Could you do 5 headcanons on Toph’s relationship with Mai and the children in the Zuko-Toph arranged marriage AU, please?

attackfish:

1. Toph is, much to Zuko and Mai’s utter chagrin, the Fun Parent/Step-Parent to all of their combined children, and by this I mean she is one of those irresponsible adults that all the other adults tell kids don’t count as adult, and it doesn’t matter if she gives permission. Why Toph, why do you have to be this way, Zuko and Mai (and every single servant in the palace) ask after she helps Izumi and Lin build a mud slip and slide in the hall with the Firelords’ portraits.

2. She adores her daughter and step-daughter, and when the girls are young, the feeling is mutual.  But as Lin and Izumi grow up… They are very different from Toph, and both feel the pressure of their position acutely.  Lin is the Firelord’s oldest legitimate child, and Izumi… Izumi is the heir presumptive, and being groomed to take the throne.  Both on some level bitterly resent Toph’s refusal to act the part that the Firelady should, as both of them have been forced, along with Mai, to take on that role themselves because of it.

3. Suyin is much younger than her sisters (or step-sister in Izumi’s case, but she is supposed to be Izumi’s sister) and both too little and too much like them.  She is stubborn and willful, like both her sisters and her mother, but also defiant and enjoys breaking the rules, like her mother, but not like her sisters.  And then, unlike any of them, she is sneakier and charming.  It drives Lin especially up a wall.

And Toph… Toph thinks it’s funny.

4. The fact that Toph isn’t very good with Lin and Izumi doesn’t change the fact that she loves them and they love her.  It just makes it much much more difficult.

5. Aside from the woes of mutual parenting, Mai and Toph get along very well.  They bond over their similarly awful families, and anyway they’ve known each other since Toph was thirteen.  Mai is the older, cooler sister figure that Toph both loves and is jealous of.