#lodish

Frankenstein (2025) has taken up permanent residence in my head and naturally it's giving me Nahida and lodish/hat radish thoughts.

I've talked before how Wanderer would definitely react strongly to the Creature getting to live a life of his own at the end of the movie, but I feel like Nahida, in contrast, would get hit SO hard by the depiction of the Creature's intelligence and how he's treated for it.

The movie diverges drastically from the novel by having Victor actually spend time with his Creature and growing frustrated by his seeming lack of intelligence, to the point where Victor both verbally and physically abuses the Creature for it. However, Victor is expecting the intelligence of a fully grown and educated man from what's essentially a four-day-old infant who happens to also be 196cm tall.

Similarly, Nahida gets imprisoned, neglected, and exploited for not demonstrating godlike intelligence when she is just a few HOURS old. At that time, she has no way of accessing any of Rukkhadevata's accumulated wisdom because her predecessor had used up all of it to protect Sumeru AND create Nahida.

Both the Creature and Nahida are deemed lacking by people who should have been caring for them, and despite the abuse they suffered, they still maintain a childlike wonder and curiosity for the world, which leads me to a second major similarity: their learning experiences.

More Nahida and Wanderer and the Creature thoughts below: