14/02/2018 19:00:19 ¶ ●

## Classpect powers and skill

So I was thinking about god-tier abilities in Homestuck, and it struck me that rather a lot of the so-called “classpect powers” showcased in hs are either A: a more “supernatural” expression of something the person in question had already been doing prior, or, rarely, B: a direct response to a previously established problem. And in aggregate, these feel like they point toward a fairly particular conception of classpect abilities, that of skills that are learned (or levelups gained in a special ability, if we want to get video gamey with it).

Let’s use John as an example. As the predominant early viewpoint character, his growth is fairly well detailed. As he enters his Land and starts properly growing, he goes from using the Breeze to send objects across his Land using the Parcel Pyxis network, to subconsciously summoning the Breeze to save himself from a fire, to subconsciously having the Breeze emanate in massive quantities from his very body to put out the planet-spanning Green Tragedy, to finally as a god-tier (and with some valuable advice from Vriska) taking full control of the Breeze and using it as a tool and weapon. All of these fall into the A category, but John also has two solid B category abilities, the ability to resist detection via scent, and the ability to turn into wind to protect himself against attacks. And both those abilities are perfect for protection against Bec Noir, who tracked John down via his scent and stabbed him in the chest shortly before John god-tiered, at which point he immediately gained the first of these abilities (he showcased the second when fighting Noir in the Furthest Ring later).

Rose gains dark magic from dark gods, and her experience with that magic allows her to use light magic after the timeskip. She also goes from scouring her Land for clues and gathering information from various informants, to being able to synthesize key pieces of info effectively from the ether after god-tiering.

Dave’s and Roxy’s abilities are both centered around doing by hand what they’d previously done with technology, Dave learning to time travel on his own rather than with time machines, and Roxy going from summoning objects from around time and space with her appearifier gun to bringing them into existence from the very ether by her own power (in a rather stunning mirror to her sister’s ability to create knowledge, I just now realize). Jade also follows this pattern, as her power to shrink or grow physical objects eerily mirrors the abilities displayed by Liv Tyler (a being she had a hand in creating) and are also the perfect solution to transporting the Lands beyond her soon-to-be-voided session, a problem she’d previously given some thought.

Jake’s ability to create a real Dirk out of thin air is preceded by his ability to create a fake Dirk in his mind is preceded by his repressed fixation on the dude as an object of romantic interest.

Dirk’s ability to destroy souls is an odd one out here, it can be inferred that he conceived of the ability when Calliope described his class as a “destroyer of souls”, but Dirk himself doesn’t ever show any interest in developing such a power, describing it as the act of a “cartoonishly villainous sorcerer”. How fitting, then, that the ability first be displayed by Brain Ghost Dirk, whose nature as a splinter of the movie-obsessed Jake lends itself much better to such theatrics.

Jane’s ability to bring first herself and later others back from the dead is, I will admit, a bit of an enigma in this context, as resurrection is fairly major mojo and Jane doesn’t appear to do any smaller versions of it prior. Call it the weak spot of my hypothesis, whatever my hypothesis actually is.

The trolls are also a little vaguer, since we see so little of their journeys into power. Terezi’s Mind’s Eye and her ability to manipulate the timestream through choices (which may or may not be at all “supernatural”) make perfect sense for her character but receive little foreshadowing. Vriska’s luck-stealing power seems a direct response to her pre-game fixation with luck as a tangible thing- specifically a tangible thing which she is lacking in. Aradia’s time stop… ok Aradia’s time stop I have not a clue how it works, beyond being a fairly straightforward application of her class description.

Do I have a thesis for all this? I dunno, it was just a pattern I noticed and I felt like putting all the pieces together in one place.