realizing this after drafting a whole outline and writing 2000 words of a sprawling story but. the combustion man arc really only needed two, MAYBE three fixes to be interesting. so instead of finishing the fic i'm just gonna write them here and trash the rest.
(1) it's stupid that zuko hires him when they get back to the fire nation at the start of book 3. zuko is disappointed in his family and himself and he feels none of the happiness he thought he would have with his fatherโs approval. he's clearly scared and suffering because his acceptance is conditional on aang being dead, but the sudden shift in his (teenage) character to literally murderous hurts the rest of his characterโs arc. sure, he's not thinking straight. let him brood and lash out and do his blue spirit schtick looking for trouble to get into. that's all fine.
but when it comes to hiring an assassin to take out the gaang in book 3, it should have been azula. i will die on the hill of this fix specifically. it makes her character INTERESTING. the show already tells us that she knows zuko is lying. this change would suggest she both wants zuko to sweat, but also genuinely wants/needs on some level to keep him around, at home, with her. it adds an additional layer of tragedy to their agni kai showdown and sets up their relationship in the comics (which i enjoy).
(2) let combustion interact with the setting in literally ANY way. let him talk onscreen, however briefly. show the audience how he finds the gaang! show him interacting with characters they interact with! let him do....anything. he clearly does smart things offscreen, like set up elaborate traps for the gaang. then as soon as he shows up, heโs just this no thoughts head empty boulder of a man. maybe he helps hama escape prison in exchange for information. maybe he intercepts the captured invasion forces to find out where the gaang escapes to after the eclipse. maybe these would be things you could speculate about in a fanfic if he had EVEN ONE SPOKEN LINE.
(3 - optional) his bending is literally unique among firebenders in the show. but what we know of his backstory is completely extradiegetic. and i get it, because writing about him, i realized he's fucking boring. he just shows up to move the plot every few episodes in an otherwise action-dense season. he probably bored the writers too. but it would have been cool to hear how he lost his limbs in-text. his bending backfired as a child? that's angsty. you could work that in.
if i had my druthers, we'd hear where he got the tattoo, how he dominated in the agni kai arena, how he was a weapon in the fire nation army before he was discharged and became a bounty hunter. WE'D GET HIS NAME. (in my fic it was khedan, from a sanskrit root meaning to strike or to terrorize.)
part of why he feels like a button writers spammed to move the plot is because (1) and (2) were poorly handled, but it also feels like they didnโt even try to add any seasoning. you could even introduce him briefly earlier on in the narrative to give yourself time - maybe he runs into zuko at misty palms when he and iroh are on the run.
