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Name a character I've written about, and I will tell you three (or five) things that I think are essential to keep in mind when writing that character.
*cough* Characters I may have been thinking about writing are also fine.
*cough* Characters I may have been thinking about writing are also fine.
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Date: 2011-02-06 04:05 am (UTC)1. Zuko is awkward. He's really smooth at some things, like breaking into strongholds no-one would have thought he'd go within twenty li of, or learning ancient firebending forms in like an hour. But put him in a room with someone (with the possible exceptions of Mai and Azula), and there will be ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF AWKWARD. If you ever needed an industrial-strength generator of the stuff, you could just attach a wire! And sometimes this is funny, and sometimes it really isn't. (See: giant painful possibly vision-impairing burn.)
Either he's really really bad at reading social cues (which is very likely) or he's working off a slightly different set of rules and can't adjust. If the latter is true, he must have gotten those rules from somewhere.
2. He grew up in an abusive situation. Zuko really, really wants to please his father (at least for the earlier part of the series); that's the most important thing to him, and it informs everything he does for a long time. Since what his father did was right, his crew will be angry and disappointed if they know the cause of his scarring and banishment -- won't they?
And even if Azula always lies, even if she wants to get rid of him so she can have the throne, Zuko is her big brother and he doesn't want her to die. And he doesn't want his father to die, either. Maybe they're cruel, maybe they messed him up big time, but they're his family and he loves them.
3. He doesn't give up. If there's something he really cares about, he will not stop until he's either achieved that goal or been convinced there are more important things to do. (Azula's like this, too.)
4. HONOURRRRRRR. Zuko is kind of a traditionalist at heart; his country, his people, his culture are all very, very important to him. But if he needs to break one to save the others, he will sacrifice everything else before his people. In this if nothing else, he is a good prince.
5. He's young. He may be royalty with a good education, he may be living in wartime. But he's a good one or two years younger than even me, and while three or four of those years spent running around the world looking for the Avatar may have helped that in some ways, he definitely hasn't had the time (except perhaps in Ba Sing Se) to settle down and learn the kinds of things a ruler should know. And the kind of things he thinks a ruler should know aren't necessarily going to be the ones he needs to know. (And if it's AU!Zuko, going for a non-princely life, he knows even less.)