way back when Homestuck was just beginning its long journey toward the end and I was still a kid, probably my first ever real theory was that in the climax we’d see all of the Jack Noirs somehow fuse together to make Lord English - a common feeling back then was that there was no way the mobster hulk currently tearing up the Furthest Ring could really be the “real” Lord English and the ultimate big bad of Homestuck; “x is lord English” was the bread and butter of Homestuck theories at that time. it’s an opinion I no longer share, but I suppose my idea that English might actually be a conglomerate of several constituent already-established characters turned out to not be that far from the truth?

in any case, this obviously turned out not to be true; but looking retrospectively through the lens of persona alchemy, all of the Jack Noirs representing a little “piece” of Lord English makes perfect sense. Bec Noir is, of course the Green Sun-fueled angel of destruction; Spades Slick is the mob boss in control of the Felt; and Jack English is that last piece of the puzzle, the ever-mysterious force of immortality.

and Jack is of course the proto-English, the meta-villain regarded as king of all angels and the greatest threat to reality before English eventually rears his skull; English contains about as much “Jack-ness” as it is possible to have. I wonder if this sets a pattern for the rest of Homestuck’s macrocosmos though; in the same way Jack Noir is the Lord English of the B1 session, Skaia is the Green Sun of the B1 session, so does every instance of Skaia represent a little “piece” of the Green Sun? Skaia as the seat of creation, the Green Sun as the smouldering wreckage of multiple creations…

Caliborn’s own Jack Noir is also the proxy he uses to enact his will in the session; when Jack stabs Calliope, that doubles as Caliborn overcoming his sister in their own mind, making Jack a very literal manifestation of something within Caliborn…

(presumably this also makes the Black Queen a proxy of Calliope? Jack and the Queen’s relationship is supposed to be emblematic of caliginous romance, which we of course find out is just the way cherubs interact with each other; and when Caliborn takes over the Black Queen’s planet and later paints it in Calliope’s blood, that seems like a very clear proxy for Caliborn once again dominating Calliope)