NEWSFLASH: Shoe Theory Probably Finally Jossed!

That’s right, we finally have guaranteed-canon pictures of god-tier Cronus (a passive Hope class) that confirms his shoe color is a light purple! It’s a different color from Eridan’s darker shoe one, but it’s not orange, jossing my previous shoe theory without any ambiguity caused by the sprites being Feastings’ previously. (Meaning his twitter response probably meant the colors didn’t matter.)

In this depiction, Kankri does have a different God-Tier shoe color from Karkat’s shoe and pants:

…but again, this is likely a symptom of what Andrew implied about them being random. Either that, or there is a system, but we don’t know or have any fitting guesses as to what it is.

Which begs the question… why is Jane’s underside shoe color the same of that of a Peixes?

Perhaps it’s understood that she’s an Heiress? She IS likely to usurp the throne…

(And once more, shoe theory being jossed doesn’t change my class chart, which has miraculously held together in the face of events for months for some unfathomable reason.)

Anyway, now I can finally stop talking about shoes, forever. THANK FUCKING GOD. :D Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Do you know how enthusiastic I am about collating tons of shoe images and color-matching them with a display monitor, then writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about them

The answer is not very

It’s just something that sadly must be done :’(

Why do John and Tavros have the same shoe colors, then?  And Rose and Aranea?  And Jane and Feferi?

There’s a chance there’s some similarity.  I’ve discussed this before, including the “what if Vriska just changed them”, just read my shoes tag first.

And now Andrew said something that only sounds like it’s debunking it without giving us the decency of totally disproving it, so I have to keep going around peddling posts about shoe theory like an idiot, forever.

Ah, so that would seem to debunk shoe color theo-

wait

@inuneechan1 god tier shoe color assignments are as close to random as anything in the comic.

“As random” as anything in Homestuck!? That devious motherfucker, that could mean either way!  D:

HUUUSSSSSSIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

(I mean I figured there’s still something there, because otherwise why are Aranea’s the same as Rose’s but Vriska’s different, or Jane’s soles the same as Feferi’s but Jake’s conspicuously different from Eridan’s, Tavros’s the same as John’s, etc… but is he stealthily stating his ability to plan or just disconfirming it as whim-based…???!?)

You’re right, I’m not sure how to interpret this either?! IS IT OR ISN’T IT GIVE US A STRAIGHT ANSWER ANDREW D:

(He wouldn’t unless he edits the ministrife so it all lines up, which he might not do until we get a canon class layout)

(Man I’m glad that my class chart miraculously stands without the shoes nowadays)

.

I am never going to get away from having to do shoe posts, am I.  :C

(EDIT:)

Yes, that’s what I’m getting at the other interpretation was, but it’s hard has fuck to tell which way he meant it, probably by design

horussebooks asked you:

JAKE HAS ORANGE SHOES ORANGE SHOES ORANGE ORANG ENOT PURPLE THEY ARE ORANGE YESSSSSSSSS

knightofbluh asked you:

Why is Jane’s shoes Condescension-colored? Unlike Aradia who has Space colored shoes.

Anonymous asked you:

Guess your shoe theory is jossed by the updates.

It isn’t jossed! What ever gave you that idea? :)

You see, the shoes we’ve seen in-story in flashes and panels that Andrew created, like these - NOT the Ministrife - are our only reliable points of reference. As we discussed around the Ministrife update, Andrew didn’t choose the shoe colors Feastings employed:

Also keep in mind that Feastings, the one who made the sprites, colored them herself with no apparent color-input from Hussie, and as far as they can tell Andrew made zero changes to them before including them in the flash.  Andrew said that if he introduces the full-size outfits differently later in the story, he intends to go back and retcon the sprites to fit, since they’re made of handfuls of pixels each.  So, nothing in the flash is necessarily finalized.

Our (once-ler-direction’s) shoe theory goes that each aspect has TWO shoe colors: one for active classes (like the Thief of Light’s bright red), and one for passive classes (like the Seer and Sylph of Light’s baby blue).  So, our canon-assured points of comparison with this update are Maids, Pages, Life players, and Hope players. Let’s have a look under the cut:

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It was part of what helped determine my final class layout:  Two shoe colors per aspect, one for active classes and one for passive classes.

However, the ministrife possibly-maybe-kinda-sorta jossed that, depending on how much Andrew cares about the shoe colors and possibly changing them in retrospect, since feastings made the sprites without Andrew’s input and Andrew said he could eventually go back to make minor changes.  Though, examining other evidence that’s come up and things that have fit, the ties I helped use shoe colors to break have since fulfilled my guesses at their roles quite cleanly; I haven’t needed to change the chart.

So there’s your shoes to go with hats.  >_>

chivalrousgambler:

By popular request, a rebloggable version.

Consider the above the alternative theory to the active/passive-per-aspect shoe color theory discrepancies I brought up earlier in response to the update.

Also keep in mind that Feastings, the one who made the sprites, colored them herself with no apparent color-input from Hussie, and as far as they can tell Andrew made zero changes to them before including them in the flash.  Andrew said that if he introduces the full-size outfits differently later in the story, he intends to go back and retcon the sprites to fit, since they’re made of handfuls of pixels each.  So, nothing in the flash is necessarily finalized.

These are our alternatives, essentially:

• There are two shoe colors per aspect, one for active classes and one for passive classes.  Andrew didn’t bother with said discrepancies in the flash - perhaps out of “meh, I need to edit them later anyway”, or perhaps because it would clue us into a whole lot more about classes we aren’t necessarily meant to know for sure, yet - and we can expect that if/when the theory or class layout is explicitly confirmed in canon, the sprites will be retconned to match.
• Vriska somehow changed the color of her boots immediately upon ascension (like Meenah rearranged her outfit), or her boots simply matched her preexisting preferences according to her will.

I take issue with the last one, for some reasons which have already been mentioned to the guy:

ashdenej: […] Although I find it a bit dubious that Vriska could change her shoes so quickly after ascension - especially since we know that Meenah could swap her clothes out so quickly because she was in a dream-bubble (we’ve seen that before), but that there are no such implications about the real world / incipisphere.

Players in dream bubbles can rearrange their appearances to match any array of past memories, so it’s not out of the question that they could instantly rearrange their existing outfits into new ones that are slightly different.

Furthermore, not only was Vriska’s love of red shoes explicitly told to us beforehand in a way that seemingly foreshadowed their inclusion in her future outfit, but also, keep in mind that she was the second God-Tier player we ever saw!  He specifically chose to make Rose’s shoes different later, and then Aranea’s match Rose’s - and others match those of God-Tiers in the same aspect - when he could have just had them all line up from the start.  Why would one of our first God-Tier sightings be a pattern breaker for such an obscure and arbitrary reason?

But then again, it could be one more of those small effects meant to later be seen as a signal that it was a coincidence brought into reality out of someone’s will, hinting at the Ultimate Riddle or such.

So there are your two options?  I’m still sticking with active/passive shoes, for now, but it’s your call.

Andrew’s taken art from others before, though, and colored it up or edited it to match canon or the situation he desired.

We can’t be entirely certain why he didn’t deem the shoe colors necessary of attention.  Is it because they’re arbitrary?  Did he not notice?  Was it not worth the trouble of delving in and cross-referencing between fifty sprites to figure out how to change a literal handful of pixels?  Or perhaps he had the “they’re just swappable clothes” explanation already in mind, and intentionally left us without a clear pattern so we couldn’t be “absolutely sure” and canonically confirm the layout of the entire class list early?

I’m still betting on the shoe color theory that once-ler-direction pointed out, the same one I used to complete my class table.  However: when your theory’s continued veracity relies on the author being lazy or inattentive, you can’t just blithely assume it’s “perfect”.  You’re on dangerous ground!

Or at least, uh, not entirely.  (And it’s not my theory, I just subscribed to it!)  But let’s break it down a little.

For Time, we have a Maid (active) and a Witch (active).

Both black.

Light we already knew, Thief (active) is red while Seer (passive) and Sylph (passive) are blue.

Hope gives us a Bard (passive) and a Prince (active).

Note that these are both purple, but different shades!  Cronus has #7E197D, and Eridan has a measurably darker #69006A (very close to his text color, #6A006A).

Life has a Witch (active) and a Thief (active).

Both the exact same color, #8E0B4E.

Breath has the Heir (passive), Page (passive), and Rogue (passive).

All these are the same, #FCFF3C.  (Tavros’s is different but negligibly enough to be within the margin of error, #FCF039.  Close enough that it was more likely a mistake than anything else.)

Space gave us a Maid (active) to add to our existing Witch, Jade (active):

And her shoes are red.

So, all of this so far lines up with the theory:  Each aspect has two shoe colors, one for active and one for passive.

But there are a pair of conflicts.

The theory demands that Blood have two different shoe colors for its Knight (active) and Seer (passive):

And both of them are #352F2F!

The other example is Rage, a Prince (active) and Bard (passive):

Both sets of shoes are #9C4CAD.

(All fetched sprites from this post by dersewalker!)

So, what gives?  Is the theory jossed, the shoe colors completely arbitrary?

Possible, but I’m not quite sure at all.  Namely: Who made the sprites?

The MINISTRIFE (which was going to drop on 10/31 but oh well) is chock full of sprite characters made by Feastings. Most of them were done a while ago and started floating around the tumblrverse as a little fandom craze, so I asked her to make a few more and now POOF they’re all magically canon. Thank you Feastings.

And when it comes down to it, Andrew may not have gone through the trouble of using an eyedropper to micromanage the shoe colors for all these god-tier sprites, especially when we are literally talking about a handful of pixels.  In other words, we still don’t know!

There are literally zero alternative theories that fit the colors (excluding anomalies), despite the “they don’t matter”/”arbitrary” option.  The only other one I’ve seen proposed is “two classes with the same shoe color are an active/passive pair”, but that would only be true if:

• Knight/Maid is an active/passive pair.  (Plausible!)
• Heir/Page is an active/passive pair.  (Also plausible?)
• Sylph/Seer is an active/passive pair.  (Wait what no)
• None of the introduced god-tier shoe colors in this update besides Kurloz’s were accurate.

So as you can see, that doesn’t work.

Should you still buy the god-tier “active-color passive-color per-aspect” shoe theory?  Tentatively, I do.  I guess you have to use your own judgment.

the-sad:

bladekindeyewear:

We quite recently saw the Page god-tier uniform:

If you’ll notice, Tavros is basically dressed like Robin.  Makes you think that perhaps Page is indeed the passive counterpart of the (dark) Knight after all.

So, from a number of different sources, concepts and ideas, I finally have a complete, good-feeling guess as to the final role layout/pairings, and their associated purposes.

Here we are:

• Purpose - Active - Passive
• — Standard Classes —
• Know - Mage - Seer
• Change - Witch - Maid
• Destroy - Prince - Bard
• Steal - Thief - Rogue
• Repair - Sylph - Heir
• Exploit - Knight - Page
• — Master Classes —
• Embody - Lord - Muse

Three passive and three active classes per gender among the standard classes, the way it works out here.

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I believe that god tier accent colors are related to how active/passive the class is. The Page and the Heir should be both active or both passive since their shoes/belts/codpieces are yellow.

Why do I think this is so? Well, look at Vriska.

Her shoes are red. This isn’t suspicious. Red compliments orange quite nicely. Now let’s see Rose.

Blue slippers? I did not expect that! I thought the colors of shoes formed a hidden pattern based on class, which was a reasonable idea at the time. After all, we had never seen two different god tiers with the same class at the time.

Let’s take a look at a Sylph.

If you look closely enough, you can see that Aranea is wearing pointy baby blue slippers. Hussie has said Seers are passive, so we can assume Sylphs are passive.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Dave’s class is active.

This would mean Maids are also active. Disregard the red soles on the bottom: they’re the same shade of red as the aspect symbol so they don’t count.

that’s all i’ve got

Hm!  Could be!  …Oh, and Pages of Breath have yellow shoes in the flash, just like John!!  That would confirm Passive Heirs!

Maid has always been a strong candidate for an active class, especially under the “Repair” purpose.  In which case, a Maid of Time would be “One who repairs/heals Time, or repairs/heals through Time”.  Aradia can indisputably be construed to fit that description.  A Sylph of Space would be passive in comparison: “One who invites the repair of Space or heals through Space”.

In that alternative - which, honestly, makes a little more sense than my initial guess - we’d have:

• Purpose - Active - Passive
• — Standard Classes —
• Know - Mage - Seer
• Change - Witch - Heir
• Destroy - Prince - Bard
• Steal - Thief - Rogue
• Repair - Maid - Sylph
• Exploit - Knight - Page
• — Master Classes —
• Embody - Lord - Muse

This is… perhaps more of an even distribution.  We still get a 3/3 active/passive split for males and females.  Males would own a monopoly on Destroying and Exploiting; Females would own a monopoly on Stealing and Repairing.  Both of these choices make some sense.  Then, the broadly applicable classes that Know and Change are split between males and females: for Knowers, the males are active, and for Changers, the females are active.

Wow, this is really, really balanced.  I like this more, actually.

It also means that our concept of broadly-manipulating god-tiers, ones who have the power to visibly shift Breath or Space at whim, is based on the intentionally introduced bias of mainly showing us the abilities of those who Change/Manipulate.  The abilities of other god-tiers could be pervasively less visible and more obscure, like Vriska’s luck-stealing (mainly depicted through surplus visual aids), her luck stockpile’s continuous benefits, and Seers’ knowledge.

I am three times more satisfied with this list!  Thanks, the-sad (EDIT: it’s now once-ler-direction)!  :D

I’ll edit my original post.

EDIT:  A clarification from the-sad, since this was misunderstood by at least one person earlier: “What I mean to say is that there are two shoe colors per aspect. One is an active shoe color and the other is a passive shoe color.”  Emphasis mine, because bolding turns me on.

EDIT2:  It could be noted that the Repair roles could also be equated with the ability to Create.  In other words, a Create/Destroy dichotomy between the genders.  In this situation, the Sylph uses her ability to create mainly in order to mend the damaged, while the active Maid is more likely to create outright.  In other words, the Maid of Time can make time!  That definition(/pun) certainly embodies what Aradia did with all those doomed timelines and clones.