Hello everybody, and welcome to an entirely infrequent and wholly selfishly motivated series (of) thread(s)! It's been FAR, far too long since I was in the classpecting mines, and my friends! I miss it so, so dearly... So here's what we're gonna do!
Let's talk about the Maid Class! Is it Passive? Is it Active? Who's it paired with?
Before we begin though, lets keep the words of our pal Calliope in mind!
"the +/- distinction can mean many things, bUt coUld be qUite roUghly sUmmed Up in this way: active classes exploit their aspect to benefit themselves, while passive classes allow their aspect to benefit others. bUt of coUrse there's plenty more to it, and that rUle is in no way absolUte. only a starting point for Understanding the dichotomy."
Keep that in the back of your head as we talk, here. Passive/Active is a fun and interesting lense to examine classes with, but it's by no means a catch all or even surefire thing, most of the time! An active player might not always act in a self serving manner. Similarly, a passive player might not always act in the interest of others.
Now then! I'm gonna talk first cause I made the thread and I wanna talk about it, beheh!
So! Speaking as one who thinks she's a maid of blood, I have always been pretty firmly in the camp that Maid falls into the active slot. This may seem a little counterintuitive as the term "maid" instantly conjures up images of servitude. Maids that serve nobility, right? Well! I'd like to instead posit that Maid is meant moreso in the sense of "Maiden", which for me calls to mind a sort of independence. Maidens are unmarried, untethered to any specific relationship! That strikes me as a very active/self-serving sort of moniker! And perhaps going from "maid" to "maiden" is part of what embodies a maid class player's quest.
Regardless, pair that with the observable behavior of some of our maids, and I think even if you're squarely on the "maids are passive" side of the fence you can see *some* credence to my thoughts.
Aradia Megido, our Maid of time. In most instances we see her creating time, or exploting it. She forces her aspect into reality, in some ways. Usually in what I would argue are pretty self serving manners. She creates time for herself by freezing Bec noir in place suring [S} wake. She creates hundreds of time duplicates of herself to distract bec noir once again. Sure, this buys time for ALL of the trolls, but. She is one of all of the trolls, imo. Look also at her powers pre-session! She can summon spirits from beyond the grave. She CREATES some more time for them beyond the mortal coil. And in almost every instance she uses it, its usually for her own purposes. (IE, making Vriska Pay.) Post her own session, she again is seen using her aspect to serve her OWN ends, her own self! She lingers in the dream bubbles. She CREATES boatloads of time for herself by wandering about them in the furthest ring, where time gets wobbly as helllll. I mean yeah she helps out those she finds in them and pals around with them but she doesnt seem too distraught when they start getting vaporized left and right by LE! IIRC, in a discussion with john, she even flat out states that she didnt stay behind in the bubbles to help her friends. She "just wanted to see what happens when everything falls apart," or something to that effect. That sounds pretty dang active to me.
I know I'm focusing BOATLOADS on Aradia (and we're coming back to her in a sec) and that we've got a whole other Maid (Jane) to look at but I'm gonna level with you I am not a Jane liker. Sorry! For the purposes of this argument though, she creates life in others. That seems very passive and she does feel very resigned to crocker corp in a lot of ways. But I'd argue overcoming that, learning when to supress her own life and when to claim it for herself and share it with others, is a HUGE part of her character arc.
Anyways, back to Aradia. There's one more thing I wanna touch on before I turn the floor over to y'all. Beyond Canon. It's the elephant in the room and the most recent piece to our puzzle,even if dubiously canon so! I gotta talk about it. Alt!Calliope addresses Aradia and Dave collectively by saying "Their rapport reflects a unique combination of their matching aspects but greatly differing classes. One a passive but powerful servant to time, the other wielding the aspect like a honed blade." THis led everyone to kind of conclude that Dave was the one wielding time as a blade cause, y'know swords and shit are his jam, while Aradia was the passive but powerful servant.
I! Kinda disagree here. Notice the lack of any gendered pronouns that might indicate who is who in that sentence. Also consider the track record for both characters. Dave has always seemed really resigned to the hero role foisted upon him, and he even tries to give up time travel several times as he believes his actions are futile, iitc (please correct me if I'm wrong here!) while Aradia, as we've already discussed, seemed very active and self driven in how she utilized and interactive with time. Hell, She even CREATES time for herself in BC by fucking off to other timelines just to check out whats poppin cause shes curious. THat again, doesnt strike me as passive. Actively fucking off to go sate your own curiosity? C'moooooon!
All this to say, I don't think Maid is passive. I also dont think it's paired with Knight.
(CRAZY fuckin stringboard, semi-aside incoming) If anything I think it's paired to a passive class in sylph. Every Active/Passive Class seems to have a unifying archetype or concept to them. Knight to Page (a knight and their apprentice), Mage to Seer (Pursuers of knowledge), Thief to Rogue (those who steal), Bard to Prince. (A noble and one of their courtesans) There's a unifying mythology to them! If we consider Maid to Sylph, I feel like there's actually a uniting mythology there: Fae! Sylphs are described as air spirits. If Maid is more "maiden" then servant, I think of like, The lady of the Lake in Arthurian Legend, who always struck me as mystical and fae-like in nature.
ANYWAYS, I've droned on enough! I'm curious to hear what y'all think! Idk if anybody can really sway my thoughts on the matter but I still like the exercise of discussing it out! I'm sure there's plenty of information I've missed out on here and I'd love to hear from y'all!
My very novel idea is that the maid and heir classes actually alternate between active and passive throughout their journeys. john starts off super passive, and aradia super active, but then they both switch during their journeys, with john's retcon and aradia doing random things in the dream bubbles. then in hsbc they both switch again. i dont see active and passive as does things for self/does things for others, but as more literally does things/things just happen idk.
Oh hey someone else who thinks maid and heir are a pair! I never thought of "class switching" tho. Sounds pretty interesting.
The reason why I think they are a pair was honestly through a silly conclusion rip. See Maid sounds like the word "made," and I think Aradia is now "made of time" because when she time travels, she no longer uses the devices she made, since she can now summon the power through herself. Meanwhile Dave still uses his time tables even after god tiering (correct me if I'm wrong tho! I can misremember things.)
Anyways, since heirs also "inherit/become" their aspect (June turning into wind), I think they are associated together. Also Jane always has royalty motifs (her being the heiress of Crockercorp), so I feel like her class would also be a royalty class like heir. Maids can also be unmarried noble women. And since heirs are confirmed passive, that makes maids active.
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To talk about the post overall, I do think maids are active. Most people talk about Ghost Aradia's behavior to say maids are passive, but that doesnt make sense to me. Classpects are also referred to "Mythological Roles," and to me that means that your classpect is your assigned "character arc," you have to learn to change from one point to another, and Aradia does just that! She turns from a passive ghost to an active alive girl. Rose has an arc too. She was very active/self serving at the beginning, but then when she went god tier, she became passive. I think Hussie explained the point I've been saying in a post once, I read it somewhere.
Sylph as the passive pairing makes sense to me too! I know I explained my thought, but I am open to other possibilities too! The connections to Maids and Sylph by using mythology roles make a lot of sense to me.
— matpat
https://rosespecting.tumblr.com/post/792868189934649344/witches-and-maids dropping this here
tl;dr i have witch as active control and maid as passive control, basically, marked by their struggles with agency
the epilogues are the best part of homestuck
@A1m3v ooh, maid to heir is an interesting pairing, and does make it a bit of a foil with prince/Bard in some ways... Thats a delightful bit of symmetry I hadn't considered! Regardless, I do think you're onto something with class defining your character arc/relation to your aspect and where you're supposed to go, If we're considering Maid/heir - in the way that heirs need to learn to be less avoidant of their aspect and instead inherit/their aspects, perhaps maids need to stop being a servant to be instead MAKE themselves of their aspect?
I'm thiiiiiink I'm still more on board with Maid/Sylph due to the fae mythology (again, I just cant help but think of the lady of the lake and fairy maiden trope)especially because Fae are often described as beings composed entirely of magic! *made* of it, if you will! I would also posit thats why Maid/Sylph seem to be way more "magical" classes in comparison to say, witch or Heir! It's one thing to be gifted or wield magic (Which also makes me consider Witch/Heir as a pair due to the whole wizard/sorcerer dichotomy in D&D) but another to harness whats innately yours!
Regardless, ty for the food for thought! I hadnt considered this before!
@Duckbuster While I don't super agree, I do think your view on classpecting is interesting! Please correct me if I'm wrong but to me it seems like you read into classpects more on their *initial* relationship with their aspect rather than where they end up after completing their quest! a journey over destination kind of mindset, maybe? Regardless its not how I've read into classpects so it was fun reading over your post! I've always kinda viewed the journey and destination as two parts of a whole when it comes to classpect! Classes defining the struggle that must be overcome but also the state that the player ends up in once they overcome it!
I go off their full journey, it's just that the initial challenge from SBURB is imo a pretty essential piece of it
the epilogues are the best part of homestuck
@duckbuster Ahhhh, I see! I can parse that a little better than my initial interpretation of what you were saying! It's not that the destination of a character's journey isnt important when considering classpect, it still plays a role! But you weigh the initial challenge a bit more heavily when analyzing classpect and that informs your read on it, yeah?
If so, I think I can get that! It's not my particular style of classpect theory analysis but I DO think it brings a lot of interesting considerations to the table! Gets you examining certain parts of a character in a different light