Pweada Portfolio

A sample of the reworked pokemon type system I made for N0rtist’s Stema region project. 

I understood her temperament as being like a Gryffindor - headstrong and wanting excitement, with a strong sense of justice, but a disregard for rules. This fits - she becomes Chief of Police to help Aang, and sees this merely as a platform to establish justice. I bet she always rolled her eyes at bureaucracy, but participated as police for reasons of justice.

However, conflating the Police / Law Institutions with morality and justice is a naive error that we all make. I imagine Toph as a young woman making this conflation. However, as a student of Critical Criminology, it is clear that the role of law and policing does not always relate to justice and morality. Even in modern society, the police must enforce laws that are discriminatory, unjust, or emanate from arbitrary cultural and social norms, rather than a true philosophical morality. Since Republic City in Lok is analagous to the 1920s, when Toph is 80ish, and we know that she was an established Police Cheif at age 40, I’m going to assume she was at least beginning her career at around age 30, which puts Republic city as analogous to a 1870s society. Add to this the fact that Republic City is seemingly the first non monarchical, non feudal society in the world, and so whomever made the laws, or wrote the constitution had no precedent.

So, I think its safe to assume that the legislation in Republic City probably suffered from many of the same,  systemic arbitrary and unjust laws as did those societies at the time. And as Police Chief Toph must enforce the laws.

This necessarily must have created many interesting moments for Toph. I imagine she must have come across many children who are exactly like her 10 year old self, breaking rules not by malice, or even those who break rules by necessity, or in the pursuit of justice. Would she charge them? Toph ran away from her parent,s and was then pursued by Master Yu and Xin Fu. In the era of Republic City, a runaway noble child would be pursued and retrieved by the police, surely. And so i wonder how Toph would feel, and what decision would she make if she was duty bound to retrieve a child under that circumstance.

I wonder about drugs and republic City. People being criminalized and incarcerated for possessing or using recreational drugs is the first thing I think of as an example of something that is defined as a crime, but is not immoral. Would Toph confiscate Cactus Juice from citizens who merely want to use it recreationaly?

We know of 1 instance where Tophs personal justice conflicted with the legal bureaucracy she finds herself at the head at: Suyins juvenile delinquency. We see in that instance she perverted the course of justice (as defined by the system at the time), and instead relocated Su Yin away from the criminogenic environment, to a family structure that would give her more care. Which I would argue is the far more just thing to do, when faced with a 16 year old child who was slowly being drawn into gang culture, because she was bored, and unstimulated.

So heres my head-cannon: as Chief of Police Toph just totally ignored 60% of the Laws as written on a daily basis. She would ignore 'crimes' that harm no one, or deal with petty delinquency in her own way. Ironically, that kind of makes her a terrible person to lead the bureaucracy since she disregards it all the time. But I think shes pragmatic - she will use force to protect people, and disregard bureaucratic legal structures.

I bet Aang, Katara and Sokka knew this, and just tried to gently advise her to maybe adhere to some of the laws. I think the Council, or whatever form of governance RC had at the time, vaguely knew about Toph being a lose cannon, but they let her stay, as a symbol of the cities power, and the celebrity and mysticism surrounded with her being the first and most accomplished metal-bender.