Toph Beifong


 * "Blind Bandit" redirects here. For other similar uses, see Toph Beifong (disambiguation).

"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 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 disability, particularly by her overprotective parents, Lao and Poppy Beifong. Upon discovering badgermoles, earthbending animals who were 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 title of the "Blind Bandit" 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.

Early life


Toph was born in 88 AG as the only child of the wealthy Beifong family from Gaoling. Born blind, she was sheltered by her 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 very few people knowing that the Beifong family even had a daughter. Her parents expected their daughter to be well-mannered and proper due to their noble status in Earth Kingdom society, something with which Toph secretly disagreed, causing her to resent her parents' treatment.

At the age of six, Toph 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 as they were both blind. She learned earthbending by imitating their movements. In this way, she learned to "see" through the use of her earthbending, detecting people and other objects through their vibrations, which she sensed through the ground via her bare feet. Her blindness and patience helped her to develop a keen sense of hearing.

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

Troubles as metalbending instructor
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 fact that her meteorite bracelet would shiver in the presence of these "super emotional people".



Toph met Team Avatar while they were on their way to Yu Dao when they were visiting the colony to learn of 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 by Sokka. He inquired her about her initiative 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 at the academy, Toph caught her students leaving, but they excused themselves saying they had been kicked out. The earthbender proceeded to the academy and saw Kunyo and his firebending students, and ordered him to leave the place; 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 was unsure whether they could metalbend, so Sokka offered to help by being a "motivational bender". However, after two unsuccessful attempts to get the pupils to 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; she stated her intention to 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 in them and continued with their training.

Yu Dao crisis


Later, Toph was waiting with Sokka for Aang and Katara to pick him up. However, instead of greeting the pair, Suki arrived in a Fire Nation war balloon, and explained that Kunyo had complained about a "dirt girl" and a "snow savage" taking over his school near Yu Dao. She continued to say that they were both needed to help her stop Zuko's army from going to war against the Earth King. Complying to the request, Toph left her students, telling them once again to practice their forms in her absence.

During the battle for Yu Dao, she earthbent an underground slide that led directly under Zuko's army. Emerging underneath the Fire Nation tanks, Sokka told Toph to metalbend the screws, effectively dismantling all of the invading tanks. When Suki and Toph found themselves outnumbered against several firebending soldiers, Toph's metalbending students arrived to save them.

After the conclusion of the battle, the fame of Toph's school rose, and she had to decline an invitation from Zuko to come to the Fire Nation Royal Palace as she had too much work to do at her school.

Facing her past
When the peace talks in Yu Dao came to an end around a year later, Toph and the rest of Team Avatar returned there to witness the introduction of the city's new coalition government. Afterward, she attended a banquet in celebration of the election with her friends, during which Katara inquired about the state of her metalbending academy; she answered without excitement that her school was doing well, to the point that she had more students than she could properly house. When Sokka suggested charging tuition in order to be able to finance the school's expansion, Toph promptly refused, stating that her school was doing something innovative and important, something from which she did not want to profit by developing it into a business. When Aang finally joined them at dinner, she seemed unenthused to learn that he would be taking her and the others on a field trip the following day.



Nevertheless, she accompanied Aang, Sokka, Katara, and three Air Acolytes, Xing Ying, Yee-Li, and Jingbo toward a cliff overlooking the ocean where they would commence the celebration of Yangchen's Festival by bowing to a stone statue. Aang failed to enlighten the group to the reasons behind the festival, brushing off the inquiries to the identity of the woman depicted by the statue to which they would be bowing by stating that that was just how things were done, reminding Toph of her childhood during which her father had used exactly the same reasoning to justify every rule and action he imposed on her. For this reason, she subsequently refused when Aang asked everyone to bow, stating that she bowed to no one, and ended up denouncing the festival entirely as unimportant when he tried to convince her to participate regardless of a lack of detailed reasoning.

Toph's attitude toward the festival's celebrations did not improve during the next part of the ceremony, given that they were to walk toward a sacred meadow where they would eat a ceremonial, vegetarian meal. Along the way, the Air Acolytes and Aang created traditional Air Nomad music to accompany the group's walk, visibly irritating Toph to the point that she used her metalbending to destroy Yee-Li's cymbals. She tested Aang's nerves further by loudly announcing that she thought she had done away with the need for "fuddy-duddy rituals" when she left her father's house; it did not evolve to a conflict, however, as the group arrived at a town with a large refinery built on the meadow. Contrary to the others, Toph and Sokka were delighted to find the settlement and they promptly parted from their friends in order to find a decent meal of meat. They later reunited with the rest of the group on the grounds of the Earthen Fire Refinery, where the factory's interim boss, the engineer Satoru, became starstruck by Toph. She accepted his offer of a guided tour of the refinery, with her friends tagging along as her entourage. After being shown the factory's bender and mechanical production lines, Toph commended Satoru on his factory and in turn earned his praise when she managed to fix the motor of a forklift in mere moments through the use of metalbending. When he offered to sponsor a new school building for her and her metalbending students in exchange for their coming by the refinery on a regular basis to help out with the machines, she enthusiastically agreed to his offer by stating that she would love to be in a partnership with him, though immediately corrected herself by saying that she meant the refinery.



Their conversation was cut short by Aang, however, who told Satoru that the refinery should never have been built on sacred grounds and accused it of being the culprit of the river's pollution. When Satoru refuted the accusation, Toph used her seismic sense lie-detecting abilities to corroborate the engineer's story and took his side in the argument, once again preferring the future over the objections of the past. She was subsequently pulled aside by Aang, who told her he was under the impression that the only reason why she believed Satoru was due to a crush she had on him; Toph countered by rhetorically asking him whether this impressionability was similar to having a skewed perception due to a nostalgic affinity to cultural rituals. Pointing to the refinery, she continued by saying that it employed the same ethic as the one they desired in Yu Dao: a place where people worked and lived in harmony, regardless of where they came from. She ended her reasoning by asking him if he really wanted to sacrifice what she and Satoru deemed to be the future for a "stupid, backwards holiday". Aang took the insult personally and their talk rapidly evolved in a heated argument. The verbal fight was cut short, however, when the ground suddenly began to shake, causing Katara and Sokka to run up to them to ask them to remain calm; when Aang deftly deflected the accusation, Toph took offense at his implication of her being a novice earthbender who could not control her bending. While she complained about this, however, a second, even more powerful quake occurred, causing Satoru to ask them all to leave, increasing Toph's annoyance. Before they could heed the engineer's request, they heard a factory worker cry out for help, as the quakes had left him trapped under a haywire machine. Toph and Aang instantly set out to free the man, and managed to rescue him due to teamwork. With the crisis averted, Toph easily accepted Aang's apology and apologized as well, though asked him if he was not trying too hard to hold onto his past. He conceded that perhaps he was, but retorted by asking if she was not trying too hard to escape hers, to which Toph replied that some people simply had to run away in order to live. The conversation was cut short by the arrival of the two owners of the refinery, bringing Toph face-to-face with her father, Lao Beifong, for the first time in two years.

Toph was shocked to hear her father say that she was a confused young lady, rather than his daughter and she grew angry upon hearing him command the Rough Rhinos to escort her and her friends off the refinery's premises. She refused to leave until she had spoken to her father, leading to a violent confrontation with the Rough Rhinos. She used an earth pillar to catapult one of the members into the air after he had nearly sliced her with his chain blades. Her action, however, earned her a reprimanding speech from Aang, much to her annoyance. She told him to stop talking to her like she was one of his Air Acolyte children and left to continue fighting her way. She encountered Ogodei, who had successfully captured all the Acolytes, and used her metalbending to chain him down with his own weapon. When she learned that the Acolytes did not fully defend themselves because they were following the precepts of Air Nomad philosophy, she got mad and told them to care more about the present than the past, lest they would have no present to care about anymore.



Toph left to go find her father, breaking down a factory wall to gain access to the refinery's grounds. She was pointed in the direction of her father's office by Satoru, who quickly joined her to guide her to him himself. When he offered his help, however, Toph coldly asked if he was sure he wanted to do that, mocking his earlier respectful action toward Loban to have been groveling. Entering her father's office, Toph was once again told by him that he was not his daughter, as he had raised a poised, demure, obedient young woman. Toph acknowledged that she had put her family through a lot, but she tried to get her father to realize who she really was and revealed that she had just been acting to be a quiet little girl in order to please them. She was hurt when her father did not react to any of her accomplishments, concluding that talking to him had been a mistake and that she would never bother him again.



When Sokka barged in and told Lao to follow him down toward the iron mine, Toph accompanied them. Upon learning that Loban excavated an unstable iron ore deposit site, she chastised him for it, telling him that he needed to start caring more about people's lives as opposed to just money. When Satoru came to his uncle's defense, Toph told him to trust her that she was right, as she could feel the earth and ore shifting around them, making the mine a dangerous place to work in. As the mine subsequently collapsed after Kahchi accidentally broke one of the support beams, Toph used her metalbending to keep all the trapped people from getting crushed by the debris.

Still lifting the debris, Toph was given the last of Katara's water by Satoru to keep her strength up. As he wanted to leave to check if others had some water left, she requested he stayed and talked to her. She listened to how he also ran away from home to eventually be taken in by Loban after months of begging in the streets of Ba Sing Se's Lower Ring. As he finished by saying that he did not stand up to Loban in fear of being thrown back onto the streets, Toph was praised for her bravery to having confronted her own father. The conversation was cut short when Lao came over to talk to Toph about the difficulties he and her mother went through after she left, which eventually led to their separation as Toph's mother believed it was Lao's fault for losing their daughter. Accepting his apologies, Toph declared that his main problem was that he never knew the real her, the greatest earthbender of all time.

Later life


After the formation of Republic City, Toph was placed at the head of its law enforcement, and became the city's first Chief of Police. Her metalbending knowledge allowed her to found an elite team, the Metalbending Police Force, to aid her in her safeguarding duties.

Toph gave birth to two daughters, Lin and Suyin, with different fathers, and raised them as a single parent. Both daughters inherited her earthbending abilities and became masters in their own right. Seeking to give them a different childhood than the one she had, Toph gave her daughters the freedom to find their own path. Lin would later follow in her footsteps as the Chief of Police, while Suyin became a rebel, much like her mother when she was young.

In 128 AG, at age forty, Toph 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, she let him join her, although she could not resist calling him by her childhood nickname for him, "Twinkle Toes", much to his annoyance.

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

In 141 AG, after Lin caught Suyin trying to flee from an arrest for theft, the sisters were brought into Toph's office. Not wanting Su to go to prison, Toph destroyed Suyin's police report and sent her to live with her parents. She retired from the police force a year later due to guilt. At the same time, Suyin would later travel the world, eventually building a metal city, Zaofu. Toph and Suyin later reconciled, though Lin refused to participate. Toph would visit Suyin in Zaofu from time to time, regaling her granddaughter, Opal, with stories about Lin, until she left to travel around the world in search of enlightenment. According to Aiwei, she has not been seen since.

Meeting Avatar Korra


By 174 AG, Toph resided in the Foggy Swamp, where she one day found Korra passed out in a pool of mud. She took the unconscious Avatar back to her home and laid her to rest in her bed while she made a meal. When Korra awoke and requested to know what had happened, Toph answered that she was hoping Korra would be able to tell her that. She revealed that she had known about Korra's presence due to being connected with her surroundings. Upon being asked if she was the person Korra was supposed to find, Toph merely stated that if Korra was led to her by her Avatar senses, she probably needed to listen to them. When Korra grew surprised over being recognized as the Avatar, Toph revealed that she had been good friends with her in a previous life and greeted the young woman as "Twinkle Toes".

The following day, Toph was asked to help Korra get back into Avatar fighting shape, as she was currently in no condition to help the world, which she believed to need her. Upon hearing Korra say that, Toph briskly told the young woman to get over herself as the world did not need her at all, clarifying that while she was Chief of Police of Republic City, she had worked relentlessly to stop crime, though eventually realized that while the names changed, the street remained the same. Despite this and wanting to soak her feet in mud for a few weeks, Toph still decided to train Korra, stating that she simply could not stand the Avatar to be "so pathetic and getting [her] butt kicked all the time". As Korra surged forward to embrace her, she erected an earth wall against which Korra crashed and fell down, stating that if the young woman wanted to hug something, she could go find a tree as they were there to work.



Toph demanded Korra fight her, but she dodged her attacks and knocked her down, telling her not to think and just fight. After defeating her a second time, Toph called her pathetic and the worst Avatar she has ever worked with while pulling an elbow leech off her. She responded to Korra's remark about enjoying beating someone up by saying the swampbenders could not take a punch. Asked why she disconnected from the world, the elderly earthbender refuted Korra, saying she was more connected with the world than her through the vines in the swamp, able to see Suyin, Lin, Zaofu, and Republic City. While responding, she detected Korra attempting a sneak attack and threw her back, calling the Avatar blind even compared to her.

As they returned to her dwelling, Toph giddily talked about how much fun she had had tormenting the Avatar again, saying that she would have destroyed Korra in her prime. Answering Korra's concerns about being a step behind, she told her there were still traces of mercury in her body, berating her for not feeling it. When told by Korra that she thought that Suyin got it all out, she added that she believed neither of her daughters had picked up metalbending well. Asked by Korra if she could finish the job, Toph shoved her, asking her who she thought she was talking to.



Back in her home, the earthbender demanded Korra relax before she tried anything. As she prepared to perform her bending, however, Korra jumped up, prompting Toph to sharply repeat her demand and tell her to stop fighting her. She tried to treat her again, but when Korra shouted and curled up, Toph told her to do the healing herself, believing she wanted the metal to remain in her because she sought an excuse to not return to her Avatar duties and risk injury. Toph began to walk away, saying she could not deal with her issues for her. Asked by Korra what she was supposed to do, she told her to ask the spirit that brought her there. The elder sharply added that the swamp was perfect for her to avoid resuming her duties and taking risks, if that was what she desired.

As the days go by, Toph begins to practically ignore Korra, laying about do nothing. Eventually, she tells Korra to gather food. Soon afterwards, Korra begins having visions of her past enemies hurting her, something which Toph was hoping for. Toph explains that the swamp wishes to help Korra rediscover and balance herself. She noted that each of Korra's enemies had noble intentions (Amon pursuing equality, Unalaq bringing back spirituality, and Zaheer endorsing freedom) but became too radicalised in their approach and thus became dangerous foes. She insisted to Korra that she must learn from those experiences but not get lost in the past. Ultimately, Toph brings Korra to the main tree of the swamp, teaching Korra how to feel the area around her. Embracing Toph's words, Korra is able to sense through it Tenzin's kids, who have arrived in the swamp to find Korra. This spike of spiritual connection allows Jinora to find Korra and Toph. The kids explain that Kuvira, who was originally tasked to restore balance in the chaotic Earth Kingdom since the late Earth Queen's death, has seized control of it for herself, renaming it the "Earth Empire". While Korra feels unready to help with the metal poison still inside her, Toph insists she can do it on her own. Following Toph's guidance, Korra is able to finally remove all the poison. Proud of Korra, Toph lets the Avatar hug her. After saying goodbye to the four youths, Toph is glad to finally have some quiet again.

Legacy
Toph was hailed as a hero in Republic City following her retirement and a metal statue of her in her police uniform was placed in a niche above the main entrance of the police headquarters. Several statues of Toph were also built in Zaofu in honor of her discovery of metalbending.

Personality
When first introduced, 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 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 once claimed that she was "the greatest earthbender in the world".



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 disability 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 obvious 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 — 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 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. 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.

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.

In old age, Toph retained her abrasive, no-nonsense personality, being harshly critical of Korra's abilities and enjoying defeating Korra in combat. However, Toph adopted a new mindset that moved beyond the realm of good and evil; After spending years defending her beliefs in what is right and just, she realized that no matter how hard she tried, crime and injustice would never give up and thus became weary of the never-ending battle.

Earthbending


Toph's proclamation of being the most powerful earthbender in the world is strongly supported by her talented displays of earthbending. Although blind, Toph's training in earthbending under the original earthbenders, the badgermoles, allowed her to use their 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 were, 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. Her knowledge of the art also allowed her to teach it to others like Aang, and later her daughter, Lin. Her speed and agility were also greatly beneficial in combat.

Her earthbending style was unique and thus unpredictable, as her training was unconventional and more deeply rooted into the nature of earthbending rather than just pure fighting. 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 over dependence on something i.e. the Dai Li and their earth gloves and Toph and her feet).

However, because Toph was dependent on vibrations in the earth, she was vulnerable to air-based attacks, as shown in her fight with Aang in 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 aim properly at opponents while they were airborne.



Terrain that impaired 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.

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 was 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, 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. To compensate somewhat, she could condense the sand together to give her a better footing. However, 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 created the ability to bend metal in the spring of 100 AG. 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 and ingenious 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 would wear.

She originally used an underdeveloped form of metalbending and usually needed to have direct contact with the element to manipulate it at all, let alone skillfully. However, she continued to practice her metalbending and started to display a dexterous control over metal.

In Wulong Forest, when she was breaking into a Fire Nation airship, it was shown that her metalbending had improved greatly, as she created 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 along the metal ceiling while completely covered in metal. Additionally, Toph could metalbend outside of her metal armor, even though she was already bending the armor in the first place.

A year later, Toph could bend metal that she was not in contact with, like when she demonstrated her ability to bend metal to Kunyo, who was trying to take over the metalbending school, by bending a metal weapon around his head. She later stated that as long as someone could see the metal, she could bend it, which she demonstrated when metalbending screws and bolts to unscrew the wheels of Fire Nation tanks.

Toph later taught this self-invented technique to many earthbenders, including her daughters. After the Hundred Year War, Toph further refined metalbending to the point of being able to start and lead a capable law enforcement group of metalbending police officers. Following Toph's retirement, Lin Beifong became the new Chief of Police, demonstrating her prodigious metalbending and leadership abilities. Despite all of her accomplishments in the development of metalbending, Toph never succeeded in bending pure metals such as platinum. She was, however, able to sense even trace amounts of metal, unlike her daughters.

Other abilities


Despite her lack of actual sight, her remaining senses, primarily her sense of touch and hearing, were especially acute, allowing her to use her seismic sense to remarkable levels. With the latter sense, she once claimed herself that she "never [forgot] a voice". This was shown when the gang traveled through the Si Wong Desert, where they were confronted by a group of sandbenders and she almost immediately recognized one as one of the sandbenders that kidnapped Appa the day before. Later in the summer, while the gang was on a captured Fire Nation ship, Hakoda and Bato seemingly deceived the captain of another ship, but the captain realized the ship as a captured one. Toph overheard the captain whispering to his troops to sink the ship and attacked. While visiting a creepy village in the Fire Nation, Toph heard people screaming all the way from atop a mountain and everyone later deduced that that was where several prisoners were being held.

Toph also 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).

As befits one who has mastered the use of neutral jing by waiting and listening to the earth, 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. She likewise has very fine memory, able to accurately remember and distinguish the physical form of people as she quickly determined one of the Kyoshi Warriors was actually Ty Lee in disguise.

She also seemed to enjoy acting and showed 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 preferred to have her 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 flipped over in the air to regain her balance after his first shot. She positioned herself in an earthbending stance in order to fight back against her attacker as quickly as possible. Toph apparently also had a good enough sense of balance and strong enough neck muscles to carry a basket full of groceries on her head.

By 174 AG, Toph appears to have attained a state of enlightenment similar to Huu, being able to use the connections of the swamp she lived in to survey the world and observe everyone, including her daughters.

Appearances
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Book Four: Balance (平衡)
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Trivia

 * 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 is the phonetic transcription based on the official guide for foreign names. Toph can also be seen as a sort of pun on the words "tough" and "toff", a British slang word meaning "upper-class".
 * Toph was the only blind person shown in either series.
 * Toph was the first of three known benders to have a physical disability, the others being Combustion Man and Ming-Hua.
 * In The Promise trilogy, Toph represents the vice of rage, over which she is able to prevail due to her time at her metalbending academy.
 * 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 tended to forget Toph was blind, only for her to sarcastically remind them that she was.
 * Though Toph could "see" where everyone was by using vibrations from the ground, she tended to not face them while talking, instead staring off into space or in a different direction.
 * Coincidentally, Toph's earthbending style is 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).
 * Along with Katara and Zuko, Toph is the only known character still alive in the current timeline who was around during the Hundred Year War.
 * 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 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 to 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 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 Avatar: The Last Airbender. However, she at least had some sorts of romantic relationship, in 119 AG and 126 AG, as she had two daughters, Lin and Suyin, with two different men.
 * 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 and unexpectedly reunited with her father at a refinery.
 * 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 in the original series, saying, "Well, I think you all look perfect."
 * According to the DVD commentary for "The Blind Bandit", Toph's Earth Rumble outfit, which she wore throughout most of the series, was influenced by European fashion styles.
 * Toph is the only known individual capable of using both variations of seismic sense, as she was able to use the skill to feel vibrations as well as detect lies.
 * 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.
 * 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 Hung Gar earthbending, at least in form only, since Master Yu gave her beginner-level instruction up until her meeting with Team Avatar.
 * Ironically, Toph displayed great mastery over the Light Chakra when she overcame the illusion of the division between natural earths and refined metals by her insight that the forging process would always leave small natural impurities, despite having never dealt with light in her life.
 * Toph is the first character, before Zuko and Asami Sato, to have joined a Team Avatar and to have a father who is antagonistic toward them and their allies.
 * Toph once admitted to Zuko that she, like him (and in the future, like Asami), has had trouble earning her parent's love (though in her case this apparently also included her mother). The major difference with Toph, however, is that unlike Ozai and Hiroshi, the actions of Toph's father were geared more toward paranoia and overprotection rather than directly inflicting pain on her out of some misguided sense of morality.
 * Toph is one of two people known to have trained two different Avatars, the other being Katara.

Original design


Toph was originally planned to be a jock-type, bad-mouthing, muscular, sixteen-year-old boy 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 unaired pilot episode's opening sequence and as the shadowed earthbender (which was confirmed by the creators to be Toph's "prototype") in the opening sequence. Later on when time came closer to the character's 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 Konietzko. From this idea which 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 original idea/design was later recycled as the ideas for The Boulder and Sud. A joke about the prototype later appeared as the actor playing Toph in The Boy in the Iceberg play bore a closer resemblance to the initial design. The original design also greatly influenced the character Bolin in The Legend of Korra.