thank you everyone for the lovely comments and great questions :)

I don't want to talk about how long I just spent writing up my own reply to miniQuiny's post when I accidentally refreshed the page. So I'm going to address Alary's question and hopefully get back to you tomorrow if not sometime within the week. 😅😅😅 (😭😭😭😭😭)

Auspisticism is a really interesting one because to me it wears its social purpose on its face. so many readers dismiss it as a weird outlier because they think the fact that it's all about bizarre and alien systems instead of physical or emotional intimacy makes it intrinsically less ""romantic"" (totally meaningless buzzword as far as this discussion is concerned) than all the other quadrants, but I think they've got it totally backwards - auspisticism's weird arbitrary constructedness is supposed to be what clues you in to the fact that ALL the quadrants are about weird constructed systems over physical and emotional intimacy! it gets less of my attention because like you say it's without competition the rarest form of romance in the comic, but also because the way I see it, where all of the rest of the quadrants' introductions are at least a little bit coded in how fucked up and imaginary they are, everything you need to know about auspisticism is right there on the first page. sometimes trolls feel so strongly about each other that it could become a problem for their other relationships, and someone has to step in. isn't it so delightfully messed up that Alternian society has made that into some kind of aspirational social opportunity for young trolls? I once described the purpose of auspisticism as "to give characters a reason to call kanaya a slut", and that's exactly it; just like all this other heteronormative nonsense, the point is to encourage youth to make sacrifices for their country by making them lame gay prude outcasts if they don't.

i'm glad you mention the bit with Rose because I did make a very small post about it once. even though I've always been especially fascinated by the ashen quadrant as a worldbuilding gimmick, reading this exchange (on p. 5414) is i think the first time i ever really GOT IT got it, as part of the broader toxic machine that is Alternian romance:

ROSE: This could create a schisasm in our group, that we could all be torn apart.
ROSE: And I don’t wand that!!!!!
ROSE: I want us all to stay friends, and jus be… peaceful togehter. :(
[…]
KANAYA: The Feelings You Are Having Are Actually Perfectly Normal Within The Framework Of Our Quadrant Based Romantic Tradition
[…]
KANAYA: Such As In Situations Very Similar To The One You Described
KANAYA: Where Two Parties Are Highly Drawn To Each Other Through Animosity
KANAYA: They May In Fact Be Perfect For Each Other In That Tumultuous Quadrant
KANAYA: But To Pursue The Relationship Would Be Chaos
KANAYA: Much Like The Scenario You Laid Out The Two Kismeses If Left Unchecked Would Devastate All Their Other Relationships

as you can see, this ashen pursuit has NOTHING to do with how Terezi and Gamzee feel about each other or how healthy their relationship is - as far as Rose or Kanaya are concerned, everything going on between those two is a perfectly run-of-the-mill kismesissitude, if not an especially romantic example of it!! what the girls are worried about is that Terezi and Gamzee's whirlwind abusemance is going to disrupt the social cohesion of the group. Rose's end goal as a hypothetical auspistice is not to make sure Terezi doesn't get badly hurt when Gamzee beats the crap out of her, like the quadrant romanticists have tried to insist for so long: it's to make sure Terezi never gets hurt so badly that she can't show up to work on time, and that Gamzee never gets so distracted beating his wife that he stops being an effective patriarch. it's the damn making the trains run on time quadrant!

totally digressing at this point but the bit with the auspisticism really gets at a consistent personal bugbear of probably a decade now, which is the fandom narrative that Gamzee and Terezi's relationship was only bad because it was an "abusive kismesissitude", and that if Gamzee had just beat Terezi up less then it would have been a "healthy kismesissitude". Dave and Karkat's attempted intervention on the rooftop is framed as Karkat recognising that a troll quadrant is being 'done wrong' and thus attempting to fix it, but that's never really what's said. it's not a problem to Karkat that Terezi hooks up with a known killer clown. it's a problem to Karkat when Terezi's tangentially-related drinking gets so bad it becomes a problem for everyone else. auspisticism is just leveling up from being a neutral party to this violence to being an active participant in making sure that violence goes ahead in a way that is acceptable within the culture.