mollysmoonweaver:

Aka: Why Frumpkin is an essential part of Caleb’s ongoing recovery. 

It has happened. I have FINALLY caught up with critical role to episode 29, and I have hit the line of Much Controversy. (Which I’m….confused about) Not to open that particular can of worms again, because that’s not what the point of this post is intended to be, but it does bring up something interesting I want to talk about: Frumpkin. 

There have been remarks, mostly light, since pretty much the show began/Caleb’s neurodivergence became clear, that Frumpkin is something of a therapy cat for him. I think that’s true, but not perhaps in the most obvious way/the way most people think of it (or maybe they do, idk y’alls minds). 

We know that Caleb has been brainwashed and conditioned in the past by Trent Ikithon, to be the empire’s perfect soldier. He was broken mentally to the point that he could be coerced, with false memories, into murdering his own parents who, by his own account, gave him a happy, loving childhood. 

Regardless of the false memory, the conviction and the devotion instilled by Ikithon had to be strong enough for Caleb to turn his back on all those years of love, and support, and dedication, to murder them in cold blood, in such a brutal way. 

What hasn’t been as strongly stated in canon, but has been very heavily implied, are some of the other ‘values’ that Ikithon instilled him while he was a young man under his influence and control. 

One of the largest being that Caleb was taught not to feel emotion towards people. He was taught to view them as tools. He was taught to think of people in terms of how they might be useful to him in a purely practical sense, in terms of achieving his ambitions and goals. 

This is implied strongly in several different ways: the fact that Ikithon had Caleb kill people who were apparently traitors to the empire. Even before his parents, he was used to killing others, in fact, he was so fanatical after Ikithon’s influence, that he stated he actually enjoyed it. 

I think Caleb’s little fireside chat with himself shortly before Molly’s death was…Misinterpreted by a lot of analysis I’ve seen on here. Caleb questioned why he was still travelling with the Mighty Nein. He talked to himself and wondered aloud what any of them could do with them. He told himself that he should leave, because none of them would be able to help him get where he wanted to go. 

I think a lot of people kind of stopped there, and missed the entire point of all that. 1)- he didn’t leave them. He stayed. 2)- the extent of the damage caused by Ikithon’s abuse. 

Someone can’t suffer the degree of emotional manipulation and abuse that Caleb endured and shrug it off. It stays with them. It festers inside them. The voice of their abuser continues to whisper to them years after they’ve realised they were wrong. They question their actions. They question their decisions, particularly when they know they are something their abuser wouldn’t like them to do. 

The person that was making those assessments of the Mighty Nein, the person wondering why Caleb was bothering to travel with them, the person urging Caleb to leave them because they weren’t of practical value to them was not Caleb. It was Ikithon. 

The entire time he talked, it wasn’t ‘I’m stupid’ ‘I should leave them’ ‘I should go’ it was ‘YOU are stupid’ ‘YOU should leave them’ ‘YOU should go’. And it could be argued that that was just because he was talking to himself, but even then, he would have been more likely to use ‘I’. Instead he used ‘you’, as though it wasn’t entirely him talking to himself, telling himself he’s stupid, telling himself to leave, it was someone else. 

The fact that Caleb stayed in spite of it going against everything he was conditioned to believe was a sign that he’s fighting, and he’s growing, and he’s healing. It was such a huge moment for him. 

Caleb was abused into believing that he should not have friends, that he should not have loved ones, because that would compromise him, and would not help him. Ikithon forced him to kill his own damned parents to drive this fact home,that love, and friendship, and family were weaknesses, and the only reason to keep anyone around was if they were useful.  

So how does Frumpkin factor into all of this? 

Frumpkin is the first thing that Caleb has allowed himself to love, and care for, after Ikithon’s abuse. 

I think Caleb is decidedly emotionally closer to Frumpkin than a typical wizard/familiar dynamic. Obviously wizards get attached to their familiars, and see them as pets in a lot of scenarios, but I think Caleb goes a lot further than what’s typical. 

For example: I think he considers Frumpkin to be a real cat, and a fully real creature, with fully real thoughts and feelings. I mean on an emotional level. He doesn’t see Frumpkin as a magical construct similar to, say, an Unseen Servant.

 He truly seems to believe that Frumpkin prefers being a cat (when in truth, it’s Caleb who prefers him as a cat), and speaks to him like a real pet and companion, such as when he apologised for having to rub sausage grease in his fur, but told him he loved him very much, and thanked him for doing this for him. Frumpkin is a familiar, which means his form is dictated by Caleb’s magic, and he does whatever Caleb wants him to do as part of the enchantment that creates him. 

He also knows he can’t truly die, which a lot of people pointed out, but the deep emotional attachment to Frumpkin, and with the purpose Frumpkin serves in his recovery, that doesn’t really matter. 

Frumpkin obviously has a degree of usefulness for Caleb, and the group as a whole. When Caleb first learned find familiar and brought him into existence, however, I think it was simply for company. 

That was after Ikithon, and it was also after Caleb spent 10 years isolated in a mental asylum. He was alone in the wilderness for around 6 months, I believe, before he met Nott. That means his only emotional connection and companion for six months, after being isolated for a decade, and emotionally abused by his mentor figure prior to that, was his familiar. 

Frumpkin is also named after, and thereby emotionally and psychologically connected to, Caleb’s childhood cat. He’s an anchor to the only positive time in Caleb’s life, and he’s also an anchor to the only emotionally and mentally healthy time in Caleb’s life, too. 

I believe that Frumpkin IS a therapy cat for Caleb, but I think his job is to slowly allow Caleb to love other creatures again. Not because they’re practically useful to him, but because he needs that. 

Caleb needs a group. He was lonely as all heck before he met Nott, and the Nein. He needs this dynamic. He needs this support system, and this found family, and these people who genuinely care about him, and will help him because they care about him, not because they need him, or because he’s a good investment. And he needs that to be a mutual relationship for his own mental health. 

The most tragic thing about Ikithon’s abuse is that it’s preventing him from attaining what he most needs to heal. Which is the way abuse, particularly the emotional and psychological kind Caleb has experienced, typically functions. 

He is not yet at that point with the Nein (at least not as of episode 29, which is as far as I have seen). Nott has helped, undoubtedly, but in the fireside moment Trent’s influence had him question even Nott’s friendship. 

He also doesn’t include Frumpkin in that, ‘I know. Don’t worry, you’re fine.’ He’s accepted Frumpkin. He’s allowed himself to have Frumpkin, and to grow extremely fond of him, allowed himself to start loving something that isn’t purely for ambitious, practical gain, and that is so important for his recovery. 

I’m glad Liam didn’t have him mention Molly in that moment, then. I’m glad the line wasn’t ‘You shouldn’t have killed my friend’. In spite of how much I loved Molly, and in spite of how much y’all know I shipped him and Caleb, Liam’s commitment is to Caleb’s character, his growth, his healing, and the effects his abuse have had on him. Those scars are big, and they run deep, and this is a very serious issue. 

Caleb had known Molly for around a month when he died. And when it comes to the emotional impact that Caleb’s current mental and emotional state allows him to have: the one he has for Frumpkin is far larger than the one for Molly, because he has not yet fully allowed himself to emotionally commit to the Nein in that way. 

He wants to. He needs to. But he’s fighting years of powerful emotional, psychological, and magical abuse and manipulation that he can’t just turn off as and when he wants to. 

Frumpkin is something he can love for several reasons, I believe. Firstly: Frumpkin is something that he created. Frumpkin is entirely his, and no-one elses. He cannot have other motives. He cannot manipulate him. He cannot hurt him. He literally created him out of magic, and he’s bound to him. That makes him safe, emotionally, because he can trust him in a way he can’t trust anyone else. 

Secondly: Frumpkin cannot die. He cannot lose Frumpkin in the same way that he lost his parents. And, just as important, I think, he cannot be responsible for Frumpkin’s death. None of the abuse I’ve detailed in this post is something Caleb is aware of yet. He hates and fears Ikithon, but the guilt for the deaths of his parents, and who knows how many others while he was in Ikithon’s service, weighs on his conscious. Frumpkin can never join that number. Whatever orders he gives him, whatever he asks of him, whatever happens to him, he can always come back. 

Thirdly: Frumpkin is connected to his childhood. He’s connected to that tiny little nub of positive memories and emotions that still exists somewhere in the back of Caleb’s mind. With his parents gone, his family home burned to the ground, Frumpkin the familiar is all that Caleb has to tie him to that. In a way, Frumpkin is Caleb’s childhood. His family. His home. His potential, before everything went wrong. Again, Frumpkin is safe to love. 

He has these guarantees with Frumpkin that he cannot have with literally any other creature. Caleb detaches a lot, emotionally. He seemed the most unaffected by Molly’s death (which is bullshit in itself. Everyone grieves differently. Everyone reacts differently to emotional situations. And particularly when someone has been abused, likely for displaying any emotions, they’re not exactly going to parade them around, are they?) 

But I think it’s because he still hasn’t fully let himself feel it, because he was never allowed to connect to Molly, or the rest of the Nein, the way he needs to be able to, because Ikithon’s influence still prevents him connecting emotionally to people. 

Part of that is probably fear that he himself will be punished (you can’t numb someone’s emotions to the point they’ll murder their own loving parents for your cause without punishing them, harshly, for having those emotions in the first place) for allowing himself to get too close to people for reasons that are not practical/without the intention to use them. 

Part of it is probably that he fears for them, too. The last, and probably only people left, that he truly loved and trusted before the Nein were his parents. And he murdered them both. 

Caleb is traumatised. Caleb was severely emotionally abused and manipulated for years. And that all means something. These things leave scars. These things have impacts. These things negatively affect your relationships, your outlook on life, pretty much every part of you, and you can’t just switch them off, even after you’ve acknowledged that they’re there. And Caleb isn’t even close to understanding the depths of the damage that Ikithon has done to him. 

But he’s on the path to recovery now. He’s beginning to allow himself to grow, and change, and heal. Frumpkin is the first part of that. Frumpkin is, at present, I think the only thing Caleb has truly, fully allowed himself to emotionally connect to. So ofc he’s upset by his death. Ofc he wants to hurt those that take that single connection away from him. Ofc that’s more important to him than the death of a friend he couldn’t even, on a subconscious emotional, mental level, consider a friend because of what’s been done to him. 

(As a small side note: I do not believe Caleb is conscious of any of this. I don’t think he knows that he can’t emotionally connect to other people at this moment in time, because of what happened to him. Because I don’t believe he’s yet accepted that anything that awful was done to him. I think all he truly hates Ikithon for at the moment is the false memory that was planted in his head. I don’t think he knows or accepts that he was abused and brainwashed. I think he simply thinks that he was weak, and compliant, and fully guilty for everything that was done. I think it’s going to take the Nein showing him Ikithon’s effects, and explaining what happened, slowly, and carefully, for him to begin to even acknowledge that there was abuse. And before he does that, he can’t fully heal from it. So yeah, none of this is conscious on Caleb’s part, I don’t believe, just making mention of that). 

TL;DR: Caleb was emotionally abused to the point that he is no longer able to form true emotional connections with people. He was taught that unless someone is of practical use to him, they’re not worth his time or energy. Frumpkin is a creature that is psychologically safe for Caleb to love because he is entirely beholden to Caleb, cannot die, or be killed by him, and is the only connection he has left to his family and his life before Ikithon. Frumpkin is, therefore, an essential part of Caleb’s emotional well-being, and his recovery from what has happened to him.