Tag: analysis asks

any thoughts on zebruh’s class then?

tl;dr Knight of Doom roleplaying Page of Void, probably. 

more under the cut, this got predictably long.

I’m thinking his true Class is likely Knight, which I see as the Passive Serve Class.

Doom is the aspect of suffering, rules and limitations, and poverty in contrast to Life’s immense wealth. I think on some level his desire to help lowbloods-who’s suffering he would be keenly attuned to on some level–is genuine.

As “Ones who serve X, or serve through X, for the benefit of others”,
Knights tend to exploit/use their Aspect directly, but always in the service of other agents.

Redglare is a huge badass who parses quite Actively initially, but she is in the service of the Grand Highblood, and mostly exists to bring his will to pass-until she accidentally serves Mindfang a bunch of Minds to control on a silver platter, allowing her escape.

In the same way,
Zebruh perceives himself as being in the service of lowbloods, but ultimately serves only the agenda of wider Alternian culture.

He’s still serving another, but it matters who the other is.

They also seem happiest when they stop trying so hard and allow their innate desires to be receptive to their loved ones’ needs to guide them–Karkat is at his best passively helping others with their romance problems, Dave is happiest when he chills out and gives Karkat the companionship and time he craves so much, etc.

Zebruh perceives himself helping the Doomed, but ends up exploiting lowbloods and serving them Doom–placing them in states of poverty, limitation, and suffering–instead. Thing is, he genuinely perceives this as being to their benefit, somehow. If he chilled out and paid attention to how others actually feel like Karkat and Dave eventually do, he might actually be a pretty ok dude.

So what’s getting in the way?

Like every other Indigo Caste member so far, including Equius, Zebruh is an avid Page roleplayer. That is, “One who invites service through x, or invites the service of X, for their own benefit.”

Pages’ biggest talent early on is their likability and ability to get people to want to help them. (Though like Knights, they seem to reach their best when they embrace the verbiage that most closely matches their Active status-Jake is at his strongest actively exploiting/using Hope to kick Caliborn’s ass, for example.)

Equius tries to replicate this by commanding people to serve his purposes, with mixed results: Gamzee complies and voices enthusiasm at doing whatever it takes to make Equius smile, and eventually does so by, y’know, murdering him. For the most part it makes him really unpleasant and weird to talk to, though, so people want to avoid him.

Amisia makes a huge deal of getting the Reader to help her, serving her purposes by making them kill lowbloods and give her their blood and stuff. She mentions having Chahut help her previously, and the guards who bring her the Oliveblood are in her service as well.

And Zebruh literally keeps slaves devoted to serving him. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem able to perceive the dissonance between his words and deeds, and he often ends up outright ignoring what the Reader says–all of which reminds me a lot of Horruss serving himself Void to ignore Rufioh’s breakup request in particular.

Amisia and Zebruh both maintain their comfortable superiority through degrees of pretense, lies, material comforts, and confusion–all of which are linked to Void as the aspect of incomprehensibility, darkness, and physicality.

Hence why Amisia is a fake painter–her entire life is ruled by physical and social power, so she’s far away from a brain space that allows for imagination and creative expression.

And hence why Zebruh is a fake social justice advocate–he’s too concerned about physical and social consequences to commit to the ideas he espouses, or connect those ideas to meaningful physical action.

And so both of them get caught up in meaningless performance and self-serving spectacle.

phew, this got pretty long. Anyway highbloods are interesting, I’m finding the indigobloods pretty compelling in particular. lemme know what you all think!

keep rising!

Are you going to make your third Gamzee / Bard of Rage video into a Medium post any time soon? (Assuming you haven’t already, that is…)

oh yeah i never did post that, did I? I’d publish it right now, but its a lot rougher than the other two–mainly its lacking the pictures and stuff i usually put on since I only meant to use it as a script.

I’m not sure if its valuable to anyone in that state since it barely qualifies as an “article” so much as a draft, but if people want it sure i’ll post it? I’m meaning to update it eventually, too, its just a fair degree of work on my part and my creative energy has been going to more…-EXCITING stuff of late 😉

but feel free to let me know if youd like it published now, or if youd really like to see a fully picture-ified version! i could probably make that happen i just wasnt aware there was much interest

What do you think Tagora’s Classpect is? I was thinking he could be a Thief because he takes your money through “vaguely worded yet stringently binding documents,” but he could also be a knight, since he offers you his “services,” and, as angel-of-double-death says, he doesn’t seem to enjoy talking, so his charisma could be seen as a facade, which Knights seem to be prone to. He might be connected to both through Class Roleplay, though.

i honestly havent been able to play it yet, but i saw at least one “break” or “destroy” reference in a screenshot and he seems based on like, your Light Yagami (Death Note) and Lelouch (Code Geass) types in anime, who tend to be Royal/Destruction classes. So I’m inclined to think Prince or Bard.

Again though, pure guess. My instinct is to consider the “service” motif Knight roleplay too–Terezi was one of Homestuck’s most intense roleplayers in her emulation of Mindfang, after all.

But I haven’t seen a teal blood seem to roleplay much outside Terezi! Tagora’s the most substantial one we’ve seen directly yet short of Terezi herself, as cool as Latula’s two versions are.  Since I’m not really sure how the class system on alternia is delegated to the different blood castes, I’m not entirely sure thats whats going on. 

More to come when I actually get to play it but I’m busy getting this last gamzee video done. Should be switching focus to Hiveswap for a while after that, though.

Should be fun 🙂

Is Gamzee’s berserk mode a purple blood power? Or a Bard of Rage power? If you say it’s the second, how the fuck allowing the destruction of rage trough you gives you a berserk mode?

1) Whether It’s a purpleblood power or a bard of rage power is beside the point to me. I consider the purple blood caste itself biologically and socially engineered to force in its members a connection to Rage, regardless of their true alignment. The same is true of every other blood caste in my framework:
Rusts are linked to Time, Jades to Space, and so on.

Pretty much every troll introduced in Hiveswap and the Friendsim so far includes references not only to their True Sign aspect, but also the aspect of their caste. That’s one of the reasons I misidentified Xefros as a Time player before the Zodiac dropped! I didn’t recognize this mechanic until @wakraya pointed it out.

2) There’s a second half to the classes’ descriptions, remember? There’s also “inviting destruction THROUGH Rage”, as if by the will of the Aspect–which does evoke to me why Gamzee seems almost possessed by his fury when it comes.

3) Another thing to consider is that, at least in my framework, Gamzee’s Horrorstuck shtick coincided with Gamzee embracing the legacy of the Grand Highblood–who was Kurloz, a Prince.

I consider this indicative of Gamzee beginning to roleplay a Prince, and so his verbiage during his more directly violent segments would coincide with the Prince description of simply Destroying Through X, which seems like a better fit to me.

The fact that Gamzee is one of the most Passive classes forcing himself to roleplay one of the most Active is a contributing factor to the extreme stress he seems to be under when doing that Ragey thing, in my opinion. 

Hope this helps.

You said in a post earlier that Karkat’s denizen might be abraxas. Could it be that he just really has the trainer denizen? It would make sense for some duality stuff against Yaldabaoth.

I’m never inclined to think any character’s self-diminishing thoughts are correct.

Abraxas makes sense for duality stuff with Yaldabaoth–Yaldy is all about overwhelming power over the physical world, while Abraxas is all about complete embodiment of every aspect of the world of ideas.
Puts some meaningful context to Karkat’s description of his Denizen here:

Random thought: what if the verbs for change & know were actually spell (like magic spells or spelling) and read, respectively?

I’ve considered that (though I went for Speech for the know classes; speaking/talking a lot is something all the prophet classes are known for and kind of a relevant idea to being a prophet in general, no?)

but i think those more specific verbs are too constrincting, compared to the versatility of change and know. I still consider them part of each class’ toolbelt though–every class’ verb is associated with some synonyms or close kins, like:

Make: Heal, improve, fix,

Destroy: Break

Steal: Take

Serve: Give, Beat (as in beating), Help,

Command: Master

And all of the verbs are linked to either Exploit or Invite/Allow, depending on Active vs. Passive behavior.