Hello! I’m wondering what you like so much about Todd? Why is he your favorite, and what makes him so appealing to you? Hope this doesn’t sound rude, I love the dedication and I’m genuinely curious why you love him so much! Can’t wait to hear, thank you!
really appreciate this message, hope that this reply doesn’t come off as too obnoxious or long.
I think a majority of Todd’s appeal comes in what we don’t see of him. We only ever really see what the boys see of him, but he is a character full of implications. He’s an alcoholic dropout and his car of choice is a Duster. It’s sleek, yet it’s cheap. It’s what he is. His personality is unusual and disruptive, even for Highland. He acts on impulse and has no real motivations because he’s a miserable desperate guy fresh into independence. He’s clearly nice to girls, he has all the casual girlfriends he can get in town and yet he only really keeps one regular friend in Slade. He’s a bit like Beavis and Butt-Head, he just hates himself. In Taint of Greatness, Judge mentions basing him on a troublesome middle child, some kid from a family that all went in and out of jail. He just acted out to make other people miserable.
Think it’s worth noting/debating that, at first, it didn’t even seem like Todd was really in a gang, he just hanged around similar guys his age. Think the boys probably just assumed that he was cool enough to have a gang, at least at that point in the show. In (This Book Sucks), the map of Highland notes that the park is where the “cool seniors” and “dudes who are too cool for college” hang. Think these two parts of the book are notable, considering they were written by the dudes that suggested Todd as a character in the first place.
In Crush and Date Bait, when Judge was still voicing him, the running joke with Todd seemed to be that he made excuses to not really hurt people. He acted out of line and he’d threaten, but he still had some kind of restraint/concern for how people would think of him. It’s an interesting shift when Toby Huss starts voicing him in Safe House. Toby seemed to play him much more whiny/snappy, less smooth/slow and much more threatening, given Todd was way more violent after he had dropped out of school. Toby’s an interesting guy all on his own, I like him plenty.
Back on Todd, safe house also noted the first time he really exhibited any real criminal behavior, he wasn’t going into hiding when he was just some senior kid being a local nuisance. He has his own personal enemies and real adult problems at this point in the show. He can’t get away with everything, and he doesn’t know how to deal with that, so he takes it out on the kids that still like him regardless. He is still self-conscious and the boys still embarrass him, but when he gets desperate they stay reliable.
Stupid to think about, but I do notice as I get older it gets harder for me to relate to the boys. They are static mascot characters. Not a bad thing, they stay reliable. They don’t change much, even in old age. Todd changes, slightly, but he’s like a twenty year old. Todd has plenty capacity to change. I think this Reddit comment kind of put it best, when debating his and other side characters’ futures. I really liked finding this.
Think most of my own latching to his design/character and even most of my artistic motivation directly links to how other fans lack in exploring him, I felt that as a kid in the fan spaces too. Highland is full of complicated characters that are very easy to write/draw. It’s a brilliant show, blah blah blah. Todd is somehow always an outlier and that never made sense to me. People remember him, he has memorable enough episodes in the midst of the show’s peak but most fans seem to take his violence and to an extent the show at face value.
And I mean I think he’s hot. I am not immune to the floating hearts and heavenly choir. his arms made the little boy feel weird. Think I was too embarrassed to even draw him until making this blog.
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