peculiar pains

I do want to keep Tobias Rodgers very true to his original, as I do genuinely like the original design that the former creator, kastoway, worked on. However, I do think many people forget that the original story was written by Wade when he was 12/13 years old, a mere middle schooler, and did not have an understanding nor the education on some of the topics and mental/physical conditions he was exploring in the story. So for starters, I want to expand on Tobias and his conditions, specifically thing such as his schizophrenia, CIPA, and PTSD.

I do want to honor the original story, and keep many of the plot points and themes the same, maybe just explored on a deeper level with how they would affect the world and especially how they would affect Toby long term in ways such as possible hallucinations, survivors guilt, substance abuse, etc. I believe that Toby Rodgers is an incredibly complex character, and can be shown to have that complexity as long as his topics are handled tastefully and with respect. I am a current pysch researcher and am as well using many of my personal discoveries and educations in writing this character.

I want to sort of re-write his personality to be more close to the original canon version that kastoway has initially intended. I believe much of the creepypasta fandom during years like 2016, completely butchered Toby's character and story due to infantizing him for his conditions and disabilities, making him appear as if he was incompetent and helpless. In recent years people have now butchered him again by assuming he's this muscle daddy who would be genuinely abusive and an asshole, so I want to bring back a bit of his personality from the original story.

My version of Tobias Rodgers, at least at this point in his life, is a jealous, sarcastic, and apathetic jerk with complicated opinions. He is genuinely hard to get close to, however he very clearly can be a good person and treat people correctly if he is fond of them. I want to include traits I have always seen within Toby and his story, such as the potential of Toby having a condition like ASPD, as many mental health conditions can be diagnosed together due to shared symptoms. My Toby Rodgers is a bad person, not because he is mentally unwell or has these conditions, but because he is a serial killer with remorse problems, yet even still I want to include writing about what that sort of thing does to an individual. I do not want to write Toby to be this blood thirsty murder maniac, but instead a young man who initially was very hurt and angry who could only use violence to as a solution, and now has trapped himself in a cycle of wanting to stop but being unable to due to his nature.

There will be parts of Toby's story and personality that I have tweaked to fit with my personal view, and for whatever story building needs when creating my oc's story, such as how he will include topics of religion and religious trauma. And I wish to sculpt and map out how Toby would handle subjects of religion, possibly in ways like potentially being raised catholic, or having his conditions treated as if he was tainted as a child which could further inspire reasons why he had such a bad relationship to his father.

I want to also bring a bit of funny realism to the blog, because while yes entities like Slenderman or Zalgo do exist in the story, both being non-human, supernatural beings, I want Toby to still behave within reality. I don't think he would be this super professional and formal sounding individual, he's a guy in his twenties, he's going to talk on the internet like an idiot and shit post stuff like any other young adult would, making bad jokes, swearing, using memes and internet humor, etc. This blog isn't to track Toby's story, think of it more as if Toby has social media and was using it for his own bullshit reasonings.

Another thing I want to expand on with Tobias, and this creepypasta rendition in general, is other characters like Slenderman, etc. Toby's canon relationship to Slenderman is idolizing him, however in my rendition it isn't just blind faith. Toby feels as if he owes Slenderman this favor, his life, his strength, because Slenderman took him in. He doesn't view Slenderman as this powerful God or anything, and instead views him with fear. Toby understands full well that Slenderman is a large reason why he is still alive, and that he is a disposable pawn in the universe that Slenderman could completely get rid of once his usefulness has dried up, so he is constantly putting himself in dangerous situations to get the attention of Slenderman, to continuously impress him and show that he can still have value to him.

Slenderman does genuinely care for his proxies and workers, but not in the standard father figure way that most of the fandom portrays, which by all means I do not mind, I actually find the father figure Slendy trope from the fandom to be very cute at times, I like seeing different people's thoughts and opinions on how characters act. However, I want Slenderman to be complicated as well, as he is a non-human being. Slenderman is very formal, and manipulative both intentionally and unintentionally. Slenderman believes he is genuinely doing what is best for his workers, through this manipulation and exploitation of them. He's a non-human entity, and while he cares for the humans under his domain, he clearly doesn't know how to care for a human, as he will never have the experience of being a human or feeling humanity himself. It's misguided and manipulative, even though he's trying to be genuine.

While he cares for his workers and domain, he doesn't fully understand them as people. In the case of Toby, Slenderman does not understand certain aspects of Toby such as his tourettes, and sees them as this trivial flaw or inconvenience, or with Toby's CIPA, he doesn't actually understand what the condition is, all he knows is that Toby cannot feel pain and that makes him a valuable asset to have, which is why in the text messages I created earlier, Slenderman calls Toby's tics "quirks," despite Toby's incorrect typing not even being from his tourettes and just being because he's driving and typing one handed on a bumpy road.