Why I ship Sokka with Toph 💙🫶🏻💚
(I think Yue’s his perfect match and will post about that later, but what’s rough is she turned into the moon.)
Used to be: Toph liked him and I felt bad for her.
Now: One of Sokka’s primary character arcs is growing out of his misogyny. When he travels the world, he sees with his own eyes that his gender roles actually aren’t the natural order of things, and his sister isn't "weird" for not conforming to gender stereotypes.
(A metaphor for how education opens people’s minds and helps them discover their gifts and talents and how they are needed in the world, in his case, engineering.)
Suki was the first girl to open up his mind. However, Sokka never had formal training. He wasn't exactly a soldier. Not to say she wasn't an incredible warrior, but defeating Sokka wasn't exactly an incredible challenge. I think that that episode humbled him in two ways: he realized (1) he didn't know how to fight, and (2) girls can fight, sometimes better than him.
Sokka's in his element, watching "guys chucking rocks at each other." Katara's uninterested, even though she's a fighter. It's a "guy" thing, guys fighting, guys dominating, it's "guy time."
She takes out The Boulder without breaking a sweat.
She single-handedly takes out every single earthbender all at once.
She's everything Sokka wanted to be and more.
Then he gets to know her.
When she's forced to be sheltered and act helpless, she fights to make her own way and control her own life.
She values efficiency over feelings (to a fault, but nonetheless, it's contrary to what Sokka would expect from a girl).
Sokka's an engineer, he likes challenges. And Toph is a challenge. She's challenges his schema of gender roles. And she likes challenges, too, and annihilates every single challenge that comes her way: Earth Rumble Six, escaping her cage of a home, figuring out how Azula was tracking them, picking up and leaving when Aang blames her and yells at her, holding up THE ENTIRE LIBRARY when Wan Shi Tong was sinking it, getting them ferry tickets, lie detecting, the Dai Li, metalbending.
(Also, she bickers with Katara, which Sokka very much enjoys).
And the pièce de résistance: she's sarcastic.
Sarcasm is Sokka's love language.
He doesn't make moves on her, and it's something worth speculating about. Maybe he thinks she's too young. Maybe he's so impressed by her that he doesn't know where to begin with her. Maybe he didn't want any kind of romantic dynamic in Team Avatar (understandable when it was just the four of them). Maybe he was scared it'd encourage Aang to flirt with Katara. Maybe he tried, and Toph was abrasive, not understanding what he was doing or not sure how to respond, and so he stopped trying.
And we all know Toph loves Sokka.
She's fierce. She's strong. She's fearless. She's bold. But she's still a very, very sheltered young girl.
Earth Rumble Six knew The Blind Bandit, but no one knew Toph.
Maybe he's the first teenage boy she ever met. His voice is deeper, but not as deep as The Boulder's or her dad's. He's young, but still older and more mature than her.
Every character has a yin-yang balance. Aang is a peacemaker but defends Appa with aggression. Katara wants peace, but will defend her values (and mother) with aggression. Sokka is manly, but loves shopping (and his bag matches his belt).
And Toph is the greatest earthbender in the world, but she’s also a young blind girl. She’s strong and independent, but she likes having someone take care of her when she's out of her element. Literally.
She's completely in love with her role as a damsel in distress.
Iroh opened her up to helping others, seeing their needs and responding to them, and letting herself be helped in return. Needing help doesn’t mean you’re helpless, it means you’re human.
When she was sinking, she had no choice but to cry and beg for help. That was the one situation where she was completely helpless. Her resentment against her parents didn't matter anymore. Even if her parents were there, she would've accepted their help. What branch do we refuse when we are sinking?
There's nothing wrong with needing rescued (we all do at some point), or feeling loved when you are rescued.
Maybe she was jealous of Suki, who brought out a romantic side of Sokka that Toph had never seen before (and liked).
I honestly think Suki told Sokka about the interaction because look at his face here:
Yes, it could be a number of other things, but it definitely does look like the face of a guy who's talking to a girl who he knows likes him.
Except maybe remember how air and earth are opposite elements? Toph was face to face with the original source of her opposite element. Flying in the air was the exact opposite of her element, so Sokka “grounded” her.
Also, back to Sokka--let's be real, he falls in love with every girl he meets--even his enemies.
No matter how much he hates the Fire Nation, he can't resist a pretty girl.
And we know Toph is pretty inside and out.
I wish the fillers leading up to the invasion in Book 3 focused more on Toph and Sokka (but it didn't because it would have taken away from Azula telling him about Suki in prison-- and that shows Sokka's yin-yang character: he's strategic and logical, but his love for Suki made him impulsive and his emotions took over).
Still, I think his feelings for Toph would be stronger, since he spent more time with her and knew her better. (“You Belong With Me” is their ship song 💕❤️)
She had his respect, but she was also very vulnerable at times, and when she was, he was happy to protect her.
Look at him rushing to shield her.
Look at his face as he’s protecting her.
He wants to protect women, which is a good thing. When he’s immature, he confuses it with the notion that women are weak. In reality, it’s not that women are weak, it’s that men should use their strength to protect others.
With Toph, she’s the strongest, but she can be the weakest in some situations. And that’s when Sokka shines. He loves showing his strength when the greatest earthbender in the world needs help from him.
And she loves when she can be the greatest earthbender in the world, *and* a blind girl who needs help.
It’s not an either-or, it’s a both-and. It’s yin and yang.
