NEW ROBERT LORE POST!!!! It’s here! The TL;DR for this is that he’s a traumatized loser baby who used to be a street racer/junkie but has since become a line cook and has gotten his life together.
It’s heavy because i loooooove putting him through my mental meat grinder :) so some things might feel excessive loool. Includes mentions of psychosis, child abuse, grooming, and CSA. among other things, like a brief mention of suicide. Proceed with caution. I don’t go into detail but i also don’t censor words :D
Hopefully yall like it!!!......................... it's split into two parts because the original is too long to post lol. sorry. check the link at the bottom for part 2!
STUPID PISSBABY ERA
His parents were very in love. His dad was a dentist and his mom was a typical stay-at-home-lady, maybe working part time at a grocery store. She smoked fervently, which sort of arose from poorly managing the stress of child rearing. However, she did help her husband John through alcoholism in the past, which strengthened John’s relationship even further. He was pretty codependent on her. Robert spent the most time with his mom; his dad was frequently working or just too tired to do anything. He wasn’t abusive, just distant, at least to Robert. His mom was really laid back, since she was on the younger side. She behaved more like a friend to Rob than a mother, meaning he developed into kind of a dick. He got away with things. He could lash out and get angry and into fights. He was the typical ‘football jock’ archetype, and was an important member of his school’s team, in a tight-knit relationship with all of his teammates and his coach. He dates one or two girls just to try it, but it was never interesting to him.
(this section is a WIP and might get changed in the future, but this is how it is now :D) Anyways, his mom develops lung cancer. The smoking got to her. Being a somewhat spontaneous and impulsive woman, already likely bored of family life, she packs up to leave. Robert never gets to know why, mostly learning of the series of events through John’s biased eyes. He never knows about her cancer diagnosis because John never did either. She serves John with divorce papers and leaves with zero custody of Robert. She left the country to Paris or something, where she might be dead, might be alive. Who knows? Robert doesn’t. Her departure tears John to shreds. He already had something of an unhealthy attachment to her, and she was his place to go when he needed support. She was practically his best friend; she helped him beat an addiction and had been his partner in crime for years. The distress triggers a psychotic episode, brought on by a previously dormant (and likely genetic) schizoaffective disorder. John also relapses into alcoholism without the support of his wife. He becomes wildly aggressive and unpredictable for days or weeks at a time, then disappears, reappears after a time, and the cycle starts over. Robert barely gets money to support himself through crummy minimum wage jobs. He’s around 15-16 now. During this time, Robert sustains multiple physical injuries. John’s unstable, irregular, and drunk state would cause him to become threatened by, and attack, Robert on numerous occasions. This is where a large amount of Rob’s scars come from, because John had access to small knives and sharp objects and was as large as, if not measurably larger than, Robert, who was a pretty beefed kid. This is not where his face scar comes from, however. Robert endured this abuse for so long under the naive (and knowingly dumb) idea that his father was in mourning, and that he would return to normal shortly, if he just waited it out. John showed no signs of improving. Previously mentioned was Robert’s football team, specifically his coach. He was an open and friendly man, and well-loved in the community because he approached things with a level of understanding. He had worked at the school for many years before Robert, and people always had good stories to tell about him because he let them get away with everything. Seeing as this was one of the last stable adult figures in Robert’s life, he sought him out looking for someone to trust and confide in. And confide in him he did; Rob shared his frustrations about his mom, his fear of his father, showed many of his cuts and bruises to his coach, etc. Coach built up his trust with Robert to the point where football practice was the safest place for Rob to go. Anyways, coach was a pedophile. That was why he didn’t tell anyone about the things going on in Rob’s life. It was a grooming situation, and unfortunately, rob’s vulnerability was the perfect opportunity to prey upon someone. I won’t go far into it at all, but there was a point in time where coach had rob alone (likely in private afterschool practices) and he took the opportunity to sexually assault him. Robert was a big kid, so he could escape, but coach got just long enough for Rob to never trust coach (or feel comfortable around very large men) again. The attack takes a toll on him, and he becomes even more distressed and aggressive than he had already become in those recent months. His anger issues really solidify. He leaves the team for good when, during the middle of a game, he snaps at another player and attacks them. He is suspended but leaves on his own as well, much to the dismay of the other players, seeing as he played an important role. He became more socially isolated from basically everyone and stopped making an effort in school. John also deteriorated; the home became riddled with trash and looked almost like a hoarding situation in some parts.
He tries one last time with John, hoping (again, knowing it’s dumb) that John would “snap out” of his issues and help if he just told him the real severity of the things going on with Coach and the SA. John did not. In fact, he called Robert a whore and a fag and blamed him for everything. They proceeded to get into their most heated altercation yet and John tried to strangle Robert. He also delivered a blow to Rob’s head that gave him the Signature Face Scar, using a bottle he broke on a table. Rob manages to fight back and narrowly escapes from the house, finding a neighbor and calling for help. This night was the moment that Rob officially gave up on john ever going back to the man he used to be. Rob was taken from the home and put into a group home, but he never spent much time there anyways.
EMO EMO EMO BOY ANGSTY LOSER ERA
(this section is a WIP and might get changed in the future, but this is how it is now :D) here begins his signature Emo Era. He was moved downstate to a group home, as mentioned above, which was probably the least important piece of this section of his life since he was close to aging out of it and nothing bad happened to him while in the home. It was a pretty chill time, he was just avoidant of everyone and an asshole lol. While staying in this group home, he got close-ish with this other dude who was in a gang of street racers. This guy introduced Robert to his gaggle of people, all varying in age and demeanor but sharing one love: cars. Rob slowly built up a strong bond with many of those people, seeing them as like a family while also keeping his distance somewhat. He was still a dick, but they returned his energy playfully, and they were basically like a group of stray dogs all play wrestling constantly. They made a lot of their money from betting on races and some part/full-time jobs the members would take up. Robert found a love for racing; it was a helpful outlet for a lot of his rage and he could just be stupid whenever he wanted. Of course, that era was nowhere near without his faults (though hed tell you it’s one of his personal favorite times of his life). He has his fair share of cuts and bruises from minor crashes (they used both motorcycles and normal cars) and more major ones. The most notable one was a crash in which his left leg was badly injured right in the knee. He tried his best to “walk it off,” but that ultimately made it worse and just put him out of commission for a while ((note: during this time he also started sketching and learned to draw :D)). Eventually, he goes to the hospital for it, and he undergoes surgery that puts him into medical debt he’s still paying off today lol. Because of this likely painful surgery, he’s prescribed opioids. Said prescription makes him develop a….. You guessed it! Opioid addiction yaaaayyy! to Heroin specifically; while I haven’t decided exactly how that gateway goes just yet, I’m assuming he develops this addiction while still on his prescription meds and then seeks them out once he runs out. The racers had connections, and all it took was a few conversations for Rob to get connected to who (and what) he needed.
This piece of his lore is still relatively new and underdeveloped, so I don’t have much to share on it just yet, but it was, obviously, shit. He lost a lot of the residual bulk from his childhood/late teens and just kinda became sad looking like the rest of the dorks he hung with. He got very close to making an attempt on his life during this time. (“close” as in, taking a drive out to go veer his car into something but deciding against it.) Which reminds me to touch on his ocd- POCD to be exact. This disorder developed in him directly following, and in the time after, the incident with his coach. Robert has other aspects of an OCD disorder, like being obsessive about clutter and checking things etc. But children, teenagers specifically, set him off the most. Rob always had a somewhat anxious disposition, even under everything else, and he would get quite a few intrusive thoughts. I must mention that Robert is NOT a pedophile. This disorder is, in my eyes, the definitive opposite of that. He avoids any child like the plague.
His opinion on John also developed interestingly here. Some readers might relate to the feeling of sharing a situation with their friends, and their points and anger just makes you more frustrated about it yourself; that’s what happened here. Before meeting his racing buddies, there was a (faint) chance of robert giving John another chance. But after this, a lot of the nuance was removed from his mind and replaced by some pretty black-and-white feelings. He still harbors a lot of anger today, even if it’s not exactly the healthiest thing for him. Do I mean to say that John was just a misunderstood little gooby whom Robert should feel sorry for? Definitely not; but the level of anger and resentment he holds isn’t healthy for anyone. Especially not after John dies, but that doesn’t come until later. SECOND POST TO COME WITH THE REST OF THIS INFO AFTER THIS STUFF! WILL BE IN THE REBLOGS
