Basically the Active Knight reading ignores the fact that, like Rose, Dave and Karkat START OFF trying to be intensely Active but gradually mellow out and grow happier as they adopt more passive/reactive roles and become more honest about their desire for attention and validation from others (for Rose, mainly Kanaya and Roxy. For Dave and Karkat, mainly each other, tho Dave also struggles with a desire for reconciliation/catharsis with Bro/Dirk on the side).

More importantly, it misses all the ways they allow/invite their Aspect (Karkat dropping Sollux down the stairs drawing Sollux’s Blood and leading to Sollux being happier is a clear example.) and pigeonholes our understanding of their behavior as being exclusively Exploitation focused because of that one quote of Aradia’s, despite the fact that every single Class both exploits and allows their Aspect–Calliope’s definition describes a tendency, not a limitation of their powersets. 

It also ignores how Knights’ greatest impacts tends to be how their efforts benefit and empower others. Karkat allows the troll session to function at all by keeping everyone bound to a common cause and leading them to victory instead of self-destruction through petty rivalries. Dave empowers Rose, Jade and John to do literally any of what they do in their session at all by making Grist cost a complete non-issue, allowing them to make whatever kinds of powerful weapons they want. Davesprite literally buffs John by giving him a hammer with Time powers!!! The Active reading of Knights misses all of that stuff. 

As for Passive Pages, I wouldn’t know where to start. Every shitty reading of Jake as a kind, patient soul cruelly Put Upon by his predatory gay friend.
Every dumbass take that Tavros is boring because he’s just a lame pushover, instead of an abused kid who resists and fights his abuser’s pressuring influence every step of the way, and who usually knows pretty well who to ask for help to stop her! 

All of them are grounded in this idea of the Page as a Passive wallflower nobody with zero impact on Homestucks’ plot to speak of, except of course for how they are mistreated by others. 

The powerset of a Page in development, if you listen to the Passive reading, seems to veer between ??? and “Nothing much”, since they’re regarded as p much a burden who must be carried through the game by everyone else until the day they finally reach their True Power, which is presumably buffing everyone else until the whole team is super saiyans. 

This is a day that never comes in canon, for any Page. Instead, we get Jake feeling sexually threatened and objectified and summoning a mental version of his boyfriend spouting quotes from a romantic comedy-adventure movie (which is way more Jake’s bag than Dirk’s). 

Not to mention BGD talks about Jake as his boyfriend while Dirk himself broke up with Jake and is simultaneously flying around in literal nowhere with no idea what’s going on. 

The Brain Ghost Dirk episode is about Jake benefiting HIMSELF with his Hope. Think about his level of power and the context surrounding it. 

Aranea wanted to use Jake’s Hope power to benefit herself, and he immediately summoned a warrior for the sole purpose of turning said power against her. 
His power is definitely not for her benefit.

It’s not for the benefit of anyone else in the session, either, because Jake doesn’t do jack shit about the Condesce as a threat despite having more than enough power to. Jake isn’t thinking about the good of the session or fixing everything so everyone is safe and conflict is resolved, all of which is stuff he could accomplish with a power level exceeding Jade’s.

Jake is only thinking about himself and wanting to feel safe, and Dirk is how he gets there. The fact that the fandom has missed that rests on the assumption of the Passive Page.

Ditto Tavros’ big moment–rallying the Ghost Army–being cast as a shitty moment where he character develops by getting to help his abuser instead of being a cathartic beat where he gets to own her as revenge because that’s all he wants–to prove her wrong definitively and get on with his life. Or ghost-life, or whatever. Homestuck is dumb, I love it.

I could make similar complaints about Karkat and how everyone thinks he got shafted because he never Got Tough and started fucking shit up with Blood-lasers or whatever. Karkat uses Blood constantly, all the time, and he’s extremely successful and effective at leveraging it. He just does most of it indirectly.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, as you can tell. All this said, it’s possible I’m just straight up wrong about what it means to be Active/Passive and canon will clarify once the Class test happens. Until then though, I’m gonna work with what I have, and it seems to me Homestuck as a work reads much better with one interpretation over the other.