#dirktav

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?

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