revolutionaryduelist:

i just edited this into the davekat piece but i wanted to point this out real quick:

i mentioned how Abraxas in symbolism, and Karkat in personality, are both beings of duality and married opposited–seemingly contradictory extremes contained within a single entity.

And, well….so is a tsundere. Hate and love, aggression and affection, instincts seemingly completely at odds contained within the same character.

I don’t want to harsh on anyones fun time wrt the way they engage in shipping, so dont take this as fandom criticism or anything, but i think this is why fanwork of davekat that portrays karkat as hyper-saccharine and woobified tends to fall flat for me.

Its not necessarily bad or anything, it just doesn’t really feel like Karkat to me, and its hard for me to invest emotionally unless i really feel like im seeing the guys i grew up knowing and loving. its personal to me, you know?

its just interesting to have the language to describe that dissonance now, after all this time feeling like there was more to say about Dave and particularly Karkat’s panquadrant stuff. It was always there in the periphery, it was just hard for me to pull it into focus in a snappy, concise way i felt i could easily talk about.

The fact that Caliborn identifies Davekat as being in the “Tsundere” quadrant not only gives weight to Karkats nature as inherently at odds with typical troll quadrants–it gives it context and a name, a frame to understand the experience through.

Which makes it a lot easier to understand why, when I dont detect that element of his characterization in fanwork, it just doesnt quite feel the same–simply because its so core to his character. im not saying he can never be happy to be around dave and sweet and stuff–the dere is as much a part of him as the tsun.

im commenting on some relatively niche extreme examples that basically turn dave and karkat into woobie marshmallows, which just doesnt do it for me. And again i really gotta stress, fandom is for fun and people should be allowed to engage in it however they want–depicting a character a little ooc  isnt a crime.

im just interested in interrogating and understanding my own experience of fandom and this is a really interesting example of how having a sharper understanding of the canons’ text enhances how easily i can think about the characters in question. its neat.

anyway i like to ramble