hi! i'm mriachka, a woman who loves talking about her love for other women. i'm primarily writing for twisted wonderland as of now and my works feature "twisted" female counterparts to original twst characters. i am open to discussing the cast as they are in a platonic sense, but romantic and sexual conversations will involve female!twst only. all characters are aged up; nrc is more of a uni.
dni list: russians (i am ukrainian and currently living in ukraine. russia and russians are responsible for the daily military air raids and consequent deaths of people in my country).
request and ask rules: no incest (themes of inheriting unhealthy family dynamics are fine; incest itself is not, including fauxcest), no pedophilia (age gaps are alright between adults only), no discrimination (okay to discuss; not okay to sexualize). unless it's a commission, nothing too detailed (ocs, arbitrary yet very specific requests etc), because i feel that at that level of reader customisation you might as well just give it a shot yourself :)
flower prompt requests are open. my ao3. not spoiler-free.
#mriachka's writing — my fiction tag.
foreword: since i write stories which describe unhealthy, toxic, and abusive relationships, i feel that the onus is on me to make it clear that none of those things are normal. your partner should view you as their equal. if they ever raise their hand at you, coerce or outright force you to have a sexual encounter with them, treat you demeaningly and cruelly, they are not somebody you should stay in a relationship with. it doesn't matter whether they genuinely love you or only claim so. you deserve better anyway. i'm rooting for you!
don't repost or translate my works without explicit permission. don't use them to train or interact with ai.
I consume so much gender bend and yuri content that sometimes I genuinely forget that atla and tlok have men. Princess zuko and fem mako and bolin…..
i have to give it to atla's fandom: their yuri game is insane. i'm fairly certain that i've seen every woman shipped with every other woman at least once, and it never feels random or ill-fitted. you have codependency issues in a childhood friendship group (tyzula, maizula, and all the variations between them), you have knightly courtship with a dash of longing for the lady's forbidden beloved (suki and yue, but i've also seen this with toph/yue as well as yue and azula...), you have legendary enemies-to-lovers with a healthy dose of hurt/comfort (azutara), you have sweet and touching friends-to-lovers (most commonly found in katoph, but suki and toph are lovely too). anything you could imagine. they have it. there's honestly not one combination you could make up with atla's ladies which wouldn't open up delectable possibilities for character exploration. it's good.
as for tlok... i wouldn't say that having mako be a woman would fix the issues i have with the romance in it, but consider this: korra, fresh out of the compound, no idea of how proper relationships work, no concept of what a romance could be (the kyoshi memoirs she got for compulsory reading had all the best parts edited out); mako, generally aware of having a predominantly gay fanbase, somewhat conscious of the ways she'd like to spend her time with the ladies fangirling over her, but over all way too busy with keeping herself and bolin off the streets to give it any proper thought; and asami, gay. openly gay, openly into mako.
cue korra struggling to identify what exactly it is that's nagging her about asami clinging to mako like that at the gala, arriving to a conclusion that she's simply mad her teammate is getting dragged off for some stupid lady bonding time (she's not. that's not what mako is getting dragged off to.), and growing increasingly frustrated with both mako and asami until the air siblings, privy to her pissed off rambling, conclude for her that she has a cruuuush (←to be read in ikki's voice), which results in korra attempting to navigate her first relationship (and failing miserably), mako attempting to choose between the two beautiful women who are suddenly really into her (and ending up with neither, since she has a subconscious unwillingness to build a relationship with somebody equally competent and independent), and asami slowly, slowly coming to a realisation that, while mako is great, what she feels when mako leaves her to get together with korra isn't quite jealousy over mako.
bonus points if hiroshi is okay with asami's relationships with women but draws the line at them being benders. he may have his issues, but he's not that kind of monster.
also this dropped today, reaffirming to me that we are not getting any proper animated kyoshi content only because it would be too great for our mortal eyes. getting an hour and a half of kyoshi being dragged around, whipped into a proper stance, and furiously kissed by her girlfriend would destroy atla's homosexual community.
I consume so much gender bend and yuri content that sometimes I genuinely forget that atla and tlok have men. Princess zuko and fem mako and bolin…..
i have to give it to atla's fandom: their yuri game is insane. i'm fairly certain that i've seen every woman shipped with every other woman at least once, and it never feels random or ill-fitted. you have codependency issues in a childhood friendship group (tyzula, maizula, and all the variations between them), you have knightly courtship with a dash of longing for the lady's forbidden beloved (suki and yue, but i've also seen this with toph/yue as well as yue and azula...), you have legendary enemies-to-lovers with a healthy dose of hurt/comfort (azutara), you have sweet and touching friends-to-lovers (most commonly found in katoph, but suki and toph are lovely too). anything you could imagine. they have it. there's honestly not one combination you could make up with atla's ladies which wouldn't open up delectable possibilities for character exploration. it's good.
as for tlok... i wouldn't say that having mako be a woman would fix the issues i have with the romance in it, but consider this: korra, fresh out of the compound, no idea of how proper relationships work, no concept of what a romance could be (the kyoshi memoirs she got for compulsory reading had all the best parts edited out); mako, generally aware of having a predominantly gay fanbase, somewhat conscious of the ways she'd like to spend her time with the ladies fangirling over her, but over all way too busy with keeping herself and bolin off the streets to give it any proper thought; and asami, gay. openly gay, openly into mako.
cue korra struggling to identify what exactly it is that's nagging her about asami clinging to mako like that at the gala, arriving to a conclusion that she's simply mad her teammate is getting dragged off for some stupid lady bonding time (she's not. that's not what mako is getting dragged off to.), and growing increasingly frustrated with both mako and asami until the air siblings, privy to her pissed off rambling, conclude for her that she has a cruuuush (←to be read in ikki's voice), which results in korra attempting to navigate her first relationship (and failing miserably), mako attempting to choose between the two beautiful women who are suddenly really into her (and ending up with neither, since she has a subconscious unwillingness to build a relationship with somebody equally competent and independent), and asami slowly, slowly coming to a realisation that, while mako is great, what she feels when mako leaves her to get together with korra isn't quite jealousy over mako.
bonus points if hiroshi is okay with asami's relationships with women but draws the line at them being benders. he may have his issues, but he's not that kind of monster.
“i could make a fun post talking about atla/tlok characters who are woman-kissers to me. but you all have to promise to have open minds and open hearts. okay?”
TRUST I WILL
surprise! this was a trick question. every woman is a woman-kisser to me. instead here is my subjective rating of how easy it would be for atla female characters to be woman-kissers in canon.
the "her kissing a woman would make the story better, actually" tier:
hama. walk with me: hama and kanna (shown interacting tenderly in a flashback) being entangled in a romantic relationship prior to hama's capture would mean that when katara stumbles into hama's village, she unknowingly interacts with a person who could have, had the things not gone so terribly wrong, been a familial presence in her life, and so, if otherwise unchanged, the rest of the story gains additional symbolism of the matriarch passing on the blood curse to her granddaughter. if, however, we are to imagine a perfect world in which the writers didn't feel the need to make every non-pacifist oppressed character a monster in the making, hama could even get a redemption arc, leaving some of the trauma of her capture behind, returning home after meeting katara, and reuniting with the love of her youth. wins include old woman yuri, misogynistic het ship death (i am still not over the writers providing their sexist male characters with a female love interest as a reward for becoming less sexist not once but TWICE in the series, no), and kya getting to mention to korra that she had two grandmothers (sweet and cute!). woman-kissing hama for the win.
june. gay. homosexual. woman-kisser. makes fun of straight people. beats men up for stepping out of line. need i say more. iconic.
azula. she's between this tier and the lower one, since i don't think that her being a woman-kisser enriches the story that much, but it is incredibly easy to read her as a woman-kisser (and a lesbian, to be precise) within the canon, and this does create some interesting parallels with zeisan and sozin, which i like. much has been said on azula's "flirting" in the beach episode being reflective of how distanced she is from the concept of being a normal teenager (as well as how much of being a woman in a misogynistic society reduces you to a wife and a mother rather than a person), so i won't add to this, but know that those scenes very much read as her being gay to me. also her forgetting the face of the guy she kisses yet remembering what swimwear ty lee and mai wore months ago to the beach is hilarious, yes.
the "you would need to tweak the story a bit, but it would work wonderfully" tier:
toph. i've partially covered this already in previous asks, but i do genuinely believe that this could be quite the win for the story itself. atla has multiple moments in which being a woman is equated to being attracted to men (e.g. suki's famous "i am a warrior. but i am a girl, too" scene, which gave me the ick even as a child), and this is, for obvious reasons, not that great of a message to send to your young audience. it also suggests that rejection of traditional femininity and sexist practices is only okay as long as it's done by heterosexual women (e.g. the common trope of giving a "tomboy" character an obligatory male love interest to reassure the audience that she is not gay), and i am not fond of that one either. consequently, toph not being straight would add to the story rather than detract from it, in my opinion.
yue. now, you'd need to be careful with the writing (we don't want to imply that her arranged marriage is only traumatizing due to her being attracted to women; we want to criticize this as a misogynistic cultural practice—something atla fails to commit to fully), but since we are talking about my yuritopia here, i expect you, my beloved readers, to already have this understanding in your minds, so i won't belabor the point. otherwise you really don't have to do much for this to work well: even if we go with the route of her being into women only, sokka can bond with and care about yue without having his romantic feelings reciprocated, and the trauma of losing her as somebody he felt protective over would still be just as impactful. i have also seen people have fun with yue/katara and yue/suki ships, which i find lovely. yuri approved. somebody get this moon a girlfriend please.
ty lee. i know that she has kissed women before and would do so again. my fawn response attention-starved circus freak (← said with all the affection and no malice).
the "heterosexual ship too integral to the story for her to be a woman-kisser only, but i need her to kiss women anyway" tier:
suki. can't/shouldn't erase her romance with sokka, since it is so central to her character, but that romance IS my main gripe with how she was handled, so i am tempted to. suki's main personality traits within tv show's canon, aside from being strong and community-oriented, can all be narrowed down to being sokka's perfect beloved girlfriend, and i personally find that pretty limiting (as well as... well. sexist. it's a bit sexist. there are no male characters in atla whose main character traits revolve around their romantic relationships). let's give her more interactions with characters who aren't sokka. let's give her better character motivation as well as individual relationships with her kiyoshi warrior friends (...who were all very lovely in that singular episode they appeared in + whom i am interested in seeing more of in the new comic). atla writers, if you are there. this is my plea to you.
mai. she's person-sexual to me. zuko being a princess rather than the prince would not have changed anything in their dynamic for her. i need him to move over, though, for personal reasons (i.e. i need her to have happened to me. i, too, can be unfunny, theatrical, and socially awkward).
katara. it's not her fault she meets aang in episode one and has this whole intro about him being the hope for the world as the start of the show. however, i still think that she has that woman-kissing spirit in her. her personal comic didn't move me much, but... katara x pirate lady yuri... yes?
i would love to hear about your lesbian reading of toph!!!
at its core, toph's story is about the effect which treating human and normal as subhuman and abnormal for the sake of conformity can have on interpersonal relationships. were she born in a society which does not perceive people with disabilities as unworthy of autonomy and does not rely on a heterosexual familial unit as a way of controlling women, she wouldn't need to rebel: her rebellious actions, while commonly misinterpeted by the fandom as fueled by an irrational hatred of authority, are a natural consequence of that authority demanding that she sacrifice parts of her humanhood to conform. they are rational. it's just that the choices toph has are skewed so as to make living without suffering impossible: if she rejects herself (=pain), she can have the love of her family (which is representative of the society she lives in), and if she rejects her family (=pain), she can have her true self, but she cannot have both. either way, unless external conditions change, she has to give something up.
the toph we meet in her role as the blind bandit is somebody who is trying to toe the line between those two choices: she isn't ready to have her family reject her, but she can't reject herself either, not without this incurring impossible suffering, so instead she leads a double life, alternating between two personas. the subversion here is that, though one would likely assume her fighting persona to be inauthentic (as katara does upon hearing the announcement), it's the front she puts on in the beifong estate that's a costume, not the tournament one (which is why, after leaving her family, the performance persona's outfit becomes her "default", as specified in atla's artbook!).
when alternating between two personas becomes impossible (since their nature is revealed), the conflict between society's imposition of a rigid role vs toph's true self is resolved by her choosing her true self, with the ripple effect of this resolution further explored in "the chase" and "the runaway" episodes: first, she has to work through the pain of her family's rejection, learning that society doesn't always reject people like her (and that, therefore, it would be unreasonable of her to fully isolate herself—something she's tempted to do after having been hurt by previous attempts to control her), and then she has to learn to embrace herself, not a persona she's developed as a response to her family's cultivation of her dependence and obedience (which she resorts to, exaggerating her crudeness, as a way of asserting control over her emotional response to missing her family).
hopefully, by now you can already see how all of this would support a reading of toph as gay. homosexuality is innate, just like womanhood is, and yet being homosexual in a society which demands that a family unit (the basis of society) be heterosexual makes living as a homosexual without disrupting social norms impossible. this is doubly true for homosexual women: a perfect woman exists only in relation to a man (a heroine to his hero, meant to reward a man for being good and to provide him with a continuation of his bloodline, birthing him a male heir), so a woman's lack of attraction to men automatically paints her either as a deviant in need of correction or as a non-woman. the issues of womanhood, homosexuality, and disability are commonly explored together for a reason. toph's canon story provides us with plenty of parallels with a lesbian experience (having to choose between the love of your family and your own self; putting on a "straight" persona to please your family and "pass" for an acceptable daughter; a coming out resulting in attempts to shut you down, claiming that you must be simply confused, and forceful dragging back into the closet, which, when met with resistance, ultimately results in a metaphorical "murder" of the child, as shown in lao's response to toph's hopes of reconciliation in the comics).
to give an example one such parallel, here's a scene from "saving face", a movie with a central conflict i find to be pretty similar to toph's one:
[daughter] i love you. and i'm gay.
[mother] how can you say those two things at once? how can you tell me you love me, then throw that in my face? i am not a bad mother. my daughter is not gay.
[daughter] then maybe i shouldn't be your daughter.
now, for a comparison, here's an excerpt from "the rift", featuring toph's confrontation with her father:
unlike in "saving face", wherein the mother works through her homophobia to ultimately embrace her daughter (by allowing herself to become an imperfect daughter to her father, refusing to marry just to avoid the shame of having a child out of wedlock, which breaks the cycle of abuse), "the rift" offers a pretty simplistic end to the conflict between toph and lao: lao sees that toph is stronger than he imagined her to be, so he stops babying her. the end. patriarchal control and how that manifests in the way parents treat their daughters, even the daughters they love, isn't something the story lingers on; poppy's lack of agency (something og atla questions through toph's remarks about her mother's limited autonomy!) is written off, the depth of the story reduced until only a shallow reading of the original conflict is left.
which is a shame, in my opinion, because the conflict itself, as i've outlined above, is quite compelling, and og atla gives the comic writers a lot to work with: that toph doesn't ever fully distance herself from her family, still keeping her long, traditional hair, despite it being a pain to style, is on its own very telling of just how deeply she cares for and loves her family, regardless of the hurt they've caused her. of how badly she wishes they could love her. look, for instance, how katara, our empathetic observer, comments on toph's interactions with her family:
now, imagine all of this as an explicitly, intentionally gay story. for one, we know that the earth kingdom is staunchly homophobic ("even avatar kiyoshi, who by all accounts loved men and women, was unable to effect any kind of real progress"), with a huge emphasis placed on upholding blood relations—relations which are only valid if they come with a "traditional" family unit; for another, beifongs are a dynasty, and much of lao's disappointment in toph has to with her turning out to have been "a bad investment" for that dynasty—a daughter who won't marry the right man and give him the right children. with the way things go in comics+tlok, it would seem that the latter problem is solved as lao's standards for what he demands of toph are lowered, resulting in toph's relationship with her family bettering to the point of her keeping correspondence with them well into adulthood and comfortably sending her daughter off to them (something she wouldn't do, in my opinion, if she believed suyin to suffer with them, as she herself suffered), but what if... there was no acceptable lowering of the standards? what if her family had no man and was a family nonetheless? what if her children weren't related to her by blood and were her children still? what if their dynasty, as traditionalist beifongs understand it, had to end with toph? in my opinion, with those stakes (and with an introduction of the theme that's very common for atla and tlok—the theme of legacy), toph's story would get more interesting and more complex, which is always a win in my book.
i would love to hear about your lesbian reading of toph!!!
at its core, toph's story is about the effect which treating human and normal as subhuman and abnormal for the sake of conformity can have on interpersonal relationships. were she born in a society which does not perceive people with disabilities as unworthy of autonomy and does not rely on a heterosexual familial unit as a way of controlling women, she wouldn't need to rebel: her rebellious actions, while commonly misinterpeted by the fandom as fueled by an irrational hatred of authority, are a natural consequence of that authority demanding that she sacrifice parts of her humanhood to conform. they are rational. it's just that the choices toph has are skewed so as to make living without suffering impossible: if she rejects herself (=pain), she can have the love of her family (which is representative of the society she lives in), and if she rejects her family (=pain), she can have her true self, but she cannot have both. either way, unless external conditions change, she has to give something up.
the toph we meet in her role as the blind bandit is somebody who is trying to toe the line between those two choices: she isn't ready to have her family reject her, but she can't reject herself either, not without this incurring impossible suffering, so instead she leads a double life, alternating between two personas. the subversion here is that, though one would likely assume her fighting persona to be inauthentic (as katara does upon hearing the announcement), it's the front she puts on in the beifong estate that's a costume, not the tournament one (which is why, after leaving her family, the performance persona's outfit becomes her "default", as specified in atla's artbook!).
when alternating between two personas becomes impossible (since their nature is revealed), the conflict between society's imposition of a rigid role vs toph's true self is resolved by her choosing her true self, with the ripple effect of this resolution further explored in "the chase" and "the runaway" episodes: first, she has to work through the pain of her family's rejection, learning that society doesn't always reject people like her (and that, therefore, it would be unreasonable of her to fully isolate herself—something she's tempted to do after having been hurt by previous attempts to control her), and then she has to learn to embrace herself, not a persona she's developed as a response to her family's cultivation of her dependence and obedience (which she resorts to, exaggerating her crudeness, as a way of asserting control over her emotional response to missing her family).
hopefully, by now you can already see how all of this would support a reading of toph as gay. homosexuality is innate, just like womanhood is, and yet being homosexual in a society which demands that a family unit (the basis of society) be heterosexual makes living as a homosexual without disrupting social norms impossible. this is doubly true for homosexual women: a perfect woman exists only in relation to a man (a heroine to his hero, meant to reward a man for being good and to provide him with a continuation of his bloodline, birthing him a male heir), so a woman's lack of attraction to men automatically paints her either as a deviant in need of correction or as a non-woman. the issues of womanhood, homosexuality, and disability are commonly explored together for a reason. toph's canon story provides us with plenty of parallels with a lesbian experience (having to choose between the love of your family and your own self; putting on a "straight" persona to please your family and "pass" for an acceptable daughter; a coming out resulting in attempts to shut you down, claiming that you must be simply confused, and forceful dragging back into the closet, which, when met with resistance, ultimately results in a metaphorical "murder" of the child, as shown in lao's response to toph's hopes of reconciliation in the comics).
to give an example one such parallel, here's a scene from "saving face", a movie with a central conflict i find to be pretty similar to toph's one:
[daughter] i love you. and i'm gay.
[mother] how can you say those two things at once? how can you tell me you love me, then throw that in my face? i am not a bad mother. my daughter is not gay.
[daughter] then maybe i shouldn't be your daughter.
now, for a comparison, here's an excerpt from "the rift", featuring toph's confrontation with her father:
unlike in "saving face", wherein the mother works through her homophobia to ultimately embrace her daughter (by allowing herself to become an imperfect daughter to her father, refusing to marry just to avoid the shame of having a child out of wedlock, which breaks the cycle of abuse), "the rift" offers a pretty simplistic end to the conflict between toph and lao: lao sees that toph is stronger than he imagined her to be, so he stops babying her. the end. patriarchal control and how that manifests in the way parents treat their daughters, even the daughters they love, isn't something the story lingers on; poppy's lack of agency (something og atla questions through toph's remarks about her mother's limited autonomy!) is written off, the depth of the story reduced until only a shallow reading of the original conflict is left.
which is a shame, in my opinion, because the conflict itself, as i've outlined above, is quite compelling, and og atla gives the comic writers a lot to work with: that toph doesn't ever fully distance herself from her family, still keeping her long, traditional hair, despite it being a pain to style, is on its own very telling of just how deeply she cares for and loves her family, regardless of the hurt they've caused her. of how badly she wishes they could love her. look, for instance, how katara, our empathetic observer, comments on toph's interactions with her family:
now, imagine all of this as an explicitly, intentionally gay story. for one, we know that the earth kingdom is staunchly homophobic ("even avatar kiyoshi, who by all accounts loved men and women, was unable to effect any kind of real progress"), with a huge emphasis placed on upholding blood relations—relations which are only valid if they come with a "traditional" family unit; for another, beifongs are a dynasty, and much of lao's disappointment in toph has to with her turning out to have been "a bad investment" for that dynasty—a daughter who won't marry the right man and give him the right children. with the way things go in comics+tlok, it would seem that the latter problem is solved as lao's standards for what he demands of toph are lowered, resulting in toph's relationship with her family bettering to the point of her keeping correspondence with them well into adulthood and comfortably sending her daughter off to them (something she wouldn't do, in my opinion, if she believed suyin to suffer with them, as she herself suffered), but what if... there was no acceptable lowering of the standards? what if her family had no man and was a family nonetheless? what if her children weren't related to her by blood and were her children still? what if their dynasty, as traditionalist beifongs understand it, had to end with toph? in my opinion, with those stakes (and with an introduction of the theme that's very common for atla and tlok—the theme of legacy), toph's story would get more interesting and more complex, which is always a win in my book.
i would love to hear about your lesbian reading of toph!!!
at its core, toph's story is about the effect which treating human and normal as subhuman and abnormal for the sake of conformity can have on interpersonal relationships. were she born in a society which does not perceive people with disabilities as unworthy of autonomy and does not rely on a heterosexual familial unit as a way of controlling women, she wouldn't need to rebel: her rebellious actions, while commonly misinterpeted by the fandom as fueled by an irrational hatred of authority, are a natural consequence of that authority demanding that she sacrifice parts of her humanhood to conform. they are rational. it's just that the choices toph has are skewed so as to make living without suffering impossible: if she rejects herself (=pain), she can have the love of her family (which is representative of the society she lives in), and if she rejects her family (=pain), she can have her true self, but she cannot have both. either way, unless external conditions change, she has to give something up.
the toph we meet in her role as the blind bandit is somebody who is trying to toe the line between those two choices: she isn't ready to have her family reject her, but she can't reject herself either, not without this incurring impossible suffering, so instead she leads a double life, alternating between two personas. the subversion here is that, though one would likely assume her fighting persona to be inauthentic (as katara does upon hearing the announcement), it's the front she puts on in the beifong estate that's a costume, not the tournament one (which is why, after leaving her family, the performance persona's outfit becomes her "default", as specified in atla's artbook!). when alternating between two personas becomes impossible (since their nature is revealed), the conflict between society's imposition of a rigid role vs toph's true self is resolved by her choosing her true self, with the ripple effect of this resolution further explored in "the chase" and "the runaway" episodes: first, she has to work through the pain of her family's rejection, learning that society doesn't always reject people like her (and that, therefore, it would be unreasonable of her to fully isolate herself—something she's tempted to do after having been hurt by previous attempts to control her), and then she has to learn to embrace herself, not a persona she's developed as a response to her family's cultivation of her dependence and obedience (which she resorts to, exaggerating her crudeness, as a way of asserting control over her emotional response to missing her family).
hopefully, by now you can already see how all of this would support a reading of toph as gay. homosexuality is innate, just like womanhood is, and yet being homosexual in a society which demands that a family unit (the basis of society) be heterosexual makes living as a homosexual without disrupting social norms impossible. this is doubly true for homosexual women: a perfect woman exists only in relation to a man (a heroine to his hero, meant to reward a man for being good and to provide him with a continuation of his bloodline, birthing him a male heir), so a woman's lack of attraction to men automatically paints her either as a deviant in need of correction or as a non-woman. the issues of womanhood, homosexuality, and disability are commonly explored together for a reason.
toph's canon story provides us with plenty of parallels with a lesbian experience (having to choose between the love of your family and your own self; putting on a "straight" persona to please your family and "pass" for an acceptable daughter; a coming out resulting in attempts to shut you down, claiming that you must be simply confused, and forceful dragging back into the closet, which, when met with resistance, ultimately results in a metaphorical "murder" of the child, as shown in lao's response to toph's hopes of reconciliation in the comics).
to give an example of one such parallel, here's a scene from "saving face", a movie with a central conflict i find to be pretty similar to toph's one:
[daughter] i love you. and i'm gay.
[mother] how can you say those two things at once? how can you tell me you love me, then throw that in my face? i am not a bad mother. my daughter is not gay.
[daughter] then maybe i shouldn't be your daughter.
for a comparison, here's an excerpt from "the rift", featuring toph's confrontation with her father:
unlike in "saving face", wherein the mother works through her homophobia to ultimately embrace her daughter (by allowing herself to become an imperfect daughter to her father, refusing to marry just to avoid the shame of having a child out of wedlock, which breaks the cycle of abuse), "the rift" offers a pretty simplistic end to the conflict between toph and lao: lao sees that toph is stronger than he imagined her to be, so he stops babying her. the end. patriarchal control and how that manifests in the way parents treat their daughters, even the daughters they love, isn't something the story lingers on; poppy's lack of agency (something og atla questions through toph's remarks about her mother's limited autonomy!) is written off, the depth of the story reduced until only a shallow reading of the original conflict is left.
which is a shame, in my opinion, because the conflict itself, as i've outlined above, is quite compelling, and og atla gives the comic writers a lot to work with: that toph doesn't ever fully cut herself off from her family, still keeping her long, traditional hair, despite it being a pain to style, is on its own very telling of just how deeply she cares for and loves her family, regardless of the hurt they've caused her. look, for instance, how katara, our empathetic observer, comments on toph's interactions with her family:
now, imagine all of this as an explicitly, intentionally gay story. for one, we know that the earth kingdom is staunchly homophobic ("even avatar kiyoshi, who by all accounts loved men and women, was unable to effect any kind of real progress"), with a huge emphasis placed on upholding blood relations—relations which are only valid if they come with a "traditional" family unit; for another, beifongs are a dynasty, and much of lao's disappointment in toph has to with her turning out to have been "a bad investment" for that dynasty—a daughter who won't marry the right man and give him the right children. with the way things go in comics+tlok, it would seem that the latter problem is solved as lao's standards for what he demands of toph are lowered, resulting in toph's relationship with her family bettering to the point of her keeping correspondence with them well into adulthood and comfortably sending her daughter off to them (something she wouldn't do, in my opinion, if she believed suyin to suffer with them, as she herself suffered), but what if... there was no acceptable lowering of the standards? what if her family had no man and was a family nonetheless? what if her children weren't related to her by blood and were her children still? what if their dynasty, as traditionalist beifongs understand it, had to end with toph? in my opinion, with those stakes (and with an introduction of the theme that's very common for atla and tlok—the theme of legacy), toph's story would only get more interesting and more complex, which is always a win in my book.
for the three people who are awaiting tlok's yandere types post: do you ladies want all the ladies. there's about eleven of them and i'm wondering whether i should write for them all. are there izumi stans. do people do x reader with pema. does anyone care about ginger (and is there anything to analyze about her).
The anon mentioning beastfolks, reminded me- I haaaaate the way the fandom makes a joke of Reggie's extreme poverty and struggles for a better financial position. Hate!! It!!! So bad!!!!! I can't remember 100% if the game itself consistently and consciously makes a joke out of it (because a lot of his frugal, more "weird"/"illogical" behaviours that we are shown seems frankly very natural considering his situation), but I can definitely tell that the fandom doesn't take it seriously at all- and usually completely boils down his character to broke (lol!!!) guy trying to get rich quick/make as much money as possibile (lol!!!!) while stuffing himself of any food he can find (lmao!!!!!!!), and that's kind of it. Like??? Is that not classist to you guys???? Does it not seem like a deeply weird (at best) way of approaching this character guys????
But tbh, fandoms in general are. Extremely weird and gross with the way they treat poor characters- like, idk if you are familiar with jjk, but the fanon portrayal of Toji (a character who isn't even canonically "poor", mind you, but still somehow got dumbed down to "misogynistic lazy BROKE!!! bum" without any canon backing) is straight up a macro-aggression☠️ and it's so uncomfortable to see these types of beliefs seep through in fandom and be widely accepted as "normal" and "fun" and even "the canon™"
the game can be dismissive about the severity of ruggie's situation sometimes (usually for comedic purposes), but, in my opinion, it doesn't even come close to the levels of disrespect people in twst fandom reach regularly and get no backlash for. i've seen people casually joke about ruggie selling himself to make the ends meet, and it's never something the jokesters self-reflect on (e.g. where does the idea that having to resort to this could be funny come from and who is the butt of the joke there? who are the people forced into prostitution in real life and how does making light of their suffering impact public's perception of them? etc). lots of people in twst fandom, seemingly due to a lack of personal experience with poverty as well as a lack of interest in learning more about the psychological impact it can have (something twst does an okay job of showing, actually!), tend to really gloss over what is likely a trauma response in ruggie. for instance, while he is practical, sure, the kind of overworking and self-monitoring he does as a part of his daily routine isn't healthy (or sustainable); he is in a survival mode, always. additionally, the positive qualities he exhibits in canon (such as a soft spot he seems to have for those younger and weaker than him, looking after them and teaching them how to work things out on their own) are either diminished or something only brought up by ruggie fans, which is a shame, too.
i'll say that i don't think twst's fandom is the worst (atla/tlok discourse is genuinely hell. i cannot begin to explain to you, my lovely twsties, how much of a hell it is.), but i do get tired from the recurrent trends of shitty character interpretation and discriminative talking points i see on there. misogyny is the big one, in my opinion. i still stumble into people who are weird about female yuus once in a while. it's not great.
on the topic of poverty (and its distasteful portrayal in media) specifically: in tlok's first season, the overarching theme is the inequality (with the big bad of the season being, quite literally, "an equalist"), and one of the ways that theme is established is through homeless people. their appearance in the very first episode is meant to hammer in just how unfortunate and grim the situation in the city is (seeing as our main characters are the savior of all and a chief of police, people directly invested in the city's betterment, as well as two formerly homeless brothers, pushed into a life of crime as children and working hard to get out of it), so you'd think that such a show would care to give its homeless characters more grace than to call them hobos (with homeless children being called "street urchins") and then write them off immediately after the big bad is killed off, no attempt at a resolution of their problem in sight. you'd think, wouldn't you? instead "hobos" appear for a joke + to provide plot convenience, after which their time in the story is over, and you are meant to forget about them. the end.
since we know that suyin (the sister who leaves her past behind) goes on to establish zaofu, i like the idea of lin (the sister who clings to the past) inheriting their family house in republic city and then never changing anything in it. she rationalizes this by telling herself that selling the house just to get a different one simply isn't worth the hassle, but in truth it's her emotional attachment to what the house symbolizes and what could have happened in it that's keeping her tethered. moving the belongings of her sister (left behind when she was sent away to gaoling) doesn't feel right, but neither does letting them gather dust, so she tidies the room up once in a while when cleaning the rest of the house. probably gets uncomfortably emotional while doing that. definitely gets annoyed and frustrated with herself for getting emotional. likely considers shipping suyin's things off to zaofu in a cardboard box when she gets too angry with their one-sided correspondence, but never finds it in herself to go through with it, so when post-reconciliation suyin comes in for a visit, she's confronted with a pristinely polished and deeply incriminating shell of her past self.
do people know that lin's relationship with tenzin is described as "a brief romance" in tlok's official resources? because i find the implications of this very intriguing, yet i've never seen it brought up by anyone.
one of the things i think abt in relation to Silver’s disability, as someone disabled myself, is that NRC outright does not seem to have ANY sort of accommodation for literally anyone. this is the first thing on my mind but the Savanaclaw trio all mention how the ceremonial robes are irritating to wear because they aren’t at all really meant for someone with ears and a tail to wear them. and that’s technically small vs an entire school who seems to think Silver is lazy (unrelated it irritates me to no end when people say he is lazy. idleness is literally the thing on his dislikes, and yeah maybe that’s bc it triggers his sleeping spells but still. off topic)
the point to that is they don’t even accommodate an entire race of people. if the robes are made specifically for the wearer and /can/ be modified, as evidenced with Malleus, why can’t they just be made with that in mind? yes this one is more wavable as “Crowley doesn’t want to pay for the alteration costs” but it’s whats on my mind whoops-
i rlly agree with the “the writers are the one who find it funny/don’t care so in universe it just isn’t addressed” thing you put down. we’ve seen Crowley be harassed into signing stuff for way lesser issues. we KNOW Lilia and Malleus are aware of how much it bothers him, and that the two of them could easily get Crowley to acquiesce. is it because NRC is a “every man for himself” situation? is it because Lilia is trying to pretend he and Silver don’t have a relationship legally and Malleus is just idly unaware he could do something? HAS Malleus ever tried something? sure Lilia figured out it was magical but why did he just stop there did he assume Silver would outgrow it when it clearly hasn’t worked?
ulgh sorry to dump this in your inbox when this is a yandere/dark content blog i am just a creature with too many Silver thoughts hitting TWST’s weak points with a baseball bat. idk if i will put things here again bc i am more of a lurker but i uhhhhhhh 🦋 will sign off with butterfly i suppose. unless thats taken in which case i am so sorry
couple of things to comment on here, so:
firstly, while i think that you are right to bring up beastpeople and their mistreatment as an example, seeing as this is indeed one of the many cases of nrc (a prestigious academy for a tiny minority of magically talented students) not really doing anything to accommodate its students, it seems to me as though, unlike silver's conflict, that conflict has been put into the story consciously. it's something that we see brought up with multiple beastpeople, and the incidents range from somewhat humorous to genuinely deeply disrespectful (such as jack being assumed to come from a particular country due to his looks or ruggie getting harassed and lumped in together with the scarabian students who are wearing werewolf costumes). i wouldn't give twst's writers too much credit here, since they are notorious for making questionable decisions regarding representation and the topic of discrimination (...og fairy gala.), but the way that this unwillingness to accommodate for beastpeople's proportions, even for the robes of a royal, presumably rich and influential enough to receive special treatment, is portrayed feels pretty intentional. if it was brought up in leona's vignettes only, you could argue that they have written it in to contrast him with malleus (the privileged heir/the despised spare), but the same problem pops up in jack's vignettes as well, so, clearly, this is a part of worldbuilding some thought was given to (unlike silver's case, wherein his condition appears to have not been thought about much by the writers).
secondly, writing silver as lazy is such character assassination that i genuinely struggle to imagine anyone who likes him viewing him like that. silver might be the least lazy person in the whole academy, actually. for one, he is so dedicated to bettering himself that he, seemingly, has no need for external motivation. wherein others complain about wanting an incentive, silver's doing the thing because he should do the thing. the reward is the hope that he may better protect the people he loves and grow up to be a good enough son for his father; that's enough of an incentive for him. for another, he consistently volunteers himself to encourage and help others. from what i've observed, idia is the one who is most commonly offered his services, seeing as the two of them are such clear constrasts in how they operate (snarky and jaded vs wide-eyed and sincere), but i can also recall similar cases with azul, ruggie, and yuu. silver's the opposite of lazy. "lazy" is what he is scared of being and what judges himself for coming across as.
lastly, while i think that "every man for himself" makes a lot of sense as an in-universe explanation (after all, that's what we are told is the biggest problem of nrc and the most tangible justification for why yuu would be useful there), it's ultimately still down to how the world in general treats silver. it seems to me that rsa students, for example, while more likely to be kinder, are unlikely to treat silver's condition more seriously than the nrc ones. although we'll see, i guess. the fairy rsa student... he is coming...
also. i am very happy to chat theory/meta/analysis regarding fandoms i'm interested in! i think that a big part of why i like writing yan/darker content has to do with the character dissection you get to do in the process, so those are the thoughts already on my mind. don't be shy to chat to me; i read everything in my inbox, even if it takes me a while to properly respond. usually because i am overthinking the response and want to make it a longer post.
toph coming from a family so prestigious that their crest is universally synonymous with wealth yet ending up employed for most of her life (first with the academy, then with the police force) is hilarious to me. could have called it quits at any given point, but she was just too locked in. she had to keep going.
something very appealing about tlok's official designs always specifying how buff korra is. do NOT draw her arms and legs as thin. do NOT be afraid to give her guns. her ATHLETICISM and PHYSICALITY should NOT be diminished. etc etc. really hammering in that she's built like a tank and she looks the part.
her being the tiniest out of the group makes this even cuter, actually. built like a tank but might need to use her bending to pull products off the tallest shelf. no wonder asami is whipped.
