hey quick question but how did fjord’s personal arc somehow become all about jester and how she feels, instead of uhhhh you know? about fjord? hey guys how do you think he feels right now, learning all the things he is? how do you think he feels being put in a position where he felt that sleeping with the obviously morally dubious cultist pirate captain (that effectively has the M9 held captive) was the best option presented to him at that moment? i mean i feel like that’s the more important person to be focusing on here, not a character that has no claim to him and no right to be jealous or upset in the first place. but ok let’s just constantly boil fjord’s character down to who he should or should not be banging. that’s fun. also let’s add a side of “these two female characters need to murder each other for the affections of a man” because… why not….. extra spice.
i feel like i can’t even express how much i miss being able to love jester. i loved her so much but now i can’t approach this valid meta topic without people accusing me of hating her/laura/Laura And Travis/women in games just because jester ~interferes with my ship. it feels like a specific subset of this fandom lost their gd minds and now none of us can get away from it.
Pardon me for butting in, but god yes to all of this.
This is pretty much EXACTLY what I feel regarding F/J, but I just couldn’t find the words to express.
I think what makes me so sad is that individually they are two of my favorite characters, but so far every single interaction between them is tainted with awkward flirtation by Jester. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, especially if Laura does play out the “naive sheltered person trying to figure out affection” character arc. But what bothers me is the pressure by fandom for F/J to be canon or for Fjord to be ‘loyal’ to Jester or something.
Yeah, it’s so awkward to love two characters so, so much but be so uncomfortable with their interactions.
I probably still wouldn’t ship F/J even if Fjord had been returning Jester’s flirtations this whole time instead of ignoring them or being uncomfortable, but at least it wouldn’t bother me as much. The live show groping scenario really, really crossed a line though.
My best hope now is yeah, that whatever is going on with Jester gets addressed and she grows from it, and Fjord speaks up for himself too and puts into words whatever it is he feels about Jester’s actions towards him. Just clear the air.
Maybe they end up getting together at some point in the future, I don’t know, and while I might not ever be invested in that possibility, if they can at least address all these really fucking serious red flags coming from Jester, and start to just baseline respect Fjord as like, a person with his own feelings, it would at least be tolerable to watch.
And my faith that Laura is playing out, as you said, a “sheltered person figuring out affection” arc has been a little shaken, maybe just by how that interpretation has seemed to be so rare, but I do think of Laura saying on Talks how Jester thinks of flirting as friendly, and how she never really had to grow up and was kind of coddled, that maybe there still is the chance that this is really meant to be part of Jester’s character that she explores and overcomes. She’s also said that she, as Laura, wasn’t trying to mark Travis’ character as her territory by having Jester flirt with him, and laughed at Matt’s comment about Fjord not being into the flirting at all, so at least I don’t think Laura really has some “romance Fjord at all costs” agenda.
And Laura did mention that Lenka’s self-titled album is basically all Jester songs, one of which titled The Show includes the line, “life is a maze and love is a riddle,” which does support idea of Jester figuring out what love and affection even really *is* and how to deal with it rather than her just being in a True Love Right Now arc.
Another thing that makes me unformcortable about F/J is the fandom reactions after this most recent episode
Fjord has no obligation to explain himself to just Jester. If he had to explain his actions that’s to the whole party, not just her. She has no ‘claim’ on Fjord, and the fact that a good chunk of the fandom believes that or believes that Travis himself should explain his characters actions to Laura is highly uncomfortable to me.
‘vox machina meet their mighty nein counterparts and give them advice!!!!’ first of all, four out of the seven meetings end with fistfights, and one ends with fjord in the fantasy E.R.
i think about how fjord’s only other reference to having had sex was with someone who ‘wasn’t special’ to him
i think about how he’s been so terrified and bad with heavy flirting and sexual situations and not knowing how to deal with them
i think about how this thing with avantika is a mas he’s putting on like he’s always put on his entire life. a mask of ‘i am not a threat’ a mask of ‘i am not here to make a fuss’ a mask of ‘i am orphan with no family and no other form of defense except to make you believe that i am not someone you should bother taking advantage of.’
i think about how not only is he trying to learn more about what’s happened to him but he is also now the only thing keeping avantika from throwing his friends off the boat because without him they are nothing but dead weight she cannot trust.
so he sleeps with her. to get where he wants to be. to make sure relations stay easy breezy. and because she’s attractive and wants him and okay she’s also ten different shades of fuckin’ weird but it’s all a lot and it’s a lot and his wisdom is so low.
and i think about all of that and i just progressively feel worse and worse for him in this bizarre leadership/dubcon position he has landed himself in.
i worry about his past and i worry about his present and i worry about his future.
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