Every time I read the “Toph is a bad example of a disabled character because of her bending.” I want to Physically leap over a table and then flip that table because NO!!!! You do not understand!!!
Toph’s bending is assistive technology!!! It’s a medical aid!!!!!
Toph’s bending allows her to full access her world the same way my mobility aids do, or my medication does. There are times when due to inaccessible surroundings that her aids are rendered harder or impossible to use. Not unlike my own greatest enemy, stairs. However, when she is fully accommodated she’s able to be just as successful and thrive just as much as an able-bodied person albeit differently. Which is the ultimate goal of assistive technology.
Toph’s parents also tried to limit her bending because they saw her as dependent upon them, which is a great example of how society denies disabled people access to assistive technology.
A lot of people have a weird (ableist) assumption that if you show a disabled person being in any way competent, like Edward Elric, Solid Snake, Bentley, Darth Vader or Hiccup, it somehow negates the fact they’re actually disabled
Toph and Edward Elric really work for me because I never once felt like the writers forgot they were disabled. Edward is constantly repairing his prosthetics. Toph can’t read or use her aids on certain surfaces. And these aren’t things that show up once and then never again - they’re constantly referenced through the shows.
Particularly love the scene atop the airship where Toph is rendered thoroughly blind by her standing on an unbendable surface, and Sokka offers her his arm for stability.
It’s so subtle but illustrates how her friends support Toph without treating her as helpless.
Tolkien started rewriting the Hobbit in the style of LotR, but what I really want is the Silmarillion in the style of the Hobbit.
In a hole in the fabric of the universe there lived a god.
Now, this was not one of those minor gods of bedtime stories or petty wars for heaven; this was the One God, all-loving and all-knowing, who created the world – only he hadn’t created the world just yet, which is why he was sitting in a hole in the fabric of the universe.
