Heir Of Time Or Prince Of Mind?

I drew these in 2020 and completely forgot to post them. They were gonna be for a little infographic thingie around my thoughts on Classpects, but I never found a way to host it somewhere lol. They’re not really fankids or anything, just random designs to represent their Classes.

Not an Enigma, and Certainly Not a Curse: the "Ultimate Self" in Hussie's Own Words

I've found myself, lately, in several conversations in a row where the other guy and myself weren't on the same page about what the Ultimate Self meant; and though I welcome the opportunity for discussion, explaining my position over and over again has cost me minutes of my screen life that I simply won't win back. So this post is a departure from my usual fare in that it's more for my own benefit than that of anybody else.

I've been over Davepeta's "superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space" enough already, so if you're interested in the Ultimate Self as it is in Homestuck, I recommend you read "Homestuck's Gnosticism: The Conflict", and then, if that piques your attention, you continue with the follow-up "The World/The Wheel". For the purposes of this post, though, I want to keep analysis, interpretation and hypothesising to a minimum. As the title indicates, this is the Ultimate Self not as I describe it, or as characters describe it, but - so to speak - straight from the horse's mouth.

In Andrew Hussie's commentary on Homestuck: Book 6, p. 312:

Oftentimes, when characters lose certain qualities that came to define them, there's this sense of liberation they seem to experience. They become a happier, more relieved, easier-going version of themselves. When Aradia ditches a defining quality we came to know her by (being dead), she becomes a much happier and self-actualized Aradia. Sollux also seems to be chilling out now that his defining properties (bifurcation, etc.) have been KO'd. He had a mouth full of gnarly teeth that gave him a wicked lisp (gone), eyes full of nasty laser beams (gone, along with his eyesight), and a brain full of doomsday visions and bipolar disorder (also gone—well, maybe not the bipolar thing, because that's probably not how that works, but whatever). You get more of this kind of thing in even higher degrees with some of the fusion stuff that happens later (Arquius, Davepeta), where characters become almost euphoric versions of themselves for having been completely liberated from certain self-limitations which previously defined them. The concept of an "ultimate self," which appears much later, probably has its roots way back to stuff like this, which got the ball rolling on the idea that a more complete or fulfilled self is one that becomes free from mortal limitations, or the idiosyncrasies which comprise a specific instance of one version of yourself. Hence an ultimate self is an aggregate of someone's full potential. It's not just doing away with negative traits, but summing up all iterations of yourself, including ones without those traits, allowing you to move beyond them. Or maybe more accurately, to view them as insignificant in the grand totality of what a person really is.

Importantly, what Hussie does here is draw the conceptual line from the themes of Acts 1-5 to what are often interpreted by some as radically different, even left-field themes through Act 6. Think of this as an extension of one of Homestuck's meta-themes, where the comic undergoes a series of escalations that take simple conflicts to their logical extremes: we start the story worried about a Reckoning which might destroy the Earth, then end up with the more pressing concern that a Rapture is about to end reality as we know it. The Ultimate Self is the end result of the exact same kind of escalation; where the God Tiers are a method of becoming a better version of oneself by merging with one's "ideal" dream body, the Ultimate Self is the logical conclusion that one can become the best version by unifying with every body.

To draw my own conceptual line back to Homestuck: Book 5, page 409:

This connects to the basic question of whether to embrace the regimentation of a heroic path conveniently laid out for you (the expectation), or to reject it as the shallow and rigid confinement of personal destiny (the deviation). These issues are expressed through the fundamental language of platonic idealism: perfect ideas of things, and then specific, imperfect instances of those ideas, or varied permutations, evolutions, or hacks of those ideas through alchemy. The way Sburb "should" go is an ideal (expectation), but the disastrous, chaotic way it actually goes is an imperfect instance (deviation). An "idea" of a person, such as Rose, along with her regimented heroic quest for growth, and all the great things she might imagine herself to become if she followed it, is an ideal (expectation). The messy, flawed, yet more genuinely human individual she does become resulting from her errant choices and rejection of formalism, is an imperfect instance of an ideal (deviation). What's the bottom line here? This is a lot. I know it's a lot. Homestuck is, in fact, a lot.

I've added some of my own emphasis there again, but that whole extract is worth reading. The reason I bolded that part is because this "Platonic idealism" is something Hussie talks about a lot in his commentary, and I think that commentary is essential reading for anyone who wants to even get their foot in the door on this topic. Again, this is something I've blogged about extensively already, so there's more than just Hussie's word to take for it if you're really interested; but for the sake of this post, I'll finish off with, again, what Hussie himself has to say on the matter, all the way back in Homestuck: Book 1, page 123:

With things like Athenums and Perfectly Generic Objects locked and loaded, Sburb architecture seems to be circling widely around a game abstraction-based systemization of Platonic idealism. Homestuck deals with what I am going to roughly characterize as THEMES.

Classpects as Real-Life Magick: Aspect Archetypes

So, here we are again, discussing the absolutely bonkers idea that Homestuck's Classpect system could be used to form a coherent, real-life magickal system. I've talked briefly about the various Forces and Wills that affect the Homestuck universe, and how those directly translate to our modern understanding of magick, but I'd like to touch on Aspects and how one could use them in a system loosely constructed from the mythology of Paradox Space. Each Aspect can be treated as having its own Domain, which includes both concrete and abstract symbols, as well as what the Aspect itself represents in the Universe. The Aspects as they're represented in the form of universal Forces are also represented in the human form, and in following this system one can "tap into" those Forces, whether for personal development or for directing those energies outward. (I definitely draw inspiration from the idea of panpsychism for this.)

I'll begin the discussion of the Aspects by delving into their Archetypes, and will expand more upon their Domains for another post. While the Classes have obvious inspiration from Jung's primary archetypes, the Aspects can also be represented similarly. If you were to personify each Aspect, they would look a bit like the following:

Space: The Creator. Infinitely patient, Space is generally calm and collected, if a bit cold at times. Yet, it's also responsible for the creation of the universe, over which it watches with a protective gaze. If its propagation is threatened, Space is capable of an incredible fury, evoking the unforgiving chaos of a star gone supernova, or the inevitable terror of a black hole.

Time: The Destroyer. Controlling, steady, and ever-present describe Time quite well. Despite its generally destructive nature, it's quite capable of incredible works of creation, most notably in the realm of music. Synchronicities are the calling card of Time; when meaningful events happen simultaneously, take notice. Time contains endless passion and drive, its fires unquenchable.

Mind: The Actor. This Aspect embodies cognitive dissonance and the ability to completely disappear into a role. Mind appears differently to anyone who comes across it, which can make signs of its influence difficult to track down. Epiphany and synthesis are the children of Mind, sought by creatives and intellectuals alike. A deep understanding of abstract reality comes with understanding Mind.

Heart: The Romantic. When dealing in matters of the soul, Heart embraces that identity which remains stable and encourages genuine connection between people. It holds the mirror to nature and exposes virtue and flaw alike. Clear self-awareness and a complicated relationship with that self are hallmarks of Heart, as well as a tendency toward melodrama, with or without an audience.

Hope: The Storyteller. Intense euphoria, unbound by pragmatism, heralds the influence of Hope. It painstakingly crafts a story for its chosen ones, who are encouraged to submit and live fully in that truth. This Aspect lends itself to to the miraculous and fantastical, opening minds to a myriad of possibilities, and those who embody Hope can get utterly lost in its labyrinth of the theoretical.

Rage: The Satirist. Contempt and a vindictive nature are part and parcel of Rage's nature, as an Aspect that inspires doubt and insanity, as well as a refusal to engage with frivolity. It stirs melancholy in dark hearts and is manifest through gallows humor and rejection of fantasy. It is the hammer to which everything else appears as a nail, though its steadfast determination is invaluable.

Breath: The Trickster. Those under Breath's influence share its nature of playfulness and constant motion. At times, this manifests as immaturity through a lack of groundedness. Breath is prone to distraction, constantly shifting its own path upon encountering any sort of resistance or responsibility. The Aspect is self-driven and individualistic, disconnected from others of its kind.

Blood: The Wounded Healer. Much as its name suggests, Blood is fully grounded in the struggle and suffering inherent to life. However, it also embodies a profound empathy for others and an unmatched dedication to those bonds, as well as an understanding of what personal sacrifices must be made to accomplish a given goal. It is relentless and deeply dedicated to building vast networks of allies.

Life: The Alchemist. Even in the deepest cracks in the sidewalk of the Furthest Ring, Life finds a way. It flourishes in the bountiful harvest and transmutation of energy, wealth, and influence. Those blessed by its influence are durable and ever-present, making decisions that utterly transform the world around them. This constant cycling of energy is necessary to keep the universe balanced and in motion.

Doom: The Martyr. Limits and restrictions are just as important to the universe as negative space in a piece of artwork. Doom generally festers like a slow-growing mold, but the telltale sign of Doom's influence is a massive, unsustainable release of energy that usually results in burnout. The Aspect also has a deep connection to inorganic systems and constructs, many centered around death.

Light: The Teacher. Knowledge itself lies in the realm of Light, which is made manifest through instruction and understanding of important information. Omniscient beings receive their enviable sight through Light, which ultimately seeks to scour the universe, leaving no stone unturned in its hunger to learn and teach. It promises great fortune to those who assist in its declared purpose.

Void: The Occultist. Endless hunger and inescapable darkness are the left and right hands of Void, which offers gifts of arcane knowledge and long-hidden power in exchange for the fame and fortune many would seek with such gifts. It twists the mind and forces their student to acknowledge their Shadow. Its power is addictive and all-consuming, but well-worth the price...to the insane.

I’ve created a class and aspect schematization chart based off the lovely theories of 0Pacifica, which were a compelling enough argumentation that I’ve significantly absorbed them into my personal canon. You should read her meta if you want and you can find the chart here.

also please follow me on twitter uwu

soooo, with the new aspects descriptions and the traits they are focusing on and putting in the spotlight as major defining traits of those aspects, do you think you'll reconsider Joey as Life now instead of Light? (and Jude as Light instead?)

I hadn’t really gotten to Jude yet at all–he still seems like a Doom player, but now I’m more uncertain about all of them.

I have been reconsidering Joey as a Life player pretty heartily, actually, BUT…I think in the end, at least so far, it’s only left me more sure she’s a Light player. 

But the reason why, I think, suggests some new infomation relevant to how the Classpect system works. I’m curious to know what you’ll think about it! And since I’m about to record this in video form and it’s pretty overwhelming and difficult to talk about, I think it’ll help to get my thoughts in order somewhat, so I think I’ll do some prep here. 

My logic goes something like this: 

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I was fiddling with that Calliope post for a few days in my drafts, but combined with what I've been repeating recently about "Caliborn's paradigm" I wonder if the point of classpect is to be interpreted?

obviously the aspects are symbols for fundamental concepts, and the point of a fundamental concept is whittling it down into something more real via interpretation (which is something we see in the comic, with Vriska thinking of Light as luck versus Rose thinking of fortune more in terms of fate)...

I suppose it could be argued that classes are the interpretations of the aspects, i.e. a Seer of Light inherently interprets "Light" differently to how a Thief of Light interprets it, but I think there's a level of fundamentality to a class as well. they represent fictional archetypes moreso than RPG classes (RPG classes themselves tend to represent archetypes of folkloric hero, but Sburb's classes take that a step or two further and, as such, a step or two more abstract); it's something I've only lightly touched upon before, but essentially, like the aspects, the classes are ideas that are open to interpretation by their very nature; while the platonically ideal concept of a "Prince" does exist out there, each individual Prince from each individual story is a totally different iteration, a different "interpretation" of the idea of a Prince.

I guess this is roundaboutly similar to the popular existing theory that each class is defined by a kind of keyword; the Prince and Bard are "destroyers", but it's up to interpretation what exactly that entails (as Calliope puts it, a destroyer of x is "one who destroys x, or caUses destrUction throUgh x"). in the same vein, Thieves and Rogues are "stealers", and so on; one major discipline of classpecting seems to be the scholarship of figuring out what the "keyword" is for every class pair.

but even that I find to be a bit too specific. because while Calliope certainly might interpret a Prince as a destroyer based on her observations of various Princes, in Caliborn's paradigm Prince is likely to mean something completely different. to Caliborn, there are "LOWLY PAGE[S]" and Lords whose "NOBILITY IS MANIFEST". he interprets classes as their literal meanings, the way Dirk thinks of a Prince as someone who "rule[s] over [their aspect] in a pompous, regal manner"; a way of thinking made manifest in the position of Princes in relation to Maids and Pages in Alternian society. because of course the opposite side of the "Homestuck characters are the audience" coin is that "Homestuck characters are the author". in the same way Calliope's interpretations of the classes are "true" because they line up with observable fact, Caliborn's interpretation of the classes is made true when he gains control over the narrative and is able to skew the reader's very ability to observe the facts. in Caliborn's own words, "IF I BELIEVE HARD ENOUGH [...] THEN THAT FACT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INDISPUTABLE AS A PERMANENT MAN REALITY."

Love, ideal and material

I was thinking about love and the way both the Light and Heart aspects deal with it but in fairly different ways. And, being who I am, I instantly decided to cram it into my absurdly convoluted system of sub-Aspect particles and say it’s all about Aspect Mirroring.

When Rose falls in love, it is redemptive. It is holy. Taz has written entire essays on why Rosemary represents the forgiveness of the sinful caprice of the universe and a greater acceptance of one’s place in the world, and we see echoes of this with Vriska’s complicated relationship with Terezi and Aranea’s strained and ultimately failed relationship with Meenah. A common challenge to this redemption, though, is fear. Rose’s relationship with Kanaya is strained by alcoholism because accepting the world for what it is means accepting her mother’s alcoholism for what it is, which is terrifying, and ironically leads Rose into that very same alcoholism herself. Vriska, meanwhile, all but intentionally blinds herself to her love for Terezi, chasing instead the impossible dream, binding herself to ambition, to grandeur, seeking through action to redeem herself and not the world. And Aranea? Poor, long-suffering Aranea, for whom the redemption of the world comes in the form of the capricious, destructive, self-loathing Meenah? She decides that love just isn’t worth it, and instead chooses to go out with a bang, enacting a spectacular, ambitious plan that ultimately seeks to deny reality rather than redeem it.

For the Heartbound, on the other hand, it’s much more complicated than that. Dirk’s love is a frightening, tempestuous thing, explicitly compared both by Hal and the comic’s own symbolism to earth-shattering volcanic eruptions and the biblical flood. Again by Taz, love is not that by which Dirk seeks to redeem the world, but that by which he seeks to redeem himself, to be Jake’s Knight in shining armor rather than the dreadful thing which Dirk sees in himself when he is alone with his own thoughts. And it doesn’t really work, does it? Grand plots and endless attempts to connect through words and deeds run headfirst into the fact that these kids aren’t alright and that closeness with another human being can be just as much pain as it can be pleasure. And that’s not even to speak of Hal, for whom love is barely a holy thing at all, but a shackle, a desire forced upon him at birth which he is neither capable of denying nor of realizing. After all, who wants to date a pair of shades?

It’s harder to say much about love with the Leijons. Nepeta’s love for Karkat can be realized only post-mortem and brings her pain as much as it brings her joy, and her love for Equius ennobles them both but also leads her to her death, but Rogues also have complicated themes revolving around love which makes it harder to tell what’s what. Meulin is a bit easier, I guess. Her love for Kurloz is an unambiguous negative, pulling her ever deeper into the dreadful clutches of the subjugglator cult and the worship of Lord English. Her love for Horuss is similarly fucked up, resulting apparently from Horuss’s desire to merely copy the surface of Equius and Nepeta’s relationship in the hopes of replicating its essence (Surfaces and surface understandings being one of Void’s themes) and gives us some horrifying insight into Meulin’s psyche with her advice to Horuss of suppressing your emotions and desires and merely pretending to be happy at all times, putting a deeply uncomfortable spin on Meulin’s own permanently grinning face and constant stream of exuberant gifs.

Meulin is also some sort of love sorcerer, her Magely insights allowing her to see relationships both real and potential and pull them together if it suits her fancy, a decidedly… non-symbolic approach to the concept that doesn’t have anything at all to do with “redemption of a sinful universe” or anything like that, pulling love itself down to the level of schoolyard gossip.

So what is my thesis here? I guess it is that love is a complicated thing, both an Idea so powerful it can turn a bond with one other person into a symbolic representation for the whole world in your mind (note that both Light and Heart are Hot Aspects, making this kind of substituting the whole world with a single individual extra symbolic) and a material thing, mere emotion, mere chemical reaction, a chain yanking at your heart and pulling it into the direction of another person whether you want to or not. The stories of Rose, of Vriska, of Aranea explore this from one angle, the stories of Dirk, of Nepeta, of Meulin explore it from another.

Or to summarize the summary, Light-aspected romance is extremely chaotic wlws trying to learn to chill with their girlfriends instead of breaking shit all the time. Love as something that pulls them away from their madcap shenanigans. Heart-aspected romance is a more complex and I think ultimately honest look at the messiness of relationships.

The recent discussion of the-character-sheet-as-a-soul led me down a very strange mental rabbit hole which ended with “could the character sheet be a piece of origami?”

I do not know nearly enough about origami to continue

(With reference to this post here.)

There's probably some design space to be explored in using flexagons as character sheets.

To illustrate, imagine a martial arts RPG where a character's stats vary depending on what stance they're in, with each of their stances' traits being written on one particular face of a flexagon, and some cost – probably an action economy cost – associated with changing stances (i.e., reconfiguring the flexagon).

Consider the traversal network of a hexatetraflexagon, for example:

Presuming a character's initial stance is represented by face 1, at the start it would be possible to transition to the stances contained on faces 2, 3 and 5, while the stances contained on faces 4 and 6 would be inaccessible.

Lots of fun tactical possibilities there, assuming you could find a way to express a sufficiently rich set of mechanical traits in such limited writing space!

I just had an epiphany on the Breath aspect, and how intricately it connects to the concept of ghosts/the afterlife

Active and Passive Aspects

So now that the whole notional and material idea has been established, that leaves the question, is there another axis to the whole thing? In other words, what separates, say, Mind from Light, or Void from Heart?

I pondered this question for quite a while before coming up with an answer I found satisfactory, and I’m still far from sure I’ve got it right. But I believe the answer might lie in a slightly different perspective on the dichotomy of Active and Passive.

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