by marathemara​

There are a lot of ways to think about which Homestuck character is most important. There’s the ‘explicitly stated in canon’ (Gamzee and/or Cal); the 'fandom inside joke’ (Ms. Paint); and the 'it makes sense when you think about it.’ Today’s essay is about one of the latter: someone whose position as most important character was suggested to me facetiously by lackadaisicallexicon​, and it got me thinking. Today we’re going to talk about Jane Crocker.

Jane’s importance begins well before we first meet her, even before the Scratch that created the universe she grew up in. In the pre-Scratch universe, she kicks of a very important part of Homestuck’s plot, though it seems like a tiny detail at first. John, her grandson, hates Betty Crocker. So what?

It turns out, of course, that Betty Crocker is an evil fish alien from another universe entirely. And the first person who we know knows this is Jane Crocker, the Batterwitch’s own adopted daughter, who learns all of Betty Crocker’s secrets, including the baking-related ones, and then takes the brave step from knowing that her guardian is evil to doing something about it, devoting her life to discrediting Betty Crocker.



And then Betty Crocker disappears, and Jane thinks she’s been successful, as well she should. Of course, now we know that Her Imperious Condescension simply left Earth’s universe and came back after the Scratch to rebuild her empire and rule the new Earth with an iron fist. And it was probably Jane’s detective work that scared the Condesce away, which means that pre-Scratch Jane played a big role in making the post-Scratch Earth the way it is. We’ll get to the effects of that in a little bit.



Her great work seemingly done, Jane settles down, marries some guy named Egbert, opens a joke shop, and becomes a mother and (very briefly) a grandmother. When we first see her in the comic, she is long dead, her cremated remains taking place of pride on John’s father’s mantelpiece.

But of course, her story doesn’t end there. John, our ostensible hero, accidentally begins (or continues?) a long tradition of prototyping sprites with deceased guardians, and Jane takes on a new role as John’s mentor within the Game, baking him delicious cookies, explaining the rules to him, and starting him on his epic journey. It’s a lovely moment for Jane, John, and the bewildered reader, who’s just been thrust into the strange new world of SBURB along with John. Nannasprite is silly, and her advice is cryptic, but her silliness is an assurance to the reader that Homestuck will continue to be lighthearted for a while in spite of the massive change in scenery, and her advice sets the stage for us to figure out what’s going on in this new world.

Jane eventually leaves John to his own devices, to let him grow up without too much hand-holding. But she comes along with him after the Scratch to continue to provide moral support, delicious baked goods, and an assurance to the reader that Homestuck won’t always be dark and dramatic. We’ll catch up with her in a bit.



But first, let’s visit Jane in her post-Scratch life, which is slightly less epic than her pre-Scratch life but no less interesting. She grows up as the most normal kid in her session, as John did in his session. This time around, she’s the Heiress to the Betty Crocker fortune, but the apparent normality of her life has led her to never question where that fortune came from. While in her past life, she was the only person who knew Betty Crocker was evil, in this life she seems, ironically enough, to be the only main character who doesn’t know. Her chumhandle, gutsyGumshoe, reflects the detective work she’d done in her previous life, but she’s never been suspicious of the subliminal messages on her Tiaratop computer, or the weird and seemingly useless technology around her–only of her online friend Roxy’s insistence that Jane’s great-great-grandmother is alive, and evil, and an alien fish from another universe. Of course, it turns out that Roxy is right, and Jane is forced into yet another role: the Life player for Sburb Alpha, and seeming leader of her team.

Part of the beauty of Jane’s character is that, like Karkat, she is presented as both a parallel and a foil to John. Jane and John live in the same house in the same neighborhood with the same father. They wear basically the same shirt, though John’s smiles and Jane’s frowns, which says something immediately about the differences in their situations. They’re both amateur pranksters who feel overshadowed by the deceased grandparent in their living room.



Once again, though, the differences between Jane and John are just as important, if not more so, than their similarities. John is cheerful, nearly carefree at times, and unashamed of his feelings, while Jane is burdened by the responsibility of being an Heiress and the anxiety that comes with being a lonely teenager. In some ways, this makes her more relatable than happy-go-lucky John: we’ve almost all felt at some point like our only friends are online, and like we don’t know how to talk to even the people who we know care about us (like Dad Crocker), let alone the people we want to care about us (like Jake). Few among us can say they haven’t repressed some stress-causing emotion until it explodes all over the very people who could have helped us if only we’d asked, as Jane does at her birthday party.

John’s interactions with his peers represent an ideal: completely unworried about romance, he goes around making friends with anybody who’s not obviously evil, and when he (in a doomed timeline) discovers Vriska’s flush crush on him, he goes along to see what will happen. Because of all this, he becomes respected and leaderly without even trying. Jane’s interactions with her own peers are easier for the average teenage reader to identify with: she’s embarrassed by her crush on Jake and jealous of Jake’s relationship with Dirk. She only really talks about her feelings when she’s not in control of herself, in Trickster Mode and Crocker Tier. Her leadership is undermined by her own anxieties and Dirk’s controlling personality, and her efforts to make things better end with an embarrassing hangover for all involved. And then everyone dies and goes God Tier. We Homestuck readers have made all kinds of social mistakes, but we can thank our lucky stars they didn’t end that badly!

The Condesce finally caught up with Jane, punishing her for not being a better Heiress (and perhaps for the actions of her pre-Scratch self) by using the Tiaratop to control Jane’s thoughts and actions. (This, for those unfamiliar, is Crockertier.) In the Old Alpha, this leads to all kinds of havoc; in the New Alpha, she’s saved from herself relatively early on by Vriska, who puts her to sleep. Not early enough that she doesn’t learn from the mistakes that led to her entering Trickster Mode, but early enough that she doesn’t repeat her worst mistakes under the Condesce’s control. ARquiusprite later removes the Tiaratop, waking her and returning her to normal.

And then something wonderful happens. Something, as ohthewhomanity put it, that I didn’t know needed to happen till it happened: Jane meets her pre-Scratch self. For the first time in her life, Jane has someone older and wiser around to tell her things are going to be all right.

Jane has spent a lot of her session feeling useless. This has led her to make mistakes, like entering Trickster Mode instead of actually talking to her teammates about her feelings. But Nannasprite has also begun to feel useless since John went off and started doing heroic things on his own, and the two of them commiserate and decide to work together to make themselves more relevant. It’s the most positive and productive meeting of alternate selves yet: Jadesprite spends most of her interactions with Jade crying; Dave and Davesprite are passive-aggressive at each other about which of them is the real Dave; Dirk and his auto-responder argue bitterly about which is the real Dirk; and Rose can’t stand Jasprosesprite^2’s exuberance and lack of filter. Jane and Nannasprite, on the other hand, respect each other and are glad to meet, and that’s lovely to see.

Oh, and when I said “the two of them,” I was lying. Old Alpha Nannasprite came across to the New Alpha with John and Roxy, so now there are three Janes–two old and wise ones and one young one with God Tier Life powers. Any one Jane alone may not have been enough to bring down the Batterwitch, but all of them together are a force to be reckoned with.

