Andrew Hussie posted the class active/passive pairing chart, as well as their active-to-passive numerical designation order, in the image above in their #q-n-a section on the Homestuck Discord:
A lot of people have asked about the fabled document containing lore about classes. There really isn't much to that document, it's about one page, and mostly focuses on scale of passive to active, the pairings, and just a little extra that probably isn't worth sharing unless it's retouched and expanded on more formally.
For now, these are the pairings, which are staggered a bit in probably an unpredictable way. Lord and muse are the extremes, but aside from that, there's some weird stuff going on. The maid/heir pair are both fully on the passive side, and witch/sylph are fully on the active side. All the others are split between active and passive, but the gap begins to narrow as you progress.
Why? Because it's more fucked up that way, and it maximizes the blast radius when vaporizing countless volumes of fanon conjecture.
.....
more to come later.....MAYBE?????
So Witch/Sylph are an active/passive pair and Maid/Heir are an active/passive pair, not what we guessed beforehand (Witch/Heir and Maid/Sylph)-- there were hints in the fact that we were wrong about Maid's class purpose, back when HS^2 revealed that it was to serve the aspect itself (though we now know why the Maid was called "passive" because technically it's the more active of two relatively passive classes, a nuance we guessed at as a possibility), and now we have some confirmation why, which if anything makes more sense of Maids and confirms our original active-part-of-the-pair assumptions about them, not less sense.
Now, I know when Andrew said this they were mostly joking about "maximizing the fanon vaporizing blast radius", but it doesn't change the fact that this chart holds SOME SMALL danger of interfering with a number of our assumptions about Inversion Theory (unless something fucky is going on). Inversion Theory is still intact by the new chart, especially its BIGGEST examples that are most important to the story (Rose, Jade, Aradia, Jane, Gamzee), but the seldom-used inversions implied by how we assumed the flips worked raise a few leftover questions... mostly, questions we can't answer until we figure out the proper definition of the classes whose positions on the chart we got wrong. Questions that would pertain to theoretical inversions we didn't really see much of in-story.
So like, read my dizzy surgery-recovery-muddled (don't worry I'm fine it had great results I'm just still convalescing) thoughts on all this below this Read More reacting to the chart and go debate Class definition stuff in the replies:
When I first saw the Q and A post (forwarded to me from the Homestuck Discord by a friend, which forced me to join up to confirm it even though I really would have preferred not to join it for a wide variety of reasons), the spread of most active to most passive didn't bother me, that made a great degree of sense-- much moreso, I was worried Inversion Theory as it CURRENTLY existed was not quite compatible with the chart, but... the biggest potential examples of Inversion aren't ruled out by this pairing swap from our prior guesses. And we do have to remember that Andrew did hint in some of the book commentary that either outright inversion theory or something like it might be going on, though we could be putting too much stock in its panel-to-panel importance outside of the major cases. Are Witch/Sylph and Mage/Seer an opposed-purpose class pair that makes Witch/Seer inversion make sense? If we held Witch <--> Seer as immutable that works fine on its own, but it would be really weird in the SYLPH'S case if it mirrored that for a Mage, wouldn't it? So what gives? And while we're at it, what about Maid/Heir and Prince/Bard, given how Maid -> Bard is the other strongest and most important class flip whose verb details are relevant (to Aradia and Jane's behavior, while how Gamzee started out inverted doesn't need a strong class association)? It's possible that it's still true. It doesn't really matter where things fall on the newly-revealed active-to-passive scale other than the inverse of Active class of a class-pair always being one of the Passive of their class-pair. For example, if Seer/Witch inversion is still a thing, there's no visible pattern like "leaping from the second-from-top Active slot to second-from-top Passive slot and back" that holds true for any of the other class inversions we strongly suspect. And I'm DEFINITELY still opposed to the freeform "class roleplay" theory championed by someone else (I wish I could remember names), where the inverted class can be practically ANYTHING from the list, which would make Rose acting like a Witch and Jade acting like a Seer PURE COINCIDENCE -- that would make so much of the system nearly meaningless in my eyes, since the reversible principle / correlation and how paired-opposite aspects are mirrored by paired-opposite classes is the main evidentiary source we have for this being a phenomenon at all. Like how it makes total sense of Jade and Rose's life-to-initial-session character arcs, how Jade suddenly "understood" jack shit when she "uninverted" after her dreamself death because she had been inverted to a class whose purpose was to "Understand" their aspect comprehensively to guide others, the Seer, etc. Gosh, I would hate it if a nice clean system like that got mucked up by malleable imprecision. But we're probably safe from that much at least... maybe... possibly.
The only problems with the class position switch are the Mage and Heir I had assumed were opposites, which are pretty minor and plot-unimportant in the scheme of theorized inversions. There is nothing about Witch/Seer inversion on this chart's new pairings that would interfere with Thief/Page inversion, something I thought was extremely hinted at by the comic with (Vriska) and with when Tavros was a jerk who wanted the Ring (and Tavros's brief behavior then plus (Vriska)'s dress/behavior change really helped convince me that said part of our class chart and Inversion Theory was correct), but it just doesn't provide for the Mage/Heir inversion (which we initially used make some sense of John's brief Blood-focused tantrum about Con Air being stupid and Davesprite breaking up with Jade, a Blood-frustration from being cooped up without perceived Freedom (boxed up Breath) for too long on the golden ship ride, though his behavior was vague enough that one could possibly chart that up to a different class inversion instead of that of an Understanding class, especially given how much Karkat was liable to blab on about romance dynamics despite being a Knight), so that's one inversion we'd be ruling out / replacing. The new chart doesn't interfere with Maid/Bard inversion either, which is extremely important as Aradia and Jane's inversions make sense as a Bard of Space and Bard of Doom down to Jane repeating Gamzee's potion seller act with Kanaya (inviting destruction of Doom - hesitance and ability to resist desire, ie. making Kanaya give in to her blood cravings).
Something the new arrangement DOES throw a wrench in though is the opposite inversions in each class pair. How does "Mage/Sylph" inversion make sense, or "Prince/Heir" inversion? Back when it was Prince/Sylph and we knew Sylphs as "Healers", it made perfect sense for them to be the opposites of Destroyers, but following our old pattern doesn't work on the new class chart. How those inversions are supposed to unfold heavily depend on how the Sylph, Mage, and Heir classes are ACTUALLY defined, which is a mystery Beyond Canon is going to reveal to us eventually.
There's also always a small chance there's something else going on here that makes sense-- formalized or not, maybe not as clean and specific as we thought Role Inversion might be-- that Andrew hasn't detailed to us yet from that shorthand class document:
and just a little extra that probably isn't worth sharing unless it's retouched and expanded on more formally.
--possibly involving the shorthand purpose of each class, which Beyond Canon has promised to go to (and likely expand upon!) while still promising to stick to the document they were handed from Andrew-- in essence, Beyond Canon would be doing the work that "retouched and expanded on [it] more formally", not specifically Andrew themselves. If we knew what the "class purpose" verbs were for sure (provided they can still be said to exist) and how they make sense in Witch/Sylph's case and in Maid/Heir's case (and I can make better guesses about the latter than the former), then maybe we could make sense of Inversion Theory in a way that covers the whole class chart instead of just the specific main three examples we THINK we saw: Witch <--> Seer, Maid <--> Bard, and Thief <--> Page.
I feel like there's SOMETHING screwy going on here though, and whatever it is I hope I don't have to get forwarded notice about it from a friend from the Homestuck Discord to deal with it. Seriously, I don't want to be involved with the Homestuck Discord, just, from a personal preference standpoint. It's kind of like the Q&A Andrew gave right before that question: Someone asked why Andrew had been seemingly absent (in terms of online presence) before the Discord and forums came back, and they responded in part by challenging the asker's implied definition of an online presence:
It's hard to call someone gone if there's no such thing as here, and whenever you ask anyone what here means, they say something like "I dunno... it's just that you've barely spent any time in Torso Chewer lately... not even to speak of the Bone Harvester :(" People who aren't presently submitting themselves to such contraptions probably shouldn't be labeled as missing, and nobody ever got put on a milk carton because they were a no-show at a dick punching party.
--which I think entirely sums up my feelings of why I don't like touching the Homestuck Discord or forums! I'll keep my online engagement safely over here with the input and output constrained through my blog and my direct friends, thank you very much.
Anyway when I was first linked this chart I panicked initially and was like INVERSION THEORY IS BLOWN UP and I reflexively flipped my shit, but it turned out it wasn't when I looked closer. (I am pretty prone to panic and assume new out-of-the-blue information from outside canon is going to mean a bad day for me out of sheer paranoia, mostly.) It's just left us with some weird questions around some of the potential inversions we barely-if-ever saw, which... I mean, that's not a big deal at all, is it? So I can go back to calmly recovering (very well don't worry) from surgery and relaxing instead of reckoning with a wholesale overturning of what we knew. There's still the changes to the official Class Chart to reckon with and the theorized new role of the Heir and possible re-definition of the Sylph, but... that can all wait until there's time and I'm recovered, or better yet, wait until we have Beyond Canon's formal definitions and expanded examples of why those class titles matter. "Control/Change" is still the operative word for the Witch and makes the most sense of how it's the most active class of all besides the Lord, and to liken the Maid who serves their aspect to the Heir could be likening them to one who... is served by their aspect (???), but with some other nuance that allows it to affect others? So much of our understanding of Heirs comes from the way John had such an impact on the direction his friends took in life while inheriting every direction he was ever handed by someone else. We can go over potential definitions for the new Witch/Sylph and Maid/Heir classes (that Knight and Page's weaponize vs fight-to-defend show don't have to be word for word the same) when I'm feeling more recovered from surgery (which again, went super well, don't worry) and have more spoons left over to engage with the discourse that comes with hashing out class definitions. Or debating the existence of inversion theory... again... which hopefully isn't necessary.
Anyway, y'all go to town in the replies like I know you want to, and if you HAVE to my ask box too, but I'd definitely prefer the replies because it confines discussion to this "thread" and I won't have to decide whether to make big blog-interrupting posts just to respond to one person. And then maybe after a while I can reconvene with y'all about proposed class definitions for the new pairs we have, with their positions on the up-to-down most-active-to-most-passive scale Andrew gifted us with as potential hints, and whether they fit with Inversion Theory cleanly or not and how, et cetera.
EDIT: As others like @ashercrane have forwarded to me, there's a quote from James Roach about an interaction he had with Andrew regarding how the Heir works when speculating James would be an Heir of Light:
"[...]you believe in Luck, but you aren't necessarily like-- you aren't a Lucky person yourself, you make others around you Luckier[...]"
Before we conceived of the Heir as a nexus who allowed others to Change, but it doesn't take much tweaking to conceive of the Heir as a passive Additive class: One who gives their aspect to others, and is often without their aspect unless given it by others (inheriting). This revised definition would still make plenty of sense of how John was always sent off in whatever Direction/Quest (Breath) given to him, and how he was able to give purpose to others.
I'm not sure if you are aware of this or if it actually affects your theories at all, but in an AMA on Reddit, James Roach said about the "One who fights to preserve" phrase: "I copy and pasted the class and aspect descriptions directly from the document andrew gave us. I will never fuck around about class and aspect that is my solemn vow. Well actually I might, but not that time."
So I expect this description is at least fairly central to how a page works, if not their exact definition.
OH SHIT THAT'S SUPER IMPORTANT THANK YOU. I didn't expect them to have dropped the 100% FULL DEFINITION of a class for the FIRST TIME out in Patreon Writer Commentary land, and now I have to take it much more seriously. Going to your source now:
ErinsHere: Recently James revealed that a Page is "One who preserves"- was that an intentional drop of Canon Classpect Information? Can we expect to see more of those in the future? And, if so, do y'all have access to a classpecting resource bible, or are you working off of headcanon like the rest of us?
JAMES: The exact wording is “one who fights to preserve”. I copy and pasted the class and aspect descriptions directly from the document andrew gave us. I will never fuck around about class and aspect that is my solemn vow. Well actually I might, but not that time.
Yup. Alright, that debunks my King Arthur view FOR CERTAIN and still most likely places the Page as the passive counterpart to the Knight, using this Active/Passive designation:
One who exploits their Aspect as a weapon, wielding it like a honed blade.
One who fights to preserve their Aspect (EDIT: and fights to preserve using their aspect? It's pointed out by ashercrane that he leaves the end open in the AMA, but didn't back in the Writer Commentary, so this may or may not be part of it).
The shared action verb would be to Fight, not to Exploit. Which feels odd to me, but mainly from unfamiliarity and my earlier doubts that personally "fighting" was meant to be so closely associated with Pages anyway. It still makes sense as an Action Verb for the pair in my book. (If they indeed ARE still a pair.)
This makes sense as a custom Active/Passive dichotomy like the Thief and Rogue definitions do, instead of using the "does" vs "invites" dichotomy language that the Prince and Bard's do. It also means that even if Pages can fight to preserve their Aspect for others, and sometimes make it available for others (as was commented that Grandpa Harley seemed almost to have intentionally given Jade a fuckton of prototyping options), fighting to preserve Hope in general -- theirs, another's, or just the concept/Aspect itself -- is the main point of the class. I'll keep that well in mind.
The Maid, though, was suggested to be a passive but powerful servant to their aspect (on a panel that reconfirmed the Knight "wields [their] aspect like a honed blade"). Isn't that too much of an overlap with the Page? Does the no-fucking-around policy apply back there too, or because that was page 278, well before the Beyond Canon team took over from the original HS^2 team on page 408, is this the implication that Maids are passive a misleading exception or something we should take literally? Because if so that could completely rearrange my chart, as I've mentioned before. Even if you take "serve" as a pun that lets one serve out the aspect, we've seen Pages do quite similar, as they might be able to under this new definition too... and Sylphs are Healers, so what are THEY paired with? Aren't THEY passive? I'm still not sure how best to rearrange the chart in the view of passive Maids, which is part of why I've resisted it for so long, but IF this retroactively confirms that alt!Calliope was being extremely literal about passive Maids and Sylphs aren't just the ACTIVE version of Maids which would seem... extremely fucking weird given how Sylphs have seemed as passive as Maids so often that it's been almost hard to tell which is more active if they're paired... guh, I need to resolve this confusion at some point and I can't wait for more info to trickle in that allows us to clarify all this.
(It's also STILL possible that Maids and Sylphs are "passive" compared to the other classes, but that Maid is technically the Active part of the pair, from Calliope's phrasing... but now that we have clear language debunking one of my existing class conceptions explicitly I'm starting to doubt that a whole lot harder.)
The true and full arrangement of the Class Chart, what the Active/Passive pairs are and their shared purposes / action verbs are, is incredibly important for Role Inversion theory. A new class chart arrangement definitely doesn't DEBUNK the theory by default -- it conceivably could, just, not yet -- but it DOES shape the way that we would need to apply Role Inversion theories both retroactively (ie. Did Maid/Bard inversion happen, or a different inverse pair? Will I ever make time to revise the Aradia Inversion post to sound less oversmug and sure of myself? Wait, I think I already did, that's damning...), AND going forward. Which will be especially important in the new Deltritus session if/when any of the characters we meet struggles with potential role inversion and going against their aspect and themselves. Which is practically a virtual certainty at least once, so it's pretty damned important for us theorists to have an accurate idea of what to expect from any given inverted Hero Title.
Stay tuned as I'll be doing my best to decide how to sort all this the fuck out as updates roll out and my liveblogging analysis continues. I'm also up for discussing any suggestions, especially well-justified ones with evidence, for revisions to the class chart that I've left stagnant for so long.
(EDIT 2: Wait, could Maid’s serve and Page’s preserve be intentional paired puns?)
Pre-Thanksgiving upd8! Time for the aftermath of her spell to go completely fine and no catastrophic slapstick to happen. ;) Liveblogging recommence:
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Yup, the tumorous overLife'd mass is totally gonna (Doom) explode catastrophically.
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Oh that is a TON of bright red blood! Just a matter of whether it'll drench the audience, pummel them, or both; either way, the applause will cease. Much less catastrophic of an explosion than I expected I suppose!
Is Bard... perhaps still in the running for her? I really really don't think so, I don't think she's nearly as chaotic/contradictory and her attitudes fall solid within Doom with a frustrated curiosity towards Life, but there's clearly something funny going on that I feel like her class will clarify regarding this whole Life-overdose-causing-Doom schtick. It doesn't QUITE ALIGN with all the examples we saw in her room of her constantly surrounding herself with and averting Doom, acting mainly herself instead of to/through others... unless they were more complex expressions of her class and this were a more primal one? Unsure. Some of the alternatives like Rogue feel just... even less right when comparing to her introduction and room, under the circumstances.
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Why are you so frustrated by the result? (Which seems to have created an overabundance of... well, food, in the area. Corpses must be eaten in Nymph culture after all. Providing Food being a very Life thing, also, or Doom's negation at least.)
Oh right, her screenname is gavageCunctation. I'd assume she would prefer to put off eating. Maybe her screenname specifically referred to corpse eating, and flouting that tradition to let the dead fester (and letting whatever consequences Nymph culture is quite possibly averting by reflexively corpse-eating, perhaps necromantic consequences or some other threat, to happen)?
Let me keep things moving instead of speculating yet--
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DEATH BEAM doesn't usually do that. Usually it just applies a death effect on living things that causes them to be dead. You've got a real mystery on your claws, unfortunately it's a mystery you're not in the mood to solve. The mere thought of mystery is making your feedbag tingle with desire. There's only one thing to do in situations like this.
Her stomach is tingling with desire to, well... probably corpse-eat. She said that eating a **LIVE** Hagsnab would be disgusting (the name of which was why the Hagsplode by the way). So. Is she going to give into this rising desire in her stomach, or avoid it by running away, fulfilling her screenname?
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Nothing more comforting than a good old-fashioned feeding frenzy.
These moments are considerably more endearing when it's not one of the grannies.
Hagsnab is so much tastier than granny.
Pfff. XD (EDIT: Happy Thanksgiving!!! Credit to friend Speckle noticing the timing for this feast update.)
So, she managed to create a Life-overdose explosion that effectively FED everyone, including herself... in a sort of Life->Doom->Life cascade that I suppose a Doom-Stealer or Doom-Averter could cause. But... why her username? Why name herself after "force-feeding delayed"?
Let me make it clear that I do NOT believe this fits with her being ANY sort of Life player or a Bard of Life, that doesn't fit the signs to me. ......Yyyyet. I'm not saying it's COMPLETELY impossible given what we just saw, but there are plenty of variants of Doom class that could cause increased Life while sticking with her overwhelmingly Doom-enjoying theme. I know you could connect her love of cartoon slapstick explosions to Life-causing-Destruction too, but it's overwhelmingly the Doom itself she seems to love and reference and surround herself with. Gamzee only referenced and surrounded himself with Hope because he was theoretically inverted into a Hope title before he played by things like his Sopor Slime habit, going against his true later-revealed nature of bouncing between killer and perception-of-possibilities-breaking Clown like The Joker, his true Bard of Rage role. Ly'lac doesn't... SEEM inverted, or like there's any malign influence or external factor in her life which would have inverted her before we met her; she just seems to have been LIKE this and of sound mind, so she should be compared more to Eridan, Dirk, or Cronus if you want to allege her a Bard in my opinion, and her constantly loving and being surrounded by Doom should be contrasted by Eridan vividly hating Hope despite surrounding himself with shitty wands, Dirk being emblematic of a unique Heart but sometimes acting Heartless and discouraging others from being their less logical unique selves right from the start of Act 6, and Cronus...
Well, hm. I guess that's a BIT closer to Ly'lac's relationship with Doom, except she's constantly threatening to destroy CC at the slightest provocation or giving into Anxiety and shying away from others or AA's threats even jokingly, and... huh. Okay let's just say my heart is set on a Doom player somewhat now that I'm looking at my biases clearly and there's A CHANCE, I WILL CONCEDE, that she's a Passive Life Destroyer/Destroy-Througher. But I can't ignore all her Doom-loving iconography, because Princes have surrounded themselves with lots of Same HATING instead of Opposite LOVING iconography, Dirk didn't surround himself with Mind-appreciation symbols as much as he valued it and Eridan not so much Rage-appreciation... though Eridan WAS at least pretty Rage color themed, so Lylac being so DOOM color-themed on top of her mountain of Doom quirks and anxiety and depression and Doomerism... it doesn't rule it out like I initially thought it would. BUT I STILL THINK IT LEANS WAY MORE DOOM. I'm still internalizing the propensity of themes on display here and insisting a Doom-bound player of a class that could be expected to induce a Life overdose is more likely to be what we're dealing with. (Especially since Tavvy seems likely to be a rather passive Life hero.) But I guess I'm way damned less sure than before, so I can't shout down the Lifers as hard as I was doing.
There's just... SO much Life that came from this exchange, Ly'lac hasn't shown many Roguish or Thieving tendencies, and having a Bard as our primary player would be... so WEIRD. But then Bard of Doom and Bard of Life would be nearly in the same running and it'd practically have to be one of them if you're questioning which side of the Aspect she's on here, you could construct arguments for both and... there's what looks like SPROUTING LIFE in both directions as her personal/SHIRT symbol even though it's in Doom colors and her upper organon is almost Skull-like and... augh.
I can't believe I'm leaning Bard of Doom here either, but, damn. Maybe. We know less about the Classes than I expect so there could be other classes we already know of that could qualify for the wand's shenanigans without conflicting with the rest of Ly'lac's shenanigans and theming in their totality.
Let's just keep going, my head's fuzzy from holiday family activities draining my social battery.
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Here comes her effective Guardian, the Caretaker. (Raised by a Caretaker for the elderly, that has Life/Doom theming too right?) I guess she's of a not-necessarily-Nymph species or subspecies that doesn't succumb to the same feeding frenzy urges as Nymphs do.
All that class and aspect confusion has me left with a lingering question of, just... why her screenname? WHY her specific SCREENNAME if she loves a good feeding frenzy as much as the next Nymph, except for the preponderance of old folks keeling over in her vicinity being less appetizing meals? Is there some OTHER ingestible she feels she's being force-fed, medication or such, that she's delaying?
Oh gosh I hope most of y'all are inexplicably busy like us US-ers with our holiday schedule, otherwise there's might be one HELL of a class/aspect debate for Ly'lac in this post's replies with my certainty wavering so much here. Try to keep the Ly'lac class/aspect debate to the Replies at least instead of my Inbox, not just because it's appropriate with how the signs for her hero title evolve one way or the other with every update, but also because I won't have the time or patience over Thanksgiving to let this occupy my mind much anyway.
EDIT: Important classes and aspects note by @ashercrane in the replies to the canon class arrangement discussion:
Repeating this here because I forgot where you said to use the replies: I could see Prince and Heir being opposites, because AH once told James Roach that an Heir of Light "...(was) not a lucky person yourself. You make others around you luckier." So if the Heir makes others luckier or more light-y, it could [invert] to making others so light-connected that the Heir starts destroying void to that end.
I'd want to get the EXACT phrasing from the primary source, if they or someone else can provide it, since that "[was]" and surrounding phrasing might have been more nuanced, but once we do: That ought to be important to our class assignment ideas, or how we think about how John's impact on other people manifested with (or despite) how his powers worked, though it may be something of a generalization.
