Continued from: [Link] and: [Link]
1. I mentioned in the first installment of this AU that Zuko never went through the kind of transformation of thinking that he did in canon, and so has never been forced to acknowledge what an abusive monster his father was and how the Fire Nation’s war of conquest has hurt the world. This is a major source of conflict between Zuko and both Toph and Iroh early on. With Iroh, this is similar to canon, in that after Lu Ten’s death, Iroh took a long hard look at the ideology his son died fighting for and began to believe the conquest was wrong, while with Toph, this is somewhat more complex. Toph is from the Earth Kingdom, but Gaoling was mostly isolated from the war, and her wealthy family kept her further isolated from the effects of the conquest. That doesn’t mean that Toph didn’t hear and see some things on the way to the Fire Nation. She knows the Fire Nation tried to conquer the world. She knows her country was invaded, and she knows that the Fire Nation lost the war. The Fire Nation was in the wrong here, obviously. Meanwhile Zuko is a boy who lost his father, was forced to take the throne as a puppet, and then after he got free from that, forced to marry a thirteen year old girl. He feels like the wronged party here, thanks.
2. Their early marriage, with Zuko’s long-term affair not yet an official thing, and Toph much too young to consummate any kind of marriage, with both of them feeling like the wronged party, and with Zuko unwilling to acknowledge that the conquest was wrong (and therefore possibly going to restart it once he has some leverage) is near nonstop fighting. When Toph isn’t running away, she’s running to Iroh, something Zuko bitterly resents. Iroh is many things to Zuko, the man who tries to convince him that Ozai was not the father Zuko wants to pretend he was, the man who tries to teach Zuko that the war of conquest was wrong and tries to force Zuko to acknowledge painful truths, sure, but also another father for Zuko for the three years of his exile, and Zuko is jealous of their closeness. It’s an ugly tangle of emotions there for a while.
3. Ozai and Azula are both dead at the hands of the Earth Kingdom, which makes it much harder for Zuko to find Ursa. In a desperate bid to try to make Zuko see some sense about his father, Iroh tries to find out what he can about Ursa’s disappearance. He discovers that she is banished, and her marriage to Ozai severed, but she was never executed. He gives this information to Zuko, and Zuko takes Mai to find her. They do find her, and Ursa is able to get her memory back, and she is able to tell Zuko exactly what Ozai was willing to do to get power, and just how little he loved his son. This breaks through some of Zuko’s denial. The war is harder for Zuko to come to terms with, since it ended so badly for him personally, but slowly, ruling the Fire Nation and seeing the damage the war did just to the Fire Nation, and how the promise of helping the Earth Kingdom came to nothing, and how this was all to bring the world under the control of men like his father and grandfather, Zuko slowly comes around.
4. One of the real barriers to Zuko acknowledging the Fire Nation’s fault for the war is just how terrible his year as a puppet was. His father was killed, he was captured, he was dragged home as a prisoner, and surrounded by Dai Li and Northern Water Tribe soldiers, he was crowned and kept imprisoned in the Firelord’s rooms, hauled out and placed on display whenever something needed to be signed or any kind of official function was held. When his sister tried for the crown, he had to watch her be killed in front of him, before he had to escape his own palace to find his uncle and fight his way back in with the support of the surviving remnants of the Fire Nation army. None of this is an experience that inclines Zuko to listen to anyone.
5. The end of the war did not involve the Southern Water Tribe. Hakoda was
left out of the invasion, so the puppet government was entirely run by
the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe. The Southern Water
Tribe has languished since in a state of isolation and poverty.But the Avatar is about to awaken…
Tag: toph
Could you do 5 headcanons on Toph’s relationship with Mai and the children in the Zuko-Toph arranged marriage AU, please?
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.
au + 5 hc- Toph and Zuko marry for political reasons, and now their children have to deal with the political consenquences
1. The avatar did not awaken. Instead, the Earth Kingdom army and the Northern Water Tribe invaded on the Day of Black Sun and overthrew Ozai. Zuko’s ship was captured soon after, and Iroh put in prison. Zuko was put on the throne as a puppet monarch. Zuko has not had his redemption/recovery arc, so he is still a hostile snarly, anxious unhappy twerp, only now Ozai is dead, and Zuko is free to lionize him without having to face the reality of who Ozai really was. Also Iroh is in prison in the Earth Kingdom awaiting execution, and Azula is running around making everything about a hundred times more difficult.
2. Azula makes a bid for the throne, persuading a group of Dai Li and disgruntled Fire nobles to back her. At the same time, Iroh escapes and makes his way home. Somehow this ends with Zuko still on the throne, Iroh safe, and the Dai Li at least out of Zuko’s court. But the other upshot is that Zuko needs to marry an Earth Kingdom noble in order to prevent another invasion. The Bei Fongs manage to luck out as the family to garner the most backers in he Earth Kingdom, so their thirteen-year-old daughter is escorted to the Fire Nation by her mother and several regiments of the Earth Kingdom army.
3. Zuko takes one look at her and marries her just to get her away from the people who are willing to marry her off at thirteen. Consummation of this marriage is not going to happen for a looooong time. But Toph might be a frightened child, but she would never let that show. She keeps running away. Not back to her parents as might be expected, just away, to the wilds of the Fire Nation, to the inner city, anywhere she can get to. She bends the glass out of her windows, she tears up Zuko’s mother’s garden, the only person who can really get her to do anything is Iroh, and now he has two intractable, bad tempered teens to look after, and Zuko is now even less willing to listen to him now that he’s got a crown.
4. Eventually, the two of them settle into a siblingish relationship, and Toph eventually grows up to realize no body here really has a choice, so she’s going to have to just deal. She still absolutely despises everything involved with being Firelady. Also Zuko resurrected the prewar custom of official concubinage when Mai accidentally got pregnant, and Toph is careful only to take firebenders as lovers.
5. Doesn’t matter. Both her children are earthbenders, even Lin, who is actually Zuko’s. Izumi, his acknowledged bastard, has to take the throne. The mess that is the royal inheritance at this time very nearly touches off a civil war, and a couple of islands do break away and declare Lin their queen. Lin has to go down there to knock some sense into them.
Could you do some headcannons for Toph and Zuko being like brother and sister please!
Do you mean this AU where they actually are brother and sister?: [Link]
I also have this one, where Toph is the Fire Princess instead of Azula: [Link] Wow I have a lot of five headcanon AUs.
Anyway, I’m going with the one where Zuko is a Bei Fong.
1. Zuko, Iroh, and Jet all end up on the same ferry into Ba Sing Se. Zuko is completely at loose ends, because he’s supposed to be hunting his sister and bringing her home, but he just can’t bring himself to do that to her, and he can’t go home without her, and he has never been anything but the Bei Fong heir. Without a nephew to teach and keep out of trouble, he’s spiraling into a bit of a depression at the site of the place where his son died. He’s there to offer his services to the Earth King in the fight against his brother, but sometimes it’s hard to hold onto that purpose. Jet is… Jet.
Anyway, Iroh meets Zuko when he’s passing around the food he stole with the freedom fighters, and he feels it’s his duty to provide a better influence for this kid before he gets arrested. This is how Zuko comes to be standing next to him when Iroh does his heating the tea thing. Zuko freaks. Iroh clamps his hand around the boy’s mouth, tells him who he is, and his plan, and Zuko decides to follow him to keep his eyes on him, since after all he doesn’t have anything else to do except try to keep tabs on his sister.
Iroh very quickly rethinks his plan after finding out about the Dai Li, and this is how he and Zuko end up running a tea shop together while they wait for the comet and plan to help defend the city.
2. Because there is no Prince Zuko to rescue Aang after Zhao captures him, it falls to Iroh, who has been spending his time on the front for the past two years, since court was so unpleasant with Ozai as Firelord. By the way, Zhao tries to have a rivalry with him, but Iroh just finds him amusing.
3. It’s Sokka that Azula strikes at in the abandoned village before making her getaway, something Iroh tells Zuko all about. Zuko just wants him to get back to talking about the time he talked to his sister. More Toph, less Water Tribe dude.
4. Toph has so many mixed feelings about her brother the secret rebel who hooked up with the renegade Dragon of the West. On one hand, yay! Her brother is awesome, and she loves him, on the other hand, she already has mixed feelings about the way he used to help her, and also help their parents control her, and she doesn’t know what to do with him, and also it;s kind of her fault he had to leave home, and hey Zuko, you may be a lavabender, but I can metalbend. I invented it. So nyah. She’s feeling a lot of things about him at once.
5. There was this really cool Kyoshi Warrior with a bunch of knives who came in for tea, and Zuko served her, and he almost spilled tea on her, but she came back, and then she saw Iroh and didn’t come back after that, and it turns out she wasn’t a Kyoshi Warrior after all, and Zuko’s pissed off at that, because he’s pretty sure she was spying on him. Not because he thought she was really cool and wanted to kiss her. No.
AU where Zuko has Toph for a sister instead of Azula.
Hmm, this is a hard one, because it isn’t one I’ve actually given a whole lot of thought to. I assume you mean that Toph is the youngest child of Ozai and Ursa?
1.Toph in this verse is a prodigy firebender instead of a prodigy earthbender, but because she’s blind her father thinks she’s weak. This drives her to train harder, and to work to develop ways to “see” with her bending. This is much more limited than her earth sense, and works like Zuko’s fire sense in Quiet Shadowed Places.
2. Between Toph’s blindness and Zuko’s compassion, Ozai in this verse does not play favorites, because he is too busy believing both his children are completely useless and worthless. This right here fundamentally changes family dynamics, history, everything.
3. Ozai is constantly pressuring Ursa to have another child, meanwhile, he keeps trying to convince Azulon to let him divorce Ursa and marry a woman who won’t give him such “defective heirs.” This all comes to a head when Lu Ten dies, and Ozai ends up strangling Azulon himself after Azulon suggests that maybe it’s Ozai that’s the problem. Then, he pins the murder on Ursa and has her executed.
4. Ozai becomes Firelord, remarries, and gets with the baby making. As soon as his new wife is pregnant, he starts looking for a way to dispose of his useless older children. Meanwhile Iroh has all but adopted them. When he exiles Zuko on a pretext, he accuses Toph of plotting with her brother to dishonor the general and the Firelord, and exiles her as well.
5. Because of this changed dynamic, Zuko’s daddy issues are different from canon. He still has the intense drive to prove himself, but he does not believe daddy will ever love him, and he is extremely depressed and has low self esteem. Meanwhile, Toph’s intense need to prove herself leads to recklessness. Between the two of them, Iroh has started to go bald from pulling his hair out. Instead of looking for the Avatar, however, Iroh has convinced them to settle down in the colonies with him. This is when the Avatar finds them, or more precisely, when the Order of the White Lotus sends the Avatar to them.
5 headcanons on AU where Zuko is the Bei Fongs’ eldest child, please?
I never got an alert or a note for this, or anything. I didn’t even realize it was here until just now. I’m so sorry about that.
Anyway, I worked out a whole little thing with Zuko as the Bei Fongs’ kid, and Toph as Azula’s little sister before I realized you probably meant Zuko as Toph’s older brother with them both as Bei Fongs instead of Fire Royals.
1. This is it, this is the universe in which Zuko is the favored child. Not that the Bei Fongs don’t love Toph, far from it. It’s just that in Zuko, the Bei Fongs have the heir they want. He’s healthy, and a son, and it’s his job to someday run the estate and preserve the family’s good name, and of course, take care of his poor little blind sister. It’s so wonderful to have a son like Zuko, their parents tell each other and their children. They never have to worry about what will happen to Toph when they go, or trying to marry their poor fragile child off. She has a brother to protect her. Toph seethes with frustration and resentment.
2. Zuko isn’t an idiot. He knows how his sister feels. When she was really little, he used to teach her moves from his own earthbending lessons, but that had to stop after they got caught. (Zuko was never in that much trouble ever. Their parents were so angry. It was like they caught him holding a knife to her throat, instead of teaching her to make pebbles dance around.) After that, they got Toph her own lessons, that never went beyond the very beginning of earthbending, but he knows she’s better than that, and he knows she knows it. And there are times when he can’t find her, when she’s just completely disappeared, and he knows she has to be sneaking out.
3. Zuko feels so guilty about it. He knows he should tell somebody, because Toph could get hurt. She’s just a little kid, and she doesn’t seem to get it, because she thinks she’s so strong, and he knows she isn’t a wimp, that’s not the point, but then their parents go and treat her like she’s a glass vase, like she’s pretty and fragile, and valuable, but has no opinion of her own and they don’t expect her to ever question being shut up an hidden like this. And Zuko doesn’t know who’s right. (Maybe neither of them are right, the back of his mind whispers.)
4. When the Avatar comes, and it all comes out about Toph being a total prodigy, Zuko tells her good bye and helps her sneak out and packs her a lunch. He stays behind. Lao and Poppy are furious. How dare he? His entire job is to protect her, and instead he let her run off like that? They send him to hunt her down instead of Yu and Xin Fu. He tracks her to Ba Sing Se, gets all caught up in the fall of the city, and the Avatar almost dying, and having to flee for their lives, and also meeting up with the Firelord’s fugitive brother, and somehow along the way, he ends up joining the gaang. Their parents are not going to be happy.
5. After the war is over, Zuko, Toph, and Mai spend a lot of time comparing parents and asking if they’re really sure their parents weren’t secretly the same people.
Can you do 5 headcanons on boy Toph?
1. I once made a five headcanons post about trans girl Toph, and everything I said in there about how the Bei Fongs perceive their “son” applies here too. His blindness now is not part of how he is a delicate flower who needs to be protected. Now he is a vulnerable defective heir who needs to be protected. He does however get to have more of a public life than his counterpart. People know he exists, and girls whose families want them to marry into the Bei Fong family learn to present themselves as the kind of sweet nurturing wife who would take care of a blind husband. Toph would rather not, thanks.
2. The way he meets the gaang doesn’t really change. He is still the Blind Bandit, he still threatens to call the guards on Aang, and he still runs away to teach Aang earthbending.
3. He is significantly more bewildered by his crushes first on Sokka then on Zuko though.
4. In Ba Sing Se, Toph escorts Katara as her recent betrothed. Everybody thinks they’re adorable and adorably dutiful to their families, since it’s obviously an arranged match. They’re only children after all. Katara is seriously wigged out.
5. Katara feels even more all alone as the only girl with all these obnoxious boys. Then Zuko joins, and she’s outnumbered four to one, six to one if you count Appa and Momo. Even the animals are boys. Thank goodness Suki joins them, seriously.
Cheloneuniverse 