#classes and aspects

[bladekindeyewear]

Hello, what do you think of optimisticDuelist's Role-playing theory? Basically, he suggested that instead of inverting, Rose was role-playing a misinterpretation of her mother's classpect. He also suggests Terezi was role-playing Redglare's Knight class while investigating Murderstuck, and that Vriska and Aranea were role-playing each other's classes. I recommend watching "HSE: Guardians and Ancestors" for more about his theory. :D

Since I'm trying to get back in the swing of things (might still take me a few weeks), I might as well remind y'all of my earlier position:

I haven't read or watched optimisticDuelist's theories yet, and I probably ought to before I make any serious judgments on the matter. Plus, I'm not caught up with HS^2's recent new updates, and I was under the impression that oD had some input into HS^2 as a whole-- I'm not sure if Andrew gave the writers and collaborators on that project the latitude to make some changes from the system that was intended by Andrew in the original comic's run, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had, so for all we know some of those theories may retroactively fit the original comic even if they weren't initially intended! Or introduced as just a NEW thing that can happen! That's one sort of thing that I was originally so devoted to the comic's "original intent" that I wouldn't have accepted easily, but I'm coming to accept as a possibility a bit easier now, with how much Andrew has pushed Death of the Author and how much the ending of the comic showed that many of the things I judged were "important" in-comic weren't important to him at all.

However, if we're looking as far back as Act 5 Act 2, I believe there's a serious fundamental difference in scope and scale between trolls like Vriska and Terezi poorly cosplaying the trappings and aesthetics of ancestors whose classpects we didn't know at the time -- ancestors who were in fact constantly teased with words like Thief (Mindfang), Seer (Redglare), and Witch (Condesce) to match their younger descendants' classes even though Andrew likely intended for them to have had different classes all along -- and the severe, extreme, and powerful event that seems to be full-on hero role inversion.

Reading some Homestuck liveblogs lately, I was reminded of the strong and intentional connections that all of Homestuck has with Carl Jung's psychological theories and the concept of the "Shadow" self. And I'm not just talking about a superficial resemblance between the Shadow and role inversion, or the "assimilation of the shadow" and the uniting of one's Real Self and Dream Self to ascend to God Tier. No-- I mean that Jung's theories, even if somewhat discredited, are referenced by the complex stew of mythologies that make up Sburb and define how the game is played, just like all the pop and serious references to works like Lord Of The Rings that made it into the game's objectives. If you skim that wikipedia page you'll very quickly see what I mean:

Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while "no one should deny the danger of the descent [...] every descent is followed by an ascent",[54] and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes a possibility.

"We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals...straight up."[53]: 160–1

There's a good reason that Rose was given an interest in psychotherapy leading into the comic. It's tightly tied to the whole story's themes! Trying to show players the potential they have as individuals, the power inherent in their very personalities, and setting them a stage to confront themselves and grow into someone who would shape the future and accept their own self-worth, is the entire point of the game and the answer to the Ultimate Riddle. Every major character had to go through the arduous process of confronting their flaws and talents and trying to accept who they were. The game IS the psychotheraputic journey from start to finish, complete with the same monumental challenges, pitfalls, rejection and acceptance (of help and of oneself!) that all sorts of different people must confront in order to simultaneously fully appreciate and become themselves, and also become the people they truly want to be. Because despite what self-loathing and toxic gender norms and all sorts of naysayers would have us believe, those two things are closer to the same thing than most can easily imagine. The journey to discover, accept, unite with and leverage the power of being you.

And when you tie Jungian Psychology to MBTI personality types, you can practically flip the letters into an opposed Shadow too, in a less literal but startlingly similar way to the class-and-aspect-flip Inversion Theory that we proposed. (DAMMIT i still need to rewrite the Aradia post to be less pretentious, that's been on my to-do list for years but I've never been up to it...)

Again, I still need to read/watch optimisticDuelist's theories (I've had a hard time emotionally looking deep into anything Homestuck for a good while now, and even though you're referencing some pretty old theories i was NEVER very good at keeping up with others' theories besides what was specifically brought to my attention, it was a serious problem), but from what I recall in-comic every time I saw someone mimic or cosplay an ancestor they were mostly... just cosplaying! Nothing is stopping a Seer from picking up a sword and trying to do some knight stuff. TRYING. The only issue is that they won't be very good at it, because they're not actually learning about themselves and leveraging the strengths of their own personality and power set. I have no idea how to use a gun or weapons; if I were to pick one up and try to suddenly join a battle, I would have no idea what I'm doing and would be more likely to get myself or others hurt rather than do anyone any actual good. And even when someone like Terezi picked up a (cane-)sword in the comic, she still mostly used it as a Seer would, as the threat to punctuate or act on explicitly foreseen possibilities. When she ran Vriska through, she was acting on a VISION borne of the realities that hinged on others' decisions and fronts, that revealed themselves through her understanding the Mind aspect. It was no martial superpower, no mental trick-- all Terezi had was the superpower of understanding how badly Vriska's move to fight Jack would play out, with the necessary certainty she needed in order to confidently stab Vriska.

(Brief edit: as an aside, many classes of Heart player might be more positioned to take on and leverage the skills and uniqueness of others. Roleplaying others was one of NEPETA'S strengths.)

Rose's inversion was very, very, VERY different.

The word "witch" was EVERYWHERE around Rose, almost moreso than the Void symbolism. "Witch" was plastered all over Act 5 Act 2 in both the text and visual representations. Other players like Eridan CALLED her a witch REPEATEDLY. We saw a Witch of Time using dual needles and magic. Andrew couldn't have shouted the word any louder. It came with IMMENSE power, the sort of power level we've deduced (and Doc and Rose hinted) comes from someone's Hero Title because it's more powerful than any other mundane, magical, or psychic power source, fitting to the Ultimate Riddle-- when someone pulls out their Hero Powers against any non-hero power source besides sometimes the Green Sun, the one using Hero Powers always wins. It isn't even a contest.

When Rose went grimdark, she looked like a Witch. She didn't look like her mother. And she didn't act like her mother either! Especially when we got Roxy Lalonde in Act 6, it was clear that Rose's Grimdark actions and modus-operandi were absolutely nothing like those of her ecto-sister, even with all the commonalities they shared as people. Whatever inspiration Rose received from her mother's behavior and aesthetics, all it seems she took from it in her Grimdark descent was the Void, and little else.

If you were to try and convince me that what Rose did in Act 5 Act 2 was meant by the author to convey to us the actions of someone behaving as a Rogue of Void and not a Witch of Void, you wouldn't just need to show me evidence of Roguish activity. You'd need to show me ENOUGH evidence that Andrew meant to hide Rogue behavior beneath an intentional Witch whitewash (like that prior tease with the Troll Ancestors being coyly made to sound like they matched their descendants that I described earlier), and that all the Witch symbology and actions were actually a bullshit red herring!!! Few readers thought there was any serious impact of her Grimdark phase to her Class until we stumbled upon Inversion Theory as an extension of Aspect Duality, and a red herring is pretty pointless if it doesn't convince anyone.

Saying that NONE of those witch hints mattered? THAT'S A REALLY TALL ORDER. "Witch of Void" is just way, way too strongly evidenced in my eyes, and almost half of our derivative understanding of classes and aspects is based on Seer <--> Witch duality! It'll be weeks before I have my mental health together enough to watch optimisticDuelist's theories, but like, Seer <--> Witch is the most confident I still am in any theory besides the Ultimate Riddle and Aspect Duality. It'd take quite a lot to make me believe otherwise, so expecting optimisticDuelist's videos to change my mind on this matter would be... er. A little optimistic.

And because of how dependent so many of my theories were on what we learned about aspect duality FROM role inversion, if Seer <--> Witch didn't happen, then you might as well throw out almost everything I've ever said on classpects with the bathwater and start over. Rightly call me biased, but I do really hope I don't have to do that!

(edit 1pm cdt: added a bit more to the second-to-last paragraph before the cut to hammer home that "Shadow (Psychology)" wikipedia article, seriously so many of the characters' journeys in the comic follow it like a playbook. edit 1:15pm cdt: fixed wandering read-more)

[roxie-the-princess]

came up with a homestuck aspects theory

the idea of “complimenting aspects” (different from opposing pairs like time/space) has been thrown around a lot but its always been as pairs, the same way opposing aspects are pairs. it makes sense at first thought, since opposing aspects are in pairs, why not compliments too?

when you think about actually making complimenting pairs, though, there’s problems with it.

for example: space is an aspect of creation, and is associated with frog breeding, so life makes perfect sense as a compliment to it. then we look in canon and see calliope hang out with jane in her hidden corner of the bubbles, and we can convince ourselves it makes sense... but what about void?

literally within the text, calliope mentions a positive relationship between space and void. plus, “the void of space” is a frequently used phrase in real life, and the large vast emptiness of space is pretty similar to the even emptier vast of the void. so space compliments void instead! right? or maybe its a triad? but void and life don’t seem THAT complimentary...

space is not the only aspect that i found contradictions like this with, so my new theory is this:

complimenting aspects aren’t pairs- it’s a circle.

i edited the official aspects circle in a way that visually expressed what i was thinking.

on this circle, adjacent aspects are complimenting- but more generally, the closer two symbols are together, the more they complement each other. conversely, the farther apart they are, the more they oppose each other.

paradoxically, (when are we ever NOT paradoxically speaking) aspects on opposite sides, while as opposing as they can be, are also linked together and as complimentary as can be. time and space are two sides of the same coin.

under this system, there would be three types of relationships between aspects-

“Complimenting Aspects”, which are adjacent on the circle, or just close on the circle if they’re only weakly complimenting

“Opposing Aspects”, which are far away from each other, but not directly opposite, such as space with light or doom. weakly opposing would be space with heart or blood.

and finally, the most important relationship, i would just call “Aspect Pairs”, which are directly opposite on the circle.

as for aspects that are two spaces away from each other (time and space with rage and hope) you could call their relationship “neutral” if you really needed to call them something.

idk i just think this circle is neat

[classpectanon]

hello homestuck kinnies that live in my computer

i finally went ahead and made a classpect quiz based on my personal conception of how things work. that means it's probably one of the more accurate classpect quizzes out there. consists of two parts. 20 questions total. go take it, share it, argue about it, whatever. have fun.

[xlandloud]

alpha god tiers… i lov them

[dresshistorynerd]

I've seen a post you've reblogged and added to, among many things about women showing nipples. Can you recommend any ref material (articles, videos, etc.) are share your knowledge about this? Cause I'm curious about that, as nowadays going out in a shirt without a bra makes you indecent, while in like 90s it was okayish? I wonder how it was in previous centuries.

There is a really cool academic paper about bare breast dresses in 17th century England specifically. I think anyone can read it by creating a free account.

Abby Cox also has a good video about the cleavage during the past 500 years in which she goes through also the nip slip phenomena.

I don't have other sources that specifically focus on this subject, though many sources about specific decades touch on it, but I do have my primary source image collection, so I can sum up the history of the bare nipple.

So my findings from primary source images (I could be wrong and maybe I just haven't found earlier examples) is that the Venetians were the first ones to show the nipple for courtly fashion. At the same time in other places in Europe they sported the early Elizabethan no-boob style that completely covered and flattened the chest. In the other corners of Italy the necklines were also low but less extreme. Venetian kirtle necklines dropped extremely low as early as 1560s and they combined extremely sheer, basically see-through partlets with their kirtle. First example below is a 1565-70 portrait of a Venetian lady with the nipples just barely covered waiting slip into view with a movement of arm. There was an even more extreme version of this with the kirtle being literally underboob style, still with a sheer doublet. Though I believe this was not quite for the respectable ladies, since I have only seen it depicted on high class courtesans. They were not exactly respectable ladies, but they did have quite good social position. The second example is a 1570s depiction of a courtesan, which is revealed by the horned hairstyle. By the end of the century this underbust style with only see through fabric covering breasts, had become respectable. In the last example it's shown on the wife of the Venetian doge in 1597.

Around the same time, at the very end of 1500s, the extremely low cut bodice fashion enters rest of Europe. The low cut style was present in the bodices of all classes, but the nipple was really only an aristocrat thing. The lower classes would cover their breasts with a partlet, that was not sheer. Bare breast was ironically from our perspective a show of innocence, youthful beauty and virtue, and to pull off the style with respect, you also had to embody those ideals. Lower class women were considered inherently vulgar and lacking virtue, so a nipple in their case was seen as indecent. Bare boobs were also a sort of status symbol, since the upper class would hire wet nurses to breastfeed their children so they could show of their youthful boobs.

Covering partlets and bodices were still also used in the first decade of 1600s by nobles and the nip slip was mostly reserved for the courtly events. The first image below is an early example of English extremely low neckline that certainly couldn't contain boobs even with a bit of movement from 1597. The 1610s started around 5 decades of fashion that showed the whole boob. The first three were the most extreme. Here's some highlights: The second image is from 1619.

Here the first, very much showing nipples, from c. 1630. The second from 1632.

The neckline would slowly and slightly rise during the next decades, but nip slips were still expected. Here's an example from 1649 and then from 1650-55. In 1660s the neckline would get still slightly higher and by 1870s it was in a not very slippable hight. The necklines would stay low for the next century, though mostly not in boob showing territory, but we'll get there. But I will say that covering the neckline in casual context was expected. Boobs were mostly for fancy occasions. It was considered vain to show off your boobs when the occasion didn't call for it and covering up during the day was necessary for a respectable lady. You wouldn't want to have tan in your milk-white skin like a poor, and also they didn't have sun screen so burning was a reasonable concern.

1720s to 1740s saw necklines that went to the nip slip territory, though they didn't go quite as low as 100 years earlier. The nipple was present in the French courtly fashion especially and rouging your nipples to enhance them was popular. Émilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749), who was an accomplished physicist and made contributions to Newtonian mechanics, was known in the French court to show off her boobies. An icon. Here she is in 1748. Here's another example from this era from 1728.

The Rococo neckline never got high, but in the middle of the century it was less low till 1770s when it plunged into new lows. In 1770s the fashion reached a saturation point, when everything was the most. This included boobs. The most boob visible. There was a change in the attitudes though. The visible boob was not a scandal, but it was risque, instead of sing of innocent and did cause offense in certain circles. I think it's because of the French revolution values gaining momentum. I talked about this in length in another post, mostly in context of masculinity, but till that point femininity and masculinity had been mostly reserved for the aristocracy. Gender performance was mostly performance of wealth. The revolutionaries constructed new masculinity and femininity, which laid the groundwork for the modern gender, in opposition to the aristocracy and their decadence. The new femininity was decent, moral and motherly, an early version of the Victorian angel of the house. The boob was present in the revolutionary imagery, but in an abstract presentation. I can't say for sure, but I think bare breasts became indecent because it was specifically fashion of the indecent French aristocracy.

Here's example somewhere from the decade and another from 1778. The neckline stayed quite low for the 1780s, but rose to cover the boobs for the 1790s.

The nipple didn't stay hidden for long but made a quick comeback in the Regency evening fashion. It was somewhat scandalous by this point, and the nipple and sheer fabrics of the Regency fashion gained much scorn and satire. The styles that were in the high danger nip slip territory and those that allowed the nipple to show through fabric, were still quite popular. The sleeves had been mid length for two centuries, but in 1790s they had made a split between evening and day wear. The evening sleeves were tiny, just covering the shoulder. Showing that would have been a little too much. Like a bare boob? A risque choice but fine. A shoulder? Straight to the horny jail. (I'm joking they did have sheer sleeves and sometimes portraits with exposed shoulder.) But long sleeves became the standard part of the day wear. Getting sun was still not acceptable for the same reasonable and unreasonable reasons. Day dresses did also usually have higher necklines or were at least worn with a chemisette to cover the neckline. Fine Indian muslin was a huge trend. It was extremely sheer and used in multiple layers to build up some cover. There were claims that a gust of wind would render the ladies practically naked, though because they were wearing their underclothing including a shift, which certainly wasn't made from the very expensive muslin, I'm guessing this was an exaggeration. Especially though in the first decade, short underboob stays were fairly popular, so combined with a muslin, nipples were seen. Here's an early 1798 example of exactly that. The short stays did disappear eventually, but in 1810s the extremely small bodices did provide nip slip opportunities, as seen in this 1811 fashion plate.

Victorian moralizing did fully kill the nip slip, though at least they were gender neutral about it. The male nipple was just as offensive to them. In 1890s, when bodybuilding became a big thing, bodybuilder men were arrested for public indecency for not wearing a shirt.

[fluorescentbrains]

society if we boarded planes back to front window to aisle in an orderly fashion instead of splitting up the boarding groups based on ticket class and esoteric customer loyalty rankings

[acrylic-anxiety]

things I thought were canon in mha but are probably just things the fandom made up that are so deeply ingrained in fanmedia, coming from someone who only joined the fandom a few months ago (correct me if im wrong)

(also not caught up on s7)

- literally any ships (rip, i know, but guys, no student relationships are canon as of rn)

- eijirou and mina went to middle school together

- denki probably has (absence) seizures due to overusing his quirk/bc storms

- red shoe theory (the quirkless have an extra toe joint and bc of that they need different shoes. unfortunately there's only one type, so doesn't matter if you're 5 or 80, you're stuck wearing bright red sneakers ://)

- erasermic. just the entirety of them being together. also includes erasermic fam. still rioting from when i found out erasermic is not canon >:((

- denki has adhd + dyslexia + dyscalculia (and probably a seizure disorder)

- hitoshi is in the foster system (and was probablg ab*sed bc of his quirk. includes mentions of muzzles and quirk suppressants)

- present mic was born with his quirk, deafening everyone in the room when he was born (includes mentions of muzzles)

- the bakugous (mitsuki and masaru) are either the best parents in the world (super attentive and caring) or suck and are probably ab*sive (quirk suppressants on katsuki any time he comes home, neglectful masaru, aggressive mitsuki)

- izuku is autistic (while not canon, i wouldnt be surprised, this is coming from someone with auDHD)

- denki's parents are both pro heroes (theres two pro's with electricity quirks. maybe?? maybe not?? we'll never know)

- endeavor is homophobic (i mean... im not saying he's not-)

- present mic was adopted by two moms

- eijirou has two moms (this one tho, so cute oml im screaming)

- the bakugous run a fashion empire (katsuki modeled for them before UA

- rooftop trio's full friend group included nemuri (a year ahead of them) and tensei (iida's brother)

- iida is autistic (ngl, if this aint the case im rioting)

- tsu never had a childhood, too busy parenting her siblings while her parents were at work or traveling

- back to the bakugous, they were too busy traveling to do photoshoots (mitsuki was the model and masaru designed clothes) to watch over katsuki, so he taught himself how to do everything (chores, keeping tbe house, cooking, etc)

- eijirou has depression/was su*c*dal in middleschool, the only thing keeping him from toppling was mina

- some mutation quirks are there at birth, others come in later. ex: toru (hagakure) was not born invisible, she turned invisible when out shopping with her mom (just imagine thinking "oh shit i just lost my kid at the store" and feeling something grab your leg with the voice of your kid but nothjngs there. wild, absolutely wild) just imagine this shit with the rest of our resideng mutation kids (whom i adore) koji, fumikage, mina, mezo, mashirao (would you consider hanta, kyoka, rikido, and mineta mutation quirk kids? bc i do)

- some kids come from all over the world (i like the idea of it, just how do they all know japanese then??) one i can remember rn were like denki is a 2nd gen japanese american, yuga we know is from france, hanta is latino (i adore this)

- mineta is great!! or mineta is a r*p*st (now, hes gotten better, i'll give you that, but hes still not great and i choose to hate him so im moving on-)

- the sports festival ceremony triggered a flashback for katsuki, making him feel like he was back with the sludge villian again

- izuku and katsuki co-wrote all might fanfiction and individually at one point had all might stan pages.

- fumikage, hitoshi, and kyoka rotate between the bakusquad and dekusquad

- the emosquad consists of fumikage, hitoshi, kyoka, mezo, katsuki, and shouto

- ochako has dad sneezes (loud asf and probably back to back) and katsuki has kitten sneezes (cute and singular) (no i will not explain further)

- while katsuki is loud and "angry" all of the time, you only really got to worry when he becomes deadly silent

- if you want tea on anyone, go to either mezo or kyoka. they know all

- shouto had many firsts after the dorms were implemented: first time trying ice cream, watching a movie, listening to music, trying certain foods, etc. bc endeavor either hated it, or didnt allow him access to it bc he thought it was a waste of time

- momo probably has an eating disorder, regardless of her quirk, due to her parents pressure as a high society family

- quirk related symptoms/damage. ex: katsuki's explosions causing low blood pressure and hearing loss. present mics causing hearing loss and chronic sore throats (maybe even repeat tonsilitis??). hitoshi getting migraines, insomnia, and nose bleeds from excessive quirk use.

- aizawa transfered to the hero course after winning the sports festival his first year at UA (i think it makes sense, what with him training hitoshi later)

(this is what i could think of rn, theres probably more, add on if you think of any)

[oifaaa]

the canon relationship of Jason and Alfred, is it a bit, idk what the word it, but antagonistic? I’ve seen panels of, post-Jason’s death when the bats are rewriting Jason’s narrative, yk where they’re claiming he was always angry or bad and that Bruce saved him from a life of crime, where Alfred is 100% on board the shit on Jason train. And pre-death Jason panels, I don’t remember seeing much of Alfred ones, just ones of dick and Jason and Jason and Bruce. Was Alfred’s opinion of Jason more or less the same? Fanon rlly warped Alfred&Jason into something near unrecognizable huh 😂

See the issue with Alfred and I've mentioned this before is that he's really just there to be what ever the current writer wants him to be so the way he acts can change drastically depending on who's writing him which means at times he can be nice to Jason even in canon we'll see the two of them bond or there's one time where alfred goes out of his way to save jason but then other times he's talking about jason being horrible and not worth bruces time and it's funny bc it just makes Alfred look worse imo like he's really two faced being nice to Jason's face but then instantly turning around and going ugh disgusting poor person

[cringefail-clown]

so ive been writing out a more indepth analysis of TB!Hal for an ask and its,,, long, but i wanna share this one tidbit about the mage class ive got cooked up on its own:

I’ve got an ask once where someone concluded that Mages are the pathfinders of Homestuck classes, and I really like the implication of it. In the same ask, they summarized that Seers, as the passive counterpart, understand their aspect and steer others with that understanding, while more active Mages experience their aspect and steer others with that experience. (Slight tangent but fr if you’re the person who send this ask (sadly it was from anon) i want you to know that it’s been such a based take i think about it daily, and also i’m kissing you on the lips rn.)

When i was doing research about the classpects, people often concluded that Mages must suffer from their aspect and gain knowledge through that suffering. While both Mages we were introduced to in the original comic, ie. Sollux and Meulin, could steer people into believing that to be the case, i want to propose a different explanation: Mages job is to experience their aspect, and through experiencing it they gain a vast understanding of it. A big part of learning about a new subject is the act of failing at it.

Let’s make an example: if you pick up a pencil and decide to learn how to draw, you won’t produce the next Michelangelo masterpiece on your first try. Or your ten, or one hundredth. But, if you fail and identify why you failed – your proportions were wrong, your shading didn’t match the lighting scenario – and start to consciously avoid making those mistakes again, you’ll start to see the improvement. But the process is slow, and the results often don’t meet our expectations, which is what makes people give up and decide that drawing is just not their thing. Or sometimes people get stuck, frustrated with the lack of improvement, because they haven’t identified what mistakes they’re making and simply keep on making them again and again, instead of steering away from them, which also drives them into quitting.

The art of learning about any subject is a steady stream of constant failures, identifying what went wrong, remembering to avoid it, and at last realizing that you’ve improved and succeeded, and this is what the Mage experience is about. We keep on seeing miserable Mages because they either get overwhelmed and give up on learning about their aspect, instead avoiding experiencing it at all costs, or they gain the knowledge of why they failed and try to guide others with it, but they themselves are unable to apply that same knowledge to their own life, instead falling into the same fucking potholes again and again.

[daily-grian]

I’ve gotta sit down at some point and do a proper classpecting session for the Hermits & co, but for some quick musings Prince of Time!Grian feels appropriate

[landofmistakesandart]

CULT ALTAR of DREAMS

Ann in her godtier attire

[zytes]

ozone

[whamss]

Every now and then I think I'm kind of sleeping on classpect analysis, but also what you have to understand about me is that I'm way less enchanted by the act of defining classes and aspects and way moreso by how individual Characters contextualize their relationship with their aspects and assign meaning to it based on their experiences

Something that I always found striking about late Act 6 Kanaya was the way she recontextualizes her relationship with her aspect as something so specific to her and her own experiences. Something about the juxtaposition between Alt Calliope mapping out hard rules about her classpect, saying "This is what it means to be a Space player" "This is what it means to be X" while Kanaya talks about how her experiences formulated her own relationship with her classpect. It's a fascinating difference between them where I never think that the story tries to say that either of them are Wrong about how they view Space. But there's such an underappreciated depth there where Calliope is demonstrated to be somebody who's obsessed with rules, strict categorization, while Kanaya says "this is what my experiences have told me, this is what Space means to Me." And Alt Calliope saying things like Space players are inseparably tied to loneliness are interesting claims, but also putting these beliefs in context with each other you can just as easily see how Alt Calliope's views of space can be formulated by her lifelong (deathlong) experience with isolation.

I think a big reason that I always found it hard to engage with a lot of classpect analysis is that there's this insistence that classpects must have strict categories that define people, when throughout the comic we consistently see how things like aspects and classes mean different things to different people. The way that Kanaya, Calliope, and Jade all see Space and their relationship to it is so so different, I sort of wonder if they'd have any common ground if they actually discussed it between each other (or wrote their thoughts down and passed it around, as Calliope would undoubtedly dominate that conversation lol). The same goes for Rose and Vriska with Light, the Time players... I don't know, it's striking to me. I can understand why the rumored Hussie Classpect doc is supposedly only a sentence or so per classpect because what do you even say? When the variety of experiences is so broad among them, it's impossible to define Classpects cohesively. Alternatively, aspects are something strictly defined by the meaning that people (characters) assign to them

[boyfriendgideon]

as yr favorite local jason todd fan sometimes i get so fed up with the apparent inability of most dc comic writers to write a class conscious narrative about him.

and yes, i know that comics are a very ephemeral and constantly evolving and self-conflicting medium.

and yes, i know they’re a profit-driven art medium created in a capitalistic society, so there are very few times where comics are going to be created solely out of the desire to authentically and carefully and deliberately represent a character and take them from one emotional narrative place to another, because dc cares about profit and sometimes playing it safe is what sells.

and yes, i know comics and other forms of art reflect and recreate the society within which they were conceived as ideas, and so the dominant societal ideas about gender and race and class and so on are going to be recreated within comics (and/or will be responded to, if the writer is particularly societally conscious).

but jesus christ. you (the writer/writers) have a working class character who has been homeless, who has lost multiple parents, who has been in close proximity to someone struggling with addiction, who has had to steal to survive, who may have (depending on your reading of several different moments across different comics created by different people) been a victim of csa, who has clearly (subtextually) struggled with his mental health, who was a victim of a violent murder, and who has an entirely distinct and unique perspective on justice that has evolved based on his lived experiences.

and instead of delving into any of that, or examining the myriad of ways that classism in the writers’ room and the editors’ room and the readers’ heads affected jason’s character to make sure you’re writing him responsibly, or giving him a plotline where his views on what justice looks like are challenged by another working class character, or allowing him to demonstrate actual autonomy and agency in deciding what relationships he wants to have with people who he loves but sees as having failed him in different ways, or thinking carefully about what his having chosen an alias that once belonged to his murderer says about his decision-making and motivations, you keep him stuck in a loop of going by the red hood, addressing crime by occupying a position of relative power that perpetuates crime & harm rather than ever getting at the root causes, and seesawing between a) agreeing with his adoptive family entirely about fighting nonlethally in ways that are often inconsistent with his apparent motivations or b) disagreeing and experiencing unnecessarily brutal and violent reactions from his adoptive father as if that kind of violence isn’t the kind of thing he experienced as a child and something bruce himself is trying to prevent jason from perpetuating. because a comic with red hood, quips, high stakes, and familial drama sells.

it doesn’t matter if it keeps jason trapped, torn between an unanswered moral and philosophical question, a collection of identities that no longer fit him, and a family that accepts him circumstantially. it doesn’t matter if jason’s characterization is so utterly inconsistent that the only way to mesh it together is to piece different aspects of different titles and plotlines together like a jigsaw. it doesn’t matter if you do a disservice to his character, because in the end you don’t want to transform him or even understand him deeply enough to identify what makes him compelling and focus on that.

and i love jason!!!!! i love him. and i think about the stories we could have, if quality and art and doing justice to the character were prioritized as much as selling a title and having a dark and brooding batfam member besides bruce just to be the black sheep character are prioritized. and i just get a little sad.

[accirax]

on the subject of DRDTdev's recent announcement...

does anybody remember if the bio for altdrdt always said "their missing classmates"? (the highlighting is mine for emphasis.) i didn't remember thinking that all of these characters were meant to be around the same age, but i'm not sure if i forgot or if this is a new piece of information.

[pitchthepeach]

He's simple, he's dumb, he's the pilot