jake english: friend or foe?

I think Jake English is an interesting character, but he kinda falls victim to a similar problem as Jane (but to a lesser extent), of not really getting the opportunity to do much. I REALLY Hope he gets better in HSBC, but that's for reasons more involving my opinion on how Jane is in the epilogues, and how he is tied directly to how messed up she is in the epilogues and hsbc imho.

I want both versions of him to stand up for himself more, he's gotta believe in himself like brain ghost Dirk said. He has very high potential and I think he's going to pop off on Dirk when he meets him again. I like him and want the best for him even if he's a bit dopey sometimes.

Jake is awesome. I have no idea why people dislike him so much. I don't think he's an asshole, just very, very immature which is like. That's called being 16. He definitely doesn't get to do enough, but his conversations and interactions and the nuances of his character are super fascinating. People are just... Idk. It feels like people are just looking for excuses to hate stuff sometimes, or that they're too easily annoyed or bored. But I think Jake is great.

re: magicmirror

thats pretty much exactly how i feel! as a jake enjoyer, i think a lot of the more frustrating discussion around him views his actions (or passivity) in isolation rather than within the wider picture of him being a teenager with identity issues who grew up alone on an island. like should he have been more upfront with his feelings? yeah totally, but he is also a mentally ill teenager in a friend group of other mentally ill teenagers, of course they aren’t going to communicate healthily and not every interaction is going to be perfectly palatable.

I have rooted for him since 2012, and I will continue to root for him going forward. I was admittedly frequently disappointed with how his character was handled in late Homestuck (this guy is traumatized and considering retreating into solitude oh let’s not deal with that kind of trouble) but I was glad to see that Credits seemed to show him settling into some semblance of peace.

Then the epilogues happened, and I was extremely enraged by the direction his character was taken in both routes. (To this day I do not dare finish one page of either route.) It didn’t help that in HS^2 meat Jake was soon shunted into a bonus side story and left abandoned for years while candy Jake seemed to not be able to catch a break either. [S] 8r8k had me outright cheering as I saw one version of Jake finally make great strides in taking action and being presented as capable and competent for a change.

Some will say that he was always meant to be written as a joke character, or a deconstruction. Perhaps that is so. But I cannot help but root for him — here is a guy whose life dealt him a bad hand, who also stumbles and makes flawed choices, but has the capacity in him to accomplish great and awe-inspiring things. How could one not be drawn to that character concept?

Jake is definitely my favorite character in Homestuck and i can't say i'm surprised that a lot of people don't like him? cowardice is a part of his character, even his pre-scratch self shares these behaviors, if you've ever read the Skaianet Files. because of that i think it's really easy for people to forget that he's a teenager - not some heroic casanova.. he does care deeply about his friends and what they think of him, it's just very easy for him to fall back on bad habits (i.e isolation & lying to himself) even if he's aware of this on some level

it also doesn't really help that people rarely think of Jake outside of Dirk & Jane, even if he is very connected to those two.

i really do hope that in HS^2 that we see more of him taking action and come into his own. i'm cheering him on :P!

I like that he's the funny and likeable 16 year old version of a man who is implicitly quite a nasty piece of work. It's very easy to interpret a lot of his behaviours as selfishly ignorant, but at the same time it's very hard to deny that he is a victim of a lot of manipulation and circumstance! Really a rare and shining example of a character who's that hard to pin down as strictly a good guy you like or a bad guy you hate

i have so many thoughts about Jake English but i want to reread homestuck before tackling a proper character analysis :v I think he's a silly guy, he's definitely in my top ten favorites, and he is NOT stupid or DELIBERATELY mean he is just 16 and probably autistic and potentially brain damaged from like. the uranium. not to say hes this poor little meow meow whos never done anything wrong or anything like that, he has definitely made mistakes and hurt people and he should be held accountable for that, but its just... blown way out of proportion. sometimes people treat him like this terrible person that he is simply Not. i will usually agree to disagree on things but this is NOT one of them.

i really dislike the direction the writers took him in with the epilogues (and post-canon content in general), i feel like hes boiled down to sex appeal and being an idiot loser and its a complete misread of his character. and then in beyond canon hes just so so miserable. but even in homestuck proper, he really didnt get to do much and iirc the only time he got to reach the full extent of his powers (of even use them to a notable degree at all) was in a very doomed timeline that got retconned by john, hes kind of treated as a background character if anything, he gets a much less prominent role in the story + character development compared to the other human kids, even a lot of the trolls.

something else i dislike is something gloomysamurai mentioned, hes often thought of simply as a side character of sorts to others (dirk & jane most often) and hes kind of just mischaracterized a lot, honestly i think people are missing out!! jake is such an interesting, fun character if you give him a chance (example that comes to mind is tomatograter on tumblr/twt, i love their jake sm, hes a prime example of a well characterized jake), with others and on his own, he has so much potential thats either wasted or untouched both as a character in the fandom and as a person within the plot. MAYBE thats just a page of hope thing but its still disappointing.

tl;dr: jake english isnt stupid or mean hes just 16, i dislike how hes mostly treated as some loser or sidepiece to other characters by both the fandom and canon (esp post-canon), and he has so much wasted/untouched potential. JUSTICE FOR MY BOY JAKE !!!

and also sidenote he is so aroace i will die in this hill

I feel like Jake English is a very tragic character that I just feel so bad for throughout most of Homestuck. Something I don't see a lot of people bring up when talking about him is that the writers, mainly Hussie I presume, forgot that one important conversation happened between him and Roxy where Roxy straight up tells him that Jane likes him. Later on, however, the story treats this conversation as if it just never happened and as if Jake had no idea Jane felt that way about him or whatever. And because of this, the story then proceeds to sort of label Jake as "stupid" or "oblivious" because it was "soooo obvious" that Jane liked him.

I don't actually agree with the way later Homestuck treats Jake because of this one simple mistake lol. I also just don't know where the idea that Jake is 'stupid' came from, so I can only assume it came from the writers just leaning into this idea that he missed something that was obvious which was that his friends both liked him romantically. But that's not Jake's fault, I don't like the trope of thinking a person's a dummy because they can't suddenly read minds, and I certainly don't think it's Jake English the Fictional Teenage Boy's fault that the man writing him just forgot that he already knew something T_T

In the Epilogues, both of his romantic partners treat him by and large like hot garbage (literally, because they objectify him lol)And so does the story! The narrative wants me to think that Jake has learned helplessness in his situation and that he just won't get out of his own problems by himself. And I can sort of understand why the story would try to go there, considering he was paired up with Tavros, the actual character who encapsulates that idea a lot better. (Note: This is not to say all of Tavros' character is this one trait, mind you, it's just a large part of his personality.)

But being emotionally and physically abused by two people who are supposed to be your friends, and who you trust because you still think of them AS your friends, and not "doing anything about it" or "standing up for yourself" is not learned helplessness. I guess what I'm saying is that it's super easy to tell someone to stand up for themself when you're not being subject to the abuse at hand, and you're an outside observer. I do hope that in the later chapters of Beyond Canon they like idk...address the weird victim-blaming undertones a bit? Maybe have Jake tell the other people in his life to fuck off for once T_T?

It's disheartening seeing him get a bit bashed by other characters because he distances himself from the rest of the people actively ruining his life lol. And I always see people who hate Jake for some reason act as if he is the problem in the relationships he had, when in reality I think the problem was more so that he just wasn't ready for any relationship, has issues telling other people no, and garnered the attention of some of the most power hungry controlling individuals in Paradox Space. If anything, I think the best thing he ever did was actually just move in with John.

That was like the only moment in the Epilogues where he actually took a stand, and the ONLY reason he goes back is again because of an abusive ex making him do that T_T.

Also what Jake did in Homestuck is "bad" but it is Bad in the sense that he was literally a 16 year old boy, and he wasn't even the WORST 16 year old boy, just an average one. I think the whole point is that his friends were building up this fake version of him in their own minds when he could never meet those expectations, and it's totally normal for teenagers to just be bad at communicating. I don't think being bad at telling a girl you don't like her in that way, or wanting to break up with your somewhat clingy first boyfriend makes Jake English the worst guy ever. I think maybe some people could perhaps cut the guy some slack in that regard at least T_T

Sometimes you talk with Jake haters, and it's like he did way worse things that you somehow missed in the comic or whatever lol. This is not to say Jake English has "Never done anything wrong" either lol.

Jake is a Well Written Character and this is both his greatest boon and his greatest curse.

He's the sort of guy who *really does mean the best*, like I'm sure he has the heart in him, but can't really.. follow through on that. Caught in his own little bubble when people need to believe in him, to believe that he can see what they need of him. Always wishing he could do better, but fighting himself at every step.

As he stands, he's someone you just can't put your hopes into wholesale without some kind of contingency - he'll be a bit too self absorbed when you need him to be selfless, but he'll throw himself at a problem when you need him to let you take it alone. He'll promise to change, and you might almost believe it, right until push comes to shove, and he falls apart again, because he thinks doing the right thing is just trying hard until suddenly you don't have to try anymore and it just happens instead of something you work for every step of the way.

He has to learn to be someone you can *actually* believe in, and not just believe you can believe in. And god i hope the recent developments mean that day is actually coming soon but. well.

jake is literally nice

She's literally nice.

she's literally nice,