Dual-Verb Classes [Classpecting Article]

I come with a new framework to understand Classes: Dual-Verb.

For a long time, we have had a rather rigid understanding of how classes are structured: They were paired with another class, and they share a verb. One is active, the other is passive.

I am here to propose all of this is wrong.

Sorry James Roach - I am, indeed, the person who is going to obcess over this little bit of lore. I love writting too much not to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmXm5VhMbIw&t=1378s

This is exceptionally important - it's a Q&A with James Roach, and this segment talks about the official classpecting document (that we as a community never got to see).

I would recommend listening to it, but here are the main points:

-> 1) Every classpect is described in 3 to 6 words.

-> 2) They're about how the character interacts with the aspect

-> 3) You only need "One who blanks this"

-> 4) There is a +/- spectrum, rather than purely + or purely -

-> 5) Pairs aren't necessarily always a passive one and an active one

These are some huuuge revelations which warrant re-examining how we do classpects as a whole. Especially 5 - it means, when deciding classes, we can pair a confirmed + class with a confirmed - class.

But also, I would like to bring another quote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/1jia17b/comment/mjed6y8/?context=3

In the official Q&A with the Beyond Canon crew, James Roach tells us that, copy and pasted from that document, a Page is "one who fights to preserve". This gives us a template to work off - one who [verbs] to [verb]. It doesn't work with all of the rules I gleamed from Roach's answer, but it is a framework we can build off of.

That was when toweringclam came up with the idea of each class having two verbs, and thus having two other classes paired with it. Our theories then diverged from there, but I still gotta give credits where it's due.

With that, I got to work, and came up with these pairs:

Knight/Witch - Exploit

Page/Knight - Fight

Prince/Page - Preserve

Bard/Prince - Destroy

Thief/Bard - Influence 

Rogue/Thief - Steal

Sylph/Rogue - Share

Seer/Sylph - Teach

Mage/Seer - Understand 

Heir/Mage - Grow

Maid/Heir  - Inherit

Witch/Maid - Serve

Lord/Muse - Embody

Muse/Lord - Command

Do note that there is a specific formatting to these; saying "Rogue/Thief is Steal" is different from "Thief/Rogue is Steal"; the order matters.

Thief/Bard - Influence 

Rogue/Thief - Steal

Sylph/Rogue - Share

If the class is on the first slot, that means that verb is in the first verb - so "Thief/Bard - Influence" means Thief is "One who influences to". If the class is on the second slot - for example, "Rogue/Thief - Steal" means that Thief is "...to steal". Together, they make Thief - "One who influences to steal".

So the phrase "Rogue/Thief - Steal"

Means that Rogue is "One who steals to..." while Thief is "One who [verb] to steal". It's semantics, but it's good to get some standarization early to make discussion easier.

With all that said, here's all the classes, their explanations, pairings and some sources which will be in italics.

Knight: One who exploits to fight

Knight/Witch - Exploit

Page/Knight - Fight

Dave, our biggest Knight, obviously uses Time to fight. But also, Karkat does so too - in Make Her Pay, you can see Jack fighting alongside Karkat. "Fight" here means more than just combat - it represents struggle. Dave not only uses time to fight but also for LOHAC's stock exchange, and on a more symbolic manner uses music as escapism for his house troubles.

Karkat similarly fights against the disorganization and social chaos of the Sgrub session via exploiting blood, IE his relationships. In Karkat's case, both words are metaphorial - he is not literally exploiting his friends, instead exploiting the aspect itself to make things better, while fight is refering to the struggle of keeping them all together.

In page 4354, Aradia calls the Knight of Time "a powerful warrior class which exploits the flow of time as a weapon". From this I took the Exploit verb as the first verb, then connected with Page's Fight - which we do know is a confirmed verb.

Page: One who fights to preserve

Page/Knight - Fight

Prince/Page - Preserve

This is one of the lynchpins of the theory because it's true.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/1jia17b/comment/mjed6y8/?context=3

James Roach just confirmed to us - a page is "one who fights to preserve", copy and pasted from the official bible. This is less a case of me justifying why I picked this and more about wrapping our heads around it. The way I see it - Tavros fights to preserve his autonomy from Vriska and Jake fights to preserve hope in his session (or, more spicy, Jake is deluding himself into believing that everything is fine and there's no relationship troubles - and his arc is about struggling with mantaining this façade, this hope. But that's a topic for another day).

Prince: One who preserves to destroy

Prince/Page - Preserve

Bard/Prince - Destroy

A weird description, but an apt one. Eridan destroys in order to preserve his worldview, his delusions - his hope. He could not let go of his entitlement and position on the hemospectrum, and instead of letting it go he goes on a rampage. Similarly, Dirk Strider could not let go, of a lot of things - his feelings for Jake, his cool guy persona, honestly we could be here all day about all the facades that Dirk tries to keep up and how it destroys all his relationships.

Page 4564, Calliope directly tells us a Prince's verb is to destroy. Notably, she says a "prince coUld be viewed as 'one who destroys x, or caUses destrUction throUgh x,'". This is important as a contrast to the Bard's description - notice how it frames the destruction as the result, rather than as a method. This is why here Destroy is the second verb rather than the first verb.

Bard: One who destroys to influence

Bard/Prince - Destroy

Thief/Bard - Influence 

The "Influence" verb is weird, but it is very apt for both Bards and Thiefs who use it. According to Calliope in page 4564,

UU: [bards] are typically known for their spontaneoUs and dramatic story-altering inflUence on the fate of a party.

Not only does it use the word influence there, but it also confirms that Gamzee's massive plot involvement is not exclusive to him but present for bards as a whole. Thus - they destroy things (as they are a destroyer class) in order to perform these massive feats of influence.

Page 4564, Calliope directly tells us a Bard's verb is to destroy. Notably, she says a bard can be viewed as "one who allows x to be destroyed, or invites destrUction throUgh x". This is important as a contrast to the Prince's description - the destruction is not framed as being the goal, it's not what is being done directly, which is what makes me put the Bard's first verb as Destroy rather than the second one.

Thief: One who influences to steal

Thief/Bard - Influence 

Rogue/Thief - Steal

We know of two thieves - Vriska, and Meenah. And both influence the plot in massive ways - but unlike Bards that have influencing as a goal, thiefs use influence in order to achieve something - in this case, stealing. Vriska influences the story in order to receive recognition and validation (Light) and Meenah influences in order to amass physical wealth and to keep on living, be it by killing her party to keep them alive as ghosts or by obtaining the ghost ring (Life)

Page 4514, Calliope tells us directly that one of Thief's class verbs is to "Steal".

Rogue: One who steals to share

Rogue/Thief - Steal

Sylph/Rogue - Share

Probably the most traditional classpect definition here.

A rogue steals, but unlike a Thief who does it for themseleves, a Rogue does it in order to later redistribute to others. Roxy's voidy powers are used to steal void from objects in order to give them to others, for example.

Page 4514, Calliope tells us directly that one of Rogue's class verbs is to "Steal".

Sylph: one who shares to teach

Sylph/Rogue - Share

Seer/Sylph - Teach

I wrote an entire article about this one:

https://fruityrumpus.com/forums/t/the-sylph-is-a-knowledge-class-classpecting-essay

In this system, Sylph is one of the 3 knowledge classes, alongside the Seer and the Mage. A Sylph shares - most often knowledge, but not always - in order to teach, and with that teaching the Sylph grants the party more knowledge. Aranea was alwasy teaching people via sharing stories, and Kanaya shared many things - namely, by sharing Space, creation, she created the kids' universe, which taught her much via Rose's gamfaqs.

Side-note: Regarding Sylph as a healer, here we are under the premise that Aranea speaks so much about healing because she idolises the Lamplady (who is a nurse) in a similar way that Vriska idolises Mindfang.

Seer: One who teaches to understand

Seer/Sylph - Teach

Mage/Seer - Understand 

The Seer occupies a really important spot in this theory.

Here, rather than having one knowledge verb, there is instead two - Teach and Understand. This means that there are 3 knowledge classes - the Seer, the Sylph and the Mage. The Seer gains two knowledge verbs, and the classes it pairs with - Mage and Sylph - both gain just 1, making the Seer overall more knowledge-focused than the other ones.

Rose performs this role a lot - both in her own understanding of the narrative, but also in teaching others about it - most notably Calliope, whose main information about the world come from Rose's writting.

Terezi also performs a similar teaching role - through her FLARPing competition in Alternia you could argue she trained Vriska in the art of manipulating people's decisions (a Mind thing) rather than merely brain controlling them, culminating in Vriska's scheme to create Bec Noir. Similarly, Terezi instructed John how to use the retcon powers to fix the timeline.

In a december 22 2010 formspring, AH says Seer of Light would translate to "Understander of Fortune", being thus the origin for the Understand verb.

Mage: One who understands to grow

Mage/Seer - Understand 

Heir/Mage - Grow

A really weird description, but hear me out.

The popular wisdom is that Mages must first suffer through their aspect to then know it properly, and while I think it's accurate I do not think it's the whole story.

Here, Understand is the first verb, not the second, meaning it's what must be done, it's the action, not the result. This means that, for Mages, knowledge isn't a reward - it's the grind. Be this through studies, via Sollux's painful visions or Meulin's heartbreaks, they all still went through the grinder to get the understanding.

And once they get that understanding, they can use it to grow - in Sollux's case, he got much happier after he understood his Doom - note how the more Sollux suffers, the happier and more content with his place in the world he is. Notably, this does not happen with Meulin - this is because the dancestors are characterized by their stagnation, their lack of growth.

The comprehensive classpecting source I am using claims that James Roach did a Twitch event and classpected people connected to academics as Mages. Unfortunately, all the links there are dead and I could not find a working link. I am sorry.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N9KSmsibqZXDmWCdWQN1Uvvv7gzT6vy7dhWlGmjfgAU/edit?usp=sharing

Heir: One who grows to inherit

Heir/Mage - Grow

Maid/Heir  - Inherit

Heirs have big shoes to fill.

John obtained the Retcon powers, the ultimate freedom from the narrative constraints and apex of Breath in the comic. Equius became a component of Lord English, master of the furthest ring and ultimate destroyer, leaving nothing but Void behind. And Mituna, well - he is one of the characters most Doomed in the story, suffering from the role the game thrust upon him.

Notably, none of these characters began like this - they all developed into this, obtained such fates mid-journey. But also, "Inherit" is not optional - like a family fate, they didn't chose this fate, instead having it thrusted onto them. Yet, they all embraced it - John willingly stuck his hand into the treasure, ARquius willingly self-sacrificed to immobilize Caliborn and Mituna was described by Aranea as having "applied every last 8it of energy he had toward some great act of heroism", which resulted in his injury and current condition.

The verb "Inherit" is taken directly from the book commentaries: "An heir, literally speaking, is one who inherits stuff." Book 6: Act 5 Act 2 Part 2 pg 306

Maid: One who inherits to serve

Maid/Heir  - Inherit

Witch/Maid - Serve

While Heirs are given a role to live up to and must work their way into it, Maids are born with it - and don't have to like it. A Heir must grow into their inheritane while a Maid is bound by it - think of dead Aradia and her relationship with Time, completely resigned to serving the whims of time.

Jane also is like this, but more cheery about it. She inherits Crockertech and the Condesse's legacy (both concepts heavily associated with Life) and embraces it, serving their interests - continuing Crokertech into Earth C or being literally brainwashed by the Condesse in Act 6, another example of how Maids are forced to serve their Aspect willingly or not.

https://beyondcanon.com/story/278 - in this page, the narration ( which is being written by Alt!Calliope) describes Aradia as "a passive but powerful servant to time", from where the Serve verb came from.

Witch: One who serves to exploit

Witch/Maid - Serve

Knight/Witch - Exploit

The Witch begins serving to later exploit whatever it was serving.

Unlike the Maid, that has serving being forced onto them by the verb inherit, the Witch serves for a purpouse - in this case, to exploit later. Do note that here "Exploit" is the verb shared with Knight - it's not literal exploit as a resource, but to wield and manipulate it.

Jade Harley literally began the story serving Bec - her first point of conflict was on preparing a steak and feeding it to him. Feferi did so too - in her first few panels she dragged a whale corpse to Gl'bgolyb. Later, Jade would wield Bec's powers directly, and Feferi asked the horrorterrors - of which Gl'bgolyb is one - to create the dream bubbles.

Lord: One who embodies to command

Muse: One who commands to embody

Lord/Muse - Embody

Muse/Lord - Command

The master classes are paired with only themselves - and thus, the only difference between them is the order.

Admittedly, I have not spent much time on this pair - I know they'd be double-paired, but the wording could be improved. The sample size of mere 1 for each doesn't help, either.

Here, the Lord embodies their aspect, forcing it to work around it: Lord English just stands around blowing shit up, but his presence alone forces the timeline of multiple frogs to contort to make his summoning possible.

Meanwhile, the Muse must command her aspect - Alt!Calliope is shown being far more hands on in comanding Space than Lord English in comanding Time. She must first command space to uncurl before embodying it, for example.

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What does everyone think?