Canon • 
Dubiously Canon- "Tavros" redirects here. For the human, see Tavros Crocker.
Tavros Nitram, also known by his Trollian handle adiosToreador, is one of the trolls in Homestuck.
His sign is Taurus, (♉) the Sign of the Unfledged, marking him as a member of the bronze caste and referencing both his association with bulls and his dreams of flight.
He types in reverse case, replacing periods with commas. He also uses an excess of commas, giving the impression of uncertainty or stuttering.
He was a member of the Red Team.
Concept and creation[]
Etymology[]
The name Tavros was suggested by Solaris and Nitram was suggested by perrybob. Tavros is Greek for "bull" and is also the Modern Greek pronunciation of the name Taurus. His name resembles that of the Doctor Who villain Davros, the wheelchair-using creator of the Daleks - this allusion may not be intentional, but it fits with his disability as well as his later acquisition of robotic parts. Nitram is Martin written backwards. There are two possible connections for this. Operation Taurus was the name of a planned prosecution by the Royal Ulster Constabulary against Martin McGuinness. Also, Mary Martin played Peter Pan in the 1954 musical. Nitram may also be derived from the word nitrate; it is suspected that nitrates can cause a condition that causes one's blood to turn brown.
From Spanish, a Toreador is a bullfighter, befitting Tavros' animal associations. adios, also from Spanish, means "goodbye".
Biography[]
Roleplaying[]
Tavros in Hero Mode.
Tavros regularly partook in extreme roleplaying with Aradia Megido, with whom he formed Team Charge, and Team Scourge, consisting of Terezi Pyrope and Vriska Serket. He played a character of the BOY-SKYLARK class based on Tavros' hero Pupa Pan; he and Aradia both agree
that, in spite of the class's lack of power at lower levels - prefiguring Tavros' assignment of the similar Page class in Sgrub - Flarp was better played for fun than for violence and treasure.
In one fateful session, Vriska, acting as Tavros' clouder, forced him into a situation in which he could not win. After he refused to take his turn, Vriska used her mind control to make him jump himself off a cliff, causing injuries which led to his paralysis below the waist. After trolling Karkat Vantas for help, Karkat called him an asshole and told him to “STOP PLAYING GAMES FOR GIRLS.”
Hivebent[]
After entering the Land of Sand and Zephyr and creating a rocket wheelchair, Tavros spent most of his time on useless side quests, much to the dismay of his server player. After dealing with his side quest obsession for some time, Vriska guides him to the gate leading to the Land of Maps and Treasure (LOMAT) where they meet up under awkward circumstances. They later come to an understanding of sorts and go treasure hunting together. During this period of mutual partnership, he is seen riding on a Horsaroni. Vriska and Tavros both travel around on their matching rocket devices, until they are interrupted by an angry Aradiabot who promptly makes Vriska pay.
Vriska is left in a near dead state but stops Tavros's reviving attempt through mind-controlling his hand with her newly awoken dream self. She communicates with him by manipulating him to write on the ground with her blood. On her request he brings her to her Quest Cocoon, but cannot bring himself to kill the girl, despite her "screams" and pleas for a quick death written all across the floor of the Quest Cocoon. He absconds and leaves her to bleed to death. This traumatized Tavros and he spent the rest of the game mostly asleep, seeking comfort on a now Vriska-free Prospit.
Post-Hivebent[]
Tavros had new robotic legs built for him after his session fled to their Veil. The legs were constructed by Equius, and his existing legs were disturbingly chainsawed off by Kanaya.
After learning of the humans, he attempted to troll Dave on his thirteenth birthday, just as Kanaya tried on Rose. Both mentioned how they were from the future and non-human, and both Dave and Rose pointed out their lack of skill at trolling. But while Kanaya eventually forged a kind of friendship with Rose, Dave met Tavros's weak attempts with a thoroughly effective homoerotic counter-troll, eventually causing Tavros to block him. Following his spectacular defeat, Tavros asked Rose what the best way to get on Dave's nerves would be. Rose told him that poetry would be the best option, and he seemed to decide to take her advice. He then trolled Dave with some unbelievably awful SICK RHYMES intended to humiliate him, although Dave completely ignored him. Tavros seemed very satisfied afterwards.
Tavros communicating with Jade.
At first, he got along quite well with Jade, communicating with her while she dreamt on the dream world Prospit vicariously. (On his iteration of Prospit, Tavros could once walk around without a wheelchair and fulfill his lifelong dreams of flight.) He saved a younger Jade from shooting herself by communing with Becquerel and directing him to teleport the bullet away, it ending up hitting and killing Grandpa instead. However, Tavros saw no harm in this (until Jade explained it to him) because he believed Bec was her Lusus and Grandpa was an intruder. Tavros was then made aware of how Vriska had directly brought about the circumstances which created Bec Noir, and set out to stop her. He had more trouble, however, with another enemy he'd been warned about.
Tavros after being killed by Vriska.
Tavros proceeded to engage Vriska in the room where the inquisiclops was found. She managed to stop his charge, steal his weapon, and stab him with it. (She impales him in such a way that the lance pierces the circle of his "Taurus" shirt, a possible metaphor for "bullseye.") Tavros fell off the edge and into the darkness while Vriska watched, finally landing next to Terezi, where he was announced as “DEAD”. Terezi attempted to revive him, but it was no use, as his dream self was killed by Jack Noir.
After Death[]
After his death, he visited Coin Dave in a dream bubble, along with a god tier Aradia. Tavros seemed incredibly excited to finally meet Dave in person, even if he was a dead temporal copy.
Tavros' fatal injury at the hands of Vriska.
Tavros' decapitated corpse was found by Terezi, along with Feferi , Equius and Nepeta's bodies, as well as Eridan's legs. It appears Gamzee placed his mutilated head on the ground in front of the jury's table.
Gamzee later preserved his body until arriving in the post-scratch Kids' session where he prototyped Tavros' and Vriska's remains with Jane's sprite, summoning the souls of Tavros and the now-dead Vriska to the session, and resulting in the birth of Tavrisprite. However, this fusion was short-lived, as Tavrisprite soon destroyed itself because the two sides were impossible to reconcile. Consequently, Tavros' ghost was returned with Vriska's to a dream bubble set in the Land of Sand and Zephyr. While Vriska began to complain about their temporary fusion Tavros stated that he felt they “WERE OVERREACTING” and that it felt nice to feel true self esteem for once and be “ALIVE AGAIN FOR A WHILE”. She agreed there was a silver lining, apologizing to Tavros for killing him. Vriska manipulates him into agreeing to “fuck shit up” with her.
He is later seen when John gains access to his dream bubble through Bec Noir's memories and enters their area. John finds Tavros lying facedown in the same location and pose as Andrew Hussie in DOTA. Tavros is revealed to be sleeping. A ring with no orbs, like the ring of orbs nofold from the B2 session, is found by John in the sand. John puts on the ring, then Tavros speaks up claiming he saw it first. This is because Tavros was hunting for treasure to give to Vriska, his new matesprit, or so he claims. John disagrees and decides to keep it, before Vriska comes. Vriska proceeds to explain to John and Tavros (even though the latter had already heard her explanations before) the threat of Lord English and her plan for using his reality-shattering rampage to lead her through the Furthest Ring to a legendary weapon that can stop him. The conversation is abruptly ended when Meenah comes along and begins a MINISTRIFE with Vriska, leading up to John getting stabbed yet again, much to Tavros' delight. Tavros starts looking around for the ring to no avail, since John woke up with the ring in hand.
Tavros is later seen adventuring with Vriska and the others in search of the great weapon. After learning about the Rings of Life and Void, Vriska attempts to get the Ring from Tavros to no avail because Tavros does not have the Ring. Tavros flips Vriska off for being mean to him before flying off and leaving.
Later, he gathers a massive ghost army without any psychic influence, similarly to his ancestor. He then encounters Meenah and the alive version of Vriska, and triumphantly tells Vriska, who cannot believe he has actually done something useful, to “SUUUUUCK,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!”, and begins to dance. He lets Meenah lead the army as she gives a speech to all the ghosts he gathered up.
In Collide, Tavros appeared in the Ghost Army and he helped Meenah and Aradia fight Lord English.
New Timeline[]
The newly prototyped Tavrosprite in Vriskagram .
In the new timeline created by John's retcons, Vriska was not killed by Terezi, and therefore her body was not available for prototyping in the B2 session. In addition, Gamzee was bound and gagged just before the events of Cascade. This resulted in Vriska appearing before Jane in Gamzee's place and prototyping Tavros by himself, as opposed to with the remains of another troll, resulting in Tavrosprite. According to Jane's conversations with Nannasprite, he didn't do much as Jane's sprite, which may have been because he “WAS UNDER STRICT INSTRUCTION FROM VRISKA, tO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE TIMELINE MUCH, fOR LOTS OF MONTHS”. He seems to have befriended Jake and spent a fair amount of time with him, every so often coming in to cheer him up when he was “feeling blue over friend problems”.
Tavrosprite is seen along with most of the rest of the main cast of Homestuck on the victory platform. When everyone decides who will take on which villain, Tavrosprite offers to join Jake in taking on Spades Slick. Vriska says that he can join him, but not before he does something else, which she'll explain to him in private. At first it appears that Vriska forgot to tell him what this task is, as she left for the furthest ring, but she later phones Jake to instruct him to summon GCat through use of a Crockercorp mouse toy, and to tell Tavros to grab the cat. This causes him to prototype himself with GCat, creating Gcatavrosprite. Tavros is now allergic to himself, but Vriska quickly puts him to sleep, and explains that her plan is to utilize Tavros's “mentally suggesti8le” mind to neutralize GCat's influence on the session, as she believes Tavros to be an inconsequential and expendable ally.
Personality and Traits[]
yEAH!!!!!!
Tavros is just too sensitive to be a decent troll (in the sense of one who provokes others), to the point where he even tries to help Jade. He sucks at trolling and usually ends up getting trolled himself, which he talks to Jade about. On the surface, he seems innocently ignorant of his own shortcomings as a troll, and of mockery from others. Karkat doesn't “THINK HE CAN HATE ANYONE”, even the thorn in his paw, Vriska. However, he copes with the negativity he faces from the other trolls by personifying his self-esteem, which he has named Rufio. Using a technique suggested by Kanaya, Tavros imagines that he talks to his self-esteem in the form of Rufio, and is careful not to let anything hurt Rufio's feelings. His misguided affair with self-esteem continues as he becomes Jade's fairy god troll, now assuming that a high self-esteem means not having to apologize for anything, even if he is at fault for it.
A dead, doomed timeline Tavros who had previously achieved god tier and ascended as the Page of Breath.
Tavros also preferred his dream world over the waking world because he is indeed a paraplegic confined to a wheel chair. Before dying himself, he confides in Jade his disappointment over the fact that his dream self, and the dream selves of all the other trolls, have died, since he had more fun in the dream world. His time in the dream bubbles seems to have done him just as much good as Prospit - Tavros shows more balanced self-esteem and assertion as a ghost.
He has decorated his room with posters of fairies/faeries and cards and marbles litter the floor. He uses a Jousting Lance, which is allocated to his lancekind strife specibus. He has the ability to commune with wildlife, and seems to be an Alternian Wildlife Master. His ability to commune with creatures extends to imps who would otherwise attack him; a cadre of imps and ogres accompanies Tavros into a temple, with one ogre carrying what appears to be a piece of a puzzle. Some of the most powerful lusii are within the reach of his commune powers as well, as demonstrated when Tavros was manipulated by Vriska to control Terezi's lusus. He is even able to commune with Bec.
Relationships[]
Vriska Serket[]
Vriska kissing Tavros.
Tavros's biggest conflict comes in the form of Vriska, his opposite Zodiac. Vriska's desire to make him stronger, combined with her complicated feelings of both of love and hate towards him, have led her to bully, cripple, and unsuccessfully seduce him; the seduction consisted of Vriska kissing Tavros as shown on the left. Meanwhile, a confused Tavros reacts with his usual passiveness, mixed with a bit of fear, all signs of a very abusive relationship. Vriska tries to mind control Tavros into having red feelings for her, which doesn't seem to go anywhere until later. Despite the weirdness and confusion, they develop a sort of mutual respect after Tavros apologizes for rejecting her advances during a memo with Karkat, and they go off to adventure together on LOMAT doing pointless side-quests. After Aradia warps in to deliver a revengemurder to Vriska, Tavros, either in an attempt to revive her via dream self, or satisfy his rather pushy and angry exile, almost kisses the girl.
That's not happening.
Vriska quickly explains that she is not dead by forcing him to choke himself, manipulating his arm to write out her bloody messages, and having Tavros use his rocket car to fly her to her Quest Bed for her god tier ascension. Unfortunately, he flees in fear of Vriska's increasingly hysterical and bloody pleas for him to kill her before she painfully bleeds to death, adding to the frustration which ultimately leads to his death by her hands.
In a conversation with John he says he is in a matespritship with Vriska, and is planning on proposing to her. Their relationship was only implied by Tavros, and is unconfirmed on Vriska's end. However, if this was the case then it seems likely that a breakup was implied when he quite literally flies away.
Hearts Boxcars ordering Tavros to kiss Vriska.
His exile, Hearts Boxcars, orders him to kiss Vriska several times. The first time Boxcars commands him, he is on the floor after crashing into Vriska's hive and cannot kiss the girl because he's paralyzed from the waist down and cannot walk. After watching him fail to kiss the girl a second time, Hearts Boxcars gives up on Tavros completely. It is unknown why he is so determined to have Tavros kiss the girl, but it may have something to do with the symbol he wears.
Aradia Megido[]
Tavros used to be Aradia's teammate on Team Charge for their FLARPing days and the two had been good friends. Before his paralysis, Aradia seems to have been among the few trolls who showed him respect and Tavros could be seen discussing their last FLARP adventure during which Aradia claimed that he “might be the 0nly flarper in the w0rld wh0 really understands the true spirit 0f the game” and shouldn't “hesitate t0 ask f0r help” if he were in trouble. However, right before the event of Tavros's paralysis, Aradia had not been there to help him and is seen later expressing her guilt and self-blame to Terezi regarding Tavros's injury. Failing to resist the urges of “the voices” and listening to Terezi's warnings against it, Aradia proceeded to get back at Vriska to avenge Tavros.
After her death, Tavros seemed rather distant from her, but after he died and she ascended to god tier, the two proceeded to hang out together in dream bubbles and with the company of Vriska's pirate crew.
Gamzee Makara[]
He has a close friendship with Gamzee. Together, they form the worst rapping duo in the history of paradox space, and it is briefly indicated that Gamzee holds some redder feelings for him, though nothing comes of it. In Alterniabound there is a 'flying one-wheeled device' that Gamzee had only mentioned wanting to Tavros[citation needed]. The only other people who could give him the code to make the useless piece of junk were Vriska (whom Gamzee was afraid of) and Terezi (who had no reason to). There's also uncertainty as to when Gamzee went around gathering the dead trolls' heads. It is unknown if he was attempting to revive Tavros, or just kiss him.
When talking to Gamzee, Tavros used the smiley }:o) twice, crossing his usual “}:)” with Gamzee's “:o)”.
Rufioh Nitram[]
Although Tavros never interacted with his dancestor Rufioh onscreen, his conversations with Jake suggest that he interacted with him a lot, as a sort of personification of his imaginary friend Rufio. He has stated that Rufioh helped him with his self-esteem largely because he happened to be his dancestor.
Other trolls[]
Thanks to his typically unassertive and calm attitude, Tavros gets along fairly well with most of the trolls.
Tavros is friends with Nepeta, Terezi and Kanaya. He has attempted roleplay with Nepeta, and Kanaya gave him the idea to personify his self-esteem in the form of Rufio. Due to Tavros' mild personality, and Karkat's self-asserted leadership, he won't hesitate to go to Karkat for advice. Their few interactions at first indicated they weren't on the best terms, however in their later interactions in the post-retcon timeline, Karkat seems okay with Tavros.
B1 Kids[]
He does not seem to like John after he refused to give back the ring Tavros was supposed to give Vriska. It gets worse after Vriska reveals that she and Alternate John dated before. Tavros even seemed rather happy after John vanishes when Meenah throws her trident at him. But, in the new timeline, John considers Tavros as one of his best friends along with many others, suggesting he put all of the stuff that he and Tavros had fought about behind them.
Early on it was speculated that he had romantic feelings towards Dave, but this can be explained as him basing his Sick Burns on human phrases he had seen before, and/or being just terrible at trolling.
He is fond of Jade and confesses to having red feelings for her, but his incredibly clumsy approach combined with misdirected pride at killing her grandfather and over-stated confidence drove her away. She later decided to allow him to commune with Bec, which was soon made irrelevant by his death.
Lusus[]
Tavros' lusus Tinkerbull
Tavros and “TINKERBULL” have a playful relationship, regularly engaging in games of Fiduspawn together. Tavros was tragically responsible for his lusus' death, however, when he accidentally ran him over with his wheelchair. Tinkerbull is later prototyped into Tavros's kernelsprite, which he regularly consulted for advice, his lusus being “REALLY SMART, nOW THAT HE CAN TALK,”
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Tavros suffers from a cat allergy
. Another Page and another Hero of Breath also suffer from an allergy.
- However it appears that his allergy of cats is all in his head, as Jasprosesprite^2 was able to temporarily cure him of his allergies just by feeding him a normal button as a placebo cure. His supposed allergy returns when he meets Nepetasprite, who is simply a troll that resembles a cat. As Tavros and Nepeta role-played many times in the past, it is possible he adopted a fake allergy to cover for his nervousness, and he 'believed so much in something fake, it became slightly more real' to him.
- However it appears that his allergy of cats is all in his head, as Jasprosesprite^2 was able to temporarily cure him of his allergies just by feeding him a normal button
- When Tavros crash-landed into Vriska's room, it mirrored another Hero of Breath crashing into the room of another Hero of Light (also while using a rocket device).
- Tavros' Boy Skylark hat matches the one from John's Boy-Skylark echeladder rung, and the hat Pupa Pan is wearing on the poster matches another echeladder hat of John's.
- Hussie has stated that if Tavros was more confident, his quirk would be replacing the letter I with 1. Rufioh (his ancestor's pre-scratch self) uses this quirk, and the subconscious genetic code on his wall does as well.
- In fact, Tavros's shyness, low self-esteem, and low confidence levels might be mirrored in his quirk - reversing the capitalization of every letter in his sentences.
- Tavros' exile, Hearts Boxcars, uses dice-based attacks in the Problem Sleuth extras - the same weapon Vriska Serket uses. Inversely, Snowman, Vriska's exile, uses a lance.
- Tavros being a Breath hero might reference Taurus' zodiac body part, the throat.
- Tavros can be seen with the rest of the red team on the "King of Swords" card in the Homestuck tarot card deck. He is also depicted on the "Knight of Pentacles" card, as he is serious and quiet, as well as uncomfortable standing out, much like the card's interpretation. He is seen on the "Five of Wands" card with most of the pre-act 6 cast.
- Tavros and his ancestor the Summoner are both similar to the character Morihaus from The Elder Scrolls, a winged minotaur revolutionary who is the son of the goddess of breath, wind, and animals.
