#also because i haven’t fully reread hs in like 2 years and have only come back to it to reread some choice moments sometimes

[this-user-is-always-bored]

how do you guys think jade and june would change classpect-wise in kidswap. considering that this adds another 3 years to their non-SBURB life, i got to consider how the different circumstances and extra time would come to change their personalities (and along with that, their classes).

not to go into detail with the strilondes here because this is a harleybert-focused post, but to sum it up i made rose a rogue of light to reflect how she tried to imitate roxy in mom lalonde’s absence, while also displaying her own feelings of inadequacy when it comes to what she’s naturally proficient at, knowledge (light), due to err, apocalyptic circumstances. dave would be a page of time, to demonstrate how without bro, he wouldn’t have absorbed the kind of self sacrificial ruthlessness that a prince of heart would have, instead gaining more self loathing from the fact that dirk is a knight, and try as he might, dave feels as if he could never live up to what he thinks he should want to be. okay recap done with back to the prospits

i think another 3 years of isolation would have legitimately driven jade fucking crazy. we can see from the epilogues and hsbc how being essentially quarantined from the rest of humanity pregame, and then losing the first source of consistent social interaction she has for another 3 years during the retcon ship trip has made her incredibly desperate for any scrap of affection and/or human interaction that she thinks she can’t ever lose. even pregame we see that jade’s only been comforting herself to avoid her loneliness through the skaian prophecies of being able to meet her friends. that’s all she has. adding the fact that bec now can’t really stay with her 24/7 and another 3 years on to that pile and you can see how quickly it fucks over her mental health to the point where i’m pretty sure my kidswap jade is more close to hsbc jade than she is to og jade. funnily enough though i don’t think i’d change her from witch of space to anything. jade’s class being the witch is tied to her complete lack of autonomy in regards to something ruled over by her aspect (which is something she shares with her fellow witches, feferi and damara!), while also referring to how in a trade off for immense power (with witches being consistently in positions of power, either in class or raw potency of ability) she loses any agency she may have gained previously, and is pulled along by the strings of the narrative until it’s done with. (again, another thing she shares with feferi and damara). this isn’t to say the robbing of jade’s autonomy and agency in the narrative in exchange for power and/or the ability to create life is solely from the narrative implications of her classpect alone, but it does play a big part.

with june it’s quite similar, since even at the very first section of act 1 we see how hollow her ‘normal suburban life’ is, despite its normalcy. i think something to note is june’s melancholy about how empty everything seems to be despite things being like they should be is something that remains (despite being repressed and then touched upon and then repressed even harder this time) through hs, culminating in her depressive spiral in the epilogues— these seeds of dissatisfaction and restlessness appear in her since the very beginning, and i feel like they would eventually result in her being depressed nonetheless, with the game or not. another 3 years of mundane, supposedly acceptable suburban life would probably drive her to the same brink as original jade, just maybe the brink could be less tall. like, 50% less. or 30%, depends on how you interpret her depressive spirals in the epilogues. again, the thing is, i can’t really find it in myself to change her class either. this seems very fitting for an heir of breath, and i don’t think the extra years would cause anything to change for her class-wise; she’d probably hold on to that sense of detachment and apathy to not lose her mind at how hollow everything around her is.

and isn’t that harrowing? three whole years of extra time, a whole different set of circumstances and yet neither of them change very much fundamentally. sure, they may be a hell of a lot more desperate and introspective (questionable. is facing the endless hole of loneliness/emptiness within the world around you and yourself introspection?) now, but as who they truly are deep inside, nothing has truly shifted. the world changed, the people around them changed, and yet they still stay the same.