can you talk more about aquadromantic karkat and what that means to you/ for him? :0
I think Karkat being aquadromantic is the intended read on Karkat canonically. I'm not really interested in going up to people who believe otherwise and arguing with them about it, but Karkat Vs Quadrants is like a constant conflict from him in the story.
Karkat is, essentially, Troll Queer. And if you, like me, think Karkat inadvertently created humanity in his image, it's especially interesting how the machinations of Skaia continually face Karkat off against his greatest fears. His planet in the game was filled with his blood, the humans and carapacians had his blood color, and the humans eschew troll romance completely for... something that looks a lot like what Karkat's ideal of romance is.
Now, there's an extra step you can choose to take, and say that the entire idea of quadromanticism was cooked up to better control the species, but I'm not sure how that theory hashes out when you consider that the Beforus trolls had quadrants as well. SHRUG.
But with Karkat specifically, he does the classic blunder of learning a lot about the topic he weirdly can't understand. (What queer person is not guilty of this lmao.) He is genuinely and truly really fucking insightful and good at talking to people about their romantic issues, but his own are an unnavigable terrain to him.
More specifically, in the second Act 6 intermission I think is the longass Karkat vs Karkat log when he drags himself through the fucking mud and makes a comparison to a stock comedy archetype in troll media, about the guy who can't figure out his quadrants and tries to shove people into each one. There's that direct line, "You want [Terezi] in every quadrant like a damn fool," I believe.
Also if you've relistened to Act 4 and 5 recently, Karkat just cannot fucking nail down his own romantic inclinations. He doesn't know what he wants to be with Terezi, he blows off Vriska's teasing about what he's looking for in a pitch partner, and even admits to Kanaya that he thinks he got looped into treating his future self as a pitch flirtation because what he wants from a kismesis is unattainable. And if you take moirail to me someone who is concerned about you emotionally and will pacify your anger, then Karkat was pretty fucking pale for his entire team, as that's a core of his leadership style. His rule was not of intimidation but of compassion and a LOT of talking about feelings.
It's such a fucking mess.
Then: humans. And its definitely not a mistake that the story ends softly around the idea of Dave, Karkat, and quadrants. I think it's Vriska who even notes that no one knows what quadrant they settled on.
Reminder that Dave's idea of quadromanticism is that he does not want to play ball with it, like, at all. And his relationship with Karkat has the fingerprints of multiple quadrants.
I think the principle reason Dave and Karkat are 'quiet' about their relationship even though its very obviously a thing going on is that Dave is trying to figure out how to come out as bi/gay and Karkat is trying to figure out how to come out as aquadromantic. I don't think either of them, together, have many hangups about the relationship itself, only how the people around them would react and what it means in context of the worlds they came from. Just like Dave grew up in fucking Texas and was fuckdeep in heteronormativity and has been actively before our eyes unlearning toxic masculinity, so has Karkat grown up with the Alternian equivalent and is working through that. And don't undersell the magnitude of how they are each uniquely equipped to help each other through this exact baggage.
So. All that said. When I personally write Karkat, he will always be written as aquadromantic. Because I think its core to what makes Karkat an interesting character to me.
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