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
Hmm. I wonder if academic!Zuko's existence (or at least personality) isn't due to my desire for the Fire Nation court to be more like this. Zuko wouldn't have to pack himself into a little box anywhere near so tightly as Mai, but I've always thought the Fire Nation court should be the kind of place where little things like poetry and music and references to them matter, where a careless line from a poem that speaks of the beauty of the Water Tribe could lose you the Fire Lord's favour. Where Zuko might only need to speak against the war in the presence of a friend one too many times to be declared unfit for succession.
And haha, wow, it looks like academic!Zuko may be way darker than I was thinking at first. (Although that would not prevent me from writing WACKY GRAD STUDENT ANTICS into it. Not at all.)
(I can't decide if canon!Zuko would be okay-ish at poetry forms but completely fail at metaphors, or if he was so terrible at poetry all-around that his tutors just gave up and started putting bets on his posthumous title being Fire Lord Zuko The Legendary Bad Poet.)
I am torn between Old Fire being a Latin-ish language for scholars and it being the language you maybe speak at home with your kids, but you and your kids speak Modern Earth Kingdom everywhere else because, you know, everybody speaks MEK nowadays and Old Fire just sounds so backwards even if it's the language your mother spoke to you when you were little and the one you always heard from your grandfather. Although I guess I could see it being the second one and then becoming the first? Especially if Modern Earth Kingdom was first used for trade, then for politics, and finally in schools when the Fire Nation started having lots of contact with the Earth Kingdom.
I really really wonder how everybody started speaking the same language, though. How come the Southern Water Tribe speaks the same as the Northern Water Tribe speaks the same as the Fire Nation speaks the same as the entire Earth Kingdom? Even in China, for a long time you couldn't understand somebody from the next province over unless you were writing rather than talking. Maybe it has something to do with the Air Nomads and their flying bison of speediness, idk.
Now I'm wondering if I could even let canon go mostly the same way up until mid-season two, or if everything would happen completely differently from the ground up. *g*
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?
Ah, see, I think this would be totally in character for season three!Zuko. :D Except he would probably start responding to their conversation the same way he would a conversation about the same thing with someone at home and wouldn't even think to do the 'waitasec, wrong country! wrong social mores!' until halfway through a sentence (which, for academic!Zuko, would totally be referencing an Old Fire poem about how discussing rebellion in public is a bad idea, guys, let's move this inside, but for canon!Zuko would probably be something related to the navy. The navy the Earth Kingdom does not have. Oops).
Basically this fabulously tl;dr comment is making me think harder about stuff and be even more tl;dr myself, which are VERY GOOD THINGS. |D (And oh Jet. The writers did such a good job on him, which is to say he creeps me out liek whoa. Also I think I'm about to hit the comment length limit, so I'll save Azula for later.)
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Hmm. I wonder if academic!Zuko's existence (or at least personality) isn't due to my desire for the Fire Nation court to be more like this. Zuko wouldn't have to pack himself into a little box anywhere near so tightly as Mai, but I've always thought the Fire Nation court should be the kind of place where little things like poetry and music and references to them matter, where a careless line from a poem that speaks of the beauty of the Water Tribe could lose you the Fire Lord's favour. Where Zuko might only need to speak against the war in the presence of a friend one too many times to be declared unfit for succession.
And haha, wow, it looks like academic!Zuko may be way darker than I was thinking at first. (Although that would not prevent me from writing WACKY GRAD STUDENT ANTICS into it. Not at all.)
(I can't decide if canon!Zuko would be okay-ish at poetry forms but completely fail at metaphors, or if he was so terrible at poetry all-around that his tutors just gave up and started putting bets on his posthumous title being Fire Lord Zuko The Legendary Bad Poet.)
I am torn between Old Fire being a Latin-ish language for scholars and it being the language you maybe speak at home with your kids, but you and your kids speak Modern Earth Kingdom everywhere else because, you know, everybody speaks MEK nowadays and Old Fire just sounds so backwards even if it's the language your mother spoke to you when you were little and the one you always heard from your grandfather. Although I guess I could see it being the second one and then becoming the first? Especially if Modern Earth Kingdom was first used for trade, then for politics, and finally in schools when the Fire Nation started having lots of contact with the Earth Kingdom.
I really really wonder how everybody started speaking the same language, though. How come the Southern Water Tribe speaks the same as the Northern Water Tribe speaks the same as the Fire Nation speaks the same as the entire Earth Kingdom? Even in China, for a long time you couldn't understand somebody from the next province over unless you were writing rather than talking. Maybe it has something to do with the Air Nomads and their flying bison of speediness, idk.
Now I'm wondering if I could even let canon go mostly the same way up until mid-season two, or if everything would happen completely differently from the ground up. *g*
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?
Ah, see, I think this would be totally in character for season three!Zuko. :D Except he would probably start responding to their conversation the same way he would a conversation about the same thing with someone at home and wouldn't even think to do the 'waitasec, wrong country! wrong social mores!' until halfway through a sentence (which, for academic!Zuko, would totally be referencing an Old Fire poem about how discussing rebellion in public is a bad idea, guys, let's move this inside, but for canon!Zuko would probably be something related to the navy. The navy the Earth Kingdom does not have. Oops).
Basically this fabulously tl;dr comment is making me think harder about stuff and be even more tl;dr myself, which are VERY GOOD THINGS. |D (And oh Jet. The writers did such a good job on him, which is to say he creeps me out liek whoa. Also I think I'm about to hit the comment length limit, so I'll save Azula for later.)