A Defense/Analysis of Jane
First a few notes: I've wanted to post something like this for quite a while but various reasons left me not doing so, but I've finally gotten around to writing this up completely. Please note that I'll be bringing up points that I don't really see others state, if you wanted a newer perspective on Jane. Also, just a warning--this is going to be long. -_- Nevertheless I believe I've mostly kept it to fresh, to-the-point ideas, which I've indicated with these symbols if you're a veteran to this debate: "-------->" and "<--------"; newer points will be within the arrows. And this is a Jane-analysis thread, not a Jane vs. Kenny thread, and not an anti-Kenny thread, so Mods, please don't close this or move this to the Jane Vs. Kenny mega-thread!
Though I did see a Luke Defense post a while back, I was really surprised no one's even tried to make a similar post for Jane yet after more than a month. Hopefully I can do a comparably good job. However rather than work through every detail of Jane's appearance, I'm just going to make some comparisons and then defend her against the most common, most damning arguments made against her.
Oh and one other thing: I can't defend Jane's actions 100% as much as I'd like to because she has flaws just like everyone; she's not perfect and thus can't be defended as if she is. I'm not trying to change anyone's opinions on their choices in the game; after more than a month there's no chance of that. But if you want to hear another perspective on Jane's character, whether you're against Jane or a Jane fan or just "meh" on her, grab a snack, pull up a chair, and let's talk.
Jane is similar to Michonne
We first find out about Jane and are told she was found outside of Carver's, covered in walker guts. From this very first introduction, Jane reminded me of Michonne from the comics/tv show. (Spoilers on the show; I'm discussing the show-Michonne as I haven't really read the comics, though I know she's similar there. If you don't want to be spoiled on the show, skip down to the >>>>>>>>> below and the "Charges Made Against Jane" heading.) In fact, Jane reminds me of Michonne a lot, more so than her being just a Molly 2.0 like a lot of people were saying pre-ep 5:
1) They both use the cowcatcher technique, and they both know how to walk through a herd of walkers with the guts technique:
2) They both are initially loners when we meet them, not trusting of anyone. (But we can't blame them for that in the ZA.)
3) They both had someone young that they had cared about in the past whom they had lost, leaving them with guilt: Michonne had a young son, lost to walkers by the irresponsibility of her boyfriend; Jane lost her sister when she had no choice but to leave her behind if she wanted to live.
4) They both sort of abandoned the groups they joined: Michonne chose not to follow Rick's and Carl's footprints after the prison fell and decided not to look for them; Jane left the group at the end of Amid the Ruins.
5) They both came back too: Michonne realized she'd become just a husk of a person if she continued alone on her way without living for other people. When Michonne is by herself, she comes across a walker that bears an eerie resemblance to her, and this is when Michonne realizes she is just another walker if she has no people to care for or people to care for her. Though Michonne is normally very calm in her zombie killings, this realization upsets her. Check out this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-P5eH3uXJE
Jane also came back for Clem and Luke and possibly others. It's not shown, but Jane could have had a similar revelation as Michonne did, though probably not as extreme.
6) They both come to care for younger individuals who bring them back to humanity. Carl first believes in Michonne and believes she is "one of us," meaning one of the group, while Jane thinks of Clem as a sister. Michonne is there for Carl (she sits comforting him in the car) when his father goes nuts killing a guy by biting his neck, while Jane worries about Clem getting emotionally hurt by getting too attached to people who may inevitably die.
For example, Jane worries about Clem getting attached to AJ (who as a baby, we know will really have a hard time surviving in the ZA compared to others.) If AJ dies, Clem is going to be really broken up about it, and Jane wants to save Clem from going through that heartache. This is Jane's philosophy really--don't get attached to people because once they're gone, it's too much pain for the ones left behind.
The Walking Dead universe has been shown to be unforgiving. We only have Clem and AJ as definite survivors of the dozens of characters we've met over two seasons. We can assume that Jane has also lost many as well. Although they might not have been as close to Jane as Jaime was, those deaths certainly must've hit Jane hard enough for her to have this mentality now. And it's also actually a wonder that Clem or more characters don't have this mentality yet either, as they have witnessed a ridiculous number of deaths.
7) They're both manipulative. Yes, Michonne is too. Remember the first mission she takes on with Rick's group to Woodbury? Although she does go back to show Rick where to find the captured Glenn and Maggie, she essentially uses Rick's group to get into and out of Woodbury and expose the Governor for what he is. Rick's group is furious with Michonne when she returns from going off on her own to take care of this.
Jane is manipulative too; ho boy is she. But that doesn't mean she's a terrible person.
8) Speaking of the Governor, the entire Jane/Kenny fight is reflective of the Michonne/Governor fight. Michonne tries to expose how dangerous the Governor is like Jane tries to expose how dangerous Kenny is; Michonne tries to expose the Governor to Andrea, her one good friend at this point while Jane tries to expose Kenny to Clem, the one person Jane really cares about at this point; Michonne enrages the Governor by "killing" his walker-daughter while Jane enrages Kenny by pretending AJ is dead; and don't forget about the eye gore in both fights.
9) (This is more conjecture than the others, but still.) I get the feeling neither Jane nor Michonne trust men romantically that much at this point, thus putting up more than one emotional wall. Michonne was betrayed by her boyfriend and his friend who lost her child and so to punish them, she let them turn and used them both as her "pet" cowcatchers to keep the walkers away. Jane, like Michonne, has many walls up; these could've been in place before the ZA. I’m just assuming here, but I get the feeling Jane put up her own walls after being hurt emotionally, possibly by a man in an early relationship. Since then it seems she probably had many casual relationships or interactions at least, as she doesn't make a big deal of having casual sex with Luke and she's good at manipulating Troy.
Already being a big fan of Michonne, I soon became a fan of Jane, as their characters seemed so similar to me. However, Michonne is more loved by fans because her kinder side has been explored more, she's not nearly as manipulative as Jane is, and her actions haven't resulted in the death of a well-loved character. Not to mention people love her bad-ass katana sword skills. 
But Jane and Michonne are nevertheless very similar, and though Jane may not be able to redeem herself completely, I think there is a chance some people can grow to like her almost as much as they like Michonne if Jane's character gets the chance to be explored more in Season 3.
->>>>>>>>>Okay, so moving on from Michonne now.
Charges made against Jane:
If you're a veteran of this debate, and since the contents of this section have been discussed much over the past month, I've taken the liberty of highlighting via these symbols: "-------->" and "<--------" the points that I believe I don't see made that often, indicated within the arrows. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me.
1) Jane argued that Clem could leave the group and survive on her own if she had to.
--------> Lee could determinantly say something similar to Clementine:
Lee: "It's going to stay bad out there until it gets better. But it will, one day. Until then, though, don't trust anyone. You have so much more growing up to do. People will see how small you are and try to take advantage of you and try to get you to do things you shouldn't."
Clem: "I won't let them."
Lee: "Good."
For that dialogue, go to 1:14:28.
Granted, Lee's determinant message here isn't exactly the same or as extreme as Jane's, though Jane would definitely agree with Lee's message here. <--------
To me, it sounded like Jane's words were supposed to be more of a confidence-lifter to Clem, that Jane believed Clem had the ability to survive on her own if it ever came to that. At the end of Amid the Ruins however, Jane states that she doesn't want to be around when Clem may meet her doom. Jane says this because although she has some faith in Clementine's survival, Jane also knows that Clem is still a small girl, and things will not always go her way. This is probably another reason why Jane came back to protect Clem.
When Jane tells Clem that she can leave the group if she has to, at this point, Jane cared mostly about Clem. Yes, it was terrible of her to suggest that Clem leave other human beings behind to die if Clem could’ve helped them. But at this point, Jane wanted Clem to live primarily; she didn’t care as much about the others, as horrible as that is.
Also note again that Jane did come back to take care of Clem. Jane says, “All I can do is…promise you I won’t abandon you again.” After this point, suggesting that Clem go off and survive on her own is NOT on Jane’s agenda anymore.
Jane was right; the group did fall apart when Arvo, Bonnie, and Mike left, because of Kenny’s actions. Jane is just being realistic, and showing Clem all the options. Interestingly, Clem going off on her own did become one of the options at the end (though I think Jane was more confident Clem could survive on her own rather than with a crying baby as well).
--------> -"It's better to leave before they drag you down with them." At first it seems Jane's referring to how she had to leave Jaime before Jaime dragged Jane down to death with her. But could she have meant something else? Remember that when Jane said goodbye to Clem on the observation deck, it seemed like she could've been talking about something Jane had experienced personally when she was warning Clem, "You don't owe them anything. They might make you feel like you do. Like it's all one big happy family. But when push comes to shove, you'll see." From this (and this is just a headcanon) I feel like Jane and Jaime may have been betrayed by their group (perhaps the Washington D.C. group Jane had been running with), or some people that they had come to trust. Possibly this group led to Jane and Jaime into getting cornered, and Jane having to leave Jaime behind. o.o This could explain why Jane doesn’t blindly trust entire groups, but rather first puts her trust in individuals she feels she can trust.<--------
-Jane said that Clem should abandon the rest of the group. Now let me be clear--I do not agree with Jane here. But I’ll try to explain what she meant. Jane clearly does not hate the group. She says this. However she realizes some members of the group are more likely to make the group less safe than others, and she is correct on this.
--------> -She was trying to drive the group apart. No actually, she was trying to keep it together, at least before it was just Jane, Clem, AJ, and Kenny. In the beginning of No Going Back when Kenny seems about to shoot Arvo and the rest of the group sides against him about going to Arvo's "house", Jane acts as an intermediary, not taking a side but rather rationally saying,
Jane: It's worth the risk to check this place out. Trust him, don't trust him, it doesn't matter. We should go anyway. We just need to be careful. It can't be far from here.
Kenny: You stay outta this! You're the reason these fuckers came after us in the first place.
Jane: Don't try and pin this on me.
Bonnie: Think about the baby, Kenny. If there are supplies, we need 'em. We ain't gonna last much longer without more food. We gotta take a chance.
Jane: Unless someone's got a better plan.
[Kenny puts away his gun.]
In addition, Jane is the one to resolve the argument off-screen between Mike and Kenny when they stop to rest.
Luke: Guess it took a woman to talk some sense into 'em. Looks like Jane broke it up.
Also, Jane is the one to volunteer to go find Luke, Nick, and Sarah, to literally make the group bigger and NOT smaller.<--------
--------> And last but not least, if you go back to Howe's with Jane and let the timer run out when deciding to let the family in, Jane is the one who decides to let them in. Not only does this prove she doesn't want to drive groups apart, but it also marks a critical point in her development as a character from a loner to someone who will give people a chance, and shows Clem's positive influence on Jane!
Patricia: Thank you, Jane. Thank you so much.
Jane: Of course. <--------
2) She always had it out for Kenny. Jane was sympathetic towards Kenny in the beginning, and hoped that they could all work together.
-------->She says: "You’re the only one that he trusts. That he really trusts. That means you’re the one that’s gonna have to pull him back. He’s counting on you. If we’re really going to make this work, we’re all counting on you."
In addition, she sympathizes with Kenny at the campfire scene:
She says, "That guy needs a drink more than any of us." That's not really a malicious thing to say, especially after Jane had just taken a drink herself.<--------
3) She was a bad sister. People change when they get older. And it sounded like Jane just teased her little sister a lot, like a lot of siblings do. Putting gum in Jaime's hair and cutting her hair oddly were light-hearted and mischievous pranks, but never black-hearted malicious things.
But Jane does say some interesting things about her sister. “What could I do. She thought I was her best friend. That couldn’t go…unpunished. Every summer we’d go to this amusement park in Virginia. But the best part wasn’t the rides…It was that nobody knew us there and I’d…I’d pretend we weren’t sisters. Just…friends.”
--------> I’m thinking what Jane means here is that she pretended they were good friends, and not two people bound by a pre-existing bond, forced to be together just because Jane's parents told her to look out for her little sister (when Jane might not have wanted to). Instead she pretends that they chose to hang out together, and that they chose to enjoy each other’s company. It seems from this that Jane must’ve felt some societal pressures on her that she had to be “a good sister” to Jaime when people who knew them were around.<--------
Also, I know what Jane might be getting at. In high school, I often thought it was odd to hang out with my sister (we were apart by one year) because I just thought then that it wasn’t “cool” for siblings to hang out together. I felt that everyone else felt it would be odd if we hung out, and so I felt it would be odd if we hung out. Happily I've grown out of that stupid philosophy.
It’s very possible that in the past Jane wasn’t a good sister. She may not have been as caring or considerate or nurturing towards Jaime as she could have been. But it sounds like she tried to step up to the plate when the ZA struck, and did everything she could to keep Jaime going. Perhaps post-ZA Jane felt she had to make up for her failings as a sister before.
4) She had sex with Luke, and someone died because of it! Yeah this was a bad decision on both Luke’s and Jane’s parts. But keep in mind that this happened after Jane had been staring off into space reflecting on Jaime and Sarah, as well as after she aggressively confronted Arvo when she didn’t want to act that way. She was almost reduced to tears at this point. However in the game this is very subtle, because Jane was suppressing her emotions; she's trying to conceal her vulnerability from Clem. But you can still hear it in her voice actress' performance. She drops the gun in a disgusted manner and says, "I can't believe I've gotten into this mess. Taking some stupid kid's stuff...Like a bandit." Go on and listen to it if you don't believe me:
3:37 until 4:04
Then Luke comes up, and I imagine there was some comforting going on before they had sex. "-------->"In other words, Jane was upset, and they both had sex to feel better.<-------- And though having intercourse at such an inopportune time isn’t excusable, I can understand why she did it.
5) She's a liar and a manipulator. She lied about the baby, true. She did this because this was her (poor, hastily-made) plan to separate Kenny from Clem. Even she admits it was a bad plan. I’ll touch on this more later.
--------> She lied to (seduced) Troy, but duh, Clem lied to Troy too. Plus Troy doesn’t seem too bright and it seems he'd be easy to fool; Clem fooled him pretty easily enough outside the comic book store, and Kenny fooled him when putting the radio under Clem's jacket. Not to mention Troy backed the truck up into Carver's place making a huge hole in Howe's protective walls against walkers. So yeah, Troy's not too bright. Therefore Jane manipulating him is not too great a feat.<--------
6) Jane shot Troy in the dick; therefore she is heartless. Troy has done some bad things. We have no idea exactly what happened between Troy and Jane (somehow I doubt Troy raped her though it is possible; apparently originally Troy was supposed to have sexually abused her somehow but they cut this); really Jane was seducing Troy to try to escape Carver's. He was her original escape plan before meeting up with Clem's group. Yeah, shooting a guy in the junk is terrible and he might not have deserved that, but we really don't know. For example he did possibly seem to have some weird pedophile vibes going on with Sarah and Clem in the beginning of In Harm's Way when asking about their bathroom trip, though this might be a stretch.
Yeah, Troy is kinda weird.
-------->Also, as I said before, I get the vibe that something happened to Jane where she put emotional walls up to defend herself from being hurt; remember not many are born with such high emotional walls. Possibly before Jane was in some relationship that did go sour. The end resulted in her putting up walls, not allowing anyone in except those she already knew and loved/trusted (e.g. Jaime and later Clem and Luke). From there she could've had casual sex though not many committed relationships, never bringing her walls down completely. I imagine when she shot him, Jane thought of Troy as every asshole she's ever been with. Perhaps she got revenge unjustly on Troy.<--------
7) She left her sister behind and so she is a terrible person. Jane hates herself for leaving her sister behind. Also keep in mind she had no other option, if Jane wanted to live. --------> The way she describes it, it sounds like Jane believed leaving her sister could have worked to get Jaime moving. She says, “So I tried something else. I told her she could have what she wanted. And I left her there.” The key word here is “tried.” Jane tried to get Jaime to move with one last option she had not tried before--giving Jaime what she wanted and hoping Jaime would realize that waiting to die was not what she really wanted. In other words, Jane left Jaime hoping they both would live rather than stay, knowing they both would die. 2 alive is better than 2 dead, though the probability of one is higher than the other. But Jane wanted to take that chance.<--------
8) Having Clem shoot Kenny was murder, and Jane knew it. I’ve already argued about this in the Jane/Kenny Megathread so I’m not going to talk about the choice here.
9) She abandoned Sarah in the trailer. Keep in mind that in this scene, Jane was reliving her worst nightmare. Sure we like to think we'd all redeem ourselves if we had a situation like that come up, but Jane straight up panicked. She couldn't deal with it. She didn't leave Sarah out of malice, but out of fear of witnessing the same traumatic event occur again. However, she tries to take on her fears of being surrounded by walkers with a young non-respondent girl to save. Jane is the first to run to the door being pushed at by walkers, and she takes on the harder job of fighting off half a dozen walkers at once streaming through the door while telling Luke and Clem to get to safety.
And she’s the last to leave the trailer after Clem and determinantly Sarah.
True; she gave up on Sarah, but we should remember that Jane barely knew Sarah for two days and barely talked to her; she has no way of judging her and making an informed decision about her, even though Jane has to make a decision about her here. Regardless of if you do leave Sarah in the trailer or not, Jane is pretty darn broken up about it when she's sitting at the picnic tables. After they come back from the trailer park, Jane is sitting by herself just staring off into space. It's pretty clear she's upset, probably because Jane was reflecting on what she'd just done in the trailer park, and how it reminded her of Jaime.
Clem: "Are you okay?"
Jane: "Yeah...yeah. Just a lot's happened today. And I don't know if...Well, it's sometimes good to have someone watching your back."
You can also say
Clem: "You know, you don't seem okay.
Ok, so Jane can say, “A lot’s happened today.” We know that Jane has probably thought of her sister and the worst moments of her life at least four times today if you go through all the events, and I bet you she normally tries to forget about those things as much as she can. She’s hurting by the end of it all, but she doesn’t express this to Clem.
10) Jane was unhealthily obsessed with Clem. Keep in mind it seems for a long time that Jane only cared about her sister, only for one person. Then Jane was forced to leave her behind. Also, Clem isn't a replacement of Jaime. Jaime didn't want to live. Clem clearly does. Jane can see that, and she's impressed by Clem on many occasions. Jane wants Clem to survive, just like she wanted Jaime to survive. But because Clem is still a little girl, Jane’s worried Clem could succumb to death in this world like Jaime also succumbed to death (though Jane knows that Clem would probably go down fighting, unlike Jaime).
Jane's perspective during the final fight
Hopefully this section won’t get this entire thread closed or moved to the Kenny/Jane choice megathread, but as I’ve said I’m explaining what Jane was thinking, NOT what I thought was the best decision. Nevertheless I’ll keep this section as short as I can, and I'm not saying one choice was better than the other; I'm just explaining what Jane thought the best thing to do was.
--------> Before the fight, Kenny was driving Jane, Clem, and AJ to where he thought Wellington could be, against Jane’s will. They had been driving for a few hours. Keep in mind at this point we don’t know if Wellington even exists, let alone where it is. Jane states, “Look, even if there is someplace up here, it could take us weeks to find it. We could get back to Howe’s in a day.” However Kenny refuses to budge on this. In Jane’s mind, Kenny was bringing them on a suicidal mission, looking for an unknown location with no food and dwindling fuel for the car. In the truck, they say:
Kenny: You wanna die out here?
Jane: Better than waitin' to die next to you.
To Jane, Kenny's irrational and stubborn behavior was going to get them all killed. She didn’t want this for Clem or herself. Perhaps she didn't want this for Kenny either, but she knew Kenny couldn't be persuaded to abandon his own plan; she had already tried to convince him.
At the rest stop, Jane’s original plan was to separate Kenny from Clem somehow. She didn’t plan on killing Kenny from the start, and she didn’t know that Kenny would kill her from the start. But she realized she had to kill Kenny when 1) he threatened to kill her verbally (he can do this 5 times) when he had no evidence that Jane had done anything wrong before Jane ever threatens to kill him (she can threaten him 1 time), 2) he followed up on his threats by fighting with and trying to kill her, and 3) after Jane gave him the option to leave them peacefully, and he didn’t:
Jane: Just go.
Kenny: I ain’t goin' nowhere.
Jane: Fine. [Jane charges Kenny with the knife.])
At this point, Jane decided that it wasn’t safe for Kenny to be around Clem anymore if he was going to irrationally kill people without evidence and so since he wouldn’t leave them alone, she decided to kill him.<--------
I’m not saying this was the best course of action; if it was me I’d have tried to find some more peaceful solution. I’m just trying to explain what Jane was thinking here.
When they got to the rest stop, Jane just wanted to get Kenny away from Clem, and back to someplace she knew (Carver's) rather than looking around in the frozen wastelands for a place that might not exist (we didn't know then if Wellington did exist). However there probably weren’t many ways for Jane to separate Kenny from Clem without Kenny getting dangerously violent or Clem not wanting to 100% leave (depending on the player.) So yes her plan was terrible, and she could have tried to solve the matter peacefully, but I’m not sure if a more peaceful approach would have gained the results Jane wanted.
--------> One last thing too. In some places it seems Jane was written quite poorly, as what she does as a character does not match up with what she did elsewhere. One glaring detail is that Jane never confesses about AJ during the fight, even when she is shallowly stabbed by Kenny.
If you'd like to see it look here: 
Start at 5:51. The first stabbing actually takes place between 6:08 to 6:18
Jane is a survivor, and for her to just let herself die without saying anything doesn't match up. She has been stabbed once already, and is literally literally inches from death. If she dies, Clem will ultimately be left with Kenny, and remember Jane got into this fight in the first place to prevent Clem from being left with him! The writing just doesn't work. <--------
Ok that's it! I'll gladly try to defend Jane with any argument you throw at me, as long as it's done respectably. 
I can't promise I can always defend all of what she's done though, because like I said, she is human and she makes mistakes. Also if you want to discuss the actual decision to shoot Kenny or not, I'll gladly do that with you in the Kenny/Jane Megathread but not here.
For those of you meeting me down here, thank you for reading all the way through.
A quick summary:
1) Jane is similar to Michonne in that they’re both loners and they’ve lost young people they care about, but they’ve come to care for children (Clem and Carl), who brought back their humanity. So many fans love Michonne, and as she’s so similar to Jane I feel Jane should be given a chance as well.
2) Jane is an incredibly misunderstood character. Her philosophy is to not attach herself emotionally to others because if you do, once they inevitably die in the unforgiving ZA, there will only be pain for you; she was trying to prevent Clem from the same pain. Jane didn’t save Sarah because she was living her worst nightmare all over again, and she was scared. She suggested to Clem that Clem could survive on her own if she needed to, in order to stay alive. In addition if you let the timer out when deciding to let the family in, Jane makes the decision to let them in, showing she's grown as a character and Clem has had a positive influence on her.
3) Jane’s plan to get Clem away from Kenny was stupid as heck, but her options for keeping Clem from Kenny were limited. Jane did not want Clem to follow Kenny on what she thought was a suicidal mission to find Wellington which might not have even existed in a frozen wasteland, when there was the option to go back to a location that they already knew of (Howe's) in a warmer area. In the final fight, Jane gave Kenny the option to leave them peacefully, but because he would not leave and because Kenny kept trying to kill Jane with no evidence she'd done anything wrong, she deemed him unsafe for Clem to be around and so decided to kill him.
Comments
Excellent post.
You should add in the fact that if you allow her to make the choice about the strangers, she opts to let them in, which shows a departure from her loner persona.
Ah yes, you're right. I shall!
Edit: Done!
Nice post, I agree that many people don't understand Jane's character at all. It really disappoints me.
All good points, shes not evil or anything shes just another screwed up person in this world.
For me I stayed with her
To avoid being alone
As she was actually going to listen to me and not just do whatever the heck she wanted, it was more option 1 though
I absolutely love Jane´s character.
I expect huge LAPs soon...
Those are the same pretty much the same reasons why I stayed with her.
Why couldn't you use Michonne from the comics?
What's a LAP?
Agree 100% with this thread!
Well I haven't read the comics, though I have read the wiki summaries on them. Are there more similarities there between Michonne and Jane I haven't mentioned?
This is a very good post sir/madame! It was hard to pick who to go with so I didn't choose anyone I left alone with the both of them dead, kinda want to make another save and see where the Jane one goes as I am interested to where it leads.
Good points here. I never really saw her as a Michonne character but I'm far more familiar with Michonne from the comics than I am with the character in the show. Jane actually seems a lot more human and actually more normal than Michonne to me but I guess we have seen glimpses into who Michonne really is. Not many though. I can figure Jane out a lot easier. But it's still a valid comparision.
As for the defence of the criticisms, you've made a LOT of points and they're good but many are really about the same events. The ending events, for example, are covered a couple of times. Personally, when considering Jane I tend to discount the end because it was batshit mental. The ending of ep5 and her actions seem so out of character to me and it's a massive shame because I think a huge number of issues people have with Jane come down to what happened at the very end. A lot of people were like WTF was she thinking? But I think a fairer question is WTF were the writer's thinking?
Many other actions from Jane felt exactly right to me, including wanting to leave Sarah. A huge amount of what she did comes down to her lone survivor personality being tainted (or perhaps in ways honed) by what happened with her sister. She's sensible and clever but needs people more than she'd like - hence what happened with Luke and her attachment to Clem. But it's clear she is right about a great many things.
The one act that leaves for me is shooting Troy in the crotch. That's a pretty damn big character moment there and, for me, an exceptionally negative one. You say Troy was a horrible person but we don't know that. Being weird does not make it open season to be shot in the junk. Jane in one ending appears to judge Clem for watching Kenny kill Carver and yet this is from a person who shoots someone in the dick? Doesn't fit for me. It feels like a story thread was left undeveloped or perhaps the writers altered course with Jane's personality from ep3 to ep4.
So for me, we have two Janes. Jane 1 shoots a guy in the dick, is totally mental, will look for a fight that could kill her and will hide a newborn baby in a frozen car and not actually tell anyone he's alive even if it would save her life - pretty crappy survival strategy. And then because she is mental will then judge a kid for being around a different act of violence. Jane 2 is a survivor. She does what it takes to keep going, she knows groups are fragile and yet she also needs to be connected to people in spite of what she'd like and what happened with her sister.
Jane 2 is awesome. She's an excellent character.
Thank you for a longer version of the same threads we've been reading for a month.
"All i can do is... promise you I won't abandon you again."
Leaves her in a truck surrounded by walkers
Leaves baby in a car during a snowstorm
I stopped reading after "Jane is similar to Micchonne"
Michonne is nothing like her. Michonne actually cares about other people and wouldn't abandon someone if they were weaker than her .
Long Ass Post.
Oh my gosh, Clem_Is_Awesome is making an anti-Jane post, oh unknowable universe!
It's hilarious how you respond to a detailed, thought out, long post with two pieces of anecdotal evidence.
Jane does care about other people.
Sounds like your shouldn't have stopped reading.
Looks like the fighting is trying to ensue again. Man, all I want to do is talk and read about this game without all the hate.
true true.
The two days I've been here has been fun! But it's starting to scare me to be honest o.o
Hahhahahahhah lets have a Kenny Jane argument shall we? personally I think that Having clem let Kenny knife jane and then shoot him in the head is the best, so lets move on now.
Oh. I was waiting for someone to defend Jane the way you did.
Even if I'm not the number one Jane fan (despite her being very well written), I have to agree with pretty much everything. I would have never thought to compare her to Michonne (totally unexpected, but greatly matching), as well as liken her words to Lee's last speech. It's new angle of Jane's character here, was intriguing to read. I like how you put this all together - her humane part and the survival one, summarized features, not just the blind babble I used to see around.
About Troy being pedophile... Well, no need jumping to conclusion, though. I didn't see any relatioship going on between Troy and Clem, although I agree he was dumb as a bag of hammers.
I know there was a lot of work you put into this post, glad you did. Mods, don't move this, more people should see it. Always a pleasure to read something interesting.
Sigh maybe this thread should just be closed before this gets out of hand again. Well at least I've said most of what I've wanted to say.
TL;DR
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If only it was hilarious that two pieces of anecdotal evidence hold up against a detailed, thought out, long post. In the end it's just an accumulation of every post that's been made before it and we're still left wanting a reason to see Jane in a better light.
Nah, I wasn't outright assuming Troy was a pedophile, just pointing out it was odd. But I've changed the post accordingly on that.
And thanks a lot for the kind words.
Don't worry about people who can't start a civil discussion. Not worth it.
In bold at the end. "A quick summary." Although it's very cursory.
Well, Troy is a walker now, let him hang out with whoever he wants to.
You're welcome, friend. It's nice to chat with you again.
Pointing out those 2 little details is all that's needed to render this thread useless.
Because you can surely be proud of writing something useful.
about what?
Countering the OP.
"Welcome to the family kid" -Mark, Starved for Help
I'm gonna go look at clems drawings now before I get yelled at o.o
Actually, that truck wasn't "surrounded" by walkers.
There were two at most that I saw that were a real danger to Clem, and though there were more from a distance, they were a good distance away if you look. The only ones Jane saw were Walker 1, which she watched Clem shoot, and Walkers 2 and 3, which Jane led away from the truck. She didn't see Walker 4 under the truck just like Clem didn't see it, and 5 and 6 were so far away they weren't a threat. Jane had to leave Clem to lead Walkers 2 and 3 away from Clem. Since Clem had a gun, I think Jane also assumed Clem could defend herself if need be. Go back and watch if you'd like:
Go to 1:16:31 until 1:17:15
As to your second point that Jane left the baby in the car. I've already said this was a stupid plan; Jane agreed it was stupid. Of course Jane believed she would survive the fight and retrieve AJ after the fight as others have said. However have you considered the possibility that Jane believed she was protecting, in addition to Clem, AJ from Kenny as well? Her plan from the start was probably not just to let Kenny bring Clem on his supposedly suicidal mission to Wellington, but to prevent Kenny from bringing both Clem and AJ marching to their possible doom.