Jester’s Wisdom: A Word Vomit
Once upon a time, I was like, what if I Researched this so I don’t Repeat Other People? What if I tried to be Comprehensive? Or, heaven forbid, Concise?
Nope, nope, current energy says excessive word vomit is all that’s going to happen
So a while ago someone brought up something interesting about Jester and Wisdom, how Caduceus is typically seen as the Epitome of Wisdom, and Jester isn’t, even though, when it comes to stats, he and Jester are on the same level. (My addendum: even though when it comes to life experience he and Jester are pretty much on the same level). And I immediately had a huge train pileup of thoughts about Jester and covert wisdom, the different learned scripts she and Caduceus use to interact with the world, and the status of the Insight Check amongst the players. Overall thesis: Jester is very wise, but she doesn’t play to her wisdom or even seem completely aware of it in the same way other characters are aware of their wisdom—she simply has very different priorities and scripts when interacting with the world. Scripts that are just as useful to her as Caduceus’ are to him!
Here’s a case study to illustrate this, chosen solely because I was watching a great animated bit for it recently. Episode 13, Claudia talking to Jester through her door, hurriedly packing to escape and trying to hide that she’s doing it. Jester knows, instantly, that there is something wrong. Claudia won’t open the door because she’s “busy,” and the tone of her voice sounds ever so slightly strained. Jester does not attempt, and Laura does not ask for an insight check on this. Jester just knows that something is wrong, something outside of Jester being irritating or Claudia dealing with the ordinary stressful business of being a business owner. She knows, and she takes this knowledge for granted. And she responds to the problem in front of her, not by attempting to play to her wisdom, to deduce through context the nature of the problem, but by attempting to play to her charm. She wheedles and pressures and nags until in the game she is asked to make a persuasion check, at which point Claudia finally lets her inside the door and tells her what is wrong, as Jester has been insisting she do.
This is, quite simply, what Jester does. She understands people, even if she’s perhaps not entirely aware of how well she does, but she problem-solves by leaning on her charm and her persuasion, not her natural insight. The issue for her isn’t putting a person’s behavior under a microscope until she can suss out their motivations or offer advice—it’s to convince them to like her enough that they’ll ally with her and tell her what’s on their mind of their own volition. It’s probably a script strategy she learned from Marion. But that’s why with Jamedi she didn’t keep an eagle’s eye on him or scrutinize his behavior like Caduceus and Caleb—she told him a funny ant story and tried to win his friendship, precisely because he was suspicious. When confronted with Lythir who Fjord had already scrutinized and pointed out as suspicious, she didn’t attempt to do the same, she attempted to win him over with conversation and talk of pastries. It is a rare case indeed when Jester will actually attempt to use insight to understand a person or to give her a leg up in a social interaction.
Yet even so, her intuitions about people and their trustworthiness are usually right without her having to work at it. She simply knows to trust Twiggy, even as Caduceus stares her down and tries to divine something past the sugar high. And her strategy for making sure Twiggy is safe for the group, her strategy for obtaining more information by befriending her is actually the most useful strategy she could possibly use in the long term to get information. It’s a solid theory, really: if someone is your friend, then you’ll be close enough to them to learn more about them. If someone is your friend, they’re less likely to turn on you no matter their past or motivations. If someone is your friend, they’re more likely to tell you things instead of forcing you to guess. That’s not to say that Jester’s friendliness and charm is cold or not genuine, but it is certainly a tool that the wields, and for strategic purpose.
Caduceus, however, is a very different kind of person. Alongside the Distrusting Duo of Fjord and Caleb, he is the most likely at any moment to squint at someone and look for tells—are they lying to me? Hell, he insight checks Fjord while he’s telling him about his life in the orphanage! Caduceus does not trust people. And as polite and sweet as Caduceus is, he’s also far more invested in maintaining distance and hierarchy in his relationships—he will always default to giving Sagely Advice, and charming a person into giving up their secrets with a close personal friendship is not something he’s likely to attempt as a problem-solving strategy. His scripts learned in the temple were most likely ones that leaned on insight and wisdom, not personal charm—how to tell a person what they need to hear without inserting yourself too far into their lives, how to guide a person through grief without having them become dependent on you in their vulnerability. Considering this, it’s no wonder that Caduceus seems like The Wise One, even though he and Jester often demonstrate that they have roughly the same degree of understanding others. He just matches up with the stereotype more, leans on those particular skills of his more. It doesn’t mean he is more wise, necessarily, at core.
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