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Healer Classes: Maids, Sylphs, and Revival
I realized something that not only connects Maids and Sylphs, but strongly supports BOTH being Healer classes, as well:
Each Maid and Sylph has died and revived in a non-standard way, AND each revival involved her aspect.
Maid: Heals, creates, and (re)generates (with/through) {aspect}. Sylph: Invites healing, creation, and (re)generation of/with/through {aspect}.
Aradia, Maid of Time
Was dead before her session started. First, she came back by prototyping herself, then by becoming a robot. She eventually revived for real, reaching god tier when her comatose dream self died on her Quest Crypt as Bec Noir destroyed Derse’s moon. Aradiabot exploded as a result.
Her revival involved destruction of Derse's moon and her robot self, being at the right place at the right time, and occurred after the end of their session.
Healing via Time (destruction, timing, endings).
Kanaya, Sylph of Space
Was murdered by Eridan via Hope-blast through the torso. Since her dream self was dead, she couldn’t be revived with a kiss. Unexpectedly, she returned to life, transformed as a Rainbow Drinker.
Her revival involved transformation and came about after space was put through the middle of her torso (physical body).
Inviting healing of Space (physicality) and through Space (transformation).
Jane, Maid of Life
Her dream self was murdered by Jack Noir, “did a lifey thing,” and revived.
Her revival involved the restoration of her life force. Later, this would prove essential for reviving her when her real-self died.
Healing via Life (life force, energy).
Aranea, Sylph of Light
Died along with the rest of the Alpha Trolls as Meenah killed their team before the scratch wiped them from existence. Deciding she wanted to be important and relevant by creating and overseeing a new alpha timeline that prevented the existence of Lord English, Aranea orchestrated events and psychically manipulated others to eventually obtain the Ring of Life. She revived when she placed the Ring on her finger.
Her revival involved manipulating others’ agency, making herself relevant and important, and creating a doomed timeline that she would then heal as the alpha (the most important timeline).
Inviting healing through Light (agency, relevance, importance).
Porrim, Maid of Space
Uh, okay, not much is known about her, and she's not particularly relevant. So...yeah. I guess ignore her. She is both a Rainbow Drinker (troll vampire) and a Healer class Space player, though, like Kanaya, so that might be worth noting.
Classes Chart
Here's a chart of all the classes, both Standard and Master.
My goal was to define, describe, and categorize them as efficiently and accurately as possible, based on my understanding of the classes. I based as much as I could on canon information, while inferring the rest.
(For clarity, "–" denotes Active, and "+" denotes Passive.)
(Note: If chart looks distorted/shrunken, right-click and View Image.)
Special thanks to bladekindeyewear, dahniwitchoflight, infinitywhale and probably others for their insight and information, helping me understand the classes and aspects. I couldn't have made this chart without them.
Some clarification: I am aware Hussie essentially said any gender can have any class (i.e. female Princes). I don’t like the idea of gendered classes, anyway, and I think it’s needlessly restrictive, not to mention sexist and stereotyping.
However, my chart reflects what’s been depicted in comic, based on what Calliope states, looking at the characters’ classes and gender distribution, and then making some inferences based on Hussie’s penchant for balance and based on class names and god tier outfit designs.
My interpretation is that Witches are active and Heirs are passive Magician classes, which involves changing, manipulating, and controlling their aspects.
Likewise, Maids are active and Sylphs passive Healer classes, which involves healing, creating, and (re)generating their aspects.
As far as “giving” goes, that’s something Rogues already do. Thieves technically can give, too, as I see Thieves and Rogues as classes that involve aspect allocation and redistribution, but Thieves are mostly inclined to take, while Rogues are inclined to give or share.
For now, I’ll link some of my related posts:
John the Wizard touches upon the Witch/Heir connection with magic.
Healer Classes: Maids, Sylphs, and Revival describes the Maid/Sylph connection with healing.
Classes Chart is my take on the class meanings, pairings, etc.
Useful Classpect Tools and Resources has links to more information from others (including @dahniwitchoflight).
It’s not much, hopefully it'll provide some insight.
Homestuck theory: Heirs are the “passive giving” class.
IE: Heirs are diametrically opposed to Thieves: they give their aspect and inspire others to do the same.
John:
All evidence that Breath/Breeze is connected to delivery comes from John, Tavros has flags, but not the mailbox kind.
John uses the Breeze and parcel pyxis to invite giving through breath (note that I’m also assuming that Equius and Mituna had and aspect driven parcel system on their planets).
Upon receiving the ultimate freedom (retcon zaps are said by many to mean breath) and being faced with drowning in oil, John instead zaps the oil away (gives his breath) in order to take on the responsibility of completing his personal quest (in which he also gives the fireflys freedom). It’s noted by Jade that he does this instead of zapping away himself, something which I think is a defining moment for his character.
John fits the messianic archetype, so it would make sense if he would give spirit and freedom in return for responsibility, friendship and warrior spirit (Blood).
Is “giving spirit” something the natural leader does? If so, Roxy and Kanaya talking about John being such a great motivational leader that he makes others better leaders at the same time counts as evidence towards John giving and inviting the giving of Breath.
John takes on warrior spirit when doing the windy thing? This is a bit of a shaky one I admit, but the thing is we often see John sort of “not taking things seriously” and making unnecessary jokes and observations, as if the graveness of his situation hasn’t really set in for him. The only time he comes down off this cloud is when he’s airbending.
When John decides to not go through the gate and is instead pulled back down to earth (in a moment which is cited to show the Breath/Blood dichotomy) thanks to alt Dave’s influence, alt Dave gets wings (as in John gave him freedom/Breath).
Equius:
In this page Calliope mentions that people with opposite classpects can have similar abilities, so Equius might possibly have Thief of Light powers (as in, if this theory is correct Equius should be able to theoretically steal light from everyone by giving them void).
So while Vriska steals the spot-light (ie: relevance, ie: Light) by creating Bec noir, Equius has become part of the most important character in homestuck: Lil'cal, and gives the alpha kids a lack of showdown (bear in mind though that Equius does this to help the humans, whereas Vriska does it to stroke her ego, fitting what we know about passive classes working for the team and active classes working for themselves).
Vriska is also accused of stealing light in the form of agency when she controls trolls, and Equius controls Nepeta’s actions in some respect at the start of Hivebent and also stops her from joining the red team (again because he believes it’s in her best interests). Deceiving his team-mates and becoming the blue team leader counts as giving lies and also another count of stealing relevance.
Equius also gives fakeness in the form of Vriskas arm, Aradia’s body, and Tavros’s legs. Also as Lil'cal he arguably teaches Dirk how to build robots and therefore invites the giving of fakeness?
Equius is probably also the reason the ring of void moved from the human’s alpha session to caliborn’s, ie: he delivered void.
Mituna:
I don’t actually have much to say about Mituna, as we don’t know much about him or his arc. Although…don’t you think it’s funny that the Thief and Heir of both troll sessions had aspect pairs that we pretty much know where opposites?
The Ψiioniic though, fits this theory pretty well. He gives/delivers the ship using his death, and often very gave death to aliens in the form of the Condesce (and invites her to give death).
Medieval connection:
The Heir class represents a medieval aristocrat passively giving away all their inherited fortune. Inheritace itself is them inviting giving.
💔Hell is a teenage girl💔
prolly shoulda made different designs, 8ut whatevs