The Classpect Crew

Hey, it’s good to meet you! I’m Thalia, and my Classpect is the Rogue of Time! :3 I generally consider myself a Classpect Analyst, and while I’ll still perform the more traditional ask-based analysis, lately I’ve been taking a different approach to the Classpect system that you can read more about in my pinned post. 🤍 Classes / Aspects / Quick Reference

[classpect-crew]

A Change of Pace

So I want to do something different with this blog. I know I’ve said this before, but I’m autistic. (Surely, nobody could have predicted this. I’ll take a moment for you to find your fainting couch.) That means I’d give my left arm to find a convenient and personally meaningful system through which to understand the world, preferably inspired by a piece of media that is a special interest of mine. For me, Homestuck’s Classpect system and cosmology can be that foundation, but I don’t just want to slap these categories and ideas haphazardly onto the “real world” and try to make it all fit. Nor do I wish to take the easy way out and just adopt or adapt one or more of the belief systems that inspired these systems and their context. (I tried out Gnosticism for a bit, but honestly, dualism doesn’t become me.)

Instead, I discovered a secret third option: experiencing Classpects on their own terms. “Tali, what the fresh hell do you mean by that?” Well, it’s complicated. The simplest way to put it is that I want to interact with the Aspects and what they represent as if they’re a fundamental part of our world, too. I want to use Classes as archetypes that exemplify how we interact with these Aspects. And I want to do all of this while letting the real-world application of these systems develop naturally, through practical experience rather than a monogamous marriage to the literature. I’ve meditated on the connections between Breath and Void while watching switchgrass rattling in the wind, for example. They share the quality of emptiness; they’re the negative space, the air rustling through tree branches or the gap in your memory where something once was, only visible in the absence of what’s around them. This isn’t a conclusion I came to by reading the comic or banging my head against the Aspect Wheel’s geometry. Although one could arrive at the same realization from either source, in this instance I let the Aspects speak for themselves, and then connected the dots.

This might get long, so here’s your courtesy readmore.

As my non-Homestuck friends know all too well (because I absolutely won’t shut up about it) I’ve been working on ways to expand the Classpect system into a practical, real-world framework that can be used and understood by somebody who’s never read Homestuck. In fact—and this is ambitious of me, I know—I take great inspiration from the development of daemonism as a contemporary practice. Daemonism has taken on a life of its own, separate from its origins in Phillip Pullman’s novel series, His Dark Materials. I can imagine the value of a real-world analogue of the Classpect system, which could open up new methods of introspection, development of one’s personal mythology, and perhaps even an analytical framework through which to understand the world itself. For those brave enough to crack open this can of worms, the possibilities truly are endless.

What might we discover by exploring our own stories through this kind of lens? What does it mean to be a Witch, or an Heir, or a Seer? Why are so many of us preoccupied with figuring out what we are, instead of what we want to be? That’s one of the many questions we should ask ourselves as we embark on this journey. Sure, we can pretty easily state what role a Hero of Space plays in the context of SBURB: they’re tasked with breeding the Genesis Frog. In the broader story of Homestuck, Space players ‘set the stage.’ But what about in our world? What does Space mean to you? What Aspects hold sway over you, and how does this shape your worldview? Your actions? Your identity? When I came up with the term Organic Classpect, it was my intention to explore this very concept. This feels like a fairly natural continuation and expansion of that idea.

You can meditate on Life the same way you’d meditate on the classical Greek element of Fire. You can learn to see its influence in your own life (no pun intended) and commune with it, increase or decrease its presence at will. Hell, I once made a sigil using the symbol of Life and charged it before going to run deliveries in hopes of making good tips that day. My first delivery was a grocery order with like, three small bags, and I got tipped $20 cash on top of the $8 I received in the app. If you understand Aspects as a source of power, and Classes as different ways of working with them, there’s so much you can do within this evolving framework.

I’d love to know what y’all think of this, because it’s something I care about very deeply, and I’ve been exploring these ideas for a long time.

[classpect-crew]

wait no actually these pairings make a fuckload of sense

i need to dive back into classpecting and give my thoughts. i obviously have a huge respect for all the creativity and speculation of the classpecting community—of which i am an enthusiastic part—but if this is really how hussie sees the classes, i think there’s merit in exploring this framework

i have thoughts on maids as the most active of the ‘passive’ classes and i actually fully agree with that pairing now, even though i didn’t at first glance

i also want to get into breaking up the ‘symmetries’ of the aspect wheel and instead taking the aspects in conversation with each other. void and breath have a lot to say to each other, after all. same with doom and time. i’m not capitalizing these because i’m exhausted and need to sleep, but eventually i’ll get around to expanding on this

[annihilatetechnocrat]

Introduction to my Classpecting Ideas

This felt like a good idea for something to put out before I put my Knight & Page analysis out there, since I plan on making this a 6 part series. (Potentially 7 if demand for a Lord/Muse addendum is high enough).

So, I'll be laying out my most important philosophies on the subject here for future reference.

Classpecting is...

Point A. Classpecting is malleable.

There is not one rigid, set definition for any Class pair, or any Aspect pairing. The freedom of the author is that they may assign any symbolism to a concept that they may like.

What I mean by this is that people often seem to think that manifestations of an Aspect within Homestuck's narrative paint that object or idea as a concept inherently tied to that Aspect.

Example: Pumpkins & Void. You would not believe the amount of people in the early fandom who swore by the idea that pumpkins were inherently just Void constructs because of their role in Homestuck's narrative.

No? Pumpkins symbolise Void in Homestuck itself and Homestuck itself only only due to a running gag inherent to Homestuck itself.

Anything, with enough narrative basis and existing thematic ties, can serve to symbolise an Aspect. Furthermore, two different authors may have different ideas of what Aspect something represents.

Some authors may see alcohol, for example, as a Void-bound concept owing to its obfuscation of fair judgement. Some may see it as a Light-bound concept owing to the idea of 'in vino veritas' and the tendency of drunkenness to induce truthful confessions. Some may see it as a Life-bound concept owing to its associations with hedonism and impulsive behaviour.

With enough narrative consistence, anything is possible. Homestuck's narrative is not as rigid of a point of reference as some people would swear by it being. This is deeply important.

Point B. Classpecting is not the whole of a character.

I can't exactly phrase this in a satisfactory manner, but... a Classpect is not a personality type in of itself. An individual being a Prince of Heart does not instantly make them Dirk Strider. It merely means that their core value is identity & selfhood, and they interact with it by destroying it. It is that simple!

I see, time and time again, Classpecting blogs acting as if a Classpect is indicative of a character's whole personality and giving guides as to the exact behaviours & quirks a character with that Classpect should have.

I am imploring you to explore wider possibilities when it comes to this. Even if it means sharing a title with a canon character! It doesn't mean you have to just rewrite that canon character because that's not how Classpecting works.

I've seen fanventure characters share titles with canon characters. (Sovereignstuck's Annomi Errata & Dynama Zarrow sharing titles with Dirk & Porrim respectively, and Porrim herself is also a player in that narrative, mind you!)

I've seen fanventure characters share titles with eachother. (Vast Error's Dismas Mersiv is a Rogue of Mind. One of my fantrolls is also a Rogue of Mind!)

In every instance, they are fundamentally different people. I cannot put it any simpler than this.

Point C. Classpecting is always applicable.

That is the perfection of the Classpecting system. You can give a title to any character, from anything ever made. It's not even that difficult if you're half-decent at media analysis!

Quite literally all you need to do is ask yourself two questions.

"What's this character's core value?" and "How do they interact with that?" Do that, and you've got yourself a Classpect.

That's the beauty of it! It's obviously not going to be as airtight as a story that has the Classpecting system baked directly into the narrative, but it's still going to work out!

Hell, do it to yourself! Do it to your friends! The world's your oyster. You can do anything you want, forever, for the rest of time. I'm a Seer of Life! My best friend is a Page of Blood! My mother is a Witch of Hope! Go wild.

Post formatting

For my Classpecting posts, I'll aim to give two related definitions for every Class.

Definition A is the narrative function, what the Class says about the person and how they interact with their Aspect as an abstract concept.

Definition B is the practical function, what the Class says about their role in the session and how they interact with their Aspect as a SBURB construct.

Therefore, we get an idea of both the abstract, personal definition of a Classpect, and the functional, game application of a Classpect.

I'll also aim to give about two or three examples for each individual title about how you could write a character with them, since there are always going to be multiple directions you can take with a Classpect.

Conclusion

tl;dr - what I'm trying to say is this. Classpecting is malleable, easily applicable & capable of saying any number of things, and my posts will aim to give two concise definitions of both narrative and practical function for every title.

I'll get the Knight:Page analysis done either today or tomorrow, and the rest of the Class posts will be staggered releases in order of poll results. Thus, the order is going to be:

Knights & Pages, Deficiency and Exploitation.

Mages & Seers, Experience and Comprehension.

Witches & Heirs, Adherence and Manipulation.

Princes & Bards, Instability and Destruction.

Thieves & Rogues, Inundation and Redistribution.

Maids & Sylphs, Maintenance and Generation.

And, potentially...

7. Lords & Muses, Absolution and Dominion.

And then, subsequently, the order for the Aspect posts, which I've decided based on relevance to the canon, roughly speaking anyways...

Space & Time, Genesis and Terminus.

Breath & Blood, Fluidity and Stability.

Light & Void, Potential and Simplicity.

Heart & Mind, Instinct and Dialectics.

Life & Doom, Progress and Stagnation.

Hope & Rage, Conviction and Iconoclasm.

I look forward to the next post. Until then, take care.

[annihilatetechnocrat]

Witches & Heirs: Adherence and Manipulation

Well, here we are again. It's always such a pleasure. (Do you remember when you tried to kill me twice, blah blah blah...)

Witches & Heirs are a pair with a lot of material to work with, owing to the fact that Homestuck's main protagonist happens to fall under this category; though comparatively the other characters in the group (besides Jade, fellow Main Character) happen to be relatively obscure.

...But I've also written a whole goddamn analysis on one of them, so this should be fine.

The Witch:Heir class dichotomy embodies adherence, manipulation and fundamentally, control. This is both control over the Aspect, and the control the Aspect has over the person - and practically functions as a means to manipulate & bend the Aspect freely.

Canonical Witch players are Jade Harley (Witch of Space), Feferi Peixes (Witch of Life) and Damara Megido (Witch of Time).

Canonical Heir players are John Egbert (Heir of Breath), Equius Zahhak (Heir of Void) and Mituna Captor (Heir of Doom).

Point A, the narrative function of the Witch.

Narratively speaking, the Witch is the Class of active manipulation. What this translates to is a person whose Aspect has a heavy influence & sway over their life and their actions, which ends up manifesting in them growing to control & influence it in rebellion. And therein lies the key word everyone uses when analysing Witches - rebellion.

The Witch is somebody who rebels against their Aspect. They bend the rules, play around with it, they think they're above its whims. And this, more often than not, is because they don't want it to try and control them in turn.

Jade Harley, Witch of Space, spends her whole life in isolation. Space has her under its thumb, she's got one big, floating empty canvas to play around in and nobody else to inhabit it with. She's so far away from anyone or anything, and has no freedom to explore it to her heart's content because of the fucking First Guardian that keeps teleporting her around.

Feferi Peixes, Witch of Life, has her future decided for her. She's the princess & the heiress to a colossal empire, and the trajectory & development she's meant to undergo is pre-planned. Her life isn't her own to control, and she has to worry about a titanic sea monster that'll kill everyone on the planet if she doesn't tend to it.

Damara Megido, Witch of Time, finds closure to be something hard to swallow. All the toxic & debilitating relationships in her life, she can't bring herself to burn the bridge until the bridge starts burning her - and that's when she resorts to pulling teeth and cutting off heads. And her post-scratch self ends up being groomed & made to serve the Lord of Time himself.

Noticing a pattern here? Witches often find themselves literally controlled by a grand manifestation of their Aspect. Becquerel for Jade, Glb'golyb for Feferi & Lord English for Damara/The Handmaid.

And this brings us to the point that Witches want to rebel against these forces of control. Jade has to learn to break the rules, to disobey her guardian & travel as far from that desolate rock as she can.

Feferi wants to bring great, sweeping change to the whole empire and everything underneath it, she's got big dreams & wants to change the way that everyone's lives grow and develop.

Damara figures out that she doesn't have to take shit & deal with abuse because she can end things, and oftentimes in her situation that means ending lives. And, furthermore, bringing about total oblivion with the Scratch.

(Damara was totally justified in doing that, by the way. Fuck you, Meenah & Rufioh).

This leads to the fairly digestible Point B of the Witches' practical function.

The Witch controls their Aspect to an absolute. The power they gain is to manipulate it and make it do whatever the goddamn hell they want it to do, best exhibited with Jade who gains complete dominion over physical space; which ties directly into her Quest.

Even then, there's still an upper limit to her strength, but from what we see of her God-tiered self (and she's unfortunately the only Witch to reach the God-tiers), Space basically becomes her bitch.

It's one of the most straightforward power sets of any class. Manipulating the Aspect is pretty simple to grasp, and it's moreso the narrative idea of a Witch that's harder to explain.

Point C, the narrative function of the Heir.

Heirs find themselves in an opposing situation, but like the Witches, the Aspect has them under its' thumb. Like the Witch, they find themselves with a huge influx of their Aspect that they don't really get a say in - though I think the difference is that the Heir isn't aware of it as much.

John Egbert, the Heir of Breath, is unrestrainable. He's impossible to keep down or chain in a way that matters, and that often applies to him being impossible to sway emotionally as well. He just glides, freely, from one thing to another without a care in the world - obeying every whim of Breath and disallowing himself the time to dwell on one thing and process it.

Equius Zahhak (yes, I'm going here again) feels empty. He has no substance to himself, and he despises it. Every single facet of his life, he feels is controlled by the untenable nothingness inside him that he can't fight back against, and Void is all he feels he has to him.

Mituna Captor, the Heir of Doom, is fate's chewtoy. He's overwhelmed by prophecies & foretellings of Doom, finds himself repeatedly suffering & stagnating as the world subjects him to misfortune after misfortune, and ultimately sacrifices his own sanity & stability for the greater good.

(And, of course, I don't think I need to mention how the Psiionic gets the raw end of the deal as well).

The Witch uses their Aspect. The Heir is used by it. And though these often overlap, the passive nature of the Heir means they're far more likely not to fight the control their Aspect has over them.

Point D also ties neatly into this, the Heir's practical function.

In the sense that they may metaphorically be consumed by their Aspect to the logical extreme, they are literally granted the ability to become it.

Not only is John seen turning himself into gusts of wind, but further on in the story once he gets his 'retcon' powers; he basically becomes untethered from the narrative. He's unable to stop himself from jumping between places & ideas, becoming instability in its purest form.

This means Equius could become invisible, which is really funny.

So, overall, I find that the Witches & Heirs are deceptively simple to comprehend - and that perhaps my initial frustration with trying to work with them comes from me searching for a hidden complexity that wasn't there. The key words here are definitely control & rebellion, and the way that manifests in them.

I wouldn't go as far as to say their sessions always have this great influx of their Aspect, because I think it's more personal to them - but often the metaphorical cloud of their Aspect that follows them ends up influencing other people around them. That's how changing the Aspect works, right? Change with it, change through it, change it itself. That's the joining point of both Classes; they change.

(That's interesting in of itself because it implies Feferi as someone who changes change, but that's something I'll focus on more when I write about Life; which happens to be my own Aspect anyways).

Next week, the post will be about the most controversial players in Homestuck analysis; The Princes & Bards.

(...oh, christ, please don't make me write about the Makaras).

[classpect-crew]

Touching Grass

A long and deeply personal story about gender transition, agency, and the Aspect of Life

Although the Lifebound are almost always gifted with privilege in some way, my childhood was spent in a gilded cage. I had an incredible wealth of opportunities, but my agency was ultimately restricted. I was told I could do anything I set my mind to, that the world was a canvas for my creativity, that my potential was limitless, but when I ultimately reached out and tried to grab that agency, that true measure of Life…I lost the support. I lost the understanding. I was kicked out. I lost my health insurance. I was treated as a burden. I was given a destiny, and I refused it. I embraced what Life truly means and refused to give that up for anything. I grabbed hold of my own desires and refused to let go. I shaped the world around me when I could, and shaped myself to fit through the cracks when I could not. And, perhaps inevitably, I burned out.

We, the Lifebound, desire control. Agency. Power. We don’t want to cede that to anyone, but those of us who have seen the worst consequences of our actions will eventually run the risk of giving up that agency entirely, afraid of what might happen if we act. We begin to doubt ourselves. Do we have all the information we need to make the right decision? Are we being selfish, trying to impose our will with no regard for those around us? We become paralyzed. We get lost in the cerebral overthinking that is terribly familiar to the Mindbound. We slip into the comfort of Doom, relinquishing responsibility along with our agency, and succumb to the inertia that comes with such long periods of inaction.

My parents handed me a mockery of Life—it came with Terms and Conditions. It was Doom masquerading as its opposite, just as they projected the façade of a happy couple for nearly two loveless decades, until divorce finally set them free. And yet, the Life inside of me found a way. The truth of my Aspect continued to shine through, guiding me on my own chosen path, propelled by my own enthusiastic and unstoppable energy. These things come in waves, though, and at some point it was inevitable that all the abuse and trauma would catch up to me. I would need to grieve before I continued on my way. I began to feel a heaviness inside of me, weighing me down and demanding to be acknowledged, processed, digested like a tough piece of meat, gristle and all.

Near the end of last year, I started to realize just how much of my gender transition—one of the most life-altering choices I’ve ever made—was a direct reaction to the trauma of being forced, sometimes violently, into the most restrictive, toxic, and misogynistic ideal of womanhood that I’ve ever known. I fought tooth and nail to escape that, and I took that newfound agency and did the only thing I could think to do: I completely rejected womanhood as an identity. All it had ever brought me was pain. I was surrounded by women in my family and community who felt that same pain, who saw little chance of escape except through denial, drugs, and living vicariously through their kids. Meanwhile, I made a choice that, I’ll admit, was quite extreme; in fairness, I was nonbinary to begin with, so some kind of gender transition was always in the cards for me. But the concept of femininity was so poisoned by my upbringing that I immediately fled to the other end of the false gender binary. It was only in late 2021, after four years on T and a few months post-top surgery, that I was finally able to see what womanhood could be.

I started dating a trans woman, a friend of a friend. Witnessing her excitement at each new development in her transition—her mother’s acceptance, the gradual changes from HRT, the experience of finally being seen—was like a salve on a wound that I’d believed had already healed. As my social circle expanded from there, I naturally became friends with a lot more transfems of all stripes: proud butches and gorgeous femmes, shy nerds and outgoing ravers, stoners, artists, vintage enthusiasts and DJs. I met transfems with kids, former Air Force security, stage managers, about a dozen incredible musicians, gun nuts, kinksters, witches, and everything in-between. The one thing they all had in common, to some degree, was the profound euphoria they experienced as a direct result of choosing what womanhood means to them—something that I almost never saw from the cis women I grew up around, and still don’t see much of today. Most of the cis women I’ve known with the same level of love for their identity have been much older, having had decades upon decades to break out of our society’s conditioning and find that joy.

My feelings of dissatisfaction with the expectations of ‘manhood’ that were placed on me by openly accepting family members and society at large, coupled with an unconscious desire to rethink my relationship with womanhood, began gnawing at me from the inside. As the years went on, I started feeling oddly disconnected from the very things that once made me feel incredibly euphoric: my beard and chest hair, my flat chest, being called ‘sir,’ and even my chosen name. It all came crashing down on me last year, when I started putting the pieces together. I realized that I never had the chance to experience womanhood as a joyful truth that I’d willingly choose to embrace.

The idea that I truly had such little agency in the circumstances that led to my transition, that the pain I’d suffered led me to race to the other end of the gender binary instead of allowing my nonbinary transition to unfold naturally, that I lost so many years that I could’ve spent exploring myself, healing those wounds caused by their violent insistence that I perform their cruel version of womanhood…that broke me. I’m still processing that grief, working with my therapist using EMDR, taking advice from a close friend of mine who’s a curandere (the gender neutral term for curandero/a), exploring soul retrieval practices, and doing whatever I can to open myself up to exploring this new truth in my identity as a nonbinary woman. I’ve realized that agency lies not in the circumstances in which you make the choice, but rather the act of choosing itself. It’s the commitment to following through upon your will.

I’m trying to consciously surround myself with manifestations of Life, to remind myself of the power of my agency, of the optimism and drive that keeps me going, despite everything. Right outside my bedroom window, there’s a table covered in clay pots where my partner and I have planted cilantro, banana peppers, lettuce, rosemary, jalapeños, oregano. I check on the sprouts each day when I go out to pull invasive Johnson grass from our garden. I can identify nearly every plant in our backyard now, from our miniature sunflower field to our blooming Texas thistle, verdant henbit and yellow butterweed blossoms, eagerly sprouting hedge parsley, and the morning glories winding their way around the sunflower stalks. Every time I greet the evening primrose or beg the yellow sweet clover to please, please spread so we can have barefoot-friendly ground coverage, it roots me in the earth and connects me with everything around me. I’m part of a vast ecosystem, affected by forces and wills beyond my knowledge, even at times beyond my comprehension. That doesn’t change the fact that I have agency. I have a will of my own. I owe it to myself, and to the world, to find my truth and live it as bravely as I can.

Life is an Aspect that promises change. When faced with the responsibility of knowing that your actions have consequences, you must also remember that it is only through our actions that we can make the world a better place. Start small, start local, and don’t forget to touch grass when you can. In the vast ocean of spacetime, we all contribute to those unseen currents that sweep us along our own journeys. Every choice matters. Knowing this, I have just one question for you:

What will you do?

[classpect-crew]

:3c

[classpect-crew]

welcome back! can’t wait to see what new classpect analyses you have to share ^.^

Thank you so much! :3 I’m excited to see where I go with it!

[classpect-crew]

Welcome back friend! May this year treat you well!

🤍🤍🤍 and you as well!!

[romain57]

[classpect-crew]

holy shit. y’all i just realized, part of the joke of calling myself ‘the classpect crew’ has always been that it’s just me on here. and now that i’ve realized i’m plural…looks like we’re finally living up to our name, huh?

[classpect-crew]

classpect crew has thots now?!

:3c

[classpect-crew]

i have some thoughts

[classpect-crew]

y’all should go watch Funk McLovin’s new video on Classes, by the way

[classpect-crew]

i have some thoughts

[classpect-crew]

Glad to see you’re back! And with another banger post too! Welcome back, we all missed you!

Awh, thanks so much! 🥺 It feels good to be back! Sometimes the inspiration just hits and I’ve got to make something with it. Last night’s post was mainly inspired by a tarot reading I had, which assured me that if I truly want to treat life as a grander narrative, I should recognize my own ability to write my story as I choose. If I have a goal I want to achieve but don’t know where to start, what better way to do so than by asking “if I were to write a character with this kind of arc, what would be their first steps?” and letting intuition take care of the rest. 🤍

[classpect-crew]

The Heir of Hope: Plurality and Personal Narrative

It took plurality, of all things, to realize that my greatest strength lies in Hope.

Hope is the Aspect of fantasy realized. Those who wield it are like the Magician of the tarot, capable of shaping the world according to their whims. With each thought, as Terezi wisely points out, we are helping to create our own reality; in the Domain of Hope, there is no greater truth. The Hopebound are storytellers and passionate consumers of media. They are the center of their own narrative, at times unable to conceive of anything outside of it. They may even strip other people of their agency—of their Life—in an effort to force them to make sense in their existing worldview. Dissenting allies become obstacles at best, and enemies at worst. And yet, should they yield ground to the autonomy of others, allowing the story to ‘write itself,’ they will find themselves swept up in a much more meaningful adventure than they could have possibly imagined.

Hope is the Aspect of the imagination, brimming with ideas and just waiting for an outlet to fully realize them in the material world. It is the Aspect of magic. It’s the reason I’ve been able to treat the Classpect system as a foundation for performing magic myself, seeing the world in terms of the Aspects, a bit similar to the way the ancient Greeks saw the four elements of fire, water, earth, and air reflected and embodied in all things. I now understand my recent obsession with restarting over and over in Baldur’s Gate 3 as an imbalance between Heart and Mind: in order to avoid addressing my latest identity crisis, I’ve tossed myself into a roleplaying game with a million different possibilities, and I’ve exhausted dozens upon dozens of hours trying to play every possible role, wearing every possible mask, creating every possible character.

I’m a storyteller—it’s in my blood. My father, and his father before him, and every relative of his that I’ve known have all been the same. Our family reunions were filled with wild tales sprinkled with half-truths, like the time my dad came across a particularly randy buck in the middle of the street—he swears he saw the buck stomp his hoof and wink—or the way my great uncle got his glass eye after a hunting trip when his own father mistook him for a turkey. My maternal grandmother is the same way. I named myself Taliesin in honor of that, and also to tap into some part of a greater legacy of storytellers, just like the historical and mythological Taliesin himself, and all those who have taken his name before me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had more people in my head than I’ve known what to do with. I have a veritable menagerie of colorful characters, some going back many years, who have taken up residence in my brain folds. It never occurred to me that they could become more than just puppets for me to play around with, reflecting my own dreams, desires, and fears in a way that felt safe. Separate. That was before one such puppet, Vivienne, cut her own strings, looked me dead in the eye, and told me “I want to be real, too.”

She did so not long after taking control of my body when I was in a cannabis-induced haze, speaking to my girlfriend in a voice that definitely wasn’t mine. When I came out of it, she asked “was that an invocation thing, or a headmate?” (I’ve had a few experiences with invocation, when a deity decided I could help one of their followers by passing along a message that, frankly, could have been an email.) I determined fairly quickly that although it wasn’t mine, the voice was coming from my own head. Thus began a long and very weird journey navigating my plural identity that all began when a character I’d had for a dozen years decided she wanted a chance at experiencing sentience.

It was eerily reminiscent of Brain Ghost Dirk, a sort of thoughtform that becomes real for a while because Jake believes in him that much, but also because so much of Dirk’s journey involves splitting himself off into different versions of himself. The more I interact with Viv, the more real she becomes. It feels like the effort is mutual, as if she’s using our conversations—among other, more intimate interactions—to become a fully fleshed-out person, joining me in my head as someone with her own agency, rather than just a sort of ‘hack’ my brain was using to override executive dysfunction.

When I discovered the practice of ‘tulpamancy,’ though controversial in some circles, it occurred to me that I could perform a feat like this willingly, given enough time and effort. Still, while the tips I found were helpful, I never really found them necessary for my own work. Hell, I was already doing it with Vivienne, working intuitively with her in ways that just made sense. It was something that came to me naturally, and still does. It feels like a natural gift—like an inheritance. I inherited the ability to dream up these stories, these characters, and make them real. Anyone who’s spoken with Viv, especially in person, can speak to the fact that she and I are distinct in a way that’s profound and meaningful.

There are many other connections I’ve made with the Heir of Hope: the soul-deep wellspring of faith and optimism that I’ve been able to draw from in the darkest times of my life, or the incredible effects of my religious journey as I’ve explored the vast reaches of conviction and doubt alike. Yet, those feel too obvious, too much like low-hanging fruit to write a whole damn essay about. That’s why I’ve written instead about the legacy my family has left for me, and the ways I’ve turned my storytelling into a source of personal power.

I’m not just the center of my own narrative, but also its author. At the same time, there are millions of characters, just like me, who are entitled to their own agency. They exist within my head and without it, living out their own lives, becoming more and more real with every thought, every word from their lips like cobblestones on a road to self-realization. There are times when I need to put down my pen and just take it all in, without trying to take control of the story or change somebody else by force.

I am a storyteller. I am a captive audience member. I am a character in a narrative as big as the universe itself. I am the Heir of Hope.

[classpect-crew]

;)

[munch-mumbles]

[girlballs]

this thing is a type of animal