#sylphs

I’m still not over Noraxia!

fuck it, round two baby. minutes ago at time of writing, I posted a big ol thing justifying my witch/maid class pairing. i feel like sylph/heir is an equally hard sell, so i figured I should do this as well.

so let's start with basic theming again. it's not quite as clean as the last example, but I think of the lady of the lake and king arthur. it's at least as solid as prince and bard, i think. the basic themes matter, of course, but they're relatively minor compared to the rest of it all, so even though sylph and heir don't really feel like they should be a pair, I think they nonetheless are.

so... just to get this out of the way, creation and healing. I can see people objecting to this, so I wanna explain it. the main core of both creation and healing is that there is now More Stuff than before. this runs as a clean counter to Prince and Bard as making there be Less Stuff than before.

other classes change the form of the stuff, or use stuff, or take stuff, or whatever, but only these four actually change how much stuff there is. also... heirs just do a lot of healing! fixing timelines, having doctor motifs, making robot parts for people... so yeah.

now, let's get into the character examples

heirs have difficulty seeing their aspect as part of themselves, and sylphs have difficulty seeing themselves as separate from their aspect.

june is a great example of the heir side of this. even if you ignore the trans stuff, she consistently has difficulty grasping the idea that she could be The Leader, but she's really the only one who could possibly do it. in a session with such limited time, they needed as much Breath as possible. and they got it! a genuinely unfathomable amount of freedom and movement is fit into the span of 24 hours.

but you can't ignore the trans stuff. june has, as of writing, not yet come out. breath is as much about the solitary self as heart is, and her identity is lost to herself. she is really, really struggling to find it. she has so easily given new opportunities to everyone around her, but giving them to herself has proven too difficult.

we can go from here to equius. equius plays a really interest role in the examination of the caste system. see, no one really takes him seriously? without trying, he casts doubt on the validity of it as a concept worth caring about. the only one who actually takes what he says to heart is himself, and even then...

there's a decent amount of evidence to suggest that equius does not actually buy into the caste system. because he struggles to find void within himself, he still tries to put a lot of value into the meaning behind the blood colours, but he just doesn't really have it in him. he fetishizes the dismantling of the caste system, but he can't identify that as a genuine desire in his heart. it's just some sick perversion he has to suppress.

let's talk about sylphs, now. sylphs tie a lot of their self worth up in their aspect. they see it as the only thing they can do well.

kanaya, as a sylph of space, has strong ties to motherhood. her job is to create new life where it has been lost, to restore the trolls to a full, thriving society. when she thinks herself unable to do this, she punishes the fucker who took the opportunity from her, and loses pretty much all self esteem. she gets her hopes destroyed along with all the other trolls, but in her case her hopes were all she had.

kanaya does eventually get to do the mother thing, but much of her arc is about finding who she is outside of that. she even rejects nurturing roles, refusing to coddle rose during her alcoholism arc. it's a much healthier example than our next sylph.

aranea never manages to find a self outside of light. she literally pays you to let her infodump, because it's the only thing that makes her feel good. she's so desperate to fulfill her role that she actively dooms the timeline (destroying its relevance) just so she can use her powers to restore it to the alpha timeline.

the 8ullshit she pulls that leads to Game Over does not go well for her, and SBURB does not take kindly to it. she gets punished in the worst way imaginable to her, making her completely irrelevant to Homestuck for the rest of time.

going back to heirs to wrap this up, mituna warns everyone about the doom and destruction they were headed for, giving them ample time to adjust to it, but he can't recognize his own limits. he pushes himself too far to save everyone from their fate, and loses his psiionic powers as a result. he only recognizes his own limits after they've overtaken him.