jake english: friend or foe?

And what is the first thing Jake does when he taps into his power in 8r8k? (Besides the force of the Hopesplosion causing the soldiers dogpiling him to spontaneously disintegrate of course.)

He forces the hand of fate, willing Jade back to life like he grabbed the pendulum of the godtier clock to stop it dead center. In the flash itself we see it conveyed as Jake symbolically holding her life in his hand, we see it in the way her comeback has her glowing white with Hope powers before they shift to the familiar rainbow of a usual godtier resurrection.

there once was a woobie named Jake
who sat on a succulent steak
"that pooter's demented"
his suitors lamented

"if only he weren't such a flake"

I have no idea how to put links in my posts but I have a great urge to deposit a link to a Jakecentric fic I wrote a while back, supposed to be something like [S] 8r8k from his POV.

Jake feels like an isekai protagonist except he never gets any of the powers of the world he got sent to. Just a regular teenage boy stuck in a story about gods and beasts. And a lot of people are convinced that he's protagonist material (Dirk, Aranea, Caliborn), but he kind of... doesn't want it. Jake doesn't mind being in the supporting cast as long as he can be useful. And he doesn't want the risk associated with being more important than that, as much as he fantasizes otherwise.

Jake is SO precious to me. i didn't care for him the first time i read homestuck but when i read it again late last year jake became one of my favourite characters. Grandpa Harley was a very neglectful parental figure and he was Strange about those blue ladies, and jake in early act 6 is just. Not that interesting to me. I simply Do Not Care for love triangles.

But then the post trickster pre game over bit happened and suddenly i Got what his deal was. Especially when he started crying in janes cell (my blorbos Should suffer more for my entertainment) He is a deeply repressed person who doesn't know who he is and is trying to fill the void (that is gender dysphoria. To me) by trying to be whatever his friends want him to be instead of who she wants to be (which is lara croft. Theres probably a cis reading of Jake with the same narrative value but i don't care that much about Narratively Significant Cisness unless you make a Really good case)

This also explains why the story is so incredibly mean to him post-retcon (for lack of a better word). The plot significance of the page of hope is gone when there's no areana to trigger a hopesplosion, and he doesnt value himself as a person enough to see his emotional significance as a friend, so he's just here for weird tea parties bc he doesn't have a purpose.

And then the epilogues happen and oh my GOD does the Jake stuff get good. The alcoholism stuff is Very well done (although not as good as in psycholonials. Read psycholonials its free on steam and the music is SO good) and Jake does indeed get reduced to a sexy lamp, but the way that happens is so interesting to me! The epilogues are so interesting about gender and dysphoria and the crushing realization that confirming to societies expectations can be Really Fucking Bad for you, and the Jake stuff is such a good example of that!! Read the candy!dance scene with john and Cry.

And then hs2 and beyond canon happen and the return of brain ghost dirk!!! And when he takes off his sunglasses and his eyes are green!!!! And the conversation with Jane on the ship where she talks about what she went through (I Support Womens Wrongs) and then Jake Tries And Fails To Kill Her!!!!! And Br8k!!!!!! This is where my analysis fails me and i just make noises at my screen to convey my excitement. Estrogen will save her. There is still time. If we werent spoiled that June would happen I would be convinced that the mystery woman silhouette would be Lara Harley (Candy!Jake would not remain crocker and also not go back to english and jade deserves all the sisters) I can't Wait to find out what's going on on the meatside after the VriskAddendum (or however well end up calling that)

estrogen will save her

I shall speak with all awe and appreciation on the matter of Jake’s power, though he only occasionally ever gets to tap into it. I perceive that Jake going full-power in the Hopesplosion seems to be Homestuck‘s equivalent to the Avatar State — rarely used, immensely powerful, downright destructive, associated with a glowing aura, and seemingly set off in moments of great emotional distress.

Several times when Jake has tapped into his powers it has been in response to people he loves being in mortal peril. We saw this in the Masterpiece where he whooped the heck out of Caliborn’s ass for almost beating Dirk to death. We saw this in the flashback where candy Jake unknowingly cured Tavvy of his peanut allergy after seeing him nearly die of anaphylactic shock. We saw it most spectacularly in 8r8k, where candy Jake essentially turned into a one-man force of nature in response to the sheer danger Tavvy was in as well as Jade dying (she got better, he made her better). It speaks volumes as to his nature, the lengths he would go to when the lives of people he cares about are on the line.

It’s also absolutely fucking terrifying. Even in the original comic itself the uncontrolled Hopesplosion that preceded the timeline careening into a Game Over was powerful enough to devastate a whole chunk of Derse, and the more conscious one Jake unleashed in the Masterpiece was basically impenetrable to the clockwork majyyks that would one day be strong enough to crack the fabric of the Furthest Ring itself. And in Beyond Canon? In 8r8k, Jake’s Hope field straight up does to mortal bodies what Lord English’s rainbow barf laser does to ghosts — utterly incinerate them until not even dust remains.