Tyson Delaney

UNIVERAL TRUTHS

• Birthname: Tyson Delaney (טייסון דילייני)
• Blood Type: O Positive
• Date of Birth: October 21st 1981 – Libra – Rooster (Metal/Gold)
• DnD Alignment: Lawful Neutral
• Dominant Hand: Right
• Ethnicity: Jew, Ashkenazi / White, British
• Myers Briggs Type: ISTJ-A | The Logistician
• Orientation: Romantically Bi, Sexually Gay, Polyamorous
• Religion: Non-Observant Jewish
• Signature:

FAVOURITE

• Favourite Animal: Dog
• Favourite Author: Terry Pratchett
• Favourite Colour: Red
• Favourite Film: Scarface (1983)
• Favourite Food: Rice
• Favourite Plant: Cosmos atrosanguineus
• Favourite Poem: A Gamble With Death - Tim Vallie

VERSE DEPENDANT

• Avatar Element: Earth
• His Dark Material’s Dæmon: Belgian Malinois
• Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff
• Hybrid!Verse Pairing: Roe Deer
• Mass Effect Species: Human Biotic L3-R
• Pokémon Team: A rotation of Pokémon from his squadron.

Colour Tyson’s Synesthesia Projects Onto Them:

John Delaney

UNIVERAL TRUTHS

• Birthname: Yonathan David Delaney (יוֹנָתָן דָּוִד דילייני)
• Blood Type: B Positive
• Date of Birth: February 26th 1951 - Pisces - Rabbit (Metal/Gold)
• DnD Alignment: Lawful Neutral
• Dominant Hand: Right
• Ethnicity: Jew, Ashkenazi / White, British
• Myers Briggs Type: ESTJ-A | The Executive
• Orientation: Hetrosexual
• Religion: Jewish
• Signature:

FAVOURITE

• Favourite Animal: Sparrowhawk
• Favourite Author: Mary Shelley
• Favourite Colour: Green
• Favourite Film: The Princess Bride
• Favourite Food: Crab rangoon
• Favourite Plant: Venus Fly Trap
• Favourite Poem: Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen

VERSE DEPENDANT

• Avatar Element: Earth
• His Dark Material’s Dæmon: Thomson’s Gazelle
• Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw (Muggle within Hogwarts AU)
• Hybrid!Verse Pairing: Gemsbok
• Mass Effect Species: Human
• Pokémon Team: Alolan Ninetails, Rapidash, Noctowl, Xatu, Claydol, & Bisharp.

Colour Tyson’s Synesthesia Projects Onto Them:

Like Father, Like Son

Tyson and his father can, and have, been compared in a myriad of ways. They are more alike than just looks.

It had always rubbed Tyson the wrong way that, minus thirty years, he is the spitting-image of his father. After his scars and not being ‘manly’ [largely lacking body hair and not being overly muscled], looking like his father is one of Tyson’s main issues with his body. It was why Tyson was ‘afraid of’ the idea of needing glasses and, despite liking himself far more with stubble or a small beard, Tyson kept his face clean shaven.

He knows he’d a, relatively, handsome man. Adorably handsome. However, he can’t admit that and has convinced himself he isn’t, because admitting that would be admitting his father was. Tyson wants to demonise his father. The late John Delaney caused Tyson hell growing up and Tyson refuses to attach a positive word to the man, at the cost of his own self-image.

Tyson knows he had his father’s stubbornness and determination, mathematical gifts, quick wit, mild sentimentally, unorthodox moral compass, and love of strong, rich coffee; but he is terrified of becoming more like him.

Tyson doesn’t want to be as sadistic or ruthless as his father, he doesn’t want to become as short tempered as the deceased professor, he doesn’t want to be as cold or dismissive as his father, nor does he want to be as lonely as his father.

That said he wouldn’t mind inheriting his father’s charm, social graces, neat handwriting, and confidence.

As a boy, Tyson idolised his father. He thought the man could do no wrong, even as he took his belt to the back of Tyson and his brother. He learnt differently. Trust and love slowly chipped away, but never truly leaving. As he’s grown older, those thoughts have become more complicated.

If Tyson could ever take thirty seconds to stop blaming himself for all the universes problems, he might realise how his father’s influence led him to Sebastian and then later to the Moriarty Mirrors. That is a very unlikely possibility however.

So much of Tyson’s life has been about living up to or trying to spite his father. He’s shaped so much of his life around that it may, in fact, be impossible for him to move forward without leaning into one or the other.

Before leaving it pinned on the noticeboard in his bedroom, and before he wore it on his right middle finger, Tyson used to wear a ring bearing the Delaney family crest around a chain on his neck. At times it felt like an impossibly heavy noose. Locking him to his father’s expectations.

It’s a similar feeling to what Tyson feels when he thinks of his father.

Both of them regret how things went down between them.

Tyson was, without a doubt in anyone’s mind, John’s second favourite son, but in his way, he did love his son. He was willing to forgive - keyword forgive, not accept - his son for being gay, but John could never forgive Tyson for signing up to die in the army. For throwing away his life to a pointless war.

If he had known about Tyson’s involvement in the web, John could have forgiven that. He could have accepted his son’s - stupid, pointless, misguided - attempts to do right by minimising the bad and keeping another from being in his position when it comes to a criminal empire, but not the armed forces.

Much of John’s sentiments about war come from his own father, Lucas Delaney, who lived through WW1 and WW2 as the head of an incredibly prominent Jewish family. He lost his twin brother, Bruce, to the Blitz and his innocence to the wars; and along with any belief that his family would ever have to stop fighting for a place to be Jewish without fear.

His anti-war sentiment came from enlistment and knowing that, no matter what they may claim, his country hadn’t gone to war to protect his people. Even after the war ended and his two sons were born - with given boastfully, proud Jewish names: Reuben Boaz Delaney (רְאוּבֵן בֹּעַז דילייני) & Yonatan David Delaney (יוֹנָתָן דָּוִד דילייני) - Lucas never stopped campaigning against war and passed those thoughts on to his sons.

John’s mother and Tyson’s grandmother, Ellen Delaney, shared that sentiment, but she was far less outspoken about it. Almost fearfully silent, having immigrated to Britain to escape the war with her parents. John picked that up too and it’s what spurred him to be so vocal about it, to not let her pain be lost; unheard.

John and Tyson were both forged from fear and spite, and a stubborn determination to never buckle; to fight for what they believed in until their last breaths. They were both incredibly proud and protective of the family legacy.

Aging

Though Tyson doesn’t care about his birthday or his current age, he is aware that with every year that passes, Tyson inches closer to redundancy within the web; and looking even more like his father. Minus thirty years or so, Tyson is already the spitting images of his father and those thirty years are gradually trickling down.

Tyson knows how to make himself useful and his role in the web isn’t dependant on his physicality, but the less able he becomes, the less Tyson can do for the Moriarty Mirrors. The less useful he becomes to them and the more likely that he becomes boring.

Tyson would walk himself out back to be put down before he allowed himself to become a liability to the Moriarty Mirrors safety, or to the safety of anyone else he cared about. He can’t reliably judge how interesting he might be to his Darling owner’s, however.

Before Tyson needed to worry about that, his age was a non-issue to Tyson. He didn’t care about his birthday, but Tyson didn’t spare any thought to how old he might become. He expected to die in service to the army long before he reached retirement age.

M&M&D

Tyson is intrinsically tied to the Moriarty Mirrors and The Colonel. The different ways Tyson fears and loves them have been compared before, so let’s compare some of the ways in which all four of them are similar and different.

One of the Moriarty Mirrors goes by the nickname/code name Sunshine and the other CCT/Mischief, depending on if he’s pre or post-Reichenbach. Where Tyson is their willing Pup, he was forced into being Sebastian’s Kitten. Sebastian was given the monikers of Basher and The Colonel, but he chose Tiger.

An obvious place to begin is that they are all incredibly smart people and all cliché enough to love playing chess. For all brutishness and mayhem, they are all academics to a greater or lesser extent. Always searching for a challenge, something to push the boundaries of what they know or can do.

They’re all educated to a university level and all four of them know Latin. Speak of which; though they are all attracted to men and the degree to which they’ll accept women into their beds varies, the general consensus is ‘when necessary’.

In a more serious discussion of language, all of them have English and Latin in common. Whilst Tyson can only read Hindi, Sebastian mastered it during their travels. He’s picked up a word or two, but largely any Gaelic from the Moriarty Mirrors is lost on Tyson. Not on Moran, however.

Tyson’s Russian is better than Moran’s, but Sebastian’s understanding of French and Spanish is far superior. Though Hebrew and the limited Yiddish Tyson knows is meaningless to Moran, between them the Moriarty Mirrors are competent in both.

To Tyson, loyalty is the most important thing: his greatest strength and his biggest weakness. Moran demands loyalty, instantly and unwavering. With the Moriarty Mirrors, loyalty is expected yet earnt; betrayal is not accepted, but questioning loyal doesn’t matter, so long as the correct decision is made in the end.

Tyson knows what Sebastian and Mischief’s whiskey-soaked kisses taste like, but the reverse is only true for Sebastian. He has, however, ended up shotgunning cigarettes with all three. Tyson has had all three of their blood on him, at separate times, and they have all had his blood on them: having spilt it themselves and after someone else injured him.

They share old-fashioned tastes - in suits, in whiskey, et cetera - but how far they look into the future varies wildly. Tyson is a paranoid little jackrabbit with backup plans for every backup plan, desperately trying to plan around the Moriarty Mirrors ever-changing whims and the natural ebb & flow of the web.

Moran reminisces within his own history and loves history in general, but he lives for the moment rather than the future. Where Sunshine has his focus more on the past, favouring his antiques, Mischief is more commonly looking forward to new inventions, new prizes; but both have grand plans for the future and value past victories.

Food Quirks

Unsurprisingly, Tyson has several quirks when it comes to food and drinks. Three of these are impulses related to his OCD:

1. He has to have the handle of his mug facing left when he isn’t holding it but others mugs can face any direction.
2. When being handed a food and drink, Tyson will always take the cup in his right hand and the food in his left hand.
3. When eating from a bowl he stirs clockwise twice, then takes a bite, then stirs anti-clockwise twice, then takes another bite.

Tyson is one of those people when it comes to chocolate bars, always biting it into separate parts: be it nibbling off the chocolate coating first or biting off the back to eat the filling before the wafer. This also includes biting off the toffee/chocolate from a toffee/candy apple before starting on the fruit.

He does something similar with sandwiches actually. He tends to favour buying subs, but whenever he’s eating a sandwich with crusts, Tyson will eat the crusts off first before eating the rest. The exceptions are tuna melts or chess toasties where he’s more concerned about not burning his hand with cheese that has reached nuclear levels of temperature.

When eating a meal, Tyson will focus on one type of food before even thinking about tasting another. Usually, that means eating all his meat before turning his attention to vegetables or pasta. Sauces and gravies are the exceptions, he can mix those with his food without feeling off.

Similarly, Tyson tends to view soup as something to dip crunchy things in or retrieve delicious chicken/dumplings from rather than an actual meal. It’s one of those foods that he can mindlessly eat without wearing out what limited appetite he’s managed to summon up.

Bread is very important to Tyson and he can comfortably eat bread on its own without complaint. However, he hates eating sandwiches without butter in them as he finds them too dry; even if they already have something like jam in them. That is most likely a carryover from packed lunches of varying quality made by the staff at the family manor when Tyson was at primary school.

Art Galleries and Museums

Tyson tends to enjoy public exhibits a lot more in concept than in actuality.

As one might expect, it’s the public part that causes Tyson problems. He struggles in narrowing his focus enough to enjoy what he’s there to see, rather than the people moving around him.

Art galleries tend to be easier than museums, as there tends to be a little more space to move around and find enough personal space to breathe in without being boxed between different display cabinets. On the flip side of that, when he’s in too large of an indoor area then Tyson end up feeling panicked, as though his feet are going to lift off the ground and leave him floating helplessly.

When he knows it isn’t going to be too busy, Tyson takes the time to visit The Fitzwilliam Museum when he’s visiting Cambridge to guest lecture. He finds it helps him focus on what he’s going to say to walk around the exhibits. To walk somewhere familiar, but with a little distance from the university itself.

Whenever his nephew, James, visits Tyson in London, they’ll either go to the aquarium or to the Natural History Museum. James is fascinated by the family legacy and loves to learn, but mostly it’s the dinosaurs. It’s guaranteed that they’ll go during the times when the ice-skating rink is set up outside of it.

Geometric Mathematics

Tyson loves geometric mathematics, getting to see the numbers that are so important be visualised.

His loves of Hexagons had been long established, but those aren’t the only shapes that Tyson cares about.

From a thread with flight-of-the-thieving-magpie:

“Hexagons are found everywhere as the most efficient shape: in every painstakingly crafted piece of honeycomb, the shape of each otherwise entirely unique snowflake and delicate clusters when bubbles meet, even in the monumental mass of the Giant’s Causeway; but it’s not the only shape maths gives. Not the only answer. The Platonic Solids were accepted as the truth before we had proof in crystalline forms. Arches were always pure compression forms. Mathematics proved that long before we had the test of time in the Roman Coliseum remaining largely intact centuries later. Proof is rigid fact. Proof is required for anything else to be accepted as the truth, mathematics proves itself. Tangible evidence is…” His gaze had initially been drawn to Jim’s lips, but had since drifted to his eyes. Tyson trailed off as he recognised his presence again, “…incidental, J-Jim.” 

From a thread with smokingoursmiles:

“It’s n-nice, aesthetically and geometrically. The lines give create volume w-without sub-sectioning the building.” Tyson was never fond of open buildings or places, he preferred places where he could curl up and hide away from the world - he liked the Delaney family manor for this reason, there were dozens of rooms for him to hide away in where no one would find him - but he appreciated it from a mathematically standpoint, and in places where there were some closed of rooms he could manage it.

He’d always had a soft spot in his heart for engineering and architecture because in them he could see mathematics, mostly geometry but also the numbers involved in causing momentum and the angle of light reflected around a room to give the most light with the least artificial. To him mathematics was beautiful - it was pure and honest, always giving more answers and never taking away.

He loves all types of mathematics, but parts that he can share with other people always hold more weight in Tyson’s mind. Geometric mathematics is one of the easier parts to share as it connects to so many different areas of life that other people already put value in