caligvlasaqvarivm

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Hey, I don't think anyone has asked you about Jane <3 Equius and I'm going crazy I want to know why (with sincere curiosity and thanks for answering in advance)

The primary reason is because 3/4 of the Alpha kids are introduced with "by the way, here's the dead troll you're supposed to date." Roxy goes on about how much she fucking LOVES wizards, and she writes a fanfic where she describes an evil arrogant despotic slytherin harry potter as incredibly hot, and she has a crush on an eccentric hipster prince... (and on Eridan's side, he's tried getting in red with a bubbly pink girl and a cat-themed rogue, and roxy is a bubbly pink cat-themed rogue...)

Jake is introduced with a small digression where he yammers about all the "cerulean babes" he's obsessed with, and in specific, neytiri from avatar, wishing he could've been the one to "overcome his paralysis on an alien adventure planet to become her boyfriend". Basically, he wishes he'd been in tavros's place while vriska was crushing on him. He's also immediately attracted to aranea, a dead ringer for vriska. vriska also pursued red with john and tavros, the former of which shares a lot of genetic similarities with jake, the latter of which is also a page and also shares a lot of personality similarities, and she also has a thing for nic cage, whose rugged adventury-ness (but also cringeness) echoes jake

jane is thus introduced with a wall of "cobalt beefcakes," with ron swanson being her ideal man. she's also constantly described as a "tightass" by her friends, correcting their grammar and being initially reluctant to swear, and catches a lot of 100%'s, not just from hal. equius's primary flushcrush was aradia, who was also a maid, and whom equius's attraction - as he describes - was primarily based on the fact that she was so dignified, if only she wasn't of such low caste - !

We also see with tiaratop!jane that at her worst, she's incredibly dominant and controlling, treating jake as an object and breeding stud. equius is a massive sub and he would be so down bad for this. she's technically the condy's heiress, so of incredibly high status; shes dignified in ways reminiscent of aradia; and to top it all off, she's domineering and bossy and has a part of her that wants a partner that can shut up and look pretty and do whatever she says.

this is all said with the MAJOR CAVEAT that none of these romances work without all the characters experiencing some pretty major character development - eridan as we last saw him is too volatile and dangerous for roxy, vriska as we last saw her is the same way, and i'm pretty sure jane would be fairly :/ about an equius as we last saw him. but an eridan who has his shit together and is actively crusading for the powers of good while still being an evil harry potter wizard would sweep roxy right off her feet; a vriska who's come to realize she doesn't need to be so switched on and dangerous all the time would get along well with jake, since her specific brand of "yeah 8itch let's go adventuring" meshes well with his; equius who's not a weird casteist anymore and has some prudence about his fetishes would basically be jane's ideal ron swanson? gruff, masculine, a cobalt beefcake, not really wanting to engage with everyone's dumb horseplay, except that he'd do anything jane tells him to do and she's into that tbh

like unfortunatelyyyyy i think they'd work well together & i think aradia would be so damn relieved about it

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

No, Karkat's lusus was a proper lusus naturae, it's stated that the Signless's followers prepared it for him along with his symbol. Probably inferrable that it was a secret lusus breeding program carried out by the jades in the hatching caves, since they're the only adults allowed on alternia.

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

So ive diagnosed my blorbo as a knight of doom; how fucked is he?

Honestly, he's probably just fine! Though Doom is the aspect associated with death and suffering, and its players tend to be pessimists, that doesn't mean that they're slated for permanent, terrible fates.

aspect = base personality, class = character arc

So we don't have much on Doom players, but every Aspect exists as an equal-but-opposite reflection of another Aspect, so Doom can also be understood as being equal-and-opposite of Life. All three of our Life players are marked by a stubborn optimism - Feferi's main defining characteristic is outright stated to be her undeterrable optimism, and Jane stubbornly refuses to believe that Crockercorp is evil and that her friends are from a post-apocalyptic future. Meenah, too, stubbornly and wilfully refuses to listen to her friends telling her that trying to kill the invincible demon is an impossible task. If we then look at our Doom players through the lens that they ought to have opposite traits to our Life players, we see that this rings true - both Doom players are pessimists (at least, Mituna was before his injury, given his defining trait then was yammering on about a terrible fate that would befall his team if they didn't all stop being such assholes) who are marked by mutability. Mituna is noted as having this thing where he switches wildly between being highly offensive and then highly contrite, while Sollux's character introduction is literally a double bait-and-switch, where he initially refuses to be introduced, and then changes his mind. Life is also associated with the physical world and biology - the Condy giving herself the psionics of the other bloodlines through whacked out genetic experimentation - while Doom seems associated with artificial technological processes, like code.

I'm also personally convinced that being a dual dreamer is actually a Doom thing, and not a Captor/bifurcation thing, and here's my reasoning: Doom is associated with death and prophecies. Mituna was noted to still have prophetic visions even though he was an Heir, a class not associated with futuresight. Sleep/dreamselves in Homestuck are associated with prophecy - the clouds above Skaia and the whispers of the Horrorterrors - and having an extra dreamself means the player functionally has an extra "death" to spare. Moreover, having two dreamselves gave Sollux extra abilities in the dream bubbles (read: afterlife) - he was able to become "half-dead", which enabled him to leave the bubbles, something Aradia remarks he "shouldn't be able to do". Finally, there's another heavily bifurcated member of the cast, arguably much moreso than Mituna or Sollux (who are both shown to be dual dreamers) - Gamzee. Sollux and Mituna have a tendency to swing between two different emotional states, but Gamzee is confirmed by Hussie in the book commentary to literally have two halves of his personality (and after he snaps, he refers to himself as if he's two people - "THE MIRTHFUL MESSIAHS WERE ALWAYS ME (o: and me :o)"). It's not necessarily a split personality so much as the result of many years of masking his true self behind a persona, but it's still bifurcation AT LEAST comparable to Mituna, if not Sollux - but Gamzee is not a dual dreamer.

Plus, it just makes sense, right? Sleep and death are interlinked in Homestuck; the death one has to take to become God Tier is called "the Ultimate Nap", God Tier clothes are equated to pajamas, and becoming God Tier merges you with your dreamself. Thus I posit that Doom's domain is over pessimism, negative feelings, death, sleep, rest, prophecies, and endings. Its players are negative and pessimistic, but empathetic compared to Life's tendency towards callousness; they tend to be contradictory and standstill compared to Life's stubborn forward motion, and they're commiscerators, not healers. They are guides in stormy weather, reminders that sadness, grief, and pain are not bad things and not to be shunned; they aren't really super noticeable when things are going well, but when things turn to shit, they often become the team martyrs, willing to sacrifice themselves to course correct - but because they have a bit more death to spare, they're able to do so without losing themselves (Sollux, after all, ends the story alive).

Knights, meanwhile, have a character conflict centering around insecurity and façade. They're usually handed some great destiny - Dave to defeat LE, Karkat to unite all the bloodlines. However, they're struck by self-loathing and imposter syndrome, and to cope with those feelings, project a façade opposite of their Aspect. For example, Dave is consistently shown to be one of the most detail-oriented members of the team, who listens and absorbs all the bullshit Karkat says and picks up on "hints" that he's meant to kill LE, and he's constantly working to polish his "art" - these reflect Time's association with minutiae and its driven, goal-oriented nature. However, he has a crippling insecurity about Not Being Good Enough, and a fear of genuine sincerity, brought on by years of abuse at his brother's hands; this leads him to project a front of "disaffected cool kid who doesnt [sic] give a fuck". At its worst, this causes him to make the wild assertion that LE has never even done anything directly to him or his friends, so he refuses to fight the guy - even though he literally watched LE pop a bubble, and was haunted directly by LE in his youth via Lil' Cal.

Similarly, Karkat loves his friends and feels personally responsible both for their success and their failure, and when push comes to shove, and he's able to calm down and get serious, he's actually one of his team's most level-headed and reasonable members (his counselling of past!Kanaya comes to mind, where he talks her through her romantic woes and reassures her that she's doing just fine at frog breeding and will figure it out) - these are reflective of Blood and its focus on bonds, and its mature, responsible (if neurotically so) nature. However, he has intense self-loathing due to both his mutant status AND crippling insecurity about his status as the Second Coming of Troll Jesus (something he's confirmed to know about because he rants at Jade at one point about how his blood color makes him good only for an execution in the exact manner the Signless suffered); these lead him to try and project a façade of a Strong Leader Who Don't Need No Friendship, which ended up having disastrous knock-on effects for his team - he functionally sanctions the Tavros/Vriska situation, which dashed any hope of Tavros self-improving; he ignored Equius/Nepeta, which stifled Nepeta's ability to grow due to Equius's isolating overbearingness; he ignored the Terezi/Vriska dynamic, which ended in disaster; and he left Eridan all alone to fester and stew in loneliness and anxiety - all the worse because it's heavily implied/foreshadowed that Eridan and Karkat have a naturally pale dynamic, and confirmed that Karkat is basically the only person on the entire team who cares about Eridan and takes his problems seriously. His fixation on being an independent badass distanced him from his Aspect, and his team paid the price, and then, with half his friends dead, he had no way to complete his arc as a Blood player.

Finally, Latula is beset by crippling insecurity, especially over her role in the team and whether or not people like and respect her - she neurotically tells Meenah that she used to view Meenah as a competitor for the team's "badass cool girl," and worked herself into knots about it, before "rationalizing" it as being okay because Meenah could be the team Bad Girl, but Latula could be the team Rad Girl. This is her façade - she acts like a dumbass exaggerated Gamer Girl stereotype so that people will like her better, opposite Mind's associations with intellect, logic, and rationality. Porrim outright says that she's smarter than she lets on, and tells her to drop the act, which Latula agrees to do, confirming that it is, in fact, a façade. Latula also confirms for us that justice and karma are Mind things, stating that she "gets" how the Mindfang/Redglare situation turned out that way karmically, and that Porrim doesn't because she's not a Mind player. But, as a result of her dedication to her façade and pursuit of likability, Latula ends up being one of the team's ultimate bystanders. She's friendly towards Meenah and hostile towards Damara, even though, given she can sense how nasty Aranea is, she should've been able to easily identify how horrifically Damara was treated - the poor, rustblood immigrant being bullied by the rich fuchsia heiress? C'mon. All the worse because Latula IS anti-casteist, as this is one of the things Kankri likes about her. Moreover, she's dating Mituna... and I've gotten death threats for saying so before, but I stand by this; it's not a healthy relationship.

MITUNA DIGRESSION TIME. Asked by Meenah what she even likes about him, Latula can't come up with anything besides "idk, there's more to him than all the awful stupid shit he says" and "he will always need me". 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬 Like she literally can't resist insulting him when she's trying to come up with why she likes him, and the only specific thing she can name is that he's dependent on her... terrible! Terrible icky bad! Moreover, Mituna himself doesn't seem to... know... that he's dating Latula? He never comments on it, and in fact, when Meenah asks him to take off his shirt so she can see if he has God Tier wings, he ENTHUSIASTICALLY assumes that she's romantically/sexually interested in him and reciprocates. Cronus outright says that part of what he "likes" about Mituna is that he's too incoherent to understand anything Cronus says, which appears to be the common consensus. Look, I am not at all saying that neurodivergent people OVERALL can't consent. I am just saying that, given that Mituna literally forgets how to take his own shirt off, and seems confused and unhappy about Cronus's intimate shoulder-touching, but can't articulate it any more coherently than "why is your hand touching me, i don't want it to be touching me", I would personally feel uncomfortable doing anything romantic/sexual with someone drunk or high enough to be similarly impaired - especially because Mituna's condition is always framed as an injury and not who he is as a person. Not only that, but it's an injury he suffered at Kurloz's hands so Kurloz could use him as a hypnopuppet (the source of the "rumor" Cronus hears that Mituna can speak coherently around Kurloz)... basically, the injury is framed as a Very Bad Thing that happened to Mituna, which allows him to be taken advantage of and abused by the others on his team. And given that Latula's only stated reason for liking him is "he's dependent on me"? 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

Finally, the thing people always point to as "Latula cares about him awww" is that she yells at Damara not to touch him while he's sleeping, or else Latula will kill her. The thing is, though, Damara is the victim in her story, no matter how explosively she retaliated, and Latula - the smart Mind player who instinctively understands karma - would know this. Moreover, we know that Damara is perfectly kind and polite to people she has no beef with, because she's very sweet to the humans - and she's even still needlessly kind to Rufioh, offering him genuine romantic advice, just because he can actually speak her language. Before his injury, Mituna is characterized as constantly trying to warn his team to stop being shitty or else something bad will happen to them - AKA, the only person on the team who likely WASN'T a complicit bystander in the Meenah/Damara situation - meaning that it's more likely than not that Damara is friendly to Mituna. What does it ACTUALLY say, then, that Latula tries to keep her away from him? Just food for thought.

Anyway, Mituna digression over - point is, Latula dating him is her taking advantage of him (in fact, it probably passes her team's smell test because of the way it resembles culling - which, by all means, Latula is AGAINST), and thus, a nasty, unjust thing to do - but done because it assuages her insecurities and helps her push her façade as the Gamer Girl to have a Gamer Boy BF.

So an Knight of Doom takes shape - someone who's pessimistic and contradictory, who has prophetic abilities, but deeply insecure about some aspect of themselves. Given Doom's association with prophecy, the impact of the Knight's usual overhanging prophecy is probably magnified - the Knight of Doom is intended to accomplish some great feat, but their powers naturally cause them to see only poor endings. Thus, to cope with it, they adopt a persona that distances themselves from Doom - probably something relentlessly cheerful and positive, like a self-help guru. They also probably stay awake as often as possible, avoiding Doom's sleep and rest. Still, they're actually quite drawn to some aspect of their Aspect - like Dave to rap, Karkat to romance, the Knight of Doom probably has some great, earnest fondness for code, or lucid dreaming.

Their arc is one of internal struggle against insecurity, the façade against their true self. At their worst, the Knight of Doom's insistence on shallow, hollow optimism will lead them to ignore their prophetic visions, and all signs of brewing trouble - which the Knight, the party's direct leader, who wields their Aspect like a tool or weapon (and who can, in turn, wield others as such through their Aspect), is uniquely poised to intervene in. A Knight is the steering force of the party, for good or for ill, and a Knight of Doom who ignores all the warnings their Aspect provides will certainly charter a course for disaster.

However, Doom players are uniquely gifted in course correction, and having two dreamselves means they have an extra death to spare. Even if the Knight of Doom fails to steer the party away from trouble, once they're in trouble, the Doom player may just be able to pull them out at the cost of one of their own lives. In general, this ability to course-correct has great synergy with the Knight's role as a leader; if the Knight of Doom is able to overcome their insecurities, and come to terms with their pessimistic nature, they'll be uniquely poised to intervene in any situation before it gets too messy or passes the point of no return - but even if it does, the Knight still might be able to turn it all around. After all, death isn't really the end in Homestuck, and in the realm of the dead, nobody has more sway than the Doom player.

Doom as an Aspect isn't very glamorous, and its associations with pessimism, suffering, and death can even make it seem like the short end of the stick - which I'm sure Doom players would agree with, those negative nancies. But pain is the bricks that build the bridge of empathy, and one can't have joy without sadness. If you never live, you can't die; if you can never die, are you really alive? Finite things are more precious for their finiteness, and all things must eventually come to an end, one way or another; what a Knight of Doom does for the party is ensure that, when they reach that ending, it's a peaceful, satisfying, and restful one - one in which they can look back and go, "that was pretty great."

Also, being able to wield doom and death like a tool or weapon sounds Sick as Hell

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Would you mind explaining how the powers of a Heir of Time work? I never understood the Time aspect and neither the Heir class.

I like the way you explain, so I would really appreciate if you could enlighten me on the topic lol

(But only do it if you want to 🙂)

Here:

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

aspect = base personality traits and class = character arc

So the Blood Thing is bonds, pacts, relationships, and interdependence (also literal blood probably, given every aspect seems to be able to deal with its literal counterpart). In contrast to Breath's callous youthful naïvety, Blood players tend to be neurotic and obsessive, shackled by a feeling of responsibility for others, which stems from a well of deep empathy. This sense of responsibility for others is the main trait Kankri and Karkat share, though it manifests in wildly different ways - also a hypercritical nature, and messy romantic feelings.

Though Karkat's personal fixation is on romantic relationships, Blood encompasses ALL relationships - platonic, familial, and even societal. Kankri is, after all, an SJW (if a viciously malignant one using it for his own selfish ends). This kind of makes Blood the Society Aspect. In contrast to Breath's focus on independence, freedom, and choices, Blood players are specialized in teamwork, binding people down, and promises and oaths.

Knights, meanwhile, are one of the most straightforward Classes in terms of powerset, but have one of the most frustrating arcs. Knights struggle with insecurity and façade. They find some aspect of themselves embarrassing or shameful, usually something to do with their Aspect, and seek to cover it up with a façade that deliberately distances them from said Aspect.

For example, Dave is usually the character paying the most attention (Time's attention to detail), but he fronts as a Disaffected Cool Guy Who Doesnt Give A Shit. there's multiple instances where he'll mock someone by going "Aint Nobody Have Time To Read Allat", only to reveal that he has, in fact, read allat. Latula, though it's more subtle, is also deeply insecure about how she comes across to others - Mind and its association with outward behavior - so she puts up a Rad Girl act that Porrim literally calls out as being dumber than Latula actually is. And Karkat, obviously, fucking loves and cherishes all his friends so so much, but pretends like he's a big bad angry leader who feels nothing for them but disdain.

Knights are usually outright given some grand, karmic task, often in the form of prophecy (moreso than other classes). Dave notes constantly that he's been picking up hints that he's destined to defeat LE, whereas Karkat is literally the second coming of troll jesus, said to bring "equality and forgiveness to all bloodlines", something he's confirmed to know about because he rants at Jade at one point about his blood color marking him as good for nothing but execution in the exact method as the signless. This reflects how they're also usually a rallying point for the party - its leader, strategist, or just its beating heart. Knights are the most classical "hero" out of the Classes in this way.

Their problem is never in actually using their Aspect - Aradia says at one point that Dave wields Time like a tool or weapon. Using the Aspect comes fairly easily and naturally to them - on his better days, karkat is constantly offering and providing solid relationship advice, or otherwise getting people to reconcile or form friendships. The problem is that, as they struggle with their own selves and their own insecurities, it's very likely for them to decide to lay their weapon down.

Dave, at the nadir of his arc, not only refuses to time travel, but opines that "LE never directly did anything bad to any of us," despite literally being haunted directly by LE as a child via lil cal - refuting not just his time powers, but his nature as a time player to notice details (it's especially stark when contrasted against the fact that he makes mention multiple times about picking up on the tiny details suggesting he's meant to kill LE). Latula, a failed Knight, has picked up on Aranea's shittier tendencies (outright mentions not liking her and saying their contentious relationship as ancestors "makes sense" as a karma/mind thing), but refuses to do anything about it (and one has to assume, given Mind's associations with karma and justice, that she also picked up on the hideous injustices happening in the rest of the team, and similarly chose not to do anything about them). Karkat's failures are more cumulative, but they are almost all centered around neglecting his team: he leaves Equius with Nepeta, which prevents Nepeta from reaching her full potential; he doesn't intervene in Vriska and Tavros' situationship; he doesn't help Vriska and Terezi make up; he leaves Eridan all alone to stew in his frustration for the entire game; so on and so on and so on. He's so caught up in being the Big Bad Leader, doing the frog breeding job that wasn't his to do (frog breeding requires time paradoxes, and the last frog is in the space player's past, meaning a time player is best suited to help the space player with it), that he fails to notice or deal with the decay rotting his team from within, and by the time he reflects on this and expresses that he could've stepped in on the meteor relationships sooner and prevented his friends from suffering so much, it's already too late for him - half his friends are dead, his romances are in shambles, and Blood is nothing without bonds.

But that also helps to clarify what Karkat looks like when he IS able to deal with his insecurities and IS able to get his shit together. Even while screwing up constantly, he's able to keep his team of 12 working toward the same goal successfully enough that they beat the black king. he's ultimately the one who bridges the gap between the humans and the trolls, and nobody can ever truly hate him because they can all tell how deeply he actually cares about them, which is why everyone listens to him in the first place. Karkat himself will probably never be a particularly good fighter, especially because Blood is about binding (people famously point to how, in the final fight, karkat wins against clover with rope and bondage, not his sickle), but if he can get his shit together, he'll be an incomparable leader.

Not necessarily the one barking commands, but the one who gets people to act in the best interest of the whole, rather than themselves. Knights wield their aspect like a tool or weapon, right? Karkat would be able to wield relationships like a tool or weapon. His entire fighting style should revolve around throwing his allies at the problem, in the ways in which they're best suited. If Karkat can get his SHIT together, it means his whole team has their shit together, everyone working with what, and with whom, they're best suited for completing their tasks. Conversely, Karkat can't really be at his best unless EVERYONE IS THERE - but I think part of his personal plotline is *getting everyone there*. Blood is the force that binds, that ties together, that makes things become more than the sum of their parts. while his active powerset might never be truly impressive (though the image of him summoning shackles and chains to hold enemies down for his team comes to mind), the fact that he'd be able to keep all these idiots in line would be the real miracle karkat alone is capable of pulling. power of friendship baybee

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

She doesn't hunt lusii though, she hunts "fauna," which is an explicitly different thing from a lusus - lusus naturae have troll blood colors, but nepeta uses the blood of the fauna she hunts and eats for her shipping wall, and the colors aren't troll blood colored. the lusus killer on the team is eridan :)

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

hand wobble, aspect = base personality and class = character arc

time has death/destruction associations but the major aspect presiding over death is doom (p sure being a dual dreamer is a Doom thing rather than a Captor thing, since doom deals with prophecy (mituna also has future vision despite being an heir, which is not associated with foresight), being a dual dreamer lets the player have an extra death, and being a dual dreamer let sollux do weird shit in the afterlife, like be "half dead" and leave the bubbles, which aradia is surprised that he can do), Mituna isn't particularly bifurcated, and Gamzee is lowkey more Actually Bifurcated than either Captor (with hussie's book commentary confirming that he has two sides to his personality, one getting much louder/more dominant after his crisis of faith), but isn't a dual dreamer.

time is more associated with minutiae, detail, the struggle to complete a goal, ends justifying the means, etc. Dave at his best is always the teammate paying the most attention, aradia is the first teammate to notice the threads of conspiracy surrounding them (and is gathering up the Full Story of how things went wrong in the bubbles), and all 4 time players are marked by their tireless persistence when it comes to completing a goal. it and space are a bit harder to define since they encompass more, and aspects have overlap, so yes, time does have associations with death/destruction, same as space has associations with life/birth/creation, but even the death aspect (doom) just gives doom players extra sway and dominion over death, and doesn't cosign them to dying and staying dead (sollux literally ends the story fully alive), so there's no reason time would do that either.

The deal with Heirs is actually that their character arc is one of defecting from decadence. All three heirs start the game set to inherit a cushy, comfortable lifestyle by the standards of their society - John is the heir of a Condy-less Crockercorp, Equius is a blueblooded noble, and Mituna would've gotten Feferi-style ultraculled. Note that this does not mean that their lifestyle is Objectively Good - just that it would be "good" by the flawed standards of their society (John would've had to be a stuffy capitalist corporate suit, equius would've had to be a murdercop, and mituna would've basically been treated like a pet).

As such, Heirs start the game pretty powerful in their aspect, but with poor control over it, reflecting their external inheritances. John's able to pull a big windy thing miracle really early on in his game, but it takes him a really long time to learn how to use his abilities to do much more than zip around and summon tornados to fight with even after going god tier; Mituna had prophetic visions of the end since the beginning; Equius's void was actually helping vriska out the whole time by hiding her from Doc Scratch while she was his neighbor. Im pretty sure the book commentary also confirms them as being passive, and given their shared themes of inheritance and "becoming" their aspect, im pretty sure the split is page (active) / heir (passive).

Because of their sheltered and privileged upbringings, Heirs start with pretty massive blindspots to the struggles of the less fortunate and the flaws in the system they grew up with. equius is the obvious example here, given the disdain he holds for the lower classes, which isn't entirely fake, and the fact that he objects to nepeta hunting animals for food, seemingly not realizing that he himself will have to murder innocent trolls as an adult. john's less pronounced in this regard, but for example, the fact that dave has an abusive guardian COMPLETELY flies over his head. John's also initially on board with the trolls just being like klingons from his movies, not questioning their horrific society when vriska talks to him about it, and it's not until much later that he goes "uh... actually... vriska, youre kind of dangerous and idk if it's a good idea to bring you back to life".

This naïvety and comfort is the crux of the Heir character arc. Like wealthy inheritors IRL, it's very easy for them to simply end up becoming part of the flawed, oppressive status quo. In the Heir's case specifically, this manifests as a sort of "ticking clock" on their aspect abilities - if they aren't able to realize in time that they want to change the system they live in, and refute the status quo they've been handed as birthright, they'll end up being consumed by their aspect. Doom has associations with endings and death, and Mituna ends up so brain damaged that it carries over into the afterlife; Void has associations with vice and pleasure, and Equius winds up submitting to his bdsm fetish and letting Gamzee kill him (hussie confirms that gamzee could've gotten out of it by just flexing his neck muscles, but didn't because Horny), and Breath has associations with freedom and independence, and John very nearly gets taken out of relevancy entirely to go on a solo adventure through caliborn's homosuck - but he's able to pull out at the last minute and harness his breath powers (his retcon abilities are solidified as a Breath Power because it turns out that his planetary quest, which is tied to his classpect, is ultimately about using retcon abilities to clear the pipes).

And I think, however you feel about the ending (which i'm certain was Bad On Purpose as a reflection of the comic's themes on unreliable, and even malicious, narrators), once you consider the retcon powers to be part of john's Breath abilities, their passive nature - and the Heir's ultimate role in the party - becomes pretty obvious; while they are JOHN's powers, he's at his best when he's using them FOR OTHERS, functionally granting them access to Breath's sway over freedom (from the alpha timeline). in other words... john becomes (inherits) breath for others!

so the form of an Heir of Time starts to emerge. This person was born into wealth and privilege, and has a meticulous, detail-oriented and goal-oriented nature. Time players sometimes struggle with big picture thinking, as that's Space's domain, so the Heir of Time probably has the Heir's blind spots toward societal flaws exaggerated somewhat, though Time's meticulous nature might mitigate some of the Class's tendencies not to notice their teammates' more personal struggles. I kind of imagine a character with a very bootstraps mentality, someone who would go "being wealthy is hard work but you can do it if you try hard enough," naively unaware of greater societal pressures and inequalities.

Emotionally, Time players are prone to destructive frustration and spinning their wheels in pursuit of the wrong goals - losing track of the bigger picture entirely. I'd imagine if the Heir's "ticking clock" on their inheritance runs out, then they'll wind up becoming lost in an impossible, sisyphean task (maybe theyre stuck in a kagerou daze style time loop or something), making Time as an aspect unavailable to the rest of the team

But if the Heir is able to reflect and realize that their worldview is flawed, Time workers are tireless when given a goal, and the Heir will be similarly persistent in righting wrongs. Moreso than most other classes, Heirs provide secondhand access to their Aspect, functionally allowing every player to use their Aspect when they're around - they would become Time for others, letting their teammates access and use time travel to complete their own goals, granting Time's ceaseless ability to struggle against all odds to the rest of their team

though ofc homestuck operates on a soft magic system, i do try to pull from textual evidence where possible, and i do believe you can figure out what each class and aspect Actually Do once you start comparing characters who share them, haha.

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

idk where that comes from, nothing about either the heir class or time as an aspect would require that

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

definitely something with doom (sorry doom players but youve been diagnosed with Pain and Suffering Aspect) and then either prince or mage because those are the most suffering classes. so i guess sollux

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Classpecting? Tell me of some powers a Mage of Space would harbor!

yayyyyyy sad mage time

aspect = fundamental personality traits and class = character arc and emotional struggle

space is about the big picture, the interconnected nature of all things, the present moment, journey > destination, recycling, and reproduction. its players tend to be patient, passive, and feminine; their main struggle is with being overly permissive and forgiving, allowing bad actors too much faith and too much freedom. they're very distractible and tend to be frivolous and silly, having difficulty staying on task and quickly able to jump from topic to topic, goal to goal, thought to thought. when everything is interconnected, it's easy to lose sight of the finer details!

mages, meanwhile, have the very powerful ability to choose the future - literally able to pick a series of events that will definitely come to pass once they speak it aloud as a prophecy. in exchange for this great power, they start the game very fucking miserable, having been subject to their aspect at its worse for so long that they've normalized shitty outcomes. As a result, mages will start the game picking out shitty futures.

Space, at its worst, is passive aimlessness - cold, uncaring, unfeeling, and distant. A Mage of Space will probably start the game lonely and in some form of bondage or subjugation to a stronger personality or even a nefarious entity. The Space proclivity for lightheartedness and silliness will mitigate the Mage's inherent sadness somewhat, but this doesn't make the mage any less of a potential problem - a Mage of Space, in order to distract themselves from their own shitty situation, will likely be an utter space case, babbling prophecies about irrelevant topics that ultimately come to be distractions for the party, as well. (We can see this fixation on irrelevant topics in Porrim's utter failure to complete the frog breeding, opting instead to be a bra-burning feminist over the course of her game - or Jade's willingness to simply go along with the visions in her clouds and her maybe-evil dog and all her impulsive whims, to the point the trolls consider her the most culpable for the creation of bec noir - or Calliope and her little fanfictions and cosplays distracting her from the very real danger her brother posed to her until it was too late.)

What's the party supposed to do if the host is completely lost in their own world? A malfunctioning Mage of Space in the party means a game stuffed full of Irrelevant Bullshit. A constant barrage of things coming into play that do nothing to help the team, and do everything to distract them and take them away from more important tasks. Conversely, a Mage of Space that's able to deal with their emotional issues has a grasp on all things that could potentially come into play in the future, and is able to summon with their prophecies only the ones that will be of help to the party, no matter how irrelevant or frivolous they initially may seem. After all, everything is connected, and a Mage of Space better than anyone else will be able to pull at those threads of interconnectivity to weave a wonderful, silly future.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I'm curious on your thoughts for a Lord of Space's powersets! And if we want to infodump and discuss OC classpecting, should we send a DM or reblog the original post about such inquiries?

i dont really do lord/muse since there's only one example of each, and thus, it's hard to tell what's a classpect ability and what's just. the guy, haha. dms are open :3

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

grabs your shoulders stares directly into your eyes. classpect bart simpson

dunno enough about bart

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

a mage doesn't really "see" the future, is the issue. a mage "chooses" the future, which looks from the outside like prophecy, because they say a thing will happen in the future and then it does. what's actually happening, whenever a mage "sees" the future, is that they are picking a course of events that will definitely happen. the PROBLEM with this incredibly powerful ability is that mages start the game Sad As Fuck, and because they only feel like bad futures are viable, they only wind up picking shitty futures. Don't take my word for it:

TA: 2o yeah. TA: we wiill all diie but mo2t e2peciially me, end of 2tory. GC: BUT GC: DONT T4K3 TH1S TH3 WRONG W4Y BUT HOW C4N YOU B3 TOT4LLY SUR3 4BOUT 4LL TH4T? GC: HOW DO YOU KNOW SOM3 OF TH3 R34L V1S1ONS YOUR3 H4V1NG 4R3NT G3TT1NG K1ND OF T4NGL3D UP W1TH UHHH GC: SORT OF TH3 W4Y YOU 4R3 4BOUT YOURS3LF TA: what do you mean. GC: HOW YOU G3T MOP3Y 4ND YOUR3 4LW4YS TH3 V1CT1M OF SOM3TH1NG 4ND HOW SOM3T1M3S YOU TH1NK YOU SUCK WH3N YOU R34LLY DONT GC: M4YB3 TH4T 1S CLOUD1NG YOUR V1S1ON?

A Mage of Mind doesn't suddenly become blind to all other options - they'd still have the Mind knack for foreseeing the consequences of actions, and predicting future outcomes based on present actions. however, a Mage of Mind would be predisposed to believing that only the shitty options would ever have a chance of actually happening (due to the aforementioned Mage Sadness), and would speak them into existence - likely, the bad things would happen as a direct consequence of speaking them into being, as per Mind's dominion over behavior, action, and consequence.

moreover, one has to remember that Mind's domain is not only over one thing. Mind also has sway over karma and justice, and so a mage's visions might wind up along those lines instead - predicting that someone will be condemned on false charges, or another might wrongfully go free - etc. etc.

class is always subject to aspect, because aspect is about fundamental personality. a mind player will always be a mind player; a mage of mind will always be a master manipulator. maybe they'd have a more active hand in their own shitty prophecies coming true than other mages? homestuck also operates on a soft magic system, so pretty much any interpretation would be viable as long as it captures the basic "vibe," haha.

You said you wanted to talk about power sets and I have to say- have always been a bit confused about Seers. I've done so much research (because one of my ocs is a Seer of Heart) but I've really come up with nothing (I'm NOT the best at classpect stuff, the whole passive/active thing goes Right over my head for example). So! I guess I want to hear your thoughts on it (or if you want something more general, hearing your thoughts on the passive/active thing would also be nice)

so seers are the passive counterpart to mages, and they're both combined under the similarity of "sees the future."

Thing is, "the future" in homestuck is a mutable concept, being laid down by the actions of the players. this is the split between the seer's powers and the mage's powers: the mage's "prophecies" always come true, because the mage's ACTUAL ability is to CHOOSE a future. mages, an active class ("exploit their aspect to benefit themselves" according to calliope) actively use their aspect to collapse the possibilities of the future into a single course of events that Definitely Will Happen. because players are 3d beings experiencing time in cross-sections, this appears to be prophecy, rather than active determination.

on the flipside, then, Seers are the actual prophets, because their powers allow them to see the branching paths of the future (along with letting them just, like, regularly "see" things associated with their aspect - terezi can see brain ghost dirk, and kankri jumps in on the cronus/meenah conversation right as something pale is happening, implying that he's able to sense relationships developing so he can cockblock them.) passive classes "allow their aspect to be used by others" (according to calliope), so that's what seers do: they see the branching paths of the future through the lens of their aspect, and by doing so, serve as guides for the rest of the party - Rose, after god tiering, is constantly leading her party down the "most fortuitous path," and terezi, whose mind powers are associated with consequences, behavior, choices, and karma, is a master manipulator, able to see the branching webs of outcomes from even minor changes in behavior.

That all being said, Aspect is tied to fundamental personality, and Class is tied to character arc. The Seer character arc is hubris, followed by a fall from grace, and then with self-inflicted "blindness" to cope with the shame and guilt. For example, Rose's need to be the smartest person in the room made it easy for Doc Scratch to manipulate her; this led to her mother's death, which Rose coped with by drinking herself stupid. Terezi's overconfidence in herself as a master manipulator led to her eschewing her personal feelings and painting herself into a corner where the only viable option was to kill her BFF Vriska, the guilt of which she coped with by throwing herself into a toxic relationship with Gamzee, which was a loss for the forces of justice and karma, but a big win for the clown (plus all the stuff with her literal vision). And Kankri is currently suffering from both at once, his insistence on being the team's "spiritual leader" making him widely disliked, and his insistence on celibacy a self-induced "blindness" to his clear feelings toward latula and cronus - feelings which make him act really shitty to mituna, and make him step between cronus and meenah right as meenah's about to make Cronus reconsider some harmful behaviors.

Heart, meanwhile, is associated with feelings, intuition, motivations, the soul, and the self. Its players are characterized by vulnerability and sincerity - its players have very strong emotions, sometimes overwhelmingly so, and are also naturally gifted at understanding other peoples' inner selves, able to see them for their best... and for their worst. There's generally two ways for an Aspect to manifest "at its worst" - toxic overabundance, or "inversion," where it starts to exhibit the traits of the opposite. A Heart player at toxic overabundance is needy and fawning, demanding attention at the same time as they enthusiastically allow those with stronger desires to walk all over them, in an attempt to please the strong desires they sense - Dirk often flips between critical/controlling and needy/desperate; Nepeta lets Equius walk all over her; Meulin has TWO awful, shitty boyfriends who do horrible things to her. At inversion, they become misanthropic and manipulative, using their influence over emotion and desire to engender terrible outcomes - seeing only the worst in others, they actively work to ensure the worst sides of others are provoked into the open. At their best, then, a Heart player is able to separate good desires from bad, just wishes from selfish ones, and encourage the best in people while helping them deal with their worst.

So a Seer of Heart would start out arrogant - perhaps a Mean Girl type? Someone assured in not only their ability to engender their desired emotions from others, but entitled to those emotions. "You know you love me!" is the "vibe," so to speak. Heart players are naturally capable of sensing motives and emotions; a Seer of Heart turns that up to eleven. They'll be perfectly assured that their ships are the best ships, that their read on people is the correct read, that they'll be able to tell how others feel and how they'll react. Also they might be able to see ghosts because of Heart's sway over souls.

When something finally happens that shatters this arrogance, they'll fall into willful self-blindness to cope with the guilt and shame. As Heart is what they can see, that means they'll deliberately try to obfuscate their ability to sense feelings, motives, and emotions - perhaps literally isolating themselves and becoming a NEET/hikikomori, perhaps replacing their brain with a computer, etc. etc.

Once they overcome this and figure themselves out, they're going to specifically be great at, tbh, therapy and life coaching. able to literally see all emotional conflicts and the ways in which people will emotionally respond to certain situations, a Seer of Heart is going to be amazing at helping others understand themselves, their own feelings, and the feelings of the others on the team. they'll be insane diplomats, too, able to grok at a glance what all parties on a negotiation desire. you can't lie to a seer of heart!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

classpecting within the comic is tied directly to who the character is on a fundamental level, so the ancestors would've had the same classpects as the dancestors do. any confusion is just because when they were first introduced, hussie didn't know he was going to be doing the dancestors, so they're written as though they have the beta trolls' classpects (the condesce is called LE's "witch"). classpect lore in homestuck is tied directly to personality traits and character arc.

For the dancestors specifically, many of them get very little characterization, but one thing we do know concretely about them all IS classpect, which makes it a fairly viable means by which they should be analyzed. aranea is a sylph, meaning she's an enabler, and she sure enabled the fuck out of some really shitty things happening on her team, most notably being on meenah's side for the damara debacle. you can go down the line for all of these. et cetera. in hussie's words, "classpect lore runs deep", hahah.

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

sorry, i don't do classpecting for irl people

im really craving classpect discussion... please indulge me ... ill classpect your ocs/blorbos (i will not classpect irl people) or talk about powersets... pls

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

You said you wanted to talk about power sets and I have to say- have always been a bit confused about Seers. I've done so much research (because one of my ocs is a Seer of Heart) but I've really come up with nothing (I'm NOT the best at classpect stuff, the whole passive/active thing goes Right over my head for example). So! I guess I want to hear your thoughts on it (or if you want something more general, hearing your thoughts on the passive/active thing would also be nice)

so seers are the passive counterpart to mages, and they're both combined under the similarity of "sees the future."

Thing is, "the future" in homestuck is a mutable concept, being laid down by the actions of the players. this is the split between the seer's powers and the mage's powers: the mage's "prophecies" always come true, because the mage's ACTUAL ability is to CHOOSE a future. mages, an active class ("exploit their aspect to benefit themselves" according to calliope) actively use their aspect to collapse the possibilities of the future into a single course of events that Definitely Will Happen. because players are 3d beings experiencing time in cross-sections, this appears to be prophecy, rather than active determination.

on the flipside, then, Seers are the actual prophets, because their powers allow them to see the branching paths of the future (along with letting them just, like, regularly "see" things associated with their aspect - terezi can see brain ghost dirk, and kankri jumps in on the cronus/meenah conversation right as something pale is happening, implying that he's able to sense relationships developing so he can cockblock them.) passive classes "allow their aspect to be used by others" (according to calliope), so that's what seers do: they see the branching paths of the future through the lens of their aspect, and by doing so, serve as guides for the rest of the party - Rose, after god tiering, is constantly leading her party down the "most fortuitous path," and terezi, whose mind powers are associated with consequences, behavior, choices, and karma, is a master manipulator, able to see the branching webs of outcomes from even minor changes in behavior.

That all being said, Aspect is tied to fundamental personality, and Class is tied to character arc. The Seer character arc is hubris, followed by a fall from grace, and then with self-inflicted "blindness" to cope with the shame and guilt. For example, Rose's need to be the smartest person in the room made it easy for Doc Scratch to manipulate her; this led to her mother's death, which Rose coped with by drinking herself stupid. Terezi's overconfidence in herself as a master manipulator led to her eschewing her personal feelings and painting herself into a corner where the only viable option was to kill her BFF Vriska, the guilt of which she coped with by throwing herself into a toxic relationship with Gamzee, which was a loss for the forces of justice and karma, but a big win for the clown (plus all the stuff with her literal vision). And Kankri is currently suffering from both at once, his insistence on being the team's "spiritual leader" making him widely disliked, and his insistence on celibacy a self-induced "blindness" to his clear feelings toward latula and cronus - feelings which make him act really shitty to mituna, and make him step between cronus and meenah right as meenah's about to make Cronus reconsider some harmful behaviors.

Heart, meanwhile, is associated with feelings, intuition, motivations, the soul, and the self. Its players are characterized by vulnerability and sincerity - its players have very strong emotions, sometimes overwhelmingly so, and are also naturally gifted at understanding other peoples' inner selves, able to see them for their best... and for their worst. There's generally two ways for an Aspect to manifest "at its worst" - toxic overabundance, or "inversion," where it starts to exhibit the traits of the opposite. A Heart player at toxic overabundance is needy and fawning, demanding attention at the same time as they enthusiastically allow those with stronger desires to walk all over them, in an attempt to please the strong desires they sense - Dirk often flips between critical/controlling and needy/desperate; Nepeta lets Equius walk all over her; Meulin has TWO awful, shitty boyfriends who do horrible things to her. At inversion, they become misanthropic and manipulative, using their influence over emotion and desire to engender terrible outcomes - seeing only the worst in others, they actively work to ensure the worst sides of others are provoked into the open. At their best, then, a Heart player is able to separate good desires from bad, just wishes from selfish ones, and encourage the best in people while helping them deal with their worst.

So a Seer of Heart would start out arrogant - perhaps a Mean Girl type? Someone assured in not only their ability to engender their desired emotions from others, but entitled to those emotions. "You know you love me!" is the "vibe," so to speak. Heart players are naturally capable of sensing motives and emotions; a Seer of Heart turns that up to eleven. They'll be perfectly assured that their ships are the best ships, that their read on people is the correct read, that they'll be able to tell how others feel and how they'll react. Also they might be able to see ghosts because of Heart's sway over souls.

When something finally happens that shatters this arrogance, they'll fall into willful self-blindness to cope with the guilt and shame. As Heart is what they can see, that means they'll deliberately try to obfuscate their ability to sense feelings, motives, and emotions - perhaps literally isolating themselves and becoming a NEET/hikikomori, perhaps replacing their brain with a computer, etc. etc.

Once they overcome this and figure themselves out, they're going to specifically be great at, tbh, therapy and life coaching. able to literally see all emotional conflicts and the ways in which people will emotionally respond to certain situations, a Seer of Heart is going to be amazing at helping others understand themselves, their own feelings, and the feelings of the others on the team. they'll be insane diplomats, too, able to grok at a glance what all parties on a negotiation desire. you can't lie to a seer of heart!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

What kind of information would you need to classpect an oc/ a blorbo that you may not be familiar with?

as much information as you can reasonably give me about their backstory, who they are as a person, etc. ... basically everything i could possibly need to know hahah. this is an invitation to infodump at me