Bobby Jr. (Reeling in the Years)

Roberto "Bobby" Santiago Jr. is an original character appearing in the Flagg1991 AU Loud House fic *Reeling in the Years.* He is the son of Lori Loud and Bobby Santiago Sr.

## Bio

Bobby Jr. was born December 18, 1961 in Royal Woods, Michigan. He was conceived out of wedlock and when Lori discovered she was pregnant, she and Bobby Sr. married in May 1961.

Like his cousins Alex and Jessy, Bobby was very close to his aunt Leni growing up; she watched him while Lori and Bobby both worked to support their family. As a child, Bobby was a poor student who had trouble focusing and class clown who was once suspended for dunking a sock in his teacher's coffee.

In 1972, Bobby began dating classmate Carol Pingrey and doing yard work for his neighbor Mr. Grouse, who regaled Bobby with fabricated stories of his time in World War I (he told Bobby that limbless men weren't sent home but forced to crawl into battle).

After seeing the movie *Saturday Night Fever* at the Palace Theater in Royal Woods in 1977, Bobby started to emulate John Travolta. He and Carol frequented discos, where Bobby's inability to dance frustrated him. In 1978, he took a job washing dishes for his uncle Lincoln, owner of Flip's Drive-In. At work, Bobby was slow, inept, and did the bare minimum.

In 1980, Carol broke up with him and moved to New York to attend journalism school, leaving Bobby despondent. He was further affected by Leni's death the next year.

Ambitionless and adrift, he continued at Flip's until 1984 when he met Lola Sawyer (in the AU Lola and Lana are not related to the Louds), a pop star whose limo broke down in front of Lincoln's house. After a brief romance, they moved to Los Angeles, California, and married in 1985. Their first child, a daughter named Stephanie Nicole, was born in May 1986; a son, Valentino, followed in 1989.

For the first several years of his children's life, Bobby was a stay at home father, but he began to fear that he was "riding his rich wife's coattails." After appearing in one of Lola's music videos, he landed several bit parts in TV shows (*Miami Vice, Family Matters, Growing Pains*). In 1990, he landed the role of Richard Parker, a villain on the long-running daytime soap opera *The Brash and the Bountiful.* The part proved successful and Bobby enjoyed a moderate level of fame, receiving thousands of pieces of fan mail a week and appearing on magazine covers and in TV commercials (in one for Jiffy Pop, Bobby, as Parker, informed the audience that "Even villains have as much fun popping it as they do eating it").

During the 1992 L.A. Riots, Bobby was dragged from his car and beaten by a mob of black men before being rescued by a black man with a gun. The attack left Bobby with only minor injuries.

At the end of the story (2001), Bobby resigns his role on *The Brash and the Bountiful* to spend time with his family after daughter Stephaine, who had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, attempted suicide. Bobby blamed himself for being too busy with TV to notice something was wrong.

## Trivia

Despite popular misconception, Bobby Jr. is not the same character as the Trillhouse creation, and, in fact, was first, appearing in Chapter 20 of RITY on December 4, 2017.

*The Brash and the Bountiful* is based on the CBS soap oprea *The Bold and the Beautiful.* His character, Richard Parker, was modeled on Victor Newman, the "despicable, contemptible, unfaithful wife abuser" of *The Young and the Restless* fame.