Why Everybody Loves Toph (And Who Wouldn't?)
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2022
- Toph - The Blind Bandit - The Greatest Earthbender In The World
One of the all time fan favorite characters in one of the most beloved cartoons of all time - Avatar : The Last Airbender. She's a champion, a teacher, a master, and an icon for representation. So we're going to talk about her.
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Changing Toph's character from the original idea (a tough dude with a rivalry with Sokka) to the charatcer we actually got, was a stroke of *pure* , inspired genious.
And then salvaging the idea in the form of the Ember Island play.
@@infinityheart_tm9270 genius^2
@@infinityheart_tm9270 Literally having a cake and eating it too, maybe even getting another one for free
I've also read that Katara was going to have much more ship teases with male toph than with aang.
Imagine The Shipping Wars
Gotta love how in a way, Toph is not strong despite being blind. She's strong in part BECAUSE she's blind.
Which is actually a bit of a problem. Most blind people don't have huge issues with toph in particular, from what I've seen. Cause it makes sense in story and non blind characters can achieve the same results, just have to learn to think differently. She's informed by her blindness, and it opens her up to a different way to see and expereince the world. But not given special powers or abilities innately *because* she is blind. It's something she had to learn and figure out, and something she can teach to seeing characters in turn, who in turn benefit from the blind perspective and the other ways of perceiving the world around you. Much like Monk was able to benefit from his OCD when he was blind, because he was already counting his steps and other common tactics blind people use to navigate.
But the kinda daredevil trope of giving enhanced senses or even super powers BECAUSE of the blindess is very very heavily criticized by the blind community who largely find it to be inspiration porn and contributing to real life misinformation that can lead to lack of proper accommodation or even a real understanding of what being blind is actually like. And at times an increased sense of pity when people do realize that people aren't automatically gifted at something if they're also disabled.
Generally useful tips for writing about disability.
www.mythosink.com/3-tropes-to-avoid-when-your-hero-has-a-disability/
(also a very common problem for the autistic community that still has to battle the idiot-savant trope as established by "great" hits like rainman and continued in shows TO THIS DAY like the good doctor. cause honestly this is an issue that disabled people face IN GENERAL and non disabled people don't seem to be getting the message that it's NOT any better representation than well. South Park, that actually handles disability kinda well and in an actually human(izing) way. They're awful with trans people still, but they really care about characters with CP or even tourettes and other disabilities, so they do get credit there.)
@@foxyfox9196 I appreciate your well stated and documented take on this, but the main takeaway I feel like in her arc was missed.
Many kids can have a quality that makes them feel like they have been rejected by society, by their peers, by their parents. For Toph, her blindness is the cause of her conflicts but only indirectly. It’s actually her parents who are the true cause of her discomfort, her blindness used to make her weak in her parents eyes, yet her blindness is the sole reason she discovers so much through her lives experiences. And her blindness is what causes her to overcompensate by being too independent and too strong willed and too stubborn.
It would make sense that she would become more astute in a fictional world where people could bend the elements. And had she been born into any other element, it’s possible this character would better represent the struggles a real blind person in our world would experience. But it’s a fantastic world that cannot 100% of the time relate and nor should it.
Her arc is another interesting one of self discovery and it’s from a different perspective than the other characters.
@UCgf9qJV59WZSxFeTwds-3AA I’m going to keep it 100% real and again, I thank you for your candor in this conversation. Honestly, I totally agree that it is wrong for people to put an expectation on others. I’m sure the unique struggles of someone who is disabled means their struggle has it’s unique challenges, and I accept that they or you may have greater ones to overcome than say someone like me. I have respect for you in this conversation not because you are disabled, but actually because you extended some respect to me by clarifying your charged emotions. And I hope you know I am treating you as I would anyone else, regardless of circumstances.
While I am not aware of any disabilities in myself physically or mentally, that doesn’t mean I’m naturally a pity pleaser. I was very fortunate to know someone who was wheelchair bound due to a birth defect and I was able to learn a lot about perceptions and how even being overly helpful can feel deflating. I treated him just as I would anyone else, because he was anyone else. He asked me for help on select occasions and I never made a big deal out of it and neither did he. And I enjoyed spending time with him, he was always a person with impeccable humor.
I never have used terms such as that and in all ways in life, I hate categorizing or giving titles to anyone, ever. I think they all are incredibly limiting and not worth subscribing to. I would agree it’s built so lazy people don’t have to think over it and it’s very dehumanizing and clearly an “at a glance” mentality.
I don’t like *fully* equating any work of fiction to the real world, even with ones that do a good job overall. And I can respect your position here. I know personally her blindness was just an aspect to her character and when I think back on Toph, I don’t recall “ a blind girl that has a weakness that secretly is her greatest strength” I think, “this character that has overcome much and has been able to adapt.” It’s the same for Zuko, he is loved and remembered for his personal journey, not his scar. And people who go on and on about these characteristics, I think we all would be better to drown them out or just ignore them.
Anyway, I take no offense to your points and I do agree with many of them. I just wanted you to know, in my case, I respected Toph so much because I related to her struggle with finding acceptance with her family. I related to having positions of thinking poorly of my parents, and have come to appreciate them more, flaws and all, I related to her sometimes being incredibly insightful only to feel less important in the conversation. For me, it was never a fetishized thing. This show makes me cry every time I rewatch it, it’s highly important to me and truly I’m a better human being having had it in my life. And I think many people are more like me in this thinking than they are like the people you are referring to.
I’m not a fan of the whole “disability makes you stronger” and I know that’s not what you’re going for, but I do love how Toph’s disability meant she had to learn earthbending in a different way than other non-disabled folks. That fundamental difference in how she built up her skill set, along with her stubbornness and competitive spirit, is what allows her to break past the boundaries of “conventional” earthbending.
since you were confused why people contest the "strongest earthbender who ever lived" part, there´s actually a really funny scene in one of the comics where she and bumi almost duel before the finale of the show. it even aknowledges that one is a child while the other is like the oldest person alive. we never get to see the fight, and neither of them would have been in their prime at the time, so a lot of specualtion of who is stronger kinda arose from that. I personally think it´s a moot point, but understandable some people would disagree with your position.
I think so far, firt she doe not need to be the strongest to among the best. Bendig isnt just about fighting. Hell she invented metal bending .
Just bumi i likely stronger,i just get te feel he has more raw power while she is incredible talented in changing th face of earthbending with her talent. And he is thronhgt among the strongest, she doe not need to be the strongest.
@@marocat4749 dude I like your opinion, but you need to use the edit feature on your comments if proofreading wasn't enough.
Bumi launches himself a lot, but Toph can see where he is in the ground, it's like the opposite of his fight with Anng. Arguably she'd actually have an advantage while he burrows as his full body style of bending would require a lot more room to counter her attacks there, meanwhile attempts to capture Toph could lead Bumi to become to cocky allowing her to take advantage of the minimal motion needed for her bending.
That's a cool fight to think on, and there's no telling how much of his fighting was done for show to impress his friends and panic his enemies, so in a fight with Toph he might do a complete change up from what I expect... Still I think Toph could work it out
@@madestmadhatter I personally doubt Bumi would get cocky.
@@juanmanuelmoramontes3883 in the case of Bumi v. Toph I'd call it pleasantly surprised instead, but fair point
A couple folks in the comments are comparing Toph to Bumi as who would be stronger, but Toph doesn't declare she's the strongest Earthbender. She said she's the greatest Earthbender. Similar vocabulary, entirely different connotations.
Bumi might've been able to one-up Toph on physicality and just decades of experience, but the fact that Toph: a twelve year old blind girl who was consistently underestimated and had her agency revoked in a world that refused to accommodate her as a disabled person to the point she learned to fight and "see" from animals, all demonstrates a degree of fortitude that is on par with Aang, Zuko and Katara bearing the weight of their cultural heritage.
Well said
Yes! I think the same can be said for the argument of Kyoshi moving an island, that is just pure "strength"(magic strength?), it really isn't something showing a better understanding of the element.
Yeah she did things that dont need strengh but relied her adapting to revolutionize earthbending , like the sonar sense, the metalbending, her generally being incrdible adaptive in all that and that she clearly has the talents an feats, she does not need to be the strongest. And frankly it do a disservice to reduce her to it.
Dunnno the lava bender might be a contender too.
Didn’t she and Bumi actually fight to see who was more powerful only for it to be a tie?
The idea that Bumi's just 'stronger' than Toph is just such a bizarre take to me. He's just never shown to be even close to her level, we see Bumi do some cool things but Toph literally held up an entire ancient lost library by the tower at the top of it while standing in a type of Earth she wasn't specialized in! She's strong enough to hold off entire armies at once and created an entirely new type of Earthbending from scratch, and while Bumi is wiser with more experience the most we ever see him do is just lift up a really big rock or move stuff while restrained.
None of these feats are even remotely comparable. The only thing really holding Toph back isn't even her blindness, it's that she's just one person and can't be everywhere at once, meaning there's a lot of times where she's simply so busy that Aang and the others have to have their own fights off to the side.
I feel like, arguably, the only real argument you can make for Toph not being THE greatest is that other people in Korra have taken the style of Metalbending she literally created and honed it to near perfection.
I think the main reason for why Toph can be a rude and abrasive character yet still be so beloved whereas others are hated is largely because she IS a teacher/mentor character in a combat story. It’s what’s expected of such figures in stories.
Whereas those who aren’t mentors yet act that same way are just being jerks.
The reason why Toph can be rude and abrasive is because those character traits are treated as _flaws_ by the narrative of the story, and those flaws have real negative consequences for Toph at various points (Toph has lots of other flaws that affect her negatively, not just her attitude). In a modern story, it's likely Toph would be written in such a way that her abrasive behavior wouldn't ultimately have any negative plot consequences for her. This is a thing that happens with Mary Sues, where they "suffer" and "struggle" and face much "difficulty" but it's all just a facade, because none of their suffering, struggle, or difficulties actually have any bearing on the plot. Like, for instance, take how Rey "struggled" in her fight against Snoke, but then the plot just wiped Snoke out like a joke, so her "failure" to beat Snoke didn't actually have plot consequences. Imagine how much more intersting Disney Star wars would've been if Rey _couldn't_ just overcome Snoke (or have the plot overcome him for her)?
Toph has a lot of interesting flaws that have real impacts on the plot, and that's what we'd probably miss out on in a current-year revision of her story.
While we're on the topic of Rey being a Mary Sue, I've heard this devil's advocacy for the sequels where a sequel fan tries to demonstrate that "no actually, Rey is totally a dynamic character" with the following fallacious argument:
Rey struggles to convince Luke to train her, and Luke almost gives in by offering her a better understanding of the force. Rey's character flaw is that she is lured by the temptations of the dark side, and I've even heard Sequel fans say that it's a metaphor for her physical attraction to Kylo Ren. I'll wait for you to finish laughing at the delusion that Reylo was somehow planned all along and not just fandom appeasement. Anyway, once Luke realizes Rey's proclivity for the dark side, he is more adamant than ever not to train her. when Rey refuses to join Kylo Ren in the throne room, it's supposed to be "character growth" because she has found the inner strength to resist the temptations of the dark side (apparently rooted in libido), earning Luke's mentorship.
There are two issues there. The first one is with the conclusion that not joining Kylo Ren was Rey resisting the dark side. I'll address that one later, let me get to the other one first, to show that even if the first issue wasn't an issue, the second one is demonstrably a separate issue.
The second issue is that people misconstrue one of Luke's character flaws with one of Rey's character "flaws." If you notice the second paragraph of my TED talk, you'll see that I recited this false premise: "Rey struggles to convince Luke to train her"
In reality, it should be "Luke struggles to find the resolve to train Rey." Luke only realizes that he should have more faith in Rey because ghost Yoda pops up out of nowhere to narrate one of the main ideas of TLJ.
Side rant: you may have realized that I said "pops up out of nowhere to narrate _one of_ the main ideas" because every time someone tries to explain what the main idea is, whether they like TLJ or not, they always say something different. If there's anything I've learned from Hollywood writer Michael Arndt, it's how unsatisfying it is to resolve a conflict with a speech directly telling the audience that they could have just skipped past everything in the story to get to the part where the only takeaway of the movie is delivered in a handful of minutes. But this TED talk isn't about scratching the iceberg that was the failure of Luke's character in TLJ, it's about Rey.
Rey resisting the temptations of the dark side (which, as I will demonstrate, is also a false conclusion) was actually not what earned her Luke's respect. By having Yoda give a pep talk to him, Luke was the one who had internal change to resolve the conflict between himself and Rey, implicitly stating that Rey was never wrong for being tempted by the dark side in the first place.
Speaking of Rey resisting the temptations of the dark side, now I'll moving on to the second issue: Rey was never tempted by the dark side.
I understand that the dark side in the prequels suggested nuance, albeit to George Lucas's chagrin. That's irrelevant, because the dark side as it is portrayed by Disney Star Wars media is unequivocally evil.
The reason Rey is drawn towards Kylo Ren is because she senses conflict within him, and she wants to fix him. When Kylo Ren asks her to join him, she believes that the good parts in him, towards which she was sympathetic, are too far gone. She was always repulsed by the evil (the darkness) in Kylo Ren, but, it turns out her sympathy for Kylo Ren is validated by TROS, because Kylo Ren turns good. So TROS basically vindicated Rey of her naivety in TLJ. I swear, even when TLJ did something actually kind of good, TROS just had to step in and undo it.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
It works becaue the writing make it believable and her havig a pretty not great chuildhood with rich parents, its also good character writig why she being that blunt with the consequence of being abraisive, is a liberation of her , a virtue, and she learns to tone down being abraisive. Her being blunt is a virtue, her being abraisive, not. Its really well character writing.
As i her having moments with katara and playing her off well, her humor does really play well with sokka, And she respects aang who is very different. She learns to be more considerate and getting along, working together while not letting good of her trademark bluntness and fun humor and force.
It not that a mentor is that, thats certainly a trope but its he well written character exploring that.
@@youtubeviolatedme7123 I mean the movie trilogy is an entire mess and ,the critiwue really shouln be ray but the whol management tonot have a cohrent story planned out in th first place.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 It's a bit of a fallacious argument to say that "modern" stories would handle things differently. What you actually mean is that a certain modern story you dislike specifically did this wrong, which is fair, I guess. There's still other stories that are made today that do this right. It's such a simplistic take to say that new things bad and old things good, when shitty media has always been made, and good media is still being made, as long as you get over the bias and look in the right places.
Tl;DR In a modern Story, Toph would be written much the same as she was back then. Good writers that knew how to avoid the Mary Sue trappings back then didn't just collectively forget now.
Hilarious fighting in the comments is exactly what Toph would have wanted. May we all strive to follow her example.
all hail the melon lord
@@tord4336 no no, all hail melon lord
“The” melon lord implies that there can be more than one melon lord at any time.
No.
Toph is the _only_ Melon Lord. All Hail Melon Lord and Cower.
@@thebaseandtriflingcreature174 Ah, you are right. All hail the one and only, the eternal, god empress melon lord! 🍉🙏
She would post extremely controversial takes on twitter with Sokka's help only for both of them to have a laugh.
@@blue_jesus9252 true
People don't really talk about just how absurdly honed her seismic sense is when we meet her. She isn't just seeing where people are and responding. She repeatedly reacts with pinpoint precision to projectiles hurtling through the air at breakneck paces towards her despite being completely blind. She's either consciously or subconsciously calculating trajectory, exit velocity, displacement over time, and judging how much effort will be needed to stop or redirect those projectiles on the fly based on nothing but her opponents' movements and the way the earth shifts when those projectiles are ejected from the rock or the ground. Bumi could *maybe* pull out a win on her in a straight up duel thanks to a century of experience and his Bruce Lee level of physique at his ancient age, but it's inarguable who the "Greatest Earthbender in the World" is and would be. She single-handedly reshaped the entire world of Earthbending after thousands of years of stagnation.
Meanwhile this video tries to portray Toph as only physically powerful, and not a genius strategist. She disables superior fighting force and picks them off one by one in her third fight ever shown. She comes up with the theory that there is unrefined earth in metal and only after searching very carefully with the intent to find what she theorized does she discover metal bending. Stumbled upon it my head ass.
Wow, thousands of years?
@@James-gd3sp That's always the thing, Bending isn't just about physical strength, it's about technique and skill. Earthbenders aren't ripped because it helps them move rocks better, they're strong because they're constantly doing very physical motions to make said rocks move. I feel like this distinction gets lost a lot.
Part of the whole point of Toph and Iroh is to show that strength is irrelevant. Anyone with the potential can be a great Bender regardless of how small or old or out of shape they might seem because what really matters is the training to master and truly understand the element they're working with and how it can be used most effectively.
When people heard you said toph was technically forced diversity to fill a quota (she was. The reason she was a girl was to have more girls in the cast), people thought you meant she was poorly written, which is completely false.
I hate how whenever a minority character is badly written, people blame diversity as the problem when diversity and character quality are two separate elements. If a character is bad, they are bad, and their identity doesn't have anything to do with it
Oh, they don't blame diversity on the character being badly written, they act like they care about writing in general (they don't) so they can shit on minority characters
People blame the mindset of diversity being the reason the characters are written badly. Like captain marvel. Coulda been a great character, but the desire to make a "strong female character" resulted in a trash character and mediocre movie. Compared to Black Widow, who was also an incredibly powerful woman, but is a much more compelling character because they were writing a character instead of a political talking point.
Toph is a great character (and would have been even if written today) because she has insecurities, struggles and moments of triumph, she also has points in time where she needs to learn to depend on other members of team avatar, because she is unable to be useful without ground. She also has tons of character growth, which most characters who are complained about (rey, captain marvel exc) dont really have.
@@christopherneedham9584 exactly!
I remember when the Wonder Woman got shit on like the Ghostbusters 2016 movie...only for that to stop when the movie cam out and it was a good movie. The fact that the wonder woman got shit on like that before it came out not only shows that diversity has nothing to do with writing quality, but that these people literally assumed it'd flop simply because the main character was a strong heroic woman
@@christopherneedham9584 couldn't have said this better or even as good myself.
@@Peasham "they act like they care about writing in general (they don't)"
pretty arrogant of you prick to assume you know what everyone who disagrees with you thinks
I want to comment to add just how tragic Toph’s story is. Her parents thought she was incapable of caring for herself. On top of that, her family was nobility. This means that Toph was taught to be a proper lady while not having any friends in her parents’ effort to protect her. She effectively spent most of her childhood sitting still and being quiet because of how much her father spoke for her. At least the character Mei occasionally hung out with her friends, away from her controlling parents. She also got to through knives when she was alone. Toph didn't have that luxury. Her parents were so overprotective that she didn't get to have any friends. The whole world, save for a few other nobles, didn't know she existed. Toph’s only escape was running away because everything in her life was set up as a prison. The life she was born into didn't have an escape like Mei’s did. It's so miserable.
Wow, never thought about it that way. Oof, That level of isolation really sucks.
I mean she had plenty of outside alone time to play with badger moles and sneak off for pro bending. Most parents that over protective wouldn't have really allowed for that much time out of sight of either the parents or a paid nanny or something.
It's sad but not unbelievably terrible.
I mean it is a different kind of sad hardship than that of a disabled peasant that is constantly blamed for not being able to do enough to help provide for the family or being a drain. Which is a pretty common dynamic in and of itself in the real world, and I'd kinda assume any area with famine or poverty.
It's just one of the ways that class can really impact these kinds of issues regarding growing up disabled and how it can often swing in the direction of giving too much unwanted or unneeded accommodation, or not enough. Both ends refuse to see disabled people as unique individuals with unique abilities and struggles. And both scenarios show how the stresses of class (kidnapping and other attacks on vulnerable children for money for the rich, vs the reality of it being hard and often slower to plow the fields when you can't walk or are missing an arm or something, and how that feeds into economic and food scarcity for many who already barely get by.
i kinda wish they did explore this class issue with a mirror to toph but bryke are neolibs and honestly even in a show about genocide and global imperialism, starving abused disabled children is just maybe kinda too dark to include.
So instead we get that guy who made weapons for the fire nation, largely to try to protect and provide for his disabled kid. Which does cover the class issue of doing things you don't want to, which are immoral, because of the oppressive forces of reality and your own class position. But it's not really a great mirror for toph exactly.
@@foxyfox9196 I said Toph ran away because everything in her life was set up as a prison. She ran away and met the badger-moles and became the blind bandit. As for class dynamics, that is something interesting I did not consider. I was focused on bringing to light how Toph was traumatized throughout her childhood. Though, I don't know if anyone else would be so as harsh to disabled individuals. After all, the middle and lower classes of the Earth Kingdom have probably seen a fair amount of disabled soldiers or refugees. Though, there are most likely exceptions.
I think Toph's backstory is a good example of the "poor little rich kid" archetype (and a clear illustration of how well-meaning parents can go very wrong).
*throw
What I did like about Toph’s introduction into the Aang Gang is the fact that she didn’t initially subscribe to the group’s customs, like helping set up camp, and was called out for it, by Katara no less. But when she decided to leave the group, only to meet and receive Iroh’s wisdom and realized that compromise isn’t such a bad thing, went back to reconcile with the group instead of abandoning them over her pride. THIS is character growth, even when the character’s power level is through the roof. Toph acted, suffered the consequences, but ultimately learned from her mistakes. Unlike a character who does no wrong because of who they are like we see so way too often now, especially in the MCU
I think there's a legitimate argument about who is the strongest earth bender to ever live between Toph and Bumi. Leaving out the avatar state (Kyoshi earth bends a fucking continental shelf), both of them have the most insane feats of earthbending power and skill we ever see. Personally, I lean on the side of Toph because metalbending is a crazy game-changer and gives her an enormous, lasting impact on the bending form as a whole, but I don't think its a mean-spirited question to ask. Its complicated by the fact that we don't really see Toph or Bumi in their prime, and literal child Toph is on par with oldest person on earth Bumi. In short: kind of a tossup, Toph's probably the greatest, we're all Toph lovers here.
I think Kyoshi is balanced out by the fact that she cant do small, she can only go big. Which kinda throws us back to thr whole system of the world in avatar. Balance! Kinda beautiful if u ask me.
@@kariissmol9172 Nah she can bend small, she just needs the aid of her fans to help her do so accurately. But yeah there's no way she could ever bend a model of ba sing se with a single stomp.
I think isnt nesesary stronger with hr pretty diverse set of skills she uses and changing earthbending itself.
It just bumi is insanely strong in raw power and honetly sh does not deserve to be reduced on strengh, more the raw talent she shows with inventing several new earthbending styles. Why doe she need to beat bumi, she is in a class on her own.
Also remember aang saying Toph tought him not to give 100 percent of strength in one attack. I imagine that means Toph is destroying people without even trying this whole time.
@@kariissmol9172 I think kyoshi just shouldn’t be on the table for comparison because avatar state or not she is STILL the avatar at the end of the day I’m sure they have to have an innately bigger pool regardless
This may be me rambling, but I think Toph being blind shows what really need for earthbending, it not vision, but rather sound given stuff like earthquakes, feeling the dirt and how underground is well dark.
Earth bending requires sensing it, not seeing it, which is the main thing that most earth benders struggle with at first , not with toph as she well blind so she can get into the rhythm of earth blending faster, That my headcannon/interpretation of it(unless they said in the show, but it been a while since I watch Avatar)
Water bending and fire bending also need sensing in order to learn initially, as water benders often start by imitating the moon's push and pull on water (also hama's advanced techniques), and fire bending requires you to feel the heat of the sun and to excercise control over the flames. That said, significant progress can still be made with these elements eg zhao was decently powerful, only mastery is locked behind sensing.
Yeesh, sounds like the original idea for Toph (making him a tough guy with a rivalry with Soka) would have been a joke that got really old really fast and also not fit very well with Soka's character arc trajectory (learning that he and everyone around him can do so much more by bucking the expectations that come with traditional gender roles), an arc he was already pretty far into by the time season two came around.
I also don't think a rivalry would have helped Sokka, either. He had a lot of insecurities, including being the nonbender in a group of _legendary_ benders. He spent a lot of time trying to let go of attaching his ego roles he didn't know how to fill in a place he couldn't be challenged (being the oldest male in the Water Tribe and his role as the older brother), to trying to become useful in a war. He couldn't fill the holes his father left here, and he couldn't act as a bender, either. He had to find an fine-tune his own skills as well as grow to being a team player to cover and add to the dynamics of everyone else, and he did so without a teacher for most of it. A rivalry may push him into feeling the needs to fill someone else's shoes, to be like someone else to be viewed as better, and may become worried about his place if his "better" already exists here. It would have made him focus on his insecurities in ways that wouldn't help him or anyone else, and I personally don't like that for him.
I mean, Toph being a girl qas a joke too.
14:17 Toph isn't framed as being in the right for tearing down Aang. Toph failed to teach Aang because of it and only succeeded when she took Katara's advice
She blatantly didn't take Katara's advice, and only said she did to make Katara feel better. XD
@@WeRNotAlive She got through to Aang when she complimented his newfound capabilities to hold his ground. Besides my nitpick, I loved the video and agreed with everything else. I'm a fan of your work
Well thanks. :)
@@WeRNotAlive She did thou, sh still went tough on him but adapted to him in the process and did trick him into getting mad to get that breakthrough playfully.
ok she compliment him too, but she got him to connect by playing the meanie to tease him rather than being just strict too.
She took the advice. And at last she changed her aproach bcause of it for better comidating aang.
i wonder what toph herself thought of the tweet...
oh yeah
You win.
PLEASE
There's text to speech function so she could absolutely use the internet 😂😂
One little point I'd add in the Bitter Work section: Toph does end up taking Katara's advice about positive reinforcement on board by immediately praising Aang and encouraging him to earthbend when he does finally stand his ground (also a couple of times earlier in the episode, like when she says his technique is now perfect but his mindset's all wrong).
Other than that, I mean you're not wrong, she's a great character :)
Toph is so great that even as an old lady she remains consistently loved by all fans
5:16 The sheer WILLPOWER in making that precise, PERFECT face after doing something she'd normally laugh at to aang is just so funny to me. "What, did something happen? I'm just a prim, normal highborn girl"
I honestly believe that Bumi and Toph are equally great for completely different reasons
Their strategies are so different it is really hard to compare them both
I was gonna suggest bumi or kyoshi but she did invent metal bending so I think that puts them in top
Before I saw the show, I saw a tweet saying that " no white people " was one of the " best things " about the show and I just shrugged it off. One of the replies caught my attention, one that remarked that the only " white people " in Avatar were the swamp men. I went on to watch the show, and I saw the swamp episode, and...
Whoever made that tweet did not watch the show. Flat out.
Yes, the swamp men had a southern influence and tried to capture Appa, but they weren't written off as stereotypes or one off villains. They had lore and their own virtues and spirituality that never came off as ignorant or intentionally cruel. They even help our heroes during the day of Black Sun.
My point is, the illusion of separation you bring up throughout the video is the entire theme of Avatar, and that's why I love the show so much and why it's held up after all these years.
Weird thought, but Avatar having no white characters is actually a good thing in a roundabout way, because it shows that you don't have to be white to be imperialist or colonial.
@@markcochrane9523 >because it shows that you don't have to be white to be imperialist or colonial.
Unlike basic middle school history? Pretty sure WW2 history Japan is heavily featured and is literally called imperial japan while trying to colonize the entire East Asian continent.
@@suuslime3908 I wouldn't know, as a Canadian we only focused on the European theatre in high school.
@@suuslime3908 Have you seen people online these days? Expecting them to know basic middle school history is a step above their demonstrated intelligence.
@@suuslime3908 In UK schools the pacific theatre is rarely, if ever, mentioned in favour of learning about how Hitler came to power for the umpteenth time.
I really can't believe how it has been 7 years since I first heard people lose their shit about this so called "wokeness"...
Avatar is truly a masterpiece of the ages, it's awesome to see such a great story in an animated form in such vast length. Never truly knew how special this show was as a teen.
Just wanna add, wonderful choice of words at the end of the video: "Seek out the diverse experiences that will make you a more complete human being."
wait... 7 years?
@@somechupacabrawithinternet8866 back in 2016 everything whent down hill with the "everything is woke " schysos
@@somechupacabrawithinternet8866 yeah, wild isn't it?
If weak American men screaming that women are political upsets you, I want you to consider something.
Imagine if the post office and libraries and national parks NEVER existed. I want you to imagine the shitty, right-wing shit storm that would break out if someone in congress proposed them NOW.
"Toph's disability is still played for laughs throughout the series, because ATLA at its heart is a nickelodeon cartoon"
OUCH. Never would have expected such a positive, upbeat video to go straight for the jugular like that lmao
I dunno if any modern show could do a character and just a story in general as good as Toph and Avatar, but I'd love to see one try.
Not try, but actually succeed.
Woke. Is a word thrown around way too casually. Often without real understanding. Same with Mary Sue.
But above all Toph is awesome.
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 I think it's best used in it's traditional sense: being a certain genre of cringy self servicing self insert character whose existence is entirely devoted to being the awesomest in every way imaginable.
I think if you want to criticize a character you should use narrative analysis to explain why it disrupts the author's intentions instead of reaching for something like "mary sue" or "overpowered"
/pos
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 had definitions like that be criticised by a friend as “well that makes Emperess Theresa the only Mary Sue”. Of which now looking back I realise he and to an extent myself missed that that was the point. Beyond a very small subset mostly consisting of Fanfiction and Video Games the term Mary Sue is just a phrase thrown at characters that people don’t like (almost always Women). And the phrase always makes media analysis worse. It’s a phrase akin to Woke, SJW and others in that it has no meaning then to mark something as to be feared and scorned, with us easily able to dismiss the question as to why this is bad with “because it’s _”.
P.S. When I say Videogames, I mean that a lot of video games centre around fairly overpowered flat protagonists who are only interesting if you project into them, and that usually works better in video games because the protagonist of a videogame really only serves as a cameraman to us. This is not saying they’re good in games, they’re not, but Mary Sues fair better if the audiences is making them do all this cool stuff (and also the male dominated space, make dominated protagonists and male power fantasy that makes this fit into “Not Mary Sue territory”)
@@hm-dq5sq I do understand that the argument is rarely “woman so bad”, in fact I even used the Mary Sue argument on a book before. However, looking back and my own personal experiences with “representation”, the Woke argument is one that I think is in bad faith,
Think of a word like Woke similarly to Propaganda. Propaganda basically means a piece of media designed to promote a cause or worldview. It’s a broad enough term that it could mean anything and nothing, but when you hear it you instinctively add on that what’s being called propaganda is dishonest and ultimately bad. Woke is the same in its modern use. It can be used as a label for anything (be it a cop joining in on a pride parade they were meant to be at for their job, a maths book, enviromentalism or a shit movie), though you add on that this is bad and dishonest to that. And (alongside a bit of appeal to emotion), this results in If X is woke, and woke is implied to be bad, then X is bad, which is a way to launder that your saying X is bad.
This is what I consider to be a bad faith argument and I deeply feel it does more harm to our abilities media criticism, because there is actual problems with representation that’s not because the super powerful action hero with the charisma of a brick has tits. I immediately think of companies like Disney do the bare minimum of Queer representation only to cut it for the Chinese and Russian releases (as they did with Finn on all the Star Wars Sequel posters after realising he wouldn’t sell as well in China). Ultimately I feel it mainly comes down to a few basic issues.
1. People representing marginalised groups have higher standards put on them. To use a quote I’ve heard before, “If he scores a goal he’s English, If he misses a goal he’s Black”, I don’t keep up with football but the quote is a pretty good description of this bias. Also of note I don’t think this is racism, just a bias that makes us want to separate ourselves from those who have in some way failed us. When it’s a minority or a kind of person that we don’t see often if at all, they are much easier to make the other.
2. People writing an experience they don’t understand. This is what separates Rey Starwars from Princess Naussicaa (and most of the other Studio Ghibli Leads). Not understanding who your writing about often leads to stereotypes and using traits that don’t seem to mesh well.
3. Corporate Meddling in order to limit representation or present it in ways that are fake. Disney and Queer representation are a clear example. This is also primarily due to incentives caused by Capitalism, so unless someone fixes that it’s unlikely it will ever happen.
I could probably go into more but I have to go now, this was fun.
@@Emery_Pallas what i see as the problem with mary sue´s is that this type of characters has been there, i could name a gary stu like kirito from sword art online, the dude literally went off camera mining and came back being the black swordman with no real motivation just being one of the strongest just behind a literal god in the story, and you know what happened? some of the people loved it, some hated it, bassically some saying it´s trash some saying its god.
the discussion was however focused on the protagonist and the show.
when captain marvel happened, she was so badass that she overpowered everyone without even needing motivation to do so, no complications, and what happened? some of the people loved it, some of them hated it, but when the discussion started, the ones that defended cap. marvel instead of saying how good it was, said if you don´t like her it´s because is a women, and therefore you are machist.
so thats why now when ever we see mary sue, we tend to see that term as something anti-feminist.
Yeah, a woke character is one that essentially is a propaganda character for "the message" of modern day intersectional cultural marxism or it's parts.
A fleshed out character that realistic within the confines of the setting and actually has a personality with consequential flaws is what people enjoy no matter who. Instead, modern media is full of the opposite. If Toph was written the way Khora (or however you spell it, it's rather late here, sorry) then people would've had an issue with her.
3:43 In the episode The Blind Bandit we see that the "master" training Toph comments about how she is still at the beginning stages, But we just SAW that Toph destroy professionals a few minutes prior. So its clear to the audience that she didn't learn her skills through conventional means. And we the audience were SHOWN her seismic sense abilities in her very first fight. Toph at that point was the only one who we the audience have been shown to have that ability while ALSO being the only character who was blind so its easy for the audience to piece together that the two are somehow linked. Her skill is even explained later in that very episode. The whole point of that scene in the 3rd season was not to justify Tophs abilities what so ever. You either completely missed the point of that scene or are purposefully pulling it out of context to make a conjecture. The scene prior has Toph state that she recommends Aang and Zuko learn from a different source, the original source. The point of the scene was to show that going back to the roots is how Zuko and Aang can fix/learn firebending, not an origin story for Toph.
5:22 Toph trounced on The Boulder because she waited, and listened just like what Bumi said. She was tactful. That's a key detail. Toph is strategic in her strengths playing others to her advantage as seen a few seconds later.
5:40 It seems you are completely forgetting to mention that Toph blinds them all, effectively disabling them, and takes them out 1 by 1. She uses her weaknesses to her advantage and plays to her strengths at the same time. The scene doesn't show that Toph is strong enough to 1v7 trained professionals. It shows that Toph is smart and, like stated previously, strategic in her attacks.
6:20 Katara literally gets demolished in that fight scene, "holds their own" not even close. Toph could, Katara at that point could not. There is no fault with Katara not being able to match a master at that point in the show, it would ruin her character if she could, but I just wanted to put a correction.
14:10 The situation of the episode is completely different from a "woke mary sue" because she is the mentor and not the student. All mentors are in pursuit of one goal, to educate and train their student. Like you even mentioned yourself the best method to train Aang was to act with such hostility and disrespect. We never see any similar actions from Toph throughout the rest of the show. It was a singular one off situation. If Toph was constantly abusive to the group throughout the rest of the show I guarantee you people would not like Toph.
18:38 This is a key difference between Toph and a "woke mary sue"
20:50 Her seismic sense didn't just "begin to register" unrefined earth. Toph CAME UP with the idea of unrefined pieces of earth being in metal and felt them out to test if she was right. You just took away her biggest achievement by just crediting her invention a side effect of her abilitie, without considering the genius it took to come up with.
Not once did you mention key traits of Tophs character. She is smart and a strategist. These traits in combination to her skill make her such a powerful character. Toph didn't overpower all 7 professional fighters in a burst of insane power, she strategically weakened them with no detriment to herself while also separating them to make the fight fragmented. All smart and strategic moves. Toph strategises a way to escape when she was cornered, coming up with an idea to do what was thought impossible. Testing the idea and inventing something completely new. You don't just stumble upon that, it takes theory and genius to think up something like that.
If you didn't focus so much on how Toph compared to "woke mary sues" you would have been able to see WHY Toph is not a mary sue. Her character is insanely well written and she does not demonstrate any of the toxic traits a lot of powerful modern female characters have. Toph has negative character traits, but they are not toxic in implementation, they are skillfully implemented to compliment her character, not destroy it.
Iroh’s line to Toph about letting those who love you help you makes me tear up every time I hear it. I’m also visually impaired. I was raised to be independent, but I also felt a need to prove I was strong/good enough. Learning that not everyone is trying to belittle me and that some people just want to help because they can was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn
interestingly, Zuko branching out from his insulated abilities didn't come from his uncle but the memory of his Mother.
I like your points on "Bitter work", but I also think, Toph was important for Aang in another way: She forced him to face his problems head on. Yes, that is part of being an earth bender and therefore necessary for his avatar training - but Aang story basically started with him running away. Running from the air temple, running from his responsibilities as the avatar, running from his proper training etc. His avoidance isn't due to his peaceful upbringing as a monk (nor any form of cowardice!), but a very intrinisc to who he is as a person. And I believe, Toph was kind of mentor to help him overcome that, since he needed to be way more steadfast in order to successfully face the fire lord.
The Boulder feels conflicted about fighting a young, blind girl!
sounds to me like youre scared, boulder!
I think the difference between toph and other “powerful” female characters is that toph’s characteristics are realistic and she never once tries to beat up men just because they’re men, or try to prove that women can do everything a man can do and stuff. She’s always been a royalty who was treated like an incapable child. Nobody wants to depend on someone for life, no one wants to feel like they’re useless and needs hand holding for everyone. Her personality is carefree and fun too, because she probably fought many muscle headed benders. She’s a child, and thus picked up on it
That’s actually literally exactly she beats up the older male earthbenders to prove that she can do everything they can do and better. And we love her for it! You can still dislike other characters who do that, but Toph proves it’s not inherently bad writing.
I can't believe people genuinely argued she isn't the greatest earth-bender. If you wanna get super dorky about it and do a power scaling discussion, then it's clear that only Bumi has feats that rival hers, and even he is shown to be incapable of bending metal. And she's a fucking child, so she's probably going to eclipse him by the time she hits 20. This is like arguing Yamcha is stronger than Cell or sth. It's so obvious that she's the best earth-bender we see in the show.
The best argument I could see is based on the concept of standing on the shoulders of giants. We see in history, feats that were initially thought impossible slowly but surely get encroached and surpassed as techniques get refined and we learn from one another. It could be argued that her accomplishments become more mundane in the future because she broke that new ground, and others were able to follow from her example and improve upon it (the obvious example being metal bending. Toph found out how to do it, but it's always crude, violent and destructive. Others however go on to refine it to an art, able to create sculptures and great works with the skill).
However, she is a product of her time, and quite literally fumbled in the dark to find how to push into the impossible. It would be weird to think that, were she born a few generations later and someone else had broken the ground she would have in her time, she wouldn't still have been at the top of the game, able to incorporate the advancements others had made before. When discussing "greatests of all time", you always have to ground them in the time they existed. As things improve, the greats of an era can and should always press further than the ones before them. Because they are standing on the shoulders of giants. And Toph was 100% the strongest earthbender of an era we have ever seen.
Yeah but bumi is 112 he's past his prime by a long shot and we dont know. prime bumi vs prime toph but that dosent matter bumi may be the strongest but toph is the greatest both words are different
Great video! But it missed out on discussing the major philosophical concepts of Sokka being stuck in the earth for most of 'Bitter Work'.
Toph doesn't just tear down guys. She's an abrasive person with everyone. It's just there aren't many girls for Toph to tear down the same way so it only seems like she's bullying the boys. There's a whole episode were she goes straight for the jugular with Katara for 20 minutes. If anything she gets along better with guys and likes guys more then girls.
Hmm not the argument
@@WeRNotAlive yes it is toph have acted the same towards katra she also dosent just attack ang for no reason
@@jd2792 What character "attacks" someone for "no reason" in anything recently? XD
Nowadays, first impressions matter a lot, specially if the character is female.
If the first scene of a female character involves them defeating a guy in combat, you can bet some people will be butthurt about it, seeing the whole thing as nothing more than woke propaganda, no matter what method she used to succeed.
What makes Toph different is that she did trained for her abilities. And she does grow during the series. She also had very difficult time against anyone who did something new for the first time. Aang beaten her, and so did the Sandbenders. It was also shown that she does have weakness against anyone who isn't on the ground, or wield abilities she never experienced before. Technically she would have lost against Ozai quite quickly. As he was flying the whole time during the final battle. Another part is that she is not devoid of emotions, or personality. Yes she doesn't hook up, or kiss, but she clearly has some emotions toward Sokka, and Zuko. Also she was a kid.
Another thing is that she was not super loved by the other characters in an instant, and no man were not lobotomized, or killed off to elevate her, and no source material was slaughtered for her sake either. Like Rey learning everything in an instant with 0 training while Luke turned into a suicidal hermit. Rey being strong was not the problem. The problem was breaking the rules of the established universe, and destroying characters for her sake. Previously nobody could just gain knowledge out of thin air on how to use the force at will. Nobody could become a jedi without training, and a conventional person couldn't do anything in melee combat against a trained force user.
As for being harsh toward Aang during the training. It was part of a greater plan. She was even bigger than usual jerk to push Aang. It was part of the teaching method. We saw her trying a lot other things before, but none of them worked. It was quite genius from her part. To realize the problem with Aang. That his attitude is about avoiding, and ignoring problems instead of facing head on. So Toph created a problem he could not ignore, or run away from. That is why she stole his food, and messed with his glider. And later on she did no such jerk moves toward Aang.
She is never shown training and her introductory scene and the vast majority of her character interactions with others is her belittling men.
@@Peasham It was shown how she learned Earthbending, and also told, that she uses Earthbending CONSTANTLY. That alone is some level of training. Also we see her first in an arena as champion. Reaching that state requires her to be trained. She had 6 years of training behind her by then. As for beating man. Well in the show the majority of enemies in general are man. Which makes sense given, that most soldiers, and violent criminals in real life also man.
If the show were written today, then she would have beaten Aang on first met, released herself from the kidnappers, beaten Azula during the chase, and the only reason she would let Appa be kidnapped is, because the tower falling, and she chose to save the team instead. During the final battle she would have beaten Ozai as well while Aang gets his ass kicked.
@@akuladoctor7355 It wasn't shown how she learned earthbending, it was shown how she instinctually, instantly figured out earthbending. If you can infer training simply from the use of skills, then you cannot complain about a single mary sue.
You cannot name a single piece of media that you'd call woke where a woke side character beat the main villain instead of the protagonist.
@@Peasham Game of Thrones. The whole series were setting up Jon Snow, and Danerys as the primary heroes against the undead, then the night king gets stabbed by Arya instead. We can't have a man winning the war can't we?
From what we saw EVERY bender figures out their bending ability on their own. Katara, Azula, and Zuko did it for sure. And Ozia mentions, that Zuko figured out his firebending so slow, that for a time they thought he is a non-bender. This is not something special. It is a common trait in real world, that people with disability has better other sense. Blind people has much better touching sense, and hearing. Toph is blind so the rest of her sense are highened. It can justify how she figured out the seismic SENSE. She used it as a supplement for her lack of eyesight. We don't know how many times she ran away to train, and learn. Having 6 years of story is worth a series of it's own. Also you might say, that Aang also barely trained despite being a master Airbender, and Katara also only trained for like an hour. There are stuff off-screen you know.
@@akuladoctor7355 we see how she learned it a few episodes from the finaly, and she does a thing which means she trains in it (and by always training I mostly remember her playing with rocks in the background).
Before even getting on the long Tangent about what it would look like if the “Wokists” made Avatar,
1. Toph does beat him and most other male main characters on the regular, be it good or bad.
2. She does this already at least once (be breaking established rules nonetheless) and pulls a lot of the heavy lifting in the first time this happens.
3.That was pretty much how it went iirc.
The one about the Chase and Ozai have no relation to how the story works and I believe deliberately written to be bad storytelling (since the chase is to continue establishing Azula (another powerful female character) as the main villain by being able to outdo both the heroes and villains working together, and Having Toph do something in the climax single-handedly goes against her arc of learning to put trust in others.
Did you even read this before sending it? I say this for the second point about “She is always doing it therefore practicing” which if practice makes not Mary Sue and half of practice equates to “a character doing a thing a lot”, then any character doing thing could be seen as practice (such as Ray using the force, every time you see her use it, that’s practice).
Overall I hope you learn to improve from this sort of mindset, I feel it holds back art and people more then it helps.
Honestly, I think that post could relate to the whole show and I know for a fact that this statement will become even more true once the live action shoe comes out. I think the key difference is depending on its good. If the show isn't good you'll be hearing people complain about how people are calling it "woke propaganda" but I it's good I doubt we will be hearing much about it.
I'm not counting on the show to be good. The Last Airbender taught me never to get my hopes up for A:TLA adaptations.
Nah, Birds of Prey was good and people still called it woke propaganda. It's not about whether it's good, it's about whether they think they can get away with criticizing it.
@@Peasham birds of prey was okay, not garbage or bad but it certainly wasn't a game changer or such for the character. An enjoyable romp. The reason why it was considered woke propaganda is due to how it was marketed as a girl power movie which isn't untrue but doesn't really matter to the movie.
Birds of Prey rules, and people who think "girl power" is an invalid form of branding are cringe.
@@christianlangdon3766 Uh. It did matter to the movie though. Did you watch it?
Though no, people didn't call it woke propaganda because girl power didn't matter to the movie, people call whatever they want woke propaganda if they think it'll sway more people towards their political position. They only don't call thing that if they think they can't get away with it.
I really freakin enjoy the way you format your essays. Like, I'm not sure how to describe it, but they seem to flow very well from one topic to the next. And I also just like how you describe things x3. Nice work!
excellent video essay
The boulder still stomps.
The Pebble wishes.
I think you mean the Boulder got stomped.
This video won't be political at aaaaaall (not a complaint get em lmao)
The scene of Toph creating Metalbending will forever among my favorite TV moments. The visuals, the sounds, the music, how everything syncs with what Guru Pathik is saying are all wonderful
Avatar had actually taught me a lot about how to be a good and understanding person, and being true to myself. it had ALSO made me REALLY into anime and fantasy so I'm happy for that as well
I know it's primarily after he lost his son, but Iroh is adaptive and flowing like Water. If he were the Avatar his opposite element would be his own element. The Dragon of the West would have the most trouble learning Fire.
i saw your tweet, went "yep" and went about my day.
And then you commented.
@@WeRNotAlive "yep"
This is a really nice video. Appreciation for Toph is always awesome
Avatar just made it so easy to accept toph was just the best without question
I saw that tweet on my timeline and was that like "Hey that's the guy that made the bill cipher video"
That is all
I agree with it all--I've already loved Toph when I first saw her, but hearing about the in-depth monologue that you just put out made me love her even MORE! Thank you! 😁
Astounding observations! Thank you!
What I like about Toph is that only Toph is the only one who doesn't forget that she's blimd.
Everyone seems to forget that at least once.
Remember aang mentioning that toph tough him not to give 100 percent of his strength in one attack. If that's the case then we haven't seen Toph with 100 percent of her strength so imagine how much more powerful she actually is if she did.
Also Toph is my favorite character of all time and I would 100 percent watch a Toph spinoff.
I'm not sure that's what that means, though I'd have to watch the scene to know. The thing is Toph isn't a "powerhouse" build, she is powerful, but unlike other earthbenders her power isn't about muscle mass it's about skill. So when she says don't use 100% of your strength, she could be talking about not over exerting yourself, fighting conservatively and looking for a point to attack, rather than meaning she has a hidden super Sayain form waiting in the back wings.
@@madestmadhatter it's the episode with the drill trying to break into ba sing se
Incredible, really helped me build a character for my novel.
Incredibly thankful, espacially since I was struggeling with her
DAMNNN I LOVED THIS VIDEO SO MUCH I GOT CHILLS FROM HOW GOOD IT WAS.
That’s the beauty of avatar all of the female characters are written differently yet they’re all strong in their own right.
I think they should give us a series around toph after the war. I wanna see her teaching her kids bending, creating the police force, the fathers of her kids.
Great video, and a great tweet before it.
There’s a few differences between Toph and the Mary Sues that are running rampant nowadays.
1: toph is a prodigy…. in her field of expertise. She doesn’t step on anyone’s toes thinking she’s God’s gift to the world and that she can do anything better than anyone. She’s a master earth bender, she and everyone else recognizes it, and that’s it.
2: she isn’t surrounded by incompetent male figures who exist only to reinforce her position as a powerful character. Sokka’s allowed to be a genius and excellent martial fighter, Zuko is an amazing fire bender and excellent swordsman, and Aang is the mother fucking avatar, and more importantly none of the leads really outshines another.
3: she has her flaws that add to her character that isn’t something like “I’m too perfect.” Besides her blindness, she also has a short temper and is more stubborn than a mule.
3: she doesn’t pull any of her powers out of her ass. Yes, she’s a powerful earth bender, but everything she does obey’s the rules of the world.
I mean, at the very least she wasn’t a master of 3 elements fresh out of the womb.
Name one example of a character like this. Korra obviously wouldn’t be one because the male characters around her are very competent and she doubts herself and loses fights all the time.
@@WeRNotAlive Korra is a very good example of my first point. I know the avatar is supposed to master all 4 elements, but she has earth, fire, and water MASTERED at the ripe old age of 3 years of and her literal first line of dialogue is straight up "I am the avatar, you gotta deal with it." That aside she learns new techniques like metal bending extremely easily. It got to the point where they had to invent a new bending style just to give Bolin something to do.
Rey Skywalker is another excellent example. What isnt she good at? She's an excellent lightsaber fighter despite having no training, she learned how to manipulate the force without a master, is an extremely powerful force sensitive that made Luke shit himself in fear, she's a marksman with conventional and vehicular weapons (one shot triple kill), can diagnose and repair mechanical issues extremely quickly, and that's without me completely finishing the garbage sequel trilogy.
These are just the two right off the top of my head. I could probably include more if I had some time to write up exactly who is an insufferable "strong female lead" and why they're garbage characters.
Ah yes, Bolin being competent is proof that he isn't competent. Korra being able to use the elements at 3 and then taking 15 more years to master those 3 when Aang mastered Airbending in 12 years and the rest within 1 year is such proof that she's overpowered and a mary sue.
I do hate Star Wars though, so I'll give you the W on Rey.
Her literal introduction is her stepping on everyone's toes and her finest moment is her declaring she's the greatest earthbender to ever live what the actual fuck are you talking about watch the shit you're talking about PLEASE
@@WeRNotAlive Bolin is an example for 1, not 2. Besides his acting career he doesnt really stand out. And him learning lava bending just seems like they wanted to give him a Toph moment since Korra pretty much instantly picked up metal bending and it's not really special anymore. I didn't say Korra knew 3 elements at 3, I said she MASTERED them. She was even demonstrating her capability of implementing all 3 in a single, smooth flow as if she had years of experience. Aang at least was in his preteens beforehand and he kind of had a war to fight on top of it all, so he couldn't exactly take his time with each element. Child prodigy's exist, and I understand that they'll excell more than their peers, but no one comes out of the vag with a clear understanding of calculus right off the bat.
An example for 2 would be more like She-hulk where she pretty much proves (and gloats) about being a better hulk than Bruce Banner, bitches about her first world problems, and the men around her are either incompetent or horny predators. A literal line from the show was from one guy talking about starting a conversation with Jennifer and legit, not bullshitting you, says, "I'm gonna go talk to it." Not her, but "it", like he's in the third fucking grade and she's a lab experiment infected with cooties or something. Its like a strawman of a straw man's strawman.
Another good example would be most family sitcoms where the wife basically knows everything, nobody dares anger her, and she's more competent at a lot of different things than the husband is at what's supposed to be his career. This one's been going on for a while and the earliest example I can give without even looking it up would be jill from home improvement, where they had an entire episode based on the possibility that she was wrong about something
Toph is kind of female daredevil but with earthbending powers
Babe wake up, Diregentleman's tweet doing numbers
This was incredibly thoughtful and carefully written. I kind of had a 'eureka' moment when you were talking about how having multiple female perspectives allows writers to open them up more. It made me realize that the flipside means; content I've perceived as 'properly representative' of women, were really just using one-dimensional token characters.
It unlocked something in my brain that I'm going to meditate on for years! I used to be very misogynistic. I didn't understand why anyone wouldn't be. I'm learning. People like you make that process more accessible to people like me. At no point in your few and far-between criticisms of 'real' people, were you ever overtly hostile. You simply exposed a vulnerability in logic, and in the same sentence, opened a path to understanding. You aren't the first or the last perspective I will seek about this topic. It's important that I understand. I'm trying.
Thank you for making this. It was insightful! This is the first video of yours I've ever seen, and I'm immediately subscribing. You clearly have good insight, and know which way is up. I look forward to learning more from you
one thing i love about toph is that blindness isn't her main struggle. she's accepted it! she jokes about it! she point blank points out that there's things she can't do- she can't sense anything in the desert, can't see colors, can't hang up posters herself, and other things.
her struggles are the way her parents and society thinks she's helpless just because she's a blind girl and learning to accept genuine help from others. she knows she's strong, and she knows she's blind. her seismic sense is something she developed from her own hard work as a person, not some kind of "the disability is actually a super ability!!1!" trope. she's still disabled, she's just also good at other things.
i'm so glad she's not some stale character defined by blindness. her struggle revolves around how she's been treated because she's blind, i think.
The thing is, you can feel that Toph's character is well written regardless of her power. She's flawed even with all her strength and the show demonstrates that fact time and time again. Her physical strength as a bender is not to be questioned, but the show is very aware of the fact that she, as a person, is imperfect. Over the course of the show, she learns to trust and rely on others for help and guidance, even when she thinks she doesn't need or want it. She has a very compelling character arch and though she's a girl and it has it's influences in her story, it's not her main trait. Even when she's seen humiliating men, it's not even because they're men. She humiliates lots of people. It's less about them being men and more about them trying to devalue her as a skilled fighter and bender. She humiliates them because she's spiteful, but they also kind of deserve it for thinking she's no threat. Also, her power wasn't just handed her. Sure she was born an earth bender, lots of people were, but she also had a massive weakness growing up which she learned to turn into a strength by watching and taking guidance from the mole creatures, resulting in her becoming more powerful as a result of her hard work and determination. She did that all on her own, which shows a clear struggle and her ability to overcome those struggles. But we also see that even as strong as she is, she still has to come to the conclusion that she needs help sometimes. Her fight isn't against sexism, a patriarchy or even the expectations of her as a female, which btw are all themes in her story, just not the ones that make her who she is as a character. She overcomes, she's not who her parents want her to be, she's flawed, brash, rude, restless, and cynical, but she changes and gets better over time. None of those have to do with her being a female. Those are traits that everyone can relate to at least one of, regardless of her sex, and we love her for it.
Here’s the separation. Toph had flaws, wasn’t sidelining the protagonist too often that it’d get obnoxious, and she had a personality, rather than being just “girl that beats up all the boys”
There is no female character whose personality is that she beats all the boys Jesus Jesus people are human filth
Just for the opening of this video I liked the video and subscribed you got a patreon too
Wonderful video!
ATLA: Is swarmed with great female and disability representation.
(Meanwhile me wondering why Mistborn insists on practically having only one noticable female character to most of the trilogy)
(Also if you guys like ATLA I feel you guys probably gonna like Mistborn, it's pretty good. I just wanted to talk about Mistborn, don't mind me lol.)
It's also unique character design to have a small character control the largest element
I've seen somebody repost your tweet somewhere, and I totally agreed with it instantly. Toph is awesome.
0:03 that sounded like a music track from RPG Maker 3 on the PS2. Or was it just similar?
0:10 oh hey, Wario Land 4 music! From the Toy Block Tower level, the first level of the Topaz Passage.
You can obviously tell I'm a fan of this game :D
2:15 Over The Garden Wall! :D
3:12 wow, I never noticed before that it was her "size-mec-sense" that allowed her to do the metal bending! good observation there.
(Sorry, I don't know how to spell that term, and I failed to find it on google).
7:14 sometimes, I myself forget that Toph is blind, because of how capable and amazing she is.
Especially in the scene with Hawky, I totally forgot that Toph can't write, and fell into the same mistake that Aang and Sokka did.
9:00 oh sweet, another Wario Land 4 music track! I'm just so happy to hear these. I think it's Pinball Zone, 4th level in the Ruby Passage.
18:25 I always loved this scene, but I always only saw it as Iroh mentoring Toph. I don't remember ever realizing that Iroh also got some insight from the conversation
My gosh, you are so good at bringing new enlightments
19:19 oh, that is beautiful. And you wouldn't expect Iroh to represent Water, but he does, and that was the whole point! Of course! I see it! And I love it!
20:30 hey, I appreciate a Patreon plug that happens after I already got a taste of your content. There's so many channels that ask for likes and subscribes right at the start of the video, before a new viewer has any chance to know what the creator is like.
You're good, and I'll consider your Patreon :)
22:50 more music from RPG Maker 3! Never would have expected it to be referenced in such a place, but this is so awesome.
Really good video essay.
The ATLA fandom always has some of the best video essays, that always bring me new perspectives to the show, and help me grow an even bigger appreciation for it.
While I wasn't in the know about some of the manga/anime you referenced, I still got the general picture. It's all interesting to learn about.
And extra compliments for the music choices in this video :)
Excellent video 👍
She is the perfect example of a strong female character
and yes toph is awesome, i just wish (and maybe we will with AS) that we got some closure between her and both her parents and on that note I love her relationship with katara
Awesome video about an awesome character
also i like (love) that you contrasted katara's warmth to the iceberg
Toph was always good and never bad.
true
Didn't we learn that she learned from the badgermole when she was introduced?
Nope, that wasn’t until the sun warriors episode. The one indication that Toph had training was that she participated in Earth Rumble which is also true of all the older, buffer wrestlers she effortlessly defeated.
I remember the show mentioning it before then. When Sokka went to learn the sword, Toph learning from the badgermoles is mentioned. If i remember correctly.
It didn't happen!
I literally rewatched it to write this video. XD
Edit: I'll be damned. I was wrong.
@@WeRNotAlive "i learned from badger moles, they dont talk but they're still good teachers" Just checked.
@@WeRNotAlive Your point still stands, we dont get an in depth explanation until very late in the show.
I agree. You probably can't get away with Toph these days. We'll have to see what the live action series comes up with.
17:15 "somebody needed to bring the young avatar down to earth" haha earth
I have a theroy that the names the runway and the blind bandit were switched.
Just think about it, how would the fire nation know she's a runaway?
I think her being published as a wanted criminal was in part another attempt to capture her by the mercenaries hired by her parents.
Because she's running away after every scam?
10:05 You also forgot to add the phenomenal women that are Catra, Adora, Glimmer, Scorpia, Entrapta & the countless other female characters in She-Ra & the Princesses of Power✨
(NO Anti- Catra comments please!)
Eh Catra's real bad in the last season, and Adora by extention, otherwise I agree lol
@@sparxstreak02 I mean, I can't say I'm too happy with how Adora went from wanting to murder her to caring about her for no reason, and I'm absolutely not a fan of how Catra's utter toxicity is portrayed as... acceptable?
I haven’t seen much of She-RA but what I have seen, Catra is an abusive asshole who constantly physical and mentally hurts Adora
@@mikeclarke5732 Yup.
The difference between her and the modern stereotype which you meant in video is that she has actual weaknesses as a person and with her ability. (Completely op in earth fight but no chance in the air for example)
You are qbsolte clowns and are not talking about any female character
Uncle Iroh perfectly encapsulates Bruce Lee's quote of being shapeless like water. Have the ability to fill a vase or a bowl, the ability to go with the flow or wreck utter havoc, crashing down upon those who challenge you.
God, this show is what cartoons should strive for. It's 100000/10 💛
Ima sum it up!
Cause she is well written, consistent in character and interesting.
As a contrarian I feel the need to say i despise Toph and who shouldn’t
As a conformist I feel the need to say I agree and that Toph is someone I despise with all my shriveled heart.
elaborate?
As a sheep I feel the need to agree with the comments above me and say I too must despise Toph
as a loner who doesn't want to feel isolated i too must agree with the notion that i must despise toph
I'm a skittles. That is all
I like the use of Spyro 1 music in the background. If I'm not mistaken, that's Dry Canyon.
I read the tittle as "The last living Cartoon" and I have no idea why
From here on out this is 100% a Toph appreciation post.
Me: Amen.
At the moment she said it I'm almost certain she was not do to her and bumi stalemating later on but the difference in age means she's most definitely and undeniably did surpass him it is just a fact that she's the best earthbender
18:26 yet again the writers finding a way to show us that as great characters as Uncle and Toph are, even they need to find a way to strike balance in their life.
God, I love this show. It ain’t perfect but this show is clearly a masterpiece. I will never stop singing the praises it deserves.
The coincidences of life, just saw this tweet on Instagram, then came to UA-cam and this popped in my recommendations, or maybe ist just the all seeing algorithm
Your tweet is correct. And most likely such a character created by an big American tv studio today would present her (at least in the media discussion outside the actual story) with significant virtue signaling highlighting her intersectional credentials more than what makes her a great character. If we were extremely lucky, she would still be just as great, but the pattern of the past handful of years makes me less than optimistic.
Just say you don't like Disney+ MCU and Star Wars shows like a normal adult. Watch Yellowjackets, Severance, Euphoria, Castlevania, West World, or The Good Place if you want shows with unvarnished well-written "virtue-signal free" female characters.
The difference between Toph and the modern "strong female character", is that she has character flaws, has to overcome physical shortcomings like being unable to read and write, and actually has a character arc. Her power level is explained by her reliance on it from a young age, and she isn't initially well liked by the group, so she is far from the typical Mary Sue archetype that is being pushed now. She is actually funny too, which goes a long way towards making her likable despite her abrasiveness. If woke writers were capable of creating characters like Toph, there wouldn't be the kind of pushback we're seeing now.
I remember that tweet, she is an AWSOME CHARACTER!
The reason I love Toph I was 12 years old when this show came out I have cerebral palsy I was used to one demential handicap character were they are played for laughter or pity I was treated in my early years with laugh and pity
But Toph to me as a kid was inspiring
She was telling me your are not your condition and it has taught you your own straight but her vulnerability made me more open to people I find my self as I grown thinking we'll developed character with disabilities are rare
My favorite represented characters are Toph
And Joker in mass effect as a handicap personne this characters are my favorite representation
Or the the kid with the flying wheelchair he has more life development and and agency then I'm used to see
I think to make a good character the gender shouldn’t be the main focus of their personality. There is of course exemptions to this
It was crucial to the making of Toph though, so she defeats your argument.
@@WeRNotAlive I totally agree
Okay so here comes a bunch of angry replies-
I, as a blind person, do not like Toph as representation. Hell, I don’t like her as representation of being disabled at all, and I’m not the only blind person I know who feels this way. I think the issue is not her incredible fighting ability. The fact she is able to do that is realistic and incredible. I myself am working on learning hand to hand combat skills, so that part is perfectly believable. I don’t like how her earthbending acts as a replacement for her sight. A lot of people will tell me that this isn’t true because, “Oh, she can’t see when in the submarine,” or, “Oh, but she can’t tell when something is thrown at her.” However, this is not all that defines that.
Toph, I will admit, is nowhere near as bad as Daredevil. The depth of her earthbending is very well done. But that doesn’t make her beyond criticism. As a character personality wise, yes, she is wonderful. I actually see a bit of twelve year old me in her. Her defiance, her insistence that she doesn’t need help, her hatred of working in a group. All of these are things I felt at her age. This, however, is not about her personality. I wish that a blind character with magic could exist without their blindness being cured by their powers. Besides this, I am, like Toph, completely blind, but I can tell when something is hurtling at my face based off of sound and will instinctually throw my hands up to block whatever it is. I also think that Toph might have been able to be less weak in the air and water. You’d think that, with these as weaknesses her whole life, she’d have learned to manage them at least slightly. I’ll give her a bit of leeway on the submarine thing, because she obviously wasn’t expecting something like that to happen, but it isn’t just airbenders who can sense air pressure and sound waves. When going about my house, I don’t use my cane, and primarily use minor echolocation to figure out what is where. I also use my hands and other senses to feel around when I’m cleaning.
Toph is, and always will be, a wonderfully written character. She feels extremely real and human, and I can also relate to the many blind jokes she makes. One in particular always makes me chuckle. It’s about steering, which I can relate to because some friends of mine and I like to joke that I’m always the DD. With this in mind, this comment is not meant to tear her down as a character, but rather to point out the flaws in her representation of blindness and disability. Personally, I find Teo a more appealing piece of representation. I myself am not paralyzed, but a very close friend of mine is, and I’ve been able to pick up similarities between Teo and my friend. Actually, once in the show, Teo comments about getting new brakes, which directly parallels a situation with my friend, who recently had to go back to his old wheelchair due to his brakes, well, breaking. Another similar situation involved Haru helping Teo on the stairs, another thing I’ve done with my friend before when the elevator wasn’t working.
In short. Toph as a character? Incredible! Toph as blind representation? Not so much.
Who cares about representation? Representation is poisonous, because if you ever try to "represent" a whole group of people with one character you
1) turn a collective into an individual, or an individual into a collective, and the two don't comport, and
2) if you give the character flaws, then it's like you're giving flaws to the entire class of people they're meant to represent, which either results in stereotyping, or it authors avoid giving any flaws at all to their 'representation' characters, which just ends up turning them into Mary Sues.
Down with representation, get that shit out of here, and write characters as individuals who represent only themselves.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 I, and many other people, care about representation. Unlike sighted people, it is difficult for me to find myself in, ‘normal,’ characters. As well as that, having something that connects you to a character on a more personal level is extremely comforting to many people. I understand better than many that blindness is a spectrum. I do not expect Toph’s blindness struggles to be exactly like mine, or like any of my other blind friends’ struggles either for that matter. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t want good representation of my struggles in the media. My paralyzed friend got good representation from Teo. Why shouldn’t I have good representation from Toph?
This also goes far deeper than just being disabled. Poor representation in media can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. For example, the way that LGBTQ+ people, especially lesbians, were portrayed during the twentieth century. We were hypersexualized, and because of that, people today in heccing 2022 still sometimes think that two women kissing is purely for the enjoyment of men.
I understand your viewpoint, but please understand that having somebody to look up to who’s like you can be extremely good for somebody, especially somebody young. I really wish I’d been given more visually impared characters to learn from at a young age, and I know that it is the same for all of my other disabled friends. Representation is a beautiful thing and must be treated with care. If it’s not, then you’re right, it can become something harmful, as I stated above. Good representation is far better than none at all, and bad representation, like Toph and Daredevil, is far worse.
@@BlindStarLily You shouldn't look up to people who are like you, as a person. You can't grow that way, you need to look up to people who rare _unlike_ you in order to grow.
Also, if you can't relate to people who are physically different from you, that's just racism/sexism/tisms, and while it's perfectly normal for people to visciously hate everyone and everything they perceive as "other," I still have to discourage such innate biases in the strongest possible terms. There's no good reason one couldn't relate to an alien character with a body and senses that bear no resemblance to a human's body or senses, and given that, there's no good reason one shouldn't be able to relate to any given human character that's slightly different to oneself in some minor physical feature, like their skin color, height, sex, eye color, how many functioning legs they have, how many functioning eyes they have, how many functioning kidneys they have, body mass index, blood type, baldness, number of fingers, etc., etc.
Like, imagine if I was watching Doctor Who, and enjoying it, but when I learned that he has two hearts I said, "well, I can't relate to this guy anymore! I don't have two hearts, we're different from each other, how can I relate to someone who is different to me?" Imagine if I was watching Star Trek the next generation and when Worf came on I was like, "I can't relate to this guy, I don't have a weird head!" or when Picard came on, if I said, "I can't relate to this guy, I'm not balding!" Or what if I was watching Terminator 2 and I was like, "I can't relate to this character, I'm not a cyborg with a robotic endoskeleton!" or if when Ridley from Aliens was on screen I was constantly saying, "I can't relate to this chick, I've never been an astronaut!" or if while I was watching Twilight and the character of Edwardo came on I said, "I can't relate to this schmuck, I'm not male!" and so on and so on. You're ability to relate to characters shouldn't come from the character's gross physical features, but from your shared _humanity._
Incidentally, I always related to Godzilla, even though I was born without any arms or legs, despite the fact that Godzilla has arms and legs. See? Not so hard!
@@migarsormrapophis2755 I believe that it is important that people do look up to and relate to characters and people different from them. I never said that nobody can. However, due to media constantly consisting of ablebodied characters, it is always refreshing to come across one who is like myself. Race, sex, gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, disabilities, disorders, etc. All of them are such a small part of media, when they’re such a large part of the world. Deny it if you like, but at least ninety percent of characters in media are ablebodied, and the vast majority of disabled characters are paralyzed.
Coming across something that somebody can relate to can greatly help them. You say I shouldn’t look up to somebody like myself. Does that mean I shouldn’t look up to one of my close blind friends because she’s blind, despite the fact she has acted as a mentor for me since I was nine? Does that mean I shouldn’t look up to the blind and visually impared teachers I’ve spent summers learning from and building extreme respect for just because they’re blind like me? Does that mean that I shouldn’t consider one of those teachers like a mother figure simply because she is blind like me?
To turn your argument on its head, imagine if I was watching ATLA, and when Toph first appeared, I told myself not to like her because the blind can’t like the blind. Do you see how bizarre and absurd that sounds?
When I talk about idols for people to have in the form of fictional characters, I am refering to somebody who sees a character who struggles with what they struggle with and is able to feel heard, to feel seen and to know that other people can get through it, so they can as well. I think I would have been a lot less insecure about my disability when I was younger if I’d had more blind characters, or blind people in general, to look up to and learn from, and I know that I’m not the only person with this sentiment. I can hear where you’re coming from regarding relatability and how not every character is going to be like me, but that is not what I asked for, and I think you know that already.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 Okay, listen. I’m not going to keep repeating myself here. Representation is good when done well. I never asked for every character in fiction to be like me and you know that. I don’t think either of us really wants to be in this argument, so instead…
Is there a reason you’re spamming random words here? Should I be looking for some kind of hidden meaning here? ‘Cause I’ll be honest, it’s all nonsense to both me and my screen reader.
I love Toph because i can see myself in her, as having bad vision all my life has lead to me having better spatial awareness using my other senses then others who can see well from birth.
Peace, dude. You're doing the Good. Keep it up.
Fire: I’M THE POWER ELEMENT!!!!!!
Earth and water: yeah and what the planet made of?
Fire: h-hey I have the sun with me!
Earth: sure buddy
Fire: I'm the reason why life was made!
Water: I also help give life, but also nurse it.
Air: also help people breathe in the surface
Fire: My teachers are dragons!
Water: My teacher is literally the moon
Earth: Which also made of earth itself
Fire: *angry noises* ALRIGHT THAT IT! I'm making my advance tribe/ethnic group take over all your people, especially you Air!*storms out*
Air: what did I do?
Earth: I think he insecure about being a chemical reaction
Fire*in the distance*: WATER AND AIR IS NOT A ELEMENT IT'S A MOLEUCLE!
Best comment. Someone should turn this into a skit
@@eitherlight6197 someone should.
Honestly I think the only time people claim something is for woke reasons as if the character is shit. A thoroughly planned out 3 dimensional character almost never gets considered solely for woke reasons because effort was put into the character and it's noticed by everyone.
god i LOVE this video
I love Toph so much she must be a role model for anyone who has visual impairment or is blind like her.