Scalding hot take: I never really vibed with davekat being referred to as a ‘beyond the quadrants’ relationship, or getting compared to Signless and Disciple.
It’s really worth noting that Karkat’s struggle with troll romance was that he couldn’t keep his feelings in one single quadrant, not that he needed to discard them altogether. Vacillation is obviously seen as having mixed signals and is generally preferred to just keep one troll per each quadrant, especially given how Terezi saw Karkat’s vacillating feelings. Being ‘beyond the quadrants’ wouldn’t make any sense to be applied to davekat, especially since Dave isn’t even a troll and quadrants don’t actually apply to him.
If anything, being beyond the four squares of troll romance could boil down to not even being romantic with each other. Like, who knows if Signless and Disciple were actually together!! They could’ve actually had a sibling-like relationship that kept getting jumbled through translation! (knowing Hussie, this is very likely)
Kanaya and Karkat’s dynamic, however, definitely doesn’t fit the quadrants, and the concept of families/siblings don’t exist for trolls. Karkat and Kanaya/Dolorosa and Signless were a first for Alternia, a relationship that trolls can’t label with quadrants.
Karkat and Kanaya’s sibling relationship is the beyond quadrants one, and in this essay I will-
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