The Toy Master Series: Behind the Scenes

Character Inspiration: Cassius "Worm" Eliades

I haven't really written anything substantial in the behind the scenes book in a while, but I've finished about half of the next chapter of Against the Moon and I have a bit of extra free time as well as a really bad headache, so let's talk about my inspiration for Cass!

When I first started working on the main characters, mainly Demi and Kailas, I knew I wanted a group of childhood friends who would all stay together in that really sweet and somewhat cliche future gang where they're always friends.

One of these days I need to write a oneshot of how Kailas and Demi met Cass and Arthur.

Anyway, my basic list was one friend who was a doctor, one an assassin, on the rebellions leader, and one a former military man, and of course he was going to be a marine, come on now.

I wanted to make sure there was a transformation of some kind, and I wanted there to be a character who struggled with his appearance, because there are a lot of people like that.

Cass didn't really care about his weight or appearance when he was younger, because there wasn't really much reason to. His father was always gone, and his mother was always busy with her promiscuous lovers. Whenever they were with each other, eating dinner or just passing, she would either make a cruel note on his weight or ignore him completely.

Due to the fact she only ever spoke to him to talk about how "fat" he was, he overate and essentially forced himself to stay the same heavy weight, because it was the only way to ever get attention from his parent. He didn't see his weight problem as a problem, because his parents seemed to care about him being "fat", meaning they cared about him, and that was all he ever wanted.

When Kailas was shot and Demi was kidnapped, he was given a painful wake-up call that not only was the lifestyle he was living unhealthy, but it was unnecessary, because there were already people who loved him, Arthur, Demi, Kailas, even Ian, Bethany, Lailani, Ennis, and Arthur's mom and dad.

He lost one of his best friends, and he nearly lost another. After that, he stopped caring about his parents and the fact all they wanted was to make each other jealous by fucking other people. He decided to focus on getting fit and strong, so he could succesfully protect his friends, because they were always more like family to him than his own.

After years of training and fighting, working in the marines and honing both his body and his mind, this is basically what I imagined he turned out like:

*art, character, and design is not mine, all rights stay with the artist Z-Pico on DeviantArt*

Truthfully I didn't have a last name for Cass for the longest time, it took me a while to decide on Eliades, but after confirming that he had Turkish and Greek roots I thought it was a nice name to go with.

Cass is currently twenty-five years old, and once upon a time he'd be willing to sleep with anything with legs, he did not care. His first sexual experience was when he was in the marines (consensual, I promise), but his first real love was Ian.

It was pretty unexpected to him how he seemed to just click with Ian when he finally returned home, but they got along, and Cass was legitimately in love with him. After Ian was blinded and they decided to step away from each other, Cass fell back into his old habit of sleeping with whoever, but ever since Carina and his group moved into the base and joined the rebellion, Cass has calmed down.

He was actually in love with both Ian and Carina at the same time, but he met Carina long after he met Ian (obviously), so the fact they ended up in an actual relationship was expected, but still bizarre to Cass, who never really knew how to deal with healthy relationships. Carina is helping him through it, however, and Cass truly appreciates and adores him. He still misses Ian sometimes, but he's come to terms with what happened, and now he just wants Ian to be happy and safe.

For a while, Cass was a total sexual deviant, due to the fact his parents were both the same way, it was all he knew. Fuck and forget, occasionally return to the same person if they were a good enough lay, it was all to sate primal instincts and boredom, until he met Carina.

While Ian did care about Cass (and still does), he didn't believe they would be able to have a relationship due to Cass' issues, but Carina was stubborn enough to see his unfaithfulness as a challenge. Maybe because Carina's parents had been so loving and faithful, but Carina understood Cass' problems, and he was willing and determined to help him see that what he was doing wasn't healthy at all for his mental stability (and his sex life).

Cass and Carina currently have a very healthy and loving relationship, slow and steady and sweet; Carina is the only person who's ever actually tried to make Cass understand relationships.

Not that Carina is the only person Cass cares about of course. He sees Arthur, Kailas, and Demi as his brothers, literally his closest family, and Malachi is essentially his best friend. He loves them all to death and would do absolutely anything for them, no matter the cost, and they feel the same.

He's good natured, flirtatious, and incredibly vain because of how "hot" he is, but he's a genuinely good and generous man.

So yea, that's Cass! He's awesome, I know. That's all I got for now, took me a while to write down cuz my head, but I hope you enjoyed this exclusive look at Cass!