Toph Beifong: Beauty in Simplicity | Avatar the Last Airbender

We're in a golden age of television and it increasingly seems like the place to tell long character-driven stories is the small screen even though that hasn't historically been the case, consider the likes of daredevils Mad Men Breaking Bad Game of Thrones on the list. continues, but among this host of titans stands a black sheep, while many of us come from anime, it must be admitted that animation is not considered the pinnacle of storytelling for mainstream Western audiences even though a show has risen above the pool. to take on the best of them, a show embraced by an audience of all ages across all demographics showing to be Avatar, The Last Airbender, having made a handful of videos about the show, at this point, my thoughts about characters like Zuko and Katara are very clear Avatar characters impressed with their incredibly well-written arcs that stand out as some of the best in the modern landscape, but surprisingly throughout my five videos there has been one character that I haven't mentioned yet and not. for lack of popularity since she is a fan favorite of course I am talking about the blind bandit Toph

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herself.

Toph is an interesting character because she is largely unchanged in that a character like Zuko is all about the growth of Ally Toph's antagonists. enters and leaves our minds as the same person even though you will often see her talked about in the same vein as these other characters with intricately woven stories and journeys, how does Toph manage to capture viewers' attention without offering the intense complexity shared by his co-stars, the voice in Tony's head was originally a different actress, but again the Girl Friday thing was something I really liked, but when she appeared as an American, the only way to establish who a person was joking was different. among them, which was literally the men liked to establish a completely new character after the vision, so to give it the accent a kind of shorthand was done.

This is Joss Whedon on his director's commentary for 2015's Age of Ultron, referring to the replacement AI system. used by Tony Stark after Jarvis comes to life in Vision form, Age of Ultron balances a lot of new characters with Scarlet Witch Quicksilver and of course Ultron and Vision, in this cron time there really wasn't much room to introduce someone like minor as Tony's new AI, but Josh acknowledged that he still had to make it different enough that it could stand out despite not receiving a formal introduction. The solution was simple: turn her into a girl's voice opposite to Jarvis's previous one and give her an Irish accent that is not, however, heard in the MCU, this is the essence of the design and, although this is only a small piece of Amelie from that film, serves as an example of how simple details can create impactful impressions, the first element that the fisherman --nz in Avatar The Last Airbender out of Airbending was water that Katara taught him partially, but significantly through PACU of the Northern Water Tribe.

PACU was ancient, old and powerful, something he shared in common with the first major Earthbender introduced in the series, King Bumi, and the first potential Firebending. Master Jeong Jeong, this gives the subconscious idea that the people who will be behind Aang's teachings will be powerful but old and wise. This is the first detail to subvert expectations that is included in this different introduction to contrast with people like Paco Bumi and Jang Jong. instead, they are introduced to a little girl or introduced because the second detail is actually that she appears as some kind of hallucination in the episode the swamp.

There are a couple of notable elements in this introduction, the first one we will return to later is the clothing. What she wears is some kind of elegant garment, something a proper royal lady would wear. The second is actually through Katara and Sokka's hallucinations. The party splits up, each having their own brief moment of seeing something that isn't really there for Katara. This was her. Mother to Sokka, this was you and both figures from her past, some more recent than others, who left prematurely and created holes in the hearts of those who are still here. The fringe was showing people what they wanted, mostly people they missed, but to Aang all he saw was a random girl, not someone he had met before or had any kind of connection to this, it creates a powerful bond between us and whoever this girl ends up being, tells us that she will be as important as the princess, you are as emotionally vital as Katara's mother.

In the third minor detail that serves as a bit of foreshadowing is the fact that when Aang finally catches her hallucination, he grabs her only to accidentally grab Katara again. This is minor, but it does foreshadow the idea that this girl has some kind of connection to our resident Waterbender, not in the historical sense but in the narrative sense, one taken at face value could mean a couple of things like potentially an interest replacement romantic, but in retrospect we know what this girl joining a group really means in that she will serve as Aang's instructor, similar to Katara, back to detail number one, the clothes, this is a bit doubly false .

First, we get this subconscious to establish that we are looking for someone like PACU or Bhoomi. Fake number one is that it is not an old man but a Girl in a Royal Dress Fake number two is that this girl in a royal dress is actually a girl in a wrestling outfit who is a champion of an underground Earthbending ring . Notice how when we first see her like this, we keep the frame close to both of us. highlighting her blind eyes and masking her height only to quickly cut to a wide shot and have her standing next to two average-sized people, thus emphasizing how small she is.

The context of her debut fight is that she is defending her title against an undefeated man. The contender on the rock, a muscular idiot from DEP, is a short fight, as she reveals an ability we haven't seen on the show yet, the seismic sense of earth bending, and uses it to quickly and surgically destroy her opponent. From this introduction we have created multiple levels of intrigue at any point where you think you know who this earthbending master will be, your expectations are subverted, add that she is then given various attributes that lead her to be a person of interest, like she has a

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name, something no one else on the show seems to possess her incredible feats of power or you know the fact that she's blind.

Toph is a standout character since her introduction and this adds incredible weight to her

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ing power in terms of entertainment. She may remain relatively unchanged compared to others. characters due in large part to this fact in an article for Writer magazine, writer Jeff Lian states that not every story is actually one story, but rather there are two subsections of a fictional story in situations, the difference lies in four conditions you describe in the article, but I'll focus on just one for the purposes of this video quote: a situation begins and ends in the same emotional space in which it began, in other words, if you don't have an arc, you won't. you have a story now.

That sounds derogatory, but it's actually not for Lyons, he identifies the purpose of a story as talking about growth and change, it's about the human condition and people learning these things are inherent to character arcs, but as it happens With all the writing rules, you can give up some of the most important ones. The pieces of fiction have Indiana Jones as a famous character without a notable arc, but he remains one of the most iconic characters of all time with someone. The most well received films. Katara and Zuko are stories in themselves, they are stories of people who cultivate Katara from a naive child to one of the most powerful water benders in the world, Zuko, from a prince desperate for his father's approval to master of the

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, but Toph isn't a story like that, she passes for little to no art entering the show as a rambunctious rebel. and leaving the show exactly the same and she's all the more entertaining for it, however, that's not to say there's no depth to a character at all, while Toph doesn't grow as much as a person, we managed to eliminate that. rock exterior that she faces in her daily life at face value in her introduction, you may be led to believe that Toph has problems with authority or, more specifically, hates being pampered, this is partly due to her royal upbringing. in which she was seen as a helpless child who must be protected at all costs, even at the cost of undermining her agency as an individual, but it is in that last line that we discover the truth of the matter.

He had previously alluded to a connection between Toph and Katara. Two characters had a rocky relationship from almost the beginning, and it's perhaps easy to see why Katara joined Aang on his journey with the motivation to help him master the elements, but a subsection of that motivation was so that Katara herself could teach Aang At Waterbend, she knew she wasn't a master, but she thought a couple of basic tricks might be easy enough; However, in the end, Aang still needed to get a true teacher and thus PACU came into the picture. Katara had issues with PACU, but they mostly stemmed from outright sexism.

As opposed to any innate character flaw within herself, of course, that character flaw is Katara's tendency to exaggerate her maturity as an adult, even Katara could probably see that she was not in a position of superiority over someone as old as PACU despite exercising that authority over people like her. of his friends fast forward to season 2 if he had studied with Bhumi I see no reason for Katara to conflict with him but aang didn't study with Bhumi and found out that teaching a girl even younger than Katara fanned the flames . as she immediately played on Katara's insecurities.

I'm learning earthbending from a teacher who was two years younger than Katara. it undermines how mature Katara is in comparison. He makes her seem weak or maybe less than Toph. This in hand put Katara into maternal overdrive in an attempt to recover. authority he had of her to once again exaggerate her role as caretaker of the group, this inherently conflicts with what we know about Tofs' flaw, which is that she hates being taken care of. These two are a perfect set of foils for each other. The culmination of this conflict comes to a head in one of my favorite episodes, the escape at the beginning of this episode.

Katara makes a bold claim that Toph actually misses her parents and that the hate she shows is just part of her facade, of course. Toph denies this, but there may be more truth to the statement than is acknowledged when we learn about Toph in this episode, is that she has no real problems with being taken care of, the real problem lies in the need to pretend to be someone who It's not with her. Her parents Toph had to hide her incredible talents to control the Earth. She had spent years working with an instructor who refused to go beyond the basics of the skill, all because her father feared for her safety.

She had to pretend to be a helpless blind girl when she was in reality, she was completely capable of taking care of herself after spending her entire childhood like this, the idea of ​​a father figure was inherently tied to the idea of ​​needing to hide who she really was, So when Katara's motherly tendencies come in the form of telling him that she can't continue with his scams, of course, this would lead to intense conflict. It was the same type of conflict that led Toph to run away in the first place. This isn't the only episode where we learned the depths behind the character of tofs, but yeah. probably the most shocking in a sense, maybe you could even call this an arc, while Toph doesn't necessarily go from something as extreme as her not liking the Authority to her liking the Authority;

She learns to trust her peers and open up to her emotions to a great extent. outline of Avatar The Last Airbender in which we witness great character arcs on a large scale, this seems minor at best, the truth of the matter is that Toph is a fantastic and entertaining character who manages to stand out as the rock of the group the unbudgeted that solidifies itself as a fan favorite not through complex, expansive narratives but through a unique and refreshing set of character traits. Thanks for watching. I swear there will be another anime video soon, maybe not right away, but I'm working on it if you enjoyed it. video and like when I talk about

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