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.
Do you have any of the posts on alternative classpect models?
I’m guessing by alternate models you mean alternates of the class/aspect arrangements? If not, please let me know!
And whoo, I would absolutely love to be able to give it to you, but my tags in that area are a sad indecisive mess that I should probably work on this summer.
Every post you’re looking for will probably be in the “all classes” and “all aspects” tags, but not all of those posts will be of alternative models.
The “aspect duality” and “aspect pairs” tags will have the kinds of posts you’re looking for, These tags are redundant with each other. I’m trying to rename the tag because not all theories say aspect pairs are opposites, and not all theories even say the aspects come in pairs. But I haven’t come up with an alternate name yet. (Suggestions welcome.)
The “class inversion” tag is very outdated and not very alternative, but it’s there.
Here’s a post I put together a while ago that compiles some of the alternate aspect pairs.
Here’s another, more recent post that briefly mentions the aspects and then goes into more detail on the alternate theories and definitions of the classes.
If there are any alternative theories that I’ve missed, I’m entirely willing to update these posts. (Probably by writing new and better-organized posts rather than editing these old ones.)
So, as a disclaimer, I don't believe inversion is canon/intended to the extent you do, and I think a lot of your class theories that kind of cyclically supports (and are supported by) inversion theory are kind of evidently bunk at this point, throwing the whole wider structure into question. HOWEVER...
Have you ever noticed how Rose-as-Witch is represented in her entry mechanics?
Witches as a class are focused on the faustian bargain with a higher power, with Jade and Damara (as the handmaiden) directly receiving space and time powers from Becquerel and Lord English respectively. Feferi is much more of a debatable case, but she does use her knowledge of and cachet with her horror-terror lusus to negotiate the creation of the dream bubbles, which is arguably the most notable thing she does.
Then, Rose takes on grim-dark powers, (which you are interpreting as part of a wider theory of inversion, framing her as a Witch of Void) and she does so by making a faustian bargain with a higher power, the horrorterrors as a gestalt group.
On his formspring, on Nov 28, 2010, Andrew Hussie talked about the session entry mechanisms for the four human kids, here are two excerpts specifically about Rose and Jade:
Rose had to break a wine bottle on her house, just as ships are christened. And though not seemingly a part of the challenge at first, the trial involved losing the bottle and having to take a leap of faith to retrieve it, and well as rely on a friend (Jaspersprite) to help her complete the trial. This was required of Jade as well.
[...]
Also included in [Jade's] challenge was taking a shot in the dark (much like Rose's leap of faith) and relying on her friend who redirected the bullet through his own head, the very friend she was attempting to slay in effigy.
Jade's entry puzzle blindfolds her, it specifically and obviously sets up a situation where the only way to win is by trusting her dog and sprite to correct the shot for her - and she's a Witch, someone whose journey involves a faustian negotiation or "help from a friend" in a way that other classes' don't.
Rose's entry puzzle doesn't necessarily involve this leap of faith on the face of it, she just has to pick up the bottle and break it, but, through circumstance (tornado) or by hidden design, the puzzle becomes something she has to take a leap of faith for, and rely on a friend to complete. So....
Jade has an her entry puzzle requiring an obvious leap of faith and help from a friend, and she is a Witch in a clear and intended way, while Rose's entry puzzle is ostensibly straightforward, but in practice also involves that leap and reliance on help from a friend, and Rose is a Witch through circumstance and hidden design.
This ask has some interesting stuff about the Witch class channeling higher powers, making bargains Faustian or otherwise. I'm not certain how tied the entry theme is to that, as the entry puzzles seem to have more to do with faith and trust (in friends, or with Rose especially, the course of events relying on fortune/outer-influence falling in their desired favor) than the Witches' various "pacts" seem to do... so I doubt that further connection you're drawing here. However, the first pattern OF those pacts themselves is incredibly strong and worth noting. Feferi is definitely a lock for having negotiated pacts with the Horrors and her Lusus, I think that's incredibly strong and feels an intentional part of the Witchy pattern, actually. It's all very mythologically Witchy! (Bit of additional HS^2 Beyond Canon discussion under the cut...)
And it'd presumably extend and add nuance to a very active class in that they can be expected to command and muster forces beyond their own for a task, something that might have even bled into Sylphs if we're to take Aranea's example. (Heck, when Jade gets to Dirk's sphere of influence she's going to be "channeling" AL / alt!Calliope again!)
If our guess that Vrissy is a Witch of Mind ends up on-point, perhaps there's some sort of pact for power in her future as well (Terezi?)-- or has she already essentially made one, with Vriska? At minimum, some juicy Denizen deal like Jade made, surely... something that feels more arcane, feels Witchier from a mythological perspective.
I was helped in putting together something pretty huge this week, Aspect-ways. Sometimes lately, I've been chatting with Taz (aka optimisticDuelist, @utopianparadoxist) and we discuss or debate over character and Aspect interpretations, or they link me some interesting thoughts they've posted blogways or from a third party. This time we were discussing a post they made on Void's potential connection to Gravity and all its potential conflated meanings, such as Love pulling things together, which they based on analysis stemming from @lime-bloods's Void/Home association theoryposts -- I was skeptical of this Gravity interpretation, for reasons I'll go into later below the cut, but one of those reasons was I felt as if paired terms between Light and Void are important when solidifying the domains of each Aspect, and I couldn't think of one for Void's "Gravity" that had a Light equivalent. For example, recently I had the belated inspiration in terminology, for instance, that Light is "Location" where Void is "Dislocation", a perfect tie between Light's links to Maps and Landmarks contrasting it with Pumpkin-like "disconnectedness from spacetime" and ability to appear anywhere, which I quickly added to the Aspect Duality post in late February (I should add the edit date in on that).
And while we were tossing the idea around, we stumbled on another set of even MORE important paired Light/Void terms that made me do an acrobatic pirouette off the fucking handle. I got permission to paste the conversation:
BOOTS: otherwise there might be other aspects that better fit what's going on
((does Light "Push" where Void "Pulls"? could that be it? no, that sounds more like Breath and Blood…))
((actually that might be really important to Breath and Blood, shit! wind pushes forward/outward, chains pull in))
TAZ: I think its pretty fair to say that its a nebulous and abstract reading where a lot of the evidence is hard to parse, like I said at the end of the post I definitely still feel like I'm missing stuff about Void
And I also agree that other aspects have a lot of room to play in this space and overtake Void in readings, primarily Heart and Blood in this context
BOOTS: ((and the "inescapability" of black holes carried Blood associations with other inescapable things))
TAZ: Indeed
TAZ: But isn't that part of the nature of Void? To be a subtle force that falls into the backdrop and lets other things more visibly take over?
BOOTS: you could call that descending into the Ocean, into the abyss over a cliff, into irrelevance; it's Descent, but not necessarily Gravi---
AAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
TAZ: Well this is exciting
BOOTS: LIGHT IS ASCENT, VOID IS DESCENT
TAZ: Yeah, I can see that
BOOTS: there are so many fucking associations across the comic and I'm remembering so many of them oh my god
And that Gravity is wrapped up in this association as everything is naturally PULLED DOWN. The rest of the conversation is under the Read More cut where we started listing out more than a dozen freakin' examples to each other that show how UTTERLY PERVASIVE a theme this has been throughout the entire goddamn comic, from the start right up to and including the very latest update of Beyond Canon. (Contains HS^2/Beyond Canon spoilers if you're coming here from elsewhere, stop reading here if you're not caught up to the 2025-03-26 update!)
EDIT: (Just a brief note I'm adding to this above the cut, but a Discord friend just gave me ANOTHER association to add to Light and Void: Outward vs Inward, Light's outward projection the pair to Void's inward gravity!!! Shining Stars versus Black Holes! Void's Inwardness finally brings together its metaphysical ties with Heart and how the latter often sits isolated in the Ocean of Void like Dirk's house, the natural inward-looking nature of Heart-- compared to the outward-facing nature of Mind and its façades, tying Light and Mind together like Vriska and Terezi!)
TAZ: It might almost apply as a broad division to the upper and lower halves of the wheel in general, actually?
BOOTS: even in this LAST update they go UP to enter Canon
a black hole is always Down
TAZ: But I like it as Light and Void specifically right now, lets examine that
Yeah yeah
BOOTS: Looking at Light almost always entails looking Up, looking down is usually staring into the Void, with the exception of Derse players staring out into the Ring
mainly abysses and oceans with looking down
TAZ: Dirk's consumption by Ultself is described as him being subsumed into the Ocean/descending into its watery depths, while Rose outright says about hers "I am ascending, and it is terrible"
BOOTS: Rose begins her grimdark path by destroying her first (UPWARD) Gate and rocketing off elsewhere
and of course she's the prime example shown off by the comic of the Descend-before-you-Ascend of role inversion
TAZ: And Heart is on the lower half of the wheel with Blood and across from Void. So maybe there's something there
mmmhmm, mmhmm
BOOTS: it's been said even in like, Andrew's commentary outside the comic, that "Skaia is always Up"
it's never shown setting
TAZ: And of course they shoot the meteor Up towards the Green Sun
BOOTS: and the trolls see the creation-splosion of the green sun Up to direct them in Cascade--
yeah, exactly [what you said]
TAZ: Terezi's looking slightly Upwards as she remem8er's Vriska in [S] Remem8er
(Vriska) and (Terezi) staring Up into the Light of paradox space breaking
it really is all over the place, huh
for that matter, (Vriska) and Meenah looking Up into the fireworks as (Vriska) comes to the true realizations she does about how miserable it is to live the way Vriska and Lord English live
BOOTS: going against your hero role, Descending, is so often denying your true self agency and straying away from philosophical Truth-- after which comes the Ascent where you find and accept yourself
oh and by going into what's been constantly called HELL inside the Plot Point and then emerging out stronger, Vriska "descended" ala Dante's Inferno and then Ascended out of it
TAZ: indeed! indeed
Oh! Dirk and Hal's conversation on the rooftop!
Dirk sits on the side of his home and is literally staring down at both a long plummet/implied s*****e and literally into his Shades/his own Self
BOOTS: hell, if you wanted to make a pun of any love association, instead of gravity you could call it falling in love!
There's just SO MUCH MORE to this, so many examples of Light and importance and enlightenment and Skaia's philosophical truth being UP or involving ascent, where anything that drops or falls DOWN into the water or off cliffs becomes dislocated and its relevance unknown until it might eventually perhaps resurface unpredictably elsewhere. Tavros being driven down off a cliff by the Thief of Light to break his legs and stunt the playful drive he needed to become a fully realized Page of Breath, Aranea's snapped-neck body being dropped into the flames to fade into such irrelevance that she never surfaced post-Retcon, Vriska stealing all the luck/Light from the enemy creature in the first Meteor walkaround and it falling into a collapsing dark pit, so many people always going UP to reach concrete destinations, Roxy and others crashing DOWN through fenestrated windows and falling to reach the Furthest Ring, and of course there's always the Jung psychology stuff that was woven into Sburb (as I've reiterated in the past) and an essential metaphor for Descending into your shadow and Ascending from it to merge your shadow self with your conscious self for true self-acceptance and balance, like Vriska just did in the Plot Point, like the normal Quest Bed method of attaining God-Tier merging the Real and Dream selves and everyone looking Upward to see John RISE UP and achieve ascension: (From an older edit of the Wikipedia page for the Jungian Shadow--)
Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while “no one should deny the danger of the descent […] every descent is followed by an ascent”, and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes a possibility.
“We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals…straight up.”
As I've said before, the game IS the psychotheraputic journey from start to finish, complete with the same monumental challenges, pitfalls, rejection and acceptance (of help and of oneself!) that all sorts of different people must confront in order to simultaneously fully appreciate and become themselves, and also become the people they truly want to be. Skaia's Light and the path it guides players on thus represents a journey to one's philosophical enlightenment about oneself, their ASCENT, and the challenges and misleading dejection that causes them to reject this journey and fight against their natures is DESCENT, so often involving the Horrorterrors who embody the essence of Void in nature and motive.
Gosh when you think of all the times "UP" or "DOWN" has been the focus of major or even offhand scenes or panels, there's just SO MUCH that fits them into Light and Void respectively. I couldn't possibly begin to list all the examples, you're probably noticing more in your mind as you read this post.
--
I'm going to integrate this Ascent/Descent meaning into the Aspect Duality post's sections on Light and Void, and link this post there, but before we finish I wanna delve into the potential Gravitation meaning of Void that optimisticDuelist brought up and reasons I might agree or be skeptical of the ties drawn in their post... especially stemming from this Rose quote they included:
That seems to tie Void pretty inarguably to Gravitation, or perhaps the vacuum pull of nothingness, but because I didn't have a clear counter-meaning in Light I wanted to look up the full context of this quote when I made this post... (readmspa.org is a very useful tool while Homestuck.com is down and mimics the old manual search function)--
ROSE: Or what about, the tale of Isaac Newdon under the tree?? He was BONKED on the head by an apple.
ROSE: Not reallyan apple though… an atomic idea. An emlemental unit of inspripation itself, id clocked him right on then noggin.
ROSE: And this indivisible notion colliding with hish awareness, much like.. . a high speed partical fired to create a nuculear chain reacation, jarred from the void a more profund unnerstand, HIC, ing of the intrinsic nature of nothiness. Thatis,. Gravivitation.
ROSE: Of course thess stories are acutually bullshit. They didn't happen in realaity. But thef act that they'rare bullshit makes them more inshresting.
ROSE: Men have crefted many stories that are bullshit out of symbols risen from the abyss of coinsciousness withou necesharily knowing whath e fuck they were doing or saying, as they flounered around for some truth.
ROSE: Bust in spite of themseleves they would for howefer briefly cross through a ray of light regarless. Becuss of the sbymbols. Dave.. The symbols hol dall the power.
Taz also mentioned that a commenter in their server pointed out that this Gravitation quote and the reference to a high-speed particle collider could also be an intentional reference by Andrew to the Graviton, the theoretical elementary particle responsible for mass and its gravitational force that has so far not been detected/discovered yet, remaining obscured (Void) compared to the particles tied to the other elemental forces.
Black Holes ALWAYS had strong ties to Void, the ultimate sinks for the destruction of information, ultimate darkness, (ultimate Down/descent), the compression of all meaning and separation into a melange forever irrelevant to the rest of Reality beyond one's Event Horizon (thanks @sagaciouscejai for the reminder). And in the Epilogues forward, "Non-Canon" belongs to the great Black Hole and everything that falls nigh-inescapably into it-- as opposed to Canon's comparative association with Light and story importance. But, hm... if Void is "down" and "descent" and the "abyss of [Jung's collective] consciousness", to what extent is it important as "Gravity" specifically, as well? Or is that just tied to the fundamental concept of "down" in the comic's metaphysical framework? Taz mentioned Dirk linked to gravitation to tidal forces too, hence the Ocean which is Void-linked. Does Gravity have a balancing opposite in Light that I can put into keywords besides "Up/Down" or "Ascent/Descent"? And if it DOESN'T have a balancing concept in Light... could Gravitation be part of Void's tie to Space that explains them as neighbors, a shared domain that Space and Void might possess?
In the end I think I'm positive toward Rose's speech and the fact of Black Holes (as well as "DOWN/DESCENT") establishing a definite tie between Gravity and Void, but where I'd disagree with Taz is how over the rest of their original post they pointed to "succumbing" to toxic influences and generational trauma as a sort of Gravity, which I'd disagree with and say has more to do with Void's existing and known "submission and divestment of agency" associations, as well as Centrality coming from it (which I'd have to reconcile with Light's "Location" meaning) not quite adding up for me, and Love as stemming from Gravity which I really don't think has enough in-comic evidence tying the two together. If we eventually deduce that Love has some Void associations-- and the Void characters we've met have certainly been more than a little Love-obsessed at times-- I expect that any association would have to stem from Void's other established meanings such as the submission of agency required by a relationship as opposed to making all the decisions yourself (Light's agency) and hogging the spotlight, like the contrast between Vriska and (Vriska) toward the end of Homestuck proper. There's more to lime-bloods's post that I haven't given enough thinking time to, like Voids always being the central seeding-place for new creation like a Womb, which would ALSO explain its proximity to Space on the official wheel... but, yeah. Those are all my in-progress thoughts on that for the moment, anyway. ((EDIT: "Outward vs Inward" like I mentioned above the cut finally completes the Gravity association!))
I'm still blown away by how clearly Light and Void can mean "UP and "DOWN", can mean "ASCENT" and "DESCENT", that's... just such a blindingly stunning revelation for us to have come to so late, IMO. I bet there's half a dozen theorists out there who put it together AGES sooner and I just never saw their posts. Wow. :D
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.
Okay hear me out. HEAR ME OUT. I have not played through The Coffin of Andy and Leyley and have not seen all the content, so argue between yourselves in the reblogs if you disagree, not with me or my inbox. I've mostly skimmed let's-plays or streams instead and missed plenty of details, especially side characters, though I've heard plenty of insightful discussion from smart people; at best I've seen 60-70% of what's out so far (through Decay Ch3 as of this post) especially the front and end(s) and many of the path differences and branch points throughout the chapters and bonus scenes. And frankly, it's probably counterproductive to do a Homestuck Title analysis of these characters when a DSM-5-TR would be more appropriate for the job!
But... just because I'm addicted to classpecting so I have to...
Andrew Graves: Knight of Mind - One who wields façade, choice, and insincerity (the outward self) as a weapon.
Ashley Graves: Bard of Heart - One who invites the destruction of souls and individual uniqueness (the inner self), invites destruction through them, or is invited to destruction of/through them.
No, I won't be taking the time to justify myself. Do with that what you will and don't judge me (much) or DM me about this game at all. 👀
THIS IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION TO PLAY THE GAME UNLESS YOU HAVE LOOKED UP ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS AND ARE STILL DRAWN TO DISASTER. BECAUSE THERE ARE A FUCKTON.
