#for me dave is protective of rose when it comes to certain subjects since he really just

[grimme-and-specs]

John has just ordered a knuckle sandwich with a side of blade

Based off of this ridiculous screenshot I thought was funny:

I rewrote it for obvious reasons

[ardenttheories]

You should make a post with how you came to your conclusions about what the classes represent

Most of my understanding of the Classes is based on what I could find from other Classpectors; reading and inferring from there is perhaps one of the best ways you can develop new ideas. I’ve essentially pooled together everything I’ve read combined with things those posts have perhaps touched on but never truly developed. 

Witch: 

Most Classpectors agree that Witches are rebellious, and that they tend to completely break the rules of their Aspect as a result. I mostly use Jade as my example of this because she’s the easiest one to see it with; she breaks the rules of Space and makes them her own by shrinking down planets that don’t turn into blackholes after a certain point. If you were to resize a planet in real life, you’d be completely fucking with the laws of physics, and disastrous effects would occur; Jade bypasses this by defining what these laws are and deciding that, hey, that law isn’t actually relevant to her! I ended up deciding that this was a “Control” class simply because to do this, Witches must have a hell of a lot of control over their Aspect. 

Heir: 

I diverge from a lot of Classpectors with this on a few points, I think? But I mostly used John to define what I thought it meant to be a Heir. They inherit their Aspect, and adhere to its rules, but control it incredibly well within those rules to make it suit them - though often without even realising it. John, for instance, has never really stepped out of the boundaries of what it means to control the Breeze, has never redefined what Breath is or even actively acknowledged that he’s doing these things, but his control is incredible; not only can he turn into the Breeze, but he can literally wield it like a weapon to drill a hole through Skaia itself and use it to move things as heavy as a car. His “Control” is much more passive than Jade’s, as it happens almost naturally as he works through the game, rather than because he looked at the Breeze and thought “huh. wonder what’d happen if i did this”. He just sort of does things and the Breeze bends to his desires without breaking its own rules - which makes him hella powerful still, but definitely much more passive than a Witch.

Seer: 

Seers are actually still kind of elusive to me, so I go mainly on what others have said, which is usually that Seers have to act on the things they see rather than simply advise people on it. They can’t just be informants, or just watch things as they happen; they need to really dive into it. They need to take what they’ve Learnt and put it to effective use themself, rather than relying on others to do all of the work for them. They’re, to me, one of the “Learn” classes (and the passive one, since they mostly observe their Aspect) because their whole purpose is to Seek their Aspect in its various forms and learn from what they See.

Mage: 

So I know that the way I view this seems to be pretty controversial? But I like to think that Mages Suffer and Experience at the same time - mostly because of how Sollux and Meulin act in the comic. It’s one of the Classes I used both research and my own interpretation for! 

Mages experience their Aspect in both good and bad forms, and become actual experts on the subject, which we see most with Sollux who is a complete whizz at anything to do with Code and Rules - two of Doom’s most predominant subsets - to such a degree that he creates a virus to destroy the universe. We also know that Mages suffer for this depth of information, as we can see Meulin actively suffering from Heart; she’s in two relationships that are fairly toxic for her, one of which has led to her own loss of hearing, but she also likely has an incredible understanding of what Heart is and how it can be used - and, yes, that totally means she’s fully aware of who has what soulmate outside of her own situation. 

Much like the Seer, their job is to just… act. They need to break their own cycle of suffering and use what they Know to help others rather than just keep all of that knowledge to themselves. It’s pretty obvious why this is a “Learn” class (through their active experiences with their Aspect, they Learn everything they need to know about it), although I have to admit that it’s kind of funny how this Active class’ challenge is to do something a bit more passive than the passive Seer’s challenge. 

Sylph and Maid: 

Again, mostly based on research rather than interpretation, but I also tend to contrast the two the most out of any other Class pair. Most of this was just a lot of reading! Sylphs are really good at giving advice, but tend to focus too much on helping other people - with the potential of helping too much, and overriding the person’s ability to learn and grow as a person, thus becoming reliant on the Sylph - and not enough on helping themself. Their challenge is to figure out that they NEED to take their own advice, and roll with it, because people will listen to them better if they lead by example and just provide a path for people to follow. 

Maids, on the other hand, rely on people to show them what their Aspect is and what it means, every little nook and cranny that exists as part of it, until they reach a point where they decide they’ve had enough and want to take control - thus stepping out of the shadows and into their own to decide what their Aspect means and why. This definitely sounds a bit like a Witch, and in a way I think it’s meant to! But Sylphs and Maids are very much “Healer” classes; all of their efforts are pooled into either Healing their aspect or Healing others with their Aspect. So while a Witch and Maid sound similar, it’s their purposes that really divide them. 

Thief: 

A mix of research and a mild obsession with Vriska. Obviously Thieves steal, and they steal for their own benefit - we see this with Vriska, stealing Luck from her enemies and using it to boost her own Luck - but I quickly realised that the Beta troll session was completely inundated with Information. They had so much information it was basically coming out of their ears; Rose’s FAQ, the puzzles on their walls, their (slightly more competent) Exiles, their seemingly more helpful consorts - all of it lead to an overabundance of Light. That’s what got me thinking that Thieves tend to show what a session has too much of, similar to how a Knight shows what the session lacks. 

You can even argue this for Meenah! Though they’re technically dead, their lives continue on endlessly in the dreambubbles; I’d say that’s a bit too much Life, considering it’s this abundance of Life that leads to Aranea formulating and acting on her Desires. So naturally Thieves come under the “Steal” Classes as the more active participant! 

Rogue: 

Rogues still confuse me, much like the Seers do. A lot of what I think about Rogues come from research, which means basically anything I say about them is rehashed from Dahni’s posts, or other Classpeting blogs. I can’t really add much else here, if I’m honest, except that Rogues definitely come under the “Steal” Classes as the passive counterpart due to their initial concern of lacking their Aspect, their Stealing of their Aspect for the benefit of others, and the pitfalls they face if they attempt to give too much of their Aspect to other people and don’t try to retain it for themselves. 

As a note, I also tend to accept the idea that Thieves have high confidence to cover up an actual lack of confidence. It suits well with the Rogue’s lacking confidence that they then gain over time. 

Knight and Page: 

This was another controversial one, and I think I got into an argument with someone over it (they were very adamant that they weren’t going to listen to what I had to say). I see these classes as the “Protector” classes, since the way they use their Classpects tends to be to Protect people or their Aspect. Dave, for instance, uses Time to Protect his friends from the severe lack of Time that exists within their session, and takes the brunt of their Endings himself to Protect them from their own ends (which we can see with Davesprite leaping back in time to ensure that John and Jade don’t die). 

Horuss uses Void to Protect himself from things he doesn’t want to see or hear; we see this most notably with the way he pretends not to know what Rufioh is trying to say when he attempts to bring up the idea of ending their relationship. Jake, too, uses Hope to protect himself; Brain Ghost Dirk is a pretty primary example of this, who ends up protecting Jake from Aranea. 

I also like to see these two as inverted Classes of Lack - where Knights think they lack their Aspect when they actually don’t, and Pages actually do lack their Aspect at first but pretend that they don’t. It made sense to me to come to this conclusion when considering that Jake tends to ghost Rage when he starts out the game, using the Doubt of others to Protect himself from situations he found uncomfortable or didn’t want to acknowledge. 

I also like to see the Knights as the passive Class - since their actions are very based around the Protection of others - and Pages as the active Class - since their actions are very based around the Protection of themselves. And just… generally the fact that Jake’s massive Hope explosion is a lot more active than Dave’s living a week in three days (or some similar timeframe) through the use of stable loops. 

Prince and Bard: 

Another bit of both for these! Princes are really the ones that started my whole T/R/F theory because of the disparity between Dirk and Bro, and the initial place where I decided to divide “Destroys with Aspect” and “Destroys Aspect”; Dirk’s actions are a lot more active and hands on than Gamzee’s are, with Dirk actively destroying Heart (such as by trying to puppeteer his friends into getting stronger, or through literally tearing out Souls) and Gamzee passively destroying with Rage (such as by using Karkat’s fear to get to Equius, Terezi’s Rage to get to Vriska, and Nepeta’s Rage at Equius’ death to get the better of her Impulses and catch her off guard). 

Princes always seem to focus more on the destruction of their Aspect to me, while Bards seem to focus more on destroying with it. I mostly got the idea of them being Ghosting Classes from other Classpectors - it’s a thing I adore, with my whole heart - and specifically I developed the idea of the Bardic Split from one of Dahni’s posts; she pointed out how Gamzee, I think, Splits because of Dave introduction the Doubt of his Belief, and that just seemed so poetically apt that I had to jump on it as soon as I could. Most of my ideas of Bards and their whims stemmed from there and, funnily enough, an obsession with Gamzee; we can see how his Aspect leads him around by the horns, and we can see pretty quickly that his challenge is to rein his Aspect in so he isn’t destroying for the sake of destruction. 

This was also based on what I’d already noticed with Dirk as a Prince! Dirk’s journey as a Prince of Heart goes from wanton destruction to a more controlled destruction; he’s not destroying Heart as a whole by late game, not destroying the Heart of himself or his friends - he’s destroying the negative subsections of Heart, or the parts of Heart in his enemies that most benefit the team. So I always adored the concept of Princes and Bards being “Destroyer” Classes, and developed on their passive “with Aspect” and “of Aspect” destructive properties from there. 

Lord and Muse: 

I wasn’t going to do this, but it’d be a good idea to explain it, I think; I completely bullshitted my way through a vaguely understandable explanation of the Lord and Muse Classes. We all know that they’re Masterclasses, and that Muses “Inspire” and Lords “Dominate”, so I collected that under the general umbrella of “Own” because I noticed that a lot of what our canon Lord and Muse do are based heavily on the powers of their Aspects overall; they Own their Aspect to such a degree that everything it encompasses is under their whim. This also led to the idea that the Masterclasses essentially contain an equal divide of the powers of the normal Classes; if you’re meant to have diversity of player style through the Classes, then the Masterclasses would be at a hideous disadvantage - unless they were every other class wrapped into two. 

It also explains why Lord English destroys Time but still adheres to the rules, and why Alternate Calliope advises Alpha Calliope to redefine what she wants Space to be. I also ended up trying to define what their challenges are based on what little we see of them in canon, which… ended up being harder to explain that I had thought; Calliope initially has no Space, and then meets a version of herself that has too much Space. She inspires others to create Space, and then inspires herself to do the same (in the form of Alternate Calliope). My logic with that was that Muses must usually flick between lacking their Aspect and having too much of it, and needing to find a stable middle ground while inspiring themself to act; they can’t let the session have too much, but they can’t let it have too little, either, and they need to learn to take part in what they’re doing because their every action is based heavily around their own concepts of right and wrong, of good and evil. 

Lords we know even less about. I pretty much based that around Lord English, and how I thought he’d be beneficial in a session, and what his drawback was; LE hoards all of his Aspect to himself and deprives every other session of it, then uses the Time he’s hoarded to destroy Time itself. So clearly the way to fix that is to teach him to share his Aspect more evenly, but still to dominate it; to act as he desires, but still give room for other people to grow, and to use his actions to help the group as a whole rather than just himself. So this one was entirely my own interpretation based on vague headcanons more than anything else! I kind of like it, though - and I like the concept that they’re “Own” Classes, as well as Masterclasses that encompass the capabilities of all other Classes as a whole.