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thepsiionic · 17 hours ago

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if you dont mind typing a bunch of paragraphs right now can i get a rundown of how you interpret each sburb class? i trust you more than anyone else about this i think

edit: hey its me chalice from the future. i didnt keep this brief at all. ill make a separate post trying to condense the information i put here as well LOL.

you caught me at a good time im like peak homestuck special interest. i'll try to keep it brief but due to the way i rotate aspects and classes, it'll probably be a bit all over the place. i will say, i am a much more aspect-oriented person than i am class. and there is a reason for that! here is the reason:

classes are an arbitrary "game role" title given by sburb to define the type of "arcs" a "character" will go through. sburb is a videogame that turns real people into "players" and views each echeladder step as a step towards "leveling up" aka growing up. truthfully, an aspect is the more important part than the "class" and that is why ultimate players like Ultimate Dirk (though, dirks absolutely lying about being ultimate. the only ultimate i personally believe we see is Aradia) because the title is only applicable within the story you're in. once the story becomes too open ended, or you play "different roles" the title completely falls apart. basically, it is an arbitrary game mechanic that attempts to apply its self to real growing evolving people, and that often locks players into believing they only have "one arc" to follow. it is like a gender title, you are assigned that and your assignment will influence your views on how you can interact with your aspect, but ultimately, it is just another box that the game is applying to you willy nilly. something that is important to keep in mind is that ultimately, classes are all neutral- none defines you as an antagonist or protagonist, but the GAME will attempt to make it sound that way. "princes" are inherently antagonistic, but that is only because we have only ever been on the side of what theyre fighting against. i can see a session for example having too much rage, and a prince of rage actually benefiting as the hero because they destroy the rage within it. issue is, we only see antagonistic princes because homestuck is about the "bad ends" of all these things. these characters fail.

this is often why i don't stress classes too much especially when classpecting real people- you cannot exist within this box unless you are literally a fictional character, and hopefully! through out your life you will realize that your title may change with age. thats completely normal, because we are real people. that said its still fun. i definitely identify with mages and thats because i feel like looking back on my life, i definitely fall into the stereotypical mage behavior. ANYWAYS. ill get into the classes now.

i also want to say, there is still no canon outline of what classes are inverses of eachother. heirs and witches are passive/active inverses, and knights/maids are passive/active inverses. but otherwise, i cannot remember if there is any other canon information other than what i've speculated.

heir - this is the "protagonist" class, and functionally, they are passive manipulators of their aspect. that means they manipulate the course of their aspect through their story just by existing, they don't have to consciously practice much, or put in a TON of effort into using their aspect because its innate with their existence. that said, this also means they struggle not to lose themselves within the aspect. heirs are naturally gifted, but with that comes the isolation and loneliness of being one with their aspect. june can do anything, she is THE protagonist and as an heir of breath (freedom, distance) she can literally manipulate her and others freedom from the narrative, which is where her retcon powers come from. but because of this natural ability, she also has a hard time placing herself BACK in the narrative, often feeling that deep distance and dissociation that comes from her aspect to the point that she becomes nothing but wind. equius is a smaller example, he ground himself into nothingness, quite literally losing himself to the void and being absorbed into lord english. Mituna is also a very good example of this, he was extremely talented in his psionics and was able to accurately predict and stop the doom coming towards his friends, but he also lost parts of himself to it entirely, and due to that has become extremely isolated because of it. heirs often struggle with this, the isolation that is caused by their very horse-blinders sort of view of the world, they do what comes naturally to them, but that means they also miss all the social aspects of the struggle. each heir has a "turning point" moment that fuses them with their aspect, equius' death and fusion with lord english, mitunas accident and johns retcons.

witch - witches are the active inverse of heirs, they have to practice and think about their power, or else it is easily manipulated by others or used incorrectly. witches struggle with the same isolation that the heirs do but instead of coming from within, the isolation comes from outside. jade was left behind abandoned and isolated, feferi was murdered and stripped of her autonomy, damara was cheated on and ultimately abandoned for her actions. this often causes a witch to "lash out", they tend to be passive aggressive people because they put so much effort into mastering their aspect only to have others turn around on them after using them. if heirs are a masterless cannon, than witches are an aimed weapon. discarded once they are used up. so they learn how to "make themselves useful" aspect wise so they will never get left behind again. witches are often manipulated by others and the narrative to be used until they have a "snapping moment" and instead turn the entire situation on its head, using their powers against the people who were manipulating them to begin with. though, in my opinion, this snapping moment is typically caused by an outside force. think of jade going grimbark, or damara being cheated on and bullied by meenah. these are both the things that drove them to the brink of no return, and they cause mass destruction on their sessions through it.

maid - maids are "bringers" of their aspect, they create and protect their aspects within the game, but they often start off with an extreme lack of their aspect. aradias time is already up, she lost hers. janes life is already on the line- she experiences frequent assassination attempts. but that doesn't change the fact that they have an utter obsession with their aspect, surrounding themselves with it at all times. often times this comes with a duality to it, aradia surrounds herself with aradiabots and death and destruction and history not because she specifically LOVES those things but because she's had her own time actively ripped out of her own hands. jane is the same, the reason she is so obsessed with consumption and procreation is because she feels like she has had her power literally ripped from her hands. she wants her friends to live- to succeed, more than everything, and literally all of them are so bad at it and actively all fucking suicidal that she feels the NEED to protect the sanctity of life. maids go from having their aspects ripped out of their hands to ripping it out of other peoples hands, once they ascend they go nuclear, deciding they'll never let anyone else make choices about their aspects for them. this often causes them to go a bit off the deep end with power if not intervened.

knight - knights are the passive inverse of maids and fill a protective role- they don't exactly "create" their aspect like the maids do but they are equally surrounded by it, as well as harmed by it. due to the fact that they are so surrounded by their aspects, they believe that internally, they lack their aspect. they recognize it all around them, but not in themselves, and feel an intense pressure to prove to something (anything) that they are worthy of their aspect. they worship their aspect intensely, viewing it as the most important thing in life and something they desperately want to keep a hold of, but for one reason or another genuinely cannot recognize it within side of them. they end up being the gate keepers and protectors of their aspects, not because they feel like they are all knowing all seeing, but because they feel like no one else will. they are worriers, planners, preventors. they often develop masks to shield themselves from vulnerabilities in attempt to prove themself strong enough to protect their aspect. think about how dave is obsessed with preserving the past, both with his obsession with fetuses and photographs but also with his obsession with capitalism, obsession with his bro, obsession with the things that came before him. karkats obsession with blood and relationships i think is the most obvious example, karkat is such a on-the-nose-knight that i feel like you could look at him and understand knights immediately. latulas the same, though she's a bit harder to pin down because mind is a severely abstract aspect. but she clearly wants to protect the sanctity of mitunas mind and choices, and puts on a "game girl" persona to try and protect her own.

prince - princes are active destructors of their aspect specifically, they do not view worth in their aspect and often idolize the aspect they inverse. dirk idolizes mind and desperately wants to be a mind player, eridan hates gamzee because he believes he would be the better rage player, kurloz actively destroys the rage within his session because he sees it as unbecoming and unhelpful which ultimately doomed them forever. despite this, the more they try to destroy, the more they create their aspect in the pieces of their destruction. with each target and successful destruction they create multiple little "splinters" of their aspect in their wake, surrounding them more and more by their aspect. no matter how hard they try to escape, they cannot, and never will. dirk will always create more of himself, he aims with the goal to destroy himself but all he does is create people and things who idolize his mission, his thoughts, his desires. he wants to encourage people down "better" paths but the "better" path is just becoming like him, and he doesn't realize it until they ARE him. eridan will always create more hope through his absolute utter defeatism, he destroyed the hope in his relationship with feferi and through that gave her the freedom to hope for a better existence. through attacking and harming sollux he actually created hope in sollux by giving him an "out" which propelled the meteor further than it could've gone. with destroying the dancestors rage, kurloz actually created the most anger-issued session possible because theyre all repressing their anger and it boils over into explosive tantrums instead of aimed passion.

bards - bards are the passive inverse to princes. and this manifests not as someone trying to destroy an aspect they see no worth in but as someone trying to run away from something they do not want to be. bards are actually very similar to pages, EXTREMELY similar to pages. in that they are often targeted by outside forces for harassment and bullying for caring about their aspect. gamzee is heavily bullied for his genuine belief in his religion and scripture, cronus is heavily bullied for his genuine belief in HIS religion and scripture. both are bullied so heavily that they end up fucking losing it, completely inverting themselves. the thing is, we actually see gamzee do a full bard arc, and we only see cronus go half way. gamzees actually half way through his arc by the time the comic starts, and i theorize this is why he's shown to be able to engage with his own aspect from the begining. gamzee regularly interacts with the confines of the 4th wall from the begining, and that is inherently a rage thing. what i believe is happening here is that gamzee with his constant high-positive attitude has already done his first "bard inverse" from whoever he was before using sopor like he does. cronus is in this same phase when we are introduced to him, he has inverted away from hope into full rage, trying to follow the expectations put upon him by the scripture and legal rule of beforus. bards have a second switch, where they revert back to who they "truly" are hard and fast. gamzee gives up dissociating and pulling away from the aggression, the bullying becomes too much and he starts lashing out, entirely focusing on rage (an aspect about the creation of scripture specifically) and losing his identity and friendgroup, giving it up for his aspect. if cronus were in a non doomed timeline, i assume we would see him drop this whole "greaser humankin" act like gamzee drops his "super kind who cares" apathy act and become full intense obsessive over hope. bards basically start off as something, are bullied into something else, and when that doesn't save them from the bullying, they revert back to their original aspect with an insane intensity. bards are hard to explain if you dont also have full context on the difference between hope and rage, which is why i write so much.

mage - mages fucking hate doing shit man they hate it so much. mages are the passive inverse of seers, they absorb and learn about their aspects through their experiences with their aspect. they are often extremely proficient in their aspect, sollux is an extremely powerful psionic and hears the voices of the soon to be dead. he also has deep connections to the creation of sburb, being the one who literally coded it. meulins aspect is talked about less, but she is mentioned to be an extremely good match maker and is important enough for kurloz to cling onto her when working with lord english. mages are an underdeveloped class, the only one we see in action is sollux and basically all he does is go "i dont want to be here" and then uses all his powers in one go for a Very Important Action and then dies and doesn't come back. that's sort of the mages plight. they just. have better things to do. they are so good at their aspect they are bored of it, and this is the biggest struggle of getting them involved- they are a great player. they just dont want to play.

seer - seers are the active inverse of mages, and unlike mages, they are Too involved. they are able to predict far off "end results" of their aspect and due to intensive boredom of getting to an ending they've already predicted, they constantly try to tip the scales in their favor. look at rose constantly needling dave for being gay, roses essentially drinking to "skip" through dates with kanaya because she already likes her and just wants to do the right thing. look at terezis constant obsession with the correct endings, sending john back and forth often to his own death just to get her way- she kills vriska because thats the "expected outcome" and then once she gets there she realizes theres a billion other ways that could've gone. seers are the "horseblinder" metaphor i say a lot taken to the ultimate extreme. seers see the end goal, and SLAM REPEATEDLY THROUGH ANY HURTLES to get there, barely caring about the collateral damage they cause.

page - pages are so much like bards its crazy, the only difference between them is that pages stick to one path. where as bards flip flop in an attempt to avoid the pain that comes from their aspect being used against them as a projectile, pages just take it lying down. often people describe pages as "lacking in their aspect" but i disagree, they have plenty of their aspect- the issue is that people do not LIKE how pages engage with their aspect, and will often leverage that against them to attempt to "redirect" them into what seems to be a more predictable path. pages then believe people over their own internal instincts. jake, for example, has SO MUCH HOPE CONSTANTLY BEAMING OUT OF HIM AT ALL TIMES, but because his hope doesn't manifest like how people want it to, they are CONSTANTLY on his ass to correct that. jane, roxy, aranea, dirk, they all try to force him to be the type of hope player they think he should be and this convinces jake that he is actually a very BAD hope player, when in reality, they have NO say about how his aspect should be used! he was perfectly fine before them! the same with tavros happens, its actually extremely clear in his relationship with vriska that he has a ton of breath- he is CONSTANTLY going against her and breaking her will, simply by doing things she doesn't want him to do. HER! VRISKA! THE MIND CONTROLLER! but because his freedom doesnt line up with what HER idea of freedom is, she doesn't see it, and insults him. and then he thinks shes right. pages biggest challenge is to just truly believe in their own ability. once they got that down, theyre as powerful as a heir or bard, or even more. they just need to learn to trust their instincts.

sylph - i will be honest sylphs are the ones i know least about but sylphs are heavily focused on getting everyone to see what their predictions are. sylphs and seers are VERY similar, which is why they tend to get along really well, but the difference is that while seers will just literally bruteforce their way through something, sylphs will condescendingly wait for everyone to catch up to them with their aspect, only to lash out explosively if people never actually catch up with them. they ADORE leaving crumb trails out for people to follow after their lead, but if those crumb trails are not only ignored but actively spit on, they FREAK THE FUCK OUT. think about how kanaya reacted to eridans freak out, and how aranea attempted to "become" mindfang. this is after both their sessions essentially gave up on the ONE mission and ideal that the sylphs had been trying to lead them to. they go fucking ballistic. they tend to be "mom friends" or "fandom moms" due to this behavior.

um..... embarrassingly, this is where i sort of lose steam. i know very little about rogues or thiefs. one, because i don't like thiefs for the most part. and two, i don't like rogues for the most part other than nepeta. i will say

thief - thiefs are extremely high energy and high anxiety control freaks. its not that they think they know best but they think they know better than everyone simply because theyre the only ones actually putting things into action. they are so high strung and controlling that they end up "taking" their aspect from others because they can't stomach watching others fumble it when they could be doing something cooler, better, FASTER than the others.

rogue - rogues have almost "too" much of their aspect that is then taken from them often willingly, they give up their aspect for others to the point of self detriment. they will give and give and give until they literally have nothing left, and then they will continue to try and give regardless.

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