Nameless Irk

I’d like to go over each protagonist personally, but it’s been too long since I read Worm, Ward, or Pact and reading those I was still all in on how the narrator sees things and bad at reading into the narration instead of just reading it, so those 3 all kind of blend together in my head too much for me to try them. I might do Sy, but I haven’t thought him much yet for it.

What I want to do right now is give classpects to Verona, Lucy, and Avery, based on my understanding of the classes and aspects I’ve been able to pick up.

Verona I would say is probably a Mage of Heart. Her arc has been more less about getting her to find a good place for her Self. She couldn’t really be herself with Brett always being nearby ready to whine to her about some bullshit or another, treating her as daughter and wife at the same time despite her age, and never appreciating any of the work she actually did until she just stopped doing it all together. Now she has her demesne that allows her to have her own home as she wants it, it’s become a hangout spot for all her closest friends, and she doesn’t have to worry about invaders doing any sort of harm to her, emotionally like Brett or even physically in most cases. Not to mention she can also easily interpret and communicate with nonverbal Others like Tashlit. But that’s just why I see her as Heart. For Mage it was more or less just that loves learning about her interests so much. She’s turning her demesne into a bookstore for books that were never written, she’s easily the most well-rounded in terms of understanding practices of the 3 Kennet Witches, and she’s even experimented with different things both mundane and magical to see how she likes them, such as that friends with benefits relationship she had with Jeremy for awhile or trying out Hosting, alchemy, enchantment, among other practices. I had also considered Void for Verona on account of how easy it is for her to play around with the truth without lying outright to confuse people, but ultimately her arc is more about getting from where she hated her life and circumstances so much she wanted to give up her humanity and become virtually anything else to getting where she’s perfectly comfortable being herself and flourishing under her own power, which to me reads with the idea that Heart is about the Inner Self.

Avery was probably the easiest of the trio. Maid of Blood. It’s my understanding that Blood is supposed to be about relationships and connections, and Avery has become something of an embodiment of networking with how many friends and contacts she’s built up over the course of Pale, and that’s all starting from a point where she could go months at a time without anybody noticing she hadn’t said a thing because of how disconnected she was. My understanding of a Maid is someone that takes care of, creates, and maintains their aspect, and boy howdy if Avery doesn’t do that. She literally goes to the edges of reality itself via the Paths to find contacts who’d otherwise be unable to contact anyone in a meaningful way in the form of Lost, who would all otherwise be to conceptually close to the ideas associated with Breath to get anywhere in their continued existences. Avery’s also the one of the trio most likely to allow an antagonist to redeem themself for similar reasons.

Lucy was the hardest one for me to get. I’d definitely peg her as a Knight, but I can’t decide if she fits better as a Knight of Hope or a Knight of Rage. I could see her as Hope because Hope players are described as “driven first and foremost by their convictions. They do right for right’s sake, and are quick to come to the aid of anyone they deem to be experiencing injustice.” That sounds extremely Lucy, but Hope as a concept also seems to be connected to the use of positive emotions to empower and accomplish where as Lucy is not someone I would describe as being emotionally positive. She is almost always on guard in some way or another, always prepared to be ‘bullet-proof’ in as many ways as possible because she’s anticipating some asshole coming up and challenging her on some arbitrary thing. Even her Sight allows her to see specifically negative emotions and pain in the form of watercolor-esc stains. This is where interpreting her as less Hopey and more Ragey comes in. She’s very tired of the way the world is. She fights tooth and nail in arguments, in magic, in duels, and in Law to gain just a bit of ground even if it isn’t as much ground as she had wanted. Training under Guilherme and Bubbleyum does seem to have taught her to be coolheaded enough not to suppress her anger but to channel it for all those sorts of fights I mentioned. Rage at the injustices of the world and especially those right in front of her that she can do something about, is what fuels her. As for why I’d put her as a Knight, that’s because Knight is the closest to how she normally operates. She doesn’t seek the knowledge the way a Mage or Seer does, she doesn’t really fit homestuck’s idea of an Heir or (ironically) Witch, she doesn’t generate or heal like a Maid or Sylph, and she isn’t destructive of any aspect like a Prince or Bard, she isn’t taking to deprive from others like a Thief or Rogue, and she certainly isn’t as selfish as she could be with her defense of what she cares about like a Page. The idea that she serves Hope for the future or exploits her own Rage or whatever it is Knights are supposed to one-worded to, Knight fits the best of the classes.

Bonus bit, going purely based off vibes I’d say Verona and Lucy are both derse dreamers while Avery would be prospit.

Found out being a Page isn’t necessarily just about hoarding your aspect to empower yourself, but can also have something to do with growing into and becoming a leader over time using their aspect. If we say Lucy is more of a page than a knight using this interpretation it even solves the issue of whether Lucy is closer to Hope or Rage because Pages always start out with a lack of their aspect, thus since Lucy started out really angry at the injustices of the world but later becoming a beacon of hope against those injustices could solidify her as a Page of Hope.

In addition, even though I don’t remember Blake’s personality all that distinctly, I got a lightbulb for what his classpect could be from reading the tags of a reblog and his role in Pact: Blake is an Heir of Doom. He literally inherited seven lifetimes worth of bad karma and all the local enemies of Jacob’s Bell along with his family’s history of diabolic magic making it difficult at best to get allies anywhere else he went, not to mention all the shit that went down with him and the Abyss or how he was supposed to be predestined to duel to the death with what would otherwise be an ally.

And based purely off vibes I’d call Blake a prospit dreamer.

Like I mentioned before, I firmly believe Sy is a Blood player. Almost everything he does revolves around the other Lambs and his relationships with them and even his most outstanding skills revolve around manipulating people by forming connections, real or otherwise. What about his class? Personally I put Sy as a Thief. As mentioned above, he’s an adept manipulator and part of that in his case revolves his ability to take allies from enemy ranks (Mary) or simply get people to follow him who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten involved at all as is the case for a large portion of late-game Twig. Hell, at one point he hijacked a plan from a rival because he accidentally stumbled upon the seeds her plan before she could return to execute it, and he did that by convincing her contacts that he was working for her. By the time they realized they’d been duped it was too late for a good chunk of them to do anything but remain Sy’s allies, which is probably his biggest Blood-heist that occurred in the story. As for why Thief rather than Rogue, that would be because Sy has an element of selfishness when it comes to his relationships. He’s made attempts to escape the Academy on his own on more than one occasion, and he’s actively harmed and restrained allies under circumstances, even becoming a large thorn in the side of the Lambs for multiple arcs at one point partially for his own amusement.

Now for Taylor. After having relistened to We Got Worm go through the first 3 arcs of Worm and remembering different things from across the rest of the serial, I still maintain that Taylor is a Mind player. I think everyone who’s ever even heard of Worm will agree that Taylor is very utilitarian minded character, and that lends itself to Mind’s conceptual ties to actions and consequences, and she makes it a habit to rationalize everything she does in order to stay on, in her mind, the right side of justice, even if that means being incredibly brutal or using fear tactics to save people. Remember that scene where she adamantly refused to take action because she couldn’t rationalize the action? That was during the agnosia plague, I forget the circumstances but I remember it being brought up on We Got Worm the first time I listened that while she rationalizes a lot of horrible actions she will not take an action she cannot rationalize. But of course, while she does try to be rational, she isn’t always thinking as rationally as she thinks she is. That brings us to her class: Prince. She’ll often get driven by emotion but not consciously realize it. Her early interactions with the Undersiders reflected this pretty well with her rational for joining them being that she could go undercover in this group that was adept at evading heroes so she could get them caught when in reality she was just looking for a group that would accept her, which the Undersiders provided. Not to mention her first interaction with Rachel. She almost threw her entire rationalized plan out the window because she was so angry after Rachel attacked her and had to be convinced to come back. Her ability to compartmentalize and rationalize is in a sense her using her Mind to destroy her own feelings. But not just for herself either. Her early interactions with Flechette also left her disoriented because she couldn’t completely dismiss the points Taylor was making during their fight, which I believe got brought up in an interlude later, in a sense destroying Flechette’s mind. And then there’s also how Taylor fights. She’s always probing for weaknesses and maintaining a very high degree of awareness via her ability to sense the bugs in the area. Even if she can’t personally capitalize on a weakness she will tell others how they can exploit it. Once again, using Mind to destroy. And then there’s the most obvious destroyer of mind thing with her, when she actively made Amy turn her into Khepri. Edit: I just remembered another point I was gonna make for Taylor being a Prince is how she takes charge and doesn’t bend the knee easily, becoming the leader of the Undersiders at one point and a gang lord near the top of the local totem pole at another, similar to a common idea I’ve seen that Sburb Princes tend to take charge when they can.

Bonus Lunar Sway segment: Based on vibes I’d place Taylor on Derse and Sy on Prospit.

Just Victoria, it might be more fun to watch her head explode while trying to wrap around characters with powers that just don't follow parahuman science, like a time traveler, dimension hopper, telepath, or even just a straight up magic using villain.

Victoria, Ashley, and Sveta are great all in their own ways

Each of them recognisably being in that delicate state of late teens/early twenties where you're trying to figure your shit out and grapple with the fact you're 'behind' what feels like the majority of your peers in terms of your development due to your fucked up life and trauma

Both Ashleys' cringefail loser villainy, she kins Skeletor and Starscream

Crystal doesn't even own scissors

Rain O' Fire 'Sopping Wet' Frazier when do we get back to your deal

Kenzie has never done anything wrong except for all the crimes

I am shocked no one else seems to love Chris, is it because he is annoying and gross and shitty and mean? Is it because of his whole [spoilers deal]? Must a character be 'likeable' or have 'a single redeeming quality' or even 'be more palpable than biting aluminum foil' to be appreciated?

I’d like to go over each protagonist personally, but it’s been too long since I read Worm, Ward, or Pact and reading those I was still all in on how the narrator sees things and bad at reading into the narration instead of just reading it, so those 3 all kind of blend together in my head too much for me to try them. I might do Sy, but I haven’t thought him much yet for it.

What I want to do right now is give classpects to Verona, Lucy, and Avery, based on my understanding of the classes and aspects I’ve been able to pick up.

Verona I would say is probably a Mage of Heart. Her arc has been more less about getting her to find a good place for her Self. She couldn’t really be herself with Brett always being nearby ready to whine to her about some bullshit or another, treating her as daughter and wife at the same time despite her age, and never appreciating any of the work she actually did until she just stopped doing it all together. Now she has her demesne that allows her to have her own home as she wants it, it’s become a hangout spot for all her closest friends, and she doesn’t have to worry about invaders doing any sort of harm to her, emotionally like Brett or even physically in most cases. Not to mention she can also easily interpret and communicate with nonverbal Others like Tashlit. But that’s just why I see her as Heart. For Mage it was more or less just that loves learning about her interests so much. She’s turning her demesne into a bookstore for books that were never written, she’s easily the most well-rounded in terms of understanding practices of the 3 Kennet Witches, and she’s even experimented with different things both mundane and magical to see how she likes them, such as that friends with benefits relationship she had with Jeremy for awhile or trying out Hosting, alchemy, enchantment, among other practices. I had also considered Void for Verona on account of how easy it is for her to play around with the truth without lying outright to confuse people, but ultimately her arc is more about getting from where she hated her life and circumstances so much she wanted to give up her humanity and become virtually anything else to getting where she’s perfectly comfortable being herself and flourishing under her own power, which to me reads with the idea that Heart is about the Inner Self.

Avery was probably the easiest of the trio. Maid of Blood. It’s my understanding that Blood is supposed to be about relationships and connections, and Avery has become something of an embodiment of networking with how many friends and contacts she’s built up over the course of Pale, and that’s all starting from a point where she could go months at a time without anybody noticing she hadn’t said a thing because of how disconnected she was. My understanding of a Maid is someone that takes care of, creates, and maintains their aspect, and boy howdy if Avery doesn’t do that. She literally goes to the edges of reality itself via the Paths to find contacts who’d otherwise be unable to contact anyone in a meaningful way in the form of Lost, who would all otherwise be to conceptually close to the ideas associated with Breath to get anywhere in their continued existences. Avery’s also the one of the trio most likely to allow an antagonist to redeem themself for similar reasons.

Lucy was the hardest one for me to get. I’d definitely peg her as a Knight, but I can’t decide if she fits better as a Knight of Hope or a Knight of Rage. I could see her as Hope because Hope players are described as “driven first and foremost by their convictions. They do right for right’s sake, and are quick to come to the aid of anyone they deem to be experiencing injustice.” That sounds extremely Lucy, but Hope as a concept also seems to be connected to the use of positive emotions to empower and accomplish where as Lucy is not someone I would describe as being emotionally positive. She is almost always on guard in some way or another, always prepared to be ‘bullet-proof’ in as many ways as possible because she’s anticipating some asshole coming up and challenging her on some arbitrary thing. Even her Sight allows her to see specifically negative emotions and pain in the form of watercolor-esc stains. This is where interpreting her as less Hopey and more Ragey comes in. She’s very tired of the way the world is. She fights tooth and nail in arguments, in magic, in duels, and in Law to gain just a bit of ground even if it isn’t as much ground as she had wanted. Training under Guilherme and Bubbleyum does seem to have taught her to be coolheaded enough not to suppress her anger but to channel it for all those sorts of fights I mentioned. Rage at the injustices of the world and especially those right in front of her that she can do something about, is what fuels her. As for why I’d put her as a Knight, that’s because Knight is the closest to how she normally operates. She doesn’t seek the knowledge the way a Mage or Seer does, she doesn’t really fit homestuck’s idea of an Heir or (ironically) Witch, she doesn’t generate or heal like a Maid or Sylph, and she isn’t destructive of any aspect like a Prince or Bard, she isn’t taking to deprive from others like a Thief or Rogue, and she certainly isn’t as selfish as she could be with her defense of what she cares about like a Page. The idea that she serves Hope for the future or exploits her own Rage or whatever it is Knights are supposed to one-worded to, Knight fits the best of the classes.

Bonus bit, going purely based off vibes I’d say Verona and Lucy are both derse dreamers while Avery would be prospit.

Found out being a Page isn’t necessarily just about hoarding your aspect to empower yourself, but can also have something to do with growing into and becoming a leader over time using their aspect. If we say Lucy is more of a page than a knight using this interpretation it even solves the issue of whether Lucy is closer to Hope or Rage because Pages always start out with a lack of their aspect, thus since Lucy started out really angry at the injustices of the world but later becoming a beacon of hope against those injustices could solidify her as a Page of Hope.

In addition, even though I don’t remember Blake’s personality all that distinctly, I got a lightbulb for what his classpect could be from reading the tags of a reblog and his role in Pact: Blake is an Heir of Doom. He literally inherited seven lifetimes worth of bad karma and all the local enemies of Jacob’s Bell along with his family’s history of diabolic magic making it difficult at best to get allies anywhere else he went, not to mention all the shit that went down with him and the Abyss or how he was supposed to be predestined to duel to the death with what would otherwise be an ally.

And based purely off vibes I’d call Blake a prospit dreamer.

Like I mentioned before, I firmly believe Sy is a Blood player. Almost everything he does revolves around the other Lambs and his relationships with them and even his most outstanding skills revolve around manipulating people by forming connections, real or otherwise. What about his class? Personally I put Sy as a Thief. As mentioned above, he’s an adept manipulator and part of that in his case revolves his ability to take allies from enemy ranks (Mary) or simply get people to follow him who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten involved at all as is the case for a large portion of late-game Twig. Hell, at one point he hijacked a plan from a rival because he accidentally stumbled upon the seeds her plan before she could return to execute it, and he did that by convincing her contacts that he was working for her. By the time they realized they’d been duped it was too late for a good chunk of them to do anything but remain Sy’s allies, which is probably his biggest Blood-heist that occurred in the story. As for why Thief rather than Rogue, that would be because Sy has an element of selfishness when it comes to his relationships. He’s made attempts to escape the Academy on his own on more than one occasion, and he’s actively harmed and restrained allies under circumstances, even becoming a large thorn in the side of the Lambs for multiple arcs at one point partially for his own amusement.

Now for Taylor. After having relistened to We Got Worm go through the first 3 arcs of Worm and remembering different things from across the rest of the serial, I still maintain that Taylor is a Mind player. I think everyone who’s ever even heard of Worm will agree that Taylor is very utilitarian minded character, and that lends itself to Mind’s conceptual ties to actions and consequences, and she makes it a habit to rationalize everything she does in order to stay on, in her mind, the right side of justice, even if that means being incredibly brutal or using fear tactics to save people. Remember that scene where she adamantly refused to take action because she couldn’t rationalize the action? That was during the agnosia plague, I forget the circumstances but I remember it being brought up on We Got Worm the first time I listened that while she rationalizes a lot of horrible actions she will not take an action she cannot rationalize. But of course, while she does try to be rational, she isn’t always thinking as rationally as she thinks she is. That brings us to her class: Prince. She’ll often get driven by emotion but not consciously realize it. Her early interactions with the Undersiders reflected this pretty well with her rational for joining them being that she could go undercover in this group that was adept at evading heroes so she could get them caught when in reality she was just looking for a group that would accept her, which the Undersiders provided. Not to mention her first interaction with Rachel. She almost threw her entire rationalized plan out the window because she was so angry after Rachel attacked her and had to be convinced to come back. Her ability to compartmentalize and rationalize is in a sense her using her Mind to destroy her own feelings. But not just for herself either. Her early interactions with Flechette also left her disoriented because she couldn’t completely dismiss the points Taylor was making during their fight, which I believe got brought up in an interlude later, in a sense destroying Flechette’s mind. And then there’s also how Taylor fights. She’s always probing for weaknesses and maintaining a very high degree of awareness via her ability to sense the bugs in the area. Even if she can’t personally capitalize on a weakness she will tell others how they can exploit it. Once again, using Mind to destroy. And then there’s the most obvious destroyer of mind thing with her, when she actively made Amy turn her into Khepri. Edit: I just remembered another point I was gonna make for Taylor being a Prince is how she takes charge and doesn’t bend the knee easily, becoming the leader of the Undersiders at one point and a gang lord near the top of the local totem pole at another, similar to a common idea I’ve seen that Sburb Princes tend to take charge when they can.

Bonus Lunar Sway segment: Based on vibes I’d place Taylor on Derse and Sy on Prospit.

I’d like to go over each protagonist personally, but it’s been too long since I read Worm, Ward, or Pact and reading those I was still all in on how the narrator sees things and bad at reading into the narration instead of just reading it, so those 3 all kind of blend together in my head too much for me to try them. I might do Sy, but I haven’t thought him much yet for it.

What I want to do right now is give classpects to Verona, Lucy, and Avery, based on my understanding of the classes and aspects I’ve been able to pick up.

Verona I would say is probably a Mage of Heart. Her arc has been more less about getting her to find a good place for her Self. She couldn’t really be herself with Brett always being nearby ready to whine to her about some bullshit or another, treating her as daughter and wife at the same time despite her age, and never appreciating any of the work she actually did until she just stopped doing it all together. Now she has her demesne that allows her to have her own home as she wants it, it’s become a hangout spot for all her closest friends, and she doesn’t have to worry about invaders doing any sort of harm to her, emotionally like Brett or even physically in most cases. Not to mention she can also easily interpret and communicate with nonverbal Others like Tashlit. But that’s just why I see her as Heart. For Mage it was more or less just that loves learning about her interests so much. She’s turning her demesne into a bookstore for books that were never written, she’s easily the most well-rounded in terms of understanding practices of the 3 Kennet Witches, and she’s even experimented with different things both mundane and magical to see how she likes them, such as that friends with benefits relationship she had with Jeremy for awhile or trying out Hosting, alchemy, enchantment, among other practices. I had also considered Void for Verona on account of how easy it is for her to play around with the truth without lying outright to confuse people, but ultimately her arc is more about getting from where she hated her life and circumstances so much she wanted to give up her humanity and become virtually anything else to getting where she’s perfectly comfortable being herself and flourishing under her own power, which to me reads with the idea that Heart is about the Inner Self.

Avery was probably the easiest of the trio. Maid of Blood. It’s my understanding that Blood is supposed to be about relationships and connections, and Avery has become something of an embodiment of networking with how many friends and contacts she’s built up over the course of Pale, and that’s all starting from a point where she could go months at a time without anybody noticing she hadn’t said a thing because of how disconnected she was. My understanding of a Maid is someone that takes care of, creates, and maintains their aspect, and boy howdy if Avery doesn’t do that. She literally goes to the edges of reality itself via the Paths to find contacts who’d otherwise be unable to contact anyone in a meaningful way in the form of Lost, who would all otherwise be to conceptually close to the ideas associated with Breath to get anywhere in their continued existences. Avery’s also the one of the trio most likely to allow an antagonist to redeem themself for similar reasons.

Lucy was the hardest one for me to get. I’d definitely peg her as a Knight, but I can’t decide if she fits better as a Knight of Hope or a Knight of Rage. I could see her as Hope because Hope players are described as “driven first and foremost by their convictions. They do right for right’s sake, and are quick to come to the aid of anyone they deem to be experiencing injustice.” That sounds extremely Lucy, but Hope as a concept also seems to be connected to the use of positive emotions to empower and accomplish where as Lucy is not someone I would describe as being emotionally positive. She is almost always on guard in some way or another, always prepared to be ‘bullet-proof’ in as many ways as possible because she’s anticipating some asshole coming up and challenging her on some arbitrary thing. Even her Sight allows her to see specifically negative emotions and pain in the form of watercolor-esc stains. This is where interpreting her as less Hopey and more Ragey comes in. She’s very tired of the way the world is. She fights tooth and nail in arguments, in magic, in duels, and in Law to gain just a bit of ground even if it isn’t as much ground as she had wanted. Training under Guilherme and Bubbleyum does seem to have taught her to be coolheaded enough not to suppress her anger but to channel it for all those sorts of fights I mentioned. Rage at the injustices of the world and especially those right in front of her that she can do something about, is what fuels her. As for why I’d put her as a Knight, that’s because Knight is the closest to how she normally operates. She doesn’t seek the knowledge the way a Mage or Seer does, she doesn’t really fit homestuck’s idea of an Heir or (ironically) Witch, she doesn’t generate or heal like a Maid or Sylph, and she isn’t destructive of any aspect like a Prince or Bard, she isn’t taking to deprive from others like a Thief or Rogue, and she certainly isn’t as selfish as she could be with her defense of what she cares about like a Page. The idea that she serves Hope for the future or exploits her own Rage or whatever it is Knights are supposed to one-worded to, Knight fits the best of the classes.

Bonus bit, going purely based off vibes I’d say Verona and Lucy are both derse dreamers while Avery would be prospit.

Found out being a Page isn’t necessarily just about hoarding your aspect to empower yourself, but can also have something to do with growing into and becoming a leader over time using their aspect. If we say Lucy is more of a page than a knight using this interpretation it even solves the issue of whether Lucy is closer to Hope or Rage because Pages always start out with a lack of their aspect, thus since Lucy started out really angry at the injustices of the world but later becoming a beacon of hope against those injustices could solidify her as a Page of Hope.

In addition, even though I don’t remember Blake’s personality all that distinctly, I got a lightbulb for what his classpect could be from reading the tags of a reblog and his role in Pact: Blake is an Heir of Doom. He literally inherited seven lifetimes worth of bad karma and all the local enemies of Jacob’s Bell along with his family’s history of diabolic magic making it difficult at best to get allies anywhere else he went, not to mention all the shit that went down with him and the Abyss or how he was supposed to be predestined to duel to the death with what would otherwise be an ally.

And based purely off vibes I’d call Blake a prospit dreamer.