Theorystuck: Active and Passive · 1:37am April 13th
SPOILER WARNING FOR HOMESTUCK COMIC, SPECIFICALLY ALL OF ACT 6...ALL OF IT
There is a LOT of theorizing what this dichotomy means in the world of Homestuck:
x Aspect vs x Through Aspect
For Yourself vs For Others
With the Flow vs Against the Flow
Offense vs Defense
Warrior vs Tactician
The first one technically applies to all Class/Aspect pairings, and the fourth and fifth don't track, because we've seen John, Roxy, Rose, Terezi, and Gamzee (sadly) all kick copious amounts of ass and John needed Terezi's help to remake the timeline the way it needed to go. The Yourself vs Others makes sense, given Vriska and Eriden, but Dirk is an Active Prince who helped get his whole team into SBURB before the Red Miles killed everyone with crazy tactical planning, Jade moved her entire Session to another to keep everyone still in said session from being erased, and Meenah more or less saved her team, even if she did it by killing them, she still made it so that they could continue to 'live' via Feferi's in-game-crafted afterlife (at the cost of stagnation).
With the Flow vs Against the Flow, coined by Ouroborista, is much more on the nose, I think, and, after reading Ouroborista's treatise and re-reading parts of the comic, ties into my own theory: Active Classes (Page, Mage, Witch, Knight, Prince, Thief, and Lord) have an innate understanding in terms of what they need to do, how their Classpect works, while Passive Classes (Heir, Seer, Maid, Sylph, Bard, Rogue, and Muse) have to learn how their Classpect works through trial, error, and being taught by someone who knows what's up.
The reason why Pages and Lords are so slow is because Pages operate under 'with great power comes great responsibility' lessons and Lords need to accumulate a butt-ton of resources, tools, and experience before they can take over their Aspect "glances at Caliborn, Homura, Ainz, and Kumoko". Both processes take time and not all are successful. Bards seem innate, but they're really just doing whatever the fuck they want: Gamzee may have agreed with Kurloz's crusade, but he wasn't taking orders so much as demanding his father/brother/son give him what he needed to do things his way (the God Tier costume), which was to fuck shit up beyond recognition for the sake of facilitating Lord English's rise to power.
Think about it: Jake feigned ignorance to a lot of things when, in reality, he knew exactly what he was doing; Sollux adapted SGRUB from long-dead coding found in ancient ruins from scratch, Jade knew how to use her powers not one second before getting a meteor to the face, Dave didn't need to think about time-travel to understand how it worked, Dirk splintered left and right, Vriska is THE Thief of Light Extraordinaire, and Caliborn knew what he wanted from Day 1.
Meanwhile, John had a hard time getting the Windy Thing and Plot Powers to work properly when he got them; Rose had to research the game itself before being taught how to 'see', Aradia had to die before she could learn what she was capable of while Jane never had a clue what to do on her own, it took Aranea three years plus to get her schtick down, Gamzee had to get the meta rug pulled out from under him, Roxy had to practice in a jail cell for an inordinate amount of time and she still needed help from Calliope in the end to pull out the Matriorb, and speaking of Callie, she was mostly guessing half the time from second-hand information.
"gasps for air"
So, tl;dr, Active Classes are DnD Sorcerers (charisma optional) and Passive Classes are DnD Wizards (logic optional) 
(nods) Yeah, that makes sense.