thinking bout the widofjord blood pact scene again
ya ever stare directly into another man’s eyes with nothing but mutual respect and complete understanding while you spill blood to kickstart a ritual you know nothing about just for kicks
ya ever clasp bloodied palms together with that same man and make an oath to assist each other come what may so you can both succeed in your goals no matter how potentially dangerous it might be while in the midst of a sea fury’s lair just to reinforce the promise to “make it work” months and months ago
y’all KNOW i go hard for those evil!aus but tbh…… caleb and fjord’s relationship has and always will be a relationship built on mutual respect and curiosity. they’re both 100% aware of and acknowledge that they’ve both got some shady stuff to work out on their own respective times and while they both want to know more they’re both playing their cards close to their chest.
i talked about what caleb gained out of their most recent interaction but that exchange of information was two-ways: now fjord has more understanding of caleb as a person as well. caleb asked him for a favor. what is that favor? when will it come? what is caleb trying to do with it? with him? he has no clue, but it’s a callback to one of the first things caleb said back when they were just starting to get to know each other in the early episodes: caleb is a man who likes to take calculated risks. in this, fjord is caleb’s calculated risk. what the potential reward is fjord has no idea. but fjord is recently familiar with the concept of taking risks for questionable and powerful rewards, and fjord’s curious to see how this risk of his pans out.
they’re both on the level with each other. they’ve got an understanding. they know that any time they want to poke and prod at powers beyond their knowledge to gain that knowledge, they’ve got a partner in crime. they’ve got someone who’s willing to pause at the edge of the abyss and peer into it together.
doesn’t mean that they’re going to jump into the abyss, of course. just that they’ve got someone else willing to test the waters and tempt disaster just to see what would happen.
the only thing i want from a potential Romantic Widofjord Canon is for them to struggle and grapple with difficult moral choices and have to give things up and learn to grieve and feel hopelessly trapped by all the ensuing pain but i want their relationship to be the thing that saves them, not the thing that damns them.
if you think fjord didn’t know what he was doing dangling the phrase aren’t you the least bit curious in front of caleb“i am always seeking books and knowledge and have a very obvious love of all things arcane and magical” widogast idk what to tell you man. everyone wants to put things on caleb because we know what his general goal is, but fjord isn’t a fool. he and caleb have possibly had more one on ones than anyone else in the m9 and especially through this arc they are growing to understand each other more and more.
to be clear, i have no desire to use the phrase manipulative to describe either of their behavior, because i think they were on pretty equal footing here and more feeling each other out and seeing how far their mutual interest in pushing to discover more goes. fjord also has a very obvious interest in magic, and the two of them have traded that back and forth through the whole campaign, so i don’t feel surprised they ended up having such a charged, relationship changing conversation over a magical alter.
we know caleb’s plan, but fjord doesn’t, which i think makes his lack of hesitation to agree to return the favor all the more powerful rather than, i dunno, Big Bad like some might. seriously, he does not pause for a single second to think it over, and he doesn’t simply say okay. he says always. caleb is here for him in this moment but he’s also had his back with avantika (and times before) so fjord is going to return that in kind. for all people still want to bring up the scroll debacle these two do trust each other, because they have put in the work both in word and deed to build that (make it work indeed).
i also don’t feel like rushing straight to a worst case scenario where caleb cackles evilly while he destroys time and fjord has been an unwitting pawn in his scheme, or something. caleb is FAR from his goal, fjord doesn’t even know his backstory yet, trent and the 2 stooges haven’t come back to haunt caleb yet. there are still so so many chapters left in this story and who knows what will come? who knows what these two will build from this. what moment might come where the favor caleb requests turns out to be something entirely surprising, where fjord himself says he is repaying the favor – perhaps in a form caleb didn’t expect. the sky is really the limit here and instead of feeling nervous or dreading the possibilities im so fucking excited, guys. idk man this is all over the place cause i got less than 2 hours sleep LOL im just trying to work through my thoughts… i got too many…
caduceus clay hates ghosts in the best possible way one can hate ghosts, which is to say that it genuinely feels like he’s just sick dealing with them.
he hates ghosts like a retail worker hates rude, annoying customers.
he hates ghosts like they’re his loud neighbors who keep waking him up at 6 a.m. on a saturday. absolutely no fear of them, he just dislikes them on a personal level.
Caduceus deals with undead like a janitor sighing upon finding a large spill he needs to mop up. Annoyed, but he has a job to do, and he’ll roll up his sleeves and do it.
the most fascinating part of today’s episode was the fact that caleb absolutely left EVERYTHING they did 100% up to fjord
all he said was “i’m always curious” when prompted by fjord, and that’s an extremely noncommittal answer. yes, he’s interested, but interest does not exactly equate to action, and note how caleb does not make a single move to spill blood until he has the go-ahead from fjord
every single step of the ritual they almost completed was spaced out in between with caleb stopping, turning to fjord, and asking “what do YOU want to do?”
i find that absolutely fascinating, because even though fjord made all his choices 100% of his own free will, caleb was still 100% manipulating him at the same time
i don’t mean that in the way that liam was manipulating travis ofc i mean this in the context of the story; caleb went into that whole scene with an end goal: he wanted fjord to agree to help him with a task later on if he, caleb, right then, risked his life to indulge in fjord’s curiosity
caleb is ALWAYS curious. this is obvious to anyone who’s seen his character in the show for ten minutes, but he’s also, by consequence, learned to temper that curiosity with practicality. he’s always weighing the risks and the rewards and anytime he does anything that could place him or the team in harm it’s ONLY because he thinks that whatever he might gain by doing so tips the scales in favor of profit and not loss. the scene by the ritual table was him asking fjord that very same question: how far are you willing to go in your quest for knowledge? where does your priority lie? in risking it all, or in choosing to forego that all and remain as you are, with the tempting promise of new knowledge just out of reach?
and caleb got two things out of that bargain: he got a favor from fjord, and he also got a deeper understanding of fjord’s motives. fjord is new to power, and deeply curious about it, he’s got a hunger for understanding that caleb finds mirrored in himself, but fjord is also at his core a good person. he’s got morals that guide him far more strongly than any eldritch being ever could. and now caleb knows that fjord can be pushed to explore things far outside his comfort zone, to spill blood in the name of discovery, but fjord won’t (or won’t right now) take that final step to true power if it means risking the lives of those under his protection. and caleb is smart. he’s spent his whole childhood training under someone who molded him into the type of person who can pull at people’s strings and push their buttons to make them do what they want, and caleb knows that a good man’s promise is a more tempting reward that any risky blood ritual could ever deter him from.
GOD I LOVE THIS DYNAMIC. it’s just so ENDLESSLY fascinating to me.
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