crisesofsanity:

Hey, Duelist! It’s Powerhouse, here to hoot at you from another platform.

Here are my two cents: in the WOG quoted, Hussie presents the idea that Vriska’s situation is a more egregious version of Karkat’s. 

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?

(Aside: this is a bit of a strange point to make, considering that Vriska generally appears very far from passive… but maybe that’s the point, to help us grasp that there is something passive about Vriska’s nature that most people miss on first read. I wonder what that could be?)

Asides aside, knowing that Thief is active, the description of Vriska as a more extremely misplaced Karkat could suggest that Knight is active too– and it might even give us some extra information about the relative placement of Knight and Thief on the active side of the scale (i.e, that Thief might be more active than Knight).

Hussie does stick to weasel words and hedging techniques in this WOG, for instance phrasing these points as questions, but interpretations that rely on Hussie deliberately trying to mislead the audience of this post (through lies of omission or otherwise) can quickly lead us into a destructive cycle of doubt. If even one idea raised here can’t be taken at face value, there is no way to be sure that the others can: it makes sense to me to stick to the face value and try to glean meaning from that.

It’s also probably worth pulling back a bit and reading the entirety of the quoted paragraph.

revolutionaryduelist:

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.

Keep reading

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.

What Hussie seems to be getting at here is that moons are somehow indicative of innate tendencies in players that can exist outside of their class’s “intended” goals– tendencies towards being active or passive independent of whichever one the player’s class is. So as the Prospit-dreaming Vriska struggles to ignore her innate passivity, the Derse-dreaming Meenah may be convinced to resist her innate activity and only return to it once she’s had some kind of epiphany.

(Feel free to repeat that in your head with Karkat and Dave.)

The question then becomes, in cases where you don’t know what someone’s class is supposed to mean, how are you supposed to tease apart their moon tendencies from their class tendencies… and whether they’re supposed to resist their moon or embrace it?

I think the starting point here is the idea that your moon indicates the culture that you “come from”. If the moon indicates one thing, shouldn’t the class indicate another?

Heya! I hadn’t realized I already followed you, I’m pleasantly surprised.
This got a bit long so my response is under the cut.

I do think moon and class indicate different things entirely, and that a player’s Class is the biggest sign of what active/passive state they’re healthiest/happiest/most comfortable in. Essentially, it’s their “true self”–a set of instincts they can’t really change about themselves.

I read the way Hussie describes the moons fairly literally, then. It’s less that they’re indicators of some Secret Tendencies of the players–though they can be that, more on Vriska and Karkat in a minute–and more that they’re environmental influencers. They pull a sort of “gravitational weight” on their Players when those Players dream on them, subtly tugging one way or another.

This also sort of suggests why moons might affect some players more than others. The amount a player spends actually dreaming on the moon might well matter! Rose, Jade and Dave all spent a lot of time awake on their respective moons, and exhibited strong Moon influences as a result.

Hussie describes Karkat as being alienated from his own more Passive nature, and Karkat actually barely dreams on Prospit at all. That said, since the only thing we can tell for sure from this section is that Thief is probably more Active than Knight, I don’t necessarily agree that this suggests Knights are Active.
On the contrary, I think it’s likelier it suggests the opposite.

Hussie describes how Rose and Dave start off their sessions very Active here and talks about how Rose’s god tiering leads her to embracing a more Passive role. Similarly, he suggests that Karkat’s self-image is overly Active, implying he’d be better off adopting a relatively more passive role.

Which he does. Since Hussie doesn’t mention it, it kind of gets lost in the weeds that Dave and Karkat’s arc progression pretty much mirrors Roses’, since both of them grow more passive further into the meteor journey.

If future developments suggest that it’s healthier for Dave and Karkat to take up more Active roles in the future, then that’ll change stuff for me, but I think it’s fairly clear that Dave and Karkat get happier and more comfortable the more they focus on their relationship with each other, as opposed to on their own self-images and the responsibilities they bring.

It is possible the Knights are Active and just meant to be Somewhat Less Active, like Vriska. I just don’t think this tract of text tells us either way.
While we’re talking about her, though, I do think we learn what it means for Vriska to embrace her Prospitian nature, too.

It looks like (Vriska), basically. She’s happiest focusing on herself–and she needs the focus to figure out that mess–but she spends a lot of her narrative either focusing on empowering others, or considering the existential needs of all of the hypothetical beings in causality above her own.

This ultimately holds Vriska back in terms of personal development, even if it makes her effective at adventuring. (Vriska) becomes more passive behavior-wise, relative to the intense action that mindset brings about, but she is more focused on her own benefit and her own feelings, which is a genuinely healthier place for her to be.

Essentially, she stops trying to be Mindfang and starts trying to be herself.
As a result, she’s able to form a genuine connection with Terezi as an equal, and symbolically gain enlightenment.