#about nathan

[n-athanmatthews]

𝒩𝒶𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓃 𝑀𝒶𝓉𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓌𝓈

Pronouns: He/Him Birthday: 12th July 1992 (25) Species: Human & Hunter Alliance: Good - Resistance Occupation: Owner of ‘il Piacere’ (safe house/training ground for the Resistance) Location: Inside the dome

So What Happened?

Alright, it’s time to let the cat out of the bag. Nathan Matthews didn’t really ‘put a pin the map’ and happen up Havensdale Valley, Connecticut to build his new restaurant. No, Nathan had been researching Havensdale before he ever showed up on our doorstep. At first, it was strange, overheard, conversations in his New York locations. Then it was unbelievable and fantastical rumours. Slowly, surely and piece by piece, Nathan put the story together.

Something big, something supernatural, was going to happen in that town and Nathan had decided he was going to be a part of it. More seriously, a part of defending it. No, he didn’t have the details and he didn’t have an exact date, but if he’d learned one thing, it was to be prepared. Unbeknown to his customers, hidden in every nook and cranny of il Piacere were weapons to defend against supernaturals.

Having grown up in a lavish lifestyle, Nathan had trained in various combat styles, archery, fencing, horseback riding and more. In a way, he’d been trained like any bloodline hunter might have been-- just a little fancier. In the end, it was a good thing that he was. When Founder’s Day hit, Nathan knew that he had to fight.

Here’s the thing... The good guys don’t always win, right away. Those who survived had to adapt. It didn’t long for Nathan to hook up with the underground Resistance, using his refurbished, reinforced basement to help train recruits. More importantly, training humans on how to defend themselves against the supernatural. He does all he can to help the fight while keeping everyone’s heads on their shoulders.

Nathan Matthews will take risks, he’ll cause trouble and he’s not afraid to get a little bloody now for the cause. 100% ready to rumble!!

Wanted Connections

tba

[dirtyjvconfessions]

Why does the way he's aging kinda remind me of nathan fielder

[adeadlysong]

OOC: I do have a "canon" ship on this blog in the form of Nuriel Flame + Arlyn Icia. They've always been together since I created them and forever will be no matter what verse they're in.

If not romanced when RPing within verses, the following muses may possibly get together with each other as background romantic pairings:

Rafaele Baptiste + Lukas Usbeorn

Olivia Grimaldi + Nathan Richter

Note that this is highly dependent on the RP situation and how involved the above muses are in each scenario and/or verse. XD

[sodapopbuoy]

DAY 3 OF @jonmartinweek !!!! Recordings & Found Footage :] first time trying to actually finish something with these 2 digitally AND IM STILL RUMINATING ON THEIR DESIGNS AGH !!! wanted to jump in as soon as possible because i completely missed the first 2 days !!!!!

[gongyussy]

why are you as a man smiling like that at your temporary teammate who the nhl ships you with....

[prongcollar]

Dear Marni, I am so sorry, can you forgive me for this?

[cattoonxd]

Have you ever gotten everything you ever wanted?

[tiger-balm]

this is such a cool shot

[aardvaark]

i like how leverage throws in random details that are never elaborated on. hardison gets himself a front row seat at the oscars each year, but we only see that in a single throwaway flashback. parker broke a guy's fingers for touching her and it wasn't even a plot point, it was just one in a series of memories of stabbings and so forth. eliot continually knows extremely specific information which implies some extremely specific scenarios he's been in. the more we find out about sophie's backstory, the more questions it raises about what the hell is wrong with her. and the more we find out about nate's backstory, the more questions it raises about what the hell is wrong with him.

[daekiyu]

thoughts filled with pickles

[yakichoufd]

I just gotta say, I love the amount of pet names Scott uses for Nathan in your comics it's so wholesome 😊💕💕

I guess that's my one headcanon for them! Scott only uses pet names for his baby bean!

[laser-tripwires]

what is your read on the scene in the pilot where eliot and nate are playing pool? do you think eliot was being genuinely empathetic or just making small talk? was eliot genuinely hurt by nate?

neither, and both. he wasn't making small talk, he wasn't genuinely hurt, but it's more complicated than that. that scene exists for a wide number of reasons, and very few of those reasons actually have anything to do with eliot. nate is the protagonist, and that scene is arguably the most important character exposition we get on him in the entirety of the nigerian job - BUT there's still a lot you can read about eliot and the team dynamics as a whole, as well as foreshadowing for the wider show.

the scene actually opens not with the pool game, but with hardison pulling nate over to tell him he got dubenich's financials. i call this out because - in the original pilot script? this got cut off from the pool scene by a dubenich interlude which didn't make it into the final show.

now, that's probably information management - much, much easier to focus on nate and eliot's convo if we're not thinking about what dubenich is doing, and the exposition from the dubenich mini-scene wasn't very important. but there's another reason, too -

nate smiles and claps a hand on hardison's shoulder before heading back over to the pool game. it's a fatherly moment! a lot of the nigerian job is dedicated to setting up nate's relationships with the trio (the fact that parker gets mentorship instead of fatherliness in this ep is kinda long goodbye job foreshadowing, even if likely unintentional), and this reiterates that he's gonna be a father to hardison. it's placement just before this conversation with eliot is also telling us that this relationship with the team is going to be the thing that heals nate, which eliot all but says aloud a minute or so later (i'll get there).

right, so the next beat of the scene is eliot offering nate a beer and nate refusing. which is... interesting, given as nate was practically drinking himself to death at the beginning of this episode and will spend the rest of the season doing just that. he clearly has an issue with alcohol and that's clearly being set up to be a large part of his arc. so refusing a drink is significant, and we cut from a wide shot (featuring some truly adorable parker lockpicking, parker picks locks like other people knit) into eliot and nate's game because like eliot, we're curious about this.

nate takes his pool shot - eliot looks to nate, to the beer bottle, and back to nate. he's not paying attention to the pool game because eliot is very smart and has just picked up on the thing i pointed out to all of you a second ago - that refusal of the beer is weird and significant. nate's doing better - which eliot says.

nate almost looks up at eliot but takes his shot instead, and eliot continues. nate mutters a "yeah," without looking at eliot. which eliot again notices, and points out that it bothers nate.

eliot's turned around and sat on the pool table now. his focus isn't on the game anymore, it's on nate. it's really hard to critique this scene from eliot's perspective because the whole point of the scene is to get us as the audience inside nate's head, and eliot's needling is the vehicle through which we do that - he's asking the questions and making the assumptions that we as the audience are doing here. nate's a prickly bastard.

nate does, however, admit that it bothers him. with another of those despondant yeahs. he moves away from the pool and towards eliot, but still isn't looking eliot in the eye. "I mean, this isn't supposed to feel-"

"Good?"

camera change on eliot's line there so we get a better look at eliot's face, and nate's finally looking at him. "good" is likely not the descriptor that nate would have stammered out if his sentence had been allowed to continue, but eliot's a blunt person and more importantly eliot's not wrong. he then smiles, which catches nate off-guard, and after a beat eliot continues.

"It's not hard to figure out. Dubenich screwed ya. He cheated by stealing from that other company and your good guy brain sees him as the bad guy. Your conscience is clear."

midway through that speech, we cut to nate's reaction so we're watching him instead of eliot. he's stony. everything eliot's saying is correct, and most of it is explaining subtext that the audience should already have picked up on. but, y'know. nate is a prickly bastard.

(side note on the script again - the change from "ripped you off" to "screwed ya" is a great example of the kind of edits that get made on the fly after you cast actors with certain affects. not relevant here but i think it's cool - WISH we had the scripts for the rest of the show, because the amount to which this one is useful for analysis and insight cannot be overstated.)

now's when it gets interesting. without a change in facial expression, nate asks eliot if he wants to take his shot - he's not quite interrupting, but he's also clearly trying to cut the conversation short. there's two possible meanings to that line - one, nate's meaning, of shut the fuck up and keep playing. two, the subtextual meaning and what eliot takes it as, which is; get to the point.

eliot takes another swig of beer, nods, and we cut to a close up of him as he pauses and reconsiders the tack of the conversation. i very very much read this as eliot trying to figure nate out here - he had a hypothesis about the state of things, and nate's response let him know he was on the right tack. it's worth remembering that (despite what people tend to percieve him as) eliot is an extremely emotionally intelligent character, and that's being established here as well as everything else.

so he starts out another speech, looking nate in the eye - it's the most intimate moment of the conversation so far, and that's important. "Listen, I'm sorry about your kid."

to me, it's abundantly clear that eliot could have kept talking from there, made whatever point he was about to. but he leaves the space open for nate to respond. small talk is the wrong word for this, and eliot's not exactly feeling out an emotional connection; but he is clearly and deliberately giving nate the opportunity to open up and respond, both out of genuine empathy and (as we already saw) a desire to unpick a little more of what makes nate tick. that's part of eliot's job, after all. he is being a nice person here.

and nate... well, nate's expression doesn't change. the sensible and expected thing to do here would be to say, y'know, thanks, and then move on with the game. but, as i've already said, nathan ford is a prickly bastard. worth pulling up the script again here:

because yeah, he shuts down. we're two thirds of the way through the pilot episode and once again this is serving as exposition for the viewer - nate is in a lot of emotional pain, and he doesn't exactly do touchy-feely feelings. he'd much rather hide at the bottom of a bottle than sort out his issues. anger, and grief, and anger.

now, eliot says that "everybody knows." he half whispers that line, which i think is a really great touch - it's a lot more tender in tone than the response could have been, and i don't think nate picks up on that. my reservations on them as people aside, christian kane and timothy hutton's acting throughout this scene is superb. it's hard to explain, but eliot's affect changes for the next line - "Guy like you goes off the street, a lot of people notice." he's still almost whispering, but he's trying to tug the conversation a little bit towards levity. the emphasis on "a lot" is almost jokey - people smarter than me have pointed out that eliot in early season one has a soft sarcastic vibe that isn't present for a lot of the rest of the show. it's a continuation of what we saw earlier in the episode in the hospital scene.

but once that's said, he halts, and we see his eyes soften a little - he stops quite meeting nate in the eye.

it's a soft little moment of comprehension. eliot has lost a lot of people close to him, and has witnessed the deaths of many innocent children. he absolutely does know what nate is feeling. arguably, bereavement destroyed eliot's life infinitely more than it did nate's. so we get a genuine flash of empathy here. he's thought about this, after hearing of it, maybe before even taking the job for dubenich. "And it was a bad story, too."

we cut back to nate for a second there. he's lost - trapped in a hospital in los angeles rather than a penthouse in chicago. as a first time viewer, though, we don't quite know what he's thinking.

so eliot asks. "How'd they justify that, huh? The insurance company, just... not paying for his treatment?"

and the thing is, coming from someone who's watched seven seasons of eliot being unfailingly protective of every child and vulnerable party who's crossed his path... i genuinely think eliot meant that. yeah, not as an actual question, but as comiseration and sympathy for what he can tell is an awful situation.

but this is nate's show. and we're in nate's head. so we follow nate, across three years of anger and pain and into that hospital room. we see for the first time where nate's standing here, the depths of that sorrow in the moments before it manifested.

worth noting that it's not the full scene - nate running in to grab sam's body was filmed with the pilot but cut back to be saved for the finale, which was a damn good choice. but even what we see here is enough to fully ground us in nate's backstory - we've been watching him dance around in chaos for most of an episode, clearly greiving his son, and now we see the cause of all that hurt. once again, this exchange makes much more sense from the perspective of the writers trying to establish and expand on crucial emotional beats.

when we flash back to nate and eliot, the camera angle has changed. noteable, because we were on a solid back-and-forth talking shot for a minute or so there, and this fully segments the scene instead of plopping us back where we just were.

we've just experienced first-hand the spiral that nate's thoughts have gone down. he answers eliot, still lost in thought - "They claimed it was experimental."

from eliot's perspective, that's a response to his question and an accepting of his empathy. from our perspective, it's an anguished statement of pondering, the re-rotation of a thought that's been trapped in nate's head for three fucking years. they claimed. he is, as we will see in the david episodes, so, so, so angry.

eliot smirks, then drinks. we cut back to his face and the original camera angles. his is where the pilot rewrite between scripting and shooting is the most obvious - in the original script, nate picks up the beer, and that's what prompts eliot's next line.

in the filmed episode, we stick instead on nate's face and let eliot continue. the emotional beat is identical, but it places a greater emphasis on nate's pain and eliot's powers of perception. it's an unimportant script edit, but an interesting one.

what happens next... "Should have kept one of those Monets you found, hm? You fence that -" and it's only at this point nate actually interjects.

i don't think eliot here is deliberately being insensitive nor do i think he's directly trying to just raise nate's spirits. you gotta remember that we as the viewers in nate's head for this scene, not eliot's, and from eliot's perspective the tone has just gotten less gut-wrenching, not more - but eliot's also, as i previously noted, an extremely emotionally intelligent person. it's why i've gone through the whole scene instead of jumping directly to this bit you asked me about, because i really do think the full context is needed to understand.

so, nate interrupts. "Eliot, you and I are not friends."

this is again where context is so important. it's not that he cares about what eliot's actually saying (though i could write a very different essay about how that line of eliot's is lampshading a pretty obvious plothole) but that he's just had to forcibly pull himself back to the present day and he thinks eliot's being annoying and would like him to shut up now, please. not all that different from him asking eliot to take his shot earlier, really, though i think eliot picks up on the curtness.

nate raises his eyebrows. it's a nice attempted reversal of power dynamics - yes he has just interrupted and been rude, but he also immediately attempts to swing the conversation's psycoanalysis onto eliot and why are you talking to me about this i don't know you. of course, we as the viewer can tell nate's in deflective mode, but we'd expect eliot to take it at face value -

which. he doesn't. we get this super interesting little "oh... right." face, and i think it's less eliot realising he's struck a nerve (though it also is that) as it is eliot properly clicking in to what nate's thinking here. i stress again that eliot really is a tremendously emotionally intelligent character, definitely moreso than nate is, and that's reflected in this scene. both of them bounce off one another here a little bit differently to how you'd expect them to just looking at archetypes, and it's this kind of thing that makes the leverage pilot so good.

because eliot picks up on the messaging nate's putting down, the prickly i'm-not-having-an-emotional-conversation-with-a-criminal-i-just-met facade, but he also kinda sees right through it. "...Right. 'Cause you have so many of them."

and it's again this softly sarcastic vibe that's pretty unique to early season one eliot, but it really works here in reestablishing that A) eliot's more observant than nate is giving him credit for, B) he's not going to let nate get away with being tacitly kind of a dick, C) he's really not easily rattled and D) eliot is as much of a chaos gremlin as the rest of the team. this is not the affect of a man actually hurt by what nate said.

all in all, good stuff. but now for the reason i dug the script out to begin with - the ending. it's a well-known piece of trivia that they shot the pilot without a defined ending for the next nate/sophie beat only for aldis to improv the world's best "oooooooh," but what's really fun is if you know that this is because the nate/sophie beat here was actually a late addition. in the script, eliot and nate's conversation finishes like this:

and end scene. eliot still gets the final word, so as to speak, but nate gets a lot more quiet reflection and a much more overt point that nate and eliot are at least peers if not friends right now. but here, instead, sophie presumably starts walking towards nate off-camera and eliot steps back - "Incoming."

and then we're on to nate and sophie, and the scene continues with a new focus as nate is left reeling.

but i really, really like the ending we get because it's that same establishment of peership, of eliot calling out nate's crap, but also of the fact that the power dynamics here aren't as they'd first seem. nate's greiving too much. eliot understands but isn't gonna let it get to him or impact the team. this... is all crucial as far as character establishment is concerned.

this answer got long. i think that this scene is just so, so important for establishing both nate and eliot's characters - and i think people miss an infinite amount of nuance when they take the surface-level reading that eliot said something which annoyed nate and nate was mean. that's very much not what happened, but it also kinda is, and it's what makes this so fun to pick apart. eliot and nate have a fascinating relationship, and it's one that's all too often overlooked. here's john rogers's take on it:

and... yeah!!! you can see all that really clearly in this scene. they respect one another, but that doesn't mean they have to like one another, at least not yet. it's good stuff.

[adeadlysong]

New Muses: Olivia & Nathan

OOC: In the case that Araceli is killed off or stripped of her position (which will probably be many cases), I’ve created tertiary OCs that may potentially fill her spot. Their bios (listed below) are also on the NPC/minor muses page!

Name: Olivia Grimaldi

Olivia works at the Ilma Region’s castle assisting with administrative matters. She grew up in a family of magic users, particularly working with earth magic, and she also has those same powers. Olivia sometimes wishes she could try using other forms of magic, but she lacks the talent or gift for any of them. A major reason she ended up working at the Ilma Region’s castle was to avoid getting into any arranged marriages, unlike her older sisters. 

As she and Nathan ended up training under similar mentors and have duties leaning toward administrative matters, both of them ended up working together frequently.

She can also play the harp and piano. She dances pretty well too.

Appearance: Olive skin, reddish-brown hair, dark brown eyes, petite build, wears a lot of dark blue and dark green, but also sometimes wears dark purple or brown.

Name: Nathan Richter

Nathan works at the Ilma Region’s castle assisting with overseeing day to day duties of the castle servants. He was raised in a huntsman family and was nearly expected to do the same. However, he got away with having more administrative duties later on after the rest of his family realized that he didn’t have the skill for hunting - something that Nathan is forever grateful for them realizing sooner than later. Despite his lack of talent in hunting he’s still capable of some self-defense and making traps.

As he and Olivia ended up training under similar mentors and have duties leaning toward administrative matters, both of them ended up working together frequently.

Nathan can play the oboe and saxophone, and has some skill in dancing.

Appearance: Olive skin, thin glasses, grey eyes, lean build, wears dark blue and charcoal grey, but sometimes also wears light violet clothing.  

[feelingthedisaster]

The King's Men's plot structure is genius.

TKM has been critized a lot for not following the conventional plot structure, because it doesnt end inmediatly at the resolution of the climax, like they taught us in class. But it actually has a reason behind it and it think that is what makes AFTG unique and Nora Sakavic an amazing writer. I'll explain.

So, we all know AFTG has a lot of chess metaphors, however i think it doesnt contain the metaphors, it is the metaphor. Each character represents a piece of the board (Riko king, Kevin queen, Neil pawn, Andrew knight, etc) and exy is the chess, but but but, a chess game not only involves the pieces, the game cannot exist without someone playing, the chess masters (which would be Kengo, Ichiriu, Nathan and all the mafia stuff).

So, AFTG is divided into two plots happening at the same time: what happens on the chess board (exy season) and what happens outside it (the mafia mess).

Of couse, the climax has to be about the outside out, because who cares which one of pieces move in which way if the players are pointing guns at eachother under the board? The guns are more more important. So who cares? The pieces on the board care, the ones that are being played with. And who is the narrator? The character that represents the pawn, the less important figure of the entire room.

Yeah, the 'outside of the board' plot is over half way into the book, but it doesnt matter because that happens outside the board, the chess game has not ended yet. The pawn cannot go back to rest in the box until the game is over, until the king dies. The book cannot be over until the chess game our protagonist is a piece of ends. The books have to end with the king's (Riko) death and that is exactly what happens.

If this isnt excellent writing and one of the best examples of know the rules so you can break them, i dont what is.

[griffithsucks]

The Rehearsal - Season 2 Trailer

[sakebytheriver]

Nathan Ford, my favorite Greek tragedy on cable TV, an Icarus with wax wings made of righteous anger and a moral code that he'll break any rule for, burned up in the hellfire of his own rage, a modern day Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving their power to the people so that they can burn down the thrones their oppressor sits upon sealing his own fate and dooming himself to eternal suffering while knowing if he was given the choice a thousand times over he'd still do it every single time

Nathan Ford, my favorite blorbo packed with every type of Catholic imagery you could give to one man, joined the seminary to atone for the sins of his father, left to serve a different master playing detective for an insurance agency before the loss of a son crumbled his whole world down around him like the walls of Jericho, and in his grief he was handed a burning sword by fate and told to Avenge. The archangel Nate Ford, given a flame of anger so hot it rained hellfire down upon those that would never fit between the eye of a needle, a violent saint on a righteous crusade soaking the world in blood and that will only end one way, he'll leave a graveyard behind him, but he will still have to dig one last grave when he's done

Nathan Ford, my favorite folk song hero, a Boston Irish drunk, the moral son of an immoral mobster, an utter bastard with anger management issues, and a control freak with a sadistic streak, who took all the pain and all the anger in his heart and used it for Good, the ballad of Nate Ford echoes through the world like a call to action, an inspiration for the future, the sacrifices he made to be the catalyst for a movement he'd make over and over again even if the nature of being the spark means you'll never see the fire

Nathan Ford, my favorite terrible horrible broken man content to drink himself into an early grave if it mean he'd get to see his son again until he was given a chance to ruin the lives of men infinitely worse than he could ever be and save even just one person the same pain he suffered and so he postponed his death until his rage burned his own heart into ash

Nathan Ford, a tragedy with only one ending, but by God if he wasn't going to cause some hell on his way down