[S2E6] The Blind Bandit
Aang searches for an earthbending teacher with little success. While at an earthbending tournament, he finds a talented blind earthbender girl named Toph, whom he had seen in a vision in the swamp. Unable to leave her overprotective parents, she cannot become Aang's instructor and, although she saves Aang after he is kidnapped, is forbidden from fighting any longer. To escape her plight, she runs away from home and joins the group, assuming her role as Aang's tutor.
[S2E6] The Blind Bandit
As the Blind Bandit is escorted to the ring, the crowd cheers. Aang and his friends realize the champion is nothing more than a little blind girl, causing The Boulder to state his reservations about fighting her. The Blind Bandit taunts him, saying it sounds as if he is scared. The Boulder's reservations vanish, and he prepares to attack her. She taunts him again, calling him "The Pebble", and laughs to herself. As she laughs, Aang realizes she is the laughing girl from the vision he had in the swamp.
Later, Sokka, Katara, and Aang are getting ready for bed as guests of Toph's family. Aang, in his room, is surprised by the sudden appearance of Toph; as Aang jumps into a defensive stance, she calls a truce. The two of them walk the grounds of her family's estate while she explains to him that even though she was born blind, she had never had a problem seeing, due to earthbending. She "sees" wih her feet, knowing where everything is, using trees and ants as examples. Aang is amazed, but Toph claims that her parents do not understand, often treating her as hopeless. Toph envies Aang's carefree life, but knows she has commitments to her family that prevent her from leaving to join him. Suddenly, she says that the two are being ambushed by Xin Fu and his wrestlers: The Boulder, The Hippo, Fire Nation Man, The Gopher, The Gecko, and the Headhunter. Cages are dropped on them and they are captured. A ransom note is left demanding five hundred gold pieces for the safe return of their daughter. Toph's father enlists Master Yu's help, and Sokka and Katara come along as well.
They arrive at the arena with the ransom, and Toph is released. When Katara asks about Aang, Xin Fu states that he plans to turn the Avatar over to the Fire Nation for a reward. He is flanked by all the wrestlers, who threaten them as they leave. Katara runs after Toph as she leaves, asking for her assistance. Her father protests, saying Toph is blind, tiny, helpless and fragile, which causes Toph to reject her father and assist them. Toph heads back into the arena and creates a spike in front of the wrestlers who are trying to leave, demanding Aang's release. The earthbenders begin to attack, and Toph tells Sokka and Katara to leave them to her. Toph defeats each opponent almost effortlessly, which amazes and shocks Lao and Master Yu. Finally, Toph faces off against Xin Fu and sends him flying into the wall, prompting Master Yu to declare her to be "the greatest earthbender [he has] ever seen!"
As they prepare to leave on Appa, Toph comes running up, telling them her father has changed his mind. Toph knocks Aang into the air as payback for knocking her off the stage after the championship battle; he lands in a tree. Toph requests the championship belt back, and Sokka, forgetting that Toph is blind, tosses it down to her. The belt hits her on the head, and she falls to the ground. Sokka sheepishly apologizes as Aang falls out of the tree.
Aang searches for an earthbending teacher with little success. While at an earthbending tournament, he finds a talented blind earthbender girl named Toph, whom he had seen in a vision in the swamp. Unable to leave her overprotective parents, she cannot become Aang's instructor and, although she saves Aang after he is kidnapped, is forbidden from fighting any longer. To escape her plight, she runs away from home and joins the group, assuming her role as Aang's tutor.
Jacob Redmon (@jkredmon) feels pretty blind recapping Book 2 Episode 6 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Blind Bandit, without Zak. Luckily, Navi is there to bring an expert Zak impression, stories about John Cena, and her Blue belt background. Together they recap the episode and so much more.
While searching for an earthbender who can teach Aang earthbending, the kids stumble upon an underground earthbending tournament. There they find Toph, a small blind girl who holds the championship belt. Aang desperately wants Toph to be his teacher, but complications with her family make it seem like an impossibility.
In search for an earthbending teacher for Aang, the kids go to an underground earthbending tournament called Earth Rumble 6. There they meet Toph (aka the Blind Bandit), a blind, but powerful earthbending girl. After seeing her unique style of earthbending, Aang wants Toph to become his teacher, but they find out Toph has hardships of her own. Will Aang manage to convince Toph, or will he be left without an earthbending teacher?
When Toph's parents paid the ransom to successfully free their daughter, Sokka and Katara wanted to free Aang as well, but were thwarted in their attempt by the band of wrestlers, who wanted to collect the bounty from the Fire Nation for capturing the Avatar. However, as they left the ring, Toph challenged The Boulder and the other fighters, threatening to beat them all again in an earthbending battle in case they refused to release Aang, a comment to which The Boulder took issue. Engulfing the arena in a dust cloud, Toph engaged in a battle with all the wrestlers at once and managed to successfully take out every single one of them. At one point, The Boulder, alongside The Hippo and the Headhunter, confronted Toph. Tag teaming, the three fighters charged at the blind earthbending girl. However, by shifting the ground on which they all stood, Toph was able to defeat them with ease, knocking them out cold.
Toph is recognized as a prodigy[1] of earthbending, which is the ability to telekinetically manipulate, reshape and control stone, sand, dirt, and, later, metal. Because she was born blind, and her parents believed that her condition limited her capacity to learn and use the skill safely, they had a tutor teach her only basic earthbending. She later learned more advanced earthbending secretly from the badgermoles (fictional blind creatures that naturally earthbend). She eventually becomes the first person to develop the ability to "bend" metal as well. Toph has been blind since birth, but from her observations of badgermoles, she had learned to locate objects and their movements by sensing their vibrations in the earth around her.
Being blind, Toph's mechanoreceptors and other senses are hyper-sensitive. By grounding herself barefoot, Toph can "see" and "feel" even the most minute seismic vibrations in the earth, be it the presence of trees or the march of ants several meters away, an earthbending technique dubbed the "seismic sense". Toph has acquired an acute sense of hearing, enabling her to recognize people by their voices, discern a person's physical appearance by sound, overhear distant conversations,[28] and sense falsehood via the individual's subtle breathing patterns, heartbeat, and physical reactions.[29] After taking residence in the Foggy Swamp, Toph claimed her heightened senses has expanded to the point of being fine-tuned via the spirit vines with events around the world.
Toph is disadvantaged against opponents who require minimal contact with the ground and vulnerable to any attacks initiated in mid-air.[7] Terrain that impairs Toph's ability to sense vibrations also hinders her abilities; she has some difficulty with sand, which constantly lacks solidity, preventing her from accurately "feeling" her surroundings.[30] Because Toph relies on sensation in her feet to perform earthbending, she becomes truly "blind" if the soles of her feet are damaged, as shown when Zuko accidentally burns her feet. Although, she can feel the vibrations of the earth with her hands to some degree, they are not nearly as sensitive as her feet. Her affinity with the earth is further illustrated in that Toph does not know how to swim and expresses an aversion to flying.[31]
She immediately drew sympathy from the audience with her story of growing up blind, but also earned their immediate admiration thanks to her fierce, direct and belligerent personality that added a new dynamic to the gang and quickly made her a fan favourite.
The contrast between the earthbending champion that Toph is and the tiny, helpless, blind girl that her parents believe her to be does make for a complex portrayal of a disabled character. It could be argued that the merging of different disability myths has the effect of negating their overall impact, as each additional myth serves to add complexity and depth to the character, making her more than the one-dimensional figure the myth states a disabled character or person to be. Portraying Toph as simultaneously someone in need of charity, as well as enforced isolation, while also showing her to clearly be overcoming her disability via a special skill leads to an undercutting of each of these myths. This has the overall effect of making Toph much more than any one type of stereotypically disabled person, instead showing her as complex individual who also happens to have a disability.
I think your second question is something many nondisabled people struggle with when trying to better understand disabilities. When people are not educated on disabilities, it can be difficult to not view things through an ableist lens. The man fighting Toph does seem to have an ableist mindset, but I do not think this makes him a bad person. Society has taught nondisabled people that they are superior to people with disabilities. This man is contemplating the fact that he is about to fight a young, blind girl, so he is also combating stereotypes associated with gender, age, and disability. I do not blame the man for having his opinions, I just think he needs to be educated. 041b061a72