[Author’s Note: This is a repost of Love, Faith and Fantasy–my piece on Jake and Dirk’s character arcs and the relevance of Knights and Pages in understanding them. I thought breaking it up into chunks would make the content more accessible, and give me room to flesh out each argument. Thus there will be some updates to the content. Hopefully this will mean more people can easily approach it!]

[Pt. 1 – Knights/Pages – Service and Ownage]
[Pt. 3 – Fearful Heart] [Pt. 4 – Noble]
[Pt. 5 – As You Wish]

Now that we’ve established that Knights are a Passive class and Pages an active one, and further established that the Passive/Active divide at least partly refers to a sort of inherent Selflessness vs. Selfishness, let’s take a look at what being a Page means for Jake.

To recap, the key verb for Knights and Pages is ‘Serve’–and the two classes are tied together by the symbol of Butlers, who show up linked to Dave and Jake with particular frequency.

This means we can roughly parse Jake’s title as:

One who Serves themselves Hope, or Serves themselves through Hope.

With the corollary attribute of One who is Served By Hope

So, how does Jake’s classpect inform us about his behavior?

Let’s take a look.

I was never exactly trying to argue Jake was some kind of secret supergenius manipulator. What I tried to say, rather, is that he’s pretty much about as aware and capable as his friends are. 

Whatever mental hiccups he has that can be attributed to mental shortcomings on our part are a red herring, and it’s a red herring Jake kind of deliberately sets up. Jake’s problem is actually similar to Jane’s: Ignorance. 

But where Jane’s ignorance is mostly genuine–if stubborn and self-serving–Jake displays an intensely willful ignorance coupled with an intense aversion to confrontation. These traits typically end with him putting the burden of action on his friends, especially Jane and Dirk, and primarily so that Jake doesn’t have to let Jane down by letting her know he’d rather date Dirk instead.

Last we talked about Jake, I mentioned how soon after Roxy messaged him and let slip about Jane’s crush, Jake messaged Jane in order to talk to her about it. What I missed was that that conversation with Roxy happens much earlier, and Jake and Roxy actually have a SECOND conversation on the subject…immediately preceding Jane and Jake’s conversation.

Note here that Jake slips up and describes Jane’s pinings as “unrequited”. Jake broaches the subject, and then rambles a bit about how he wonders if people really do feel that way. Then Roxy is interrupted by something and has to go, which results in…

I’m not really vouching for the idea that this “Hmm.” is definitely Jake being given a line of quiet contemplation before he decides to do what he does next–talk to Jane–but I will advance it as a possibility. At the very least, the line is ambiguous. This kind of understated response is a little bit odd in the context of Jake being worried about Roxy’s danger, and he seemed lost in his own thoughts right before she left. 

Regardless, moving on to the next page. Despite knowing for a fact Jane has feelings for him, Jake chooses to believe Jane when she tells him she isn’t. Brain Ghost Dirk–who is Jake’s own brain–literally calls him out for doing this, so on some level, Jake is aware of it.

The question is: Why go about things this way? And how’d Jake even manage this bizarre feat of ignoring reality in the first place? If Jake knew how Jane felt, why not just answer her? And why does he seem to forget Jane ever liked him in the first place once she says No–to the point that even with Brain Ghost Dirk, his literal own brain, telling him better, he still claims ignorance?

And the answer is that Jake conflates believing in someone with believing the things they say, and Jake very much wants to be a good friend to his loved ones. What Jake fears more than anything is that he may have to confront or disappoint anyone. That he be forced to find out he accidentally hurt his friends’ feelings–or be forced to choose to do something that would do so himself.

This is why his big solution when he becomes a Trickster is to become a doormat and date everybody, explicitly so that he can make everyone happy–not because he wants to date everyone himself. (though he makes it a point to include Dirk when the girls exclude him)  And he admits his reasoning himself once the session falls apart:

So it’s more convenient for him if it turns out he really was wrong about Jane liking him–despite literal evidence to the contrary–and once he has it, he serves himself through Hope and believes it wholeheartedly:

Note that he admits to having put Jane on the spot while doing this, btw. 

He then puts Jane in a situation where she ends up helping him by acting as a confidant for months, all the while talking her up as such a great and understanding friend and thanking her. (This is an approach Jake constantly uses, by the way–think of his “standup gent” gratitude spiel in his first log with Hal. Why does Jake give it? He wants uranium–ie, Dirk’s service.)

And implicitly uses the head trauma he received during session entry as a plausible excuse for his lack of foresight, just as he uses his Hotheaded Adventurer persona to ignore possibilities he finds inconvenient. He does all this because on some level he’s genuinely convinced it’s all true, so this isn’t exactly active manipulation. But he convinced himself it was true in the first place because it was conducive to his preferred fantasies.

This reluctance to confront his friends when he thinks there’s a chance he messed up also answers a question barely anyone seems to have asked:
If Jake was having so much trouble with Dirk, why did he always go to Jane or Erisol? Why never Roxy, over the course of six months?

The answer is because Roxy knows a secret (hidden information-Void stuff), a fact that Jake cannot square with his constructed identity: That he knew Jane liked him all along. Because she told him about it. (Roxy has her own reasons for not advancing this information, which we’ll get to someday.)

But because of all this behavior, Jake’s friends find it extremely difficult to approach him about subjects he doesn’t want to be approached with, which coupled with their own issues ends with everyone bottling up their feelings until they burst, always ending in Jake getting breathtakingly….

Devastatingly…

Served.

But I don’t want to harsh on Jake here. It’s not that he doesn’t love his friends–it’s just that he’s kind of selfish about it. But that isn’t always a bad thing.
Do you know what Jake is more comfortable doing for Jane than letting her down gently over her unrequited feelings?

Literally dying for her. After she threatened him with sexual slavery.
And she’s not the one he chose to be with–but we’ll get to Dirk later. The point is this is not a boy who cares only about himself–it’s a boy who is so scared of disappointing the people he cares about he would rather lie to them and himself forever rather than face the possibility. 

Jake is selfish, sure–but you can love deeply and perform great acts based on selfish love. Another way to parse it is that he’s self-directed. Jake is demonstrably not motivated by thinking primarily about how his friends might benefit from(or be hurt by) his actions–that’s Dave’s instinct. 

Jake’s instinct is to get what he wants. But when they’re in danger, Jake wants to protect his friends more than he wants to stay alive himself. 

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt them when he’s thoughtless and selfish by choosing to believe whatever’s easiest for him, obviously. In the words of so many people who have told me about their perceptions of Dirk: “Intent does not invalidate harm.”

And there’s no one this habit of Jake’s hurts worse than it hurts Dirk Strider. 
We’ll talk about their relationship next. 

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Keep rising.