"I'm gonna take a trip to the underworld, don't wait up!"note
Tom vs. Jannanigans
is the fourth Star vs. the Forces of Evil fan comic created by Tumblr user MoringMark, following Ship War AU, SVTFOE Metaverse and Echo Creek: A Tale of Two Butterflies.
Taking place parallel to the series, instead of following the adventures of a safe boy and a magical princess from another dimension, we instead follow the adventures of Janna, Echo Creek's resident abnormal aficionado, and Tom, the bizarrely saner crown prince of the Underworld, as the two forge a friendship even more unlikely than that of the princess and the safety boy.
This is not an AU comic. The story is meant to be running parallel to the canon, main story of SvtFoE. All spoilers from the show will be unmarked.
Tom vs. Jannanigans provides examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: With Janna becoming the protagonist, she's in a lot more dramatic circumstances than she was in the show, giving her more emotions to express.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Janna is a lot nicer in the comic than in her show counterpart, giving emotional support to Tom when he starts crying and feeling guilty when she damages something important to Tom for example. Justified in that the comic is about her developing relationship with Tom, giving her more kinder moments with said character.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Tom and Janna barely knew each other in the first three seasons of the show and only become friends around Season 4. Here, they both have met already in the events of "Blood Moon Ball" and had developed a close friendship during the events of the second season.
- Ascended Extra: A mild example. Mackie Hand has a pretty minor posthumous role in one episode of the series and only appears at the end of the same episode as a ghost, but he becomes an integral character in Chapter 3, which happens in his mind, and we are shown more of his backstory and how he actually died.
- Belated Love Epiphany: Janna realizes she has feelings for Tom... just about the time he gets back together with Star.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Tom and Janna share one in the finale.
- The Cameo:
- Glossaryck and Shawn both had small cameos in "Sir Crandle Doesn't".
- Ponyhead make a small appearence in "To Make A Head Spin".
- Jackie appears in one of Janna's memories after the beginning.
- Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Mackie Hand got so deep into character that he thought the movie he was acting in was all real and he really was a hero facing against a villain. Which ended up killing him when he jumped from a moving car. Tom and Janna help him realize he's just an actor and he thanks them for helping him regain his sanity. Now his only problem is that he doesn't realize that he's dead.
- Comically Small Bribe: To get Glossaryck to help her and Tom sneak into the Bureaucracy of Magic, Janna offers him a pudding cup. Glossaryck refuses. That is until Janna ups the offer to two pudding cups.
- Deal with the Devil: Janna's fascination with the morbid and occult leads to her making a deal with Tom. In exchange for citizenship in the Underworld, she'll help him with his royal duties. Tom lampshades how making a deal with a devil NEVER ends well, only for Janna to reveal she's flipping this trope on its head:Tom: Are you seriously making a deal with the devil?
Janna: No. You are making a deal with me. - Delayed Reaction: During "Once in a Blood Moon," Janna stows away in Tom's carriage via his iron maiden-themed wardrobe. Later, he's rummaging through it to find his tailcoat, only for Janna to hand it to him. He's so caught up in his preparations for the Blood Moon Ball that Janna's presence doesn't register... for six whole panels. Janna's smug grin when Tom comes storming back to the wardrobe says it all.Tom: Who. The hell. Are you?
Janna: Name's Janna. Who's asking? - Demoted to Extra: Star and Marco appear once in a while, but they barely had any relevance to the plot.
- Doomed by Canon:
- If you had already watched the series, you know that Star and Tom's relationship is destined to fail and that Star and Marco will end up together.
- Also "Hell-bent" is about Janna going to the Magic Realm to save Tom. If you had seen this show's Grand Finale, you will know he's still there, which means Failure Is the Only Option. The dark unicorn Janna takes from the Magic Realm disrupts the All-Seeing Eye after she frees Tom from the remains of the car and uses the necklace to jolt his memories.
- Similarly, after the Whispering Spell is successfully performed, Tom tries to find Janna before she gets trapped on Mewni forever, only for her to disappear back to Earth right before they can take each other's hands.
- Double Take: When Janna hands her a suit for him to wear to the Blood Moon Ball from his wardrobe, it takes him several minutes putting on the suit, combing his hair, and spraying himself with cologne before he realizes that there was someone in there.
- Flipping the Bird: When Tom realizes that Janna took care of his royal duties while he was at the Blood Moon Ball, he looks back at the wardrobe where he can see that she's giving him a thumbs up before giving him the middle finger, which is pixellated.
- Green-Eyed Epiphany: This is how Janna realizes her feelings for Tom.Janna: (crying) Dang it.
- Heel Realization: Janna gets a good hard look at herself when trying to use the severing stone to remove her feelings for Tom. After listening to her other self talk about severing Tom's feelings for Star, she realizes it's not her crush that needs to be severed. It's her selfishness.
- Hero of Another Story: The comic makes it clear that other characters' lives don't just go wait in a corner until the main characters need them again.
- Heroic BSoD: Janna has one by the end of "To Make A Head Spin" after she sees Tom getting back with Star.
- He's Not My Boyfriend: Janna does not take it well when Koguuz assumes she and Tom are an item
- Killer Rabbit: Janna at one point finds Marshmallow sitting on a pile of bloody skulls chewing on a bone.
- Love at First Sight: Subverted. Janna 'thinks' she fell in love with Tom the moment she saw him and tries to erase that memory with the severing stone. Only for another part of her consciousness to tell her feelings aren't down to one single moment with the demon prince, but developed over the course of their whole friendship.
- Oblivious to Love: It's really not that hard to see that Janna has a crush on Tom from the get-go. However, he's still totally fixated on Star.
- Other Me Annoys Me: Janna finally gets to see what she comes across as to other people when she meets a copy of herself via the severing stone and does not like it.
- Mundane Afterlife: Janna is not impressed by the Underworld at first sight. At least not until she realizes Tom has been ignoring his royal duties while his parents are away. Some forged signatures and a little imagination and she has the kingdom running so smoothly that his folks are very impressed.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Janna has only two reactions to the horrors of the underworld: fascination, or disappointment.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: Janna... does NOT approve of the form the Wand initially takes under her hands.Janna: Change it. ...Or else.
- Perspective Flip: Takes many episodes of the original show and puts them in the point of view of Tom and Janna.
- Pervert Revenge Mode: To transfer souls and enable the extension of one's lifespan, a demon must perform a deep kiss. Janna didn't read that this was a condition of the lifespan extension and punches Tom's head so hard his head spins around while declaring this trope before he clarifies to her what he was doing.
- Simultaneous Arcs: "Once in a Blood Moon" happens at the same time as "Blood Moon Ball", "Happily Sever’d After" happens in the middle of "Curse of the Blood Moon", and "Hell-bent" happens during the events of the series final arc, but they're told from Janna's point of view.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Tom can't do much but thank his parents for their praise of how well he looked after the kingdom while they were away... because if he admits that Janna did all that for him, he'd be getting punished instead.
- That Came Out Wrong: When Tom tells Koguuz, the elevator demon, to take him and a pig-goat milk-plastered Janna to his room, the elevator demon is horrified. It takes a moment for Tom to realize what the demon is thinking before clarifying that that is not what he's trying to do.
- You Are Worth Hell: When it looks like Janna's trapped on Mewni in the peniultimate strip of "Hellbent," she admits she's okay with it. She doesn't say it outright, but it's implied that she's happy to be where Tom is.
