#lin lok

There are a lot of moments that make me think this way, but the most glaring moment of awfulness is when Toph, Lin, Bolin and Opal are sitting together eating dinner. It's a scene that gets overlooked because of Lin's meme face and audience-insert Bolin.

Bolin, in one of the most obnoxious displays of fan-insert dialogue I've ever seen (though, let's be honest, Bolin is nothing but a fan-insert, barely a character), asks Toph - a woman he has only just met - who Lin's dad is.

But the non-existent tact and respect of the question doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that Toph answers it, and not simply because she answers at all.

It's the fact that she answers a question that is extremely personal not only to herself but to her eldest daughter, Lin, who is sitting there as well. And it's so awful because this is the question that Lin has been asking her mother for years, but Toph "would never even discuss it".

Lin has spent half a century, half or more likely more than half her life, not knowing who her father was, and it hurt her. It hurt her so much that later in the same scene she tells Toph how much it bothered her all these years, and especially growing up.

Toph denies an answer to the person to whom it matters most to give it to a completely unconnected stranger on demand, because the fans mattered more than the characters did.

Toph describes the breakdown of her relationship with Lin's dad so casually, like it doesn't matter, not caring how much it mattered to Lin. And if it was so uneventful and apparently amicable, what reason did she have for keeping such important information from the daughter she had with that husband? It's hardly in-character for Toph to be so bitter and vindictive that she make Lin suffer just so she doesn't have to face a difficult time in her life - if it was really that horrible to begin with. Toph admits Kanto was "nice" - so what could possibly compel her to keep his identity a secret for so long?

This is the woman who preached to Aang about facing things head on! Then again, this is also the woman who detached herself from her family when they needed her most throughout their lives.

And Lin is supposed to look like the unhinged, hateful woman who just needs to 'get over it' for getting angry in this scene. How can she get over it when such pivotal pieces of her own history are being kept from her, than then suddenly flung at her when a random kid asks? She always wanted to know who her father was, but now she may never be able to. We don't know if Kanto is dead or alive. Lin doesn't know.

If he was alive, at least they could have a chance to reconnect, despite the fifty-year separation, but there would be precious little time to make up for being kept apart for so long, for no reason at all. If there was good reason, Toph would have given it - to LIN - years ago.

And the kicker? It's never mentioned again. An intense topic of hurt, decades of parental alienation, is just swept under the rug. There's not even an apology for it, no remorse. A vague 'I wasn't a great mother' doesn't even begin to cover something like that.

Satiating fan speculation mattered more than the characters did.

inspired by @beifong-enthusiast so blame them

fic under the cut