OOC
GAME: Fairly Tales
DESCRIPTION: Reincarnated fairytales.
DATE: February 2008
PB: Ryan Reynolds
JOURNAL: takingmemos
IC
NAME: Tobias Xander Hastings
AGE: Twenty-nine.
BIRTHDATE: August 4th, 1978
ZODIAC: Leo
generous and warmhearted; creative and enthusiastic; broad-minded and expansive; faithful and loving.
pompous and patronizing; bossy and interfering; dogmatic and intolerant.
HOMETOWN: Scottsdale, Arizona
EDUCATION: B.A. at some university in/around Santa Clara, California.
OCCUPATION: High school math teacher.
DETAIL: Works at a public school along with Henry Porter and Giselle Prescott. Has a quirky and off-kilter style of teaching, along with a biting sense of humour, which he uses to keep his students awake and paying attention. Fiercely sardonic in the classroom, but incredibly laid-back if his students see him elsewhere. Stays up-to-date with his paperwork, and is obsessively ordered with notes and to do lists. Students include Isabel Noble.
LIVING SITUATION: Shares a studio apartment with Anne Gardner. People tend to think they're married or seeing each other. They're not.
personality.
FIRST IMPRESSION: "Gregarious, loquacious — sure likes to hear himself talk, doesn't he?"
PERSONALITY: Tobias is, above all things, incredibly quick-witted. Strictly speaking, he was a bit too bookish and intelligent to fit into the “most popular jock” role during high school, but he pulled it off anyway; it's due to Toby's social butterfly aspect, and his ceaseless tendency to heave himself into situations with an easy smile and a well-aimed (if slightly sardonic) quip. It's the most crucial foundation of the man's personality: the fact that he enjoys mental stimulation, quick-witted conversation, and intellectual games. There's still some of the pompous and kingly demeanour in him, and a pride in his bearing, that hails back to royalty and chessboards — “it isn't respectable to beg”, after all. Like all contrary Carrollian inventions, Toby is a peculiar mixture of royal politeness and blunt insult: he feels it's his godgiven right to regale others with his opinion and commentary. Words are his weapons, and he throws them around like barbed confetti. It's definitely not his tale, but Toby is like the errant Jack plunging himself headfirst off the hill, leaving Jill to come sauntering along afterwards.
Despite having a keen mind for numbers, Toby's pet love will, and always will be, language. He's fascinated with words, taxonomy, and linguistics, and attempts to broaden his vocabulary almost daily. For most of his life, he successfully passed himself off as this rowdy, sportsy type, but the truth is that Toby's mother managed to drill a love of words and learning into him. He does the crossword every single morning, and plays chess like a master.
He's awfully full of himself, however, and sometimes takes people at face value in order to take the piss out of them — which seems a pretty common looking-glass thing to do. Toby can often be intensely snarky and holier-than-thou, which is where he matches his queen like two peas in a pod; but as opposed to her strange maternalism, he's self-interested, and believes that people should sort out their own problems. He'll throw up his hands at other people's IMMENSE FAIL instead of helping, and Toby is then simply content to stand on the sidelines and do commentary from the peanut gallery — or write little memos about it. He does breezy social commentary like others might attempt sports commentary, because the social world is, at the end of it all, nothing but one big game to this man.
For all his light-hearted personality and keen insight into others' lamentably dramatic existences, however, Toby's terrible at assessing his own problems. He leans on others quite a lot as a result of this — both emotionally and, in Anne's case, financially. It's faintly hypocritical, to be honest. He believes strongly in teamwork and cooperation about as much as he believes in wit and intelligence, but doesn't practice fierce independence himself. The king can't win a match on his own, after all; he needs a wide and varied flotilla of allies and supporters.
He's also very patient. Toby's on an eternal quest for instant verbal and comedic gratification, but everything else can wait. One step at a time.
LIKES: Words. Chess. Crossword puzzles. Logic puzzles. Riddles.
DISLIKES: Blatant stupidity makes him want to set things on fire.
RANDOM FACTS:
1. Attempts to use the dictionary.com Word of the Day every single day. Keep an eye open for it.
2. Predictably, he makes a lot of memos and notes to himself. He doesn't really care if they're public or secret.
3. Sometimes forgets that his compendium is a compendium. Grocery lists and assignment outlines appear in Toby's journal every so often.
4. Handwriting is an extremely jagged scrawl, all in lowercase: he's gotten far too used to writing numbers, so his letters suffer and turn square and blocky.
5. Knows exactly what makes Anne tick. Kind of enjoys making her tick.
background.
FAMILY: Daniel (father), Laura (mother), Vivian and Chelsea (younger sisters, 24 and 22 respectively)
HISTORY: In a sense, he lives his life backwards. Tobias Hastings started off as a very quiet and calm child — but junior high and high school opened him up and, unfortunately, led to some rather rowdy and immature behaviour. Now in his late twenties and in a position of arguable responsibility and social modelling, he's finally attempting to shape up into a sane and mature member of society. He has the sane and level-headed part down, but part of Toby is still eternally blithe and carefree; he often seems stranded and at a loss when it comes to his own life, simply waiting for that giant hand from the sky to pick him up and drop him where he needs to be. There's never been enough guidance.
His family was stubbornly middle-class, and all three children attended the local public schools in Scottsdale. Both parents were teachers, with Daniel in phys-ed and coaching the school football team, and Laura holding down the fort in English. Toby grew up taunting his two little sisters mercilessly, and largely resisting the urge to nose into their lives — except for when he decided to protect them from boys he saw as “unsavoury elements”, much to Chels and Viv's distaste. Tobias was definitely in the most popular circle in high school, and had a lot of social clout to throw around. When he broke his leg at age thirteen, his cast ended up covered in doting and flattering messages from loyal followers. Lacking the necessary fortitude for playing football, instead the boy was a regular fixture on the baseball team — he didn't have a lot of brute strength, but was a good runner and mover.
Always in favour of endowing her children with literary knowledge, Laura read him Alice in Wonderland when he was little. This did not result in any large, sweeping tale-related epiphanies. He became prom king before graduation — nope, no realisation. His father taught him how to play chess — close, but still no cigar. There were many years of feeling vaguely discomfited and uneasy, as if there was some knowledge lurking on the periphery that he just couldn't get, but Toby simply attributed this to a general feeling of teenage restlessness.
That lasted until college. Toby scraped up all his savings and went to university in California, and held down jobs in order to afford it. It was one night in the middle of the schoolyear when he and his friends — “all the king's horses and all the king's men” — crashed one of the elite Stanford parties, which is where he met the Queen. Off-the-wall jocks swarmed into a house of aghast rich kids, and as the two caste circles clashed and mingled, everything clicked. Wandering around in a haze of alcohol, seeing an ornate chessboard on the mantlepiece, and meeting Anne Gardner, the realisation finally fell like a tonne of bricks. Kings and pawns, chessboards and royalty, mirrors and Alice.
“… Ohhhh shit. Enough tequila for me.”
“Oh, no, not quite, I shouldn't think. You're a Wonderlander, aren't you? The White King—now wouldn't that be funny?”
“…?”
“Oh, I'm the White Queen, dear. I think you'll be getting a call in the morning.”
What with all the opportunities he had, he was a bit slow when it came to awakening — but this seems, unfortunately, a recurring element in Toby's life. People often underestimate him, but he's a lot quicker than it seems. He just works backwards sometimes. He approaches problems from the other side of the spectrum.
After the awakening, he started indulging in the king's old habit of writing memos, and started a serious undertaking in keeping a journal to chronicle every little important memory and thought he had during the day. Patricia visited to give him the 'official announcement', but that was about it for his librarian's personal involvement; Anne was who he went to for answers. Toby began asking her multitudes of questions, and surprising his buddies by suddenly spending so much time with this new girl. The guys teased him a lot for it, but despite some stirring memories of being with the queen in more ways than one, Tobias' attention was never anything more than platonic. Really, he just needed to know who he was, and being around her made the understanding come faster.
He finished out his degree — studying math, as it so happens — and then took some follow-up courses in the faculty of education. His parents weren't particularly surprised that their son was leaning towards following in their footsteps; despite his scattered nature, Toby's intense focus on others always turned out well for him, and he was good at explaining dogmatic concepts in new, unusual, and interesting ways. Toby jumped locations again when he decided to move to New York to be closer to the Atheneum — he enjoys order and social structure, so a part of him wants to help out the institution the best he can. He lived by himself in New York for a while, before moving in with his newest girlfriend, Noreen Rivera.
They were together for around three years, thus making it one of his longest-running relationships. It ended amiably with both parties still strongly fond of each other, but starting to fidget for new experiences: they cut the connection before they could get bored with a daily domestic life. This resulted in Toby suddenly not having a place to live. It seemed natural to move in with Anne and share her flat. His students keep assuming she's his girlfriend, and he's starting to get lazy enough that he won't correct them, just for the sake of convenience.
royalty.
TALE: the white king, through the looking glass (and what alice found there)
ABILITY: Awesome chess skills. What?
STATUS: Being incredibly proud of his tale, he'll blab it to anyone who asks.
CORRELATION: Tobias retains a frustrating metaphorical short-sightedness as a result of his tale; he's not too certain about himself and where he's going in life, though he's plenty certain when it comes to other people — the pawns in his life, if you will. But Toby has carried the weight of an imaginary and fragile looking-glass house on his shoulders, and he's all too aware that he might not be up for this task. He's too brusque, too direct — one touch could shatter that delicate world. So the man steps back to keep it safe, and safe from his meddling. He takes memos instead.
He desperately wants to be a proper "king", and as a child, entertained idle dreams of being president. The impossibility of attaining such a dream meant that he just made prom king instead. He's perfectly fine with that.
He's fiercely proud of the looking-glass world, even if it was the product of a dream of a fictional girl written by the pen of a man named Dodgson. There's a dreamlike calm associated with some of the Carroll characters; sure, they're manic, but they're also strangely sensible. This aspect especially came out in the looking-glass, and it's reflected in Tobias: there are rules. If you get to the other side, you become a queen. The king has the crown. Queens run. You can't catch a Bandersnatch. There's a chessboard between the lines, if you look closely enough.
physical.
HEIGHT: 6'2"
APPEARANCE: Tall and sturdily-built — a bit moreso than you'd expect from a math teacher. Mousy brown hair kept cut relatively short. Brown eyes. Often wears tousled white shirts. Tries to be cleanshaven more often than not, but his beard grows in at an absurd pace, so Toby fluctuates wildly between having it and not having it.
social.
STATUS: Single.
SEXUALITY: Straight as a majestically launched arrow. … What?
(Well, there was that one time in his teens. He pecked another guy on the lips in exchange for two chicks having to make out in front of them. He thinks it was a pretty even trade.)
TURN-ONS: Intelligence. A quick enough wit to keep him on his toes. Wordplay. Unique traits and being out of the ordinary.
TURN-OFFS: Complete dimwits.
SOUNDTRACK
the killers - "mr brightside"
the libertines - "the man who would be king"
LOGS
~April-May, 2008: Meeting Noreen & handing over Checkmate
Unfinished: Fuzzy sleepytiems with Anne
June 4, 2008: Absinthe with Ryoko
June, 2008: Rock bottom
After: Unofficial epilogue
20 YEARS LATER
Moves into the new apartment Anne got him, and then spends the entire summer (and the next few years, really) trying to piece himself back together after the loss of his soulmate. He uses the help of friends and loved ones (Scott, Noreen, the Byrons, Ryoko and Wonderlandians, a growing and ~blossoming~ relationship with Kelly). He starts writing some clever columns for the local newspaper, but doesn't do much with it — instead, he focuses on just taking things one step at a time and then going to grad school, inspired by Noreen's efforts. He manages to rebuild himself into a less selfish monarch>, having realised what he was taking advantage of all along. A decade or two later, he and Anne finally patch things up as individuals, no longer dependent upon being the King and Queen. Toby is, needless to say, overjoyed and breathes a sigh of relief he didn't even know he'd been holding for twenty years. I don't know if he and Kelly last, but my inner fluff side would like to think they do — he will be pretty much the coolest, quirkiest dad ever, albeit forgetful and far less stringent on his children than any of his other 'subjects'.
