The Light Player Problem

[scarletkilometers]

...Is a term coined during my classpect meta discussions with Bumblebard and will be defined here for future reference

So! Going solely off of the letter of the aspect, and given what we know about how Light powers work, it seems like Light players should be these knowledge-driven support players, the quintessential boring-but-necessary utility class. And while this is technically true to a degree, every single light player in homestuck proper also has a chronic case of Never Does Anything Small and a bone-deep driving desire to fuck shit up on a scale measured in entire timelines. Or, to put it more simply:

Sburb: You are a support main.
The Light Player, In All Likelihood: The FUCK I am! *Kicks over a trashcan and sets fire to the sun*

OCs that represent the Light Player Problem: Charlize, Ami, Sigal
Characters from other media that represent the Light Player Problem: Morrigan, Barry Bluejeans, The Medic, MA

Comments

[princeofdoom]

The class you get is supposed to challenge you. What's a challenge for someone who is super dramatic, has contingency plans for their contingency plans and fucks things up on epic proportions?

Stepping out of the spot light. Chilling out. Letting other people do things.

Light players aren't a problem except in that sometimes they don't learn the lessons of their classpect.

[scarletkilometers]

just to clarify, I call it the light player problem pretty facetiously. I honestly love the fact that what ought to be the most boring magical skill set in the comic keeps being given to the ones who would love nothing more than to Monster Factory this thing into the ground and it's a big chunk of the reason I love the characters it applies to.

As to the rest, I'm pretty hesitant to take the "our roles are meant to challenge us" thing as set-in-stone canon gospel due to the fact that our primary source on that is "Kanaya hypothesized that that was the case one time." Kanaya is very much a person who sees herself as someone who Fixes Things and Solves Problems and is extremely hard on herself when she thinks she's failed at it, even when it isn't actually possible or realistic to succeed according to her own standards (Jade and Porrim do this too, possibly this is the Space Player Problem). So Kanaya is someone who has a lot of problems accepting the premise of Sometimes Shit Just Happens For No Reason and needs there to be some kind of Greater Purpose in the struggles she faces in order to be able to deal with them, and the Prospit Dream Cloud Situation probably reinforced that view quite a bit. (her lusus died and it's very sad, but it was Meant To Be so that's all right.) I think she's kind of right in that players have to grow into their roles to a degree in order to flourish in it, and that the game is pretty intrinsically throwing its players out of their comfort zone. (some more overtly/maliciously than others, hiiii LOHAC.) But the thing a lot of the fandom has going on where the Point of your sburb quest is to mold you into someone who is sin some significant sense the opposite of who you originally were and anyone who doesn't is FAILING doesn't really play out in the comic from what I've seen. The numbers of players who fit their given roles like a glove, who have to go through some shit in order to do their thing effectively, and whose relationships with their powers and roles aren't really delved into one way or another are roughly the same. The problem with the Serkets isn't that they Do The Thing, it's that they Do The Thing to the exclusion of literally all of the other things. The problem with Serkets is also that they view the people around them as supporting characters rather than people, but that's not the Light Player Problem, that's the Serkets Are Terrible People problem.

And I don't see many problems with Rose's actions in the medium at all. All of the choices she made pre-cascade were perfectly reasonable in the context she made them in.

[princeofdoom]

I was pretty sure the "our classects are meant to test us" was word-of-god'ed so not so much "canon" as confirmed by Hussie. But where he might have said that to point to, I have no idea, and the canon and word of god in homestuck are both pretty nebulous and sometimes self-contradictory. SO who knows!

[scarletkilometers]

In my defense, I don't really keep up with much of the stuff Hussie says outside of the comic proper, and I'm not 100% sure how much of the formspring stuff is even findable anymore. Beyond that, 100% reliable narrators aren't really a thing Homestuck has, so mostly I'm analyzing this shit based on observing the characters actions and making some damn reasonable guesses.

[princeofdoom]

That's absolutely fair. I might be completely incorrect about it being word of Hussie in the first place. Although I kind of like the idea of the classpects being a challenge to the people that have them, just not always in the way that THEY think it challenges them either.

[firedjinn]

Sburb: You are a support main.
The Light Player, In All Likelihood: The FUCK I am! *Kicks over a trashcan and sets fire to the sun*

Perfect. Rose "I'm going to blow up the motherfucking green sun" Lalonde would be proud.