Someone invites Crowley over for shabbos after seeing him alone in the back row during service and he spends the next few decades making sure they get new shoes and gift baskets on the appropriate holidays.
“Yeah, that’s uncle Crowley. His granddad had dinner with our family once and now his family’s just like weird cousins. Always wears black; he’s either orthodox or his whole family’s been very goth for, like, ever” –one of the family’s kids at torah study
Now that Fjord’s become a paladin, I think it’s a good time for me to lay out all my thoughts about Fjord and the idea of “Chosen”-ness.
I think Travis has said before, in Talks, that part of why Fjord was so reluctant to break with his patron wasn’t just the sheer power that Uk’otoa gave him (though that’s part of it), but this idea of having been “chosen,” that Uk’utoa picked him and he didn’t want to let go of that. He’s also said he specifically made Fjord in his 30s because he wanted him to be a fully-formed adult with a life and an identity before this thing HAPPENED to him and he became an adventurer and got magic powers and such - that we’re so used to this story happening to kids and teens and very young adults, but he wanted Fjord to be an adult.
I think Fjord’s had this feeling that, if he was ever going to be special, he’s missed his chance - and we all know that feeling, don’t we? It’s what you all felt the day you turned 11 and no hogwarts letter showed up to tell you that really, your life is a wonderful adventure. it’s how you felt when you realized that you’re past the age when narnia would be closed to you, past the age where peter pan would ever whisk you off to neverland, too old, somehow, for magic. for adventure. for chosen-ness.
(Caleb’s also a deconstruction of this narrative, but in the opposite direction, looking at the problems of beinga Special Chosen One as a kid, which is one reason I think their interactions are so interesting to me.)
And here’s Fjord, an unwanted, unloved orphan who always stuck out as unique but only in all the worst ways, working his ass off every day on board a ship and thinking this is what his life is and he’d better suck it up and get used to it. And then he’s in this awful situation where he nearly dies and suddenly this immensely powerful being is telling him he still has potential. And it wants him. He’s pretty sure everyone else aboard that ship that night is dead. It could’ve saved any one of them, but it picked him.
Fjord wants that so much. He wants it so much he pops the second lock on Uk’otoa because he didn’t want to lose the chance to have the same kind of special gift that Avantika got. He wants it so much he keeps up his bargain long after he is made aware of just how awful his patron is. He wants, so badly, to believe that he’s special. Not that Uk’otoa madehim special, though he feels that, too. But the idea that Uk’otoa picked him in the first place makes him feel like maybe he was already somehow Good Enough to bepicked.
I think it’s part of why he’s so unsettled when he realizes that Vandren had the sword before him, and I think it’s what’s driving him the night at the forge when he presses the blade to his own chest. “You need me more than I need you.” He’s trying to bluff a demigod, but he also just wants it to be true. He wants to be important to Uk’otoa, not just a tool he made and can discard at will. That’s why he couldn’t throw the sword away until Uk’otoa made it clear that, no, he wasn’t going to intervene to stop Fjord from hurting himself. No, he’s not thatimportant. He’s useful to Uk’otoa, but he’s ultimately expendable. Fjord can’t keep pretending to himself that he’s a capital-c Chosen One to Uk’otoa. (He throws away Vandren’s accent that same night, because Jester reached out and it turns out Vandren’s doing just fine without him, so he can’t keep pretending to himself that he’s a capital-C Chosen One to Vandren anymore, either.)
All of this is why I think it’s so important that Fjord’s elevation to paladin by the wildmother happens the way it does. She lays it right out for him - “You found my gaze through chance. Through deed. Through company.” He wasn’t always, inherently special (the way Vax was, for instance), but he’s caught the attention of this goddess by being Fjord. And sure, some of it is down to luck, and some if it is down to her already favoring Caduceus, but part of it is through deed. Something Fjord has done has made him important enough for a goddess to sit up and take notice. I think this is very much what Caduceus means when he says he believes in fate, but that free will is an important part of fate. They can’t do it for him - Fjord has to choosethe Choosing.
A character whose power is generally labelled ‘seeing the future’ by other characters, but is actually just fourth wall breaking and a very good knowledge of tropes and storytelling.
***
“Okay, so we have to get in there to save the hostages, but there are armed guards everywhere and the building will blow up in three minutes. Any ideas?”
“Send in Stormgirl.”
“… Er… Jessica? Stormgirl is the weakest and least experienced one on the team. I’m pretty sure her secret identity is literally a high school student. She got her powers last week.”
“Exactly! They’re not gonna kill her off now, are they?”
***
“Hey! Red Shadow, how are things between you and The Black Cat?”
“Same old same old.”
“Are you ever going to get round to asking her out?”
“No. Jessica says that if we ever progress beyond 'will they won’t they’ unresolved sexual tension, one of us will be killed.”
“Fuck. Bad luck mate.”
***
“Why is Jessica crying over Torpedoman?”
“He had an unexplained coughing fit like five minutes ago, and now she says he’s gonna die within the week.”
“Shit. Poor guy.”
“Yeah, we just got his merchandise set up as well.”
***
“Okay, Sharkageddon, that all seems to be in order. We’ll be glad to have you on our team— although you are going to have to change your costume.”
“What? Why? Is it too similar to another hero’s or something?”
“No, no, it's… it’s our clairvoyant, Jessica. She gets very upset if any of us wear red shirts out in the field. Best not to ask why.”
#jessica is her superhero name btw #her real name is something really symbolic and protagonisty like #sybil portent #or cassandra voyant #and her choice of hero name was absolutely an act of revenge
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ALT
