BORN TO BE A STAR — JOEY CLAIRE, ……THE MAID OF LIGHT
MAID:
One who makes Light, or makes through Light — for themselves.
LIGHT:
Power, Fortune, Enlightenment, Knowledge, Ideas, Importance…
[This post will not require any Homestuck knowledge,
but will include Homestuck spoilers!]
I’m an old hat Homestuck. I went into Hiveswap expecting lore on old Homestuck characters, and to learn more about the wider universe that I love.
In my excitement for these things, I somehow never considered the possibility that Joey Claire and her new friends would be the things that really caused me to fall in love.
More the fool I am — I should’ve seen it coming. Homestuck has always been at its strongest when it explores the complex and nuanced lives of its cast, creating some of fiction’s richest and most layered characters, and Hiveswap is no different.
Although in some ways, it’s better — snappier, more accessible, certainly easier for a wider market to enjoy. And a lot of that is down to Joey Claire — Hiveswap’s magnificent protagonist. Among an already standout cast, it can’t be denied that for many of us, Joey stole the show. Which is good!
Because she’d like it that way.
In this essay, I’m going to do a Hiveswap-review by way of character analysis by way of classpecting. We’re going to talk about Joey, delve into her nuances as a character and how they tie into Homestuck’s fascinating hyperflexible mythology system: Classpects.
Don’t worry. You won’t need to know much about Classpects to follow along! I’ll define the relevant points as they relate to Joey along the way
So without further ado, let’s gets to know what I dearly hope will become one of gaming — and literature’s — biggest darling stars.
JOEY CLAIRE is a 14 year old girl who lives alone with her little brother
JUDE HARLEY and their often-absent alcoholic babysitter in the town of HAUNTSWITCH. At the beginning of Hiveswap, Joey and Jude are beset by mysterious monsters that seem linked to the NEIGHBORHOOD CULT Jude has spent years obsessed with.
Even in this life and death situation, as usual, the kids have to fend for themselves. Joey introduces herself as a semi-orphan, as she feels abandoned by her billionaire CEO father, who’s spent less and less time in the household ever since the tragic early death of Joey’s mother, a famous dancer known to us as A.CLAIRE.
Not only is she not over her Mom’s death, she only really has her brother and their pets to spend time with as a result of her dad’s selfishness. Her Babysitter is often drunk or working, and the kids at school are mean. Out of anger and resentment, Joey has forsaken her father’s surname in favor of her beloved mom’s.
Maybe my favorite thing about Hiveswap is how Joey spends the whole thing relentlessly shittalking her shitty awful dad. She’s ruthless. I love it. And at no point does the narrative ever stop her in her tracks or suggest she’s being unreasonable for her slighted, complicated, dramatic feelings — even when they’re vicious. As far as the story’s concerned, Pa earned them.
In fact, Joey’s anger at her neglect is eventually cast in a downright heroic light. Part of how Hiveswap paints the portrait of Joey’s life so effectively is by giving us a very clear picture of who Joey is. Hiveswap tells us — without having to bog it down with raw exposition — that Joey is a kid who deeply desires attention.
So let’s start unpacking Homestuck’s complicated symbol language with the first part of Joey’s Hero Title:
Maid.
HERO OF ________ ==>What will you do?
Homestuck’s Classpects are a hyperflexible mythology system that borrows it’s structure from the iconic “Hero of Time” structure used to describe Link in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Consisting of 12 Standard Classes and 2 Master Classes that interlock with a seperate system comprised of 12 Aspects more, a player’s Hero Title provides a hyper-interpretable context for the character that tells you a lot about their personality traits, innate tendencies, and possible powersets.
It’s important to stress the word hyper-interpretable. Classpects run on a complex dream-logic that can include visual symbolism, wordplay and puns, and individual character traits.
The thrust of the world of Paradox Space — the setting Homestuck and Hiveswap share — is that the characters are, on some level, always creating their own reality and potential. As such, the power of their Classpects comes from within their own personalities and thoughts.
That means that even if two people had the same combination of the 168 classes, the way that each individual character interprets their role — and so, imagines the powers it gives them — would differ between the two.
Meaning two different Thieves of Heart would likely execute their roles in completely different ways.
The first half of Joey’s title is MAID — but she’s not the cleaning kind. Homestuck’s 14 classes are divided into two sets ACTIVE and PASSIVE players, each of the 7 pairs connected by a primary verb.
Maids are paired with Sylphs, under the roughly defined verbs
‘Create’ or ‘Make’. And though both Maid and Sylph
are ‘Creation’ classes, they will ‘Create’ in different ways.
A Sylph will tend to take the more PASSIVE approach:
They will invite the creation of ‘X’, or invite creation through ‘X’ —
where X is the Aspect.
And a Maid will be at their strongest behaving ACTIVELY most of the time:
They will simply create ‘X’, or create through ‘X’.
On top of that, a Passive Sylph will feel most as home using their powers for the benefit of others. An Active Maid may choose to do the same — and vice versa — , but in the long run will find themselves healthier by predominantly using their powers for themselves.
So when Joey says she’s not Dammek’s Maid, the emphasis is on the idea that she’d be acting to serve someone else. We’re still being clued into her place in the system through the wordplay!
Neither of these are hard and fast rules, mind you. The class system is informed strongly by Taoist Yin-Yang philosophy, and ultimately suggests true inner peace and self-actualization can only be achieved by bringing these two extremes of behavior to an individualized balance.
But they are descriptive of tendencies. Which means that as a Maid of Light, we can understand Joey as “One who makes Light, or makes through Light, for herself.”
But what does Light mean in Hiveswap?
The Aspects define the second half of a Hero’s Title. We can understand them as the elements that a Hero will work with to accomplish their goals — like fire, water, wind and earthbenders in Avatar, each Aspect represents a different source of influence and power. Though their reach is considerably more wide-reaching than Bending.
The Aspects are regarded as the primordial particles of Paradox Space, and all twelve can be combined and recombined to create every object and event in existence. This is the source of any one Player character’s power.
In Hiveswap, the player’s thoughts literally manipulate the fundamental Aspects of reality.
This means that any concept that can be linguistically, symbolically, or historically linked to Light falls under the domain of Light’s influence — many of which I’ll describe as we continue. In Joey’s case, that means our clearest signs for her kinship with Light include lots of Light-based puns and wordplay.
Joey’s Lite-Brite gives us the first example that we can apply her Classpect’s verbiage to. Light is linked to the idea of Enlightenment, and so to the concepts of True Knowledge, Reason, and the World of Ideas in the Gnostic myths that Homestuck draws heavily from.
In Hiveswap, those concepts are condensed into Joey’s powerful IMAGINATION — her capacity to come up with unique Ideas.
So we can understand Joey as creating Light in the world by coming up with ideas and then expressing them physically, through her art!
The Lite-Brite also happens to run off electricity that provides POWER to Joey’s house — the very energy she uses to make her artworks in the first place. This can be parsed as Joey creating through Light. In both cases, however, the end result is her own amusement and enjoyment! So she is creating for her own benefit.
Some nuances of a Classpect are built up by association through consistent traits among different players with the same Class verb. Maids and Sylphs, for example, are sometimes described as being MADE OF their Aspect — as in this bit of wordplay. They also have an association to Fairies, who are said to be “Made of Magic”.
As a Class who’s thought processes tend to be more connected to their Aspects than to their societies’ influences, and who can Make More of their Aspect out of seemingly nothing, it wouldn’t be out of line to regard Maids as sort of Aspect Elementals, literally made of the stuff their magic draws on.
Joey has no Fairy associations (that I’ve picked up on yet), but she does liken herself to a source of Light — comparing herself to the mysterious, shining green energy cube that lets her hack into Dammek’s hive.
It’s worth mentioning much of Joey’s inventory concerns symbols of Light magic, too — two sets of batteries and the power cube (energy), the great book of beasts and map (information), her flashlight (obviously literal), the Magic Spice. Nothing to say about the pogs. The pogs just suck. Worthless pogs.
Let’s move on.
Not only that, but the star on Joey’s shirt was partly created by Joey herself! Her passion for the Star her mother painted was so intense she got the shirt made for her. Another instance of Joey’s imagination leading to creation to benefit herself.
This passion for Stars coincides with Joey’s keen interest in attention, importance, and FAME. Joey wants above all else to follow in her mother’s footsteps to be a famous celebrity — in other words, a STAR.
The last name ‘Claire’ even happens to mean ‘famous’.
Other associations are built into the Aspect. Every Light player in Homestuck is a girl who displays a girl-loving inclination, and Joey is no exception. It’s no mistake that a number of Joey’s references to attraction to girls are coded with words like “bright”!
And then there’s times we get lucky and get to compare two players with very similar classes and the same Aspect — like so. As a Sylph of Light, Aranea describes herself as both a powerful healer and someone naturally endowed with an abundance of luck. Light also describes fortune, both in the sense of luck and the accumulation of wealth. Aranea tends to be at her best using these faculties for the benefit of others, however.
For Joey, being the Active counterpart to a Sylph means she also has a deep interest in healing and restoration, as a subset of her ability to create.
Joey’s investment to healing also pays off in a Lucky break, as her healing of the Deercat triggers a rare process where it chooses to adopt her!
So while Joey heals and creates, much like Aranea, those actions are much more likely to directly benefit Joey herself. So even here in Joey’s humble beginnings, we can see that her title provides a powerful toolset for understanding her skills and assets!
But no path in life is easy, and Classpects are designed to reflect this as well. After all, anyone reading this far knows there’s many ways in which Joey isn’t a lucky girl at all.
Also among Light’s associations in the comic is a focus on IMPORTANCE and the SPOTLIGHT. Vriska, the Thief of Light, becomes upset and furious when she isn’t given attention and responded to by someone she’s wronged.
Aranea employs a dramatic power grab for relevance after feeling ignored for millennia.
To most Light players, the spotlight matters. Being paid attention to matters.
And that’s important to understanding Joey, because she’s every bit the diva of her fellow Light players. And attention is the one thing she’s always denied.
A LONELY STAR
A. Claire’s death is the top on which both Joey and Jude’s lives tailspin downwards, as it prompted her Pa’s increasing abandonment of the family on top of costing the kids their mother.
For Joey, the already tragic loss of both her parents also represents a loss of attention from…basically anybody in her life, given her babysitter’s maladjusted alcoholic lifestyle and her brother’s obsession with the mysterious Cultists.
Joey tries to make friends at school, but finds herself shunned at least partly for her interest in video games. This leaves her utterly without peers to share her variety of interests with — her strong imagination and affinity for Light ironically condemning her to isolation.
This is also something of a running motif for Maid players. Maid might well be the most Active standard class in the game, meaning that Maid characters are extremely self-driven, and are at their best when following their own wills and desires.
But each Maid player we’ve seen so far has also found themselves subjected to circumstances that undermine their capacity for self-expression, making them play the miserable part of servant or slave to their Aspect in a way they must eventually overcome, if they’re to be happy at all.
Aradia, the Maid of Time, spends much of her early narrative having her self-expression subjugated as she serves and maintains the time loops necessary to complete the Alpha Timeline.
Jane Crocker, the Maid of Life, has her free will stolen by a Thief of Life and her considerable willpower, expression, and ability to resurrect the dead turned against her friends and loved ones — on top of suffering many assassination attempts from the same source growing up.
It’s in this same tradition that we can understand Joey: as a deeply self-driven girl with high aspirations of stardom and admiration from many, who has by the cruel circumstances of life been condemned to the shadow of obscurity.
Joey thinks a lot about how she might look from the perspective of others.
She fantasizes about her future memoirs and practices her routines hard, even though she’s got nobody to practice with, or even tell her how well she does.
The moment she’s put in any sort of new social situation — even one as bizzare as trying to survive desperate circumstances with Xefros on Alternia —
Joey habitually turns to communicating in terms of performance.
Watch me! Feast your eyes! Be Dazzled!
She’s partly joking here, of course — but the joke itself is the performance, and the amount of times Joey makes jokes or makes up scenarios where she’s in front of a crowd are too many to count.
Hell, even most of Joey’s STRIFEs center this tension between Joey’s desire for attention and the world’s seeming determination to ignore her.
A good half of Joey’s fights involve her simply trying to get the enemy’s attention in some way — usually by either performing, and so putting herself in the metaphorical spotlight, or simply by using her flashlight.
And Joey’s desperate desire for attention is crucial for contextualizing her intense FURY at Pa’s abandonment and neglect. She’s also angry at him for killing animals, of course — the death of her mother and general affinity for animals seems to have left Joey with a strong interest in the Life Aspect on top of her innate relationship to Light.
But his inattention and disinterest in her and Jude’s lives is repeatedly given as a largely separate and equally powerful reason for her righteous resentment. Most telling of all, though, is how Joey’s desperation for SOMEONE to pay attention to her manifests in her relationship to her dead mother.
Grief is a devastating thing to deal with, especially for a kid. And saving items or experiences left by loved ones is an experience many who have dealt with grief can relate to.
But for Joey specifically, the habit of saving her mother’s dance tapes is framed not just around a desire to remember her, but specifically around Joey’s desire to share with her Mom the moments that she absolutely needs to share with somebody.
For the days that, either glowing with pride or in need of comfort, Joey desperately wants to share with her. This, then, is the closest Joey comes to having real attention from her loved ones in the moments that matter — saving her Mom only for the moments Joey deems most important to her.
But the inspiring thing about Joey, the thing that’s moved me to tears at least once every day since I finished this game, is that despite Joey’s loneliness, her isolation, the abandonment of her father and shunning by her peers, she never loses sight of her own intrinsic worth.
Despite her frustration, despite the pain and sorrow, Joey knows
she’s not at fault. Joey knows she has intrinsic worth, that she’s important and that the blame lies with those around her who can’t see it.
And not only that, but when transported to Alternia, she soundly rejects the reality that makes Xefros feel the same way her own life made her feel.
Joey is a girl who sees life as intrinsically valuable.
It should be noted here that “Nothing” and “Nobody” are concepts closely associated with Light’s complementary Aspect, that of darkness, false information/lies, and physical reality: Void. So when Joey counters Xefros here, she’s not just being a good friend.
When Joey rejects the lie that the physical color of Xefros’ blood means he’s worthless, or that a socially conditioned idea of fated moirailship means he HAS to like whatever Dammek does to him, she does so while being considered inherently righteous not just by common sense, but by the fundamental principles of Paradox Space’s cosmology.
And she ends off by promising to raise Xefros’ standards of friendship — in other words, to grow or increase his ideas about his own inner self-worth.
To help him see the truth of himself as important and valuable, and so be able to forge healthier and more fortunate relationships for himself.
She is, in other words, helping him increase his inner Light. Joey’s climactic moment of narrative heroism in Act 1 coincides with her most intense use of her natural powers yet.
It might seem odd that she’s doing this to benefit Xefros — but there’s two factors to consider here. The first is that Xefros’ own Class — that of the Page — naturally invites others to be inclined to help him this way. Take my word for that, and we’ll revisit the subject as soon as we can in Xefros’ own Classpect post later.
The second is that Joey will need him in the road ahead no matter what she does next. So even though the Maid’s intrinsic tendency to act for her own benefit isn’t a hard rule anyway, this particular action arguably qualifies.
More interestingly, though, is that it brings us to the question:
Now that she’s in Alternia, what WILL Joey Claire do next?
SHOWTIME — THE DANCE OF THE GREEN STAR
We’re going to get into speculation territory here, which is something I’m generally averse to doing. But this is at least fairly well-grounded speculation! And I think it’ll give us at least some idea roughly what to expect for Hiveswap’s next coming acts.
So we’ve established that Joey wants attention, craves the spotlight, and has strong aspirations of Stardom. This is important off the bat, because the Cherub Portal that Joey gets sucked into at the beginning of Hiveswap actually serves another function as well: It’s a Wish-Granter.
In Homestuck, when Jane Crocker receives a Lollipop with the same red-green spiral, it momentarily flashes with the black and white twin-ouroborus serpents featured on the wish-granting amulet AURYN, from
The Neverending Story — a movie/book referenced several times in Hiveswap.
And who does Joey come across on the other side of the wish-granting portal? Xefros Tritoh, who is already in a band and from whom we’ve already seen suggestions of untapped singing potential. His AUTOTUNE MIC could well be holding him back.
And the ally Joey and Xefros are seeking out is likely to be Cridea Jeevik, of whom we know little about other than a presumed talent for memes.
So Joey is already seemingly being set up to be a performer of some kind on Alternia — meaning she’ll likely have her wish come true.
Alas, this will likely come at a cost.
When Jane uses the AURYN/Lollipop, it’s effects are an exaggerated version of AURYN’s in the book. It grants her wishes, but in a horrifying “be careful what you wished for” sort of way. Not unlike a monkey’s paw, such as that found in Pa’s attic.
Also worth noting is the apparent orchestrator of Xefros and Joey’s meeting. The character who talks to Joey through the hint buttons and provides Xefros with the Scratchware that protects his and Joey’s messages.
Doc Scratch is one of Homestuck’s primary antagonists — an omnipotent, omniscient Butler in service to an indestructible time-traveling demon known as Lord English.
He is also in many ways the ruler of Alternia, having subtly encouraged it’s development into the brutal and merciless culture we see during
Hiveswap: Act 1. Scratch is represented by the mysterious, featureless cueball in Xefros’ favorite sport, Arena Stickball.
Scratch is also an entity that we know from experience has a predilection for carrying out his work through young girls, and in particular, Light players.
His involvement with Joey is foreshadowed by the art painting of the ballerina Joey keeps by her closet — an 1878 Edgar Degas painting named ‘The Star’.
And he is unfortunately involved in the creation of one of Joey’s precious green star shirt symbol. Because a star is, of course, just a sun that’s far enough away.
And in Homestuck, Doc Scratch’s primary goal is in fact the creation of the Green Sun. He hasn’t done this yet in Hiveswap, but he will later on in Alternia’s future — it’s inevitable. And he knows it.
So it seems likely he is now looking to either foreshadow or repeat his main performance in the comic through the creation of a metaphorical
Green Star in Joey. If Joey performs, Scratch will be watching, and it’s a pretty solid guess that everything up until now has at least somewhat involved Scratch setting up her stage.
It’s hard to say what kind of negative consequences that might have for Joey, but Doc Scratch should not be mistaken for a kind man. Still, while I’m worried for her, I believe in Joey! And I’m excited to see her get to enjoy her time in the limelight, however long it turns out to last.
She’s been waiting long enough, after all.
Special thanks for this post have to go to thricequeen and dahni, the witch of light, since both made connections that helped me contextualize Joey’s arc so far for myself!
As for what comes next for me now, at the very least, you can expect to see this post in video form before I go on hiatus (more details in this post). I am excited to make similar Classpect posts on Xefros and Jude as soon as I’m able to.
Unfortunately, after this post I may be forced to go on hiatus for a while to get my economic situation under control! If you’d like to help me do so and want to see more writing and videos like this in the future, you can throw me a buck on Patreon. My readership has grown fairly wide and my expenses aren’t huge, so I’m not overstating it at all when I say every dollar counts.
Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you came away with a stronger grasp of Joey — a character that I think everyone deserves to love. I can’t wait to see you guys again, whenever that may be, but for now:
Keep rising.
