Many who don’t see the Marco/Janna (also known as the ”Manna” or “Janco”) ship as plausible argue that Janna doesn’t really like like Marco and only teases him to get a reaction out of him.

Honestly, as someone who is starting to develop a degree of empathy towards the Marco and Janna characters, I actually would like this to be the case, because the alternative is rather depressing.



Pretend for a moment that Janna is not only teasing Marco for fun, that she does have strong feelings about Marco, and that there are deeper meanings behind her actions. If we assume this is the case, then we can craft a rather unfortunate alternate interpretation of Janna’s character and of her role in the series.

If one assumes there is something more to Janna, then one can easily conclude:



Janna is obsessed with Marco



It seems generally agreed upon that Janna likes interacting with Marco. Just look at how happy she is to see him in “Mewberty” when he comes looking for Star’s book:



“Mewberty” is of course when Janna as a character really took off in getting the attention of the audience. That brief appearance exuded character, particularly in her rather flirty interaction with Marco.

Now, obviously, this is all just intended to be teasing to get a rise out of him.

But pretend for a moment that it isn’t, that there really is something more in how Janna interacts with Marco. This is actually not that hard to do as the interactions have, over time, become more and more extreme in the degree of teasing involved.

In “Gift of the Card” we learn that Janna collects all his personal information:



In “Naysaya” we learn that Janna reads Marco’s diary, knows the combination to his locker, and even keeps things in his locker.

In “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown” we see she has no qualms about slapping Marco on the bottom or smelling him.

One might be tempted to say that this has crossed the line of teasing for fun into outright obsession and possessiveness.

Obviously, this cannot actually be the cause, because this alternative interpretation is rather dark: Janna has an unhealthy obsession with Marco, is actively stalking him, and may even basically consider Marco almost as her own possession. Further, this would also lead to problems for Janna’s emotional well-being in the future: she cannot continue stalking him forever, especially as Marco eventually becomes romantically involved with Jackie (and potentially Star) as the series progresses. One day Janna will have to face the reality that Marco is not her own and that she cannot continue her fixation on him, and this could be painful for her.



Janna wants Marco to like her



In “Sleepover,” when Marco is hesitant to play Truth or Punishment, Janna is quick to encourage him to play:



She even makes a little nervous giggle.

Then when Marco says that he likes the color red, Janna immediately jumps in and asks if he means blood red, almost as if happy and excited to have something in common with him.



And then when Marco shuts her down, Janna looks almost sad and hurt.

Obviously this whole sequence is just a joke about how Janna is a little weird and likes the macabre, and certainly not anything more.

But pretend for a moment that there is something more. If that were the case, then the series of incidents would be about Janna trying to win Marco’s approval, and being rather hurt and disappointed when it doesn’t work. This would create a rather tragic interpretation of her character.



Marco of course is not exactly unfair in his rather harsh and suspicious treatment of Janna in “Sleepover,” for Janna can be rather cruel to Marco as well. In “Naysaya” she comes to gloat at Marco’s failure to ask out Jackie.

This of course is only a joke at Marco’s expense without any hidden meaning behind it.

But one can pretend to almost hear an unspoken second line: “Then you can hang out with me all the time! Forever!”

Which if course would never happen. Marco successfully gets closer to Jackie, is always getting closer to Star, while Janna remains at a distance, unable to get any closer with Marco. This would be a very sad situation if Janna actually did want Marco to like her.



Janna knows she has no chance with Marco

Janna is smart. She has to be in order to pull off all the antics she does, from getting access to Marco’s diary and collecting his passwords and social security number.



And she has to have known about Marco’s crush on Jackie for years. She has been classmates with both Marco and Jackie since early childhood as revealed in “Freeze Day,” and she certainly didn’t look surprised in “Sleepover” when Marco confessed:

Seeing as Janna is a smart girl, she certainly knows she’s one of the “weird kids,” who cannot compare to Jackie as girlfriend material. And seeing as she’s also friends with Jackie, and knows her well, she certainly knows that Jackie is a good person who is accepting of her eccentricities and of Marco’s eccentricities, and would make a good romantic partner for Marco.

In “Naysaya” she was already making jokes about the two getting married:



A throwaway joke yes, certainly one without any intended secret meaning behind it.

But pretend for a moment that Janna might actually care about the fact that she has no chance with Marco, in which case the throwaway joke becomes a rather pathetic self-deprecating joke about how she knows she can never compete with Jackie, and could only ever hope for third place.

Yes, third place, because Janna is also friends with Star, and is certainly smart enough to know that she would lose against Star too.

After all, everything Janna could offer Marco is something Star could do better. Janna is a weird eccentric kid who likes to play with Marco, but so is Star. And Marco has consistently show that he is willing to put up with Star’s antics much more readily than with Janna’s antics; the whole series is practically about that fact. And Star is also a lot closer with Marco than Janna could ever hope to be: Janna can steal his house keys and come over to hang out like in “Gift of the Card” or “Hungry Larry,” but at the end of the day Janna has to leave while Star actually lives there.



To Marco, Janna might as well just be a darker, inferior version of Star. And Janna certainly knows that. (And just wait until she meets Tom and realizes there’s yet another person above her on the list.)

Pretend this is all true. Janna’s role in “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown” gets darker real fast. All of a sudden Janna is blinding herself with a flashlight so as to not have to watch her friend Jackie go on a date with Marco and willfully denying reality.

Janna was awfully quick to delete a picture that was on someone else’s phone which she had no right to delete.



Janna’s love of John Keats has another meaning



As Janna reveals in “Sleepover,” she has a crush on the 18th century romantic poet John Keats.

This revelation has been interpreted by some as confirmation that Janna does not like like Marco, and is probably the intended meaning behind it.

But pretend for a moment that there might be something more to it, that there is some meaning behind why Janna might like John Keats specifically.

John Keats (1795 – 1821) was a Romantic poet of the same generation as Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. He wrote some of his best letters and poems after meeting the “unrequited love of his life” Fanny Brawne; Keats did not have enough financial stability to marry Brawne. His rather possessive love of Brawne caused him to become jealous, depressed, and he later fell ill and died at twenty-five.



Some of Keats’ work is rather dark, just the sort of thing Janna would like. Consider a few excerpts from various letters that Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne:

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it. From no others would I take it.



My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you



Or consider this poem by Keats, published posthumously:



I had a dove and the sweet dove died;

And I have thought it died of grieving:

O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,

With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving;

Sweet little red feet! why should you die -

Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?

You liv’d alone in the forest-tree,

Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me?

I kiss’d you oft and gave you white peas;

Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?



Marco is the dove.

Good thing none of the above is true, right?



Janna has no chance of winning over Marco, so if Janna actually did like like Marco, she would be doomed to have those feelings lead absolutely nowhere. So it is rather fortunate that Janna does not actually like like Marco, because if she did, it would be a slippery and fast slope to turning Janna into a rather tragic character.



I’ve mentioned that Janna sometimes reminds me of Éponine of Les Misérables; all we really needed to solidify the comparison was a revelation that she comes from a hard family life and spends so much time with Marco to escape it.

It’s a good thing “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown” confirmed that Janna has a decent enough home life:

Or at least, assuming there’s no darker meaning behind this:



That better not mean anything…

Anyways, I don’t want poor Janna to become a tragic character like Éponine. Though I could totally imagine it in my head, I never want to hear Janna say: “You know, Señor Marco, I think I was a little in love with you.”

