#as someone who went thru a period where i literally did nothing beyond lying around and crying and not being able to stop crying

[youaremysunshine-court]

Tldr; the wwdits writers know a thing or two about depression and being tired of life, nandor is a prime example, allow them to bring about his character arc in a natural way

Nandor's 'I'm whispering bc I care about marwa and don't want her to know I'm about to replace her' gives me hope and much food for thought. Excuse the rambling because I'm fleshing this thought out as i go.

Because he's just self aware enough to know when his actions are making people sad. It means that he knows when he's doing/ done something wrong, and actually, I was super mad about this episode be guillermo and marwa and freddie deserved better, but now that I'm thinking more clearly, the writers have been leading up to this.

Everytime nandor does something wrong, he does notice. A lot of it is stupid dumb shit like getting locked in a cage at the rescue shelter. But when he pushed guillermo off the balcony during their fight, he has a millisecond of hesitation before he says OOPSIES. Likewise, when he's discussing the freddie fiasco, he considers for a moment that he's doing something wrong, then very deliberately glosses over it like it's nothing. (For more, see nadja figuring out he pillaged her village, leaving benjy alone and hypnotised, turning Gail without her consent, etc)

I believe the reason for this is a very specific turn the writers want to take with nandor as a character. It's a fact that nandor hasn't been happy for a long time, but this fact only becomes evident from the latter half of season 2 onwards. This is also when he starts fucking up more, and instead of taking responsibility the way he did with Sean and the brain scramblies, he starts to write things off like they don't really matter.

Had the vampires not stated clearly that he was going through vampire depression, it would have been evident from the way he just... stopped caring about everything and everyone. Compounded by guillermos apparent betrayal in 3×10, I believe he just kept sinking into these feelings, until he became the nandor we see in s4.

I know in a previous post i said they'd just made him into an asshole incel (which btw I do still think), I believe its a mask for the terrible depression he's going through. He's a lonely lonely vampire who wishes he could be human, who wants a lifeline so badly he'll cling to one made of gum and feathers at this point, and he's been in this despairing state for a while.

First, he clutched onto guillermo, thinking if he made him a vampire then they'd be happy. Then, he decided a wife would fix him. But she didn't, so he thought she needed to be changed. All this while he's struggling both with depression and buried feelings for guillermo. Which means when guillermo and freddie show up, happy and gay, he is intensely envious and immediately latches on to "what he's been missing".

Freddie. Freddie is the stand in for everything nandor wants but can't have. A human, slightly nerdy boyfriend, who dresses like the pits of fashion and knows enough about nandors niche interests to be interesting. He's the "perfect fix". Until he isn't.

This episode made a lot of people, including me, very very angry. But I think we need to look past this to what nandors really struggling with and allow the writers to let him grow without praising them for some episodes and cursing them for other, heartbreaking but necessary ones.

Honestly I'm pissed about the ending they forced on marwa, because yes she deserved to stab him at least once. But once again, I think that last shot of them together just highlights how far gone nandor is. She looks miserable, because he IS miserable. Marwa doesn't like him because he doesn't like himself. Marwa doesn't like living because nandor doesn't like living.

Sure, he smiles and laughs with freddie, but he's uncomfortable not knowing human jokes. Even the second time around he looks deeply unhappy when he's laughing at the roomba joke. He wants to be a part of this little clique humans have SO SO badly, but at the end of the day he is other.

And finally, that shot at the end where nandor cries after leaving freddie on the train. Is he grieving leaving freddie or is he grieving the travels he could have had with guillermo? Is he really crying or just scrunching up his face for the cameras? It all comes down to the original question: does he care? And the answer is, no, not anymore, not for a long time.

In conclusion, this has been long and rambling, but I can't wait to see how far he has to fall before he hits rock bottom, or if this is perhaps rock bottom. At that point I would like to see if he wishes to become human, or wishes that he'd always be happy. Or, my favourite option, I would like to see who the writers bring in as the person who shows him how to heal himself. Either way, the writers have brought the show this far without ruining it, and I trust them with this episode and the bigger picture, and I can only hope that they follow through on that.

#wwdits #nandor the relentless #not tagging this as nandermo bc it isnt #as someone who went thru a period where i literally did nothing beyond lying around and crying and not being able to stop crying #i can see a bit of myself in nandor #i fucked up a lot in that time and i just couldnt bring myself to care #i said some really insensitive things and then brushed them off and moved on #it wasnt my proudest moment but i yanked myself up and i hope nandor cam do the same #anyway character growth uwu good writing uwu nandor character development U fucking WU