classesandaspects - Tumblr blog

[classesandaspects]

Homestuck is fucking me up right now in ways you have no idea. Like just, in light of the recent update I’m heavily considering the idea that… 

God tier is a farce.

An illusion, set up by the game, and you’re thinking, how can it be an illusion when you gain all those powers and immortality?

The problem with god tier has always been, in actuality, most of the kids had already gained their powers before needing to god tier. In actuality, the only thing god tier had ever been proven to gain was immortality.

I once made this connection, in an older post of mine two years ago, but tldr; the idea was that nobody who plays Sburb can actually die by any normal means. What if, in fact, this whole time, they all were “technically” immortal. 

Except they can die within the game you say!! Look at all those doomed selves.

But see, they always end up just “rebooting” at some point or another. Their memories, their consciousness, they never truly have ever been shown to die. 

What if, lets assume in some cracked up way, they never played Sburb, they could have potentially lived forever.  

I have never seen any Homestuck character die by any natural means, they have all literally been killed by either something or someone.

But the game is big on transfers and reincarnations, and these kids are paradox space clones of themselves, genes based on slime, what if they were never truly human to begin with.

What if they were God’s from the start?

And wouldn’t that be a part of the big riddle. The big joke. The biggest irony, because consider if you’ve ever watched the Wizard of Oz.

Dorothy always had the power to go home. She just didn’t know it.

Sburb is a game about  growing up.

What better joke, than the joke of, everything you are, and will be, was always right inside of you all along.

What could possibly be a better message, for a coming of age story?

[classesandaspects]

This isn't actually a ask, but seriously like I admire so much how you do things in your blog, I'm classpecting too by now and just wanted to let you know, you were one of my inspirations

Holy shit man I am honored and also genuinely floored! And I'd love to see some of your classpecting if you're willing to share

[classesandaspects]

What would the land and the land quest for the Mage of Doom be?

I still don't actually take asks for classpects, lands, quests, weapons, session analysis, etc etc, but I'd like to suggest a land quest generator I created a while back that might offer some starting inspiration:

P.S. reblog with your generated land quests, I'm curious and nosy

[classesandaspects]

Sburb: The Rogue’s Arc

Supporting my theory here with canon examples.

Rogues have too much of their aspect distributed to them before their personal development truly starts. Here’s how this looked for the canon Rogues:

Roxy grew up profundly alone, inherited lots of alcohol, and drank in an attempt to hide the effects isolation was having on her.

Nepeta’s abundance of soul manifested in her constant shipping and roleplaying. She spends most of her screentime pre-retcon on these pursuits, and notably does not confess her feelings to Karkat.

The Summoner had wings due to a mutation, and was thus given the ability to fly. This is less of an ‘excess’ than a freedom Summoner had from birth that other trolls didn’t. (This is more symbolic than canon, but I choose to interpret that as him being able to fly away and live somewhere less-traveled and unbound by the caste system if he so chose.)

Rufioh had a wing mutation as well, but his worst Breath trait was to avoid committing to anything. He cheats on Damara for a while before coming clean, fears saying no, and prefers the “freedom” afforded to him by being easygoing towards everyone rather than committing to a relationship.

Rogues are afraid to distribute this excess. It gives them comfort from something they’re afraid of, though this comfort keeps them from confronting their real fears or issues. They might know that, but that doesn’t make it an easy prospect. Sharing their aspect means losing what they want, but in doing so, the Rogue gets what they need.

In Roxy’s case, drinking felt easier than acknowledging her loneliness or true feelings. She stopped drinking so she could see clearly enough to take care of herself and her friends. In recovering, she became dependable enough to handle her friends’ secrets and strife - an emotional leader who kept her friends together from the shadows.

Meanwhile, Rufioh knew taking the path of least resistance was cowardly, but acting like a pushover kept him at least temporarily safe from physical or emotional conflicts. If he’d broken up with Damara instead of cheating on her, he would’ve had to experience her pain as well as his own, and the possibility for her to hate him for it. But they’d both be free to pursue someone else without being unfaithful or wondering how their partner really felt. Instead of telling whoever’s standing in front of him whatever they felt like hearing, all of them would have been free.

Summoner has at least as many blanks in his story as the other ancestors, but considering that the ancestors are realized if not healthy versions of their classpect roles, Summoner’s rebellion showed his army that they could be free of the rigid castes they were born into. He didn’t succeed, but the Condesce used his uprising as reason to banish adult trolls from Alternia, which gave them freedom from Condy and the threats adult trolls would pose.

Nepeta is harder to pin down since she had relatively low screentime as herself and a lot when she was “fused” with someone as a sprite. But if Nepeta had been a successful teammate, she would have used her understanding of her friends’ inner selves - an understanding refined by roleplay and displayed in shipping - to help everyone grow. What was it Davepetasprite^2 said? “help each other GET ourselves”? She also could’ve moved on from her feelings for Karkat, or at least confessed to him (”give her heart” to him), faced rejection, and realized it wouldn’t be the end of her. Instead of pining and keeping her feelings behind roleplay, she would’ve opened up her Heart so her friends could do the same.

[classesandaspects]

How do you feel about the thief classpect? Do you think the 'thieves are manipulative assholes' bit is true or not?

Thanks!

OH I WAS LITCHERALLY THINKING ABOUT THIEVES EARLIER

like ive said before i dont think of classes as describing personalities but as describing arcs/roles in the story, so no i dont think thief = nasty person, necessarily.

my current running theory with the thief class is that thieves are by nature a creature of the opposite aspect to the one they crave, born and molded by something they could not give half a shit about and desperately chasing something fleeting that comes to define their existence, despite not being something that comes to them by nature

i already made a long post about vriska's void-light dichotomy, but the long and short of it is that vriska is a child of darkness and danger and uncertainty in almost every way possible, but she spends every second of her life compulsively searching for light and safety and certainty.

the fact that her attacks are RNG based are the clearest manifestation of it, games of chance are the ultimate unknown, randomness is the ultimate manifestation of void, and vriska seems to hate it and takes everything other than Things Going Exactly As She Wants Them And Thinks They Should Go to be "bad luck", because really vriska just can't comfortably let her own fate in the hands of the dice... and yet, that's her weapon of choice. because she is a child of void who has to make do with it and scramble to make light out of whatever she has on hand, so she circumvents it by manipulating the circumstances to the point the dice CAN'T betray her and affect the result at all, and after going god tier she straight up kills the uncertainty of randomness and luck and replaces it with the GUARANTEED CERTAINTY that things will go as smoothly for her as they possibly can.

as for meenah/her imperious condescension, who i do consider to be basically the same person in wildly different circumstances- her entire life in both timelines has been largely defined by her being pushed and pulled by the forces of doom (systems, being controlled with no escape and being made to just accept it as inevitable), and fighting and running desperately to evade them- whether it's a birthright she hates and refuses to accept, lord english' rule that has her life outside her own hands, literal nonexistance after the scratch, or just the narrative pointing her in big red arrows towards stealing a ring she doesn't want lol. the world keeps setting out Unavoidable Chains to tie her with, and meenah never once stops trying to wrestle them away and do what SHE wants to do with HER own life instead, and finding her own happiness and survival no matter what anyone else thinks of her

i don't think thieves are inherently "manipulative assholes", but i do think it's a selfish role to play, and i dont mean that as a value judgement, but just in the literal sense that a thief's relationship to their aspect seems to be about their own need for it first and foremost. but then again, you could argue this is a bit of a "put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping anyone else" situation where to a thief it will ALWAYS be necessary to act in their own interest first, since classpects are descriptive and not prescriptive, and most of the time they end up either helping or harming those around them (often both at once somehow) as a natural side effect of their own quest for their governing aspect

[classesandaspects]

Oh whoops and no problem, hopefully they can give you a better answer than I can!

thoughts on the classpect maid of blood? >:]

Sorry, still don't actually do classpects myself, never have

[classesandaspects]

thoughts on the classpect maid of blood? >:]

Sorry, still don't actually do classpects myself, never have

[classesandaspects]

Sburb: Beastliya’s Basic Class Premises

This is my masterpost of what I think each class does in terms of function, personal growth, and powers. As masterposts go, it’s long, and thus under a cut.

Keep reading

[classesandaspects]

send me any homestuck topic (character, relationship, act, classpect, etc anything) and ill give thoughts and analysis. pls

[classesandaspects]

Hi everyone. I'm Spencer, I've been an avid Homestuck fan for a while, and though it may seem it has fallen out of fashion, I wanted to try my hand at classpecting analysis and see where I go. If you have any requests my ask box is open, both anon and regular.

Im gonna mention some other classpecting blogs to spread this around but yes have a nice day!

@classesandaspects @classpect-analysis @ask-the-seer-of-breath @classpecthelp @classpect-hotline

[classesandaspects]

wait you're alive

...OH I meant to save that post! I didn't tag it yet!

Er yeah I'm alive and I have 200+ saved posts in my drafts that I keep meaning to go back and tag eventually

I still follow the various classpect tags so mobile tumblr puts the posts on my dash, but I just don't have the brainspace to read every classpect post like I used to

Uhhh anyway how's everyone doing nowadays

[classesandaspects]

(i change my mind, copypasting this to its own post cause it really got away from me. long post warning)

i guess what im thinkin is like, that light is the domain of “things that MUST happen, for Reasons”; mind is the domain of “things must/will happen, for REASONS”; void is the domain of, like, “things happen or don’t happen for no discernible reason, necessarily”.

thats not really a great description of it i guess but, for instance, a good example is that one time Rosesprite happened…. For No Reason. and for no reason, really i mean no narrative reason- it ended up setting off a chain of events that resolved the subplots of many minor characters, so it’s not like it’s USELESS, but there was kind of no way to predict that whole thing from a “narratively this is something that we are leading up to” standpoint, which is why roxy’s actions brought it about on accident, and why rose was so thoroughly perplexed by it the whole way through. void is probably closer to the way things happen in real life, but it is sort of the anthitesis to the way things happen in stories, where everything is deliberate and happens for A Narrative Reason… but homestuck was always largely written on the fly at least in the smaller scale things, so this sort of thing just Happens lol

incidentally im pretty sure a mind player like terezi could have technically predicted that, if she had for any reason at all been previously informed of all the moving parts of that whole thing and TRYING to predict what the fuck jaspersprite was gonna do, because it IS perfectly logical in hindsight, but like… that’s the whole thing, why the fuck WOULD you be trying to look into that or predict it????? there was seemingly no narrative reason for any of that to be relevant! and that’s kind of what void is about i think!

on a similar note i thing breath is more along the lines of just…. Things Happen. similarly to void, it’s not about trying to discern WHAT will happen or WHY, but unlike void, the things that DO happen under the influence of breath ARE kind of things that the narrative called for. breath seems to be kind of the aspect dominating narrative contrivance

people often confuse contrivance with plot holes, but from what i understand they’re very different. a plot hole is when something happens, and it makes no sense for it to happen to the degree it breaks with previously established known facts, and it’s just never explained.

a plot contrivance doesn’t really contradict anything, necessarily, it’s just… like… there’s no reason for it to NOT happen the way it does, but there’s also no reason for it TO happen the way it does, and overall the reason it’s considered bad writing is because it tends to come across as lazy. oh, the heroes JUST SO HAPPENED to find the one magic sword that can defeat the bad guy, just laying on the side of the road. how convenient!

…incidentally, john’s entire story arc seems to be built entirely around moments like these skfnkenfke

i think it was smart writing to codify this as 1. the influence of an actual cosmic force that DOES operate on those principles, and 2. make john have to figure out how to get a handle on things by himself, even if the tools and circumstances just happened to be aligned in his favor by everything else in the story. john still has to be the one to turn HIMSELF into a deus ex machina, on-screen, to fix everything. it gives the story a good narrative and emotionally resonant reason to just contrive the hell out of everything john does and goes through, while STILL delivering on his arc as a hero’s journey

(i also think it’s really funny that the ring, which gets LITERALLY deus ex machina’d into the story via the author himself, is CONVENIENTLY found by tavros, and john CONVENIENTLY ends up with it in the story itself sjfnskdn true breath shenanigans, and incredibly fitting that vriska rejected it and played no part in it because there was no previously known indication that the ring would be important in any way until the two breath players started playing hot potato with it)

i’m still not sure if i have a good grasp on what exactly time does, because we have seen very different attitudes taken towards it by various different players AND the official description, and it’s hard to tell what, in each regard, comes from time as an aspect, from the classes of the characters, or from the characters themselves/both things; but for now i think my best guess is that time is kind of “things already happened, this is inmutable, let’s just cut to the chase”, more or less. like, the way this differs from light is that light still thinks of things more or less linearly, even when they UNDERSTAND this is not the case, whereas time tends to just not even concieve of things has “something that is happening”

like, example, vriska vs aradia; they both kind of enabled Big Bad Things that they already knew would happen via timeline shenanigans- but from what i recall, i don’t think aradia ever PERSONALLY set any of those events in motion, she simply didn’t correct any misunderstandings and thus allowed the wheels of time to turn smoothly; whereas vriska went “bec noir Will Happen = someone will make it happen anyways = i’m gonna make it happen myself, cause someone has to, and it might as well be me!!!” because of her compulsion to be the master of her own fate

aradia didnt so much see her actions as her *doing* anything, evil or good; she was pretty much just making sure things ended up where they were already going to end up/had already ended up, devoid of motivation or reason. similar to dave in the first five acts, just opening and closing loops Because He’s Gotta until he eventually runs out of steam and loops to close, because he really never had any motivations for doing what he was doing other than Well, I Already Did Them, So Obviously I Have To Do Them So I Can Have Already Done Them. no intent or motivation inherent to the actions themselves for half the story

a more childish example is caliborn getting fed up with the story and the Interpersonal Problems of the players and being like “fuck this, just skip to the good parts, they’re Going to happen so why do we have to sit through all of this shit!”. obv contrast to calliope, who seems to illustrate the kind of reader who would rather explore the status quo forever and imagine all the character interactions possible, playing in the *space* of the work in between the big status quo shifts and dreading said shifts, where caliborn wants to skip right past the status quo and have a story composed of nothing BUT the big shifts, the start and end of things

(neither of these are a sustainable way to tell a story, which is why you need at least a space and a time player)

[classesandaspects]

the classes and aspects but i just picked three words and didn't think twice.

(transcript below the cut)

Heir – Receive. Conduct. Become.

Bard – Provoke. Corrupt. Imperil.

Rogue – Adjust. Restore. Deliver.

Seer – Study. Interpret. Prophesy.

Sylph – Ammeliorate. Enhance. Preserve.

Page – Attain. Ascend. Assume.

Mage – Experience. Intersect. Discover.

Maid – Generate. Liberate. Provide.

Knight – Wield. Defend. Steward.

Witch – Transform. Alter. Manipulate.

Prince – Refine. Excise. Destroy.

Thief – Appropriate. Acquire. Master.

Breath – Independence. Opportunity. Diffusion.

Life – Consumption. Rebirth. Youthfulness.

Light – Attention. Salience. Focus.

Time – Contention. Culmination. Finality.

Heart – Essence. Spirit. Identity.

Rage – Defiance. Rejection. Aggression.

Blood – Commitment. Connection. Allegiance.

Doom – Resilience. Inevitability. Structure.

Void – Serendipity. Meditation. Unconsciousness.

Space – Physicality. Potential. Incipience.

Mind – Ethics. Contemplation. Plans.

Hope – Faith. Devotion. Imagination.

[classesandaspects]

“{>you’ve seen the outcome of this scenario so many times, you’ll never find one wa-where you save them}>”

[classesandaspects]

Heir of Doom (#60 / 144)

Heir of Doom [#060 / 144]

Title Breakdown: [Esoteric Carrier] of [Aesthetic Culmination]

Class: Heir. Arguably the most Passive class in the Game, the Heir manifests or channels their Aspect, instantiating its essence within their own 8eing. The Heirs arc is one from disconnection from their Aspect to transcendence through it; like their opposite/complementary Class, the Mage, they experience their Aspect fully, but unlike the Mage, they do so not through understanding and interaction with their Aspect but rather through unity with and transformation into their Aspect. The Heir is Analogous to the Seer and the Witch, and is a Carrier Class like the Bard and the Rogue: the connection between an Heir and their Aspect is therefore extremely abstract and almost spiritual, by contrast to the Catalysts’(Knights’, Mages’, and Maids’) practical and agency-oriented connection to their respective Aspects.

Aspect: Doom. Associated with structure, suffering, sympathy/empathy, and resilience in the face of mortality and inevitability, Doom is the opposite/complement to Life and is affine/analogous with Hope and Time. It shares Time’s connection to death and finality, and Hope’s connection to grand narratives and acceptance of the inevitable; however, it differs from Time in that its connection to death has more to do with inevitability and persistence than with conflict and struggle, and it differs from Hope in that it is associated with pragmatics and rational interpretation of internal structure, rather than with leaps of faith and personal conviction. Doom is an Aesthetic/Ethical Aspect, like Heart, Mind, and Life - this means that its narrative domains have to do with personal action and interpretation of circumstance, and its metanarrative domains have to do with sub-textual meaning, as opposed to text or hypertextual context.

Mechanical Profile: The Heir of Doom becomes and inherits the inevitability of death, and their role in the Game is suffused with both the slow and painful march of Time and its consequences, and with the Hope to carry on even in the face of that. Like any Heir (or really, any Passive Class), their control over their Classpect-related abilities is likely to be indirect and abstract, and at times the extent to which their powers are beyond their control is likely to prove problematic - Heirs often initially struggle to act in harmony with their Aspect, and the greater the contention and dissonance between their aims and their Aspect’s, the more serious these problems could become.

However, what Carrier classes lack in capacity to Assume Direct Control, they make up for in the clarity and completeness of their connection to their Aspect, which is capable of manifesting in unparalleled bursts of raw power when the Heir is able to fully synchronize with the essence of Doom. Such synchronization is most likely to be achieved through the dialectical synthesis and simultaneous acceptance of both inevitability and the Will to persevere beyond the inevitable, and to pass through the shadow of death and be transformed without being destroyed.

The in-game abilities associated with Doom aren’t particularly deeply explored in the text of Homestuck; as such, most of what can be said about said abilities is speculation and conjecture. Doom, like its complement, Life, is connected to cycles of creation and destruction, growth and the consumption necessitated thereby, and of course, Death and Rebirth, with Doom having the stronger connection to the negative/destructive pole of this dichotomy. Consequently, it seems likely enough that an Heir of Doom would be able to channel into themselves symbolically destructive and transformative energies, such as fire (combustion, conflagration, oxidation) and decay, chemical, nuclear, or biological. Key to understanding the nature of Doom are the notions of inevitability and necessity, for within the domain of Doom, by contrast to its analogue, Time, death and fate are not hostile forces with which the Aspect-bound must valiantly contend, but rather processes essential to survival and being which the Aspect-bound are called upon to embrace with equanimity. This principle is reinforced by the link between the Doom-bound and self-sacrifice or martyrdom (see the Psiioniic, who was himself an Heir of Doom, tragically consumed by Doom but - crucially - not in vain). Like the Time-bound, the Doom-bound must walk the line between righteous self-sacrifice and senseless self-destruction/self-abnegation, and this line is all the finer for those Doom-bound heroes belonging to Carrier classes like their Heir.

A final note on the relationship between the Heir and their Aspect, that seems especially relevant in the case of the Heir of Doom - an Heir’s connection to their Aspect develops slowly, and, at initially, on a level that is often subliminal to the Heir themselves. That is to say, an Heir of Doom will begin to Inherit Doom, and take on its mantle of resilience and sacrifice, before they are aware that they have done so. However, once this gradual process of investiture has progressed, and the Heir has both realized their own capability and accepted the responsibility placed upon them, it’s quite likely that said process should culminate in a sort of climactic moment of inheritance - the moment of recognition of power is also the moment in which the power is made real. This moment of culmination could be ecstatic or traumatic (or neither, or both), but will almost certainly occur in a moment of transformative actualisation, which moment is all-but-certain to prove foundational not only to the structure of the Heir’s personal growth, but to the progress of the Game itself, and of all of its players. The road of Doom’s Heir is far from smooth, but could well be the lynchpin of the Session itself.

Personality: In terms of personal character, Doom players have a tendency to manifest some level of stoicism or cynicism - altho, crucially, this detachment is not necessarily representative of their essential character. Rather, it is a mechanism of survival by way of detachment; in the face of the suffering that haunts the Doom-bound and those around them, it becomes necessary for (in this case) the Heir to, to a degree, abstract themselves from the seemingly intractable harshness of their circumstances.

This quality of Doom-bound Heroes may seem, perhaps, as less-than-copacetic with the Heir’s calling to embrace their Aspect, and more broadly, the world as a whole - indeed, the arc of the Heir as a Mythological Role is necessarily bent towards greater connectivity, rather than any sort of toughening, distancing, or abstraction. However, this apparent contradiction should, ideally, be resolved over the course of the Heir of Doom’s in-game character development: as they realize their connection to Doom, the Aspect, their projected cynicism and their feeling, voluntary or otherwise, of distance from their world and their peers, should be sublimated into a willingness to connect with their surroundings not despite the likely harsh character thereof, but because of it. The great virtue of Doom is a sort of universalizing sympathy and empathy through comprehension of the structures underlying the cyclical confluence and disintegration of all things, and as the rightful inheritor of that virtue, the Heir of Doom carries in themselves a sort of paradoxical Hope - that even in the face of Death and Decay, they Live and Grow, that set as they may be against the headwind inexorable of Entropy, they weather onwards, establishing structure, shelter, and solidarity yet in the center of that storm.

~~~

“Do or die, you'll never make me

Because the world will never take my heart

Go and try, you'll never break me

We want it all, we wanna play this part

I won't explain or say I'm sorry

I'm unashamed, I'm gonna show my scars

Give a cheer for all the broken

Listen here, because it's who we are....

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on.”

My Chemical Romance, “Welcome to the Black Parade” (The Black Parade, 2006)

~~~

[classesandaspects]

hi yes heres the premise

Hi. yes. i am your local knight of blood and i really fucking like classpect analysis; specifically in regards to relationships, arcs, personalities, etc etc. so instead of talking about powers and session roles, this is a place where i talk to you SPECIFICALLY about FUN RELATIONSHIP SHIT . this is all because im a self-indulgent blood player who loves the shit out of going “lol this is why you suck because this your classpect”

which also means i will do relationship analysis between two classpects (leave moon out of it preferably LMAO) and will give u pointers and shit. i’ll try to be semi-active here but dont expect perfection LMAO

(i will not be doing master classes here)

classes i am VERY good with; knights, princes, bards, seers, rogues, heirs

classes i may struggle with: thieves, witches, maids, sylphs, pages

aspects i am very good with: blood, breath, heart, life, rage, hope, doom

aspects i may struggle with: space, time, mind, void, light

submit an ask if you want my non-existent gospel .

[classesandaspects]

I absolutely cannot remember a post like this, does anyone else know of it?

Need some help finding a post

I cannot find for the life of me a post involving Homestuck aspect explanations with the characters who are under them(John, Karkat) drawn in Animal Crossing style. It had really good canonical explanations for them