phrixphrax:

edoro:

phrixphrax:

edoro:

phrixphrax:

edoro:

Hey

hey

fandom

Tavros isn’t ‘a pussy’ or ‘a weakling’ or ‘a wimp’ or ‘useless’ or ‘a helpless sobbing victim’

okay

I mean for one, like, he actually is a lot tougher than most people give him credit for? Vriska walks all over him but he still stands up to her, like, he straight up TELLS her he doesn’t want to talk to her, he doesn’t like her, he’s not going to apologize, she’s being ridiculous, etc. She’s spent years emotionally abusing him after disabling him and he still stands up to her.

And second, seriously, if you think OH MAN WHY IS TAVROS SUCH A DUMB WIMP WHO LETS PEOPLE HURT HIM??? than congratulations, you’re a victim-blaming shithead who doesn’t understand that he’s been emotionally abused for years, to the point where he legitimately doesn’t even see himself as having any worth because he’s disabled. He is a victim of severe abuse in a culture that tells him and his abuser that these are their proper places and, if anything, she’s being too lenient.

You don’t have to like Tavros, or think he’s interesting or even useful, but if want to hate on him about being ‘weak’ or to try to deny that the abuse he went through is tragic and awful, you’re kind of terrible.

That’s all true, but doesn’t hit on the reason I hate him. As soon as he gets his legs he becomes a smug snake. Tavros isn’t a nice guy. He’s a Nice Guy. You know, the kind that helps a beautiful woman purely because he expects sex in return.

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004950

   He saves Jade’s life

AT: i MEAN, i SAW THAT YOUR LUSUS SAVED YOU ANYWAY, iN ADVANCE,
AT: aND,
AT: i JUST WANTED,
AT: tO MAKE IT POSSIBLE SO THAT i WAS THE ONE INVOLVED WITH BEING THE HERO THERE,
AT: tO SAVE YOU,
AT: lIKE, tO PUT MYSELF IN YOUR STORY, iN A BRAVE CAPACITY, bECAUSE,
AT: tHAT’S WHAT FEELING GOOD AND POSITIVE ABOUT YOURSELF IS ALL ABOUT,

Right, saves Jade’s life, then kills her Grandpa, which he doesn’t care about, then hits on her

AT: wOW, tHAT SURE WAS A HARD THING TO SAY AND MADE ME INCREDIBLY NERVOUS,
AT: bUT i SAID IT BECAUSE OF MY REMARKABLE LEG-POWERED SELF CONFIDENCE,
AT: aND NOW i THINK ALL THAT’S LEFT IS DEFINITELY YOUR RECIPROCATION ABOUT THAT, pROBABLY,

and when she shoots him down he immediately threatens to get back at her by forcing Beq to attack Jack.

GG: you said you are asking me permission first and i appreciate that
GG: but if you are asking im afraid my answer is no!
AT: oKAY, i RESPECT THAT,
AT: bUT, i WONDER,

GG: what?

AT: i WONDER IF A TRULY SELF CONFIDENT GUY, wITH THE BEST SELF ESTEEM THERE IS, wOULD EVEN NEED TO ASK,
AT: mAYBE THE BEST GUY WOULD JUST KNOW HE WOULD BE SUCCESSFUL, aND WOULD DO IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, aND EVERYONE ELSE’S,

Tavros fans, be glad Vriska killed him when she did. Had he lived any longer or had you been paying more attention I don’t think you’d like him very much.

Yeah, that was kind of unfortunate, and I’d also like to point out that if you dislike Tavros for any reasons other than “he’s a useless wimp” then it’s fine.

I would like to throw in my two cents on that incident, though.

He did get really Nice Guy-ish and creepy, like, that entire thing made me super uncomfortable and the whole time I was going, “Oh, Tavros, no, stop being such a douche”, but on the other hand, I think it’s really sad in a way. Because he has legs, so he feels confident now, and the only way he knows how to be confident is to basically try to emulate Vriska and treat everyone around him like they aren’t really people, like they’re just part of his game he’s playing, and to be really pushy and brash and demand things like he has an inherent right to them.

I’m not saying that it’s OKAY that he did that, because hell no it wasn’t, but that’s also another facet of how emotionally fucked up he is, that he thinks ‘being confident’ = ‘acting like Vriska’. It shows that he still has no idea how to actually be confident so he’s overcompensating by being aggressively douchey.

Also, I’m pretty sure that at the end of that conversation, he had apologized and backed off. It might just be that I am a fan of him that makes me read that as being sincere, but I feel like it’s pretty in line with the rest of his character to be legitimately sorry he fucked it up.

Like, he’s never really been a huge douchebag like that. He’s a little dork and kind of punchable at times, and definitely someone who fucks up trying to be more confident and make himself feel better, because he’s hugely awkward and doesn’t really know how to interact with people, but I’ve never really felt like he was malicious or actually wanted to manipulate or hurt people.

Again, that doesn’t mean that wasn’t what he tried to do to Jade, or that what he did was okay, but I don’t think that he’d necessarily have continued being a smugly manipulative Nice Guy if he hadn’t been killed.

It’s a definite pattern that the victims of abusers become abusers themselves. Plus, he saw himself as a Hero. Have you ever read any of those uncomfortable chauvinistic heroic stories where the big strong dashing perfect white-male hero kills all the non-white-people and then rapes one of their women, but it’s okay because she likes it and falls in love anyways?

Even these days we’ve got stuff like Twilight, where Edward is so rough during sex Bella falls unconscious and then he FINISHES ANYWAYS. And she gets pregnant and their demon child literally chews it’s way out of her stomach and this is portrayed as ROMANTIC.

That’s the kind of hero Rufio always struck me as. Now, take all this horrible stuff and put it into a culture where Kismesis is considered a valid romance option. I really don’t feel there was much hope for Tavros turning out well.

Oh, and need I remind you that Trolls regularly genocide their enemies?

I try to stay away from those stories, actually, because they distress me. 

I think the problem here is that we both have very different readings of Tavros. You seem to really be focused on just the surface layer of his actions, without considering any of the context behind them or his previous behavior.

I think it’s really obvious Tavros didn’t see himself as a hero. He WANTED to. He was trying SO HARD to be okay with himself, to like himself, to see himself as someone who had value. He’d spent years feeling utterly worthless and now finally circumstances had occurred where he could see himself as someone with worth, since he wasn’t disabled anymore, but his low self-esteem wasn’t magically cured.

So he overcompensated and, again, behaved like his abuser. Which I have been saying he did. I’d also like to point out that there’s not a one hundred percent correlation between being abused and becoming an abuser. It’s a trend, yes, but there are also plenty of people who are abused and DON’T abuse others because they don’t want to put anyone else through that, and people who abuse that weren’t abused themselves. Please don’t try to say that just because Tavros was abused it is VERY VERY PROBABLE that he will become an abuser, because it’s not. It might be more likely, but it’s not nearly as close to a sure thing as you’re trying to say.

Twilight is also kind of completely unrelated here. I know about Twilight, I think it’s awful and also portrays an abusive relationship dynamic. It’s not related even vaguely to how Tavros views himself. I do think there is validity in thinking he tries to view himself as the hero who swoops in and saves everything and rescues the girl, which is not quite the same as swooping in, killing everyone, and TAKING the girl. Similar, though.

The existence of romantic rivalry among trolls doesn’t have any bearing here either, really. For one, Tavros didn’t exactly display hate towards anyone, and especially not Jade. He was a Nice Guy to Jade, which would be redrom, but, again, he backed off after she pointed out how shitty he was being. Because he’s NOT Vriska and he DOESN’T view himself as better than everyone else or automatically deserving of whatever he wants.

Look, I’m not saying you have to like him, but you’re basing your entire interpretation of him off of one conversation that was pretty wildly out of character compared to how he’d behaved before, and clearly a result of him trying (and failing) to be more confident, that resulted in him apologizing and backing off.

I’m NOT saying that what he did was okay. I’m NOT saying it wasn’t creepy and douchey and gross. I absolutely understand being incredibly skeeved out by that. I’m NOT saying he has to be your favorite character or that you even have to like him.

I’m just saying that I don’t think something that someone does once, and then apologizes for, is a good thing to base your judgment of their entire character off of.

Personally, the apology didn’t make much of an impact on me. He had already accomplished his goal of scaring her for rejecting his advances. It wasn’t a “I did something wrong” apology it was more of a “I’m running out of self-confidence don’t be mad at me” apology.

I just view this whole conversation and the fact that it IS wildly out of character going on his past behavior as incredibly revealing. This is the kind of person he wants to be.

 
As for the kismesis bit… This is stomach churning, but I was implying that if he raped her and she DIDN’T turn around and instantly fall in love with him for it, as is likely to happen, Alternian society might view her reaction to that as a valid way of starting a kismesis.

You make a lot of good points though and I’m rethinking my position a bit.

It didn’t show me you replied, for some reason.

I feel like the apology was more in keeping with the rest of his character, though. And also, like mercurialmalcontent said, abusive behavior is not just ONE conversation or ONE action, it’s a whole pattern of the way someone acts in a variety of different situations. We’ve seen Tavros do one douchey thing, that was, let me emphasize, VERY CREEPY and WRONG and DOUCHEY TO THE MAX and I am not in any way defending it or saying it was okay that he did that, that his actions were somehow NOT creepy/douchey/wrong, or any of that. But he did it once, and he backed off, and he even said he’d understand if Jade didn’t want to be friends with him anymore, after the way he acted.

To me, that sounds like someone who is legitimately sorry about what they did. And I don’t think that it being wildly out of character necessarily means that’s the kind of person he WANTS to be. He doesn’t think Vriska is nice and doesn’t really like her, after all, and again, he’s basically acting exactly like her. He doesn’t want to be like Vriska, he wants to be confident and feel good about himself, and the only way he knows how to express that is by acting like Vriska. But it was shown to him by Jade and I am SURE would have been shown to him by the rest of his friends that that’s not how you treat people, that’s not how to make friends, and so on.

At this point we’re both just hypothesizing, so there’s no way to really prove who’s right, but I don’t think it’s very likely that he would have continued to act like that. I don’t think his friends would have let him, and I don’t think that he, when he realized he was being a bully, would have wanted to be that kind of person. It just doesn’t fit with the rest of his character and I think that you need to interpret people’s actions by how they’ve acted in the past, too.

I also don’t think that him raping Jade would…ever happen? Like, that’s just kind of completely out of left field. At no point did he indicate he wanted to force her to have sex with him. He wanted her to love him, and thought that being forceful and confident would make her have feelings for him, but once she said no he didn’t push it. He kept being kind of douchey after that, which could be interpreted as punishing her for rejecting him, but he never brought the issue of redrom up again and instead offered to just be friends, then even said he’d understand if THAT didn’t happen because of how he behaved.

Whether or not rape is seen as an acceptable caliginous action in troll society is really kind of irrelevant here, because I honestly am not seeing how that situation would even occur. You’d have to do a LOT of explaining to make that seem plausible. 

(via phrex)