#waste class

I don't know how they do that either, it's scary.

Anyway. I would instantly dismiss the idea that your Cataclysms (or lack thereof) in the last Session are affecting this one. The only thing consistent between Sessions are players, or bugs associated with said players ("plz halp i keep getting double dreamselves why"). And even if the Cataclysms somehow affected the victory door, it would only affect your Session. Like, for example, rendering the game completely unbeatable, turning it into a pseudo-Void Session.

So I'll just take a blind guess. An Active Cataclysm by way of replication and copying, a Passive Cataclysm by way of madness and lack of focus? When people talk about "Grace Cataclysms", they're less like explosions, more like poison. A long shadow cast over the Session, a malaise permeating every event, leading back to you. I'm going to guess that Rain's influence caused persistent errors such as visual glitches, objects appearing where they shouldn't be, and delays in events (triggering too soon, triggering too late, outright failing to trigger unless "activated" three times)? It's likely that the Mist Cataclysm had a stalled activation, and replicated itself, accumulating. Imagine if you will, a kettle filled with boiling water. Except the kettle keeps on forgetting the part where it lets out the steam and whistles. And after roughly an hour of boiling and building up steam, it remembers "wait, I should whistle before it's too late". And it lets it all out at once and explodes. Thankfully the house was already vacated when the kettle became bright red and a haze rendered the kitchen unlivable.

Yes, I’m familiar with the various outside-canon Classes and Aspect. (Classes: Waste, Gent. Aspect: embarrassingly, Piss. I have given all of these an unfortunate amount of thought, even if their existence is largely in jest.) I’m rather glad, I admit, that someone has opted to send me something outside the in-canon Classpects. (no disregard intended towards the canons, mind you.) Having gotten that out of the way… Challenge accepted. The analysis begins now.

Wastes, as a class, toss aside every preconceived notion about their aspect to do some really fun things with it. A Waste of Space may completely disregard their role as a caretaker and focus rather on creation, inventing spaces that only work fourth dimensionally as they ought to intersect with each other, telling grand stories while they paint every wall a different color than before simply because they’re setting the scene for the part of the story where they insert themselves into it. (cough cough lookin’ at you Comic Hussie.) Yes, a Waste of any aspect cares only for the end goal of any project. It’s not even a matter of ends-justify-the-means when they act questionably, morals never play into it for them. At least to start off they don’t.

But that’s the Waste broadly, not the Waste of Blood. The Waste of Blood starts out already interested in their aspect, fond of forming bonds and connections, freely saying with pride that they made all their friends because they didn’t have anything to do, and something appealed to them about making a friend. Their upkeep of said friends is likely not the best, since they’re always doing their own thing, but this may just be a good reason for a writer to keep their friend group small. Maybe they while away their time with puzzles just to connect the pieces. If they’ve ever been hurt, chances are good they’ve stopped to watch themselves bleed for a little bit before tending to the wound. Even if it’s not the aspect of Blood that they appreciate most, Wastes always have a fondness for their aspect.

To begin with, they disregard their connections easily, most of them having been made only for convenience. They move for themselves most often, and are always looking to make something happen even if others get hurt. Hell, even if they get hurt, it’s all about the realization of whatever idea they had. As they progress though, they begin to shift their perspective a little. Blood begins to hold meaning beyond spectacle, likely beginning when they realize the can use their connections better if they strengthen them. As they put more genuine effort into things, Blood becoming less of a “haha that’s neat” and more of a “If I do X and Y, I can reap benefits A-D. And benefits A-D are fun.”. They begin to see Blood as a tool, one with a defined set of rules, and as everyone knows, you have to learn the rules…

Before you can break them. And break them they do. They stretch the meaning of Blood to it’s limits, going as far as calling Breath the air’s Blood, playing with all sorts of relationships only to see how they may fare in a rivalry versus a romance with the same person, all of these things shaping up towards their Big Idea, something that they’re working for quietly. As they grow as a person, while everyone can see that they’ve grown as a person, yes, they can also say that their antics have only grown. Their sense of morality is much improved from what it was, but the Waste will always be a wild card. The Waste will meddle in every established system, only to change it irreversibly for better or worse.

As far as powers, they specialize in the manipulation of whatever part of Blood they favor. Connections? They may be able to pull on the literal red strings of fate tying them to others, drawing someone closer, or some other mischief. Blood itself? Perhaps they can control the flow of blood within another being. The undeniable reality of what is in front of you? Psh, a plaything to them. Their stories could literally draw you in, if this was their desire. 

Writing them, Wastes are generally an omen of something big. After all, they’ve got that Big Idea to work towards. Maybe its a bad thing, maybe its good, the important part is that the Waste of Blood will revel in the effect it has. They don’t care much for morals beyond how it plays in to their plans, though they are aware of them. Maybe a close friend motivates them to not do anything too bad.

In much the same way the Heir & Ward are the Inheritor Classes, and Thief & Rogue are the Displacement Classes, the Cataclysm Classes would be the Waste (active) and Grace (passive). They both are meant to “ignite” change, with the Waste suddenly changing things up, and the Grace slowly changing it.

The thing is, SBURB hates you and so “bringing change” translates to “causes travesty”. That’s why they’re alternatively called the Disaster Classes. The best way to describe them is that Wastes are ticking time bombs for their session, and Graces are poison.

So let’s take the Breath Aspect. Wind & Freedom. The Waste would suddenly explode, in a burst of wind, knocking the planets around. Or they would cause the session to be “free” in some way, like opening them up to other sessions, or removing the border between the Furthest Ring and The Medium. Meanwhile, a Grace of Breath would cause people to drift away, slowly freeing them from the bonds that makes them friends. Or the Heart Aspect. A Waste of Heart would make everyone’s personalities do a 180, or would swap their souls. Meanwhile, a Grace of Heart would induce disassociation that gradually leads to the loss of identity.

Here are some things to note about the Cataclysm classes.

Wastes get broken powers. They can fling their abilities with more destructive force than most end-tier Princes & Bards.

Waste of Time and Waste of Space will never be naturally attributed. It’s like the Clown, it doesn’t happen. They would be absurdly powerful and probably destroy reality. If for some reason you break the game and give yourself either Titles, consider this. Don’t.

The Disasters will never not happen. You must plan accordingly. If you have Plans A through Z and one of your buddies phones in and says they’re a Waste or a Grace, then start from the top with a new alphabet. I always preferred the Greek alphabet.

I thought you said Waste of Waste and I was gonna cry.

All of the Aspects a Waste can roll are apocalyptically dangerous when the game decides to flip the table and make things suddenly more interesting. Even Life (mega-cancer for everyone), Blood (zombie apocalypse but instead of zombies its Every Object), and Light (exponentially increasing luck and enlightenment followed by lethal karmic rebalancing and insanity) could be disasters. The catch is that while they're really fuckin' bad, they are at least salvageable. Even with the stuff you mentioned, I can see how they could be circumnavigated. Stars won't cause SESSIONS to collide, but they would cause the Lands, Moons, and Battlefield to start running into each other. Flux might cause the metaphorical "author" to start having a seizure and slam their face into a keyboard, but post-modernism never hurt anybody. It'll suck ass, to be certain, but life kind of sucks ass, yet we're still alive.

The reason why Space and Time specifically are banned is because they are uniquely dangerous, and fragile. Time and Space are absolute requirements in Native Sessions because of the fact that the universe cannot exist without Space or Time. They are the prerequisites for things existing in general. To put it another way, a Cataclysm is always an Act 3 mix-up, and lowers the odds of a Session succeeding by about anywhere from 20-70%, but a group of competent players could lessen it to 10-30% impact. A Space/Time Cataclysm is you flipping a coin to see whether or not the stage gets artillery-striked, and your skill has almost no bearing on the outcome.

The mistake being made in your analysis is considering a Space or Time Cataclysm to be a very very bad variety of Cataclysm, but fundamentally just another type thereof. In reality, the metaphysical implications jettison it into an entirely new context that you do NOT want to fuck with. They're just not the same. Spicy food can upset your stomach, and ghost peppers are one of the spiciest things you can eat, but eating uranium is something completely different.

A Witch befuddles, and a Waste basically tears shit up on a fundamental scale. So I have two theories as to what would happen.

1) They’re supposed to change the status quo slowly, doing weird stuff until the Session literally bellies up from the sheer wackiness. All in all, that combination is somewhat like what a Muse does. Very interesting for future discussion…

2) The second theory is that their Cataclysm will be hella weird. Most Cataclysms are stuff like “your souls are swapped”, “Prospit needs to win the war but they’re still hard-coded to lose” and the like. She’ll get something weirder like “the game’s metaphor of Chess is now more like Snakes and Ladders” or “PERMANENT OCTOROON RANGOON”. So good fucking luck with that.