app @ thebastion

[tophgirl]

Player name: Katie
Age: 27
Contact: badlifechoices @ plurk
Other characters: None

Character name: Toph Bei Fong
Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
AU info: Zuko is a girl, but little else changes of AtLA canon. (Matching Zuko's app). It's also three years after the end of the series, which ends with Ozai's defeat and Zuko being crowned Fire Lord.

A few weeks after Zuko's coronation, Sokka returns to the South Pole with Suki to help rebuild the Southern Water Tribe. Aang and Katara remain in the Fire Nation to help Zuko make a smooth transition. Delegates from all corners of the globe swarm on the palace, and negotiating peace is more difficult than expected. Nobody trusts the Fire Nation to do the right thing. Everybody wants the Fire Nation to pay for the damage that it's done, but there's no international organization to manage and oversee reparations. Many also want to try all Fire Nation soldiers for war crimes, which Zuko is reluctant to do.

Toph also remains at the palace, and surprises everyone with her skills as a diplomat.

But the biggest surprise comes when Toph's parents come to the palace and charge Aang with kidnapping. They demand that Toph be returned to them. Zuko invites them to stay at the palace so they and Toph can work out their issues peacefully. But Earth Kingdom diplomats pressure Zuko to force her to go home — "She's only twelve," they argue. "And she's not the Avatar. She should be with her family." Meanwhile, Katara and Aang know that being separated from them has been hard on Toph, and they encourage her to go with them so they can get to know the real Toph. Eventually, she caves, and she is back at the Bei Fong estate by her 13th birthday.

She tries. For a year, she really really tries to get her parents to accept the person she really is, but their house becomes even more like a prison. Sure, iron bars can't hold her, but she's not immune to emotional manipulation. As much as she wants to run away again, she still feels guilty about the way she left before.

She finds unexpected solace in poems that she exchanges with Iroh. He had taught her the art of hiding messages in poetry while she was still at Zuko's palace, and so she is able to dictate letters to him and have his letters read to her. He recognizes that some people simply don't change, and that sometimes it's healthier to just leave. He encourages her to run away, which is exactly what she does on her 14th birthday.

She doesn't run to Aang/Katara/Zuko, or Iroh, or Sokka, or anyone else she's known. She deliberately avoids them, because they are the first place her parents are going to look for her. When the gAang finds out that she's missing, they all want to go on a journey to find her, but Iroh talks them out of it. They all have important work to do, on paths they've chosen for themselves. It's Toph's turn to find her place. So they content themselves with the occasional message that she sends to Iroh.

And so Toph travels. She wants to visit every corner of the world (except the icy / watery ones), and she makes it her personal goal to invent at least three new forms of bending by the time she's 20.


Summary:
Despite being born into wealth, Toph is very much a self-made woman. She was born blind, and her parents were incredibly overprotective of her. They kept her cloistered away at their estate, to the extent that people outside of their house didn't even realize the Bei Fongs had a daughter. When they realized she was an earthbender, they arranged for her to have a master, but he was strictly instructed not to teach her too much, nothing more than the basic forms and breathing exercises.

Toph learned how to "see" with earthbending from badgermoles, creatures who are said to have taught the first earthbenders how to bend. All earthbenders have a special relationship with earth, but it's because of the badgermoles' influence that Toph has the degree of affinity with it that she does.

Around when she's 11, she starts sneaking out of the house and participating in earthbending matches. Her persona is "The Blind Bandit." She loves combat, conflict, and shit-talking; she shines in the spotlight. As the Blind Bandit, she can finally be herself. At home, she has to play the role of the dutiful, helpless daughter, one with elegant manners but no ability to take care of herself.

This changes when Aang and the others find her. He says that he had a vision she would be his earthbending teacher, and due to the shenanigans that inevitably follow Aang around, her double life is exposed to her parents. Rather than accepting that their daughter isn't as helpless as they thought, her father asserts that she's been given too much freedom. So she runs away to join Aang.

Transitioning to life on the road is hard for her, not because she's used to luxury (she revels in dirt and hard work), but because she's not used to working in a group. She doesn't understand how responsibilities get divided or why she should help set up camp when she's taken care of herself. She forages for her own food and sets up her own tent; why do the others need her help to do that for themselves? "I carry my own weight," she yells at Katara at one point. She ends up running away from them too, and meets Iroh on the road. He helps her to understand Katara's position, and that she can accept help from others without being helpless. Because of him, she returns to the group just in time to help in the fight against Azula.

As a teacher, Toph is harsh, bordering on cruel. Where Katara uses encouragement and positive re-inforcement with Aang, Toph shouts insults and creates outrageous challenges (like stopping a giant boulder that's rolling down a steep cliff).

Of course, she's like this as a friend too. She shows affection with rude nicknames, hard punches, and LOTS of sarcasm. She likes to use her blindness to make fun of other people ("Wow, Sokka, that's a great drawing!" "Thanks! ...hey, you can't see it!"). She enjoys picking fights, particularly with Katara, whose maternal nature both aggravates Toph and makes her happy. In some ways, having Katara around is like having a mother who actually accepts her; at the same time, it makes her miss her actual mother, feel guilty about the way she ran away, and yet also resent that her mother wouldn't accept who she really is.

When she has to, though, Toph is willing and capable of putting on a genteel persona. She uses all of her knowledge of high culture and manners to sneak herself and Katara into a party so they can speak to the Earth King about the war.

Toph's sense of morality is...kind of skewed. When the group needs money, she has no problems scamming other people to get some. At first she justifies it as "well they were scamming other people!" but it eventually gets out of control so she scams anyone stupid enough to fall for it. This eventually comes to bite her in the ass, but it's questionable whether she learned that scamming is wrong. She enjoys having power over people and lording it over people.

She is also ruthlessly practical. When Zuko asks to join their group and teach Aang firebending, Toph is the one to say "Hey, I know she's been trying to kill us, but Aang needs a firebending teacher so stop whining and just accept her." She's also pretty forgiving; after the initial rush of fear and anger, she completely forgives Zuko for burning her feet because she can beat her up in revenge later.


Powers:
Toph is an earthbender, which means she can control and has a special relationship with earth (dirt, rocks, etc). She is, in fact, possibly the greatest earthbender of all time — certainly of her generation. She invents three entirely new ways to utilize earthbending, and shows an endless creativity with the way she uses even more traditional techniques..

Sight: Toph was born blind, but she uses her earthbending to "see". She can release minute pulses and read the vibrations that come back. While she can't (yet) read little details like changes in facial expression, she can see everything that's around her; she can tell where people are moving, if something's approaching, and she can find things that are hidden within rock (such as the tunnels that led to Ozai's underground bunker). This would be an always on ability.

Lie detecting: She may not be able to "see" facial expressions, but Toph is so sensitive that she can even "hear" the pulses of a person's heart through the ground, and she uses this to deduce when a person is lying. It's hardly infallible — Azula is able to tell a completely ridiculous lie and have it seem like it's truth — but it still comes in handy. I believe that this is a more active, intentional skill than her usual "sight," (otherwise she'd be deafened by her heartbeat and the heartbeat of every other living creature around her), so this would fall into "3 a day."

Metal bending: Previously thought impossible because it's heavily processed, Toph is the first person in the world to be able to bend metal. The less refined the metal is, the easier it is to bend; extremely refined metals aren't possible for her. This would fall into the "3 a day" category.

Sand bending: Toph is able to build elaborate sandcastles with a single stamp of her foot (and doubtless could make sand do whatever else she wanted). This would fall into the "3 a day" category.

Traditional earth bending: Toph is also a master of the traditional bending forms and using earthbending in combat. She can send gigantic boulders flying through the air; create doorways in stone walls; fashion stone tents; even create a stone bodysuit to protect herself in combat. The ability to earthbend is how Toph protects herself and is an integral part of her identity, so I'd like to say this is an "always on" ability, but she would tire more quickly than she's used to. She can still make rocks fly through the air, but no juggling boulders for the entire night. This will fall under the 3 a day category.

Entry: She'll find her own way to Bastion, thanks.

Other: Any other information you think we will need can go here.