Working on a larger post that will elaborate on this, but just want to go ahead and briefly note that Jake’s necrophilia (x) is analogous to his “believe in a fake thing so hard it becomes real” schtick.
The fairytale kiss of revival (aka “corpse smooch”) is depicted via Tavros as a literal insertion of Breath – on a metaphysical level, this eroticizes the act of instilling the pneuma (divine breath of life) into dead matter. This ambivalence connects Jade’s distaste for divine intervention to Jake’s fascination with the corpse puppetry in Weekend at Burnie’s: from opposite views, both are concerned with the idea of an animating force.
Shortly after that Caliborn snippet, we get this little exchange between brainghost!Dirk and Terezi:
Terezi breaths on bg!Dirk, and suddenly he becomes a tangible dream!Dirk; this suggests that Terezi instilled the brainghost with breath, thus rendering him “real” (with a healthy dose of discomfort to go accompany the gesture). Breath instills life in the dead and realness in the fake – so Jake’s cheerful advocacy of the reifying power of belief was, in a roundabout way, a nice predictor of the vigor with which he kisses Dirk’s decapitated head.
