Classpect Questions?

Y'know what. It's Mage Hours. Mage of Heart/Mage of Rage would be interesting to see.

Haven't given up on this project, personal stuff has just come up. I'll get back to it eventually, I promise. Sorry for not being consistent, hopefully I'll get back on this soon. Sucks this happened right after I went on about how excited to continue it. Life is just a bitch sometimes TuT

No need to apologize for not being consistent! It's a passion project, take your time. Life is a bitch so go be a bitch right back to it ^u^

Hi! I took a look at your classpecting document; it was very helpful! I think I've settled on Thief of Mind. I find that my main struggle in life is my tendency to pull away from people and focus inwards on my own ego, with said ego attempting to rationalize it as me being simply "more intelligent" and above everything else. This results in an abundance of creativity and self-analysis, but a weak sense of consequences and presence in the world. I think that, much like myself, the challenge of a Thief of Mind is to learn to balance out their aspect instead of being an impulsive hoarder, to allow other perspectives and aspects to influence them instead of instinctively self-isolating, and to drop the pretentious shields and actually be honest about themselves.

Okie I'm back. Won't promise to post consistently, but just as often as I feel up for it. But at a minimum I'll try and post at least three times a week, but I'll have a lot of phases where I get through a bunch of requests quickly. If the queue ever gets emptied I'll make a couple of wheels with all the classes and aspects and spin them and do random ones. @celluloidGadabout I'm so so happy you were able to use that doc for it's intended purpose, really neat seeing what you landed on! Thanks for the update ^v^

Anyway I'll get to posting a the next few pending requests soon, but here's an update on the spreadsheet so far. The picture I posted of it a few weeks ago isn't loading anymore which is weird, so I hope this one actually stays up.

Sylph: Sylph’s are similar to witches but they manipulate their aspect in a more abstract way, with a focus on healing. They can manipulate their aspect to heal it, making it thrive in their session. A common way to do this is to manifest their aspect into others. They also manifest it into the world. Their aspect is something that’s fragile or flawed in their session, and they always take it as their duty to both nurture it and fix it personally.

Breath: Wind, freedom, particularly narrative freedom. Not being tied down. Going along with the flow of events, not being an obstacle to a story

Heavily reworded Sylph's description from the last analysis. Still makes mostly the same point but I think it does it more efficiently.

So, Breath, as short as it's description is, does mean a lot. It's the concept of freedom in general, and the concept of freedom within a story. John inheriting narrative freedom is basically the same as him having plot armor as a real power. Literal wind can be used to escape and travel wherever the character needs to be and also as a weapon. It's an interesting class because it's one of the few that's equally symbolic and tangible.

A Sylph of Breath would be in a Sburb session where there are extreme limits and restrictions put onto the players because of an issue stemming from a narrative force, most likely being something that went wrong in their game. The lack of freedom can be caused by anything if you get creative enough. Maybe they pirated Sburb and it caused major consequences (which is an idea I had at like, yesterday, probably been done before or at least joked about). A fitting way to have a lack of breath within a story would be if the characters were just in a glitched or null session. Doesn't have to be that they're lacking a space or time player, could be a rogue NPC that kills all their dreamselves or kills the Black King and Queen before them, or a really bad coincidence, or interference from a powerful force outside their universe, like an Ult level player or a Lord. Or maybe even an evil Muse?

Anyway, if you're wondering why it's taking so long to get to explaining what a Sylph of Breath actually does, it's because it's one of those classes that's heavily influenced by the universe around them and the story they're a part of. People could relate to the struggle of a Sylph of Breath if they feel like the world around them or the systems in it that they're supposed to be able to rely on always seem to be plotting against them. Or if you feel like god themself has a grudge against you and the people you're close to, or maybe just the people you're close to. Things keep happening that keep you from feeling like there's any freedom in your life, and it's your biggest goal to carve freedom out for everyone, to try so hard to fly that you can eventually go anywhere you want.

Their actual powers would be similar to Johns but not identical. They wouldn't have very strong combat abilities, when they're fighting with others they'd take on a support role, using wind to push enemies away or to get their allies out of harms way. The way the metaphorical and literal wind works in John's favor when he just needs to go somewhere, how he always gets to where he needs to be, would be something that a Sylph of Breath could manifest for others, and you can elaborate on that concept in whatever way you feel would work best.

If whatever issue is causing the narrative to be weakened is a person acting out because they feel like they don't have any freedom themselves, a Sylph of Breath would heal them, no matter how much harm they've caused. However, them being able to heal breath may not come from something they do with their literal powers, it could just be because of the things they do in the story outside of using them. I hope no one's tired of me repeating this but I'll say it again: Classes determining specific powers of a hero is secondary to classes determining a heroes role in the story and how they interact with a specific narrative concept.

Welcome back!

Using discord as an image host breaks after a few weeks, it's a known issue

Interesting that you say a Sylph's aspect is lacking in the session; I always thought of that as a knight thing but I guess it could be both

@libraryseraph Ohhh, I screenshot the images and send them to discord so I can copy the link. I'll start doing it a different way. Glad it'll be up for a while at least. Thanks!

The vague difference between them is that a Knight's aspect is completely lacking in their session, while a Sylph's aspect is there but is fragile or inherently broken.

Beta trolls had teams that worked against each other and had a shit load of infighting, so they didn't have any blood at all. The life of their entire universe was tied to the life of a single individual, and the universe frog that they bred had cancer, so their sessions aspect of space was something that needed to be fixed. Oh and also the matriorb got fucking wasted.

It's kind've a weird distinction though? Because it'd also have been fitting for Karkat to be a sylph of blood by my own explanation. An aspect lacking in a session could also be interpreted as being inherently broken or fragile. The distinction is only important because it determines why a Knight and Sylph have their respective abilities.

Knights need to serve and protect their aspect rather than fix something that's fundamentally wrong with it, like a knight guarding a princess that's constantly dealing with assassination attempts. Dave didn't "fix" time, he served it the best he could; he made the most out of what little time they did have, but couldn't do anything to create more of it. Similarly, Karkat didn't manifest a strong bond between all twelve trolls, he just made the most out of what bonds they had (pretty much just the bond they had as players trying to beat sgrub) and got the teams to accomplish a goal together. He also kept the bonds from worsening the best that he could. He didn't create or heal anything.

Kanaya on the other hand took on the goal of creating and healing space. She wanted to create more of it. And Aranea wanted to heal Light, and her own narrative relevancy (which leads me to theorize that a sylph will fail in their goal of healing their aspect if they become to self centered about it). Light was fundamentally broken in paradox space because of how much bad luck it's had in general due to a bunch of coincidences happening to bring Lord English into existence.

Idk much about the theory about active/passive pairings in classes (which is why I never bring them up in these analysis's, whoops) but the biggest take I have on it are that Knights and Sylphs are counterparts with Knights being active and Sylphs being passive.

honestly Im surprised no one else had asked for it, since I think its a common classpect, how would you interprete a Maid of Heart? :33!

Two things- I want to throw Prince of Doom in the ring to see your interpretation.

Second thing- if you have a method, how do you go about actually 'classpecting' people? I want to think about what a session between my friends would look like, but only one of them has actually consumed Homestuck enough to classpect themselves. How do I make a 'proper' meager assumption as to what my friends classpects are? Do you have a method, or some kind of reputable test you think is more or less fair?

@rookie1978

Well the most simple way I can describe how to do that is to take what the aspects represent on a narrative level and see how they apply to your or your friends lives. What aspect has the most significance in their life? Once you answer that, you need to ask why and how that is. Their relationship with it determines the class.

Homestuck is a story and it's gimmick is that it's very self aware of it, which is why canonicity is such a prominent concept. To classpect yourself you have to view your life as a story where both you and the universe are the writers. Because your aspirations impact your class just as much as the way you currently are, reaching towards your aspirations is you writing the story.

I hope that actually makes sense. Apologies if not. But the google doc that I have linked in a comment under my profile might help what I'm talking about here make sense, it's spoiler free if you just wanna show it to your non homestuck friends. Good luck!

After saying my own up there, I'm curious about your interperetation of a Thief of Mind!

Sylph: Sylph’s are similar to witches but they manipulate their aspect in a more abstract way, with a focus on healing. They can manipulate their aspect to heal it, making it thrive in their session. A common way to do this is to manifest their aspect into others. They also manifest it into the world. Their aspect is something that’s fragile or flawed in their session, and they always take it as their duty to both nurture it and fix it personally.

Doom: Fate (specifically an unfortunate fate), futility, misfortune in general, sacrifice, and death. Time has an association with death, but doom directly deals with it. It heavily involves ghosts and the afterlife. This aspect seems to be connected with rules and restrictions. It's usually tied to the specific event(s) in their sburb session that will doom everyone.

This one has a long preamble, and I apologize. Skip the paragraph below if you just wanna read the analysis straight.

So, the first sylph request I completed was Sylph of Rage. In that one I interpreted it as being an inherently antagonistic classpect to have because I view Sylph's healing their aspect to mean they don't see any single part about their aspect as something wrong with it. They don't try and improve or change it, they just manifest it and nurture it as a whole to the best of their ability. Someone else had the idea that a Sylph of Rage could be beneficial because anger isn't an inherently negative thing and can be used to help others, which is true, but I view rage as encompassing destruction and chaos in general, so it didn't change my view that classpect. I don't think that's an invalid take though, I understood where they were coming from. Sylphs, rage, and doom as well are all concepts that aren't very directly explained in the comic. I'm prefacing this analysis with this because 1) I forgot to respond to that reply before (sorry), and 2) my own interpretation of Sylph of Doom is not going to be someone that heals their session of doom. They will be healing the aspect themselves. However that last reply has led me to broaden my thought process, which ended up leading me to believe there are three different ways this classpect would work narratively, so it'll probably be one of the longest analysis's I've written so far. Whoops!

So! Doom is an unfortunate fate, misfortune in general, the restrictions their session faces, and death itself. It has a lot to do with specific major events within their game session that will restrict and negatively impact them and their teammates. A Sylph's aspect is something that's fragile, weak, or threatened within their session, and they will take it on as their personal duty to manifest it and make it stronger, and have the ability to bring their aspect out within others. They're known as a healing class because their goal is to "heal" their aspect; they can heal others through their aspect, which also serves to accomplish that goal. This is why I wrote that preamble as well as mentioned that these things interact a bit strangely, in my own opinion.

I think the best case scenario for a Sylph of Doom would be to function similarly to a time player, taking on the duties to do what needs to be done in order to prevent a doomed timeline, or keep the wrong timeline from not becoming doomed, they focus on the death and misfortune that's necessary for success rather than death and misfortune that would lead to a doomed timeline.

Because sometimes bad things have to happen in order to prevent a broken timeloop. The simplest example of this concept being that Vriska made sure Bec was prototyped because she knew their timeline would be doomed if he wasn't. A benevolent Sylph of Doom would only be able to exist in a session where a lot of bad things need to happen in order to keep their timeline stable (which ties into Sylph's aspect being weak, since they would need to make sure these things happen). This would work well if they had a Page of Time on their team or another time player who has difficulty with keeping the timeloops stable, or they could simply work together with them. They could alternatively be at conflict with one another, with the time player preventing bad things from happening thinking it's what's necessary, even though those things need to happen. It'd also work well if it was neccessary for some players to die for one reason or another.

Basically, this type of Sylph of Doom takes on the duty of nurturing doom for the benefit of their session and timeline.

Now, the more straightforward Sylph of Doom would be someone who simply wants doom to come about in a session where everything is going "too good" in order to cause a doomed timeline rather than preventing one. They would be perfect to be the main or a secondary antagonist. Maybe they're working under a higher power that wants to destroy everything, maybe they grew to hate their teammates, or they want to bring about despair just for the sake of it. All that matters is there's a lack of death and misfortune in the game and they plan to manifest it and restrict their teammates.

This Sylph of Doom takes on the duty of nurturing doom for the sake of doom. Death for the sake of death.

A combination of these two ideas would be a Sylph of Doom who manifests doom to cause a doomed timeline, but isn't a villain. If something bad would happen if their team won their session, they would do anything in their power to bring about doom to their timeline. This could be the case if the other players would be tyrannical towards the new universe they created.

This Sylph of Doom takes on the duty of nurturing doom for the greater good. Manifesting misfortune and death to those who just deserve it.

With all that said, what would their actual powers look like?

Sylph's manipulate their aspects in an abstract way, and that works well with doom, which is an inherently abstract aspect. I feel like Sylph's would be able to essentially curse others. The least to most powerful curses would be bad luck, an impending sense of doom and/or futility, a very restrictive disability, sickness, and death. They would likely have to lay their hands upon them to do so, similar to how Aranea had to physically touch Jake and Terezi to manifest light within them.

Fascinating. My take on Sylph of doom leans pretty heavily on the fate aspect of doom, but I see where you're coming from. (Also not giving up on my sylph of rage takes)

Since my personal backlogue is cleared... knight of life and thief of blood?

Interesting takes all!

Throwing a bit of a curve ball then and do of course feel no pressure:

Current theories as to the Omega Kids and their prospective classpects being what it is I'd be entirely curious what your takes are on the as yet unseen combinations on Human/Vrissy The Honorary Human Classpect combinations.

Those being, as the theory goes, and with some personal figuring fully intact:

Bard of Doom (Tavvy)
Thief of Mind (Vrissy)
Sylph of Blood (Harry)
Mage of Rage (Yiffy)

Sylph of rage has already been covered here and that particular analysis is quite interesting, even gets me thinking of maybe swapping mage and sylph given "healing with rage" is certainly something a punk anarchist that sees things glazed over with banality would disrupt and upset. Tavvy being given motivation, Kanaya being spurred into a justified rage, Jane's entire thing and so on. Granted this does lose the rather interesting element of hard confirming the notion, canonical or not depending on who you ask, that there are in fact no truly gendered classes and that was Calliope's assumptive assertion.

The thief analysis also brings up some interesting points given Vrissy does, in many ways, lack "mind". Hard facts and insight into matters of practical motivation, the calculus of underlying themes and deeper realities hidden from her. Not to mention the greater context of some of her friends turning out to be Nymphs and Satyrs. (and of course the very blunt fact she seemingly has particularly potent mind powers regarding her ability to manipulate species not her own thanks to her training and upbringing on Earth C. Being a literal brain-hijacker in that sense.)

I've always personally imagined "Bard of Doom" is the kind of classpect that brings the term 'Malicious Compliance' to an entirely new philosophical zenith as well. He's skilful and competent and well versed in etiquette, but also increasingly seems willing to use that architecture to Proceed To Disrupt.