#will probably address his actual characterization in vol 2 and his design/expressions in vol 3? depends

[gem-tavvy]

IMPROMPTU TAVROS NITRAM WRITING COURSE

VOL 1. ~ OF QUIRKS AND SYNTAX

wanted to work on a fun lil post to remark on some common problems i see in tavros nitram's portrayals in fanworks, and how he actually Acts, using in-comic examples! please tell me if you enjoy!

i think more people should learn how tavros' quirk works. cause i see a lotta ppl making the same handful of mistakes, and while there are more important things to worry about. the comic is Right There and Chock Full Of Text.

obviously there's the basics. capitalization and punctuation. these are the basic building blocks of every character's quirk. john using apostrophes and periods separates him from, say, dave and jade.

and jade using an excess of question marks, exclamation marks, and smileys separates her from dave. and roxy using a lot of acronyms and shortenings (and typos while drunk) separates her further from the "all lowercase" gang.

for tavros: let's look at capitalization first.

tavros types in reverse case. that is to say, where most people would write capital letters, he writes lowercase letters, and vice versa. he starts every sentence with a lowercase letters, and every lone 'I' is lowercase as well.

(important to note: he also uses lowercase after EVERY comma. when it comes to capitalization, treat every comma like it's a period.)

the only exception to this rule seems to be proper nouns. unless he's saying it at the beginning of a sentence or after a comma, that name is written in capital letters, like when he says "THE KNIGHT" and "DAVE" in his conversation with rose above.

as for his punctuation,

tavros uses a lot of commas. where you'd expect a dash or a semicolon, use a comma. where you'd expect a period, use a comma. you need a set of ellipses? use a comma.

wait. i want you to read that last sentence REALLY closely. "use A comma." i need you to drill this into your head right here, right now, forevermore. if you care even remotely about writing tavros correctly, HEED MY WORDS:

USE A SINGLE COMMA.

i don't care how many pieces of art, how many fanfics, how many Whatevers you have seen, tavros dOES NOT,,,,, uMM,,,,,,, uSE THIS MANY,,, uH,,,,,, cOMMAS. he only needs to use one at a time. the exceptions to this rule are INCREDIBLY rare, and only appear when he is genuinely distressed or compromised.

in the first example, not only is he merged with vriska - causing numerous quirk changes - but they are under a tremendous amount of mental and emotional stress. in the second example, he is caught off guard by gamzee's sudden advances. in the third, he is experiencint a severe allergic reaction caused as a result of being permanently fused with a cat.

even in his conversations with vriska where he is being actively bullied and harassed, he largely only uses a single comma at a time. this is absolutely THE most common mistake when writing tavros.

the SECOND most common mistake i see is making him s-s-stutter. a lot of people think that just because he's awkward and is described by vriska as "stuttering," he always has to "s-stutter like t-t-this." but it's not true, and tavros Does Not talk like that.

tavros DOES stutter, but the better word to use to describe it is stammering. he doesn't really think a sentence out before he talks - it's why he often says "uh" and "um" between clauses. it's also why he drags out words sometimes, like "hIII," or "hEYYY," or "wOAHHH,". he's the kind of guy that's always gotta make a noise when he's talking, even if he doesn't really know what to say yet.

i have more stuff to say about WHY people write tavros this way, but i'll save it for later. we're still on the topic of his quirk!

so he doesn't use more than one comma at a time, doesn't use dashes to stutter, and as we know uses apostrophes mostly properly. what about exclamation points and question marks?

now, this is where we have a bit of a schism. previous images i've posted, if you noticed, have sentences where tavros is asking a question. namely when he's asking rose all those questions about dave. when it comes to EARLY homestuck, which i personally subscribe to as the purest form of his quirk, tavros ONLY uses commas. even if he's asking a question.

but later on, usually during act 6, tavros starts using exclamation marks and question marks more. so there's a precedent for it, sure. i'd personally err on the side of caution, though. use them like you'd use multi-commas: sparingly and for a good reason.

combining capitalization and punctuation, i also want to mention how he whispers, too, because it's one of my favorite gags in homestuck.

in homestuck, whispering is typically denoted by surrounding one's text in (parentheses.) for tavros, this is no different. if a character normally speaks in all upper case, like karkat or terezi, they might also replace all of that upper case with lower case.

but tavros sucks at whispering. if he's outright muttering under his breath, he (jUST SPEAKS LIKE THIS,) but if he's genuinely trying to be surreptitious, he will TRY to speak all in lower case. however, little pockets of upper case will still (sNEak, inSIDE,). if you need to write tavros whispering for whatever reason, this can be a fun gag to call back to for comedy's sake.

the final syntax element to touch on is simple. emoticons!

tavros uses a variety throughout homestuck. all of them have a common theme: they always start with a "}". NOT a bracket "[". he ALWAYS uses one of the curly brackets, without exception.

he uses }:) , }:o) (when speaking to gamzee once), }:( , }:'( , and }:D ! might be more examples, but you get what i mean. he has a good variety! he typically either uses these after a sentence OR as its own "line," without any text. he also even uses them outside text. like:

AT: aWW, sAD SURE IS WHAT THAT IS, }:(

TAVROS: }:D

#homestuck #tavros nitram #writing #hoping to make a continuation #will probably address his actual characterization in vol 2 and his design/expressions in vol 3? depends