Toph Beifong


 * "Blind Bandit" redirects here. For the episode, see "The Blind Bandit". This article is about the character in the series, for the character in the video games, see Toph Beifong (games).

"earth"

- I love fighting. I love being an earthbender, and I'm really, really good at it. I know I've kept my life secret from you, but you were keeping me secret from the whole world. You were doing it to protect me, but I'm twelve years old and I've never had a real friend.

Toph Beifong was an earthbending master and perhaps the most powerful earthbender of her time. Blind since birth, Toph was constantly treated condescendingly because of her disability and stature, especially by her overprotective parents. Upon discovering badgermoles, earthbending animals who were blind just like her, she learned how to use earthbending as an extension of her senses. This gave her the ability to "see" through every tiny vibration that passes through the ground.

Having developed her own unique style of earthbending all on her own, Toph acquired a tough-guy personality and became famous for winning underground patriotic earthbending tournaments under the title of the "Blind Bandit" behind her parents' backs. Initially uninterested in helping out directly in the War effort, she eventually chose to leave behind her old life and travel with Avatar Aang and friends to be his earthbending teacher when her parents finally became unbearable for her. Toph's total mastery over earthbending, unique personality, and pragmatic intelligence made her a valuable addition to the team.

Background


Toph was the only child of the wealthy Beifong family of Gaoling. Born blind, she was sheltered by parents who believed her blindness made her fragile and incapable of looking after herself. They went to extreme measures to protect her, including hiding her existence from the rest of the world, which resulted in no one knowing that the Beifong family even had a daughter. Poppy and Lao Beifong expected their daughter to be well-mannered and proper due to their noble status in Earth Kingdom society; while she usually wore her green and pale yellow belted tunic and pants, at home, Toph wore a floor-touching white petticoat dress, with long teal sleeves, a flower printed bodice, a long sash along the back, and a small, tiara-like headband with pink and white flowers on it. Toph, resenting her parents' treatment, grew up hard and rebellious.

At the age of six, she ran away from home into a cave inhabited by badgermoles. Badgermoles were the first earthbenders and according to Toph, she and the creatures understood each other since they were both blind. She learned earthbending by imitating their movements. Toph learned to "see" through the use of her earthbending, feeling people and other objects through their vibrations, which she sensed through the ground via her bare feet. In the process, she also developed a great sense of hearing.

Lao Beifong later hired the earthbender teacher, Master Yu, to instruct her, but he did not teach her anything other than beginner's moves, according to the orders of Toph's father, unaware that she had already become very powerful. She became such a formidable bender that she secretly entered underground earthbending tournaments as the Blind Bandit, and was successful enough to become the champion of Earth Rumble more than once. After meeting Aang, Toph soon ran away in order to teach him earthbending, but also to get away from her parents, who never gave her any real freedom.

After the Hundred Year War
Toph traveled the world to teach metalbending to other earthbenders, founding an academy for the art soon after the Hundred Year War's end. Her first known students were Penga, The Dark One, and Ho Tun, whom she chose due to her earth bracelet which would shiver in the presence of super emotional people.

Toph met Team Avatar while they were on their way to Yu Dao when they were visiting the colony in order to learn about its situation. On their way toward Ba Sing Se to inform Earth King Kuei about Zuko's decision, Toph decided it was time to go back to her academy, and she left the team accompanied with Sokka. He inquired her about her initative to start the school, to which she answered that she had felt a "calling" to teach what she had discovered. However, Sokka did not believe this and realized the real reason was that she liked to tell people what to do. When they arrived to the academy, Toph caught her students leaving, but they excused themselves saying they had been kicked out. The earthbender then entered the academy and saw Kunyo and his firebending students, and ordered him to leave the place, but the firebender refused stating it was his school before the Harmony Restoration Movement. When they were about to fight for the academy's possession, Sokka interrupted them and proposed a "match to the sit" between their students in three days, which both instructors accepted.

Toph told Sokka how she had chosen her three students, but she was unsure whether they could metalbend, so Sokka offered to help by being a "motivational bender". However, after two unsuccessful attempts to make the pupils bend, Toph gave up and confessed to her friend her feeling of failure as she was trying to make her students something they were not, so she would surrender on the day of the battle. That day, at their opponent's arrival, she began sitting down but was interrupted by her "lily livers", who demonstrated they could metalbend and attacked the firebending team with metal coins, easily defeating them and making Kunyo sit down. Toph, happy at her students' victory, renewed her trust them and continued with their training.

Later life


Twenty years after the Hundred Year War, Toph had a daughter who would later become the Chief of Police in Republic City, Lin Beifong. At age forty, while being the Chief of Police herself, she was on her way to arrest a man named Yakone for being a practitioner of the illegal art of bloodbending and using it to terrorize Republic City. Although mildly annoyed that Avatar Aang asked to accompany her on the arrest, she let him join her, albeit she could not resist calling him by her childhood nickname for him, "Twinkle Toes", much to his annoyance.

Having apprehended Yakone at Kuang's Cuisine, she brought him to be tried before the United Republic Council. However, right after he was convicted for his crimes, Yakone used his bloodbending abilities to incapacitate Sokka. Coming to the aid of her best friend, Toph was immobilized by the dark bending art as well and was forced to use her keys to free Yakone of his handcuffs before being harshly tossed aside and incapacitated.

Legacy
A statue of Toph in her uniform is seen outside in the top of the Metalbending Police Force headquarters as a recongization of her work.

Personality
When first introduced, Toph brought a totally new personality to the group. Unlike the nurturing Katara, flighty Aang or gruff but goofy Sokka, Toph is fiercely independent, sarcastic, direct, stubborn and confrontational. She appeared to have the same carefree and adventurous personality as Aang and she was very tomboyish in the way she acted and dressed, in contrast to the delicate doll her parents saw her as. However, unlike Aang, who avoided fighting whenever possible, 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 claimed that she was "the best earthbender in the world".



Toph's eagerness to prove that she can be independent had led to some initial difficulties with Aang and his friends. Toph insisted that she can "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 care for her because they are friends, not because her disability makes 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. Thanks 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 does not feel the need to fuss over her appearance. However, despite her many quirks, Toph had shown 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 obvious traits involved personal hygiene. She was accustomed to lying on the ground and walking everywhere barefoot leaving her soles quite soiled, a habit common among the earthbenders. Also, she had been seen belching loudly, picking her nose or toes, spitting, and is usually covered in dirt or, as she calls it, "a healthy coating of earth".

Toph was well-educated in the manners and bearings of high society—she merely consciously and constantly chose to ignore them. She made an exception when the group needed to go to a special party to see the Earth King, in order to give news of the solar eclipse, only to meet the head of the Dai Li, Long Feng.

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 didn't matter, Toph was in fact pretty, which visibly cheered up Toph.

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 putting up fliers. She angrily slapped up a poster herself, only to inadvertently place it backwards 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 the 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" before waving a hand in front of her eyes.

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 several months 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, but did not always take into account how this might put her in danger or aggravate others because she was still a vulnerable child underneath everything else she pretended to be, something which caused problems for her during the group's visit to Fire Fountain City. However, 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 as people by restricting them simply so they could meet her vision of them, just as her parents had done to her, and maturely 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. Lucky 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.

Name
Toph's name is usually written as. Her given name means "expanding lotus", while her surname means "northern". On one other occasion, her given name was written as, which means "entrusted husband", though this was likely a typographic error. Toph can also be seen as a sort of pun on the words "tough" and "toff" (British slang meaning upper-class).

Earthbending


Toph's proclamation of being the most powerful earthbender in the world is strongly supported through her powerful earthbending. Although blind, her remaining senses, primarily her sense of touch and hearing, are especially acute, allowing her to use the unique ability of seismic sense: she used earthbending to "feel" even the most minute vibrations in the earth, including the march of ants several meters away and the presence of trees and buildings. Through this heightened seismic sense, Toph could visualize where people are, their relative distance to her, and their physical build, but was unable to visualize faces. This sense provided her with a distinct advantage when facing other earthbenders in combat because she could predict attacks as they began and quickly react, and her speed and agility were also greatly beneficial.

Her earthbending style was unique and thus unpredictable, as her training was unconventional. This style greatly differentiated from the rigid training and fighting style that earthbenders like the Dai Li implemented. Toph's style tended to be proven to be superior to the Dai Li, as she was able to take on a number of them and defend her friends at the same time. This is likely because while the Dai Li just manipulated the earth, Toph had established a tremendously deep connection to it at the very outset of her self-tutelage in earthbending (although both styles have an overdependence on something i.e. the Dai Li and their earth gloves and Toph and her feet).

However, because Toph was depending on vibrations in the earth, she was vulnerable to air-based attacks, as shown in her fight with Aang in the Earth Rumble VI. Later, Toph was completely surprised by Sokka dropping a large belt on her head. Her success rate in intercepting projectiles was also tied to her sensing of vibrations, being able to feel an opponent's movement, and proceeding accordingly. By her own admission, she could not feel her own projectiles while they are airborne.



Terrain that impairs Toph's ability to sense vibrations also hindered her abilities, as shown when Toph had some difficulty with sand, describing the vibrations in the earth as "fuzzy". She was able to compress sand into solid rock to gain some temporary footing, but was still unable to accurately aim attacks under those conditions. However, she seemed to have ultimately gained some mastery of sandbending, as she mentioned working on it during Team Avatar's beach party and was able to create a miniature version of the upper ring of Ba Sing Se in rich detail. Apparently, her ability to sense vibrations had improved, which may be how she was able to produce the very fine details of the city and did not show the same helplessness she had shown when previously walking on sand when the gang stepped onto the beach.

Toph also expressed an aversion for flying and submarine travel, as she could not sense her surroundings without her feet on solid ground. Also, as a result of her closeness or affinity with earth, Toph could rest or sleep comfortably on solid rock without any sleeping bag or blanket and could walk on any kind of terrain in bare feet, a standard trait for earthbenders. Toph relied on direct contact between her feet and the ground for "sight" as well as for her earthbending. Toph was very reluctant to allow anyone else to touch her feet, probably because insensitive handling there would make her deaf to other vibrations and thereby render her helpless (and because they were far more sensitive than other people's feet).

Despite her substantial prowess on land, Toph did not perform well in water and on ice. She seemed incapable of seeing where she was going on ice, was not able to swim, and became nauseous when she needed to travel by submarine in the Invasion of the Fire Nation.

Toph had a great sense of hearing, able to clearly hear the most subtle of whispering from a considerable distances and could recognize people by the sound of their voices. In the Si Wong Desert, Toph recognized the sandbender who stole Appa, remarking as she did so that she never forgets a voice. In Ba Sing Se, Toph was seen feeling even slight vibrations as she told a man they met, "I can feel you shaking." Also, Toph demonstrated an ability to sense when a person is lying by the vibrations of his/her heartbeat and breathing patterns. However, Toph's ability to detect lies was not absolute, as Azula demonstrated when she was easily able to lie without even the slightest physical reaction. However, very few people have the ability to lie while manipulating their breathing and pulse in this way.

Toph's earthbending style was based on Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, which is a style that is apparently unique to her; the style of earthbending used by other earthbenders is rooted in the Hung Gar style of Kung Fu. She was the only bender known to use a style based on a different root martial art than the standard for their bending art. This may be because she was self-taught rather than trained in the traditional earthbending form. Toph came to develop her unique style by observing the movements of the also blind earthbending badgermoles that could be found in the caves around her hometown.

Sandbending
Because sand is loose and ultimately always changing with the winds of the desert, Toph found it hard to navigate through and control. When she tried to attack one of the sandbenders with a small wave of sand during their ambush of her and Appa, she missed, her lack of precision on the sand aggravated by her hurry to save both Appa and the others.

After the events in the Si Wong Desert had shown her inability to see effectively while walking on sand, Toph practiced her sandbending, eventually achieving a mastery over it that allowed her to create an extremely detailed sand version of Ba Sing Se during her time relaxing at Ember Island.

Metalbending


Toph was the first character with the ability to bend metal. Metal is derived from ore, which is found in the earth. Guru Pathik explained to Aang that "metal is just a part of earth that has been purified and refined". Because of Toph's ability to feel the vibrations in earth, she was able to locate the impurities (the small fragments of earth) still found in most metals and manipulate them to "bend" the metal portion. By acquiring these metalbending abilities, Toph had shown herself to be one of the most powerful earthbenders in the world, being the only known earthbender to ever bend metal during the Hundred Year War, a feat that even the Avatar was unable to perform since the origin of earthbending.

When Sokka finished his training as a sword master, he gave Toph a small piece of meteorite, which being composed of earth and metal, she could easily mold into a myriad of shapes, subsequently transforming it into an arm bracelet which she then wore.

In Wulong Forest, when she was breaking into a Fire Nation airship, it was shown that her metalbending had improved greatly as she made a metal armor and manipulated the metallic structure of the room with far more ease than before, moving metal more fluidly. She was also able to crawl hanging on to the metal ceiling while completely covered in metal. Also, Toph could metalbend outside of her metal armor, even though she was already bending the armor in the first place.

Toph later taught this self-invented technique to the world and to her daughter, Lin Beifong, who eventually became head of the metalbending police officers. However, Toph never succeeded in bending pure metals such as platinum.

Other abilities


Toph showed a decent amount of artistic talent, as she was able to create a realistic replica of the city of Ba Sing Se with sandbending while Team Avatar stayed at Ember Island, contrasting with Sokka's poor sculpting abilities when he created a sand sculpture of Suki. Later in a training exercise involving all of the members of the team, she was able to create earthbending mannequins while acting as the "Melon Lord" (who was in reality an inanimate mannequin made to resemble the Fire Lord, supported by a small earth column and clothed in Fire Nation robes).

She also seemed to enjoy acting and shows a decent amount of talent at it, getting more into character as the "Melon Lord" than was necessary for Team Avatar's training purposes, rebuffing Katara for acting out of character when Aang distracted her from their act of being noblewomen (as was made necessary for entry into the Earth King's party ), and reveling in the "stage name" given to her as "The Runaway". This appreciation for "getting into character" as an actor was likely behind her greater ability to enjoy the The Boy in the Iceberg play relative to the rest of Team Avatar.

She also displayed a remarkable amount of agility for one who prefers to have their feet planted on the ground at all times. In Team Avatar's first battle with Combustion Man, she rolled, pushed herself off of the ground with one hand, and then flipped over in the air to regain her balance after his first shot. She then positioned herself in an earthbending stance so she could fight back against her attacker as quickly as possible. Toph apparently also has a good enough sense of balance and strong enough neck muscles to carry a basket full of groceries on her head.

Appearances
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The Promise Trilogy

 * The Promise Part 1
 * The Promise Part 2

The Search Trilogy

 * The Search Part 1

Book One: Air (气)
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Trivia

 * Toph was the only blind person shown in either series.
 * Due to her blindness, Toph had no reading or writing skills. That being said, she apparently had some math skills, as seen when she was counting money.
 * A recurring joke was that other characters tend to forget she was blind, only for her to remind them she was in a sarcastic manner.
 * She initially appeared as a vision by Aang in "The Swamp". She had no lines, but giggled and laughed as Aang tried to pursue her.
 * Though Toph could "see" where everyone was by using vibrations, she tended to not actually look at them while talking, instead staring off into space or in a different direction.
 * Coincidentally, the style Toph's earthbending was modeled after was rumored to have been started by a blind woman.
 * Toph's seismic sense also extended to metal, sand, and even to the meteorite that Sokka fashioned his "Space Sword" from which she used as a bracelet and described as "space earth"; but not to non-earthen solids such as ice.
 * Toph could tell if people were lying as there are physical reactions in the body that she could sense through vibrations. Azula and Old Sweepy were the only known characters that were able to foil this.
 * In certain ways, Toph was very similar to the Marvel Comics character Daredevil; they are both blind but can still see (Toph with vibrations in the earth and Daredevil with acute senses), they are shown to have incredible hearing, and they can use heartbeats to tell when someone is lying (Toph by feeling their heartbeat through seismic sense and Daredevil by hearing their heartbeat with his acute hearing).
 * Toph apparently used her hands as sense organs to supplement the vibrations she was able to feel through her feet, as she was often seen doing this to further investigate vibrations she had already felt by other means. This was probably a product of her learning earthbending by crawling on all fours like badgermoles. She was also seen using this ability before entering Old Ba Sing Se. Furthermore, when Zuko accidentally burned her feet, she crawled on her hands and knees when trying to get away from his camp, probably in an effort to retain some sort of sense of her surroundings.
 * After making her escape and inventing metalbending, Toph made the claim that she was the greatest earthbender in the world. Taking into account her advanced bending abilities despite her young age, her seismic sense and that she was the first earthbender shown using metalbending (in fact, she was the one who created the skill) and used all the known forms of earthbending, there may be some truth to her words (although King Bumi made similar claims, he apparently lacked the ability to bend metal or perceive his surroundings with Seismic Sense).
 * Toph discovered metalbending and was the only person shown to utilize it, until she taught others how to metalbend at her school. In The Legend of Korra, it is apparently taught to the Republic City's police, appropriately named the Metalbending Police Force.
 * Despite Toph's hatred for rules, she later founded and led Republic City's police force.
 * Toph was the third known person shown to be taught earthbending by the badgermoles, the first two being Oma and Shu. Toph was also one of the few known to be taught by the animal from which a bending art originated, others include Iroh, Aang, and Zuko.
 * Toph had a crush on Sokka since at least the time when they traveled across the Serpent's Pass, which she tended to express by aiming more insults his way than toward anyone else. However, partially because Toph did not like admitting this even to herself, nothing ever came of this.
 * Toph was the only person in Team Avatar that did not have a romantic relationship by the end of the events of the Avatar: The Last Airbender section of the series. However, she has to have had some sort of romantic relationship between the events of the series finale and the beginning events of The Legend of Korra, as she had a daughter at some point, Lin Beifong.
 * Toph was the only member of the original four members of Team Avatar not to go on an adventure with Zuko after he joined the team, later wanting to go with him when splitting up to search for Aang. As she plainly put it, "Everyone else went on a life changing field trip with Zuko, now it's my turn." However, it did not go how she planned, as he was more focused on finding Aang. Toph later stated, "This is the worst field trip ever."
 * Although Toph's hair appeared to be short, it was shown to be very long and bushy when she let it down.
 * Toph was the only member of Team Avatar with a known last name.
 * Toph was the only member of Team Avatar whose life was not uprooted or dramatically changed by the Hundred Year War or the Fire Nation.
 * Toph has not been with her parents since she ran away from home. However, she did send them a letter.
 * Toph was the least spiritual of the benders in Team Avatar, and the only bender who matched Sokka (before Yue's death, at least) in his disregard for the subject.
 * Toph was the only member of Team Avatar to be of the same biological age as Aang, as both were biologically twelve years old (though Aang is chronologically older than her by one hundred years).
 * Toph had the last line of the series, saying, "Well, I think you all look perfect."
 * Toph was voiced by Jessie Flower, who also voiced Meng.
 * A statue of Toph currently stands in her honor outside the headquarters of the Metalbending Police Force.
 * Even twenty-eight years after she originally gave him the nickname, Toph continued referring to Aang by the moniker "Twinkle Toes".
 * Toph is a playable character in Avatar: Legends of the Arena. She is unlocked through the use of a secret code (metal bending). Aside from her appearance and name, she is played just like any other character.
 * Toph is the youngest known earthbending master in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
 * Despite exclusively using Praying Mantis-style earthbending, it is possible Toph knows some very basic Hun Gar earthbending, at least in form only, since Master Yu gave her beginner-level instruction up until her meeting with Team Avatar.

Original design


Toph was originally planned by the creators to be a jock-type, bad-mouthing muscular teenaged man who would act as a foil to Sokka's nerdiness, as revealed by the co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko during an interview with Toon Zone. This idea made its way into the opening sequence, as the shadowed earthbender was confirmed by the creators to be Toph's "prototype" and in the opening sequence of the unaired pilot episode. Later on when time came closer to her debut, the creators pitched about it being funny for a small girl being able to take on all the strong, buff earthbenders, an idea introduced by head writer Aaron Ehasz that was initially rejected by co-creator Bryan Konietzko. This idea blossomed as a joke, and after long discussions Toph was given her gender and turned into the character that was introduced in the show, ironically becoming one of Bryan's favorite characters. The idea and design for Toph was later recycled as the idea for Sud, who was Roku's earthbending teacher. A joke about the prototype later appeared as the actor playing Toph in the The Boy in the Iceberg play bore a closer resemblance to her initial design. The original design for Toph also greatly influenced the character Bolin in The Legend of Korra.