#that won’t be satisfying for marwa’s ending but i think that’s what’s most likely

[cookinguptales]

okay one more meta post at four am and then I’m done for the night

I canNOT stop thinking about Nandor’s “fatal flaw”, so to speak, and how the Djinn is punishing him for it. It’s so simple and so complex and so frustrating, and the Djinn is clearly 1000% done with it.

Simply put, Nandor is never satisfied. He’s absolutely one of those guys that’s always thinking the grass is going to be greener somewhere else, but he never bothers to water his own goddamn lawn. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Nandor romanticizes things. He romanticizes people. He romanticizes ideas. And that allows him to avoid emotionally engaging with reality -- because he’s always focused on a fantasy instead.

The first time you see what a problem it’s going to be is in the citizenship episode in s1, I think. That’s when we see Guillermo really, genuinely lose his temper with him for the first time. As Guillermo says, who cares if he’s not an American citizen? He’s a vampire and he should be happy and proud and grateful.

But he’s not. Nandor can’t be satisfied with anything. Part of it is perfectionism, part of it is an inability to understand the emptiness that he feels inside him at all times, but part of it is greed. That’s what the Djinn has zeroed in on, I think. At a certain point, the inability to be satisfied with what one already has is greed. The Djinn even specifically said he punished greed.

And Nandor is greedy.

He has a good home. He has a chosen family. But those weren’t enough for him. He had power. That wasn’t enough for him. He has a person who loves him, desperately. That wasn’t enough, either.

He has this chronic emptiness and ennui and it’s partially because he cannot appreciate all the good that he has in his life. He keeps thinking that there must be something better out there, something that can fix him, but there isn’t, is there? When Nandor finally feels better, that will have to come from inside him, not from any outside force. Nandor’s problem isn’t that he needs more. It’s that he needs to stand still for five goddamn minutes and notice what he already has.

There’s a sort of frenetic desperation to Nandor’s quest for meaning, and I sympathize with that. But I also sympathize with the Djinn’s irritation. Nandor hurts those around him when he doesn’t appreciate them for what they are. He can’t form real relationships because he won’t give people a chance and engage with them emotionally on more than a surface level. This is most clearly seen with Guillermo, but Nandor treated his wives abominably, too. He found such trifling faults with them despite claiming to have loved 35 of them, and he threw them away like yesterday’s trash instead of trying to form a real relationship with them. He keeps altering Marwa instead of getting to know her. 

He keeps looking for a wife when the person who loves him more than anyone on earth is right next to him.

And the Djinn has really had a front-row seat to all this. He sees how picky Nandor is, how quickly he discards things that aren’t “perfect”. He sees how Nandor is never satisfied. Not with his life, not with Guillermo, not with his wives, not with Marwa, not with himself. Which is the real root of the problem, I think...

The Djinn’s been run ragged trying to follow all of Nandor’s fickle changes, and he knows better than anyone (save maybe Guillermo) what Nandor’s real problem is. Nandor wants an easy fix for a difficult problem, and when potential solutions don’t immediately fulfill his needs, he abandons them. 

(And yes, this is absolutely why he joined a cult.)

I think this was exactly what the Djinn was getting at when he told Nandor that he’d only had a small increase in dick size and he was surprised that he’d wasted a wish on it. (Just like the Djinn keeps telling him that he’s wasting wishes on other shallow things, too.) He was telling him that he was wasting his life trying to fix what’s not broken. And in trying to fix his dick, which was already huge, Nandor ended up losing his ability to have sex with Marwa altogether.

So that’s why the Djinn chose the punishment he did, I think. He’s not just forcing Nandor to think about Guillermo every time he uses his dick. He’s forcing him to think about all Guillermo does for him. He’s forcing Nandor to confront the good things he’s been ignoring in his life, and he’s forcing him to realize how precious Guillermo is... after Guillermo has finally gotten a boyfriend. He wants Nandor to pine for something he used to have.

That’s the ultimate punishment for throwing away good things because you’re greedy for a fantasy that doesn’t exist. It’s realizing just how fucking good those things were once they’re no longer yours.

And I do think that Guillermo isn’t going to be off-limits forever, but he is right now and I think the Djinn senses that. That’s why he looked so fucking smug when Guillermo ran off. He knows that this is going to be a punishment for both of them, and he’s ready to watch the sparks fly.

...ah, Nandor... The Guide’s not the only one here who needs therapy! Use one of your wishes on that, if you haven’t already squandered them all LIKE YOU DO EVERYTHING. ;;