This section was written by OptimisticDuelist (with notes from me).
In the traditional Zodiac, the mutable signs are set apart as changeable, versatile entities — if the Cardinals are “initiators”, and the Fixed signs stubborn and determined “sustainers”, then we could describe Mutables as “perfectors” or “finishers”, who perfect any given task or product of reality.
If we apply this mindset of flexibility and finality to the Mutable Aspects, we see some interesting patterns emerge. Heroes of all four Aspects tend to be relevant in moments of great finality, bringing to a close epochs or chapters of the story. Gamzee is the workhorse that ends the strange-eons-spanning plan to birth Lord English. And it is the karmic task of the Heroes of Hope to defeat Caliborn. Fulfilled by Jake when he defeats Caliborn, marking his end and LE’s beginning..
Jake’s overwhelming Hope power also invokes the story’s DBZ arc, leading to the grand destruction that is [S] Game Over. Similarly, Eridan obliterates the tenuous peace in the Trolls’ lab, ushering in Horrorstuck, and Sollux’s sacrifice ends the story of the Beta Trolls’ session, ushering us definitively out of it. Meenah has her biggest impact at the very end of the Alpha Trolls’ session, stealing all their lives away, and HIC is similarly at her most relevant to Homestuck once troll society comes to an end, at which point she’s contracted to bring about the end of Alpha Earth’s humanity.
All of that could be circumstantial, however. More compelling, I think, is the four Aspects’ shared motif of duality. The Mutable Aspects all exist in binary states, and dramatic shifts seem like an inherent part of each Aspect’s experience.
Doom’s motif of Duality is the most well-trod, with the Captors’ red-blue binaries giving way to the white/black of Yin/Yang seen in the Tumor and Sollux’s Half-Ghost self. Doom is concerned with the underlying rules that constrain reality, the boundaries that determine in what ways things are allowed or not allowed to exist. Alive or Dead. 1 or 0.
To Be or Not To Be. That is the question, because as a result of this focus, Doom is interested in suffering as a state of existence, a common inheritance to all who are alive. One cannot exist while being impervious to the ravages of time and happenstance, and Doom collects all of the negative and painful eventualities a cognizant being will inevitably come across under the umbrella of “Fate”, ie: That Which We Are Doomed to Experience.
This is where the Materialistic/Idealistic division it shares with Hope shines through. Where Doom is concerned with what the individual Knows will happen due to the nature of reality, Hope is concerned with what the individual Thinks will happen due to the nature of their mind. Hope players are explicitly defined by the Zodiac as black-and-white thinkers, a tendency that shines through when we look at their relationships to Belief.
Eridan’s genocidal tendencies are powered by an all-consuming faith in the inherent supremacy of seadwellers. Jake’s forced bravado is driven by a hope that he’ll somehow turn into an action movie star over the course of his adventure. When that hope is lost, the effects are drastic, such as with Jake’s crisis of self-image in late Act 6 — echoing Cronus’ loss in faith in magic.
Finally, where Doom is inclined to accept reality head-on, Hope is more inclined to skew and distort it with it’s own ideas. Doom’s fatalistic cynisim lends itself to a kind of no-nonsense bluntness — Sollux informs his friends of their collective fates straight up, pretty much constantly. Jake sows discord among his friends with his various lies, whether directly spoken or by ommission. Not to mention Hope players’ seemingly endless capacity to lie to themselves.
Note their shared focus on the world/other people, though. Both Aspects are focused on a sense of reactivity to the world around them, whether they’re thinking about their desires for the world/people around them, or their fears of them. It’s just the opposite with Life and Rage.
Both of these Aspects are focused on action, and the impact of the individual on the world around them. Rage’s duality is the clearest: The twin masks of Tragedy and Comedy that inform everything about Gamzee. Where Hope sees a deeply meaningful world of gravitas and legacy to inherit, Rage sees reality as a mere stage for the Hero to perform in.
Contrast the Tragedy of Horrorstuck, with Gamzee at it’s center, against the Comedy of Trickster Mode, with Gamzee always hovering in the background. Gamzee makes us laugh or he makes us scared or he makes us angry, but he always makes us feel *something* through what he’s doing. We’re given very little awareness of the interiority of Gamzee’s actions — for all we know, there might not *be* any. What matters it the performance, and the consequence of each action the actor takes.
Life is just as action-focused, but fittingly it is much more concerned with the ideas behind the action. Broadly put, if the division between Rage’s actions is between the comedic and tragic, then Life’s actions are divided into the Good and the Evil. It’s a division of morality.
The dividing symbols here are the black-white snakes of AURYN — the impulse to protect and preserve vs. the impulse to dominate and destroy.
The Peixes girls also capture this duality, with Feferi’s innate predilection for benevolence and Meenah’s equal inclination for malevolence.
Arrghus’ notes: Thank you, OD. The duality of Life is further captured by Jane, who throughout her story swivels wildly between an intense desire to please her friends to the point of becoming a doormat (when Roxy almost kills her, she wants to apologize, not to mention her everything with Jake), and a suppressed desire for control and dominion that she only lets out once she snaps or gets mind controlled. The desire to please her friends and the desire to claim that which she desires war endlessly inside her. As Bladekindeyewear pointed out long ago, Jane also wields the AURYN itself.
Arrghus’ notes, further: While on the topic of AURYN, and the nature of good and evil, I wish to point out that the thing that ties Life, the AURYN, and the nature of good and evil together is the cherubs, who, as Aranea explains at length, are divided into good and evil, arrange themselves into an AURYN-like symbol during their mating rituals (unlocking limitless power while doing so), and are prominently featured on the sides of that one big clock that measures/determines life and death based on the subject’s morality.
Arrghus’ notes, final: I leave you with one final thought for consideration. Is it just me, or does the Life symbol look an awful lot like a pair of green snake tails now that we have this information?
