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.
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…
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.
absolutely nothing in a video game has set a tone as well as asgore smashing the mercy button at the start of his fight and thats just a fucking fact
Please elaborate. I want to hear more about what you think of this.
not to be serious about epic divorce man but like. the asgore fight is more or less the payoff of the advertised theme of undertale – “you don’t have to kill anyone”, and he does the most to challenge this theme, not just to the player but on a personal level, since the running motif of undertale’s monsters is that they don’t want to kill you either, but they have to or less they will never be free.
the scene beforehand, where small shock plays, is given additional context on replays and knowing how chara, flowey, asriel, and frisk all relate to each other – asgore is looking at someone who looks identical and acts identically to his child who, from his perspective, died of an illness that he could not prevent, and he has to kill them again
it is as equally “you cannot spare me” as it is “i cannot spare you”, which when juxtaposed against how asgore never uses attacks that are aimed at the player directly, creates the mood that is “neither of us want to be here but we have to be for there to be a future at all so someone needs to fucking die already” and its really fucking good
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.
some of the reasons homestuck meets the requirements of a traditional epic!
homestuck is a finely crafted piece of literature that deserves serious discussion and recognition, and it bothers me when people won’t acknowledge that.
Homestuck is the most important piece of literature of the 21st century so far.
I’ve compared Homestuck to Lost in the past, and I’ve oft seen Lost analyzed as a modern twist on the traditional epic. This just makes the comparison even more poignant!
Homestuck is such an incredible piece of literature. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s the most important piece in the 21st century so far. Absolutely.
I want to point out that the plot doesn’t just span civilizations, it spans both genre (space opera, urban fantasy, apocalyptic romp, let’s play, fable,) and medium (epistolary narrative, comic, webcomic, novel, video, videogame). It employs all the accumulated self-aware, self-critical traditions of the latter 20th century to launch into a uniquely self-aware 21st century narrative: it’s not a story that’s epic, it’s an epic about stories.
The narrator struggles for control over the telling with his own metaphorical selves, he’s his own protagonist, deuderagonist, and antagonist— all with the acknowledgement that they’re only controlling the telling, that the story has always been what it is, that they’ve always been part of it, that they’ve always been inside it— and this is also a story that’s written, in significant chunks, by reader suggestion. Are we outside the story? Yes. Maybe. No. The audience is part of the theater, the bard is part of the crowd.
What is Homestuck? By now, the question’s gone from joke to koan and it’s still a completely legitimate question. But if it isn’t an epic, it’s only because we haven’t invented the actual word for it yet.
This is a bit out there, and I absolutely don’t think it’s canon, but hear me out: Lucretia was under the thrall of the Bulwark Staff.
It’s clear that the IPRE aren’t completely immune to the effects of the thrall – they just are the ones who have the chance to overcome it, while everyone else to a person is overcome and gives in. Taako almost gave into the thrall of the Gaia Sash. Magnus was tempted by the Temporal Chalice. Even Davenport seems at one point to be drawn by the Philosopher’s Stone.
Lucretia had possession of the Bulwark Staff almost since she instituted her plan – she said it was easy to recover. The Bulwark Staff does not ever seem to tempt anyone else in the Bureau, as there’s never a hint that it’s a Relic. It would’ve had nearly ten years to draw her in, cement her ideas.
Secondly: the Bulwark Staff is abjuration magic. Abjuration is all about shielding and protecting, and that’s what all of Lucretia’s plan was about. She wanted to shield Faerun from the Hunger, she wanted to shield her friends (her family) from the pain of their decisions, she wanted to shield herself from their dissent against her plan.
Now, the Bulwark Staff didn’t cause Lucretia to institute her plan. That was all her. But why didn’t she turn back when she saw what it did to Davenport, or when Glamour Springs happened, or when she lost twenty years of her life in Wonderland? What made her so stubborn that she would continue for ten years, alone, turning further and further from her family and deeper into a plan conceived of hopelessness?
Well, having a Relic whispering in her ear every moment of that decade that she was doing the right thing, that together they would save everything, that they could protect everyone who needed protecting – in other words, a thrall that just needed to confirm what Lucretia already thought on her own – would probably go a long way towards steering her down that path and keeping her from ever looking back until Taako, through Paloma’s crystal prophesy, showed her a third way and broke through that thrall in the same way that Hurley dying broke through the Gaia Sash’s thrall on Sloane.
No offense to all the people saying “Fjord!! Don’t be distracted by a pretty face, Avantika’s dangerous!” but that’s not what I think is going on at all.
Fjord’s not attracted to Avantika – not in a romantic and sexual way. What does Fjord want – what has he wanted every since we’ve met him? He wants to understand what’s going on with his powers, to know he’s not imagining things. After all, he focused on Caleb’s magic until it was clear it wasn’t like his; he persisted in trying to figure out Molly’s swords until Molly explained that his rituals didn’t really mean anything. Fjord has been desperate to figure out his powers, and Avantika’s finally giving him the information he craves.
Then there’s the psychological aspect: being seen, and known, and understood. Canonically, all his life, Fjord has tried to fade into the background. He doesn’t want to seem dangerous or unlikeable, so he deliberately has people underestimate him, he charms them, he flirts and tips his hat and hopes that’s enough for people to see past his heritage and past. Avantika allows him to move beyond that. She’s led him into the spotlight as the leader of the Mighty Nein and one of the chosen of Uk’otoa, but she’s still the captain – he doesn’t have to take full command of the situation. He has a fallback. It’s the perfect dynamic for someone like Fjord.
So of course he gravitates towards her. Of course he tells her about his dream when he can’t get the words out to anyone else. Of course he explains about his falchion, and the words he hears, and his search for the truth, despite the fact that Avantika is patently dangerous, a pirate captain and a cultist who threatened to murder him and all his friends and who has an eye embedded in her palm.
I don’t think Fjord’s attraction to Avantika has anything to do with physical attraction or desire. He sees in her what he’s been looking for for months at the very least, if not his whole life, and he may even see in her what he wishes he could see in himself. He’s probably flattered by her attention, and excited at the possibilities their patron and their connection to each other through their patron suggests. He’s awed by her power and eager to learn from her.
Is he going to regret it? Probably. Will he learn that she isn’t what he’s looking for? I hope so. But I can’t blame him, and not because he’s fallen for a pretty face.
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