Jazzpect for your Soul

You know what, sure. I’m feeling spunky.

To recap on previous analyses, its key to remember that when analyzing a session, the nature of Sburb is that the end goal is Creative, and typically requires a great amount of Teamwork. For this reason, flagging one specific classpect as a ‘potential problem’ in a game of sburb does not reflect their value as an individual. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree” and all that. 

Since we have a lot of players to look at, lets break them down into 3 categories, and put them under a break bc shits long:

Hey, thanks. I know I’ve been pretty inactive on this blog in a while but I miss it a lot.

I guess as a quick update: I’m doing ok. I haven’t felt super inspired to post much for reasons that rhyme with “Boronavirus” coupled with all of the other horrible shit thats been going on in America. But, I can say that I am safe and in a stable living environment, so i’m counting myself lucky.

Happy 4/13 Nerds

Rogue of Light

Rogues redistribute their aspect, moving its concentration to the place where it is needed most. A Rogue of Light’s abilities lie in the instinct to inject situations with relevance, illuminating key truths as they become important that may not have been initially apparent.

One of the more predominant metaphors present in Homestuck is the use of a Theater Stage to represent stories and narrative as a whole. If we build on this, then the Rogue of Light’s role is the person operating the spotlight, illuminating the characters as their actions become important or relevant. The Rogue of Light is always looking for ways to elevate others when it is their ‘Time to Shine,’ so to speak. But as is the case with any Rogue, they don’t consider themselves to be good judges of importance, undermining their own instincts as to what should and shouldn’t be brought into the light. They more often than not suppress their instincts, letting the people around them decide what is and is not important, often resulting in what is actually important being buried beneath a tide of total irrelevance.

As they grow and evolve, their perception changes and their confidence grows. They become a bastion of truth, believing that not only are they a good judge of character, but possess relevance and importance in the grand scheme of things because of this ability, not despite it. They are the player at a D&D table who is always looking for ways to elevate the other members, making sure that more boisterous characters don’t hog the spotlight when their moment of notoriety has passed. In social and professional scenarios, they act as guides to the path of thought, always using their agency to curve the direction of conversation back to things that may have otherwise been displaced or skipped over. They know the truth, and they will always try to displace their companions back towards the Light.

...

The Emperor doesn’t strike me as a card that’s overly concerned with nurturing or optimism, instead representing all things that come with the ideas of Structure and Control. I would sooner put this card somewhere in between Hope and Blood. Hope brings order and structure to the table, making your vision a reality and reinforcing it with your own belief. Hope is probably the strongest case for the card, but it doesn’t completely encapsulate everything that comes with it. Blood places value on the strength of camaraderie and leadership, which tracks, but the canon specifically states that their strength is not borne out of a commanding presence, choosing to take a passive role instead. The Emperor is the manifestation of Command.

I feel like the term “True Self” may be misleading in this context. Within the classpect system, the most important part of the classpect you choose is personal growth. The importance of the person you aspire to be greatly eclipses the importance of the person you are. Don’t know exactly what you’re like right this moment? No worries - scrap it. Instead, ask yourself what you think would be the most badass. Being good at helping people? Being able to read other people like a book? Being just absolutely batshit mad all the time? Don’t even worry about if you’re god awful at what your answer is - theres a class for that.

Maybe its the Mind in me talking, but I don’t believe in a True Self. Humans are constantly changing, adapting, and evolving, both in personality and in values. I definitely don’t want to minimize how completely fucked up depression and anxiety can make you feel. I know it can make you feel like you’re losing sight of who you are, and that the real you is buried under a thousand layers of horse shit. But, it can’t stop you from becoming the person you want to be, because that person hasn’t been invented yet. Only you have that power. The rest comes with finding out where you are now, and how to get from point A to point B. Thats all classpect is at the end of the day.

And most importantly, classpecting isn’t meant to be the be-all and end-all to all matters concerning personality. Its meant to be fun, and believe me when I say its not worth stressing over. Use it as an escape, not a prison. Get yourself some god pajamas. Do the windy thing. This is becoming a lot of words.

Maids and Seers have a lot of crossover. Both of them concern some initial sense of perceived dependence upon outside influences for their own comfort and growth. With Seers, that dependence comes from outside sources information regarding their aspect. With Maids, it spurs from relying on others to create their aspect within themselves.

Hi!!!

Rogue of Doom

Rogues let their aspect to be redistributed from their own source, potentially feeling a disconnect from it despite their comfort with it. A Rogue of Doom would allow others take the reigns of suffering while they elect to suffer in silence.

A Rogue of Doom is somebody who lacks the assurance that the pain, grief, and anxiety that they feel within themselves is valid or noteworthy. They have a natural understanding of suffering and are typically pretty good and compartmentalizing their own stress and misfortune in a way that is manageable for them. They have become proficient in minimizing the impact of their pain and how it manifests so that nobody else will ever have to deal with the fallout. In the mind of the Rogue of Doom, the suffering inside them is in some way not important enough to air. Maybe they don’t feel as though their own pain is as great as the pain of others, or maybe they believe that the thing bothering them is merely a result of them being too sensitive. They allow the redistribution of Doom, making sure to ensure that others have space to suffer while depriving themselves of it.

The Rogue of Doom arrives at their full potential when they begin to let themselves grieve. They learn to confront their own insecurities and come to terms with the fact that, yes, they are hurting. That they are allowed to hurt. A Rogue of Doom that realizes this opens themselves of to the grief of others like an empath, and is more intuitively able to redistribute and allocate that grief. They are counselors and therapists, able to ascertain between one who is still bottling something up inside, and one who is caught in a cycle of suffering that they can’t escape.

Always

Lol I love Knights, bc being a Knight whos into Classpect basically just means youre going to have to deal with constant call-out posts about how you never think youre good enough. Must be v fun for the psyche.

The 8 of Swords represents paralysis, whether real or imagined, and feeling powerless to escape your current situation. Helplessness, hoping for a hero to come along and save you. This mentality is most familiar to those bound to the Doom aspect, who often fatalistically resign themselves to suffer rather than seek to be their own solution.

An Heir of Doom, perhaps, would be most fitting. Someone who has accepted the idea that, “Hey, bad shit just seems to happen to me. This is just the next bullshit on a long road full of bullshit, and I just have to carry that burden for a little while.” - when in reality, the capacity for change may exist, but has already been given up on before it is considered.

Vrissy: Do genetic duplicates still share the same aspect? Probably? Is certainly more concerned about how she comes off to people than OG Vriska, she could make a good Knight or Rogue of Light if she does belong to that aspect

Harry Anderson: Im trying to choose between Heir, Knight or Thief but I dont know him that well yet. Hes got some cockiness for sure but I dont know if its organic, a mask, or because he just thinks hes the best, respectively. Space, Heart and Breath are my initial guesses

I think Light and Mind are probably good fits as far as aspect goes, but in kind of opposing ways. A Light player’s approach to gambling is to obtain a calculated understanding of the rules in play, stakes, probability, and to make the optimal choice given the variables on the table. A Mind player’s approach would be that none of this matters, they only have to know how to best manipulate the other players perceptions of them to ensure that nobody ever knows whats going on behind the mask. A Light player folds when the probability of failure reaches a certain threshold, but a Mind player tries to convince everyone else theyre holding pocket aces.

Come to think of it, Light and Mind’s aspect opposites are also contenders - Void is the epitome of secret keeping, never giving any hints as to what kind of advantage or disadvantage they may possess while confusing the hell out of everyone around them. And Heart players might seem bad at gambling initially - they wear their Heart on their sleeve and odds are they wont be able to hide their tells. But I think they also have a really easy time exposing the tells of others, figuring out quickly how people act differently when they lie and calling their bluff.