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As a quartet closest to the center with the most interrelated verb. It's easiest to describe prophets and magicians as two sides of a coin. Both are defined by their unique connection to magic. The art of using individual will to change reality in a way that would normally be impossible. They're also connected to the scientific process. As it describes the collection of true knowledge through the changing of variables.

As emissaries of their Aeon's divine will, prophets use their aspect as a source of knowledge. They're known for becoming experts and analysts. Often approached as consultants and sources of guidance. The speech of a Prophet is powerful, and the way they spell words will be often linked to their dialogue. Which is itself influenced by their aspect or the legacy of their prophecy. Their insight of the future and the rules governing reality allows them to issue prophecies, making these individuals effective guides. But they can also perform miracles, impacting reality directly through the sheer intensity of their thoughts. But both run the risk of becoming intemperate in their knowledge and arcane. Even alienating to the friends that should listen to them.

As sorcerers who wield their aspects great power, magicians use their aspect as a tool of change. Mighty beyond their kin, magicians transform reality and are altered by their aspect in kind. They're often looked to as leaders and sources of direction. Knowing best how to flow with reality and respond to change as it comes. Their speech is often marked by the way they spell words, as the locutions to a wizard's spell is always linked to the magic being cast. Successful wizards learn to take control of their immense power and use it for themselves. Witches will rest that power from their familiar. A living source of their aspect that both AIDS and controls them. Heirs must take responsibility for their magic inheritance or risk letting it consume them, and both risk turning to dark magic that worsens the world. Evil sorcery is practiced whenever we diminish ourselves or other people. Changing individuals into unhappier, more unfulfilled versions of themselves.

Whether they take the form of Robin Hood, pirates or cyberpunks. Outlaws are rebels who stand outside society's rules and prefer to live by the law of the land and their own personal values. Since their only community is the one which they make themselves. More solitary thieves tend to pick their friends carefully, only trusting those they consider equals. This tends to make them high-impact solo players, but they can sometimes go AWOL and take action with no regard for their group's feelings. If they think they know what's best. More group-oriented rogues tend to be friendlier to everyone, but are also intensely devoted to those who win their hearts. Sometimes to an unhealthy degree. Outlaws are skilled at stealing their aspect from reality and using it as a versatile tool. Thieves will use this ability to amass power and options for themselves. While rogues will spread their wishes like gifts to empower those around them.

Whether we're talking about warriors or butlers, servants are those who serve and protect. They stand defending the front lines of society or helping whether it requires structure. Acting as Guardians and assistance as duty calls. Feeling beholden to the expectations of society, servants often adopt some version of a Warrior's Code of Honor. Which factors into the persona they strive to project. Group-focused Knights try to make themselves seem reliable and dependable. Getting others to trust them to know what to do and how to help. Solitary Pages tend to use their personas to try to escape accountability. Convincing others to let them indulge whatever fantasies interest them. Because of their early reliance on others and self-serving nature, pages have the longest path of any class to reaching their true power. However, once they reach it, their vast reserves of untapped potential make them second to none.

Powerful warriors, both Knights and Pages shine at using their aspect as a weapon with. Which to serve their enemies as a weapon with which to provide their enemies devastating defeats. Whether it's in combat or conversation. Knights are devoted to serving their friends. Between either direct service or by making gifts out of or through their aspect. With which to empower them further. A Page's innocent and kind-hearted nature tends to inspire in others the desire to be helpful to them in turn. Like thieves, they'll collect both their aspect, the tools and allies that grants them to further empower themselves. However, both should be careful that they don't confuse their personas with their own inner selves. Or use them to deny their feelings and those of others.

Royals are those concerned with aristocracy and nobility. They're intensely concerned with the great figures who shape society. As such, share a focus on birth-rights and legacy. Their passion for society makes them intensely devoted to the causes they choose and the people they love. Never one to shy away from a challenge, the Royal will take on any fight so long as the cause is righteous in their eyes. These individuals are judges and revolutionaries. Tearing down what's old and stagnant to allow for the flourishing of the new. They're formidable attackers, but also effective de-buffers. As they remove their aspect from reality or wear down the enemy through its use. However, their reverence for high-class court society can make them judgmental and arrogant. Their greatest challenge is resisting the ego that would convince them they're above others.

Fairies are a kind of elemental, a being who is made of magic. Their identities are crafted by the weight of their own aspect above all else. Being so connected to their own inner-nature, insulates them from the society around them. Prone to meddling and mischief, fairies make a mark all their own, and the world can only stand by and watch. This tends to give them an ethereal quality that makes them stand out. They're healers and improvers, bringing into existence what wasn't there before. Though they can fight perfectly well on their own terms, they can also grant powerful buffs. As they add their aspect to reality or build up others through its use.

However, being so defined by their own inner worlds makes the fairies' greatest challenge handling their own extreme tempers. Depending on whether they're in a good or bad mood, they can evoke either of the two fairy courts.

Besides Gnosticism, the father of analytical psychology established several concepts you might recognize from pop culture. Like the persona and the shadow. Jung also recontextualized the Gnostic world of ideas as the collective unconscious, an element of the subconscious mind that connects all people.

From this collective unconscious, Jung believed patterns of potential he called archetypes would emerge in the minds of cultures and individuals. Universally and eternally, infinitely. These archetypes would then be contextualized by culture, adding particular symbols that render the pattern into more specific examples of its source.

This includes patterns of behavior people might engage in, with mythic figures acting as the ultimate ancestral role models. In this sense, precursors are a little like platonic ideas for moderate people. Indeed, Jung considered Plato an influence.

In 1991, Dr. Carol S. Pearson adapted Jung's archetypes into a system similar to the MBTI, with twelve such forerunners describing different types of mythic heroes.

It seems likely Andrew was influenced by these as he developed the twelve classes. But it doesn't exactly seem like Hussie simply copy-pasted the archetypes from Pierce's model into his system.

Instead, he remixed them, condensing the 14 classes into seven pairs. Each linked to a verb that describes how they interact with their aspect. And an archetype that lets us know what classes are paired while fleshing out their abilities.

The pairings are divided into active and passive versions of the archetype, reflecting the Taoist concept of Yin-Yang. So while paired classes will use the same verb, they have some key differences. Active or Yang players tend towards exploiting or using their aspect to benefit themselves. While passive or yin-players be inclined to allow or invite their aspect to act through them to benefit others. Yang and Yin also carry over to most general personality traits. Active contestants have a tendency to be moreover proactive and self-driven, while passive players tend to be more reactive and group directed. However, tending is the operative word.

Central to Yin-Yang is the idea that all things change between each other, depending on the context. As complex and nuanced people, a player might flip any element of the dichotomy in the right situation. So we can sometimes see active contestants acting to benefit others, or passive players making direct use of their aspect. Class alignment does suggest which state of being the hero is happiest and most comfortable with, as well as what type of behavior might come naturally to them.

This tendency to shift between active and passive states is the final thing that sets classes apart. The roles exist on an active-passive spectrum, with the Master status Lord and Muse as the most active and greater passive, respectively.

The rest of the leagues have matching verbs, creating quartets of tiers with their own existential contrast.

The more intense the verb's effect on reality is, the moreover active or passive the classes in the quartet will be.

So Maid and Prince are a variety of the greater active, while Sylph and Bard are various of the most passive.  We can see this reflected in the way the heroes of these classes shape Homestuck's narrative. Players of all four classes tend to stick to either active or passive states for lengthily spans of time. They tend to be somewhat inflexible, either abstaining from undertaking entirely or taking highly dramatic action all at once with insignificant middle ground. The contestants also find it incredibly stressful to adopt their opposing alignment. As a result, these players tend to either keep out of the spotlight entirely as they quietly allow the story to continue. Or dominate the plot completely with the sheer impact of their actions.

This stark divide is lessened for the serve and steal classes, whose verbs conflict but can somewhat coexist.

And it's almost nonexistent for the change in no tiers whose verbs are practically interdependent. What these classes lose in direct impact, they gain inflexibility instead. That describes the base of the hero title system. But believe it or not, there's more.

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Jung believed archetypes manifested in the instinctual behavior of individuals. But they could also be actualized when these roles enter consciousness as images. Homestuck uses both approaches simultaneously, presenting the latter through an additional game mechanic we'll call live-action roleplay.

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While each character has an innate class that describes the behavior over which they're most effective. The characters are also exposed to archetypes through the ancestral figures they look up to. Or simply by their individual interests.

If the interest in the archetype is intense enough, they will sometimes imitate the behavior and verb of the corresponding class through roleplay.

Sometimes a controlling force will even make a character adopt a particular role, limiting their self-expression and personal desires.

On top of that, while each contestant has an innate aspect, there's another outcome opposite to it. We're told that a player resistant enough to their true calling or corrupted by outside forces could manifest their abilities as a different aspect entirely too. This creates an additional layer stacked on top of the structure the hero titles already give us.

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Space and Time are the aspects concerned with physical dimensions. Together they make up all of SpaceTime. Space is also linked to visual art, environments, and the setting. Time is linked to music, narrative pacing and decay.

Light and Void are linked to Gnosticism's world of light and world of darkness respectively. Light is found in imagination and true information. Good fortune, what's important and plot relevance. Void deals in the physical world, nothingness or meaninglessness. Secrets, lies, misfortune, the unknowable, and plot irrelevance.

Life and Doom relate to the power we wield over reality and that which certainty exerts above us. Life describes agency, the power with which a character overcomes the obstacles before them. It's linked to growth, drive, rule-breaking. Including the consumption, & use of energy to survive. Doom meanwhile describes the conflict of the story, the burden that the world places on every character. It's connected to rules, technology, sacrifice and high output that comes with an unsustainable energy cost. As such, Life players tend to be very wealthy and have a great amount of influence over their societies. While doom players tend to be linked to labor and poverty.

Breath and Blood are both concerned with people, goals, teamwork and direction. Breath is linked to emotion, freedom, and goals set by oneself. Also detachment from the world. It describes the plot the core events that drive the story. Blood represents connection, responsibility, commitment to a collective, and attachment to the world. It describes character dynamics, the relationships that influence the cast as the story moves along.

Hope and Rage are concerned with perspective. Hope relates to faith, possibilities, positive emotions, and all things imaginary and idealistic. It also describes our faith and the narratives coherence, our excitement for building plot threads, and ability to immerse ourselves in the fictional world. Rage relates to negative emotions and the ways they have us focus on the physical reality right in front of us. It describes the contrivance present in every story, making us see through the illusion of the fiction to focus on its flaws instead.

Finally, Heart and Mind relate to the nature of the self and the two sides of a character, their feelings and choices. Heart reflects the soul, inner feelings, love & attraction. Including platonic ideals of both people and objects. Heart players often have unique, personal weapons and change very little. Mind reflects the thoughts between the heroes in our world and reality. It's focuses on choices how we present ourselves to the world around us and the experiences that make us unique. The Seer of Mind’s weapon is highly adaptable, taking a variety of forms depending on her needs.

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