#s36

The Identity V design of the day is:

"Psychologist": Everlasting Dream (Limited) (S-Tier)!

Humans have only one form of romance. [...] A single, linear concept. A concept usually denoted by a single symbol.

Looks like the playing-card symbolism is pulling double duty. Let’s see if we can predict what each suit means. 

The club contains three circles, so I think it represents the only relationship which involves three parties by default. In other words, it stands for auspisticism. 

Therefore, the spade is the other blackrom relationship - kismesissitude.

The heart is a traditional romantic relationship, which trolls call a matespritship.

That leaves the diamond for the ‘paler’, less romantic moirallegiance. 

Now that that’s settled, how are these terms formally defined?

RED ROMANCE, comprised of the flushed and pale quadrants, is a form of romance rooted in strongly positive emotions. BLACK ROMANCE, with its caliginous and ashen quadrants, is rooted in the strongly negative.

I thought that blackrom might be a combination of love and hate, but it doesn’t seem as if love is involved at all. Knowing that, I’m not really sure how it qualifies as ‘romance’.

I guess you could argue that it’s still ‘romantic’ in the Byronic sense, in that it’s a sad, cynical type of relationship. 

Those quadrants which are CONCUPISCENT, the flushed and caliginous, have to do with facilitating the elaborate reproductive cycle of trolls. Those which are CONCILIATORY, the pale and ashen, would be more closely likened to platonic relationships by human standards.

It sounds as if the concupiscent quadrants are the ones which involve physical intimacy. 

Considering the nature of the caliginous quadrant, this seems more than a little troubling. Should we really be encouraging trolls to pursue intimate relationships with people they hate?

There are many parallels between human relationships and the various facets of troll romance. Humans have words to describe relationships of a negative nature, or of a platonic nature. The difference is, for humans, those relationships would never be conceptually grouped with romance.

Ah, I think I get it. 

A lot of these relationships aren’t meant to fit the human definition of romance - because on Alternia, ‘romance’ is defined more broadly than it typically is on Earth.

Most humans, looking at a moirallegiance, would parse it as fully platonic. They’d see that fact as contradictory to its romantic nature, and they’d be correct - but only according to the human definition of romance. 

A troll would agree that it’s fully platonic, but would fail to see the contradiction. That’s because to a troll, platonic and romantic aren’t mutually exclusive. They’d say that a moirallegiance is a platonic variety of romance. 

 Establishing those sort of relationships for humans is not driven by the same primal forces that drive our tendency to couple romantically. But for trolls, those primal forces involve themselves in the full palette of these relationships, red or black, torrid or friendly. Trolls typically feel strongly compelled to find balance in each quadrant, and seek gratifying relationships that each describes.

It seems as if trolls are biologically driven to seek out all four types of relationship. It’s not enough to have a matesprit, or even a matesprit/kismesis - you’re still ‘single’ in the other categories. 

The Identity V design of the day is:

Explorer: Continuum Researcher (B-Tier)!

The Identity V design of the day is:

Lawyer: Dispossessed Worker (B-Tier)!

When two individuals find themselves in the flushed quadrant together, they are said to be MATESPRITS.

D’aww. What are Mom and Dad even doing on Skaia, anyway?

Dad might be looking for John, but Mom’s motivations remain unclear. She’s a mother who’ll do whatever is best for her children, but I don’t even know what she can do any more. The Battlefield has been destroyed, and the game is lost.

Does Mom know something we don’t? 

When a pair of adversaries delve into this quadrant, they become each other's KISMESIS. As one of the concupiscent quadrants, it plays a role in procreation as well.

Jack and the Queen are sort of obsessed with each other, aren’t they? 

Let’s not forget that this is from a scene where she’s dressing him up for her own amusement. Who else have we seen doing that? 

For instance, human players would never be able to adequately diagnose the relationship between the queen and her archagent. But troll players could immediately place it as a dead ringer for kismesissitude.

Looks like carapacians can experience black romance, too.

This type of romance plays a role in reproduction - and it would make sense for carapacians to be able to reproduce. They’re meant to rebuild societies, after all, and once they leave the Medium, they won’t have the Veil to clone themselves. 

There is no particularly good human translation for this concept. The closest would be an especially potent arch-rivalry.

I can think of at least three relationships that seem to fit the bill. Admittedly, two of them are from The Locked Tomb, a series written by a Homestuck fan. 

Hey, did I just crack the code? Is this where Taz Muir gets this stuff? 

The need to seek out concupiscent partners comes with more urgency than typical reproductive instincts. When the IMPERIAL DRONE comes knocking, you had better be able to supply genetic material to each of his FILIAL PAILS. If you have nothing to offer, he will kill you without hesitation.

No Bitches is a terminal condition on Alternia. As if the place wasn't bad enough!

The genetic material - WITHOUT GOING INTO MUCH DETAIL - is a combinative genetic mix from the matesprit and kismesis pairs, respectively. The pails are all offered to the mother grub, who can only receive such precombined material. She then combines all of it into one incestuous slurry, and begins her brooding. In the slurry, more dominant genes rise to the fore, while the more recessive find less representation in the brood. Especially strong matesprit and kismesis pairings yield more dominant genetic material. The more powerful the complement or potent the rivalry, the more dominant the genes.

I’m a little confused about what is meant by ‘combined’, here. Is the slurry just being mixed, preserving each matesprit/kismesis pair, or is all the troll DNA being merged somehow, breaking these pairs? 

The answer to this question is pretty important, because it tells us how many parents a troll has - which has implications for their ectobiology. There are two possibilities, implying two different Veil configurations. 

Trolls have two parents. Each nascent larva is formed from a specific pair of trolls, and the stronger the pair’s relationship, the more frequently their larvae are spawned. 

Trolls have many parents. Each nascent larva is formed from the DNA of a large number of trolls - but stronger matesprit/kismesis pairs contribute more of that DNA than weaker ones.

If it was the former, and each troll had two parents, then Karkat’s cloning wasn’t any more ‘complicated’ than John’s - so I think it’s the latter.