i've alluded to many times on my blog my theories about jade harley's particular affinity for hatemance, and it's time i finally delved into this.
jade harley is, as we know and love, a silly, cheerful girl with a lot going on under the surface. because of that, most popular jade ships are cutesy and lovey-dovey.
but i'd argue that this isn't what would actually be healthiest for jade, or what she would truly prefer. in homestuck, jade is self-assured, and not at all afraid to steamroll other characters or take charge. despite her penchant for silliness, she does not tolerate nonsense.
the thing is that jade considers negative emotions themselves to be nonsense.
i think saying that jade is walked over by other characters would be a mistake. it's incredibly obvious that the one person who isn't letting jade talk about her feelings, is, in fact, jade. jade is holding herself to impossible standards, believing that the entire course of the game rides on her shoulders due to her skaian responsibility.
you can see it so clearly in how she talks to herself, and even in how she speaks to others-- despite her penchant for silliness, jade holds an unmistakable no-nonsense attitude when it comes to productivity.
emotions make her uncomfortable when they deter that progress... and this follows her into her relationships in a serious way.
we don't get to hear much about the specifics of how davejade fell apart. dave's gayness nonwithstanding, it's very clear from the dialogue that davesprite had extreme depression issues that jade was, understandably, not able to handle.
this isn't something that comes out of nowhere- it makes sense for jade to get awkward when situations get too mushy for her; even without knowing that grimbark jade was working off her real desires. jade dislikes discussing negative emotions because she thinks they're unbecoming, and that makes her red relationships fall apart.
this happens with "cheerful" characters too- jade has friction with characters too similar to herself, too "silly", who aren't taking things seriously enough.
overall, jade has a lot of difficulty with emotions and talking about them-- hers and anyone else's. so she awkwardly humors them, hoping that it'll stop, and slowly builds frustration, as seen with tavros (and maybe davesprite).
this brings me, finally, to the flipside of things: blackrom, and a jade who doesn't have to be mushy.
jade is at her best when she's 'allowed' to be an asshole to people without feeling guilty about it: most famously, towards karkat.
jade thinks of karkat of someone who deserves her ire; in fact, he might be the singular person in the world who she can be productively angry towards. telling karkat to fuck off is always the right thing to do to proceed to her goal- whether that be blocking an annoying troll or getting the frog timelines in order.
jade and karkat's relationship starts off extremely toxic. years of anger and bullying make it hard to believe these two could ever be friends, but strangely, something happens to tip those scales- two interesting scenes that i'll highlight here.
what's happening here is auspisticism, a blackrom relationship that diffuses a previously toxic romance. and that is not my theory, that is something explicitly pointed out in (and out) the text several times.
it seems jade harley's healthiest, realest relationship is a (strange, rotating, time-travel-based) auspisticism where she gets to cuss someone annoying out all the time.
she's finally free to bitch at someone. which is kind of adorable??
[i'll write a longer post about these two another time.]
but it's visible in all of the jade redrom attempts as well. what's clear is that jade needs to confront and express her emotions. what jade really needs is an outlet- jade needs to feel like her negative feelings are the goal, so she doesn't feel guilty for impeding one. this is why blackrom could be more healthy for her!
think of popular jade ships; jadekat, davejade, even jadenep. all of these characters deeply frustrate her. why bottle that up when she could make it a healthy romantic outlet instead!?
of course, jade was always allowed to boss her friends around- it was a pretty big part of her early character, in fact! (though she should learn to do it more!) but she was scared of the "immaturity" of involving negative feelings, and that was what she was missing.
she deserves to embrace and celebrate smacktalking people!
so that's my analysis. make davejade and jadenep pitch now <3<
Andrew Hussie introduced the concept of Quadrants to the world as a satire of restrictive human concepts of sexuality and gender. Unfortunately, she did far too good of a job of creating a differently restrictive system and many people have incorporated it into their belief systems (myself included).
It's worth noting that this is what Trolls have instead of labels like homosexual, heterosexual, aromantic, etc. Trolls still have these things, they just don't call them that. Likewise, the Quadrants system puts words to something that humans might actually have. This is descriptive, not prescriptive.
wait just cuz I’m stupid and not as some kind of gotcha- how do you think kismesis dynamics should work or like. in what ways do you feel like people misunderstand them ?? sorry this question might be shit
okay. This might be a long post cause I'm not very good at explaining things, and I tend to speak in very round-about and long-winded ways. Also, I'm using proper grammar and no TQ. That's how you know im smart, and correct. (Sarcasm.)
Alot of people shipping in the Homestuck fandom don't really regard any other quadrants other than flushed romance (Matespritship) and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it speaks alot to how people just... don't really understand the other three quads.
Most of the experience I have seeing people treat kismesiship is as just another word for enemies to lovers, or worse, platonic hatred. I think people should treat characters in Homestuck (Specifically the trolls, I don't think this necessarily applies to the humans) casually hating eachother the same as them casually liking eachother. To trolls, "I love you" is just as intense as "I hate you" and the same for "like" and "dislike."
WHILE I don't want to be that guy who's all "Erm in canon they're friends!" Because, obviously. Fucking look at me. I brand myself as the Eridirk guy. They have absolutely zero canon on screen interraction-- the Eridan we see and the Dirk we see don't even know eachother exist.
I strongly believe everybody has a right to ship and interpret characters however they want. I would be an obtuse hypocrite if I said they couldn't. I just think the way people interpret Eridan's "Pitch Fishing" (MY term I made up. Do not steal. /j) as actual meaningful hatred is willfully misunderstanding Eridan's character. In [S] Kanaya: return to the core, Eridan was very obviously fighting Sollux as a cry for attention, or how I interpet it, as him trying to look "cool" and "strong" in front of Feferi. At the very least he wanted Feferi to assume the position as their auspistice, which would negate Eridan and Sollux from having a proper blackrom. I think Feferi was right in assuming Eridan was just fighting with him to push them out of their flush quadrant, to say the least.
We have two prominent characters displaying Eridan's pitch "type." Rose, and Vriska. Two cunning, snarky girls who perfectly oppose Eridan's over-the-top villain persona. Eridan wants someone who would respond to a villanous monolgue with one of their own. Not a gamer boy who codes all day and calls him a fish. Sollux gets under his nerves because he sees him as lesser. Eridan, pointedly, does not see Vriska or Rose as lesser. The whole POINT of the black quadrant is that you see your pitchmate as an equal, and if you don't, youre doing something wrong. The ideal kismesis hates their partner because they want to BETTER them. Not because they want to ruin them.
