i've been writing the first nina pov scene of flat on your face and wow, capturing her thought process after being so deep in fabian's head for so long has been really tricky. they're mirror image kinds of prideful tbh? i've been extending how i read fabian's canon characterization to a theoretical s4 as self-loathing to the point of self-obsession in the wake of His Mistakes, and while her deal isn't necessarily the direct opposite, her tendency to:
try and take sole responsibility for a problem in a way she really should not be,
reluctantly lean on others when that becomes unrealistic, often not by choice, and the lack of control she feels as a result is important because she:
then redirects her anger at herself for not "preventing" a problem (that she, in nearly all cases, could not have forseen!) towards those people who insisted on helping when it goes wrong
vs his tendency to:
take matters in his own hands out of a sense of duty/necessity and, even if he's right in enough cases for it to sneak up on you when he's wrong, pride re: his ability to handle the situation as ""the guy who solves stuff,""
overstep and subsequently fail in the process,
and then, once the consequences have escalated enough, stop trusting himself to the point that it starts affecting his ability to trust other people at all...
...sure do react like pure sodium and water!
(they explode and the water catches on fire. btw)
they both have a bad case of 'depending on what i do, i'm going to end up either the best or the worst person ever for succeeding or failing, and obviously failure of any kind is not an option' mindset and that's sort of just how they are as people but tbh, they're in a horrible feedback loop with the high stakes environments they stumbled into (read: put themselves in out of naivete and the hubris to think that they weren't naive!)
so at the same time, it's true that neither of them needed to end up this riddled with hubris and pain, as it was never one singular show-stopping bad choice that decided things, and yet the very nature of where and why they started on this path made tragedy a foregone conclusion. and if they stewed on it enough, they'd simultaneously blame each other and themselves! just as pridefully! yikes!