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general-cyno · 3 months

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ehh it's just me musing but. I do find it a little curious that (depending on who likes whom I guess) cora is usually either seen as some saintly flawless goofy figure or a brainwashed cop who got killed because he refused to try and save his brother. I do think his character is not exactly easy to pinpoint, considering he appears for a very short time and in a flashback nonetheless, plus the fact that he's dead means no further fleshing out of his character - broadly speaking - outside of the people who knew him and are willing to provide insight on what he was like, though that'd still be kinda biased.

however I believe there's actually a bunch of things that were straight up shown and some that can be pieced together from what little panel/screen time he had: ie how he's seemingly more bad tempered, impulsive and violent than he's portrayed as in fanon at times, albeit motivated by his own priorities at the moment (trying to kick the shit out of law to stop him from exposing cora to doflamingo) + his sense of what's right and wrong and to whom it applies (punching medical staff and setting hospitals on fire for mistreating law, whom he'd been trying to help).

specifically about the navy and doflamingo part... it irks me a little, tbh. partly because it removes what little agency cora had during the flashbacks and sort of waters down his motivation to stop his brother. it's not just whatever crimes doflamingo was committing or planning to back then and the navy wanting to put a stop to that - the thing is that cora was influenced, at least to an extent, to oppose doflamingo based on their childhood experiences with (ofc) the more negative ones, which include doffy murdering their father right in front of him, overshadowing anything else. as he tells law, cora can't fathom how their kind parents could've borne someone as evil as his brother. and yet. that's the other thing. cora was very much a child, and younger than doflamingo at that, when the elder DQs chose to leave marijoa and all that it entailed after. between all the traumatic events he lived through and later being raised by a marine (sengoku of all people), I'll be the first to say his perception of those events, of their parents and doffy himself is not really the most unbiased or reliable. we don't see him questioning the existence of celestial dragons (beyond warning law he's in danger when cora finds out about the D) nor the nature of the WG/the marines and the antagonistic role they play in OP's universe. we didn't have him long enough for those things to be put to question deeply anyway, especially not wrt to doflamingo, so imo it makes sense that his focus wasn't on "saving" but stopping him.

that said... he does witness the worst of it, kind of. through law. law is the very reason why I don't agree with the idea of cora being simply a brainwashed cop. this guy watched how people (those who should care) mistreated, dehumanized and demonized a sick child over prejudices caused by the lies the nobles and WG itself relied on to sweep their own corruption under the rug. he saw first hand how all those doctors ran to call the WG to kill the child and how they answered to do that. and what did he do? he lied and betrayed the organization he'd been part of (presumably for more than the years he spent undercover) and the man who'd raised him like a son just to save the kid that everyone, even the so called justice, had turned his back on and would've gotten rid of if given the chance. heck, when he first brought up the topic of law with sengoku, the man basically told him not to favor him too much for it could jeopardize his mission.

but perhaps the biggest proof is that he lied to law about being a marine when the latter directly asked if cora was one. as he later admits, cora lied to him about this because he didn't want law to hate him - and knowing all law lived through (flevance), seeing some of it himself (their hospital shenanigans) and what law told him as well, cora knew he had plenty of understandable and justified reasons to hate anyone ever slightly associated with the marines or the WG, including cora. to me, someone who's completely blinded by the navy/WG propaganda and follows their every order to the letter without thought wouldn't have denied his own affiliation nor been so determined to ditch being a marine and make an enemy out of those institutions (even if that also meant betraying his father figure) just to save, protect and do right by a child who'd been clearly failed by them. at no point did cora ever try to argue that Not All Marines, much less express any other sentiments of that sort to law.

on a similar vein, despite insisting doflamingo was evil and an agent of destruction - law is also the proof cora was somewhat aware that his brother (and people like doflamingo) normally don't pop out of nowhere and do Terrible Things just because. that maybe in other (better) circumstances, doffy might've become someone different and/or made different choices. after all, cora is the one who points out the similarities between doflamingo and law, and eventually does his best to turn law's life around so that he won't follow the same path. should he have tried to save doflamingo as well? when? how? would it have worked? who knows. and if you ask me, regardless of their similarities at that moment in time, doffy was already a grown ass man compared to law and cora himself was just an even younger kid when shit hit the fan in their childhood. I'm not sure doflamingo (as an adult) would've been particularly receptive of "help" either, considering his disdain for the kindness in cora and their father that he saw as a weakness. not to mention waaay too many other factors that come into play also (trebol and co's grooming and influence for example). still, one of them did pull the literal trigger in the end and it wasn't cora, so there's that.

all in all, for a character with such a short lived amount of time in the story - cora is quite the complex one and so very compelling. characterizing him as just strictly one thing or the other can be a little reductive but the fact that his character can be explored beyond that in the first place (once more, despite his lil bit of alive and onscreen moments) is what's fun and says a lot about the writing itself.

#tp #one piece #donquixote rosinante #donquixote corazon #I need to chew on him like he's a dog toy #mentally ill abt a dead guy who was in like 5 out of 1000+ chapters. life is good #also before someone misunderstands fics and such are free real state these characters are dolls to play with #I'm talking abt canon specific scenarios

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embyrinitalics · 11 months

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Have a fun little prompt:

TP Zelda gets a dog. Link is unimpressed. She calls the dog Link. Chaos ensues.

That's it. That's the prompt.

— Replaced —

“What is that?”

“The latest taxation proposition for Lanayru province.”

“Not that. That.”

The queen set the top page of her report aside, not deigning to glance beneath her desk.

“It’s a dog.”

“Yes. But what is it doing here?”

“It’s mine.”

The captain of the guard waited a beat. She turned another page.

“You got a dog.”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“Dogs are good companion animals.”

He folded his arms, frowning at it. It laid down and folded its paws, unmoved.

“And why do you need a companion animal?”

“You seem needlessly fixated, Sir Link.”

“You’re avoiding the question, Your Majesty.”

“Why? Does it pose a threat to my security?”

“It’s unlike you.”

“Not so. I’ve always liked dogs. And companion animals can be very soothing.”

“You already have—”

Her eyes met his at the same time his teeth met each other. Her gaze lingered, and he strategically uncrossed his arms. Beneath the desk, the dog sniffed.

She turned another page.

“Did you have something for me?”

He did. He fished the envelope out of his breast pocket and stepped closer to hold it out to her across her workspace. She reached for her letter opener and sliced it neatly down the seam, and he let his eyes drift down near his boots and bared a tooth.

“Thank you,” she said, and leaned back in her chair to read.

It was as polite a dismissal as he was liable to get. He saw himself out, glancing back from the shadow of the door.

The dog looked smug.

⬫⬫⬫⬫

The delegation arriving that afternoon was large, and the staff had been agitated as a cucco swarm seeing to the last minute preparations. Fortunately, the captain had some experience with cuccos, and was adroit enough to stay out of the way as he oversaw the finishing touches on the security measures.

One of the kitchen maids, sheen on her forehead and pink on her cheeks, came out of the dining room with a platter big as a Hylian shield balanced against her shoulder. The frustration on her face melted a bit when she met his eyes, giving way to an exhausted half-smile.

“Hello, Captain,” she said, breathless, and he nodded.

“Miss Tilly.”

“No room for a fourth platter of bouchées,” she sighed, dragging her wrist against her brow. Her eyes sparkled beneath. “These’ll have to go back down.”

“Pity,” he said.

She plucked an hors d'oeuvres from the top of the arrangement and held it out for him.

“Care to lighten my load?”

The pastry hovered between them a moment—unassuming, bite sized, glistening with eggwash—before his fingers finally lifted along with the corners of her mouth.

If anyone knew how to tempt the otherwise impervious captain of the guard, it was the kitchen staff.

He was halfway to biting into it when the queen’s voice, raised, urgent, startled him so badly he pulled it out from under his teeth and whipped his head aside.

“Link, no!”

A blue-eyed shepherd bounded down the hallway like a shot and back up again, twirling a circle by the trailing queen’s skirts and hopping a bit until he pulled a smile out of her. He let his tongue loll out and pranced at her heel as she walked.

The captain’s teeth hadn’t quite found their way back to each other.

“You—” he started, and then closed his mouth at her sudden, innocent attention.

She waited, elegant. He tried again, off kilter.

“You named the dog Link?”

“It’s a heroic name,” she reasoned, fingers feathering the silky top of his head, and Link preened. “Don’t you agree?”

Miss Tilly ducked her head and scurried off, hiding her toothy smile very poorly.

The captain shoved the whole pastry in his mouth and stomped off.

⬫⬫⬫⬫

The queen brought Link to the reception.

He was bouncy and very good at manipulating his eyebrows to swindle the guests out of treats. He was light enough on his dainty paws that he stayed out from under the foot traffic, and small enough that he could slip under tables with ease. The Zora also found him novel and charming, which made absolutely no sense.

His good behavior did not keep the captain from glaring at him whenever they crossed paths.

After dinner the queen stayed up late entertaining and listening to informal presentations of the Zora’s concerns. Link laid at her feet, occasionally offering his chin and ears for scratches. The captain of her guard stood stationed at the far end of the room, where he could keep an eye on all the entrances and wouldn’t eavesdrop.

It was his usual spot at functions like these. But tonight he felt leashed up outside.

When the guests had finally gone to bed, the queen glided towards her chambers, trailed by two shadows. It was a sleepy procession. And as the delegation was staying for the better part of a week, there would be more of them. The dog whined.

“You poor thing,” she murmured, reaching down to stroke his chin. “You haven’t had your supper yet.”

Neither had the captain. But he refrained from whining about it.

They reached her room and the queen went inside. Link followed, nails dragging noisily on the carpet, but stopped wedged in the doorway to look pointedly over his shoulder. The captain felt his hackles raising.

“Was there something else?”

“Nothing else, Your Majesty. Get some rest.”

“You as well,” she nodded, swallowing a yawn. “Come to bed, Link.”

The dog trailed her inside, making a beeline for her mattress.

When the door closed, the captain bristled so hard he felt the need to shake down to his tail.

⬫⬫⬫⬫

The next few days were more of the same: crowded meals that lasted for hours, long walks through the castle grounds speckled with talks, and tired evenings brimming with wine. The queen’s captain and her dog liked each other less and less.

The last morning of the visit, nerves frayed, tension wound tight, Link growled when the captain wandered too close to the queen’s desk, and without thinking the captain bared his teeth.

“Link!” she scolded, and they both flinched, tails tucked.

The envoy met with her one last time for what was sure to be a long negotiation, and the captain took the opportunity to attend to some pressing business.

He snatched the dog by the collar and dragged him, nails scuffing everywhere, to a broom closet, and locked them both in. He changed, and the dog screamed.

“OH GODS! WOLF! WOLF! HELP! SOMEONE HELP!”

“Stop barking! Stop—shut up, shut up!”

Link hesitated from where he had reared back on his haunches, breath puffing and chest fluttering, before he took an uncertain sniff. The whites of his eyes receded a bit, his forepaw meeting the ground and his nose drifting closer as he investigated. And then his eyes—as much as a dog’s eyes can—rolled.

“Oh. It’s you.”

The wolf let his lip curl, and while Link’s ears drooped, he planted his paws and raised himself a little taller, not to be intimidated.

“Let’s have it out,” the captain growled, “before this becomes an issue for her.”

“Well I certainly have nothing to apologize for,” he snuffed. “I’ve been nothing but well behaved!”

“You took a snap at me under her desk this morning.”

“You were asking for it.”

If the captain had a palm to drag across his face, he would’ve. Instead he pinned his ears down and huffed, glowering, “The safety of the queen and her household are my responsibility. You don’t need to like me. I don’t need to like you. But I am going to protect her. So stay out of my way.”

Link snorted. “That’s what she keeps you around for? Protection?”

“At least she has use for me. I can’t fathom why she’s kept you as long as she has.”

“Because I am the best boy. And the goodest boy. And the prettiest boy—”

“All right, shut up, shut up.”

He planted his tail on the ground, trying to think. It swished like an irritated metronome.

Link’s ears perked, head tilting and eyes going horribly wide with realization.

“You’re jealous!”

The wolf sneered. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It all makes sense now. You’ve been unwelcoming from the moment I arrived. And at first I thought, Perhaps he’s one of those unpleasant people who simply doesn’t like dogs—insufferable, yes, but mostly harmless. But it couldn’t be clearer now what this is about: territory.”

“The queen is not territory.”

“But the place beside her throne? At the foot of her bed? Those certainly are, and I’ve never seen you in any of them.”

Link put on his best smug face. The captain entertained thoughts of cleaving his head clean off his shoulders.

“So, what did you do to get yourself ousted?”

“I haven’t been ousted.”

“Fine. Replaced.”

“I haven’t been—!”

“Well you must’ve done something wrong. How else do you explain my arrival? Were you too noisy? Too big? Too intimidating? Do you give subpar cuddles?”

His eyes narrowed. “The queen and I have never cuddled.”

Link looked mortified. “How can you even be a lapdog and not give cuddles?”

“I was never her lapdog! I’m her head of security!”

He hesitated.

“She does… know you’re a dog, yes?”

The wolf huffed again. “Yes, she knows.”

“Because I’ve never seen you like this in front of her before. And we’re mostly inseparable.”

“It’s been a while,” he grumbled.

“But you used to.”

One of his ears went sideways.

“And you liked it.”

Both of his ears went sideways.

Link beamed. “Doesn’t she give just the best scratches?”

“Listen, lapdog,” the wolf snapped, teeth meeting loudly, and Link shrank back against the wall. “The point is we’re stuck working together, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it. Deal with it.”

“You could ask for reassignment.”

He snarled, “Excuse me?”

“You can talk to her,” he explained, reaching with his back paw to scratch an itch. It made his collar twirl. “Tell her things. I envy you that, though I do a fairly good job of getting what I want besides. But you could tell her you don’t want to be her head of security anymore. Tell her you’d rather be a lapdog instead.”

“I don’t want to be her lapdog!”

“You just want to be closer to her.”

The wolf’s ears pinned back and his lips curled. “Why am I even having this conversation with you?”

“Because you locked us in a closet!”

His growl rumbled so low the brooms rattled.

He waited.

So did Link.

Finally, he murmured, “I can’t tell her that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

Link tilted his head at him again.

“Is that common among humans? They can’t say what they want?”

“I’d say so.”

He considered that a moment. Then he glanced up at him, eyebrows quirked.

“I think you’re dense.”

The wolf looked suddenly ravenous, but Link was unbothered.

“You’ve been outside wolfshape for too long, Captain. What do your senses tell you?”

That made him hesitate. He sniffed reflexively. “I don’t follow.”

“She got a dog to keep her company. With blue eyes. She named me after you. And you think you’re the only one who isn’t saying what he wants?” Link did his dog impression of an eye roll again. “Let me out of here. Your stupid might be contagious.”

The wolf blinked at him. “I’m going to let that go.”

“Well you know what else I think—”

The captain shifted, fur and teeth and claws melting back into softer shapes. The dog in the broom closet with him yapped incomprehensibly for another five seconds.

He smirked, “I think I like you better like this.”

⬫⬫⬫⬫

That night, when the door to her boudoir opened, the wrong sort of animal stepped through.

The queen looked up from her book from her seat on the couch. A wolf stared back.

After a beat he set his jaw, crossed the room with purpose, and dropped his snout into her lap.

Her lips twitched. The weight of his head didn’t let up in the slightest; if anything, her hesitation only made him sag harder.

“Link,” she murmured, carefully lifting one hand to trace a slow line from between his eyes to between his ears. “What have you done with my dog?”

I ate him, he thought smugly.

Her fingers dug a little deeper, and he leaned shamelessly into it. Because she gave excellent scratches.

“It’s not really appropriate for me to be overly familiar with my staff,” she mused, fingers sliding down, down, toward that spot behind his jaw. He stretched his neck to help her reach. Her smile turned pensive, and then faded just a little. “And even if I wanted to, that’s a lot of pressure to put on someone. It isn’t easy to say no to the queen.”

That’s sweet, Your Majesty, but I can handle myself.

She smoothed the fur around his ears, as though she’d mussed it. The wolf looked up at her out of fluted blue eyes, waiting. Expectant, more than hesitant. It made a smirk twist at her lips.

“It does get lonely, though,” she admitted. “Which is why I got myself a dog.”

Right. Because you didn’t already have one.

The wolf sniffed. He lifted his head from her lap and circled the couch, calculating, and then leapt onto the cushion beside hers with great care and laid down, tucking his legs so he’d fit. He plopped his head meaningfully on her shoulder.

“I can’t very well get rid of him now,” she argued.

He pushed his nose into her neck, and then wriggled to press in with his chest, encroaching as much as possible.

“Link,” she complained, puffing fur away from her mouth. “You’re too big.”

He only had two shapes to choose from, and wasn’t sure she’d be much happier with the other one. But neither was he about to call off his offensive after he’d come this far.

He shifted in a flurry of shadows. His elbow was planted on the camelback behind her shoulder, his temple planted on his fist. He was still very much in her personal space.

She arched an eyebrow, but made no move to pull away. He tested the waters, drifting closer. Her eyes twinkled, the way only hers could, and the grin that spread over his lips was probably too wolfish.

“I know a ranch in Ordona that would love a shepherd.”

On ao3 | masterlist

#Twilight Princess #Zelink #fanfic #Replaced #TP Zelda gets a dog #Link is unimpressed #fic request #mrmilktrayman14 #LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO YOU CRAZIES I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY!!!1!#THIS WON THE POLL YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE #also Link the Dog is an Australian shepherd #just in case anyone was dying to know that 😂#Zelink promptly #embyr writes

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