Okay I just finished episode 21 and I would LIKE TO NOTE SOMETHING.
The enormous argument in the group was, in the end, blamed on “Caleb is a bad communicator.”
While that might be true in general… allow me to argue that Caleb’s communication and group work was near-excellent in this conversation.
He hid the bowl for all of 4 minutes, until he was certain they were out of danger and could get a reasonable distance from the girl who just breathed acid everywhere.
He suggested a plan and waited to see if anyone else had a better one.
Surprisingly, CALI had a better one – which he immediately agreed with, and when he discovered Cali was telling the truth, he stepped back and let the group deal with the bowl.
Caleb, I see your character development, I appreciate it, and I’m as confused as you are with the rest of the groups’ reactions but I guess they had their reasons.
Anyone ready to jump down Caleb’s throat about this episode can COME FIGHT ME.
He had the right idea but he went about it in a very bad way. Caleb is book smart, not people smart. We’ve seen this several times before and tonight it was displayed very well.
Caleb acted like a leader and assumed everyone would go along with his plan. He was arrogant towards Jester, trying to dictate her spell choices for the morning. He did not factor in that Jester reacts very badly to people telling her what to do, Molly and Beau are very anti-authority and don’t react well to being ordered around either, and Jester was identifying personally with Cali due to their similar backstories. These are important elements that Caleb didn’t consider when making his plan.
Most of the group still doesn’t really trust Caleb all that much, and remembers the recent incidents of him being secretive, arrogant, and stealing/concealing stuff from the group. He can’t just go “aha here is my clever plan here we go” … even if his plan is the right plan. Assuming the group will fall in line and follow his lead just leads to in-fighting, as we saw tonight. It almost led to a stranger walking off with a very dangerous artifact, which was the last thing Caleb wanted to happen!
If you’re confused as to why the group reacted the way they did … you’re pretty much in the same boat as Caleb. It’s not just about what the ultimate goal is, it’s about how to get there by convincing a group of fiercely independent people to listen to what you have to say. Caleb had the ultimate goal in mind, but didn’t think about how to get there without offending Jester, angering Beau, and frustrating the rest of the party. He’s part of a team. He’s not a leader with underlings.
That’s the thing, though, is what should he have done instead? Changed a few word choices, perhaps, but even when he chose reasonable neutral “here’s a plan we can do that will solve the problem” words, people have made it out to be “here’s what we have to do” words.
Fact is I very much am in the same boat as Caleb: “just because I’m bad at empathy doesn’t mean I’m bad at communication.” He communicated the plan perfectly well, in my opinion it was very clear what he wanted and his reasons for wanting it. The problem, to me, was that the group reacted very emotionally and in an irrational manner.
WHICH IS TOTALLY NORMAL PERSON BEHAVIOR AND PROBABLY IN CHARACTER FOR ALL OF THEM.
But it isn’t something that’s easy to predict, or something that’s necessarily a good thing in a high-pressure situation.
Now, maybe it’s my low-empathy high-logic self being biased here, but when I say “I think Caleb was right” I don’t mean “I think Caleb handled that situation perfectly and there was no way he could have done better.”
What I’m saying is, the “flaw” in Caleb’s communication came from the irrational way the group reacted. And I think that’s something MORE on the group than on him. Sure, he’ll have to learn to deal with irrational, emotional responses – we all do, it’s harder than it looks. But in this situation, I found more fault with the group for not being able to take a step back and analyse the situation logically.
TL;DR I believe the fault was not Caleb’s communication but the fact that the group wasn’t listening. However, take that with a grain of salt because I took an empathy test once and I got a 6/80.
Perhaps in the future, when they all know each other better, the team will recognize Caleb’s thought processes more readily.
Unfortunately right now, they know very little about each other, and what little the team knows right now is that Caleb is not to be 100% trusted, especially around powerful magical objects. (He’s not alone in this, they know Nott is not to be trusted around wealth, Beau is abrasive, Yasha could be in danger due to where she’s from, Jester could be in danger from her religion and her prankster nature, Molly could have people from “his” past around any corner, not to mention nobody really knows anything about Fjord at all. Most of the team doesn’t 100% trust the others right now.) The team wasn’t just listening to Caleb’s words, they were analyzing the entire situation. And I don’t think they were being “irrational” at all.
When Caleb did his plan reveal tonight, most of the team was suspicious and inclined to think the worst based on their past experiences. That’s not irrational or out of nowhere, this is all built on the past few weeks they’ve spent with him and what they’ve noticed about him. Most of them don’t know a thing about Tiamat, but they do know a few things about Caleb, and that made them suspicious. Jester, Beau, and Molly have a demonstrated history of reacting badly to authority, or being told what to do by someone they don’t trust. Caleb knows this, but he didn’t factor that into his plans. To him, that stuff wasn’t important or meaningful, so it didn’t matter (which is very arrogant of him.) But it mattered a whole awful lot to the rest of the team. He assumed everyone else would be just as detached and logical as him, and that backfired. He assumed Jester would go along with his plans, and she was angry and upset that he steamrolled over her like that.
Caleb is super smart, but he needs to factor in other people’s emotions, past reactions, and likely responses to situations, if he wants to be trusted by the team and not faced with constant suspicion and arguments. Unfortunately he’s being continually enabled/encouraged by Nott, who wants him isolated and dependent on her. Also unfortunately, the only person who seems inclined to really call him out is Beau, who is brash and abrasive and has her own social issues to be dealing with as well. This is a bad situation all around and I hope it gets sorted out before the party gets into more frustrating arguments.
They need a team policy meeting. Where they actually discuss whether they trust people or try to double check before someone jumps into the situation and demands everyone else back him up.
Overdressed & Underappreciated 