I’ve been spinning Raziel around in my head the past week or so and I’ve come to a very interesting realization about him and Daniyal???

(Not sure how accurate, but whewwww)

I think I’m a better world, a different time, (maybe the modern au), they are extremely similar people at their core???

It’s something about how for Daniyal, he has two people. That’s it. They’re just *his* people, and no one else has ever really mattered. He doesn’t emotionally attach to people in the “normal or correct” kind of way. Even as a doctor who is borderline murderous at the violation of patient consent, his reasoning lies less in helping others (even innocents) and more the satisfaction he gets- the pride, the puzzle.

At a base level, before everything else happened around them or to them, I think Daniyal and Raziel had a similar relationship with socialization and being alive??? Which is very odd for me to think about, because I think the main contrast in their lives that caused the divergence of fates away from being the same is:

Things happened *to* Raziel. And that shaped him.

Things happened *around* Daniyal. And that shaped him.

And it’s inherently different in a way I can’t quite explain???

Like two identical coloring sheets.

I dunno. Crazy Daniyal rambles because he’s giving me the feelings.

Daniyal is not the priority relationship for either Dahlia or Caladin. He’s aware of this. It doesn’t bother him. He knows that relationship is something he can’t replicate.

But as a result of things happening to them instead of him- and partially because of his influence, his relationship with both Zahra siblings has an air of “I miss her and I blame you.”

Both with how Daniyal’s pushing is what inevitably caused Dahlia to push over the edge and awaken as a resonator

And how Caladin is inherently enraged, distant, and mildly terrified of both Dahlia and Dani upon being set free??? Knowing he’s fundementally alienated from his family by choice because of what they’ve done: even when they think they’re right??

In a nutshell: Dani has a smaller emotional range than the average person. He’s a bit more “That’s mine” with his relationships, and tends to ruin things he touches. This doesn’t bother him because he never “ruins” something he can’t “fix.”

hohoh this is delicious lore i am eating up, but i definitely think you're right that they're similar and yet different.

i feel like if you put the same coloring page in front of both of them you'd get wildly different colors and interpretations of that page alone.

i like that dani's approach seems to be "even if you break i can fix it" where as raziel is more like "you'll break when i tell you to". they both seem to crave a level of control, but raziel's is definitely driven from more a internal factor from what was done to him and not really from the actions that happened around him.

two sides of the same coin. what strange little creatures.

i definitely think that if these two had a chance to meet long before the ThingsTM happened, they would have been extremely similar.

i like thinking about these two. how similar they are at their core, and how things could have been different for these two and how it seems like, even though they've veered off into different directions, at the core they still want some layer of control and understanding. dani in solving and playing with the puzzles, deriving satisfaction from it; and raziel who desires to direct the flow of the water and command where and when it flows, deriving satisfaction from it's obedience.