#tavdirk

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Dirk and Tavros is a pretty cute ship I never considered before. Do you have any thoughts on how they would get together or how their relationship would work?

Getting together is a... tricky one, given the way all the characters end up post-canon, and the fact that I'm a canon analysis blog and not really a fanfic writing blog. But relationship wise.

So uhhhh here's my genuine belief. I mean this as nonsexually as possible. Jake and Dirk don't work out because they're both bottoms, but Tavros is a top 😢

Basically, we get a really good picture as to why Dirk and Jake don't make it - Dirk requires a pretty intense amount of emotional vulnerability, and he's highly deferential to his partner. His texts to Jake reveal that he is more than happy to tailor their dates to Jake's preferences, and go along with anything Jake wants to do, but in exchange, he's basically begging for a level of open, vulnerable, sincere communication and emotional frankness (Heart players, amirite?) that Jake is just too much of an oblivious dummy to provide.

I mean this with as much love as is even possible to have, but Jake is not exactly the deepest puddle in the playground tarmac, nor is he particularly in tune with what emotional turmoil he does experience. This doesn't mean he's a bad guy, but it does mean that Dirk fundamentally wants from his partner something that Jake is simply incapable of providing. In fact, the intense level of emotional vulnerability that Dirk demands intimidates Jake into leaving the poor guy in read while he desperately tries to get his feelings in order, something made even more difficult because he is, by nature, just a really wishy-washy, easily influenced guy. He has a genuinely hard time recognizing that he Just Kinda Isn't That Into Dirk because, I mean, maybe he is? how can he say for sure if he is or isn't? it's not like we have an example of him meeting someone who is actually his type and him losing his shit over it like the hormone addled teen he is oh hi aranea.

What I'm saying is, their compatability is terrible, because at the end of the day they're both pretty deferential people. Jake does best with partners who take firm stances and drag him along with them, overriding his wishy-washy bullshit - we see this in his communication breakdown with Jane, too, where Jane trying to be a polite people-pleaser means she can't just bring herself to say outright "you're being a dick and hurting my feelings," which unfortunately, Jake does need spelled out for him in plaintext. Because he is an idiot.

And Dirk also wants a partner he can defer to. As Dirk says in his reconciliation with Jane, he put Jake on a pedestal - the Jake in his head was a goofball, sure, but he also clearly bought into this fantasy of being, like, the broody morally-ambiguous second-in-command shadow puppetmaster behind a bumbling but truly paragonic hero. You know what I'm saying? Like that yeah, Jake is kind of an incompetent dummy, but his heart is in the right place, and Dirk's fantasy was sort of them being this power couple where Dirk's the guy pulling the strings and making the sacrifices and getting his hands dirty so Jake's heroism can go off without a hitch. This is exactly the fantasy that Hal enacts on Dirk's behalf. Hal also mentions that Dirk's original plan was a much more lowkey version of this - Dirk wanted to be Jake's client player so that Jake would be able to "save" him.

But Jake's really just not that guy. He has pretty major performance anxiety, turns out to really hate being put on a pedestal or shoved into the spotlight, and has difficulty taking any sort of major stand one way or another.

Anyway, you'll note that these are all problems that Tavros does NOT share. Tavros is, in fact, based in Peter Pan, and one of Peter's most defining character traits is his eternal cockiness - literally described as the cockiest boy in the world. The things that make Tavros so embarrassing are in fact these Peter Pan traits - no matter how much people bully him, he somehow still walks out of it with an irrational arrogance, like he's moments away from becoming the coolest guy on the team. Like Peter, he just never learns his lesson.

Let's remember how he got countertrolled by Dave so hard that he blocked the guy, and then decided to drop the worst bars anyone has ever heard as a form of payback (Dave left him on read), and he spent the next page congratulating himself on how sick his fires were. Or how he realizes that he accidentally killed Jade's grandpa, but still tries to get her to date him by being like "yeah but look at the amount of bravado it took to ask you out... surely that heroism deserves to be rewarded". or how he thinks he has a chance at vriska after they spritesplode, and then decides she's actually mean and he's better than her, giggling to himself about how bad he owned her while flying away (and everyone can hear him).

now, these repeated negative incidents do in fact leave him emotionally injured, as we see in gcatavros's speech to jake about how he likes to run away from relationships before people realize that he sucks. but he also rebounds like, super fucking fast and easily. It would not take much to reinflate his ego.

And here's another thing about him. He's also WAY emotionally vulnerable and communicative. Like to an embarrassing and often uncomfortable degree. Like, even in his first convo with Vriska, he's like oh yeah, rufio is my self confidence, kanaya told me to give it a name, she might have been playing a joke on me, i guess im worried about that, but i still did it. Like Tavros why are you telling her all of that. But, look, that's fucking catnip to Dirk, yknow? hes literally on his hands and knees begging for a crumb of insight into Jake's emotional landscape, and here Tavros is just spilling out every single thought he has with zero filter whatsoever to literally anybody who will listen.

So he's got this exact same bumbling, cringefail, naive but unerringly idealistic bent to him as Jake does (Pages 🙄), this "one-of-a-kind" attribute that Brain Ghost Dirk lowkey reveals is what drew Dirk to Jake in the first place, but unlike Jake, he knows exactly what he wants, he asks for it readily, and he's communicative to a fault. And also, like Rainbow Dash, he is spunky and associated with flight.

Again, we already know that Dirk is incredibly deferential to his partner's preferences. So I ask of you: would Dirk not fucking love playing fiduspawn with Tavros? Would he not find tavros's incredibly terrible rapping endearing to the extreme? would his stupid gay heart not flutter at Tavros's brash displays of completely unwarranted, audacious bravado?

Listen, it would be so fucking funny. Tavros would 100% assume the dominant position in that relationship regardless of any objective evidence to the contrary. He would unironically and proudly declare that he has made Dirk his bitch after spitting the most vile rhymes to ever grace paradox space. Dirk will never emotionally recover from this

[hs-rarepairs]

Round Two!

Which Rarepair Is Better?

Dirk Strider/Tavros Nitram

Dave Strider/Tavros Nitram

Voting ended onFeb 12

Propaganda:

Dirk/Tavros

Dirk has a thing for pages. Tavros could do with someone willing to give him a chance

Dave/Tavros

i legit think this wouldve been better than davekat honestly. dave could teach tavros to stand up for himself and tavros can help cure dave of his irony poisoning ♡

[hairscare]

I don’t actively ship this but once I read a Tavros/Dirk fic that was really cute

orange boys

[oopslmaodeactivatedcunts]

:^) edit tiem

hand base by @deepseaspriteblog

[imhereformysciencefriends]

dude tell me abt pale dirktav??

OKAY SO I read this really great flushed DirkTav fic a while back and basically all the reasons why they worked out great in flush are also reasons why they would be excellent in pale but like okay so Tavros seems pretty meek, right? Seems like he’s easy to push around, and to a certain extent sure, he is, he’s perfectly willing to let people who know more than him about a given Thing take charge about the Thing. But like when you get to stuff he knows he’s a stubborn little shit, and he’s got a good moral compass that takes an EXTENDED barrage of negativity to start nudging (and even then he bounces back fairly quickly once removed from the toxic source) and so then we have Dirk. He’s innately led to people he thinks he can control because he’s got some moral problems- but he’s honestly trying to work through them- but that doesn’t change that he’s sorta instinctively leaning towards people he can get to do what he wants and Tavros is just all sweet smiles and pretty eyes and Dirk comes in like “yes hello I am here and in charge” and Tavros just looks at him, shakes his head, and pats his arm with a “oh honey.” And then Dirk proceeds to get the greatest paradox of his hyper-analytical life because Tavros is so???? Sweet??? But he will hesitate -5000 seconds before hoisting Dirk’s ass up over his shoulder like a bag of feed and make him sleep/eat/get like ten minutes of fresh air, Dirk, this isn’t, that hard. And Tavros gets someone who is very upfront and frank about how smart Dirk thinks he is and EXACTLY HOW Dirk thinks he’s smart, highlighting Tavros’s strong points and praising them accordingly (much the same as he does with Jake) but also remaining aware of Tavros’s faults and helping him deal with them in a roundabout “oh me am I helping” way that allows Tavros to feel like he’s accomplished the progress on his own, even though Tavros sees through Dirk and knows all those little tricks and ploys are really just meant to help and Tavros APPRECIATES that bc Dirk isn’t forcing anything, Dirk is just painstakingly lining up the situation to the point where Tavros would be silly not to achieve progress/personal growth.

tl;dr Tavros won’t take Dirk’s bullshit and will take care of him and Dirk gives accurate, meaningful feedback and provides opportunities for Tavros to grow

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

question! apologies if you've already answered this, but you've talked about how each alpha kid has a beta troll counterpart that would match well(or at least, was alluded to match well) with them thematically, or at least fit their interests. roxy = eridan, jake = vriska, jane = equius. following that theming, who would dirk's be?

It's not as obvious for Dirk, but given the pattern followed by the other alpha kids, probably Tavros?

The other kids, it's practically indisputable - Jake's intro literally yammers about how he loves "cerulean knockouts, hubba hubba" and how he wishes he could be the guy who dated Neytiri from James Cameron's Avatar, wording it in a way that makes it sound exactly like the TaVris SGRUB situationship. The other big hint is that Jake is pretty much at the center of the venn diagram of Vriska's two love interests, John and Tavros (three if you count Nic Cage). Let's note that one of those interests shares a Class with Jake, a Page.

Roxy's is also practically indisputable; she fucking loves wizards, she's a hipster, but crucially, she also has a crush on a broody Prince, and her other interest is John, who's got black hair and glasses (and in their initial meeting, she literally isn't even listening to him, just going "wow... black hair and glasses... is he single" hahaha). Similar to VrisJake, Roxy is in the center of the venn diagram of Eridan's two red interests, Feferi and Nepeta - a bubbly pink nice girl, and a cat-themed Rogue. Let's notice again that some major foreshadowing here is class.

Finally, Jane literally talks about having a wall of "cobalt beefcakes," and she's constantly described as a "tightass" who starts out correcting peoples' grammar and chastising them when they cuss. Equius's main redcrush? Aradia... a Maid, except he laments her low social status because he's really into being dommed. Well. Guess who is also a Maid and of high social status (heiress).

So, following this pattern, it's very likely that Dirk's redrom situation will be someone who shares a class with his extant red interest... which would be a Page. Moreover, while it's subtler, his interest sets him up for Tavros in a similar way to the other three - he unironically loves Rainbow Dash, a flying horse, with Tavros also having a preoccupation with flight; he has a tiny horse similar to Tinkerbull (and Tavros also has horse associations, given his fiduspawn of choice is Horsearoni), and he's shown in his introduction rapping with a robot significantly less good at it than he is, winning by dousing it with orange soda. This same orange soda is later used by Dirk to pacify Gamzee, and Tavros and Gamzee are implied to be destined moirails, so that also gives it a more direct Tavros association. It's also not the first time soda of a corresponding blood color has been used to represent a troll character, as part of pale EriKar foreshadowing is the cherry-red Faygo that Eridan picks up. Tavros is a real mess in the romance department, meanwhile, because he regularly pursues people purely for status/accomplishment - Vriska (after dying) and Jade most notably - but he also has a weird something-something with Dave, being the first one to show up to doomed!Dave's bubble besides Aradia to challenge him to a rap battle. As we've seen with Vriska and John, an indicator of compatability might be interest in a similar family member.

Plus, the glimpse we get to see of Jake and Dirk casts Dirk in an interesting light - he IS needy and IS pushy, but his messages largely read as "what do YOU want to do? Let's go do something fun for YOU. Or if you need space, that's OK, just tell me and I'll give you some. But still you have to tell me". In a very Heart-esque way, he's super comfortable putting his own wants aside to accommodate his partner - he's just pushy about knowing what his partner wants.

(Quick sidenote - I believe that Hal is a fully separate entity from Dirk, so I don't lump any of Hal's actions in with Dirk's.)

This actually seems like what Tavros would need - as we see with Gamzee, he ghosts people who are too forward, but Gamzee is also deeply pessimistic and self-conscious, so he probably didn't bother trying to get back in touch after the first ghosting. Meanwhile, we see from Vriska that Tavros actually doesn't mind some pushiness, and there are even parts of their adventure he had fun with, since he just genuinely loves adventuring - she was just ultimately too inconsiderate and selfish for him.

And again, the major caveat to all these relationships is that every character needs character development to get to a point where the relationship is viable. Eridan, Vriska, AND Equius, given how they were before they died, and sometimes after, were all far too unstable, their worst traits untreated, for them to be good matches with the Alpha kids - but with some char dev and maturation, each of these characters' best selves are basically perfect fits.

Vriska's character development cuts out her need to live up to her society's murderous standards, and learns to be a bit nicer, meaning she ends up as a confident, take-no-shit bitch, whose adventuring style would mesh well with Jake, who's a fan of a challenge to a greater degree than Tavros and rebounds better from humiliation and defeat.

Eridan at full character development is likely still a naturally arrogant-sounding, despotic-acting freak, but firmly on the side of good (the "i will kill for you" type of friend), much like Slinus Marlevort from Roxy's wizard fanfic, but 1) she's really into all of that, she DOES NOT STOP describing Slinus as Hot as Hell, and 2) he's also a simp, like he would do anything his dating partner asked LOL

Equius at full character development has had a very long reflection on the fact that he's mostly just got a fetish, which - because he hasn't realized it's a fetish - he's inadvertantly been pushing onto other people. And he would stop that. Equius, at his core, is a polite and helpful lil' stoic, and most of his casteism is a combination of being a sub mixed with "this makes sense to me as an explanation of the horrible things that happen around me". Once he learns to rein in his fetish, his natural tendency is already to be the strong, silent type - à la Ron Swanson, Jane's "ideal man". Moreover, we see from tiaratop!Jane (and Jane and Jade later describe their mind control as them acting on their worst impulses, so it's still meant to be read as a reflection of Jane) treats Jake like an object/breeding stud, meaning that there's a part of Jane that's looking for submission, deference, and obedience in a partner............ Equius.

And finally, Tavros with full character development sees Tavros friendly, nice, confident, and outgoing. It's the version of him that puts together a massive pirate army at the end just by asking them nicely. Dirk's introduction describes that he unironically loves Rainbow Dash... because she's so spunky <3. Spunky is a good word to describe this final form of Tavros we get to see at the end.

Just wish I could see these characters happy, man. Like, I get why I can't, but still.

[elliotts-fic-recs]

Caffeine High by mtjester

Homestuck, T, Tavros Nitram/Dirk Strider | Sollux Captor & Tavros Nitram | Sollux Captor/Dirk Strider | Gamzee Makara & Karkat Vantas, 58,677

Your favorite place on the ship is a small wing of the upper deck dining hall called a “coffee shop.” You don’t really know much about it, actually, except for the little things you hear now and then. Coffee is a drink from a planet called Earth, as is the alien chained to the counter, who calls itself a “human.” You only know that much because you overheard it say so to an angry highblood once.

includes: no sburb/sgurb, non-sexual slavery, spaceships, troll culture, coffee in space, caffeine-sensitive trolls, stimulants

READ HERE!