Toph Beifong

Toph Beifong is an earthbending master, one of the most powerful of her time, and the discoverer of metalbending. Blind since birth, Toph was constantly treated condescendingly because of her visual impairment, particularly by her overprotective parents, Lao and Poppy Beifong. Upon discovering badgermoles, earthbending animals who are also blind, she learned how to use earthbending as an extension of her senses. This gave her the ability to "see" every vibration that passes through the ground. Having developed her own unique style of earthbending, Toph acquired a toughened personality and became famous for winning underground earthbending tournaments under the alias "The Blind Bandit", doing so behind her parents' backs. Although initially uninterested in directly aiding the war effort, she eventually chose to leave behind her old life, and travel with Avatar Aang and his friends as his earthbending teacher, when her parents finally became unbearable for her. Toph's total mastery over earthbending, unique personality, and thoughtful pragmatism made her a valuable addition to the team. After Republic City's formation, Toph became the city's first Chief of Police, forming the Metalbending Police Force to help maintain order. She had two daughters with two different men: Lin, who succeeded her as Chief of Police, and Suyin, who created the metal city of Zaofu. Toph eventually set out to roam the world in search of enlightenment before settling down in the Foggy Swamp. Due to her blindness, Toph was often pampered by her overprotective parents. Her freedom was limited to the point where her own existence was not known to most people in her hometown, much to her chagrin, thus straining her relationship with her parents. As a result, she greatly craved to interact with the rest of the world, albeit independently. It was not until she learned earthbending from the badgermoles that her confidence tremendously increased. As a result, she secretly participated in Earth Rumble tournaments without her parent's knowledge. Upon joining Team Avatar, Toph brought a completely new personality to the group. Unlike the nurturing Katara, flighty Aang, or gruff but goofy Sokka, Toph was fiercely independent, sarcastic, direct, stubborn, and confrontational. She appeared to have the same carefree and adventurous personality as Aang and was very tomboyish in the way she acted and dressed, in contrast to the delicate doll her parents saw her as. Toph loved battling and took great pride in her earthbending skills. She appeared eager to prove that she was as strong as anyone who could see and once claimed that she was "the greatest earthbender in the world". This attitude was most prominently shown when she was teaching Aang earthbending, as she taught him to face his enemies and problems head-on. Toph's eagerness to prove that she could be independent led to some initial difficulties with Aang and his friends. Toph insisted that she could "carry her own weight" and often mistook a simple friendly gesture as an act of pity for her blindness. Her encounter with Iroh, however, taught her that Aang, Katara, and Sokka cared for her because they were friends, not because her blindness made them feel obligated to do so. Toph was often brutally honest when criticizing others, especially her friends. She was vocal about her opinions on others regardless of status (the Avatar, Aang) or age (Iroh). Her occasional attitude or aloofness is likely related to her being the only child of one of the richest families in the Earth Kingdom. Due to her time as a competitor and champion of earthbending tournaments, she was an expert in verbally taunting and insulting her opponents and, on occasion, her friends, particularly Sokka. She revealed to Katara that, being unable to see what she looks like, she did not feel the need to fuss over her appearance. However, despite her many quirks, Toph showed that she was a quick learner, and her courage and loyalty to her new friends seemed very stable. Toph and Katara seemed to be polar opposites; while Katara was kind, welcoming and supportive, Toph was rough, unyielding and steadfast. These differences in personality extended to the way both girls taught Aang; however, Toph eventually showed a bit of compromise in order to help Aang through his initial difficulty with earthbending. Despite occasional clashes or spats, Toph and Katara generally got along. One of Toph's most profound traits involved personal hygiene. She was accustomed to lying on the ground and walking everywhere barefoot leaving her soles soiled, a habit common among the earthbenders. Also, she had been seen belching loudly, picking her nose or toes, spitting, and was usually covered in dirt or, as she called it, "a healthy coating of earth". Toph was well-educated in the manners and bearings of high society but deliberately chose to ignore them. However, she made an exception when the group needed to go to an exclusive party to see the Earth King in order to give news of the solar eclipse. To this end, she and Katara dressed and acted formally to evade suspicion. Toph did not let her blindness hurt her self-confidence. She had high self-esteem in regard to many of her abilities and was more than determined to show that she would not let her blindness deter her from living freely and fighting like everyone else. However, sometimes this acted as a ruse to hide personal insecurities. After getting a makeover with Katara in Ba Sing Se, some residents of the city mocked Toph for it (who retaliated with a prank). She told Katara that "one of the good things about being blind [was] that [she did] not have to waste [her] time worrying about appearances" and was not looking for anyone's approval. Katara voiced that it was something she admired in Toph but could tell that she had been hurt by the insult and added that though it did not matter, she was in fact pretty, which visibly cheered up the blind girl. An ongoing joke concerning Toph's blindness was her lack of ability to discern anything that had been written or drawn. In Ba Sing Se, Toph became angry when Sokka suggested that she needed help distributing fliers. She angrily slapped up a poster herself, only to inadvertently place it backward and say, "It's upside-down, isn't it?" Also, she sarcastically complimented Sokka on his drawings of Appa despite the obvious fact that she could not see them. Later, in the Fire Nation, after being presented with the same wanted poster twice, Toph vocally expressed her annoyance with the constant oversight. Toph was comfortable enough, however, with the group's absent-mindedness on the subject of her blindness to even joke about it herself at times. For example, while searching for Wan Shi Tong's Library, Toph, while flying on Appa, claimed that she saw it, before remarking, "That's what it'll sound like when one of you spots it", and waving a hand in front of her eyes with a nonchalant smile. While hijacking an airship, Toph mistook Sokka's comment about taking the wheel, thinking he was referring to her. By the smile on her face, it was pretty clear that she was gleeful about getting another chance to correct him. However, it turned out that Sokka was talking to Suki, and Toph managed to subsequently cover up her original intention pretty well. At the reunion in the Jasmine Dragon after the passing of Sozin's Comet, she made a joke about Sokka's drawing, saying that she thought everyone looked perfect. Because of the restrictions placed upon her by her parents and the fact that their servants waited upon her hand-and-foot lest she hurt herself, Toph often seemed to want to take on the responsibilities and obtain the freedoms of adulthood. This caused problems for herself and her friends, most notably during their visit to Fire Fountain City, as she did not always take into account how this might endanger her or aggravate others. No matter how she acted, though, others realized that she was still a vulnerable child underneath everything else she pretended to be. When she went on to teach her unique talent of metalbending, she realized how her dogged pursuit of her own dreams of becoming the world's first metalbending teacher disrespected who her students were. She found parallels between how she was treating them as people by restricting them simply so they could meet her vision of them with how her parents had treated her back when she still lived with them. She subsequently decided to give up her metalbending academy so that she would not use it as an outlet for the pain she felt from her relationship with her parents onto her students. Luckily for her, her students happened to have overheard her conversation with Sokka about this subject, and responded to it by overcoming the limits the rest of the world saw as defining them in an attempt to live up to the vision Toph had had for them, and were finally able to metalbend. Due to her troubled past with her parents, Toph also exhibited a modernist attitude, believing that change is the key to progress. As a mother, Toph found herself to be a direct opposite of her parents, letting her daughters be free to find their own way, though Suyin claimed that Toph was not pleased with the paths either of her daughters had chosen. She later admitted to her children that, while she knew she had not been the best parent, she was proud of the women they had become. In old age, Toph retained her abrasive, no-nonsense personality, being harshly critical of Korra's abilities and enjoying defeating her in combat. However, she had adopted a more cynical mindset about the impact actions make on their surroundings; she had realized that no matter how hard she tried, crime and injustice would never give up. Despite her tough exterior, Toph is not above warming up during intimate moments, as evidenced when she joined in group hugs with Team Avatar and held hands with Aang at the prospect of friendships lasting more than one lifetime. Although she had become more cynical in old age, she would allow herself to show affection when she deemed the other person worthy, as evidenced when she let Korra hug her after earning her respect and did not berate or try to stop Opal's embrace when they met again after several years of separation. She even allowed Wu to hug her after she gathered the King was just an affectionate person.