App for Gargleblasted
OOC:
Name: Freshy
Are you over 16?: Yes!
Personal LJ: fresh_debonair
Email: twin_ebonyivory @ yahoo.co.jp
Timezone: EST
Other contact: AIM- VontAuxCieux
Characters already in the game: Vergil, Marie, Holmes (2009), and Pip!
How did you find us?: I'm already in-game!
IC:
Character name: Tavros Nitram
Fandom: Homestuck
Timeline: After talking to Jade about killing her grandfather (Post-Hivebent)
Age: 6 solar sweeps, which is roughly 13 human years!
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: Tavros has the ability to commune with wild animals and magical beasts and wildlife in general. He's like a horse whisperer, except he can do that with, well, any animal, really. His weapon of choice (strife specibus) is a lance, but he's really kind of terrible at fighting in general, so he mostly uses his wildlife communing powers to control and subdue the imps and orcs that would otherwise have squashed him. His communing powers are actually quite advanced, however lame it might seem-- on a few occasions, he's seen communing and controlling his friends' lusii (the troll equivalent of guardians, rendered in various animal forms), which is no mean feat.
How would they use their abilities?: To make friends with the wildlife of the Thor...? It might actually be interesting to see if Tavros could possibly commune with more...animal-like aliens on the ship, for maximum hilarity. He can also commune with wildlife so they can engage in roleplaying activities and card games with him. SO LONELY, TAVROS...
Appearance: Tavros is an Alternian troll, but he looks pretty humanoid, save for the gray skin and his rather prominent horns (shaped like bull-horns). He has black hair styled in what I can only describe as something between a crew cut and a fauxhawk (god that sounds terrible, I'm so sorry Tavros). Other distinguishing features involve having yellow eyes and two little protruding fangs on either corner of his mouth. His wardrobe is pretty simple: black pants, a black short-sleeve jacket with a similarly black T-shirt underneath, adorned with the tauros (♉) symbol. He's also a paraplegic, due to circumstances in the past which will be discussed later, but one of his friends later kindly saws off his lower half so he can get a pair of robotic legs!
No, really, that actually happens.
Background/Personality:
Once upon a time, there was a troll boy named Tavros Nitram. Tavros Nitram was no ordinary troll boy, however: no, he had a super special alter ego! His alter ego was called 'Pupa Pan', and as Pupa Pan, Tavros would fly through the windows of little troll kids, and...
...Okay, so no, none of that ever actually happened outside of Tavros' dreams. But, Tavros is indeed a troll boy, heralding from a planet called Alternia, a planet that existed millions of years before the more familiar human Earth. Trolls are grey-skinned, horned, humanoid species who are known for being aggressive, forward, strong-willed, strangely prophetic, and altogether quite odd. Tavros is none of those things, except for the odd bit, but we'll get into that later.
Tavros was raised by his lusus-- the aforementioned troll equivalent of a guardian-- Tinkerbull, which is basically Tinkerbell if Tinkerbell was a bull. His lusus' form may account for Tavros' fascination with fantasy and fairty tales, such as 'Pupa Pan': just as the name suggests, Pupa Pan is the troll equivalent of Peter Pan, and Tavros had always idolized and fantasized about one day having Pupa Pan fly into his room and take him away on a ~magical adventure~. All in all, despite Tavros' somewhat...eccentric nature, he led a pretty normal life, consisting of chatting with his troll friends online via Trollian, exchanging SICK BURNS via slam poetry, and engaging in harmless roleplaying.
It was only when the harmless roleplaying turned into EXTREME roleplaying that Tavros' life took a little turn for the worse.
One day, Tavros, along with his troll friend Aradia Megido, decided to engage in a session of 'Flarp'-- a form of EXTREME live action roleplaying that involved all the real-life risks of being hurt and killed and such. He and Aradia formed a team, 'Team Charge', while two other troll acquaintances of Tavros', Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope, formed 'Team Scourge'. Once engaging in the game, Tavros eagerly chose to be the class of 'BOY-SKYLARK', modeled after his hero, Pupa Pan, complete with the ridiculous green outfit and the funny little elf hat. While his teammate (and Tavros too) admitted that his choice of class wasn't too wise in the beginning, mostly due to how weak his stats were, they were both more intent on having fun and doing sidequests, as opposed to being powerhungry like the rest of Flarpers seemed to be. This arrangement suited Tavros fine, and he set out on his extreme roleplaying journal, confident that he'd be the best BOY SKYLARK ever...
...until, of course, he found himself at the edge of a cliff, faced with a bunch of enemies that he was clearly underqualified to take on.
At a loss as to what to do, he called both his teammate, Aradia, and his less intimidating friend on the other team, Terezi, to help him out, to no avail. They were both failing to respond to his plea, and Vriska, the one who was responsible for setting up Tavros' situation in the game, was pressuring him to do something, anything. Being the timid and passive troll that he is, Tavros stated his inability to take action and suggested that he should just surrender and quit his session, thereby admitting defeat.
Vriska didn't like this one bit.
So, instead of letting him back out like a pansy, she went ahead and used her powers of mind control to make Tavros jump off of the cliff, intending to kill him in the process. Fortunately or unfortunately, she failed-- Tavros didn't die, but he permanently lost use of his legs due to the fall, rendering him a cripple. Ever since then, Tavros had to move around via wheelchair, which made his life a lot more difficult. This subsequently led to both Aradia and Terezi severing ties with Vriska for harming Tavros in that way-- Aradia promised herself that she would make Vriska pay, to which Vriska responded by killing her. BLUH BLUH HUGE BITCH. Terezi also swore revenge, and managed to blind seven of Vriska's eight eyes, but was later blinded by Vriska later as revenge. BLUH BLUH HUGE BITCH.
ANYWAY, roughly a half a sweep or a sweep (which is roughly 2 human years) after this happens, Tavros was once again invited to engage in a game with his troll friends. This time, the game was called Sgrub, and while it was, to some extent, a roleplaying game, the stakes were much higher with this one, as Tavros and his 11 other troll friends would soon find out: the game involved a complex web of interactions between all 12 trolls, wherein each troll would participate in manipulating and aiding another troll's environment in order to move them through 'Gates', which would--
--okay, this probably makes no sense, AND IT IS QUITE HARD TO EXPLAIN, but in a nutshell, to avoid recapping EVERY SINGLE DETAIL about Homestuck, I'll keep it short: initiating Sgrub also simultaneously alerted the trolls to the impending demise of their planet. The only way to survive impending and inevitable doom was to play and win Sgrub, thereby creating a new planet that the trolls could then repopulate.
So! What did Tavros do during this crucial and extremely important game session? He mostly used up his time on useless side missions and took the most conventional and longest routes to get anywhere, of course! Which was probably fine, because it wasn't as if he wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing-- but once again, Tavros had to contend with the looming shadow over his existence, in the form of Vriska Serket. Vriska was Tavros' 'server player', which meant that she was the one that had direct control over what happened in Tavros' environment and such. A series of awkward events happened, one of which involved Tavros finding Vriska's dream self and being unable to kiss her because he's crippled, BUT I DIGRESS. Though that is quite important to his characterization and such which I'll go into later.
In any case, Tavros and Vriska had, for a short while, a tentative partnership, which was mostly comprised of Vriska manipulating the shit out of a very passive Tavros into doing what she wanted him to do. But despite that, they seemed to relatively get along during this span of time, gaining all the levels and getting all the treasure. But! Their merry shenanigans were suddenly cut short, when, out of literally nowhere, Aradia (alive in the form of a robot) appeared and finally made Vriska pay for killing her. Aradia basically beat Vriska senseless, leaving her to bleed out. This would have been traumatizing enough to Tavros as it was, without Vriska then managing to STILL COERCE HIM to take her half-dead body to what was known as a 'Quest cocoon', instead of trying to revive her there on the spot. Now, when a player dies on a Quest cocoon (while their dream self is also still alive, long story), they achieve MEGA SUPER STATUS, aptly named 'God-tier'. Vriska, upon reaching the Quest Cocoon in her half-dying state, ordered Tavros to kill her. She would have died anyway, due to massive amounts of blood loss, but she insisted that Tavros end it quickly by just impaling her with his lance instead. Tavros, thoroughly disturbed and traumatized by this whole business, was unable to kill her, and fled the scene, choosing to spend the rest of the Sgrub session asleep.
Bluh bluh things happened afterwards that involved the trolls hitting an unforeseen setback, and instead of populating the planet that they made, it became planet earth. The 12 trolls were confined to a lab on some obscure meteor, waiting for the incompetent humans to start their own session of Sgrub, renamed Sburb. Shit sucked. It was then, though, that Tavros got his new pair of SWEET ROBOTIC LEGS, courtesy of a fellow troll by the name of Equius. Of course, he had to have his legs chainsawed off by another troll by the name of Kanaya, but it was totally worth it.
(Oh my god why is this app so long I'm so sorry)
After the whole Sgrub fiasco, Tavros then turned his attention to conquering stairs with his new legs (I TOLD YOU BRO...), trolling the humans Jade and Dave via Trollian, and awkwardly trying to kindle a friendship with the human girl, Jade.
And then everything exploded and now he's on the Thor. Hooray!
Now! On to Tavros' personality. As it may be excruciatingly apparent by now, Tavros is a very sensitive and somewhat insecure troll, which makes him really not a very good troll at all. Since trolls are, by nature, somewhat negative and prone to verbally attacking each other in every opportunity, Tavros faces a lot of mockery from his peers. This leads to him having a somewhat shaky self-esteem and a faltering self-image, to the point where he actually has to make a physical and imaginary embodiment of his self confidence, named Rufio, to believe in. Rufio is a construct that Tavros made upon suggestion by someone else (seriously, he has a lot of confidence issues), and he often thinks about what Rufio would do or what kind of things Rufio would approve of when faced with a problem. Now, it also doesn't help that he's constantly being bullied and pressured by Vriska, whose abusive behavior he swallows with a patience that is somewhat mind-boggling-- as one of his troll peers, Karkat, aptly pointed out, Tavros seems genuinely unable to really hate somebody. Tavros simply doesn't have that kind of personality, which makes him quite a weird and inadequate troll, but a pretty agreeable human, if he were one. He's almost incapable of being aggressive: he tells Vriska that he's not entirely sure if she should use her mind-control powers or if he himself should use his wildlife communing powers during Sgrub, because he thinks that that might be 'cheating' and 'not doing things the right way'.
In short, he's a doormat but he's a really nice guy. Too nice for his own good, really.
However, it's a bit understandable why his passive nature prompts Vriska to push and shove at him. While Vriska wanted to pursue a strange troll romance with Tavros (troll romances are very complicated, to say the least), Tavros' indecisiveness and displays of cowardice disappointed Vriska time and time again. When she wanted him to kiss her, he couldn't kiss her. When she wanted him, during Flarp, to show himself as somewhat worthy as a troll, he chose instead to surrender. While Tavros isn't entirely at fault for doing any of these things, his inability to make tough decisions ultimately kind of leads him to being pushed to horrible situations, the poor guy. What's sad is that he really is quite endearing, despite his blatant lack of self-confidence.
After getting his robotic legs, which give him a boost of self-confidence, and after meeting Jade, however, Tavros decides to 'change', resolving to cultivate his self-esteem by not apologizing for anything. Which is basically kind of a mask for his insecurities by constantly self-affirming that he doesn't have any. Yeah. More often than not, Tavros sort of pushes his newfound 'self-respect' too much by saying a bit more than he intends to and winding up having to apologize for sounding 'too forward'. This isn't anything new, because he'd always had the tendency to be a little too sensitive or a little too excited about something, and consequently having to sort of. Apologize his way through it. The Flarp session is a good example of Tavros getting in way over his head, for example.
Tavros is also a huge dork. He believes in fairies and Pupa Pan, and he keeps his window open some nights believing that one day, Pupa might come and fly him away. His other hobbies include slam poetry, which is basically the worst kind of 'rap' imaginable. He believes that his 'beats' are 'strict', but in reality, they are horrible. Horrible and terrible. He's really only a good troll when he's dishing out his 'sick rhymes', and even then, he's unaware of it.
All in all, Tavros is a dreamer and kind of a blunderer when it comes to talking to people, who also has self-esteem issues but is really quite endearing and agreeable, on human principles. He's a failure, probably, when it comes to trolls, but he's really not a bad guy at all.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yes! The Guide plugin is called FlamingFerret, and to earn money, characters can do missions, mooch off of others, or just plain steal, which Tavros will definitely not be doing.
1st person sample:
uH, hELLO, i GUESS,
at FIRST i THOUGHT THIS WAS,
kIND OF LIKE A PUPA PAN ADVENTURE,
wHERE YOU WAKE UP AND YOU'RE SUDDENLY, sOMEWHERE ELSE,
aND EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT AND, wELL,
i'M NOT QUITE SURE WHERE i'M GOING WITH THIS, bUT,
i GUESS IT WAS KIND OF NICE, aT FIRST,
eSPECIALLY WITH ALL THE THINGS THAT WERE, gOING ON BACK IN THE VEIL,
wHICH IS NOW APPARENTLY, dESTROYED,
bUT THEN i HAD TO FILL OUT, aLL THESE FORMS,
aLL OF THE FORMS,
aND THEY TOLD ME, aFTER i DID ALL OF THEM,
tHAT THEY DON'T LIKE HOW i WRITE,
wHICH IS ALRIGHT, i SUPPOSE, bUT
rEWRITING THEM IS GOING TO BE A LOT OF WORK,
bUT i GUESS i SHOULDN'T, yOU KNOW,
lET THIS WEIGH DOWN ON, mY SELF CONFIDENCE,
bUT,
mY HANDS ARE STARTING TO, kIND OF, hURT,
aND i AM WONDERING IF, aNY OF MY FRIENDS ARE HERE,
aND IF THEY ARE, iF THEY ARE OKAY,
3rd person sample:
Tavros had never been an assertive figure, in his little niche of what he called his 'friends'-- if anything, he was more often than not the brunt of more than one joke within his little circle, usually initiated by the more outspoken trolls, regarding his hobbies and his choice of idols. Those subtle insults didn't faze Tavros too terribly, though once or twice he'd tried to think of a suitable rebuttal, only to face vehement retaliation from the other party. And by 'other party', it was most often than not Karkat who was the dealer of such passionate rebukes. Tavros was convinced, correctly, that Karkat was ornery and angry towards most everyone, so, once again, Tavros was pretty alright with his position, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, sometimes he'd feel like maybe he could have spoken up, or maybe he could have done something else, but saying or thinking things like that would inevitably hurt Rufio. He didn't want that to happen, not really.
So, mild-mannered, sensitive Tavros set about finishing his refugee forms as he was told he had to do, still in somewhat of a confused daze regarding his 'world's destruction'. Hadn't Alternia already been destroyed, once? He wasn't exactly sure what was going on, or where they even were, or what timeframe, but he was pretty sure these so-called Vogons didn't want him to pester them with questions. So he chose not to ask, plodding away at his papers with a frown on his face.
He wondered if all his friends were here. He wondered if Vriska were here. He sure hoped that he wouldn't have to room with her-- that would be all kinds of awkward, and he wasn't entirely sure if he was up to the task of talking to her about...well, things that had happened. It was all pretty complicated, and he was getting kind of tired after signing his name on every document and reading all these things. All of these things.
Also, Vriska mildly terrified him, along with other...things, but that was another matter entirely. He'd think about them later: right now, he had papers to attend to.
Really, he was getting half tempted to start signing his name as 'Pupa Pan', by this point.
Questions?: Could Tavros possibly commune with NPC aliens, if they resembled animals closely enough?
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yessir!
Name: Freshy
Are you over 16?: Yes!
Personal LJ: fresh_debonair
Email: twin_ebonyivory @ yahoo.co.jp
Timezone: EST
Other contact: AIM- VontAuxCieux
Characters already in the game: Vergil, Marie, Holmes (2009), and Pip!
How did you find us?: I'm already in-game!
IC:
Character name: Tavros Nitram
Fandom: Homestuck
Timeline: After talking to Jade about killing her grandfather (Post-Hivebent)
Age: 6 solar sweeps, which is roughly 13 human years!
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: Tavros has the ability to commune with wild animals and magical beasts and wildlife in general. He's like a horse whisperer, except he can do that with, well, any animal, really. His weapon of choice (strife specibus) is a lance, but he's really kind of terrible at fighting in general, so he mostly uses his wildlife communing powers to control and subdue the imps and orcs that would otherwise have squashed him. His communing powers are actually quite advanced, however lame it might seem-- on a few occasions, he's seen communing and controlling his friends' lusii (the troll equivalent of guardians, rendered in various animal forms), which is no mean feat.
How would they use their abilities?: To make friends with the wildlife of the Thor...? It might actually be interesting to see if Tavros could possibly commune with more...animal-like aliens on the ship, for maximum hilarity. He can also commune with wildlife so they can engage in roleplaying activities and card games with him. SO LONELY, TAVROS...
Appearance: Tavros is an Alternian troll, but he looks pretty humanoid, save for the gray skin and his rather prominent horns (shaped like bull-horns). He has black hair styled in what I can only describe as something between a crew cut and a fauxhawk (god that sounds terrible, I'm so sorry Tavros). Other distinguishing features involve having yellow eyes and two little protruding fangs on either corner of his mouth. His wardrobe is pretty simple: black pants, a black short-sleeve jacket with a similarly black T-shirt underneath, adorned with the tauros (♉) symbol. He's also a paraplegic, due to circumstances in the past which will be discussed later, but one of his friends later kindly saws off his lower half so he can get a pair of robotic legs!
No, really, that actually happens.
Background/Personality:
Once upon a time, there was a troll boy named Tavros Nitram. Tavros Nitram was no ordinary troll boy, however: no, he had a super special alter ego! His alter ego was called 'Pupa Pan', and as Pupa Pan, Tavros would fly through the windows of little troll kids, and...
...Okay, so no, none of that ever actually happened outside of Tavros' dreams. But, Tavros is indeed a troll boy, heralding from a planet called Alternia, a planet that existed millions of years before the more familiar human Earth. Trolls are grey-skinned, horned, humanoid species who are known for being aggressive, forward, strong-willed, strangely prophetic, and altogether quite odd. Tavros is none of those things, except for the odd bit, but we'll get into that later.
Tavros was raised by his lusus-- the aforementioned troll equivalent of a guardian-- Tinkerbull, which is basically Tinkerbell if Tinkerbell was a bull. His lusus' form may account for Tavros' fascination with fantasy and fairty tales, such as 'Pupa Pan': just as the name suggests, Pupa Pan is the troll equivalent of Peter Pan, and Tavros had always idolized and fantasized about one day having Pupa Pan fly into his room and take him away on a ~magical adventure~. All in all, despite Tavros' somewhat...eccentric nature, he led a pretty normal life, consisting of chatting with his troll friends online via Trollian, exchanging SICK BURNS via slam poetry, and engaging in harmless roleplaying.
It was only when the harmless roleplaying turned into EXTREME roleplaying that Tavros' life took a little turn for the worse.
One day, Tavros, along with his troll friend Aradia Megido, decided to engage in a session of 'Flarp'-- a form of EXTREME live action roleplaying that involved all the real-life risks of being hurt and killed and such. He and Aradia formed a team, 'Team Charge', while two other troll acquaintances of Tavros', Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope, formed 'Team Scourge'. Once engaging in the game, Tavros eagerly chose to be the class of 'BOY-SKYLARK', modeled after his hero, Pupa Pan, complete with the ridiculous green outfit and the funny little elf hat. While his teammate (and Tavros too) admitted that his choice of class wasn't too wise in the beginning, mostly due to how weak his stats were, they were both more intent on having fun and doing sidequests, as opposed to being powerhungry like the rest of Flarpers seemed to be. This arrangement suited Tavros fine, and he set out on his extreme roleplaying journal, confident that he'd be the best BOY SKYLARK ever...
...until, of course, he found himself at the edge of a cliff, faced with a bunch of enemies that he was clearly underqualified to take on.
At a loss as to what to do, he called both his teammate, Aradia, and his less intimidating friend on the other team, Terezi, to help him out, to no avail. They were both failing to respond to his plea, and Vriska, the one who was responsible for setting up Tavros' situation in the game, was pressuring him to do something, anything. Being the timid and passive troll that he is, Tavros stated his inability to take action and suggested that he should just surrender and quit his session, thereby admitting defeat.
Vriska didn't like this one bit.
So, instead of letting him back out like a pansy, she went ahead and used her powers of mind control to make Tavros jump off of the cliff, intending to kill him in the process. Fortunately or unfortunately, she failed-- Tavros didn't die, but he permanently lost use of his legs due to the fall, rendering him a cripple. Ever since then, Tavros had to move around via wheelchair, which made his life a lot more difficult. This subsequently led to both Aradia and Terezi severing ties with Vriska for harming Tavros in that way-- Aradia promised herself that she would make Vriska pay, to which Vriska responded by killing her. BLUH BLUH HUGE BITCH. Terezi also swore revenge, and managed to blind seven of Vriska's eight eyes, but was later blinded by Vriska later as revenge. BLUH BLUH HUGE BITCH.
ANYWAY, roughly a half a sweep or a sweep (which is roughly 2 human years) after this happens, Tavros was once again invited to engage in a game with his troll friends. This time, the game was called Sgrub, and while it was, to some extent, a roleplaying game, the stakes were much higher with this one, as Tavros and his 11 other troll friends would soon find out: the game involved a complex web of interactions between all 12 trolls, wherein each troll would participate in manipulating and aiding another troll's environment in order to move them through 'Gates', which would--
--okay, this probably makes no sense, AND IT IS QUITE HARD TO EXPLAIN, but in a nutshell, to avoid recapping EVERY SINGLE DETAIL about Homestuck, I'll keep it short: initiating Sgrub also simultaneously alerted the trolls to the impending demise of their planet. The only way to survive impending and inevitable doom was to play and win Sgrub, thereby creating a new planet that the trolls could then repopulate.
So! What did Tavros do during this crucial and extremely important game session? He mostly used up his time on useless side missions and took the most conventional and longest routes to get anywhere, of course! Which was probably fine, because it wasn't as if he wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing-- but once again, Tavros had to contend with the looming shadow over his existence, in the form of Vriska Serket. Vriska was Tavros' 'server player', which meant that she was the one that had direct control over what happened in Tavros' environment and such. A series of awkward events happened, one of which involved Tavros finding Vriska's dream self and being unable to kiss her because he's crippled, BUT I DIGRESS. Though that is quite important to his characterization and such which I'll go into later.
In any case, Tavros and Vriska had, for a short while, a tentative partnership, which was mostly comprised of Vriska manipulating the shit out of a very passive Tavros into doing what she wanted him to do. But despite that, they seemed to relatively get along during this span of time, gaining all the levels and getting all the treasure. But! Their merry shenanigans were suddenly cut short, when, out of literally nowhere, Aradia (alive in the form of a robot) appeared and finally made Vriska pay for killing her. Aradia basically beat Vriska senseless, leaving her to bleed out. This would have been traumatizing enough to Tavros as it was, without Vriska then managing to STILL COERCE HIM to take her half-dead body to what was known as a 'Quest cocoon', instead of trying to revive her there on the spot. Now, when a player dies on a Quest cocoon (while their dream self is also still alive, long story), they achieve MEGA SUPER STATUS, aptly named 'God-tier'. Vriska, upon reaching the Quest Cocoon in her half-dying state, ordered Tavros to kill her. She would have died anyway, due to massive amounts of blood loss, but she insisted that Tavros end it quickly by just impaling her with his lance instead. Tavros, thoroughly disturbed and traumatized by this whole business, was unable to kill her, and fled the scene, choosing to spend the rest of the Sgrub session asleep.
Bluh bluh things happened afterwards that involved the trolls hitting an unforeseen setback, and instead of populating the planet that they made, it became planet earth. The 12 trolls were confined to a lab on some obscure meteor, waiting for the incompetent humans to start their own session of Sgrub, renamed Sburb. Shit sucked. It was then, though, that Tavros got his new pair of SWEET ROBOTIC LEGS, courtesy of a fellow troll by the name of Equius. Of course, he had to have his legs chainsawed off by another troll by the name of Kanaya, but it was totally worth it.
(Oh my god why is this app so long I'm so sorry)
After the whole Sgrub fiasco, Tavros then turned his attention to conquering stairs with his new legs (I TOLD YOU BRO...), trolling the humans Jade and Dave via Trollian, and awkwardly trying to kindle a friendship with the human girl, Jade.
And then everything exploded and now he's on the Thor. Hooray!
Now! On to Tavros' personality. As it may be excruciatingly apparent by now, Tavros is a very sensitive and somewhat insecure troll, which makes him really not a very good troll at all. Since trolls are, by nature, somewhat negative and prone to verbally attacking each other in every opportunity, Tavros faces a lot of mockery from his peers. This leads to him having a somewhat shaky self-esteem and a faltering self-image, to the point where he actually has to make a physical and imaginary embodiment of his self confidence, named Rufio, to believe in. Rufio is a construct that Tavros made upon suggestion by someone else (seriously, he has a lot of confidence issues), and he often thinks about what Rufio would do or what kind of things Rufio would approve of when faced with a problem. Now, it also doesn't help that he's constantly being bullied and pressured by Vriska, whose abusive behavior he swallows with a patience that is somewhat mind-boggling-- as one of his troll peers, Karkat, aptly pointed out, Tavros seems genuinely unable to really hate somebody. Tavros simply doesn't have that kind of personality, which makes him quite a weird and inadequate troll, but a pretty agreeable human, if he were one. He's almost incapable of being aggressive: he tells Vriska that he's not entirely sure if she should use her mind-control powers or if he himself should use his wildlife communing powers during Sgrub, because he thinks that that might be 'cheating' and 'not doing things the right way'.
In short, he's a doormat but he's a really nice guy. Too nice for his own good, really.
However, it's a bit understandable why his passive nature prompts Vriska to push and shove at him. While Vriska wanted to pursue a strange troll romance with Tavros (troll romances are very complicated, to say the least), Tavros' indecisiveness and displays of cowardice disappointed Vriska time and time again. When she wanted him to kiss her, he couldn't kiss her. When she wanted him, during Flarp, to show himself as somewhat worthy as a troll, he chose instead to surrender. While Tavros isn't entirely at fault for doing any of these things, his inability to make tough decisions ultimately kind of leads him to being pushed to horrible situations, the poor guy. What's sad is that he really is quite endearing, despite his blatant lack of self-confidence.
After getting his robotic legs, which give him a boost of self-confidence, and after meeting Jade, however, Tavros decides to 'change', resolving to cultivate his self-esteem by not apologizing for anything. Which is basically kind of a mask for his insecurities by constantly self-affirming that he doesn't have any. Yeah. More often than not, Tavros sort of pushes his newfound 'self-respect' too much by saying a bit more than he intends to and winding up having to apologize for sounding 'too forward'. This isn't anything new, because he'd always had the tendency to be a little too sensitive or a little too excited about something, and consequently having to sort of. Apologize his way through it. The Flarp session is a good example of Tavros getting in way over his head, for example.
Tavros is also a huge dork. He believes in fairies and Pupa Pan, and he keeps his window open some nights believing that one day, Pupa might come and fly him away. His other hobbies include slam poetry, which is basically the worst kind of 'rap' imaginable. He believes that his 'beats' are 'strict', but in reality, they are horrible. Horrible and terrible. He's really only a good troll when he's dishing out his 'sick rhymes', and even then, he's unaware of it.
All in all, Tavros is a dreamer and kind of a blunderer when it comes to talking to people, who also has self-esteem issues but is really quite endearing and agreeable, on human principles. He's a failure, probably, when it comes to trolls, but he's really not a bad guy at all.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yes! The Guide plugin is called FlamingFerret, and to earn money, characters can do missions, mooch off of others, or just plain steal, which Tavros will definitely not be doing.
1st person sample:
uH, hELLO, i GUESS,
at FIRST i THOUGHT THIS WAS,
kIND OF LIKE A PUPA PAN ADVENTURE,
wHERE YOU WAKE UP AND YOU'RE SUDDENLY, sOMEWHERE ELSE,
aND EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT AND, wELL,
i'M NOT QUITE SURE WHERE i'M GOING WITH THIS, bUT,
i GUESS IT WAS KIND OF NICE, aT FIRST,
eSPECIALLY WITH ALL THE THINGS THAT WERE, gOING ON BACK IN THE VEIL,
wHICH IS NOW APPARENTLY, dESTROYED,
bUT THEN i HAD TO FILL OUT, aLL THESE FORMS,
aLL OF THE FORMS,
aND THEY TOLD ME, aFTER i DID ALL OF THEM,
tHAT THEY DON'T LIKE HOW i WRITE,
wHICH IS ALRIGHT, i SUPPOSE, bUT
rEWRITING THEM IS GOING TO BE A LOT OF WORK,
bUT i GUESS i SHOULDN'T, yOU KNOW,
lET THIS WEIGH DOWN ON, mY SELF CONFIDENCE,
bUT,
mY HANDS ARE STARTING TO, kIND OF, hURT,
aND i AM WONDERING IF, aNY OF MY FRIENDS ARE HERE,
aND IF THEY ARE, iF THEY ARE OKAY,
3rd person sample:
Tavros had never been an assertive figure, in his little niche of what he called his 'friends'-- if anything, he was more often than not the brunt of more than one joke within his little circle, usually initiated by the more outspoken trolls, regarding his hobbies and his choice of idols. Those subtle insults didn't faze Tavros too terribly, though once or twice he'd tried to think of a suitable rebuttal, only to face vehement retaliation from the other party. And by 'other party', it was most often than not Karkat who was the dealer of such passionate rebukes. Tavros was convinced, correctly, that Karkat was ornery and angry towards most everyone, so, once again, Tavros was pretty alright with his position, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, sometimes he'd feel like maybe he could have spoken up, or maybe he could have done something else, but saying or thinking things like that would inevitably hurt Rufio. He didn't want that to happen, not really.
So, mild-mannered, sensitive Tavros set about finishing his refugee forms as he was told he had to do, still in somewhat of a confused daze regarding his 'world's destruction'. Hadn't Alternia already been destroyed, once? He wasn't exactly sure what was going on, or where they even were, or what timeframe, but he was pretty sure these so-called Vogons didn't want him to pester them with questions. So he chose not to ask, plodding away at his papers with a frown on his face.
He wondered if all his friends were here. He wondered if Vriska were here. He sure hoped that he wouldn't have to room with her-- that would be all kinds of awkward, and he wasn't entirely sure if he was up to the task of talking to her about...well, things that had happened. It was all pretty complicated, and he was getting kind of tired after signing his name on every document and reading all these things. All of these things.
Also, Vriska mildly terrified him, along with other...things, but that was another matter entirely. He'd think about them later: right now, he had papers to attend to.
Really, he was getting half tempted to start signing his name as 'Pupa Pan', by this point.
Questions?: Could Tavros possibly commune with NPC aliens, if they resembled animals closely enough?
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yessir!