#coolest use of relentless hex i swear

[justalittlebluetiefling]

We’ve all got things that we want to talk about after that episode, but the biggest moment for me that I want to dig into is:

Jester fucking hesitated.

Why can’t I ever just get to the point? This got long. 

Jester’s playlist came out two months ago and it sent me into a weird spiral about Jester’s place in the Mighty Nein. If you were following me then, maybe you remember lol. Her two songs for Artagan were very conflicting: Formidable by Amy Lilley vs Anywhere U Go by Tove Lo. Like she said. Her relationship with the Traveler had become... complicated. I made more than one post talking about how worried I was about Jester feeling a lack of connection to the Nein and how it felt like she might leave because of it. Leave with the Traveler because of it. I didn’t think she wanted to leave the Nein, but if it came down to a choice, the choice felt obvious. It has never felt like a stretch to me. It’s seemed very possible. Because Artagan saved her from loneliness.

And so I want to talk about Connect by Elohim real quick before I move on. When she set off on her own, she was “desperate to find someone to connect with. Someone who would understand her and be what she always read about in storybooks.” (Again, as a few people have said, that is clearly a split paragraph from the next, Summer’s Gone, but I digress.) This song was the reason I started thinking about the way she connects to the Nein and I started paying attention to how invested she seemed in the group dynamic.

So... here’s the deal. I really do believe that Jester has been struggling to feel the connection with the Nein. It’s not that she doesn’t love them or consider them friends, but she has one of the strongest sets of external ties in the group. And part of her external ties travels with her, in a sense. He’s her patron. God. Funky little archfey buddy. Whatever he is. 

And because of this, because I think she’s been struggling with connection, I think that Fjord’s conversations with her were truly beneficial. Fjord went out of his way (in a way that he hasn’t before) to make sure that she knows that she is valued and she is wanted. Jester’s got a high wisdom. I don’t necessarily think she reads what he’s been saying to her as romantic love, but it is very clearly love of some kind. 

It was just... incredibly poetic, the way the whole scene played out. Of course Jester would cling onto Artagan and of course Fjord would do what he could to get up to her. This is... weird. I don’t know how to word it. Really, I’d put money on Artagan being grateful that Fjord was up there trying to get Jester to let go, because he also wanted Jester to let go.

Okay I’ve gotten super off track. This is about Jester’s hesitation and what that means for her and how she’s evolved. 

When she started traveling, as I mentioned above, she was desperate to find someone to connect with. She already had Artagan at this point. And even she knew that it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. And then she met Fjord. Who she was immediately infatuated with. And that relationship/friendship has grown and deepened to something very different over the almost year that they’ve known each other. They’ve been there for each other without hesitation the entire way. Jester followed Fjord across the ocean, underneath it, into danger repeatedly for his personal journey. And now Fjord has done the same. He’s never hesitated to follow her into danger, diving off the side of a tree, teleporting out into the shadows as a distraction when she fell off the roof. He’s made sure that her mother was safe from Algar, run out into the night after Jester because she accidentally left her mom at a party, that she got a chance to see The Gentleman. 

She loves these two people very much. In very similar ways. She’s idealized them both at various times and has been coming to terms with what she really feels as she’s traveled through the world and met new people. Whether or not she loves them the way she thought she did. Whether it’s different than she thought. 

And that’s what it comes down to. The planar being asks her: “Do you love him this much?”

And Jester hesitates.

“I look at Artagan.” [long pause] “I look back at Fjord.”

The way this felt to me was Jester evaluating. Does she love Artagan enough to go into imprisonment with him? Yes. But does she love Fjord enough to stay behind?

Even last Wednesday, I would have told you that she would never hesitate in a situation like this. I seriously expected her to say, “I’m sorry, Fjord.” or something along those lines. But she looked at Artagan, restrained. And then she looks back at Fjord, who is showing no signs of letting go either. He’s followed her into danger once again. Would he have held on if she did? Could she condemn him to that? Make him pay for Artagan and Jester’s mistakes here? Can she leave him behind? Can she leave her friends? Her home, she says later.

Now, I’m going to make some speculative leaps here. But when they’re back down with the group later, Jester all but admits that she would have gone if Fjord hadn’t been there (and Artagan kicked her off, but that’s not what Jester was talking about). Jester thanked Fjord for going after her. She said she was glad that he was hanging onto her. She implies that if he wasn’t there, she would have gone. People are talking about this scene a lot and I’m surprised that more of it isn’t about the fact that we very well could have lost Jester in this episode if it weren’t for Fjord. She is absolutely able to make her own decisions, but she was panicking and clinging to her friend, trying to save him, and letting go of him wouldn’t have occurred to her as a possibility if Fjord hadn’t been there. 

For some reason, I’ve got to bring it back to discourse, but not in like a hateful way I swear. It is genuinely strange to me that people are so offended over Fjord’s treatment of Jester when Artagan and Fjord literally want the same things for her. Neither of them wanted her to make that sacrifice. And the thing is... maybe it’s because it was such a shippy moment, on Fjord’s end, and people don’t like the ship. But it was truly a selfish act on Fjord’s part. I’m sure there was some urge to protect as well, but Fjord didn’t want to lose Jester, so he went and he begged for her to stay. Neither Fjord nor Artagan wanted Jester to pay for Artagan’s mistakes, no matter how culpable Jester is. It was pretty cool to see how far Fjord would go to “save” her. To keep her around.

Putting it that way, I kind of wonder if that hit Jester, too, in that moment. Because she’s been struggling to feel the connection with the Nein, maybe she thought that they wouldn’t fight if she tried to leave. But Fjord proved to her that they would. And I think that’s neat.

And I mean, to end this, I’ll say it again. Jester hesitated. This is the first time it’s felt like there was a chance she wouldn’t have left. That she might not choose him over the Mighty Nein. Of course, thankfully, it sounds like for now, she won’t be put into that position again. Neither the Nein nor Artagan appear to want or need her to choose. But Jester did just have to face whether or not she’d leave her oldest friend behind for her new friends (who she later called her home). And I think we’ll be seeing the ramifications of this dilemma play out over the next few episodes.