>>122274279My favorite body for adult Toph is both strongfat and tall as fuck. I admittedly do this for somewhat fetishistic reasons, but I also think it can be justified in a storytelling sense. I have two reasons:
1. It makes a certain amount of sense given what we see of other powerful earthbenders. Every other elite earthbender in ATLA is a behemoth: they are always quite tall and they are always massively built. Bumi, the Boulder, Xin Fu, all of them are massively built. There's even precedent for powerful earthbenders being on the fatter side with Fire Nation Fred and the Hippo. The only elite, high-level earthbender we ever see who's on the smaller side is Toph.
2. This reason is directly related to reason one. The entire REASON Toph is so small, and so petite, is that Bryke and Ehasz wanted her to be ironic. They wanted to play up the dramatic irony of the most powerful earthbender of them all being a short, tiny, petite little girl. So Toph's character, and her character design, have included an element of irony from the very beginning.
But if that's so, then there's good justification for infusing her adult character design with an element of irony, too. And what would be more ironic than the smallest member of the Gaang growing into the biggest member? Imagine Toph being taller AND wider than anyone else in the Gaang as an adult. I love the idea of her towering over adult Zuko, Sokka, and Aang, and of her shouldering them all out of the way during this or that event with her strength and girth. I like the idea of her winding up as this big girthy mammoth of a woman, because it keeps up the element of irony that was present in her character design from the beginning.
