#guide classes

Knights are supposed to divorce their personal character from the things they do– whether it’s fear, loneliness, wrath, brashness, or something else entirely, the way you act and feel does not deserve a say over what it is you ultimately achieve, or what it is that the hand of fate ultimately decides for you. Ideally, a Knight triumphs over their personal flaws and thrusts themselves into the path of danger and risk, the consequences be damned, because they’re the only one who can. Assuming that you live a fairly normal life compared to Dave and Karkat, this probably involves less dodging past fireballs and knifing belligerent dragons than my phrasing perhaps implied and more opening up to people and taking risks with social implications.

Seers are liable to be tempted to follow suit, but their path is more fraught: their pride is less brashness than it is hubris– the (woefully mistaken) belief that one can stand against the gods. Again, following the rules of modern day life in the real world, switch out “gods” for the cold hard facts of reality, like the reality that the problems you’re facing aren’t the kind of things that you can fix alone. If you find yourself desperately wanting to do everything on your own rather than involve anybody else, and remembering times in the past when you did that exact thing and failed miserably, you probably fall on the Seer side of this distinction. Ideally, a Seer learns from these remembered mistakes and does not repeat them: she finally calls her accountant and asks for help pulling out of the floundering Vietnamese Jacuzzi market, or listens to her girlfriend’s increasingly transparent hints about getting a goddamn haircut.

Speaking very broadly, you could say that the Hope aspect says that belief is power. That sounds really mystical and cool if you leave it at that, but if you want to get something meaningful out of it you have to unpack it a bit. The core insight of the Hope aspect is that you have to believe you can do something before you can actually do it. Belief isn’t so much power as it is a power enabler. It doesn’t end there, though– simply believing that you can raise your arm doesn’t mean that your arm is in the air. There’s another element to power; desire. In the belief system of Hope, belief is the means by which the human mind actually accesses both its ability and its willingness to perform physical acts.

What does that actually mean for a person, though? Assuming, as I always do, that people are initially pretty bad at their aspects, Hope players are generally confused about the relationship between belief, desire and ability. Do we believe in ourselves because we are competent, or are we competent only when we believe in ourselves? Do we just want to be competent, and tell ourselves we are so that we don’t feel useless? These are the kinds of questions that reside at the core of any Hope player’s decisions.

As Hope players, Seers of Hope tend to overestimate how effective their communication skills are– part of this is assuming that others see things the same way that they do, and part of it is assuming that whatever they have said is “enough” for their audience to immediately grasp everything. Of course, assuming that other people know everything you do is a fast way to rack up some serious miscommunication problems. Sometimes, you just have to tell them stuff that you think is obvious, in a way that doesn’t make them want to murder you.

Character traits that make this difficult include impatience– one of the many great traits that frequently coincide with hubris. This is problematic on several levels for a Seer of Hope in particular, and not just in the region of interpersonal relations and communications; deduction is often a process that takes time and thought, and a Seer of Hope can quickly give up on that and just stick to whatever their gut says is right, using their formidable intellect to come up with rationalizations for actions rather than true reasons. Taking people at face value and ignoring (or refusing to face) the possibility that they’re wrong or lying is a frequent pitfall for this kind of character. Initiative is key when investigating the truth, and unfortunately initiative is often something that Hope players lack.

The “colour” of a verb basically consists of its connotations, extrapolated out into a set of character traits that you can then use to describe other verbs. As an example, take the verb “steal”. Its denoted meaning is “to take (another person’s property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.” The connotations of steal include illegitimacy, cunning, stealth, subversion, envy and greed, getting away from the police, and figuring out clever ways to get what you want.

What listing all of these ideas gives us is a way to get the semantic identity of “steal”– the characteristics tied to the meaning of steal– out of a large number of other potential actions. In other words, a “colour” (or “color”, as the case may be). This plays a large part in the “hyperflexibility” of the class system, and (for example) allows Thieves to destroy as part of fulfilling their title, as long as it’s in the spirit of stealing. Verbs that will almost always take on the colour of steal in one way or another include “trick”, “escape”, “cheat” and (to a lesser extent) “improvise”. Note that usually having the colour of one verb doesn’t exclude any of these words from also naturally having the colour of another class verb-- “escape” also tends to fit the colours of “sacrifice” and “destroy”, for example.

Here’s a list of the seven class verbs that I think occur in Homestuck, with words that I figure best communicate their colour.

Destroy - violence, intensity, lack of limits, unfettered, heightened stakes, danger, recklessness, crossing boundaries, and breaking free from imprisonment.

Guide - teaching, curiosity, discovery, book smarts, nurture, authority, caution, petulance and indignation, academia, and personal pride.

Master - power, control, creation, the rule of law, advanced competence, forcing yourself to do things that you’d rather not do, and Exact Words.

Sacrifice - kindness, instinct, protection, loss, surrender, heroism, self-destruction, leaving things behind and loss of innocence.

Serve - labour, hardship, pressure, boldness, duty, aggression, anger, toughness, difficult training, taking the hard path, and standing your ground.

Steal - illegitimacy, cunning, stealth, subversion, envy and greed, getting away from opponents, and figuring out clever ways to get what you want.

Summon - negotiation, inner power, transformation, movement, personal ingenuity, secrecy, control, an otherworldly nature, and lofty ambitions.

This list is especially useful in situations that occur in either real life or settings that closely approximate real life, where actions like summoning, destruction and theft usually only occur in a relatively abstracted sense.

We can take the example of a detective who pours his whole life into trying to find the perpetrator of a crime, pushing away his lover and friends in the wake of the intensity of his desire to know; although the physical action itself is more akin to guidance or (perhaps) sacrifice, this list tells us that he codes more readily as an active destroyer, despite only really destroying one thing-- and metaphorically at that.

Before she embarks on crazy shenanigans or dangerous quests, a Maid would do well to ask herself one major question: “How am I going to get out of this alive?” As the active guide class, it is her duty to herself to foresee any possible points of personal destruction and then do whatever is in her power to avert them before they arrive– and then think about saving everybody else’s collective ass.

A Seer has to ask himself the same question, but writ large– he has to consider the assets and vulnerabilities of everybody on his team, and navigate them towards a group victory condition. Partially because of the larger numbers involved, a Seer often has to ask questions of others where a Maid wouldn’t, but in return is afforded a more complete picture and more freedom in assisting others.

Both of these classes look odd when placed against the backdrop of death-linked Time; what’s so fatalistic or Stoic about trying to avoid death? The answer is that rather than trying to dodge deaths entirely, these classes are interested in keeping them at bay for as long as possible– which, to believers in a deterministic universe, happens to be exactly up until the point where they were predestined to occur. A Maid of Time makes sure that everybody dies on schedule, when they’re supposed to, while a Seer of Time gives people the information they need to ensure it themselves. Also they probably get people to do other stuff that they were predestined to do besides dying, and actually only rarely actually do help (directly or not) to lock someone into their fated demise, but who cares about that kind of stuff.

Psychologically, a Maid of Time is liable to succumb to feelings of hopelessness and cynicism regarding the time (or lack of it) that she has left. She may feel destined to fail, locked into the role of fate’s servile punching bag for all eternity, incapable of progressing. On the flip side is a Seer of Time, who will often have the opposite problem– feeling that amidst these pointless, predeterminedly short bouts of suffering, somebody ought to seize the reins and try to free everybody. And that somebody might as well be the Seer himself, right? (cue another “off the rails” Seer event)

Both kinds of mindsets are fundamentally mistaken about the kind of reaction that Time players are meant to have to the belief that your free will at any given moment is largely an illusion of causality. Immature Maids of Time mope and despair and resign themselves to recklessly making explosions happen at potentially hazardous times, while immature Seers of Time seek to realise their self-aggrandising beliefs by trying to stop explosions in general. The thing to understand about being a Time player is that, actually, free will does exist, even if your choice has, in a sense, already been made. The thing about determinism is that it occurs orthogonally to any individual decision made by a person; they do not choose because fate said so, they chose because of self-generated reasons– one of which may very well have been “I think that fate says so”!

The deal with Seers is that they’re incredibly intelligent. Let’s put that on the table where everyone can see it. Their problems come about through hubris; thinking themselves better informed and more competent than their friends, they believe that they can, and indeed should, be able to solve their teams’ problems by themselves. This is a flawed outlook for any Seer to have, one which promotes anti-Seer behavior such as hiding information and solo escapades.

A good Seer is able to put their intelligence towards leading others, providing plans and guidance instead of acting them out. They’ve got to trust their friends to pull their own weight, avoid relying too much on any one source, and (above all) listen to their friends’ thoughts and ideas.

Void has ideas that don’t gel particularly well with Seers. For one thing, Void players are universally disposed towards believing that information is inherently subjective; what this boils down to is that you can interpret anything as meaning anything, and it would still (to the uncaring universe) be a valid interpretation. Our brains invent meaning, not God, and we can make whatever choices we want. On the other hand, this idea of subjective information also means that everyone is alone in matters pertaining to ethics and truth; we have to walk our own path, draw our own maps. 

The title Seer of Void strikes me as much more confusing than Seer of Light; perhaps this is fitting, given the nature of Void. Seers share knowledge, but Void purports that sharing knowledge is impossible; a strange contradiction.

One way to look at it is that the Seer is able to understand and communicate things that nobody else could— they might be able to convey the color orange to a man who has been blind for all his life, or learn how to find individual molecules. Translated to superpowers, this ability to know-- and describe-- the unknowable can quickly become absurdly broken. I also imagine that a Seer of Void would have pretty baller deductive skills, quietly observing when their friends aren't telling them everything and somehow working out what that something is.

The Rage aspect starts with the premise that we are all incredibly confused. Not only do we lack the mental fortitude to assess anything with any degree of reliability, we are in fact completely misinformed about the nature of our own existences.

Where Hope speaks of solipsism and takes the view that the only thing you can take for granted is that your own mind exists, Rage tells us that our minds don’t exist. Your ego, your conscious self, is literally nothing more than the invention of a cosmic subconscious. The stuff you want is a distorted reflection of what this cosmic subconscious wants; in fact, the stuff that everyone wants is a distorted reflection of the cosmic subconscious.

So, what does the cosmic subconscious want? According to Rage, it wants to live. It wants to be alive, and every single deluded shard of its being— you, your parents, your siblings, your pet dog, your potted fern— wants exactly the same thing. Because of this, people call this cosmic subconscious the Will To Live.

Becoming a successful Rage player means staring into this dark reality and accepting your inherent non-realness. Hope says that believing in nonexistent things makes them slightly more real, and conversely Rage says that disbelieving a “real” thing makes it slightly more nonexistent. The ultimate goal? To eliminate your own wills and desires entirely, and in doing so escape all suffering.

Rage players are supposed to turn away from their desires, and by extension their minds, through abstinence and avoiding stuff that they want.

I think I’ll end the Rage stuff here, and press boldly on: to Maids!

In personality, Maids are generally perceptive, inquisitive and cheerful young women who have a passion for learning. They tend to resent what they perceive as attempts to control or exploit them, and like it even less when their friends are treated badly. If they’re moved to fight, they tend to become walking beacons of disaster— both for themselves and others.

When it comes to character development, Maids are supposed to use their skills to inform and guide people, including themselves. Not withholding information is key here. They play a bit of a support role, even among active classes, but they still consider their aspect a tool rather than another entity.

As an archetype preoccupied with walking their own path, even if it is a path that involves assisting others, it seems to me that a Maid of Rage would engage with all this subconscious stuff with much more control and direction than a Bard of the same aspect. They’d use instincts and desires to discover things, going with gut feelings when they feel stumped. I feel as if they’d be excellent when it comes to dissecting the motivations of others, taking flowery proclamations of honor or what-have-you and pointing out that they’re really just an expression of anger or lust.

Seers tend to be the more academic members of their session, and this leads to a bit of a disconnect between what they think ought to happen and what actually does happen. Put less obtusely, it’s like taking a high school student who scores straight As in Physics and expecting them to be able to reverse engineer a plane.

And the Seer isn’t always in the position of the high school student, either. For whatever reason, Seers like to think that all people need to do stuff is information; while this gives them ample motivation to provide guidance for their friends, it can lead to frustration when they discover that people can't do certain things when armed with information alone.

Particularly annoyed Seers begin to downplay the importance of their role as purveyors of knowledge. Cultivating an air of mystery and enigma, they try to pull things off by themselves, hiding from their friends their machinations where before they would've gladly explained, in great detail, every little nuance of their cunning plans.

The big challenge for a lot of Seers is learning that they don't need to be in control if they want things to go right; it's a matter of trust, of having the security needed to give their more actively inclined friends the knowledge they need to forge a path to victory. Trust is also important in gaining the information in the first place-- a Seer's journey is a journey of a million guides, and everyone has something that a Seer can use. Even if you have to read between the lines.

Anyway, enough about Seers. Let's talk about Light.

Light governs the realms of meaning. Money is, physically, little more than pieces of metal with special engravings and pieces of paper with fancy watermarks. Its value comes from the meaning attached to it. In the olden days, you could take a one dollar coin to your local bank and trade it in for exactly one dollar's worth of gold. The coin was, in essence, a promise that you'd always be able to get that dollar of gold, should you deign to.

Nowadays, even though banks don't use gold so much anymore, the promise is still strong. Nobody in this day and age questions the dollar; you know that you can trust people to give you your dollar's worth when you give them whatever they're charging. But someone who'd never heard of money (like a cat) would see no value in your dollar, because they wouldn't think that the shiny round thing could be used to do anything.

There's writing, and all information, that you can also look at in this way. Here, the projected meaning isn't a promise-- it's a message. These words that I'm writing would look like a bunch of useless black squiggles if you were a Zulu tribesman, or a cat. And if I suddenly started writing in Old French, you would be in the same position as the Zulu/cat. (Unless, against all odds, you happen to actually know some Old French.)

Luck, too, is rooted in this. What actually is luck? It's when something that a person perceives as "good" happens, for reasons beyond their own control. Stuff like randomly finding a twenty buck note on your way to school, or when you go all-in on a single roulette tile and somehow manage to win. This time, the projected meaning is neither promise nor message; it's a motive, attached to events that are really just random.

This whole idea of meaning gives Light players a lot of shit to mess around with, but it also lends itself to a somewhat paranoid viewpoint. (The concept of pronoia, which is the same as paranoia except you think that the conspiracies exist to help you, is equally likely to show up.) To a Light player, a coincidence is never just a coincidence. There is a deeper meaning in every single one of them. Some kind of hidden hand with a mission in mind.

While the debate about any "hidden hands" in real life may be inconclusive, works of fiction have always got their hidden hands, putting meaning in places where there once was nothing. I am, of course, referring to their authors. Any Light player who isn't doing something horribly wrong sees the world in terms of narrative; stuff happens for a reason, and a Seer of Light likes to find out what these reasons are.

A Seer of Light, as one who allows Light to be guided or invites guidance through Light, can consult things like coincidences and symbolism to learn stuff. They can have limited ability to leverage the narrative itself to discover things, although this is always at the whim of their author.