#and Nandor has always protected Guillermo from the realization that he could never truly be a vampire... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ineffably-human · 7 months

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It honest to God took me a month to rewatch the last two episodes of this season of Shadows, because I'm still so mad about how they handled Guillermo's decision. And I'm probably going to always be mad. I think this season wasted a lot of time that could have been spent laying better groundwork, for both Guillermo's decision and for Nadja and the Guide's subplot.

But something did click into place for me in that very last scene, where Derek's being ushered down by Topher to meet the other zombies. Season Three was unofficially about power and protection. Season Four was officially about change. I thought this season was going to be about secrets. But it's actually about belonging to a community.

The vampires were out in the world a lot more this season. Colin runs for public office (passing among humans as he can), which drags him into the interests of the community of energy vampires. Nadja connects to a community from her homeland, and winds up caring about them more than she ever expected. Laszlo's mostly focused on the experiments, but his natural ease with Sean (and humans in general) is on display a few times - and when the vampires think he's in distress, they throw a whole party to rally him. The Guide, of course, struggles the whole season with feeling like an outsider who can't be part of the group she cares for.

Sean links the vampires to the pride parade, not just celebrating the queer community, but making the vampires the face of queerness, of immigration, of Staten Island itself. (And Guillermo gets his first taste of Pride, and of a community he'd never been able to claim until recently.) At the same time, it's shown that vampires always feel like they're a step away from being found out by humans, of their surrounding community turning on them and forcing them out.

Nandor struggles throughout the season with social awkwardness, communicating, being misunderstood; he fails to connect with strangers without hypnosis guiding the conversation the way he wants it to go. But the other vampires have become his home, in a way that's evolved past their relationship during Season Three. He rallies them successfully during Local News. He and Colin Robinson look out for each other. Keeping Guillermo's secret is just as much about protecting Nandor as it is protecting Guillermo.

(It's still Guillermo he's always calling out for, though. With the certainty of someone who already knows where home is, he just hasn't named it yet.)

And as always, Guillermo is stuck in between two worlds. He can't connect fully with his bio family, but can't truly step away from them. He wants to be a vampire, but his transformation fights him and he can't see humans as prey. He wants to come when Nandor calls, but can't tell him about the biggest thing that's happening to him.

By the finale he feels more isolated from the vampires than ever, to the point that he can't see what's actually happening: by the time they all know his secret, the others have rallied around him, and are seeing him as another member of the family in need of protecting.

And once Nandor realizes that he cares more about losing Guillermo than his own pride, he deliberately brings that community to Guillermo: he introduces Guillermo as the fifth of their household, and throws him a birthday party to bookend the one at the start of the season. He makes Guillermo a ceremony, invites everyone they know, and asks if he's willing to become one of them forever.

And it's not that Guillermo doesn't want to be a vampire. He does, desperately. It's that he can't stop also being a human.

So instead it's Derek (a vampire basically living as a human, and deeply lonely for it) who is ushered into a new community ready to welcome him, something Guillermo has always been hoping for.

("Do you like eating human flesh? Heh, you will!")

Guillermo still doesn't have The Thing he wants, not really. He still has to name exactly what it is. But Nandor helped guide him towards where home is. And Laszlo helped him pick up the pieces. The vampires don't love Guillermo like a fellow vampire, but they love him like Guillermo, and like with Colin last year that doesn't just reset. It can't. The roots are in too deep, it's already bound everyone stronger.

We'll just have to wait to see what it turns into.

#fandom: wwdits #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #i am a meta gremlin #otp: nandermo #nandermo

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cookinguptales · 9 months

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I just keep thinking about the way that Silvia and Nandor mirrored each other in this episode. Both of them represented Guillermo's two families and how he's really failing them both.

Both Silvia and Nandor love Guillermo and know him well enough to know that something's up. They both know that he's distracted and self-involved and absent -- and won't tell them why. And it's hurting them both.

They're both starting to get angry.

Silvia and Nandor both get pieces of Guillermo that the other doesn't, and both treat him very differently, but... they're both very similar in this episode.

Like, Silvia rarely sees her son. He barely took any time to see her for thirteen years, even though they lived in the same city for most of it, and has missed at least three birthdays in a row. Then he suddenly starts wanting to repair their relationship. He's not just showing up at her house every so often or crashing on her couch in a depression for a week without telling her why. Now he's actively trying to be with her. Be there for her. He's giving her lavish gifts and making time to visit with her.

But even before that, she still loved him. She still supported him. Even now, she's happy for any scrap of attention he gives her. But... she's finally losing her patience with him in 5.05, and you can understand why. She's finally got him there at her birthday physically, but mentally he's not there at all. He's constantly on the phone, constantly ignoring her, didn't even bring a token gift. He keeps trying to make this night about him.

And her Guillermo has always been distant, has never been entirely honest with her about his life -- but he's never been cruel or selfish towards her.

Until now. So for the first time, he's truly disappointed her.

Then, on the other hand, we have Nandor. Nandor has always had all of Guillermo's time, but he's only started to have the emotional intimacy that Guillermo's shared with Silvia very recently. He's become addicted to it very quickly, though. He doesn't just enjoy Guillermo's attention; he's addicted to it. And he's come to really depend on him. He's become used to Guillermo being there for him, protecting him, hyping him up, getting him out of trouble. Loving him.

And now, like Silvia, he's coming to realize that his Guillermo is pulling away. And like Silvia, he doesn't know why. Silvia doesn't know that he became a vampire familiar 13 years ago, and Nandor doesn't know that he's been bitten by a vampire now.

Nandor has sort of been downgraded to where Silvia was for most of the series, hasn't he? He had all of this love and attention from Guillermo, and then he was very abruptly ghosted without any straight answer why.

But he's not like Silvia. He's not gentle and understanding and long-suffering. Nandor, like Guillermo, is fairly selfish. So while Silvia is only becoming disappointed with Guillermo now, Nandor's speedrunning it. lmao

Guillermo betrayed his biological family with his physical and emotional absence, but this episode showed that he's starting to do that to the vampires, too. And while we may laugh at the vampires' antics and it's harder to feel bad for them when Guillermo isn't there to clean up their messes, we understand keenly how badly Guillermo hurt his family by messing up his mother's birthday.

By the end of the episode, though, it's made really clear that to Nandor, the two feel like one and the same. It was an important event in his life and Guillermo, who promised to always be there for him when he needed him, was not. And he was deeply, deeply disappointed.

Compare Nandor's reaction here to his reaction in s2 with The Curse. (I could write an entire meta post just comparing those two episodes, lmao.) He would have liked Guillermo's help in The Curse and seemed a little cross that Guillermo was off "having fun" at a concert or something (read: killing vampires) but he was largely okay with figuring things out himself.

In Local News, though, he was constantly reaching out for his right hand, who was no longer there. Guillermo has become something reliable and depended on and necessary to Nandor -- and he's not here. While it irritated Nandor in The Curse, it seemed to actively hurt him in Local News. He felt betrayed by Guillermo's absence, just like Silvia did.

For both of them, though, it's not actually about physical distance. (Though that obviously bothers them, too.) It's about the emotional distance that Guillermo is putting between them. Guillermo might physically have come to Silvia's birthday, but he was emotionally a thousand miles away. Guillermo's physical absence was felt by Nandor, but it was that he wasn't there to depend upon emotionally that really seemed to fuck him up.

(Even though Nadja and Laszlo disagreed on methods, they both comforted and supported each other in a really scary time here. Nandor kept reaching out for that from Guillermo, but never got it. Ouch.)

So both Silvia and Nandor are getting this sense that they're not really important to Guillermo anymore, and that's killing them. Both of them are feeling abandoned -- and for Nandor in particular, who has several hundred years of abandonment issues, that's devastating.

Guillermo, for his part, doesn't seem to realize how much his actions are driving them both away. He's trying to have it all, but he's on the fast track to having nothing. He won't be a full vampire, he won't be a full slayer, he won't have his biological family, he won't have his vampiric family. He'll be all alone, and he'll have no one to blame but himself.

The vampires didn't make him forget his mother's birthday. The slayers didn't prevent him from helping the vampires. Guillermo is just prioritizing his own hopes, fears, and desires, and he's alienating everyone.

It's good to prioritize yourself sometimes, especially when you're a person like Guillermo who's always suppressed his own desires so he could fulfill others', but it's almost like he's swinging too far the other way now. He's letting down the people who depend on him, and he's hurting their feelings in ways that will be very hard to fix.

Guillermo has, up until now, been a very dependable person. Guillermo's mother couldn't depend on his presence, but she could depend on his love and care and kindness. Nandor couldn't depend on his openness, but he could depend on his presence and unconditional support.

But he's not dependable anymore, is he? And that really seems to have thrown both of them. They don't know what to make of this new Guillermo, but they don't like it.

They're both so, so disappointed in him.

And I think Guillermo is, too. : /

#tbh I could write an entire meta just about how this is tying into nandor's deep-seated fear of guillermo leaving him #which is worsened by the abandonment issues he's had since he was alive #but this one is already pretty long #wwdits #wwdits spoilers #wwdits meta #guillermo de la cruz

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