I remember you said in one post that grimdark Rose (and even Rose just before she turns grimdark) is roleplaying fairly successfully as a witch, but do you have any thoughts on Jade acting like a seer at the very beginning of the story? Like we’re introduced to Jade as someone who has an ability to see into the future, but this is completely dropped as an attribute of her character later on, so I was wondering what you thought of how that coincides with her character development or anything

shizukateal:

revolutionaryduelist:

I don’t really think Jade is acting like a Seer at all. At least, I haven’t seen that referenced in the story so far. Roleplay is a way that players deviate from their native active/passive states, but it doesn’t seem to be the only way. Dreaming moons influence players to be more Active (in Derse’s case) or more Passive (in Prospit’s) on their own.

Jade *is* acting more Passive during that section of the story, but that’s explicitly due to her waking up early on Prospit, and Prospit’s Passive influence. I don’t really know that we need more of an explanation for her behavior there.

Similarly, I don’t really think Jade’s ability to see the future is dropped as an element of her character–it just stops being relevant as the timeline catches up to Jade and other characters start waking up. 

Everything Jade does is, by Kanaya’s own admission, something Kanaya also does. So unless Seer roleplay is a thing all Space players default to early on (which I suppose is fairly possible–Skaia certainly qualifies as a divine influence), I don’t think that’s what’s up.

It’s important to note *why* I think Rose is roleplaying a Witch. It’s a byproduct of her interest in wizardry and an inability to really understand Mom’s true nature as a Rogue. She isn’t assigned the Witch roleplay from abstract, Skaian forces–she’s driven into it by her own confused admiration of her mom and desperate desire for power.

If Jade is roleplaying a Seer, I’d expect some similar impetus or drive or associated imagery from her. Along those lines, I think there’s *sort of* an argument Jade might be roleplaying a Page, though I kind of feel like Grandpa and Nanna’s relative absences mean there’s not a ton of ancestral influence from them. It’s hard to say.

ok, see… I support a lot your roleplay theory, but this is where I disagree.

Or rather, I think that both your roleplay theory and bladekindeyewear’s inversion theory are both valid interpretations of the same concept of the charactes acting in resistance/defiance of their role and should be applied on a case to case basis and can even sometimes interlope, like in Rose’s case. For example, I think “Aranea is roleplaying as a Thief” is more accurate than “Aranea is overbearing her Sylph role”, but I think Inversion is more accurate in this case. Yeah, Jade is acting more passively due to Skaia’s influence, but why is she so submited to said influence? Vriska, who is putting her to sleep every chance she gets for 13 years of her life to further her own agenda, so Jade’s attitude on life up until she can’t dream with Skaia is to just do what the clouds say, and once she’s forcefully taken out of that position she starts acting more actively, as represented by her actually confronting karkat’s bullshit instead of just blocking him  The difference between Jade and Kanaya is that the latter has a normal sleeping schedule and a passive alignment in her class, so she can enact her role with more balance.

Also, I don’t get why you say there’s no imagery associated with Jade as a seer when everyone up to act 4 is calling her a Psychic, has 2 pages were she shows off both her 8-ball and cue ball and later makes a pair of goggles that let her see everything. Not to mention the entire segment of her letter to PM and the cable she left for The Mayor.

My basic standpoint is that WP has said inversion theory isn’t canon, so I don’t have much reason to regard it as an influence in the story. I think Jade is submitted to Prospit’s influence because she dreams a lot on Prospit.

Prospit and Derse are two distinct cultures. They have their own sorts of identities that can influence dreamers on their own. I don’t think you need extra justification to explain why someone is influenced by a place that they grow up in–that happens as a matter of course.

And that’s what Prospit and Derse are to their respective dreamers–provided they’ve woken up. Jade wakes up early, as does Kanaya, and as a consequence both grow up in two different worlds/places/environments simultaneously.

Their exposure to Prospit’s culture also encourages both to act Passively, but Kanaya suffers less for this as she’s already a Passive class. Tavros is another example–he spends the latter part of his game being incredibly passive, and also, it so happens, dreaming on Prospit.

We see from Jadesprite emerging from the Dream Bubbles with her sense of self-indulgent, helpless fatalism that Jade is extremely susceptible to this kind of environmental conditioning, which makes sense, because environments and places are part of what Space describes.

So I view her passivity as being more telling of her nature as a Space player than of inversion, on her part. As for the psychic stuff, I mean. I guess I’m just not all that inclined to regard “psychic” as synonymous with “prophet”.

A Prophet is a pretty specific archetypal image, and all of the classes access psychic power through the Aspects. Heck, the Zodiac’s -Bound designations link Aspect powers to Earthbound, implying Aspects in and of themselves are psychic in nature.

So sure Jade is psychic, but so is literally everyone in the cast, by Homestuck/Hiveswap’s own coding. I don’t think it’s impossible to convince me Jade is roleplaying a prophet here necessarily–I honestly am not confident I have a reading of her early character I’m 100% satisfied with, I feel like I’m missing stuff, and it could well be that.

But again, this implies literally all Space players–or at least all players who wake up early on their moons–will end up roleplaying Prophets. That’s possible, but it’s a legitimate question that I feel warrants searching for an answer to.
I am not convinced inversion is that answer. That’s about where I am.

If the internet, the whole thing(Google, YouTube, Tumblr, the Dark Web, everything) had a god tier. What would it be? I say a Lord of Blood, but I really want to hear what you say

Probably can’t go with anything but a Muse of Light.

It’s essentially the Gnostic world of ideas or the Collective Unconcious made manifest physically, if you think about it. Jokes, stories, images, lies–we experience all of reality, vicariously, through this slim sheen of glass and light. The screens inform us, educate us, give us knowledge and power–the power to reach out, the power to be heard, the power to be seen.

That’s kind of what the internet is. It’s light–electricity, energy, power harnessed into a form that is able to showcase any thought any of us care to share, and give all of our eyes windows into that holds those forms.

It’s a terrifically powerful tool, one that determines and controls basically everything about the world we live in. It commands us, one could say–holds our attention even as it constantly directs us towards each other.

I’m not sure how well I’m getting across what I feel, but I think a lot about the internet, and the way it entangles us and connects us and drives us apart. Basically, I think the internet can be understood as an entity that commands us all, for all of our collective and individual benefit. So I’d say Muse of Light.

Hey! So I’ve been thinking about your Light aspect theories and they explain so much! Rose dropping relevance during the three year meteor journey is a loss of Light because she started drinking (which is Roxy’s thing, and we all know what aspect Roxy is.)

Aaaaaaa I’m sorry I missed this Ask for ages, but yeah I completely agree!
Kanaya links Rose’s behavior when drunk to a lot of concepts related to Void, too:

image
image
image

So on and so forth. Void and soporifics are pretty strongly intertwined!

dingodad:

blood caste is NOT the alternian equivalent of race… even if we ignore that canonically alternians DO have an equivalent of race (land and sea dwellers are referred to as the “two races”), every blood caste has its own COMPLETELY UNIQUE internal traits that make them better at one thing or better at another thing, which is nothing like what ethnicity is, unless you’re literally using a definition of race from like, the 17th bloody century, mate

racism is racism. caste is caste. if the hemospectrum was a racialist institution, equius would hate gamzee just as much as he hates lowbloods. but he doesn’t, because the castes represent pseudo-xeno-feudalist classes (and are referred to as classes many times in the comic and suplementary material!). racists don’t see race as a spectrum; the closest thing would be the spanish-european caste system introduced in the americas post-colonisation, and even that brings up an important point; you can be of mixed ethnicity, but you can’t be of mixed caste. because castes aren’t malleable, arbitrary distinctions like ethnic groups are; they are strictly enforced social classes.

also: castes exist in real life. for starters, the troll “castes” are probably named after “castes” in ant colonies: physically differentiated forms of ant who all have specific roles to play in a colony, just like troll castes in the alternian empire. and ant castes aren’t anything like “the ant equivalent of ethnicities”; they’re actually more like genders. so if you wanted to directly translate the troll blood castes to a near-western near-human setting, you’d more likely be dealing with 12 genders than 12 ethnic groups.

if you really need a direct human analogue to caste, you’re in luck and still don’t need to use ethnicity because there are human societies with caste systems that don’t depend on ethnic segregation. take the caste system of the Ethiopian Amhara people, for example;

The […] caste system consisted of: (1) endogamy, (2) hierarchical status, (3) restraints on commensality, (4) pollution concepts, (5) each caste has had a traditional occupation, and (6) inherited caste membership.

so there you go. didn’t mean to turn this into a whole arse essay but reading the alternian castes as a form of alien racial segregation not only lacks a whole lot of nuance but also just has a bunch of unfortunate implications. tune in next week

Hm. The “traditional, assigned roles” thing makes me feel way more confident in all the idea of the Castes all assigning some kind of Class behavior to its members, as well as the Aspect association. Interesting stuff, thank you!

I love your roleplaying theories and definitely think that they are an interesting way to look at Homestuck and certain character’s behaviours. I was just wondering if they only roleplayed another’s Class or if there were some instances of Aspects being roleplayed, too?

I’m genuinely unsure. I think there’s a possibility Xefros is manifesting the Time Aspect (and Dammek the Breath Aspect), and it seems like Joey is manifesting both Light and Life.

So I think we’re starting to see what Calliope referred to when she said players could manifest powers “in defiance of their Aspect” if corrupted or resistant to their true calling.

We saw stuff like that in Homestuck sometimes, but it’s basically always been linked to the complementary Aspect, ie: Rose’s Voidy tendencies, Aradia’s Witch behavior leading to her merging with a symbol of Space through self-prototyping like Jade did (Bec for Jade, a Frog for Aradia), so on.

Until now, that’s generally been understood as Aspect “inversion”, but given what we’re seeing in Hiveswap, I think the system is likely more flexible on the Aspect end, too.

But I don’t know in what way yet. I think Aspect “Switching” happens almost always as a *result* of Roleplay done wrong, but I don’t know if the switching itself is Roleplay, or what rules determine what Aspect one “switches” to, or rather, adds.

Happy New Years, peeps!

In this section of our exploration of the Hero Titles, we discuss the Archetypes each pair of classes is based on. To be clear: This writing is based mostly on my own exploration of the comic! We don’t know for sure whether these play into how the Classes are structured on any official level.

However, I hope it proves a good starting point for understanding the Classes, and getting a sense for how flexible and evocative the Hero Titles are. Let me know if it does!

You can support this project at:
https://www.patreon.com/optimisticDue…

https://liberapay.com/optimisticDuelist/
https://ko-fi.com/U7U16EJZ

Or follow us on social media!:
https://revolutionaryduelist.tumblr.com
https://twitter.com/RoseOfNobility

https://www.facebook.com/HomestuckExp…

Find the music on Bandcamp!:

“Teal Seer”, by Kera L. Jones https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/…
Art: https://sangcoon.deviantart.com/?rnrd…

“Bronze Rebel”, by Yan “Nucleose” Rodriguez https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/…
Art: http://akitsu-47.tumblr.com

“Purple Tyrant”, by Kevin “UWBW” Grant https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/…
Art: http://purenonsens.tumblr.com

Intro music is “Nemuro Kinenkan”, from Revolutionary Girl Utena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8luvp…

so I enjoy your videos alot. And I like classpecting. I used to do some classpecting blogs. And after seeing your videos, I feel inspired to make a classpect focused video series that focuses on individual classpects determined by something like a strawpoll. I don’t know why I felt the need to tell you. But maybe if I get motivated enough to go through with it (which is the hardest part) and I get to the Mage of Hope, you could be a guest? idk. just spitballin. do you think it’s a good idea?

I feel that the Homestuck fandom overall might benefit from a shift towards Youtube, in some ways, so it sounds awesome to me.
Like, I really can’t stress how big a shift I think it’d make.

If you’ve ever played Dark Souls or engaged with its youtube fandom, or for that matter if you’ve ever browsed a game wiki, then you might get why I feel this way.

Like Homestuck at the end game (and in many ways, throughout it’s run), Dark Souls has some extremely esoteric and vague storytelling tactics, and a lot is left for the player to deduce from cryptic clues and environmental storytelling.

The thing is, Tumblr makes this stuff VERY difficult to talk about! I get wordy and overly elaborate when I communicate through text (as you can see), and that lends itself to stuff that’s hard to read.

I think video is a more effective way to communicate this kind of analysis because it forces me to structure my arguments and prioritize brevity and clarity of conveyance.

And the clearer and more enjoyable I can make videos, the easier it is for new fans to take an interest in the comic’s lore and background, which I feel could easily be a huge part of Hiveswap’s appeal. It’s already received substantial exposure from lets players like jacksepticeye and stuff. And again, borrowing Dark Souls’ example:
People love deep enviromental storytelling and background lore stuff.

So I think more people deciding they love Homestuck enough to tell people about it on Youtube is a good thing. Let me know if there’s any way I can help if you do! And I have no idea if I’ll have the time to guest in anything, sorta having trouble keeping up as it is, but if we get the chance, that sounds really cool!

Hello! I read your theory on Roleplay in classpects, and I have to say that I love it and it is a great theory! Using that, as well as the imagery that you pointed out (black = passive, white = active) I want to raise a question about Knights being active as well. I know your arguments for them being passive, but I do not think that this was brought up before. I was rewatching some flashes due to nostalgia, and in [S]Flip and [S]Attempt rare and highly dangerous 5x SHOWDOWN COMBO, (12)

Terezi and Karkat, one of which could have been roleplaying a Knight, while the other was a Knight, were linked with the colour white – although in Flip it was only the glasses for Terezi (and wings for Vriska). What are your thoughts on that? (22)

Thanks for the ask! And for the insight. This might well be a solid point in favor of reading Knights as Active.

image

I honestly don’t know if this scene is meant to convey this kind of Yin/Yang stuff, tbh? That said, Vriska’s roleplaying a Sylph, which is one of the most passive classes. So this wouldn’t match the imagery either way.

image

Karkat and Gamzee here might certainly back up the view, though.
Karkat’s in white, clear as day.

I should mention Karkat and Gamzee here would probably still check out, either way. Bard is one of the most passive classes, and Karkat is the one about to take action here–he’s simply more Active than Gamzee is, at the present moment.

image

And in the very next shot, the colors invert. And this isn’t the only time just the signs are used to denote Active/Passive status, I don’t think?

So things seem a little muddled to me right now. I suppose I should tip my hand a bit and say that, if I seem hard-headed in talking about how nuanced this is, it’s only because I’m weighing this section of Karkat’s arc with literal word of god in mind.

I’m talking about this bit of a post on Active/Passive dynamics Hussie posted on Tumblr, back in the Good Old Days oh god i’ve been in this fandom so long…:

Being from Derse means you are from a culture of offense and aggression. Being from Prospit means the opposite. [..]

[…] Or maybe sometimes they are tendencies that are resisted, and need to be understood and embraced. As a Prospit dreamer, did Karkat struggle because he was actually passive in nature, but had a very active self image as a leader and conqueror?

Was Vriska an even more extreme case of misplaced active behavior from a Prospit dreamer? These are yet more things to consider when looking at everything contributing to the hero story of an individual in this game.

So there’s that. Karkat and Dave certainly echo Rose’s arc of starting off miserable and quite Active, and slowly growing happier as they adopt more passive roles. So I’m not sure what to think here, but I have to admit, I’m genuinely swayed.

If anyone has thoughts, I’m all ears.

Do you think that Xefros Page of Rage thing could have been inverted by Dammek? By forcing him to live as Dammek wants, he could be effectively switched into a beginner Thief of Hope, which wants hope but cant really get it. We already know he has an unhealthy relationship in this way.

I mean…no? I don’t really buy inversion theory, and even if I did I wouldn’t agree that a Page would invert into a Thief, since I read Pages as active.
If you have a particular reading based on lines in Hiveswap’s text,
I’m happy to hear it out, though.

In act 1, related to Xefros, I’ve seen a ton of references to Time (largely centered around Xefros’ exploitation by Alternia and his toxic relationship with Dammek), and a good number of references to Rage. Hope has yet to show up on my radar.

Similarly, I’d say the Butler motif links Xefros (and Dammek) to roleplaying a Knight. I don’t think I’ve seen any references to outlaws or pirates or whatnot linked to Xefros, either. I do think there’s an argument for Dammek as a Thief (Xefros explicitly refers to Dammek as ‘taking his stuff’), but none for Xefros just yet.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, necessarily, since ofc I missed the Rage references before the extended zodiac pointed in that direction. Feel free to send me screencaps and whatnot of whatever part of the text you feel point to a Thief of Hope reading.

How I feel Kilius’ Hope powers work

ancient-trolls:

I want to start this off by stating my perception of Knights. There’s a big discussion over which of the Knight or the Page is active or passive. I see a lot of stock in both of the interpretations that say Knights are active/passive and I’m unwilling to completely disregard either interpretation, especially seeing that there could very well be a Class test with canon information on them a la the Extended Zodiac. Instead of listing out the generic abilities like ‘Exploits/Serves Hope/through Hope’ etc, I’ll instead talk about a specific thing about Kilius’ Hope powers.

Professional Wrestling is the most Hope thing ever, period. It’s completely built off having the audience suspend their disbelief. This lets the wrestlers smack each other with fake weapons, go through tables that could barely support a grilled cheese sandwich and have it all played completely straight. A man puts a snake glove on and the other wrestler is now being attacked by a snake. This shit is normal and intrinsic. There’s a name for this concept, Kayfabe.

With that in mind, combined with Kilius’ absolute zeal for it, the Hope-powered Cerulean, if he develops nicely and gets enough power, makes wrestling real. As in, he will impose wrestling logic on you and you are forced to comply.

Let me write out an example. The move that best shows off Kayfabe is the Irish Whip. It’s not exactly a move, more of a transition but it makes my point well. The Irish Whip involves taking hold of your opponent’s hand, pulling them and flinging them in a direction, usually to bounce them off the ropes and into the corner.

The thing that completely destroys Kayfabe is the simple fact that the opponent can easily negate the move by just… not running. Seriously, it’s not like the creative team or the wrestlers are disguising this fact and even poke fun at it.

So picture the scene; you are an imp facing off against this glistening player who’s wearing some golden kilt. He approaches you, grabs your hand and just… pulls you in a direction? Only you can’t stop moving. He has long let go of your hands but you just. can’t. stop. Kilius’ faith in wrestling has made it so you can’t just simply stop moving your feet because that’s not how wrestling works. It’s part of the illusion, the illusion that Kilius has so much faith it.

Here’s another example, you’re a separate imp and after seeing your buddy be compelled to endlessly roam the lands until he hits the great rung corner called death you’re reasonably wary to face off against this guy. He kicks you in the gut, not really, the kick was clearly off by a good few inches but you still feel the impact. You feel your head get placed between his legs and you feel him flip over your body, only for your entire body to backflip and then you only partially feel your head impact the ground before the part of your brain responsible for registering what the fuck just happened is crushed between the ground and the soft, muscular legs of this glowing twunk.

So there! With his Hope powers, Kilius essentially makes his opponents and allies run by wrestling rules and logic. His punches and kicks carry their full weight and impact even if they miss their mark or Kilius holds back his strength. When he stomps the ground, the punches he launches land with even greater impact and force. If Kilius truly believes, which he most certainly does, that he can suplex you, you’re gonna be suplexed.

Anyone’s free to inqure, add their own take or simply make a vague reaction to this post!

man stuff like this is one of my favorite ways to talk about classpects/aspect powers. like, using the framework homestuck provides to provide context and insight into an otherwise seperate passion/interest and help sell the appeal of it

anyway i love this concept, this is a cool idea for a character :B