u/TheDefinitiveAlt

Not even a scenario. Just two panels of an imainary comic.

Cyn stands in the midst of a screaming crowd.

Screams of joy, that is. They are her passionate, devoted fans. (You and me!)

Suddenly one cries out loudly, “WE LOVE YOU CYN!”

Cyn, who has just been slowly twirling around, scanning all the surrounding mob, grinning that wild, gleefully sadistic grin, now snaps her head directly to that fan, the rest of her body following shortly afterward.

She licks where her lips would be, and responds in flat, broken monotone. “Yes… and I’m going to love… all of you.”

Yeah, N is one of the most popular characters. People really like him. I'm very much in the minority in my not being the biggest fan of his character. But it's simply the truth. I'm not. At least not most of the time.

However there are exceptions. One of the major ones being what they do with him in Fight Till I'm Good enough. And I was watching yet another Murder Drones reaction last night where they got to episode 5, I very quickly realized that Episode 5 N might be another one of them. I kind of like N there.

Scratch that...

...I actually kind of LOVE episode 5 N.

Just an older brother trying to protect and look after his younger sister who is clearly disabled, while navigating a world he also is uneasy and kind of scared in.

He's not an idiot. And I'm not even referring to his avoidance of acting like a horror movie protagonist (thought that is also nice) I'm moreso referring to the fact that he seems more AWARE of the mistreatment his kind was suffering at the hands of humans, unlike modern day N where abuse and mistreatment seem to bounce off of him unaware, (see V and J's introduction or the Beau surgery scene)

The only thing I don’t really care for is how they gloss over N’s reaction to Cyn’s experiments on the manor drones. Kind of just make a joke out of it. "Not feeling particularly great to be immediately honest.... Okay, it's gone."

You had something going there. Even got started with the "OUR Cyn? Nah, she's cool."

I honestly could have gone for more stuff about N and Cyn just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. Him helping her out when she (seemingly) accidentally messes some order up from Tessa's parents or makes some mess or something. Helping her fix her hair and stuff. Piggy back rides and stuff,

Just caring for her like a little sister, you know? That kind of stuff. It would be sweet.

And then this episode, or at least N’s part in it, can be more about him having to come to terms with the fact that this person he loves and cares about is not the person he thinks she is.

I mean, they do kind of do that. But they don't focus on it. I would like to see them make that more of an internal struggle, something he really has to wrestle with. To where it takes multiple pieces of evidence of what she has been doing for him to even consider any of it true. Even when he directly sees the freaky stuff Cyn had going on down in the basement, he's still trying to be like, "There's gotta' be a reason for this."

Yes, even when he finally does come to know it, have him still think she’s not too far gone.

Heck it’s already the case that Uzi’s meddling is making it to where N’s memories of these events aren’t playing out 1 to 1 how they did originally. So use that. Maybe even go so far as to try to have N try to reach Cyn, SERIOUSLY try to reach Cyn, only for her to demonstrate indisputably she is in fact the monster the others are saying she is.

Maybe even have him personally witness the gala massacre she orchestrated. He’s clearly in distress. While she’s still smiling that cute “innocent” smile she always does. Which we see very obviously now is just a mask she wears covering her sociopathic tendencies.

Could be some good drama there. Some good emotion and stuff. And I personally would quite like that.

"Naaaaaaaaaah, really?" is what some might say.

However, I have heard others say that J actually does care about V and N, acting as a big sister of the group. It's just that she resents being forced in the role and uh...

...is kind of just a horrible person in general and that just manifest in abuse to N despite her care for him.

I can see that for V. Why else would she try to get V to join her in episode 8? But for N specifically, I don't really agree.

In fact, I see the opposite. Not only does J not do that for N. Not only does she insult him at every opportunity. But she literally tried to kill him in the pilot.

You might reason that she was just doing what was necessary to keep order at that moment, and knew that N was going to come back anyways (as she herself later did.) But just wanting to maintain order would not explain the great amount of pleasure she took from killing him or her mocking him afterward.

I also think about episode 5 where she protects N there. But something about the way this was done feels less to me like she cares about N necessarily...

...and moreso the writers were just giving J a role in the plot. We don't at this point have reason for J to be working for Cyn, with it just being revealed what Cyn's aims even are. So let's give J a role in helping with fighting that too, and kind of handwave everything else.

Kind of feels like, yeah. She's not a GOOD person. But she's not a COMPLETELY heartless person. What Cyn is trying to do here is pretty freaking evil and will end with many lives lost, as mass murder generally is. So if someone is trying to fight against that and I can do something to support them, regardless of who it is, I'll go ahead."

But that's just how that feels to me.

I do actually wish it wasn't that way. More complexity isn't a bad thing. And if J already does have that care, I kind of wish it was shown or implied a bit more clearly, something you can see and appreciate about her character in the moment, rather than being something you might can only possibly, debatably intuit in retrospect (like many aspects of the show honestly). But yeah.