(no subject)

[iniquiticity]

gonna try to write this post about jester without expressing any controversial ship opinions... this will be moved to DW eventually

something that i think a lot about jester’s interactions with the nein is that it seems so unlikely that any of these characters, sans caduceus, have ever been expressed the kind of unconditional affection that jester has. if they have, they have had trauma that severed that comfort. on the contrary, all the people in jester’s life, more or less, have ALL expressed unconditional affection for her, and it is steady even up until now. because we have:

caleb: loved by parents; abused by ikithon; killed parents

yasha: loved by zuala, leading to zuala’s death and her exile; killed tribe

beau: obviously not loved by parents and viewed as woefully insufficient; tough-loved by dairon (if their relationship now is anything to go by) & the rest of the soul, probably

fjord: orphaned, tough-loved by vandran.. just think of the toxic masculinity

and then on the other hand we have...

jester: unconditionally loved by mother and all the lavish chateau staff - given all the toys and gifts she asks for - picked up by the traveller who was her forever partner in crime. i can just imagine the things that she got up to in the lavish chateau, and was probably never punished for anything.

so much of this about where - developmentally, psychologically, behaviorally - jester came from.

unlike so many people in the world (caleb, early fjord, beau) (yussa, BQ, the empire leadership, etc), jester’s default is to offer unconditional friendship because that’s all of her formative connections were structured like that.. not necessarily that she COULDN’T use someone, but it wouldn’t come easy.

nowhere is this difference more evident than with essek, who jester hoped they could be friends with (IN FRONT OF THE PRISON) and caleb saw him as a dunamancy reservoir and only later came to realizes that he’s a person. (i’m sure, btw, that caleb’s care for essek is conditional.) more humorously, beau’s attempts to be a good host for essek! on the contrary think of how pained jester was about yasha. even though yasha caused so much pain and so much suffering.

so -- anyway, that’s some backstory.

so.. if you’re beau or fjord, who has never been loved by anyone --- how could you NOT be ride-or-die jester? can you imagine how that FEELS? (hint: i don’t have to imagine). to always expect conditions and what-ifs and buts and you-have-to-or-else and then it’s just jester grinning at you? to have this idea that..... maybe you’ll just WAKE UP and jester will be going “good morning!” and grinning at you like that. for beau who was NEVER the kid her parents wanted and beaten into being a monk? for fjord who was steeped in sailor bullshit, always being the outcast? fucking ouch my dudes

and caleb -- jesus caleb who up until nott a few months ago literally probably was not TALKING to other people, who saw everyone as a person out to get him, who was freezing and starving on the streets - and then this weird tiefilng who came and was like “wow, you smell” and now it’s almost unbelievable that he gets to be around her every day? him, king garbage man (his words not mine) gets... a shred of this? the radiant kindness that he knows he doesn’t deserve but he’s human and it... aches and feels good, in a way? even though he certainly doesn’t deserve it, she still worries about him? how could he not be uselessly in love? jesus it’s like eating your first fucking cinnamon bun.

so then i have this thought -- the three of them, especially - they’ve never been here before. this is new and unexplored territory, and certainly that newness, that rawness, that unaccustomedness - modifies their perceptions of jester, jester’s feelings, and their feelings about her. presumably they meet other people that care about them, eventually unconditionally. what would it have been like for any of them, had they had someone else like her previously? i wonder if caleb will get married to someone else and look back at jester and go ‘i loved her so much because somehow.... it wasn’t as bad, when she said i wasn’t a bad person.’ or beau will marry someone else and go ’ no one made me believe i had worth before jester.’ or fjord will marry someone else and go ‘jester caught me you could care for people and still be strong; she cared about me and it made her strong.’

so much about the growth of the nein is about being in a place where you are respected, supported, felt whole, felt adequate. and that’s such an important stepping stone, right? but you keep growing from there. how do jester interactions work after? when you realize she was everything you needed to take that first step? is that love?