#he's doing everything not to throttle her and eat her liver á la prometheus' dipshit eagle

[scrawnytreedemon]

Writing for this ZelZant fic I've been working on-and-off since mid-June. God these two are so fun to bounce off each other-- Not even romantically at this point, just gritting pleasantries through their teeth while simultaneously having moments of curiosity.

[I'm gonna continue rambling under the cut in case this gets very long, lol <3]

To grab some stuff directly from Discord chats:

It's just. They're so soooo. Twilight Princess' whole baseline is power, who gets it, what they do with it, and what that entails, and I find these two in particular to be especially fun in this regard, since they're both trying to project an aura of legitimacy moreso than the other main characters(Link is an Ordon goatherd who has to take up power but is not to use it beyond this liberatory purpose, Midna hides her true nature as Twilight Princess and doubts herself even as her status is crucial, Ganondorf wants to throw everything out because he recognises the whole institution as corrupt even as this version of him gestures to divine mandate as proof of his own competency, ect.).

Zelda is the would-be monarch of Hyrule, a bloody institution that, even if not responsible for the banishment of the Twili themselves, are heavily implied to have enacted genocide on the Gerudo, whom I consider Zant(and Midna!) diaspora of. At the same time, Zant himself is undeniably a cruel, oppressive figure not only robbing Zelda of her birthright, but all of Hyrule of its freedoms. He's a strongman dictator, hyped up on religious fervour and tight-lipped egomania.

This is by no means a super deep or particularly "great" exploration of the topic, but for me, in this little context, this weird topsy-turvy dynamic is fascinating. Historically, Zelda's ancestors were the ones doing the oppressing, but in the here and now Zant is trying to enact it upon her, while also leveraging this paternalistic, politely-misogynistic affect. It's everything he should, in theory, stand-against, but Zant for all his talk is nothing but an opportunist.

(He has no morals, he has no values-- He really is a Tory! My god 😭)

But like, despite all that, I do think the ways in which they are similar lend themselves to a degree of chemistry nevertheless. I think even without the backdrop of war and conquest, it'd remain stilted, and they'd still have issues with each other... But, oh!

They're fascinating. They remind me of those late-19th century early-20th not-quite-aristocratic couples forreal. Fucked up. Love that for them <3