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br-amblinghostcat · 2 years

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Homestuck Classpecting Thoughts - Homestuck^2, Knight/Page Wielding their Aspect, Passive "Servant" Maid, and Re-thinking Active/Passive Understanding

Here's a TLDR of the conclusions I've gotten through my discussion if you don't want to go through all this:

I didn't like the overly reductionistic view of classpects that it seems a lot of people have, so with the homestuck^2 content having resolved Maid into Passive Serve class, it gave me the push to recontextualize each class axis to have their own active and passive statements (like Rogue/Thief and Bard/Prince have).

Rogue:(+) Steals [aspect], Steals from [aspect], or Steals from [aspect] for betterment of others.

Thief:(-) Steals [aspect], or Steals using [aspect] for their own benefit

Bard:(+) Allow Destruction of [aspect], or invite Destruction through [aspect]

Prince:(-) Destroyer of [aspect], or one who Destroys via [aspect]

Page:(+) Enabling others to Wield [aspect], or be Wielded by [aspect]

Knight:(-) Wield [aspect] as a weapon/tool, or Wield [aspect] as a shield.

Maid:(+) Servant of [aspect], or Served by [aspect]

Sylph:(-) Servant of [aspect], or Serve using [aspect]

Heir:(+) Inviting Change (by/of) [aspect], or being Changed by [aspect]

Witch:(-) Change using [aspect], or Changing the expression of [aspect]

Seer:(+) Understands [aspect] by visions, Understand [aspect] through intuition

Mage:(-) Understands [aspect] by visions, Understand [aspect] through experience

Keep Reading if you want to see my discussion on it and how I reached the above conclusions:

Rereading the ^2 reminded me that the Maid is now canonically stated to be Passive, but I haven't seen hardly any discussion on how this changes a lot of the prevalent theories by placing Maid as Passive. BUT maybe I haven't seen it since I'm not super embroiled in the fandom - if anyone else has beat me to this punch please link me so I can give a like and a share! Anyway, it means likely Sylph is placed Active (Page is likely to stay Passive, and Mage is likely to be Active anyway due to it's inference that it's under the Know/Understand axis, where Seer is canonically Passive). What does this mean for understanding of the class dichotomies and how they work in the active/passive framework? The same sentence on the Maid also had an interesting wording for the Knight that I also want to discuss.

First, what the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about https://www.homestuck2.com/story/278 - "Their rapport reflects a unique combination of their matching aspects but greatly differing classes. One a passive but powerful servant to time, the other wielding the aspect like a honed blade." So not only does this place the Maid as Passive, but it implies that they are separate dichotomies - there goes my Knight/Maid "Serve" theory!

First I want to discuss Knight's axis since it is the easiest for me to discuss. Knight has already been more-or-less confirmed to be Active, and with most of the Passive classes already being accounted for as for what dichotomy they fell under, it means Knight is almost definitively paired with Page. (Heir makes more sense with Witch-Change axis than paired with Knight). I have never been very comfortable with most guesses as to what the verb for Knight could be. "Exploit" just didn't jive with me for Knight (while it only strenuously made sense with Page in a very negative way). But that description, "Wield" sounds like a verb that can apply to both, and feels more neutral than "Equip". Knights actively "Wield" their aspect, and how they wield it can be for battle, protection, what have you. There is this concept of Knights having a bit of a forced persona/self-protection, which we see with Dave, Karkat, and Latula. So I think they can Wield their aspect as a weapon or as a shield.

Pages, being passive, are enabling others to wield their aspect (much how medieval pages/squires would carry and hand off the weapons for knights). This would make sense in the context of Aranea telling Jake that him giving Caliborn a defeat would give others hope, and also makes the scene with Tavros going to revive Vriska (and the "Breath" aspect symbol appearing) trying to equip her breath. Also, Tavros singlehandedly building the ghost army is definitely him equipping the army with Breath, with narrative drive! I also think Pages may be wielded by their aspect, and I think the best example of this is Jake's Hope Bubble - he isn't in control of it, it's just his aspect acting through him, wielding Jake, channeling Hope through him, for the narrative purpose, which is a very powerful, albeit passive, expression of the aspect. So, Knight/Page is with Wield aspect, and you can wield it actively yourself or enable others to wield it, or be wielded BY it.

What starts getting sticky with Maid-Serve axis. The active complement to it, by process of elimination, is most likely Sylph. Witch doesn't make sense as the active form, nor does Mage, and either of those would leave a Sylph-Heir pairing or Sylph-Seer pairing for...Heal? Understand? Which does not make sense with what we have seen (Mage has been described in context as scientific, and Sollux was able to foresee Doom, so, makes more sense in the Understand axis). So, how is the "Serve" word working with both Sylph and Maid being flipped in their dichotomy from what the common theories were?

I think that the reductive view of dichotomies may be the problem here, where a common view is Active you are doing something yourself, and Passive you are enabling it through others or doing it for others. But this is already a rather tenuous (and not canon!) way to reduce all axes, as that hardly works for Seer (Passive Know) for example, and I don't think it works for Sylph/Maid or Witch/Heir. I think instead there needs to be a bit more flexibility with how to understand the active/passive axes across classes, to have an individual understanding for each axis.

Let's first discuss an Active-Serve-Sylph, and a Passive-Serve-Maid. The most immediate thought I have is that Maids passively serve the state of their Aspect/their Aspect as an environment (Aradia as a Maid of Time was mostly going around and cleaning up Time Loops, and Jane as a Maid is serving Life as an aspect by serving/increasing Business/Money/Power), and may be called "Servant of [aspect]", while Sylph actively serve USING their Aspect (Kanaya serving others as an auspitice, serving up Space, as well as serving up Creation by being the caregiver of the MotherGrub, while Aranea serves up Light, and so is able to heal sight, knowledge, etc). Another thought I had is that Maids are served by their aspect: Aradia was served the past/future ghosts, and was served time (a bit of a stretch, but her dreamself being left on the slab, over TIME, meant that she would awaken and die on the slab just in time to die again and gain god tier). Likewise, Jane is served by Life, where her business and politics just always go how she wants, Life is serving her. But then how is another way to describe Sylph's relationship with their aspect and Serve? It may be that, like Rogue/Thief both sharing "steals [aspect]", it may be that Sylph also shares "servant of [aspect]". This is rather unwieldy as a way to describe, I am not satisfied with how this one turned out. I'll take any brainstorming anyone else has on this.

Next I want to try out describing Mage/Seer, and Witch/Heir, which I have been generally dissatisfied with as far as descriptions go, and make a nice and neat list of the active/passive sentences for each class pair.

Witch and Heir is the "change" axis as is commonly described, but it's a little hard to imagine what Witch and Heir have in common archetypically. When you think of Heirs, you think of them "inheriting", while Witches "manipulate", so it can feel a bit weird for them to both be under the "change" aspect initially. Heir usually archetypically have to go through an arc where they have to accept what they are inheriting, and I think keeping this in mind makes them perfect for Passive Change, in case anyone was still on the fence with that. I think Heir as a Passive Change can be described as: "Inviting change (by/of) their aspect, or being changed by their aspect." This fits not only the Heir in terms of literary archetypes where they have to undergo internal change in order to ascend, but also John's arc across Homestuck and Homestuck^2, where he has to accept and be changed by Breath. This also works for Mituna's event, where he both invited Doom to change, by being changed by Doom. I can't speak as much on Equius, since it never really felt that he had a proper arc, but he seemed to indirectly want to be changed by Void - to accept irrelevance of himself and his whole hemospectrum beliefs (which maybe was resolved in some of his dead-alts by becoming a literal maid). Witch is pretty straightforward: they are changing using their aspect, or changing the expression of their aspect (IE Jade being able to grow/shrink items).

Finally, the one that is hardest for me to tackle, Mage/Seer. There have not been any real main-character Mages, closest we have is Sollux, but in general Mage's arcs have not been a focus of the narrative. If Homestuck^2 ever finishes and someone ends up a Mage (My money is on Yiffany being a Mage of Rage) then I may need to readdress this if it turns my theory around. Right now, if Sollux's visions aren't just a Doom specific thing (possible, since it is possibly loosely implied that Mituna also had visions), there is something that Mage and Seer have in common: they have visions. So, there is something that is directly shared like the "Steal [aspect]" is for Rogue/Thief, which is fine. But there needs to be something differentiating them. There is this idea that Mages "suffer" their aspect but I don't think this is the case. Rather, I think they gain understanding of their aspect through experience (as opposed to Seers that understand their aspect through intuition). Experience can be a cruel teacher, true, but it doesn't HAVE to be linked to suffering. It's just that troll's lives suck.

So with that, here's the passive/active statements for all the classes, including the canon descriptions we have already been given:

Thief:(-) Steals [aspect] or Steals using [aspect] for their own benefit.