listening to ep 100 of riptide and thinking about the parallels of the encounters with jay’s dad
in their first encounter, at the block, jayson ferin (grizzly, man, i’m sorry but why does it have to be spelled that way) knows exactly what to say to intimidate jay. he ridicules her choice to become a pirate, insults her friends. but he also shames her for having left featherbrook island. for “leaving her mother all by her lonesome.” jay’s response is that her mother can handle herself, though her father continues on, speaking at her rather than to her.
the majority of the conversation, jay pleads more than argues. she doesn’t need to prove him wrong. she just needs to convince him to let her friends live. she doesn’t move to attack or defend, just walks up to her dad, head down, and puts her fist on his chest. she immediately surrenders. says she’ll return home, do what he says, begging him to let the others go.
this doesn’t pan out of course. gillion acts, fights against jayson for the sake of his friend, for her freedom. but jay’s internal conflict, the secret she’s spent all this time lying about, her genuine care for her friends but her want to somehow appease her father, to find out what happened to ava. there’s uncertainty. and jayson sees this, and uses it to punish them. by forcing her to punish them. there’s nothing else she can do.
she shoots gillion in the chest.
in episode 100, as the crew has just left zero, they’re ambushed by the navy. as jay’s father lands on their ship to arrest them, something is different. jay has committed to her choice, to her co-captains and her crew. jay speaks against him.
“you shouldn’t be here.”
jayson ferin doesn’t know his wife is sick, that her magic is leaving her. jay herself has only just found out, but it makes sense that she hasn’t been able to return home as a wanted pirate. jayson doesn’t have that same excuse, yet he’s been absent for years. he doesn’t visit home often, not even before jay left to be a pirate.
when her father asks why, jay says “of course you wouldn’t know. always blind to everything around you, especially your family.”
he speaks as if he’s looking past her, trying to separate the person he sees from the daughter he raised. trying not to think about how much she looks like ava.
“my family would never forsake their duty on some immature whim of emotion. i see no family-“
jay interrupts him. “yeah? and what about mom? you ever once think to look over her? check in on her maybe?”
and jayson’s response is what really stands out to me.
“my wife can take care of herself. how dare you use her to provoke me. is this how far you have fallen?”
he’s contradicting his words in the block. not that he really meant what he said, as he didn’t truly care about jay leaving her mother. he cared about controlling the situation, and his wife was an easy card to play to make jay feel guilty.
as jay challenges her father, he assumes she’s trying to play the same game. weaponize their remaining family to gain control. she isn’t.
“when was the last time you saw her?”
jayson ferin is silent.
“i saw her a week ago. she’s very sick, dad.”
he doesn’t seem to even consider that she’s telling the truth. skirting around the subject to insult jay’s character before addressing it.
“try to trick me all you want. but it will not be me who dies a fool. and do not dare use my wife to bargain.”
“that’s just like you, dad. just like you to think i’d use mom as a bargaining chip and not tell you out of pure concern for her. i would’ve stayed and helped. but, y’know, you have so much navy on the island no i couldn’t even do that for mom.”
there’s such a contrast in how jay holds her self during the block and now. her father never allowed her to be her own person, wouldn’t have acknowledged it even if she’d tried to do so. and she knew that in the block, knew it long before she left featherbrook. it may have been easier had she gone back home with jayson after the block, but it would have been a betrayal. not just to her crew, but herself. she knows better now. knows what she wants and what she’s worth.
“so you know what? you continue to do your thing. be a bad husband, be a bad father, i don’t care. right now? i’m gonna get you off my ship.”
and she shoots at him.
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