Classpect discussion

[Gio]

Admittedly, I may be a little biased otherwise. I have no problem with oD himself, of course, but his fans do like to show up in the Classpect discord server I moderate and start picking fights,

By the way, Egg’s discord server is Classpect Rumpus Zone (invite link). On that server, the admins don’t get much criticism for their theories. I recommend joining if you have any original theories of your own. It’s not picking a fight to suggest new ideas. (not to sound rude in saying this.)

This seems to be a dummy account for criticizing and dogpilng a specific discord server, which is in violation of our No Beefing rule. Don't do this. ~Gio

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

When I encounter Doc Scratch calling himself passive, my reaction is not "maybe Doc Scratch isn't a Prince." Rather, my reaction is first "Princes might be passive" and then it's "Can we stop? Can one thing stay constant? Please? First, gender is debunked. Then I insisted on fucking with the verb. And now the guy is passive?" So my intention was for people to argue against Doc Scratch's claim of passivity.

How I came up with Doc Scratch as the Prince of Void is simple. There's only two options, because he's the Auto-Responder and Equius. He's not really anyone else? He's meant to contrast Caliborn's dumb muscle. The components that aren't Equius He makes a big point about the dark pockets and he says, like, a thing or two about true names, so there's barely any Heart. There was an entire flash about the Auto Responder and Doc Scratch (And maybe the aimless renegade? Not sure what to make of that) that you can sum up as "the exact same character, how did they get away with this?" And, even if it were possible to decouple AR and Equius, the first panel of Equius and the first panel of Doc Scratch are accompanied by similar lines about standing and watching.

One of the few characters I'm uncomfortable giving a mythological role archetype is Dad, because he is a Perfectly Generic Man. He is sterile, clean-cut, and aspires to be a Perfectly Generic Man. I'm too gay to comprehend that.

My reason for doubting that we know the true nature of the Prince class is because of Dirk himself. This part of the post is getting too long, so I'll post it separately.

I think Vriska's rather direct to the point and doesn't really count? She wants to get involved in everything but she's loud about it. she'll post what she's up to on vriskagram. That's the opposite of misdirection. If she does something we don't know about, that's a matter of pacing and not because of anything she's doing. Stealing the spotlight is just. Normal direction. I'm not sure where you got the idea that Vriska counted.

Giving Jack Noir a classpect (CW: Incestuous subtext wrt Carapacians if you think too hard)

Show

Jack Noir as a prince of blood (bkew's old theory) is just. really wrong. The aspect of blood Jack is a rage-coded character, and not because he's angry. Rage isn't about anger. It's about fakeness. A lot of characters lean on the fourth wall, but Jack Noir is introduced with his fourth wall just plain absent. A lack of a fourth wall is when the characters of a story acknowledge that the setting is made up bullshit. He despises the Black Queen's rule and its arbitrary rules and dress code, made up social construct nonsense. But, in the Alternian session, Aradia prototyped a frog statue, so she abolished the dress code and exiled herself. In the Intermission, Spades Slick gets his eye stitched but it's the wrong eye so he has to flip his sprite. He also flips his sprite when he needs to access the barcode on his wrist. Andrew Hussie fixes up Spades Slick and gives him a robot eye. Spades Slick uses the eye to zoom and enhance, and the Hussie remarks that he shouldn't be able to even see out of that eye because it's just red glass.

It's also incredibly easy to get him to do your bidding, as long as you get there first. He takes the commands. It's him. He stabs Karkat, and then Karkat uses him as his personal torch-holding assistant. Just a really friendly stabby boy. He's an adult, but next to the Black Queen he looks like a kid with his twig legs and his short stature. He's so sick of being pushed around, pushed into pushing papers, that he'll do anything to stick it to the Mom.

But the Jack Noir in the B1 session opened a (suggestion) box meant for John. So he usurps the mom. He's the mom now. No one can tell him he can't watch TV past his bedtime now.

I'm not sure where I got this idea, but I think he was meant to illustrate how varied alternate selves could get. Many potential variations. I think I got it from a formspring question.

So I'm thinking of, Page of Rage? That's my best guess, but I really need to come up with at least some sort of model for the other three or four classes. I don't think inspiration will strike me today.

[Dream Muttman]

Isn't the simplest solution, assuming he needs to have a title, to say he's a Bard? He quite clearly invites destruction upon himself. He explicitly invites Rose to kill him by destroying the Green Sun.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Ok, if you think I'm applying that definition for Bard, then you're not paying attention the sort of thing that I am trying to do. I want to find something different, a class theory I personally can buy into. This will involve confusing the shit out of myself. That's okay.

The lode-bearer of the new theory geromy is that the classes currently labeled as To Destroy (Prince, Bard) are the antonym verb of the classes labeled as To Understand (Mage, Seer). That's the one thing I'm not budging on.

I mean, I might be able to keep using the verb To Destroy, but it's going to be difficult to communicate what I'm talking about if I frame it like that. You've just demonstrated that you're conflating the actions of these classes with physical violence because of the key verb.

Rose uses wands to destroy a gate, something the game does not encourage her to do. Eridan does basically the same thing by killing angels instead of imps. It's the same behavior. But we know that Rose's destruction isn't because she enjoys blowing things up for its own sake, so we don't label Seer with To Destroy.

Either stop looking at the definitions and start looking for characters who are similar to him and have similar conflicts, or give your opinion without mentioning me.

You think Jack Noir would put up with Gamzee's bullshit? Get on his level of bullshit? He can barely stand the hijinks of some time weirdos. No-nonsense. Gamzee is distilled bullshit.Do you think Jack Noir is the kind of person who would go "Ohohoho, you have fallen right into my trap," do you? He doesn't do that. He's not going to orchestrate events to have his enemies kill each other.

Check out Courtyard Droll's assassination of Jade Harley. Really random. Very stupid. If you called him a Bard, I'd at least see where you're coming from. I personally see this combination of brute force and lateral thinking to be more like that of a Knight, akin to Dave Strider amassing Too Much Time to make Too Much Money, but that reasoning makes more sense than.

Jack Noir. Bard.

[JakeMorph]

you're losing us tyb i have no idea where this jack noir stuff is supposed to come into play with regards to the doc scratch stuff

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

You said that, according to my rules, every villain would qualify as a Prince or a Bard. I refuted that because that claim made no sense to me.

It is completely irrelevant to Doc Scratch, and that is the point I am trying to make.

[JakeMorph]

i did not say that at all lol i said it is in the NATURE of homestuck's villains to be MANIPULATORS. i did not say ALL of them were manipulators. in fact i have literally been arguing the opposite of this: jack and lord english are the direct OPPOSITE of manipulators, in that they are active destroyers by nature, and basically do not do any manipulating at all. doc scratch and jack noir are polar opposite characters. yes. i know that. you are practically arguing the same point as me.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

This post is going to be Epilogue discourse. I've dropped arguing about verbs entirely and am pursuing the active/passive hat switch. Distractions are just distractions. I command you to throw that line of thought away.

What is Eridan's motivation for killing?

From page 6/005221, [S] Kanaya: Return to the core.

ERIDAN: as the prince of hope im uniquely qualified to recognize wwhen all hope is lost
ERIDAN: and im tellin you there is no hope not evven a little bit
ERIDAN: only thing left to do is servve him and hope he spares us

He's not destroying hope. According to him, it's already gone. As an authority, he's informing us of his assessment of the situation. He's not right, and his plan is dumb, but he's pretty close. His actions may seem destructive, and although the results weren't something he planned on, unlike Gamzee, who killed people who didn't need to be killed (unless you count nonsense about Lord English being already here, which I sure don't) and Vriska (who killed Tavros for criticizing her bad decisions), his actions put the meteor at a tactical advantage.

Feferi, no longer too busy kissing Sollux, communed with the Horrorterrors to make the dream bubbles.
Sollux went blind and stopped spouting fatalism.
Kanaya came back as a Rainbow Drinker with vampire speed, vampire strength, and glowy powers.

The destruction (while we're still calling it that) benefited the people around him.

Gamzee's destruction makes other people bend over backwards to pity the fool. He kills Equius and Nepeta and pins it on Vriska. Nobody will suspect Gamzee. He is an innocent babbu. :'o(

The active-passive shitty twist is easier to find justification as a specific Thing. Caliborn and Calliope play a game of chess, but with the king and queen "switched." Calliope puts Caliborn into checkmate. Caliborn takes off the hats. She had been targeting the wrong one this whole time.

In a way, she had actually been doing impossible maneuvers, but now that the ruse is up, the piece she used as her queen is now in a place of vulnerability. This is a summary from my recollection rather than looking at the page.

Gamzee is the true King, sticking to his paradise planet, rather than moving across the board. But his brain is so broken that his utopia turns into a joke of a pity party planet. In part because not everyone knows what they want, in part because people want different things, but it's bad for him in particular because he knows that he didn't actually earn this. He cheated. He groomed one child into being the Most Evil Guy, and he groomed another into thinking that he is a harmless, trustworthy person. It doesn't really matter what sort of shit he's actually up to. His victory, if he attains it, will ring hollow. It is Fake.

I have a feeling that Gamzee's death is not the last we'll see of him.

I'm assuming Gamzee is an ultimate self because, although the Gamzee shown with Caliborn is, by necessity, from the Post-Retcon timeline, he reacts to seeing Trickster Mode as if he had been there, and that it's something he regrets. It also explains why he doesn't have any ghosts even though he's been shown dying. His gambit wouldn't be possible if he couldn't co-ordinate his actions this way.

Ultimate Self Dirk may or may not be working for Gamzee. That I don't really have an opinion on.

In conclusion, here is what Calliope's exposition looks like with the hats in the right place:

UU: a [bard] is a destroyer class.
UU: it is very far on the active side of the scale. its more passive coUnterpart woUld be the [prince] class. both of these are [GENDER IS A THING SOMEONE MADE UP FOR FUN]
UU: to Understand a hero's capabilities, it always helps to search for the right way to parse the class/aspect pair into a more explicit statement.
UU: for instance, being active, a [bard] coUld be viewed as "one who destroys x, or caUses destrUction throUgh x," if x is the aspect.
UU: while the more passive [prince] coUld be seen as "one who allows x to be destroyed, or invites destrUction throUgh x," as if by the will of the aspect.

And this describes Princes:

UU: maybe! it's a qUirky class.
UU: somewhat like a wildcard role for a hero. very Unpredictable.
UU: they are typically known for their spontaneoUs and dramatic story-altering inflUence on the fate of a party.
UU: some of the more remarkable tales involve sUch parties, where the [prince] is single handedly responsible for their spectacUlar downfall or improbable victory. or both!

[JakeMorph]

okay, so then let's look at what i think is probably the bigger question. why and how would calliope be wrong? calliope gets her knowledge from rose's book, which means the information she's repeating either a) came from Knowledge Itself or b) was deduced by rose through observation, which makes it completely pointless to argue 'prince is this and bard is that' when the definitions we're working with are literally just descriptions of the same things we're seeing. and perhaps more importantly: what does calliope being wrong add to the story? what is its purpose, as lines of text deliberately written into the comic?

[egg]

Unrelated, but here's a bit of a vent I guess.
I've been doing this actively for 6 months, and on and off for nearly 5 years ever since I first heard of it way back when I was but a bab, and trying to figure out how to actually derive meaning from sentences people said on the Internet. The one thing I've learnt is that Classpect is a treadmill. The more people argue about something, the less likely it is that anyone will reach any form of consensus. On that regard, oD did pretty well I guess, as most of the people I talk to borrow from his ideas. But it is tiring, and I think it wears down any starry-eyed theorycrafter who decides to get really deep into it.
And I think ultimately its biggest flaw is that it's easy to take personally. It's too easy for people to get emotional over it and decide on silly ideas because they don't want to be associated with certain concepts, and I get it really. I've tried very hard to maintain that every Class and every Aspect has a positive side, and even if they don't seem like it at first, the whole point is for them to grow and be better. But it has never really worked. And I don't understand why I continue to be enamored with it.
Do I just want to be the guy who's "right" on the internet, constantly getting into verbal fistfights with fans of a guy who doesn't even know they exist? Is there some sort of mystical curse, magnetizing me to this dumbass system? I no longer know, but I certainly no longer have the heart to abandon it now that I've made several documents on it. I do know that if I see one more motherfucker call themselves a Void player because they 'keep secrets from their friends', I might just commit heinous crimes.

[thorondraco]

see you quite often say things like "this could be because of that" but you haven't provided any reason to actually believe that, in which case the most likely answer remains the most simple one, which is "it's just something he can do with the various powers we already know he has"

Because with lord english we know surprisingly little, or unsurprisingly little i guess? So we can only speculate how and why these things work as they do.

Far as we know it turns out that Lord english himself has Narrative abilities. Which could possibly man that the reality is Homestuck was always about something investing the entire narrative...

That makes too much sense to be honest. Starts out with Kurloz fucking with everyone, extend to the entire troll world, to the human world and then the post scratch human world. His minion's influences growing stronger and stronger in each iteration.

[JakeMorph]

I think lord english being in control of the narrative from the beginning was the point?

[thorondraco]

I think lord english being in control of the narrative from the beginning was the point?

Hussie obviously was in control up until his death, and even then it was Hussie creating the story while Lord english was attacking the dream bubbles and was after the horror terrors. Hussie DID in fact create lord english. But i guess he lost control at some point and had accidentally created something he had no hope of writing a defeat for without being super contrived. We don't know the true limits of the author powers.

I think that Hussie might have made a mistake by creating a portal for lord english to enter his Hussie Space... I remember now that there was a 5th wall mentioned and Hussie isolated himself in this space. But foolishly opened a hole for Lord english to breach when he went after Doc scratch.

We, dealing with Chtulu type layers of reality maybe, or similar? %th dimension where the author is, apparently the dimension that Dirk has access to. The 4th dimension which is sburb sessions. And the 3rd dimension which is the rest of reality, stuff like post canon and such. The 4th dimension overlapping the 3rd for sburb, and the fifth acting as a place of isolation to keep the author separate from the dangers of the sessions. Each higher dimension having power over the lesser dimensions.

[egg]

I'm pretty sure Lord English is more of a metaphor than an actual character by this point.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

I'm pretty sure Lord English is more of a metaphor than an actual character by this point.

It's metaphors all the way down, friend. It's so metaphorical that it's pataphorical.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

why and how would calliope be wrong? calliope gets her knowledge from rose's book,

I've told you once, twice, however many times that Gamzee has altered the book. Yes, all we see is Gamzee using Equius's blood to censor bits and pieces, but we're only shown one page from it. He could have altered it in other ways that aren't shown. I mean, we actually aren't shown anything. It looks like a wavey scribble to us.

It's the fucking joke about Terezi killing Vriska while ignoring Gamzee all over again. The joke is that nobody notices what's he's actually up to for no fucking reason. Calliope is ignoring Gamzee.

The point of Calliope being wrong is to elaborate on the themes elaborated on in the Epilogues about unreliable narrators. It's to remind us to question everything, every narrative, fictional or nonfictional. Question what we tell ourselves. You should not doubt to the point of spiraling into nihilism, but you should question. For example, why do other people believe that Jane has bad politics and Dave has good politics when they're both avaricious capitalists? Why do the trolls of the Troll Kingdom care about bringing back the Mother Grub if it's not even tradition for this generation? Why are they segregated in the first place? Is Jade right about Obama being a fictional character?

From the perspective of the greater narrative, the purpose is to teach us how to make sense of propaganda. From a character perspective, it's to make Dirk think of himself as an abusive person.

[Notchine]

hey lads, heir of blood here. Personally i don't really get what my class does considering its main deal is inviting change through its aspect (inviting change through blood????) but i dont mind since its a pretty badass sounding classpect

[PilotBlackSmith]

apparently I'm a Heir of Void
what the fuck do I do I don't remember what Equius could do besides punch really hard

[thorondraco]

why and how would calliope be wrong? calliope gets her knowledge from rose's book,

I've told you once, twice, however many times that Gamzee has altered the book. Yes, all we see is Gamzee using Equius's blood to censor bits and pieces, but we're only shown one page from it. He could have altered it in other ways that aren't shown. I mean, we actually aren't shown anything. It looks like a wavey scribble to us.

It's the fucking joke about Terezi killing Vriska while ignoring Gamzee all over again. The joke is that nobody notices what's he's actually up to for no fucking reason. Calliope is ignoring Gamzee.

The point of Calliope being wrong is to elaborate on the themes elaborated on in the Epilogues about unreliable narrators. It's to remind us to question everything, every narrative, fictional or nonfictional. Question what we tell ourselves. You should not doubt to the point of spiraling into nihilism, but you should question. For example, why do other people believe that Jane has bad politics and Dave has good politics when they're both avaricious capitalists? Why do the trolls of the Troll Kingdom care about bringing back the Mother Grub if it's not even tradition for this generation? Why are they segregated in the first place? Is Jade right about Obama being a fictional character?

From the perspective of the greater narrative, the purpose is to teach us how to make sense of propaganda. From a character perspective, it's to make Dirk think of himself as an abusive person.

As of late i find myself wondering how much of this kinda stuff is meant to handicap the players of the game itself. Cause we have dirk literally gaining the power to create a story while being a player in the game too so that implies there is an immense amount of power these individuals are capable if they are allowed knowledge.

[lavendersiren]

apparently I'm a Heir of Void
what the fuck do I do I don't remember what Equius could do besides punch really hard

Void is said to concern that which is empty and/or obscure. That which is in shadow, often not understood well.

Heirs are often said to embody or become their aspect. Going by just name alone, it could be said that they inherit their aspect.

Putting those together, an heir of void would be "one who inherits nothingness", "one who becomes obscurity" or some variant therof.

As for what you can do in relation to your title, I'm afraid I don't know you well enough to make a solid statement on that.

Equius's hella strong punches, I would say, would be more of a "this is this troll's special ability" sorta thing rather than an aspect thing. It doesn't seem to be the sorta thing that has much to do with the void theme.

Do note that I subscribe to the glitch faq-stated maxim of "two players of the same exact classpect can be entirely different and still be following their title", though this theory is mostly in favor of making wiggle room for voiding interpersonal conflict in the face of lack of standardization.
It makes for great writing at least.