i think the idea is supposed to be that human romance, by combining all the quadrants, smooths out most of their rough edges like, when you put matespriteship and kismesisitude together, you get something that's not fully either, something that's an averaging-out of both of them and it goes the same way for all the other quadrants they combine and end up averaging-out into something less extreme than any of the four
Issue I have with Kar<>Kan; usually it's portrayed as her mothering him, which is fine, but it's not really clear what he's giving back. That doesn't really seem fair. Kanaya's honestly kind of hard for me to pale-ship; I don't know who would be best suited to helping her with her flaws and problems. She has them, but I'm unsure which characters don't either share them or clash badly with them. I'd honestly have been a lot happier if Homestuck ended with nobody in a relationship with anybody because every single pairing has the potential to be a fucking dumpster fire and they have much bigger things to worry about. I know I'd want a break from relationships if I had the responsibility of producing a whole new universe hanging over me.
My God. I just realised I'm kismesic for the plot and ashen for the entire cast! I can see ways in which they could all work together wonderfully and help each other overcome their issues and flaws and instead they drag each other down and I'm attached enough to the Nakama trope that it's SO FRUSTRATING!
*reblogs a “send me ships and I’ll rate them!” meme to my Naruto blog, hopes that someone asks me about zabuhaku so I can unleash my salt*
Is Dave outright repelled by the mere concept of quadrants or is it just that all his examples of them have been horrible? The only blackrom and palerom he saw involved one party hiding in the vents for months on end and reducing one of his friends to an emotional wreck. I can't remember exactly what he said about them. Come to think of it, am I imagining implications in Karkat's speech about John<3<Terezi among other things that the quadrants are a purely social construct and all blurred up emotionally speaking anyway? That would make perfect sense, but it's disappointing. I always loved the fics which had them as definitely separate boxes with entirely separate biological systems - damn I loved Heavy In Your Arms and the scene with Eridan's pale submission reflex. Should we make an Alternate Universe - Quadrants Are Real tag on AO3?
Love in general as we conceive it could probably be called "just a social construct". Large chunks of gender or race or whatever else are too. That doesn't make those things not real and not things that affect us to incredible degrees. It just means that they're things that we, as social beings, made up and largely agreed to. And not everyone agrees to those things. I just don't see anything more "inherently real" about how Western cultures conceive of romance than how trolls in a webcomic do.
That makes sense, but... I am having a really hard time figuring out what I even mean here. I like fics which have the quads with a sharper divide; like, when kismesissitude is not just irritation as Karkat said, pale involves a much stronger reaction than just the endorphins resulting from being around friends... I don't know, am I looking for something like soulmate AUs with "we know this isn't a thing in real life/canon but it's fun to write fics in which it is"? Things in which troll quadrant reactions are markedly different from human behaviours, I guess.
While I'm not fond of Davekat, I'm deeply irritated by one anti who goes around claiming that Karkat would either abuse Dave or remind him of his previous abuser. Karkat is not a damn thing like Bro and is about as threatening to Dave as wet tissue paper.
People not getting that the entire point of Horuss and Meulin was that they make a horrible moirallegiance and forced themselves into it just because their dancestors were. They could make for a good one, character development is awesome, but they don't now! JadeNep gets shipped in black a lot, but I'd like to see some actual characterisation for it beyond cats vs dogs jokes.
Trying to fit a pair in another fandom (Veil/Bryony, which has been written a couple times and nobody seems to notice how fucked up it is) to the tune of "SadoMasoPedoRoboNecroBestiality", but neither of them is a robot, I'm not sure it's bestiality if they're both animals (albeit different species), he wasn't dead for most of it, and I don't know where to fit "adoptive incest" in.
Anti-DaveJade shipper insisting "Dave already dated Jade and realised he didn't like her!" Wrong Dave, pal.
i’m pretty sure davesprite also didn’t break up with jade because he didn’t like her—my personal interpretation, given davesprite’s depression and struggles with inadequacy, was that he felt like he wasn’t good enough for her and that he was doing her a favor by breaking up with her see also: davepeta has no qualms about kissing her, which i think they would if davesprite didn’t like her
I really like Wincest, because the dudes are codependent as hell and all sorts of wrapped up in each other, and I like seeing that explored in all it's terrible heartwrenching potential, but an awful lot of the fic is very. Like, it feels like people are more into it because in the earlier seasons it's the only real viable ship between actual characters who exist beyond the confines of a single episode, so all the stuff I like about it gets ignored in favor of generic dudeship stuff.
My own shipping issues; I know many of the SGurb players were horrible for each other and really should seek relationships outside their own group in a 'verse in which they aren't the last trolls in the universe, but I'm still going NOOOO I WANT THIS 'VERSE TO HAVE THEM DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME AND ALL BE HAPPY TOGETHER FOREVER. Even though there are now plenty of other people they can bond with and they don't have to form one big group! I hate when I can't decide!
Possible compromise: they remain part of each others' lives due to being bonded by the shared trauma/experience of SGrub, which these people in the new universe have never experienced, but also form new friendships outside of the main group. This results in them actually being able to talk out their issues with each other because there isn't that baggage of 'if I fuck up my relationships with these people there is Literally No One Else Out There', allowing to gradually improve their problems and making their relationships with each other stronger and healthier in the long run. tl;dr They're still one big group, but sometimes someone spends a couple nights hanging out with Random Dude From Their Ceramics Class instead and that's cool too.
