● N A M E ●Theodore Liam Foster
☇ Most people, and by most pretty much all of Verona, refer to Theodore as simply Teddy. It's short and sweet and kind of simple. If people like shorter, Ted's also a decent enough shorthand, though he isn't as fond of it and won't generally respond to it as quickly.
Twenty-six
● G E N D E R ●Male
● O C C U P A T I O N ●Owner of
One Thousand Pages☇ It was an... alternative, at first. Fresh out of his senior year of college with nothing really to show for it didn't really provide Teddy with much. So, he went back to the one place he knew he could escape to: Verona. There, he worked as a cashier for One Thousand Pages, doing what he could and living off the wage the old man provided him. And then, suddenly, that old man died. Mr. Henderson, people loved him, or the people who knew him did. Not anyone else, though. No children, no nephews, or cousins to give his belongings to. He signed one thing to Teddy in his will: the bookshop. Probably the only thing he could do outside of completely selling. Teddy doesn't question the man's decision; he deems it as luck and he'll settle.
So, Teddy takes care of the shop, has tidied up the place in the passing years and made it just a tad different. It still has that homely feel that he's always loved coming for. There's a few newer sections with newer books, and a whole spot in the corner for the kids who come by. He doesn't make much, just moved into the apartment above the shop, but it's something he's proud of. Lost and with nothing to show for his past, this is something he can settle down with.
Teddy, the absolute fuckhead, had no prior knowledge of how to dress outside of, "this tank top shows off my muscles the best," while attending college. Back then, he had no need to care about his appearance. Things, items, affects were handed to him on a daily basis; he had friends who could pick out his wardrobe. However, with those days long passed, Teddy can be summed up as the oldest looking young man in this history of ever. It's a mix between future wine-club tasting and hitting the golf course the moment retirement begins. Just staunchly over fifty, but so looking forward to retirement.
That's a lot of words for 'Grandpa', but it's just a specific style of grandpa that Teddy kind of nails. He can rock a sweater vest, a pair of loafers, some thick-rimmed glasses (his eyesight is atrocious), and some crisp khakis when he wants to.
Outside of his wardrobe, Teddy still has the young man part down - he's fit, with as much trouble as he has maintaining a decent body mass, looks presentable, and only has a moderate amount of scruff lining his jaw. The only out of ordinary part being the gnarled, right arm usually hidden under a long sleeve. The muscles, the bone, all of it still works, but to a varying degree and causes him constant, if a bit dull, pain. And poor Teddy was not left handed after his accident. Regardless, he does his best with what he has and it since hasn't caused him much trouble, in the psychological department, anymore. He lives with it.
Teddy speaks in a heavy baritone, that's more lethargic than rumbling. He's got an accent native to Washington, though he and many others can't really tell.
Tragedy has a great track record for mellowing out turbulent personalities - Teddy is no exception. For a long time, from elementary school to high school, Teddy's been loud, obnoxious, and above all else cocky. He's done what he wants to for years without anyone telling him no. His one parent, his father, was far too busy working double shifts as a nurse to bother with his only son. Thus, Teddy learned various ways of getting attention and affection, all of which inevitably led him down a road that garnered more enemies than it did friends.
College only exacerbated his attitude. With fame on the horizon, getting everything he wanted couldn't have been easier. People deferred to his judgement, followed his lead, and when he asked, he got. Teddy was a grade A asshole, misogynist, and one of the best frat boy douchebags on his campus. He could fuck up monumentally and no one would have given a shit.
In a karmic turn of events, he lost everything. He lost his scholarship, lost his 'friends', and lost every meaning to live. Star pitcher without an arm to throw or to bat with was utterly worthless and people told him that. They tolerated his attitude for as long as they could and when he had nothing left to give them, they all left. So, Teddy had no choice but to mellow out, to humble himself. Packing a bag for Verona, he took on a trivial job, lived out of his car for a few weeks, and ate the worst kinds of food imaginable.
To some degree, it worked. Teddy understood what it meant to be grateful. He learned how to help people and in return ask for help. None of it came easily, no, but Teddy soon learned how to draw from kindness rather than entitled cockiness. An attitude helped no one and Teddy knew that. Of course, there's a degree of stubbornness left in him and he'll throw a hissy fit if he doesn't get his way; he's quick to anger and has self-confidence issues directly linked to his arm; he hates pity and mistakes sympathy for condescension; and he's unbelievable loud still. But, Teddy cares about people a lot more and finds himself more comfortable with a book and a glass of wine with no one to disturb him. He likes listening to other people talk and tends to assist whenever he can. Oh, and he understands fully just how much women can utterly kick his ass in anything he tries his hand at.
● R O M A N T I C I N T E R E S T S ●This one's been complicated for, probably, the entirety of Teddy's life. Suffice to say? He doesn't know. He's still figuring things out and most of his time's spent dealing with the shop rather than dealing with people. Of course, there's an inkling somewhere in his mind of an ideal partner, it's just buried in a pile of denial and years of hard-wiring his past social environment did to him. But, lately, he's been more accepting of allowing himself to maybe stare at a few guys that come by. And, perhaps, he's allowing himself to sit down and ruminate a bit on his past ventures with ladies and come to the conclusion that, no... it's not that he had 'no game', Teddy was both a misogynistic asshole then and he just wasn't into the lady bits. The lady parts. The ladies. He's not into females.
But, jeeze, maybe he'd like to sit down and just find someone to snuggle with once in awhile. To validate him. Maybe to dote on him a bit. Who knows. He gets flustered just thinking about it.
● O R I G I N S T O R Y ●Everything's pretty much been said and done. Mostly, Teddy doesn't like looking back at his past self. That guy was just all around atrocious. From high school to college all Teddy did was ride on his talent and popularity. Looking back at it, it's obvious Teddy never would have made it past college baseball, especially not with the attitude he had. That kid was lazy, didn't train, was a snob, and volatile; treated his friends and teammates like dirt.
Teddy doesn't like his past and it's sad to say that everyone who staid in Verona kinda knows who Teddy is. And definitely knows what kind of person he was. Maybe even a lot of them look at him and think he deserved what happened to him. Teddy wouldn't argue, he'd agree. Maybe he'd even go so far as to say that things happen for a reason.
For the longest time, Teddy wanted nothing more than to be a star athlete. First, he wanted to go into the Olympics, then basketball, then football, then Wimbledon, until he finally settled on baseball. For a kid, he was amazing and that talent only shined through the further along he went. No one, not even the people who hated them, and they were numerous, could say that Teddy didn't win the Washington State Championships for Lincoln High. He did. He sure as damn well did. He recalls the moment when he's being nostalgic (for baseball) as one of those luck of the draw kind of things. Went right down to the wire, all the bases loaded, and he sinks a curve ball right past the bast and smoking hot into the catcher's glove.
That sent him far and into college where he also excelled. And, by far, Teddy wasn't an intelligent guy, more like average. More like C average, and for college that's more than okay. Even after his accident, he still didn't flunk out. If anything, schoolwork took his mind off of the shit storm going on around him.
As for the accident, itself, all of could honestly have been Teddy's fault. Of course, now he'd take the blame, but then he only took half. Both he and his friend, the shortstop on his team, had gotten absolutely wasted after training. It being winter that time, they only had to train a few times a week, in between their own workouts. Both he and Teddy thought it'd be fine if they just drove the small stretch from the bar back to their dorms. They'd only had like, what, ten or so shots? They'd be fine.
On the final stretch home, the truck they were in hit a rough patch of ice and being the idiots they were, they were going full pedal to the medal at 3 AM in the morning. The truck slid out and practically bent itself on a stoplight. Luckily, someone had witnessed the crash and called the police. His friend suffered a minor concussion and a fractured elbow, nothing seriously. Teddy, however, suffered far worse. When the car crashed and the glass broke, just before the door hit the post, his whole arm shoved its way in between and was nearly irreversibly smashed.
Every bone, from his fingers to his shoulder, was absolutely shattered. A doctor and a nurse reminded him that, if he hadn't worn his seat belt and if his arm hadn't done what it had, it likely would have been most of his head shattered, instead. Something like that. He doesn't understand how or if it was even possible. If the seat belt had saved his life entirely, or what. Teddy reckons it was just luck that his head didn't decide to smash itself into the light post with how forceful they'd hit it.
Of course, with that, Teddy lost pretty much everything. He lost his spot on the team, lost his scholarship for being unable to play, nearly flunked out of his classes, and just about lost his will to live. Being alive and relatively well, however, he's monumentally glad he hadn't lost his entire will to go on. Though, there are days where he wonders if the people around him would have even cared. Or the people he'd befriended in college. He almost feels like they wouldn't, what with how he acted.
After graduating with a degree in business that he had absolutely no idea what to do with, Teddy decided to haul back to Verona. With the accident happening just before his last semester, Teddy only amounted a meager amount of loans that doesn't, at all, resemble the mountain of debt most students wade through. Lucky on that part. However, that also meant he had absolutely no money to pay for anything and no job to earn money to pay for anything.
Most of Teddy's days were spent sleeping in his car before someone decided to hire him. An older man, Mr. Henderson, who owned the bookshop down main street. He offered him a place to stay while Teddy got back on his feet, as well as a job that paid only minimum wage - and the old man had the most distraught look, though Teddy reassured him it was enough and better than working at a McDonald's.
For about a year, Teddy kept the older man company. They talked for hours over the books that they'd read together or separately. He taught him how to steep tea and that tea alone should be good enough for him - he'd scold him for adding honey or sugar. And when Mr. Henderson's health visibly deteriorated, Teddy took up longer hours at the shop, despite Henderson lacking the money to pay him for overtime, and did his best to attend to the old man's needs. No one understands the meaning of humble until they've taken the time and care to wash someone obviously stricken by dementia head to toe. Or, well, maybe that's not the exact way to humble oneself, but it's a damn quick one.
Eventually, Mr. Henderson passed away one summer morning, and Teddy was, once again, lost as to what to do. Henderson's life insurance paid for just about all of his funeral arrangements, the rest coming from Teddy's pocket. He spoke a eulogy, despite only knowing him for about a year and a half, and let those individuals that did attend grieve in peace. Every single one individual was a Verona resident, which was odd, seeing as he must of had some kind of family.
It hit once he'd been called to hear out a reading of Mr. Henderson's will. The man donated just about everything he had to charity, all but the shop and the home above it. Those he gave to the only individual still alive that he considered his child: Theodore Foster.
With a shop he was now entitled to and a home he could live in, Teddy... had no idea what to do. So, he did the only thing he knew best: he cleaned and he decorated the hell out of the place. Every hour of work meant he'd be too busy to think about anything, until he could just fall face first into a bad and let his body drift into the void.
The next years were turbulent, a few of the kids around town staid around to help manage the place a bit better. A few left, the hooligans, mostly, but the ones that staid he gladly treated the best he could. Until, of course, the recent storm and illness that hit Verona. Knocked him out good for a few days, of which the shop wasn't earning any money, which meant he wasn't earning any money. Of course, with the big storm that ran through, much of what he'd be doing for the next week or so was cleaning up and helping any way he could. There's just something odd that he can't put his finger on; he feels different, almost. Not sick, but, just a gut feeling that something's not right.
Bubble Forcefield
● P O W E R C L A S S I F I C A T I O N ●Aberration
● A B I L I T I E S ●It's a bubble, short and sweet, that acts as a protective barrier against anything outside of it (or potentially as a prison to entrap someone).
☀ At the moment, it can only encase an individual in a small bubble that's about 6 feet tall and 6 feet in radius.
☀ The bubble acts as a protective barrier, protecting the individual from all harm for as long as it remains up.
☀ The bubble is just as strong on the inside as it is on the outside; it's not passable and acts as a solid object.
☀ Eventually, with enough use and training, the bubble size can be increased, and the bubble itself may not depend on Teddy's own strength to stay up - though it's durability will be typically the same as if Teddy were holding it.
☀ Prolonged use of this can put a monumental strain on Teddy - he becomes disoriented, suffers a severe headache, and produces concussion like symptoms.
☀ At the moment, the bubble relies purely on Teddy to keep up, which makes him incredibly vulnerable if he isn't using it on himself.
☀ Once the bubble breaks, Teddy usually won't be able to put up another until he recovers fully. This usually brings the onset of the Stigma's symptoms immediately, as the bubble stems from Teddy's own stamina and energy.
