After entirely too much ado, I finally finished my first two videos on classpecting. I'll be releasing a written essay format of this theory eventually as well, that'll go into more depth and nitty-gritty while this video serves as a proper and true first introduction to the concept. If you finished watching the first video, you can click here to watch my video on the Classes. Some of the art I used for both videos will be under the cut for ease of use and sourcing.
All hail the Aspect Wheel
Unironically I still hate this cone but it's, unfortunately, useful.
I made this cheat sheet to every Direct Mention of a class's active/passive alignment today.
In above, i've excluded everything like interpretation of characters' behaviors or of subtext, mentions of a character being active/passive and mentions of classes in ways that don't directly indicate activeness or passiveness. I do also want to keep a more general track of those subtexts and generic mentions of classes, so i'll make a list of those i find interesting.
I'll quote relevant parts where it's shorter and leave entire pages at the page reference. {And leave my personal comments in brackets like so}
Homestuck Proper:
Calliope on Rogues, Calliope on Princes, Aradia on Knights and Seers: p.4514, 4564, 4354 - {Mentioned above, but there's more i haven't quoted.}
Scratch on Seers: p.3832-3835 - {Too long to be quoted. It's unclear exactly to what extent Doc is talking about "A Seer", "A Seer of Mind" and "Terezi", respectively. }
Brain Ghost Dirk on Pages: p.4875 - "Pages have a lot of untapped potential. That's practically all there is to the class, actually. But when they eventually find it, look out."
Aranea on Sylphs: p.6553 - "I am a very powerful Sylph of Light. I have had millions of sweeps to hone my abilities. As one gifted with the aspect of light, certain outcomes will be prone to breaking in my favor. And as an ancient, highly experienced sylph, I wield an unprecedented ability to heal. A doomed timeline is really just an anatomical feature of a much larger organism. Like a capillary which comes to an end, because it has withered and died. I believe I will be able to heal this offshoot. And with enough time and patience, I am confident I can restore its vitality to such a great extent, it will effectively take over as the alpha timeline, thus reducing English to a lost footnote of paradox space." - {Obviously that last thing didn't happen, but she did end up making the Game-Over timeline take over as the alpha timeline. She just didn't understand the implications of that within Paradox-Space's framework.}
AH on... Clowns?: p.5484 - "It means crazy clowns just won't die for some reason. In adventures such as yours, they tend to linger long past their welcome. They linger and linger and linger, and just when you think you're totally fed up with their bullshit and you can't take another second of it, they just linger some more. And you never know what they're up to, and they're always scheming in the shadows, and it's quite possible that whatever master plan they're hatching just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense at all. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how stupid the clown's schemes are, or how sick of him everybody is. He just. Won't. Die." - {This is sort of my crackpot theory, but i believe this passage is a subtextual explanation of the Bard as a character archetype. Essentially a Jester staying in the shadow of its king. }
Beyond Canon:
Got nothing beyond what's in the sheet
Q&A:
On how Lunar Sway relates to Active/Passive Classes: p. - http://wheals.github.io/tumblr/tumblr.html#post25156009290q1 - {In the cheat sheet, but as before, there's more}
Book Commentary:
On Aradia and Vriska: Book 4, p.143 - "Aradia's extremely passive nature as a ghost makes her an easy target for this kind of overbearing attention." - {Hussie is commenting on aradia, not Maids, but the language is pretty strong}
right. here’s something i’ve been meaning to talk about for a while. the assignment of classpect titles.
before i start, i want to make something clear: i’m not here to tell anyone how to identify. i am of the opinion that everyone knows themselves best. i’m not here to tell anyone how to classpect: this is a wacky business filled to the brim with speculation. this is merely an account of my views and opinions.
the classpecting community at large, here on tumblr at least, is very concerned with one’s personality when assigning classpect titles. this approach also necessitates a focus on both class and aspect in tandem; making sense as one full concept, a one and done thing, rather than two components of a title. a title, not a name.
a prince of heart is one who destroys heart. therefore the prince must destroy heart. he cannot engage in destructive behaviour, fall into that class’ archetypal pitfalls and climb its archetypal highs, and also have an arc concerned with identity, see the world in those terms at the same time. he must always be a [destroyer of heart].
it all ends up rather stereotypical; a prince destroys, therefore the prince is bad. a knight protects, therefore the knight is good.
i find it more constructive to look at classes as archetypes, because at their origin, this is what they are. patterns of behaviour one repeats again and again, falls back on when they are at their wits’ end. this is where the narrative view of classpects comes in.
class represents the hero’s internal processes. their values. a sort of concise list of their greatest faults and greatest strengths, like horoscopes in the newspaper. made to be generic. made for the hero to grow with and past them. it makes sense then why most prefer to classpect based on personality: it is easier to look at yourself as a list of traits than it is to look at yourself as a history, a narrative path you’ve walked. actually, that brings me to a good metaphor: your class is your shoes. the trail you walk. your aspect is the scenery.
classpecting from a narrative angle requires a shift in perspective, and acknowledging one stark difference between the hero title of myself and say, the hero title of jake english. we are both hope players, yet one of us is a person. the other is a character. the title system in homestuck is made around characters. the game is deliberately set up to help its players grow, and in doing that sets them on a path loosely defined by their title. people are a bit more complicated.
seeing yourself as a character isn’t easy. it’s almost impossible. characterhood is objective; personhood is not. in a story, we see its characters’ entire arcs in one line, we can clearly identify the inflection points in their stories and which themes repeat again and again. but as people our lives are ongoing; we are not afforded the same omnipotence, the ability to see time all at once.
class is incredibly hard to determine because of this. aspect is a bit easier. it is the themes that repeat again and again in our lives, a backdrop for all else to happen. it is a lens through which we see and understand the world. a light player might see their world as a story. a heart player might see the world as a tangle of identities rubbing up against and affecting each other. the possibilities are as endless as paradox space, which is to say not at all or quite a lot, depending on how you look at things. and how big you are in the scheme of them.
of course some measure of both narrative and personality classpecting must be employed for the most accurate outcome to be produced. one cannot look at the forest’s reflection in the lake and claim to know the beasts within. one cannot build a house with only bricks. but a healthy harmony should be strived towards in order for the result to be most accurate.
if you would like to read some posts from people who know these things better than me, i recommend @classpect-navelgazing, particularly their masterpost, and @urcharactersclasspect, whose opinions i found very particularly eye-opening.
Hello! As someone who loves having good study materials, I made a Beginner’s Guide to Homestuck Classpecting. It’s only 5 pages!
This guide has a focus on the class side of classpecting, covering foundational information including:
What the classes represent.
How the class system is structured.
How active and passive are defined.
It includes links to where all the information comes from. Most info is from the comic itself and nearly verbatim, while some info is from archived or now-deleted tweets from Andrew Hussie.
This isn’t a comprehensive guide, mostly it’s a guide for people who either know nothing and need a good spot to jump in or for people who like having a lot of references organized in a quick to find place. Either way, I hope someone enjoys checking this out! ✨
Wanted to do quick coverage of this fleeting idea in my head (fitting) since I’ve been back on a Homestuck Theory grind thanks to my brains inability to leave it alone. So…here we go?
So with the release of the Extended Zodiac Aspect descriptions, Hope has been unequivocally linked with Imagination. Brain Ghost (BG) Dirk goes on to explain that two factors help make him responsible: Pages having a lot of untapped potential (that’s all the class is basically, is how he puts it), and that Hope is an especially potent combo (something something holy shit). The only other major relevant factor with this could be Dirk existing as a collection of splintered consciousness, and that the splinter exists more easily in Jake’s head than anyone else’s due to the aforementioned factors.
Now BG Dirk isn’t a fraymotif, but the combo nature of it initially makes me think of the tag-team moves we saw in Collide. In reality, it seems more to me like Jake’s imagination is just real fertile soil, not unlike Skaia. To deliver on my promise of brevity, there’s two major takeaways I got: Hope acts as a medium for making the imaginary into reality through belief and conviction - as a defined part of the skill set, and that Pages are largely undefined by design, making a long challenging journey towards power similarly to a pawn on the chessboard.
So the tl;dr of this idea before I take the time to make full on dissections is this: Between the Blank Page and Imagination bits being real cool for the sheer lack of detail they can inherently provide, it seems not only plausible to me but likely that Pages have this sort of flexibility inherently like how a Pawn can choose what piece it is to become when it reaches the other end of the board. Minor supporting evidence in the form of Jake’s two big power ups happening at the end of their respective “arcs” for lack of a better word (GAME OVER, the fight with Caliborn’s production), and being able to create an imaginary copy of his god tiered Heart player, make them real, and then the copy have access to the full range of Dirk powers that hadn’t been used by the real Dirk yet.
Bonus Section I guess?
- Hope Symbol is a core chess color
- at the end of their respective narratives (in this case GAME OVER Jake), both pages are able to amass pretty substantial armies of angels or ghosts (although I guess Aradia is able to have an army of doomed bots so grain of salt here ig).
- Knight also being a cool chess piece known for its unique tactical pattern.
I’ll probably come back to this idea in greater depth as I try to figure out the classes better because I can’t leave well enough alone. Hope someone else enjoys this pure string of chaos.
I just thought of what I think is the most concise way to describe the Light aspect as a concept.
Light has always been one of the vaguer aspects to categorize. All aspects have some kind of deeper meaning, sure, but a lot of them have more superficial meanings as well that make them easy to understand to most people, while Light just... doesn't. Or rather, the few versions we get seem contradictory and confusing.
But let me put at least some minds at ease. I think this is probably the easiest way to understand Light, and helps a lot when thinking about it.
Light, in its most raw form, is the aspect of Plot.
The way the plot will progress, the story, the narrative, the outcomes of potentiality. It kind of makes sense, right?
This is why for so many classes, Light manifests itself as information. Rose, scrying forward and divining the plot as it unspools itself before them, Aranea, illuminating others with the lore necessary to understand events in both the past and future. Alpha Rose, walking the path of fate to her death, knowing every footstep from the moment she began, dancing in the steps of inevitability.
Then there's Vriska, the wrench in most people's understanding of Light. Luck, fortune? How does that fit in with information and stories?
Well, to put it simply: Vriska has a path that she thinks the story should go down, and can manipul8 events to get it. Her powers manifest as a give and take of activity, letting fate act on others as it will to gain the ability to defy it herself, to change the story to her own whims. All those lucky br8ks, it almost seems like she has Plot armor, huh?
There's also my favorite manifestation of the Light with Vriska: her magnetism. The way she just drags at the attention of everyone who sees her, fandom and in-universe alike. Really Stealing the spotLight, isn't she? The plot follows her, when she wants it to, and it relinquishes hold of other characters to do it. I was surprised and laughing when one of Tavros's Pesterquest routes had Vriska just come in and become the new focus, because wow, she really Stole the Plot right out from under him, hahaha! Everything plot-related bends around her from the moment she was introduced.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Light. The aspect of Plot, in it's entirety, of the story of life itself. It's not just limited to stories, either, if someone seems to just drag the attention of everyone around them, if events just seem to go their way, if everyone can't help but make room for them whatever they do, they might be Lightbound.
I absolutely love just building up my galaxy brain take classpect theories years after everybody stopped caring abt homestuck 😔 like... Aradia and Jane both being compelled into serving their aspect in the beginning but absolutely SNAPPING at some point and having their aspect serve them instead... Aradia using the connotations of inevitably from the time aspect to beat her depression and do whatever she wanted... Jane having comp-het (life: procreation) forced on her both by caliborns creepy hitting on her and her obsession with having Jake's kids when she was possessed, then later becoming head of a huge company and later President thus wielding huge control over others lives, as well as controlling massive wealth and privilege, both connotations of the life aspect... Don't u see that the maid story is literally "aren't u tired of being nice? Don't u just want to go apeshit?", but making the best parts of your life what used to hurt you the most...
