Y’all my husband is shaving of his beard. He’s about to be clean shaven for the first time in.... fuck I can’t even remember.
As sad as it makes me, I realize that it has to be done. The medication he’s been on to fight skin cancer (and kick it’s ass I might add) has made his hair thin out.
Tenma is a half-Vulcan, half-Human and thus doesn't quite fit in with either society. He was raised Vulcan and thus strives toward the ideal of pure logic, though has never been able to succeed in the ritual purging of emotions that all Vulcans undergo, to his great shame. Rather than seek to join Starfleet, he instead took his post within the Vulcan Science Academy with a focus in engineering.
After an intense and violent emotional breakdown caused by the death of his wife and son, he is essentially expelled from the academy until such a time that he can "master" his humanity. He’s assigned as an observer to a Starfleet research outpost, where he meets and must cooperate with Ochanomizu. If he is to be accepted back to the Vulcan Science Academy, he must come to terms with his human half; a difficult process, for someone who views humans as inherently inferior for their illogical nature.
Because he's not Starfleet, it gives him room to be kind of an antagonistic force since he's serving the interests of Vulcan rather than Starfleet and sometimes, even though they're allies, they don't get along. Ochan can't give him orders because they're not the same chain of command so they're gonna be butting heads a lot.
Mirrorverse Tenma: This version of Tenma has achieved balance with his human half and accepts his emotions rather than try to suppress them. He actually did become a member of starfleet the Terran imperial fleet, as one of the few avenues through which a Vulcan can obtain status in the Terran Empire (short version of the alternate timeline: when humans made First Contact with Vulcans in the Mirror!verse it did not go well for the Vulcans).
I can't decide whether he's working his way through the ranks to install himself at the top or if he's engaged with resistance groups aiming to sabotage and overthrow the Empire....though knowing him he might be playing at both ends.
..........i just KNOW he is.........has to shave his face every single day or his beard starts growing in and it's DARK. and i KNOW his legs are hairy alfbdidkalalqm BYE BYE BYE DARK HAPPY TRAIL BYEEEEEEE i'm insane
anyways if they give us the beard lore of ted saving his life + them being connected like that and beard passing on the lasso way to nate only for them to.......................separate ted and beard at the end.....................i'll commit atrocities