#suyin beifong

[operationbeifong]

𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑷𝒀 𝑬𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑯 𝑴𝑶𝑵𝑻𝑯 — EARTHBENDING + SUB-SKILLS APPRECIATION POST.

[xenaisnumber1]

I love how despite Lin and Suyin fighting, Lin is still the protective older sister.

[waterfire1848]

Toph: I'm just terrified I'm going to drop Suyin like I dropped Lin. 5 year old Lin: You did what? Toph: I did-Hey! Hey, sweetie. No, no, no, mommy didn't drop you. It was more like a toss and then you flew a little. Lin: Bad mommy! Toph: But your daddy caught you. Lin: Lucky mommy.

[wilcze-kudly]

A barely coherent ramble on the Beifongs being a family of people with an incredibly high ability to feel things

Toph

I think a lot of people really misinterpret Toph. They see her for her role as powerhouse. However, one of her key abilities is actually her ability to sense her surroundings with earthbending.

But that's not all. Toph is able to sense people's heartrates and tell when they are lying or not.

In fact, Toph is a surprisingly empathetic person. Despite her abrasive and harsh personality, she's surprisingly good at reading people and seems to have very high emotional intelligence. She's extremely good at identifying people's strengths and their weak points. Multiple times, she's able to successfully get under people's skin very efficiently.

Girl is using her empathy to bully people good for her.

Sure, she often uses a tough love approach, however I would argue that it's a self defence mechanism. Toph doesn't like being vulnerable, probably due to the fact that she was treated as weak and helpless when she was growing up. People with higher empathy or sensitivity tend to be percieved as weaker or more delicate, which is something Toph desperately wants to avoid. Toph also carried her parents' emotions and expectations of her for a very long time and it could stand to reason that she doesn't wnat to do that with anyone else.

I think I may make a longer post on Toph and her trauma surrounding her parents and how that affects her relationships and behaviours lol.

Lin

So... Lin is very similar to her mother in many ways. She also puts up a prickly wall of "tough love" to deal with her high sensitivity. However, she seems to absorb and internalise things that hurt her much more than Toph does.

Lin's emotional maturity is heavily stunted, most likely due to her difficulty with bonding with people. She never really allowed herself to grow past a certain point. She didn't grow into her empathy, therefore she feels things, but doesn't exactly know how to handle them. Repressing these feelings is a band aid solution, and we do see how dangerous them overflowing is.

However, on rare occasions we do see Lin allow herself to empathise with others. We see this particularly with Opal and Mako. However, with most people, Lin's guard is always up.

Lin is the textbook example of someone very sensitive who pushes people away out of the fear of getting hurt.

Suyin

I can see some people arguing that Suyin has pretty low empathy. Looking at her treatment of Lin, Kuvira and Baatar Jr. I think it's true that in her younger years, Suyin struggled with her feelings. I'd argue it is due to very high empathy actually. In the flashbacks, Su seems to mirror Lin's emotions back at her, perhaps unable to distinguish them from her own.

However, unlike Lin, Su grows as a person in her time away from Republic City. When we see her as an adult, she is very in tune with her emotions and also able to deal with other people's outbursts without internalising their feelings.

She has a very gentle way of speaking to people and is able to quickly pinpoint what they need to hear, as she does with a young Kuvira and with Bolin. She can make other's feel comfortable and safe. Perhaps due to her own turbulent upbringing.

However, Suyin is also heacily driven by her emotions. Her impulsivity can cloud her judgement, such as when she flew into a fit of rage at the idea of a guard betraying her city, or when she risked not only her own life, but that of her sons, and tried to impulsively save Zaofu feom Kuvira. She also still holds a shocking degree of sympathy for Kuvira, despite her initial anger at her ans her children's visible discomfort with Kuvira's presence.

Suyin feels things very strongly, and, despite getting better at managing her feelings, they still often overtake her.

Baatar Jr

It's interesting when a character who is characterised as a more "intellectual" type is driven primarily by their emotions. Despite being a man of science, Baatar Jr has a habit of disregarding logic completely.

He prioritises his relationship with Kuvira, he has a weird lil rivalry with Varrick, he's incredibly bitter when it comes to his relationship with his family. Baatar Jr is such an underrated character.

Huan

I think most artists are inherently sensitive people. And we very much like to express the things we feel.

Huan seems to use his art to process certain experiences, for example Harmonic Convergence. He's quite sensitive when it comes to his creations. He also values other people's art too and perfers "raw emotional power" over quality.

Opal

I think a lot of people pick up on Opal's empathy on the first watch, especially when you see her interact with Lin. Opal is also very quick to notice that Su still has a soft spot for Kuvira. She also sets boundaries with Bolin very quickly and efficiently and I would credit this to Suyin's parenting.

But Opal is very much like her mother in the sense of having her judgement clouded by her emotions. Especially when it comes to the Kuvira situation. Her strong emotions often act to her detriment, as she almost gets baited into attacking Kuvira and her unchecked anger at Bolin arguably made him retract further into Kuvira's army. This is hardly a new thing for Opal, as we see her lashing out even as a child.

Wei and Wing

Splitting what little screentime the twins have between them yields scarce, but interesting characterisation. Wing seems to be more outwardly emotional, throwing a tantrum when he loses a game and cheering when excited about sparring Korra. While Wei, much like Lin and Toph before him, seems to put up a bit of a prickly wall, for example when he's antagonising Bolin.

The twins are very closely tied to their mother and it wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to say that they internalise her emotions. Like when Wei yells at Kuvira during the negotiations.

The twins are also very open about their upset at Opal leaving. It's honestly sweet to se that Suyin raised her children to be able to express their emotions rather healthily.

Uh. Anyway. This post was mainly meant to toss a pattern I've noticed out into the open. I might make some more posts elaborating on particular aspects of it (i also wanna make one on kuvira and how she's quite the opposite of the Beifongs). So uh. If you have any suggestions of topics i should start with,just shoot lol.

[blackflash9]

Hey, remember that time Suyin saved the Avatar Cycle?

Suyin's handling of the metallic poison situation is among some of the pettier things that fault-finding fanatics within the ATLA/LOK fandom tend to hurl at Suyin, which genuinely baffles me. Maybe I am overreacting, but it often feels less rooted in any genuine criticism of her character rather than an avenue to use some thinly veiled microaggressions to excuse their issues with her at best or exercise flat-out hate towards her at worst.

"Smh she didn't even get it all it out"

"Lin would've got it all out"

"Toph just crapped on her"

General comments like these often carry a negative connotation, focusing more on Su's failure to fully "heal" Korra. Something that I feel is missing out on the deeper intricacies of the matter, which I'll get to in a moment. There's also this very peculiar sentiment that the poison was all that held Korra back when it was actually a combination of factors such as the brutality of the fight itself and the lingering PTSD that stemmed from her overarching doubt and fears over her role as the Avatar. All of these factors, along with even inhibiting the poison within her bloodstream in the first place, is what crippled Korra for years. Not having it all out or not, seeing as how Korra still had issues even after removing it all in Book 4.

Speaking of bloodstreams:

Let's discuss Suyin's prowess as a metalbender. Firstly, it was a miracle that she was even able to get out as much as she did, despite Zaheer deliberately prolonging the fight with Korra so that the poison could be further entrenched in Korra's body and her bloodstream. Who knows, maybe if Suyin had gotten to Korra immediately, she would've likely gotten it all out, which is something I hardly see get mentioned.

The complicated nature surrounding the poison itself is another issue: Not only was the poison fluid in nature, but with it being metallic, Suyin had to actually perform the double duty of carefully finding the traces of earth within a liquid substance within someone's bloodstream in a very quick and precise amount of time because Korra could very well die at any moment. That is A LOT to consider, and she still managed to do a good enough job to save Korra's life and, you know, the Avatar cycle itself. It's also neat that Suyin uses techniques similar to waterbenders to navigate the poison out. This highlights the level of her precision with the element and the sheer amount of elegance that Suyin has with metal bending.

It exemplifies an understated quality to her character in how she's spent much time exploring the more intricate and creative ways to apply her bending that isn't just combative. And you all better thank her every day for being that way!

[kashiomi-art]

Lin Beifong

[knightofthenewrepublic]

[flamingtoads]

Gaang kids back at it again <3

[hadesisqueer]

Avatar universe characters as tweets part 8 I think

[loklove48]

Don’t know why I’ve got Suyin writing this novel🤣

[avatarkyoshisfansss]

op

[wilcze-kudly]

Anyway, something, something almost all the Beifongs we see in atla and tlok seeming to be very sensitive and highly emotional (all dealing with it with varying degrees of success) . Something something seismic sense.

Remind me to make a post breaking down this aspect of Toph, Lin, Su and Su's kids. Fucked up lil family of superfeelers.

[dalekofchaos]

Ways Legend Of Korra could've paid tribute to Suki instead of acting like she never existed

Suki is the cop, not Toph. Suki would have formed the Republic City Police, in this case. The Republic City Kyoshi Guard. Suki enforcing the rules and law makes way more sense than Toph. Lin would be Sokka and Suki’s daughter and would have a brother named Hakoda in honor of Sokka’s father and both would be in charge of the police after Suki’s retirement. Lin always wears the Kyoshi Warrior make up to honor her mother and Hakoda inherits his father’s boomerang and cunning mind. Toph “fuck the rules” Beifong would never in a million lifetimes EVER be a cop. I find it hard to believe Toph, the rebel who hates rules would become the very institution she despised, if anything Toph would be the Founder of Pro-Bending or a nomad Earthbending/Metalbending master and a hermit. Suyin would be her daughter and The Duke or Teo would be the father.

Suki leads a new generation of Kyoshi Warriors that helps train Korra non-bending techniques to counter the Equalists Chi-Blocking techniques.

Just giving Suki a statue in Republic City. Literally anywhere.

One little mention to her existence. Bumi mentioning he was trained by uncle Sokka and aunt Suki would've been enough.

In The Red Lotus Society's attempt to steal Korra, Sokka and Suki died protecting the Avatar

I came up with 5 near perfect scenarios that could've paid tribute to Suki. All Bryke did was act like she never existed or didn't matter. Fuck you, Suki deserved better.

[lying-on-floors]

More TLOK as text posts

Hey guys, I'm glad you're enjoying these! It's totally okay if you repost these btw, but I would greatly appreciate it if you guys credit me for them. Just an fyi <3 :)

[currentlyfandomobsessed]

"Yeah but when you're with her you're thinking of me aren't you?"

Korra, with all due respect, EVERYONE thinks of you an obsessive amount (including me ofc.)

[malizanu]

wip