying the anthropology of organized religion has left him with a bad taste in his mouth when it comes to delineated churches. As he is often fond of saying, “Religion was great before Man tried to get between Man and God.” Though he counts himself as faithful, Zak rarely includes his devotion in his actual life – prayers are only spoken in the most extreme circumstances, and he goes to church “when he feels like it” (the last time he set foot in a Catholic mass was four years ago, and that was for a friend’s wedding). He chooses instead to express his faith in his actions, and rarely does he speak of religion. His ideals are his own, he reasons, and he considers it rude and invasive when others proselytize.

When it comes to his professional and personal life, Zak hasn’t exactly had to try very hard. He is a creature of habit – when he gets comfortable at a job, in a living situation, or in a relationship, it’s difficult for him to consider looking for something better. With his natural intelligence, he has been a quick study in anything he’s tried to do, and with this and no small amount of dumb luck, he does just enough to get by. He dropped out of engineering school at the height of the dot-com boom to work as a web designer (after having taught himself HTML and the then-new CSS in less than a week) until 9/11 destroyed his company’s offices, then started tending bar at a local dive. Today would see him still behind that bar, cheerfully whiling away his years, were it not for the unfortunate events that led him home, to Saint Calais.
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Background ★ Info,

History,

[/color] Zak was born Zhiqiang Guan to a pair of Chinese immigrants right here, in Saint Calais. As the youngest of three boys, Zak was gleefully spoiled rotten by his doting mother in an already-loving household. Despite the warmth of his upbringing, his parents were strict Catholics, insisting on weekly Mass and nightly prayers. With this level of discipline came high expectations when it came to academics, and all three Guan children easily excelled in their studies.

With Zak in particular, such excellence did not come from diligence; whether it was piano lessons or college-level chemistry, the teen handily met (though rarely exceeded) the standards set by his brothers with as little effort as he could get by with. When it came time for him to attend college, young Zhiqiang opted for a jaunt down at Rutgers Engineering, an ill-fated attempt that ended in an old-school flunking once he discovered alcohol and illicit substances.

Since then, Zak has spent his life in New York City, first as a web designer, then as a bartender in a cruddy little TriBeCa dive. His life has run the gamut from the heroic (he was on-site during the 9/11 attacks, helping people out of the chaos of Ground Zero and aiding in the evacuation of the Seaport) to the painfully mundane (he called out of work for fifteen days when Rock Band 2 was released). The loss of his father eight years ago to a stroke created an almost desperate urge to “live life” for most of his early twenties; Zhiqiang experimented with drugs, partied hard with the strange little subcultures the service industry generated, and generally made a sloppy, but self-sufficient mess of his life.

Mess as it was, however, it was his mess. Despite the depths of debauchery he dove into, Zak’s benevolent nature always prevailed, whether he was hiring the homeless guy on his street to help him take out the trash at the bar or letting a buddy of his from Tennessee crash on his couch, he always did his best to do the right thing by people, whether they deserved it or not.

When his mother was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, Zak packed up his life in New York and immediately moved home to take care of her. After months of cooking for her, driving her to chemotherapy, and caring for her, he watched her pass on in her hospital room. The events sobered the young man, muting his self-destructive instincts and mellowing out his personality. His zest for life is still very much there, perhaps even intensified by the heartbreaking ordeal, but far more relaxed and philosophical.

Unbeknownst to him, the Guans were surprisingly well-off. Zak finds himself now on the business end of a shockingly large inheritance, as well as sole ownership of the family home. For now, he is reluctant to live there – the wounds of his mother’s passing are still fresh, though he often stops by the house to check up on it and perform basic maintenance tasks. As he lives his life of simple, idle comforts, he remains blissfully unaware of the secrets the old family home holds… of the history of his stoutly religious bloodline, and of the secret lives of his parents.
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The ★ Puppeteer,

[/b][/color] None.
★ WHAT SHOULD WE CALL YOU? Warmonger Smurf, Destroyer of Worlds, Devourer of Fried Chicken. Smurf will do for short.
★ HOW TO CONTACT YOU? [e-mail]
★ HOW DID YOU FIND US? I go where Loreley tells me to.
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FACE CLAIM

[color=e10e3f]★[/color] [b]Cho, John[/b], [s] Zhiqiang “Zak” Guan[/s]

The ★ Copyright,

Rosen Nocturne Kai & Kiare.♥

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[Kai ♪]

ACCEPTED ♠,

Hurrah ! You and Court have already brought so much 'realism' to the site with your ... well, real, believable humans. ( ... should that be worrying that you two are keeping us grounded in reality since these characters are essentially caricatures of yourselves?)

Nonetheless, extra points for really tying in the evoker 'bloodline' into the religious history and all that. Makes me happy that people did their research !

Looking forward to seeing Zak around.