volatilesmile

But the intriguing thing is that as insensitive as she may sometimes be, she also seems to be incredibly perceptive to the emotional needs of the people around her otherwise. In her introductory scene alone the first thing we learn about her is how in-tune she is to imogen’s emotional needs. She’s insightful and supportive with her the entire time. Her characteristic energy fades away like background noise and she’s just… gentle. And we’ve consistently seen that supportive, sobered-up gentleness from her to imogen ever since. Any insight she may have to Imogen needing support and she’s there to give it like it’s priority number one. Everything else to the back-burner, without fail.

Honestly, at first I figured that the reason she takes this role so seriously was because she’s already so close to imogen. The more you know and care about someone, the easier it is to pick up on tells of distress and the more personally invested you’re going to be in soothing and supporting them. I still think this is the case to some extent, but man this episode revealed so much into just how seriously she takes the emotional needs of others in general, and how quick she is to step in and support. The same gentleness, the same sensitive insight, and the same attentive support, all to people that she hasn’t even known for three days.

In this case: it’s because, out of the entire party, Jester is the easy choice for any- and everyone to fall in love with, and I get really quickly disappointed in easy romantic choices.

Everybody’s in love with Jester.  And why not?  She’s bubbly, sweet, outgoing, traditionally feminine, pretty, caring, and aggressively personable.  Jester is very easy to like.  She will come after you, cupcakes included, if you don’t like her.  And that’s wonderful!  I, also, very much like Jester!  But something in my gut starts to feel just a little sour when the pretty, sweet, caring, traditionally feminine healer of the party is also the number one person everybody else is in love with, you know?

It’s not even about the Ethics of Representation or whatever bullshit–this isn’t scripted, everybody is doing their best, Laura is deliberately flirting with absolutely everybody in a quest for sheer chaos, that’s fine, whatever, it’s great.  Jester deserves to be liked!  This is a much less abstract, much more personal, “oh, eh, that is not quite the ideal story I might want which would hit my buttons perfectly” objection.  The everybody’s-in-love-with-Jester story isn’t bad.  I just find it boring.

A story where Caleb’s secretly in love with Nott–who’s his best friend and the first friend he had in about 15 years, who he absolutely misjudged and probably did not entirely see as a grown woman for a long time in their relationship, who’s married, who isn’t even entirely sure who she’s going to be when she stops being Nott and goes back to being Veth and how her past and present combine–that’s interesting to me, because it’s seventy-three different layers of complicated.  A story where Caleb’s still so in love with Astrid is less complicated but still really cool.  A Caleb slowly growing in understanding and eventually love with Yasha through their shared trauma is interesting!  Fuck, a Caleb who’s in love with Beau and knows to the core of his soul that it’s an absolute no-go, completely platonic on her side, except that she kept his secrets and wants him to stay and his dumb brain keeps saying ‘well…’, that’s a story.  Caleb who finds low-INT high-WIS Caduceus with his incomprehensible worldview fascinating, that’s a story.  Caleb who’s into Fjord on the basis of their shared tendency towards contractualism in friendships, the way they turned early conflict into later blood-pacts, and Caleb’s awe of how easily Fjord seems to remake himself, that’s a story.  There are so many possible stories!

And: Caleb who latched onto this bright spark of a girl who seems to care for him is a story, too.  It’s one I would never deny to anybody!  But it is so very low on my personal list of the interesting possible stories here.

This isn’t just a Caleb thing, either–Fjord being into Jester is relatively low on my list of interesting stories, too.  Beau being into Jester is a good spot for me, probably partially because my brain automatically parses queer attraction as more complicated and therefore more interesting.  (It’s also partially because one of Beau’s top reasons for being into Jester is how layered and complicated she knows Jester is, all the bitterdark bits mixed in alongside the sweetness, and that’s definitely a button more me, but I digress.)

On the other hand, I don’t expect to be disappointed by wherever these crushes go, either.  I trust and respect the CR crew to make any possible relationship that develops interesting.  I trust them to do interesting things with unrequited crushes that never see the light of day.  I trust them a lot, across the board, and in particular I trust that they consider this story very very far from over.   There are a thousand directions to go from here!  (What does Jester do upon realizing that half her closest friends, including her roommate, her ex-crush, and her literal actual god, are all super into her for some reason?)