So, what's up with Tavvy and Caliborn?
This topic has been done to death, but I guess it's been done so dead that nobody is talking about it any more. So maybe it's worth going over again. Here I’ll lay out the main connections I can recall, alongside my brief initial thoughts on what this might *mean* for refinement and expansion.
The first point on the agenda is the obvious one; they dress the same. Sure, the suspenders are a Terezi staple too at the moment, but in context it’s clear that these are the same outfit.
This is hardly a new observation. I've seen the idea that this paired with his jumper setup is supposed to mirror Calliope and Caliborn, and this has been taken all kinds of places from here. This works well taken alongside Tavvy's room scene in the epilogues: As you will remember, In this scene John searches Tavvy's tidy if unremarkable room, and the one point of note is a hidden bottle of faygo under the bed. Once again a symbol of an antagonistic force (caliborn, gamzee) is hidden under a tidier exterior (the jumper, the bed).
More tuned in people than me have formed interesting theories off this basis (Notably the work of shoegazingMonad) so for now I'll move on to other tavvy-caliborn connections.
The Father
[Note that these horns were supposed to be an omega. The alternative resemblence has been pointed out, is unfortunate (for him) and unintentional, but it does just seem like a thing that would happen to him]
Another point that has not gone uncommented upon is that they were both raised by Gamzee. This also perhaps explains another less widely pointed out, but still fairly meaningful connection: they share a first word. Not Tavvy and Caliborn, but Tavvy and LE. Tavvy's first word (see page 630) is the same as LE's upon hatching from Doc Scratch: "Honk".
In a relatively old Q&A, Miles referred to Tavvy as a "man-boy (boy-man?)", which could be our clue as to where all these strange echoes of LE are headed. The presentation of LE as a "man-child" is reasonably founded, most literally through him being an adult of his species who lacks the characteristics of adulthood, a cherub's wings, because he never predominated and resolved his childhood. He's still trying to destroy the other half of him when we meet him in homestuck proper, still unable to grow up.
We could now read Tavvy's situation as a twist on this, him instead being a child who lives with adult concerns: He's a notary public. He has a drivers license. He brings snacks for the kids, and is the main one looking out for them during 8r8k. The angle of Tavvy as the Responsible member of the group is also explored in bonus comics, specifically #40, where Tavvy insists they buy "real food" and points out that "a balanced diet is very important". A direction I could imagine this going (with little specific evidence, to be clear) is of Tavvy developing into a positive masculine example as the comic progresses, in inversion of LE. This currently underbaked speculation is based in the presentation of LE as a cosmic patriarch, and the interpretation of the above Tavvy behaviorisms as an alternative father-adjacent figure in his own right.
Various
I'll also list a few quickfire connections that I'm not confident in, or that I don't know what to make of yet:
- - In Pool, the 4 ball is solid purple, and the 13 is orange stripes. Tavvy's two "looks", ie the purple jumper and the orange suspenders, could be read as purple solid and orange stripes, ie "4 13", a common arc number. That is to say, when LE's eyes read 413, they are Tavvy's colours.
- - Others have noted the visual similarity between Tavvy and Caliborn’s Deviantart LE. This obviously could come down to them both being derived from Jake, who OC LE more strongly resembles, but it *is* worth bearing in mind given several vintageFoods pieces feature Tavvy with a jacket and glasses that bring him closer in line with Yaoi LE.
- - Both are related to a figure that was given the title of Batterwitch. I’m certain *something* can be made of this given the deep well of Condesce interpretation, but this is a well that will be far better dredged with more experienced buckets.
- - Tavvy is exiling Del'fi, or at least is the kid watching Del through a similar method to how Vrissy was watching Ly'lac. Del's own connections to Caliborn might deserve their own post; aside from somewhat recreating Caliborn's Homosuck with Beyond Anon, Del's mantle also strongly resembles a sharp toothed green skull.
- So, where do we expect this to go from here? Are there any other connections we should bear in mind? What other conclusions could we draw here?
What do you think?
