Not going to lie, I read this as “Constitution bender” at first and am now terribly disappointed I don’t get to write some kind of ridiculous lawyers AU with elderly LoK era Zuko as a Supreme Court Justice.
1. So combustion bending is heavily implied to be a learned skill, and one typically associated with a certain amount of ritual. So how does a prince end up in this kind of ritualized training? He doesn’t discover a proclivity for edged weapons. Maybe Iroh sent him something other than a knife. Instead, as Zuko’s life after his mother’s sudden disappearance grew bleaker, he searched for some other useful, worthwhile skill to make up for his complete inadequacy in comparison to his sister in standard firebending. He hits on combustion bending almost by accident.
2. Ozai is overjoyed. Sending Zuko off to study a specialized form of bending is a handy way to get rid of him for a while, and with any luck, he’ll discover a vocation, or be manipulated into discovering a vocation and become a combustion monk or a Fire Sage. So this is what happens to Zuko instead of scarring and banishment.
3. Zhao holds the honor of being the first Fire Nation officer to be tasked with hunting the Avatar, and he gets all the toys. He asks for a combustion bender, and he gets one. Unfortunately, or probably very fortunately, Zuko is under a vow of silence at the time, so he spends a lot of time glaring at Zhao’s back instead of shouting exactly what he thinks of his new commander to the man’s face, and getting himself in a duel.
4. Zuko is still a prince, and at least half the reason Zhao wants him around is to have a baby royal as witness to his exploits. So he brings Zuko with him to the North Pole, and takes him on the land expedition to kill the moon. Effectively this means he takes Iroh’s place. In the lessons he has taken from the Fire Sages in the hopes that he could be persuaded become one himself, he got to hear a lot about balance and the spirits, and how doing something like destroying the moon is a terrible idea and also blasphemy, and he turns on Zhao, breaking his vow of silence to stumble his way through explaining this.
5. After Zhao kills the moon spirit and the Avatar joins with the ocean spirit, Zuko takes on Zhao and is winning when the ocean spirit hauls Zhao away. This very public fight gets Zuko captured and taken before Chief Arnook and the Avatar. They try to piece together his identity, and figure out what to do with him, but Zuko isn’t saying a word. Literally. He’s back to that whole vow of silence thing.
if it wasn’t clear enough in the last post i’m really pissed about this so just to make sure everyone doesn’t think tome has a crush on reigen
this:
DOES NOT mean this:
the original characters used are わくわく(wakuwaku), which are used to denote excitement and joy- specifically, shaking with anticipation. tome is literally so excited about getting to go out on a job with reigen that she’s vibrating. it is not a heartbeat sound, not even close. (and ONE didn’t use dokidoki either, that was added by the translators.)
so yeah @transgayshou is right, pgp is a gigantic shithead and put romantic connotations where none existed. and more importantly ONE is making absolutely no suggestion that tome has a crush on reigen so don’t believe pgp’s shit thanks for coming to my ted talk
Hi, the translator here—this is true in the sense that there’s no connotation of a crush here, and I don’t think @polyglotplatypus intended there to be. わくわく does indeed mean that you’re excited, so I translated it as “th-thump th-thump” (which PGP changes to “ba-dump ba-dump” because I think it must have sounded better to them)—as in your heart’s pounding because you’re so excited you get to go see some evil spirits. A lot of Japanese onomatopoeias don’t have an English equivalent, so translators do the best we can, and I’m not sure a “buzzing” or “vibrating” sound would have made sense to an English-speaking audience. You can disagree with me on that, as it seems that my translation certainly caused some people to misunderstand. However, I can assure you that it was not intentional on my part. I was surprised when I first saw a Tumblr user (who was NOT PGP, by the way) using that panel to imply that Tome has a crush on Reigen.
I would also like to point out that—as someone who has studied Japanese for years—“doki doki” is a general sound for your heart pounding hard. It’s not strictly confined to romantic feelings, even though that’s how most non-Japanese will have heard it in Japanese pop culture.
If you have issues with the way I translated something, that’s valid and I invite you to politely message me about it. I don’t necessarily appreciate being accused of deliberately twisting things. I’m very friendly and responsive, so please feel free to message me next time there’s an issue.
I really wanna write a Zelda all about Dadondorf, like
In this cycle, Ganondorf wakes up/reincarnates/is freed early, and as he’s finally gotten sick of the cycles, he finds the infant Hero of Courage and either kidnaps him or orphans him so that he can raise him for himself, with the goal of corrupting him towards darkness and evil
But over time, Link corrupts Ganondorf, and by the time he’s old enough for him becoming the Hero of Courage to begin reasonably getting set in motion, Ganondorf has legitimately become a caring father to him
And then this cycle’s Zelda begins a hunt for the Hero of Courage and the Bearer of Power, because Ganondorf’s awakening all those years ago did not go unnoticed, and this Zelda only believes in the roles Fate has laid out for the three; as such she’s lost perspective on her own rule and has become something of a tyrant. When she and her entourage reach Link and Ganondorf’s village, she meets them both (by accident; Ganondorf didn’t know she was there) and she takes Ganondorf prisoner with the intent of executing him
And Link has to begin his journey in a way nobody ever intended: to free the land from the tyrannical Princess Zelda, and to rescue Ganondorf from her diabolical clutches
Bonus points for Ganondorf reveling in the quiet love of the parental bond and genuinely being remorseful for his actions in past cycles
Additionally, Link has to wrest the usual Zelda reincarnations from fate’s
grasp; he has to convince Impa to rebel, the oracles of the three goddesses to forsake
their traditional champion, he has to spend the entire game telling
fate that the universe has finally had enough.
Revision: Ganondorf DOES know Zelda is coming and hides, but Link wanders out, is met by her, and when she tries to take him back to her castle by force Ganondorf steps in to protect him and is taken prisoner instead.
Further addition: Dadondorf takes Link to a Gerudo village to raise him, and Link grows up surrounded by sisters and moms and when Zelda shows up to search the village he’s like “Oh that’s a lady who looks like me!!! EXCITEMENT!!! Ladies are nice, she must be nice! I’m gonna say hi!”
Poor Link has no idea the storm he’d set in motion with that misjudgment.
(WOW this got way longer than I thought it would)
“It was not like the Hero of Courage to be so…afraid.“ Zelda leaned in, her nose almost brushing the bars of Ganondorf’s cage. She was tantalizingly close, but this cell had been designed to hold him. Him, specifically; the magic woven into the cell meant he could no more reach through the bars than he could lift himself up by his own bootstraps. “What did you do to his spirit, while he was in your…care? How did you break the unbreakable?“
Ganondorf chuckled. “Do you really believe that courage is the absence of fear?”
A tilt of her head, a narrowing of her eyes. “What is it, then? Tell me, ancient one. You have faced us in countless cycles past. What is his courage, if not that?”
He shook his head, then leaned back against the wall of his cell. “I thought that too, at first. I thought, yes, this is the one foe that fate had chosen to bar my way! He must be a paragon of courage, of fearlessness, for what am I if not the paragon of power? But, then…we fought. We fought, and I looked into his eyes, and I saw terror. I saw desperation. And as I lay bleeding in the dust, I saw that the absence of fear–my absence of fear–was naught but foolishness, and that true courage came from accepting fear, from allowing it into your heart as a friend, and from there it would help you stand tall when others turned and fled. I thought myself unstoppable, until I faced a boy who’d defeated me in his heart before we ever met face-to-face.” Ganondorf smirked. “And from then on, I knew fear.”
The Queen straightened, her face cast in shadow; Ganondorf couldn’t tell if she was pondering his words, or had discarded them as the rambling justifications of…well, of Ganondorf, the Ancient Evil. After a moment’s silence, she spoke again, but this time she sounded troubled.
“Why did he not cry out? If he was so afraid of me, why did he not object? He merely tried to pull away, to run. He did not call for help. He did not ask for mercy.” Another pause. “Did it simply not occur to him?”
Ganondorf’s smile disappeared. “…He can’t.”
“He what?”
He sighed. “He can’t talk. I’ve been trying to teach him for his entire life. It’s as if the words just get…caught in his throat. I’d never thought anything of it before; in all those cycles, I counted fewer words from him than duels we fought. He understands everyone around him perfectly, but…” Ganondorf gestured helplessly. ”All he can get out are mangled grunts and half-noises. It hurts him to even try.“
“That’s ludicrous,” Zelda scoffed. “None of the tales mention that. You’re playing games with me, and I’ll not suffer it gladly.” She turned to leave, and called over her shoulder, “We’ll speak again once your hunger makes you willing to tell me the truth, Gerudo.”
Before she could leave the dungeon, Ganondorf barked a laugh. “You’re trapped.”
Zelda stopped, seemed to wrestle with herself for a moment, and then turned to meet the challenge. “I’m not the one in a cage, ancient one.”
Ganondorf rose from where he sat, drawing himself up to his full height and moving to the bars to meet her as she returned. “You’re trapped, Zelda.”
To her credit, Zelda didn’t flinch from his gaze. He loomed, dwarfing her with his presence on the far side of the bars, and his eyes burned like coals. “I heard you the first time. Explain yourself.”
Ganondorf smiled, this time without humor or mirth. “Fate has plans for us, O Wise One,” and the way he spat the words made his mockery clear. “It always does and it always has. It conspires against us, does everything in its power to force us to dance to its tune. Every Zelda I’ve ever known might as well have been locked in a tower, for how much freedom she had to live her life. Ten years old, twenty for the lucky ones, and then you face a murderous madman obsessed with conquest, only able to trust in a young man you’ve never met but whose face is burned into your soul. Every Zelda I’ve ever known has been forced to use her mind for Fate’s design, unable to allow my madness to consume her world. You aren’t allowed to be anything else.” His eyes softened. “And neither are we. I, locked into conquest; I, locked into failure. Fate ensured that I was born with nothing, that the envy and hunger might consume me and draw you both out. And he…” Ganondorf looked away. “Perhaps it was a cruel jest on the part of the gods. He cannot speak, so he must act.” His eyes locked on to hers again. “I was tired of all this. I changed fate, I went off the course that had been set for us, and now I am free.”
Zelda held his gaze through the bars for a moment, then glanced around his cell. “You’re right, Ganondorf. You are mad.”
As she swept out of the dungeon, his laughter echoed behind her, following her up the stairs until the echoes had faded together into a mocking whisper. She would spend the rest of the night trying to distract herself from the nagging feeling that she was the one behind the bars of that cell, and that Ganondorf was on the outside, looking in.
I'm Still Kicking 