The closer Rachel comes to her end, the higher my opinion of her, even in the first read-through while still believing everyone was gonna be alright in the end.

What’s kind of funny about this, and this may seem uncharitable, is it reinforces one of the hurdles Rachel and E-Merl would have faced if they’d developed their relationship further. E-Merl is self involved, he’s very kind and loving, but he is in a battlefield and the woman he loves is out of sight, and he’s thinking about his feelings. It’s not even that he’s too focused on the needs of the moment. The guy’s back to back with an ally fighting against 13 capable fighters, and he’s still got an inner monologue going about his feelings. Rachel would never be able to feed the self love he needs, but because of her nature she would try, and he would rely on her too much for validation, while never really being satisfied. Because he still thinks so poorly of himself.

Frigg’s general projection of confidence grants her the ability to rudely buoy up someone’s emotions at little cost. She can put out what others need without it costing her, because she isn’t investing herself in their emotional well-being, she’s just pointing out what seems obvious to her, good or bad. It wouldn’t occur to her to try to fill E-merl’s emotional void (“hur hur”) because that’s not her fucking job. This means that while she does give him sort of tough love validation, he can’t completely rely on it, and he’s got to do the emotional labor, while she shakes her head and laughs at him.

At least that’s my read on their dynamic.