nhs is HARD to write properly, and some of the ways he gets incorrectly simplified in fandom are maddening to me and i don't want to let them sneak into my fic. nhs is an obsessive, revenge-driven murderer by the end of the series, playing a long con with deadly stakes

BUT!!! he doesn't talk like a chessmaster! he's not big on pithy one-liners that sound like richard silken quotes. he stammers a lot, makes little jokes, shares uncomfortable glances with people, and gets openly flustered when his plans start getting messed up

AND YET he also doesn't go completely hard on the ditz persona. in particular, the part where wwx and lwj are interrogating him post jin ling's wall adventure in the blade tomb, nhs is pretty obviously feeling the situation out, playing "i know you know something's up" w/ them

the little fluttering bird with the nervous fan isn't a subtle mask. it's campy and in-your-face; anyone who buys it 100% is an idiot. the thing that makes it work is that he's been cultivating it for a long time to compensate for being afraid of swords and not very butch

which is what people assume is underneath that kind of flamboyant, /ah me i'm such a stupid little thing/ act. nhs doesn't let people see what he cares genuinely about because that's a good way to get it taken away. it's better to be ridiculous about it so it becomes a joke

a thing the untamed is really good at is depicting theory of mind. the characters all have public facades, and everyone knows this. the trick isn't to make you think the facade is real - it's manipulating what you think is beneath it. the Real You is much more convincing that way

so nhs lets people think that his sort of pathetic, delicate facade is still part of the armor protecting a clever boy who was born into a clan that doesn't fit him very well. which - it doesn't stop doing that - but it also comes in handy hiding ice-cold toxic fury

that's a starting point, but i think the ditz-covering-for-closeted-covering-for-mastermind part is still easy mode and i don't want to fall into it when writing nhs fic

you can't make a mask of nothing. it's all built out of pieces of you! and so a really critical part of characterizing nhs is seeing how someone fey, gossipy, self-indulgent and easily-awed can still execute brutal revenge.

my interpretation is that nhs finds the revenge quest really distasteful and does it anyway. his face while wwx and lwj's backs are turned digging around in his family grave is angry and uncomfortable. he doesn't like it! he doesn't like /any of it/

he doesn't WANT power for its own sake. he never wanted to be sect leader, never ever ever. he wants his brother alive. he wants to paint and look at beautiful things. he wants to wash his hands of the nie's ugly human-sacrifice history.

nhs doesn't get what he wants, does he?

so i guess my final point is that while destroying jgy for killing nmj is def corrosive to nhs's temperament, i don't think it's his entire personality. no matter how pissed off you are at somebody, there's still a lot of time to fill day-to-day

and in the day-to-day i think nhs is often flustered and doing his best to avoid responsibilities while he wishes he could be feeding his damn birds! nhs wants to make mean jokes behind ppl's backs; plan a nice party; let a friend feel cool by listening wide-eyed to their story

it's terribly convenient that the skills you need to do those things are the same ones nhs uses to jury-rig together a convoluted and insane plan that completely ruins jgy's life. it's also really fucking sad!

and to really get to his tragedy in fic i think it's important to not skip the middle part -- the smart witty femme boy in a violent, masculine world -- and only have the flighty queer and/or the cold manipulator. /fin

WAIT ONE MORE THING: NHS DIALOGUE OBSERVATIONS

- constantly whining, often uses it strategically
- self-deprecating jokes as defense mechanism
- he pauses a lot to see if people will jump in/fill in the gaps with assumptions
- repeats words all the time, srsly ALL THE TIME