#wonderbabe

Amy Rose as:Madeline

Shadow the hedgehod as:James Bond

Introducing: Marie Rose as Mathilde

Amy and shadow's Daughter

Aww, you're too sweet! "Can You Please Just Hold Me?" came right from the heart, so I'm glad it touched you too.

@sokka-beifong and @twinkle-toph are both super talented. (“i meant it when i said i wanted to start a family with you.” and “He’s always like this” were both so sweet.) I know they're both primarily Tokka shippers/writers, but multishippers be multishipping and you and I are both stupendously grateful for it.

- DC Superhero Girls, Wonder Woman Day/Summer Olympus

You are very welcome! I actually read a couple of older Toko fics on FFN recently-- you've probably read them already, but I'll share them here anyway.

The first is Grounded-- just a sweet little hurt/comfort oneshot, and I absolutely loved it.

Then there was the 60k word Land of Fire and Stone, which is FABULOUS. And the 160k word sequel Voice of the Earth (with bonus JetMai-- I've noticed that several of the OG Toko writers seemed to have a thing for JetMai). (There's also an amazing third book, Bender, which is Sukka-centric.)

As far as anime, I do recommend both Violet Evergarden and 86: Eighty-Six-- fair warning, they both deal with the topic of child soldiers and are very angsty.

Wonderbabe! It's so nice to hear from you again! I hope you've had a chance to check out the Toko rec list-- I'm sure you've already read most of them, but hopefully there's at least a couple you haven't seen before.

Yeah, I've been a Spy X Family fan for three years-- way back when the manga was first being serialized.

By the way, when I was working on this reply, I went to check my #TwiYor tag-- only to find it empty. For a moment, I was very confused, because I knew I'd posted shippy content for them. But then I went to my #Spy X Family tag and immediately realized the problem: I tag them #LoidYor!

Awww, thanks!

As for what inspired me to start writing...... IDK, I've been writing it as long as I could remember.

Now as for what inspired to start writing Toko is an interesting story.

I rewatched ATLA last summer. Once I finished it, I obviously wanted to go read some good fics.

The nature of ATLA fanfics is that, no matter what you do, you're always going to find yourself saturated in Zutara fanfics.

I'd never been into Zutara, but I was just starting to dip my toes into multishipping, and there were so many interesting-looking Zutara fics, I decided to try a few.

And there were a few good ones (I've got some recs in my AO3 bookmarks if anyone's interested).

But at the end of the day, I just didn't really like the way a lot of them completely sidelined Aang.

So I sat and considered. I said to myself, "I do like Maiko, but I'm not nearly as attached to it as I am Kataang. Who else can I ship Zuko with (without breaking up Kataang)?"

And after a few minutes of contemplation, I was like "oh! Toph!"

I really enjoyed because i've always believed that if you make Toph and Zuko spend time together, they are gonna fall in love for each other at some point... So, that's why Arranged Marriage is a perfect trope for them, because it forces them to spend time to know together and to know each other in a deeply way. The other way is Uncle Iroh, but it works more like friends to lovers kind of story and slowburn.  But regardless of if they’re in love when they get engaged, it still could be seen as an arranged marriage because of the political implications of their union. I mean, the Fire Lord marrying an Earth Kingdom's noble screams politics and rebuilding the trust between their nations.  So, at the end of the day their relationship is beneficial to everybody, not only themselves. And it's a good topic to treat in fiction, like in this fanfiction called  (Is there a line I’m missing?)  If you don't want to go the Lin/Tenzin route, i'm all for it because it's very sad thinking about it and i love angst but i prefer the "life is not easy" type of angst you're going for in these series than romantic angst... like in my point of view, there are more heartbreaking and painful things than a broken relationship, i'm not trying to dismiss someone experiencing a heartbreak because it's also painful, but to me, if i'm very honest, losing a loved one is the worst hearbreak you could ever experience...  Death is a really hard topic to deal with and you never get over it, truly, you only learn to live with it but like i said that's my approach to life... but i think whatever you is gonna be amazing because i love your writing and the way you've outlined this so far, so i can't wait for you to surprise us with more!! 

-WonderBabe. 

I did not say it was a sister, either! I refuse to reveal any identifying information about my OC lavababies until they crop up in my fics, so you shall have to wait and see! 

And, wow, you’ve read all of them? Noice! Symbolism is definitely a classic (I should reread that one, it’s been a while), but I think my favorites are A Tale of Earth and Fire, @pigeonchest’s not supposed to come home (major inspiration for we all want love/we all want honor!), and @this-acuteneurosis’s Third Time’s the Charm.  There’s one other currently updating arranged marriage Toko fic I haven’t had the chance to add to the list yet: @lone-star-ranger’s How to Scam Your Way into Marriage, which he wrote for the @avatar-rare-pair-ship-challenge​ and was kind enough to gift to me. (Thanks again, Lone Star!) 

I did read A Simple Request, and I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t actually an arranged marriage story, but I was not disappointed-- a 15k word Toko fic I haven’t read yet is still a Toko fic I haven’t read yet. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in this ship-- the writer had a really good handle on Zuko and Toph’s character dynamic, especially considering that this one was written before season 3 aired (in other words, before the two of them had ever actually interacted with each other on screen). (TW for Iroh death.)  

Arranged marriage is one of my favorite tropes in general, and it works really well with Toph and Zuko-- I’ll go into this in depth some other time, but suffice it to say that, politically speaking, Zuko’s best marriage option would be a minor Earth Kingdom noble, preferably one stubborn and thick-skinned enough to be able to handle the intrigues of the Fire Nation royal court, and Toph checks all of those boxes.  (Did you forget to include the title of a fic you were trying to recommend?) 

As for Lin and Tenzin I feel like I read their relationship pre-canon very differently from how most of the LOK fandom seems to.  The story I put together while watching the show was not one of childhood sweethearts who were dating for nearly two decades before Pema swept in and broke them apart.  No, my interpretation was that they were a pair of childhood friends who, upon entering their thirties and and realizing that they were still single, decided that they may as well try out a relationship-- which failed miserably and ended in disaster.  In short, I don’t think that they dated for more than a few months, a year or two at most, and Lin is less upset about Tenzin “breaking her heart” than she is about how he broke up with her. (Maybe with some added bitterness that Tenzin, who she always considered to be “in the same boat” as she was, was able to find someone to settle down with while she wasn’t.) 

Back to my writing; I’m a lot more comfortable working with that “life isn’t always easy” angst you’re talking about than your standard romantic angst plotlines.  Broken romantic entaglements are hard, sure, but you can always find stories about those. I prefer stories about the struggles relationships experience that actually require effort to work through. 

As always, it was really nice to hear from you, WonderBabe!