#classpect theories

[k3agn]

I haven’t written a post in awhile, so to prove I’m not actually dead but simply dead inside, let’s tackle Homestuck Mythological Roles again.

Classes (Active/Passive)

In Homestuck, we are told that the classes the players/characters have are classified as either active (-) or passive (+) , and are paired together. We know that the male exclusive Lord is the most active class, and that the female exclusive Muse is the most passive. Of the 12 standard classes, only two pairings are known:

Prince/Bard (Destroy)

Thief/Rogue (Steal)

Their placements on the class spectrum are not known; really none besides the master classes are. Hussie has given clues along the way: the most active class being female, and the two most passive being male, classes shade slightly towards male/active, the Witch is a highly active class, Seers are passive, etc.

To the point: I’m not a fan of the idea that active means a class benefits itself and passive means it benefits others. This idea was initially set by Calliope to explain Thieves and Rogues, and while it can be expanded to other classes it narrows the scope way to much, and so many things fall out of view because of it. The understanding falls apart with instances like John as the Heir of Breath having displays of his powers that both benefit him and others, or sometimes only benefit him, or Aranea as a Sylph of Light healing people for her own agenda, or suggesting that Witches and Maids of Life healing goons is for their benefit rather than who they’re helping. To me, who benefits is less important than what happens, how it happens, and why.

To this end, I subscribe to Calliope’s later explanation with the Prince/Bard class, in a somewhat adapted manner: Active classes use their aspects to their will, whole passive classes seem to act by the will of the aspect. To put it another way, active classes wield their aspect, while passive classes are conduits for their aspects, OR active classes use their aspect more concretely, while passive classes seem to be more open ended. I won’t be covering aspects that much in this post, but if that’s something people are interested in I might do it at a later time.

Many different people subscribe to different orderings, but this is the spectrum/pairings that I subscribe to, with paired classes being equidistant from each other:

Lord (-7)

Maid (-6)

Prince (-5)

Witch (-4)

Mage (-3)

Thief (-2)

Knight (-1)

——————

Page (+1)

Rogue (+2)

Seer (+3)

Sylph (+4)

Bard (+5)

Heir (+6)

Muse (+7)

Placement is somewhat arbitrary while still following the hints Hussie laid out back in the day. Most people put Mage/Seer in the center, but we haven’t seen a lot of Mage action, and we know from Doc Scratch that Seers are supposed to be more like tacticians/commanders waiving their batons rather than warriors in the battle, so I figured they’d be slightly more on the passive side. Really the pairs between |1| and |4| have about as much arguments for them being in any given configuration as any other, but I light Knights/Pages being in the center because it supports the spectrum shading slightly male/active, the great emphasis put on Knights and Pages in their sessions, and the two classes tendencies to (from viewer standpoints) shift between active/passive behaviors. To this end I like to think they’re almost neutral/null; Knights have a lot of innate skill with their aspect, and Pages have a lot of potential.

And that line of thought was when it hit me: active classes tend to be more concrete, passive classes tend to have more potential. Thieves steal their aspect, Rogues seem to steal from/using their aspect. Knights powers seem more defined (exploit as a weapon) compared to the Page’s open ended abilities. Maids do a very specific thing very well whereas Heirs seem to have a lot of flexibility.

Class pairs also seem to share ideas. I’m not going to go into too much depth because this is already a long post, but here’s the concepts I think they encompass:

Lord/Muse: Creation

Maid/Heir: Control

Prince/Bard: Destruction

Witch/Sylph: Transmutation/Restoration

Mage/Seer: Divination

Thief/Rogue: Stealing/Liberation

Knight/Page: Exploitation

Beyond that, it’s up to players, their aspects, and what these ideas mean to them to determine how they use their powers.

If you wanna see more stuff like this, let me know. This was a bit all over the place, but I might do more in depth analyses on the class pairs and aspects moving forward.

[krysal-tepsyr]

To anyone who just saw my previous reblog

A real quick TLDR: Basically, this fucker here has implied that I, as a Lord of Time, remain consistent across time and do not experience character development. I have questioned him about this, and I got an answer that essentially said “You are too perfect for this, Lords are perfect and you are a Lord.”  Yeah, fuck that. I’m great, but I’m not THAT great. Come on, people. We know this.  So, as a finale to a series of a whole three messages, I have decided to reveal myself, in all my glory. Because even though I’m not THAT great, I’m still fucking great.  Today’s lessons, for those who care: -Lords are not perfect. We do, however, have huge superiority complexes. -Princes also have superiority complexes. Big shocker. -Being a Lord of Time doesn’t mean you don’t experience character development. Time players HAVE to change, they have to learn to accept their mortality ESPECIALLY quickly due to the whole “doomed selves” thing. And SBURB is an engine that, in the end, builds stories. It wouldn’t want a boring story, so if you are a player and are concerned your personality may stagnate, don’t! It only will if you’re only there to serve as a bulky mess. (No shade to my classpect twin, but also, look at him.) -A Lord of Light does not control your existence, you have the power over what you decide to do within this timeline. You should be more concerned about Doom, Mind and Time players when it comes to losing your agency (sorrynotsorry.) -And finally, remember that everyone’s interpretations of classpect can be very different! Some people say Light deals with relevance, while some people (like this asshole) say Light deals with the idea of existence itself!  This has been your lesson in classpecting from your local, hopefully more friendly Lord, Krysal. Also, dude, don’t bring your religion into classpect, it just doesn’t look good. Now, back to your regularly scheduled fuckery.

[botgal]

If a session is completed in the correct manner, assuming all players involved learned the necessary secrets, the new universe they have created will be shaped and ruled by the God Tiered players as they see fit. Defining its' order and deciding which values will be granted high esteem.

However, though their journey has been long, this does not mean that all secrets are yet revealed. For there exists one last tier yet which, once reached, could hold sway even over the 'Gods' who created their universe by their own hands.

The Highest Tier, for which there exists no other name, consists of but two 'classes':

The Lord - the one who instructs

The Muse – the one who inspires

It is in this final journey that those who traversed to the precipice of this final higher standing, must pass the final test to achieve it.

Those who have acted and who hold the power to make great changes to the world, must learn to relinquish these powers which allowed them to shape. They must accept the end of their actions, and allow their hands to fall. Knowing their duties are done and relinquishing their self-forged chains which have always bound them to action, to grant them to heroes anew.

Those who have stayed watchful as they have aided those who would forge the way ahead to the brighter future, however, must see the power they hold in their hands which they have let lie dormant in their quest to aid their fellows. In their journeys they became those versed in how to become the learned. Now they must take the reins, and become those who will help the new learning.

In this way, it shall pass that those who have Learned will become those who Instruct; to grant their hard earned wisdom to the guides of the future. They will aid what they learned in watching and show them how to watch and learn in turn.

And so shall those who have Acted become those who Inspire; their exploits showing a future for those who desire to take destiny into their own hands. For even with the new kindling ready to burst, it will take the bright spark of inspiration for a great new blaze to light anew.

A little for fun thing I made based on my Theory/AU that the Muse and Lord God Tiers are typically meant to be a final tier achieved by God Tiered players who had created new universes after they successfully completed their session. But their roles juxtapose in the final tier based on their ascendance title. Basically the passive classes - Seer, Rogue, Sylph, Page, Bard, and Heir - become Lords; while the active classes - Witch,  Prince, Thief, Knight, Maid, and Mage - become Muses.

[ymawgat]

Homestuck Theory: All active classes exploit their aspect, not just Knights.

For those who are unaware, the most prevalent class theory says that Knights and Pages “exploit” (with) their aspect in the same way that Thieves and Rogues “steal” (with) their aspect and Princes and Bards “destroy” (with) their aspect (although I know that there are some people who think that Heirs passively exploit).

This post is sort of two theories in one; First of all I have a few of arguments against Knights exploiting (with) their aspect, and secondly I also have some pieces of evidence that I think imply that all active classes could be said to “exploit” their aspect.

First let’s talk about the evidence for Knights exploiting their aspect and why I don't agree with it.

There’s a bunch of evidence and interpretations of Karkat and Dave’s actions that people use to back up the “Knight’s exploit” theory, examples include Dave using timetravel in lot’s of different ways and Karkat “using” relationships. 

The thing is though that these kind of interpretations are very subjective, and the fact that I can use the same source of info and come back with several different interpretations makes this evidence weaker. 

For this reason in this post I’m only going to look at the dialogue between characters, because it’s less subjective and can be interpreted in fewer ways, making it stronger evidence.  

The more solid evidence for Knights exploiting (with) their aspect comes from this page and this page. The relevant quotes are:

However Karkat doesn't connect Dave exploiting time to the fact he is a Knight, and we never get any characters talking about Pages or Heirs exploiting either. This is important as it means that Dave exploiting could be linked to something other than his class verb. It could be linked purely to the fact he’s a time player, to his “destiny” of killing LE (and to the fact he lived with a time demon trapped inside a puppet for the first 13 years of his life), it could even just to do with the time constraints on his session, or, as I believe, it could be linked to the fact he is has active class.

Now let’s look at the Aradia quote. Here she directly links the fact Dave is the Knight of Time to the fact he exploits time.

I think a good way of analysing these lines is to look at how each theory interprets Aradia's "warrior class which exploits the flow of time as a weapon" phrase:

My interpretation of Aradia's words:

“the flow of time” ---- The aspect of Time = the flow of time.

“exploits" ---- The Knight is an active class.

“a powerful warrior class (...) as a weapon" ---- The class “verb” of the Knight (and it’s counterpart) is something specifically rooted in combat or having a weapon, such as "equip", "weaponize", or "fight".

The “Knights exploit” interpretation of Aradia's words:

“the flow of time" ---- The aspect of Time = the flow of time.

“exploits” ---- Knights "exploit" their aspect in the same way that Thieves and Rogues "steal" or Princes and Bards "destroy".

“a powerful warrior class (...) as a weapon” ---- The Knight of Time doesn't focus on using his powers for combat, but Aradia doesn’t know this.

The thing is that saying “Knights don’t focus on combat” requires us to assume that Aradia was mistaken (and more importantly requires us to do this based on the strength of our interpretation against the strength of hers), which is very unlikely considering that she has more information than we do.

Aradia has experienced being a sprite (we first hear of classpects from a sprite, and sprites in general are meant to be the player’s main source of information), has probably completed some weird puzzle shit (another source of info), has information from other timelines and overall has more information about the game than we ever will just by virtue of having played it.

Put another way: Aradia draws her conclusions about classpects from these sources, in the same way that we are trying to draw conclusions from the comic, but since Araia has far more information than we do, we should believe what she says before trying to build our own interpretations from other pieces of evidence.

“But what if AH deliberately wrote that as a red herring?” Well although Andrew often misleads us about what is going to happen, in this case we have this quote:

“Any chance you’ll be willing to give a listing of which classes are active/passive or is this something to be revealed fully later on?”

AH: “This is exactly the sort of thing that gets nibbled away at as the story goes along. A little here, a little there, without giant info dumps. It makes no sense for me to say now. It’s much better for people to invent their own rules, roleplay with them and stuff, and then for their ideas to gradually get debunked by canon.”

This to me implies to me that we were just going to be up and told, over time, what each class and aspect is and does. The quote even suggests that most of the rules/theories that we came up with ourselves were generally going to be debunked. 

(You could argue that he hasn’t really kept to this system (as the comic is mostly over and we don’t have an in comic description for each class and aspect) but that quote is from after the update with Aradia, so he probably was using that system of just telling us the truth over back then.)

”Why can’t Knights “exploit” *and* have a focus on combat?”

This is exactly what I’m saying, I’m just also saying that all other active classes exploit their aspect as well (and that Pages and Heirs don’t exploit their aspect).

All active classes “exploit”.

To begin with, let's look at the very first definition of active and passive in the comic, specifically this page:

"active classes exploit their aspects" which on one level should be evidence enough for this theory. Another thing to mention is that going back to this page Karkat specifically says:

Sorry if I'm looking at this incorrectly, but doesn’t this imply that Aradia exploited timetravel as well, just not as shamelessly? 

Remember that Aradia has what is also thought to be an active class, and you could even interpret this line as meaning that Knights are more active than Maids, with exploiting more shamelessly = more active actions.

Finally on this page Calliope says:

Calliope doesn’t talk about exploitation here, but she does say that Bards (a passive class) destroy “as if by the will of the aspect”.

Is acting by the will of something a polar opposite to exploiting it? It isn’t a perfect opposite but I’d it’s quite close. 

I could go into the semantics of this a bit more and talk about how active classes seem to go “against the grain” of their aspect while passive classes seem to work with their aspect and even obey it, but that’s moving on to more subjective grounds and this post is long enough as it is.

Please tell me what you think of this theory.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Classpect theory: Amy Rose is a Thief of Heart

This one was fairly easy, since Amy Rose's characterization is one of the most consistent in the Sonic franchise: she's always been the poster hedgehog for "clingy self-proclaimed girlfriend."

Heart was also fairly easy. She's heart-themed, her predilection is for romance (Meulin, Nepeta), and she has trouble telling when her romantic inclinations are unrequitted (Nepeta) or overbearing (Dirk).Blood was another contender, given her Karkat-like tendency to fly off the handle, and that romantic relationships can also fall under Blood (Karkat was a fan of romcoms). However, Blood is more about the relationship itself and the loyalty and interpersonal connection that this entails, whereas Heart is more about the thematics of romance and emotional attraction, and it's clear that Amy doesn't actually care about Sonic's feelings or inclinations, she just wants Romance With Sonic The Hedgehog.Obviously, there's more to Heart than just romance ("Hm, I can't really see myself ever wanting to steal a soul"), but Nepeta never really did anything Heart-y beyond messing with shipping walls either. Given Amy's characteristic thoughtlessness, I'm comfortable putting her down as severely underrealized.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Classpect Theory: Sonic the Hedgehog is a Knight of Breath

I figured, as long as I was doing his arch-nemesis, I might as well do a writeup on Sonic himself. (Again, this is primarly about the games, not the cartoons or comics.)

His aspect wasn't exactly hard to come up with; he can even do the windy thing in some of the games. Sonic's main concept is one of going fast. Personality-wise, he's laid back and easygoing, always willing to go on whatever quest or adventure shows up ... but when things get serious, he gets right on it. Really, he fits bladekindeyewear's description of breath to a T.

But here's Sonic's modus operandi, in pretty much every single incarnation:

Find something to do

Get it done, as-is.

He doesn't change his quests for the most part, ruling out Witch. He doesn't steal them from anyone else, nor create them, since goals tend either to fall into his lap or are made specifically for him by others, thus ruling out Thief and Maid. He certainly doesn't destroy quests, except inasmuch as he stops Eggman's plans -- and even then, it's clear that he doesn't need a villain to thwart in order to get the most out of life; he brings his quests to a conclusion, thus ruling out Prince. He doesn't even need to understand them; everything tends to work out all right in the end.

No, what he does is, he takes his goals, his quests, his directions, and he exploits them -- he uses them to the fullest. He follows his intuition, and it takes him where he wants to go. You know who else has his intuition about his aspect work out for him? Dave, the Knight of Time:

TG: i never really studied how it went down all that closely TG: i just figured when the time came to sort it out the right thing to do would be obvious TG: like it is now TG: managing the loops is a balance of careful planning and just rolling with your in the moment decisions TG: and trusting they were the ones you were always supposed to make TG: by now im pretty used to having my intuition woven into the fabric of the alpha timeline

Also worth noting: Sonic tends to form friendships very easily as he goes about on his quests. Chip, Blaze, Tails (possibly), Yakker, even the occasional outright enemy like Shadow. These friendships always end up turning out for the better on his quests. Could this perhaps be a sign that he is "ghosting" his opposing subrole, a Rogue of Blood?

Of course not. Sonic has nothing to do with Homestuck's cosmology, and the developers couldn't possibly have been thinking along those lines.

But then, if I'm giving him a classpect to begin with, why not?

[finalvortex]

Bards: how HIGH do you have to BE

It’s been far, far too long since I did one of these posts. But hey, it's 4/13! Time to get back into it.

As we all know from the comic, the Bard is a passive destroyer class- Calliope defines it as ‘allowing destruction through [aspect] or allowing [aspect] to be destroyed.’ This tells us what a Bard does, but not what a Bard is. And character arc theory is trying to understand the latter!

Bards are also defined by unpredictability- or capriciousness, if you’d rather. Gamzee Makara is of course the epitome of this idea, because no one has any idea what the fuck is going on with him. Cronus, on the other hand, is just kind of… there. How can we possibly compare the two?

Well, I noticed that they had one major thing in common. Something that’s a very, very big part of Gamzee’s character and Cronus’ backstory. Can you guess what it is, I wonder?

Faith.

Or rather, disillusionment with faith. Gamzee loses his faith in the Mirthful Messiahs, Cronus loses his belief in magic. (Magic is associated with Hope, by the by. Maybe if I do a thing on aspects I’ll talk about that.) Anyway, here’s the important thing: both of our Bards have a crisis of faith that completely redefines them as a person. Remember, prior to his disillusionment Cronus was basically troll!Harry Potter. Gamzee's severe shift in personality came after Dave showed him the ICP video.

Anyway, what does this mean? Well in short, the Bard is defined by shifts in personality. Which means that they're going to have their worldview challenged... and the two examples we have reacted very poorly to it. Perhaps, then a Bard's challenge is to overcome this crisis in faith. Perhaps it isn't. Bards are confusing like that.

To sum my (admittedly rather poor) understanding of the Bard's character arc, I'd say a Bard struggles to overcome a crisis of faith.

Oh, and the answer is very. Very, very high.

Intro | Thieves | Knights | Seers | Mages | Rogues | Princes | Maids | Heirs | Witches | Sylphs | Pages | Bards

[samwize-gamzee]

How and why popular Inversion Theory is Incorrect

Inversion theory: the idea that characters may at times completely flip their abilities and nature to opposite extremes due to a number of factors, and that at these moments a character has become an antithesis to their normal self.

This theory is credited to BYB ( as far as i know ) and holds itself up by BYB's explanations of Rose and Jade and how their actions led to their use of their diametrically opposed aspect ( Void for Rose and Time For Jade ). after a conversation i had with Dahni the Witch of Light it became all the more clear to me that to invert one must be at their petulant breaking point; rejecting reality as they comprehend it ( aspect flip ); rejecting class methodology ( class adverb flip ); and rejecting your personal motivations ( active/passive flip). Dahni was incredibly STRONG and insistent in her opinion that in order for a person to invert they must experience all 3 of these factors at once, otherwise the result is not inversion but something else that doesn't really count.

This concept seems believable enough, that a main Title has an antithesis which functionally opposes it in every way and that in a persons worst moments they may be driven to "invert" their role as a player in order to strive through difficulty. The dynamic between these diametrically opposed personalities would be so catastrophic and require an immense feat of willpower to ( be a thing in the first place, most people would give up ) maintain dual-coherence that a single being which was capable of containing both Titles at once would be so overwhelmed with internal conflict that they just might Explode! Seems like a healthy thing to entertain, no?

But what happened to Rose? And Jade? Few of these things seems to have happened: Rose used her seer of light abilities and became grimdark, theoretically becoming the witch of void. But, this does not seem to match up with the either the requirements OR characteristics needed for "inversion", nor does Rose's behavior once she is back onscreen line up with someone who has just been broken to her core or someone who desires to actively change and manipulate Void. No, when rose descended  she was fully in control and aware of her actions, suffering no great sense of personal destruction other than being a walking eldritch avatar, channeling the Void itself in all it's grimdark glory outward from her person. Rose sought out Beck Noir, got sidetracked to get John, and ended up dead as she directed and advised John along the path which would take him to discover his godtier invulnerability, how fortuitous... But what void did she change?! Nothing that rose did while grimdark reflects the notion that she was behaving as an "inverted-Witch of Void" other than weakly based fan-theory, and instead a majority of her actions could easily be understood as if she was actively applying the information she knew of voidy matters: Grimdark Rose was the Mage of Void, plain and simple. ( scroll down for dahni's mage of void description )

Currently known dichotomies of classes operate on a scale where 2 classes share an adverb to describe their actions. these adverbs are described in inversion theory as paired as well, running along lines opposite of one another's adverbs. If you are familiar with HS theorizing the chart below will seem almost deja-vu: 

Change/  + Heir/Witch -

Know/  + Seer/Mage -

Create/  + Sylph/Maid -

Destroy/  + Bard/Prince -

Guard/  + Page/Knight -

Steal / + Rogue/Thief -

Rule/ + Muse/Lord -

( Most popularized versions of the Page/Knight dynamic use the adverb "Exploit" in regards to them, but i directly object to this because that adverb was used by Calliope to describe ALL Active Classes. "Exploit" was tied to Knight/Page i'm not sure how... )

(Another version i've seen about postulates Change - Sylph/Witch, Create - Page/Maid, and Guard - Heir/Knight , but i'm less sure of this arrangement. and if you really feel like sending me a message feel free to.. )

Current Inversion theory places the change/know, create/destroy, and guard/steal on opposing axis and so allows for a dynamic comprehension into the nature of who is absolutely irreconcilable with who..

Sounds like a real winner of a combination to me. Attempting to unite, comprehend, justify and balance these two so opposed forces is just the sort of thing which breeds dissonance in the self, and everyone knows that it's internal conflict which leads to eternal, everlasting balance and harmony between an active and a passive nature oh wait that's completely counter intuitive in all regards. Oh well, guess i'll have to see it to believe it before it changes my opinion ;)

Now, what im getting at is that fundamentally the concept and ideal of what inversion Actually is has absolutely nothing to do with what the theory is based off of! I theorize that all classes can and do have a "flip side", but this other side of the coin is instead as simple as stated by the comic: "classes always come in +/- pairs, with significant disparity between them". I believe that Titles "flip" their Aspects along their adverb-aligned dynamics

In comic we have seen that it is completely capable for numerous people to "flip" certain characteristics about themselves particularly when they "do" something story related. Idk who has read through Problem Sleuth, but this is incredibly familiar territory for Hussie and i could say is easily one of his largest plot devices, the idea that interacting with something in a certain way flips that something's characteristics.

Another tidbit i'd like to see more theories on is exactly what the whole "I can do X, but only once".