Oh nooo no choice but to talk about my moron
Tyler is one of my oldest characters. He's been with me since I was a teenager and has gone through a looooot of iterations. But he's one of the ones who settled on a fairly consistent core and stayed that way, pretty much unchanging no matter his circumstances. Wherever I put him, he likes to exist in a particular way. Usually that means his story is about him trying to exist in places that are less than flexible to someone like him.
He's very uptight, very clever, and very antisocial, at least at the beginning of a story. He struggles to make friends and struggles to trust people. I often put him in situations where he doesn't get to connect with anyone authentically, or where his relationships are purely transactional. So when he runs into someone who actually wants to get to know him for him, he finds it suspicious as hell and drives them away by being a nasty little turd. It takes a very patient soul to draw him out and make him realise he's not under threat of friendship. But if you put in the time and effort, he's a very sweet, passionate and loving person. He really wants to be loved, and he really wants to love. He's just usually in a position where he doesn't believe in it.
In the floof AU, Tyler is a captive bird. Birds are kept by humans as pets or slaves, and in that way he's actually one of the more fortunate ones. Eventually he's adopted by an old apothecary who's quite lonely and ends up treating him like a surrogate son, training him in his craft. It's not unusual to have a bird running tasks for you. It's very unusual for that bird to inherit your home after you die. Tyler does his best to stay put in that society out of stubbornness, but he quickly finds he can't deal with the prejudice of people who consider him stupid and a lesser being. The second they have someone available with more medical knowledge than him, he's driven away and put under threat of being captured.
This is where V'sun comes in. V'sun is a bit of a meddler. He can't help himself. He was raised outside human society, so from Tyler's perspective he has weird boundaries, aka no boundaries. He doesn't understand that you're not supposed to climb in through people's windows, or touch people's stuff. He thinks he's being nothing but courteous to someone who's clearly in need of help, because a lone grounded bird is a dead bird. Tyler feels very threatened by him at first, then just exasperated. But because V'sun never seemed to be trying to get something out of him, he very quickly becomes the first person Tyler trusts. (For Tyler, that leads very quickly into a crush, because... I mean, u see him? U see his stupid hot face right? We're all seeing this it's a normal reaction to a face like that)
When V'sun gets Tyler away safely, he becomes part of a flock, and suddenly he's facing a whole different type of discrimination. Birds are an intelligent, well put together species with a huge culture of their own, and Tyler has never participated in any of it. A lot of that is down to his inability to fly, and his reluctance to learn. He's scared of heights, and he finds the whole thing a little distasteful, if he's honest. Living up high makes him dizzy, and the idea of not being able to get from place to place without flying is scary to him. He and V'sun end up in a colony of birds that specialises in looking after others in a similar situation, birds who are crippled or injured, so it's a bit more accessible. Even so, there are a lot of downsides to being flightless in a flighted community. In particular, he faces ire as someone who is whole and healthy, and therefore just unwilling to try. The psychological element of not being able to fly is more difficult for people to understand.
Some of our fave world building for the floofs came from him, side note. For example, Tyler is bad at eating like a bird, even though it's significantly healthier for him. Birds have a slightly different diet to humans: no milk, no cheese, and none of the heavy salt humans use to preserve food. That salt is actually horrible for birds, and part of why they migrate with their food instead. Tyler doesn't know any of this. It turns out part of the reason he's been so ill is that he's been living like a human when he shouldn't be. That infuriates him, because he feels like he should have known better, because he's not supposed to be stupid. He has a lot of genuinely good knowledge about plants, making medicines, even simple first aid that other people don't have. It frustrates him that none of it is respected, just because it came from a human origin.
He also wears glasses, which is really unusual among birds. They tend to either have good eyesight, or, if they don't, just live with it, because tools like that don't really occur to them. It's likely his poor diet as a child contributed to some sight deficiency, so he actually needs a tool that can only really be made in human society. To some extent, for him to exist comfortably, he has to have an item other people can't make.
Over time he proves his worth as an apothecary and gardener. Those are talents that basically require you to stay in place, in a species that tends to be migratory, but boy is heckin stubborn and makes it work. He cultivates gardens and brings his skills to the flock in ways they could've never predicted,I think. Him being inflexible makes him weirdly good at problem solving?? He's always gonna be a type A priss about the whole process, but once he finds his place, confidence follows, and a confident and secure Tyler is a Tyler who will do anything for the people he cares about.
He has a love-hate relationship with Raul for V'sun attention, ends up having two daughters, and does eventually learn to fly but this is already so long help. Another time maybe 👀
