Wait I got more. What if Calliope is the Jungian shadow of Nanna. John knows Nanna only through stories but she is nonetheless an inspiring figure to him. Calliope was the brother to Caliborn as Nanna was the brother to grandpa and represents regret over her unrealized potential in altering the way he grew up and stop him from becoming the monster. Calliope also wears disguises like Jane, but that's more surface level stuff. Alt Calliope echoes Johns wish for a matriarch to set things right.
A matriarch to set things right? I’m curious what led you to that.
Red-zora has also suggested Calliope as a Jane/Nanna analogue, but even though there are some interesting points in favor of that reading, I’m not really convinced of it.
I think you’re inventing motivations for Nanna -- she only knows that Grandpa went on to great commercial success, nothing of his later character. Nanna’s main regret is that she didn’t get to marry her brother (assuming she isn’t concealing sour grapes about Grandpa inheriting Crocker Corp in her stead, as Jane’s business ambitions might imply). But the sibling incest desire is a key feature of cherubic pairings, so that’s not nothing. Likewise there’s some synergy between Grandpa’s attraction to blue beauties (a cipher for death) and Nanna’s rebirth as a cyan ghost. I have an old post on that topic (x, csa cw), but tbh I think it’s one of my old posts that hasn’t aged well, at least as far as Nanna’s concerned... but by this logic you would also need to map Rose and Dave to the cherubs, since the subject recurs between them and their double suicide to make the Green Sun is initiated by a sex joke (x), though that linked post doesn’t even attempt to assert a reason for the imagery... it becomes notable that Davepeta and Jasprose debate incest in front of Jake? Idk man
For my money, the main thing that supports Jake/Jane as a cherubic pairing (though not necessarily analogous to Caliborn/Calliope) is the way early Act 6 weaves back and forth between them... in the same way that recent reading of Act 5 Act 1 (x) started to feel out the contours of a single mythic structure distributed among seemingly random cuts to various trolls, I wonder if a close reading of Act 6 Act 1 could yield the picture of a single mind divided into the poles of Jake and Jane, as though they were cherubim... same would apply to Dirk and Roxy if that panned out, though.
I was always a little frustrated that the cherubs didn’t seem to follow rules of manifestation like the trolls, so I’m drawn to the idea that the cherubs would instead provide a model for how to reframe other parts of the story? That’s not something I have evidence for though, it’s just willful speculation
