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.
the idea of “complimenting aspects” (different from opposing pairs like time/space) has been thrown around a lot but its always been as pairs, the same way opposing aspects are pairs. it makes sense at first thought, since opposing aspects are in pairs, why not compliments too?
when you think about actually making complimenting pairs, though, there’s problems with it.
for example: space is an aspect of creation, and is associated with frog breeding, so life makes perfect sense as a compliment to it. then we look in canon and see calliope hang out with jane in her hidden corner of the bubbles, and we can convince ourselves it makes sense... but what about void?
literally within the text, calliope mentions a positive relationship between space and void. plus, “the void of space” is a frequently used phrase in real life, and the large vast emptiness of space is pretty similar to the even emptier vast of the void. so space compliments void instead! right? or maybe its a triad? but void and life don’t seem THAT complimentary...
space is not the only aspect that i found contradictions like this with, so my new theory is this:
complimenting aspects aren’t pairs- it’s a circle.
i edited the official aspects circle in a way that visually expressed what i was thinking.
on this circle, adjacent aspects are complimenting- but more generally, the closer two symbols are together, the more they complement each other. conversely, the farther apart they are, the more they oppose each other.
paradoxically, (when are we ever NOT paradoxically speaking) aspects on opposite sides, while as opposing as they can be, are also linked together and as complimentary as can be. time and space are two sides of the same coin.
under this system, there would be three types of relationships between aspects-
“Complimenting Aspects”, which are adjacent on the circle, or just close on the circle if they’re only weakly complimenting
“Opposing Aspects”, which are far away from each other, but not directly opposite, such as space with light or doom. weakly opposing would be space with heart or blood.
and finally, the most important relationship, i would just call “Aspect Pairs”, which are directly opposite on the circle.
as for aspects that are two spaces away from each other (time and space with rage and hope) you could call their relationship “neutral” if you really needed to call them something.
Or rather, the Extended Extended Aspect Test. A personality quiz that helps you figure out your Homestuck/SBURB Aspect. It is firmly based on the official Extended Zodiac Test and analysis of canon content. It expands upon the original test through a simiplification of the original questions, multiple new questions, and a very similar but tweaked scoring system based on the Aspect Wheel. It's 32 questions long -good luck and good patience!
(If you could excuse the use of a relatively unkown quiz making site, it was the only one that allowed me to use a point/score based system and offered the level of customizability I needed.)
ok, so as part of a previous post, i made a little bit of a small comment about knights that now i’m thinking a bit more about. i don’t know how it fits into broader ideas or themes but it seems to be a thing that happens. knights tend to work by passing things they need to do their work between alternate versions of themselves. for example, dave works by passing physical objects (typically with time properties like caledscratch or the time tables) between himselves via the medium of time travel. karkat uses trollian, a internet social communication application, to pass bonds and allies between himselves. most notably, he passes a (very) friendly john back to himself almost at the beginning point in their communication, where he wouldn’t really have a lot of reason to be friendly, but would be very useful that way.
unfortunately we on’t get enough of seeing how latula or redglare work for me to make much judgement on them.
“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.
It really rubs me the wrong way whenever I see posts like “this God Tier is the most powerful player”. It seems like there are very few people who understand that any title has the potential to be the most powerful player. The word “God” is literally right there, and anyone who ascends literally has God Tier powers and abilities.
A Page can defeat a Lord easily. Vice versa, etc.
