This seems like it’s meant to be a diss, but truthfully how would shooting fire at a rock coming at you result in anything than a hot rock coming at you?
I remember making an Earthbender OC as a kid who’s whole shtick was that he floated boulders around his head, broke them into smaller stone, and then fired them like drones. Ironically, this is just about the only way for an Earthbender to defeat Toph, purely by nature of “She can’t actually see it”
Canonically, Toph can sense floating earth, her powers extend to that. Floating things that aren't earth are invisible but there's basically no way for an earthbender to catch her off guard
Does this mean Toph is super weak against waterbenders who can levitate a circle of water and blast her with ice chunks she can't detect? This maneuver is a very popular one for waterbenders to use by the way (Kya does it in her fight against Zaheer for example).
Toph can sense how her opponent’s body moves, and bending is very good at correlating a user’s movement with the effect they produce.
Even without that, which I’m not actually 100% on, she can definitely sense your stance since feet touch the earth. Anything that relies on footwork, like most bending, is more or less predictable from that.
Well, waterbenders can also raise themselves on a water tornado. Sure, Toph can probably still sense their position, but she probably can't read the movements of their body through the water spiral.
I feel that Toph actually has a terrible matchup against any decent waterbender with access to a supply of water. It's not like she's fought any waterbenders seriously in the show other than the friendly sparring match with Katara, right?
Also, Ming Hua is a psychic waterbender, so Toph would lose instantly to her if she has any supply of water, right?
This is all true ppl just don't like the answer bc Toph is the GOAT, but these kind of matchup checks are part of what makes the magic system so interesting. Except fire which is so ass - but my headcanon is that this is a metaphor for success using violence coming down to what you will do rather than what you can do. We see with Aang directly that fire can hurt people so easily it happens on accident, so of course those people can cause more damage with less deliberate effort
Can't she just sense the floating pieces of earth? In the same way she "sees" with vibrations through earth? Since they affect objects through some force, doesn't that movement of that object cause some perturbation in that earth-energy field?
She doesn't see floating rocks the same way as she does things on the ground, its a different application of earth bending, but one every earth bender does to a degree.
The following is fan theory, but I think that is the base from which she developed her earth-sight ability. Train of logic being "I can sense rocks being bent, but what is the ground other than a big rock? If I bend that just a tiny bit, I should be able to sense it. Wait, I don't even need to bend it of I'm touching it to sense things on it."
It’s the same thing. The way she sees movement of things on the ground and the way she sees floating rocks are both her ability to sense earth. The way she sees floating rock is the same way she sees the ground, she can “feel” the earth with her earth bending. Her seismic sense is the same thing too. She can feel the earth moving ever so slightly in response to the things on top of it, and through those movements, she can tell what’s on the earth and how it’s moving. This works whether or not the earth she’s sensing is connected to the ground or not.
Honestly I like this far more than hitting a rock with fire and it just fucking exploding. Like, if the fire nation was using fire as small jets to dodge quickly that'd be cool as fuck and I could believe Earth benders might not do good against that. In all other scenarios, Earth beats fire ez. Fire ain't doing shit to a rock in any useful amount of time.
tbf the fire in avatar seems to be a type of compressed energy than true flames. also explains why firebenders can generate and redirect lightning, it’s another form of energy manipulation. also explains how firebenders can control heat sources other than fire, like sozin cooling down a volcano. some firebenders, like rangi, can just create shockwaves without much flame.
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u/LilyKarinss Least delusional Azulaang shipper 🔥 Jun 04 '25