Survival Of The Fittest

Name: Joshua Christopher Edwards
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies and Interests: Playing guitar and soccer, reading, writing, guitar heavy music, and cooking.

Appearance: Standing at 5' 3" and weighing in at around 128 lbs, Joshua is relatively small compared to the rest of his family, particularly his older brothers, and even some of his friends. Without much muscle mass to speak of and lacking in fat, Joshua is small and scrawny when compared to his much larger siblings. He's always been smaller than his brothers were and usually smaller than his friends, but he never let it bother him much. While he appears to have been pretty fit once and does look like he gets some occasional exercise, Joshua is a slouch and usually does not stand up straight, which does very little to flatter him. He always seems to have his hands tucked into whatever pockets are available and tends to walk with a limp on a regular basis.

While not particularly unkempt or greasy, at least any more than the average teenage boy, Joshua's long dark brown hair tends to look quite messy when it is normally left to hang low and parted down the middle. Occasionally, Joshua will tie it back and keep it properly combed if he has somewhere to be and wants to look nice, but normally he does not care much for styling his shoulder length hair; often he ends up settling with simply washing it and running a comb through it every other day. Having long since given up on growing a proper beard or even a proper mustache, Joshua takes a modicum of teenaged pride in the goatee he managed to grow that covers his chin in coarse red-brown hairs, keeping the edges trimmed and letting it grow in length only for as long as he can put up with it.

Coming from a long line of mostly English and Irish stock, Joshua's light skin tone does not lend itself very well to tanning, and he will almost always end up getting sunburned if he goes out without some sort of protection. Because of his inability to properly tan, Joshua tries his best to stay covered up if he has to go outside and usually tries to avoid going outside very often to begin with, preferring to stick to the shade whenever possible. As fan of smelling good and of at least trying to keep acne at bay, Joshua has tried to take care of himself and keep clean, even if his clothes would often suggest otherwise. Being an injury prone child had left Joshua with a number of minute little scars from the various cuts and scrapes he accrued when he was younger that never quite faded with time, but none that were very large or significant.

After coming to an agreement over the rules regarding any sort of body modification, Joshua's parents allowed him to get the tattoos he wanted to get. Starting off small and moving up from that, Joshua had the finishing touches done on a series of stylized thorn covered vines and lush roses just before winter break. The tattoo ended up covering a good portion of his left shoulder, and moved on to the left side of his chest up to his collarbone. Having only the one tattoo so far, Joshua plans on getting several others, but one of the requirements his mother insisted upon was that any tattoos he got had to be easily covered with his clothes and out of sight.

Looking more and more like his father as he gets older, Joshua has inherited quite a few features from his father's side of the family, but a few of his features are noticeably from his mother. He has got his father's deep set blue eyes and naturally thin eyebrows, but his mother's long, narrow nose and thin lips. He has a strong jawline that resembles his father's, but his chin is pointed and long, and resembles his mother's. His cheeks are thin and show a set of dimples when he smiles, but they are prone to occasional outbreaks of acne, as is his forehead and nose. His ears are quite large, but they don't stick out very far and very much resemble his father's; unlike his father though, Joshua has taken to piercing them. Starting off small with only one piercing in his left ear, Joshua eventually moved up to a total of three piercings in his left ear alone. He also had his left nostril pierced, as well as both eyebrows.

While Joshua leans heavily toward graphic tees and fashionably torn jeans, most of which were oversized hand-me-downs from his older siblings, he has never been much of a fan of washing or ironing. He consistently goes out in public in clothes that have gone unwashed and wrinkled, and occasionally even wears the same outfit for several days, much to his mother's chagrin. In colder weather, Joshua tends to wear heavy hoodies from his favorite bands and slightly newer jeans, ones without torn knees and frayed ends. No matter the weather, he always wears an old, beat up pair of skate shoes, and on sunny days will often wear an old boonie hat, with clip on sunglasses for his prescription glasses.

Biography: Born August 28th, 1993 in the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, Joshua was the fourth child of Jeremy and Andrea Edwards. Before Joshua came along, Jeremy and Andrea had three others boys: Micheal, Jake, and Steven in '86, '89 and '91, respectively. While they did not have any more children after Joshua, they did adopt a child; in 2001, they adopted Katrina, Joshua's little sister. Despite the rather uneventful births of his older brothers, Joshua was almost two months premature and was significantly smaller than he should have been, which perhaps accounts for his status as the runt of the family and the reason his parents never tried for another child. With Jeremy working as a Sales Director for a local company, and Andrea working as an OB/GYN at the University of Washington Medical Center, they were more than capable of providing for their fairly large family. They lived and worked in Seattle for years before Joshua's birth, having moved there shortly after getting married in '82.

Joshua was spoiled when he was a child, which was a result of his position as the youngest child in the family for several years and the six figure annual incomes that both of his parents brought in. He was the envy of a number of his childhood friends because he always had the most toys, the best video games, and the newest game systems; the only things that really appealed to children at that age. His brothers were spoiled as well, but never quite to the extent that Joshua was; he was the baby and that's just how it went in his family; the youngest always got more. It did not last forever but Joshua definitely enjoyed it while it lasted, and he learned quickly not to gloat about it to his brothers. He made that mistake a couple times before he learned that when he gloated they would make him eat his words, and they would do their best to make that literal. Being the youngest and smallest child of the bunch usually meant that Joshua was outnumbered and outgunned, and he never was capable of putting up much of a fight. He got a little bigger and a little stronger every year, but his brothers were always much bigger and much stronger than he was, and he has never managed to win in a fight against them.

With both of his parents working full time to provide for the family, Joshua spent most of his early life alternating between daycare centers and at home babysitters until his maternal aunt, Audrey Carrington, came to live with the family in '96. She became Joshua's primary caretaker for two years, and was the one who initially taught him to read, starting him early and always egging him on to try harder books as he got older. While his older brothers were beginning to attend public school, Joshua was being tutored by his aunt even before he started preschool, and she continued to tutor him on a daily basis until she moved into her own place in Seattle in '98. She still visited the family on a regular basis, and would often bring over a new book for Joshua to read, gradually increasing both the size and complexity of the books she would bring over as he got older. She is the reason why Joshua has had an actively used library card since he started grade school, and why he became a regular customer at the Something Borrowed Used Bookstore.

As a highly energetic and curious child, Joshua was excited when the time came for him to attend public school. He attended the same public school that his older brothers had, and never shied away from the experience. His aunt had spent quite a bit of time getting him ready for public school, and tried to make it seem as exciting and enjoyable as she could before he got any ideas to the contrary. He was active and friendly, and never really had a problem getting along with the other children; he continued reading and did well in his classes, but never shut out other people or retreated into the books. Nevertheless, as the years went on and he spent more time with friends than his family, he started to develop some bad habits. He started to disobey his parents and his caretakers, and he was starting to follow the poor example set by his friends. He started following along when they hung out past curfew or when a few of the older boys started smoking. He joined in when they stole from corner stores or spray painted street signs and park buildings, or when they vandalized homes around the neighborhood with toilet paper, eggs, and water balloons filled with sugar water.

By the time his aunt Audrey got married in early 2001, Joshua had become a regular hellion. His brothers had tried to set him straight, but they had lives of their own to deal with as puberty came and went for each of them in turn and their focus shifted from their friends and family to girls. Micheal was going to be 16 within a year and all his time and energy was spent on his new girlfriend and his high school buddies. Jake was well on his way to starting puberty and Steven was closing in fast on that milestone himself, and neither of them wanted to take time out of their preteen schedules to deal with Joshua. Meanwhile, his parents were in the process of adopting a baby girl born early in the year, and that left Joshua feeling neglected and suspicious that he was in the process of being replaced. After thoroughly trashing the room being set up for the baby, Audrey's husband and Joshua's new uncle Thomas Hedges stepped in to set the boy straight.

An ex-Marine from Idaho with a firm grip on his temper and a heavy handed style of parenting with a grown son of his own, Thomas took Joshua under his wing for most of the year while his parents re-adjusted to the presence of a new baby and did what they could to spend more time around the house to take care of the baby. Thomas' first goal was to break the streak of bad behavior that Joshua had been on; a mix of corporal punishment and backbreaking labor eventually got the boy to shape up and start obeying his caretakers. Thomas had Joshua working day in and day out after school and over the summer, and had him doing work for the neighbors such as weeding and planting gardens; mowing lawns; trimming hedges; walking dogs; and even assisting during home improvement projects. Thomas did his best to instill responsibility into Joshua, and when the boy started to show serious improvement, he even started paying Joshua for the work that he did.

Joshua stopped hanging out with the friends who got him in to trouble and instead started spending more time with his family. Micheal went through his fair share of break ups and Jake had his share of breakouts, while Steven started pushing to include Joshua in his soccer games whenever possible. Joshua even got used to the idea of a baby around the house and spent quite a bit of time taking care of Katrina. The time he spent with his uncle also led Joshua to picking up something other than a sense of responsibility; after spending weeks watching his uncle play the guitar and testing out a few chords himself, Joshua eventually asked his uncle to teach him how to play. Joshua enjoyed it because it was fun, and it gave him callouses that were not the result of hard daily labor; meanwhile, his parents enjoyed it because it gave Joshua an outlet for his time and energy, and the soft sound of the acoustic guitar actually managed to sooth Katrina when she was having a fit.

When he was not spending all his time playing the left handed acoustic guitar he received for his birthday, Joshua was playing soccer. Initially just something he played with his brother and some of the neighborhood kids on weekends and after school, his parents eventually signed him up to join the team toward the end of elementary school and in to middle school. Joshua thoroughly enjoyed his time playing soccer, even if he was prone to sunburns and had his mother fussing over him to put on sunblock before each game. It was something he had in common with Steven and they would often spend hours out in the yard practicing, though Joshua was often prone to injuries when playing with his older brothers. He was still the smallest of the bunch, though his parents assured him that he would be as big as they were, if not bigger, when he got to be their age.

Joshua simply could not compare to his brothers, and even his teammates had a few inches or pounds over him most of the time, so he would often get bowled over during practice. Even though he enjoyed the game and enjoyed playing on a team, soccer often meant injuries for Joshua. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, sprains and even a dislocated shoulder or two were common injuries for Joshua throughout his childhood. He had always been energetic but never very graceful; he was prone to rolling his ankles on a regular basis, which only got worse when he took up soccer, but he never quit. He never broke anything, but he certainly came close a few times with some pretty bad sprains that put him out of a couple soccer games. He got better as he got older, but he was never a graceful person and always remained prone to injuries, even if the injuries were fewer and far between.

Around the beginning of middle school, Joshua's parents started taking more time off of work and tried to free up their normally busy schedules in order to spend more time with the family. Katrina was getting older and demanding more attention from them, and Joshua was just starting puberty, while Steven was starting high school and making his own awkward attempts at dating. Jake was getting closer to graduation every day and Micheal had moved out on his own to attend college and live on the university campus. Joshua started spending more time with his parents, and the family as a whole would often take time to go on day trips and weekend vacations. Joshua was often saddled with taking care of Katrina during these trips, with having to keep an eye on her and making sure she did not wander off now that she could walk, but he still enjoyed the time he spent with his parents and siblings.

Despite his initial misgivings about having a new sibling around the house when he was younger, Joshua really liked having Katrina around. He enjoyed spending time with her and even though he usually ended up having to babysit her, he did not complain. She was cute and Joshua made the best of it, and he spent a lot of time sitting with her and reading to her. His aunt had taught him to read and write before he started preschool, and Joshua was intent on doing the same with Katrina. Even though the books were far below the level of the ones he would normally read, Joshua enjoyed reading children's books to his little sister, and did his best to teach her to read them, often encouraging her to try and read a page before he continued with the story.

Joshua started spending more time with his father as well. They didn't have much in common at first, because his father didn't play the guitar or play soccer, and the books that he read were not exactly the type of books that Joshua was very interested in. They struggled to find common ground for a while, and most of the time they were reduced to short, awkward conversations whenever they were forced to spend any significant time together. They had the common conversations about puberty, girls, and sex, with Jeremy answering almost all of the questions Joshua had, but they still did not have much to talk about. It was not until Joshua's birthday, when his father cooked a special dinner for him the way his mother usually did, that they found a sort of common ground. Joshua was amazed that his father knew how to cook, and cook well. For the most part, Joshua's mother did all the cooking, or they got take-out, or his aunt would come over with his uncle and she would cook for the whole family.

So finding out that his father was almost a trained chef, and had even attended a few classes for it during college, surprised Joshua. He asked his father to teach him how to cook and show him how to make quick, simple, and enjoyable meals that did not consist of microwave pizzas or hot pockets, the staples of most teenager's diets. Joshua found out that his father had a history of working in restaurants before he caught a lucky break and got the job that eventually led him to the sales director position he current has, and that he had a rather massive collection of recipes as a result. Joshua was excited to have his father teaching him how to cook, and he quickly assembled his own box of recipes, copying them down from his father's box or printing them off of the internet to try them if they looked interesting. Joshua took to it quickly, and was even given responsibility over what the family should have for dinner one night every week.

Going in to middle school was the start of an awkward time in Joshua's life. He was starting puberty as his brothers did before him and as most of his friends were, but while his friends were getting taller or heavier or stronger, Joshua was not. By the time he started middle school, the girls he had crushes on all tended to tower over him and his friends were starting to do the same, and that left Joshua feeling all the more like the odd man out. He hated that he was not growing at the same rate his friends were, and he hated that his friends were drifting away from him in the process. Their interests were changing as they got older, and the people they chose to hang out with were changing in the process. Quite a few of his friends connected Joshua's small size with immaturity, and tried to pass themselves off as adults, leaving Joshua behind in the process. Several of them started smoking, while others experimented with alcohol and sex, but Joshua was often left out.

Because his friends were becoming more and more distant with him, Joshua had a lot more time on his hands. He never had much luck with girls, despite his efforts to get advice from his brothers on the subject. He didn't have much in common with a lot of the boys in his class, and had trouble making friends early on in middle school. While he eventually came in to his own, he still had trouble early on and sank into his schoolwork and his books. When he started running out of books to read in school, he started to write his own, and while they weren't very good to begin with, he kept at it. Because he often finished his assignments early and ran out of work to keep himself busy, Joshua would usually end up writing during class. He took ideas from his favorite fantasy and science fiction books, and even presented the finished works to his aunt a couple times, but they weren't very good stories or very long stories. He kept at it though, and writing in his spare time soon became a habit of his, both in and out of class.

Joshua adjusted quickly to the increased workload of middle school, and remained a bright student throughout, earning high marks in most of his classes with an A average. He did not have any problems with bullying, even with his small size and high grades, because he did not draw attention to himself or his grades. He adjusted to the atmosphere of middle school and started to get out more, losing much of the awkwardness that he had early on. He got to know the kids on the soccer team, only a handful of which he knew from elementary school or from around the neighborhood, and even met kids who had similar taste in music and books. When he found out a few of them knew how to play an instrument of their own, he tossed around the idea of forming a band. It never got beyond the earliest stages of planning, but it remained something that Joshua wanted to see happen.

As middle school came and went for Joshua, his oldest brother Micheal got married and announced to the family that his fiance was pregnant. Jake ended up getting involved with drugs and alcohol, and dropped out of high school, but eventually got his GED and enrolled in a vocational college after his parents intervened in his life. Steven made a name for himself in soccer during his time in high school, but he was still a pretty big influence on Joshua and helped him adjust to high school. Joshua remained an avid reader and an ambitious writer, and he continued to practice with the guitar on a regular basis. He experimented more when cooking dinner for the family and had brought his collection of recipes up from barely one box to several. Katrina started grade school and Joshua often helped her with her homework when his parents could not, and he even started taking her on trips to the aquarium when he started driving.

High school came easily for Joshua, having his brother there early on to help him adjust, but it did not come without its fair share of problems. Some of the people Joshua knew from middle school, and even some friends he had since elementary school, were starting to get in to drugs and alcohol, and at least one girl he knew ended up getting pregnant. Joshua wasn't exempt from this behavior, and he had his own experiences with drugs, sex and alcohol, but he did his best to avoid falling in to the same hole that he watched his brother fall in to. He took up smoking for a while, doing his best to keep it secret from his parents and his teachers, but paranoia and difficulty getting cigarettes ended up causing him to quit. Joshua doubted his ability in soccer and was tempted to forgo joining the high school team, but Steven convinced him to at least give it a try, and Joshua ended up sticking with it, just like he had through elementary and middle school.

As Joshua went through high school and saw that some of the seniors and juniors had their own cars, he expressed interest in getting one of his own. His older brothers had all gotten cars of their own by their senior year in high school, usually the ones that their parents had previously owned, and Joshua did not want to be left out. He did not want any of the cars that his parents were driving though, and insisted on something that was more his style; while his parents drove sensible cars, Joshua wanted something that he felt was cool. When his parents told him that he would have to pay for the car himself, Joshua did what he could to surprise them, and got a part time job after school. He even started busking at the park on weekends and sold off many of his old guitars, bringing the modest collection he had built up down to only two guitars: the left handed acoustic guitar he got as a gift when he was younger, and a newer electric guitar he bought for himself around his 17th birthday.

Initially hopeful that he would be able to earn enough money to buy the car of his dreams, Joshua eventually gave up on trying to afford the car that he wanted. He was still determined to have his own car though, and to that end he put together all the money he had earned and saved up so far, even emptying his savings account, to put toward the purchase of a used car. He ended up buying his uncle's 2009 Altima at a discount and used the money that was left over to have it painted. Now that he owned his own car, Joshua did not need to keep working part-time, but he enjoyed it. He liked having the extra cash, but he did not like making sandwiches or flipping burgers, and ended up getting a new job at the Elysium Comic and Gaming supply store just before he started his senior year.

When he was just entering high school, Joshua had shown a brief interest in getting a tattoo and an even greater interest in getting a piercing. Many of the guitarists that he idolized and emulated had numerous tattoos and piercings, and Joshua was intent on doing the same as soon as he could convince his parents to let him. Nothing came of it when he was younger, but when his 18th birthday rolled around, Joshua insisted on getting a tattoo. Paying for it out of his own pocket and getting his left ear pierced around the same time, Joshua got his first tattoo about two weeks after his 18th birthday. He didn't particularly enjoy the process of getting tattooed, but he certainly enjoyed the tattoo. While he started small with a single flower and a few thorny vines, Joshua eventually returned to the tattoo parlor to have the tattoo expanded.

Joshua's mother was against any sort of body modification at first, and initially refused to even let him get his ears pierced. It took Joshua well over a week to convince his mother that he wasn't going to go overboard and that he wasn't going to go in to it without thinking. Even then, it took his father offering a compromise before his mother would allow any sort of body modification. He had to agree that any tattoos that he was going to get had to be approved by both of his parents, and could not be visible outside of his clothes. He was also restricted in the type of piercings he was permitted to get, with his mother not wanting him to get any sort of lip or tongue piercings, and his father insisting that he avoid the chains that some people attached to their piercings. He wasn't allowed to get body piercings, and any facial piercings he got had to be removed before they went anywhere nice. As long as he followed those rules, his parents would let him get whatever piercings and tattoos he wanted.

During the first half of senior year, Joshua made a number of new friends and even met a girl, overcoming some of the awkwardness left over from his past attempts at dating to ask her out and actually carry on a relationship with her. It didn't last very long, but she was Joshua's first real girlfriend and he was utterly infatuated with her. He spent a good portion of his allowance and paycheck on gifts for her, and taking her out to nice little restaurants, and they would could often be found hanging around the movie theater. Joshua even went as far as starting to have her name added to his tattoo, despite advice from his older brothers to avoid doing that. Joshua did not listen to their advice, and insisted that he loved her and that she loved him, and he should have something to show it.

When she broke up with him just before winter break, it left Joshua devastated. He lost his first real girlfriend, and went through his first bad break-up, but his brothers were supportive and even Katrina pitched in to cheer Joshua up. It took him a while, but Joshua eventually got over it and did his best to move on, starting with a touch up to his tattoo to cover her name. He managed to get back and sell most of the jewelry he had given her, and used the money to buy himself a corgi puppy. He never had a pet before then, and it keeps him up most nights, but he does his best to take care of it.

Joshua has always managed to split his time evenly between school, work, and hobbies, as well as friends and family. When he is in school, he hangs out with a fair sized but still close knit group of friends and still manages to keep his grades up at an A average, even with his commitments to the soccer team. At home, he spends much of his time reading with Katrina and showing her the stories that he has written, something that she really enjoys. She has even taken to showing Joshua stories of her own that she has written, and will regularly ask for his input on them. He still plays his guitar on a regular basis, and his uncle will often go over and show him a thing or two, which usually ends with the two of them playing together for a while.

Joshua still has a desire to play in a band, and has attempted to get his friends in to the idea as well. He prefers listening to and playing various genres of rock and metal, and has even learned how to play more than a few of his favorite songs on the electric or acoustic guitar. He's tried his hand at writing music, with a greater focus on the music itself than the lyrics, making use of a synthesizer and music editing and mixing programs to create his songs. The main influences in his music tend to be Latin acoustic and Swedish power metal, but he is also very fond of covering music from video game soundtracks.

A number of things happened to Joshua and his family over winter break. Steven came home from university on Christmas with his boyfriend, something that didn't really shock Joshua or the rest of the family. Micheal brought his wife and Joshua's three young nieces, who he spoiled with numerous expensive gifts, while Jake showed up without his girlfriend. Joshua ended up getting glasses to help with his mild nearsightedness, and he has been struggling to get used to them, though he does feel they make him look smarter and give some balance to his face. Joshua also started smoking again, but never around the house, fearing that Katrina would see him doing it and copy him. Joshua wanted to be at least be a role model for Katrina around the house, if nothing else.

Advantages: As an avid soccer fan and long time player, Joshua has always been in decent shape, though never well built. His legs are strong and he is used to staying on them for long stretches of time due to his time spent on the soccer field, as well as his time spent standing around the counter when working in a fast food joint. He is a decent runner and can kick with some strength, and his time spent trying to score goals has given him decent aim with his kicks. He has also been a guitarist for years with a focus on power metal, so he is quick and nimble with his hands, and he is used to the precision required to play without mistake. He is also incredibly well read and a fan of everything from fantasy to science fiction to modern crime and adventure novels, leaving him with a wealth of potential, but unproven, knowledge. He is very friendly and tends to do his best to get along well with others, and he has a sizable group of friends that he can depend upon and trust. He is also a very bright student and that could lend itself well to problem solving. Because he has always been prone to injury, Joshua is quite capable of handling pain, and may even be able to ignore general cuts and scrapes that come with survival in rough environments.
Disadvantages: Joshua has never had to really defend himself in a fight, and never had much experience in dealing with confrontation, often shying away from it and doing his best to avoid drawing attention to himself. He is slightly nearsighted and wouldn't be able to see very clearly at any significant distance without his glasses, and he has recently taken up smoking again, which can leave him out of breath, or with nicotine cravings if he is deprived of cigarettes. While he is in decent shape from soccer, he is far from very strong and his small frame can easily leave him outgunned when put up against someone who is bigger and meaner. He is also used to always having someone around to support him, ranging from his parents and his aunt or uncle, to his brothers and his friends. He is not used to being left to deal with things on his own, and may be lost without guidance of some kind. While he has a sizable group of friends and feels he can depend upon them, he may also trust them too much and refuse to believe that they would be capable of doing wrong. Coming from a wealthy family, Joshua has never had to face any real hardship or do any real work, and he will likely be ill-equipped for a survival situation. Even from a young age, Joshua has been prone to injury, and can easily be considered a klutz, something that can easily cause problems for him at the worst possible time.