Oh, man, I am so glad to see your expanded thoughts on academic!Zuko (also, um, hi!). Because although I really like the little snippet you've already posted, oh dear god does the very notion of academic!Zuko bring cognitive dissonance crashing down on me like nobody's business.
I've been trying to figure out why, exactly, since I'm reluctant to pin it down to !Zuko is dumb, lol! Because clearly that isn't exactly true in canon - he's hardly brilliant (that would be Azula), but he's bright and omg focused. And although he's crashingly unimaginative for most of the series, it's apparent by the close that at least some of that (the bit that isn't due to him being a boy scout who is too noble and straight-arrow at heart to be tricksy and smart like Aang) is a result of him tamping himself down so very tightly post childhood trauma and exile - I love the little glimpse we get in Ember Island Players of drama nerd!Zuko.
So ... it's not as if canon!Zuko, as I read him (of course ymmv), couldn't be extrapolated out into a Ba Sing Se student who keeps tripping over echoes of Old Fire Nation. And I myself have spent far too much time deliberating over canon!Zuko's likely proficiency in court poetry (conclusion: inept. profoundly inept).
Not to mention, I'm also fascinated by the historical and cultural implications of the Avatar world's apparently global common language - though I think I'd like to have my cake and eat it wrt Old Fire or whatever you'd call it, with it being perhaps a little like Latin in early modern Europe, where educated people or those in particular professions would know it and highly educated people would speak some version of it - with perhaps even an equivalent of medieval Church Latin, legalese!Latin, etc, omg so fun.
But ... I am so totally not a linguist, and so haven't thought particularly deeply about this! And if I did I would obv feel obliged to ground it fairly securely in Asian literary and linguistic history, as you say, and these are things I'm deeply ignorant about.
Which is to say, I'm fascinated by all this world building-y stuff. But academic!Zuko, man... I guess that even allowing for the Zuko who disapproves of inferior versions of Love Amongst the Dragons being much more to the fore than in canon ... I just can't see the kind of historical consciousness and willingness to riffle through options in the researchy way that you describe above - 'crap, wrong language' - coming that easily to him? Or, at least, not without radically changing the way he reacted to stuff long before reaching Ba Sing Se? Which is to say, yeah, AU and a half before you even get to the culture building.
And ... I'm still not entirely sure why aca!Zuko pings my O__O radar more than other crazy ATLA AUs I've come across. Personal taste, I guess? *throws up hands.* (Though, talking of personal taste, I do totally share your reaction to Jet, as per one of your ealier ATLA posts - yeeech).
Oh, man, sorry! I feel as though I've popped up on your journal and been a spigot of negativity. I would love to see you do aca!Zuko - it just hurts my brain! And this has been incubating since I first saw your atla stuff (um, somehow?) a while ago, so this whole tl;dr isn't as spur of the moment as it may appear.
Um. If you can face it after wading through all of the above, Azula would totally be my meme character. From whatever universe!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-09-29 04:42 am (UTC)I've been trying to figure out why, exactly, since I'm reluctant to pin it down to !Zuko is dumb, lol! Because clearly that isn't exactly true in canon - he's hardly brilliant (that would be Azula), but he's bright and omg focused. And although he's crashingly unimaginative for most of the series, it's apparent by the close that at least some of that (the bit that isn't due to him being a boy scout who is too noble and straight-arrow at heart to be tricksy and smart like Aang) is a result of him tamping himself down so very tightly post childhood trauma and exile - I love the little glimpse we get in Ember Island Players of drama nerd!Zuko.
So ... it's not as if canon!Zuko, as I read him (of course ymmv), couldn't be extrapolated out into a Ba Sing Se student who keeps tripping over echoes of Old Fire Nation. And I myself have spent far too much time deliberating over canon!Zuko's likely proficiency in court poetry (conclusion: inept. profoundly inept).
Not to mention, I'm also fascinated by the historical and cultural implications of the Avatar world's apparently global common language - though I think I'd like to have my cake and eat it wrt Old Fire or whatever you'd call it, with it being perhaps a little like Latin in early modern Europe, where educated people or those in particular professions would know it and highly educated people would speak some version of it - with perhaps even an equivalent of medieval Church Latin, legalese!Latin, etc, omg so fun.
But ... I am so totally not a linguist, and so haven't thought particularly deeply about this! And if I did I would obv feel obliged to ground it fairly securely in Asian literary and linguistic history, as you say, and these are things I'm deeply ignorant about.
Which is to say, I'm fascinated by all this world building-y stuff. But academic!Zuko, man... I guess that even allowing for the Zuko who disapproves of inferior versions of Love Amongst the Dragons being much more to the fore than in canon ... I just can't see the kind of historical consciousness and willingness to riffle through options in the researchy way that you describe above - 'crap, wrong language' - coming that easily to him? Or, at least, not without radically changing the way he reacted to stuff long before reaching Ba Sing Se? Which is to say, yeah, AU and a half before you even get to the culture building.
And ... I'm still not entirely sure why aca!Zuko pings my O__O radar more than other crazy ATLA AUs I've come across. Personal taste, I guess? *throws up hands.* (Though, talking of personal taste, I do totally share your reaction to Jet, as per one of your ealier ATLA posts - yeeech).
Oh, man, sorry! I feel as though I've popped up on your journal and been a spigot of negativity. I would love to see you do aca!Zuko - it just hurts my brain! And this has been incubating since I first saw your atla stuff (um, somehow?) a while ago, so this whole tl;dr isn't as spur of the moment as it may appear.
Um. If you can face it after wading through all of the above, Azula would totally be my meme character. From whatever universe!