Yep, depending on what elements you weigh the heaviest, Knights and Pages in particular get complicated. That’s really the only thing that throws me off in determining which is Passive and which is Active.
The reason I currently come down on Pages as Active is twofold. One, I simply think shaking up the current reading of Knights and Pages is important, because most people’s readings of Pages is really off, frankly?
But two, when considering it this way, I keep getting tripped up by other examples. Like, Muse is the Most Passive apparently–but Alt!Calliope has her greatest impact through her own direct action by blowing up a sun. Lord is the most active, yet Caliborn and Lord English have most of their direct impact on the plot through the ways they coerce, manipulate, and influence others. What stays consistent is who benefits, regardless of method. Calliope and Alt!Calliope’s actions are basically always to the benefit of others. Caliborn’s machinations always benefit himself.
It’s possible that’s a quirk exclusive to Master classes and there’s more to figure out about how Active/Passive works for the other classes, but for the time being I use it as a guide and consider the “For oneself” vs. “For others” habitual distinction the most important one to consider for Pages and Knights. Pages tend to benefit themselves, Knights tend to benefit others.
at this point, i think the unifying myths I’ve picked up on carry enough weight that I value them over nebulous rearrangements of the class terminology we don’t know. That’s because there’s a lot of overlap between the classes and how they might use their terminology: Thief/Rogue, Knight/Page, and Prince/Bard are all associated with weaponizing, for example.
I wouldn’t be averse to an alternate arrangement, but unless links are drawn from the canon that associate the classes together as strongly and as consistently as the unifying myths seem to, I’d probably continue to regard the setup we’ve developed on that basis as canonical.
I was reminded last night that Calliope had referred to passive/active classes with a +/- designation– passive is +, active is -. I think this has been a kind of enduring fandom mystery, as to why she chose + for passive and – for active, rather than, say, the other way around? Or why use +/- for this concept at all??
But I was thinking about this question and it hit me like a fucking thunderstroke.
Batteries.
Batteries!!!!
A battery is composed of, and I am likely simplifying this greatly due to my limited understanding but stick with me here, an anode with a negative charge (-) and a cathode with a positive charge (+). The anode has an excess of electrons, which creates an imbalance in a system that really really wants to be balanced. The cathode has relatively few electrons, which makes it the perfect place for all those excess electrons in the anode to go so they can correct the imbalance. When the anode and the cathode are connected, the electrons flow from the anode to the cathode, creating a circuit– and that’s the magic that makes batteries work!
Active and passive classes are distinguished in a number of possible ways, but to my understanding, they can by and large be explained this way: active classes act, passive classes react. Active classes are the source from which most of the action flows, but passive classes facilitate and allow the action to be. In this way, they’re a lot like the anode and the cathode– one being the font of influence, the other being its conduit.
I would super love if dyed-in-the-wool classpect theorycrafters could tell me what they think of this idea, because I mostly just read and very rarely contribute to this sort of discussion. But I THINK I’m on to something here.
Huh, that makes sense.
Good observation. It kind of bashes the theory that active classes are inherently self-aggrandizing and all the actions are directed towards the self and that passive classes are directed toward others as support. Good job!
Well, that certainly wasn’t my intent. My hope was that it could be largely compatible with other passive/active theorizing I had been reading, including that one, but particularly with the Daoist reading– passive/+ as yin and active/- as yang– which was a major inspiration for this post and totally dovetails with the battery metaphor imo. (i am basically indirectly @’ing @revolutionaryduelist here so i may as well @ them directly– this idea came to me while reading up on their classpect writing.)
There’s a decent amount of wiggle room here, I think, so there’s no need to define these terms too strictly. I vastly prefer viewing these sorts of things cooperatively versus competitively. 😀
I’m inclined to agree with this completely. I think someone once told me something similar but I didn’t quite get it at the time, actually? But yeah this seems like it makes sense to me, thanks for bringing it up!
It doesn’t really conflict with the selfish/selfless readings for me, either. Calliope says the active/passive dichotomy is complex and can mean many different things, and I regard the selfish/selfless thing as being indicative of a broad trend or a habitual default for the character, not a hard rule.
Another way to understand the division is that Active classes are simply more self-defined and self-focused, so their impacts on reality emerge much more from within themselves and their willingness to force reality into their ideal shape.
Passive classes tend to conform more to the status quo and tend to act to return stability to a disturbed/unbalanced system, so they’re more sensitive to the influences and nuances of the world around them.
It’s also worth noting that both the Selfish and Selfless extremes are just indicative of trends, in my view. A healthy example of any kind of player will ultimately just come to understand their own thought patterns and reach a balance that works for them & those around them, not just blindly revel in the satisfaction of their natural affinity.
This is worth clearing up for me since apparently I’ve given some the impression that, like, Jake being a selfish jerk to Dirk is perfectly ok because thats just his Class? So it’s worth clarifying that I just think it’s understandable, rooted in actual desire for Dirk and his company, and is a problem they can both work out over time.
This turned into talking about dirkjake again of course so im gonna stop here but bottom line is: good post op i dig this
Higher castes live longer and tend to be more vicious. While lower castes have shorter lifespans (even without the drones hunting them) and are naturally attuend to become psychics.
Just because you want to force political correctness unto a race of violent space dominators and establish that racism is bad in our world doesn’t mean it’s a lie among the trolls.
1) Charming. Do you get invited to parties often when you open rebuttals to people’s points with “you fuckin dumb”?
2) All this, and yet, Beforus managed to handle the exact same physical differences with a system that didn’t necessitate genocide and slavery! Hm, how about that! It’s almost like the eerie bargain the Alpha trolls made that allowed Scratch onto Alternia had some sort of impact on their society. Interesting. Almost like…the racism and exploitation was a bad thing? Huh.
3) Before you even go there, no, Beforus is not as bad as Alternia in “a different way”. Alternia is explicitly presented as a fall from grace for Trollkind, and it’s brutal, and it’s awful, and it’s Lord English’s fault. Don’t make me dig up the screencaps just please go actually read Homestuck. Systems of exploitation are bad and unnecessary across the board–no physical differences justify exploitation and brutality. Period.
And another thing about the source of STRENGTH thing. I don’t think that’s right either. Equius is plenty strong in his own. The reason why him and every other Zahhak followed it (in relation to how the hemocaste was in each alternate universe) was because they are incredibly dependent on SYSTEMS. Everything has to be in their right place, everyone doing what they’re meant to do. If someone doesn’t fit in the system it confuses and flusters them.
Equius is physically strong because that’s a mutation endemic to his blood color, of which he seems to be a particularly exceptional example. He values the blood that marks him as someone physically strong quite similarly to how Caliborn values physical strength itself.
And he values the system that takes that physical trait of his and tells him he’s special for it, tells him he’s Above Others due to something he was born with, which is objectively. Not. True. There is nothing about Equius that makes him intrinsically better than anyone else–he just treats others that way because the system he so values conditions him into believing there is. Yes, of course he’s reliant on the system on which he predicates his entire self-worth.
“Confuses and flusters” him? Sure. And on Alternia, he would’ve acted on that confusion and fluster by exploiting, hurting, or reporting others to the authorities. He’s a Good Troll by alternian standards. This is how systems of oppression work. None of this does much to counteract my point, or…make Equius’ ideology more palatable? Is that what you’re trying to do here? It sounds unbelievable, but I’m not sure what else you could be going for.
It took him being killed, get his moirail killed, be revived as a sprite, getting combined with a horse AI, and finally reuniting with his moirail but he did change at the very, very end when it would even matter. Either way, the changed Equius is what was finally put into LE.
Yes, at which point the “changed Equius” was promptly devoured by Caliborn’s soul and integrated into LE like so many spare puppet parts. Caliborn predominated–that’s what he does. The other souls incorporated into LE are little more than amalgamations of interests and puppets for him. Equius has no blame or agency in this–it’s simply a way he fulfills his Class role by “becoming” Void. Not reallyyy sure what this is supposed to tell me.
Ok so first of all I have to say that the idea that Dirk and Jake’s relationship seriously wavered on any level but the superficial “are we officially dating” one is, imo, inaccurate. The boys are in love, they love each other and are best friends and this is true across the board for the Alphas.
Thanks a lot for your message though, and I’ve been meaning to say something about John and Dave’s relationship for a while now so sure, I’ve got a bit to say for you.
predictably as hell this got really long, so meet me under the cut.
But to talk about them, I’m going to have to talk about a different pair of friends who grow up together, first. One underexplored element of Homestuck that I’ve always found interesting is how Classpect seems to reflect, to a degree, how characters take influence from their societies.
I’ve written plenty about Jake and Jane in this regard, but I think John is maybe my favorite example for how nuanced it is.
A great example of what I’m talking about is Equius and Vriska’s contrasting relationships with the Hemospectrum. Namely, Equius, the Void player, values it greatly, while Vriska, a Light player, regards it as a bunch of bullshit.
What Vriska DOES put value in is how it affects circumstance–how it makes people see Tavros, how it makes people see her, the very real burdens of responsibility and societal expectation it puts on everyone. THAT’S real. THAT matters to her.
But the ideology itself is a bunch of baloney, and Vriska picks up on that almost instinctually. Now let’s take stock of what the Hemospectrum is in the story. It is, simultaneously:
1) A source of STRENGTH, at least for Equius.
2) Inherently irrelevant and unimportant to anything about any of the characters except how it makes society treat them.
3) Explicitly a lie.
4) Most importantly for our purposes: Entirely physical.
True to Homestucks’ Gnostic roots, unlike true ideas that the characters reason out over the course of the story, information that is unimportant, irrelevant, and built upon markers of physical identity is inherently coded with Void, as the aspect of all things false, unfortunate, unimportant and untrue. The world of the physical Yaldabaoth creates in Gnosticism is coded not just as the world of lies and physicality, but also as the world of Darkness. Hence the link.
For Homestuck, this means that that sort of information has a source. It can be traced on a timeline, just like any other objects in the story, because information like the Hemospectrum amounts to what is essentially a bad meme.
For the Hemospectrum, that source is Equius, who first inherits that incredibly unimportant information from his society and then becomes nothing when he succumbs to its influence, allowing Gamzee to kill him.
Now here’s the kicker: Eventually, Equius (along with Gamzee) becomes the source of the Hemospectrum himself, becoming part of Lord English and so explaining how LE got the idea to impose such a complicated system in the first place.
In essence, once he becomes part of LE, the hemospectrum itself is Equius’ most lasting legacy on the plot, a time loop to rival Gamzee’s RIDICULOUS proliferation of clown-themed horror across the cosmos. Equius has truly become Void in this regard, a potent undercurrent for Heirs.
Now let’s talk about Dave finally.
So like while it’s true that John and Dave’s friendship is mostly wholesome as fuck and really sturdy, I’m going to complicate that narrative a bit on both extremes.
One of the things I’ve always found appealing about Dave is how intensely devoted he is to his friends growing up–which makes sense when you consider how unhappy he says he was in his home life.
If Dave has a penchant for rapping ad nauseum and talking to his friends even after they leave to humorous extremes early on, well–that has at least something to do with the fact that he’s using them as an escape from his nightmarish childhood.
This devotion is more than just him being very giving and caring–he’s invested in all of the other betas emotionally, and it matters to them how they feel about him. Maybe none moreso than John, even years and lots of chilling out later.
And it plays into Davesprite’s lost sense of self in a big way. When John rejects him in favor of “Real Dave”, Davesprite is genuinely hurt and angry, and John continues to aggravate those feelings of displacement during the 3 year journey on the ship. John’s perception of him MATTERS to Dave.
And a lot of what made Dave’s childhood awful was his internalization of heroism as linked to not just Bro’s weird hypermasculine bullshit, but also explicitly to heterosexuality.
Dave compares himself unfavorably to John as a hero, and knowing what we know about him now, it’s pretty reasonable to put Dave’s struggles with his attractions to men at the root of it.
And given how similar Jade and John are and his obvious romantic interest in Jade, I’ve always read him as being just as interested in John–just closeted and repressed about it.
Which means that all of those gay jokes he and John partook in had an effect on Dave far beyond what they had on John, which I think is really interesting. Also interesting, though, is how John reveals he parsed all of those things growing up:
As jokes. See, John also inherits a lot of his culture’s toxic ideology, like Equius does. But unlike Equius, John doesn’t inherit it as information to value and define himself by.
Breath is the aspect of detachment and levity, and fittingly, John inherits these toxic masculinity-enforcing cultural memes as a series of jokes! Stuff he says, but doesn’t think about. Stuff not particularly worth “taking seriously”.
So his relationship to masculinity is a lot less fraught and intense–partly because he fits the mold more neatly than Dave, but also partly because he simply didn’t actually believe the stuff he was saying.
Here, John is a depiction of the straight dude who makes shitty jokes and claims to be “just kidding”, except that John actually IS just kidding, and so he doesn’t really force the issue or focus on it.
That doesn’t mean that toxic masculinity hasn’t had an effect on him–he still struggles with cultural shifts to a degree. But I like that Homestuck allows for different levels of impact of these cultural memes across individuals. This stuff doesn’t affect everyone equally, and it doesn’t affect everyone quite the same way.
On top of that, it’s a good example of the fact that even a genuinely good person who doesn’t believe this stuff can have a negative effect on people they care about by transmitting these cultural cues. Because it’s the memes themselves that are toxic.
We’ve all known Doc Scratch would be involved in Hiveswap for a long time now. I mean, this is Alternia. Nothing temporally important or cherub-related gets passed him without his approval and the Handmaid’s (non-)involvement. In Hiveswap, he’s been introduced to us as ‘The Man’ (on the moon) through the defaced poster of Trizza, the arena stickball terms, and:
(note that this is a reference to the very human – and understandably known to Joey – phrase ‘screw the man,’ not her referring to Scratch. Why is it coloured then? Perhaps Dammek has the HTML set up to talk about him, or it’s a product of the Scratchware. I’ve seen some people wondering why Joey would know who he is and to code his name like this, but she probably doesn’t, so just clearing that up).
And we’ve talked to him in other ways too. We’ll be talking about the hint system under the cut.
EDIT: credit to @thricequeen and @hypeswap for writing this post that I first saw point out the circle on the UI! Obviously I disagree with their interpretation of the hint system’s connection to Joey, but this was a really good find on their parts! I don’t quite remember where I first saw the Degas pointed out but they both mentioned it in that post as well, so go check them out.
Meanwhile, here’s another good point someone made about Scratch’s designs on Xefros, something which I was unsure of but this makes sense considering how Xefros has been unhealthily forced into roles of service by his society (Scratch’s doing) and his friends/responsibilities (which ties into his classpect as discussed by @revolutionaryduelistand myself here): http://jakemorph.tumblr.com/post/165425562332/hiveswap-theory
to be fair, its because Sophia doing everything by herself is the cause of all the problems lol so it gets the most notoriety. She was supposed to do everything/creation with her partner/paired concept, just like all Aeons are supposed to, so she has a partner in all gnostic myths, but the problem is she just never uses him lol
anyway, to answer your question, yes and no, kinda but not really
because Sophia’s Partner Aeon is often called Theletos or Christos, but oftentimes is paired with other aeons called Nous or Anthropos
Theletos/Christos/Anthropos are meant to represent the idea of “mankind” like how Sophia represents the idea of “church/wisdom” and their union in cosmology was meant to be like a parable about how Mankind and the Church should be “married” together and produce things together and etc
like, basically think of all natural Aeon pairs as Married Hetero couples, things meant to be in “male”/”female” unions who produce things together
what complicates things though is that Christ as in Jesus Christ the actual human person was considered a different Aeon who’s natural partner was the Aeon called “the Holy Spirit” and these guys were like, the lowest of the rungs of Aeons
and basically the reason everything is complicated is because different Gnostic practices considered Different Aeons married to eachother or lower or higher up in the Hierarchy, especially Sophiua’s partner, he’s constantly changing
and because people like to equate Sophia/Church/Holy Spirit and Nous/Logos/Anthropos/Mankind/The Word/Jesus Christ into these hodgepodges of symbolisms, even when they really should be and are kinda seperate concepts
and also because people see the word “Christos” and immediatealy assume they mean Jesus Christ, not some other dude who happens to share his last name who isnt even really a dude hes and aeon and even though he represents the Idea of Mankind, he’s not exactly human shaped
Jesus Christ the person is always explicitly a human man born of a human woman (and god)
Aeons are not humans and have nothing to do with humans and existed before Humans were ever a thing
but also sometimes Jesus Christ the man IS also an Aeon, just not the Aeon that Sophia’s partner is
its, complicated and inconsistent lol
aaaaa this is fascinating and im never going to be done researching this stuff. I would love your take on how it seems to me that the Sophia/Christ link is presented in Homestuck if/when you have the time, feel free to shoot me a message on discord about it! (dont wanna say too much about that publically until im sure about it)
What Pumpkin and Homestuck are partnering with Viz Media to work on a lot of cool stuff together in the future. This will include projects based on both the Homestuck and Hiveswap worlds. The possibilities are wide open… Take a look at the sorts of things Viz has already published or produced. These are all examples of things on the table for future consideration for either Homestuck or Hiveswap. I’ve got plenty of ideas, and so do they. Maybe you do too?? – News Update, 14 September 2017
The first of the planned products from this partnership is the (F I N A L L Y) complete novelization of Homestuck, and this gives me palpitations every time I think about it as someone who can buy Viz books at his local comic shop, but paid over $100 NZD to get Act 1-3 books shipped from Topatoco in 2013. There could be official Homestuck merchandise for a reasonable price 15 minutes away from me in the next 4+ months. W!O!W! Let’s talk about that (text heavily).
I will say that my friend @hussianphilosopher made some points about Gamzee I thought were compelling, and on my agenda is moving that little Tumblr post over to Medium with a few expanded sections on Gamzee and Damara.
I’ve known about Whistles, and yeah I agree that Gamzee is definitely a giant callback to that in many ways. But honestly I really don’t like the idea that any character in homestuck is just a plot device/makes no sense–Equius is an extended humanimals reference in a bunch of ways, but he’s still also a character who has depth and intrigue and a coherent personality, as Tex Talks breaks down excellently here:
HOWEVER, If I were to accept that any character in Homestuck is contrived and nonsensical and exists only to be a joke, it would be Gamzee. It’s just that I believe that perception is intentional, and in itself part of his character arc. Tex Talks may help get across why I think so here, as well:
I honestly think it’s pretty fascinating how much Gamzee deliberately flattens himself, how much he *chooses* to be uncomplicated as a character, because he devotes himself to a single principle: serving/becoming Lord English. As revolutionaryduelist pointed out in their last post, he destroys all the offshoot timeline’s he’s in and chooses, over and over, to seek out LE instead of helping his ostensible friends.
I’ve never really bought the argument that Gamzee lacks motivation, even in Act 6. From, like, day ONE, we’re told that the most important thing in his life is his religion. His switch from interpreting it as a distant prophecy of future clown messiahs to meaning LE (and, by later implication, himself) is admittedly subtle at first, relying on recognizing that he was speaking to Doc Scratch in Cascade and that the Vast Honk is actually LE’s, but by mid Act 6, it’s not even subtle anymore. Like,while Gamzee is doing his antics, the Author himself literally tells us that Gamzee sees Caliborn as his god, and that he gave up all his other connections to serve him. The only missing piece of the puzzle, then, is why Gamzee called *himself* the mirthful messiah back in Horrorstuck–which is answered in Caliborn’s masterpiece: he experiences apotheosis with his own god by becoming part of LE. Which explains the Vast Honk in the first place. It’s great.
Note also that after Horrorstuck, Gamzee basically ends up having zero connections to anyone else–which were the bonds and desires that made him a more complex character originally. Tavros, the one person he arguably kind of cared about, is dead and mourned, and while Karkat’s morallegiance manages to snap him out of cruel Joker prankster rage mode, he ultimately chooses (as Hussie says) to abandon it for his LE-centric goals. He discards the bonds and thus his complexity, in other words, to serve an idea, a principle.
This is why the Whistles parallels make so much sense: like Whistles, Gamzee chose to devote his entire being to one entity, in this case Lord English. And his arbitrary, plot-device-like appearances in Act 6, while closely connected to the caprice inherent in Rage, as Tex points out, also make perfect sense in the context of him wanting to fulfill all the time loops that lead to Lord English. He becomes less of a character, less of a person, because *he wants to be.*
Honestly, the parallels between Caliborn and Gamzee are fascinating. They have the same hubristic sin: they’re willing to give everything else up to be exalted as a supcreme god, and don’t recognize the value of what they’re sacrificing. Only Caliborn does it as himself, and Gamzee, as a passive class, other-oriented character, does it entirely through submitting his agency to that of another. God, I love this comic sometimes.
In short, everything Gamzee does makes perfect sense when you consider what he wants and what he’s willing to give up for it. And that, while it makes him an increasingly simplistic character, also makes him a fascinating one.
Why would I be worried about it? it already did :p
No but to be serious, like, I’m a fan of BKEW’s. I’m a fan of virtually every Homestuck writer out there? I would not be writing what I’m writing if BKEW hadn’t written what he’s written. The same is true of @dahniwitchoflight , @sam-keeper , lildurandal, and a bunch of other writers and thinkers. Not sure how I feel about seeing anyone so passionate about something I care about described as a crackpot, regardless of whether I disagree with them about some things, because as far as the passion and conviction goes I really am already there, and I don’t have any reason to be ashamed of it.
That said, I try really really hard to look and focus on the text directly, to pay attention to what the comic is prioritizing and branch out from there. So like, I guess I’d say I’m not TOO worried I’ll lose sight of what I’m doing because I’m ultimately less interested in any particular theory I advance than I am in understanding Homestuck as a whole.
A good example is Xefros; his reference to PASSIVELY absorbing a narrative has genuinely thrown me off a bit re: whether Pages are active or passive. I’m still inclined to regard it as roleplay, and the evidence still seems to weigh Pages active and Knights passive, but one of the things I’m so keenly interested in in hiveswap is whether it changes that equation for me. Whatever the case turns out to be, it’ll lead to a better understanding of what the Classpect system prioritizes for describing a class as Active or Passive, so we’ll have something to gain whether I’m right or wrong.
So I guess I’d just say I strive really hard to take Homestuck seriously, and part of that is being reactive to the views of others and new evidence presented to me because I literally never know when I’ll be given new information that’ll shake things up for me but eventually lead to a stronger reading of the text? This has happened literally more times than I can count.
Flying through Storytelling 