Gordon Freeman's Classpect: And Why You're All Wrong About It

Gordon Freeman's classpect: and why you're all wrong about it

well forgive me for the hostile-sounding title there, but as it stands i'm yet to see a single other person with this take.

the unanimous agreement for gordon's title seems to be heir of hope - which i will give credence to as making a lot of sense at face value. the heir is the class of the typical 'hero' and hope is the aspect of belief, faith, deficiation, angelic symbolism. on paper, it works perfectly for a man held in such high regard as a saviour and liberator.

but what of gordon's personality? what little of it we see, of course.

the heir of hope argument applies a classpect to gordon not as a person, but as a concept.

gordon freeman the concept is an heir of hope, for sure.

but gordon freeman, the man?

gordon freeman, the scientist who was late to his first day on the job? whose brief glimpses into his personality include blowing up a man's casserole for no clear reason and solving every problem with a crowbar?

the gordon freeman who has been jumping from trauma to trauma for twenty years under the machinations of a sinister interdimensional bureaucrat?

hear me out here.

gordon freeman is a bard of void.

now, i should probably explain my thoughts on the bard class and the void aspect before going any further, since this entire take hinges on my very specific take on both things.

in my eyes, the bard (the passive destroyer) is somebody who initially ghosts adherence to their opposing aspect, until a traumatic incident or dire crisis suddenly pushes them into an influx of their real aspect. they change their tune from passively destroying their aspect in themselves to passively destroying through their aspect. bards are capricious, unpredictable people who are often cowardly, avoidant or lazy in their ways.

the aspect of void, the antithesis of light, deals with the eldritch and the unknown. void is shadow, void is doubt and obsfucation, it is by its very nature unknowable and exists in the dark corners of one's mind. void is narrative irrelevance given (a lack of) form.

so, how does this fit into gordon freeman's narrative?

let's get into his head.

gordon freeman is a man who, prior to the black mesa incident, has lived his life adhering to knowledge and science. he's studied, got a degree, probably quite passionate about science. the statistics, the thirst for knowledge and understanding, all of this paints a picture of light.

light players are the ultimate students, as the extended zodiac says, they are the knowledge-seekers who wish to understand the world around them and comprehend the most fortuitous path better than any other.

the guy shows up late to his first day on the job. a man with more degrees than should be feasible and he can't even show up to work on time. this is the first hint of gordon being a bard, it's an incredibly lazy and capricious action that also hints at his passive destruction of light through his lack of fortune.

and it's that fateful test that changes everything - you all know the one i mean.

the one that suddenly inundates him with void. suddenly, gordon's world is unknowable, incomprehensible, he is a slave to the plot and forced to keep driving forward a narrative to which he ultimately has no say in. it's another example of the traits of a bard, who generally do seem to be reduced to narrative devices. (we see this a lot with gamzee.)

gordon is consumed among the alien and eldritch, and emerges from black mesa's ruins anew. a man whose existence is defined by contradiction, doubt, obfuscation, and everything that void stands for.

we see it again and again throughout the series. his very existence within the combine's rigidly defined, meticulous and mechanical empire defies principle. he is the anticitizen, his presence within their world is a contradiction just by his very being. he is undocumented, an anomaly that shouldn't be. and that scares the shit out of them.

and it should! because, as a bard of void should, gordon destroys their empire through void. his very existence is enough to spark the revolution (which in itself is tied to the aspects of hope and rage) and the destruction he brings about is through his nature as the anticitizen. the contradiction, the hole in their logic. he casts doubt upon the system that they've forced into place and he does so while continually being surrounded by the eldritch and the unknown.

he does so while in servitude to the eldritch, actually. i think that g-man himself is a player of space (to be more specific, i think he is a lord) but i think that there is also a lot of void symbolism within the g-man's character and his 'employers' more specifically.

and you know what really cinches my argument?

gordon freeman, player of void, embodiment of the unknown and the obsfucation, of the silence and emptiness, of the doubt and darkness?

he never utters a single word.

i will revise this entire thing once i wake up tomorrow because it's currently 10pm for me and this is going to look incredibly lazily worded/formatted when i get up in the morning

but for now i suppose you can all take this rambling mess of uncoordinated madness and tell me how wrong i am

isolated thought that i don't have the energy to turn into a full essay just yet: joseph joestar is 100% a breath player

his powers revolve around breathing

he self-describes himself as incredibly lazy and can't be bothered to work unless he absolutely has to

struggles a lot with commitment, cheated on his wife

his whole fighting style revolves around backing off and running away

he's just such a fundamentally free-spirited, apathetic, irreverent person that i can't think of a better fit for his aspect than breath. (a lot of people are in the 'mind player joseph' camp but i don't think joseph really fits mind at all beyond his mind games and even that could also be explained away with another title)

i would argue that he's maybe a seer of breath, but one who completely and utterly fucks up his whole quest.

either that, or maybe the precise opposite (a mage)

would like to hear other people's thoughts on joseph's classpect

ashamed to say that i have Not read the prom bet - how long is it?

i think we need more fan works that address the internalized homophobia that the three heathers would have given the type of shitty teenage mean girl culture they were part of.

i think it'd hit chandler the hardest, actually

so i finally did it: flowey the flower's classpect & asriel dreemurr

obligatory disclaimer that this post will include massive spoilers for undertale and undertale yellow.

let's get the obvious out of the way first - what is flowey's ASPECT? this is something that i feel is pretty obvious, he's a very clear-cut doom player.

he deals with inevitability and predestination, has a very nihilistic and cynical worldview based on his soulless perception of the world and the repetitions he's gone through, and he's associated a lot with some very morbid and edgy imagery. in particular, i think it's his manipulations with fate and inevitability that solidify him as a player of doom (save states and such). it's for this same reason that i believe sans is a doom player, but that's for another essay.

what's his class? well, let's get into how flowey experiences doom.

flowey's existence, from the very moment of his creation, has been defined by doom. an inability to die or cessate his own existence that leads to a plethora of lives full to the brim with death, experiments with predestination and a general morbid curiosity. flowey does things until he's exhausted every single possible outcome of the situation, and then he moves on to the next until he's sucked all novelty and nuance out of it, effortlessly manipulating doom and making it bend to his whim.

a lot of people would be quick to place him as a witch because of this, but personally i think that flowey's absolute will and dominion places him at an even higher tier.

flowey isn't a witch, he is a lord of doom. he holds absolute control over the aspect of doom, exhibiting full control over inevitability and decay in every facet.

let's just look at some of the things flowey does. he subjects clover to countless resets and deaths at his hand for his own amusement, sets up the denizens of the underground like little dolls for him to play with until they break apart, all the while plotting to grasp more control and seize true dominion. he's a textbook lord, endlessly determined and power-hungry as he lets nothing stand in the way of his goal (acquisition of the SOULs). much in the same way, we see caliborn's quest for power leaving similar destruction in its wake and he holds the same determination, hell, they're even associated with the same laugh soundbyte! the similarities are all there, and the stunted mental development definitely shows for both of them given they're a kid who never properly got the chance to grow up.

in fact, it's the link to caliborn that brings me to my next point. what of asriel?

simple. in the same way the caliborn has his calliope, the muse of space, flowey has his asriel, the muse of life. this may sound contradictory to the asriel we see in the finale of undertale, but i propose that this is an asriel still under the throes of the inversion that brings flowey his classpect.

their true classpect has always been the muse of life, it's merely that flowey's soulless state brings about an inversion that is only 'fixed', if you will, after asriel is brought back to normality.

the real asriel is much like a muse. he is tender, emotional, caring, perhaps a little weak-willed or timid at times. he is the narrative's driving force but in a wholly passive manner. throughout the whole game asriel is the inspiration that hangs over the plot (throughout BOTH games in fact, his role in deltarune very much cements his role as a muse) but we never see him until the final hour. much like a muse, he has become his aspect for the sake of the narrative. life, of course, represents growth, affluence, the natural energy of all things, and uses both baking and plant-life as symbolism. consider what asriel and chara used for their plot, and what flowey is now, and those two symbols make a lot more sense.

so, though asriel and flowey have two separate classpects by technicality, they are still the same person and it's a inversion similar to that people say rose underwent during her descent into 'grimdarkness', going from a seer of light to a witch of void.

now, this is a controversial statement to make because a lot of homestuck fans question the validity of the 'inversion' argument, saying that it's never explicitly stated in canon and to that i say that homestuck is quite possibly the poster child for 'death of the author'. i want you to bear in mind this is my personal view on the subject and homestuck's fanbase has never been one to agree on any concrete interpretations of the classpect system.

that's all from me. until next time, tumblr.

atrocious question - heathers zodiac signs?

jd is probably an aquarius. veronica i can see being an aquarius as well or a scorpio

no clue for the heathers

heather chandler <3< heather duke

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