[ there was more to this ask, but some was spoilers 😆 - C ]
Ooh, that is a fun challenge! I might make this a bigger Title post, actually, because it's been a good while since we've had one of those.
...alright, I just finished, and this one kind of got away from me. I hope it's ok that I sort of hijacked your post to talk about Aspects as a whole - but rest assured, I did answer the original question. Let's get into it!
Unfortunately, it might be kind of difficult to make Class guesses. My theory is that they're Sburb's take on RPG party roles - and for obvious reasons, we haven't seen how any of the non-Player characters would fit into a Sburb party. A full analysis of the hypothetical Midnight Crew, Exile and Guardian sessions would be fun, but it's a little out of scope for this question.
Personality certainly seems to be a factor. I don't think it's a coincidence, for example, that the Seers are the most inquisitive members of their respective parties. Dave and Karkat both hide their true emotions behind a persona - but then again, so do Feferi and Jade, two happy-go-lucky Witches with incredibly dark backstories. Dave may be the worst offender, but half the cast is hiding behind some sort of facade.
John, for his part, doesn't seem to have anything in common with Equius - at least, nothing I can see. I might dig a little deeper for human/troll Class parallels once we've seen more of Equius and Feferi, but our sample sizes are so small that it's going to be hard to tell which shared traits are intentional.
Anyway, none of the other classes feature a pair of Players that I could toss into a Venn diagram, so we're at a bit of a dead end.
I suppose I could approach this from another angle, and try to extrapolate a Class from each character's life circumstances - for example, by speculating that Grandpa's inheritance of the Betty Crocker brand makes him a potential Heir - but that's clearly not an accurate method, given that literal heiress Feferi is a Witch.
See, Classes are a tough nut to crack! The main issue here is that the comic has given us very little to work with - it's been tight-lipped on Titles in general, and there's been almost no exposition on Classes specifically.
It might be easier just to try and assign Aspects to each of the non-Players - so that's what I'm going to do. I'll also take the opportunity to put forward my best guess for what each Aspect means.
Without further ado:
Time means time.
This one seems extremely straightforward. Not all the Aspects are quite so literal - Breath, for example, seems more closely related to wind than the body function it's named after - but Time is about engaging directly with its namesake. It may have other meanings as well, but we haven't seen any yet.
If you wield Time, then you're the session's designated time traveler - which is a lot less cool than it sounds, because it means you're on Doomed Timeline cleanup duty. Enjoy the corpse disposal!
Both of the comic's Time Players have fashioned their own personal time machines out of musical instruments. Music seems to have some connection to Time - which makes sense, since it's an art form of pitch, rhythm and beat. Music is time.
We can also talk for a second about Dave's Quest. As we'll see, each Land Quest seems to directly concern the Player's Aspect. Dave's Quest is to...
...um.
Well, one of these is Dave's Quest. The LOHACse is the only one of the two which is directly related to Time, but I've speculated that Dave's sword-in-the-stone quest will involve him rewinding Caledfwlch to an earlier point in its timeline. Plus, the Caledfwlch quest also speaks to Dave's Class as a Knight, so I think it's the real one.
For the sake of completeness, let's also talk about the Time Lands. Each Land always seems to feature one trait which either directly or obliquely references its Player's Aspect. LOHAC is self-explanatory, but Aradia's Land of Quartz and Melody is an interesting case, as its 'Aspect trait' could be either of its two descriptors. Quartz could reference the quartz in a modern clock, and Melody could reference the musical connection I mentioned above.
I can't think of any non-Players with particularly strong ties to Time - aside from the Felt and Lord English, who we know very little about. Let's say they're all Time Players, and English rules over them as a Prince of Time. As a mob boss and destroyer of worlds, he undoubtedly shares some of Eridan's megalomania.
Space... well, we actually don't have much for Space. We haven't seen Jade or Kanaya do anything with their Aspect, nor do we know anything about their Quests.
We do know that both Space Lands contain the Forge, so maybe there's something to that. Presumably it's going to forge something, and I think it's probably where you're supposed to create the universe. If your task is literally to create Space, it makes sense that a Space Player would take point - but that begs the question of what would happen in a session without a Space Player.
Maybe the game prefers a Space Forge, but it can spawn on another Land in lieu of one - or maybe Space is the 'default' Aspect, and it's actually mandatory in every session.
As far as Space's symbolism is concerned, my assumption is that it's as straightforward as Time, but we'll need to see more.
While I'm here, I guess I should dip my toe into this hot mess.
Yes, LOFAF's Space Word does appear to be Frogs. Yes, that does imply that Kanaya's was also Frogs, or something equally mysterious. No, I do not know what this could possibly mean.
These frogs are apparently heralds for their god, Bilious Slick, whose shadow has been looming over the comic for months now. I guess their appearance on the Space Lands implies that Slick is Space themed, which is at least consistent with my theory that he's the final obstacle between the Players and their universe.
Moving on, because I give up.
(Oh, and if anyone's a Space Player, it's Bec. You could also make an argument for Mom Lalonde, since her home was fitted with an observatory, but that's very tenuous. We don't know much about Space, so I don't know how else to tie a character to the Aspect.)
There's a lot going on with Light.
All Quests so far have had ties to the Player's Aspect, so whatever Jaspers thinks he's talking about here should have something to do with Light.
Jaspers... seems to be talking about different ways to represent information, and instructing Rose to find a particular DNA sequence. (I have to assume this isn't the MEOW sequence, because I don't think Sburb wants Rose to fill LOLAR's oceans with First Guardians.)
So, it sort of looks like Light is information, doesn't it?
Well... maybe. See, things are are complicated by the fact that Dave's Quest above was also Knight-themed, so this spiel from Jaspers could be partially Seer-themed. How can we tell which is the Seer stuff, and which is the Light?
Recently, Rose said this, seemingly confirming that her Title is about information ('knowing shit'), and also implying that the 'knowing' is a Seer thing.
This allow us to compare her to Terezi, the other Seer. As we'll see below, she specializes in discerning people's personalities and motivations - literally, seeing into their minds - so it sounds like being a Seer is about perceiving or 'seeing' things that relate to your Aspect.
Rose, the Seer of Light, should therefore have an advanced perception of Light - but just what is Light? What can Rose see?
Well, she says she can see 'the big picture'.
I think Rose's powers allow her to zoom out, understand the broad strokes of a situation, and see how it all ties together - and I think that is the essence of Light.
Dave wonders how he's going to navigate the Furthest Ring's twisted-up space, so she scans the overall situation with her Light powers, and vaguely understands that it won't be a problem. Dave will be able to play his part.
However, if he asked why, exactly, it won't be a problem, or how he's going to do it, she'd be stumped. That's not her department.
I think I sort of understand what Light means now, but I can't think of a succinct way to describe it. The zooming-out Aspect, maybe? The everything-is-connected Aspect? The don't-sweat-the-details Aspect?
Guys, I think I'm starting to understand Homestuck!
Ah, shit.
Yeah, I don't know how Vriska or her powers slot into this interpretation. As the Thief of Light, I guess she'd be stealing... the bigger picture... from other people? And that lets her take their luck, somehow?
I guess when you give yourself 'good luck', you are sort of improving your situation in the general sense, rather than the specific. You don't know the details of how your luck will manifest, but you don't really need to - all you need to know is that it'll be good for you.
I don't know. This is getting messy, and more than a little abstract. I'm sure Vriska will be doing a lot of luck-stealing, so we'll hopefully learn more as we go.
At least the Land of Maps and Treasure fits Light-as-the-big-picture. A map is, literally, a big picture.
A flurry of disquieting happenstance is related to the ADORED SOVEREIGN. With no other options, her counsel is all that is left to be sought.
Abdication is never ideal. But in the face of inevitable conquest, conceding ground can supply the only remaining advantage.
WQ, then, seems like a good fit for a Light Player. After listening to PM's full report, she seems to understand how the pieces fit together.
The Queen knows that Jack wants her dead, and clearly understands how dangerous a Player item can be, in the wrong hands. She doesn't know what's in the package, or what Jack will do with it - but she doesn't need to. She can see the writing on the wall, so she retreats.
I did a bit of Breath research for this post, and landed on the above quote. I think Breath is about direction and destination.
TT: John?
TT: Are you there?
-- tentacleTherapist [TT] is now an idle chum! --
EB: hey, yeah i'm here!
EB: and not dead i think.
TT: I know.
TT: I've been watching you scramble through the house like a lunatic.
TT: You should have answered me sooner.
John's a meandering kind of guy. He's wandered haphazardly around the session for three thousand pages, but he always seems to reach his goal. Despite not knowing where to go, he always seems to be where he needs to be.
John's Quest as the Heir of Breath has been explained in detail. He needs to unclog the pipes of LOWAS and defeat Typheus, freeing his Land's fireflies from their cloudy prison. In essence, John's Quest is to give these bugs a new direction, allowing them their full axis of movement once again.
There might also be some Heir stuff in this Quest, but its ultimate goal seems to align pretty well with that Breeze quote above, so I'm willing to accept it as Breath evidence.
AG: Have you ever tried to fly? I 8et you haven't!
AG: How a8out we take to the skies, Pupa!
AG: Hahahaha, oh you like that idea, Pupa? Yes, you do. I can feel it in your simple, mallea8le 8rain.
AG: You want to fly so 8ad!
Breath might also have something to do with agency - or at least, the ability to choose your own actions. John's freedom-themed Quest isn't the only example of this - Tavros's entire arc is about how Vriska keeps denying him agency, while pretending she's doing the opposite.
(I'm going to avoid comparing Homestuck to other works, because this post is long enough as it is, so you're just going to have to imagine the twelve paragraphs of Deltarune meta that would otherwise be placed here.)
AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP,
Tavros just wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to ignore the game and float around Prospit, away from everyone's expectations - but he was denied this opportunity, again and again. It's no wonder that he's on a bit of a high right now, after being granted the freedom of his new robo-legs.
As for potential Breath Players - well, CD reminds me of John a little, but he seems a lot more likely to stay on task. I don't know what Aspect he'd be assigned.
Now - we're onto the Aspects we've only seen in trolls. We don't have as much for most of these, since we haven't seen any troll Quests, nor any Aspect powers sans Vriska and Terezi.
Terezi, the Seer of Mind, deals in personality - or maybe, more generally, vibes.
CG: WE'RE NOT EXILING JACK, HE'S COOL. [...]
GC: [...] 1 DO NOT G3T 4 GOOD F33L1NG FROM H1M!
GC: H3 K1ND OF
CG: STINKS? [...]
GC: W3LL
GC: SORT OF
GC: H3 DO3SNT SM3LL B4D 4CTU4LLY
GC: H3 SM3LLS R34LLY CL34N 4ND SH1NY 4ND D4RK D4RK D444RK L1K3 4N O1L SL1CK 4ND TH3R3 1S 4 T1NY H1NT OF L1COR1C3 TH3R3 TOO
GC: 1TS MOR3 L1K3
GC: TH3 W4Y H3 MOV3S
GC: 1 SM3LL H1S SMOOTH MOT1ONS 4ND TH3 W4Y H3 SQU1NTS H1S 3Y3S 4ND 1T G1V3S M3 TH1S R34LLY N3RVOUS F33L1NG
When she smells someone, her Mind-enhanced perception doesn't just tell her what they look like - it also seems to communicate that person's essence. Terezi can see the idea of Jack Noir, here. She's smelling what it feels like to be inside his head.
GC: TH3 D4Y 1T H4PP3N3D W4S TH3 F1RST T1M3 1 3V3R H34RD FROM MY LUSUS
GC: SH3 WOK3 M3 UP, 4ND 3V3R S1NC3 H4S B33N T34CH1NG M3 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO S33
GC: 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO P3RC31V3 3V3RYTH1NG 1 GU3SS, NOT JUST 1N 4 S3NSORY W4Y
Terezi is also a naturally perceptive person, so it's sometimes unclear whether her reads are due to Seer clairvoyance or her own deductive abilities. As a general rule, I'll only treat her insight as a Mind power if she explicitly refers to her sense of smell as its source, since that's the avenue for her supernatural perception.
GC: T3LL M3 YOUR R34L N4M3!!! >:[
TG: ok lets say its
TG: dave why not
GC: D4V3!
GC: TH4T SM3LLS L1K3 TRUTH
GC: 1 W1LL D3C1D3 TO B3L13V3 1T >:]
TG: fuck
Therefore, I'm pretty sure her powers do, in fact, allow her to detect lies. Mind, then, might be related to the concept of truth - as in, your Mind is the truth of who you are, stripped of all illusions.
I was initially going to place Droog here, since he seems to be the only Crew member with his head screwed on, but I no longer think Mind is about being rational or analytical.
Blood is the first Aspect I don't really have a guess for. Maybe it's got something to do with genetics - Karkat is a carcinoGeneticist, after all, and a mutant to boot.
Spades Slick is blood brothers with a Knight of Blood, and he's got a lot in common with Karkat, commanding his party with a moderately annoying leadership style. I'll put him here on the strength of those parallels, and I can revisit it when Blood is explained.
We don't know much about Nepeta, so we don't know much about Heart. Shipping is all about drawing them, though, so maybe Heart is about romance - or, more broadly, relationships and connections.
Nepeta's Land of Little Cubes and Tea is a lolcat joke, so it might not conform to the Aspect Word pattern. I guess, since the cubes are sugar cubes, it might be a pun on 'sweetheart'? Who knows.
I'll put Hearts Boxcars here, and not just because of his name. He's the only member of the Midnight Crew with any interest in shipping.
Feferi revived Sollux with a kiss, so Life is probably healing, as it is in many other element systems.
How her Land of Dew and Glass relates to Life is a mystery. While dew can refer to condensation on any surface, it's often used to describe the water droplets which accrete on grass and other flora. That's kind of a connection to a living thing, but feels like a stretch and a half.
Let's also put Nanna here, since she's the only true healer in the cast. I don't know why the other sprites don't use the healing beam.
Our Void Player is in a Land of Caves and Silence - a hole in the earth, and an absence of sound. Void seems to represent negation, or a lack of something.
Also - this might be a reach, but Scratch describes the gaps in his clairvoyance as 'pockets of void', so perhaps Void also has something to do with uncertainty - aka, a lack of information.
Most of the Guardians could go here, really. Bro seems the best fit, since he's constantly hiding from Dave, and completely vanishes for most of the session.
When a timeline is marked for destruction, we say that it's doomed.
Doom seems to represent death, obliteration and entropy. Sollux Entered into the Land of Brains and Fire, and I think it's pretty clear that Fire is the trait which is tapping his Aspect.
Doom may also be the Aspect of prophecy. After all, Sollux is a prophet of Doom - so maybe he's a prophet because of Doom. It could also be related to his nature as a Mage, but Mages haven't been explained, so I can't speculate.
I originally thought that Sollux might be a Seer - but the Seer Class seems to be about gathering information related to a particular Aspect, rather than directly divining the future. Maybe a Seer of Time could see future events, but it's certainly not a default ability of the class.
Grandpa seems to have some ties to Doom. He prophesized Jade's death to her when he told her about her dead Dream Self - plus, he's a hunter, with a house full of corpses. Also, his entire presence in the session is overshadowed by the spectre of his future death. This is probably the Aspect guess I'm most confident in.
I guess there's also Hope, a brand-new Aspect with no lore. Eridan's 'hope' would seem to be expressed in the fact that he constantly hits on people, hoping in vain for a yes. Thankfully, we're not aware of any non-Players like that....
The mail is the one final hope for resurrecting a dead planet from its ashes, and the letter carriers are the brave soldiers of God in this righteous crusade. They are the defenders of the light of knowledge, free communication, and the exchange of ideas. They are the bold toters of all those little papery conduits of freedom, the white postmarked angels that whisper a message on their deliverance, a promise to the yearning: "There is hope yet."
...but PM is pretty much screaming about hope in her mail monologue, so we'll put her here.
ORDER IN THE COURT. YOU WILL HAVE ORDER IN THIS COURTROOM. IF EVERYONE DOES NOT SETTLE DOWN YOU WILL CLEAR OUT THIS COURTROOM, YOU SWEAR TO GOD.
It's hard to classify the Aimless Renegade. He's all about crime and punishment - which is certainly a Terezi trait, but I don't think it's a Mind trait.
As for Dad, he has a well-established gentlemanly personality, but I don't know what Aspect is the most 'gentlemanly'.
I could try and classify more obscure characters like FedoraFreak, the Pen-pal, Jaspersprite or the Hussie self-insert, but I'll tell you right now I don't have any guesses. Still, that was fun, and it was a good opportunity for me to update my thoughts surrounding the Aspects!
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Give meq tgat fefat <> roxy stuffff please
alright bear with me for a second i gotta paint a word picture
imagine youre roxy lalonde, right.
you just entered the game. youve got a bottle of momslime. your modus was literally built to hold ectobiologized goo. youve been feeling the weight of destiny on your shoulders -- YOU ARE GOING TO MEET HER. she might be dead but you are going to meet her.
and you get to your sprite,
and theres just
a fucking
CLOWN
and two corpses that he throws into the kernel.
(the first homestuck fic i ever read, Conference Call, has a version of the erisolsprite prototyping. they fought gamzee and got their fuckin asses kicked. its great.)
and then youre left with just. Some Alien Bitch. and its like the universe is teasing you, because she's partially the DIRECT DESCENDANT of the fishwitch what killed your mom, and also a cat???? you are so sick to death of cats. you have been up to your fucking ass in cats. its just too much
and then she just. talks to you
and you slowly start to listen
you hear about her lives on alternia. what it was like being a princess, what it was like being the pauper. how they weren't even really friends, before -- they ran in different circles.
but they're one person, now. one person dedicated to *helping you.*
we never find out how roxy quit drinking, or who helped her through it
(it was fefeta)
and fefeta *loves* you. she listens to you talk about boys. you talk about your mom. fefeta never really spoke to her... but her nepeta half *knows what happened to your kitty frigglish* after he died. and frigglish said that your mom was okay.
that everything was going to be okay
and it's just. jane had her shit. jake was up in his shit. dirk had fucked off with his shit. and roxy really only had fefeta!!!!!!!!
and i think they were moirails and i think they loved each other so much. frankly. tbf.
roxy is a trans woman, fefeta is newly plural. they have a lot in common. tbqh. its like. its very beautiful. in my eyes. in my vision.
and then
she dies
and this is like. this is a really big fucking deal honestly?
fefeta's death is like. a huge thing. its one of the only things she tells john about when summarizing the entirety of her session.
and this isnt something she magically gets back in the post-retcon timeline, either
like... when fefeta dies, there isnt a post-retcon fefeta. (we'll GET TO YOU JASPROSE.) it's just roxy who remembers fefeta's existence at all -- her friends dont have any connection to her. *nobody alive in all of reality* remembers her.
fefeta isnt just dead, dude, shes Fucking GONE. shes the goner ever. shes fuckin erased.
but honestly
on a level? good for her.
we've seen what being in homestuck does to people. it warps them, reshapes them. (see the new hsbc upd8 for some cool imagery about it.) fefetasprite was never a real part of the story. she got away with being silent -- her words are hidden from us. she was never in LE's clutches.
and why would LE even want to clutch her
she's the sword that's going to kill him, after all
:3
i call fefetasprite the "cat fish witch" for a very important reason. a) its cute BUT B). if you look at caledfwlch, dave's sword, and just sorta. squint at the word. it looks like cat fish witch. that's fefeta. she Iss the cat fish witch.
so what does her death mean?
well it's not like dave used an UNBROKEN sword to fight LE.
feferi is the part of the sword still left in the stone. the part we forgot and left behind.
which leaves Nepeta, the other half of this broken sword, of the Cat Fish Witch
to kill the shit out of Lord English. B33
the sword was always going to kill him!!!!!!!! fefetasprite was the sword!!!!!!!!!!! NEPETA WAS ALWAYS FATED TO DEFEAT LORD ENGLISH!!!! AM I CLINICALLY INSANE? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
anyway. all this to say.
i wrote a fic about this.
check out the second work in the series for roxy processing the emotions that none of her post-retcon friends remember her moirail. it's some good stuff i think!!!!!!! also hal is there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
anyway jasprose is just roxy's initial dream of reviving her mom in her kernelsprite brought to life through the most roundabout and indirect and stupid way possible. send POST
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