#Toph Critical

[allgremlinyaps]

honestly I love Toph in tlok but my defense of her characterization would come off as Toph slander I think. Like, they didnt write her as a cop because she's the rich elite and a little close-minded and stubborn and emotionally crippled by her ego and cares more about proving herself in every way possible than facilitating any societal change, they made her a cop cus it was 2012 and they were white liberals and its all they could think of I guess BUT. It fits.

[innocentimouto]

Some atla opinions that I feel like have been explained in old posts

Aang supported, respected, and comforted Katara throughout the series.

The first one to ever trust or help Zuko was Aang.

Everyone in the Gaang did chores, not just Katara.

Katara comforted many characters, not just Aang.

Appa should have been afraid of Zuko.

Sokka is not a good judge of character.

Sokka should have been the one to go with Katara to face Yon Rha.

Toph is bratty.

Toph didn't care about the war.

Haru showed a lot of hatred for the Fire Nation.

Hahn was a missed opportunity. And so was every ek kid.

Katara was the only normal one for not trusting Zuko.

There are more pros than cons in keeping Jet alive for the plot.

Jet was a great leader.

All the Freedom Fighters were fine with flooding the village.

Ty Lee can be cruel.

Mai was friends with Azula, willingly.

Suki deserved more development.

Jin should have gotten the chance to confront Zuko over Ba Sing Se.

Teo should have made plans with Sokka.

Hakoda should have praised Katara for her bending.

Hakoda should have been able to fight in the finale.

The White Lotus made a lot of characters look worse.

The only actions Zuko regretted were the ones against Iroh.

Zuko was fully prepared to capture Appa and use him as bait by any means necessary (ie firebending).

Iroh is a hypocrite.

Azula was abused.

Azula lost many times.

Bloodbending isn't evil.

Book 3 was rushed.

[avatar-legends-confessionblog]

Iroh, Toph Zuko are the most overrated and overhyped characters on the show.

Iroh is not all powerful or all wise. His character just isn’t that interesting either.

Toph loses 6/10 of someone gets her feet or she’s fighting someone who’s agile

And I’m tired of 99 percent of fics being about Zuko. We get it, he had a sad backstory so does everyone else let’s keep it pushing,

X

[transformers0]

Look at this guy on Twitter saying that the other members of Team Avatar should have accepted Zuko as easily as Toph did.

Dude needs to learn that the real world does not work like that.

He's also even trying to say that Toph's attitude is fine and is justified by her parents' treatment of her.

[sh3nlong-promakh0s]

Toph was such an asshole to Korra in LOK s4 omfg

Her low empathy ass pissed me tf off but anyway ig that's pretty fitting for her character. Me out here just thinking CAN EVERYONE PLEASE GIVE KORRA A BREAK WTFFFFF SHE WAS DISABLED AS ALL FUCK FROM THAT WACK ASF METAL POISON FOR THREE YEARS AND HAD HER BENDING SEVERELY COMPROMISED AS A RESULT ALL IN THE NAME OF SAVING EVERYONE HOW THE FLYING FUCK WOULD YOU FEEL?!?!!? SHES JUST TRYING TO GET BETTER FOR EVERYONE ELSE DNDJSJSJ anyway

[bathenaswopez]

Summary: Aang, Sokka, and Katara have a talk after Toph leaves

Fix-it that takes place during The Chase.

[innocentimouto]

Be honest, would you call Toph a bad teacher?

Yeah I would.

I don't take issue with her being a rougher teacher than Katara (doesn't work for me personally but I get it works for some), but she was beyond the point for me. I don't know if the show wanted us to treat her crazy handling of Aang's staff as a joke, but it never sat well with me.

I think that's just a point of her being uninformed and rich. She probably only saw it as being a concern for Aang since it was his property, but didn't truly understand how important it was (she does seem to later on in Book 3)

In my opinion, she gave up on Aang too quickly. He does everything she demands and then the ONE TIME he can't, she dismisses him entirely. Suddenly if he can't do this, he can't do anything. He might as well not earthbend at all. She doesn't bother to find a way around it. She doesn't consider he may not have been ready because of HER.

She leaves him to figure it out on his own and then completely endangers Sokka.

Aang did need to learn to accept failure, and no one will really hold your hand in war, but Toph had no patience with him in the end. Which is in character for her. Just wish it was recognized.

[avatar-legends-confessionblog]

I understand Toph as a character- I understand the context for her behaviour, attitudes, personality. I understand how integral she is and how cool her feats are.

I still ABSOLUTELY cannot stand her.

X

[transformers0]

A potential hot take, personally speaking, but I feel that Toph's lie-detecting ability is too much of an overpowered ability to the point that it feels convenient when it works and makes things easy for herself or the team, or if it fails at the worst possible time (and it feels like the writers have to mandate it).

Girl probably shouldn't have had that ability in the first place. She's already too stacked.

Also, personally speaking again, Toph does not have enough character growth or mastery over her behaviour to justify being so powerful at such a young age.

It's overpowered crap like this that makes me SO glad that other prodigy characters such as Po from the Kung Fu Panda movies can still get his ass kicked by villains or allies (in spite of his good heart and strong will).

And in the case of Anakin Skywalker, Toph's ridiculous memetic fandom that hails her as a nigh-unstoppable badass and worships the very ground she walks on makes me appreciate that Anakin on the other hand was NOT granted the rank of master, because, in the words of Obi-Wan from the Revenge of the Sith novel, "How can you be a Jedi Master when you have not mastered yourself?"

[gorey-gorella]

Iroh is morally gray but not a misogynist.

Zuko is still kinda gray, but he isn't misogynistic either and Azula is still worse and more abusive than him.

Ursa is a terrible mother and wasn't abused by Ozai.

Ursa still loves Azula even then but she is selfish and weird about it.

Ursa has a higher social status than Ozai and is respected and liked by Azulon more than Ozai.

Ursa is a Fire Nation imperialist.

Ozai loved his children and could feel empathy. It's not that the only thing he cares about is power. It's that he cares about power more than anything else. The scene with him abandoning Azula is not only a sign of his selfishness, but also the fact that he doesn't want to seem or feel like an unfair, cruel father.

Ozai has smiling depression/depression.

Aang, Katara, Toph and Iroh may have npd.

Aang and Iroh have smiling depression.

Sokka may have smiling depression.

Katara, Aang, Toph and Zuko are all flawed jerks and not called out enough on it by the show and fandom.

Katara enables Aang's behaviour and is at fault for his brattiness almost as much as Aang is for himself. She is older and knows better yet she keeps letting his kid guilt-trip her and yell at her when mad because 'he has been through too much' and probably because he is a cutie patootie.

Toph is morally grey and a jerkbender.

Pakku is just some boomer dude of his time. Stop treating him like Satan.

Sokka and Suki are the only sane ones of the gaang.

Appa and Momo are sapient and if they do something wrong they can and should be held accountable.

Ozai would probably break down internally if he had to directly kill people in the EK on Sozin's Comet. Like, he would probably have a panic attack and sweat a lot and try and ignore everything and focus on the fire and the fact he's winning. When he gets back home and sees Azula with wild hair, shaking and saying how she killed Zuko and his water Tribe savage girlfriend, Ozai would probably be like, 'Oh that's nice', coldly. She would scoff and be pissed at his reply and snap at him. 'AFTER EVERYTHING I HAVE DONE FOR YOU?! THIS IS YOUR REPLY!?'. Ozai would snap back with his sleeping bags under his eyes, 'AZULA. I told you to be quiet the last time. Why can't you be quiet this time?! I had a long day, and I do not care for your insistent whining! Just because grateful you got to rule here while it lasted. I'm going to my room. Don't bother me unless necessary.'

When he goes to his bedchambers, he just curls up in a ball on his bed, the events playing in his head, driving him insane. It's overwhelming and overstimulating. It makes him want to break down in tears and cry, but he can't, not that he wants to, but even if he did, it's hard to physically, he wants to cry but he can't cry. He punches and cracks his wall in anger and then flops back on the bed, dying inside, internalising everything way too strongly because he never let himself externalise.

I’m bored, I want to hear everyone’s unpopular Avatar The Last Airbender opinions. And I don’t mean the ones like “Aang should have killed Ozai” or “Zutara should’ve been canon” because those have proven to be quite popular opinions. I mean the ones that almost no one talks about and you’d be afraid to bring up to a fan.

[avatarfandompolice]

Oh great another female character for NATLA to butcher and throw to the side

Sorry…but…um…WHAT ABOUT HER NOT BEING FEMININE MAKES HER LESS “HUMANIZING”??? WHAT???????

If anyone is a Toph fan and is defending this then you’re not a Toph fan. Sorry.

[azulasminion]

I noticed Katara does not canonically have any female friends her AGE Suki and Yue are right there but she barely have any strong connections with them because they obviously only exist to be her brothers love interests.

And the girls she do meet her around her age are either girls obsessed with aang (aang’s fan club) or tried to kill her Azula Ty Lee and Mai)

And every other girl is pitted against her or pop up for a moment to never be seen again

And in the comics Katara has no friends other than her brother and her boyfriend (she barely interacts with Toph)

It such a miss opportunity to have Suki and Katara talk about how the war made them grow up too fast

Suki being a kyoshi warrior as such young age and had to be a leader to other young girls and Katara having to be the caretaker after their mother was killed not just to her family but towards the other village kids after the men left for war.

They should had a conversation about that with each other

[innocentimouto]

Your takes on characters you don't personally think are worth much or like are so painfully surface level. If you don't enjoy them, don't talk about them, simple

...

Are you policing how I enjoy fandom??

If someone doesn't like a character, there's nothing wrong with talking about it, especially if it's on MY blog. I'm not jumping on other people's posts and telling them the character they like sucks and here's why.

Or trying to control what they post. Like you.

Also take into account that a lot of us have been around a while and have made long detailed posts about why we like or don't like certain characters, so we sometimes make posts without those details because we've said it a hundred times.

For example, Toph. Her issues of independence stems from her parents' suffocating hold on her. I know this. I'm not going to say that every single time I mention she endangers her friends or acts bratty or doesn't entirely care about the war (at least at first). I don't need to explain it's perfectly normal for her to act bratty because she is both a child and rich and in war every single time.

We're online. At some point, you have to realize we can't convey our every single thought on things because the context to it is in our heads, and we either forget others don't have insight into it or we simply got tired of making clear we don't hate this character because this criticism that we have actually makes them nuanced or is justified or exists and we just want to talk about it.

Although to be honest, I have no idea what you're referring to. I don't often say characters aren't "worth much". I don't like certain characters, yeah. Like everyone else. So I talk about that. I haven't even been that active lately, so if it's about Sokka, neither of those posts were even intended to be a deep dive into his character. I just answered the questions.

I get sometimes it's easy to get angry when people talk negatively about your favorite characters, but part of fandom is ranting about things. You can't just expect people not to talk about certain things.

Just post on your own blog about how you're irritated about such and such take. It accomplishes the same feeling of letting you vent while avoiding telling people how to enjoy things. And maybe you'll attract others who share your opinions.

[transformers0]

Crappy parenting is definitely in character for Toph.

The majority of Toph's screentime in the original show is her poking fun at her friends and ignoring most of the advice they give her on her own self-improvement.

Someone like that would almost certainly grow up to be a shit parent.

I actually found the saddest and most frustrating moment at the end of Operation Beifong, when Lin apologizes to Toph for her justified outburst, makes you wonder, Lin has probably apologized many times to Topf for letting her bottled up emotions out

It shouldn't be shocking at this point that a Lin-centric (ish) episode revolves around Lin being treated poorly and then having to apologize for having a reasonable response to being treated poorly. Have you ever heard the saying that sometimes your anger is the part of you that loves you and knows you deserve better? Lin has been forced to silence that part of her and it's unfair.

Parents can be deeply complicated people with pain of their own. That being said, "If you can just find some way not to hate me maybe that’s enough,” is just a really insufficient apology for the fine mess that Toph made.

We can and should talk about how "good" mothers are portrayed in tlok and if this was in character for Toph, but with the story, we got Lin was thoroughly screwed over by Toph and Suyin and then painted as the bad guy. When I think of the years Lin probably had to lie about her scars and the lifetime of twisting herself into knots for Toph's approval. Lin is the last person in the Beifong family who needs to be forgiven.

[avatar-legends-confessionblog]

But you’re supposed to CARE about your partner and at least be nicer to them than you would other people, and the fact that some people don’t seem to get this is concerning.

But Mai does do this, it's clear she cares about him and treats him nicer in her own way. she just struggles with it considering how she's raised

That being said one can dislike for not being caring enough in their eyes or more emotional or whatever

I dislike Toph for being rude/mean for no reason and too damn cocky.

X

[sokkastyles]

I can't picture Sokka doing housework once he's married to Suki, but I absolutely can picture Zuko doing it (despite him being the fire lord), and I think that's the difference between shallow libfem "I'm a warrior but I'm a girl, too" stuff that's resolved in one episode but then never mentioned again, and the kind of more subtle arc Zuko has where he learns the value of service and getting rid of entitlement. It's not specifically a gendered arc but that makes it better because there's never a suggestion that doing things like serving tea and sweeping the floor makes him less of a man. Like, the person who teaches him these things is Iroh. And it makes sense to translate those things to his relationship with Katara since so much screentime is dedicated to them learning to see each other as allies. The show says Suki can be a warrior and a girl, but she can't just be a warrior, because someone still has to wash Sokka's socks. And it's conspicuous that the franchise never shows us Sokka and Suki's adult relationship, especially with the way Katara is pigeon-holed post atla into being just a healer and Toph into regretting all her life choices.

I wasn't gonna post this because I'm really not trying to hate on Sukka and it's whatever but then some dumbass was like "wow labor isn't gendered atla is the most progressive show ever anyway Sokka is totally the mom friend." Like, you really don't see this?