Jake English likes to fight, and likes the Brobot.
TW: Physicality, Discussion of Physical combat
So, like. It’s long past time I wrote about my favorite character in this webcomic.
Jake English is the best and most interesting character in Homestuck, and it’s pretty tragic that barely anybody knows it. This is partly due to Jake’s narrative and personality being one of the most understated and subtle in the comic, but it’s also due to a Fandom Narrative building up around him that unfortunately paves over a lot of Jake’s most unique and interesting character traits.
Let’s try and rediscover this diamond in the rough as we wait for the game that will largely center around an alternate version of him, yeah? Here, I’m going to debunk some pretty common misconceptions about Jake, what he likes, and what he dislikes.
Brawls, Wrestling–Scrums and Whatnot. And the Brobot.
Let’s put it plainly: Jake English likes fights. A lot of the discourse surrounding Jake’s relationship with the Brobot seems to ignore this, or implies that the Brobot, like, Ruined Fighting for him somehow because it was outside of what he initially envisioned when Dirk sent it:
A point commonly further backed up with this quote Jake gives Jane:
There’s a few issues with this interpretation. Jake’s initial negative reaction is his very first encounter with the Brobot, and his quote with Jane is one he delivers as a passing remark. And by simply comparing Jake’s actions before and after the Brobot is sent, we can tell Jake really wouldn’t rather deal with the monsters.
Before the Brobot is sent, when Jake is 13, he explicitly avoids going outside:
Which is easy to link to being afraid of the monsters, since Jake complains about them himself…
And has no problem going outside three years later, after the Brobot is sent. To some extent, this can be put down to Jake’s increased experience and competence. But…
That clearly doesn’t account for the entire shift, since Jake does indeed need the Brobot to save him. I’ll come back to that later, but really, we don’t even need to do all this backwards story introspection to decide what Jake Really Feels. It would be easier to just listen to the guy himself.
So yes, Jake complains about the Brobot to Jane in one passing remark…while he’s still dancing around the tangled web of his relationships with Jane, Dirk, and Roxy. A period of time when Jake, by his own admission, is thinking very much about what other people think and not entirely being honest with the people around him.
What does Jake say when he is being honest, though? What does he tell John in his letter, which Jake wrote when he was 16, after 3 years of dealing with the Brobot?
What does he tell Caliborn–who’s opinion he doesn’t care about–after entering the session, after 6 months of dating Dirk?
And what does he tell Jane about the Brobot when he’s actually being honest with her–which he’ll CONTINUE to do for six months, complaining about all of Dirk’s myriad issues and shortcomings as a romantic partner…without ever once bringing up the specter of physical fear or discomfort?
Wait, hang on. Let’s zoom in on that one, that one’s important:
Woah. Is that Jake conceptually linking the Brobot…to the thing he was most consistently excited about for the entire comic? Interesting. Wild. What could it mean. It would almost imply that after spending three years with the thing, he doesn’t really hate the experience of having it in his life.
Again, Jake is no stranger to complaining about Dirk over the course of their session–he complains to Jane endlessly about him, as well as to Erisol and even Caliborn a little. (Though never Roxy, hmm…I wonder why…(I know why and I’ll get to it in another post.))
But he never really complains about fighting or about the Brobot in general, and his general attitude towards fights seems to be changed absolutely not at all whatsoever–right up to [S] Credits.
And he ultimate views Dirk as a figure of comfort and safety, so much so that he trusts Dirk with protecting him even more than he trusts Grandma or his own powers–after all, even after Brain Ghost Dirk tells him that he wouldn’t need him if he unlocked his hope potential, Jake still chooses to simply make Brain Ghost Dirk real rather than doing anything on his own when he wants to feel safe:
So yeah, I find the idea that Jake was bothered by the Brobot on any meaningful level pretty hard to square with the avalanche of counterevidence that is in the canon. The Brobot was an imperfect gift, but Jake still ultimately enjoyed it.
Jake English likes to fight. Plain and simple. This is weird to a lot of people, and that’s fine, but it’s not actually that uncommon.
There’s plenty of sports that center around fighting or come with the risk of physical harm, like boxing, martial arts, etc. I’m a longtime fencer, and I genuinely liked going without protective padding and getting bruised from the sword impacts. Physicality appeals to some people.
Jake’s love for fighting established, feel free to join me tomorrow and we’ll take on a smaller issue. A tighter one.
I’ve written an obnoxious amount about Dirk, but seeing how quickly I was able to put that Dirk post out, I decided I’d like to use the next couple days to put out similar smaller posts about the other Alphas–Jake, Roxy, and Jane, In that order.
I’ve got at least two more posts of Jake in me before we move on to Roxy, and I should be putting out at least one of these posts a day–the next one’s already pretty much written, so I may post it early in the day tomorrow.
Hopefully, by doing this I can help people understand just how tangled and complicated the tangles of mutual hurt and mutual love are in this group of friends, and why I love this severely underrated group of Homestuck characters.
If you enjoyed this post and think others like it would be interesting to you, well–stay tuned. If you have a counterargument or you disagree with this post, feel free to respond and I’ll do my best to get back to you. I enjoy testing my ideas so long as we’re all nice about it.
Keep rising.
