First. With international, you won’t be able to fully check in online. No worries. That will be fine.

I finally exchanged messages with Qatar twitter team. They couldn’t change either because of the code share BUT said get back to us at 72 hours pre flight. I did at just after that 72 hour window opened and asked for any ef pair. They did it. (Mind you, they didn’t send me a message back. I had to go into my reservation to see that they had given us the ef pair. At that point I didn’t care and was just thrilled that we had the seats)

now I know. At 72 hours Qatar can make the seat assignment