Taeko Dōjima

Dōjima ‘Tae’ Taeko (堂島 妙子)
↳ Local coffee-shop entrepreneur, amateur lion tamer.

The face claim for Tae is Naoko Mori.

Within walking distance of Tyson’s apartment is his favourite café in all of London: The Biscuit Tin, est. 1997. The Biscuit Tin was opened by 堂島 妙子 when she was only 28, and has been owned & operated by her ever since. Tae enjoys making tea and coffee, pastries, and cakes, but she loves making people happy with her tea and coffee, pastries, and cakes.

Originally Tyson was drawn to the shop because it was so close to his home and accepted dogs inside. He kept returning when he discovered that 妙 served Turkish brew coffee and his two favourite type of tea, Jasmine & Pomegranate and Peppermint & Nettle. Since then, Tyson and Tae have become good friends.

Technically Tae doesn’t make takeaway drinks, however, she always lets Tyson - and anyone else who provides their own flask - take a flask of coffee away; officially for himself, but truly for the Moriarty Mirrors. Tyson and James, his nephew, will always say that Jasmine makes their favourite treats, but James asks to visit The Biscuit Tin for Zebra Shortbread every time Tyson babysits him.

She has a Leonberger called Simba who joins her for her morning jogs every morning. Though their schedules don’t always align, Tyson (with Lily & Bobby) join them. Afterwards, after briefly parting for showers, Tyson will join Tae at The Biscuit Tin before her employees arrive and help her set up the store whilst chatting.

When Tae takes her yearly trip to Japan to visit the rest of the Dōjima family, Tyson looks after her house: watering the plants, cleaning, feeding the tropical fish, and taking care of Simba from her home. He’s a sweet dog who gets on with both Lily and Bobby, but he is also a very large dog and Tyson’s apartment is already crowded.

Tae doesn’t know the truth of Tyson’s work, only his usual cover story, but she’ll always let him duck into her kitchen when he needs to escape The Colonel. He told her that Sebastian is an ex-boyfriend that it didn’t end well with, which technically isn’t false. As far as she knows, Tyson is a very popular, social person. The truth is that Tyson uses her café as a safe place to meet with the employees and pets of the web.

When neither have much on their plate, Tae can convince Tyson to join her for a hike out with the dogs. Far less frequently, Tae can talk Tyson into joining her for kickboxing. Even when he agrees to go without having his arm twisted, Tyson feels tricked into the situation, and bruised. Very bruised. Both in body and ego.

The most important fact to remember about Taeko is that she is fire. Through and through. She is burning at 100%, 100% of the time.

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Dōjima ‘Tae’ Taeko

UNIVERAL TRUTHS

• Blood Type: A Negative
• Date of Birth: May 23rd 1969 - Gemini - Rooster (Earth)
• DnD Alignment: Lawful Good
• Dominant Hand: Left
• Ethnicity: Japanese
• Myers Briggs Type: ESFJ-T | The Consul
• Orientation: Heterosexual
• Religion: Shinto
• Signature:

FAVOURITE

• Favourite Animal: Lion
• Favourite Author: Kendra Elliot
• Favourite Colour: Baby blue
• Favourite Film: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Favourite Food: Peach Flan
• Favourite Plant: Sundew
• Favourite Poem: I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud (Daffodils) - William Wordsworth

VERSE DEPENDANT

• Avatar Element: Fire
• His Dark Material’s Dæmon: Red Eyed Tree Frog
• Hogwarts House: Gryffindor
• Hybrid!Verse Pairing: Horse
• Mass Effect Species: Batarian
• Pokémon Team: (Alolan) Exeggutor, Rotom (Heat), Tepig, Panpour, Pyroar, & Hawlucha

Colour Tyson’s Synesthesia Projects Onto Them:

Seasons

Spring

By the time Spring rolls around, Tyson has usually stopped bristling every time someone mentions Christmas and is slowly dragging himself back into healthy vitamin D levels as he’s sent back out into the daylight occasionally.

Spring is a time of recovery for Tyson, for the aching of the dent in his torso and the dog bite scar on his shoulder to slowly fade away, and for him to begin seeing daylight again; no longer taking advantage of excessive darkness for his work within the web.

Summer

Given how many layers of clothing Tyson tends to wear - to provide a layer of protection, for himself mentally and for the dent in his torso - it’s not all that surprising that he tends to overheat in the summer.

Not that this fact actually encourages Tyson to remove layers. All this actually achieves is Tyson berating himself harder when a panic attack hits as he begins to hyperventilate. He knows its stupid, but when his mental state is so much worse in high temperatures, Tyson has to take the risk of having those extra layers.

His anxiety and OCD are relatively consistent the whole year around, but Tyson’s PTSD is always worst in hot weather. The most traumatic years of his life were spent running for his life across Afghanistan, Pakistan, & India. When he thinks of hot, he thinks of being afraid and helpless.

The heat brings those memories to the front of his mind much easier. Especially when it’s too hot to sleep, his restless mind thrashing for anything to hold onto. When a heat wave hits London, Tyson will go days without sleeping to avoid nightmares.

Summer will mostly find Tyson laying on the cool tiles of his bathroom, resigned to his fate. Defeated.

Autumn

Autumn is Tyson’s absolute favourite season.

Cooler weather, pretty colours everywhere, and the return to school. That last part was especially important to Tyson as a child, he has always loved education and going out to school was one of the few times that he could escape the family manor and his father’s clutches for a few hours during the day.

Winter

Though he’s whine about feeling cold until all city boys are safely tucked away inside where they belong, Tyson actually prefers winter over summer. He finds it much easier to warm up than cool down, though the hypersensitive dent in his torso and dog bite scar on his left shoulder tend to ache when the weather turns.

He likes the way London looks when its covered in snow, the way the number of hot drinks vendors seem to double, and he especially likes the excuse to stay in his jacket all day; using it for warmth as much as a layer of protection for the dent in his torso as much as a pressure stim that soothes his anxiety.

He loves getting to throw snowballs around for his dogs to catch, especially Jack, and the feeling of brushing snowflakes out of their coats with his frozen finger tips. Tyson always uses winter as an excuse to have handmade hot chocolate and warm soup with fresh bread.

All in all, winter suits Tyson better than he thinks it does.

Ice-Cream

Tyson’s favourite type of ice-cream is raspberry ripple, with sea salt ice-cream coming a close second.

Usually, however, Tyson eats Häagen-Dazs Vanilla ice-cream cups or White chocolate Magnums, because ‘consistency and avoiding overwhelming his easily shattered appetite’ is the name of the game.

There is usually some kind of dog-safe ice-cream in his freezer and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Caramel Chew Chew Ice Cream stashed in there for the days when Tyson babysits James.

Ice-cream is one of the things outside of ‘needs heat’ cooking that Tyson can actually make delicious versions of.

Voice

Tyson comes from a family of late bloomers, especially when it comes to male voices dropping.

For Jethro, his voice began breaking when he was fourteen and lasted for almost an entire year before it settled. John’s voice began breaking when he was sixteen and took five months, where Richard’s began at fifteen and took almost seven months.

Tyson’s voice didn’t begin breaking until he was fifteen and took roughly eight months to finish*; which meant that Jethro didn’t hear his baby brother’s ‘adult voice’ until he was nineteen and used his break in army training to visit his older brother.

James’ voice won’t begin breaking until he is sixteen (20th March 2022) and will take around seven months to properly settle.

* This means that in Teen!Verse and Hogwarts AU/Honey Badger SU Tyson’s voice is still breaking: teen!verse is beginning to break, and Hogwarts AU/Honey Badger SU is towards the end of his voice breaking.

Cambridge

Even as he tries to run away from his upper-class upbringing there, Tyson would never run away from his love of Cambridge. Lovely Lady London may be Tyson’s first love, but he still adores his home city.

The bad memories that Tyson has of growing up there are all linked to the Delaney family manor, which is far enough outside of the city that - despite knowing it’s part of Cambridge - always felt separate from the city whilst Tyson was growing up.

It was close enough that Tyson could sneak out at night and skateboard or bike into town without any trouble, but there was always a moment when Tyson could recognise that he had left the Delaney manor grounds and has entered Cambridge, even before reaching the buildings he’d associate with the main areas of Cambridge.

Jeremy Thornton

Jeremy Thornton
↳ Manipulative Scotsman, falsely protective butcher.

Jeremy runs in a butcher shop, two stores down from Tyson’s pet shop on [Old] Board Street. Tyson and Jeremy have a business deal, of sorts. Tyson purchases the bones he sells for dogs in his store from Jeremy and sends people looking to feed their animals a raw diet to Jeremy’s butcher shop, as well as picking up his own meat from Jeremy. Tyson agreed to this because Jeremy sells good quality meat and because the Scotsman offers him a place to hide when his anxiety gets the better of him.

During the come down from one of Tyson’s social anxiety induced panic attacks, Jeremy took advantage of Tyson’s openness to coax out every little piece of information about Tyson. Tyson still doesn’t know Jeremy’s reasoning for wanting that information, but it makes him very unease that the other man knows it. Mostly because the butcher keeps ‘joking’ that if he ever asked Tyson for a sexual favour, Tyson would be almost obliged to agree.

Despite the butcher knowing almost everything about Tyson, up until Tyson met Moriarty, Tyson know virtually nothing about Jeremy; all Tyson knows is that his wife is Welsh and called Sue, that he owns a female English Bulldog called Cait, that he used to work as a plumber, and that he has three children, all boys. In Tyson’s opinion the butcher is too crass and too loud.

Jeremy often comes across as protective of Tyson because, in a way, he is. A happy Tyson is a Tyson that brings customers into his store, so - with financial motivations in mind - he does as much as he can to make sure Tyson’s safe and happy. When Tyson brings anyone into his shop, he makes it clear that he’s there to look after Tyson.

His hair is mostly grey, with last vestiges of its black colour on the sides. He has dull, pale blue eyes. Jeremy’s hands are covered in little scars, nicks from knives.

Even knowing that he could easily overpower Jeremy without regrets, the butcher still sets Tyson’s teeth on edge. He fundamentally does not trust Jeremy, but Tyson has never needed to trust someone to enter business with them; especially when that means he has an excuse to keep a wary eye on them.

Jeremy is a scavenging, cowardly opportunist who cares only for himself. He would gladly sell out any of his children - Rhys (28), Adam (24), & Gavin (23) - to save himself, without remorse.

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Jeremy Thornton

UNIVERAL TRUTHS

• Blood Type: B Negative
• Date of Birth: March 24th 1959 - Aries - Pig (Earth)
• DnD Alignment: Neutral Evil
• Dominant Hand: Right
• Ethnicity: White, British
• Myers Briggs Type: ENTJ-A | The Commander
• Orientation: Bisexual
• Religion: Christian, Protestant
• Signature:

FAVOURITE

• Favourite Animal: Polar Bear
• Favourite Author: George RR Martin
• Favourite Colour: Purple
• Favourite Film: Breakfast Club
• Favourite Food: Caesar Salad
• Favourite Plant: Calla lily
• Favourite Poem: Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost

VERSE DEPENDANT

• Avatar Element: Earth
• His Dark Material’s Dæmon: Weasel
• Hogwarts House: Slytherin
• Hybrid!Verse Pairing: Meerkat
• Mass Effect Species: Human
• Pokémon Team: Farfetch’d, Murkrow, Houndour, Purugly, Bouffalant, & Patrat.

Colour Tyson’s Synesthesia Projects Onto Them:

Fashion

Across all of his wardrobe, there is a general style that Tyson sticks to: to the nines, or college student.

Though Tyson hears a lot of second-hand accounts about the latest fashions from Billy, the only area where Tyson actually cares about fashion is with his suits and needing to look good for work with the web.

The ‘pushing the boundaries’ style of fashion honestly exhausts Tyson and he doesn’t understand it in any way. However, he would be willing to have a conversation about seasonal fashion, about the clothes that look best in summer or autumn; even though he doesn’t fully understand that either.

Disappearing

Whilst certainly not a master of illusions by any stretch of the imagination, Tyson has a talent for disappearing.

In part, this can be attributed to his habit of wandering away from conversationsand leaving without a second thought about saying his goodbyes. He can certainly behave ‘like a ninja’ when he desires to, but Tyson largely hears that when people don’t register him walking away.

That is where most of Tyson’s disappearing happens. He makes sure that rather than going unnoticed, he is quickly dismissed from people’s minds. He didn’t slip off quickly into the night. Tyson paused to politely ask people to move out of his way and was easily dismissed from their minds the second he left their vision.

When he actively needs to disappear, however, Tyson is gone in the blink of an eye. With his form of Synesthesia and talent for parkour, he has no trouble losing pursuers and Tyson is an old hand at avoiding security cameras too.

Television

Generally, Tyson prefers to have instrumental music on as background noise, finding silence too oppressive and lyrics distracting when he’s not out and about.

He doesn’t watch much television, but there is a rotation of shows that Tyson will put on as background noise when he needs voices to shake away the effects of a PTSD, panic, or anxiety attack.

Usually, he’ll listen to something calming like How It’s Made, Blue Planet, Planet Earth, or basically anything that David Attenborough narrates. He’s watched Red Dwarf so many times that it’s become a comfort watch that he can easily tune out whilst still enjoying it, the same applies for the original Batman the Animated Series.

When he needs grounding in the present, when he feels displaced by bad memories, Tyson will look up the latest episode of Mock the Week or Have I Got News For You to ground himself; something topical, yet lighthearted enough not to exasperate his mental state.

Holmes Verses Watson

There is a fundamental difference between ‘I could love you, but I don’t’ and ‘I don’t love you, but I could’. That is the crux of the difference between Tyson’s thoughts about John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. The type of love differs, but the point remains.

Tyson absolutely does love John. They are simpatico, brothers-in-arms, brothers by all but blood. Romantically? Oh, Tyson knows that he could have fallen for John, easily, but he doesn’t love him romantically. And that’s fine. Whatever alternative path they could have taken, Tyson is happy where he stands with John.

Sherlock, on the other hand, is a more complicated feeling for Tyson. He does not like Holmes, but Tyson knows that he has a paper thin defence against caring for him; and that defence is avoiding him like the plague. He purposefully keeps a distance from the detective, because he does not need the Moriarty Mirrors game to become any more complicated by fallnig for another genius determinded to burn themselves up.