How Troll Things Work (Homestuck)

Relationships

This is all copied from the internet, I don't own it.

The Basics

Troll romantic relationships are divided between red romance (redrom), which concerns positive emotions, and black romance (blackrom), which concerns negative emotions. They are further subdivided into the concupiscent (meaning "sexy") quadrants, which concern the trolls' idiosyncratic reproductive system, and the conciliatory quadrants, which are equivalent to what humans consider platonic, though they involve placating someone's violent tendencies, or preventing someone or someones from violently getting out of control (or any other kind of getting out of hand, really). Individually, they are referred to as the flushed, caliginous, pale, and ashen quadrants, named after their respective colors. When you are in a relationship with someone else in a particular quadrant, the quadrant is said to be "filled" for you.

Note that the troll reproductive system technically requires genetic material from two individuals per concupiscent pairing ("without going into too much detail!" as the narration hurriedly exclaims),1 but it does not require that they be of the opposite sex. They don't even have words for homosexuality or heterosexuality. (This is quite similar to the behavior of human shippers.) For this reason, the pronouns used in the examples are randomized every time you load the page.

The Four Quadrants

The Flushed Quadrant (♥)

matespritship: "she is his matesprit", "they are matesprits" (concupiscent, red)

This is romantic love as humans understand it. Nothing new here.

Etymology: A portmanteau of "mate" and "esprit" (French for "soul").

Examples: Alice and Marisa. :D Or, uh, Han Solo and Princess Leia was the first example which came to mind that actually exists in their canon. Wesley and Buttercup.

The Caliginous Quadrant (♠)

kismesissitude: "she is her kismesis", "they are kismeses" (concupiscent, black)

Romantic "hate" - that is, a relationship which has all the trappings of a romantic one, except that it is based on mutual hatred rather than mutual love. Two people in a caliginous relationship are "enemies" the way romantic lovers are "friends"; for instance, their behavior towards each other can be extremely vitriolic and hostile, and most of their interactions might be arguments and shouting matches ... but you just want to tell them, "Oh just get a room, you two."

Note that this is not the same as mortal enmity; kismeses want the relationship to continue, much as lovers/matesprits do (albeit for different reasons), and they certainly do not want to kill each other; at one point, a troll explains to a human that his kismesis "hates me, but not enough to kill me." However, it is quite possible for such a relationship to escalate to the point that the former kismeses do in fact want to kill each other. The reverse is also possible.

Late in Homestuck, a troll describes the feelings associated with kismesissitude to a human who seems to be experiencing them: It almost never involves full-blown antipathy, and rarely reaches that level of animosity in the long term; someone might have frustrated, negative feelings for her kismesis, or she might spend all of her time going out of your way to aggravate him, but these negative emotions don't comprehensively account for how they feel about each other. They actually do like/admire some things about each other - all healthy relationships must have some measure of respect - but the negatives make it difficult to articulate what the positives actually are, and in the end the positives only serve to accentuate or emphasize the negatives, i.e. "I'd really like him if it wasn't for everything I hate about him!" The human's reaction to this in-story summary is variations on "No no no!" but the troll reassuringly says that the "No no no!" is all part of the experience; it's supposed to feel messed up when you realize how you're feeling.