Its been a long while since I read homestuck. But I am REALLY curious to hear about your thoughts on ribbun being an unhealthy ♦️ relationship 👀👀👀
oh jeez—I wasn't expecting to actually have my brainworms indulged like this,,, 😂💧 okay, uh, wait, hang on a sec— *shuffles around some the many, many papers on my big messy desk & accidentally knocks over a sizeable stack in the process*
okay, so! insert Obligatory DisclaimerTM about some things obviously getting changed/lost in translation wrt Quadrants when applying to humans instead of trolls yadda yadda (babbled a bit abt ♦️ TADC dynamics & other quadrant stuff in This Post previously)
(I also feel compelled to tack on another disclaimer that none of what I'm about to say is condoning or excusing any of Jax's actions, etc. etc.—which should be obvious enough to not need to be said imo but w/e lol)
hmmmm.... it's really just Vibes again, I guess! xD I assume it's easy for people to see the Quadrants structure and go, "okay, so the Redroms = Love(/"Pity")-based & the Blackroms = Hate-based, therefore if the 🎭🐇 relationship is antagonistic then that means it's gotta be a ♠️Kismesissitude!" but that's... not exactly correct? 🤔 idk, I think ♦️Pale and ♠️Pitch are actually a lot closer to each other than many people realize since they're at opposite corners of the chart 😆
anyways, the TL;DR of my Quadrant Meta ThesisTM is that the component parts that make up each symbol are important in its meaning:
Ɛ> <> <3< o8<
Attraction / Acceptance / Improvement / Intervention
(Yes, using the backwards-3 symbol version vs. the typical "<3" heart is actually important for maintaining the pattern of rotating each symbol clockwise-90°, thanks for asking 🫶✨️)
The shorthand phrases I most commonly associate with each of them are:
♥️Love Is Blind
♦️Diamond In The Rough (this quadrant is also the epitome of the "I Can Fix ThemTM" dynamic/trope if you'd prefer that phrase x3c)
♠️Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
♣️Alright, You Just Lost Your Independence Privileges
soooo, if we're looking at that list... which one of these dynamics do you think fits Jax & Gangle the most, if any? :3c [vote_now_on_your_phones.gif] Obviously I tend to read them as fairly ♦️Pale—but probably not in the way a first-glance would assume? idk
like, okay, the way I parse Jax & Gangle's relationship in canon is that, in a very warped & twisted way, I do think that Jax genuinely does think he's operating in Gangle's best interest with his bullying towards her?? That's not to say that he's correct in any way for doing so or that he Only does it out of the good will of his ~uwu secretly-kept heart of gold~ (he definitely Enjoys being a s[%$@#]head just for his own gratification lmao), but he's managed to rationalize it to himself as like, a "necessary evil" kind of thing?
Like, I don't think he's being facetious when he says this; I think he genuinely has convinced himself that he believes these words. He wants Gangle to like that he's mean to her, because him being mean to her keeps her in her role as The Sad One—which within the framework of Jax's faulty Archetype philosophy is A Good Thing. He doesn't hate the fact that Gangle is sad—he hates when she wears her comedy mask because that's not the "real" her, in his eyes, and for some reason he decides that this is important enough for him to want to ""fix""????
(Like, his weird little possessive streak over her while simultaneously being viscerally allergic to connection/commitment is v interesting to me. Is it just because he's dehumanized her so much in his mind by this point that she's become a "safe" non-person entity for him to allow himself to interact with?? Probably. God, everyone in this Circus needs soooo much therapyyyy 😩 anyways. back to the actual post:)
Needlessly cruel? Absolutely. But again, I don't think he's Just saying this to be an a[%$@#]—I do think he really means it. In the same way that he thinks he's the only one that "gets" the Circus with his whole ArchetypesTM & None Of This Is Actually "RealTM" copium, he thinks he's doing Gangle a favor by breaking her mask because that's what he so desperately wishes he could do for himself. It's hypocritical as hell, yes, bc Jax is clutching onto an even more prominent mask than any of the rest of them and does NOT like it whenever someone tries to point that out, but that also feeds into why he treats Gangle the way he does: he's externalizing his own self-loathing & unhappiness by channeling it into bullying the only Circus member weaker than himself that won't directly fight back against him. If anything it's almost like some kind of self-harm-by-proxy projection bs that he needs to go to therapy about bc this is not helping ANYONE you pos rabbit, jfc—!! 😤 ....I feel like I'm starting to get off track here,, x'3c
like... if Gangle actually reciprocated those antagonistic feelings and actually pushed back against Jax (the way that Zooble and Ragatha and even Pomni eventually ends up doing) then That would be closer to ♠️Pitch imo? because ♠️Pitch kinda boiled down even further to just a singular word would be "Rivalry," and 🎭🐇 in-canon are not?? rivals?? Maybe Jax wants them to be, at least in part, and that could be why he pushes Gangle around & tears down her interests the way that he does—but then again, he also doesn't want her to spar back with him, not really:
He wants her ~submissive and agreeable~—like a ♦️Moirail trusting him implicitly to know what's right for her. The fact that Gangle ultimately only complies here because he threatens her with figurine-related blackmail doesn't matter to him, that's still her acquiescing to his judgement. Which this is where ♦️Moirallegience gets a bad rap bc of the whole deference-to-another-person aspect—but in a healthy ♦️Moirallegience it goes both ways, and that's exactly what DOESN'T happen with 🎭🐇! Jax gives all the orders, is the only one who's allowed to be right about things, and Gangle isn't even allowed to take the conciliatory role opposite his emotional volatility either bc Jax is too deep in his own unhealthy coping mechanisms to let himself be that vulnerable with someone else anymore, so that staple of ♦️Pale counterbalance is gone too! 🥺😠
(I imagine that earlier on in their relationship Gangle would still have tried to help him (the same way we see Pomni try do for him now) before he rejected her enough times that she eventually learned to just stop trying... :( d[%$@#]it, Jax, just let the ppl around you help you, you miserable sadsack!! 😫)
oh my god do NOT get me started—I have a whole ThingTM about Jax monopolizing on claiming the title of being Gangle's best friend but she's not allowed to call herself His best friend in turn,,, orz i'm fine I'M FINE;;; anyways—
so like... that's why it's an unhealthy relationship—because Jax is doing exactly what so many bad-faith takes think ♦️Moirallegience is "supposed to be" about. He's completely domineering the relationship without any of the emotional vulnerability/honesty or other checks & balances that a healthy partnership necessitates. He's treating it like a one-way street, like he's the one in charge of doing all of the "fixing" without even so much as entertaining the thought that he might—and realistically should—need a bit of "fixing" himself in equal portion. He's using the relationship as a means of control just to make himself feel better instead of an actual relationship where they both agree to help & support each other... :/ Which is really sad bc if Jax were actually open to it I think he & Gangle do have enough interests/traits in common to actually be a good duo—they just both need to do some important self-work (separately) before they'll be ready to be any kind of healthy together...
....okay I hope that explained enough to make at least a little bit of sense—I've been trying to find the right words for this post for the past like 4 days now & my brain is mushhhh,,, 😂🙈
Ty for asking tho~!!!! Despite the struggle to articulate it externally I do very much enjoy thinking abt this kind of stuff~ x3c ✨️
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