@runephoenix6769 replied to your post “Legend of Korra was a rushed money grab!”
Yeah. I always thought it odd that Toph, the girl who hates rules, becomes the one who enforces them???? She even let her kids do as they pleased. Sokka as a mechanic makes sense. But Toph??
Well personally, I still think that Suyin is Sokka’s baby. So who knows...
But aside from that, I think Toph being a teacher/mechanist makes sense.
On one hand, of course Toph would get a cult following from other earthbenders, so whether she liked it or not, she’d end up a teacher again.
But the question then becomes, what happens to the revolutionaries when the revolution succeeds. She overthrew a government and spent her childhood beating up grown men. On that alone, she may be drawn to a position like law enforcement as an adult, but everything we knew about her was that she rejected society and its rules. Even the rules of earth bending.
I think that Toph would spend a few years lowkey fascinated by her cult following, working with the gaang as necessary to make sure the world stays on its path to peace, but eventually just looking for ways to recapture the magic and the innovation and the excitement of the life she led as a child.
Enter Toph’s much deserved closure with her parents (seriously... she was the only member of the gaang to not get closure with estranged [and alive] family members, and that’s not the only time Toph’s character was canonly disrespected and underserved by the writers).
We know that The Beifong’s were one of the richest families in the entire, gigantic Earth Kingdom. It would be nothing for them to own some sort of manufacturing plant. And then this was confirmed in the The Rift comic arc with Toph’s father being revealed as the part owner of the Earthen Fire Refinery.
Once Toph gets her resolution to the rift between her and her parents, it would only make logical sense for Toph to get hooked by these metal machines with a thousand moving parts, all of which she can individually feel and upgrade in seconds.
Then... where Legend of Korra enters with a conversation of inequality between benders and nonbenders, you’ve actually tied into this story line a clear example of how even when nonbenders try to level the playing field with benders, they still can’t get ahead because how do their machines keep up with those that can be majorly upgraded several times a day by someone who just has to twitch a finger.
Boom, you’ve tied in the old story in a logical way, addressed plot holes, avoided your beloved character being a glaring contradiction, and used this to actually give more than just “My mom was killed by a firebender” to support the claim that nonbenders are oppressed (because for some unknown reason Asami never once talked to Korra about what it’s actually like to be nonbender in a world of benders IN THE SEASON ABOUT NONBENDER OPPRESSION).
