#and then i ended up getting very distracted by jerma streaming all night... re4 my love <3

[mattodore]

Tell me more abt Theo 👁️

being asked about my little guy makes me feel so warm 🥹 but whew... i don't even know where to begin.

cw for mentions of drug use and child abuse

so this is theodore or theo as he prefers. everyone say hi theo 👋

theo is a man in his early twenties who's been having a pretty rough time coping with the traumas of his life and has developed some nasty habits and defensive behaviors because of that. theo was born as the only child of an investment banker (his father) and a heart surgeon (his mother), who were both very clinical and hands-off parents — in fact, the only time they were hands-on were when they were hurting him. so theo initially grew up more under the care of his childhood au pair rather than his parents.

theo's parents were more on the outside of his life up until they started pushing their ideas of academic and social excellence onto him around his teenage years, which was also around the time they sent away his au pair and expected him to start fending for himself. he was maybe around ten or eleven years-old then. theo's rebellious phase was very short-lived at this age as he was cowed back into line pretty quickly. in such a high-tension household he was always on edge unless his parents were away, which gave him a messed up sense of comfort in isolation.

being sent to boarding school for his summers gave him the chance to explore his sexual orientation but the shame overwhelmed him back into repressing. as he got older the idea of love and physical affection distorted pretty bad when he was so used to any kind of touch being a source of hurt. late in his teens he began to rebel again in little ways like with his fashion choices and growing out his hair. theo was used to the violent reactions his parents would show in the face of these infinitesimal rebellions and, in a way, he craved them. in his mind, the only time his parents showed him attention was when they were hurting him... and he wanted any kind of acknowledgement he could get from them. the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference... and they proved themselves to be far from indifferent when he was acting out.

when he moved out for college he didn't know what to do with himself. theo struggled a lot in that first year of college... he was suffering from some fucked up kind of separation anxiety, almost, despite everything. he very quickly fell into unhealthy coping mechanisms to handle the pain of separation. partying was something he found himself doing a lot. all those people showing him attention, the alcohol, the drugs... self-destruction was an easy vice to fall into for him and in many ways was another way to rebel. he escaped that way. in college, theo has a group of people he sees often who view him as a friend, but his view of himself as unlovable from an adolescence of abuse and neglect has him unreceptive to the notion.

as an adult, theo is still closeted when he's with his family. he can't help but crave the approval and affection of his parents, so he dresses the part and he tries to be what they want him to be. alone, he tries to be himself... but he doesn't exactly know who that is anymore.

theo is a loner, prone to bouts of depression, noncommittal, easily jealous, competitive, kind of waspish and mean at times, and touchy; like an injured animal with its hackles raised, who lashes out to scare others away. he's also desperate for affection, fashionable, diligent, intelligent, and alluringly magnetic.

#river dipping #asks #simarcana #theodore doe #echthroi #s: echthroi #oc extras #cw child abuse #cw drugs #sorry this took so long for me to reply to you sent me this yesterday and my brain immediately short-circuited and i ended up stopping #everything i was doing so i could go stare at my folder of pics of him and go through his pinterest board with my hand on my screen #and then i ended up getting very distracted by jerma streaming all night... re4 my love <3 #but theo is hands-down the oc i care the most about and there's honestly a lot of projection going on here... #like we have a lot of similarities... i project a lot onto all of my ocs especially my favorites um. so he's very dear to me #echthroi is a group of ocs from a story that revolves entirely around theo!! he's the main star! #that's kinda why the characters from lykos are so much more fleshed out whereas echthroi is mostly just theo #bc lykos is about everyone but echthroi is theo-centric