Chapter Text
EDIT Nov 13: Fixed a graphic link.
What's the scoop, snoop?
For the classpect spelunkers in the audience, I'm sure you're familiar with aspects and their opposites, the most canon framework for interpreting aspects in Homestuck. For the uninitiated, the twelve aspects in Homestuck are all arranged in a circle, with the aspect across from theirs forming an aspect pair. The wheel, available as part of the Extended Zodiac, looks like THIS:
As you can see, breath is opposite to blood, hope to rage, time to space, etc etc. Each aspect on the wheel has an "inverse." This has a great many implications in classpect analysis and adds a framework to one of the less explored lore tidbits in the comic. If you LIKE this framework of opposites, then all power to you, I think it has merits, as well, but this essay and the model espoused herein does away with it wholesale. If you'd like more info on aspects and their opposites, check out the likes of OptimisticDuelist or 0pacifica, they have devoted a lot of time to analysis in a more conventional manner.
So, that raises the question, "Jojo, if you hate classpect opposites, why? And more vitally, what replaces that framework?"
Well, gentle reader, a great many things. I'm hard at work unlocking the puzzle that is aspects, busy aligning them all in unconventional ways and refusing to come to terms with the fact that they're not actually that deep and probably were just included as an afterthought by an author who already had too many balls in the air. That's not to say they're bad- After all, who doesn't like balls?
My main issue with aspects on this system is that the "opposites" are inconsistent.
For example. Aspects like Time and Space as well as Heart and Mind seem to compliment each other, both forming one part of a greater whole. This is in opposition to aspects like Rage and Hope or Void and Light, which are instead opposites. There are more ambiguous relations, too, like Breath and Blood. Are they opposites? Are they compliments? This relationship is pretty tenuous at best, and two aspects' positions opposite each other on the wheel seem only to imply "a relationship," which is so arbitrary as to be useless.
Some creative bending of the aspects' definitions can be invented to explain this away, like setting complimentary aspects in opposition or setting opposing aspects as some sort of compliment, but this requires the changing of the aspects themselves where I think it's far more useful to change the framework.
The framework I have in mind is a bit more complicated.
Behold!
Holy hell what is ANY of this?
Well this yellow-arrow abomination is a different system I concocted with the help of my diligent aspect-spelunker BUCKO. This spaghetti feast warrants explanation, so I'll offer it presently.
Each 12 aspects forms 4 groups of 3.
Each four groups represents a theme, and each aspect inside of the theme has a cyclical relationship with its peers- Like 4 simultaneous games of scissors-paper-rock.
The four themes and their constituents:
time-light-hope (THE TEMPORAL)
life-breath-space (THE SPATIAL)
heart-mind-blood (THE MENTAL)
rage-void-doom (THE INEVITABLE)
Let's examine one specific theme to see what I mean. Let's discuss the final theme, THE INEVITABLE.
Starting with Rage, we lead into Void, then into Doom, then back into Rage, in a cycle. (Refer to those 3 on the graph.) The idea is that Rage, if it becomes potent enough, will lead to Void, and void, if potent enough, leads to Doom, which, potent enough, becomes Rage, et cetera.
Rage and anger's destruction leads to Void's nothingness, and that nothingness spells Doom for all. That doom then fosters more Rage. A cycle of anguish. Like Yoda said- Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate... You get the idea.
The three other themes can be explained similarly:
THE TEMPORAL: The flow of Time manifests Light's fortune, giving people Hope, allowing them more Time to work.
THE SPATIAL: Life and lives beget the Breath of stories, which lead to Space's perpetuation, which leads to more Life.
THE MENTAL: Feelings in one's Heart become the thoughts of the Mind which invigorate their Blood, which churns in the Heart.
Outside of conceptually, this is easy to see in-comic, too, with the goals and actions of the various players. Each player of a certain aspect has a goal or undergoes an action related to the next aspect in the chain.
Fig 1: Breath June repairing the timeline, using her new powers to fix physical errors Spatially.
Fig 2: Space player Kanaya hoping to secure a mother grub egg to make new Life.
Fig 3: Rage player Gamzee facilitating the Void of nonexistence with LE through his actions raising the Cal-siblings.
Fig 4: Light player Rose delivering the tumor to give Hope to her friends. Time player Dave is also there, helping his Lightbound sibling as well as doing it for the fortune of his friends.
Fig 5: Light player Vriska trying to give her group hope (though her efforts ARE misguided,) through her plights like taking on Bec Noir.
Fig 6: Hope player Jake's abilities buying Aranea Time to execute her plan in the Game Over timeline.
Fig 7: Mind player Terezi's final act being a note in Blood to June to fix the timeline.
Fig 8: Heart player Dirk fragmenting his own Mind into a machine version of himself.
Fig 9: Life player Jane taking over the Breath of the narrative in some capacity in Act 6.
Fig 10: Void player Roxy facilitating her planet's Doom by her decision to play Sburb, a decision she struggles with for some time.
Fig 11: Doom player Sollux being prone to bouts of Rage.
Fig 12: Blood player Karkat being the Heart of his Sburb team.
Fig 13: Space players harboring the forge, the necessary sburb construct needed to create the new universe's life.
Fig 14: Life player Meenah struggling for relevance (Breath) after her own death.
Fig 15: Light the aspect being related to fortune, which requires Time to be relevant. Especially Rose, who sees the future.
Fig 16: Jake's Hope powers manifest as being made of Light and are drawn out by a Light player.
Need I go on? I probably could. I might, but later. I think I've demonstrated my point enough. Basically, heroes of an aspect draw from powers further back on the chain to further goals that relate to later in the chain.
The big question now is, what can we do with this? Well, that's a good question. I see aspect analysis being useful in two ways. One, to layer on top of non-homestuck media to draw conclusions about it, a la "Will it Homestuck," or we can layer it on top of Homestuck itself to draw conclusions about things more explicitly. I've already done the latter with my various figments, so I'd love to see analysis of other media using this framework.
At the end of the day, this is just one theory, a theory that I think is a little more easy to apply and a little more malleable than a strict "aspect opposites" system. More useful conclusions can be drawn and more things fit into this framework than with the aspect wheel as it stands.
I can imagine some criticisms of this system, namely that some of the associations I draw are just as arbitrary as the classic "opposite" system. For example, space leading to life is explicit in the narrative of Homestuck, but Time leading into Light needs more of an explanation, requiring outside speculation. I can also imagine there are some people who are so mired in the classic analysis that they don't like the idea of throwing it out. After all, the aspect wheel was made canon with the EZod, I imagine some people are thinking, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." To be clear, I'm not trying to tear down classic analysis, OD and 0pacifica and everyone else who's contributed to aspect theory is still just as great at the end of the day. This is a fictional analytical framework, they can and should co-exist. As a matter of fact, the classic aspect wheel and this system aren't even mutually exclusive! Aspects can have more than one relationship.
I think that this model could be built upon and I could see myself expanding upon it if enough people pitch in their thoughts (please comment below!)
Some questions for readers: What relationships could be improved? What are some other examples of this framework functioning in-canon? How do the four themes interact with the others? How could this co-exist with the established aspect wheel? How could this framework be improved? What's good about this framework? What's bad about it?
The platonic ideal for any framework is one that is both flexible and canon-compliant, and this gets closer than the aspect wheel, but it's still not quite there yet. That's why this is just model #1. I'll be posting more later on, so stay tuned!