QUADRANT SCIENCES THREAD

[Dream Muttman]

I don't disagree with anything that's been said so far, but do keep in mind biological social structures do exist. Birds that mate for life and pair bond and such. It's not out of the realm of possibility for trolls to have these quadrants specifically as instinctual impulses they've codified. Not everything has to be socially constructed in fiction!

[egg]

I don't disagree with anything that's been said so far, but do keep in mind biological social structures do exist. Birds that mate for life and pair bond and such. It's not out of the realm of possibility for trolls to have these quadrants specifically as instinctual impulses they've codified. Not everything has to be socially constructed in fiction!

Friendsim implies there's a biological aspect to AT LEAST the pale quadrant, with Polypa calming down instantly when you pap her, which obviously doesn't happen with humans. We've also seen this in the comic itself with Gamzee and Karkat, but Friendsim makes it even more apparent.
I wouldn't be surprised if similar things happened with the other quadrants.

[JakeMorph]

it's less that I'm inclined to believe everything in fiction is socially constructed and more that trolls in-comic have had their whole society engineered to be a certain way from the beginning. this probably includes the way their breeding works, for maximum efficiency, and I wouldn't be surprised if the way their teen romance drama bullshit is exacerbated by the existence of four whole kinds of it was deliberately made that way in-universe too. like I said, I find it sort of unlikely any species would naturally find benefit to a relationship with someone they literally do not like.

I think that a lot of quadrant stuff, especially it's cross-species potential, deals more with love as a learned emotion and romance as a learned behavior. Even in real world human societies, you see radically different approaches to romantic love across cultures. With that in mind, if a human is immersed in troll culture or even just spends a ton of time with trolls, especially when they're young, you can see that cross-cultural pollination of emotions and constructs. I also think this shows of quadrants as something that doesn't really need to be enforced; it's just a how trolls, as a culture, approach love and romance.

while I see where you're coming from here, doesn't the unique structure of troll society change their relationship to these sort of learned emotions and behaviours? I think it's safe to say that at least for most of history people have learned how love and relationships are meant to be from their parents, and if not their parents then other established adult relationships in their family or social circles.

trolls don't grow up around adults, and if they had any guardian figures to learn about relationships from they'd be more likely to pick up animalistic habits (unless we're just to presume lusus mating habits are just the same as troll mating habits, which I suppose is possible - but someone likely would have had to make it that way). if troll children were inclined to just learn romantic emotions and behaviours from their fellow children, the whole nature of troll romance would be inclined to mutate at an incredibly fast rate.

karkat is an interesting look into this. most of his knowledge about quadrants and romance sees to come from shitty romcoms, and one could argue that it could easily be the norm among trolls to learn about romance from media with adults in it - but what is that if not engineered? in an authoritarian state like the alternian empire, who makes the films that are supposed to demonstrate What Love (/Hate) Is Meant To Be Like?

[egg]

it's less that I'm inclined to believe everything in fiction is socially constructed and more that trolls in-comic have had their whole society engineered to be a certain way from the beginning. this probably includes the way their breeding works, for maximum efficiency, and I wouldn't be surprised if the way their teen romance drama bullshit is exacerbated by the existence of four whole kinds of it was deliberately made that way in-universe too. like I said, I find it sort of unlikely any species would naturally find benefit to a relationship with someone they literally do not like.

This is essentially pedantry, as your point arguably remains the same anyway, but in this conversation Karkat explains that kismessistude is not full blown hatred, and actually involves a level of mutual respect between both parties and admiration for some traits, which is why it tends to vacillate.

[Dream Muttman]

Hate as a socially structured and valued relationship is actually pretty big brained, biologically speaking. It basically short-circuits conflict and changes outcomes dramatically.

[BrobyDDark]

When one looks at Quadrants, a lot of them absolutely are human emotions that have been escalated to relate to romance. For Troll society, there cannot just be good friends, it has to be in a romantic sense. I think this is where the social engineering aspect of the Troll Empire comes in, to keep the Trolls in-check or pacified.

Auspiticism- everyone knows that friend who mediates in every argument and keeps the peace. For Trolls, this is used specifically for romantic relationships rather than all relationships.

Kismesistude- we all have rivals, the main difference is that we don't necessarily kiss our rivals to pass the time. A lot of times on TV, though, we see rival detectives of opposite (sometimes same) genders who develop a romantic interest in eachother despite being bitter, spiteful rivals. Otherwise, it's just mutually respecting eachother for your abilities, but being unable to agree with eachother's methods or personality. Think Gary (motherfucking) Oak and Ash Ketchum.

Moiraillegiance- it's just best friends. Yeah, sure, Hussie tries to say it isn't like best friends, but- but it's just best friends. More specifically, it is those best-friends who have known eachother long enough to know how to keep eachother from fucking goin off on someone.

And Matespritism is like human singular romance.

[aspiringWatcher]

Literally nobody save for broby here sees the romantic potential inherent in rival tension huh

that's what kismetic feelings are, when you look at some1 and just KNOW "this one. I'll outdo this person or fucking die trying. they have built a seven foot statue? i'll build an eight foot one. burned down a fleet? i'll burn down two."

of course there's infinite potential for things going haywire, but hey, a healthy dose of respect is all a rivalry needs to sustain a romantic relationship

think batman and catwoman, maybe?

[JakeMorph]

I think there's probably a difference between "a relationship that would be fun for certain kinds of characters in a story" and "something that literally every troll has to do lest they die". if everybody's parents had to be like batman and catwoman nobody would get born.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Literally nobody save for broby here sees the romantic potential inherent in rival tension huh

I think the issue is that rivalry and hate are conflated in Alternian culture, which leads to the confusion. Matespritship is based on pity. Pity, like pitiful. We simplify it to love, as if the love for fighting doesn't count as love, but whatevs. You can hate someone you find pitiful, but it's not going to be "fun" to be curbstomping someone who is 900 levels weaker than you. This might be why OG Vriska wanted Tavros to get stronger, so they could duke it out properly as kismeses should. Problem is that they don't compete at the same sort of games, now that Tavros can't FLARP anymore. If Vriska were a Fiduspawn player or a rapper, there'd be some commonality for them to compete with, but since she isn't, her behavior is just confusing. Her tendency to be aggressively apologetic is pitiful but also very unpleasant. Vriska finds Tavros frustrating because he's playing SBURB in a way orthogontal to her method. He's using his animal communion to avoid combat with the imps. That's unfair. She can't do that. That's cheating. Or, it would be if they were competing, but they're not.

Maybe I shouldn't be talking about rivalry while I'm looking for reasons for why I'm not doing things that I like to do.

I think there's probably a difference between "a relationship that would be fun for certain kinds of characters in a story" and "something that literally every troll has to do lest they die".

i think the latter would be bad no matter what it was.

[thorondraco]

Literally nobody save for broby here sees the romantic potential inherent in rival tension huh

I think the issue is that rivalry and hate are conflated in Alternian culture, which leads to the confusion. Matespritship is based on pity. Pity, like pitiful. We simplify it to love, as if the love for fighting doesn't count as love, but whatevs. You can hate someone you find pitiful, but it's not going to be "fun" to be curbstomping someone who is 900 levels weaker than you. This might be why OG Vriska wanted Tavros to get stronger, so they could duke it out properly as kismeses should. Problem is that they don't compete at the same sort of games, now that Tavros can't FLARP anymore. If Vriska were a Fiduspawn player or a rapper, there'd be some commonality for them to compete with, but since she isn't, her behavior is just confusing. Her tendency to be aggressively apologetic is pitiful but also very unpleasant. Vriska finds Tavros frustrating because he's playing SBURB in a way orthogontal to her method. He's using his animal communion to avoid combat with the imps. That's unfair. She can't do that. That's cheating. Or, it would be if they were competing, but they're not.

Maybe I shouldn't be talking about rivalry while I'm looking for reasons for why I'm not doing things that I like to do.

I think there's probably a difference between "a relationship that would be fun for certain kinds of characters in a story" and "something that literally every troll has to do lest they die".

i think the latter would be bad no matter what it was.

You do realize that its likely that their society was ruled by a warrior womanchild who would probably have tried to emphasize aggression in her species rather than affection and weakness? Hate being the primary emotion is obviously absolute bullshit and has been proven time and time again. Calling love pity was meant to make it seem like it is a lesser emotion to hate.
Put simply trolls seem to skew to the eccentric but have the exact same range of emotions as humans.

I would say that the quadrants imply that by nature their species is group oriented. The ashen and black quadrants are meant as a means alleviating or at least controlling interpersonal conflict. With black causing reproductive emotions to rise. In a sense it is 'love' but one born out of rivalry, both sides challenging the other and leading to improvement. Anime ass stuff. Under normal circumstances it probably prevents escalation of the interpersonal conflict as one is unlikely to try and overtly harm or even kill a mate.

The only and singular place where trolls are growing up under 'normal' circumstances is on Earth c. Both incarnations of their society are oppressive in their own ways. Alternia was worse for obvious reasons but Beforus controlled and contained the natural eccentricity and aggression of the trolls, repressed them. Far as we know Feferi in that incarnation in fact imposed reproduction restrictions on her own species, as it seems they did not spread into space at all.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

I forgot if we were talking about nature or nurture. JakeMorph was talking about how hate-based romances don't make any sense to him, so I suggested some kind of alternative. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be realizing other than the stuff I already believe?

Pity is a synonym for sympathy. If you feel sympathy for someone, it feels bad when you know they're hurt, right? I think pity works well as an antonym for rivalry, even if I leaned into the negative connotations to establish how it would work. I wouldn't call Tavros's feelings for Vriska love or hate as I understand those words.

[JakeMorph]

Alternia was worse for obvious reasons but Beforus controlled and contained the natural eccentricity and aggression of the trolls, repressed them. Far as we know Feferi in that incarnation in fact imposed reproduction restrictions on her own species, as it seems they did not spread into space at all.

this is a totally insane leap to make just based on the fact that we don't KNOW 100% whether Beforans were spacefarers or not

[VASKA]

I think there's also the fact that Alternia honestly pretty sparsely populated? Sollux was the only one who actually lived in a city, and even hiveswap is more suburban than urban. There seems to be plenty of space for however many kids are on Alternia, with space for a ton more. Considering both societies are implied to be post-scarcity as well, I can't imagine population is really an issue. Alternia is just a freakishly huge planet, I guess.

[thorondraco]

Alternia was worse for obvious reasons but Beforus controlled and contained the natural eccentricity and aggression of the trolls, repressed them. Far as we know Feferi in that incarnation in fact imposed reproduction restrictions on her own species, as it seems they did not spread into space at all.

this is a totally insane leap to make just based on the fact that we don't KNOW 100% whether Beforans were spacefarers or not

The specific aspects are of course in question, but but its very likely that Feferi was an oppressive leader cause it seems the lifebound tend to have controlling personalities. They can have nurturing or even mothering tendencies but they also have a desire to keep things within their control. And that is a bad, if all too common, quality for a leader.

Three out of the four known lifebounds are like this for sure. Including lanque who... YEAaaaa very controlling and maybe a little rapey too? So is likely that Feferi had a similar issue herself. And her prior incarnation was probably a tyrant but with a softer hand.

Still want feferi to be alive alive again cause she was given such a short stick. Like Nepeta and Equis and tavros... Eridan can stay dead. Though its possible a new incarnation of his sign would be less assholey.

[Dream Muttman]

It is canon that the quality of the genetic material is based on the qualities of the relationship, so I don't know if it's that easy to dismiss every bit of Alternian culture as 'wrong' on the face of it. Maybe they encouraged what was better for reproduction than what was better for relationships. Remember the through-line of Alternia's culture is that Trolls are utterly disposable.

TL;DR: Maybe Hate and Pity are the real deal as the triggers for S++ genetic material, and basing the culture around it is another cruel trade-off against trolls.

I think the shift to love and rivalry is part of a larger trend in Homestuck's worldbuilding. Things like the gender-enforced Classes seemed like they were put in the story to generate conflict, but because fans didn't enjoy those restrictions they were slowly worn away. Slowly the story shifted away from "SBURB is full of cosmic, agency-stealing horror" and titles started applying to people who won't ever play the game, with no inherently negative connotations.

[thorondraco]

It is canon that the quality of the genetic material is based on the qualities of the relationship, so I don't know if it's that easy to dismiss every bit of Alternian culture as 'wrong' on the face of it. Maybe they encouraged what was better for reproduction than what was better for relationships. Remember the through-line of Alternia's culture is that Trolls are utterly disposable.

TL;DR: Maybe Hate and Pity are the real deal as the triggers for S++ genetic material, and basing the culture around it is another cruel trade-off against trolls.

I think the shift to love and rivalry is part of a larger trend in Homestuck's worldbuilding. Things like the gender-enforced Classes seemed like they were put in the story to generate conflict, but because fans didn't enjoy those restrictions they were slowly worn away. Slowly the story shifted away from "SBURB is full of cosmic, agency-stealing horror" and titles started applying to people who won't ever play the game, with no inherently negative connotations.

Sburb still is a cosmic agency stealing horror, if one that creates the cosmos. The classes can be genderlocked without question, depending on the session. And it is less applicable to beings whom would never gain power over the aspects by sheer fate, like the peeps in Hiveswap.
Which is why i literally think Joey and the trolls on her side start unlocking those powers, as it would really rile up the 'powers that be'. And would be useful in performing whatever action is planned for them. A powper up to help them match their enemies. It would explain why aspects even apply to non paradox clones. They always have the power, but sburb wants absolute control and thus the players must be created by the timeloop itself.
I think we already have examples with Boldir and Marvus.

Basically the reality is for Sburb to be agency stealing to begin with, Agency needs to exist to be stolen at all. Its very, very possible that everything we know is a lie when it comes to Sburb and how reality works. And if its a truth, it may be a truth only because sburb allows only those methods, not because they are the only things that can happen.

[JakeMorph]

let's not turn my quadrants thread into one of your sburb conspiracies please

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

It is canon that the quality of the genetic material is based on the qualities of the relationship, so I don't know if it's that easy to dismiss every bit of Alternian culture as 'wrong' on the face of it. Maybe they encouraged what was better for reproduction than what was better for relationships. Remember the through-line of Alternia's culture is that Trolls are utterly disposable.

I feel like "the hotter it is, the harder you cum" is a joke that we shouldn't take seriously, even if it's canonically factual.

[JakeMorph]

while I do think the bit about powerful complements and potent rivalries is worth bringing up, and i see your point, it's also true that it's not that hard to elicit biological reactions from purely psychological associations. the fact that people in the west and in countries heavily influenced by the west are attracted to breasts, for example, is taken completely for granted by a lot of people, but it's essentially an artificial association. there's no reason a strong kismesitude couldn't produce "dominant genes" in this way simply because the society alternians grow up in conditions them to associate certain things that aren't explicitly amorous with biological reactions.

[Dream Muttman]

To be fair that same exposition dump mentions primal forces and contrasts humans to trolls in that sense.