Update because I think now is the perfect time for it. Pale’s final chapter of the main story has been released and all that’s left are the epilogues. For future reference, this was written after Finish Off.7 came out but before the first of however many epilogues did. That’s relevant because I have new thoughts on the Kennet Witches classpects to add after I do Victoria.
So, Victoria’s classpect. I did relisten to some early We Got Ward but a lot of stuff is going on in my life and I don’t have the time to do it consistently so instead I’m referencing Ridtom’s “Tips for Writing Victoria Dallon” post on r/WormFanfic. Here’s a link if you’re interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/WormFanfic/comments/jxecrn/tips_for_writing_victoria_dallon_by_ridtom/
Remember when I previously mentioned Victoria gave off the vibes of a Light player? I do believe I was on the money with that one. Ridtom quoted Wildbow in saying Victoria is “a woman with more appreciation for gathering information than there is from the usual person”. Besides that, Ridtom also described her core Self that’s consistant across Worm and Ward as obsessing over capes, taking unneeded college courses, buying magazines, manuals, and other books about them, and even prodding some capes themselves about their lives, which I might add is pretty similar to how in Homestuck the 3 existing Light players all seem to have a singular obsession they channel their aspect through, that being psychology for Rose, luck for Vriska, and stories for Aranea. Victoria’s equivalent is parahuman science. In addition, she’s also not a fan of being ignored or looked down on, much like how Homestuck’s Light players tended to draw in a spotlight and end up flashy in one way or another. The fact that she originates from a team of superheroes who don’t have secret identities and allow the public to know who they are also kind of vibes with her being Light, although likely would have more to do with her having other family members who are also Light-coded and I’m not her to classpect them. If remember right, Victoria also had a technique she would use in Ward, her “Thinker 0″ technique, where she’d fly up above a battlefield to re-assess what’s going on and get more information than she could in the thick of it.
So Victoria’s a Light player. What about her class? I think Victoria’s a Knight. Whatever you might think a Knight is and does in Sburb, I think it’s all too clear that’s what she is. She’s a warrior trained from childhood to fight crime and she continues to do so all the way until the end of Ward. Moreover, much like Lucy, I struggle to see what else she could be out of known classes. While information and facts are important to her, she’s not a scientist trying to find the secrets of what can be known, she just wants to know what’s already known. That rules out Mage or Seer. I don’t think anyone is going to argue she could be a Thief or Rogue, nor a Prince or Bard. While there’s likely arguments she could be an Heir being the child of superhero parents who later became a hero herself, I don’t really see that as all that important to her story or character. I can’t really see any argument for Victoria being a Witch, Maid, or Sylph either, and given she was Glory Girl as a teenager, one of the stronger Brockton Bay heroes back in the day, I don’t think she was ever so weak at any point that she needed to reach some hidden potential the way a Page does. Finally, there’s also the deal that Victoria had somewhat of a policemen mentality during Ward, or at least was interpreted that way by some commenters I’ve read since. So there we go, Victoria is a Knight of Light.
But I’m not done. I mentioned I have new thoughts. These were partially brought on by someone commenting their own thoughts for the Kennet Witch’s classpects on the original post I made, and partially brought on by how the Crucible went in the last few chapters. Said commenter was someone named “aspecsyzygy” for anyone curious. I’d link the blog but I’m a bit too lazy to do that now. I might come back and do that in an edit. Apologizes in the meantime. I’ll call them AS for short.
Firstly, Lucy. Originally I thought of her as a Knight but was undecided on whether that should be a Knight of Hope or a Knight of Rage. Later I reevaluated her as a Page of Hope, citing that Pages often start out with little to none of their aspect. Thinking it over after the Crucible, I’m back to thinking she’s a Knight, as calling her a Page makes her sound like she started out a lot weaker than Avery or Verona were when the only real argument for that was that she took the longest of them to solidify the sort of practice she was interested in. And of course, Lucy is somewhat similar to a cop or lawyer in how she operates, if an idealized one, landing her a few similar reasons for being a Knight as Victoria. However, I have settled on her aspect as a Knight: Rage. She sees the worst parts of the world and gets pissed at them, fighting tooth and nail to right whatever’s wrong wherever she can. AS mentioned that with her ties to the Winter Court, work with curses, her desire to be “bulletproof”, and her danger detecting Sight may make her Doom related as a Rogue of Doom who “steals the Doom from that which ought not to be doomed and redistributes it to wrongdoers”. Given the seeing the bad and fighting against it, I can see why that could be interpreted that as Doom, but the way I see it Doom implies a sort of resignation. For however much you might not like it, it cannot be changed. Rage on the other hand sees what Doom sees and tells it to fuck off. Additionally, in one of the Crucible chapters, Lucy had this paragraph
“Racists will always try to find a way of avoiding recognizing there’s a problem. But what I’m saying, this isn’t about them. I’m thinking… what do you do? What do you do, when, after decades, generations of seeing something happen, saying it’s happening, being ignored, you get irrefutable proof… witnesses, and nothing comes of it? One more point in a society-wide pattern that only racists will deny exists, but nobody does anything about? You get mad. You have to get mad.”
Which is what really tipped me over into seeing her as Rage.
Secondly, Avery. Originally I had pegged her as a Maid of Blood on account of her association with relationships and connections, an “embodiment of networking” so to speak. AS instead suggested she was much closer to a Breath player. Fair enough. She does have travel, speed, and mobility as goals and pieces of her toolkit, and the Paths are sort of like the ultimate expression of Breath that isn’t just a wind dimension like D&D’s Air Plane. She even has a similar air-headedness to her as John and Tavros had in Homestuck. That and Avery’s Crucible chapter also really emphasized how important freedom is for her. I forget the specific passage I was thinking of and can’t find it looking back through the entire chapter, but I’m safe in agreeing on Breath as opposed to Blood. So what about her class. AS suggested maybe a Page on account of her untapped potential, but wasn’t sure enough to lock that in. I think whatever she is is probably a passive class, but I’m not sold on Page, particularly because Avery was the first of the girls to really get going on practice and being a Page would imply she took longer. She’s no thief or destroyer though, so not Rogue or Bard. I again cite her airheadedness for why she’s no Seer, even if she does have an intuition for Paths the same could be said for any Sburb player and their aspect as Dave pointed out how he understood timeloops intuitively as a time player. There’s disagreement on whether Page or Knight is the passive, but I can’t really see Avery as a Knight either. Something like Sonic the Hedgehog is what I’d expect of a Knight of Breath and that is not Avery. That leaves Heir and Sylph. Personally, I have a difficult time articulating why, but I think she’s more of a Sylph. Avery feels like the type of person who could lift spirits just by being happy nearby, which goes well with the idea that Sylphs heal. She even frees up Lost and other Others wherever she goes, and while she do that more actively, she does it more so to just whoever she happens across then actively looking for them, so I think that still counts as passive. So, Sylph of Breath for Avery.
Finally, Verona. Originally I had assigned her as a Mage of Heart, citing that Heart is a lot more closely related to the Self than it is to romance, which is more in Blood’s wheelhouse if you ask me. I thought I had reclassected her later like I did Lucy but I guess I never actually posted it but basically I figured she might actually be more Voidy than Hearty on account of her ability to deceive without lying, pick up on practices she knows little to nothing about and innovate on them, her ability to understand the voiceless, and her desire to get away from her father and effectively hide from society. Even her avoiding telling her mom about the Practice for so much longer than the others contributed to this idea. So I reclassed her as a Mage of Void instead. AS begs to differ, and suggests Verona is closer to a Witch of Rage on account of her conflict not so much being internal or at war with herself but more so with external society trying to fit her in a box, and more importantly about people going back on their word and being unable to handle her. They suggested Rage is an aspect that already disrupts systems and norms and that Witches bend and break the rules of their aspect, with Verona’s massive fuckoff rituals being a result of her bending and breaking the only rules of an aspect that already had few to begin with, which is she is both “good and bad at operating in regimented systems”. I do think this has some merit. I still prefer Void over Rage or Heart for Verona’s aspect as of the end of Pale, but AS’s point about Verona bending and breaking rules is pretty compelling, so I’m officially reclassing her as a Witch of Void.
So to recap, among the Kennet Witches Verona is a Derse Witch of Void, Lucy is a Derse Knight of Rage, and Avery is a Prospit Sylph of Breath. Among the original trio of Wildbow protagonists, Taylor is a Derse Prince of Mind, Blake is a Prospit Heir of Doom, and Sy is a Prospit Thief of Blood. Victoria meanwhile is a Knight of Light, and for her lunar sway I’d say probably Prospit.
I won’t say I’m necessarily done, if I have any other thoughts on these later I’ll probably make another reblog update here, and I’d also like to classpect any future Wildbow protagonists as well, be it Plex, Pyre, or whatever else the Bow has cooked up. Who knows, maybe I can eventually build a session with all 12 aspects and all 12 base classes,
