Idk if you’ve already mentioned this but wrt Jake being smarter than he presents himself as, there’s also this dialogue about Tavros (and Vriska) early in Act 5:
GC: H3S NOT R34LLY H3R FR13ND THOUGH
GC: YOU SHOULD S33 HOW H3 T4LKS 4BOUT H3R B3H1ND H3R B4CK
GC: SH3 H4S NO 1D34 HOW B4D H3S PL4Y1NG H3R
GC: BUT TH3N 1 DONT TH1NK H3 KNOWS HOW B4D SH3S PL4Y1NG H1M 31TH3R
GC: S33 1TS COMPL1C4T3D
But I haven’t been able to find anything in the rest of the comic that builds on this quote. What do you think?
The thing is, this quote doesn’t refer to Vriska and Tavros. It refers to Doc Scratch. Here’s the full quote:
Terezi and Aradia are talking about how Scratch distracted them, giving Vriska the opening she needed to hurt Tavros in the first place.
I’m glad you sent this though cause it gives me an opportunity to clear something up. I’m assuming you’re referring to this post where I argue Jake is “the most intelligent character in Homestuck” and “hides it deliberately”, and I gotta say, in retrospect I kind of hate that post?
I haven’t deleted it because I think it’s a lot better than people thinking Jake is a clueless moron, and deleting it wouldn’t stop the reblogs anyway. But I think I overstated my point pretty hard.
Jake is really perceptive and aware–much more than people give him credit for–but he’s not like, moreso than any other one of the kids. He’s just about on par with them. What people mistake for cluelessness is actually willful ignorance that Jake uses to avoid confrontation because it scares him, basically.
Basically a much better way to understand how I think Pages get people to help them with what they want and present fronts to live out their personal fantasies is this post, where I describe Knights and Pages as the Passive/Active ‘Serve’ pair.
I think reading Pages as a class that is out to serve themselves and inspires others to serve them is a much more comprehensive and accurate description of how Pages act in general.
I don’t think that behavior is always particularly intentional and highly ceberal/manipulative though, and I certainly wouldn’t say what happened with Tavros and Vriska was at all equal.
Tavros found himself outmaneuvered, manipulated and coerced at almost every point with Vriska– that she did it all out of a desire he inspired in her to help him become stronger doesn’t really change that.
You can abuse someone while wanting to help them every step of the way, and Vriska’s intentions weren’t even quite that clear-cut and noble. Things with Dirk and Jake are substantially more complicated, and I don’t consider Dirk’s behavior abusive or coercive at all (Hal is another story).
But that I’m trying to reframe how Pages are perceived to act in general shouldn’t be an indication that I’m trying to establish a new parallel between Dirk and Jake’s relationship and Tavros and Vriska’s.
They are two completely different arcs with totally different contexts, and how I read Jake and Tavros as characters doesn’t mean that either was less abused–Jake by Hal, Crockertier!Jane and Aranea, Tavros by Vriska.
But uh yeah basically check out that other post, I wrote better in that one and I had new info to add there anyway. Thanks a ton for sending me an ask I could use as a loose excuse to get this off my chest.
Flying through Storytelling 