#nahri

They’ve been thrust into their situation by powers greater than their own and they’ve decided to unequivocally NOT make the best of it. They’re mad about the situation they’re stuck in, and they take it out on each other. They’re both in love with each other’s brothers. They humiliate and undermine each other at every turn. If one of them does try to be sweet, the other shuts it down immediately. They hate fuck sometimes.

If this ever gets adapted I want to see every ugly bit of their marriage on display. The embarrassment, the hatred, and the misery that they both cause and feel.

But I also want to see the pinpricks of light. How they find occasional comfort in each other. The acceptance that each is in love with someone else, without holding it against them. I want to see the moments where they work as a team, but not because they want to. I want to see a flicker of recognition that maybe, they do make a good team. Even with no love. And who cares if there’s no love when you’ve got each other’s backs?

Alizayd "the biggest simp" Al Qahtani 😆

One would think it'd be the bigotry. The stunning lack of insight/reflective capacity. The "just following orders here, sir" attitude, his tendency to reinforce his own oppression, the lack of ability to learn from the past...

No.

It's the way he wouldn't be in any of these situations if he wasn't constantly trying to control everyone except for himself. This fucking guy.

On second read, its glaringly obvious that his controlling attitude is not reserved for Nahri, because he tells Maniza that he wouldn't have allowed her to play in the fields as a child--and then he refuses to allow her to do the thing he just refused to do with the Marid worshiper, not because he suddenly agreed with the choice, but because he "can't allow" her to dirty her hands. Even in the grove of judgment, when his sister is like "you're super dead, it's time to go", he refuses not out of some fear of harshness, but because he's just not ready yet.

My very dumb morally bankrupt guy, it's been 1400 years of following these same narratives and never once benefitting in any way. You got your entire family dismembered. You caused untold destruction as a weapon of war. And yet every time there's the hint of a path to another life, you go "I must control this other person in some way" and bathe the world in blood anew so you can roil in your own self loathing and then Do The Exact Same Thing five pages later.

Just why? Why don't you die and stay dead? There is no vindication!