The Basics

Foster is a member of Bune's pirate crew, but why anyone thought this was a good idea is a mystery.

He hasn't told anyone, but it's fairly obvious there is something wrong with him--and there is.

Foster is possibly one of the most intelligent Senjagi on the ship, but he also has a neurodegenerative condition centred in the frontotemporal lobar area of his brain, saddling him with a variety of symptoms--and only a few years left to live.

His level of functionality varies rather drastically sometimes, and most of his symptoms fall under the broader categories of a dysexecutive neurological profile or thought disorder.

These symptoms include disinhibition, speech-related impairments (pressure of speech, perseveration, etc.), confusion, clouding of consciousness, motor difficulties, and periods where he does not remember anything he has done (often in conjunction with disinhibitive behaviour.) His ability to sleep has suffered heavily, and he can only manage an hour or two at a time. His eating is similarly irregular. Some days he eats ravenously, constantly--others he does not eat at all and doesn't appear to be bothered by it.

There's also a pronounced behavioural tic that involves running his hand back through his hair.

He has severe impairment to his ability to empathise as well--yet Foster is incredibly self-deprecating: a person who frequently refers to himself as 'garbage,' 'trash,' 'worthless,' and so on in all sincerity. He is also perennially friendly, and mostly seems to want to help others. Mostly.

Personality-wise, Foster is intelligent, but trapped in a vicious cycle of bad decisions, an inability to understand those bad decisions, and attempts to fix himself or others--which is then followed by failure and the persistent fact that he has fucked up. This is interspersed with genuinely obnoxious or unsavoury behaviour that he lacks the judgment to recognise or catch, making him really uncomfortable to be around--or even outright terrible sometimes.

Frequently, it seems Foster is not getting it that he's not doing it right, or he does get it but something gets lost on the way to point B, and he turns the feeling inward to himself and his self worth. He wants to act on his self loathing--because people don't normally just sit around being okay with that kind of feeling and still remain functional--so he tries his damnedest to do Good Things but his judgement is still off and it's a vicious cycle. And he probably doesn't have the ability to see that, no matter how often it repeats itself.

He left home a few weeks after the discovery of his condition, and prior to meeting Bune, wandered aimlessly around the surface of Uo, begging for money and food and trying to avoid being too much of a burden on any one place or person. He has a strong belief that life can only be appreciated most when you come very close to death--as close as possible, as often as possible. It makes you 'shine brighter.' This can mean anything from gambling your life (the worse the odds, the better) to narrowly escaping death to experiencing terrible physical injury to witnessing the death of someone close to you. Or more than one. Maybe all at once.

Now he's the navigator for a bunch of morons on a boat.

This will end poorly, we're sure.

A few design notes:

• Foster always has lines under and around his eyes. Always.
  
• Because he has ceased to give even a solitary fuck about his appearance, he only wears a pair of pyjama pants and absolutely nothing else.
• He's somewhat scrawny in the torso area, but he has fairly broad shoulders.
• His wings undergo emergency amputation due to sea monsters, so they are not a necessary part of his design.

Art by Itsubun

Bune and Uo and the Senjagi are also by Itsubun.