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Tag: classpects
Hey, guys! In this video, we dive into Classpects in a little more depth, focusing on the recurring symbol of the Witch’s Familiar. We also take a look at every case of Witch roleplay we’re currently aware of, and note how characters who roleplay as Witches always seem to end up with Familiars themselves.
So now that the whole notional and material idea has been established, that leaves the question, is there another axis to the whole thing? In other words, what separates, say, Mind from Light, or Void from Heart?
I pondered this question for quite a while before coming up with an answer I found satisfactory, and I’m still far from sure I’ve got it right. But I believe the answer might lie in a slightly different perspective on the dichotomy of Active and Passive.
I think I’m starting to find this pretty damn compelling, at least with Time and Space in particular. It makes my head hurt to think about, though. Classpects are so…so….so complicated if this is true. God.
When Vriska Serket was young, far younger than her still very young age when we first encounter her, she faced a choice of monumental proportions, at an age so young many would not ascribe her any agency, any responsibility for her actions. Perhaps we might even call it a Choice, for it is similar in nature to the ultimatums presented by the Denizens.
The Choice was this: A: Start killing people, innocent or not, on an enormous, serial killer kind of scale. Dye your hands in blood for all futures to come. B: Die before you’ve ever had a chance to live.
The Vriska we encounter chose A. Obviously she did. If she hadn’t, we would never have met her because she would be dead. This is the reponsibility of Vriska Serket, that to even exist in the story, she had to be a person who chose A.
And that makes her evil. I mean that in a sense that to choose and to continue to choose your own life over that of countless innocent strangers is a horrible (albeit somewhat understandable) decision, but I also mean it in the sense that Vriska herself perceives and understands herself as a bad person.
She makes excuses for herself, certainly. She justifies her actions using troll morality, tries to pretend she doesn’t care, clings to arbitrary standards of “fairness”. None of it works, of course. Aranea makes that much clear, in that key conversation of hers with Terezi. It never works.
And with her repeated failures to find absolution, with guilt gnawing at her every step of the way, here is Vriska’s grand mistake, that she desires to be Good, more than she desires to be Well.
In this world I would be surprised to hear of anyone who does not know the consequences of prioritizing accomplishment over health.
A take on Vriska that actually mostly aligns with my own! Pretty rare. I can’t resist the urge to mention that I see Vriska’s self-imposed selflessness as being the major identifying trait she borrows from Mindfang.
Thieves being an Active class with innately selfish tendencies and Sylphs being a Passive class with the opposite, I think the Mindfang persona itself is the major corrupting influence on Vriska’s psyche.
I’ve talked to Arrghus about this before I think, I just wanted to mention it here because not only do I think this reading is fairly accurate, I also think it’s grounded in the very mechanics of Classpects. And honestly I just think that’s hella neat, I’m never over it.
Maybe? I don’t really like jossing headcanons, but I’ve never really read a version of this idea that feels compelling to me, personally.
I think it’s more accurate to say Pages tend to either A) Attract the attention of others who mean well, but can be unpredictable in how they go about “helping” the Page, or B) Serve themselves their Aspects in very selfish ways.
I don’t think Jake in particular reads as “lacking” Hope. Understanding the impact Jake has on Dirk when they’re 13, specifically through the vector of his Hope, is instrumental to understanding both their characters, imo.
Well, I think that saying that Pages “lack” their aspect is very much oversimplifying it, and it’s worth noting that we never actually hear it stated this way in the text, not even from Calliope or anyone who gets info from Calliope. It is, however, present in patterns, just as it is for Princes – “lacking” the aspect is a signifier for them, too. Let’s review:
-Tavros is the simplest and most literal application of this signifier, and is probably where the concept originated because of it. He lacks freedom, both physical (due to his confinement in a wheelchair) and social/sexual (due to his constant victimization by Vriska). And this is not a failing on his part! Tavros is aware that freedom is something he does not have, and is not happy about it! Freedom sounds pretty good to him! Eventually, he gets it. Good for him.
-Jake, then, presents us with the other interpretation of this concept; that of having a bad relationship with one’s aspect, in which that part of one’s life is unhealthy. Taz can source this better than I can, but while Jake is very hopeful, he is naively so. Jake is a hopeless optimist, a person who thinks that if he just believes in something hard enough, it will eventually come true. If he believes that he’s a rugged, badass adventurer, he’ll become one! If he believes that his friends are all Good Pure People With No Issues who he can have Straightforward, Easy, Uncomplicated Relationships with, that’s what they’ll be! Everything will work out, you just gotta believe. Jake’s journey – one that as of Act 7 he has only just begun to make serious progress on – is that of understanding that hope is not enough, that in order to make the world the way you want it, you have to strive for it.
(Despite his other issues, I think we see the end of this road in Grandpa Harley – one does not become as accomplished in as many different fields as him by wishing in one hand and seeing how quickly it fills up!)
The concept holds up pretty well with the Princes, too – Eridan has hopes and dreams, but they all get smashed to pieces and his moment of greatest power and greatest impact on the story comes at his moment of utter hopelessness. Dirk certainly has a soul, he has emotions (indeed, Dirk’s biggest problem is arguably that he can’t stop feeling way too much, all the time, forever) – but, like his counterpart Rose, he’s very bad at dealing with them and processing them, and he’s constantly held back by difficulties placed in his way by his Self or versions of his Self (such as Hal) and by his own literal Self-hatred. Kurloz we don’t see too much of, but he’s a Rage player (anger, chaos, doubt, purifying truth) who is always 100% calm and collected, and dedicates himself to a god who cares nothing for him – hardly a righteous or truthful faith.
So there’s my counterpoint – I would say that yes, Pages do lack their aspect at the beginning of their journey, but that’s only one way that their difficulties can manifest, and interpreting that too literally is limiting and inaccurate. It might be better to say that early on Pages (and Princes) have a weakness corresponding to their aspect.
A solid add-on! I think I could still make an argument that Tavros’ issues stem from an unhealthy relationship with his Aspect, or a fundamental misunderstanding linked to it. But I agree on the broad points, and I think this is a pretty solid way of conceptualizing the parallels.
We’ve gotta start with the fact that as the third Hope player, Jake is subject to a magical prophecy passed down from Cronus. All three Hope players roleplay Magicians at some point.
Eridan and Jake both use Hope to force an enormous amount of emotional labor out of a Life player. And both Eridan and Jake piss their respective Life players off so much they revoke a symbol of mutual friendship. Eridan does this by using willful ignorance to keep his belief in a legacy of destruction, and then selfishly choosing to destroy Hope to save his own skin.
Jake is more complicated. He actually foreshadows his own behavior when he tells John about his Grandma in his letter, back in Act 4. It’s telling that tells John he likes to be honest, because he’s anything but for the first half of Act 6.
Jake uses willful ignorance to get what he wants without having to be honest about it. In so doing, he ends up keeping secrets–not just from all his friends, but even from himself. Only the part of his brain that takes the form of Brain Ghost Dirk is fully honest about Jake’s true awareness of his surroundings.
Secrecy comes fairly naturally to a Witch. Jade’s plan in its entirety is shared with no one until the end, Damara is secretive and cryptic about her actions, the Batterwitch is noted for her secrets, Feferi doesn’t fill anyone in on the nature of her bargain with the Horrorterrors until after she’s already Dead…so on.
This seems to be an element of his Grandmother’s Jake emulates, but it doesn’t come naturally to him. He mentions that secrecy wears on him and leaves him feeling jaded, which is exactly how he ends up feeling about his relationship with Dirk.
Jade: Becquerel (Space) Damara: Lord English (Time) Feferi, The Batterwitch: Gl’bolyb (Life) Rose: The Horrorterrors (Void), Doc Scratch (Light)
The interesting thing is, the relationship between a Witch and her Familiar always seems to be described in terms of Service. Serve is the verb inherent to Knight/Page, with Knights often Serving for the benefit of others, and Pages often benefiting from the service of others.
It’s from Dirk that we get the best description of Witches’ Familiars, as he describes the relationship between Gl’bolyb and the Batterwitch.
And as it happens, it’s also an excellent description of the sum total of Jake’s experience of Dirk, himself. Which is fitting, because Dirk is also an intense roleplayer–one who roleplays a Knight.
Brain Ghost Dirk is the manifestation of Jake’s faith in Dirk as both his personal bodyguard and his secret weapon–a window into how Jake sees Dirk at his best. Here he parallels Bec saving Jade from the meteor or from imps. While Bec is powered by Space and Dirk by Hope, the image is of a devoted, hypercompetent protector.
Jake’s faith also has a hand in creating AR, however, and Hal becomes the interpretation of Familiars as foreboding and controlling figures. This Dirk most reflects Gl’bolyb imposing its will onto the Condesce’s desires, or Lord English imposing his onto Damara’s.
ok so i totally failed at making that quick or short but that’s the loose gist of it. I could write a lot more but i really need to learn how to make these points concisely so i am hoping this is short and concise enough to get the point across.
So I was thinking about god-tier abilities in Homestuck, and it struck me that rather a lot of the so-called “classpect powers” showcased in hs are either A: a more “supernatural” expression of something the person in question had already been doing prior, or, rarely, B: a direct response to a previously established problem. And in aggregate, these feel like they point toward a fairly particular conception of classpect abilities, that of skills that are learned (or levelups gained in a special ability, if we want to get video gamey with it).
Let’s use John as an example. As the predominant early viewpoint character, his growth is fairly well detailed. As he enters his Land and starts properly growing, he goes from using the Breeze to send objects across his Land using the Parcel Pyxis network, to subconsciously summoning the Breeze to save himself from a fire, to subconsciously having the Breeze emanate in massive quantities from his very body to put out the planet-spanning Green Tragedy, to finally as a god-tier (and with some valuable advice from Vriska) taking full control of the Breeze and using it as a tool and weapon. All of these fall into the A category, but John also has two solid B category abilities, the ability to resist detection via scent, and the ability to turn into wind to protect himself against attacks. And both those abilities are perfect for protection against Bec Noir, who tracked John down via his scent and stabbed him in the chest shortly before John god-tiered, at which point he immediately gained the first of these abilities (he showcased the second when fighting Noir in the Furthest Ring later).
This is pretty solid. I think with a bit of time I could prob argue Jane and the trolls also fit into this schema nicely. A bit busy right now but hopefully soon
Heir’s familiars tend to actually be pretty harmless and less powerful. John’s clearest Familiar is Wizardly Vassal, for example. I could also make an argument for Nepeta, and then Davepeta way later into the narrative–they’re p much set up as Jade’s familiar, and they’re pretty relevant to Arquis, too.
I’m not sure I understand the question, sorry. What other 6?
If you mean 6 classes, each Archetype corresponds to two Classes. You can think of Classes as different “versions” of the Archetype, with the same rough powersets that are simply deployed differently. Or at least, that’s how I think of it.
Oh, no. All I was alluding to was that Mind and Heart powers in general both seem to be linked to alt-universe memories. I kind of already believe this about Dirk, since I suspect he correctly subconsciously intuited Jane’s other name, Anna.
Since Dirk has Heart powers, I just mean he has the idea of Heart to add to any potential fraymotif combination. Considering what Dave and Terezi were able to do together, literally who knows what the kids could accomplish by working together as they learn to use their powers to their fullest.
anon: I don’t do analysis writing on individual classpects, not because I don’t want to or don’t think it’s worth doing (there’s lots of cool peeps doing it on tumblr now!) but because I could do it literally forever.
Writing or producing content mostly related to Homestuck is basically a full-time job for me, so I try to stay focused on making stuff as many people can enjoy as possible. When I do talk about this stuff, I’d like it to be focused on particular characters, and ideally on Youtube.
That way,
A) People who aren’t already in love with Classpects might have a chance in hell of being interested, assuming I do my job well enough and B) I can hopefully paint a much more evocative and interesting idea of what the Title might be like.
Until then, I think what I’ll do is mention a character I read as at least related to said Hero Title, if I can think of one.
At least two characters I’ve considered covering in video form can be read as Pages of Heart, I think: Kirby (serves himself the bodies and identities of his enemies; wears hats) and Steven Universe (though I also think he might be a Knight? I’m not sure. I’d need to rewatch SU at this point.)
@appreciationcat Thanks! I don’t know if anyone “should” use classpects any particular way, especially since I’m not even sure we fully understand the system, but I’m glad if what I’m up to is helping anyone understand classpects better.
@geekness101 See 1. As it happens, though, we have one such character right in the comic. Jake English may not be a Witch, but he does roleplay as one for a good chunk of his narrative. Keep an eye out for my writing on that as soon as I can possibly produce it.
Flying through Storytelling 