Quadrant Aesthethics

[anxious_songbird]

Do any of you have aesthethics you associate with one or more quadrants? Or do any of you have aesthethics/moodboards based on them? I've recently created a tumblr side-blog called 4romanticism. Which for now is an aesthethic blog for the quadrants. & while they haven't posted in a while quadrantcore on tumblr did do it first.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I don't really have quadrant-specific aesthetics, but after looking at the examples you linked, I can see how it makes sense.

I tend to think in terms of psychology, symbolism, and practicality when describing characters. I also like to save clothing images to show how they dress differently from each other. So I'm used to considering this sort of thing.

We can look at the quadrants as represented in the grid and say that red romances run to red and black ones to black; that concupiscent ones favor darker colors and conciliatory ones favor lighter colors. There are also the shapes of the symbols: curves and angles for flushed and caliginous, all angles for pale, all curves for ashen.

We can also look at human-based pride flags with their colors, especially when applying troll romance to humans. Flushed spans the many sexual/romantic flags such as gay, lesbian, and heterosexual. Pale is a good fit for the asexual spectrum. Ashen might draw on polyamory. Pitch could relate to things like kink or leathersex.

Some of those show up in the cited examples.

However, there's an aspect inherent to troll romance that is rarely if ever touched upon in human romance, which is that trolls typically belong to multiple relationships each with a very different vibe. So you can't just pin a singular aesthetic on a given troll (or whatever) since it will change with context. For a pitch date, you want to wear something that you can fight in, just in case you get lucky. But a pale date would either call for clothes based on a particular platonic outing (e.g. overalls and a sunhat for visiting a U-Pick farm together) or loungewear suited to cuddling if you stay in. It could be interesting to show one character moving through their set of relationships, and how differently they dress or act with each, while still remaining recognizable as the same person.

Think about how many human establishments are overtly or covertly designed to service sex/romance couples. A few even rule out singles explicitly. Now imagine that there are 3 other major relationships. Are there pitch parlors that rent fighting gear and arenas, debate or sport clubs that are the equivalent of singles bars for pitch? Cuddle parlors for pale, and if you don't have a moirail, you can go to a cat café? Are there ashen businesses that specialize in triples counseling or have bench seating for three people? Can you buy matching outfits that indicate your relationship type based on whomever you're with at the time? Or maybe that's communicated more with jewelry, scarves, something easy to change quickly if you shift partners.

The closest I can think of is some of what I've shown with poly relationships. A character might have a platonic partner and one or more sex/romance partners, because sometimes acespec folks get into polycules, and interact very differently with each. But I don't think I've seen people choose clothes based on that very often, with the exception of soups who have a cape costume (that they may wear to fight with their best enemy) and street clothes (for most of the time, including romantic dates with a nary partner).

Re: Thoughts

[anxious_songbird]

I do agree that each quadrant, if they had aesthethics, would have a diffrent one for each quadrant (which is why i label each reblog with "___core").

You've brought up something I haven't thought about, & that's time! Obviously having multiple relationships will eat up more of your time, so having jewerly/acsessories that easly change in case you have a pitch-date & pale-date on the same day is handy. Though I imagine it's kinds like lovecore in our world, very few people try to dress like the embodiment of dating often, and even then I understand that most people only dress like that for special occasions. So I imagine it's similar with each version of quadrantcore.

Still, good points! Very good to keep them in mind :3

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> (which is why i label each reblog with "___core"). <<

Good idea.

>> Obviously having multiple relationships will eat up more of your time, so having jewerly/acsessories that easly change in case you have a pitch-date & pale-date on the same day is handy. <<

Poly does take more time, but not necessarily time x number of partners. To some extent, you can condense that if you hang out as a family. I suspect trolls do that, because there are references to vacillation and to a pitch couple becoming an ashen trio; those are more likely if people are together in groups. A lot of the time commitment comes from learning and practicing relationship skills; you have to keep an eye on your different poly relationships to make sure they're doing well. Couples tend to coast unless they hit a rough patch.

>>Though I imagine it's kinds like lovecore in our world, very few people try to dress like the embodiment of dating often, and even then I understand that most people only dress like that for special occasions. So I imagine it's similar with each version of quadrantcore.<<

That likely depends on an individual's aesthetics. Do they have one consistent style, several subsets, or just whatever random stuff strikes their fancy? Some people have a very tight style. I had one teacher who only wore purple, counting dark jeans as indigo. My partner dresses almost entirely in black jeans and black T-shirts with characters or quotes on them. I like having clusters of things that go together, like tie-dye tops with solid bottoms, or having some print bottoms to go with solid tops.

Then look at how a capsule wardrobe works. It can be like "Whatever's Clean 13" where everything matches (but is not necessarily the same color) or in clusters where everything might not match. What about quadrant colors? Black, gray, red, pink; they all go together. It would be easy to mix and match as needed from a wardrobe of those colors, then use something like jewelry to refine the message.