#moirail discourse

Yeah the people who talk about how moirails are romantic is something i can't understand. Because i'm sorry but isn't it obvious that trolls use the word romance for more things than humans do? It's like people see "troll romance 4 quadrants" and think "hmm that must mean human romance in different ways" or something. Matesprits are supposed to be like human romantic partners but all the other quadrants not only are different kinds of relationships but have different feelings associsted with them too. I'm begging everyone to remember that the quadrant explanation in homestuck said that in human terms moirails are like platonic soulmates. Moirails aren't like human romantic partners. The word romance doesn't mean all the same things for humans that it does for trolls. I'm going insane

GET BEHIND ME, ANON, THEY'LL COOK YOU FOR THIS ON TWITTER

Like, okay sure, maybe you took the word "romance" literally and didn't internalize anything actually said by the comic, like how it's literally introduced as being in a more platonic sense and specific purpose

and maybe you also don't question the fact that every character who talks about being romantically interested in someone with quadrants is someone who almost exclusively does not actually get their own feelings or has had explicit issues with them in the past, like genuinely believing that Horuss getting involved "romantically" with Meulin (the, BY HIS OWN WORDS, "ridiculous midblood" who he has "hardly ever given a second thought"), was anything more than an explicit parallel to Meowrails that was also NOT ACTUALLY A GOOD RELATIONSHIP FOR EITHER OF THEM AND NOT A GOOD EXAMPLE OF MOIRAILS, and did not have any actual romantic inclinations aside from how trolls view them, and *also* exists as a meta response to fandom, as all the dynamics among the alpha trolls are

and maybe you somehow ignore the biggest, most important representation of moirails being THE CHARACTERS WHO INTRODUCE IT, as Nepeta and Equius, despite all the shipping fanart and discourse about "kissing da homies", never once do anything exclusively "romantic", with both characters CONSTANTLY talking about other characters they'd rather be actually romantically involved with, like Nepeta's crush for Karkat and Equius's obsession with Aradia

And maybe you ignore that every time a "true" romance comes out, the most romantic thing described about them is that they "go beyond the quadrants", like Rose/Kanaya, Karkat/Dave, and the signless/disciple

Maybe you ignore all of that in service of some insistence that troll romance is a system that actually works and is a thing to take seriously

In the end, what's more important is what ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS, the people READING THE COMIC, get out of it

THEY'VE ALREADY SOLVED THIS STUPID DISCOURSE

JUST RESPECT THAT OTHER LIVING PEOPLE HAVE REASONABLE CAUSE TO NOT SEE IT AS ROMANTIC instead of being sanctimonious about it/how you do or don't want certain characters tied to each other

This is why some people get hung up on moirals being "a type of romance" because "look, the text says it's a romance, let homies kiss homies" without reading further but also get super mad if you even hint that it could be platonic (or try to stress that everything in non-platonic relationships can be done platonically) even though the text literally says it's also platonic right afterwards

Eyup, it's almost like there's a clear distinction between the quadrants and what they facilitate for the people involved in terms of emotional investment and how much that does or doesn't work for them, compartmentalizing them into, shall we say, quadrants?

Also, depending on where post-canon goes, I feel like people generally agree that the two don't *really* want to be moirails, but it's the only thing they know how to describe where each other are in how they feel about each other due to external drama and always being in drastically different places in their lives, and general emotional immaturity.

In the epilogues, Terezi says her relationship with Vriska is complicated

but returning to the comic, proper, they end up as moirails, Vriska stresses that they're moirails, but just like almost everything the characters say, it can be interpreted that she's mostly just finding comfort in not having to think about her actual feelings for Terezi, since we have the whole situation with their ghost selves who *do* end up together (basically all of [S] Terezi: Remem8er., but also considering that one scrapped version when they would've kissed)

not a single point while reading the comic did I think of morails as traditionally romantic (and still don't), and thus being actually related was a big deal, as opposed to the reason that Jasprose explicitly stops trying to court Nepeta after they become Davepeta, which is called out and not even related to quadrants

they literally both still have the moirail symbols in their typing quirks and have a huge flash page dedicated to how their reuniting is (even if just as a joke) "the most important part of the comic", with a highly detailed hug, and how the characters involved are basically cosmically tied to each other (you know, like moirails)

for as much as I talk about how fandom influences interpretation, I did in fact get so used to people calling them brorails that I've just consolidated that into my actual interpretations of the text