Anne Samantha Williams

Tyson knows very little about his mother. He knows what she looks like, but not much else. She left his life when she walked out on his father, when Tyson was four years old. Almost everything Tyson knows about his mother comes from things Jethro has told him.

He discovered his mother’s art room when exploring the Delaney family manor. As a child whenever Tyson wanted to be alone, and he wasn’t in the mood to climb up into the attic, he could go into his mother’s art room. His father never went in there and for Jethro it brought up too much emotions so Tyson could always be alone there. She was a talented painter and Tyson keeps one of her paintings in his apartment.

Tyson doesn’t know what has become of his mother and doesn’t want it. There is a lingering curiousity and a need to ask why she left without bringing him or Jethro, but not much more: Tyson knows she left his father to avoid his abuse, but he’s never understood why she left them too. Jethro, on the other hand, did look into it and discovered she passed away in early 2006; he didn’t bother telling Tyson.

UNIVERAL TRUTHS

• Blood Type: A Positive
• Date of Birth: July 9th 1953 - Cancer - Year of the Snake (Water)
• Date of Death: April 5th 2006
• DnD Alignment: True Neutral
• Dominant Hand: Right
• Ethnicity: Jew, Ashkenazi / White, British
• Myers Briggs Type: ENFP-T | The Campaigner
• Orientation: Bisexual
• Religion: Jewish
• Signature:

FAVOURITE

• Favourite Animal: Flamingo
• Favourite Author: James Patterson
• Favourite Colour: Maroon
• Favourite Film: The Mask of Zorro
• Favourite Food: Lamb Henry with roasted sweet potato & parsnip
• Favourite Plant: Carnations
• Favourite Poem: Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep - Mary Elizabeth Frye

VERSE DEPENDANT

• Avatar Element: Fire
• His Dark Material’s Dæmon: Blue Jay
• Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
• Hybrid!Verse Pairing: Marsh Harrier
• Mass Effect Species: Human
• Pokémon Team: Ampharos, Smeargle, Ludicolo, Infernape, Kricketune, & Mantyke

Colour Tyson’s Synesthesia Projects Onto Them:

Mother Figures

Tyson has two mother figures in his life, his mother and Jasmine: a maid at the family manor.

Anne walked out of his life when Tyson was only four, to escape the abuse of his father. Any memories that he has of her are so faint that Tyson doesn’t know if they’re actual memories, or events that people have told him about. When Tyson thinks of ‘mother’, he thinks of Jasmine. He even calls her ‘אִמָא’.

This isn’t a one-way street, she calls him ‘מתוקי’. When she started working at the Delaney manor, she never expected it to become her home. She was there to pay off her student loans, from studying to become a therapist*, but now? Tyson is her son by everything but blood and law.

Whenever Tyson wanted to be alone, yet find-able, he would hide in his mother’s art room in the family manor. He tried to piece together an image of who she could be based on that room, and stories from Jethro. Tyson keeps two things that he found in that room in his apartment: the painting in his bedroom and the teddy bear in his walk-in cupboard/panic room.

When Tyson’s father sent him to bed without dinner unjustly, Jasmine would leave food out on the kitchen counter for him to sneak up to the East Wing’s attic. She taught him how to calm down after a panic attack by keeping his hands behind his back. Her baking is his favourite and he loves the raspberry white chocolate cookies she makes.

Tyson’s Synesthesia says a lot about his view of a person. Tyson views Anne in bright, primary childlike colours; shades one would associate with bottles of paint in a classroom. Jasmine is viewed in homely, earthen tones that feel grounding with a delicate pink and blue woven in. He views his mother with the idealistically simple eyes of a child, but views Jasmine with the nuance of actual memories and more tangible feelings.

* Though Jasmine will often say that she abandoned therapy as a career path because Tyson needed her, it’s more complicated than that. Working at the manor - cleaning, managing, arranging events with the university, et cetera - was largely simply work, but in doing that, Jasmine realise just how stressed and unhappy she was with therapy.

She liked being a maid with extended duties, and now practically serving as the head of the Delaney family. It’s simpler work, but Jasmine enjoys it and there are people who need her involved, people that she cares about and wants to help.

Earth

Of the four traditional elements, Tyson has the strongest connection to Earth.

Earth - Connection

Of the six medication elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space, & Consciousness - the one Tyson connects most with is earth.

Earth in Tyson’s mind is about connection, everything being the same. This appeals to his mathematical mind because to him everything is connected through numbers and patterns. His favourite example of this is the hexagon…

…when Tyson just wants to calm himself he will think of nature - of earth - and how everything is connected. This also relates to his thoughts on how he is never alone because of mathematics. Full headcanon [x] 

Tyson can very easily be kept entertained by giving him an hourglass or zen garden, but he is absolutely on the side of #fucksand. Sand can become annoying for anyone, but with his OCD, sand - in collaboration with glitter - is the bane of Tyson’s existence.

To touch on some of his verses, Tyson’s Marvel AU is called Earth!Verse and his mutant power is Geokinesis. Naturally following on from that, Tyson is an Earthbender in his Avatar!verse and in his Hogwarts AU, Tyson’s connection to earth carries over into being a Hufflepuff.

In Tyson’s Pokémon AU, he makes use of whichever Pokémon is best suited to the job and has trained many Pokémon for other people. However, Tyson has the strongest connection to Rock and Ground-type Pokémon; with Steel coming a very close second, and Grass & Water tying for third place.

In expanded earthen headcanons, Tyson has a rock collection.

Tyson doesn’t have a rock collection because he’s interested in geology, but rather because he finds the rocks he finds pleasing to look at.

He keeps his rocks as souvenirs of places he’s been or memories he has. Some rocks he finds in nature, others are bought from tourist shops that he’s passing: he doesn’t actively search through the rocks, but if one catches his eyes in passing he’ll usually buy it.

He keeps the rocks, like most of his possessions, under his bed in a box. Though he hasn’t labeled any of the stones he knows where he got all of them and the story behind them too.

Some of the stones aren’t nice to look at, those are rocks he’s kept from places with bad memories. The smoother the stone then the nicer the memory, usually. There are some exceptions where it was the colour or shape that took his fancy.

Thunder and Lightning

Tyson has a phobia of thunder and lightning.

This is his only phobia to have a specific nervous tick related to it, beyond his default nervous tick: a slight twitch in the first two fingers of his left hand.

Taking a sharp breath and tensing. – There is thunder.

For the sake of that masterlist, I wasn’t as specific there as I could - and, perhaps, should - have been. It’s not simply that Tyson tenses up around thunder and lightning. His entire body locks upand he will stay frozen for several seconds that feel like hours, heart hammering, before coming back to himself.

His phobia wasn’t created until his time in India with The Colonel. There were several instances of thunder and lightning happening, sometimes in alarmingly close proximity for how exposed their current position was, however there was one moment that Tyson can say cemented it; as, for how awful that moment was, the one thing he can get clear memory of is the sound of thunder and flashes of lightning.

Tyson had gotten caught out in a monsoon with Sebastian, a drunk and - as often followed - very angry Moran. He had taken a harsh beating that night, but Tyson honestly can’t remember the specifics. He can’t remember the wind whipping around them or the rain pelting down. Just the roar drowning out Sebastian and flashes of his face in darkness.

He has a stronger reaction to hearing thunder than seeing lightning. Which is likely why he is comfortable with Tesla Coils. Whilst its natural form is wild, electricity can be controlled. Tyson actually has a Tesla Coil and Faraday Cage set up in his warehouse near Bath.

Snakes

Tyson likes snakes:

Tyson wasn’t always fond of the scaled creatures but after his time in the Middle East he became fond of them. Watching them move across the sand and up trees had been his only source of entertainment for a long time. He’d learnt to appreciate them since. Before he found Lily they were his only company for long periods of time.

He prefers the smaller ones, but he still finds the medium and large ones interesting.

Snakes like this lil’ guy, and this jackass.

He has a definite bias to smaller snakes, and especially stripped snakes like corn snakes and California king snakes. However, there isn’t a type of snake that Tyson actually dislikes. Boas are cool and, after far too much time watching nature documentaries, Tyson knows more about sea snakes than he ever thought possible.

The time he spent crossing from Afghanistan to India, through Pakistan, with The Colonel led to some close calls with venomous snakes, but the closest was during his army service in Afghanistan.

He was patrolling alongside multiple jeeps whilst they were removing landmines from the roadside. The sound of multiple engines, even when moving slowly enough to accommodate those on foot beside them, was more than enough to drown out any warning hisses from the Caspian cobra; one of the most venomous snakes in the world.

Tyson was very fortunate that the cobra’s bite only caught the padding of his boot. He’s seen plenty of soldiers brought back to camp after a snake bite went straight through their boots.

Flight

Though he isn’t a fan of being confined in a metal box under someone else’s control, Tyson isn’t a bad flyer. Honestly, Tyson gains more discomfort from being trapped around so many people for extended periods of time than he does the actual flying part.

He favours being in a helicopter over taking an aeroplane, as he knows that a crash in a helicopter can be utterly indistinguishable from a regular landing with a competent pilot. The idea of learning to pilot either has absolutely no appeal to Tyson.

Tyson has a lot of bad memories of being on planes, but none are directly related to the plane itself or the flight. It’s mourning a fallen soldier with no escape from his thoughts for hours at a time. It’s double checking his fellow passengers every few minutes, terrified that it will become a military sting or turn out The Colonel is sat behind him.

Parachute drills remain one of Tyson’s least favourite parts of military training. Once the parachute is deployed, or even starting from a point when the chute was already open, then getting to see the world from that point of view has always been an enjoyable experience, but not one Tyson would actively seek out.

He has never been hang gliding, but whilst mountain boarding with Rosie - his sister-in-law - Tyson has ended up kite-boarding several times. He prefers to have the more direct control that straight dirtboarding provides, but he can admit to enjoying getting to be airborne for a while.

Rincewind

For a time, Tyson had a pet mouse called Rincewind: from the 23rd of April 2013 until 17th May 2014, when he passed away in his sleep.

He used to settle on Tyson’s left shoulder or on top of Lily’s head, who accepted that she wasn’t allowed to eat him. Bobby listened when Tyson told him to leave the mouse alone, but he would inquisitively nudge at the mouse to test if he could eat him this time. Bobby was also adamant that the rolling hamster ball was a moving snack and a toy for him to bat around.

Rincewind was a seal point fancy mouse with pink/red eyes. He was blind in his right eye and Tyson became far too attached for how short-lived he was. Rincewind was typically happy to be handled - though he could become overwhelmed - and, being very food motivated, was easy for Tyson to train through multiple tricks.

His most impressive trick, and one Tyson absolutely did not teach him, was to routinely escape his cage and ball. Even after Tyson replaced both with different types. Bar prompting Bobby’s prey instinct, Rincewind usually didn’t cause any trouble when he escapes. Either he went to pilfer the dog’s bowl or make a nest for himself in Tyson’s pocket.

Tyson is very fond of rats and mice, and to a lesser degree hamsters, but their relatively short life spans compared to cats & dogs, and his inability not to immediately become attached to anything with four legs, is why he typically doesn’t care for any.

If he didn’t have any dogs, or cats, Tyson would probably use the space he gained in his apartment to make a proper space to keep multiple rodents: probably the more social rats over mice. He might also choose fish or reptiles, but rodents are the most likely choice overall.

Birds

Tyson is rather fond of birds, though he is definitely biased towards the tiny palm-sized garden birds. Draco - who we will be getting to eventually, never fear - is essentially a scaly, colour changing tiny bird.

Every year, Tyson got to change which chores he was given in addition to his curricular activities and, without fail, one of his picks would always be filling up the various bird feeders around the garden area of the family grounds.

After dogs, Tyson’s favourite animal is the speckled hummingbird. Though there is a mathematical curiosity in the way hummingbird’s wings works, Tyson is more interested in their bright pigmentation; and how it affects his Synesthesia. He also has a soft spot in his heart for London’s pigeons.

Every summer holiday, Tyson and Jethro were send up to their Uncle Richard in Edinburgh whilst their father went on holiday to Spain. Uncle Richard often took them out on camping trips to go hunting. During those trips, Tyson remembers his uncle pointing out various birds hidden in the canopy or teaching them to identify them by their song. Tyson’s first successful kill during those hunting trips was a Pheasant.

Bees

For a time, Tyson raised bees.

This was part of his research for his Ph.D in applied mathematics. Tyson left his secondary school (Cambridge International School) and began attending Cambridge University at age fifteen, but due to his tutors, Tyson had already begun university level education by this point.

This also meant that, knowing what was expected of him to continue the family legacy and aware of his father’s plans to transfer him, Tyson began working on the research he would need before actually attending the university.

His first paper was on his favourite subjects, hexagons and game theory. Hexagons are Tyson’s absolute favourite shape, bees build their hives using hexagons, and game theory can be used to predict the behaviour of bees, ants, humans, and beyond.

Though he could use many other resources, Tyson was aware of what his father demanded of his students for that course. He needed to have his own evidence for at least one of his applied mathematics papers. So, Tyson enlisted the help of one of John Delaney’s fellow professors, Mrs E. Baldwin, who raised bees in her free time.

He wanted evidence for how mathematics could be used to predict how bees would build their homes in any given container and under different circumstances, such as proximity to flowers. The easier part to prove was that they would always build in hexagons, as it was the most efficient shape and there was hundreds of years of precedent.

To prove how game theory predicts behaviour, ants would have been easier subjects; as they are overall easier to observe working and can be made to operate in a small area. However, Tyson wanted to consolidate his time usage better and give the paper a more direct focus, so resolved to use bees instead.

In more general information, Tyson has never been afraid of bees and he was rather at home in the bee keeper’s helmet, as he’d been fencing for several years at that point.

Though he has never had a particularly sweet tooth, Tyson has struggled with low blood sugar ever since he was a child. Every day after school, ever since he was old enough to attend nursery, one of the maids at the family manor would give Tyson a teaspoon of honey. If he didn’t eat that, Tyson would collapse or have wild mood swings for several hours; which is saying something as, on any given day, Tyson can give a man emotional whiplash.

Tyson has fond memories of sharing pieces of honeycomb, gifted by Elizabeth around his father’s birthday, and a bowl of strawberries whilst playing games of chess against his father in his study or the family library; which Tyson spent most of his childhood thinking of as his father’s library.

Bugs

Generally speaking, Tyson doesn’t mind bugs. He prefers that they stay outside, but he certainly isn’t squeamish about them. Whilst Tyson know it definitely isn’t kosher, he doesn’t baulk at the idea of eating insects; though he doesn’t exactly jump for joy at the prospect either.

He hated that science class where everyone had to go outside and collect bugs with the insect pooter, but that was more that Tyson has OCD and absolutely did not trust the other students to keep them clean. He also found it much easier to simply open the lid and scoop up insects that way instead.

Part of the family manor’s grounds is a meadow of wildflowers and tall grasses, in the spring and summer that field was full of butterflies. Most commonly Painted Lady (Venessa cardui) and Red Admiral (Venessa atalanta). Dragonflies could be found in the eastern part of the grounds, in the forest where the river ran through and the pond was.

As a child, he found Ladybugs and Greenflies fascinating. Caterpillars too. Anything that could be found by examining both sides of tree leaves was interesting to him. Tyson used to climb up trees that he found those bugs on to see how far up they could be found.

He finds mosquitoes as annoying as anyone else, especially on humid summer days when he ends up walking through a cloud of them, but Tyson tends not to get bitten. This is fortunate as Tyson’s skin is pretty sensitive to chemicals and thus, he can’t really use mosquito repellent too much.

Water

This is a headcanon that has been told several times:

Tyson loves water.

Tyson was taught to swim by his brother, Jethro Andrew Delaney, who used to take him to a small creak near the family manor, and sometimes to the river in the family manor’s ground when it was summer and there had been a heavy rainfall making it deep enough to go in.

Though he’ll whine about being wet when he gets out of the water Tyson does love being in it, except when it comes to baths. He hates taking baths, even after a long run when he feels like he never want to stand again he’ll take a shower rather than getting into the bath, because he didn’t like just sitting in a pool of water. It’s the same reasoning he gives when his nephew wants him to join him in the sea or in a swimming pool. However, when presented with an open lagoon Tyson would gladly sit in the water for hours on end.

He likes being in fresh water with lots of room the best though, especially those near waterfalls. Tyson adores waterfalls, almost to the same level as he does mathematics, maps, and dogs. They are a source of wondrous beauty for Tyson that the man-made world cannot corrupt.

Swimming gives him a freedom. It takes him away from the world. He can’t fully meditate when floating because he has buoyancy issues. He can flow perfectly, but only face down which causes an issue if he wants to breath. If he tries to float on his back then his head would sink under water - unless he keeps pushing it up - until he rotates around to floating on his stomach.

Rain holds less affection in Tyson’s heart. The constant, dismal onslaught of rain from the British weather takes away a lot of the joy rainfall can bring, but even so he appreciates the mathematical challenge that rain can give. He knows the formulae for predicting where each rain drop will fall. His view on rain does improve once he’s inside, however.

There is a divide amongst Tyson’s pets when it comes to water.

Lily [Dalmatian/Dhole] hates water. When they first met, Lily was terrified of water; including the river she led him to for water. Since those days, Tyson has helped her calm down and taught her to swim, but she still hates taking a bath and she never wants to stay out in the rain. More often than not, Tyson will wash her in the en-suite’s walk-in shower instead.

Bobby [Dalmatian/Dhole/Beagle] - on the other hand - loves water, and swimming, and rain, and jumping in puddles, and… anything wet. When he was a smaller dog, Bobby used to swim laps in the bathtub. Whenever Tyson goes to take a shower, Bobby insists on jumping in to join him.

Jack [Doberman] is largely impartial about water. Whilst he won’t care about walking out in the rain, he also won’t jump into the water; unless it’s a very hot day or ordered in by Tyson. Bath time has always been easy with Jack.

Meg [Welsh Border Collie] also loves water, natural water anyway. Unlike Bobby, Meg would take some coaxing to get into a chlorinated pool. As soon you’ve spotted a pond, lake, or river, Meg is already in it. And pulling out the biggest stick she can find to play fetch with.

Mandy [Tabby] is continually curious about water, especially running water. However, that thought is abandoned the moment her body gets wet. Tyson can clean her legs, tail, and ears without her raising a fuss. She’s easy to calm and, unless she falls in the water, doesn’t start scratching, but she’s clearly distressed.

Felix [Ragdoll] hasn’t shown a great interest in water, but he’s largely apathetic about being wet. He won’t even bother to dry himself. He just lays his soaking wet body down on the bed for someone else to deal with later.

Draco [Dragon] responds like a tiny bird to water. 

Fire

Though Tyson is also afraid of alcohol and thunder/lightening, his strongest - and oldest - fear is his pyrophobia. However, it is also the one he finds easiest to deal with.

He doesn’t have a specific nervous tick or one particular method that will keep him calm around it. Instead, fire always puts Tyson on edge - even a simple candle flame - but beyond refusing to allow the flame out of his sight for more than a few seconds, Tyson will be fine; no matter how long he has to stay in the fire’s presence.

When a mission requires surviving in the wilderness, Tyson can create bonfires and fire pits, but he’ll sleep almost too far away to feel its warmth and - frequently - let his food get burnt, hesitating too long to retrieve something from the spit. Generally, he favours making a Dakota Fire Pit, as removing the flames from sight makes things easier for him and it’s also a better way of staying undetected.

Unlike his phobia of thunder, lightning, and alcohol, which can all be linked to specific events or memories, Tyson doesn’t know what - if anything - caused his phobia of fire. It had been that way ever since he was a young child, some of his earlier memories are being afraid of the Shabbat candles lit by Ms Appleby.

Whilst Jethro would watch the flames in the fireplace and be transfixed by how they moved, and want to burn various items to see how it would look, Tyson would stare at the flame to make sure they weren’t touching anything flammable. As if looking away from the flames would mean that the house would suddenly turn to ash as the fire burned it down.

With all that said, Tyson understands why fire appeals to people aesthetically; and he absolutely understands being attracted to things you knew were dangerous.

Green-ish Thumb

At most, Tyson has a green-ish thumb.

He can - with tender love and care - nurture a plant back to life from the brink of death. However, it’s almost always his fault that the plant was in that state, having allowed it to fade into the back of his mind as mere décor. He’ll restore the plant back to health, and then the cycle will repeat.

Tyson is a city mouse through and through. Truth be told, he prefers to experience nature from afar or in small quantities. He loves London’s many parks and the family manor’s grounds, but he’ll always favour pockets of nature within a city over the countryside.

However, if shown a tree leaf, Tyson can very reliably identify it. The same applies to which berries, mushrooms, et cetera are safe to eat: for people and for dogs. He couldn’t do this everywhere in the world, but Tyson has Britain’s flora memorised, and large areas of both Europe and the Middle East committed to memory too.

Hairy Ball Theorem

Tyson's first lesson usually involves teaching the hairy ball theorum.

It’s a crass technique, but it gets a giggle out of some of the new students and gets their attention. That way, he has their focus when he moves onto more complex mathematical theories.

This applies for Teacher!verse Tyson, and the guest lectures normal Tyson gives at Cambridge.

Tyson can easily be mistaken as lying.

When people know his nervous ticks, at least.

Tyson's default nervous tick is a slight twitch in the first two fingers of his left hand. Try it now: with your hand open, twitch those first two fingers. Which ones moved? The answer should be your index, middle, and ring finger; due to the ring and middle finger sharing a tendon. When Tyson lies the ring finger of his left hand twitches.

See how easy it could be to think he's lying now? Especially because he's already displaying nervous behavior, which can be a sign of lying.

So, why isn't his default nervous tick listed as all three fingers moving? Well, when his nervous tick happens and his hand is closed, it's only the first two fingers that move.

Yoga

In a previous headcanon I mentioned that Tyson tried yoga once but never since and that, though flexibility wasn't an issue for him, causing pain in the dent in his torso was.

In Tyson's main!verse - despite occasionally doing control exercises with Jasmine - Tyson didn't really start meditating until he was taught to by monks whilst the dent in his torso recovered and yoga came afterwards. This applies for almost all verses, except Orphan AU - child!verse, child!verse 2, & teen!verse - and Hogwarts AU where Tyson doesn't have, and isn't going to gain, the dent in his torso.
Tyson isn't going to take up meditation [fully; he's dabbled slightly as a teenager in both AUs] or yoga in any of those verses, but beyond them - an adult Tyson within those universes - he would end up doing both. In his early twenties, Tyson would begin meditating frequently in those verses and by mid-twenties would be doing yoga frequently too. In his main!verse he's decently flexible already, but those version of adult Tyson would be very flexible and happy to let his dog join in the fun.

As a child Tyson had a Grumpy Bear stuffed toy.

Essentially, that's all there is to this particular head canon.

Tyson never watched the Care Bears cartoon growing up, and still hasn't, but Jethro won the toy at a school raffle when Tyson was six and gave it to his little brother.

This toy was treasured until Tyson's father forced him to give it away - along with other toys - when he was twelve.

Tyson likes seeing other people messy.

With Tyson's OCD, and general dislike of ripped clothes on other people, this seems rather odd.

He can't explain why, and paint/glitter/dust/et cetera on his own skin would drive Tyson up the wall, but he adores seeing other people that way. He thinks it makes other people look incredibly pretty.