#2448

There’s something I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to address, and this seems like a good time for it. 

Kismesis relationships are incredibly unhealthy. We’re on a planet of angry children, and we’re telling them to direct their negative emotions towards each other. This is wrong.

I know Alternian culture deems this acceptable, and even desirable - but Alternia wouldn’t really care if it’s damaging these kids’ mental health, would it? Alternia doesn’t want mentally healthy trolls - it wants soldiers. Kismesissitude serves a useful purpose for the empire, since it can be used to breed more ‘potent’ wigglers - but it has no reason to care if the trolls themselves are miserable as a result. 

Look. Maybe if you’re an adult troll, and you’re very careful not to let it go too far, kismesissitude can be cathartic - but these troll kids don’t have the emotional maturity to engage with these kinds of feelings. Even human teenagers have trouble expressing negative emotions in a healthy way. Adolescent kismesissitude could get toxic - or worse - incredibly easily, and I think the Vriska/Tavros relationship is a pretty good case study of the results. 

Especially with all this pressure! It doesn’t even matter whether you want to participate in kismesissitude - you have no choice but to throw yourself into one of these rivalries, on pain of death. It’s unclear when, or how often, the imperial drone comes knocking - but I’m sure every troll can hear the clock ticking in their heads. Find someone to hate - or else. 

It’s interesting that the only troll for whom the clock may not be ticking - the heiress, whose imperial drones are unlikely to harm her - is skeptical about entering a kismesissitude this young. 

Maybe, without the pressure to find someone to hate, she’s realized that she’s not as hateful as she’s been told. 

You and this sea princess have splashed down hard into the moirail zone, and now you don't know which way's upward. Perhaps tonight you will reveal your true feelings toward her, and end these exaggerated emotional theatrics once and for all, one way or another.

That’s the second time that Eridan has referred to ‘the moirail zone’, which is clearly analogous to the infamous ‘friendzone’. He wants a flushed relationship with Feferi, but his pale relationship with her is getting in the way. 

It’s kind of funny that a troll can ruin their prospects with someone by getting into the wrong relationship with them. This is the awkward subject that Eridan was trying to raise - he wants to switch quadrants. 

That guy. Talk about a high maintenance moirail. Perhaps tonight you will reveal your true feelings toward him, and end these exaggerated emotional theatrics one way or another.

I don’t get the sense that Feferi feels the same, though.