Though self-conscious about his appearance in not looking masculine enough, Tyson isn’t concerned about being too feminine. Tyson is often more concerned with what he should be, rather than what he shouldn’t be.
The idea that he shouldn’t be gay doesn’t get under Tyson’s skin and cause him guilt as much as the idea that he should be straight, and isn’t. He doesn’t care that he shouldn’t side with criminals, but Tyson does care that he should be a better role model for his nephew and - eventually - for his godson.
Tyson can barely tolerate shorts so the idea of getting him into a dress is a fool’s errand, but he has no problem with the idea of wearing women’s clothes. He is proud of how good he is at applying make-up and nail polish. He hates knitting, but that’s an objection to the clacking sound of the needles rather than crafts being too feminine, and he’s decent sewer.
His issues with his masculinity are more around his appearance rather than his hobbies. Tyson’s self-esteem issues around his appearance, his scars and looking like a carbon copy of his father, are complicated and difficult to separate into individual issues, but being smooth chested and not overly muscled has been a part of them since Tyson was a teenager.
Tyson always buys multiple versions of any clothes he purchases so that he can wear the same thing every day, like a uniform; like armour.
His tendency to pressure stim plays a role in this, but another part is that Tyson has spent years of his life wearing a uniform and separating different parts of his life by the clothes he was wearing.
What he chose to wear around the family manor during Sabbath wasn’t the same clothes that the Delaney family heir would be permitted to wear whilst his tutors were at the manor or whilst representing the family, at home or outside of the manor grounds. One of his few acts of rebellion was wearing his brother’s leather jacket.
Even when Tyson is dressing casually, he will choose specific shirts on days when he’s visiting the Moriarty Mirrors as opposed to sprawling across his settee with Bobby on his chest, both of which are entirely different to the casual clothes he’d pick for days when he intends to run a bunch of errands around London.
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.
Though Tyson wouldn’t choose to cosplay on his own volition, he is willing to do so for his nephew, James. Especially in Redemption!Verse, where Tyson’s anxiety is - practically speaking - non-existent and going to events with his nephew is much easier.
The characters that Tyson would agree to dress up as are characters that Tyson likes and that James likes, and specifically requests his uncle to do. The general theme of them are characters that James sees a little of his uncle in, but there is an occasional exception that James simply thinks would be fun to see.
Tyson is a decent sewer and painter, he’s pretty good with makeup, and money is no object when it comes to getting materials. So, the main barrier for Tyson is needing to find the time to create whatever his nephew asks for. It’s easy to justify the time in his mind as good practice for disguises for the web.
Within Tyson’s main universe and Redemption!Verse, these are the characters that James has asked Tyson to do so far. The pieces of those costumes are stored in Tyson’s storage locker on the other side of London, where he keeps his motorbike.
Garrett Hawke (Mage) - Dragon Age
When James plays Dragon Age 2 as male!Hawke, James always ends up playing him as he imagines his uncle. This began the first time he picked one of the purple/humorous dialogue options and recognised it as exactly what his uncle would say in that situation.
Any time that Tyson has to grow a beard for one of those costumes, Tyson never wants to keep it - to avoid looking even more like his father - but he does prefer the way he looks with facial hair; and the way his nephew’s eyes lit up with glee is worth it every time.
If he could get away with wearing armour every day, Tyson one hundred percent would. He wears particular sets of clothing as armour anyway. The bloodswipe/kaddis on his nose is never perfectly correct, but that’s because James always likes to apply it himself and then to put a matching one on his own face.
Kaidan Alenko - Mass Effect
Kaidan was chosen for a similar reason as Hawke, though not for the humour part. Kaidan’s awkward seriousness, yet open honesty and gentle understanding is exactly what Tyson always shows his nephew.
James didn’t mention that to Tyson, however. He simply told his uncle that he thought biotics were really cool, which is true. Though Tyson suspects that there is more to it than that, he isn’t going to press his nephew too hard over something that makes him happy.
Tyson finds that costume much easier to wear, it’s not as bulky as Hawke’s armour, and it was easier to make too. He’s gotten pretty good at pitching his voice to match Kaidan’s for James’ amusement.
The Outsider - Dishonored
James’ reasons for wanting Tyson to dress up as The Outsider are far less profound.
He simply thinks the Outsider is a really cool character and Dishonored is a series that he only ever plays when visiting his uncle, taking turns after every death or getting spotted to do no-kill stealth runs through the game; or various other self-imposed challenges.
The eye makeup is a little bit of a pain, but The Outsider is one of the easier ones for Tyson to do.
Red Robin/Tim Drake - New 52 DC
Tim Drake is James’ absolutely favourite Robin and DC character overall.
He started reading comic books during the New 52 era of DC, so when James thinks of Tim Drake, he thinks of that version of the costume first. Though James likes Tim’s character more, he wanted to dress up in Damien’s Robin costume and to be a character with a skin tone more like his own.
Tyson is always happy to pull out the two superhero costumes if that’s what James wants, but he really wishes that Bobby would stop standing on the cape and tripping Tyson.
Adam Jensen - Deus Ex
Though James doesn’t know what Tyson does for a living, he’s not stupid.
He knows that Tyson used to be in the army and that he does something dangerous, something that James’ father doesn’t want him to know about and to James, that means it must be even more dangerous than his father’s job as a police officer.
James knows that for two years, from when he was three until he was five, his uncle disappeared and that he won’t talk about what happened. He’s since read news articles about events around Tyson, but James has also read that Tyson was innocent of that shooting.
He assumes that Tyson has a job like Jensen, just real. Something special ops and important where he had to go undercover, or that he used to and is somehow still involved in that life. Like an informant, perhaps. James keeps that assumption to himself.
On Tyson’s end, the hexagon makeup is a little fiddly, but he’s happy enough to throw on Jensen’s coat and glasses for his nephew’s amusement. Though shaving the scars through Jensen’s facial hair involves a lot of swearing when using a straight razor.
Rhys - Tales from the Borderlands
James honestly doesn’t know why he thinks of his uncle when playing Rhys. They just seem… similar somehow.
On Tyson’s end, that hits a little too close to home frankly. To where he is in his life now, or where he used to be in Redemption!Verse.
However, Tyson isn’t going to burden his nephew with that knowledge. The paint for the tattoos and makeup for his info-port are a nightmare to do in the mirror, but Tyson will gladly do it for his nephew’s amusement.
It’s as good an excuse as any to play with Nerf guns and calling out attacks as Borderlands damage types.
Tetsuya Kuroko - Kuroko no Basuke
Dressing up as Kuroko began one Halloween at Rosie’s request. She watches anime with her son and gave the suggestion when it was decided that Tyson would be babysitting James for Halloween.
Tyson is honestly happy for the excuse to have light blue hair again. He likes his normal hair colour the best, but he does have a soft spot for that blue hair as well.
He absolutely hates having to play basketball against Jethro, however.
Dr Strange - Marvel
It was somewhat inevitable that once Tyson handed James a Marvel comic with the good doctor in it that Tyson would end up having to stitch together a cloak of levitation.
The combination of beard and touch of grey in his hair reminds Tyson all too much of his father, but - as you may have gathered by now - Tyson won’t let his own discomfort get in the way of James’ enjoyment.
He isn’t entirely certain that the comparison to Dr Strange is a good thing, but James seems to mean it in a good way. He loves the things Tyson teaches him and the ways he seems to do magic with animals.
And in many ways, Tyson continues to be a dumbass punk.
In most of his verses, Tyson wore his brother’s leather jacket and used the same pins/patches as his main universe. There are three exceptions that we shall get into below.
In general terms, Tyson largely goes for positive pins/badges/patches. As is true in most of Tyson’s life, he would rather fight for something than against something: even if the end goal would be the same for both messages.
Main Universe
The first thing to note about Tyson’s main universe is that the jacket he wore is the jacket Tyson continues to wear in his main outfit, the leather jacket that used to belong to his older brother Jethro.
This means a) the jacket is not a style that Tyson would otherwise choose to wear, especially with the lack of pockets, b) that despite his decent height and broad shoulders, the jacket always looks slightly too big for him and c) that Tyson would never dare damage the fabric.
It’s a little tricky to see in the picture, but that union flag has a tab to attach it to something; the other side of the flag when looped over Tyson’s right shoulder like a pauldron. This meant that Tyson had something to attach things to without damaging the fabric and that he could quickly remove it, to hide this side of himself from his father at a moment’s notice.
That flag and almost everything that was attached to it was left behind in Tyson’s bedroom at the family manor. However, two patched remain attached to the jacket; the two that Jethro added before he ran away from home: ‘I am my brothers keeper’ & ‘O Pos’.
The blood type patch is stitched on the inside of the hood, by the collar. Easy to access and to point out to a medical team. Jethro attached that one when he decided he would be leaving that jacket for his brother when he ran away from home. The brother patch had been stitched inside the cuff of the left sleeve for almost as long as Jethro had the jacket.
Of all the pins, the one that meant the most to Tyson - the one that felt like most like rebelling against his father - was the ‘Not Perfect’ shield. He took it with him into his army service and now it’s hidden away in the bag of his old army gear, stashed away under his bed as a not-so-secret treasure.
As a teenager in Orphan AU, away from his father’s abuses, Tyson has much more confidence in expressing his own style; rather than the more subdued, secretive choices of the teenage Tyson from his main!universe. Also, he leans more towards being a pastel punk/hipster than his purely punk counterpart.
In this verse, Tyson chose to buy that jacket in particular. Second hand as that was all he could afford. It came with the Wonder Woman patch attached on the bicep of the left arm and Tyson had absolutely no inclination to remove it.
The other patches were stitched on by Tyson, on the right inside of that jacket, easy enough to see when its unzipped, but they are more for Tyson’s satisfaction than to be viewed.
Above the zip-pocket on the left side of his jacket, Tyson always has one of the ‘Please Adopt’ pins attached. Whenever there are people visiting the orphanage, Tyson grabs his spare version of the pin and attaches it to whatever t-shirt he was wearing that day.
Of his nine other pins, Tyson only wears three at a time on the right side of his jacket, rotating through them depending on his mood that day.
Though Tyson’s jacket is technically a very dark brown, within Hogwarts AU Tyson is loyal to the Hufflepuff colours scheme with his choices.
Here Tyson is largely away from his father, but Tyson is still bound by his responsibilities to the family legacy. His style remains less subdued than main!verse Tyson, but there is a stronger themeing and sense of loyalty to it.
He also isn’t afraid of damaging the jacket he snagged from a muggle market, as he can easily repair it with magic. Tyson cut out the inside lining of his jacket, originally an odd paisley, and replaced it with the Hufflepuff Quidditch Banner seen in the top right.
On the back of his jacket, Tyson has gold/silver wings like a Golden Snitch painted on; though magically enchanted to ensure the rain doesn’t wash them off. Though the Hufflepuff tie always remained around his left arm, Tyson daily chances which pin he has attached over the knot of the tie.
Along the line of the wing on his right shoulder, Tyson has handstitched the words ‘Half-blood and proud’ with white cotton. It felt important to him to do that part without magic and, though clearly amateur, Tyson is pretty proud of how neatly he managed to stitch the words.
The Nirvana patch is stitched over his right-hand pocket, with the flap covering the name, and the Robin patch is stitched neatly onto his left pocket. The feminist patch goes above the left pocket, like a name tag, and the Arc Reactor is stitched a little higher up over his right pocket; enchanted to illuminate when pressed, giving out just enough light to let him read in the dark.
The leather diamond patches are stitched across Tyson’s right bicep, whilst the two round fabric patches are stitched onto the left: one above and one below the permanently tied tie. The bee patch is only 1cm big and stitched onto the back of his jacket, when pressed the bee will walk to a new location to settle in.
Within his Honey Badge SU, Tyson has moved the tie over to his right arm to conceal the werewolf patch.
He knows that it is incredibly unlikely that someone would decide that patch made him a werewolf, but Tyson is afraid of being discovered; whilst stubborn enough to want to be proud of who he is and refusing to remove the patch.
Though Pokémon is where Tyson’s jacket becomes most like the more subdued style of his main!verse and where he spent most of his childhood under his father’s thumb, Tyson had more independence due to having his own Pokémon; actually having those friends and companions outside of his brother and Jasmine.
In this verse, his jacket is thicker and more designed for rough treatment to better survive various Pokémon and travelling around with them. With the exception of the leather fish patch on his right bicep and the ‘mistake’ patch stitched inside the jacket, all of Tyson’s patches are on the back of his jacket in this verse. He always has the ‘sad soul’ pin over the ‘not dead yet’ patch.
With the exception of whichever pin or gym badge he has chosen to put as his ‘lapel’ pin on the left of his jacket, Tyson puts all of his pins/badges on the back of his jacket in his verse. This tends to avoid any of his Pokémon accidentally pulling them off when he’s interacting with them.
Tyson will occasionally pull out this jacket when he needs to go undercover with Team Skull, throwing it over their signature tank-top to better cover his scars. When he puts the jacket on these days, Tyson will pin a few of his league gym badges onto the jacket.
Travelling around in the Pokémon universe can dangerous, so Tyson has the First Aid and Nurse patch stitched onto his bag to reassure any trainers that he comes across that he can help patch them or their Pokémon up.
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.
For Tyson, or more specifically for his OCD, there is good dirt and there is bad dirt. Times when it’s allowed and when it’s intolerable. His OCD is more based on conforming to a structure than cleanness, but that doesn’t mean it won’t affect him.
Mud on the ground is fine. He can touch it without a worry. Mud on his boots is fine. His boots are there to walk in the mud so he doesn’t. That mud getting onto the carpet is not fine. It’s the exact opposite and something he must fix that immediately.
If Tyson is wearing his everyday clothes and gets coated in mud, Tyson has to go shower. Those clothes have to be washed. As soon as possible. Sooner. Now. It would become an incessant buzzing in the back of his head. He could delay caving to that need to finish whatever he was doing, but he would have to do it and Tyson would be left feeling rattled afterwards.
If Tyson was wearing the clothes he saves for taking his dogs on hikes and got completely covered in mud, not just over his clothes but also on his face and in his hair, Tyson would sigh, scrub off whatever he could feel on his face, then carry on with his day. No problems.
When wearing those clothes, he is supposed to get messy. It’s fine. The bit in his hair would irk once he realised, but it wouldn’t agitate his OCD in the same way. That was how Tyson got through P.E. at school, his P.E. kit was supposed to get muddy. It was okay. It would be okay. There was nothing to panic about. Nothing had gone wrong.
In this same vein, Tyson has specific clothes to wear when tinkering on his motorbike or other machines. He can get covered in grease and oil, even wiping it off his hands onto his shirt like a regular grease monkey without batting an eye. He’ll want a wash once he’s out of those clothes, but for the duration that Tyson is wearing them, he may as well be wearing armour.
One of hundred and one strange quirks Tyson has is showering in his swimming trunks. He lifts the waistband to put soap on himself then lets the water run through to remove the soap from his body.
Tyson has never been comfortable in his own body so showers whilst wearing his trunks because this makes him feel covered; and safer because of that. Another part of it is paranoia, and possibly also Pyscho's influence in the public mind, of feeling unsafe when he can't always hear over the sound of water/having nowhere to run. Largely his OCD makes the shower a safe calming space for Tyson, but once he's already on edge it's hard to take comfort in that.
When he's in a hurry yet needs a shower - to settle his OCD or for genuine need - he won't waste the time doing this, but this is the norm for him. Something that has only been compounded by Bobby's need to jump under any running water. Tyson isn't embarrassed about being naked around his dogs, but if he can do anything to minimise the changes of Bobby's claws catching sensitive areas, he'll take it.
"He used his belt for most of his essential gear. His multi-purpose knife was attached to his belt by a leather sheath on the left side of his body. His gun in the same way to his right, several magazines were attached behind the knife - where it felt most natural and easy to access them. Covering his belt from view was a strong length of rope, wrapped through the belt loops of his trousers, again for easier access. As knives didn’t need to be refilled with ammo, where ammo might have gone behind the gun was instead a metal flask of water and a metal container that worked as a simple first aid kit." - Quote from thread.
There are several different parts of Tyson's work belt. When in public is jacket usually covered the weapons so that he doesn't panic the public and when wearing this he always makes a point to put his dog tags on top of his clothes so that anyone who spots the weapons will assume that he's a military operative working with the police - this has worked well so far.
Knives.
Tyson usually has his hunting knife in the sheath and keeps his silver edged knife in his rucksack. The handles of these knives start being hollow two thirds of the way down the handle, which means that the rest of the handle contained the tang of the blade - making it hard to snap off and difficult to break. The silver edged knife's rubber edged handle is filled with salt, the blade of this knife is six inches long.
The hunting knife has a serrated edge on the back side. The handle has black rubber grips over the metal and is custom made to fit Tyson's hand/grip style. The removable cap of the handle has a compass on it, on the side that faces up so that it can always been seen. The hollow part of this knife contains a whetstone, two pieces of flint to make a fire (spark) with a small box of wood chips to use as kindling, and a fake circular stone (make to look like a piece of Heliotrope) that is actually a GPS chip to track Tyson's location. The blade of the hunting knife is seven inches long and he keeps a spare version of this blade in his rucksack at all times.
Gun and magazines.
The kind of gun Tyson uses is a Glock 17 9mm pistol. It is registered. General Clarkson had it sent to him for protection from Sebastian soon after he cleared Tyson of all criminal charges based on his shooting and Tyson's departure from the forces.
There are several attachments available for this gun but the only one Tyson has, mostly kept in his rucksack, is the torch. The only other gun Tyson owners is a Browning 9mm, the gun he took with him when he was forced to abandon the army by Sebastian.
Tyson's preferred weapon is the knives but he can't complain.
First aid kit.
In the first aid kit is:
A stitching needle and thread
A small bottle of rubbing alcohol, 70%
Sterile gauze dressing
Wrapping bandages
Pain killers
Caffeinated tablets
Antiseptic cream
Tyson also has the first aid kit that he always keeps in his rucksack which has extra supplies and refills.
When he doesn't simply crash where he's sat, Tyson sleeps in a pair of black boxers and a thin light grey v-neck t-shirt.
On the nights, most nights, when he is too tired to get fully undressed and decides that bending is too much effort he'll also be wearing a black sock - usually on his right foot.
After an incident in Afghanistan, a mission gone wrong, Tyson doesn't wear anything with too tight of a collar.
The clothes that he wears are either very loose and bellow his collar bones [t-shirts and polos] or stop on the collar bone and are tight enough that they can't slip any higher [basically anything else other than dress shirts and formal dress shirts*].
When he wears a dress shirt he doesn't do up the top button and lets the tie or bow tie [or any other type of fabric worn around the neck] keep the collar closed. When he wears a formal dress shirt he'll close the top button but keep the neck wear loose to avoid triggering any flash backs.
*Having come from an upper class family Tyson considers anything worn on the torso that isn't a vest or item of clothing worn over a shirt [blazer, jacket, coat, et cetera] to be a dress shirt. What most people would normally call a dress shirt Tyson calls a formal dress shirt.
Jethro knew Tyson would be upset that he was running away so left a note on his bedside table and put the leather jacket over Tyson as a blanket. He didn't want to abandon Tyson, as their mother had abandoned them both with their father, but Jethro knew that he wouldn't be able to take care of Tyson on his own. Not properly.
His dogtags are covered in scratches, general wear and tear, but the two most important markings are:
/ \
/ O Po/s \<-------- Lily's claws; secondary break-away tag
| 0000/0000 \ |
| DEL/ANEY \ |
| TD \ | <------ Sebastian with knife; main tag
\ JEW \ /
\ /
Friday, 20 July 2012
Every weekend Jethro would take Tyson swimming in a near by creak. Once Jethro ran away from home Tyson would hang up the leather jacket his brother left him hanging from a tree branch and sit by the side of the river hoping he would see Jethro again.
