#our matespriteship is too powerful

[phemiec]

Yo congrats on the kid!!! Had no idea you were a parent lol

yea the government said 2012 homestucks aren’t allowed to reproduce but they haven’t caught my cringe gay ass yet 🖕😎🖕

[catflowerqueen]

Non-Quadrant Marriages

(Make sure to read my previous post on Earth C first!)

Human-style:

In a nutshell, this is basically human marriage as it is now. Messy, complicated, and you more or less hold all your quadrants in the same person/small groups. Weddings would likely be highly varied in appearance/traditions since certain cultures/historical events probably wouldn’t have developed in the same way as they did on our version of Earth. I mean, for all we know, the continents and climates might not even be the same enough to allow certain plants/animals to even exist outside of alchemization. I’m not entirely sure how long it would take for things like continental drift to have happened, but considering the state that the world was in when Jade grabbed it, and how it was heavily implied that a lot of time had passed for there to have even been trees and plant life around before they touched down, I don’t necessarily know for sure how much would have changed in that regard.

Those who have this form of relationship legally recognized would “officially” refer to those in the relationship as “spouse” or “spouses” in order to denote that they are referring to a human-style relationship. They would also share rings—which would be plain, aside from maybe having carvings on them, or limited amounts of a very small and specific pool of gem-types—to symbolize this. Humans and non-seatrolls would wear the ring on their left ring-finger, seatrolls would probably wear the ring as part of a bracelet on their left arm, or on a cord around their neck—because otherwise they would have to pierce through their fins. In either case, however, they would definitely still have a plain/carved ring denoting the relationship in order to differentiate it from other types of relationship that I will get into in a later post.

It is entirely possible that someone in a human-style relationship would still have outside quadrants, but it would probably be a lot messier to actually work that out among the spouses, as, by its very nature, a human-style relationship implies a certain amount of monogamy that the quadrants don’t. Otherwise, it would be simpler to just enter into one specific quadrant—likely a matespriteship, if there is a human involved—and then one spouse would simply have that as their only relationship while the other/others would enter into other quadrants. And then they would use a term different than “spouse”

Oh, and also—there is not the sort of imperative on filling all your quadrants (or at least the concupiscent ones) that there was on Alternia. All relationships would be optional on this planet.

This type of relationship is also the one in which you would hear the terms “husband” and “wife” the most, with spouse being the gender-neutral term as well as one most typically used if the marriage includes more than two people. It is perfectly fine to use “husband” or “wife” in the other types of relationships as well, it’s just that the traditions behind the word implies this kind of relationship.

Now, what that means for canon Rosemary I don’t care too much to speculate on—it seems like they prefer to refer to each other as “wives” over “matesprits,” but they’re also coming from different cultures—Alternia didn’t have weddings, and Earth didn’t have matesprits, after all—and neither of them would have been all that familiar with the specifics of the Earth C culture at the time of their marriage. It is entirely possible that other quadrants might get involved at some point, but it’s equally likely they will just stick to matespritship, or not use any sort of label like that at all. But I’m not talking about them—I’m talking about Earth C’s culture in general.

 Carapacians:

I have my own headcanons about historical Carapacian society and the way they run things that I’m not going to get into here, but basically… they don’t really have the same sort of need to label their relationships like humans or trolls do. At least, not traditionally. We obviously saw in the human and troll sessions that certain pairings seemed to follow the quadrants, but it’s unclear how much of that was influenced by the specific players of the session. After all—Bec Noir didn’t seem to feel the same amount of remorse in killing his Game’s Black Queen as Spade Slick did when killing Snowman. And even then—who is to say that’s what was really going on, rather than that just being what the troll/human audience saw when filtered through the lens of how they understood romance based on their own culture?

I’d say that Carapacian romantic relationships are probably more flexible and shifting than either human or troll romance. There are probably elements of both the quadrants and human-style forms in it, which, by that nature, probably does push it a bit closer to human-style. But, like, not completely? If that makes sense?

If they absolutely had to choose a label, though, I think they would go with “Bonded.” It would probably lean more towards couples, but small groups wouldn’t be out of the question. And I don’t think there would really be any sort of special ceremony to denote that relationship? Or any sort of ornamentation? What would most likely happen is that the couple/group would decide in private, and then maybe add each other’s barcodes into a special slot, akin to the “next of kin” or “power of attorney” position that would pop up when their own barcode was scanned. (So, like, if a carapacian got into, say, a car accident, their barcode would be scanned at the hospital and show things like their medical records, and then they could look at the “bonded” slot and see who they should inform about the accident.)

At the same time, though… while this is the most “flexible” one, I think it’s also the rarest form? You probably wouldn’t see too many Bonded couples/groups—and not just because there’s no real signifiers on the outside. I feel like because their romance is so flexible and shifting, it means that you would have to be far more certain of things to actually put the label of “Bonded” on someone. The decision would be very private and special.

 Consort-style:

I… honestly have no idea. Consorts are so weird and varied anyways, and so prone to just copying things that look cool/interesting/special that I feel like it would be hard for an outsider to tell what was going on? I’m sure that they have something, but it probably differs by species and, to be honest, I don’t think I would really be focusing on them enough in my stories for it to matter? So, sorry to those who are really interested in consorts, but I have nothing.

 Leprechauns:

Yeah, I don’t really think we got enough in canon to get the specifics of what the different symbols signify in their own culture, let alone how that would work if they were mixed in with other species, so I’m not touching this one. There aren’t any leprechauns on Earth C, anyways, so it doesn’t really matter as far as worldbuilding goes.

 Cherubs:

Same as above—there’s really only one cherub on Earth C, and Calliope isn’t really following along with any sort of relationship structure anyways, so it doesn’t really matter for my worldbuilding purposes. Cherub courtship is also so rare and complex anyways that I doubt it would be long-lived enough for a particular pairing to put a label on it. But if Calliope or some other random cherub did, for some reason, decide to enter a romantic relationship, it probably wouldn’t be with another cherub outside of mating purposes, in which case they would probably just go with whatever term/form their partner was using.

 The next post will talk about quadrants.