Not enough of the fandom is interested in how Classpects may play into Hiveswap, I think. We’ve gotten lots of hints at the player’s potential Classpects, but there’s a lot of skepticism as to whether Classpects will even show up at all, given that the game doesn’t center around Sburb.
I’m here to argue that they’ll definitely feature in some way. And luckily for all of us, whether or not I’m right here will be incredibly easy to prove!
Our case study will be Xefros Tritoh. But before I explain how we’ll scrutinize Xefros to determine whether or not I’m full of shit, I’ll need to talk about three things:
1) Knights
2) Terezi
3) Roleplay.
Extreme Live-Action Roleplay
When I say “Roleplay”, I am referring specifically to the system I advanced in my series on Classes. But my description of it was scattered and focused, so here’s a quick wrap-up:
In Homestuck, when characters are particularly inspired by or moved to imitate rolemodels, that tends to show up in their mechanical behavior as Heroes. What’s more, such acts of imitation tend to come with references to the specific Mythological Archetypes that inform the Class of the Role-Model figure.
The Troll Ancestors are essentially our introduction to this concept, and there is no clearer example than Vriska. For all of Act 5, Vriska strives to emulate Mindfang in all things–and at the same time, Vriska is consistently depicted and referenced as a Fairy. You can see one such reference above.
As it turns out, Sylphs and Maids share the descriptor of Fairy.
Jane, Aranea, Aradia, Kanaya and Porrim are all referenced as Fairies in different ways, and share a number of visual references linking them to fairies.
So Maids and Sylphs are fairies, according to the Class system. But Vriska is a Thief, and attempting to live out the role of one. One important factor in the Roleplay system is that Roleplaying this way is often misguided and unhealthy, and that players are typically at their happiest and most powerful when playing to their innate strengths.
Compare Vriska’s attempts to make Tavros stronger to Aranea’s effort to do the same for Jake. Both end disastrously, but it’s hard to deny that Aranea had an easier time getting the job done.
We’ll talk about Knights (and Pages, by association) in a bit, but for those of you curious, here are the Archetypes for the other classes that have them:
Knights and Pages, contrary to popular opinion, are best described as the “Serve” class.
As Caliborn suggests when speaking to Jake, to “Serve” has multiple meanings in the context of Class powers. Two of them are relevant to Terezi.
1.Shit son, you just got served.
-Urban Dictionary
The first thing Serve classes are prone to doing is Serving their enemies in brutal defeats.
The second–and nicely bringing us into a description of Neophyte Redglare, Terezi’s mythological idol–is the providing of Service.
Knights are prone towards helping others and serving others’ needs through the use of their Aspects. In Redglare’s case, that means that everything she does is at the behest of the Highbloods–even if she doesn’t agree with their ideology.
But perhaps most interesting for our reading of Terezi isn’t anything Knights do through their powerrs, but a different quirk of the Class. One of the Archetypes for the Knight/Page pair is the historical image of the Warrior, including Warrior Caste’s historical tendency to subscribe to a code of honor.
All the Knights we see in Homestuck adopt a code of honor of some sort, in that they hold themselves up to very high standards of behavior based on a persona they construct in their heads.
For Dave, this is the image of the cool dude. For Karkat, it’s the ruthless leader. For Latula, it’s the R4D G1RL act.
In all three of these cases, the Knights primarily use their personas to distance themselves from their emotions and force themselves into positions of responsibility, even if they’re uncomfortable with their own competence or don’t really want to carry out a particular duty.
Which is exactly what Terezi does when confronted with the need to kill Vriska!
Terezi buries her feelings about Vriska and decides that eliminating her is simply the professional way to resolve the problem–choosing to focus on performing her role as Redglare instead of thinking about her own feelings.
Terezi’s Redglare roleplay, however, might even go farther than the three true Knights–since it even includes a literal code for how to act as a Warrior, that she uses to determine when killing was acceptable.
This code of honor is, of course, Terezi’s idea of JUST1C3.
And once Gamzee manipulates Terezi into fully embracing her Redglare persona, Terezi is visually cast as an echo of another Knight–
[S] Seer: Ascend acting as an extended visual callback to Dave’s
[S] Dave: Ascend to the Highest Point of the Building.
Seer: Ascend even starts off with Dave’s symbol!
And the end result of this roleplaying is, of course, as disastrous for Terezi’s being as Vriska’s Mindfang roleplay is for her.
Passing judgment on Vriska leaves Terezi doubt-riddled and self-loathing for years because her true inclinations as a Seer were not to try and go to war for the sake of Justice, but rather to pry, inquire, and discover the truth about Vriska’s nature and feelings. That roleplay misled Terezi from her desires and needs in this respect shows how much of an impact it has in the narrative.
Hopefully this overview gave you an idea of the logic behind it, and if not hopefully looking at other examples I’ve written in the links above–such as
Rose as a Witch, Jane as an Heiress, or Dirk as a Knight–
will illustrate further.
Now. Let’s get to Xefros.
Xefros is interesting here primarily because of his interest in Butlering.
The Butler is the second Archetype that informs Knights and Pages, and it covers the Service connotation as well, but it also includes
last definition of the Serve verb:
To give. As a counterpoint to Thieves and Rogues–who Take–Knights have a tendency to give others their Aspect, or give others things through their Aspect. Much as a Butler offering a plate of food. Davesprite giving John a hammer with Time powers is a prime example.
And on top of being interested in one of the biggest symbols of a given Class in the comic, Xefros also comes with one free FLARP manual, it seems.
Flarp being the same book that marked the impact of Roleplay and Mythological Archetypes on Vriska and Terezi, this is relevant to me.
So my premise is simple. If the Classpect system has any weight in Hiveswap, odds are very good we’ll see Xefros display similarities with Knights in some way.
(I say Knights and not Pages because Pages seem to have a knack for inspiring those around them to do the serving, whereas Knights seem much more inclined to be serving others–and Xefros is definitely interested in doing the serving.)
But there is a catch here.
Apparently, becoming a Butler is Xefros’ ambition.
But that seems a bit odd, considering he’s also a rebel fighter.
So the question is: Is Xefros a Knight, or is this interest in serving (presumably the elite of Alternia?) going to prove to be unhealthy for him?
In other words: Is this an indication of Xefros’ true Classpect?
Or is it a case of Roleplay?
I think it could go either way at this point. Of course, it’s also possible I’m reading into stuff too much and there’s nothing here but coincidences–in which case, Xefros will exhibit nothing particularly related to Knights or Pages or possibly any Classpect stuff at all.
But to be honest, I doubt that. I am, however, very interested in testing this guess, and I hope you’ll all at least be interested in holding me up to scrutiny, too.
That’s all for now. Feel free to drop by on r/Hiveswap’s reddit and Discord if you’d like to ask questions about this, or just jam about Classpects or other cool stuff in general.
Keep Rising.
Flying through Storytelling 