Toph Beifong

Toph Beifong is one of the most powerful earthbending masters of her time and the discoverer of metalbending. Toph was ridiculed as a child for being blind, and developed a toughness and resiliency from growing up not feeling accepted.She becomes famous as the Blind Bandit and wins many underground earthbending tournaments using her unique fighting style. Aang, the Avatar, seeks her out after having a vision that she would become his earthbending teacher. Although it takes some convincing, Toph eventually joins with Aang and his friends and becomes his earthbending teacher, partly out of a desire to escape her controlling parents.Background: She is the only child of Poppy and Lao Beifong, who thought she needed to be sheltered and cared for because of her blindness. They hid her existence from the rest of the world, but still expected her to act like the nobility she was, which caused her to resent her parents.When she was six years old, Toph ran away from home and encountered badgermoles in a cave. She understood the animals because they are also blind earthbenders. From them, she learned to see by using her earthbending to sense vibrations in the earth, and in the course of doing so also strengthened her sense of hearing.Her parents hired the earthbending teacher Master Yu to develop her skills, not knowing she was already a master. Show less «