Rage - Cyberstuck

The Rage Aspect and its God Tiers/Classpect Roles

Keywords: Unconditional Hate or Fear, Refusal, Defiance, Rejection, Skeptical Criticism, Doubt, Negativity, Despair, Getting the ‘Red Light’ or a Hard Stop, NO

Symbols: Immovable Objects, False/Counterfeit, 'Demons’

Rage is one of the 12 Aspects of Homestuck. Its Opposite is the Aspect Hope. When I think of Rage, I think of Undying Doubt and Skepticism that everything around is 'perfect’ or going to be okay, one way or another. Everything will actually turn out wrong, if not completely horrendous in the end. Rage is unconditional Hate and Fear, it is the cold shoulder, rejecting any thing or person. It is the underlying thought that what is here is wrong and false. It is the thought that there is no will and there is no way! No matter how deceivingly peaceful everything looks on the surface, its not real! It’s actually false, lies all of it! Rage is despairing and refusing that everything will be 'just fine’, so their answer is always an adamant NO! But don’t think of Rage as only a fierce angry thing lashing out at everyone, Rage is also like the Demon that creeps towards you from behind, paralyzing you and slowly binding you and dragging you away with no escape. It is the Cage, the Immovable Object that constantly surrounds you on all sides.

(side note: Rage may sound bad, but it is the only thing holding you back from Hope and their charging blind beliefs, which can be just as dangerous. It’s good to know when to hold back and say No instead of always saying Yes to everything. Rage can be just as much Constructive as Destructive.)

Mage of Rage: One who Knows with Rage or Knows Rage

Mages will uniquely experience their Aspect, both good and bad. As a result, they gain a unique understanding of what their Aspect is or does. Their challenge is to become open to new insight or different perspectives than their own.

A Mage of Rage is one who might suffer from great anger and fear. If their own, they can be prone to uncontrollable inconsolable rages and temper tantrums or they can be prone to inconsolable terrors and paranoia. They might be literally haunted by false images of demons lurking in shadows, only increasing their fear. If they experience the Rage of others, they might suffer someone else’s rage and fear, by being misunderstood, hated and feared because they are intimidated by the Mage of Rage. They can always tell though who fears and hates them. They know because they experience it.

The fearful glances, hushed whispers, anxious avoidance of themselves. It becomes a necessity for them to always be on their guard, always watching out for those that might do them harm. They know and learn what to reject or doubt, if they experienced it harming them before, like a suspicious gift from another, or a certain poison they’ve experienced before. They might even suffer from false friends or people who act harmless but who actually wish to harm them in some way (or they might believe so anyway), which doesn’t help their hyperactive sense of paranoia. But In return, they can easily tell the trustworthy from the untrustworthy at a glance. If at first they suffered from a false image of counterfeit from another, they can instantly know if someone actually means them harm or not, or if they are sincere or not.

All this experience with Rage gives them an intuitive understanding of it. They can understand and empathize with the fears of others, knowing what made them afraid or angry and why, and how to deal with it. They might also suffer from a unique kind of unmovable stubbornness, or a false image of themselves or the world around them, either viewing themselves or others warped from their normal forms. Most of all though they of all Rage Players are uniquely able to understand where Rage is a positive influence as well as a Negative, no one can tear down their boundaries or push them to do anything they do not want to. They build iron walls of the self and don’t let it be influenced by anyone else. They build a sense of self and self esteem like no other. Ready for the cool awesome example from a media? Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Yup.

Thief of Rage: One who Steals with Rage or Steals Rage

Thieves have good intentions, and might be egocentric. They have natural confidence with their Aspect, but hide insecurities and hate being seen as weak. Their challenge is to learn to let others have their Aspect as well

Thieves of Rage have a natural knack for what makes you angry or upset, what makes you afraid or panic and what makes you doubt and despair. They have a natural confidence with what usually makes people panic or too angry to function, even if it does make them afraid or angry. They can be quite prone to bursts of anger or panic after all. They might not admit that they are actually afraid or angry though, if they see it as a weakness of theirs. They might even outright refuse to acknowledge its existence with a vicious stubbornness. “I am NOT ANGRY/AFRAID!!!”

I can even see them using that phrase as a kind of repeated personal mantra. They might even steal out of anger, through jealousy or envy or they might steal out of fear, afraid that what others have may be used against them. They might even steal by distracting you with your negative emotions first. They blind you with rage, weaken you with despair, paralyze you with fear and then leave you empty with nothing left. A Thief of Rage also steals Rage though and they can deflect a close friend from having hatred and fear and any sort of general negativity thrown their way by stealing it for themselves all confident like “Don’t criticize them! Criticize me! Hate me! Fear me! I can take you >:D”

If anything they probably see other people hating, fearing and generally disliking them as some kind of achievement or badge of honor like “haha! asshole points +100! Ability to throw sick biting spiteful insults unlocked!” There like, Hate me = lol whatevs. Hate my friend = Bitch I will cut you. To use a phrase from Whose Line Is It Anyways: “Hey c'mon make fun of the bald guy! I’ll be your lightningrod of Hate!”

Knight of Rage: One who Exploits with Rage or Exploits Rage

Knights hide a fear of a perceived fundamental failure with their Aspect behind a shield of confidence and obsessive effort. Their challenge is to learn to take it down a notch and to understand that they are skilled enough

A Knight of Rage would be extremely skilled at using their own reactive rage, panic or fear to their advantage. They are probably almost never caught off guard due to their paranoia and anger making them highly reactive, as if their flight or fight response was on constant overdrive. Their reactive impulses matched with the Knight’s skill makes them great warriors, having great fighting instincts and even greater reflexes. They would be able to antagonize and dominate their opponents with their pure fighting ability or their ability to exploit the blind anger, fear, despair or doubts of their opponent. They definitely are ones to taunt their enemies while fighting like “haha missed me missed now you gotta kiss me!” *high pitched screams while flinch dodging angry attack* “haha missed me again wow you suck!”

A Knight of Rage though is always afraid that one day they might be caught off guard or get too angry or too afraid to do anything, and they exploit their anxious paranoia, fears, anger or doubts to fuel their twitchy reflexes. Tap them on the shoulder without warning when they are in a bad mood and they liable to punch you in the face just on pure reflex. The Knight’s fears of uselessness or not just trying hard enough mixed with Rage’s tendencies to criticize and doubt can make for a serious case of low inner self esteem caused by internally kicking themselves when they’re down and making it worse.

They tend not to dwell on it much though, being more focused on the general adrenaline rush they are almost constantly on. The Knight may even use that a shield they hide behind like instead of dealing with insecurities just drown them in the adrenaline rush. Their challenge is a difficult one, because it involves coming out from behind the shield and really facing their fears, not through a battle of avoidant reflexes, but by stubbornly holding their ground and refusing to back down or flinch away. Media Example: Pretty sure but not 100% Jack Spicer from Xaolin Showdown (Original Series, haven’t seen new Jack Spicer so can’t say)

Page of Rage: One who Invites Exploitation of Rage or one who Invites Exploitation through Rage

Pages start with a deficit in their Aspect that they confidently overcome through obvious overcompensation. Their challenge is to keep at it, even if they fail and the journey is slow, for they become the strongest players

A Page of Rage has totally got this whole anger and defiance thing down. They got this, they know what Rage is, it’s being unreasonable and uncooperative and dangerous without rhyme or reason or justification. Someone tells me to do something because it might be good for me? FUCK YOU *flips a table* I AIN’T DOING SHIT JUST BECAUSE YOU SAID TO. There are literal two year olds and reverse psychology is pretty much the easiest way to get them to do something. “Hey Page of Rage, DON’T clean your room” “YOU DONT CONTROL ME!” *angrily cleans rooms then sits in their clean room happily thinking they’ve got one up on you* They lack at first the ability to doubt or critically think about things sometimes as in the example above.

They also are actually pretty willing to do things, when worded in the right way, thinking they’ve got this whole defiant stubborn thing down. They think being stubborn or defiant just means doing the exact opposite of whatever they were told, instead of refusing to participate at all. Instead of walking away from a situation, they just engage in it in a different way. They might also be pretty horrible at telling believable lies or actually standing their ground in stubbornness, being easily led stray when something distracts them or even easily lied to themselves. But when a Page of Rage slowly starts learning and growing they get wise to reverse psychology tricks very fast, and when they realize that instead of them fooling you, they were the ones fooled, then they get really angry and more motivated.

They catch when they are lied to and start feeling actually purposeful, justifiable anger. They learn to engage in constructive debate rather than petty mean arguments and they get good at fighting for their cause, they have to. Mostly because they sort of learn the lesson of the boy who cried wolf, because at first they just had petty temper tantrums at anything that got them even a little upset. Now when they feel true rage for something, they might not be taken seriously because oh look who’s having a temper tantrum about something unimportant again. Even if the Page really is like no shut up this is serious I fucking mean it. They learn to actually be stubborn and unmoving and hold their ground and really give you a piece of their mind.