“Aspects are the twelve ideals and points that make up all of reality. Each has an opposite, and with this opposite, they form 6 individual spectrums that make up all of reality. Two of them form the physical world: Space and Time, and the rest focus on the ways that people interact with reality. Everyone has a bit of all the aspects in them, but there tends to be one that people can identify with more than any others. This aspect will probably come to define them in subtle ways, and they gain an instinct for the flow and feel and shape of this aspect, and it largely comes to represent them whether they know it or not.
Every idea can be traced, in some way, back to these aspects. The concept of a spectrum cataloguing everything might seem alien, but it is in fact well explored. Consider the four classical elements or the five colors of Magic: The Gathering. This is simply another schema available for looking at it, and looking at people.”
-quoted text from inifinitywhale’s Ultimate Classpect post
Aspect Theory - the basics
Aspect is the part of this whole system that I love the most. I’m not sure why, but I find the abstract functions of it really fascinating; discovering how they all interact, noticing them all at work in characters, in the game, in the fabric of reality. I’ve created this post with the intent of gathering as many references and resources as I can to provide a thorough explanation of the various aspects. It is and will remain a work-in-progress as I find new links to add, new ideas to discuss, and so on.
Note: this means I’m always open to new ideas! If you have anything to contribute, I’d love to discuss it and add it to my archive.
(more under the cut)
Aspects work into a general dichotomy, but can also been organised into a wheel. Like a compass, with the cardinal aspects acting as N and S. One of my favourite theorists, bladekindeyewear, organised this Aspect Wheel to demonstrate how they flow together.
Now, the wheel is very theoretical, but it is an excellent perspective on the relationships between aspects, and the application of it is fun.
I’ll be constructing a more in-depth post on the Aspect Wheel at another time.
But speculative wheel aside for now, back to the dichotomy. It may not be stated explicitly in canon, but aspect dualism is pretty certain theory at this point (feel free to disagree, but most seem to subscribe to it). Each aspect has a pair, intertwined so intimately that they essentially define each other in photo-negative - the shadows of one is filled by the other. Within every pair is a more, let’s say, optimistic half and a pessimistic half - like yin and yang. Neither is any better or worse than the other, but they are the inverse of each other.
(Aspect dualism discussed at length by BKE)
The general trend is between creation and destruction. The creation vs destruction dichotomy is pervasive in every piece of Homestuck lore, but particularly in aspect dualism. Space and Time embody it the most literally, making them the two cardinal aspects. Between the two of them they represent physical reality.
You’ll notice on the wheel referenced above that the rest of the aspects are divided into two halves around Space and Time, aligning themselves with one while their inverse aligns with the other.
The Archive
Links and keywords for a quick overview of each aspect
Note: if anyone knows of other posts discussing particular aspects, I’d love to add them to my archive. This list will continue to be a work-in-progress and I always accept more additions.
First, some masterposts discussing all aspects (including those linked above):
Ultimate Classpect Post - infinitywhale
Aspect duality - bladekindeyewear
Aspect Wheel - bladekindeyewear
aspect related concepts/keywords - creative-classpect
aspects and philosophy - the worst person in the world
the aspects as in SKRUB - Project SKRUB
aspect ‘personalities’ - classesandaspects
Aspects - 2classpect4this
A Guide to Classpect - gaytog
Space - physical matter, forces and dimensions, physics, literal space and the fabric of reality, distance, creation, evolution and change/variation, uniqueness/originality, physical appearance
Time - time, progress, inevitability, mortality, uncertainty, death, beginnings and endings, entropy, patterns, repetition
if you’re really curious about Void just. listen to the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. it embodies Void. Night Vale IS Void, narrated by Seer of Void, Cecil Palmer.
@dahniwitchoflight and I just had a very interesting conversation about the nature of Aspects and how they are connected to one another. For the sake of posterity, I have attempted to make this copy+paste transcription available and legible. Enjoy.
...
drakkoniss "these rings have been constantly associated with things of an opposing nature, and here they clearly as black and white also and they are called the rings of Life and Void" Those are not the same rings?
dahniwitchoflight yes, but the ongoing theory is that they are going to become them lol
drakkoniss Those two in particular, though, rather than the ones that came from the Alpha Kids session, which have no orbs on them?(Also, you've hit on some very interesting points, in your thoughts, there, about opposing aspects and stuff.
drakkoniss I feel there is something one must consider: If you are to look at the Aspects as a whole, they can be grouped into groups of 3. The ones you are concerned with are those associated with Birth/Creation and Death/Destruction, which are Light, Space, and Life, as well as Void, Time, and DOOM, respectively.The other two groups are more about the core of the person, their relationships, and their emotional states.
dahniwitchoflight actually if you were going to group them at all, it would be in pairs or in 4's not in threes
drakkoniss Oh?
dahniwitchoflight and people ahve already mentioned that life doom is confirmed by calliope as well, but i like to keep doorways open incase things change lol
drakkoniss Why groups of 4?
dahniwitchoflight lik opposing pairs, and then pairs that are close with other pairs, for instacne Time/Space and Light/Void, or Light/Void and Life/Doom bevause that is also how the classes are grouped witch/heir and seer/mage etc
drakkoniss No, no, I mean like... three sets of pairs, which together represent main concepts that are linked.One side gets half of each pair, and the other group of 3 is their paired partners.
dahniwitchoflight in that case it would be groups of 6, not 3
drakkoniss Thus Light would be in one group, and Void would be in the other.
dahniwitchoflight Void, Life, Space, Hope, Heart and Breath, versus Light, Doom, Time, Rage, Mind and Blood one side representing creation or chaos, the other destruction or law
drakkoniss I mean... Yes, you could say they form a SUPERGROUP that is the opposed Life/Death pairing... You see, I wouldn't want to include all of the aspects like that.
dahniwitchoflight oh? any reason in parictula why? particular*
drakkoniss Albeit I actually agree that that is a theme worth pointing out... Because Rage and Hope don't necessarily have anything to do with life and death. Neither do Mind and Heart, necessarily. The same goes for Blood and Breath.Those are more about interpersonal connections and a person's state of being.
dahniwitchoflight Hope is Creation of reality, bringing things into existence, as well as you can point out they have weird sexual associations at times, and that directs relates to life
drakkoniss YES, there is an order/chaos bias between them: Blood vs. Breath, for instance, but also take this into account: The Life/Death group is Order/Chaos neutral.
dahniwitchoflight rage then also is limitations and being held back, stuff you cant avoid and that is very doomlike as well
drakkoniss Even DOOM is actually a mix of both Order and Chaos.
dahniwitchoflightLife is extremely chaot is and doom is extreely lawful Doom has exploson yes, but they are strict explosions with counters ticking down and things you cannot avoid lawful destruction life on the other hand is all about power and doing your own thing and not being beholden to what others want, its privlege and wealth and being on top and its also childlike in nature, like a bratty spoiled kid
drakkoniss I can see what you mean.
dahniwitchoflightor at times naive those two are the ones i associate as starting the whole chaotic/lawful divide lol
drakkoniss Hmmm... (This has been a long debate of mine, by the way. Whether Aspects should be parsed this way. )
dahniwitchoflight i think you can if you want, but its not really important because then people get hung up on putting them into good or evil categories and that isnt the point
drakkoniss It's complicated. (And yes, I agree. )
dahniwitchoflight Creation is Chaos, Destruction is Lawful. But you can have good creation, bad creation, good chaos, bad chaos, good destruction bad destruction and etc etc
drakkoniss I know, and I would not argue otherwise.
dahniwitchoflight another way i used to divide them up is into quadrants, 4 dealing with things of a personal nature or that create individuals, Heart/Mind/Breath/Blood literally Soul/Mind/Body
drakkoniss Maybe it is just one pair that's neutral, and I was assuming a bias because I haven't thought of this in a long time..
dahniwitchoflight then higher up things dealing with the creation of the universe into reality Space/Time/Hope/Rage and then the final four Life/Doom/Light/Void being the laws and rules of reality and things that givern it
dahniwitchoflight govern*
drakkoniss I think your ideas concerning grouping them are good. But at the same time, I feel... there probably can and should be multiple correct groupings, because each Aspect deals with a vast variety of topics. Like Time and Space can be literally the fabric of the universe, but then you have to arrange them differently if they're life and death.
dahniwitchoflight yeah of course, i dont really think theres one right way to do it as long as they make sense are are balanced yknow?which is why groups of 3 just dont feel right to me personally, cuz there inherently unbalance
drakkoniss *nods* This should... probably be actually made into a post, this conversation.
dahniwitchoflight but thats just me lol i think i have before lol somewhere anyway
drakkoniss Why would groups of 3 need to be unbalanced?
dahniwitchoflight not need to be, i think they just would be, they would be biased towards one side, because two of them will find something in common that they dont have with the thrid i dont think they can be equally neutral with eachother, and if they were i dont see a need to group them together
drakkoniss Well, think of it this way: One can form an aspect with two others. Hope can be called an intersection of Light and Heart, for example.
dahniwitchoflight but hope also has its own things that still cant be accounted for with either heart or light its like fusion classpects with garnet, i say ruby is light and sapphire is doom, and garnet fuses on an aspect level, and the closest thing you could get to some thign shared between doom and light is time, but its not 100%, there are still things unique to time or garnet that arent in either of her partsshe is her own person as well as a fusion
drakkoniss I know. But all the Aspects blend together and interact with one another, meaning overlap is necessary. Each is unique, but you cannot describe a Form without using the likeness of other Forms to compare to it, no?
dahniwitchoflight the thing is though that is correct, you can find intersections between all aspects, hope isnt just between light and heart with no others, they share euqal boundaries and things in common with all other aspects and if all those are equal, why put heart and light higher?and this is true for all twelve, they are like if you had a color system with twelve primary colors, and each could mix with each to form their own secondary colors/things they have in common
drakkoniss (One second. )
drakkoniss Because each aspect can be seen co-equally as part of the makeup of the others.
drakkoniss Light can be suggested to be between Hope and Space. Light is information and knowledge pulled out of what was originally nothing, only possible by the existence of an actual medium and reality to gleam the information from.
dahniwitchoflight yes, but this is true for all 11 other aspects in regards to one aspect, hope shares an equal amount with all other 11, just like other aspects share an equal amount, so my question is why put light and heart as closer to hope if they arent?same with any combo or trio
drakkoniss Because one could argue that certain concepts are intrinsically closer to one another than other concepts are.
dahniwitchoflight with the only exception being their actual opposite, but even then you can find a boundary of things they both deal with example?
drakkoniss Time and Breath are some distance apart, whereas if you say that Life and Breath are close to one another with much more accuracy. Likewise with Time and DOOM.
dahniwitchoflight things time and breath have in common, an ability to be abstracted into the meta of something, to exist outside of physical barriers the nonphysical abstract nature of something life and breath can also be very different, life is extremely concerned with power, versus breath wanting an equality of peers life wants to dominate, breath wants to permeate and i can find examples for all combos you throw at me lolso my question is, what makes time and breaths similarirites less important and breath and lifes?
drakkoniss (And this is why we are having this discussion. Debate is key for furthering of understanding and the proving and disproving of key concepts and arrangements)
dahniwitchoflight i think though you can see how i view it now tho lol in my witch of lighty nature i am rejecting importance as heirarchy and instead putting forth importance as uniqueness:P
drakkoniss I shall concede that it is simply a matter of perspective and opinion, I suppose. (Yes.) Anyway, though, I suppose this is a good enough place to end our exploration of grouping concepts. Tumblr's wheels never stop turning, and whatnot. (And as a Knight of Heart, I use both my personal passions and my penchant towards Mind to help expand and further our efforts toward understanding. )
I was thinking of this a while back somewhere just after Karkat and Kanaya`s conversation with Echidna, so none of this is exactly cutting edge. I used to keep better abreast of the latest developments in the whole classpect theory world, but I notice the field these days has become pretty densely populated with certain fanon concepts that seem to be taken for granted but I don’t really agree with or just don’t really care for, so at best I can hope that this isn’t completely basic knowledge and I didn’t realize it b/c I’ve been out of the loop for so long.
So when Kanaya starts talking about what the Space aspect means, how it’s more than dimension and matter and physical reality, but it also has reference to propagation, I got really excited. I was never really satisfied with the way some aspects seemed to be almost elemental (Breath being the worst offender, windy powers) while others required thinking of them more as non-physical concepts. Of course this is old news, with theories describing the potential between Breath and Blood (the only two remaining unpaired aspects almost no matter how you slice it) in terms of freedom and movement vs. bond and relationships.
This of course still leaves Breath mysteriously having a literal and a spiritual component. Meanwhile Light has been annoying me for a while where it’s treated as either/or/both of luck and knowledge at the same time, rather than parsing consistently as one or the other.
What Kanaya’s revelation of Space being both dimension and room but also deeper with propagation and the creation of reality excites me because it seems to answer some of these inconsistencies as well as open room for new speculation. What if every aspect has both a more literal facet and a ‘deeper’ meaning? Breath is both the Breeze and flow. Light is both fortune and the light of knowledge. Space is reality and propagation.
I don’t have answers for what all this could imply yet, but just a few brief speculations:
Space
Basic - Dimension and Reality
Advanced - Propagation of Existence
Light
Basic - Fortune/Luck
Advanced - Knowledge (tho’ I’m not committed to which of these is which)
Breath
Basic - The Breeze, Wind
Advanced - Motion, Freedom
I don’t know what to do with Rage, Doom, Life, or Time yet, but then Rage has so many ambiguities bound up in the Makaras, while Doom is nigh untouched by the fleeting graces of the plot’s attention. Life and Time are bound for more love, but don’t have really obvious deeper non-literal aspects depending on what the narrative wants to do with those.
What are the aspect opposites? like I know life&doom are usually considered opposites as with blood&breath but what of the others? Thousand Thanks in advance
Well, it's really a matter of opinion since there's no canon information on this subject, but the widely accepted ones are:
