#I think the point of Dirk's character is that while he is a literal knight in shining armor

[mrdrhenwardhykle]

Can I just take a moment to rant about how Hollywood reboots of original animated properties have no respect for the character's original design and purpose behind that design (mainly just because Hollywood has an obsession with making things boring-looking and conventionally attractive).

(The following is slightly opinionized. You don't have to agree with me, but I'm just naturally picky on flawed character design)

Alright, so this is Dirk the Daring from the 1983 Arcade game 'Dragon's Lair'. If you didn't know, Dragon's Lair is an early quick time event-centered arcade game that's mainly known for it's harder-than-balls gameplay and comedic yet semi-violent death scenes. By Dirk's original design, he is top heavy but not overly beefed up or overly-masculinized in his concept. Dirk's basic shapes are elongated rectangular shapes; allowing for the character to be as expressive as the animators need him to be. It can also be noted that Dirk's character is not romanticized or sexualized by the designers because of the over-exaggerated features in his nose, chin, mouth, feet, and hands; making him much more cartoony than Daphne (the Damsel in Distress he's after).

The character of Dirk is so expressive, in fact, that for the most part; the animators make a habit to slightly break past his character sheet\ over exaggerate his model during his death scenes.

(Notice how his nose changes, and also sometimes has a square jawline and sometimes doesn't)

Also, alongside being a very expressive character (both through expressions and slapstick); Dirk doesn't talk at all through the franchise (being the only words I think he's ever said is "uh-oh" and "Daphne?"), but instead makes little cowardly squeals, screams, and whines even if you're playing the game properly. Sure, it's not a whole lot like mountains of 'quirky' dialogue, but it's enough to understand that this character is a little more than a blank slate.

So, after knowing about this conventionally un-attractive character who's strongpoints are being very expressional through both expressions and body-language, but also showing his hesitation through little sounds in the gameplay; who would you guess who is reportedly being considered to play the role of this character in a (likely) live-action adaptation of Dragon's Lair?

No other than Ryan Reynolds; a conventionally attractive actor that expresses himself the most through witty dialogue. I have nothing against Ryan Reynolds, but the fact that I don't associate him with any of Dirk's qualities just feels like there wasn't much thought process or consideration behind this. Ryan goes by a verbal-type humor, while Dirk is more physical. (Also, if you look Ryan Reynolds up on Google Images, he's literally making almost the same face in every image).

If anything, they feel like polar opposites.

I'm just bothered by this because this just sounds like another Garfield\Mario\Chris Pratt situation where all options weren't considered well enough.

But nothing's set in stone, I don't think. I just feel like if Hollywood-type directors and producers ever get their hands on this franchise, they'll totally erase his original personality and appearance one way or the other.

[nell-pointer]

DSMP CLASSPECTS CUZ  ITS 4/13 BABYYYY!!!!

I’ve seen some other people do these, and I thought I’d try my hand at it because sorting characters into things is like the most fun thing to do ever. I didn’t do all the characters, just a few of the ones I felt the most confident about (and some rapid fire ones at the end). This probably won’t make any sense if you don’t already understand classpects but I dont care so without further ado:

Dream - Knight of Heart: First off, Dream doesn’t get to have that many splinters and not have a heart aspects, secondly, I honestly feel like heart just fits him really well. Heart players are all about passion and the soul. Combine that with Knights who are notorious for hiding their true feelings behind a façade (or a mask lol) You get someone who pretends to be all logical, but is in reality ruled almost entirely by emotions.

Technoblade - Prince of Blood: There is no universe in which I don’t give Techno a blood aspect, while you could make an argument that breath would suit him much better, it just wouldn’t be right. 

So I went for a middle ground. The Prince class always mirror their opposing aspect. (that's why Dirk was logical despite being a heart player, Eridan was nihilistic despite being a hope player, and Kurloz was calm despite being a rage player) So It would make sense that Techno, as a Prince of Blood would share so many characteristics with the Breath aspect. Plus deep down its pretty obvious that Techno does long for a sense of community and friendship, even if he sometimes has a pretty bad way of going about it. 

Also, Prince of Blood literally translates to “One who destroys Unity” so.....

Tommy - Knight of Blood: Tommy may look like a Dave Strider kinnie, but hes got way more in common with Karkat. I don’t think this requires more explanation, but i’m a wordy bitch so I’m gonna keep going.

Blood has to do with bonds, attachments, unity, things like that, all of which are pretty much the core of Tommys whole character. And I’m going with knight because he puts up a front of an annoying raging child, but past the surface its clear he’s cares deeply for those around him. 

Tubbo - Rouge of Void: Tubbo is a character study in avoidance. Time and time again we see him sweep very important things under the rug, usually to make things easier or more comfortable for others. He lets things go because he wants to be the bigger person, because he wants to be a forgiving person. This is token rouge behavior, using your own aspect to help others, he will forgive pretty major things, or avoid talking about major things because he doesn’t want to cause conflict. But at the end of the day, all rouges struggle with giving too much of themselves away, and will almost always reach their breaking point. Also, major Roxy Lalonde vibes what can I say. 

Quackity - Witch of Mind: While I could go for the easy clap and say ‘oh, here's this morally ambiguous character that also happens to dabble in some occasional manipulation, lets go with thief’.... but I’m not that lazy. Plus I actually really like witch for him, witches are confident in their aspect and are always trying to test the bounds of it, and I think that works very well with Quackitys ambitious nature. He’s not evil, he’s cutthroat. 

And as for his aspect... again I could have gone the easy route and given him light because of the obvious luck motif, but in my opinion, the luck motif is really ALL he’s got in common with light. Other than that, nothing else about him stands out to me as belonging to a light player. Mind on the other hand, I think works very well. Mind players are logically driven and great critical thinkers. They are usually several steps ahead, and if that's not Quackity I don’t know what is.

Here are some rapid fire ones that I’m less sure of either because I don’t care that much or I know next to nothing about their lore I just get ‘vibes’ from them

Sapnap: Knight for sure, not totally sure of what maybe life tho

Karl: Bard of Light

Philza: Mage (or maybe sylph) of Doom (or maybe life)

Wilbur: Mage of Time

Fundy: Seer of something, not sure of what

Bad: Definite Rage player, even with my limited knowledge of the Eggpire I’m pretty confidant on this one. Class I got nothing for tho. 

Hannah: Witch of Life

Ranboo: Obvious Void player

Michael (not the pig): Seer of Doom seems a little too obvious but its all I got

George: I’m leaning towards Heir, maybe of Void

Aimsey: First clock says Sylph of Doom, could potentially change based on what he does moving forward. 

Puffy: Also probably a Sylph (damn meddlers)

Boomer: Based on the like two things I know about them, I’m thinking Rouge of Light

Slime: Heir of Heart

[tomatograter]

hey dirkjake guy , what makes you so interested in dirkjake so much ?

if I were to answer this with total accuracy we would be here all day and i’d have to hand you a 60 page peer reviewed thesis but since I don't have that time and i’m assuming you also don’t; There’s a LOT of things to work with if you read dirkjake as more than just… a vehicle for dirkcentric character angst. And they’re pieces actively embedded in the story! That matter! I like building fanwork around a textual basis and these two quite literally go as far back as being part of the guardians setting up SBURB beta in Act fucking 2. You can mine motifs until you’re dead. Here’s a contained, though by no means complete, list of things I particularly like about them:

1) Dirk and Jake both have highly imperfect experiences with their own gender/sexuality, partly out of societal pressure and partly because the story has decided what they ought to be. You've got two gay characters who are both a man in the WRONG way; Dirk overcompensates masculinity so hard he thinks of himself as too brash, imposing, damaging, nearly sizzling arsenic. Jake is expected to be the most perfect dude that has ever Het'd and fails in every feasible way because its not who he's comfortable being. He's not a wife-hunting casanova, He's just kind of a blatant useless fruit. Each of them thinks the other has it together and is doing sooooooooo much better than themselves, though.

I like that even though the adoration is mutual, the relationship is not smoothed out. It's not perfect from the get-go, and it's easier to make it awkward before making it good. We see them at their most immature, they have plenty of flaws, and they're extremely self-sabotaging in the way that isn't "cute" (or romantically convenient) but rather realistically concerning. I like seeing them working through it & maybe relapsing & putting in the effort to be better. They mean a lot to each other but have no idea how to go about it without putting on a show, it's comical to the point of being endearing. 

...And they're still the one person that makes the other feel like more than just a sum of poorly stitched frankenstein parts. 

2) Moving onto The Cringe Axis Of Relevance: Dirk and Jake are inextricable from the overarching plot and cyclical nature of Homestuck itself, Dirk as a motivator and Jake as a escapegoat. You could technically “pin” the “blame” of more than a dozen game changing plot events on them, and sometimes they’re not even aware of it. Beta Jake is HIC’s bastard child, a Dirk splinter is a core component of LE, Jake Harley translates the ancient runes in the frog temple containing the game code & is the one to release SBURB worldwide, eventually going on a time-displaced quest to get the game in motion; Ultimate dirk, funnily enough, is trying to do the exact same thing but much more shittily after borrowing one of Jake’s company ships and copying jadebot’s schematics for the purpose of making a robot daughter to forcefully restart Homestuck, The Webbed Comique, after its over. (Mom lalonde was Grandpa’s assistant & vaguely familial protégé, if you remember. Funny how that works!) And this is just like, in the text. Rose in the candy postscript directly drops it: 

I guess plagiarism is a backwards form of flattery :/

Alpha Jake in turn ends up flooded with promises of giving LE’s his first defeat, kickstarts a thousand little conflicts throughout act 6, brings dirk back to life with a kiss, sends the bunny back in time in the box (he was jade’s secret penpal that far back!), eventually only knocks caliborn on his ass because *Dirk* gets hurt in a fight, then it turns out davepeta is his sprite and actually the one fated to defeat the final boss, and that’s just the major stuff. Alpha Dirk & his dastardly AI-self messily usher the alphas into a new session, we only discover what the hell is up with alpha earth through dirk’s 20 page pesterlog gifted on jake’s birthday, Hal’s existence partly relies on Jake’s unending support- and so does Brain ghost dirk’s existence, for that matter. In big-scale and small-scale stuff alike, they’re tied up.

3) Overabundance of referential motifs: Homestuck is practically a big collage of character-relevant media. You can talk about things like some of jake’s favorite superheroes being similar to dirk, or how dirk and jake’s romance is jokingly compared to the Princess Bride via their planets/personalities/BGD literally quoting the movie and acting out the same sword movements, or how they both have a thing for artisanal puppetry, or how dirk is a history buff while jake is a time-displaced verbal oddity, or how Dirk's concerns with narrative philosophy and clean logic make him squarely Apollonian in certain lit terms & that is perfectly opposed by Jake's haphazard Dionysian approach! Or how Grandpa has an orange-lit room of knights and a replica of Iron Man’s armor (widely known for his fragile heart) to stand in for Dirk while Jake has his knight genre movie posters and dreams up dirk to serve the same role, or how the brobot, built with jake’s help, eventually has a nervous conniption and rips his heart out so it can be used as a battery - and while the moment is reminiscent of aradiabot's blue blood breakdown, the heart is actually the same kind grandpa had installed into jadebot; as both were created to protect someone dearly beloved.

Funny how that works x4

Or just how like, Jake fantasizes about Avatar while kissing a poster but mentally he's having an elaborate dream of putting Dirk in the role of the movie's lead to prove how Awesome And Perfect life can be. Or how brain ghost dirk tells jake he looks good when he's feeling like shit and jake, in turn, says his gay little prince outfit looks pretty sweet and not dumb at all, in a sort of covert pep-talk system covering for both of their masculinity hang-ups. That works too.

4) They're the only ship I can confidently compare to Shrek, the Movie, and make that into insightful commentary.

And lastly:

[jake-analyzes-classpects]

Prince of Mind

Alright, so the Prince of Mind. I think this'll be pretty interesting. (Disclaimer: Pretty much everything here is speculation. I’m mostly doing this because I find Classpects really really interesting, so this might not be super accurate. Also, I will be looking at cookie cutter examples for personality. Those parts are mostly for 1.) Making characters and 2.) Being like “Oh my god that’s me wow that’s so cool”. Okay anyway lets actually do this thing. WHERE MAKING THIS HAPEN)

PRINCE

Princes destroy their aspect, or destroy with their aspect. They have to be careful not to let their own aspect destroy them. With that out of the way, there are three canon princes: Dirk Strider, Prince of Heart, Eridan Ampora, Prince of Hope, and Kurloz Makara, Prince of Rage. Let's look at Eridan first. He destroyed the Angels in his session, which were symbols of Hope. He also destroys hope by killing a handful of other trolls, and destroying the Matriorb, the only hope of the trolls continuing their society.

Dirk Strider is, due to getting more time in the story, a really good example of a Prince. He destroys Heart, the aspect of relationships and feelings, and he also finds himself surrounded by splinters of himself that he is quite sick of, and in some cases has tried to destroy. He destroys Heart in himself by portraying himself as a hyper-logical being, to the point of one of his "splinters" literally being an AI. Brain Ghost Dirk(tm) is seen ripping Aranea's soul from her body, and Dirk also tears souls out of Gamzee, Caliborn, and Arquiusprite. He also destroys his own relationships.

Kurloz is another Prince, and a generally well accepted concept is that he destroys his own Rage. He is always calm, passive, and slightly smiling. However, I wanted to talk about his moirallegiance with Mituna Captor. Cronus says that Mituna is lucid and coherent around Kurloz, and while this could be the Chucklevoodoos, I also think it's possible that Kurloz helps Mituna destroy his own Rage, therefore allowing him to not be so... Mituna. (Whether this is by Mituna's choice or Kurloz manipulating him is up to you to decide.)

MIND

Mind is one of those aspects that is kind of hard to analyze because there isn't a human player with the aspect. It also doesn't help that one of the Mind players is a Knight, who actively covers up their aspect. Anyway, we do know a couple things about Mind.

Mind is related to thoughts, decision-making, rationality, and the consequences of decisions. Therefore, Terezi, the Seer (Taster?) of Mind, understands the outcomes of decisions. We see this in her killing Vriska, the Dave Strider coinflip god-tier shenanigans, and, of course, the Game Over timeline, where she channels her thoughts to make John fix the timeline. I'm not going to analyze Latula, because there isn't much to analyze.

PRINCE OF MIND - PERSONALITY

The Prince of Mind would likely be the kind of person to be chill, try to be in touch with their emotions, and would basically echo the Heart Aspect, destroying the Mind within themselves. However, a Prince of Mind would also have an effect on others around them. Imagine somebody who would somehow end up inducing really dumb ideas, just with their general dumb vibe.

However, the Prince would eventually learn to draw their destruction of Mind away from other people, and would instead be able to use their natural ability to make people do stupid things for various "noble" purposes, from bartering with a particularly strong enemy, to getting somebody to do something stupid for the Prince's clout. A Prince of Mind could also pretty easily use this to influence a lot of people, becoming a leader which none would question, because they wouldn't be able to.

Speaking of that, Princes, in general, can kind of suck. Eridan was a jerk, Dirk was a jerk, and Kurloz is less openly a jerk but he still basically possesses people. Princes are also pretty likely to flip their lids in a session, especially one that destroys their own Mind. One good thing is that if they do flip their lids, they might be pretty dumb.

PRINCE OF MIND - ABILITIES

Now, abilities. I lightly touched on this in the personality section, but they would be able to make people do pretty dumb stuff. Now, this could also lead to mass destruction of Mind on a battlefield, allowing for all of the enemies to be reduced to a point mentally where they would not be able to form thoughts.

There is a theory that Princes destroy to allow for their Aspect to come and fill in the holes, but better this time. For example, Dirk breaks down relationships and allows for better ones to form, mostly ones not involved everyone wanting to bang Jake English. In this case, a Prince of Mind might destroy harmful thoughts, and allow them to be replaced with better ones.

The Prince would also have to avoid being destroyed by Mind. They might feel superior to all else due to their "higher thoughts", or they might feel so stupid that they think they aren't worth anything anymore. Both avenues cause the Prince to be destroyed by Mind in the end. Basically, a Prince of Mind would be tip-toeing on a thin line to not end up destroying Mind too much, but also be able to destroy Mind in a combat scenario.

CONCLUSION

Basically, Princes in general are scary classes, and Mind is kind of a scary Aspect. And when you combine them, you're either gonna get a hyper-genius who makes everyone around them dumber, or some dude that's, say, always on drugs or something, and still makes everyone stupid, but not in a malicious way.

As for synergy with other Classpects, a Muse of Mind would actively interfere with the Prince of Mind, not allowing them to destroy as effectively. This could be good in a scenario where the Prince has gone rogu- AWOL. Come to think of it, the only Classpects that I can imagine a Prince of Mind synergizing with is the normal Classpects that can help to calm people down, such as the Sylph of Blood.

Feel free to recommend a Classpect, or to ask me about other SBURB stuff. Or just random questions.

[finalvortex]

True Colors, huh?

Now that things have settled a bit, I'd like to review my classpects for the Sharps, in light of all the new information we have.

((Future Maltor here. I started this post two weeks ago intending it to be a quick post where I said things like "I think Anne is a Breath player because she's friendly! :)". Instead I have written a 2000 word character analysis of Sasha alone (with some digressions into analysing and explaining Homestuck). So this is going to be... an endeavor. Enjoy?))

To give a brief recap of my classpect theory, just so everyone is on the same page: Your Aspect is, fundamentally, the way you see the world, the concept or idea that is most important to you, and is therefore usually a strength. Your Class reflects the way you then take that idea and use it to interact with the world - and it's often tied to your weaknesses. Now, it's important that when I say 'strengths and weaknesses', I don't necessarily mean your best qualities or your flaws. A weakness can be a kindness. A strength can be an obsession.

I want to start with Sasha. So, as we learnt in Battle of the Bands, everything Sasha does is driven by a desire for control. But while Sasha is a lot of things, I think that fundamentally, she's never selfish. Everything she does - including the things that make her kind of villainous - are done for the sake of other people. As we saw, she's driven by a desire to be the best and win at everything, and she wants the people she cares about to do the same, because she believes they're capable of it. She does this with Percy and Braddock in Barrel's Warhammer, too - she doesn't let them back down because she wants to succeed, but she also genuinely includes them in that success. She tries to take control because she thinks she knows best. In my previous post, I was tossing up between Thief and Prince, which are two very similar classes in terms of behavior - but here's the thing. A Thief, fundamentally, is someone who takes things for themself. A Prince, however, is a leader. Someone who pushes others to do things, often to the point of going against what that person actually wants. Compare the way that Sasha treats her friends to the relationship between Jake and Dirk, where Dirk keeps aggressively pushing Jake past his limits because he believes he can live up to this unrealistic standard. And maybe Dirk has a point in that Jake is capable of reaching those heights, but the way he goes about is by putting Jake in dangerous situations against his will. Yes, that does ultimately turn out to be Hal acting as Dirk in proxy, but by also looking at Eridan and Kurloz, it's clear that Princes have an association with abuse.

All of that said. I've been reading a lot of character analysis posts, and a lot of them point out that, on paper, Sasha is a thoroughly heroic character. She's literally a knight in armor fighting to take down a corrupt tyrant. I'm hardly the first person to say this, but given the information she has access to, Sasha never really does anything wrong beyond being a bad friend and lying about her true motivations. Sasha has a history of doing what's technically the right thing for the wrong reason, which makes her a very interesting character, but also makes it very hard to pin her motives down. I'm hoping her time in Wartwood in S3 gives us a new perspective on her. Anyway, I got distracted from my point, which is this: taking a traditionally heroic arc and corrupting or tainting it in some way is something that happens a lot in Homestuck. It's not something that's particularly strongly connected with a particular class - it's something that Dave, Rose, Dirk, Jake, Karkat, Vriska and Eridan all go through to varying degrees.

In Sasha's case, it seems as though she sees herself as the hero, and she'll force the narrative to bend around her to fit that. ...and now you're thinking about Vriska, aren't you? Well, you're wrong - Vriska is determined to make herself important to the narrative, but it doesn't matter to her how she does it - she's just as willing to play the role of a villain, so long as it puts her center stage. (I will also continue to argue that that's more of a Light player trait than a Thief trait - it's something she shares with Rose and Aranea, but not Meenah.)

Sasha, in contrast, isn't trying to make herself important - she's trying to make herself into a hero. She's trying to make herself the protagonist - not out of a desire to have other people recognize her, or even really for power - she wants her friends back, but she wants them back without having to compromise on her ideals, and without having to admit she's been in the wrong. Positioning herself as a heroic figure is the best way of doing that - it fits into her ideals of strength and perseverance, and it lets her take a perceived moral high ground - at least, it would if Anne wasn't able to see through that hollow shell. In terms of overall heroic actions, she's not even doing that bad a job!

I just used the phrase "hollow shell", so I think you know where I'm going with this. Let's talk about Knights. Knights are one of the classes that have the most complex relationship with the heroic arc - they are people who feel an obligation to be heroes, but they have personal hangups surrounding that. Dave and Karkat were raised in this way where they were taught to idealize a certain image of a warrior hero, and they feel like they should aspire to that image. but they have trauma associated with being forced into that role. Both of their arcs are about how they relate to the idea of the heroic narrative, redefining and reshaping it into their own narrative as a method of processing that trauma. Now, it's difficult to say how much that applies to Sasha, because we know so little about what her life was like pre-Amphibia. But it wouldn't surprise me if it does turn out Sasha has some kind of backstory that explains a lot of her issues (I saw someone suggest that it would explain a lot about her if one or both of her parents was a cop... or, say, a government agent). I'm expecting to learn a lot more about her in season 3 - but I definitely think that Knight is a strong contender for her. It's also worth nothing that, mechanically speaking, a Knight uses their aspect as a weapon.

So, the two classes I think are most likely are Knight or Prince. It's really impossible to say which one is a stronger contender until we learn more about Sasha's past, so I'm going to go forward by looking at how these interact with the Aspects.

To get this out of the way, I did suggest earlier that the desire to position yourself at the center of your own narrative is a Light trait - but that's really the only thing associated with Light that I can see in Sasha's character. She hasn't shown any strong association with knowledge or fortune - she's certainly not a particularly studious or scholarly person. Also, Sasha isn't literally thinking in terms of a narrative or story structure, the way Vriska or Rose did, she's just acting in a way that she sees as heroic. So I don't think Light is a real possibility here.

In my previous post I posited Sasha was a Rage player, but I did say I wasn't totally committed to that, and also suggested Time. This is because these two aspects are the ones that are the most focused on direct, meaningful action - Time literally being about constant forward movement and perseverance, Rage being defined by chaos and disruption to the status quo. While those are still candidates, I'm finding it kind of hard to settle on a specific Aspect for her. It's hard to say exactly what the most important thing to Sasha is, especially because in her own words, she herself doesn't know what she wants any more. I think up until True Colors, power and friendship were the same thing in Sasha's mind- reminder that her stated goal in taking over Newtopia was "to get this friendship back under control". Which, uh, I'm not sure how those things connect, girl.

So, maybe the thing that Sasha cares about most is genuinely her friends. She'll push them beyond their limits, sure, but that's because she wants them to be their best selves. The Blood/Breath pairing is the one that deals with close interpersonal relationships, of course - and they specifically frame the player as an inspirational figure, like the figurehead of a cause. Looking at the roles Sasha players in Prison Break and Barrel's Warhammer, that's all fine. Now, Breath is defined by a flexible, easygoing mindset and casual attitude, with others being naturally drawn to a Breath player due to charisma. Blood players, meanwhile are defined by strength and force of will, forging close bonds with others and forming a tight-knit community of followers. So... Blood, then.

And sure, Sasha did form a close group with Grime, Percy, and Braddock after the fall of Toad Tower. But her time in Amphibia has been entirely characterized by losing the people who are closest to her. First Anne, then Percy and Braddock, and now Marcy. If we take Sasha as a Prince of Blood, someone who destroys close personal relationships, that's... fitting. Note that this could also mean someone who uses close personal relationships to destroy, which may be appropriate if she's going to rally Wartwood against Andrias in S3, as the intro implies. However... I don't know if I like the idea of Sasha's definitive trait being 'destroying relationships'. It' just doesn't feel right to me. Also, Marcy wasn't her fault in any way. What about Knight of Blood? Well, then she uses her close personal relationships as a weapon, which... maybe? I guess? But if she does that, she tends to use them up in the process. The bonds Karkat formed, like with Spades Slick, seemed to be pretty stable and long lasting.

Well, what about the other thing Sasha values - power, control, victory? We've seen that Sasha has a drive where she wants - needs, even - to win, regardless of the circumstance. Whether that's in a battle of the bands or a literal fight. That's probably Time, which as an aspect is thematically tied to concepts of destruction and entropy, trimming down possibilities, opposing the limitless creative potential and freedom of Space. Time is this inexorable, unyielding force that marches eternally onward, and Time players reflect that. Relentless, driven, unstoppable. As we saw in The Third Temple, one of Sasha's strongest qualities is her perseverance - that she never, ever gives up. That seems like a pretty strong case for Time... but considering that in conjunction with the classes we have, I'm not sure I can say that Sasha destroys (with) Time, or attacks (with) it, even looking at more metaphorical interpretations of Time. She also doesn't have any real association with death, something shared among all Time players. Maybe you could say that by invading Newtopia she's ending the time of Andrias, but that seems like a stretch.

Rage is the aspect that focuses on negative emotions. It might seem strange that negative emotions can be a person's strong suit, but 'righteous anger' falls into that category. Or, you know the Discworld quote, from the Tiffany Aching books, about turning selfishness into a weapon? That's Rage at its finest. Rage players are agents of chaos, destruction and change, but all of their negative emotion - all that anger, hatred, jealousy - can be incredibly valuable when channeled towards the right targets. Sometimes you need to raze something to the ground in order to rebuild it. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. I can definitely say that Sasha weaponizes her rage and envy (see Barrel's Warhammer especially, where they gain her a literal weapon). Destroying with them... again, maybe, but the fact that she managed to successfully avoid destroying North Tower makes me think probably not.

So I think the strongest combinations here are Prince of Blood or Knight of Rage, but I do have one other aspect I want to consider. A sort of wildcard option.

Heart is, thematically, all about identity and self. If you're a Heart player, the thing that's most important to you is going to be figuring out who you are and why, forging your own identity. Now, it may not seem like figuring herself out has been something Sasha has been particularly concerned with, but... quoth the extended zodiac test:

Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story.

Hey, that sounds familiar. Remember when I talked about how Sasha was obsessed with positioning herself as the hero of her own narrative? That's an identity that she's forging for herself, in fact, to the point where she struggles to deal with anything that comes into conflict with it. And hey, remember how I also started this post by saying that I don't think Sasha is ever selfish? She allies with Grime in order to find Anne and Marcy. She plans out the attack on Wartwood as part of her role at Toad Tower. She agrees to help Grime raise an army and take over Newtopia to get him back on his feet. She tries to take over the concert because she wants to win for Anne and Marcy's sake. What I'm saying is, nothing Sasha ever does is motivated purely by self-interest. Now, these are all things that would be beneficial for herself as well, so I'm not saying that Sasha is placing (what she percieves as) the needs of others above her own. It's more like... Sasha is really good at presenting her actions as being beneficial to everyone. She's good at convincing you (and herself, I think) that she genuinely has your best interests at heart.

I think Knight of Heart is another really strong contender here. Someone who takes their own identity, their sense of self, and utilizes it as a weapon. Someone who makes themself into a weapon, you could say.

In summary, the classpects that I could see Sasha having are:

Knight of Rage - attacks (with) negative emotion

Prince of Blood - destroys (with) close relationships

Knight of Heart - attacks (with) self

But I don't think I can pin it down any more specifically until we learn more about her. Do you have any thoughts on any of this? Let me know!

[butterflies-dragons]

Sansa, Jon and Sweetness

I know that “sweetness” could be a bad omen for other characters in different contexts, but in these quotes of Jon and Sansa “sweetness” means innocence, family, dreams, beauty, desires and love.     

Sweet Lady

Remember when Jon Snow called his mare “Sweet Lady”?

The mare whickered softly as Jon Snow tightened the cinch. “Easy, sweet lady,” he said in a soft voice, quieting her with a touch. Wind whispered through the stable, a cold dead breath on his face, but Jon paid it no mind. He strapped his roll to the saddle, his scarred fingers stiff and clumsy. “Ghost,” he called softly, “to me.” And the wolf was there, eyes like embers.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon IX

As I said before, there are so many things to say about this quote:

Jon Snow, the guy who is supposed to like the warrior woman type, whispered to his mare “Easy, sweet lady”. He could’ve said “Easy, girl”, but he said: “Easy, sweet lady”. Oh Jon, you are such a romantic dork.  

Lady is also the name of Sansa’s direwolf.    

Lady and Ghost are mentioned together and linked in many passages of the Books. I love it.

At this point Lady is dead, so she is literally a ghost.

Later in the Books Jon also dies. So we have a direwolf with a dead master and a master with a dead direwolf.

And guess who is the female character that is called ‘sweet lady’ the most? Yes, the answer is Sansa.   

Red haired girls calling Jon Snow “Sweet” & Jon Snow calling red haired girls “Sweet” 

Ygritte:

Tormund frowned down at Jon. "Best go, if it's the Mance who's wanting you."

Ygritte helped pull him up. "He's bleeding like a butchered boar. Look what Orell did t' his sweet face."

—A Storm of Swords - Jon II

Sansa:

“There's a new High Septon, did you know? Oh, and the Night's Watch has a boy commander, some bastard son of Eddard Stark's."

"Jon Snow?" she blurted out, surprised.

"Snow? Yes, it would be Snow, I suppose."

She had not thought of Jon in ages. He was only her half brother, but still . . . with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again. But of course that could never be. Alayne Stone had no brothers, baseborn or otherwise.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

Jon:

Blood meant little and less amongst the free folk, Jon knew. Ygritte had taught him that. Gerrick's daughters shared her same flame-red hair, though hers had been a tangle of curls and theirs hung long and straight. Kissed by fire. "Three princesses, each lovelier than the last," he told their father. "I will see that they are presented to the queen." Selyse Baratheon would take to these three better than she had to Val, he suspected; they were younger and considerably more cowed. Sweet enough to look at them, though their father seems a fool.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII

Red Hair exists Jon Snow: Lovely! Sweet!

Sweet Dreams of Winterfell

Jon and Sansa really want to go back to Winterfell, their home:

If I could show her Winterfell . . . give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.

The dream was sweet . . . but Winterfell would never be his to show. It belonged to his brother, the King in the North. He was a Snow, not a Stark. Bastard, oathbreaker, and turncloak . . .

—A Storm of Swords - Jon V

That was such a sweet dream, Sansa thought drowsily. She had been back in Winterfell, running through the godswood with her Lady. Her father had been there, and her brothers, all of them warm and safe. If only dreaming could make it so . . .

She threw back the coverlets. I must be brave. Her torments would soon be ended, one way or the other. If Lady was here, I would not be afraid. Lady was dead, though; Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa IV

Sweet flowery smelling

Jon is OK with sweet flowery smells:

"Maybe he never washes, so he smells as rank as a bear."

"Then I'd push him in a stream or throw a bucket o' water on him. Anyhow, men shouldn't smell sweet like flowers."

"What's wrong with flowers?"

—A Storm of Swords - Jon V

The shield that guards the realms of men. Ghost nuzzled up against his shoulder, and Jon draped an arm around him. He could smell Horse's unwashed breeches, the sweet scent Satin combed into his beard, the rank sharp smell of fear, the giant's overpowering musk. He could hear the beating of his own heart. When he looked across the grove at the woman with her child, the two greybeards, the Hornfoot man with his maimed feet, all he saw was men.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

Sansa smells sweet like flowers:

Sansa Stark, he mused. Soft-spoken sweet-smelling Sansa, who loved silks, songs, chivalry and tall gallant knights with handsome faces. He felt as though he was back on the bridge of boats, the deck shifting beneath his feet.

—A Storm of Swords - Tyrion III

On the morning her new gown was to be ready, the serving girls filled Sansa's tub with steaming hot water and scrubbed her head to toe until she glowed pink. Cersei's own bedmaid trimmed her nails and brushed and curled her auburn hair so it fell down her back in soft ringlets. She brought a dozen of the queen's favorite scents as well. Sansa chose a sharp sweet fragrance with a hint of lemon in it under the smell of flowers. The maid dabbed some on her finger and touched Sansa behind each ear, and under her chin, and then lightly on her nipples.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa III

Sweet as Song

Jon seems fond of sweet voices and singing:

The wildlings seemed to think Ygritte a great beauty because of her hair; red hair was rare among the free folk, and those who had it were said to be kissed by fire, which was supposed to be lucky. Lucky it might be, and red it certainly was, but Ygritte's hair was such a tangle that Jon was tempted to ask her if she only brushed it at the changing of the seasons.

At a lord's court the girl would never have been considered anything but common, he knew. She had a round peasant face, a pug nose, and slightly crooked teeth, and her eyes were too far apart. Jon had noticed all that the first time he'd seen her, when his dirk had been at her throat. Lately, though, he was noticing some other things. When she grinned, the crooked teeth didn't seem to matter. And maybe her eyes were too far apart, but they were a pretty blue-grey color, and lively as any eyes he knew. Sometimes she sang in a low husky voice that stirred him. And sometimes by the cookfire when she sat hugging her knees with the flames waking echoes in her red hair, and looked at him, just smiling . . . well, that stirred some things as well.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon II

With their black hoods and thick black cowls, the six might have been carved from shadow. Their voices rose together, small against the vastness of the night. "Night gathers, and now my watch begins," they said, as thousands had said before them. Satin's voice was sweet as song, Horse's hoarse and halting, Arron's a nervous squeak. "It shall not end until my death."

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

Sansa sings sweetly:

It wasn’t fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had gotten their mother’s fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. 

—A Game of Thrones - Arya I

So the singer played for her, so soft and sad that Arya only heard snatches of the words, though the tune was half-familiar. Sansa would know it, I bet. Her sister had known all the songs, and she could even play a little, and sing so sweetly. All I could ever do was shout the words.

—A Storm of Swords - Arya IV

He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon's breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady's coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird's nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XIII

Sweet Bran

Jon and Sansa remembering Bran’s sweetness: 

When the dwarf grimaced, his scar tightened and twisted. "The boy's earned himself a dagger, wouldn't you say?" Thankfully Tyrion did not wait for her reply. "Joff quarreled with your brother Robb at Winterfell. Tell me, was there ill feeling between Bran and His Grace as well?"

"Bran?" The question confused her. "Before he fell, you mean?" She had to try and think back. It was all so long ago. "Bran was a sweet boy. Everyone loved him. He and Tommen fought with wooden swords, I remember, but just for play."

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa IV

When nine-and-ninety hostages had shuffled by them to pass beneath the Wall, Tormund Giantsbane produced the last one. "My son Dryn. You'll see he's well taken care of, crow, or I'll cook your black liver up and eat it."

Jon gave the boy a close inspection. Bran's age, or the age he would have been if Theon had not killed him. Dryn had none of Bran's sweetness, though. He was a chunky boy, with short legs, thick arms, and a wide red face—a miniature version of his father, with a shock of dark brown hair. "He'll serve as my own page," Jon promised Tormund.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII

This post was so sweet to write ♡  

[ditheringluminary]

Classpect Stuff: Failure States Pt. 2!

Let’s wrap it up! Read the previous post under a similar name for context on what a Failure State is.

The Maid’s failure state is very similar to the Mage’s: Suffering from their aspect, or more specific to their case, suffering from too much of their aspect. This can actually be seen when Jane is the first one to engage in trickster mode, which is seen and described as the characters being basically invincible, with all their problems and emotional hangups solved. Sort of like Life on Hella Fast mode. Aradia, the Maid of Time, was prone to just flat out destroying things out of boredom (not to mention starting the game DEAD, death being associated with Time). Basically they have so much of their aspect it controls them, rather than the other way around. They truly SERVE their aspect.

The Sylph’s failure state has less to do with their aspect and more to just do with being a Sylph. They are, in essence, pushovers, at least in their failure state. While Kanaya urges Rose to stop drinking, urges Vriska from doing a number of things, and generally tries to keep the peace (possibly trying to keep Space intact) it rarely works. When a Sylph tries to help and nothing good happens or they fail to assert themselves enough, this is when chaos reins. This failure state may have 2 parts! 1st seen in Kanaya and Aranea by being sidelined, but then seen again in them both when they enact their Sylph Badassery. Kanaya’s actually worked out fine, but Aranea’s pushback essentially ended up in a doomed timeline.

The failure state for a Page is having so little of your aspect, you both inflict the opposing aspect onto others and yourself. Seen in Jake, when he has negative emotions bottled up towards Dirk and he talks to Jane about it constantly (making her enRaged, the opposite of Hope) and again when Jane captures him in the Game Over timeline. He’s absolutely miserable. Tavros shows this when he is MADE to carry Vriska to her Quest Cocoon and refuses to kill her. He feels either too close or would feel too guilty, either way showing an excessive amount of Blood, and also is LITERALLY covered in blood. Horuss kind of shows this, though since his aspect is Void, he has nothing to have in the first place. He is entirely inconsequential, and renders other people’s words as inconsequential. Truly keeping in the spirit of Void’s vagueness.

A Knight’s failure state is when they repress their aspect for so long it begins to mentally hurt. In this sense most Knights are constantly in their failure state, with Latula, who pretends to be a flighty “unique” gamergrl instead of showing off her intelligence. Also seen in Karkat, who constantly yells about how much he hates his colleagues when really he would die for them. Knights go against their nature on the outside in order to shield themselves from revealing parts of themselves they dislike. This is seen in Dave, but inversely. He HATES most of the aspects of Time, which is being destructive, busy, and fighting. However he keeps up the charade for such a long time because his Knight’s Shield (forced onto him by several outside forces) forces him to do so.

The failure state for a Prince is fully embracing and enacting the lacking of their aspect, whether this harms others or not. Ultimate Dirk can be described as pretty Heartless by most, and he accepts that completely by asserting himself as the story’s new antagonist. Eridan at one point literally said that the troll’s situation with Bec Noir was hopeless, and tried to go kill him himself (leading to the deaths of Feferi, Sollux, the matriorb and Kanaya in the process, killing more Hope). Kurloz doesn’t seem too focused on destroying Rage for others, though. Not so much a failure state but just him not doing his job incredibly well.

Finally, the failure state for a Bard is instilling your aspect in others and yourself, rather than destroying it. Cronus does this by putting delusions in his own head that he is a human, and also berates and lies to Mituna simply for his disabilities. Gamzee is a special case, I think. While he does enrage almost everyone he meets, he also unifies them in a sense, thus destroying their rage in a mutual hatred for him. This is, of course, only sometimes. When Gamzee is instilling rage in others and there are no direct benefits to it, is when he is in his failure state (enraging Karkat so that he runs to Gamzee but is killed, being shot a crapton by Caliborn). Basically a Bard just creates more of the negative sides of their aspect for seemingly no reason in others as a failure state.

[turntechgodbeheaded]

okay so i’m back on my bullshit about theorizing hal’s class.

So what we know:

-passive or active doesn’t matter

-Hal can’t really control his abilities which accounts for him generally smothering everyone he possesses

-WE SAID A LOT OF THINGS THAT WERE CLOSE BUT WE DONT KNOW WHAT GRRR

-i may have guessed the class at some point, or come CLOSE to it, which implies that my GUESSES (heir thief rogue prince) are NOT correct. but almost.

-THIS screenshot was from when Dirk said we are apparently close... apparently DANGEROUSLY close...

- while THIS vvv net us a “katreal thinks you’re getting closer”

-His class wasn’t decided on until a few chapters in, the ocean motif is irrelevant to his class, he is confirmed heart powers, gender is fake.

THINGS THAT MADE ME SQUINT

-

FUCKER DIDNT ANSWER THE FIRST PART.

But also we have a character from literally EVERY class. Hal acts most like a Knight or Prince— in that he puts up a front to keep people from seeing how he genuinely feels and sacrifices himself/puts other first ((mostly!) read: continually ejecting himself from Dirk’s body even though it scares him, trying to pretend to be Dirk to placate Roxy and Jane despite his emotional distress about it, defending Dirk from Jake Even Though He Doesn’t Have To And Knows Dirk Doesn’t Like Him, refusing to hurt Jane even though he thinks she doesn’t like him and they aren’t friends, but eventually agreeing to the experiment for their benefit)

-

-

Davepeta being two classes in Defrag. Hal is TECHNICALLY two people, even though the fic treats him as Just Dirk, so hey what if Hal!tier meant Hal’s class overlaid Dirk’s class and Hal has to deal with the surge of power? Idk.

[pokkop15]

(Ok so I was a fool and had had a lot of this meta written up yesterday and instead of saving it as a draft while I watched critical role, I, like a fool, just left all the tabs open and then went to bed after the episode. Then firefox crashed in the night and everything was lost. Press F to pay respects I guess cause here I go again.)

First off, Aradia is best girl and I am so happy she's RELEVANT again. I had a whole preamble the last time I wrote this post, but I can't remember what it said other than mentioning that this is gonna be a long post beneath the cut and that I have other metas that will kind of overlap with what I'm saying in this one so I will try to keep my discussion of the narrative styles of the The Prince and The Muse to only what is relevant to this post and to what is RELEVANT. Also previous metas should be reblogged directly before I post this to make it easier to check them out before hand or to reference them more easily.

The main points of focus will be: The differences between how the two Time gods interact with The Muse and her narrative, as well as the general level of metatextual awareness of characters within Candy. | The juxtaposition of the Knight and the Maid. | The possible suppression of the Ultimate nature of The Knight, and by extension The Seer. | The Muse's unique state of power and presumed Awakening | I swear there was more but I flat out don't remember what they were.

One last thing. I am a rambly motherfucker so if you haven't read my previous metas, here's your warning to expect a very long and very chaotic mess of a post beneath the cut. Also for anyone confused anytime I emphasize someone as 'The Class' it's referring to their actions as a potential narrator and as an Ultimate Self. For example, the difference between The Muse and the Muse is that 'the Muse' would be for character moments like when the dead cherub possessing Jade's corpse in Candy is just talking with Davebot and Aradia, while 'The Muse' is for when talking about her influence over the narrative. (There's a lot of different ways I put emphasis on words or phrases, but “The Class” was the one I felt really might need clarification)

I find it interesting how Davebot acknowledges and shows distaste for The Muse interjecting her narration and thus inhibiting his ability to live in the moment. I find this interesting because as an Awakened god of Time, he is simultaneously living in every moment but as a Knight, and as The Knight, he is also intrinsically separate from those moments as he is the Ultimate One who Wields Time. Aradia on the other hand is the Maid of Time, who while almost assuredly having reached the pinnacle of her god tier after the hundreds of years we now know her to have lived, is not ascended to her Ultimate Self. As a Maid, Aradia literally embodies her aspect. As such she doesn't worry about living in the moment because she is the moment. Because of this Aradia is more prone to just accept, agree, and repeat the sentiments The Muse dictates in her constant exposition. However, despite acknowledging the narration, Davebot still ends up being incredibly passive in the face of it. Even though he has an Active class and is a dreamer of the Active moon, Dave himself has always come off as an incredibly passive character to me in a lot of ways. (Even the aspect of Time itself and its heroes are specifically denoted as incredibly Active in the {official and Canon} extended zodiac test [which means its contents are NECESSARY, RELEVANT, and TRUE]). Always acting under the direction of other characters, subject to The Lord's rule over Time, and constantly struggling with his seeming lack of control. Here, even after reaching his Ultimate Self, he still only makes passive-aggressive remarks instead leaving the flow of the story and the big decisions to others. (In my last post I went into deeper detail about the nature of, and relationship between Aradia and Dave's classes and how that affected their sessions, but I can't remember what the tie in was unfortunately so for now I'll leave it at this and move on)

Among the human players of sburb, the Strilondes have always been the most genre savvy and possessed the most awareness of the narrative and its' influence, (although Dave was never near the levels of Dirk and Rose). But up until this upd8, direct interactions with the narrative have been few and far between in Candy (at least as far as I can recall). I mentioned this in my previous meta as being a result of The Muse being the type to inspire characters to action whereas The Prince is far more heavy handed in is dictation and rarely attempts to hide his presence in the narration these days. But we see here once again, that not only is The Muse bad for the people under her influence, she's also just really not good at constructing a story. She relies too heavily on tropes and cliches, on plot contrivances; she tells too much and doesn't show enough, (something that should literally be her greatest strength as a Muse). Yet despite this, Davebot and Aradia are seen multiple times to interact with her dictations directly and Aradia even points out on page 284 that she is aware of The Muse “observing (their) every action and noting its relevance : )” (the emphasis on 'relevance' being mine). As such we can infer that it doesn't take an Ultimate Self to recognize The Muse's narration. But if not that, then what? If it was just pre-disposition of character that let them notice, then between her own abilities and self awareness, surely Candy!Rose would have by now, but she hasn't. Then is it proximity? Maybe The Muse is getting complacent and starting to unknowingly imitate The Prince and his methods? Or is it because both Davebot and Aradia are Heroes of Time? The aspect opposite The Muse's. After all, The Muse did express that the way (either Aradia specifically or that the both of them) experience time is “woefully unfamiliar” to her. Perhaps that makes it difficult for her to write a story that resonates with them fully. Whatever it may be, all the information up until this point doesn't come to a head so much as it is something that I believe to be RELEVANT.

With that, let us switch gears while keeping the previous information in mind. As I said before, in spite of all the active components of Davebot's Mythological Role, his character has often been passive. And the precise story beat I want to focus on right now is his Awakening to his Ultimate Self. Candy!Dave was out on patrol with a wife who he loved, but who also had very much always been the driving force of their dynamic. He was pulled to the ancient bunker by the narrative where a hologram of Obama expertly guided him through a conversation like a true politician, somehow knowing a lot about Dave while at the same time withholding “classified” information as if that word had any meaning without a country or government holding Obama accountable. (Unless of course Obama was still answering to someone... *Cough cough*the authors*cough cough*). Look, all of this is me saying that Obama was a leftover contrivance of The Prince that The Muse utilized for her own means. Dirk was a skilled programmer and engineer. He had a deep understanding of how to build AIs that could easily impersonate someone. He had an even deeper grasp of how to manipulate Dave. Dirk built the bots. The Bots. The bots that are supposedly NECESSARY for one to Awaken to their Ultimate Self and survive. And yet even if that is TRUE, it isn't true. The Prince claims he was a special case but his powers are of the soul, not the body. And it is the body that breaks down. And we know that Rose really was suffering in her path to Awakening, but I will remind you that her poor condition was first established through narration that we know was under the control of The Prince. Further more it happened prior to the Meat/Candy split, in which the Canon still possessed TRUTH, which is why it still remained RELEVANT in Candy (and it was obviously NECESSARY in Meat for reasons about to be discussed). Both Rose and Dave ultimately played a passive role in their Awakenings, guided to their Ultimate Self by another even though they are both Active players. I believe that The Prince established these rules about Ultimate Selves and built the robot bodies as a way to give him an upper hand against the two characters most likely to overtake him. Because to reinforce a point from a previous post, Rose is the only full on published author among the players and Dave himself has written comics and presumably screenplays for his films, making them the two people who might not only do a better job than The Prince or The Muse, but just do a flat out GOOD job. The Seer especially, which is why The Prince went through the extra effort to disrupt her sense of self as she was coming into her Ultimate Self. If these two had played an Active part in their own Awakening and without The Prince’s influence I think they both would’ve been quite capable of giving The Prince a run for his money. But the humans are not the only players in this game...

As I've already alluded to, Lord English (The Lord), was almost certainly his Ultimate Self. Awakened and Empowered by the treasure (a juju so powerful that it enabled John to retcon things in a way that overrides the timeline instead of splitting it, and it did so without even granting him its actual power). When The Knight awakened, The Muse described it has having all of Time flow through his consciousness, allowing him to experience every instance of his own self. Conversely Jade described that her Ultimate Self would be “like... one ultimate self distributed across multiple bodies. so in multiple places and states at once. every jade that exists is like a light being shined through a thousand cracks in the timeline.” (Hey remember those cracks in the universe that had light peaking through them? Idk, seems RELEVANT if you ask me.) So if we reasonably assume that ones aspect heavily affects how one's Ultimate Self first Awakens and how it operates than that means there will be similarities between those who share aspects. If Awakening for a Hero of Time is an experience of everything that ever has, is, or will happen to a version of themselves, and Lord English possessed a juju that allows one to retcon and not split, than the combination of those powers would make it so he could be the singular instance of himself while at the same time always be “Already Here” than there is truly no difference between Lord English and the theoretical Ultimate version of himself. And since the Muse consumed Lord English at the end of Candy, granting her the power to punch a wormhole in the black hole. This is also presumably where she gained the power to “...exist in several narrative structures at once” (pg 286) (also see the above explanation of Jade's Ultimate Self for why that is RELEVANT). Because of this, we can assume that The Muse is just as indistinguishable from her theoretical Ultimate Self as The Lord was. But these powers and this simultaneous existence is not without consequences because the Muse's collapse at the end of this chapter is almost assuredly a result of Meat!Jade's rebelling against The Muse in chapter 6 (specifically the action on page 167/168). And finally, to tie this back to the imposition of bodily destruction to those who Awaken their Ultimate Self, it is worth noting that The Muse does not possess a body of her own to be destroyed. Instead inhabiting the body of various Jades.

Alright, so once again sorry if you thought there would be some big culmination to this post, and hey, what pumpkin?

[high-stuck]

Okay, fourth page, here we are, and already some major revelations. John’s dad is almost certainly connected to the Life Aspect. Why do I say that? It’s quite simple, actually. He appears in the beginning to enjoy baking, just like his mother, whose post-scratch counterpart is a Maid of Life. Baking is a representation of Life as well. Why is this important? Well, John being raised by his dad has had a huge effect on him, as it has for all the kids. One such effect is that he is related in some ways to Life, not just Breath.

The one that sticks out on this page is that he likes to program computers (which is associated with Doom, Life’s opposite) but isn’t very good at it. On the Aspect Wheel, both Breath and Life are very far from Doom, so he struggles with manifestations of Doom. He struggles even more with manifestations of his True Aspect’s opposite, Blood. Think of how he separates himself so often from his friends, or changes his mind, or shirks responsibilities in favor of screwing around. Since he’s always received his Aspect plentifully, as the Heir of Breath, he struggles quite a bit with its opposite. He even has an antagonistic relationship with Karkat, the Knight of Blood, for quite some time and, mainly due to his association with Breath, refuses outright to do what Karkat says, despite the troll managing to wrangle so many other disagreeable trolls together to push toward a common goal.

Now let’s think about how this factors into the other characters. Rose is very obviously affected by her mother’s Aspect, Void, and even plunges into its depths when she goes Grimdark and inverts into a Witch of Void. Her mother’s alcoholism and neglect, the mysteries and confusion that characterized their miscommunication with each other, and even Rose’s misinterpretations about her mother’s psyche are all drenched in Void. She struggles with it deeply, even turning to drinking later on in the story, and it’s tragic to watch its effects. She was raised by a woman who represents her Aspect’s opposite, and this struggle is even seen in her nature as a talkative Light player, who nonetheless can be cryptic and utterly incomprehensible at times. Though she tries to be informative, so much of her interest lies in shedding light on the unknown, especially that which does not wish to be known. She peers into the Furthest Ring, and instead of penetrating the dense fog, the fog swallows her, and she drowns.

Dave’s is an interesting case. At first, given the official Aspect Chart as we see on the Extended Zodiac pages, it would seem odd that two Aspects that are right next to each other (Time and Heart) would manifest in such a troubled relationship. However, we must consider that their Classes (more specifically, Dirk’s) play a big role. See, the Prince and Bard are Destroyer Classes which can occasionally “ghost” their Aspect’s opposite as they destroy their own. Thus, Dirk acts much like a Mind player at times, and Mind is almost directly opposite of Time on the chart. Now it all makes sense! Dave struggles with his identity throughout the story, especially since he’s so busy trying to act like he’s something he’s not. He goes through a few different masks, from “coolkid” to “hero” to “not a hero” and discovers more about himself each time. He is plagued by the consequences of his actions (Mind’s domain) and grows to despise the “mind games” his brother plays, yearning for genuine human connection underneath layers of “irony”.

Jade has a strange relationship with her own guardian, especially considering he’s a stuffed human corpse, but we can see a glimpse into the Aspect relationship when we see how she speaks to Jake through their “pen pal” arrangement. Space and Hope are just two Aspects apart on the wheel, therefore they hold a friendly disposition toward each other. Jade comes across as an optimistic person, occasionally with her head in the clouds, but when she finally snaps, she snaps hard. Her temper is extreme, and she lashes out, sometimes violently, in a way that is quite reminiscent of Rage players. She seems generally convinced that there are other options available, and has a strong belief in helping others, to the point that she becomes distraught if she isn’t able to do so, which are excellent manifestations of Hope. What Jade sees in the clouds while dreaming also fuels her hopes, but when she takes a look at her Shadow (insert obligatory essay about how Jadesprite is, in Jungian fashion, Jade’s Shadow) she becomes irate, literally beating herself up. The qualities she sees in Jadesprite include cowardice, indecision, and being a general annoyance, which are all qualities we see in Jake when his false bravado is forcefully stripped away. “Turning the mirror to nature” is a manifestation of Rage, which I’d like to discuss further sometime.

[theorynexus]

Unrelated to the Epilogues

Apologies for not getting back to liveblogging, yet; however, that’s going to begin again with my next post.   This one is simply to express some thoughts that have been kicking around in my head for a few days, which I did not get the chance to express because I was sleep deprived and then briefly sick. Namely:   All weapons (or Strife Specibi, I should say) in Homestuck seem to be symbolically representative of the character who owns them to some extent.  A few easy examples would be: * the Dualing Pistol (White Magnum/White Wand), which is elegant and precise, only needing to be fired once to provoke massive, impactful change, and doubly representative of Alt!Calliope’s subtle orchestration of events behind the scenes; * The Dudely [Fire]Arm[ament]s (Caliborn/Lord English’s canes/rifles), which the aforementioned doubled set is contrasted to: whilst they are equally intended to convey mastery of events (and particularly the people taking part in them), these are more brutish, and make their impact through repeated blows (a pool cue arranges things through a loud, meaningful break, and then many serious blows to follow--- and while these blows might in theory require precision in order to make the balls fall where they must, in practice, Caliborn’s talent is in ensuring that every hit eventually brings things to a favorable conclusion, rather than in the shortest route possible).   Brute force methods are used to bring about the desired conclusion--- an inevitable death, generally  ---and the overkill that Caliborn (the Lord of Death, in some ways) utilizes whenever his rifle’s sights fall upon a target (for it’s never a single bullet that hits) is representative of his general methodology and spirit. *  Dave’s broken/mended sword, split over time, is obviously representative of his own Aspect, how it gradually affects him (time heals all wounds, as the saying goes, despite the fact that he seems to become quite incensed with it at some points, and struggles with it to the point of refusing to embrace it for a very long time), and especially how his personal history ties into his personal arc (Dave is more affected by his time with his Guardian than perhaps any other kid, despite the fact that Jade is fused with the replacement surrogate that might arguably be said to have usurped the position from her grandpa, and this is also a reflection on the Aspect of Time in his life, I should think).     How Bro (Dirk) Broke his Heart, and how Dave struggled to mend it over the course of the series has been much better discussed elsewhere than I could attempt to express in the brief space I’m allotting to this discussion, here, though, and thus I shall cut this off right here, just as both brothers have a habit off symbolically cutting things off, themselves. ~~~ The train of thought that I am wanting to express herein started with a thought that caught me by surprise:   I continue to have no idea what, precisely John’s Strife Specibus is supposed to represent, you see, so when I remembered that there was a method of inheritance called Gavelkind, it struck me that it could be related to this, as a pun.  Unfortunately, this seems like a dead end, unless it is a very forward thinking joke about every member of his party taking up the main character mantle after he dies in the “more canon [more relevant in Dirk’s eyes]” Meat Epilogue (or, alternatively, Davesprite and Rose’s inherited self from the timeline having to clean up John’s mess after the idiot got himself obliterated in the deal he made with Typheus after Terezi tricked him).     It could also be related to him forging the group through his Heir of Breath inspiration toward a path mechanic, but what are the chances of it being that simple an answer?   Unfortunately, said inheritance business seemed more promising than it was, because I was initially confusing it with the Elective method of kingmaking that is to be found in German historical culture. That truly fits with who John is, and resonates with the “I’m not your leader, I’m your friend” humblepie that was served up to us (and everyone else in his party). ... This line of thinking was useful, however, because it led me to thinking about Karkat’s own weapon.  Obviously, the “Heh, heh, Communism” line of thinking briefly occurred to me, but more relevantly, I thought of the reason why the sickle is used as a symbol of Communism.  It is a classic symbol of the lower class--- farmers, in particular  ---which hints at the very beginning to Karkat’s rather humble origins. While many people might like to think of his mutant blood as “potentially higher than fuschia,” or some such nonsense, more realistically, one has to realize that Karkat was placed in the lowest of low positions: not only was he the only member of his kind, but he would have been without a Lusus and immediately abandoned to death, if the worshipers of his Ancestor had not ensured that he had the dimmest possibility of a relatively normal life. At the same time, he wanted to defy this lowborn status and become a mighty general in )-(er Imperious Condescension’s army.   While this initial spark of revolution was not much, it is representative of all that was to come-- you see, the sickle is to some extent also a symbol of revolt, and while peasant revolts would generally be brutally put down throughout history (just as the waves of opposition to the Condesce were in Alternian lore), this would not in fact be the case with Karkat, or the session that he (and Aradia) would lead. You see, Karkat’s own ideals and the weapon that represents them are but the tip of the iceberg.  The Beta Trolls’ entire session was littered with themes of rebellion against the established social order, and the consequent turning of it upon its head.   First and most obviously, it would be two Lowborn trolls that would come to lead the two “teams” which the session had to offer. Both of these figures acquired this position by usurping it from Bluebloods, who might traditionally have taken up this role in a circumstance where the empress-to-be didn’t show interest in leadership and the Purple Blood in the group appeared to be an incompetent, serially inebriated sack of garbage. This theme particularly shown through in [concupiscent] romance, where we saw pairings that, without exception (other than possibly the crush that Ms. Leijon bore for Karkat, which saw no fruition and arguably did not count for anything, just as Eridan’s flushed feelings for Feferi didn’t “matter” in the end, and Kanaya x Vriska, while being a borderline issue for this topic, doesn’t count either, also due to it just being a crush), all saw subversion of social hierarchy:

Equius x Aradia, Gamzee x Tavros, Feferi x Sollux {I just noticed that these relationships all have the same social distance from one another for some reason.}, Terezi x Karkat. Vriska x Tavros is one-sided, and thus debatable, but also fits this pattern, intriguingly enough. Equius was hit with this subversive force in their social lives particularly hard, possibly because he was the Heir of Void, and thus was more inundated with forces of subtext than the rest of the group [particularly since he was a failure in that role].   Not only could he not resist the drive to submit to those it was “perverse” for one of his “station” to bend the knee to, when the opportunity to truly embrace the anti-normative forces that he had been dipping into (despite his Classist upbringing) came, he was so confused and uncertain that he could not properly understand what he was being pushed to do, and the necessity of it--- and thus froze, allowing himself to be swept away by the Rage Gamzee filled him with. These themes play out in Operation Regisurp, both in name and its practical implementation.  Furthermore, I have just, in the course of writing this post, come to the conclusion that this is why Gamzee had to be the final obstacle to the true end of the Beta Trolls’ session.  He was a crystallized manifestation of the old regime, and its established order:  Gamzee acted as a shadow of the Condesce’s will, the Hemospectrum’s implications, and the brutal reality that was Alternia.    It was thus quite fitting that Karkat was the one to stop his rampage, for he was the Knight of Blood who cajoled everyone to work together as a single team, rejecting the classical restrictions that would have spelled DOOM for their party in favor of bonds beyond the literal nature of the blood that flowed through all of their veins.   Furthermore, I think this is why that confrontation ended in the Shush Pap scene.   Not only was it true that Karkat had literally zero percent chance of actually killing Gamzee in the fight (and a very small chance, indeed, to defeat him through violence), but this would to some extent additionally be an endorsement of the old Alternian way of life.  Rather than through violence, Karkat used his bond with Gamzee to find a solution, and by this means, turned him away from his role as brutal Subjugglator--- though unfortunately this also meant that Gamzee would take a turn for the worse, becoming even more firmly cemented in his role as a servant to the Mirthful Messiah’s. ... Heading back to the meaning of Karkat’s weapon for a moment, I think that the sickle has another implication to explore: it is an implement of the harvest.  Karkat initially wanted to be a sort of grim reaper, slaughtering Alternia’s foes and claiming glory for himself and for his empress. While he was correct in thinking that he just needed an opportunity to prove himself (and thus, he was embracing the symbolic “one must wait until the fruits of the harvest are ripe” implications of the sickle in his own life), the climax of this narrative arc would come when Karkat found himself at the head of Meenah’s united army of all the trolls in the afterlife and bravely charged to meet a foe he knew could destroy the soul with very breath--- and the very real equivalent of the Grim Reaper, himself ---wielding the closest thing he had to a weapon painted with the rainbow (Fuschia an Lime Green bound together betwixt bands of black and white, thus singled out amidst all the colors of the light spectrum). This was his ultimate rejection of the Alternia that was, as he challenged the hidden hand that had twisted it into the place of horror it had been; and upon the fulfillment of that destiny, Karkat would vanish.

Yet, by some miracle, this was not the end: in a place separated beyond barriers of space and time, he would awaken, and but a short time later, he would be granted the Ultimate Reward that had once been wrenched from his grasp. ....................................................................................................................... One last matter of note:  It should be pretty obvious, considering the fact that universes are shaped to reflect the wills and designs of the Players involved, but I am pretty sure humans’ singularly colored blood is an explicit rejection of the hemospectrum, and the particular color that was “chosen” may very well be reflective of the important role Karkat in particular played in the session. What may not be so obvious is how fitting, symbolically, it is that it is a human that stands triumphant over the corpse of )-(er Imperious Condescension.  Curse baggage aside (which still has been irksomely unexplored, to my knowledge), the fact that it is essentially the Beta Trolls’ rejection of her world order that does the empress in feels very right and, upon reflection, is quite beautiful.   Obviously, there’s also a nice splash of revenge playing into that too, as visibly denoted by the weapon used and the handle wrapping, in particular.  I am curious as to the implications of Roxy’s typing color being the same as the blood of said fishy tyrant, though. That, I can’t quite figure out.

[ardenttheories]

@fun-with-colors

I saw your tags. I’m here to theorise. 

Knights of Light, for as long as I’ve been able to understand them, have always seemed to me to be the type that just come across Knowledge. There’s no real intention on their part to find it; it just happens to be right there, waiting for them. 

They’re the kind that get messages from the Horrorterrors in their dreams, though they’re never aware that their dreams are from other beings. They can’t fully comprehend what they’re seeing, even in a dreaming state, and as a result transfer it into something they can analyse, find meaning in, and understand. 

For instance, when I originally had Dane (from my AU Ectostuck) classpected as a Knight of Light, one of his biggest theories was “mothman is real”. He got this information from the revelation in his dreams that he was going to be prototyped with a Mothsprite, and that he would die early into the game. In technicality, this would make him a Moth Man. 

If we want to go wholly narrative with this, then we can assume that a Knight of Light is physically capable of hearing or interacting with the narrative. They’re likely able to dream about it as if it’s an open book, or can just innately recognise it in the back of their head, as if it’s transcribed somewhere and playing out in a voice that their subconscious can hear. 

They might not be fully aware of what it is, and as such, they’re more likely to assume that they’re just good at Knowing things. But this also means that they can use the narrative in an exploitative way.

If the Knight of Light is a few steps ahead in the narrative and can “read” that their next reaction is to bow to a person they actually don’t like, they can completely avoid that outcome. They can exploit it by knowing what’s going to happen, and doing something else. 

Lets say that Terezi were a Knight of Light instead of a Seer of Mind. If she knew that killing Vriska on the meteor would much, much later on lead to a doomed timeline, and that letting her live would get them all killed, all because she had the narrative playing out in the back of her head at all times, then she’d know immediately that she’d just have to get the drop on Vriska and knock her out. 

She wouldn’t know why, per se, knocking Vriska out is the best option, but she’d know that it has to be done - and in doing so, she’d completely skip any of the events that led to Game Over. 

Of course, Knights of Light would also be able to tell if a narrative speaker is present, and they’d be able to exploit that voiced narrative in order to trick the narrator. 

A Knight of Light in Meat could’ve easily gotten the drop on Dirk because they’d have known almost instantly that Dirk was in control of the narrative. They could then use that Information and play along until such a point that Dirk can’t fight them back, and while they wouldn’t know he was the narrator or that he was using the narrative specifically, they’d be able to guess that Dirk had been controlling everyone the entire time and wouldn’t be swayed by his influence. 

(In other words, much like Dave, they’d hear Dirk’s voice in the back of their mind - but they’d hear it in full clarity, and they’d be able to decide what they do and don’t do, how much they give away.) 

Hell, a really good Knight of Light could be able to control the narrative itself without meaning to. If they exploited it to the full, they’d be able to change that narrative in their head - the actual narrative that they’re being exposed to - the same way that Dirk changes the narrative of Pony Pals. The original narrative would still be there, but you’d have sections crossed out or written over by the Knight of Light, subconciously or completely intentionally. 

I mean, this could even be done physically. Think of the book Calliope reads that details the story of the Alpha and Beta kids. If a Knight of Light got their hands on that and actually wrote over it, the things they wrote would come True. 

Light has so much to do with the Plot and Importance, it’s very easy to say that a Knight of Light would become the main character of any narrative they’re present in - likely turning something like Homestuck from the 2nd persona to the 1st - and that they’d have a significant effect on the narrative as a whole. I think, however, they’d never be fully aware of it.

Like, they’d get the idea and the concepts, but they’d see it as just that; concepts. A way to visualise what they’re doing rather than what’s actually happening. They’d only realise that as Truth if they ever become a Realised player or (more likely) the Ultimate Self, but even then I’d say it’s more lowkey. 

After all, Rose is a Light player - a literal Seer of the Plot - and she doesn’t have as much of a narrative grasp as Dave does (being that she isn’t aware that Dirk’s controlling the narrative in Meat, and doesn’t host any concern to the physical text during Candy, either. She sees the plot and the story, but not the words). It’d make sense that the Knight can interact, but can’t actually see. 

Of course, Light is a more metaphysical aspect - one of the idealist ones, rather than the realist Aspects, such as Time - so it’s always going to be a fact that it’s easier for a Light player to mess with the out-of-universe things. 

In that sense... A Knight of Light could be the player to recongise that they’re in a story, but see it as a sort of “alternate universe” sort of deal. I don’t think they’d realise that there’s a narrator - that Andrew Hussie, for instance, is writing Homestuck itself - but they’d know that there’s people who can see, and people who can help. They could likely exploit that by interacting with a real-world audience. They’d be 4th wall breakers, if they got really good at it. Knowing that something’s there, but maybe not wholly what. 

They’d also be able to exploit the things the narrative doesn’t focus on. I think I mentioned this before, but I’ll go over it again with a deeper focus; Dave has always loved breadsticks, but this wasn’t relevant enough for us to know, and thus wasn’t written in the narrative. There’s likely a thousand other things he likes that we don’t see - and it’s logical to think that there’s a thousand things he does that we don’t see, either.

For instance, we know that all the characters collect the Grist that drops from the monsters. We don’t see them do it, but they must do, because their Grist counter goes up.

We also know that they must eat and pee. It’s just... human biology. We don’t see it because watching that isn’t relevant to the story, but surely they must do. 

We also know that they must walk places without us actually seeing them do it. We don’t see every step of their travels; sometimes we just see where they end up. Maybe they picked a flower while walking. We’ll never see that flower, but it’s still there, on their person. 

Maybe they give that flower to someone else. We still won’t see that flower, because it’s not imporant. This flower could move from person to person and we’d never know. 

In the same vein, we’ll never know what happened between Dirk and Jake during their relationship word for word. We missed a lot of that. The build up wasn’t as important as the actual breakup and fallout; so there’s a thousand things they could have done and said to each other during that time that we’ll never see. 

Naturally, a Knight of Light could exploit this. Imagine they just randomly brandish an incredibly powerful item that the narrative isn’t prepared for, all because they did the quest for it off-screen. Imagine that they take detours all across the map whenever we’re not focused on them so that they can avoid specific points of confrontation later in the narrative, or so that they can help set up something off screen that ends up being invaluable later. 

A lot of what they do would have to have some sort of on-screen significance - it’d be a Knight of Void, probably, who hides things that’re never seen again within the narrative, and only they who can stop it from ever being revealled, thereby creating their own purposeful plotholes (that only stay irrelevant for as long as even the author doesn’t mention or explain it) - but they could exploit those lapses within the narrative wholly. 

There’s a lot that can come from the narrative when you really think about it, and I’m so glad I always read tags so I didn’t miss that! This post got so much longer than I intended it to be, all because I kept thinking of more and more that a Knight of Light could exploit within the narrative. I think I need to end it here, though, in case it gets too long. But, for a final thought:

When you read this text, you are essentially reading my voice. I am influencing the way you read things in a very clear and precise way. However, if you didn’t know that this was, in and of itself, a form of narrative, you wouldn’t maybe focus on the fact that I am a real person writing these words with a specific purpose. You wouldn’t know that every word is being transcribed from my thoughts onto a page, and that there is an overarching figure to contend with. You would know that there is a narrative being made, and that is as far as you’d be able to get. This is the experience of the Knight of Light.

They would be able to understand my arguments, and they would be able to garner everything they needed from them - but they wouldn’t know that these words have an author. They’d interact with the narrative, change it, disobey it - but they wouldn’t talk as if they knew that a wider figure, a god-like figure, is writing it all down.

In Homestuck, Rose knows there’s a plot but doesn’t focus on the idea of finding the author in order to change things, even though there is still an author physically writing their story even after Hussie (the character) has died, and their narrative focuses more on them as real people than as fictional characters. In some ways, this is because that would get too meta. A character who knows there’s a conceptual “story” is one thing; a character who knows they don’t truly exist, because everything they say is being written down by someone else, someone bigger, is another. 

So when you think about the Knight of Light, it’s always best to imagine that their influence ends with the in-universe understanding. They can break the 4th wall, but not come through it; they can exploit the plot, but not the author; they can recognise that a story’s being told, but not that there is someone responsible for it - at the very least, not someone who isn’t already present within the universe. 

[actualbird]

I CONCUR THAT THERE CAN NEVER BE TOO MANY DRAGONS. If you ever want to share your dragon lore, pleaaassse do. (Also, now I'm imagining. like. a dghda!dragon au where Todd is the dragon and Dirk's a holistic hero: he wanders the land getting dragged into epic quests against his will, usually causing havoc and being shot with arrows in the process, and is delighted when his adventures throw him together with a dragon best friend.)

GODDDDD thank you so much for this ask because i have Always wanted to share my dragon lore, i just didnt think anybody would wanna see it but one (1) message like this is enough to enable me

okay so this au is a fantasy au where there are dragons. naturally occurring dragons, much like any other creature, but they were a magical creature. normal animals are normal, but magical creatures are like animals that magic Chose To Be Special. most dragons are regular dragons. they were creatures made with obsession in mind, the same way unicorns were made with purity. Tricksters were made with mischief. dragons had an object of their affection and they hoarded that object, or a symbol of it.

but some dragons were given a specific purpose. because it seems that reality was breaking, and these dragons had to fix it. regular dragons kinda did this (there was too much wealth being accrued by one person, so they stole it), but these dragons were….specialized. they each have Special Powers. they may or may not hoard. and all of them can turn human. they were born human actually, but chosen by the universe and its magic to be a Dragon 

like, in this world, magic exists and is maybe kinda sentient. magic is inherently ambivalent, but because of human greed and other bad shit, that magic started turning sour and infecting the world. the Special Chosen Dragons were supposed to help fix it. because magic is semi-sentient, whats currently happening is hurting it. The Universe and Magic are connected. Llke the Universe is the character, and Magic is one of its languages or one of its limbs. sometimes, if magic got used for evil so much, the magic would become corrupted in itself. 

these Special Chosen dragons were called the Blackwing Dragons. they popped up roughly 50 years before the current story takes place. Everybody knows about the Blackwing Dragons (who were called as such thanks to the wizard who discovered their existence. they saw it in a magical Black Book and thought, huh, dragons….wings…..b….blackwing) and theyre a pretty popular and well known legend.

many dark magic users didnt like the idea of dragons taking away their powers, so hunters were employed to capture the dragons, learn how they work, and use the dragon’s powers for their own good. Queen Wilson is one sorceress who employs Riggins and Priest as dragon bountyhunters. Wilson is able to catch an insane amount of dragons and magically experiment on them for a few years before something at the castle goes wrong and all the dragons escape. but thanks to this experience, all the Blackwing Dragons had gone into hiding.

anyway, a normal citizen of the world would know that general legend. The Blackwing Dragons were sent to help, but humans hurt them, they went into hiding, and now nobody knows where they are or what theyre doing.

THATS THE LORE……the actual story i had is like. todd is very very normal blacksmith who makes boring shit like horseshoes and then one day dirk breaks into his house through his window and says that todd is now apart of his quest to save the universe and that he needs a very special sword made!! no, todd, you have to be the one to make it specifically!! i dont care if youve never made a sword before, it has to be you!! also i live here now!!! :D :D :D

so theres much shenanigans involving todd dealing with weirdo dirk gently who introduces himself as a wandering detective of sorts. dirk is friends with farah, who is a knight that is very cool and very competent and very paranoid and very protective of dirk. dirk and farah are weirdly cagey about Things for some reasons and todd is quite suspicious of them until he realizes WHY theyre weird, and it’s because theyre hiding the fact that dirk is a Blackwing Dragon.

which todd finds out eventually when theyre like, attacked by bandits and dirk magically shifts into a RATHER LARGE-ISH DRAGON to fight off the attackers. here is an excerpt of that exact moment

“Holy shit, you’re one of them. You’re a dragon. You’re a Blackwing Dragon.”

“Am not!” Dirk says, wings flattening against his body. Wings. “I’m just a…holistic…were-reptile—of the magical semi-human persuasion?”

Todd figures that Dirk would really make a more compelling point if he sounded surer of himself and also if Todd just minutes ago didn’t witness Dirk turn into the huge dragon that was currently towering over him, wings, scales, and horrifyingly sharp teeth displayed in full glory. Full dragon glory. Because Dirk is a dragon. Dirk is one of the dragons in the legend Todd has heard all his life. 

Well, fuck.

i got quite far into plotting this, but it’s still quite messy. the sword todd is supposed to make is very important for very convoluted magic reasons. lydia is in fic too as a mage practicing soul swapping. amanda is a seer who suffers from very painful visions. riggins and priest and friedkin are all badguys trying to locate and imprison the blackwing dragons. bart kills people very well whether she is a dragon or a human. dirk, todd, and farah embark on a quest to literally save all the magic in the universe. 

before i could work out all the details, i found the other fic where dirk is a dragon and dropped this concept like a hot potato :(((

okay so that was a doozy but god i am also INTENSELY ENRAPTURED by the concept of TODD BEING THE DRAGON!!!!! 

i can VERY easily imagine todd being an incredibly grumpy dragon, holing himself up in a cave because he is a Monster, he must not be Seen By The People Because He Is Terrible And Dangerous And Hurts People. and then in comes waltzing dirk all smiles and he just pops his head into the cave like “Hiiiii~”

i am going to be thinking about dragon!todd for the rest of the night now. todd who is a dragon because of, god i dunno, curse reasons? magic outwardly manifesting his self loathing reasons? my point is that todd thinks he is the worst, and dirk thinks he is the coolest. dirk would spend a lot of time trying to prove to todd he is, in fact, a good person/dragon while todd just stomps his dragon feet and huffs with just the slightest touch of fire in his breath and grumbles but also secretly hopes that dirk sticks around.

i just….really REALLY LOVE DRAGONS!!

[mmmmalo]

the king/father creates/births things while the queen serves only to impregnate (him with the idea for what he will create, like a muse, if you will)? idk i hate women being reduced to their reproductive function but this also seems misogynistic somehow. also does this make roxy's ability to create objects from nothing another "she's trans" joke?

I think the discomfort you’re apprehending is discussed somewhat when Crockertier!Jane tells Jake he will only exist to sire her children? Sexual objectification is probably a more familiar experience for women, but the unease in being subsumed by some sexual function isn’t necessarily gender exclusive… (the existence of domination play attests to that probably)

This subject is probably out of my depth, but I’m going to meander a bit and hopefully say a couple useful things.

First, some clarification: “birth” is the principle of separation and “pregnancy” is the principle of union. Thus birth-as-we-know-it is rendered equivalent to ejaculation, Breathing out, pooping – all of which involve separation from that which was once part of you. Likewise the image of a gestating fetus is equivalent to taut testicles, lungs full of air, a constipated colon – states in which the union is maintained. On this level, it’s apparent that any given body can participate in both halves of the dichotomy.

But as elaborated back in the Roxy-and-Dirk post, Sburb’s queens and kings are aligned with birth and pregnancy, respectively. As per Caliborn’s enchantment, this is treated a hat-switch, a reversal of expectations on who ejaculates and who gestates. “Birth” (which Caliborn likes) is coded as masculine, so that assigning this function to the queen is met as a reversal. While “pregnancy” (for which Caliborn fetishes his disgust) is coded as feminine, so that assigning this function to the king is met as a reversal.

The problem I’m facing is evaluating whether the birth/pregnancy dichotomy (aka separation/union, aka Breath/Blood) contains an intrinsic (ie inescapable?) gendered hierarchy, or if the gendered hierarchy is imported by characters (or us) onto what is actually a gender-neutral distinction. Though there could also be a broader point that binary systems are easily co-opted as mapping to the gender binary…? So that even if a distinction “ought to be” neutral, the matter remains that it has been /rendered/ gendered?

To avoid speaking too much in terms of generalities, I’m going to reorient this discussion around John Egbert via an ask concerning the ARG:

you gotta talk about it man come on

I read the ARG as a conspiracy theory that falls in line with the kids’ paranoid fantasies. In the same way that the very real trolls function as manifestations from the psyches of those around them, the world of Homestuck is, in general, shaped by the psychological profiles of its inhabitants.

I gather this partly from the nods to an irl conspiracy (eg declaring Obama to be a cross-dimensional immigrant), but mainly because the overwhelming paranoia that defines the narrative, the conviction that the world has degenerated and that every known authority is but a feeble puppet of a nebulous overlord. Comedians Laurel and Hardy are slowly corrupted and eventually infused with Evil, resulting in the birth of the Insane Clown Posse, which is to say ICP’s low-class status translates into degenerate art within the confines of the conspiracy. Albert Einstein is renounced as a fake, whose “insights” are mere scraps cast off from a feast of truth available to some unseen master. It’s all insurmountably stupid, but there is a unifying thread:

The idea is that the world is “fallen”, in two of the senses explored via John Egbert’s fear of heights (or rather, his fear of descent). 

1. John is literally afraid of heights, having fallen from the slime pogo. But John’s entry item is an apple because he experiences a pervasive sense that there is a perfect world of ideals from which he has been thrown down – a sort of intersection between the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden and the heavenly Platonic Forms. This manifests partly in an obsession with authenticity, a subject that pervades Act 1 (x)(x). The Obama birth-certificate conspiracy attempts to frame Obama as “inauthentic”, and framing Einstein as a feeble peddler of inherited slivers of truth relies on the idea that there is a Godly figure with access to ALL the truth, a master presiding over the Pleroma. John is susceptible to this kind of thinking; after all, the paranoid idea of Betty Crocker as an Illuminati-tier omnipotent antagonist began as one of John’s funny delusions.

2. The biblical Fall is at times phrased as the corruption of humanity, and that sense carries into Homestuck. The other Heir, Equius, is revolted and titillated by that which he regards as base. His fetishization being lower class and other modes of degradation receives a visual complement in images of a falling ideal: the death-by-fall of man-horse Arthour, and Equius’s own descent through the caves of LOCAS (the circumstances of a lusus’s death and the features of a planet both bear relation to a player’s fantasies). John complicates the picture a little bit: he specifically has a fascination with “bad movies” (low status art), but also he regards the other side of the silver screen as a Pleroma of sorts, which simultaneously elevates the art.

But my goal is to demonstrate that all of this intersects with the original topic: the division of high/low is also projected onto masculine/feminine.

John wishes to undo his traumatic fall from the slime pogo, an event that has come to represent John’s fantasy of his own birth. As hinted at the start, the birth he imagines for himself is ejaculatory: Ghostbusters is “manbro bukkake theatre”, and John fancies himself a ghost busted directly from the loins of his heavenly Father. John seeks to re-merge with his image of God, a goal implicit in John’s attempts to reunite with Dad in a more familiar sense.

But implicit in John’s quest to give up the ghost and ascend to the Father is a rejection of the implicitly feminized earth and flesh, to which the self/soul is umbilically bound. This gendering is often shown via robots: 

Jake jokingly says that Dirk is “more machine than man” – this is a jab at Dirk’s terse demeanor, but placing machines in opposition to manhood potentially feminizes the machines, compromising Dirk’s desiring to be a paragon of dudeliness. The simultaneous masculinization of reason and dehuminizing jabs like Jake’s confuse and frustrate Dirk for a variety of reasons

The ghost of Aradia enters robotic husk to be reborn, imitating the insertion of the spirit into the body. She then finds that Equius has inserted something into her body against her will, and violently removes it and destroys it. “It” was a chip that controlled her feelings, but the intimate violation has tones of assault, and Aradia’s heart is effectively aborted.

There’s more examples, but this is just an aside to push the notion that the Fall (from high to low) entails the entry of spirit into body, which via the analogous entry of sperm into womb would seem to gender hierarchy itself. Masculine/feminine is entrenched as high/low by the metaphysics.

(Here’s a nice post that notes a gendering of the hemocaste system in Zebruh’s Friendsim route)

This leads me into thinking that John’s desire to merge with the image of the Father is connected to his love of pranking people, insofar as it becomes a assertion of domination/power (which is presumed to be the masculine position). The prankster’s gambit, at its purest, is a measure of Who’s On Top.

At the end of the Chaos Dunk scene (in which John symbolically enacts Rose’s rape fantasies), John pranks Rose by dumping a bucket full of gushers on her head. Buckets are receptacles, and thus occupy the balls/womb half of the divide. Evacuating the bucket all over Rose is a repetition of earlier symbolic assault, and the moment is embellished with a prankster’s gambit to emphasize the notion that there is an element of domination to the encounter.

The bucket prank is echoed in a  later conversation between John and Rose, beginning at page 2922. John asks repeatedly whether Rose “knows everything” now, says the beta kids “were in this adventure together” but with Rose’s occult knowledge, she is now “getting away from us”. John is not anxious that Rose is separating in a neutral way – his anxiety stems from the idea that she is rising above them. “Knowing everything” is a property of mastery, and John is confused by Rose being above him. At the end of 2922, John attempts to mock Rose’s words, but she tells him he’s being mean and he apologizes.

Rose herself expresses some anxieties about her position, saying elements of her wizard shtick have made her feel “ridiculous” or “embarrassed”. Her choice of words invokes the manifestation of Eridan, who mocks Rose’s “ludicrous poppycock” – she has an ongoing worry that her phallus (masculinized symbol of power) is fake.

This is why the scene culminates in an play scenario, in which John promises to sweep in like a noble knight and banish Rose’s encroaching grimdarkness, and Rose in turn pretends to swoon. The joke is an ironic acquiescence to the (gendered) hierarchy that is implicitly being challenged by Rose’s rise to power (or rather, that the kids perceive to have challenged). Past this, the conversation goes on to the subject of the Tumor, in a way that I have difficult tying into some sort of conclusion for the gendered aspects of the conversation.

This probably bears some relation to Rose’s insistence that John is the group’s leader…? But again, I’m at a loss. Let’s wrap this up.

On your last point: Roxy creating items from nothing actually throws a small wrench into things: in another essay on Gnosticism I was reading (Schuyler Brown’s “Begotten, Not Created”), “emanation” suggested that the creation was originally part of something (God, the One, etc), and emanation was thus framed as being in opposition to creation-from-nothing.

This brings me back to the problem of not knowing which portions of Homestuck’s metaphysics are particular to a given character’s psyche, which portions are universal, and which portions are loaded with both personal and universal meaning, or personal meaning that are /rendered/ universal. The motif of Roxy throwing a dead cat out of bucket seems to carry multiple meanings at once… in the sense we’ve noted, it would relate to the terror of stillbirth and miscarriage that follows Mom and Condy around. But reading “birth” as ejaculation, the cat could also be read as a disappointed acknowledgement that she cannot create life on her own…?

[utopianparadoxist]

Xefros Tritoh is a Page of Time. also, class roleplay is real.

I’m still too sick to record for the Joey video, so while I don’t have the time to make a full-scale analysis post on everything about Xefros right now (theres a lot) I figured I’d make two crucial things about reading his character clear:

A) Xefros’ unhealthy relationship with Dammek is the latest example yet of unhealthy Class Roleplay dynamics. If anyone remembers, I speculated weeks ago, before the game dropped, that Xefros’ relationship to the role of Butlering might well turn out to be both unhealthy for him and reflective of Classpect behavior. As it turns out, I seem to have been correct. Specifically, Xefros is roleplaying a Knight through his unwilling assignment of the role of the Butler. B) Xefros is a Page of Time.

Let’s explore them in order, considerably more briskly than with the Joey post. There’s more to say about Xefros, obviously, but unfortunately, I just don’t have the....

Time.  Something I have in common with Xefros, fittingly enough.

Xefros’ general lack of time to keep up with the various demands on his time--mostly Dammek’s demands on his time--is a strong focus point of his character.

And just in case we’re not super sold on it yet, Xefros does us the Time-saving  courtesy of establishing his relationship to the aspect by reinforcing Time’s longstanding relationship to music and rhythm! How nice of you, Xefros. 

Now where were we?

Right. Xefros has a lot on his plate: Band practice, revolutionary lectures, butler practice, and only the occasional reverie about getting to spend time on something Xefros himself finds interesting.

And most of that time is lost in various forms of service to Dammek. Serve is, at this point, basically inarguably the key verb for the Knight/Page class pair--combining connotations of providing service/help, dealing defeats/ownage/sick burns, and literally serving/giving items to others, as the verb counterparts to Thieves/Rogues’ ‘Steal/Take’. 

So Xefros’ unhealthy position of servitude to Dammek is explicitly linked to his unwanted, forced assignment of the role of Butler--which in Homestuck terms loosely correlates to the role of Knight. Dave’s biggest contribution to his session is to serve all his friends time or provide them with resources through the use of his time, for example. 

But where doing so comes naturally to Dave, for Xefros it is an effort to play the role. Xefros does not find butlering fulfilling, and he’s not particularly good at it, either--it’s not where his natural talents shine. 

This is a common thread with most kinds of class roleplay--it usually doesn’t work out well for a player character to pretend to be something they’re not. 

Perhaps particularly so when the role the character is playing encourages them to adopt the opposite class alignment, as when an ACTIVE player is conditioned into acting PASSIVELY. This line comes from Xefros’ FLARP book, by the way, which has a bunch of Classpect references. Fitting, since FLARP is what introduces us to the concept of Class Roleplay in Homestuck proper.

Because this line kind of has to be taken in context. The truth is, Xefros would rather be playing a game.  And it’s in the context of that game, along with Xefros’ childhood and natural effect on others, that we’ll find references to his true classpect, buried under the burden of the imposed Butler role. 

Pages, like Knights, are linked to the image of the Butler--but not as players who fill the role themselves. Rather, Pages seem to have a talent for inspiring other players to act as Butlers for them. Or to close the ouroboros loop of classpecting: To get others to act as their Knights.

Xefros’ affinity for Arena Stickball immediately strikes this echo, as one of the things Xefros immediately remembers is having his Brawler defending him-- a relationship echoed by Tavros’ affinity for using animals as his warriors, and Jake’s summoning of a splinter of Dirk to protect him from Aranea. 

Xefros’ demeanor quickly turns around an overwhelmed and exhausted Joey, making her quickly grow concerned and then adamant about helping him in return for his own kindness. 

This ability of Pages to inspire others around them to want to help them is part of the reason why I think it’s likely Dammek’s concern for him is at least somewhat genuine--though that’s by no means the same as healthy. Vriska’s concern for Tavros was genuine, too, lest we forget.

And Xefros is prone to both Giving things to others and trying to make others happy in ways that ultimately turn out to benefit him. This comes through clearest with Sloth Dad, whom Xefros would give gifts or receive food from whilst always benefiting from the arrangement in some way. 

Xefros’ first cuebat, his physical strength, and open passage from his house are all things achieved by giving. But past the key verbs, Xefros’ clearest indication for both his class of Page and his aspect of Time come through in his relationship to his ancestral figure: Xultan Matzos. 

Xefros’ text logs on Xultan are drowning in both references to Time and a profound personal admiration. He likens Xefros to a figure from history, imagines convoluted alt-timeline crossovers featuring various versions of Xultan, fantasizes about having the kind of psychic power Xultan had, and more. 

He also admits to fantasizing about just imagining Xultan standing around, believing in him. This fits Xultan squarely into the archetype of the Pages’ imaginary friend, a slot filled by Rufioh for Tavros, and Brain Ghost Dirk for Jake. 

Perhaps most telling, however, is his imitation of Xultan--a copycat approach to self-improvement that Xefros credits with at least occasional success! This has common ground with Homestuck’s Pages too, as Tavros ultimately finds narrative success as he fully embodies his imitation of the role of Peter Pan. 

Jake English also famously copies female action movie tropes in both fashion choices and his eventual fall into the damsel in distress trope, whereby it’s his imagination and faith that Dirk can save him that saves the day. 

And finally, Xefros’ copying habit and Page role are referenced in a two-for-one reference combo, through Joey’s persistent early habit of calling him Xerox. 

In the 90′s, Xerox (Logo pictured above) was the colloquial term for both a product and the company that produced it. Particularly, Xerox was a popular brand of photocopier, meaning a machine designed to copy text and images onto a blank Page. 

I haven’t come close to covering half of what I want to say about Xefros, but I hope this will at least give the rest of the fandom an idea of how he’s set up.  Just for the record, I don’t think the X on Pa’s globe was pointing at Dammek. 

Particularly given Pa’s own status as a Page, Joey’s budding friednship with one puts us in a very interesting position. How will Xefros and Joey’s personalities mesh in the long run, and is Xefros involved in whatever plans Pa seems to have devised?

Interesting questions to consider as we wait for Act 2. 

If you’d like to enable me to expand on this subject, and so bring more questions like these to light in the future, please consider throwing a couple bucks my way on Patreon. This is basically definitely my last written post for a good while, as I am going on hiatus to get my financial life in order as detailed in this post. 

I’m really overwhelmed and grateful by the support so many have shown me, and excited to take posts like the one I did on Joey and this one to Youtube, where more of the fandom can engage with classpects in an accessible way!

You can also feel free to drop by and chat about this and other interesting Hiveswap and Homestuck topics in the r/Hiveswap discord! 

Hope to see you soon, and until then--Keep Rising!

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

[gothamcityneedsme]

The Prince of Heart Begets a Prince of Blood, or, in Which I Support the Theory that the Auto-Responder is a Prince of Blood   (Part 1/?)

Part 1: The Popularity of Classpecting

Speculation concerning classpects is an incredibly popular subset of the Homestuck fandom, with several blogs interpreting their own versions of the classes, coming up with theories, and figuring out what they think every possible class and aspect combo would consist of.  This is mostly something people do because they wish to classpect themselves, as this kind of classification system is very popular in media.  It is fun for readers to connect to the source material through making themselves part of a group within the fictional world (a common example of this is how readers of the Harry Potter series choose Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw for themselves).

With its complex and in-depth system, Homestuck opened the door to increased reader-inclusion, and it is likely one of the reasons Homestuck is so popular.  This kind of speculation and theorizing can make readers really feel connected, and it can motivate them to continue to be involved with the fandom.

As the majority of Homestuck characters have known classpects, this sort of critical thinking towards Homestuck generally isn’t directed towards finding a character’s classpect (since we already know), but instead, the focus often is shifted towards examining how the character is representative of their classpect.

What do we learn about Space through Jade, Kanaya, Porrim, and Calliope? What do we learn about Heart through Nepeta, Dirk, and Meulin?  What do these characters have in common and how do they each reflect their aspect? We do something similar with the classes (which are even more nebulous to define than the aspects):  How do Pages function through Jake, Tavros, and Horuss?  How do Knights function through Dave, Karkat, and Latula?  And so on.

The canon classpects in Homestuck exist to define the characters, but we can use them additionally to supplement our vague knowledge of the classpects and add to our understanding so that we can more accurately predict what a particular classpect might consist of.  Of how that class and aspect combination would work, what kind of powers the person with that classpect might have, and perhaps even which classpect would suit another character (or readers themselves) best.

For instance, we can theorize what classpect would best suit the Auto-Responder, a character who is unclassed (a rare occurrence in Homestuck).  And, additionally, we can theorize what a Prince of Blood would be like (and, consequently, observe how the Auto-Responder shares traits with the Prince class, the Blood aspect, and how he could function as the classpect, Prince of Blood).

In this essay series, however long it might be, I will be examining the Auto-Responder as a Prince of Blood.

 Part 2:  Defining the Prince of Blood, the Destroyer of Relationships

First, in order to place him as a Prince of Blood, I must define both the Prince class and the Blood aspect separately.  Then I will describe how they would likely function together. Finally, establishing this will allow me to continue my argument to move onto how the Auto-Responder reflects this classpect.

The Prince class is one of the few we have explicitly described to us in the canon.  Assuming that Calliope is correct (which we will, as we don’t have a reason not to in this), the purpose of the Prince class is one of the clearest:

The Prince is Active, a Destroyer class.  They actively pursue and destroy their aspect, even though they also reflect it. Examples of Princes offered by Homestuck are Dirk, Eridan, and Kurloz.

Dirk, the Prince of Heart, is obviously important to consider (and we will talk about him later and throughout this piece).  He is the starting-point for the Auto-Responder and is his creator.  Dirk destroys Heart through his splintering of himself into several fragments, and this is evidenced through all of the different Dirks that exist throughout canon (and, of course, the Auto-Responder is one of these splinters).

Eridan, the Prince of Hope, destroys Hope through breaking the Matriorb, the only way that the troll species could continue to propagate.  He single-handedly completed the genocide of his species that he had been seeking for most of his life.  Thus, he destroyed Kanaya’s Hope and the Hope of all trolls.

Princes are also suspiciously devoid of their own aspect, Dirk splinters his own soul, Eridan has no hope for his own life, and Kurloz is mostly emotionless and does not display anger.  Thus, they destroy their aspect both outside and within themselves, and their powers revolve around them using their own bodies/powers to also conduct that destruction in their surroundings.

The aspect of Blood is largely believed to concern connections and close relationships.  Friendships, love, alliances, and anything similar likely fall under the category of Blood.  The Blood aspect, through Karkat especially, seems to signify bonds and the forging/maintaining of them (for example, how Karkat sees himself as such an expert of the quadrants).  Blood can be connected to leadership, partnership, and overall group dynamics (with a focus on uniting a group into a team).

Proof of this can be found when Kanaya insists right before the final battle, that Karkat is a leader and that his life is important:

And, continuing, Karkat’s connection to blood and creating bonds and causing unification connects to Echidna’s claim that Karkat is necessary to guiding the future of the trolls:

This claim itself connects to both Kankri and the Sufferer, as Aranea infodumps about Kankri’s failures (which connect to the Sufferer’s failures in unifying Alternia, which leaves Karkat with that legacy, the mission to unify trollkind, which is what Echidna believes he will live up to):

Compared to Karkat, Kankri is a failed Blood player who does not unify his allies as he should have, or as he was trying to (just like how the Sufferer ultimately failed due to adversity and conflict).  Blood as a failed concept still connects it to ultimately creating unity, and does succeed on some degree, as the Sufferer in particular still did create a movement that had many members still following it, unified even after his death.  Additionally, throughout canon and specifically during the events on the Meteor before the humans arrive, we witness Karkat failing and struggling as a Blood player.  Blood seems to be a difficult aspect to master, at least it is for Kankri and Karkat. And although Karkat could be interpreted in succeeding through his moirallegiance with Gamzee, which diffuses one of the tensest standoffs in the comic, that connection doesn’t last very long.

Blood players, it seems, often struggle and fail in their aspect.

The Auto-Responder, conversely, succeeds in his role as a Blood player, but this may only be because his stance as a Prince is much more negative towards his aspect.  He succeeds as a Blood player by failing to maintain bonds and by destroying unification.

So, ultimately, I am defining a Prince as an active destroyer, even of himself, and Blood as an aspect having to do with bonds, relationships, and unification.

With these definitions, a Prince of Blood is basically ‘a Destroyer of Relationships’ both internally and externally.  Through his actions and inherent nature, a Prince of Blood destroys his connections to people, destroys the relationships of others, and ultimately causes groups to break apart.

      Part 3:  Considering the Auto-Responder

While not being quite as popular in the fandom, the Auto-Responder still gets quite a bit of attention and he plays a rather major role in Homestuck.  In terms of word count in dialogue, according to this post, the Auto-Responder is the 20th character with the highest word count, clocking in at 8015 spoken words in the comic.  Although this might not sound like much, it is also important to consider ARquiusprite, who definitely has dialogue that is more like the Auto-Responder rather than Equius.  ARquiusprite has 3558 words, some of which can arguably be added to the AR’s word count. Also, considering how many characters have dialogue in Homestuck, scoring in the top 20 isn’t that bad at all comparatively.

And, of course, a character’s influence on the story isn’t necessarily tied to their word count, but to their other actions in the story as well, and we know that the Auto-Responder does quite a bit off-screen (and on-screen in part of the comic without wordcounts, like [S] Unite and [S] Synchronize.

(Disclaimer:  I did not check the above numbers myself, and I am curious if the creator of these statistics considered the AR pretending to be Dirk as Dirk or as the AR.)

I have seen several people try to tackle classpecting the Auto-Responder, although none have been in extensive detail.  Most answers I have found have given him a connection to the Mind aspect, which makes sense, and at first, I thought I agreed.  It makes sense, the Auto-Responder is a very cerebral character, he is a splinter of Dirk’s mind, he is literally only a mind because he does not possess a body.  Mind is all that the Auto-Responder has.  I agreed with this for quite a while, until I started to seriously consider classpecting the Auto-Responder.

I did so during a time when I was thinking in general about the 12 aspects. I wanted to think about how I could fit all twelve of them in with the human session, since the human session is outstanding in the aspects of Doom, Rage, Blood, and Mind.

This is why I considered Mind for the Auto-Responder at first, since it filled a hole in the session.  But, as I continued to think though, I wondered if I should try to see him as another aspect, to figure out if perhaps something else suited him more.

He was always a Prince to me, I think he mirrors Dirk too much to not be a Prince (since he still is Dirk, and if he is not a Heart player then he surely still must be a Prince, he is a splinter but not a shatter—he is still a part of Dirk, he is still Dirk), so he had to have another aspect.  Mind was first.  But then, I thought, what about Blood?

Prince of Blood.  What if the Auto-Responder was a Prince of Blood?

For a long time, I was stuck between considering him a Prince of Mind or a Prince of Blood, and I wasn’t really worried about it immediately, so I let the concept sit for a while.  I let it stew as I kept thinking it over whenever it occurred to me.

And the answers I reached made Blood seem all the more fitting.

So, why a Prince?

Dirk, to me, feels like a character of innate destruction.  He cannot help his nature, and that nature is to rip things apart, both within and without himself.  We see it so much in Homestuck with Dirk as a Prince of Heart, we get to know his class and aspect so well through him that it is one of the ones we understand the most.

The Auto-Responder is Dirk, the only difference is that he is split from Dirk’s experiences from the age of thirteen—when Dirk took the scan of his brain and created his robotic counterpart and copy.  I don’t think that this split is enough to fully separate the Auto-Responder from Dirk as a character, so I am not fond of thinking of him in classes that aren’t Prince.  The Auto-Responder, as Dirk, would have to share either Dirk’s class or aspect.  I think it makes more sense for him to share the class, because I believe the event of splintering actively creates/changes the Auto-Responder’s aspect.

Why Blood?

Blood comes from the Heart.  Blood splits off of the Heart.  The Heart creates Blood.  Dirk created the Auto-Responder.

The Auto-Responder is associated with the color red (the color, ironically, that connects to Dave, and thus connects to Alpha Dave as well—the Auto-Responder grasps a color that Dirk does not, grasps at a relationship that already doesn’t exist).

Blood connects to relationships and bonds, and throughout Homestuck we can absolutely see the Auto-Responder as connecting to connections, as interfering with Dirk’s and other’s.  He puts a wrench into character development and interactions, complicates things concerning the makeup of the Alpha session.  As we move forward in this essay and I start to pull apart events from the comic, we are going to do so through the lens of Blood, focusing on relationships and how the Auto-Responder interacts with them (both within and without himself).

As a Prince, the Auto-Responder will not have his aspect within himself as much as some of the other classes, and he will actually tend to break and destroy even his own aspect in himself (like how all of the other Princes in Homestuck do, to some extent).  I think it’s easy to see how the Auto-Responder destroys his own relationships and bonds, his very existence serves that purpose, and I will go into more detail on that later.

He is the Destroyer of Relationships, the Destroyer of Bonds, the Destroyer of Unification, and the Destroyer of Friendships.

(an aside, from this moment forward I am going to call the Auto-Responder Hal, simply because doing so is simpler.  AR would work too, but it doesn’t look as good in writing as Hal.  Although I believe that Hal is a name that the Auto-Responder picks purely for irony and that he doesn’t actually feel any connection to it, the fandom has adopted it, and I have gotten accustomed to it.  Honestly, I think that the Auto-Responder thinks of himself either as the AR or as Dirk, but I am obviously not going to be calling him Dirk, that would be far too confusing.  Thus, Hal is the name that I will be using continuing forward).