2022-07-30 3:56:07 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

hiveswapguesses:

> lime-bloods:

> > seems at least worthy of comment that trolls have an ashen quadrant, where cremation has recurring significance; trolls don’t traditionally have any funerary rites - …don’t typically bury their dead. Leaving bodies to be consumed by wild animals is more customary - so the Signless being burned after his execution may have been a deliberate disrespect against him. which explains why it’s Meenah’s two least favourite children who get cremated rather than preserved: Jake’s grandma, in particular, had to be burned “with haste so the monsters wouldnt eat her”: a pointedly nontraditional disposal for the daughter of a troll.

> > how this connects to the so-named quadrant, idk… Karkat’s ashen-grey sign is supposed to have cooled from fiery red, but that doesn’t line up with the function of the quadrant. do John’s “pale fire” or Vriska’s “irons in the fire” having anything to say about it either… and one has to assume the differing symbols of ascension for humans and trolls - eternal sleep vs the dissolving/burning of the old body - factor into this somehow too

> I wouldn’t dismiss it having a connection. The auspistice’s duty is to cool off hot tempers, in a way - to mediate in such a way that two people don’t hate each other enough to kill each other. Might be a stretch but it came to mind.

that’s a misrepresentation of the quadrant; an auspistice stops a relationship from forming, not violence from taking place. “fires of passion” still work euphemistically in this case, but the Signless’ cooling flames went from red to gray, and the ashen quadrant deals with black relationships and not red ones, so it’s still a detour from established colour symbolism