I often like to point out the ways in which Alternia reflects the relationships the kids have with their guardians, what with its rapping autocrats and custodial beasts, but until this week I’ve never really stopped to think about how much of this could be because those very guardians were actually the people Lord English knew growing up… (think of the room in Jade’s house where Jake’s stuffed corpse hangs with effigies of Calliope and the other three alphas)

spurring this on in particular was my recent reread of Act 5’s quadrant exposition. with fresh eyes it’s easy to see that beyond any “social purpose” any of the quadrants serve, they exist to create relationship drama; which is just another way the trolls and the alpha kids kind of bookend the betas, who aren’t really defined by their relationships at all.

though Caliborn heaps abuse upon his sister’s love of shipping, moments like his yaoi obsession show that he has his own love of romance in the same way he has his own appreciation for worldbuilding. so it’s easy to imagine that, truly relishing in the alpha kids’ interpersonal drama, he tried to replicate it on Alternia with his institution of quadrants as the main means by which trolls relate to each other; possibly adding cherub hate-romance to the mix because he thinks it will either make things even messier and more dramatic, or will fix the supposed ‘holes’ in human romance and expedite sex, or both?

though it’s easy to see Dirk and Roxy’s moirallegiencesque relationship as a symptom of the assimilation of Alternian culture into their Earth, it also makes just as much sense that Scratch would use the relationships he observed growing up as the basis for the relationships that would define his handmade society…