Kooki_914

After entirely too much ado, I finally finished my first two videos on classpecting. I'll be releasing a written essay format of this theory eventually as well, that'll go into more depth and nitty-gritty while this video serves as a proper and true first introduction to the concept. If you finished watching the first video, you can click here to watch my video on the Classes. Some of the art I used for both videos will be under the cut for ease of use and sourcing.

Also, your sister rocks, and I just wanted you two to know that

How u kookin, Kooki?

🔥🛹!

Happy Pride Month!!!🔥🔥🔥

TECHNICALLY yes. I haven't fully decided on the details, and it'll mostly rely on what catches my interest during my (still ongoing ugh) Homestuck reread. So far, I'm very interesting in the planets/skaia/moons/medium lore, both as a self sufficient closed system as well as an elaborate sandbox and how the machinations of such a process even work. There's very little in the base text of Homestuck that supports some of my hypotheses about it though, so it's dubious how I'd approach that.

I guess it depends on the circamstances? I don't think classpects are SO important that you need to be able to identify yourself in them, after all they're tools for story analysis and real world application is secondary. HOWEVER. The only scenario in which one could, without a shadow of a doubt, know their own classpect, would be if WE are also in a narrative and the author themselves made that information available to us in some way.

If that were the case and there was a definitive way to talk to the author of this shithole reality we live in I'd be interested in asking some other questions. Mostly about what themes they're trying to portray and how some narrative beats are meant to end. Is catharsis the goal? Is an avant-garde withholding of catharsis the point? And if so, what does one even count as an "ending" in a perpetual existance machine which is most likely what we live in if it WERE to be made (up) by somebody?

Hell yeah, godspeed!

For a little extra guidance, the main difference between a Seer and Mage is application, basically. Mages learn in order to mediate essentially, they see knowledge as a way to make the world make more sense, while Seers learn for the sake of itself, they see knowledge as something to accumulate and something that's an endless well of inspiration. This is most clearly visible in homestuck with the Terezi and Sollux dichotomy in how they approach their Aspects (as moral guidance or as practical burden), but if you're not much of a homestuck another good example would be Garnet and Steven from SU (both of them are Heart players, but Garnet is a Seer while Steven is a Mage and it clearly reflects on how they approach their own personhood and understanding of being.)

i hope that with your method my classpect thoughts are a little more streamlined, and easier to explain to people how i got to my conclusion!! very exciting stuff, if a bit more advanced than it’s advertised to be, hehe

Of course! I posted most of the visual aids in this post under the readmore for this exact purpose. If there's any I missed send another ask and I'll post those as well!

i want more classpect stuff!!!

three videos are not enough to satiate me

I understand, in theory, why an infinitely expanding cork board sounds fun, in the sense that you get more of the thing you like, the problem is I'm not a Hope player if I add too much that has little backing behind it onto my theories that makes them both less credible and less practical.

HOWEVER,

In my classes video, I took off the codpiece from the Bard outfit, as well as made some minor tweaks for a few others, mostly in order for the outfits to be easier to differentiate between each other and take seriously. You kind of can't put the cod piece on screen without context or acknowledgement of it, especially since the videos are aimed at an audience that doesn't know the base text of Homestuck and its semi-ironic clown shenanigan intricacies...

The less practical explanation is that my sister convinced me of her theory that the cod piece isn't ACTUALLY part of the Bard god-tier outfit. Gamzee made his god tier outfit without ever actually reaching god tier, as we know, and the only other Bard we have in the comic is fucking Cronus, who I think would just wear the cod piece without prompting. So there's a good 50/50 chance that BOTH cod pieces are custom made, that it's not part of Cronus' god tier either and it could be why Gamzee's retrieval of the piece depended on the Alpha trolls, like both unholy things were made in the same session as part of a matching Hope/Rage set. The extended sequence in Openbound focused on Gamzee's retrieval of the cod piece, furthermore hints that it has a symbolic significance to it that the rest of his god tier outfit doesn't have. One that easily comes to mind is Lord English's focus on masculinity and tying it to domination, and Gamzee's devotion to LE extending into mimicry/worship of that dogmatic dominance of all things "lesser", which we in fact see him doing with his killing of Equius and it's vaguely sexualized connotations.

What exactly makes a person a master class? Is it just necessary to have a 1-player or 2-player session or is it tied to something else entirely? Was there something about Calliope and Caliborn that was the reason they were muses and lords, or was just the circumstances they were both in?

Could you have a 1-player or 2-player session without being a master class?

For Homestuck lore, I'm honestly not entirely sure. My gut instinct is to say that you CAN have a two-person session without the two rarest classes being involved, for the pure practical reason that MOST sessions will instinctually be two-person (per longer chains being more of a hassle), and sburb's setup necessitating both players have a server and client disc at their disposal. Without sburb interference, I assume most players would attempt a two-person session, which doesn't add up with Muses and Lords being very very rare.

As for why Caliborn and Calliope in specific get crowned with ruler classes while no other character or species does, I think is down to the fact that Cherubs are angellic beings mythologically speaking. Ruler classes often reflect an aspect of the author, or fully act as in-universe authorial intent, being larger than most other characters means you're essentially on the same level an author-insert would be in the story, hence why these "grand" titles are given to a species that is more powerful and more mythically significant than all other player species we have.

For classpecting in general, outside of Homestuck, commanding classes ("master" classes as you will, I just don't like that term) require a character or person or myth that's bigger than any single part of the story, their very existance interwoven into everything, often being the unseen context for the state of the world at large before being revealed (think of the Green Sun, or the Cal doll). They tend to be powerful beyond proper measure, either by literally commanding pieces of the story, or just by virtue of being THAT strong as fuck and terrifying. They ultimately seek to Rule, understanding preserving and changing being secondary to them when compared to the ideal of Being The One Who Makes The Rules.

considering gettin into tumblr but honestly im just a deer in headlights anywhere i go on the internet sooo

any seer-ly advice from dear old man yaoi?

I mean, I guess? Depends on the subject. Like, you can mostly trust my judgement when it comes to visual art critiques, but you wouldn't take my word for any math related problems y'know?

how do you keep up with all your stories, OCs and lore stuff..? ;-; any advice on how?

Notes notes notes notes notes notes NOTES!!!!

You don't need pre-organized documents. When you get an idea WRITE IT DOWN!!! It can be on physically anything, preferably something small or part of an established notebook for note-keeping. Only after you have multiple ideas codified on paper can you, later on with a clearer head, organize and trim and expand on the ideas as necessary. My personal notes range from "four a4 pages in my general purposed drawing notebook with details about scenes, dialogue and worldbuilding condensed into short readable quotes" to "slip of paper that just has CRYSTAL COOL written on it" and with a lot of that material you can shape it into what you need. You can't shape or organize something you don't have yet.

Notes don't have to be pretty either! Its literally just something to help you remember what you thought of. If coloured stickers help, use them! If rewriting in a more legible manner in a bespoke notebook helps, do it! If your notes are all barely comprehensible doodles, who cares! As long as YOU know what you meant and you're reminded of what the idea was with said note, it's served its purpose. I know a guy who has an entire WALL in his room dedicated to just taping to it all the notes he has for his worldbuilding. Yes it looks deranged, but if it works, who cares about aesthetics. It's the behind the scenes stuff, like those "out of sight out of mind" wires for server rooms. No-one is allowed to judge you if in the end the ideas can be shaped into something satisfactory.

Also, if you have a LOT of OCs and worldbuilding tidbits, you could make a template for writing down the most relevant information. For characters this can be your standard character sheet (name, age, height, species, gender, sex, etc) or a more specialized character bio (for my characters I write things like philosophical leanings, attachment to objects, speech patterns, empathy levels and stuff like that because it helps me distinguish their voices when I write them), depending on how important the character is obviously. If you find yourself giving too many details to a random NPC consider making them the main character. For worldbuilding though, I used to write faux-encyclopedia entries for some of the concepts and items in my stories, the limit being that none of them were allowed to exceed a certain character/page limit in order to prevent me from over-explaining and also to ensure I wrote down only what's most important about them. I haven't used that method in a while but I might restart sometime soon.

Also, don't be afraid to discard things! If you change your mind about something, don't feel compelled to keep the old version for the sake of consistency. Growth, change, cutting and re-adding are all part of the growing pains in developing a story. I typically have the mindset of "before its published, it can be anything", so while you're still workshopping things, give yourself room to do literally whatever is necessary to make the story Feel Better. And, if you're doing this as a hobby and aren't planning on publishing anything, REJOICE!!! You can do literally whatever you want forever and anything can change or stay as is and it literally doesn't matter as long as you're having fun.

I think Catra is fine. I don't have particularly strong feelings either way about her (anymore*), she's well written but isn't my personal cup of tea when it comes to villainous characters. I enjoy her in the role of protagonist/deuteragonist much more, but we only get the last 10ish episodes of the show where we get to see her in that role.