Thoughts on Kismesissitude
Jan. 10th, 2024 03:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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100quadrantedships recently. It features the quadrants of troll romance from Homestuck. They have to do with whether a relationship is sexual/romantic (concupiscent) or platonic (conciliatory), and based primarily on positive (red) or negative emotions (black).
"A Black Concupiscent relationship represents the Caliginous Quadrant. The romance is called Kismesissitude, and most humans fail to understand it."
-- Troll Romance Analysis
A link on100quadrantedships pointed to this interesting article, "A Guide to Healthy Kismesissitude" by Ask Toxie on Tumblr. I think that there's more overlap between human romance and troll romance than most people realize, but humans don't always put a name on it, which leads to people overlooking it and/or doing it badly. The patterns are still there. So I thought it would be fun to talk about this.
As Kismesissitude is outside the human spectrum of romance, it is often done incorrectly when intended to be a healthy relationship built on hate. Keep reading to learn more about about healthy hate!
So the first problem is that humans tend to thing of romance as based on positive emotions, and thus, if a relationship is primarily negative they do not classify it as romance. But they do tend to understand that both love and hate are emotions of passion. They are not opposites; the opposite of both is indifference. The position of "nemesis" is one of committed negative passion -- or as trolls would call it, kismesis.
Because humans don't tend to recognize this type of relationship as romantic, they get confused over the other emotions that it can generate, particularly lust and jealousy. However, this awareness does appear in tropes, and those tropes predate Homestuck as a canon. Hate + lust = hatesex or hatebanging. It appears often in fandom, but also in the mainstream. Hate + jealousy = The Only One Allowed to Defeat You. This is where it really shows as a relationship, as passion, when they get possessive about each other.
When humans don't realize that they're having a very intense, perhaps even exclusive, relationship based on negative feelings like hate and rivalry, they're flying blind. They usually fuck it up. But the confused feelings and fucked-up-ness are normal parts of this type of romance for trolls too. They're not so far apart after all. However, because trolls do know more about this quadrant, they have a higher chance of doing it better: the healthy kismesissitude of the featured article.
A kismesis is defined as someone that you hate. This hatred is separated from normal hatred by the dynamic of the relationship. As opposed to platonic hatred, a kismesis is special. Those involved in a kismesissitude detest each other, but would be lost without their presence, making life feel emptier. This is what qualifies it as a ‘romance’.
Most of the time, humans don't acknowledge this kind of relationship openly, and so it is rarely acknowledged that way in fiction either. But once in a while, you see an extremely explicit declaration scene:
Batman convinces the Joker to help save Gotham at the end by admitting that the Joker is important to him too (in a weird frienemy kind of way), which is all the Joker really wanted to hear. The Joker is overjoyed.
Then once the city is pulled back together and the day is saved, Batman and Joker have an oddly tender moment in front of the rising sun... wherein they declare their mutual hatred for each other. It's as funny as it is bizarrely heartwarming.
Batman: I'm just gonna come right out and say it. I hate you, Joker.
Joker: *GASPS* I hate you too!
Batman: I hate you more.
Joker: *holding back happy tears* I hate you most.
Batman: I'll hate you forever. *smiles*
-- Heartwarming: The LEGO Batman Movie
The purpose of a healthy Kismesis is to help their partner grow through rivalry. This benefits both involved by helping them both improve.
This reminds me of my series The Origami Mage. In it, the Origami Mage and the Kirigami mage are very dedicated rivals, based on practicing two very similar types of paper magic that are not quite identical.
>> When one kismesis is frequently better than the other and gets no challenge, then the relationship will likely fail. <<
I actually have a functional, surprisingly healthy version of this over in Terramagne with Dvorak and Qwerty. You can even see it right in their cape names. What makes it work is that they have a balanced relationship because, even though Dvorak is more powerful and skilled, Qwerty is just plain unshakeable. Dvorak can never really rest because Qwerty is always breathing down her neck ... a day late and a dollar short, canonically, but impossible to get away from. They drive each other absolutely bats. It is adorable. They're so stuck on each other that I could paint little spades over their eyes instead of hearts. <3< See them in:
"Off the Street"
"Beyond Their Failures"
"Going Steady"
"A Wizard's Fingerprints"
"Capes Make for Capers"
"On the Axle of Mindless Aggression"
Of those, "Going Steady" is the one that explains the whole nemesis concept in Terramagne cape politics. It's a very tight match for kismesissitude, so you like that sort of thing, watch for it -- or ask for more in any relevant prompt call. "Jealousy" is coming up in the January 20-21crowdfunding Creative Jam.
On the opposite end of this spectrum, a kismesis terrorizes his or her partner, but does not wish to do irreversible harm. One’s own definition of 'irreversible’ is debatable, however generally this implies that they do not wish to kill their kismesis.
This one is most dramatically demonstrated in the recently sponsored poem "Like Fragile Ice" when Jackie Frost skates into a truck during a cape fight, and her nemesis Contretemps leaps to protect her. In Terramagne, most cape fights are dominance fights (see the content notes). Black capes and white capes fight over territory, resources, and so forth. They are almost never trying to kill each other, or even do permanent damage, especially to a nemesis. That creates the potential for a healthy nemesis relationship, for certain values of "healthy" that parallel kismesissitude.
Killing one’s own kismesis would not only deprive them of a fun and challenging rival, but also leave a hole in the killer’s heart where their other half was. This is seen most heavily in a relationship that never truly blossomed, but the pitch-flirting was incredibly thick- Terezi <3< Vriska.
Pitch-flirting refers the provocatory actions taken to initiate or maintain a caliginous relationship. A more common human term is "pulling pigtails." Adults often falsely say that "boys pick on girls they like." It would be more accurate to describe that emotion as negative attraction than positive attraction. This is also discussed in my poem "Pulling Pigtails."
In human relationships, and thus entertainment, this dynamic is usually dysfunctional. You see it a lot in cases like Clark Kent <3< Lex Luthor and Professor X <3< Magneto. Or any other superhero/supervillain pair where you want to drag them behind the barn and give them a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex. Which is why Antimatter has that book on his shelf, and why they eventually worked out their attraction into a more positive direction, instead of "All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles." You can't even fairly complain that it's literary suppression of homosexuality, because humans really are that dumb in relationships. Clark/Lex and Charles/Erik? I grew up with boys exactly like them, in exactly the same dynamic, missing only the superpowers and definitely including the part where they hit each other because it was the only touch they thought they could get. 0_o
In the event of a relationship that becomes unhealthy, the quadrant system of romance has a failsafe- the Ashen quadrant. When relationships deal harm to one or both parties in a kismesissitude, be it to self, partner, or other quadrants/friends, someone will often step up to 'calm’ this relationship, mediating and acting as a buffer to keep this relationship from becoming pitch and creating harm.
"A Black Conciliatory relationship represents the Ashen Quadrant. The romance is called Auspistism, and it is not meant for couples but for trios."
-- Troll Romance Analysis
Humans will be more familiar with this as getting between two fighting friends.
I have something like this in Trichromatic Attachments. The three principles are the black cape Tarnish (Declaude Rowe), the gray cape Cavalier (Farrell Westover), and the white cape Princessa (Astoria Toller). It started out with Tarnish and Cavalier having a dynamic balance; they were sometimes adversaries, sometimes allies, but fairly even and both really liked roughhousing in the streets. But along came Princessa, and pulled Cavalier more into her orbit, which destabilized the balance between Cavalier and Tarnish. The jealousy kicked in, and Tarnish made a whopping big mistake with Cavalier, which created an absolute spiral of doom until the three of them managed to sort it out eventually. You can see in places where Princessa tried to damp down the conflict, but it didn't work as well as her usual mediation because of the boys' former relationship. It's not exactly ashen romance, but you can see the similarities.
Follow the thread Trichromatic Attachments in "The Things You Do," "Never Accept an Apology," "Spiraling Out of Control," "The Fourth for My Enemies," "When in a Dark Place," "Our Power to Change," "Bad Turn to Good," "Care and Take Care," "The Refusal to Be Victimized," "A Useful, Temporary Shield," "Heroes Are My Weakness," "Food and Cheer and Song," and "Because You Have Made It So."
Another example appears in some iterations of The Fantastic Four. There Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) and Victor von Doom (Dr. Doom) are rivals. Susan "Sue" Storm (The Invisible Woman) knows both of them and often tries to temper the conflict between them. It doesn't work out very well, but the thought is there.
Probably the most functional case I can think of is Spock, Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy, and James T. Kirk in the original series of Star Trek. Spock and Bones argue all the time, over anything or nothing; Kirk tries to defuse the tension enough to avoid total mayhem. But you can clearly see how much all three of them love each other, because they are at times affectionate and they are all fiercely protective. In fact, any time you think, "Wow, they bitch like an old married couple," suspect kismesissitude; and if someone is getting in the middle of that, then it's probably auspistism (the ashen quadrant, which is a black conciliatory relationship).
If a relationship built on hate is healthy, however, then we must not forget that it is a concupiscent relationship, and it is one of passion. Without discussing what consenting adults do behind closed doors with a bucket, the nature of a kismesissitude, if it is working properly, is one in which those involved feel an attraction based on these adrenaline inducing interactions of challenge and antagonism.
See above re: hatesex. It definitely happens. It's just that trolls seem to be somewhat better at managing this sort of relationship in a healthy way compared to humans.
Another often sited and excellent (if platonic) example is that of DC Comics’s most popular character- Batman. He and the Joker are constantly at odds. They fight, they taunt, they plan elaborately around the next time they will face off like two love-struck teens waiting by the phone for their crush to call and plan a date.
Hence the "I hate you" example I cited above. That movie just made it a lot more explicit than other iterations of this canon, where it tends to be more veiled.
In the end, kismesissitude is a foreign and alien concept to humans- but not one entirely out of reach. If we look at these examples and dissect them, we can see the positive qualities of this sort of relationship built on antagonism.
I think it would be prudent for humans to put more thoughts into different types of romance, or deep and committed relationship, than they typically do. Ignoring it does not make it go away; you have to walk away and stop interacting for that to happen, and people usually aren't willing to do that. Mistaking it for something else is a disaster. If you have a rival, you need to understand their role in your life and respect it for what it is. If you can't do that, walk away before it really does blow up in both your faces.
Maybe some people need a copy of Homestuck more than The Joy of Gay Sex.
100quadrantedships recently. It features the quadrants of troll romance from Homestuck. They have to do with whether a relationship is sexual/romantic (concupiscent) or platonic (conciliatory), and based primarily on positive (red) or negative emotions (black). "A Black Concupiscent relationship represents the Caliginous Quadrant. The romance is called Kismesissitude, and most humans fail to understand it."
-- Troll Romance Analysis
A link on
100quadrantedships pointed to this interesting article, "A Guide to Healthy Kismesissitude" by Ask Toxie on Tumblr. I think that there's more overlap between human romance and troll romance than most people realize, but humans don't always put a name on it, which leads to people overlooking it and/or doing it badly. The patterns are still there. So I thought it would be fun to talk about this.As Kismesissitude is outside the human spectrum of romance, it is often done incorrectly when intended to be a healthy relationship built on hate. Keep reading to learn more about about healthy hate!
So the first problem is that humans tend to thing of romance as based on positive emotions, and thus, if a relationship is primarily negative they do not classify it as romance. But they do tend to understand that both love and hate are emotions of passion. They are not opposites; the opposite of both is indifference. The position of "nemesis" is one of committed negative passion -- or as trolls would call it, kismesis.
Because humans don't tend to recognize this type of relationship as romantic, they get confused over the other emotions that it can generate, particularly lust and jealousy. However, this awareness does appear in tropes, and those tropes predate Homestuck as a canon. Hate + lust = hatesex or hatebanging. It appears often in fandom, but also in the mainstream. Hate + jealousy = The Only One Allowed to Defeat You. This is where it really shows as a relationship, as passion, when they get possessive about each other.
When humans don't realize that they're having a very intense, perhaps even exclusive, relationship based on negative feelings like hate and rivalry, they're flying blind. They usually fuck it up. But the confused feelings and fucked-up-ness are normal parts of this type of romance for trolls too. They're not so far apart after all. However, because trolls do know more about this quadrant, they have a higher chance of doing it better: the healthy kismesissitude of the featured article.
A kismesis is defined as someone that you hate. This hatred is separated from normal hatred by the dynamic of the relationship. As opposed to platonic hatred, a kismesis is special. Those involved in a kismesissitude detest each other, but would be lost without their presence, making life feel emptier. This is what qualifies it as a ‘romance’.
Most of the time, humans don't acknowledge this kind of relationship openly, and so it is rarely acknowledged that way in fiction either. But once in a while, you see an extremely explicit declaration scene:
Batman convinces the Joker to help save Gotham at the end by admitting that the Joker is important to him too (in a weird frienemy kind of way), which is all the Joker really wanted to hear. The Joker is overjoyed.
Then once the city is pulled back together and the day is saved, Batman and Joker have an oddly tender moment in front of the rising sun... wherein they declare their mutual hatred for each other. It's as funny as it is bizarrely heartwarming.
Batman: I'm just gonna come right out and say it. I hate you, Joker.
Joker: *GASPS* I hate you too!
Batman: I hate you more.
Joker: *holding back happy tears* I hate you most.
Batman: I'll hate you forever. *smiles*
-- Heartwarming: The LEGO Batman Movie
The purpose of a healthy Kismesis is to help their partner grow through rivalry. This benefits both involved by helping them both improve.
This reminds me of my series The Origami Mage. In it, the Origami Mage and the Kirigami mage are very dedicated rivals, based on practicing two very similar types of paper magic that are not quite identical.
>> When one kismesis is frequently better than the other and gets no challenge, then the relationship will likely fail. <<
I actually have a functional, surprisingly healthy version of this over in Terramagne with Dvorak and Qwerty. You can even see it right in their cape names. What makes it work is that they have a balanced relationship because, even though Dvorak is more powerful and skilled, Qwerty is just plain unshakeable. Dvorak can never really rest because Qwerty is always breathing down her neck ... a day late and a dollar short, canonically, but impossible to get away from. They drive each other absolutely bats. It is adorable. They're so stuck on each other that I could paint little spades over their eyes instead of hearts. <3< See them in:
"Off the Street"
"Beyond Their Failures"
"Going Steady"
"A Wizard's Fingerprints"
"Capes Make for Capers"
"On the Axle of Mindless Aggression"
Of those, "Going Steady" is the one that explains the whole nemesis concept in Terramagne cape politics. It's a very tight match for kismesissitude, so you like that sort of thing, watch for it -- or ask for more in any relevant prompt call. "Jealousy" is coming up in the January 20-21
crowdfunding Creative Jam.On the opposite end of this spectrum, a kismesis terrorizes his or her partner, but does not wish to do irreversible harm. One’s own definition of 'irreversible’ is debatable, however generally this implies that they do not wish to kill their kismesis.
This one is most dramatically demonstrated in the recently sponsored poem "Like Fragile Ice" when Jackie Frost skates into a truck during a cape fight, and her nemesis Contretemps leaps to protect her. In Terramagne, most cape fights are dominance fights (see the content notes). Black capes and white capes fight over territory, resources, and so forth. They are almost never trying to kill each other, or even do permanent damage, especially to a nemesis. That creates the potential for a healthy nemesis relationship, for certain values of "healthy" that parallel kismesissitude.
Killing one’s own kismesis would not only deprive them of a fun and challenging rival, but also leave a hole in the killer’s heart where their other half was. This is seen most heavily in a relationship that never truly blossomed, but the pitch-flirting was incredibly thick- Terezi <3< Vriska.
Pitch-flirting refers the provocatory actions taken to initiate or maintain a caliginous relationship. A more common human term is "pulling pigtails." Adults often falsely say that "boys pick on girls they like." It would be more accurate to describe that emotion as negative attraction than positive attraction. This is also discussed in my poem "Pulling Pigtails."
In human relationships, and thus entertainment, this dynamic is usually dysfunctional. You see it a lot in cases like Clark Kent <3< Lex Luthor and Professor X <3< Magneto. Or any other superhero/supervillain pair where you want to drag them behind the barn and give them a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex. Which is why Antimatter has that book on his shelf, and why they eventually worked out their attraction into a more positive direction, instead of "All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles." You can't even fairly complain that it's literary suppression of homosexuality, because humans really are that dumb in relationships. Clark/Lex and Charles/Erik? I grew up with boys exactly like them, in exactly the same dynamic, missing only the superpowers and definitely including the part where they hit each other because it was the only touch they thought they could get. 0_o
In the event of a relationship that becomes unhealthy, the quadrant system of romance has a failsafe- the Ashen quadrant. When relationships deal harm to one or both parties in a kismesissitude, be it to self, partner, or other quadrants/friends, someone will often step up to 'calm’ this relationship, mediating and acting as a buffer to keep this relationship from becoming pitch and creating harm.
"A Black Conciliatory relationship represents the Ashen Quadrant. The romance is called Auspistism, and it is not meant for couples but for trios."
-- Troll Romance Analysis
Humans will be more familiar with this as getting between two fighting friends.
I have something like this in Trichromatic Attachments. The three principles are the black cape Tarnish (Declaude Rowe), the gray cape Cavalier (Farrell Westover), and the white cape Princessa (Astoria Toller). It started out with Tarnish and Cavalier having a dynamic balance; they were sometimes adversaries, sometimes allies, but fairly even and both really liked roughhousing in the streets. But along came Princessa, and pulled Cavalier more into her orbit, which destabilized the balance between Cavalier and Tarnish. The jealousy kicked in, and Tarnish made a whopping big mistake with Cavalier, which created an absolute spiral of doom until the three of them managed to sort it out eventually. You can see in places where Princessa tried to damp down the conflict, but it didn't work as well as her usual mediation because of the boys' former relationship. It's not exactly ashen romance, but you can see the similarities.
Follow the thread Trichromatic Attachments in "The Things You Do," "Never Accept an Apology," "Spiraling Out of Control," "The Fourth for My Enemies," "When in a Dark Place," "Our Power to Change," "Bad Turn to Good," "Care and Take Care," "The Refusal to Be Victimized," "A Useful, Temporary Shield," "Heroes Are My Weakness," "Food and Cheer and Song," and "Because You Have Made It So."
Another example appears in some iterations of The Fantastic Four. There Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) and Victor von Doom (Dr. Doom) are rivals. Susan "Sue" Storm (The Invisible Woman) knows both of them and often tries to temper the conflict between them. It doesn't work out very well, but the thought is there.
Probably the most functional case I can think of is Spock, Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy, and James T. Kirk in the original series of Star Trek. Spock and Bones argue all the time, over anything or nothing; Kirk tries to defuse the tension enough to avoid total mayhem. But you can clearly see how much all three of them love each other, because they are at times affectionate and they are all fiercely protective. In fact, any time you think, "Wow, they bitch like an old married couple," suspect kismesissitude; and if someone is getting in the middle of that, then it's probably auspistism (the ashen quadrant, which is a black conciliatory relationship).
If a relationship built on hate is healthy, however, then we must not forget that it is a concupiscent relationship, and it is one of passion. Without discussing what consenting adults do behind closed doors with a bucket, the nature of a kismesissitude, if it is working properly, is one in which those involved feel an attraction based on these adrenaline inducing interactions of challenge and antagonism.
See above re: hatesex. It definitely happens. It's just that trolls seem to be somewhat better at managing this sort of relationship in a healthy way compared to humans.
Another often sited and excellent (if platonic) example is that of DC Comics’s most popular character- Batman. He and the Joker are constantly at odds. They fight, they taunt, they plan elaborately around the next time they will face off like two love-struck teens waiting by the phone for their crush to call and plan a date.
Hence the "I hate you" example I cited above. That movie just made it a lot more explicit than other iterations of this canon, where it tends to be more veiled.
In the end, kismesissitude is a foreign and alien concept to humans- but not one entirely out of reach. If we look at these examples and dissect them, we can see the positive qualities of this sort of relationship built on antagonism.
I think it would be prudent for humans to put more thoughts into different types of romance, or deep and committed relationship, than they typically do. Ignoring it does not make it go away; you have to walk away and stop interacting for that to happen, and people usually aren't willing to do that. Mistaking it for something else is a disaster. If you have a rival, you need to understand their role in your life and respect it for what it is. If you can't do that, walk away before it really does blow up in both your faces.
Maybe some people need a copy of Homestuck more than The Joy of Gay Sex.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-11 09:50 am (UTC)Thank you!
>> I was always fascinated by kismesissitude when I first read Homestuck. <<
It's an intricate and riveting concept, and I think it resonates with a lot of people.
>> At first I understood it as "oh hey its hatesex", aka the easy interpretation of it, but over the years I've come to realise that it can be a bit complicated than that.<<
I would say that hatesex, when performed between committed rivals or nemeses, is kismesissitude -- but there is much more to kismesissitude than just hatesex.
>> Personally I think my favorite usage of it is the "The Only One Allowed to Defeat You" trope as you mentioned.<<
The sheer, unbridled jealousy of that is what qualifies it as a type of romance, as negative passion.
>> It feels like it should be such a commonplace trope, but the best example of it really is Batman and the Joker, and its hard to bring to mind another....hate-filled, passionate to the point it's classified as romantic by many relationship? And in the end, the best way to describe it definitely is kismeissitude more so than loving.<<
Well, they're both deeply fucked-up people, and the fucked-up-ness is an essential part of kismeissitude.
>> A healthy rivalry that makes eachother grow....that one is an interpretation my childhood brain never quite thought of, and I can definitely see it in different relationships, especially in shonen anime! <<
Now this, I think, is very common in anime and manga. Many canons there derive much of their tension from rivalries, because status is so important in Japanese culture. If you've seen Ranma 1/2 it's especially dramatic because of the gender-shifting, such that Ranma has quite different relationships with some people in male vs. female mode.
>>Heck, take Naruto + Sasuke with Sakura as an auspitice (did I get that word correct?), for example, where it took a LOT of effort to fix that tentative rivalry turned brief friendship turned unhealthy rivals again. I can see that happening.<<
Vacillation is another aspect of troll romance, where a relationship may flip back and forth between different quadrants. Think about "on and off again" relationships, and yeah, that fits.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-15 04:38 am (UTC)Hatesex, rival, nemesis, some types of bondage may match up with kismesissitude, but I don't think there is a 100% equivalent in any human culture.
This is common with culture-specific terms, even in human-human cultural differences. Also, a quick comparison is good to convey a fast-and-messy idea of the given concept, but to understand the other-culture concept thoroughly, you really need to study it over time in it's proper cultural context.
Also, I imagine a common problem in any human-troll kissmesistude would be sexual relations. Sure, some people would be happy to have hatesex with someone who can very well snap your bones like twigs, but a lot of humans would find that offputting. I suspect that celibate kissmesistudes would be far more common in humans than trolls.
>>Well, they're both deeply fucked-up people, and the fucked-up-ness is an essential part of kismeissitude.<<
Other examples:
Sherlock and Moriarty in any iteration (and someone actually did a Homestuck fanfic commenting on that)
A lot of the characters in Criminal Minds had this with Unsubs. They actually discuss it at one point when teaching potential recruits: the profilers are the only ones to understand many of the Unsubs, and also, the profilers need to be able to do the whole 'respect your prey' thing or they couldn't do their jobs. Predicatbly, the potential of acquiring an obsessively-affectionate Unsub kismesis does scare off some of the potential recruits. (Hmm, kismesis seems to be a common occurrence in a lot of crime shows.)
Actually, come to think of it, Hotch (from Criminal Minds) had two kismeses. There was his recurring nemesis (the Reaper, creepy serial killer guy), but there was also the one-episode character John Blackwolf. Mr Blackwolf was interesting because they were both very similar in some ways (law enforcement, experienced, protective) but had very different philosophies in some ways. By the need of the episode, not only are they on friendly enough terms to snark at each other over their different philosophies, but they do so right after taking down multiple Unsubs. I think overall, the latter was a much healthier relationship than the pormer.
>>Now this, I think, is very common in anime and manga. Many canons there derive much of their tension from rivalries, because status is so important in Japanese culture.<<
'Rival' is a concept that doesn't seem to exist in American culture. I think (extrapolated from animes) a Japanese rival is supposed to compete with you, and that competition makes the both of you better. Also, if you are no /longer good competition, then you are no longer rivals. Now, while I have seen similar relationships in Western media, the interactions match up, but the surrounding cultural framework is not there. Americans... well, we are more culturally competitive, and a lot (but not all) of American rivalries seem to have the end goal of defeating your rival, not a mutual progress of improvement.