#fraymotif

Interactions between Classpects

The way I look at Fraymotifs is as a synergy between synergies. A Hero’s Class is how they interact with their own Aspect, while a Fraymotif is how two or more Heroes interact with each other’s Classpects (Jade, a Witch of Space, changing the space in which Dave’s, a Knight of Time, protection through time is used into a single concentrated bubble; slowing time within a bubble around Bec Noir via Adagio Redshift).

My Goal with this very ambitious blog

There are 144 unique Mythological Roles (Classpects) within Sburb, and a Fraymotif involves 2+ of them. Let’s do the math for a second. The equation to figure out the number of combinations there are between r elements of a set of n items, ignoring differing permutations, is: C(n,r)=n!/(r!(n−r)!). So, 144 choose 2 comes out to be 10,296. That's actually 10 thousand different Fraymotifs for just combos of two Heroes. It shoots up to 400k+ once you include combinations of 3. There’s probably a lot less when you disclude combos between Heroes of the same Aspect, but its still an astronomical number. On top of that, there are at LEAST 36 single-Aspect Fraymotifs, meant to be used by a single Hero, and I do not wish to cover those, simply as a personal preference for what I find interesting. Sorry, I’ve got enough on my plate with the 10k+ I already intend to do, and those are at least wacky goofy combos.

I wish to at least cover what I think ALL 2-Player Fraymotifs there can be, in this blog. That is over ten thousand, so I will be covering many at a time within a post. There also may be more than one possible Fraymotif per Aspect-Combo, but for the sake of brevity (the irony is not lost on me) I will limit it such that each Pair of Classpects only get 1 Fraymotif assigned to them. That narrows it down to a measly 9504, and I do not feel sorry for making each of them special.

I don’t know if I will have the brainpower to cover 3+ Player Fraymotifs as thoroughly, so I will only cover them upon request! Yeah, as genuinely cool as those were, I can't keep up. I'm sticking to 2-Player Fraymotifs only going forward unless/until I change my mind. So please ask if you really wish for my take! I will be glad to nerd out some more. Hell, you can ask pretty much anything you want about my efforts, that's what the askbox is for (^-^)b

The Fraymotif design process

This will develop the longer I run this blog, but as it stands now, I start by analyzing the Classpects of each Hero involved and take note of their abilities in their own right. Witch of Space naturally has control over the properties of physical Space so their abilities could localize and/or expand the area of effect of other physical powers, stuff like that. Of course, this requires a comprehensive understanding of Classpecting first. Classpecting as a magic system is defined in-world by flawed/biased narrators, so most of it is left up to interpretation. As a Mage of Heart myself, I am very Classpecting-pilled, and I feel as though I grasp the concept very naturally. For areas in which my understanding is a bit thin, I do like to reference Ouroborista’s take on the system, and I am especially fond of the Class symmetry proposed therein, albeit a bit contested throughout the community (and canon; see: THE SHIFT). But hey, most of it is up to interpretation anyway, so if you disagree, please let me know in the asks, I would love to hear your opinions! Classpecting is all symbology lol.

Edit: the class symmetries I use have changed since starting this project, I will cover this in THE SHIFT.

Next I look at how the abilities of the Heroes interact with each other, obviously. A Witch of Space localizes the time powers of a Knight of Time, and constructively interferes with the powers’ purpose of protecting, keeping the Target trapped in a bubble separated from the outside world (Adagio Redshift). A Seer of Mind may use the Knight of Time’s protection as a guide to see through the various alternate outcomes to find a version of events where things went a little better, and the Knight would then lock-on to that timeline to bring their partner to refuge, perhaps re-doing a section they struggled on before (Assylum Dal Segno). It is mostly a case-by-case basis, but a HUGE part of Fraymotifs are the Motifs themselves, that is to say, a theme or recurring element. The motive behind a power or ability. A Knight of Time would have access to Time shenanigans (That’s the theme of their powers), but the leading motive behind them will be for Protection, even though they are a solid combatant by themselves.

Edit: I forgot to mention that while non-godtiers are able to use Fraymotifs (See: Dave and Terezi with Assylum Dal Segno in [S] Collide), I will be designing these under the assumption that all participants are godtier. Some Fraymotifs will be simple, despite everyone's access to their full godtier kit, but seriously there's 9.5k of them they can't all be perfect.

There are obviously a few Fraymotifs that are defined in canon. But I mean. Come on. Canon is a tangible thing that can be messed with in Homestuck, and mess with it I shall. There are 11 2-Player Fraymotifs that we see in HS, and when you treat June and Rose’s and Dave and Terezi’s duplicates as a single Fraymotif each (as I will because they are consistent in how they utilize the abilities despite a different graphic (well, except for Rose and Roxy but that’s a whole different beast I will address in the next section)), that lowers it down to 7-technically-8 Fraymotifs that have been shown, and only 4 of those are named. I will try to keep-in-line with the Fraymotifs we actually do see, and interpret them in a way that matches the tone with the rest of the ones I design, because its 7-technically-8 out of 9.5 thousand, and I don’t see you out here doing this.

Following that is the fun part -- the name. Fraymotifs are music-themed, and thus have music-themed name schemes. Ivories in the Fire (Heir of Breath + Knight of Time), Mixolydian Maelstrom (Heir of Breath + Seer of Light), Fantasia's Inhale (Heir of Breath + Witch of Space), and Adagio Redshift (Witch of Space + Knight of Time), to name a few (that’s actually all of the named ones in-world). So keeping with that theme, I will come up with equally badass and/or ethereal names for the other 9.5k. Such as: Assylum Dal Segno (Knight of Time + Seer of Mind), Sostenuto Spotlight (Knight of Light + Mage of Heart), Flash Sforzando (Page of Light + Mage of Heart), etc.

Preemptively addressing my personal biases

Hussie outright stated that before the events of [S] Collide, Fraymotifs were a piece of throwaway worldbuilding, and are referenced as a hard magic system, despite the fact that it is anything but. This frustrates me to my core, like, fricking, for example: Both of June and Rose’s Fraymotifs shown in [S] Collide can be interpreted as the aforementioned Mixolydian Maelstrom, which is just varying forms of attacking with wind and lasers. And Dave and Terezi’s (Assylum Dal Segno) can both be interpreted as allowing a Target refuge in another, better timeline, because they both either bring Dirk back or send themselves to another timeline and both are actually part of the same series of events. So that’s all fine. But. The Lalondes. Rose and Roxy have two separate Fraymotifs together, one where Roxy does a Voidey thing and removes the nonexistence of a bunch of perfectly generic objects in a laser-cube made by Rose, and another where they just do a bunch of Aspect-related attacks.

In fact, a lot of Rose’s powers seem to just be “lighty magic attack:” when that is far from her role as a Seer, and goes against that whole “leading motive” theme I brought up earlier. It seems that she was just around to do laser stuff. Which is cool! In a fast-paced epic fight sequence! I liked it! But I want to get a bit more creative with these, moving past the “they hit them a lot with their Aspect” for those Classpects where they can do so much more than that. I said that canon was something to be messed with, and I’m going to tweak things as I see necessary because there are 7-technically-8 that are shown out of the 9.5 thousand I’m going to do so who cares.

Another thing I want to bring up goes more into the Classpecting side of Fraymotif design. In the 12 Aspects, they are aligned along the Time-Space axis, but something that I rarely see focused on is the Breath-Blood axis. Time and Space rule the physical world, but Breath and Blood rule the nonphysical world in a way I find really cool and interesting. I see Breath and Blood operating not only under their commonly understood Freedom/Bonds mechanics, but also messing around with causality. I think that Blood is very fate/destiny-coded and that Breath is very unrestricted from such matters. Karkat and Kankri both had a personal arc based around the fate/destiny of their people, and feeling responsible for it when all that got messed up, while Tavros and Rufioh both had a personal arc about becoming detached from who they were “supposed to be”, June especially becoming fully detached from deterministic causality with her retcon powers being able to mess with past events without dooming the timeline (and her being removed from who she was due to that broblorone making her transfem). You may be thinking “Oh, but Doom is for outcomes and fate” but really only with destruction and bad endings. Hope and Rage deal with positive/negative emotion but Heart does ALL emotion indiscriminately. When chopping up the whole universe into just 12 pieces (13 if you count Piss. (I do not count Piss.)), there’s going to be some overlap on account of there being more than 12 Things in the universe. Them’s the breaks.

Last thing here is the names. A lot of people, and I mean a LOT of people, look at Hero-specific names as being taken from a pool of words that have to deal with their Aspect. Like, a lot of people will interpret the name Ivories in the Fire (Heir of Breath + Knight of Time) as having the components "Ivories" + "in the Fire", where "Ivories" is a "Breathy word" and "in the Fire" is a "Timey word" and will just toss them around until there are like 50 "X in the Fire" Fraymotifs. I'm not a huge fan of that. Another way this is seen is in Land names, where people will read "Land of Maps and Treasure" and will automatically throw in "Maps" into a big grab-bag of Light words and "Treasure" into a separate bag of Thief words, as if this was a cheap flash name generator instead of a deeply specific thematic choice. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic (very real chance there), but I think that each name should be about what the Fraymotif does more than what it's made of. "Redshift" isnt specifically a Space word or a Time word, it's a phenomenon that is deeply tied to both Space and Time, and Adagio is a reference to the time-slowing effect of the Fraymotif. Obviously, with 9.5 thousand to come up with, there will be a lot of names that are similar, but they'll be on a case-by-case basis.

How in the world will I go about posting all of this?

There’s over ten thousand of these damn things, so I will come up with a whole bunch in one go, and make that one post, tagged appropriately ofc. These posts will be queued, so there will be at most 1 per day (if I get 1 two days in a row please understand that is a miracle I have a job and college), and any asks will be answered as soon as I get around to them, skipping the queue (unless your request is in the queue, then you gotta wait :p).

There will be many Fraymotifs per post on some posts, like 15+ 12 max, so there will be at least 1.7-ish 2 years whenever before this blog is full-up on Fraymotifs. Wack.

Edit: fixed the stats Edit x2 combo: fixed them again

THE SHIFT

When I started this project, I used Ouroborista's class symmetries to do my classpect analysis [Witch/Sylph, Knight/Maid, Page/Heir, Mage/Seer, Thief/Rogue, Prince/Bard]. However, Hussie released the official class pairings which are way different than the ones I was using. Fraymotifs posted before THE SHIFT follow the old pairings, while the new ones use [Witch/Sylph, Prince/Bard, Thief/Rogue, Knight/Page, Mage/Seer, Maid/Heir]. I also will have updated update the old ones under the #THE SHIFT tag some point in the future.

Edit: added THE SHIFT section Edit x2 combo: updated THE SHIFT section to reflect the canon class pairings Edit x3: in order to have any fun doing this, i'm putting THE SHIFT off until i get around to it.