Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of my Avatar: The Last Airbender rewatch! Today’s post will be covering “The Blind Bandit.” Episode 2.06 changes the nature of the show forever with the appearance of everyone’s favorite earthbender: Toph.
Please note that while the summary will remain spoiler free (aside for everything up to and including the current episode, of course), the subsequent commentary (and comments) will not be. If you haven’t already seen the series, go do it now. This post will be waiting for you when you come back.
Note: I would like this rewatch to remain spoiler free for The Legend of Korra. Please choose your comments wisely. If you wish to discuss Korra, you can do so on these posts.
Summary
Sokka waffles over whether or not to buy a bag. While he decides, Aang and Katara are waylaid by a dubious man who is handing out fliers for Master Yu’s earthbending academy. Since the coupon on the back declares that the first lesson is free, Aang decides to check it out.
Aang gets lumped into a class with children much younger than him, but he still gets knocked around like the complete novice he is. Master Yu says if Aang pays for the entire year in advance, he’ll bump Aang up to the next belt. Aang leaves the school and tells his waiting friends that Master Yu is not the teacher for him.
A few students pass by, and one of them mentions Earth Rumble VI, an earthbending tournament with the world’s best earthbenders. Aang asks the students where the tournament is held, but they shut him down. Katara hurries off after the boys and disappears for a few seconds. When she comes back, she has the location of Earth Rumble VI. Katara deflects when Aang asks her how she got them to tell her, but the camera cuts to the boys still frozen to the alley walls.
How does getting buried alive count as an earthbending lesson?
Our heroes arrive at an underground arena for Earth Rumble VI. The announcer (Xin Fu) appears and explains the winning condition: just knock your opponent out of the ring.
The first round of the tournament is The Boulder vs. The Hippo. It doesn’t take long for The Boulder to win, but Aang isn’t impressed with the idea of him as a teacher. Sokka, however, is officially a fan of The Boulder. The tournament progresses until The Boulder faces the previous champion, The Blind Bandit.
Our heroes are surprised to see that The Blind Bandit is a young girl who really is blind. The Boulder is conflicted about fighting a young, blind girl, but The Blind Bandit’s taunting helps him get over it. She calls him The Pebble and then laughs at her own joke.
That laugh makes Aang realizes that The Blind Bandit is the girl he saw in the swamp.
Toph: Insults
The fight begins, but it’s over in seconds thanks to a special sense that The Blind Bandit uses. The Boulder tries to charge, but The Blind Bandit moves the earth from under his foot when he sets it down, causing him to fall into a painful split. While he’s incapacitated, The Blind Bandit catapults him straight out of the ring.
Sokka is devastated that The Boulder lost, but Katara is amazed at what happened. Aang realizes that The Blind Bandit waited and listened to the earth, just like Bumi had described.
Xin Fu leaps into the arena and offers a sack of gold pieces to anyone in the crowd who can defeat The Blind Bandit. At first no one steps forward, but Aang volunteers to face her.
Aang tries to talk to The Blind Bandit, but she’s not interested in talking. She attacks him, but Aang’s airbending/floating make it difficult for her to track him. The Blind Bandit throws a boulder at him, and Aang is forced to deflect with airbending. It knocks The Blind Bandit out of the ring, much to everyone’s astonishment.
Aang chases after The Blind Bandit because he wants her to be his earthbending teacher. She tells him to leave her alone and disappears behind a slab of rock. Our heroes receive the championship belt and bag of gold, but Aang is upset at losing his chance at a teacher.
You can’t fly forever, Aang. Toph will find you in three, two—
Our heroes return to Master Yu’s earthbending academy in the hopes of finding leads on The Blind Bandit. They run into the students Katara froze, and despite her heavy-handed tactics, they don’t know anything about who The Blind Bandit really is.
Aang realizes they’re asking about the wrong person. When he describes the girl he saw in his vision, the students reveal that the flying boar is the symbol of the Beifong family, the richest people in town. The students point out that the Beifongs don’t have a daughter, but it’s the starting point our heroes need.
Back at the arena, The Boulder tells Xin Fu that he didn’t see Aang do any earthbending—The Blind Bandit just fell out of the ring. They speculate that The Blind Bandit cheated and let herself be knocked out of the ring so she and Aang could split the reward money. This understandably pisses off Xin Fu.
Something tells me that you’re the villain of today’s episode.
Our heroes arrive at the Beifong estate, and instead of knocking like polite, normal people, they climb the wall and sneak around. They’re quickly caught by The Blind Bandit, who demands to know why Aang (nicknamed Twinkle Toes) has shown up.
Aang tells her that a crazy king told him to find an earthbending teacher who listens to the earth and that he had a vision in a magic swamp. Before The Blind Bandit can pound his face in, Katara tells her that Aang is the Avatar and needs to master earthbending in order to defeat the Fire Lord. The Blind Bandit declares it isn’t her problem and threatens to call the guards if they won’t get out.
Sokka tries to reason with her, but The Blind Bandit puts on her helpless girl voice and calls for help from the guards. Our heroes make a break for it just as a guard shows up. He addresses The Blind Bandit as Toph and asks what’s wrong. Toph says she thought she heard someone and got scared. The guards escort her back inside.
Aang watches the scene unfold from the walls and gets a devious look on his face.
Toph: Does not play nice with others.
We cut to Toph’s mother and father, who are talking to Master Yu about Toph’s lessons. They want to make sure she’s not doing anything dangerous. Toph sits sullenly in her chair, but she doesn’t say anything. A servant appears and tells them that the Avatar has arrived.
Our heroes join the Beifongs and Master Yu for dinner, and it quickly comes apparent how overprotective they are of Toph. Toph’s dad asks Aang how long he thinks the war will last. This gives Aang the perfect segue into his lack of an earthbending teacher. Toph’s dad suggests Master Yu, but Aang hints at Toph instead. Toph slams some rock into his foot in return.
Master Yu points out that Toph is still learning the basics, and her dad says that she probably won’t ever become a master because of her blindness. Our heroes are astonished by the claim. When Aang hints at her prowess, Toph earthbends his chair forward so his face smashes into his bowl of food.
Everyone is a little confused about Aang’s spastic actions, but Aang gets his revenge by sneezing food into Toph’s (and her mom and Master Yu’s) face. Toph and Aang square off over the table. It’s a miracle they don’t come to blows.
Yeah, Toph, you deserved that.
The Beifongs have graciously given our heroes a place to stay for the night. Aang is a bit jumpy when Toph shows up, but she apologizes for dinner and asks for a truce. She and Aang walk through the gardens. Toph reveals that even though she was born blind, she’s always been able to see via earthbending. She can feel the vibrations in the earth and see where everything is, even all the way down to the ants in the grass.
Her parents have always treated her as if she was helpless, which is why she became The Blind Bandit. Aang asks why she stays here if she’s unhappy, and Toph points out that they’re her parents. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Aang offers to let her to join them, but Toph turns him down.
Before their discussion can get any further, Toph senses something in the ground and realizes they’re being ambushed. They are quickly confronted by one of the Earth Rumble fighters. Before they can defend themselves, Xin Fu and his other fighters drop metal boxes on top of Aang and Toph. Xin Fu declares that they owe him money.
Some time later, Sokka, Katara, the Beifongs, and Master Yu find a ransom note in the gardens. Xin Fu and The Boulder want 500 gold pieces in order to get Toph back. Toph’s dad charges Master Yu with recovering his daughter, and Katara says that she and Sokka will go with him. Toph’s mother falls to her knees and is distraught over her daughter’s undoubted fear.
Why have you suddenly become a tracker? Why do you need to touch the ground with your hand? Aren’t your bare feet enough?
Toph, however, is far from afraid. She and Aang are strung up high above the ground in their boxes, but she’s issuing challenges to the men that kidnapped them.
Sokka, Katara, Master Yu, and Toph’s dad arrive at the arena. They exchange the money for Toph, and Xin Fu frees her. Xin Fu doesn’t release Aang—he wants to turn the Avatar over to the Fire Nation. He orders the siblings out and the rest of his fighters appear in their ridiculous faux-wrestler glory to threaten the siblings.
Aang tells Sokka and Katara to leave; he will be okay. They go after Toph, and Katara entreats her to help them. Against that many people, they’re going to need an earthbender. Toph’s father is upset at the request and declares that his tiny, fragile, blind daughter can’t help them. That’s all it takes for Toph to pull away from her father and go back with Katara and Sokka to rescue Aang.
Xin Fu and company are busy hauling Aang’s box away when the ground erupts in front of them. They turn around to see Sokka, Katara, and Toph, who tells them to put Aang down. She’s beaten them all before, and she will do it again.
The earthbenders toss Aang aside and charge at Toph. Before Katara and Sokka can get ready to fight, Toph stops them. She claims that the fight is hers. To prove it, she tears up the ground from beneath their enemies’ feet, scattering the earthbenders everywhere. She wades into the cloud of dust and takes them on while Sokka and Katara work on freeing Aang.
(You were waiting for this, weren’t you?)
Back at the Beifong residence, Toph tells her dad that she loves fighting and being an earthbender. She was only pretending to be helpless and obedient. Unfortunately this soul-baring confession doesn’t do anything besides make her dad realize that she needs to be watched and guarded twenty-four hours a day. Toph had far too much freedom, and she needs to be protected for her own good. Her dad kicks out our heroes. On his way out, Aang apologizes to Toph, who cries as they leave.
Our heroes prepare to leave the village. Katara tries to console Aang about finding him another teacher, but Aang knows they won’t find another earthbender like her. Just before they take off, Aang spots Toph running to them.
Toph tells them that her dad changed his mind and that she can go with our heroes. Sokka wisely decides they should leave fast before her dad can change his mind again. Aang tells her she will be a great teacher, and Toph tells him she wants to show him something.
As soon as he lands on solid ground, Toph knocks him into a tree with some earthbending. With that she declares them even and asks for her belt back. Sokka still hasn’t gotten the hang of her being blind and tosses the belt at her. It smacks her in the head and knocks her down.
At the Beifong estate, Toph’s dad offers Xin Fu and Master Yu a chest of gold pieces. He says that the Avatar has kidnapped Toph, and he wants them to do whatever it takes to bring her back.
Toph smiles and closes her eyes as she flies away with the rest of our heroes.
At least you’re getting paid in shiny gold instead of tasty gold.
Commentary
TOPH IS HERE!
Right, with that exclamation of joy out of the way, maybe I can manage to write something coherent. The odds aren’t good.
I have never actually watched wrestling—all my knowledge has been gained via commercials, pop culture, and TV Tropes—but I still found the wrestling parodies to be hilarious. I loved it all: crazy costumes, ridiculous stage names, overblown theatrics, etc.
Of course, the wrestler that stole it all was The Boulder. Speaking in the third person about himself was entertaining enough, but what really sold it for me were his interactions with Toph. I knew going into this episode that I would be using his conflicted feelings line as the jump text, and it was just as brilliant this time as it was every other time I’ve seen this episode. His facial expressions when Toph makes fun of him are amazing, and I love how easily he’s manipulated and defeated by the little blind girl he was so reluctant to fight.
I’m a little confused about why Earth Rumble VI would be a clandestine event, though. It seems like an entirely reasonable recreational use of earthbending. They aren’t under Fire Nation control, so it’s not like in “Imprisoned” where getting caught earthbending means trouble for you. Who cares if some consenting adults get together and try to pound each other into dust with giant hunks of rock?
And honestly, it’s not like Earth Rumble VI is that secret considering some random teenage punks know exactly where it is. Besides, Toph somehow heard about it, located it, and entered at least the last tournament, if not ones before that. But maybe I’m just overreacting to what the punk students said.
I’m so pleased Katara wouldn’t take no for an answer and gave the students a beatdown for being snots. (Though this is where I should probably enter a disclaimer that I generally disapprove of using brute force to obtain information. Even if it is funny.)
Speaking of the students, Master Yu is such a skeevy teacher. We don’t actually see him ever teaching Aang, even though this was supposed to be a first lesson. Furthermore, his offer to move Aang up to the next belt level if he paid for a year upfront was just as awful. Is he running an earthbending school or a pyramid scheme?
I’m actually voting on the shadier option. Allegedly, Master Yu has been teaching Toph since she was young, but he still has her on the basic forms and breathing exercises? I get that they want her safe at all times, but shouldn’t she have learned how to breathe properly by now? Are her parents paying for a teacher or a babysitter?
Then again, it’s no surprise that her parents probably think teacher and babysitter are synonymous. I am upset at them for how they’ve treated Toph—and I am definitely going to rant about them soon—but part of the blame lies on Toph, too. She’s very honest at the end of the episode where she tells her parents she’s been lying to them and hiding her abilities. Honestly, part of the reason they’ve continued to coddle her so fiercely is because they have never gotten any indication that she doesn’t need it.
If they’d seen before the sudden kidnapping/showdown of awesome that Toph was, in fact, capable of taking care of herself, maybe they would have loosened up a little before now. Instead, Toph has been playing up the helpless little blind girl act (like when she shouted for help in the garden). It’s a smart tactic to play to someone’s prejudices in order to get what you really want, but it doesn’t help solve the fundamental problems the Beifong family has: communication and trust.
And that’s the part where Toph’s parents really fail. Instead of acknowledging the fact that their perception of their daughter was incorrect and asking for time to adjust their world view, they flip out. The correct, reasonable, I-am-a-parent-but-also-a-rational-human-being reaction to this news would be to reevaluate how they treat their daughter since she is obviously far more capable than they ever thought she could be. Instead, they decide that the proper course of action is to restrict her even further and monitor her closely because they don’t trust her to be able to take care of herself. Even though her father saw her take on an entire troop of professional wrestlers earthbenders.
Parenting (and logic) fail. (Disclaimer #2: I am not a parent.)
The Beifong parenting failure extends even before this, unfortunately. I can understand their protectiveness to a point—this is a world that isn’t friendly to the differently abled, after all—but sequestering her to the point that most people don’t know she exists? Have her parents ever knowingly let her outside of the Beifong estate? Probably not, considering the guards mention Toph isn’t even supposed to be wandering the family gardens by herself.
The more I keep thinking about Toph’s first twelve years of life, the more upset I get. Toph says she’s never had a friend before, which means her parents couldn’t even be bothered to have some other rich little girls over to play with their daughter. Or let the children of their servants keep her company. What possible danger could they think other people’s kids would pose to Toph if she had some play dates with them?
There are no words to describe how completely awful that is. And I was heartbroken when Toph said her parents were doing these things to protect her. While I can concede that hyper protectiveness was probably the majority of their motivation, I can’t help but think there was embarrassment or even shame mingled in with that. A protective parent might hover or coddle; an embarrassed parent hides.
So, like everyone else, I was very pleased when Toph joined the rest of our heroes in defiance of her parents. That is the sort of rebellion I can condone, though I fervently wish she’d done it in such a way that her parents didn’t think Aang had kidnapped her. That was poorly done, Toph. I’d rather you had gone out with a bang—another astounding display of your bending power (your mother didn’t get to see the combat one)—instead of sneaking away in the night.
Oh well. I guess you needed something exciting to do in the season finale. And by exciting I mean inventing an entire new subfield of bending in order to escape Master Yu and Xin Fu.
Speaking of bending, let’s circle back around to Toph’s amazing fights. Aside from Bumi’s showdown with Aang in the first season, we haven’t really seen what an earthbending master can do in combat. (Haru and his dad don’t count, and neither do the nameless soldiers in “The Avatar State.”) With Bumi we got big, flashy displays of power like ripping giant chunks out of the wall.
And while Toph is completely capable of ripping the ground apart, what really impressed me in her fights this episode was how precise she was. She could have taken down The Boulder in a really flashy way. Instead, she moved the little patch of ground he stepped on to incapacitate him and then catapulted him out of the ring. In terms of spectacle or sheer power the actual earthbending moves she did weren’t very impressive.
Go back and watch her grand fight at the end of the episode again. She does a lot of dodging—almost as much as Aang does in his fights—and uses her opponents and their attacks against each other. (One of my favorites was when she lined up two of the fighters so a third accidentally took them down.) And the one time she couldn’t dodge, Toph basically created a shield for herself in order to deflect the incoming attack. Toph fights smart and fast—and awesome, let’s not forget awesome—in this episode. As a further testament to her skill, she even sends everyone but Xin Fu crashing into the same spot. That is a brilliant bit of showmanship on Toph’s part.
Now, while Toph’s seismic sense is pretty much a Disability Superpower, I love it anyway. And mostly that’s because the show doesn’t make this cool ability an equal substitute for sight. Yeah, Toph can sense people sneaking up behind her, but she can’t do it if she’s in the air or water. She also can’t read or write, and as proven in this episode, can’t see it when people toss non-earth things at her. Dang, Sokka, did you really have to throw that giant belt at her head?
Furthermore, the technique isn’t unique to Toph, even if she is the first human to use it. By the end of the series, she will teach Aang how to use it. Aang, in turn, will use it in his fight against Ozai. It’s difficult to argue that the seismic sense is a Mary Sue ability when it isn’t unique to Toph. Toph just gets to be the best at it in the series—but even then it will let her down with detecting whether or not Azula is lying and when she is stuck in sand.
The last thing I really wanted to touch on was something Toph said in the episode: You guys get to go wherever you want. No one telling you what to do—that’s the life. First, it actually reminds me a lot of what Mai says about her own background in “The Beach.” Both girls adopt personas to deal with their parents and their neglect/control, though in Toph’s case she went for a full out secret identity where Mai just went for quiet and angrily bored at everything.
Second, this actually does a really good job of explaining why Toph and Katara butt heads, especially in “The Chase.” Toph ran away in part to, you know, help Aang save the world, but she also did it so she could be in control of her life for real. That would make Toph an excellent loner adventurer, but it definitely makes it far more difficult to fit into a group—especially when you’re a late addition. Katara has been the mother hen and head keep-people-together person all of season one, and it’s no wonder those two have a catastrophic meltdown in their next episode.
In a similar vein, this episode makes it quite clear that Toph doesn’t really trust the rest of our heroes yet. If she did, wouldn’t she have told them the truth about under what circumstances she joined the group? Or at the very least not flat out lied about having her dad’s permission? Then again, I don’t think she expected her father to make the incredibly logic leap that Aang kidnapped her in order to get an earthbending teacher.
Still, Toph has a lot of growing to do before she figures out what it’s like to be a team player and not The Blind Bandit. I’m okay with that. Mostly I’m just excited that she is here. :D
- Aang is in disguise for a good portion of this episode, though it doesn’t do much good. The hat might cover the arrow, but you can see that he has a tattoo that goes from his back and up onto his head. I guess the hat might buy him a few extra seconds before someone requests he take the hat off.
- I was amused by Katara vs. the snotty earthbending students. What really sold the joke was at the end of the second encounter when Katara tells them she’s watching them and Sokka is all full of Water Tribe pride. Yes, Sokka, your sister is awesome and not someone to mess with. I love that he knows that.
- And we have yet another mother who inexplicably gets sidelined. Toph’s mom has all of two lines—but at least it’s more that Katara’s mom has gotten so far? And at least Toph’s mom won’t be dead and/or missing by the end of the show. So. Yay her?
- As much as I enjoy the jokes about Sokka and his man bag, I can’t remember if we ever see the bag again. Do we? If not, it’s a lot of screen time to spend on something that only shows up for a single episode.
- Toph’s dad is more scandalized by her spitting than by her giving the beatdown to seven grown men. I wanted someone to bash his head into the bleachers.
Now that we’ve acquired the last of our heroes for this season, it’s time to go check out Zuko. Come back Monday for Book Two: Earth || Chapter Seven: Zuko Alone, in which Zuko tries to figure out where he’s supposed to belong in this narrative.
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sannask
June 4, 2012 at 9:35 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
re Earth Rumble 6 being ‘clandestine’: I sort of picked up that it wasn’t REALLY clandestine, that’s just an advertising word the promoters used. instead of HEY THIS IS POPULAR NO REALLY, YALL SHOULD COME, it becomes “heyyyy this is a Sekrit Fite Klub and if you show up you’ll get to see Osm Badass Things that the General Public doesn’t know about!” You know what I mean?
re Master Yu: I vote ‘thoroughly skeevy.’ He cares about money, not about actually instructing people, and if the Beifong parents don’t actually know anything about how quickly earthbending lessons /should/ progress for their blind daughter, Master Yu is probably all like ‘i am sitting on a gold mine here! I charge them whatever i want, babysit her through her ‘lessons,’ intentionally don’t progress her quickly so i can continue walking away every week with a pretty penny or three, and barely have to break a sweat! easy money yeahhhhhh.’
“Honestly, part of the reason they’ve continued to coddle her so fiercely is because they have never gotten any indication that she doesn’t need it.”
we (the average viewers) actually have zero evidence to make conclusions one way or the other on this. It’s entirely possible that early on, Toph tried to be upfront with them about how talented she was, and maybe her parents just shut her down. I had to learn to do this with my step-mother-in-law; just nod and smile and get the dinner over with and wait until we’re in the car driving away before i go ‘WAAAAAAAAAAT, WHYYYYYYYYYYYY.’ It would suck to have to be in that mode full-time with overprotective parents, but that’s the impression I got about Toph. It’s not that she lacks the capability to break out of her gilded cage, just that before Aangh, she lacks somewhere to go once she did leave, and she’s highly aware of that fact. Hence, a gilded cage at least provides food and safe sleeping quarters?
then again, that still makes her at least 50% culpable in her caged-ness. but still. i can see it both ways; one, she tried to fight it at an earlier age and was contained, two, she just never tried because what’s it going to gain her? either way, obviously as soon as she shows any impetus, her father just clamps down. whether or not she tried to fight it in the past may not have made any difference.
IMO this also explains/feeds into why she lied to Aang about her father letting her go; not only might she have to slightly twist the truth in her own head to give her some emotional shielding about what she’s doing (despite the part where she sneaks out All The Time, she has apparently never whole-hog run away before; that stuff ain’t easy, no matter how much you might actually WANT to be doing it), and also maybe, like… maybe she asked herself, “if I tell THE AVATAR (larger-than-life title, carries a lot of ‘look up to you’ weight) that i’m running away from home, is he going to be LAWFUL GOOD and tell me to go back?”
also: i never thought of it that way, about why toph and katara butt heads so much. that makes so much sense that toph wants to be In Charge Of Self and gets frustrated when she feels she’s exchanged one mother hen for another. (also: now that you mention it, how does a 12 year old kid who has had ZERO SOCIALIZATION EVER even like… not be a completely terrible person? Dang I can’t even imagine what kind of torture that would have been like.)
I…. think Sokka’s bag shows up later? For some reason I feel like I have recollection of it, butttt don’t quote me on that. Let us know in future writeups if it’s still there! Now i’m curious…….
Audrey
June 6, 2012 at 8:37 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Welcome to the rewatch, Sannask! Now that I’ve approved this comment, your future comments should skip the moderation queue.
I never considered that maybe Toph had tried to fight back on her parents’ control, so nice call there. I agree with you, though–if she did try, it was probably early on and she hadn’t tried very hard since. And once she was capable of sneaking out on her own, why not stay with all the comforts of a rich girl and be a professional
wrestlerearthbending fighter at night? Though the overprotective parents had to take a toll on her.Also a good call with her thinking that Aang might make her go back home, though his stunt with the food at dinner should’ve hinted he isn’t all rule-and-politeness-abiding all the time. Then again, Toph probably wouldn’t have wanted to risk it.
I’m not sure where Toph acquired her socialization skills–because it will become obvious in Ba Sing Se that she does know how to move among the elite–but I shall assume that along with an earthbending teacher, her parents also provided her with an etiquette teacher. Or something.
Caitie Cat below says that bag shows up again! I shall have to keep an eye out for it.
And thanks for stopping by. I hope to hear more of your comments in the future!
somariel
June 7, 2012 at 8:30 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Sokka’s bag shows up again in “The Library”, “The Desert” and “The Serpent’s Pass” at the very least. I can’t remember if it shows up again after that.
Audrey
June 10, 2012 at 7:26 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
You have an awesome memory. Thanks for letting me know!
somariel
June 4, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
With regards to Master Yu’s tutelage of Toph, it’s possible that her parents have explicitly told him not to teach Toph anything beyond breathing exercises and basic forms because their “fragile little girl” can’t handle anything more strenuous.
Re: Toph and her parents: There are a lot of theories out there about why they see her the way they do. The most heartbreaking theory I’ve seen is that it’s a role that Toph trapped herself in in order to be able to keep her earthbending sight.
The Earth Kingdom is based on China and up until a few generations ago, most Chinese girls were put through a process called foot binding, which broke the bones in their feet to reshape their feet and keep them from growing bigger as the girl grew, starting between five and seven years of age. It also had a mortality rate anywhere from one in forty girls to as high as one in ten girls, depending on whether the foot binding was performed by a professional foot binder or a village auntie.
So if Toph overheard her parents talking about starting the process on her and understood that a) the process would break the bones in her feet, and b) some girls died during the process, she would have immediately started playing up her frailty so that her parents would think she was too fragile to survive the process and by the time she was too old to start the process, she had been living the lie for too long to be able to easily break out of her role.
Audrey
June 6, 2012 at 8:43 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
OKay, that’s a pretty horrific theory and I love it. I know that the Earth Kingdom is based on a (or several?) Chinese dynasties. Do you know? If so, we can figure out whether or not that dynasty did footbinding. If the dynasty matches up with the footbinding, I think that is a deliciously dark theory that is totally plausible.
Thank you for bringing it to my attention! Sometimes I think I should lurk more in fandom for delightful theories like that. Then I remember how wrapped certain people can get in their shipping and decide it’s best to stay out of the internet sometimes.
somariel
June 7, 2012 at 8:26 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Here’s the relevant Author’s Note for the story I saw that theory in (Sacrifices by Kimberly T; it’s on both FFN and AO3):
And yes, the foot-binding is drawn from Real Life examples; it was widely practiced in China, which is actually where the story of Cinderella originated. I double-dog dare you all to Google on ‘foot binding’ for pictures and video clips; just don’t do it right after eating. I have no idea how those feet were considered erotic, but they were; men wrote poems praising the beauty of what they called the ‘lotus foot’, and a Qing Dynasty sex manual listed 48 different ways of playing with a woman’s bound feet. And in real life as opposed to fiction, there were no decrees restricting the practice to only wealthy families, where the traditions started. Over the centuries the custom spread to the remote and rural areas of China until even the poorest mothers brought in aunties and village elders to bind their daughters’ feet (and at the hands of amateurs, the death rate increased; some estimate that one in ten girls died from it.) An entire nation thought such torture was perfectly normal, just a part of life for women. It kept them mostly in the home, because walking far or even standing for too long was painful, but that hardly mattered because a woman’s place was in the home, right?
Foot-binding isn’t practiced in China anymore, thankfully, but the practice finally died out only a few generations ago, and there are still a few elderly women walking around on horrifyingly broken feet. And other countries have practiced binding and reshaping skulls, piercing and stretching out lips, stacking rings to stretch out necks, binding corsets so tightly that they broke ribs and caused internal bleeding, silicon implants… It’s appalling what people do to themselves, and even worse to their innocent children (mostly the girls, too,) in the name of beauty and fashion.
For those of you wondering what Toph’s life would have been like if she hadn’t eavesdropped on that conversation and had been forced to undergo the foot-binding, I urge you to read “Life Bound” by clockworkchaos; it’s powerful, and haunting.
Audrey
June 10, 2012 at 7:28 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
That’s a very cool author’s note. Perhaps I’ll have to check the story out.
somariel
June 11, 2012 at 4:48 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It’s a great story, although I will give you a heads-up that it evolves from Maiko and Kataang to Zutara. That author’s note is from the bottom of the most recent chapter (Chapter 8), which is where foot-binding gets discussed.
Audrey
June 11, 2012 at 6:40 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I don’t mind pairings evolving so long as they actually evolve and aren’t ripped apart because an author hates someone in the canon pairing (typically the girl, which very much annoys me). Thanks for the head’s up!
somariel
June 12, 2012 at 6:49 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Kimberly T treats everyone with respect and even brings up some very good points about issues that Aang and Katara are going to have to work out between them for a successful relationship.
As for how she feels about Maiko vs. Zutara, this is from the opening Author’s Note for Chapter 8:
But actually I don’t fit the category of “diehard Zutarian”, since I have several Maiko fics bookmarked/on my Favorites list, and I think it is possible for Mai and Zuko to stay in character and still have a good long-lasting relationship; to be content and sometimes even happy with each other. And for the folks who like B&D or S&M relationships—I don’t understand the attraction of that stuff at all, but we’ve got a wide world with many weird corners to it—anyway, Mai would definitely make a much more appropriate B&D or S&M partner for Zuko than Katara. (Please, folks, take the knife-girl instead.) But with all their many similarities and their many complementing differences, the way they can truly fit together like yin and yang, I do think Zuko and Katara can be even happier together.
But having said that: I’d like to assure everyone that Mai’s death in this story wasn’t purely a “Die for our Ship” death. I don’t want to give everything away now, but… Mai is going to be quite important to a very Serious Conflict much later on. A conflict in which the first move was made in the course of the canon series…
luunyscarlet
June 8, 2012 at 1:19 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Yeah, foot-binding is pretty nasty. There doesn’t seem to be any hints that it exists in the Avatar world but that might be beause AtLA IS a children’s cartoon, after all.
It will always be my headcanon that it was a wide-spread practice in Kyoshi’s time. She escaped it, either because her parents disliked it or because they thought an earthbending daughter would be more useful to them with her feet intact. She always thought foot-binding was horrible and when she was known to be the Avatar, she started the “Big Feet Are Beautiful” campaign. There was a lot of resistance to it, but foot-binding got slowly phased out and Kyoshi lived to see the fashion completely gone.
Audrey
June 10, 2012 at 7:32 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It’s always fun to hear other bits of people’s headcanon, and this one made me smile. Yet more proof of Kyoshi’s uncontested awesomeness.
CaitieCat
June 5, 2012 at 7:03 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I wondered about the hand thing too (why not just use her amazing feet?), but I was talking to a friend who is blind recently, and she pointed out that it made perfect sense to her: hands are MUCH more sensitive than feet. So she’s either/both touching the ground with her hand to get better sensitivity for the tricky task (like she does when truthtelling, note), and/or adding a third point for better and quicker triangulation or confirmation of what her amazing-but-not-as-sensitive-as-hands feet are saying.
It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t come immediately to us because we don’t rely on touch as much, but my friend pointed out that she can’t read Braille with her toes, but she can read faster than I can with her fingers (and I’m pretty quick!).
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they consulted a person who is blind for the show, to get the little bits and pieces right. They did with everything else, it’d be more surprising if they hadn’t.
Also, more recent Korra! OMG AWESOME! But not Ep 9 or later, because I won’t get those for at least 10 days…:(
I totally love this episode, it’s one of my favourite in the series. Katara’s bully beatdown was hilarious, for sure, but my thought was “OMG waterbending in public much? way to hide!” Master Yu does turn out to be a pretty good earthbender, which we see later on in “The Desert”, I think it is.
As a parent myself, I have to say I totally understand Toph’s parents being opposed to her going off with the Avatar. She’s been totally sheltered, has no concept of public interaction at all, and from there the mental conversation goes:
“…and you folks want to take her adventuring?
Without any adults at all?
And with the specific goal of going into danger by taking on the FIRELORD?
AND YOU’RE HUNTED BY THE FIRE NATION NOW?
AND THE CROWN PRINCESS IS CHASING YOU ON GIANT SALAMANDERS WITH HER LETHAL FRIENDS AMONG WHOM IS ONE WHO COULD TAKE AWAY YOUR ONLY DEFENCE?
ARE YOU FREAKING INSANE?!?!?!?! GUARDS!!
H. Torrance Griffin
June 6, 2012 at 2:26 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I get how a good parent would be leery of the whole ‘Run off to take down the Fire Lord’ thing, but (to crib from TVTropes) a good parent confronted with that level of evidence that his daughter is a freakishly powerful earthbending genius would fire the twit of an instructor who had no clue of her capabilities and assign a few seeing-eye-maidservants. A politically savvy one would also try to set up discreet instruction for the Avatar in case the whole ‘save the world’ bit works out for the sake of a useful political tie.
Lock the kid down harder? Not a good parent. I would give a pass on the bounty hunters if one of them were not the guy who managed to kidnap her less than a day ago.
Audrey
June 6, 2012 at 9:49 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Welcome to the rewatch! Now that I’ve approved your first comment, any future comments you make should skip the moderation queue so you can join in the conversation straight away.
Firing Master Yu would have been in everyone’s best interests, but apparently Toph’s dad can’t be bothered to find a new lacky to do his bidding. I like the idea of seeing-eye-maidservants, especially if we coupled it with CaitieCat’s suggestion that her parents should have sent at least a guard with her on her adventure. I’m always fond of lady bodyguards in stories.
Put in that light, hiring Xin Fu seems like an exceptionally crazy and stupid thing to do. Then again, he has an excellent track record for finding her and dragging her places she does not wish to go?
Audrey
June 6, 2012 at 8:54 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
In retrospect, that also makes sense to me. And I love the idea of her triangulating, especially since she’s having several people attack her and Aang at the same time. I suppose I can accept that answer, though she doesn’t have to do it when she’s fighting all the same people in the arena. Hmm.
Your mental conversation makes a lot more sense than what happened with her dad. He doesn’t address any of those points–and if he had, maybe I’d cut him more slack. He just continues to harp on how Toph is helpless in complete contradiction to what he saw actually going down.
CaitieCat
June 5, 2012 at 7:14 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Thinking about it a bit, y’know what would have helped Toph’s parents? Sending along at least one adult. Maybe the smallest, toughest guard they have, so Appa doesn’t get too overburdened, but even one would go a long way to making them feel a little better.
They could have made a joke out of how not in-control he was at various points, maybe even ditched him quickly and made a joke of him chasing them, occasionally bumping into the various parties also doing so, all kinds of fun.
Because one of the things I hate most about when kids are heroes is that they’re almost always either orphans or kids who ran away from awful parents (as in, all of our Gaang, Harry Potter – Hermione being a notable and wonderful exception, except when she effectively orphans herself, and Ron getting to stay that way, all sorts of other kid-lit).
Kids from good, living parents don’t adventure, apparently.
One of the thing I’m aiming at in my own writing is bridging that gap, because I think it’s possible to find ways and situations in which a parent – a good parent – could be convinced to allow their amazingly-talented child to go adventuring, and I’d like to see that story start happening more, that concept be investigated. We allow our kids (those who have them) to do things like go to scouting camps, and that sort of thing. With the world on the line, it could be possible for a good parent to say, “Okay, but you write me EVERY FREAKING DAY, you get that? Here’s an enormous stack of pre-stamped envelopes, from every postal system in the world.” Or whatever. I just think we don’t always have to take the lazy/easy way out, by traumatizing our young heroes with the unwilling loss / abusiveness of their parents.
The world that I’m building – an alt-history Soviet/Tsarist standoff (a la the Koreas) in a steam locomotive era (1920-1950, given slower tech advance with fewer large wars) – will lend itself nicely to all sorts of different storylines, and one of the ones I have in mind is an adventure in Africa, involving a group of young teens. The characterization for that one is where I’m starting to vary that “Hero Kids Must Be Orphans or Abuse Victims” thing.
Audrey
June 6, 2012 at 9:27 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Sending a bodyguard along with their daughter would have been awesome. I would have loved that more than having Xin Fu and Master Yu tail after them and being vaguely (and mostly ineffectually) menacing.
I’m also tired of the literal orphans or the orphans by choice being the only ones that get to go adventuring. Ron wasn’t orphaned, but we didn’t see his parents much–I think his ever-present siblings made up for some of that, though. Yay for having a kid that goes on adventures and also has siblings!
Your story sounds like a lot of fun! I think it’s neat that you’re looking to vary the parental neglect/death for your heroes, and I hope that you can find a good, reasonable explanation why a parent would let a child go off adventuring without them, especially when the stakes are high.
CaitieCat
June 5, 2012 at 7:25 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Oh, also (sick of me yet?) we totally see Sokka’s bag again, and I adore him in this episode particularly. One for being such a giddy shopper, two for accessorizing (“it matches the belt!”), and three for being quietly and tauntingly proud of his awesome younger sister, without the need to one-up her or bring her down for being more powerful than he is.
The permanence of objects and places in this series is really great. The world changes around our Gaang, and we see that it does. They lose things, and have to replace them. Appa leaves a footprint that Momo sleeps in. The volcano defence in the Fortuneteller leaves a permanent stone wave all around the town, which we see again later. Things they pick up now become important later: Katara hands over the waterbending scroll to get into the Library. Katara’s canteen and the Spirit water. Zuko’s earth-kingdom knife. Pai sho tiles. When Aang’s glider is torched, he doesn’t get a new one until the Mechanist makes him one that Teo gives him.
It is, again, superb worldbuilding on their part: they create a world inhabited by people and places and things that move and are moved as the story goes along. It makes everything so much more real, in such a tiny way. They’re doing it again in Korra, too.
I swear I would watch “The Shanghai Phone Directory”, as animated by Bryan and Mike.
Audrey
June 6, 2012 at 9:44 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
(Nope!) Thanks for letting me know about the bag! I’m not so good of keeping track of objects unless they’re plot points, so I’m glad that other people have a better mind of such things. Sokka was adorable in this episode, especially when he was busy being The Boulder’s fanboy. I really enjoyed his comedy here because it wasn’t at his expense.
I’ve been consistently impressed with the worldbuilding of this series, and LoK, too. I might not watch an animated version of a phone directory, but I’m definitely going to look forward to any other series they produce in the future. I kind of want them to do yet more things in this world after Korra, but I’d also love to see what they’d do with a brand new world, too.
Pam
June 6, 2012 at 11:42 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
TOPHTOPHTOPHTOPHTOPHTOPHTOPHTOPHTOPHTOPH!!!!!!!!!
Meghan and I haven’t actually re-watched the episode yet, but I don’t know when we’ll get a chance so I went ahead and read your write up. It was awesome. I don’t have anything productive to add at this time, but that may change once I watch the episode again.