The saddest panel in homestuck homestuck

Ok, I'm not a huge fan of Jake (Jope), but I came across this panel while looking for something else and it really got me thinking about him as a character. In a story that is fucking filled with tragic backstories, Jake's might be one of the saddest. He was orphaned on a jungle island full of MONSTERS and had to burn his own Grandmother's corpse just so the body wouldn't attract dangerous scavengers. He lived in the ruins of the house she built. It's stated that he had a cookalizer so he wouldn't go hungry(or he could hunt or gather in the jungle presumably), but for all his other stuff (guns, computers) it's likely he had to dig around in the ruins of the mansion.

Now, some might point out that Jade was in a similar situation, but, her island wasn't filled with monsters. She also had an intact house filled with working technological wonders, and a cosmically powerful dog guardian for company. Also, since she split her time between Earth and Prospit, she had plenty of company in her dreams.

Again, some might point out that Dirk and Roxy had it at least as bad as Jake, if not worse. Yes, their situations were horrifyingly awful, and I'm not sure you can truly compare one person's misery to another since it's a subjective emotion. However, my conjecture is that Jake was slightly worse off for a few reasons:

1. While Roxy and Dirk keenly felt the absence of their respective gaurdians, Jake actually had the chance to get to know his Grandmother and lost her. It seems sadder to me to actually lose a close family member than to miss the logical stand in for an abstract relationship.

2. For all that they were pretty much stuck in their homes (see what I did there), Roxy and Dirk still had fairly safe places to live. Roxy had the whole Carapacian neighborhood to run around, as well as the lab and her whole big house. Dirk had the least room of all the kids (and probably all the character excepting Calliope and Caliborn). However, he had access to plenty of supplies (though I have to wonder what his teeth were like after a lifetime of drinking orange soda) and futuristic technology. I don't believe he faced many dangers aside from those he created himself. Again, Jake lived in ruins in the middle of a jungle full of monsters. He did have some access to advanced technology (mainly computers), but it was actually probably a bonus for him that they entered the game because he had ripped the fuel out of his cookalizer and refrigerator.

I bring this up because Jake had never struck me as a particularly deep character. He was kind of just a happy-go-lucky, oblivious guy who acted as the catalyst for other characters' emotional strife. He was, well, a Joke. But looking at him in this light, I realize that the fact that he had a hard, lonely, danger ridden upbringing and yet still managed not only to face the world with a smile, but was actually the goddamned hero of hope? That's pretty damn amazing.

Submitted June 06, 2016 at 06:32AM by LittleUggie http://ift.tt/1Ya5uH7 homestuck