Tag: hiveswap

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!

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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!

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.

hello! first of all i want to tell u i really enjoy reading ur metas and analysis, i think its amazing how u contextualize some things and the entire story suddenly makes So Much sense. second, ive been wondering about hope and rage – im not sure i can word myself correctly, but hope is like an aspect that has ppl firmly believing in an ideal or belief. rage is its opposite, but both canon rage players (im not counting xefros bc were not sure about him yet – but im pretty sold on the (1/2)

stormsbourne:

revolutionaryduelist:

page of rage idea!) seem like avid followers of their own faith/religion/cult. in the true zodiac test, the questions that seemed to relate to hope and rage seemed to put them in a clear dichotomy as well – so ive just been meaning to ask u what do u think about this?? is the dichotomy about something other than faith/doubt?? (2/2)

The main thing is that the Rage players’ religion doesn’t actually require faith, at all, because it’s simply true. The Mirthful Messiahs worship Lord English/Caliborn, and, well…he exists. He’s right in view of all the ghosts and stuff, blowing them to smithereens.

I think the dichotomy involves a lot more than faith/doubt (coherence vs. contrivance, for one thing). But as far as the Rage players’ religions go, I don’t see much of a conflict, currently.

from what the canon classpect test indicates, it’s not so much “faith vs. doubt” as it is “loving truths vs hating lies.” hope players have an intrinsic need to believe in something, and their power comes from that intent belief, whether it’s jake’s beliefs that he can save his friends (masterpiece) or that dirk can help him (game over timeline), or eridan’s belief in “white science” ultimately giving him his abilities. 

rage players, meanwhile, are hellbent on disproving lies and making sure everyone knows how full of shit they are. the most obvious canon for this is when gamzee loses his absolute shit about icp, because their version of juggalo-ing runs super counter to the truth he knows. it’s a gigantic lie and he fucking hates it. this is why caliborn/LE, through lil cal, is able to speak to him and influence him so readily: LE offers the absolute truth. he is already here. gamzee is already part of him. gamzee embraces that truth, but it’s not what gives him his power. what gives him his power is the hatred he has for what he sees as lies.

rage players, according to that test, bring doubt and confusion, but how that happens is because they are tearing down what the rest of the world may perceive as true because to them, it is flawed and not worth saving. both hope and rage involve commitment to an idea, but rage is about commitment to destroy what is false, and if doubt is sown along the way, the ends justify the means.

Yeah, I agree with this pretty much completely. Pretty useful nuance, too–I’d never verbalized the relationship between them quite this way. Thanks!

So ive seen a few people talking about how light is possibly the aspect of stories, and how the light players in homestuck were somewhat aware that they were in a story, vriska through literally interacting with the author, rose through insistence that they follow character arcs in a few scenes (I’m not entirely sure how Aranea would fit into this theory though). Just wanted to get your opinion on the whole thing since I️t sounded interesting. Hope you have a nice day!

The more I think about it, the more I agree with Tex Talk’s description of the Aspects as each relating to an element in narrative construction.

It’s been traditionally accepted that Light is the Aspect of narrative revelance/importance. The “Spotlight”, if you will. Tex argues that all the Aspects represent different elements of a story.

Light is plot relevance, while Void is plot irrelevance. He hasn’t done videos on every Aspect yet, but he has covered Rage, which he describes as plot Contrivance.

So I’d say all Aspects are an aspect of stories, in that they all describe different  parts of narrative construction that make a story whole. 

So then it’s not so much that Light is the aspect of stories, but that the fact that Homestuck is a story is one of the most important things about it. Indeed, characters like Vriska and Jasprose come by the closest to acknowledging and interacting with the author.

hey duelist I think joey is a breath player not light and reason is joey has not have any good luck before going to Alternia but has gotten trapped or stuck and needed to be saved so maid of breath. That and joey is john half sister it will connect them that and i think is genetics also is a factor for aspects like some times they have the same aspect of there dad or mom or what mixing those aspects will make together or a random aspect.( game and time)

Hey, thanks for the message!

I’m not sure about this, to be honest. If Joey were a breath player, I’d expect to see more Breath-related descriptions and dialogue surrounding her. So far, there’s a lot of Light and Life, but I haven’t seen much Breath yet. Feel free @ me with stuff.

Besides which, sure Joey’s related to John, but by that measure she could just as likely be a Space player, like Jade. I actually wouldn’t be shocked, to be honest? It’d require some recontextualizing, but I could see arguments that Space imagery is already there, what with the green sun and all that.

Her parents are also Jake, a Hope player, and if my guess about A. Claire is right, then a version of Jane, so a Life player. Or A.Claire could be someone else entirely, at which point she could be any Aspect and might be influencing Joey in ways we don’t understand yet.

My point is, there’s room for Joey to be related to players of lots of different Aspects, so I’m not sure I’d use that as a way to tell for sure.