vergess can you actually explain classpects to me... i was super into them before the muse/lord thing was revealed and the "meta" about classpects changed. so ?????? how do
Well, first things first, I never kept up with the meta on classpects. Not when I was running @godtiertalk and not now.
I use classpects for myself as a fun toy. It's a bit like pokemon. I understand conceptually that there are people using classpects/pokemon in wildly different ways, but I'm over here looking at my shinies and thinking about breeding groups, not consternating myself with what a head-to-head matchup between Time and Space would look like at a numeric level.
With that in mind, I've generally taken a "what and how" approach to classpecting, rather than the more traditional "personality and narrative role" approach. That always struck me as deeply limiting in its applications. First of all, real human people don't have a narrative role, so jot that down, but secondly it means not being able to classpect a character until after a media property has concluded, which is not only Way Less Fun, but also!
Literally not how classpects worked in Homestuck itself.
So for me, classpecting a character involves asking myself what the character does, and how they do it. The "what" will go towards their aspect, and the "how" towards their class.
For example, I might say, "Haumeath is a classic space character: she likes experiencing and exploring for their own sakes. What she does is wander. But in terms of how she interacts with her wanderlust, she's very confident in it on the surface, but hugely anxious underneath that something about her Is Not Good Enough. How she engages with her wandering is compulsively."
So then I would ask myself what kind of class gets compulsive about the use of their aspect, and the answer to that is generally Knights (see: Dave's timeloops, Latula's obsessive overcompensation, every negative thing karkat has ever done). So logically I would conclude Haumeath is a Knight of Space.
Except then, and this is the part I have the most fun with, is to look at the whole title not just the sum of its parts, and see if it still fits. Which, in this case, it absolutely does NOT. While Space is a highly passive aspect associated with stability and inertia, the combination with knight (one who exploits a limited supply) brings up an image that makes simply no sense compared to Haumeath herself: someone fighting against a limited supply of space to just Be. Haumeath has almost the opposite problem of too many options.
Which raises the question of inversion: is Haumeath's title actually the opposite of Knight of Space, namely the Sylph of Time? One who is passively created by the passage of change and the weight of destruction? This title immediately seems more fitting, with sylphs (Kanaya, Aranea) often appearing calm on the surface but hiding immense anxiety and self doubt that leads them down some staggeringly stupid paths.
And then, of course, the most important part of all: imagining a little pink dragon wearing this costume with its silly sleeves so that every time she takes a step there's like 8x more tails to deal with than she's ready for.
And isn't that what it all comes back to in the end? Imagining your favourite characters in a dumbass costume?
