caughtinanetwork | video; the worst kind of joint post

[ At first, the video consists of inoffensive ocean blue carpet and bright fuschia shoes. The giggling, glubbing nonsense sounds that follow gives Feferi away well before she speaks.

And that interlude lasts about one agonizingly giddy minute. And then, in a stage whisper: ]

Hello! Glub glub glub, I've done the most fantastic thing today. I'm just so excited!

[ She brings her SFC up at arms' length to point at her grinning fangy face, and then turns it around to point at a dressing room door next to a rack of wildly colorful clothing. ]

Wait for it, just hang on to your fins here...!

[The door opens and Sollux inches out, his shoulders hunched and his head down. He looks around furtively, not yet seeing that Feferi is holding her SFC, because he's looking all around for anyone else that might be there to see this.

He's wearing a tasteful number. At least, it's tasteful in the mind of Feferi, and likely not anyone else in the known universe.]

FF, this is fun and all, but to be honest I don't think this is my style-- Hey, what are you doing?

[As horrified realization hits, he lunges forward and makes a grab for her SFC.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, you get half of her stuff too.

Huh? [He is looking more and more confused] What if I don't even want her stuff? I just want my own stuff and she can have hers! Humans are fucking dumb sometimes.

The point is that married couples share everything, and if they get divorced then everything is split evenly down the middle.

Oh.

[He rubs his forehead] Well, this is dumb, because I have two other quadrants filled, too. Why should FF get half my stuff compared to Eridan and Lysunder, anyway? We can't just do it the human way, because we're trolls and have four kinds of romance compared to your one.

That seems needlessly complicated, why would you need four kinds of romance?

We just do! Your romance is stupidly limited and dumb. [He shrugs. He's not really a romance philosopher like Karkat, so this kind of conversation doesn't come up for him a lot] It's because we have hate and pity, not just...whatever you humans have.

I wasn't aware that romance could be built on hate.

[Thinking back, he's known more than a few people in incredibly unhealthy and hateful relationships. Maybe that is normal for a troll?]

Well for humans it apparently can't, but I have a really good kismessisitude and I hate the fuck out of him. [He shrugs] And of course for both pity and hate you can have two different types, either concupiscent or conciliatory. FF is my matesprit, she's in the pity and concupiscent quadrant, which is apparently the closest thing to human romance.

Given how she talked about marriage, I figured as much.

[Shiro is an educated man and knows what concupiscent and conciliatory mean, so he can take a guess at the purpose of the four romances.]

So then conciliatory pity is like....really good friends?

[Sollux gives Shiro a look like he's the dumbest person he's ever seen.]

Conciliatory pity is called moirails, and really good friends are called really good friends. Moirallegiance is a romance. Moirails support each other and calm each other down, and keep each other balanced, and give advice and stuff. It's different from friendship.

[Forgive him, he's an old man and has a hard time understanding all this newfangled romance stuff.

Moirails, though, is something he somewhat understands. Because it sounds similar to things he's had to put up with in the past. The organization he works for has a habit of hiring unbalanced people, and there usually has to be someone to keep them in line. He's not getting the romance part of it, though.]

Right, right, gotcha. So that's hate-sex, pity-sex, and pity-'keeping each other balanced'. What's the last one?

Kismesissitude, matespritship, and moirallegiance. [He groans. Why didn't he just fob this guy off on Karkat from the beginning?] The last one is auspisticism. When two trolls hate each other but it's not a good black relationship or they already have kismesses and stuff, so it's not going to work well, then a third one can get involved to keep things calmer so they don't kill each other or cheat.

[Needlessly complicated romantic drama, basically.

But this kid seems on edge and pissed off so Shiro will keep those comments to himself.]

Aaah, I get it now. Thank you for taking time to explain it.

[He's not pissed off, just... frustrated maybe a little. He doesn't have patience for this kind of thing, and his experience with explaining romance to humans tells him to expect it to go on forever, not to be thanked politely.

He blinks, then shrugs and relaxes.]

Yeah, no problem.

[He is nothing if not polite to people who are doing him a favor.]

Oh, and by the way? Human marriage isn't legally binding unless a priest or an elected official authorizes it, so if you want to make your girlfriend happy without all the paperwork and headaches you can just skip that one part.

[He perks up] Really? So I don't have to give her my stuff if we break up if no one official writes it down?

Pretty much!

[He's not going to bother explaining all the ins and outs of marriage and why it could be beneficial to a teenager.]

That's a relief. How do I know a priest, just in case one shows up?

They wear all black and talk about God a lot. They also fight demons, so they might be a bit distrustful of you at first, since trolls look a lot like demons.

[He considers that, then nods] Okay, got it. They're dumbasses who live in fantasy land. Of course, that describes nearly everyone.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge. To them, your world might sound like a fantasy land.

I'm not talking about the real world. Like, Earth, or whatever world they come from, physically.

video; the worst kind of joint post

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