Can you elaborate on what you meant with that ashen post? What do quadrant misunderstandings have to do with Eridan
first of all, the fandom seemed to take eridan at his word when he said moirallegiance was a lesser romance akin to a friendzone; that's its own problem.
but in relation to blackrom: the toxic, horrible behavior that eridan displays in his flirting is often taken by fans to prove that kismesissitude is an inherently abusive, unnatural quadrant that the empire forces young trolls into. but this is incorrect.
as stated by multiple characters in-text AND by andrew hussie later: this behavior is not pitch at all. it's ashen flirting.
feferi calls out how transparent this bullshit is instantly. terezi, too, gets caught up in this when eridan decides to drag her into it, but she is also not having his shit. both of them read him for how fake he is. and that's not even going into how completely uninterested sollux was in this “rivalry”.
hussie, in the commentary, also states that eridan's obviously outrageous behavior is basically textbook for an ashen solicitation.
i feel that it's also worth mentioning that when eridan had a real kismesis, his relationship with her was amiable, and they even supported each other as teammates and allies in their campaigns. the second she gets bored of him, eridan starts pretending their relationship is volatile and going to “become murderous” to get kanaya to auspistize for him… sound familiar?
and now here is what eridan looks like when he's actually pitch flirting. notice how despite his obvious assholery, eridan also tries to treat her with weird respect and pay her compliments? there's a noticeable difference between how eridan treats someone he actually has a pitch thing for and how he treats sollux.
with sollux, eridan is intentionally going way over the line, to goad people into stopping him. i discussed this before in reference to vriska/kanaya/tavros, but trolls actually obviously don't want their relationships to become unpleasant. they have an entire quadrant dedicated to intervening if they think a relationship isn't healthy. and the relationship going extremely toxic is attributed to a failure of auspisticism, not a natural facet of pitch romance.
this is what eridan's treatment of sollux is. it's unhealthy, by troll standards. which is saying something! it says that trolls have standards for blackrom; standards that make them think trolls like vriska, gamzee and eridan are going too far.
so that's what my funny little image was trying to encapsulate. that fandom has such a blind spot when it comes to ashen relationships that it makes them misinterpret pitch romance as well. they forget that it's literally proven in-comic that trolls don't accept shit tons of toxicity as normal in their romance. (of course it gets a little more complicated when caste dynamics are introduced, but in the end other trolls still wish to auspistize in cases like terezi/gamzee.)
ashen romance has a purpose, and people straight up refusing to acknowledge one of the four romances in the four romance system throws their perspective of the entire thing off balance.
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