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Headscratchers pertaining to new bending and benders in general in The Legend of Korra. Return to the index for more.

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     Slightly useless jails 
  • So we have earthbenders, and some of them can metalbend. And the criminal ones end up in a cell...with metal...bars. How does this make sense? Lin breaks her debended guards out of jail easily once she shows up, and Bolin could've broken him and Mako out of jail if he knew metalbending. Also, how many of these cells had stone in them? The jail in the Earth Kingdom's royal dungeon! If 1 in 100 earthbenders can metalbend, how is there not a riot/breakout every week?
    • Actually the royal dungeons are encased in metal to prevent earthbending and i'm sure that the Dai Li have specialized prisons for metalbenders.
    • In the original series, Toph was thrown into a wooden cell when she was captured. In this series, the same happens to Ghazan (though we don't know if he's an actual metalbender or it was just a precaution), and Korra is bound in chains of platinum to keep her from escaping the Red Lotus. Anyway, the only people who know how to metalbend are those who were taught by Toph or her daughters, so it's limited to certain members of the Republic City police officers and the guards of Zaofu. Considering the size of the Earth Kingdom, I doubt both groups' numbers amount to 1 out of every 100 earthbenders.

     Another question about bending genetics 
  • I didn't see this in the ATLA headscratchers page, and since it relates to characters from legend of Korra, I'd thought I'd post it here. Okay. We know that bending is one part genetic and one part spiritual. We know that if, say, An Earthbender and a Waterbender had a kid, that kid would be an Earthbender, a Waterbender, or neither. We can see that in Aang's kids - a Waterbender, an Airbender, and a non-bender. So here's my question; can Kya, Aang's Waterbending child, have kids that can Airbend? I was always under the impression that the type of bending is partly determined by the culture you were born into, so what does that mean for second generation children of mixed families? Does the fact that Kya had an Air Nomad father mean that she has a chance, if only a slight one, of having an Airbender, or does the fact that she's a Waterbender mean it's impossible for her to have Airbending children? And for that matter, what about Bumi, Aang's non-bending child? We know that you don't have to be a bender to father one, so does that mean that Bumi has the exact same odds of having an air/water/non-bender as his parents? Does marrying a Waterbender decrease his chances of fathering an Airbender? What if he married a Firebender or an Earthbender (supposing he's married at all, of course)? Or to make things really crazy, suppose he married a non-bender who's parents were Earth and Firebenders. Does that mean their kids could be any element, including none of the above!?
    • Genetically speaking, a bender/non-bender would have that specific trait as the dominant one, with the other possibility being recessive. If the airbending trait is recessive, it would have to be recessive in both parents for it to manifest in the child (implicitly, this would explain Katara being the offspring of two non-benders). They can't have airbending kids, not without some serious squick.
    • I'm inclined to think that the general Bending ability is hereditary, but which Bending style a person learns is dependent on the environment. Raise a Water Tribe child with Bending talent from birth in an Air Temple, and I suspect you'd get an Airbender, not a Waterbender.
    • If it were that simple, wiping out the Air Nomads would not have been a solution to the Avatar cycle. Aang being the last Airbender is never treated as anything other than a concrete fact. If a Water Tribe couple could just bonk at an Air Temple and turn out an Airbender, it wouldn't be so serious.
    • That wasn't the point I was making. What I meant was that the Bending ability is genetic, but the Bending styles are cultural. Remember that people originally learned them from observing various animals and the Moon. It wouldn't matter if somebody was raised in an abandoned Airtemple because there'd be no-one to raise or teach the child to become an Airbender, but on the other hand, if you put a baby with Bending talent to close proximity with Skybisons from birth, they might figure out Airbending on their own.
    • It wouldn't be the environment so much as a combination of how they're raised and their own personality. It's more likely that just the ability to bend is genetic and recessive, but which element you are is a separate, dominant allele, and you need both to bend.

      So, if you have Aang and Katara's kids. Aang is an Airbender, with his bending gene bb, and his element gene Ax. Katara, as a Waterbender, has the bending gene bb, and element Wx. So they have kids, who are all going to have bb. But of the element gene, you'll have one with AW, one with Ax (Tenzin), one with Wx (Kya), and one with xx (Bumi). Alternatively, Tenzin is AW, and in that case it randomly "sides" with one or the other—turning it into AA, which would explain why all of his children are airbenders.

      Alternatively, it might be tied to the XY chromosome, so that any male children will have the father's element, while any female children will have the—wait, no. Mako and Bolin rule that out.
      • Maybe one of them is an XX male?
    • I think it has more to do with the culture and the spirituality around them rather than the actual place. If two waterbenders bonked at an airtemple and had a kid, they'd still either be a waterbender or a nonbender because they've only experienced waterbending and water tribe culture. However, if those two waterbenders bonked in the middle of the Fire Nation, and their child was consistently exposed to Fire Nation culture and surrounded by firebending (more so than their water tribe heritage), then I'd say that it's possible that that kid would end up a firebender. They couldn't create more airbenders because the genocide destroyed everything that composed the air nomads, not just the people, but their books, stories, spirituality, and everything else that made up their civilization as well.
    • Maybe, though Kori Morishita is an earthbender who grew up in a Fire Nation colony, otherwise in the Earth Kingdom, and identifies herself as a Fire Nation Citizen so she probably grew up proudly with their culture. Her mother is an earthbender, and her father is of the Fire Nation.
    • Don't forget the possibility that bending might not be a simple recessive/dominant trait, but more complicated. Most real traits are controlled by a variety of things such a poly-genetics, promotor regions and environment. Throw this all together and it might not be so easy to predict.
    • This is most likely the case, as an episode in the first series showed a set of identical twins where one was an earthbender and the other was a non-bender. Since identical twins have the same DNA, other factors are likely involved in determining bending ability.
    • Before the Air Nomads were wiped out, they were 100% Airbenders, because they were the "most spiritual" nation. What that means hasn't been explained further to my knowledge.
    • It means that Air Nomad culture is highly conducive to developing airbending capability. In practice, that appears to mean that any children of two individuals who follow Air Nomad culture, of whom at least one is an airbender, will be airbenders. For example, Tenzin is an airbender, Pema is a nonbending Air Acolyte, all three of their children are airbenders. If Tenzin had chosen Lin, you'd expect one airbender, one earthbender and one neutral (viz. Aang's kids).
    • This was shown in the comics. Each elemental bending type is a specific genetic expression (now, at least). In the comics, a child of an Earthbender mother and Fire Nation father raised explicitly as a Fire Nation citizen still came out an Earthbender. As well, there has been a new culture of "Air Acolytes" taught the ways of the Air Nomads by Aang himself, but none of them have become Airbenders. It's more likely that each type of bender was drawn to their elemental totems (Sky Bisons, Dragons, Badgermoles, and the Moon), not that just anybody could learn it.

     Why are benders so afraid of having their bending being taken away by Amon? 
  • What's the big deal? All that happens is that you won't be able to bend anymore, and yet they treat it as big as death. The procedure is probably painful or scary, but in the end how is having you're bending being taken away dangerous at all?
    • The people that bend have learned how to use it to work and fight. This is their livlihood. Imagine losing a limb. Now imagine that your job required working with that limb. Get it now?

    Changes in bending; Secret lightning? What's that? 
  • Going back 60 years lightning bending was a secret ultra dangerous tech. Only Ozai and Azula were shown to consistently being able to use it. Come present day, oh, well, even a random crime boss can do it. In fact they use whole rows of lightning benders in the power plant to generate the city's electricity. Did they discovered a cheap and safe way to do it that don't risk instant death if they don't channel it correctly or something?
    • Lightning isn't dangerous, it's difficult. You're thinking of lightning redirection, which can be fatal if done wrong.
    • I don't think lightning was ever implied to be a secret technique.
    • It was. Only three people were confirmed to be capable of it in The Last Airbender. However, nothing stays secret forever, and it only takes one teacher to let masses learn the technique.
    • Alternatively, maybe it was once illegal or taboo for anyone to generate lightning except the royal family. Before Iroh developed his secret redirection technique, lightning was a guaranteed one-shot kill ability. If there's no prohibition on non-royals using lightning in Agni Kais — and while admittedly Azula wasn't in her right mind while battling her brother, Zuko himself was counting on her blasting him with lightning — then what's to stop some ambitious quick-drawing admiral from KOing the Fire Lord in a duel using lightning if not some legal or social restriction? Before, lightning could be excused as just a really difficult technique that only top-tier benders could do, but now we know it's not. It's in fact common enough that Mako can get hired off the street to do some work at the power plan for a decent but not outrageous wage. So a legal/social restriction makes more sense pre-LoK, and by LoK's time those restrictions don't exist anymore for whatever reason. Like the United Republic having different laws and morals, or Iroh's redirection technique diminishing lightning's lethal potential, or just simple practicality in an age where electricity is widely used.
    • I don't like this explanation. It seems to me that the slightly decreased likelihood of getting assassinated by a lightning bender would not be worth the increased military power of lightning-bending troops. If lightning almost always kills the opponent in a single hit, while fire typically requires multiple hits, it seems that teaching all capable troops to lightningbend would significantly strengthen the Fire Nation's military power, allowing them to deploy few men for an even greater impact on the battle field. If Fire Nation troops could lightningbend then the Hundred Years War would have ended long before it did. Also, the Fire Lord Ozai (and I assume Sozin and Azulon) was extremely popular in the Fire Nation (because of the propaganda) and Fire Nationals are extremely patriotic. The chance of assassination by his own citizens is already low, and a clear line of succession means that a general or noble couldn't directly gain power by assassinating the Fire Lord, his successor would just take over and probably have whoever's responsible executed. It seems like whatever assassination risk there is by teaching members of the military to lightningbend could be easily counteracted by taking additional security measures, like hiring an extra bodyguard who would jump in the way of any lightningbending assassin. Why would Ozai even consider burning down an entire continent when he could just teach his military lightningbending so that they could just kill insurgents on the spot? I'm sure after enough insurgents are killed in an honestly horrifying manner, immediately and unceremoniously, eventually people would stop rebelling.
    • Zuko co-founded Republic city and the influence of fire nation technology is rampant. His expertise in lightning as well as his more peaceful mindset as well access to minds like Sokka would have gone a long way into finding more appropriate uses for it, giving civilians a reason to learn it. It's connected to the change from spiritual to scientific. Lighting as a rare art to a source of energy.
    • Just look at metalbending in comparison: it goes from exactly one user to an entire police force's worth in the same time period. Lightning is an already established subset of firebending; if metalbending can become that commonplace, so can lightning.
    • Especially considering that more people would have incentive to learn the ability as it became more needed. The power plants pay firebenders to shoot lightning into generators, and according to Mako, it's good money.
    • Think of it like basic algebra in the real world. As a society advances and the free exchange of information becomes easier, arts that used to be limited to a select few become more common place.
    • Whether or not lightning bending was ever a "secret" isn't really an issue. But... wasn't it previously implied to be so freaking difficult that it automatically signified a degree of mastery that the overwhelming majority of fire benders would never attain? If so, that it's now so easy to pick up as to be used by factory workers is a problem. The situation with metal bending is rather different, in that while the technique may have taken centuries to discover, there was never any implication that it would be particularly hard for Toph to pass on.
    • Things thought to be difficult once are not always necessarily so. Lightning, as it was taught in the Fire Nation before, came from the "wrong" teachings of using anger as strength. If the technique was refined and taught the Sun Warrior way, it would doubtless be easier to achieve the state of mind necessary to do it.
    • Things that used to be impossibly difficult became everyday matters as the society and technology developed. Once knowing how to read was practically a superpower, but now everybody is taught how to do it. It's only a matter of more focused, standardized education that allowed masters to teach large numbers of pupils for the first time, also without the traditional habit of keeping some techniques secret. And those pupils go on to teach even more people, and before you know it, what was once a secret, ultra-rare technique is available for everybody.
    • Another possibility is that NOT all firebenders can master lightning, but the teachings are there or available to the general public. Remember, in ATLA, Zuko had access to the way the technique was performed too, but was unable to control his own emotions enough to actually shoot lightning. This could be the case for regular citizens "now" as well—they might understand the theory but can't do it in practice. Mako says his job at the plant makes 'good money.' Presumably it makes good money because it's a difficult skill that not everybody CAN do, which means they'd pay extra to find firebenders skilled enough to supply electricity. Not at all unlike modern-day jobs that give employees with more experience bigger paychecks.
    • I think this makes the most sense. Mako is a pro-probender, so probably not master-level but exceptionally talented, and seems to have his emotions under control so it makes sense that he would be capable of lightningbending. If we take Mako as the baseline for a plant worker, then that would make potential job applicants somewhat of a rarity. They're skilled laborers. This would explain how he was able to get a job that pays "good money" without any sort of interview or prior powerplant experience. The power plant is always hiring capable lightningbenders.
    • One of the reasons why Lightning Bending was rare in ATLA was because the teaching of it was restricted. It was basically a secret taught only to the Fire Nation Royal Family, and jealously guarded. But at the end of ATLA, what happens? One of the world's greatest masters of Lightning Bending moves to the Earth Kingdom and sets up a tea shop in the capital city, and the taboo against teaching the technique widely probably falling by the wayside as a result of Zuko's reign (and the possibility that Iroh may well have simply decided to ignore such a taboo), and the prevalence of Lightning Bending by Korra's time would easily have been the natural consequence of Iroh deciding to freely teach it in a years immediately after the end of ATLA.
    • Also, lightning was never implied to be master level. We only saw masters using it, true, but if Zuko had no inner turmoil he would've generated it in the middle of season two and Azula he was not. Good, yes. But not on the level of the other royal family.
    • Actually, yes, lightning is very dangerous, and very difficult. Zuko never mastered it, and he was a good enough fire bender to be mentor to the Avatar, plus being part of the elite royal family. When Iroh was teaching Zuko about it, one of the conditions of being able to use it was something along the lines of ‘complete balance and peace of mind’, the slightest hesitation causing it to backfire. It is dangerous enough and difficult enough to learn that I seriously can’t comprehend the logistics of teaching a factory of workers lightning generation, and how to sustain it for any length of time.
    • Honestly, I think the OP had it right, and that a new way of Lightningbending was discovered since the previous series that's easier and safer. After all, with the more modern technology appearing, it's clear that the people of the Avatarverse have a much better understanding of how electricity works now, which makes it likely that some Firebender worked out a way of throwing out bolts of it using a scientific, easily-replicated technique, as opposed to the 'complete balance and peace of mind' thing. I'm betting that that's also why Lightningbending is considerably less impressive in this series, as a technique that deliberately bypasses the spiritual aspect of bending seems like it would be inherently weaker.
    • I like the "rage" school of firebending vs. "Sun Warrior" school idea. Lightningbending requires balance and peace of mind, which is the exact opposite of the standard firebending philosophy taught during the A:TLA era. You've been taught all your life that firebending is fueled by rage, and then right when you're at near-master-level of that, suddenly you have to pull a total 180 and firebend without rage. Damn You, Muscle Memory!! No wonder it's so hard for most people. Ozai and Azula could only do it because they were just plain gifted enough to brute-force their way past the philosophical difficulties. Presumably, by the Korra era, the Sun Warrior school of firebending had become the standard taught to all novice firebenders, making lightningbending much less of a difficult departure from the norm.

     Why don't benders learn chi-blocking? 
  • Given the threat posed by Equalist chi-blockers, one would think that at least some benders might decide it is a good idea to learn the skill themselves. Even if there is no direct way of nullifying the effects, knowing what chi-points are being targeted and knowing the hand-to-hand techniques used to attack those points should help benders defend themselves in combat. And then there is the potential of combining chi-blocking techniques with bending. Think about the combat potential, for benders fighting other benders, of targeting chi-points from a distance, striking them with a stone or a small piece of ice, for example. It would be a great equalizer for a skilled-but-weak bender, who cannot move large amounts of his/her element. Think how effective it would be in the hands of the metal-bending police, with their combat tentacles, when fighting the bending gangster triads. Just imagine what a blood-bender could do with knowledge of chi-blocking.
    • Most Benders wouldn't know Chi-Blocking any more than any other martial art because most Benders are civilians in this day and age. As for why they don't learn Chi-Blocking, the threat of the Equalists only really came out recently so learning Chi-Blocking would require a trainer (the only ones we know of being Equalists), and the requisite time it takes to learn a martial art, which is probably a fair bit of investment of time. The Metal-Bending Police Force should definitely be taught such things, but again that will take time to find Chi-Blocking teachers who aren't with the Equalists and then train them. There might very well be Chi-Blocking benders, but they're probably not well-known enough for them to be on Republic City's payroll.
    • Okay, we've seen what a chi-blocking bender can do. I'm guessing a combination of chi-blocking and bloodbending can permanently shut down someone's bending.

     Does the Avatar have to be "set" to be a bender to begin with? 
  • Just wondering, is it possible for an avatar be the offspring of two non-benders?
    • It is established that two non-benders can have a bender child, but it's strongly implied that a child has to be born a bender to be an Avatar. Korra is the only Avatar that we know of to have figured out she could bend all the elements at such a young age.
    • We have no idea whether either of Korra's parents is a Bender or not, at least as far as I've been able to tell.
    • They both are
    • Whether the Avatar's parents both need to be benders has never been commented by Word of God.
    • Not really, because the Avatar is just a normal human, who gets their powers from Raava. Raava is the only reason they can bend all of the elements and have a "genetic" memory.

     Can Metalbenders not Earthbend? 
  • During the fight with the Equalist mechs, we see Korra earthbend to throw chunks of the floor at one mech. You would think a group of elite benders like Lin and the Metalbenders would've thought to earthbend to knock the mech off their feet or combo bend to throw giant chunks of floor at them. They don't (and seemingly forgot last week's lesson that their metal makes them easy pickings for the Equalists' shock weapons). Are Metalbenders so specialized that they simply can't do standard earthbending anymore? And this is a take that gets thrown into more confusion when you take into account Lin using her mom's trademark "bending as 'sight'" trick. So either we have a case of Crippling Overspecialization or an egregious case of Forgot About His Powers.
    • They can. I wondered the same thing until I noticed that they bend a little earth at their feet to be able to pull the mechas. Not that it helped them much. Why they didn't just bend the earth under the mechas is beyond me. It would have been an interesting demonstration of not just the metalbenders' power, but also Korra's power. Here's the chance to do some destructive large-scale bending. From a meta pov, it was probably to set up Asami's character development.
    • This may be a case of Fridge Brilliance. The police are specifically trained not to cause unnecessary collateral damage with their Earthbending, and stick to their metal whips and small, precise chunks of earth and metal. They're police officers, not soldiers, after all, and are expected to use nonlethal force if at all possible, and protect people's property, not destroy it.
    • Agreed. I expect that the next time Metalbenders, or at least Lin, face off against the mechas, they'll be better prepared and willing to take off the kid gloves, so the fight will be more even.
    • The episode, "When Extremes Meet," confirms that yes the police can indeed earth bend.
    • After reading the first two parts of The Promise (which shows the beginning of Toph's Metalbending Academy), we see that Toph found people who had potential to be Metalbenders but didn't even seem to know any Earthbending. It's very possible that they train exclusively in Metalbending, and neglect Earthbending. In "When Extremes Meet" all of the Metalbending cops Earthbend in sync. Maybe they're just more comfortable Metalbending, or just not very good individually with Earthbending.
    • Metalbenders are, by definition, earthbenders. Metalbending works by bending the tiny earthen impurities in the metal, and thus the metal by extension. At best it's probably a case of Crippling Overspecialization alright, in that they focus on the metalbending so much and neglect standard earthbending as a result, which would logically be the case for the police since they can't earthbend without causing property damage usually.

     Are we supposed to believe benders are better people than non-benders? 
  • Because that seems to be what the show is pushing for. Asami has been one significant non-bender who wasn't evil (Pema is pretty tangiental) whereas non-benders are apparently onboard with massive acts of terrorism due to nothing more than a few gangs on the streets and a few dicks in sports arenas. The conflict they tried to set up in the first few episodes falls apart when everyone who can't bend is over the top evil and benders are almost never shown doing bad things (the Triads in the first episode are the only benders we've actually seen doing something criminal).
    • So smug snakes like Tarrlok and Tahno don't count as "bad?"
    • To be fair, those two are nuisances, not villains. The worst they have done is political mudslinging and sport-fixing respectively, which is hardly "evil" evil.
    • Not anymore. As of 'When Extreme's Meet', Tarlock is now Evil with a big fat capital E.
    • Tahno still didn't do anything wrong enough to warrant villain status though.
    • 100 year war. That's one hundred years of fire benders abusing their power. Don't forget just how easy it is to kill someone with bending. Or extort them. There's a reason the revolution has followers.
    • Basically, the series and franchise as a whole has done a good job of showing that benders, like anyone else, can be real assholes. Just in this series, benders have killed Mako and Bolin's parents and Asami's mother and those three are main characters. It's not on-screen, but it's not exactly out of focus, either.
    • In fact I'm hoping the writers dare to show how an extremism can lead to another. Something like the appearance of a violent group of benders who want to purify the city no-benders.
    • Personally, this is what might be happening as of 'When Extremes Meet', what with Tarlock cutting off power, enforcing a curfue, and basically accusing anyone who's a non-bender of being an Equalist conspirator and arresting them for interrogation. From my perspective, as of now, it seems like Tarlock is going to be of a 'Bender Superiority' train of thought, which is the almost-direct opposite to Amon's ('Bender's are scum who abuse their powers'). Or he could just be a simple extremist who believe that the end justifies the means, and sees nothing wrong in his treatment of non-benders as long as it gets rid of equalists in the end. Of course, We'll simpley have to wait and see.
    • I don't think that's the case. Remember that the original series wasn't totally black and white. There were bad guys in the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe was sexist- yet those were the "hero" nations. Iroh, Zuko, Piandao, Joeng Joeng, Mai, and Ty Lee were from the Fire nation and they were all heroes in the end. The same can be said here: there are heroic benders and heroic non-benders; there are villianous benders and villianous non-benders. Also, you're overstating the issue. Gangs can be extremely violent and dangerous, especially if there are a lot of them and they have a powerful advantage over that averasge nonbender. Not all non-benders support the Equalists (Asami Sato? Shiro Shinobi?); Amon mentions that some nonbenders don't support the Equalists, Word of God states that the Protestor's parents are fine with benders, and Asami flat out states that being a non-bender does not mean being an Equalist (sympathizer). Overall the point Bryke is trying to make is this: what you do is more important than where you come from or what group you belong to; we all have the potential for good or evil.
    • The problem is that none of this bad stuff from benders ends up on screen. Mentioning that gangs are around doing bad things has much less emotional impact than watching Korra getting dragged into a darkened room by dozens of chi-blockers. There's obviously a conflict going on in the setting but the story is being told in such a way that sympathy can only possibly lie with benders.
    • They haven't just been mentioning it. In the very first episode we see for ourselves a group of benders trying to extort money from a (presumably non-bender) shop owner, threatening to burn his shop down if he didn't pay them.
    • As the OP said that has been the only scene with benders abusing their powers. We're more than halfway through the first season now.
    • Well, the protagonists are in large part benders, so of course the sympathy lies with them. But it's also true that neither benders or non-benders are being portrayed as monolithic forces of good or evil - to see it as an "us vs them" scenario is to make the same fundamental mistake as the Equalists. I think the compressed seasons compared to ATLA have hurt Korra's world-building; Bryke did the best they could to set up the conflict, but with only 12 episodes in the season they had to get things moving. Even so, it's there if you look that between the Triads, other benders lording it over non-benders, and the all-bender ruling council (only five people in that giant hall? What happened?), the Equalists do have a point about bender oppression and advantage. It's just as clear that Amon's revolution is an overreaction and that many benders would prefer a more harmonious society without undue advantages based on bending. Amon's methods are wrong, but so is his core point: that all benders look down on and oppress their non-powered fellows. Many do, but not all, so being a bender does not make you a bad person (nor does being a non-bender).
    • Responding to the above poster's part about not having enough episodes to to world-building: In my opinion, that's what fans get for complaining about filler. Even the worst fillers in the last series made the world and characters fuller (with the exception of The Great Divide).
    • Two things: One, it's still a kids' show, meaning as ambiguous as the conflict might actually be, they're going to skew it toward black and white, which means if the heroes are benders, they're not going to show a whole lot of badguy benders. Hell, in the original series, how long was it until we really got to see non-antagonist Firebenders besides Jeong Jeong? And he was made out to be a major exception.

      The other thing is, on some level they don't have to show Benders being oppressive, because the evidence of it is in the strength of the equalists—Amon isn't drumming up hundreds of people in support just by being persuasive. It must be a genuine issue for a lot of people. I'm betting if there's a second or third season, that's what they'll focus on.
    • Iroh was always a benevolent Firebender, and while certainly not to the degree of later seasons we did see that Zuko’s antagonism was largely rooted in his desire to regain his honor and have his father accept him rather than simple villainy. Season 3 of A:TLA, which had a lot of grey morality in play, was still aimed towards kids, so surely the ‘darker, more mature’ sequel could also eschew itself towards ambiguity without worrying about children not understanding it? And while it can be inferred that oppression does exist, there are many fans who use lack of ‘concrete’ evidence as proof that it was all hyperbole on the non-benders part. Saying that something exists and then not showing it to us is lazy writing, regardless of how fans react to it. Especially in regards to a topic like oppression, which is ingrained into society and can’t simply be shown on and off at the drop of a hat.
    • Don't forget that it is only about halfway into the first season. A common story-telling trick is spend some time setting up your audience's expectations going one way, and then, once your audience has gotten comfortable with that and come to accept that this is just the way things are in your fictional world, you pull the rug out and reverse it. The dramatic punch is much stronger that way if properly done, and it is an excellent way of dropping anvils subtly.
    • Well, Tarrlok is established as a villain now.
    • The problem with this black and white view is that it ignores the larger Avatar world. We know of bender oppression very well because we saw The Last Airbender. The Fire Nation and the Dai Li both used bending to oppress and control people at one time or another. We have also seen the Triad and we know of the people killed by “A Firebender” so clearly there is plenty of evil benders. If you look at just what we see in The Legend of Korra you are missing the point. Rule of Perception is at work. We are not seeing “the benders vs. the non-benders” we are seeing “The Krew, the Council, and the police vs. The Equalists.” They are two very different things. From what we have seen The Equalists probably number somewhere in the thousands but there are tens if not hundreds of thousands more non-benders in Republic City. The non-benders we are seeing are the one’s who are being the villains and the benders we are seeing (besides the Triad and now Tarrlok) are the ones acting as the heroes. We have seen non-benders who do not support the equalists and we have seen evil benders. We are just not seeing them much because they are not the focus of the story. In fact “When Extremes Meet” is basically an answer to this view by showing that Tarrlok is going too far and acting just like Amon with his military state response. Tarrlok arresting all of the protesters is treated as a horrible action because it is explicitly stated that not all non-benders are Equalists. We have a man who wants to remove all bending fighting a man who sees all non-benders as enemies. If there ever was any truth to the statement that we never see benders doing bad things it certainly doesn’t hold ground any longer.
    • Then came the next three seasons. Season 2: Evil waterbender nearly destroys the world by dealing with Flatworm Satan. Season 3: Evil team containing all four kinds of element-bender throws Earth Kingdom into chaos and nearly kills Korra. Season 4: Metalbender declares herself dictator, attempts to violently subjugate an entire continent. We can safely state that "benders are ethically better" is not a major tenet of the series.

     Why don't firebenders resist bloodbending by bending their breath into flames? 
  • Bloodbending somebody in a way that isn't intended to kill means the victim is still breathing, which in turn means that a firebender could still breathe flames.
    • Does Korra look like she's having an easy time breathing or doing anything when she's being bloodbent?
    • Not to mention that even breath-bending flames requires a certain type of movement, and you can't do that if you can't move your chest.

     How does bloodbending knock people out? 
  • Bloodbending controls people by waterbending the fluids in the body. Maybe I don't know enough biology, but I don't see how this could cause someone to go unconscious.
    • There's any number of ways complete control over a person's muscles could be used to render them unconscious. Choking, for starters.
    • Stop or slow the flow of blood to their brain. Cause a cardiac event.
    • There are also techniques that basically knock the blood back into your brain, which can cause enough of a disruption to cause fainting. In weightlifting, there's also a danger of exerting so hard that you pass out. And, if there's enough fine control, it could be possible to slow blood flow to the brain or cause enough shock in the skull to cause a blackout.

     How widespread is metalbending? 
  • It was all fine and dandy when there was a metalbending police-force, it seemed to be common enough not to worry about it going extinct like airbending nearly did, but now Amon has more or less taken over and captured captured the metalbenders and even Lin, who's left to teach it?
    • Lin may not be able to bend anymore, but she still knows the principles of the art. She's the master of it. There's a good chance she could still be able to teach. Although, personally, I don't believe she'll stay de-bent, anyway.
    • I'm thinking the same thing (Lin's too awesome to stay depowered), though I am worried how anticlimactic it would be for everyone to get their bending back, and it would sort of ruin her sacrifice there.
    • Maybe next season would have people either find a way to get their bending back though this would take some time or learn to live with it? Now I'm wondering if there's going to be major character developments next season.
    • It would be foolish assume that all the metalbenders in the world are even in the Republic City. Ba Sing Se and Omashu would be foolish not to have their own metalbending forces at this age of industry and steel.
    • I was given the impression that metalbending was reserved for the police, is there anywhere that says it spreads further afield than that?
    • Other countries besides the United Republic have police forces, too. And the United Republic is larger than just the Republic City. Why wouldn't Earth Kingdom cities hire retired metalbenders from Republic City to train their recruits in this incredibly useful art, even if they didn't actively seek to spread the skill as wide as possible?
    • I think that once a kind of bending is "discovered" that's an extension of a kind of bending that already exists, there will always be someone to continue the tradition. It's not like airbending that would disappear completely. All you need to know about metal bending is that there are impurities in metal you can bend. All you need to know about bloodbending is that blood is a liquid. I mean, it's more than just the knowledge, but also a particular awareness of those facts, but that can be developed.
    • I wouldn't be too surprised to find Ba Sing Se replacing it's walls with metal, as per the changing times. Just imagine how lucrative the entire thing could be for the metalbenders and metal manufacturers...
    • Well, IIRC, in the finale, Iroh asks Bolin if he knows how to metalbend. Presumably, this means that there are some metalbenders outside the police force, though it's still probably fairly uncommon beyond the police.
    • If metalbending is at least fairly common outside the Republic City Police (I imagine it would be very useful in factory and construction work), then why do the police wear full-body metal armor? I get that they can use bending to compensate for the usual disadvantages of heavy armor, but if they ever encountered another metalbender they would probably be at a serious disadvantage. Their opponent could just freeze them stiff like a bloodbender does and then they'd be helpless. All the tools they could have in their suits could just as easily be carried separately or with much lighter armor. Also, I imagine they'd face problems with anyone who can bend creatively, water could slip into their suits without difficulty and fire could heat up the metal plates and burn them. Every single other bender wears basically no armor, even the pro-bending gear isn't designed for outright combat and is probably just padding. Why would the police give themselves such clear weaknesses that no one else would have?
    • Book 3's 'The Metal Clan' has Zaufu, a city of metalbenders. For this to be possible in a matter of decades, Toph must have found and trained a substantial number of metalbenders who then passed on the skills. Within the city we see metalbending being used for transport, construction and culture (dancing, artwork). All the sorts of bending-related elements we see in settlements of the other nations. The metalbenders of Republic City may be mainly found within the police force, but Zaufu is an indication that the discipline is becoming/has become anything but a niche one.
    • We more or less get a detailed explanation for just how common metalbending is when Bolin relates a apparently well-known saying that only one in a hundred earthbenders has the potential to learn metalbending. Su Yin claims this is an exaggeration, but it certainly does seem true that without special training (and/or the help of starting out on special meteorites that make it easier) very few earthbenders would ever be able to metalbend, and even with training many can't (though they may have other hidden talents as Bolin did).

     Did Bloodbending Do that? 
  • So, this Fridgelogic just hit me like a freight train while i was looking at Amon's character page. It says there that he used bloodbending to take away peoples bending. um...How? I mean, i'll buy that, don't get me wrong. But How? Because whatever he didn't wasn't physiological. it was spiritual. How do i know this? Because Korra/Lin's bending to be Energy-Bended back into place. Unless the avatar now contains some kind of end all be all healing touch, Energy Bending fixes a problem with the Spirit, not the body. Am i wrong? is there a Wordof God on this? Did they even say, explicitly in the show, that he used Bloodbending to take away people's bending? It's just that there's a huge gap between the last time Tarrlock saw him and the moment he became Amon. He really could've been granted the ability to Energybend by a Spirit. In fact, you'd think an evil spirit (looking at you, Koh) would be rather interested in someone who mastered the art of Bloodbending.
    • Azula sealed one of Aang's chakras shut with lightning, which stopped him from going into the Avatar State. Both that and the practice of chi-blocking indicate that physical means can cut off access to bending abilities. Presumably Amon is using bloodbending to mess around with one or more chakras and/or to affect the person's chi flow, which prevents the target from using bending.
    • The physical and the mental/spiritual are deeply connected in both the avatar-verse and Real Life. I choose to look at it a bit like brain damage, which is extremely difficult to restore. Brain damage has been proven in some instances to alter even one's personality. Seeing a physical act(bloodbending) affect some spiritual aspect seems very logical to me. Conversely, bending one's spirit/chi to circumvent/heal that damage makes sense.
    • OP. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. But then why couldn't Amon undo the damage he did? it stands to reason that if he could turn off the bending, he could turn it back on, right? he didn't state it outright, but he seemed to imply during his final moments that he couldn't restore Tarrlok's bending. And again, if it is physical damage, why couldn't it be healed? Azula's Lightning strike and Aang's connection to the spirit world was undone by him getting pinned to a rock, not by spirit mumbo-jumbo. And, i don't mean to sound like i'm ungrateful, but it'd honestly be kind of disappointing (to me, anyway) if that's all there was to it.
    • It's a lot easier to break or destroy something than it is to fix it.
    • And who said Amon ever even considered how one could undo what he did?
    • Amon's bloodbending technique is basically just reverse healing. Instead of manipulating chi to heal, he simply does so to sever chi pathways/possibly parts of the nervous system. Really, it's like rudimentary energybending.
    • When Aang used energybending to remove Ozai's bending, he touched him on the forehead and in the chest. Amon uses a different technique, and touches the victim only on the forehead, the chakra that (according to Guru Pathik) is blocked by illusion. One explanation is that the loss of bending is psychosomatic: Amon manipulates the person's chakra to create the illusion that they can't bend, therefore they believe they can't bend, and Your Mind Makes It Real.
    • A more pragmatic theory: You know how chi blockers strike at pressure points to disable bending? Well, what if someone were to use bloodbending to strike at every single pressure point simultaneously from within? It would probably result in internal scarring and the complete inability to bend ever again. Amon probably couldn't cure that because he was never trained in healing, while for Katara it was an injury she had never seen before and in fact could never see, being internal and all, so she didn't know what part(s) of a person to focus her healing on. Advancements in surgery would probably have to be combined with waterbending to cure such a crippling injury.

     Psychic bloodbending 
  • So, is the ability to bloodbend (and presumably, by extension, waterbend) using just the mind the waterbending equivalent of Combustion Man's bending "with his mind"?
    • That's probably why Sokka mentioned him in the flashback. Nicely hidden foreshadowing.

     So Hama was not actually the first to discover bloodbending? 
  • Yakhone tells his sons that their family has the strongest bloodbending genes in history, if I heard right? Perhaps this is why explains why they had to make it illegal. At some point they discovered the skill was more widespread than anyone thought. And it's pretty positive Hama could not have taught anyone while living in the Fire Nation during the War.
    • Well actually he uses the phrase "strongest line of bloodbenders". Doesn't this mean that bloodbending has been around for a long time? Wonder how they kept it secret.
    • It's most likely Yakone was a genius, waterbending's equivalent of Toph. This also fits in with how he managed to teach the technique to his sons, just like how Toph was able to teach metalbending to the police.
    • Or how Sokka managed to get a blind Toph to create a Mini-Mecha out of fire nation armor.
    • Yakone may have just been bragging about the genes. As for being the first, Hama was the first known user of bloodbending, an art Katara made sure to be illegal from then on. And that's only possible if at some point it had become a major crime weapon. Perhaps there were other criminals like the Triad gangs who started using it.
    • However Yakhone remains the first person to develop psychic bloodbending and use it without a full moon. It doesn't rule it out the possibility of his ancestors using ordinary bloodbending.
    • I had noticed this, and after this scene, I decided that bloodbening was probably a little-known skill or one that wasn't talked about much (because why would you want to spread the idea), and it's what gave Hama the idea to bloodbend. I'm fairly certain she never says she invented the skill, but was probably the only prisoner willing and not broken enough to try to escape with it. With Katara, it probably became more widely-known, and was then made illegal.
    • For one, Yakone was probably exaggerating about coming from a family with strong bloodbending genes. Its likely that once Katara and the Gaang made bloodbending illegal that the story of Hama got passed down until someone thought "Hey, what if I tried to do that!" and Yakone experimented with the bending style until he became skilled enough to do it without the full moon.
    • Why would they make it illegal if the gaang and Hama were the only ones to understand what is was at all? Unless other villains figured it out too? You make something illegal that no one knows about, it would just give people ideas would it not? And why would Katara make it more well known? It's likely that bloodbending was outlawed in response to it becoming more widespread. Yakhone would have been at his prime when the gang was just learning (looking at the age difference), so he must have been developing his skill then or would do so shortly. It might be that there were mysterious incidents of people puppets in the Northern Tribes and eventually in Republic City, until Katara recognized it and declared it illegal.
    • It's not unlikely that other people figured it out too. Also, as I mentioned in the Fridge page, keep various (real life) legal provisions in mind that make it illegal to punish someone for conduct that does not constitute a crime. (Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights for example.) The sentence you get for bloodbending matches the severity of the crime. However, if bloodbending wasn't illegal, they could only charge him with misuse of bending or something like that. (Assuming Republic City has such a provision, which I do.)
    • The most likely explanation is that Bloodbending was a previously existing (but probably highly secret and taboo) discipline, but Hama was unaware of it, so when she independently discovered it, she believed she had invented the technique. Remember that waterbenders were becoming scarce in the Northern Water Tribe during Hama's growing years. It's entirely possible that there were no bloodbenders living in the NWT during Hama's lifetime. Another point to remember is that Pakku led a re-population of the NWT, specifically bringing more benders. Bloodbending may have originated in the SWT, where there seemed to be a higher percentage of benders to begin with, and Yakone's ancestors may have originated there and migrated to the NWT sometime after ATLA's first season.
    • The problem with that theory is that the Northern Water Tribe was, as has been mentioned, repopulated recently with benders and the Southern Water Tribe was down to just Katara as of the beginning of At AB. The Southern Tribe was sending non-benders off to war and we've seen what happens to nonbenders (not named Mai or Ty Lee) when the fight benders. At best they survive to talk about it. The point being things were well past the point where even if blood bending was taboo that both tribes should have been taking off the kid gloves and doing everything in their power just to survive against the Fire Nation. My guess is Yakhone was either lying, the technique was lost for a long time and Hama did discover it independently, or it was a Retcon. Considering Hama is a very minor character and they clearly didn't plan a sequel series from the start the most likely answer is Retcon.

     How can lightning benders power an entire city? 
  • How could humans continuously generate that much power without any breaks in supply? And how many humans would that need? How could they control voltage and current? A thermal power plant seems a much more possible alternative. A hydro electric plant also wouldn't be impossible.
    • It's never said lightning benders power the entire city. The Avatar World probably has various methods of generating power, just like our world has, with lightning benders being just one of them.
    • Provided they've already invented power turbines, waterbenders, metalbenders, and regular firebenders (via steam generation), could also contribute power to the city.
    • Indeed it's never stated that the "Bolters" powered the city, more likely just power to that one building or factory. It's probably cheap and fast electricity.
    • One bolt of lightning could produce 250 kilowatt-hours, which is half the amount the average household in the real world uses. Since the real world doesn't have any lightning-benders, lightning is extremely inefficient to power /anything/. However, it's possible that with lightning-bending being fairly commonplace by Korra's time, it's entirely possible that someone found a very effective and efficient way to harness the energy in lightning and use its energy. And that's just one bolt— wherever Mako was working had plenty of lightning-benders producing lots of lightning in a short amount of time. It's cheap, fast, and efficient, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lightningbending plant could power a whole neighborhood. Think about it, just a few lightningbenders producing several bolts of lightning per hour several days a week. You would need an army to power the whole city, for sure, especially when you're considering sick days and needed breaks. And this is assuming the lightning even a very strong lightningbender could produce is as powerful as actual lightning... it probably is more economical to use thermal or steam large-scale rather than lightning.
    • I agree that lightning can't power a whole city, but the average household from the 1920s probably uses less power than a modern one.
    • I always thought that lightning benders were used as support of the city's powerplant during spikes in eloectricity usage. It takes long time for most types powerplants to start-up or shut down (nuclear PP takes whole day to do it while fossil fuel PP take several hours) so when you encounter spike (for example factory workshift starting) you will need stopgap untill you start-up another turbine in your main PP (hydroelectric and wind PP do this in real life) so in case of Republic City they call in lightning benders for several hours.
    • If they use a spiral-capacitor combo they can control voltage and intensity.

     How does the "water hold" work? 
  • Can someone explain the logic of the "water rope" used by Tarrlok to restrain Asami in episode 8? This move appeared in the first series, too, and I didn't get it then either.
    • I assume he freezes it around her arm, but keeps it otherwise liquid for more flexibility. I guess it's kind of similar to the water whip.
    • I don't think it has to do with freezing. I think because he's continuously bending it, it keeps it shape so that she can't yank her wrist through the water.
    • Yeah or he's just holding the atoms in place so that it turns from a liquid into a solid.

     Why can't the Avatar bend different elements at once? 
  • Or rather, "Why don't they?" There's one example of an Avatar (Roku, I think) bending lava, but otherwise it's never shown. With the uptick in benders working together for combo-moves, you'd think that Korra would try something like mudbending (earth and water) or something like that.
    • Aside from the fact that we've seen Roku and Aang bend multiple elements at the same time, mudbending was demonstrated in the previous series. You only need one type of bending to do it. Both Katara and Toph could bend mud by virtue of their respective element. For a more practical answer, bending multiple elements as a combination attack would require that much more concentration and preparation. It isn't a very efficient method of attack unless, like Aang, you had a large supply of all four to draw on.
    • I don't think bending multiple elements at the same time is possible. Lava bending, like vine, sand and mud bending is probably a specialized example of one or another type of bending in the case of mud it could be done either way but probably with differing effects and techniques. Considering how precise the movements are for bending you're probably asking why doesn't someone through a right hook and use a full nelson at the same time. Avatar or no they've only got the two hands.
    • Why doesn't the Avatar have more unique moves? Uncle Iroh observed water benders and discovered you could redirect lightning. I assume he had a reason to believe this technique would work prior to wandering out into a storm to practice it. I would expect the Avatar with hundreds of lives worth of experience and not just knowing, but relearning the four elements time and time again would produce a style similar to real life MMA.
    • Avatars don't have constant access to their past life memories, only an instinct for disciplines they've already learned.
    • It does appear that the first Avatar was unable to bend more than one element at a time. Bending appears to be a form of spiritual programming. Raava (who became the Avatar Spirit) had to hold the other bending abilities when Wan was using one element. This also explains why the Avatars usually "glow it up" when they bend more than one element at a time.
    • Well for the most part, even the Avatar has to perform the motions to bend. As such, it's tough for them to, say, perform the motions to airbend and waterbend at the same time. Even Firebending, the seemingly least motion-intensive bending requires the user focus on their breath. I feel like that's difficult to do while I'm also trying to lift a 500 pound rock.

     Can Yakone and his sons bloodbend during the full moon? 
  • I'm a little confused. So Yakone's lawyer said that normally bloodbending requires the full moon, and that the witness testimonies were of bloodbending being used at every other time except during the full moon (the emphasis was done by the lawyer). Does Yakone's family have a mutation that reverses the usual requirements, or did he only not bend on the full moon so that all eyewitness reports would have been dismissed as physically impossible? I'm leaning towards the latter, but I just thought I'd ask.
    • Presumably, yes, he was specifically being careful. It's repeatedly made clear that Yakone and his sons are exceptionally powerful waterbenders (especially when it comes to bloodbending), not that they used some weird ritual to change the way their powers work. Waterbenders get more powerful at night and under the full moon, so they'd be able to bloodbend even better. That's all there is to it.
    • In the finale, Tarrlok specifically explains how they did it during the full moon, then not during the full moon.

     Bending in the Spirit World? 

  • How is Unalaq able to waterbend in the Spirit World, and even specifically note that it's something that only a human being could do? In the original series there specifically were no earthly elements in the Spirit World that humans could bend; Aang even once tested if he had unknowingly been sent there by trying to airbend, knowing that it would only work if he was in the physical world. This seems like a lot bigger inconsistency than the issue of the origin of bending that can be explained in various ways, as seen above, but it seems to cause a lot less discussion and controversy so far.
    • I think it's because Aang was never physically in the Spirit World, just an Astral Projection. Since physically entering the Spirit World was something Aang never believed he could do, he probably thought when he tried bending, it was to see if he was there in spirit. Alternatively, because the portals are connected to the physical world, the matter that Unalaq is bending originally came from the physical world.
    • Unalaq can bend because he isn't a spirit, simple as that. He used the portal to enter so his bending remains. Korra, Aang, and Jinora are disembodied souls that cannot bend.
    • Unalaq even points this out to Korra, saying that it would've been smarter for her to enter the Sprit World through the open portal rather than meditation.

     Reincarnate as an Earthbender? 

  • I know that Unalaq was killed, but he is technically an Avatar. Does that he's going to be reborn into an Earthbender or is he permanently dead?
    • He's permanently dead. The Avatar reincarnation cycle is caused by Raava leaving an Avatar's body and finding a new one. Vaatu is inside Raava (and Korra) now, so that's not going to happen. Mind, it's not clear if everyone reincarnates in this 'verse and the Avatar is the only one who remembers their past lives, or if the Avatar is the only one who reincarnates, but the point is there isn't going to be a Dark Avatar running around unless it turns out Vaatu wasn't actually destroyed after all.
    • Even if he follow the reincarnation cycle, one of the things established in the previous series is that an Avatar who dies in the Avatar State breaks the avatar cycle permanently. It'll be 10'000 years before Vaatu can reform and try again.
    • The reincarnation thing and it's order is likely a choice by Raava, rather than a theological imperative. Raava's a spirit of harmony, and it is a very harmonious way of doing things. Vaatu could likely have chosen whatever poor mortal baby he wanted to reincarnate himself... if as mentioned, he hadn't been killed while in the Avatar State.

     The power behind bending..? 
  • Though I'm not sure if its cropped up in the canon, but it's said that all the air nomads were benders because of their deep spiritual connection. However, as we've seen with Wan and the Lion turtles, the spirits don't grant bending. Certainly the avatar's bending is tied to a particular spirit, but the others shouldn't be affected by them. Heck, the spirits were at war with the benders in Beginnings...
    • Spiritual connection doesn't mean connected to spirits, it means connected to the spirit world and to the world around them on a deeper level than most humans.

     What was the point of Unalaq merging with Vaatu? 
  • Unalaq was a Waterbender only. Vaatu didn't have the other elements inside of him, unlike Raava. Therefore every subsequent Dark Avatar would ONLY be Waterbenders. So what was the point?
    • I think you're missing the "chaos god" half of that equation. It doesn't matter if he only has the one element, he still gets the awesome power of the personification of chaos. Also, given their One-Winged Angel, it's certainly possible that Unavaatu would have never died.
    • The power up, presumably. Even a severely weakened Raava was able to essentially curbstomp full-power spirit-Vaatu after being bonded to Wan, Vaatu probably wanted in on that action (it does also help that Raava's vessel (Korra now) would have just sealed him away again immediately otherwise). Unalaq though I'm not sure what his proper motivation is, since I can't see Vaatu handing over the reins completely like Raava does.
      • My theory is that Unalaq was being manipulated by Vaatu. The dark spirit had no plans of being the “Dark Avatar” but knew he couldn’t escape his imprisonment, or fight Ravaa and Korra on his own, so he needed a vessel. Once he destroyed the light spirit, Vaatu basically “disposed” of his vessel, or just completely took over him, and from then on, it was just him (Vaatu) unleashing chaos on the world. Unalaq was nothing more than a pawn.

     If waterbenders can bend ice and steam... 
  • ...then why is everyone so surprised that a skilled earthbender can melt rocks and bend magma? Granted, the boiling points of rocks tend to be much, much higher than the boiling point of water, but why do so many people believe it's so far beyond the capabilities of a talented earthbender that only the Avatar can do it?
    • Because of the sheer difference. Water changes state with very little energy. Earth takes orders of magnitude more energy to do the same.
    • There is a huge difference, but people seem to think it's impossible for any earthbender to heat rocks and bend magma. We've seen some really freaking powerful earthbenders who aren't Avatars. We also have to remember that just because the only people we've seen bend magma were Avatars does not have to mean it's impossible for an Avatar. The two Avatars were bending a lot of magma, enough to make multiple volcanoes erupt at once, or literally create an island. A particularly talented earthbender like Ghazan would never be able to pull that off, but melting a handful of rocks can't be as hard.
    • Let's put in this context: Ghazan is, as far as is implied, unique in his ability to do this. If King Bumi and Toph couldn't do it, and if it's still apparently unheard of after a criminal showed he could do it, then it seems rather unlikely it's something any bender, even very good ones, could just pick up.
    • Ghazan's ability may also take a certain special mindset or intuition to do, in addition to great strength and skill. Metalbending was thought impossible, but Toph's earth-sight made it possible for her to figure it out, and now there are many more metalbenders who are only just average. Bolin is at least an above average fighter and he can't yet metalbend. Lightning was once seen as a highly advanced technique only few could accomplish, but now it is much more common. Ghazan's magma bending may just be another one of these secret technique's that only he can do not necessarily just because he himself has some kind of mutation, but because he figured out the "trick" to it. Perhaps he figured out because he saw how waterbenders could change water and kept experimenting on rocks until he got the hang of it, in a similar way to how Iroh learned how to redirect lightning.
    • You also have to consider that molten lava isn't as common as something like water. Without much of it around in everyday life, it seems that there really hasn't been much need for people to figure it out. That said, Bolin being able to do it does indicate that a talented enough earthbender can learn how to do it. That said, what makes Ghazan unique is that he's figured out how to melt rocks and turn them into lava, something Bolin hasn't figured out yet.
    • The show implies that you have to be part Fire Nation to use Lavabending, which at least explains why we didn't see it much before.
      • The show never implies anything about being part of the Fire Nation. Bolin and Ghazan have very similar attitudes, attitudes that are very rare for Earth benders. They have an attitude that resembles a Water bender, not a Fire bender, which makes sense given the fluid nature of lava.

     If benders can deflect each others attacks... 
  • Why not steal Ming-Hua's water arms?
    • Because she could just steal them back. She can bend without arms. It's gonna take more than that to stop her.

     Zaheer's guards needing to ration 
  • Am I missing something or couldn't the metalbender guard who opened the door break out of the cell fairly easily? Was Zaheer's line about them needing to wait for the next shift change just him trying to be cool or whatever, or did he just forget that tidbit?
    • The bridge can only be pushed from the other side. Getting out of the cell would help, and he might be able to get them down the mountain, but it's not a guarantee.
    • The rationing comment was just a taunt. Unless Zaheer was willing to wait a significant period of time period before busting out his associates, the White Lotus would find out about his escape and go check on his cell long before starvation became an issue.

     Metalbending specifics 
  • Okay, how exactly does metalbending work? I thought metalbendings weren't actually bending the metal so much as the earthen impurities within it, but if that's the case, why don't they intentionally use more impure material? And how would Suyin have extracted a metal-based poison without any impurities? On a side note, where does everyone keep getting all this purified platinum? Is it just not a precious metal in this world?
    • On the subject of the platinum the Red Lotus is a secret organization with fingers in a lot of pies, so to speak. At least one of them (Aiwei) was a major player in a large city. They got it the same way anyone else did. By shelling out a lot of money. And it's going to be easier to dig for things like platinum for people who can move the earth around to their liking without the need for craptons of construction equipment.

    Metalbending the poison. 

     Korra's Avatar State 
  • It was explained that the power the Avatar State grants comes from the combined knowledge of all past Avatars. But Korra's connection to those past lives were destroyed in the finale of Book 2, leaving her as the first Avatar of the new cycle. So why does the Avatar State still enhance her powers? The only experience she has to draw on is her own at this point, so Avatar State Korra should be only as strong as Korra normally is.
    • As far as knowledge and wisdom as a power goes, that's true. But the physical might and bending prowess of the Avatar State is manifested when a bender and Raava, the light spirit, become fully synchronized. Even without any past lives for guidance, Korra is at least as powerful as Wan, the first avatar, who became one of the strongest people on the planet without any past avatars to call on either.
    • Bryke outright stated in the commentary that the Avatar State is primarily Raava. In fact, it may actually be more powerful than ever in Korra, since Vaatu is dead and Raava's in her peak.
    • Re-watch "Venom of the Red Lotus" and you'll that while Korra's Avatar State (Which if I remember correctly is the first time since Raava was split off and reunited with Korra) is still quite powerful, it lacked co-ordination and precision. While whether this is a reflexive or controlled state is up to you, this makes sense as she isn't able to call upon the previous lives this time around. She's also still acting quite like herself but very angry, so she's being blinded by rage.

      Basically Korra is still as powerful as she ever was in the Avatar State, but because she relying on her own abilities and skills the Avatar State's potential is dampened.
    • She's also under the effects of a debilitating and hallucinatory poison.

     Harmonic Convergence connection to bending 
  • Have the writers explained Harmonic Convergence's connection to bending yet?
    • Not in detail, but it has been mentioned that there was a big shift in the Earth's energy that could be felt by those sensitive to it. Not to mention that Bending was taught by Spirits and other sources from nature. With more spirits running around the place after Harmonic Convergence, perhaps their presence has something to do with as well.
    • Connecting the portals released a shitload of spiritual energy into the world, this opened up peoples bending nodes or whatever you want to call them granting them bending, it is effectively what the lion turtles did, but on a global scale and with no real control

     How did Zaheer learn all the airbending moves? 
  • When Zaheer acquires airbending, he progresses from a novice to a airbender skilled enough to hold his ground against Tenzin and Korra (i.e. a master airbender with decades of practice and the Avatar) within weeks. In both cases it's obvious he wouldn't actually have won without the help of outside factors (the rest of his team joining the fight against Tenzin, Korra being weakened by mercury poisoning), but that's still quite a feat, considering that there was no one there to actually train him in airbending. The other folks with newfound airbending had to go through some tough training by Tenzin and his family to hone their raw potential into actually airbending skills, so how come Zaheer was able to do the same without any help? He does seem to have had interest in the Air Nomads and their teachings when he was still a non-bender, so maybe he had trained some airbending moves back then, but most of those moves can't really be trained without bending, since they rely on the extra mobility you gain from being able to manipulate air. Also, Zaheer is a practical person, so would he have really wasted loads of his time rehearsing for the possibility that he might some day miraculously gain airbending, even though he or no one else in the world could ever have suspected anything like that happening before Korra reopened the Spirit World portals?
    • He's obviously intensely interested in Airbending culture, and clearly put a hell of a lot of study into it. It's way more than "some interest." And Korra shows in the first season that you can learn the forms without being able to airbend — she outright says she's learned all the physical stuff, she just can't get it to work. Also, it's made clear that airbending styles are useful without airbending — recall "A Leaf in the Wind," and how Korra aces her Probending match using the Airbending moves without using Airbending itself.
    • A few other things: 1) His style is heavily influenced by firebending, which is everywhere, and the martial arts he already knew; since most bending is on a physical level "martial arts move + element power", he's in a great position to retrofit his earlier moves to include his new access to wind. 2) He has spent fourteen years alone in a cell with nothing to do. He seems fairly fit, so presumably he's been using martial arts routines to keep himself in shape, and he covers the spiritual side because he also seems to have spent a lot of time meditating on the philosophy of ancient airbenders, most notably Guru Laghima. Basically, if anyone is a good candidate to grasp a degree of airbending quickly, it'd be Zaheer.
  • It's also worth pointing out that as skilled as he is, Zaheer still can't match up to a true airbending master. When he fought Tenzin one-on-one, he was getting his ass kicked. It wasn't until his accomplices showed up and started going after Tenzin as well that Zaheer managed to get the upper hand.

     How did Yakone and his sons bloodbend without a full moon? 
  • In the original series, it was said that bloodbending needed the full moon to be possible for the simple reason that the moon affects the abilities of waterbenders: they are stronger at night than by day, severely depowered during a lunar eclipse and at their peak when the moon is full. This powerboost allows for the fine and detailed bending needed to bend atomic water inside another human. How the hell did Yakone, Noatak/Amon and Tarrlak pull it off without that boost? No other thing is said about this than Yakone training the boys vigurously and Sokka's handwave of "Dudes I've seen people breaking bending rules all over the place, hell, our POLICE is based on one such rule-breaking thanks to Toph and her metalbending. At this point, being incredulous and dismissing it as impossible is plain stupid." Hama from the original series has had years and decades of practice and yet she was bound by this rule.
    • They were just that powerful. Also, water inside a person is not "atomic" any more than it is outside a person. Also that's a really off-base mischaracterization of what Sokka was saying.
    • True water inside is no more atomic any more than outside, but outside it is much more visible and easier to control: think in the vein of the difference between bending normal earth or rocks and the earthen impurities within metals that Metalbenders use to bend. However, as I said Hama spent way more time perfecting this and she still could only do it with the full moon backing her powers. Also Sokka's explanation does boil down to "Just because somebody or several people once said it's impossible doesn't mean it IS impossible, bending rules can be broken."
    • Yakone and his sons were more powerful than Hama, then. That's the explanation — that they had an inborn talent that was suited to it. Hell, Katara was more powerful than Hama and was able to beat her at her own game with literally her first move as a bloodbender. And that was at 14 years old. If she'd applied herself to it and trained on it instead of neglecting the talent and outlawing it, Katara probably could've done it at will, too.

      Remember that Hama came up with bloodbending while she was malnourished and dehydrated, and when we see her in action, she's an elderly woman — i.e., when she was extremely weak. Don't take that as an ironclad rule for someone who's in their prime and dedicated to training their hardest at something.
    • I never said she was in her prime, only that she had decades of perfecting the technique, which is way more than what Yakone and his sons had. It isn't even sure Tarrlak used bloodbending between Amon/Noatak leaving (if I remember right Yakone stopped training him since Noatak was the prodigy and Yakone's hope was gone with him) and the episode of the first season when he fought Korra, which means he might have been years out of practice. What you said about Katara is a good point though.
    • I know you never said that — my point is, all we really have for it being only possible under the full moon is the word of someone who was really weak when she came up with it and really old when we see her in action. Hama might have been a good example of a creative waterbender, but she wasn't, on screen, an especially powerful one.

     Why does fire-bending not actually burn anyone? 
  • We have seen it happen it The Last Airbender, so why not in Legend of Korra? Unless fire is being used as a combustion move instead of an incineration move, then MAYBE I'd understand. However, even some explosions leave burns. Is it because of avoiding censorship on Nickelodeon?
    • To be fair, in ATLA firebending causes burns only when the plot calls for it: when Ozai burns Zuko's face, when Aang burns Katara's hands, when Zuko burns Toph's feet... We never see firebending causing burns in cases where said burns would be unimportant or irrelevant to the plot, even though close contact with fire should always leave some burns. ATLA is about the conflict between the Fire Nation and other nations, so it makes sense that fire burns are occasionally used for dramatic effect. In TLoK, there is no conflict involving firebenders as a group, so there's much less reason for the plot to use fire burns in this way. Though it's worth noting that Amon claims his face was scarred by a firebender, and at first everyone believes him, so getting fire burns from firebending still seems to be a thing that can happen.
    • Or, it can be that nearly every person getting attacked by fire either avoid the attacks in time, or they get blown away by the fire (since it can be like a combustion move) before getting burned at all. Note the times in ATLA where anyone that actually did get burned, none of the attacks involved a shotgun-like blast that could push them away.
    • We don't see much in ATLA either. Yes Katara and Toph get burned in the series, but those burns are superficial and heal easily. Zuko's disfigurement happens off screen, and even that was toned down (he should've lost his eye). An accurate depiction of firebending and burns it should cause would up the shows Y7 rating, make it impossible for the show to air on Nick.
    • Simple, because the fire is not that hot, its hot enough to hurt and causes only superficial burns but you really have to TRY to kill someone wwith basic firebending. Firebendng is not inherently more lethal than say Earth or water bending. After all you're producing fire from inside of you, and in order to produce fire from life you have to not... Kill yourself by using up all your life. Also ccaloric intake matters, since you're producing so much raw fire the energy to produce has to come from somewhere, there may be a natural governor in a bender's spirit that stop s them from killing themselves from malnutrition.

    Bloodbending to undo bloodbending 
  • It's revealed that Amon's power to take away bending works by bloodbending. So if bloodbending is the cause of a person's bending being lost, couldn't it also be the solution to restoring it again? It took Korra being awakened to the Avatar state for her to be able to restore bending, but wouldn't it be possible to call for waterbenders who can bloodbend and use them to undo the bloodbending block on a person's bending?
    • That would be possible, but it would take time for them to work out the manner in which Amon's bloodbending had imitated chi-blocking, which would be rather uncomfortable for the victims considering how painful bloodbending was shown to be, along with the fact that it's stated to be illegal, meaning there's probably a severe shortage of people skilled enough to be qualified at undoing the damage.

    Opposite-element-bending 
  • According to Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Avatars have always had the most difficulty learning to bend the elements opposite the ones they were born to, which is why Roku (a born Firebender) and Aang (a born Airbender) had such difficulty learning to bend Water and Earth respectively. Based on this, Korra (a born Waterbender) should have had much more difficulty learning to bend Fire than Air; why didn't she?
    • Because that notion from the first series was semi-pseudo-retconned in the first season of this one. When preparing to teach Korra airbending, Tenzin explains that it's the Avatar's personality, not strictly their birth element, that determines which element they would have the most trouble bending. Aang had trouble earthbending because he had the mindset of an airbender; he was evasive, free-spirited, and nonconfrontational. Whereas Korra, although born a waterbender, has the stubborn, unyielding, and aggressive attitude of an earthbender, hence why the element of freedom was so difficult for her.
    • It's not actually a retcon. It was never explicitly stated that the Avatar struggles only with their birth element. Whatever Katara said to Aang is just speculation. She didn't know why Aang had a block with earthbending and was just making an analogy to help rationalise it. Doesn't mean it was accurate. The better explanation came from Iroh. He summaises the elements basically like Hogwarts. Each element represents certain traits that each nation embodies and or values. Fire is desire and willpower, Earth is resliance and endurance, etc. And as we see in the Firebending Master, personality does in fact a persons bending. This is why Zuko temporality lost his bending due to a shift in his personality. The reality is that people are multi-faceted and have traits regardless of where they were born. One of Toph most defining traits is her love of her own indepedence, i.e her sense of freedom. Yet she is an earthbender. Isn't freedom her opposite element? The Air Nomads were not clones of each other. Aang has issues with confrontation because that is simply who he is as a person. Doesn't mean other Airbenders or Avatars would act the same way. Did Yangchen also run away like Aang did? We know she certainly has no qualms about killing, unlike Aang.
    • A lot of the difficulty comes from being initially immersed in one bending style for years before learning the others. Korra however has been bending three different elements since the age of four.


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