At nekropsii's recommendation, what are your thoughts on rage and hope as aspects?
Thank you for asking!! Alot of this is based in my own interpretation, research and opinions, here are my thoughts below the cut though:
Rage and Hope as aspects intrigue me, because they really do have a lot of potential. They're the pair of aspects I've studied the most and probably the only pair of aspects I've actively made posts on. A lot of difficulty in interpeting them as aspects comes down to 2 things:
Our canon Hope and Rage players to study consist of 4 with destructive classes, and a Page.
Every Hope and Rage player is a character that was either written to be a terrible person, a villain, or Hussie didn't like them and approached them in a mean-spirited way. Often some combination. Essentially, they're either the worst or a joke.
Also the description for Rage on the True Sign website was 100% written by a cop.
While you cannot for even a second evade the fact that Hussie's bigotry is a part of it, with @nekropsii having already made a good post (which I'm sure is the one you came from) on how the Makaras (and how the author wrote them) are a lot of the reason why Rage is the way it is, I do believe Hope and Rage as aspects can easily be written and interpreted in a way that doesn't have this problem and in my opinion more interesting and nuanced than the interpretation of Rage being "the most dangerous aspect".
Start by accepting that no Aspect inherently has more or less capacity for evil by default, because that'd be fucking dumb. They are supposed to be base elements of the universe. Even if the """""canonical""""" True Sign quiz says so, it logically wouldn't make sense. Rage, as long as you're not writing it like a bigot, has just as much capacity for good as Hope does, and Hope has as much capacity for bad as Rage does. After all, beliefs are destructive all the time, so someone having the power to overthrow belief systems is not necessarily bad. It's all dependent on the individual and how they're using that power.
I find one of the easiest ways to repair Rage as an aspect to some extent is to focus on it not as an aspect of inherent anger, instability or destruction, but rather of rebellion, skepticism and most of all iconoclasm. If the greatest power of Hope is to believe in things even against all odds, then the power of Rage would be to not simply accept things at face value even if it's the easier option. Rage is essentially the punk aspect. It is an essential and healthy concept.
The anger or pessimism facet of Rage as an aspect, if and when incorporated, should be handled with care. Don't just make a character angry for no reason other than because they're a Rage player; is there a source for it? Is their anger justified? Because it most certainly can be. Don't just needlessly villainize a character for feeling anything non-positive. And certainly don't needlessly villainize a character by writing them as a racist caricature, but that should be a given.
Hope, on the other hand, isn't necessarily a good or fun aspect to have. It's certainly not an evil one either, not inherently so (if your beliefs or insistence on pushing them on others are harmful enough it can be), but because the majority of Hope players are likely to be classes that directly challenge their sense of Hope in some way, they actually tend to be pretty miserable at points.
I mean Jake isn't even a destructive class and he spends a lot of his screentime nearing the end of the comic sad and somewhat unresolved. He gets called "Joke" more than once and doesn't even have it in him to correct it. And of course, the canonical and legitimate Worst Character in Homestuck title goes to a character who is a Hope player; Cronus Ampora.
In my studies on hope as a concept (and figure) in Greek myth I found that one thing vital to understanding, for example, the story of Pandora's Box, is that hope was not inherently seen as a good thing. It was more akin to "expectation". It was rather seen as an extension of human suffering. It's only later that views towards it became more positive. Remaining positive in adversity and staying true to your beliefs can most certainly be an incredibly good thing. But believing in or expecting things that simply are not true or will not come true can put you in a really bad place.
I think that understanding the Hope and Rage aspects as, at least in part, an extension of and/or response to suffering can help give them nuance. Two different tools to face adversity with. It's just a different stance of approach.
And I can't go without mentioning that having abilities based in what you do or do not believe in make them very interesting and powerful aspects. Granted, all aspects have the potential to be interesting and powerful. But just imagine making something real because you believe in it hard enough, or calling bullshit so hard that you de-power or even destroy the antagonist because you don't believe they could even have that kind of power. Not that that's an ability that you'd wake up at level 1 with, but y'know.
I think in all honesty that they're incredibly cool aspects on a conceptual level that never reached their full potential and probably realistically couldn't in their source material, partially because of the author's approach to them, and partially because the comic ended somewhat prematurely. Which is fine (the second part I mean) but it is worth keeping in mind.
