#surprise! comphet is also just amatonormativity! whee !

[lucabyte]

fundamentally i think its fairly interesting that for the most part when working with quadrants, especially Outside of the context of characters in homestuck (and even in it but like), pity gets relegated to not actually pity and instead just *handwaves generally at the concept of romantic love* but in the sifloop/isiloop paradigm its like, hm no there is actual pity here

people loooove to read the quadrants as Romantic Love / Platonic BROTP / ????? the other one / Hatesex (nebulous concept) id argue sifloop actually fills all the quadrants perfectly as written in the comic since its

PITY (literal pity binding the two together. pity that makes you want to protect someone, be possessive, but not necessarily be nice)

PACIFICATION (which as written by hussie, is NOT platonic besties, but instead explicitly about someone being able to hold you back from being a danger to others by being an emotional outlet) ARMISTICE (okay auspicism is always the fucking goofy one. but to be fair ! they do it ! loop multiple times advises siffrin on how not to obliterate their relationships with people. presumably the same would be true in reverse. Also i think i'd count act 5 loop as "stepping in to stop siffrin being destructive in a relationship" so...? auspicism isnt always between two potential blackrom partners so...)

RIVALRY (hussie makes a point via karkat's continued rants that kismessitude falls apart when the parties just actually legitimately hate each other/dont respect each other/arent on equal footing, and thus its healthier as a rivalry that CAN include genuine hate and annoyance, but is instead more a motivator or driving force for self-improvement because ugh. i GOTTA be better than that guy)

the quadrants are frequently squarshed down to fill the roles that they were critiquing in fandom (i think like a lot of things in homestuck that aim to do this, they are both critique and a perfectly laid narrative trap) but in this scenario, oh boy oh boy if they don't work well as the other thing they were intended to be (a lense to utilise when deconstructing the narrative tools that are characters)

now as for having all of these at once/vacillating. well karkat would be mortified. all that really does is prove hussie right that the lens was arbitrary in its creation, lol. The whole point is that an interesting character relationship SHOULD include multitudes, and not just One Emotion Always Ever LMAO. and also that it's a really good jab at amatonormativity whether intended or not.