so ive been writing out a more indepth analysis of TB!Hal for an ask and its,,, long, but i wanna share this one tidbit about the mage class ive got cooked up on its own:
Iâve got an ask once where someone concluded that Mages are the pathfinders of Homestuck classes, and I really like the implication of it. In the same ask, they summarized that Seers, as the passive counterpart, understand their aspect and steer others with that understanding, while more active Mages experience their aspect and steer others with that experience. (Slight tangent but fr if youâre the person who send this ask (sadly it was from anon) i want you to know that itâs been such a based take i think about it daily, and also iâm kissing you on the lips rn.)
When i was doing research about the classpects, people often concluded that Mages must suffer from their aspect and gain knowledge through that suffering. While both Mages we were introduced to in the original comic, ie. Sollux and Meulin, could steer people into believing that to be the case, i want to propose a different explanation: Mages job is to experience their aspect, and through experiencing it they gain a vast understanding of it. A big part of learning about a new subject is the act of failing at it.
Letâs make an example: if you pick up a pencil and decide to learn how to draw, you wonât produce the next Michelangelo masterpiece on your first try. Or your ten, or one hundredth. But, if you fail and identify why you failed â your proportions were wrong, your shading didnât match the lighting scenario â and start to consciously avoid making those mistakes again, youâll start to see the improvement. But the process is slow, and the results often donât meet our expectations, which is what makes people give up and decide that drawing is just not their thing. Or sometimes people get stuck, frustrated with the lack of improvement, because they havenât identified what mistakes theyâre making and simply keep on making them again and again, instead of steering away from them, which also drives them into quitting.
The art of learning about any subject is a steady stream of constant failures, identifying what went wrong, remembering to avoid it, and at last realizing that youâve improved and succeeded, and this is what the Mage experience is about. We keep on seeing miserable Mages because they either get overwhelmed and give up on learning about their aspect, instead avoiding experiencing it at all costs, or they gain the knowledge of why they failed and try to guide others with it, but they themselves are unable to apply that same knowledge to their own life, instead falling into the same fucking potholes again and again.
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