one of my favorite moment in homestuck and what i think is the epitome of quadrants is the conversation between karkat, terezi and dave in the game over timeline where they have their "intervention" for her because there's just so many elements at play.

firstly it's the fact that it's so clear she's in an abusive relationship but neither boys see it because of its blackrom coding. she's throwing out a lot of the typical abused party in an abusive relationship lines, but every instance of "love" gets replaced by "hate", muddling the message. "i hate how he treats me and i want to leave but i keep coming back because i love him so much" becomes "i keep coming back because i hate him so much", so the contradiction of the statement is lost, and it becomes a "healthy" expression of black rom, even though the language of abuse is so on the nose you can blatantly see through it.

then there's the way the boys utterly fail to help terezi and point out the obvious solution: "leave him". dave just washes his hands of it because he finds the whole thing weird and none of his business, even though he probably could've contributed something meaningful considering he's a survivor of abuse who's been grappling with that for the past three years on the consideration that he was about to meet a younger version of his abuser. and then there's fucking karkat and his absolutely divine take of "girl you just needed a third".

karkat's whole mentality is fascinating: one of his closest friends is being abused by his shitty ex and he's just trying to figure out the logistics of how to make it work. this is where the quadrants truly unravel, because first he blames rosemary for being unable to mediate gamzee and terezi, which begs the question of "why is it their responsibility?" and then you can't even dwell on that for too long, because he says the reason they failed is because they needed a mediator, even though they never had a black rom relationship, and the comic is pretty clear about ashen relationships only applying to black rom. and then you realize that rose has been an alcoholic for the past year or two, meaning that karkat sees rosemary having relationship problems because of rose's addiction not as a dysfunctional relationship, but as a different but completely valid form of romance.

and that's the crux of it: kismesitude existing means no relationship can ever be bad or abusive, because aggression, mistreatment and violence are all "valid" forms of romance. and then you look back at black rom as a whole and like, so much of it is just misogyny. aradia hates that equius tried to coerce her into a relationship, and even after ripping out her heart and beating him she kisses him anyway. equius' programming fails, but his coercion doesn't, because equius being misogynistic, weird and creepy to aradia is a form of romance too.

karkat's relationship with black rom is also really interesting, because he just. doesn't get it?? which makes perfect sense since his whole thing is that despite being brash and mean and aggressive, all of that is entirely superficial and no one takes it seriously, because in reality karkat genuinely loves and cares about all his friends, so he can just never actually be a good kismesis. all of his attempts fail: with john he says that he hates him and that's apparently the attitude on which he tries to build their relationship, but that's just so utterly untrue highlighted by the fact that his first conversation with john happens after they've built up their relationship. the fact that john just dismisses all the insults and goes right to talking to him like he's a great friend he likes is the perfect demonstration that karkat just cannot help himself and is literally incapable of actual hatred.

and then there's his thing with trying to "organize" his relationship with dave and terezi: the implication that he thinks dave and terezi can just, like, start vacillating between black and red is really weird if you think about it. like, how does he expect that to happen? it only makes sense if karkat views black rom as just like, banter. which he totally does because he says he wants terezi "in all quadrants" but like, he doesn't hate her at all, all their black rom-like interactions are just banter. and then you realize most of karkat's views on romance come from shitty romance media and it makes even more sense: karkat is just like those people who love dark romance and claim they want dark romance in real life, when in reality they want just like, a boyfriend who play fights them.

i feel like karkat is like, the entire reason kismesitude is kind of muddled in the sense that it seemingly includes anything from literal abuse to playful teasing. most of the detailed information we get on how black rom actually works is from karkat, and most people take it at face value because, well, he's the romance guy, and it's his culture, but actually looking at it and seeing how utterly incompetent karkat is at dealing with black rom, maybe we should be putting his words into question a lot more.