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you'll miss the superchick within

and i christen you titantic underestimate and swim

Created on 2009-04-28 02:28:09 (#19810184), last updated 2009-10-06

96 comments received, 141 comments posted

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4 Journal Entries, 16 Tags, 0 Memories, 0 Virtual Gifts, 15 Userpics

Basic Info

Name:	Toph Bei Fong
Birthdate:	01-04
Location:	(states/regions/territories), Canada

Bio

coming soon to a theatre near you

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Character Name: Toph Bei Fong

Character Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Age: 12

Background:

Toph was the only daughter of the Bei Fong family - a wealthy, aristocratic family in the Earth Kingdom. She was born blind, so her parents became excessively protective over her from birth to the present day. They hid her from the rest of the world in their estate, and made her out to be either invisible or a completely defenseless child to not only anyone that met her, but to themselves as well. The only thing they really allowed her to do on her own was pratice basic earth bending with a master earth bending instructor, Master Yu and even then, it was only to help relieve her boredom and help her should she ever get into trouble. The defenselessness that her parents perceived was really only that - a perception. Her parents were even more blind than she was and refused to see that she could take care of herself. Toph pretended to be an amateur with earthbending to keep up this facade for her parents, but she had really surpassed her master in every way before the age of 12. When she was younger, she ran off one day and ran into a cave of badgermoles who taught her the fundamentals of earthbending. This chance meeting allowed her to become the master she is today, and also helped her to learn to see everything around her by feeling the vibrations in the earth - 'seeing with her feet', essentially. She was tired of being treated like a baby and instead ran a doublelife to satiate her rebelliousness. She attended earth bending tournaments under the alias of 'The Blind Bandit',becoming a household name without her parents knowing, and coming out as the reigning champion from all of them (defeating everyone, no matter their age). Her parents had no idea that their dainty child competed in violent, dangerous competitions on the side because if they did Toph was sure they would restrict her even more.

During one of the tournaments, she met Aang, the Avatar. For those that do not know what that entails, it essentially means he has to keep peace in the world. Aang had the extra duty of solving the world's war of the Fire Nation vs. Everyone else. He wanted to talk to her, but she refused to talk as... well, he kind of came up to her in the middle of a fight and he was her competition. She lost to him when he accidently defeated her - she couldn't sense his vibrations because of his airbending and was blown off the stage by mistake. Obviously with awesome timing on his part, he asked her to be his earth bending teacher right after, and she promptly refused and ignored him. She was bitter that she had lost by some 'Twinkletoes'. He didn't stop though, and visited her estate with the rest of his group - Katara, a waterbender; Sokka, her brother; Appa, the flying bison/transportation; and Momo, their flying lemur. While walking around the estate's grounds, Toph and Aang were captured by the tournament-head who thought that they had cleverly stolen the extra money promised to anyone that could defeat Toph. Her parents, her earthbending teacher, and Aang's group came to get them back and it was there that she decided to reveal her true personality and extra curricular activities to her parents by defeating her captors -- and easily at that. Aang had hoped that this would allow her to be his teacher. Instead, it made her parents take away her remaining privileges, just as Toph has thought.

Toph ran away from home then after Aang and his group left, following them and agreeing to be his teacher. It was difficult at first, since Air and Earth bending were opposites and clashed in terms of the fundamentals of each, but nevertheless she was able to teach him as they travelled through the Earth Kingdom, constantly avoiding Fire Nation armies.

Her attitude with the group wasn't exactly welcoming at first. She had an 'I can pull my own weight' mentality, didn't help anyone else but herself, and wasn't interested in becoming good friends with anyone. That changed with time as well, after a few hard earned lessons. With her help, they were able to enter into a hidden library and find a secret to defeating the Fire Nation, while consequently losing Appa to a troupe of Sandbenders. Despite being saved by Toph, Aang became furious with her at that point, saying that she lost Appa intentionally and that everyone in the group was acting selfish. After a day of walking in the desert with no means of transportation or any type of map, they came across a cave and soon after met Sandbenders, some of which took Appa. This is the first time that Toph sees Aang go into the Avatar State, which is essentially him channeling past Avatars when he becomes very emotional and is nearly uncontrollable.

After this ordeal, they continue to the Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se, still hoping that Appa will find them. After stopping the Fire Nation from drilling into the city, the group is granted access into Ba Sing Se. Despite telling their guide that Aang is the Avatar, which essentially gives him persmission to see everyone interested in stopping the war, the group is told that they'll have to wait at least a month. Rather than do this, they attempt to sneak into the castle and only end up causing a commotion rather than see the King of Ba Sing Se. Aang is taken into the chambers of a man named Long Feng, who explains that in order to keep the culture of the city, mention of the war is not permitted - those that live in the city don't even know that there is a war. Even the king doesn't know, because his role is that of a figurehead and nothing more.

They uncover the secret of Lake Laogai near Ba Sing Se, that they are brainwashing everyone that says anything about the war. The Dai Li, and the leader of the Dai Li are the ones that essentially control the city.

Soon after, Toph receives a letter from her mother - which she finds out is a trick. After she had run off, Toph's father sent her original earthbending instructor and a member of the Earth Rumble Six (one of her original kidnappers) to bring her back home. They manage to trap her in a metal box, but while in it she is able to teach herself metalbending to escape and return back to the Avatar group. Without going into too much detail, Appa returns, and it eventually comes to an epic fight after the Fire Nation begin to take control of Ba Sing Se, and Aang nearly dies. With Ba Sing Se under their control, the last free place in the world to go is where everyone least expects it - the Fire Nation.

The group make their way through the Nation in secret. They plan an attack against the Fire Lord directly using the secret they found in the library - the Day of the Black Sun, where firebending powers are gone for a short amount of time (an eclipse). Unfortunately, their plan was known ahead of time by the enemy and the attack fails with many of their allies being captured. They retreat to the Western Air Temple where they meet a long time enemy trying to capture Aang - Zuko. At this point, Zuko is turning over a new leaf and wants to help end the war as well, despite being the son of the Fire Lord. Aang still needs a firebending teacher, after all, and there aren't many that will help him stop the Fire Nation's war. The group is understandably wary of this and deny his attempt. Toph, who can tell if someone's lying, thinks the others are letting their hurt feelings get in the way and goes after Zuko when he leaves. Unfortunately, she accidently sneaks up on him at night and he firebends the soles of her feet which basically leaves her crawling back blind. When she gets back to the group, they're even more certain that he can't join -- until he helps save them from an enemy named Combustion Man. He tries again, and they accept him this time. And thus, Zuko officially stays with the group for the rest of the series and is eventually even welcomed into it.

With their plan of attack over, the only choice they have left is to have Aang master all four elements and defeat the Fire Lord before Sozin's Comet - which amplifies firebending. If the comet begins and the war hasn't ended, then the Fire Lord will have enough power to take control over everything else in the world. The end result is that Aang defeats the Fire Lord Ozai and stop the Fire Nation from taking over the world using the four bending elements. Toph, along with Sokka and Suki (two other members of the group) help to defeat the Fire Nation airships and stop the Fire Nation take over. This specific memory that is the longtime plot of the series is what her lost 'item' will be.

Aside from all that backstory, Toph is known as the world's best earthbender. This entails her manipulating the earth around her to essentially do whatever she wants it to do. It is her basic means of fighitng/defending. She takes up Sandbending as well in the middle of the series (allowing her to manipulate sand) and appears to be very good at it - she makes an intricate sand castle in the events at the end of the series. She is also the only one in her world that has even succeeded at Metalbending, which she accomplished trying to escape from her kidnappers the second time. Considering the time she's had little time to do anything with it, she probably has not mastered it as well as Earthbending, but she is very good, seeing how intricate her Sandbending has become in so little time.

Being blind, she also has one more ability - one that's somewhat natural to her. She can use earthbending to see with her feet via sending the earth's vibrations underneath her. As long as someone or something is touching the ground, she can tell where it is in relation to her. She's so sensitive to it, she can even hear one's heartbeat to see if they're lying or not. While it does somewhat depend on earthbending, she has said to Aang that despite being blind, she has never had a problem seeing this way hinting to the fact that because earthbending is in her blood she can see just fine even without understanding earthbending. So, if accepted, she will still have this ability at first (though probably not to the extent to being able to pinpoint where ants are in relation to her, as seen in the series). Even if it isn't 100% natural, the way she has to use it all day everyday must have put it under the category of explicit memory by now so that she could use it somewhat without knowing how without her memories of earthbending.

Bending any sort of element in the Avatar world is a natural gift that presents itself in random people in the four different kingdoms (Water Tribes, Fire Nation, Earth Kingdoms, and Air Temples). At the beginning of the series (before Toph arrives), Katara is seen using it accidently when she gets annoyed at Sokka. Without being able to control it, she's able to split a giant iceburg in half. While earthbending is not as emotionally-driven as waterbending is (Toph says that with Earthbending, the mentality is that there's only one way to finish something - head on), the fact that she has this ability is innate and probably will manifest in some emotional cases before she remembers everything that she's learned.

Personality:

Toph's most obvious trait is how tomboyish she is. She stands out in the non-feminim way she dresses and the rude and non-chalant way she acts in social situations. She picks her nose, rolls her eyes, picks at her dirty feet and puts them wherever the heck she wants (hey, they're her eyes - she wouldn't tell you to stop looking at the table, so why should she have to take her feet off of it). Being blind, her appearance doesn't mean all that much to her since she can't see herself or what others look like. That doesn't mean she doesn't care about it at all though - in 'Tales of Ba Sing Se', we see her vulnerable and maybe a little doubtful of herself (one thing she is most certainly not in most social situations, especially with the guys around); since she can't see herself, she doubts that she looks very girlish or pretty even when she does try.

She is fiercely independant, which stems from the fact that her parents coddled her from birth because she was blind. Nobody outside of her parents' estate even knew she existed because they were so worried that something would happen to her since she was oh so frail and vulnerable. She escaped her home frequently just so that she could live her life the way she wanted and prove her strength and existence in the world. When she told her parents that she could see fine (through earthbending) they just imposed more rules that she couldn't stand and refused to see it from her perspective (which influenced her to run away and join Aang's gang).

Aside from that, she can be sarcastic and confrontational (always eager to prove that she can carry her own weight, as she did when she initially stayed with the group; when offered help, she might mistake it for pity if she hasn't known them long enough and start picking a fight, but she won't mistake friendliness for pity with the people she cares about).

She is also pretty direct about the things she does and says - just like her earthbending, she takes things head on instead of skirting around them. It might also stem from the fact that at home she was spoiled since her family is rich, even if she wasn't able to do the things she wanted. Sometimes, people don't understand her brutal honesty, and she doesn't understand back why they would try to lace words with other meanings, but in the end it just means that she's opinionated and everyone else gets to try to come up with a response without starting a war (because she's not about to back down from a fight, verbal or not). Being direct isn't completely a bad thing though - she's direct about herself as well, admitting her mistakes quickly and getting the emotional rollar coasters over and done with so that everyone can focus on the next task.

From all of this, we can see that Toph is pretty much the embodiment of pride at times. She loves showing off her skills and doing things that make her look good (figuratively), and anything that remotely resembles an insult might be taken to a new extreme.

Toph can act as emotionless as the rocks she throws sometimes, refusing to bring up the problems she has unless someone does before her. While she sometimes keeps things to herself, she is also the one that understands people the best since she doesn't focus on their face or who they are - just their sincerity and character. She can tell when people lie by looking at whether their heart rate changes, and focuses on their voice and what they say.

Despite all of this, Toph is a top notch actor as well, disguising her uncouth ways whenever she wants. At home, she had to act frail and needy so that her parents wouldn't suspect, and in Ba Sing Se, she managed to teach Katara how to act proper and high-class so that they could enter a rich party. She can be the mannerly, frail girl that her parents thought she was, she just chooses not to.

Item Lost: Her memory of the end of the war

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