I suspect Rage, as the aspect of theater and acting/performance, might lend itself to a sort of versatility by way of being able to efficiently, if not effectively, play at many different roles. I touched on this heavily in my writing/videos on Gamzee.
By contrast, I suspect Hope might lend itself to an unusual intensity in roleplaying that makes its players less efficient/versatile, but more potent/effective. Eridan’s power boost when he starts roleplaying a Witch or Jake’s power boost coinciding with summoning Dirk as a Witch’s familiar-esque figure are both examples I’d use here.
So, wow. Looks like shit got real all of a sudden, huh? We suddenly understand jack shit.
This is what keeps me in Homestuck, god I love this stuff. Let’s talk bout Boldir a little bit–needless to say, spoilers for her path under the cut.
First things first: Yeah, I have no idea who this is, either. I suspect it might be Boldir herself, given that she suggests she has some knowledge of what happens when someone dies. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead”, “If only”.
The only other party who seems likely to have this kind of metatextual awareness is Doc Scratch, but this doesn’t really feel like him to me. It could also be the MSPA Player themselves, I suppose? We’ll see.
Onto Boldir! I agree with @banavalope‘s opinion that she’s a Muse, and seeing someone else came to that conclusion independent of me and the crowd talking on my Discord made me feel that much more certain. But since I feel I have some stuff to add here, let me run through the evidence I’ve compiled for this view.
There are a couple of lines in her text that seem to echo Calliope; she speaks in a “stage whisper”, for starters, and whenever Stages and Theater references come up, they seem to feel associated with Caliborn, Calliope, or the Rage aspect via Gamzee.
Paradox Space itself is a Stage, and both Calliope and Caliborn find microcosms of that stage on their journeys, using it to tell and define parts of Homestuck.
From her Stage, Calliope invites Jane and Jade to tell us the story of John claiming ownership of his absolute power over Homestuck’s reality. From his Stage, Caliborn tells us the story of how John used that power to unintentionally make Caliborn’s wish to become Lord English come true.
This section of text also reminded me heavily of the Childlike Empress from The Neverending Story, the uber-Passive ruler of the realm of Fantastica, who was described as reflective and somewhat unreadable/incomprehensible in the book.
To be fair, this has as much to do with Boldir’s nature as a Heart player as anything else–it’s very evocative of Dirk’s unreadable stoicism. But still, Boldir’s unreadable “essence” paints her as something like a mirror of the world around her–the garden, the sky, all of it. And that reminds me very much of Calliope, who was herself a mirror of her environment.
Alt!Calliope grows stoic and straightforward when surrounded by nothing but absence and purpose, and Alpha Calliope’s personality and nature is defined by her experience with Homestuck.
Both Callies, however, had a deep intrinsic understanding of the macrocosmic, metaphysical principles on which Paradox Space operates-and Boldir has that in spades.
She seems to have a sense of what happens after death, she’s aware that “Fate” is a force being created by particular forces in Homestuck/Hiveswap, and that the MSPA Player has more leeway in the river of those powers than most. This makes her a unique sort of threat to Lord English and Doc Scratch, who rule over fate on Alternia.
Like Calliope did for the Alpha kids, Boldir uses this awareness to at least partly clue the MSPA Player into their own role, pulling them towards some important part they must play.
What that’ll mean, we’ll find out later, but she’s told us some very interesting things.
1. The Friendsims are taking place within the context of a Paradox. This
is important, because it means there’s at least one stable time loop
defining the narrative, just like there was in Homestuck.
That means the entire story exists diegetically, under temporal constrainment–we see
the events that we see because they’re the events that fulfill this time
loop. Much like in Homestuck, events that conflict with this loop probably cause doomed timelines due to the paradox failing to fulfill itself.
And if that’s true of the Friendsims, its also true of
Hiveswap. I already had reason to suspect this was true, but it’s nice
to see someone in the actual story talk about it.
This suggests that the MSPA Player, and by association Joey and our other heroes, are parts of an event of cosmic importance that must come to pass in order for them to ever have existed.
The importance of the plots of Hiveswap and apparently even the Hiveswap:Friendsim are similar in nature to that of Homestuck, which was necessary in order to create the world that these stories take place in.
2. Paradoxes are inherently irrelevant. This is honestly Boldir’s most interesting line to me, because Paradoxes define everything about Homestuck–but particularly, everything about Lord English and time travel. To say they’re irrelevant is to link them to Void by nature, isn’t it?
I’m honestly not entirely sure what the implications of that are, and if I were to ramble about it this would turn into a totally different essay, so I’ll talk about it later, but this is a very profound statement to make about the nature of reality in Paradox Space. I’m about to vibrate so hard my molecules come apart you guys.
For now, just ponder the question: Paradoxes defined literally the entire plot of Homestuck. If they aren’t relevant, then what is?
That said, also like Calliope, despite her immense and intimate wisdom with regards to the nature of reality, her understanding of its scope is such that she seems inclined to see herself as unimportant and irrelevant in the face of it.
I’m not sure I agree with Bana that she dabbles in every Class (though it does strike me as possible), but she certainly seems quite adept at playing a Rogue.
There’s a lot of Outlaw motifs surrounding Boldir; she lives outside, under a tree, she’s competent at Stealing and committing crime, and she’s pretty much as outside of the social order as you can get on Alternia without being a seadweller.
I’d expect Rogue roleplay from an Oliveblood, since I suspect that as a
Caste they’re mostly ignored by society, rendering them inclined to act
like Outlaws–and indeed, I’d say Polypa and Konyll both have shades of
it.
But in Boldir’s case that role is neatly compartmentalized–its clearly something she can psychologically put on and take off, not the core of her identity. A hat she wears, so to speak.
But The MSPA Player cites Boldir exuding a “sneaky aura”, so I see this as the very Muse-like passive nature of Boldir’s identity/heart/soul influencing the world around Boldir, in like with her current intent to stay outside of society’s sight, as the role of the Outlaw implies. Again, it reminds me of the Childlike Empress, and how nobody in Fantastica would think to hurt her.
Of course, somebody does hurt Boldir, and when she dies it seems to change or shift the world in some way. Again, Childlike Empress vibes–Fantastica literally relies on the Empress’ existence. If she dies, the world of Fantastica goes with her.
Now this whole time I’ve been sidestepping the most direct connection to Calliope, which is Boldir’s relationship to the Spiral. It’s fascinating, to be sure, but most of what there is to say about the connection has been said already, I think.
1. If there’s a Muse character among our ranks, there may well be a Lord to match. Caliborn was linked to his own spiral, so we may assume such a link between Spirals and our hypothetical Lordling as well.
2. The spiral is represented in Boldir’s sign itself.
Meaning if there is a Lord, we might be able to find such a spiral in their sign, as well.
3. There’s a Purple Sign that seems to match this criteria–Capricen has a spiral in it’s design, which curls opposite to Lelo even. One sign is Prospit–matching Calliope. One sign is Derse–matching Caliborn.
So if there’s any merit to this stuff, Capricen just rocketed to the top of the charts as far as my guesses for the True Sign of the mysterious Marvus Xoloto.
I’d already kind of suspected Marvus might at least roleplay a Lord, by virtue of his role as circusmaster. Caliborn is described as a ringleader to his own dark carnival, and if Marvus “runs the shitshow”, its only in Lord English’s shadow, since he’s the one who truly runs the show, after all.
We’ve also got a theater reference in his Troll Call, to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. To be fair, Marvus is a Purpleblood, and so has a certain connection to Rage and thus Theater, so this might not be indicative of Lordship. And Blood might be represented by the line “texting your sister”, since it’s the Aspect of relationships and social connections.
There’s not much else to connect Marvus to Blood, but it’s worth noting it would make a lot of sense for a hypothetical Lord character in Hiveswap to command the story to his whims through Blood.
Trizza and Dammek are both Bloodbound, and if one wanted to pull all the strings in this story, having power over both of them would be a good way to get there. Alternia’s a pretty damn Blood-heavy society in general, what with all the Suffering and social constrictions and interest in romantic entanglements.
All of which is to say, if this is true, Marvus would be quite fearsome indeed.
That’s all I’ve got for now, but damn, am I excited. Lemme know what you all think!
Til next time,
Keep rising.
[Final Notes that didn’t fit in anywhere else: Boldir’s the only troll we’ve ever seen wear
white and without her identifying symbol at all–other than maybe Doc
Scratch.
Ardata and Marvus hide their signs, but they’re also higher on the social ladder, so its an interesting bit of her design. Wonder how important that’ll turn out to be.]
When Aranea starts copying Mindfang, she acts like a Thief, too. The classes are basically just cultural ideals any individual can choose to live up to, and it’s implied that the older you get/the more you know yourself, the easier it is to blur roles or act out the roles you perform in a more adult, premeditated way.
Mindfang is a Sylph–we only know her through the writing she produces, shining light on herself and Alternia to Vriska’s (complicated) benefit. Vriska is inclined to elevate Mindfang in all the ways she perceives Mindfang as being unlike herself. Aranea’s inclined to do the same thing.
Running away from yourself is generally a bad idea, especially if its because you don’t like yourself and are trying to be someone else. That’s the problem both Aranea and Vriska run into with imitating Mindfang, and it suggests that roleplay has more to do with how an individual relates to the role model in their heads than anything particularly to do with the role model themselves.
i dont think its particularly high? in homestuck we’ve got terezi and dirk mainly, maaybe kankri somewhat. I might talk about it more because im pathologically predisposed to talking about dirkjake and so i have the most experience talking about knights/pages nowadays, but there are other roleplay cases im interested in discussing and exploring, too.
it might be common among lowbloods in alternia because butlering is a particularly brutal and thankless version of “serving” jobs that invite that kind of behavior. I wouldn’t be surprised if rustblood girls got a lot of “Maid” roleplay in a similar vein.
It definitely seems to be some kind of social prerogative to Teals, though, like the caste in and of itself seems to be conditioned to value and glorify Service roles, whether its providing legal services or Serving justice to evildoers and whatnot.
“Resigned to the fact that there’s no hope and all thats left in his life is exploitative labor until death” is not the same as “genuinely interested”.
He’s trying to learn about being a butler because the alternative is being murdered even faster. There is no consent from Xefros in this situation, he’s merely complying with that Alternia demands of him on pain of death. It matters that Xefros doesn’t like it, and it matters that not wanting to do it but being forced to leaves him feeling drained and miserable.
That’s why I view the role of the Knight-a mechanical metaphor for his role as a Butler-as a corrupting influence that will likely be discarded as Xefros finds his true self. I 100% guarantee you there’s no scenario where Hiveswap will suggest that Xefros lying down and embracing the role of Alternian butler is a good thing.
The music link was initially Dammek’s idea, yes, but in contrast to the Butler motif it is actually possible for Xefros to choose to embrace it in a healthier way, now that he’s free. So it might turn out to be an interest he develops on his own terms together with Joey–the wish granting implications of the cherub portal suggest that performance is in Joey’s future, after all.
1) Whether It’s a purpleblood power or a bard of rage power is beside the point to me. I consider the purple blood caste itself biologically and socially engineered to force in its members a connection to Rage, regardless of their true alignment. The same is true of every other blood caste in my framework: Rusts are linked to Time, Jades to Space, and so on.
Pretty much every troll introduced in Hiveswap and the Friendsim so far includes references not only to their True Sign aspect, but also the aspect of their caste. That’s one of the reasons I misidentified Xefros as a Time player before the Zodiac dropped! I didn’t recognize this mechanic until @wakraya pointed it out.
2) There’s a second half to the classes’ descriptions, remember? There’s also “inviting destruction THROUGH Rage”, as if by the will of the Aspect–which does evoke to me why Gamzee seems almost possessed by his fury when it comes.
3) Another thing to consider is that, at least in my framework, Gamzee’s Horrorstuck shtick coincided with Gamzee embracing the legacy of the Grand Highblood–who was Kurloz, a Prince.
I consider this indicative of Gamzee beginning to roleplay a Prince, and so his verbiage during his more directly violent segments would coincide with the Prince description of simply Destroying Through X, which seems like a better fit to me.
The fact that Gamzee is one of the most Passive classes forcing himself to roleplay one of the most Active is a contributing factor to the extreme stress he seems to be under when doing that Ragey thing, in my opinion.
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.
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.
I agree completely with shizukateal–I think the imagery is too prevalent and too frequent to be brushed off as “oh it’s Prospit’s influence”, when the imagery is very specifically linked to Seers. Crystal balls? Spectagoggles? Her early fixation on seeing events disconnected in time, and trying in vain to remind herself of when all these things are supposed to happen, while she frantically attempts to give instructions to others to allow them to bring about the events she has witnessed? It’s textbook Seer of Time behavior, but it’s not healthy for Jade, she isn’t really happy or satisfied behaving that way, because her true nature is far more active and hands-on.
When Rose is (whether through inversion or roleplay) behaving like a Witch of Void, she is wielding wands (a Witch symbol if I ever saw one), trying to solve everything herself (an Active sign), and highly focused on rebellion (also a Witch trait) against her Light aspect and the concept of anything being meaningful (the tearing apart of more Light, to get Void, its opposite).
When Jade is (through inversion, because roleplay frankly doesn’t justify it) behaving like a Seer of Time, she is wielding assorted crystal balls (a Seer symbol), trying to pass every bit of information she has glimpsed in the clouds of Skaia (moments scattered throughout Time) on to the people who can actively Do Something about them while remaining quite inert herself. She’s even likely doing it all because her extremely isolated spatial position has left her feeling powerless and frustrated in her natural aspect and class. She can’t change things happening across Space now, herself, so she naturally flips to telling other people what to expect across Time.
I think it’s also causing additional confusion when people treat the Derse vs Prospit categorization as meaning the same sort of active/passive as the Active classes vs Passive classes.
If we want to take WP’s official word on the subject, Prospit sway means: inherently optimistic, adaptable, intuitive, instinctive, emotional, unstable, changeable, flexible, outward-looking, and focused on the present day to day.
Derse sway means: inherently skeptical, pessimistic, dissatisfied, rebellious, self-aware, controlling, inflexible, cerebral, introverted, and fixated on analyzing the past and looking forward into the future.
‘Passive’ classes, however, are (according to Calliope) those which “allow their aspect to benefit others”, and a player with a Passive class is “one who allows (aspect) to be (verbed), or invites (noun) throUgh (aspect), as if by the will of the aspect”.
‘Active’ classes, by the same token, are those which “exploit their aspect to benefit themselves”. And an Active player is “one who (verbs) (aspect), or caUses (noun) throUgh (aspect)”.
These are not describing the same feature at all. If they were, classes would naturally be linked to either Derse or Prospit. They’re not. In fact, as near as I can tell from searching mspa, Derse is never called ‘active’ in canon OR on the extended zodiac, and Prospit is never called ‘passive’. How did that get started, anyway?
I’m drawing partly on the description of Derse/Prospit from the Zodiac, but just as much, if not more, from a particular post Hussie made on Tumblr (archived here). where he describes the moons this way:
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.
But if we’re saying active/passive literally translates to offensive/defensive for the sake of this topic, then Derse would be very active and Prospit would be very passive. Derse’s job is to attack. Prospit’s is to defend. This seems to carry over to the roles of the dreamers too. Dave and Rose turned out to be very active players. Dave time traveling all over the place, making a fortune on stocks and such. […]
Being from Derse means you are from a culture of offense and aggression.
Being from Prospit means the opposite. You could argue that these are
qualities that either rub off on the dreamers, or they are designated as
those dreamers in the first place because of those qualities. You could
take the view that these are innate tendencies to overcome, as seemed
to be the case for Jade and Rose.
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.
As for the item imagery you note–I mean, I tend not to assume roleplay unless there’s some kind of hard evidence to imply it in the text, through description in the narrative prompt or pesterlog dialogue.
The examples you note seem pretty general to me, to that effect. Jade has crystal 8-balls and a Scratch cueball, but then so does Vriska. Vriska even also had special goggles that let her peer into the cueball, where Jade couldn’t–does that mean she was also roleplaying a prophet?
I feel that the focus with roleplay is less on individual actions and more on the impact of role models and interests on the characters’ ways of interacting with the world. Hence why I’m so careful about it.
Trust me, I’d be delighted if I was convinced Jade was roleplaying a Seer, not the least because it avoids me having to consider any implications that Jade roleplaying a Page makes her more Passive, which I *am* considering but am not in love with.
But if I’m going to be convinced, it’s going to have to be with more evidence. Inversion theory is not canon, and I am left unsatisfied by arguments that posit a character has changed in so fundamental away simply on its merits. If Jade *is* roleplaying a Seer, then I’m sure it’s somewhere in the text and I’ve missed it. But where would she be drawing that influence from?
If I may, I would like to put forth a term I’ve been using to express that a character is acting in a way that would make more sense with either an opposite class or aspect, but not both: Ghosting. I don’t get super involved with these discussions and and kind of new to the fandom (I started reading when Act 7 was uploaded), so I’m not sure if anyone else uses this term.
I originally used the term “ghosting” to describe the way Princes and Bards have personalities and modus operendi that seem to represent their counterpart aspects; Gamzee and Kurloz are religious zealots (Hope), Eridan is pessimistic and wants to tear down society so only the royal bloods are left (Rage). Beforus didn’t really give Cronus an outlet for his Rage-related tendencies the way Alternia did with purplebloods and Eridan, but his pessimism showed up in other ways: his totally-not-a-harry-potter-reference-what-are-you-talking-about deal with Kurloz and Lord English. He really, really believed that he could and would defeat Lord English, but Kurloz convinced him otherwise and forever after he was pessimistic. And then we have Dirk, who, being cynical and the kind of person who overthinks everything, acts more like I would imagine a Mind-bound person that isn’t as insane as Terezi would be.
They all are still aligned with their true aspects, of course. Dirk has his splinters and is extremely focused on himself and his actions. Gamzee has his murderspree and his kismissitude with Terezi that causes the meteor crew to fall apart, and so on and so on. It just isn’t very obvious. I believe that Jade is ghosting pre-entry, but with both her class instead of her aspect.
This is where my evidence comes in, @revolutionaryduelist. Two of the major symbols associated with Seer-hood and Prophecy in Homestuck are the 8-ball and the cueball, both of which were possessed in conjunction by 2 people: Vriska and Jade, and the way they used them was fundamentally different. Vriska Stole the Relevance of her 8-balls on the regular; she kept breaking them and was noted to be almost addicted to the action. She also Stole Knowledge from the cueball via her vision eightfold. She didn’t use it to see or See anything; she Stole the Knowledge it had by asking questions and then Stealing a glance through its surface. She never saw or Saw anything through it.
On the other hand, Jade never used her cueball to See the future. She didn’t use it at all until she Alchemized (Created) her Spectagoggles. Vriska kept putting her to sleep, so she kept using the Oracle Clouds during the eclipse with Skaia. I would posit that the use of the word “Oracle” is enough to link the clouds, and Jade who Saw what happened in them with her eyeballs, to Prophecy and Seerhood. She also alchemized herself a pair of Spectagoggles, which she then immediately used to Look at her friends around her session and Know what they were doing. And when she saw Rose doing something she didn’t understand, she asked. She wanted to understand, which is perfectly in line with a Seer’s tendencies.
It is here where we see that Jade was Ghosting, not Inverting or Roleplaying. Jade had no guardian to be influenced by. There wasn’t really anyone she looked up to so much growing up that she wanted to imitate them. She only had Bec. So Roleplaying is out. And an inversion would merit a full flip from Witch of Space to Seer of Time, and I don’t think Jade flipped over to the Time Aspect.
We don’t know everything Jade Saw in the Oracle Clouds, but what we do know Skaia showed her had to do with Creation, which is part of Space. We saw the “birth” of Bec on Earth. I don’t remember everything else she saw (it is almost midnight here and I’m only still up because I really, really want to write this), but we know for sure that she saw John’s dreamself Wake Up, which is essentially the creation of another perspective for him. We know that she Saw several things regarding the way all the kids entered their session, essentially Knowing the Creation of their Incipisphere (literally their Space in the Furthest Ring) ahead of time. Then when she was using her Specagoggles, she was Looking at all of her friends and where they were in Space.
Never was she Served in the same way as a Page. John acted as her Server Player because literally everyone that played Sburb had one. Dave became her Server Player after that because that’s what he did as a Knight. Furthermore, we never really see anyone try to “improve” any part of herself as we did with Jake and Tavros. No one was trying to make her stronger or more able to take on the world.
And then she made Jadesprite, a Saw something she wanted to Change about herself, realized she was frustrated with her passivity so far, and flipped over to her Ideal Nature as a Witch.
Thoughts?
Hm. Fair enough, I actually think I’m fairly swayed. I think it makes enough sense from a Jungian perspective, in that Jung posited that the archetypes were immutable potentials *all of us* held. I think it makes sense to say a particular role has been forced on a character by simple circumstance.
You know, it occurs to me. If waking up early on one’s moon is a Space player thing, maybe this whole oracle cloud experience explains why, on the Zodiac, Space sounds like it almost tends towards Passive behavior. Maybe all Space players are, indeed, encouraged into Seer roleplay at the start? Or the ones on Prospit, at least.
Thanks for swaying me. I’m genuinely curious–are there other examples of “Ghosting” behavior like the one you’re describing? Besides the Bards and Princes, I mean. I’m not sure if I agree with those, but for now I’m just curious to see where else you see it.
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.
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.
Flying through Storytelling 