A QUICK RUN-THROUGH OF: Passive (+) and Active (-) Classes!
classes are paired together based on the similarity of their functions and on occasion, the narrative parallels they share. they're separated with the terms "passive" and "active", and this greatly affects how a class uses their powers, how they act around it, and how their aspect affects them. NOTE: passive and active should not be compared to "good and evil". that is a fundamental misunderstanding of it entirely!
to be a passive (+) class is to invite through your aspect for the betterment of others. they're selfless and serve as an inspiration for their team. passive classes include: knights, heirs, sylphs, seers, rogues, bards, and muses.
to be an active (-) class is to use your aspect to benefit yourself. they're advantageous and orient themselves around acting upon their aspect. active classes include: maids, witches, mages, princes, thieves, pages, and lords.
Passive classes are weird in that the best definition we can give them is '____s through <Aspect>', and the concept of DOING things passively is fucking weird to wrap the head around. Passively stealing? Ok, alright. What? This is a rambling thing, but perhaps a more accurate description would be 'is being _____ by <aspect>'
Being destroyed by rage. Gamzee
Being stolen from by Void. Roxy
Being understood by Light. Rose.
Anyway it works better in some cases than others but I like using Latin linguistics to try and mess around with classpect
seer of heart vs knight of heart? kind of an odd pair of classes but im not sure which one i am, any help?
All told, I wouldnât consider Knight and Seer an odd pair to be agonizing over at all. Members of the two classes can act surprisingly similarly to each other, when it comes to their flaws. They tend to rashly overestimate their abilities or underestimate the obstacles facing them, often feel as if not being able to handle things entirely by themselves is a personal failure, and can often come across as smug assholes, not entirely undeservedly.
Luckily for the both of us, these classes arenât entirely composed of downsides, and the answers that the two classes are meant to give to the flaws above differ pretty drastically between the two. Letâs talk about them!
Knights are supposed to divorce their personal character from the things they doâ whether itâs fear, loneliness, wrath, brashness, or something else entirely, the way you act and feel does not deserve a say over what it is you ultimately achieve, or what it is that the hand of fate ultimately decides for you. Ideally, a Knight triumphs over their personal flaws and thrusts themselves into the path of danger and risk, the consequences be damned, because theyâre the only one who can. Assuming that you live a fairly normal life compared to Dave and Karkat, this probably involves less dodging past fireballs and knifing belligerent dragons than my phrasing perhaps implied and more opening up to people and taking risks with social implications.
Seers are liable to be tempted to follow suit, but their path is more fraught: their pride is less brashness than it is hubrisâ the (woefully mistaken) belief that one can stand against the gods. Again, following the rules of modern day life in the real world, switch out âgodsâ for the cold hard facts of reality, like the reality that the problems youâre facing arenât the kind of things that you can fix alone. If you find yourself desperately wanting to do everything on your own rather than involve anybody else, and remembering times in the past when you did that exact thing and failed miserably, you probably fall on the Seer side of this distinction. Ideally, a Seer learns from these remembered mistakes and does not repeat them: she finally calls her accountant and asks for help pulling out of the floundering Vietnamese Jacuzzi market, or listens to her girlfriendâs increasingly transparent hints about getting a goddamn haircut.
The real challenge for you here is going to be assessing yourself frankly: Knights and Seers are both very good at convincing themselves that their problems arenât problems at all. A Knight tells themselves that theyâre not putting off something difficultâ how can you tell that apart from actually being someone who isnât putting off something difficult? A Seer tells themselves that the people giving them advice just donât know what theyâre talking aboutâ how can you tell that your perception isnât just filtered by your own stubbornness? These are questions that we all have to answer, in our quests to understand ourselves, even if most people donât get the chance to hear them formulated so explicitly.
