Avatar: The Last Airbender

I guess it depends on what you consider energybending. I view it as manipulating the spiritual energy inherent in all living things. All the examples I gave involve doing weird stuff with your spiritual essence or manipulating some kind of spiritual construct.

Edit: My head canon has always been that Unalaq was somehow comvined the two styles.

Edited by Kostya on Feb 27th 2020 at 4:16:41 AM

Also, you can't take away bending with water alone, no matter how precise you are. It takes bloodbending — a very rare skill already, used by five people in the Avatar-verse and then never seen again — combined with chi-blocking. Noatok's the only one who figured out how, and he was a genus prodigy.

Also, I always figured every culture has their own method for quelling spirits — Unalaq's version is just the only one we see.

Edited by drac0blade on Mar 2nd 2020 at 12:46:43 PM

Air, fire, and water all make sense for purifying spirits. How on earth (heh) would Earthbending purify spirits exactly?

Mud bath, isolation chamber, acupuncture, Hollywood Magnetism...

Earthbenders could also draw salt from the earth to purify spirits.

Yes. Most likely. That's my favorite suggestion so far.

Edited by BrightLight on Mar 2nd 2020 at 8:57:18 AM

Good luck getting needles into a spirit, though.

Edited by SalFishFin on Mar 2nd 2020 at 8:37:09 AM

"the spirit has fled the room for it's life,apparently sticking pins in spirits is a dick move"

I mean it's a spirit, so just levitate the needles/salt/etc around the thing and let magic do the rest...

The Avatar universe is expanding with new projects, new formats, and new approaches!

Yeah, it's probably more comics, those are doing pretty well.

I wonder what new formats they mean. New publishing formats or are they hinting at something else?

Probably some more novels, maybe some animated short films.

Another TV series if we're lucky.

Or an animated movie (set in the original continuity, of course). Whether it be theatrical or released on DVD, I don't mind.

I'm just happy that the well is far from dry.

The live action adaptation of TLA apparently began production last month. That’s the big thing for the franchise in the immediate future.

Thanks for that little update of news.

To clarify, I was talking about animated movies in the style of the DCAU films.

We're probably still a few years away from that, but hey, it's something to speculate on in the meantime while we wait for more concrete information.

I’d hope we eventually get something, whether it be a comic, that delves in on the TLA crew when they are adults.

See what life was really like for the Avatar as he juggles managing the world & taking care of 3 kids.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Voice Actor Greg Baldwin Explains the One Fan Request He Does Turn Down

Honestly, I feel there's still a lot of stories to cover in the Avatar world. We have 10,000 years between Wan and Korra's time that are still mostly a blank slate, we have all the years after Korra's time where the reintroduction of spirits and new technologies will doubtlessly change the world in ways we can only guess at, and we have stories that don't actually involve the Avatar — like, we can go all Gundam or Clone Wars with The Hundred Years War.

Edited by drac0blade on Mar 3rd 2020 at 11:29:33 AM

By that logic any story could go on forever. Yeah, you could keep going, but at some point you have to pick a stopping point.

I'm saying there's different stories to tell in the world, not one long one. That logic doesn't hold up at all. It can be more like Jojo — taking place in the same universe, but each a self contained story.

I mean, a Jojo's comparison really doesn't have much pull with me...

And, the principle remains the same. In every fictional world you could go thousands of years in the past, or the future if you want. The question of continuing or eventually stopping remains the same.

Edited by LSBK on Mar 3rd 2020 at 1:37:28 PM

It's a rich enough world to go on with a Hero of Another Story, but when the first series features a massive setting change where the airbenders went extinct and the world is on the verge of falling to the Fire Nation, a more traditional story detailing something like Chin the Conqueror's Earth Kingdom expansion falls into both Foregone Conclusion and Tough Act to Follow. Legend of Korra itself suffered from freeform, episodic seasons rather than a singular myth arc, lacking that endgame focus the first series had.

I thought Rise of Kyoshi neatly sidestepped that by telling a tale we hadn't heard of before, even if it was ancient history by the time of Last Airbender.

Right that was a big issue with Korra.

It lacked a proper myth arc so it made heavy use of Arc Villains. Each season had an entirely different antagonist faction, most of whom could pretty much be the primary antagonist for an entire show & this wound up gimping the villains somewhat.

Just look at how the Red Lotus was hyped up in book 3 & became practically nonexistent in book 4.

Cough cough, a Hundred Year War anthology series, cough cough.

On a different idea, I've dwelt on a concept of a futuristic Avatar world, something with the visual aesthetic of I, Robot, and the weaponry technology of Star Wars and Star Trek.

We've already discussed how conventional firearms can be ruined by benders, but what about plasma?

Seeing benders going up against other benders or non-benders with laser-esque weaponry and high-tech armour is a battle match-up that intrigues me.

In addition, seeing a war where there are all four types of benders on both sides would be chaotic but cool.