Tobias : from priest to witch to start athlete

Decided to continue my character building posts, this time I will focus on the protagonist of my story - Tobias Nevermind. I think recently he turned one or even two years old as an OC, but his history and inspiration goes deeper. In his inception, the prototype for Tobias wasn't even an original character but a re-imagination of an existing character.

Image from here

As some might know, a few of my Granado Espada characters had off-canon backstories, Valeria was one of them - I genderbent her and gave the recruitable character the name "Tobias". I also made it so that Valeria Vendetta wasn't Valeria's "evil" side but the third sister, alongside  princess Gabriela.

Here is a drawing of the genderbent Valeria, I tried to keep the original design of her dress but adjust it to a more masculine type of clothing. On the right is Calypso. This is a drawing from 2012 so about 5 years old.

Here is Tobias and Calypso in more casual clothing. I think they were meant to be friends or even lovers. I think some GE fans shipped Caly with Val. I think canonically she had some connections to princess Gabriela too. Not that questioning shipping leads to logical conclusions.

Naturally, when I stopped actively playing GE or working with the character concepts I stashed everything away in my memory.

That is until I decided to work on 100% original characters, not derivatives of existing characters. I don't know how it is for others, but sometimes creating a fan character helps as a getaway for developing my own ideas. Like training wheels for a bicycle that get taken off.

This is the first drawing ever of Tobias as an independent character. As you can see, I've kept the tunic type clothing but have made my own design. The drawing is from 2015 so maybe Tobias' as a character was slightly older than I thought but still - the GE character concept had marinated for 3 years until I decided to warp it into an original concept. 

In the beginnings Tobias was supposed to be a sort of priest. I had developed an AU for another fandom (can you see a pattern here...) and I had created a church. Tobias was supposed to hold the title of  "Monarch" - an outsider who gained the trust of the ones belonging to the church. Since the AU concept didn't translate well to an original idea I scrapped the concept of priest Tobias. That's when I started creating the story of Walpurgisnacht, centering around witches. 

This is the first description of Tobias:

Tobias, he’s a witch with no familiar. His sister, Veronica, has a boyfriend Eric and Tobias becomes good friends with him. Then it goes on to a poly relationship where Eric is both with Tobias and Veronica.
What Tobias doesn’t know is that Eric is a rogue familiar under the whip of Lieire… and Eric doesn’t know Tobias is a witch. Trouble ensues.

There was a weird love-triangle between him, his sister and her boyfriend. I just scrapped that and gave both Tobias and his sister separate lovers. Basically Tobias got Eric and his sister got someone else.

Speaking of Tobias' sister, she is his twin, which is based on the original Valeria duo. I decided calling her "Valeria" might be too obvious even though she has no similarities, but I didn't want to risk so she got the name Veronica. Honestly at this point there is 0% similarity and if I didn't write this post out I doubt anyone would ever even see where the inspiration comes from. Five years is enough for a character to morph completely, especially since I scrapped the initial concept which had the most similarity to Valeria.

Anyways, now Tobias was a witch and he had a twin sister. In fact, him being a witch is a hurdle I pondered over for a long time, mostly because I needed a reason how and when he became one. I am still working on the lore.

Here is a picture from 2016 of Tobias and his lover, Eric. As you can see, now Tobias has several scars which I intended as a way to show his change and development throughout the story. Now, however, I am not so sure the final concept will have scars as it will go against certain canon rules.

To see how far Tobias has come along as a character, I will post his official profile from his Toyhou.se profile:

The secondborn (twin) child to star athletes, Tobias grew up in a household that was devoted to physical activity and competition. Growing up he was taught to always take care of his sister, sometimes even putting her needs before his which resulted in Tobias carrying a heavy burden for anything that happened to Veronica. As a teenager he started training and soon became a youth star, winning first places in gymnastics competitions. At the age of 18 he was transferred from Youth Olympics to the General Olympics and secured gold medals, gaining fame for his incredible feats.

It all changed after a critical accident - during his second time at the Olympics Tobias misstepped and fell, snapping his neck. It was a miracle he lived but the injury impaired his movement and shattered any chance of every continuing his career. He had to go through rigorous physiotherapy but it never fully healed his ability to walk, Tobias had to use crutches and often was exhausted by pain. It was the pain that spiralled him into depression and turned the once optimistic and loved star into a reclusive shut-in.

Fate had another trick for Tobias and his life did another one-eighty on a dark night when the poor man ran into a local drug addict, who threatened him with a knife. Unable to run, Tobias was stabbed, only for the drug addict to drop dead right in front of him. For the first time, Tobias could let go of his crutchesand stand up straight. He was stuck in a dark alleyway, with a knife in his gut and a dead junkie at his feet as if nothing had happened. That was when he met the Familiar and in a twisted kind of fairy tale way found out something new: he was a Blood Witch, marked by a curse.

The text has some links to other characters. It's a bit clunky, I probably need to freshen it up. As you can see, from a priest, a witch Tobias has morphed into an ex-athlete who got caught up in a strange predicament. The Blood Witch part is going to be scrapped now that I look at it. Tobias is no more a witch, more like someone simply "marked" or "cursed". Also he is going to be related to the Witch Hunters, which I will eventually write about.

Character development takes some time, especially when the lore is half baked and you hit dead ends from time to time, trying to figure out how to tweak certain concepts so they do not break canon.

Here is a recent doodle of Tobias with his most current look. No more scars!

Ps. His last name - Nevermind - is inspired by Sonia Nevermind, a character from Dangan Ronpa, who in turn is named after a Nirvana song. Yeah.