taking classpect, flippin it turnways
Hello. My name is Arcturus. I am here to talk about classpect. Why? Hard to say.
I've been percolating this for quite a while now, and I feel I have finally settled on a unified theory of classpect. But I feel I have to do a few disclaimers up front, so if you don't vibe with what I'm laying out, you can hit that back button and be free to go about your day.
Disclaimer One: I am an archive reader of Homestuck, and only consider "canon" to be the actual comic from page one up to the Act 7/Credits flashes. Nothing from friendsim, pesterquest, or any of the """Post Canon""" content will be taken into account here. This also includes the "official" quiz that WP finally put up, because I find it lacking in several metrics.
Disclaimer Two: I strongly consider everyone in HS to be an Unreliable Narrator, and I heavily doubt anything that is outright 'told' to the reader by specific characters. My profiles of each aspect and class come from observation of actions. More specifically: I think Calliope's infodumps in Act 6 are interesting theorycraft but nothing more. Meaning…
Disclaimer Three: I don't give much stock to inversion theory, to gendering the classes, to passive/active classes (and outright disagree with some of Calliope's assessments), and frankly to a lot of the sort of Assumed Truths of classpect. Going into this, you can expect to see some ideas that I think go against the popular fanon.
If any of these are dealbreakers for you, then smash that back button and have a lovely day!
Let's get started! How do you explore this project?
My preferred method of figuring out classpect is the self-doxxing method. I have written some pretty thorough (but hopefully not overlong) descriptions of the common traits of each class and aspect. I would recommend starting with the Classes and begin to navigate through and read them.
This project has been pretty thoroughly beta tested at this point, and the common refrain is someone finding something that feels like a person attack. That would be the correct selection for you, the one that makes you feel particularly seen and observed.
Now, personally, I think its extremely hard to test for classpect. I think Aspect is slightly more feasible but Class is impossible. This is because I believe Class should be understood as what role you play in the narrative. When the audience is handed a playbill with the Dramatis Personae, what is the little descriptor next to your name? That is your class.
As such, it's hard for someone else to tell you what it is; it's about your personal journey and how you interact with the world. In the end, the person who is best going to understand what class you are is you. not me.
Aspect is slightly easier to assign from the outside. For that, I am currently working on a quiz for the people who truly have no idea or who just like quizzes. But for the time being, I would suggest figuring out your Class first, then moving onto Aspect. There have been a handful of people who found it easier to work the other way around, though, so don't feel like you're not allowed to look at Aspect if you want.
That's enough from me! Get started!
MAID: "Burdened by the aspect"
SLYPH: "Heals their aspect in others"
WITCH: "Sponsored by their aspect"
PAGE: "Served by their aspect"
KNIGHT: "Guardian of their aspect"
ROGUE: "Distributing their aspect to others"
SEER: "Knowledge of their aspect to serve others"
THIEF: "Steals aspect for self"
MAGE: "Knowledge of their aspect to serve self"
PRINCE: "In service to their aspect"
HEIR: "Avatar of their aspect"
BARD: "The Facilitator of the narrative"
BLOOD: the aspect of obligation
DOOM: the aspect of inevitability
LIGHT: the aspect of relevance
SPACE: the aspect of the concrete
HOPE: the aspect of imagination
VOID: the aspect of obsession
LIFE: the aspect of affluence
BREATH: the aspect of freedom
RAGE: the aspect of impulse
TIME: the aspect of opportunity
HEART: the aspect of identity
MIND: the aspect of skepticism
Hey, what about Prospit vs Derse?
Sure, that one's easy. I got a quiz for that here.
Nah. I don't think I can extrapolate the similarities of the class from a single example. The games of Sburb seems to only use Muse/Lord in the event of a two player game, as they don't appear naturally in any of the four other sessions we get to look at. So nope.
Hey this is a lot of information and I'm still struggling to decide my class/aspect.
I'll make a post outlining some similarities and delineations to help you out later.
This was a metric fuckton of work. I have struggled with a lot of other analyses of classpect, and every time I go to HS wiki and look at their page on in, I see red, because none of it makes sense! None of it has internal logic! This project has been me throwing out everything I've seen on the topic and trying to create something that makes sense.
If you enjoyed it and want to give me a tip, I have a ko-fi over here.
Thanks to everyone who tolerated me working on this project, especially my Whomstve server. If it were for all y'all going "GASP I'VE BEEN DOXXED" and "WHY IS THIS SO ACCURATE" I would've quit.
For the curious, the hardest class to nail down was Prince. Trying to fucking unify Dirk, Eridan, and Kurloz was a nightmare, but I actually am very happy with the final product. Though admitting that shit about myself wasn't fun.
The hardest class to write was, hilariously, Heart, for the same reason. Unifying the experiences of the characters was difficult.
I am a Prince of Heart, but my favorite class is Page. My favorite aspect is Blood.
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
jacobvanloon
2087
origamiaround
