Parents in Avatar
Jul. 18th, 2008 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesSo, I saw a post on the Avatar community on LJ discussing Toph's parents. For those of you who haven't seen the show, Toph is a blind terrakinetic (earthbending) 12-year-old girl who can see using vibrations through the earth. We also first meet her competing in an earthbending tournament that is a slightly less staged version of pro wrestling, which she wins. (At least, until Aang shows up -- since he can hover, she can't see to hit him. This earned him the nickname of 'Twinkletoes' from her.)
Toph's parents on the other hand, don't know that she can 'see'*, so shelter her to an extreme degree. We know she's been to Bah Sing Sei (one of the two major cities on the continent), and she has a passport, and can dress noble. On the other hand, most of the locals in her town aren't sure if her family even has a daughter, because she doesn't get to leave their house and garden much.
This eventually leads to her parents discovering that Toph is sneaking out to fight pro wresters (and winning), them freaking out, and her running away to join Our Heroes. They hire her old teacher and the MC of the tournament to bring her back.
There's a lot of blaming Toph's parents in the fandom, and the post I saw was trying to make the point that they weren't bad people -- they just were protective of their daughter, and not willing to let her run off to join a war or fight grown men. While I didn't agree with some of the minor points, I did agree with that. Heck, even the show presents Toph's parents' flaw not as freaking out over this, but in not realizing their their daughter can be treated as a mostly-normal 12 year old with slightly altered needs, rather than a delicate flower. (And shows that Toph had (and has) severe issues with authority -- any form of constraint was seen by Toph as an attempt to utterly control her-- and she really does want reconciliation with her parents, if they are able to accept that she doesn't need to be coddled any more than most kids her age.)
I kind of observed this problem in high school. People I knew with strict parents, would often just sneak out and do things anyway. I hate to go all pop-psychology on this (hey, it is my blog, though), but if you know your parents will freak out over a minor thing and a major thing, it's hard to learn the difference between them.
(Heck, I had to sneak a friend of mine a copy of 'The Golden Compass' because her mother refused to have the book in her house. This was last Christmas, mind you, and the friend is a college graduate (who was living at home because she lost her job as a psychologist's receptionist thanks to the psychologist being shady) and two years older than me.)
Probably what happened with Toph is that she was always adventurous (she went off exploring or ran away at age three, before she learned to see by vibrations) and her parents were always conservative and protective of their blind daughter, and the two fed back on one another -- the more Toph tried to break free, the more protective her parents got. Eventually, Toph just got so good at hiding things that things reached a status quo, until Aang and Co. came along, and accidentally exposed her activities. I always got the sense that, when she was younger, Toph tried, and eventually gave up, to tell her parents that she learned to sense vibrations in the earth from badger moles.
(Actually, come to think about it, of the young characters (excluding Aang, who was raised by monks and most of his parental issues seem to come from the fact he was raised by committee and even his mentor had to listen to the senior monks, and that everyone of those is 100 years dead), Katara and Sokka are the only ones with a really good dad and grandma, and even that family had problems, since their dad left for war when they were young, and both Sokka and Katara were affected by it. Mai felt like unless she was the perfect dutiful daughter and showed no sense of individuality, her parents wouldn't appreciate her. Ty Lee was from a big family and thought that unless she tried to be as different as possible, she would just be one of a group of sisters.
Then again, all of these are normal parent issues. The Fire Nation Royal Family wins by having abnormal (and abusive) issues, with Granddad Azulon ordering Daddy Ozai to kill his son for badmouthing his brother's grief at losing his son, (and then Ozai letting his wife take the blame when Azulon died in his sleep -- granted, she probably did kill him, but...) and Ozai maiming and banishing his teenaged son for questioning him at a strategy meeting. Heck, even Azula was affected by these -- as she puts it, her mother thought she was a monster. Granted, her mother was right, but it still hurt. )
Toph's parents on the other hand, don't know that she can 'see'*, so shelter her to an extreme degree. We know she's been to Bah Sing Sei (one of the two major cities on the continent), and she has a passport, and can dress noble. On the other hand, most of the locals in her town aren't sure if her family even has a daughter, because she doesn't get to leave their house and garden much.
This eventually leads to her parents discovering that Toph is sneaking out to fight pro wresters (and winning), them freaking out, and her running away to join Our Heroes. They hire her old teacher and the MC of the tournament to bring her back.
There's a lot of blaming Toph's parents in the fandom, and the post I saw was trying to make the point that they weren't bad people -- they just were protective of their daughter, and not willing to let her run off to join a war or fight grown men. While I didn't agree with some of the minor points, I did agree with that. Heck, even the show presents Toph's parents' flaw not as freaking out over this, but in not realizing their their daughter can be treated as a mostly-normal 12 year old with slightly altered needs, rather than a delicate flower. (And shows that Toph had (and has) severe issues with authority -- any form of constraint was seen by Toph as an attempt to utterly control her-- and she really does want reconciliation with her parents, if they are able to accept that she doesn't need to be coddled any more than most kids her age.)
I kind of observed this problem in high school. People I knew with strict parents, would often just sneak out and do things anyway. I hate to go all pop-psychology on this (hey, it is my blog, though), but if you know your parents will freak out over a minor thing and a major thing, it's hard to learn the difference between them.
(Heck, I had to sneak a friend of mine a copy of 'The Golden Compass' because her mother refused to have the book in her house. This was last Christmas, mind you, and the friend is a college graduate (who was living at home because she lost her job as a psychologist's receptionist thanks to the psychologist being shady) and two years older than me.)
Probably what happened with Toph is that she was always adventurous (she went off exploring or ran away at age three, before she learned to see by vibrations) and her parents were always conservative and protective of their blind daughter, and the two fed back on one another -- the more Toph tried to break free, the more protective her parents got. Eventually, Toph just got so good at hiding things that things reached a status quo, until Aang and Co. came along, and accidentally exposed her activities. I always got the sense that, when she was younger, Toph tried, and eventually gave up, to tell her parents that she learned to sense vibrations in the earth from badger moles.
(Actually, come to think about it, of the young characters (excluding Aang, who was raised by monks and most of his parental issues seem to come from the fact he was raised by committee and even his mentor had to listen to the senior monks, and that everyone of those is 100 years dead), Katara and Sokka are the only ones with a really good dad and grandma, and even that family had problems, since their dad left for war when they were young, and both Sokka and Katara were affected by it. Mai felt like unless she was the perfect dutiful daughter and showed no sense of individuality, her parents wouldn't appreciate her. Ty Lee was from a big family and thought that unless she tried to be as different as possible, she would just be one of a group of sisters.
Then again, all of these are normal parent issues. The Fire Nation Royal Family wins by having abnormal (and abusive) issues, with Granddad Azulon ordering Daddy Ozai to kill his son for badmouthing his brother's grief at losing his son, (and then Ozai letting his wife take the blame when Azulon died in his sleep -- granted, she probably did kill him, but...) and Ozai maiming and banishing his teenaged son for questioning him at a strategy meeting. Heck, even Azula was affected by these -- as she puts it, her mother thought she was a monster. Granted, her mother was right, but it still hurt. )
