Saw this post on X, and I have a few thoughts:
How exactly was it the best option for Toph?
In the original series, Toph cared very deeply for her friends and her family.
The GAang was her family and she went to hell and back, put her life on the line, multiple times, over and over again, just to protect them. She was twelve fighting a war, just to protect the people she loved more than anything.
Additionally, despite popular belief, Toph cared for her family. In the original series, her choosing to abandon her parents (even though her childhood home was very oppressive and isolating) was a tumultuous and difficult choice for her. Before she ran away, she pleaded to go with Aang, and when they wouldn't bend, she decided to flee. This decision is one that weighs down on her across Season Two and Three (with her wanting to meet up with her mother in S2, and, in S3, deciding to write to her, in hopes of salvaging their relationship) - she wants to have a good relationship with her parents.
She's always been family/friend centered. That is why she's the one to ask Aang if their friendship will last a lifetime. She craves these bonds. Toph is an adventurous and free spirit, yet, she still holds onto those she truly sees as her family.
She does want a family. Be it her adopted family or her blood-related family. Family is important to Toph.
It is one of the pillars of her character.
So, how exactly, does Toph having two baby daddies, who are absent from her and her daughters' lives, the best outcome for her?
Toph in LOK is miserable. Her daughters are miserable. She doesn't have a support system to help her in her tribulations of raising two kids all on her own. She's alone, struggling. And people truly think this is the best outcome for Toph?
Toph chooses to runaway from her family, something that in the original show, was one of her greatest struggles and something that weighed her conscious down with guilt.
People truly don't see Toph beyond the badass, ass-whopping tomboy. They don't see her as this emotionally mature character that values her friendships and family.
They see her for her little bits, the small little jokes that are often through at her expense.
Oh, Bryke make jokes about her slight crushes (such as Sokka and that one dude from the comics, who I cannot remember)? Oh, yah, so that totally makes sense that she would be okay with the fathers of her children being absent and neglectful!
Oh, Toph is a tomboy who isn't naturally nurturing nor motherly like Katara? Oh, so it totally makes sense she would value her job over her own children, ultimately abandoning them in the future and leaving them with mommy issues (so much so, her eldest doesn't even call her mom.... BRYKE ARE YOU INSANE?!?)
I don't enjoy the fact that Toph, the only tomboy of the group, was portrayed the way she was in LOK.
I didn't need Toph to be a stay-at-home mother. I didn't need Toph to be family oriented.
Her being a single-mother would be great if they had handled it with much more care.
But Bryke's own biases about motherhood and femininity bled through when they wrote Toph the way they did in LOK.
It's infuriating to see, once more that people (not even Bryke themselves) care enough to see Toph beyond her exterior layers. She's much more than this amazing earthbender.
Why would someone who was isolated all her childhood, choose to isolate herself from her own kids?
Futurely, I will analyze and criticize Bryke's take on motherhood in LOK - especially with Katara and Toph, because I have a lot of thoughts that I need to organize!
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