The 1880s with a ginger twist

okay like here’s the whole thing with tavros

• his whole story is literally him just him trying to use escapism to get away from the horrible shit that happens to him
• (and usually failing)

like, there’s a lot you could argue back and forth for when it comes to FLARPing and what it means in troll culture and stuff, but there’s a few irrefutable facts about Tavros even at the youngest we see him

1. he’s the second-lowest lowblood in his whole friend group (and is friends with Aradia, the lowest lowblood; I don’t think everyone knows Karkat’s blood color yet)
2. he’s playing a (abet pretty dangerous) immersive game

now again, you could argue this forever, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that being a lowblood is pretty shitty and having a game that puts you on pretty even ground with other blood colors must be pretty awesome escapism

and he and aradia even mention how it’s better to play for fun??

and then his friend gets killed and he gets paralyzed?? 

which then made him the lowest living blood color in his friend group

and he was already playing at being pupa pan, and believes in fairies, and rufio, but even then he registers they are imaginary

so then skipping forwards to the game, tavros is back into escapism because, as we know, he’s off doing side quests while everyone is doing Real Game Things I guess (i’m pretty sure this happens but I might be misremembering)

anyways, fun game-playing is then interrupted by vriska and the whole tinkervriska thing, which tavros pretty obviously doesn’t want to deal with, since he goes to karkat, which he literally hasn’t talked to since he tried to ask for help after getting paralyzed

and the really crazy thing about this is he only really starts responding in a not “i don’t know what to do” way when vriska mentions treasure hunting and basically smooths everything over like it didn’t happen. so he goes back to game-escaping

and when shit gets real with aradiabot he just wants to fix vriska and make things Back To Normal (normal being treasure-hunting), but vriska makes that not-happen and tavros can’t go through with Actually Killing Someone

and then what does he do?

he spends the rest of sgrub asleep and dreaming

and I mean, this whole avoiding-things-that-are-bad pretty much keeps happening, whether it’s blocking dave or just plain stopping talking to gamzee (which is a whole ‘nuther ballgame considering he was best friends with another character using escapism/drugs to the x-treem)

the real kicker with this is when tavros finally decides to confront this, in the form of confronting vriska, he gets killed

and like, there’s plenty to argue back and forth about current-tavros and his relationship with vriska, but i’m pretty heavily of the opinion that it’s some kind of Stockholm’s syndrome, which makes a lot of sense considering his whole thing has been Pretending It’s Okay

‘coz Getting The Girl And Going On Adventures seems pretty ideal for a dude like that, even if vriska still seems pretty abusive to him and he has no idea if what they’re doing is good or bad and for all he knows it might destroy the universe

SORRY THIS IS FULL OF A LOT OF OPINIONS AND READING INTO THINGS BUT BASICALLY:

Tavros is always trying to Pretend Things Are Okay but things get worst anyways

he apologizes, avoids, and uses escapism to further this pretending

and then when he tries to take things on for real, he dies