#duriya

I don't know if the daevabad fandom is still alive, but I just finished the trilogy and I am not ok

I CANNOT believe people are sleeping on the absolute BADDIE that is Duriya, so I made her some fan art (and her guy Rustam)

If these doodles get like 15 likes i promise I'll color them 🤞🏽

But SERIOUSLY Duriya be badass. A gold eyed shafit woman who tamed a river god, maintained her sense of dignity and pride despite a society that demeaned her existence, bagged a pure blood prince, and rekt a crazy woman's mad scheme???

AND single handedly raised a child??

DURIYA THE QUEEN YOU ARE

i have had way too much time to create head canons of these characters so if anyone is interested in hearing them PLEASE ASK MY ASK BOX IS OPEN

In the meantime, here are a few:

-Sobek deeply cared about/ loved Duriya- as much as one like him is able. When she reappeared with a child in tow, he was happy to see her- but deeply jealous.

-Rustam was terrified to find out Duriya was pregnant. He wanted their child, a child made from love, but was afraid of what would happen to Duriya and their baby once people found out. That being said, he never once considered terminating the pregnancy. He was a Nahid- a doctor. He knew ways to abort an early pregnancy. But as scared as he was, the baby was wanted.

-While in the human world, Duriya would often sit by the Nile and talk to Sobek. They were both lonely creatures and took comfort in each other's company. She considered him a dear friend; but didn't miss the way his eyes tracked her as she grew into adulthood. She made a point to discover as much about Sobek as she could and was well aware of the sacrifices he asked from humans in the past.

Today we'll be looking at the Palace of Alcazarzaray, a lovely jungle hideaway that is all splendour... if you have no taste.

FINALLY finished all of my Nahli kids sketches!!! this is what i’m thinking:

- Duriya has nahid and marid abilities

- Armah has nahid and djinn abilities

- Armah HATES water and is terrified of it, he inherited Nahri’s fear and won’t get in the water unless he’s with Ali

- Duriya is super talented with her marid abilities

- the kids meet Sobek in crocodile form, and their reactions are......very different

- Sobek is secretly so excited to meet both of the kids, but then ARMAH TURNS OUT TO BE ‼️ EXACTLY ‼️ LIKE HIS NAMESAKE ‼️ the betrayal hurts more than Sobek expected lmao

The "amoral Mora-grubbing fiend" characterisation is so... how do I put this nicely?... uncritically Merchant of Venice-esque. The silver tongue, the love of Mora rivalling Ningguang's combined with the amoral black market implications... and yes the fact that she's short[1] and wears gaudy glasses and her attack animations have everyone else doing the work for her. It's not hard to see which body of tropes HYV drew upon here.

And where her characterisation differs from our other Mora-happy characters like NG and HT, it's mostly that the love for Mora is the core of her characterisation and there's not much else to see. It's not exactly a sympathetic depiction.

(And ofc, Dori isn't a particularly common Arabic name; Duriya is the more common form [2]. AFAICT, Dori is more commonly a Greek or... Hebrew name. Hahaha funny coincidence I'm sure)

And her Vision story completely contradicts her characterisation! The girl in the Vision story sees Mora as a means to an end: security, safety, being a provider, never having to worry. The Dori we see today seems to have an intrinsic Mora-lust. And even with a bit of having lost sight of her goal along the way (why hello there Electro Vision weirdness) that just seems... inconsistent. Like HYV realised they were writing a pure stereotype but decided to make an exception for her Vision story.

(I guess maybe you could say it's an act / a mask she wears? Not entirely convinced.)

Meanwhile, the rest of her design is shallow '1001 Nights' theming (actually, let's be real, it's basically Aladdin theming and that was added to the 1001 Nights during translation [3]). The unironic magic lamp trope, the puffy pants plus open navel, the bangles and hair accessories...

...at least she's not wearing a fez I guess? :S

There's not really an end point to this post. I'm just echoing the disappointment others have expressed in HYV's choosing to have this character design be a thing.

(Writing her into fic is stressing me out a lot right now etcetc. The various redesigns/art the fandom has made are cool at least, kudos to everyone doing that!)

Now, are HYV going to lazily give her the same running animation as Klee and Qiqi?, i.e. the toddler-with-no-motor control windmilling their arms? Probably. After all, they did the same for Sayu, an escape artist ninja, for whom that kind of imbalance makes no sense at all.