Just wanted to chime in for a second about this question:

Can a player appear entirely active even if they are in a passive class?  How closely does active/passive relate to the player’s actions?  How much did Rose’s status as a Derse dreamer affect the activity/passivity of her class?  How good is Hussie’s storytelling, actually?  What else might the readers be wrong about?

Because as it happens, Hussie’s actually talked about it. I usually don’t do word of god stuff, but this particular quote is handy in exemplifying how Hussie might think about the Active/Passive dichotomy.

For reference, here is the quote:

classesandaspects:

This is a really good question!

First of all, not really.  BKEW’s system is the most popular by a wide margin.  Although that might be partially due to the fact that he serves as a very well-known figurehead. Theorists who think similarly to him will stumble onto his pages very easily and probably end up adopting the whole system, or something similar to it.  Alternate systems, on the other hand, usually share some common theories with each other but can differ widely in the specifics based on the reader’s personal interpretations.

Also, just the fact that BKEW is so popular means that any novice reader trying to get into classpect will probably see his theories first and form their own theories based on BKEW’s system.  Most of the theories I see use class/aspect concepts very similar to BKEW’s own, even if they end up at different conclusions.

Deviation from BKEW’s system is most apparent in Aspect Pairs or Aspect Duality.  (I really need to fix those tags eventually.)  Everyone knows BKEW’s aspect system:

LIGHT – VOID

SPACE – TIME

HEART – MIND

LIFE – DOOM

HOPE – RAGE

BREATH – BLOOD

and the next most common system is probably what I call the What Pumpkin system, named after the graphic that they had on their site and due to the fact that this aspect presentation tends to appear mostly in official Homestuck media:

BREATH – LIGHT

TIME – SPACE

MIND – HEART

LIFE – VOID

HOPE – DOOM

BLOOD – RAGE

And then there are aspect systems that differ entirely from these two. I can’t describe them all here, but I do recommend going through my Aspect Pairs/Duality tags linked above to see the ones I’ve collected so far.  Those posts almost always describe each aspect, so you can compare aspect definitions from there too.

As for classes,

(This is off the top of my head so I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but I think I got the most popular ones and haven’t been too badly biased by my own theories)

KNIGHT

• Verb: “exploit” or “protect” (sometimes “protect/serve”)
• -/+: contested, usually active
• Paired with: Page (active ”exploit”), Maid (passive ”protect/serve”)

HEIR

• Verb: “change/manipulate/control” “protect” “create” or “invite”
• -/+: contested, usually passive
• Paired with: Witch (passive ”change”), Mage (”create” or ”invite”), 

WITCH

• Verb: “change/manipulate”
• -/+: active (confirmed word-of-Huss)
• Paired with: Heir, Sylph, Mage

SEER

• Verb: “know” or “guide”
• -/+: passive (confirmed word-of-Huss) but I have seen active by a few theorists*
• Paired with: Mage (”know”) or much less commonly Maid (”guide”)

MAGE

• Verb: “know” “invite” or “suffer”
• -/+: usually active; passive if the theory is more centered on how shit tends to just happen to the Mage
• Paired with: Seer (”know”), Heir (”invite” or “suffer”)

SYLPH

• Verb: “heal/repair” “change/manipulate” “create” or “guide”
• -/+: almost always passive
• Paired with: Witch (passive ”change/manipulate”), Maid (passive ”create” or “guide”); I think I’ve seen Seer (active “guide”) at least once as well

MAID

• Verb: “create” “provide” “repair” “protect” “serve” “guide”
• -/+: usually active
• Paired with: Sylph (active ”repair” or “guide”), Sylph or Heir (active ”create”), Knight or Heir (”protect”), Page (active ”provide” or ”serve”), Seer (active ”guide”)

PAGE

• Verb: “provide” “serve” “grow” “exploit”
• -/+: passive
• Paired with: Heir (passive ”grow/change”) Knight (passive ”exploit”) Maid (passive “create” or ”serve”)

Then the classes PRINCE, BARD, ROGUE, and THIEF are usually accepted as given by Calliope in-comic.

* 

in my experience the theorists who suggest the Seer is active are going entirely based on in-comic evidence and have not seen the word-of-Huss that confirms the Seer is passive.  (Which is really interesting to me.  Can a player appear entirely active even if they are in a passive class?  How closely does active/passive relate to the player’s actions?  How much did Rose’s status as a Derse dreamer affect the activity/passivity of her class?  How good is Hussie’s storytelling, actually?  What else might the readers be wrong about?

You could also look to the passive/active nature of the classes in making some retroactive sense of the Derse/Prospit dreamer duality. Passive/active classes are also a pretty vague thing, and don’t resolve so easily into simple dualities like defensive/offensive and such. Those are the guidelines for understanding them, but there is clearly a lot of flexibility within that system. They seem to suggest tendencies rather than absolute capabilities. Like there isn’t a rule that says a passive class could never use an offensive technique. The system is meant to be very flexible, and in the story, classes suggest a little more about a hero’s path and role in the greater quest than what their battle capabilities are.

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. Rose went on her crazy solo mission to break the game and fight Jack. Jade and John had more passive roles through most of that, players who were “acted upon” by other players and circumstances. John was always being led around by trolls this way and that, drifting around wherever the wind took him. Jade was especially passive for a lot of the story, spending a lot of time falling asleep (or being put to sleep) at key moments. It wasn’t until she reached god tier as a Witch (said to be a highly active class) that she became extremely active, making lots of stuff happen, rounding up planets and all that. Rose may have been a similar case, being excessively active as a Derse dreamer, but then flipping over to a passive role upon reaching god tier as a passive class.

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.

So yes, a Passive player can behave Actively, and vice versa. It’s also worth noting that Calliope’s description of Active/Passive references another existential dichotomy concerned with behavior sometimes called “active” and “passive”–the Yin-Yang. 

Full disclosure: I’ve written about the implications of Yin-Yang for understanding the Active/Passive spectrum previously. While confident, I’m not married to the idea that I’m right about each pair or verb. But I do think the Yin-Yang connection itself is pretty much inarguable, and popularizing it would go a long way to improving fandom understanding of Active/Passive as a system.

hope this helps, or that you at least find it interesting!

PS: While I’m here, I feel It’s worth noting how Hussie casts doubt on the nature of Knights, leaving it pretty ambiguous as to whether the class itself is active or passive.