Avatar: The Last Airbender

The point was that the events of Legend of Korra don't support the idea of airbending just returning spontaneously on its own. It took an extraordinary spiritual event to bring it back.

They wouldn't return spontaneously on their own if an Airbender Avatar spawned randomly. That would be a Raava thing.

In a sense, Raava's whole thing is giving people bending powers they wouldn't normally have.

Spontaneously giving the person who in the cycle who should be from the air nation, airbending powers is not wholly implausible.

Yeah, and considering Avatars can take bending away and restore it, and Raava and the lionturtles can grant bending to anyone, there are plenty of canonical solutions available already. Hell, you could probably get away with the Avatar cycle spontaneously generating an airbender at random, and explain it through the power of reincarnation granting them the necessary bending powers. Which is what is implicitly happening when new Avatars are born anyway, since no one is born with all bending powers, or even two of them, naturally.

I'm surprised that they are making an animated movie about Avatar. I thought that they wanted to go in the live action direction from this point forward.

The point is that even if the Cycle continued, the new Avatar alone wouldn't be able to bring back air bending by themselves. Even if they would still have the potential to wield air bending due to being the Avatar, they might never figure it out without a bending teacher.

Shit, just look at Season One Korra. She couldn't figure out air bending for most of the season until its last episode.

Basically, it'd be like this:

• The cycle continues, but with only three bending demographics.

• The Avatar would still be able to bend four elements technically. But good luck figuring out airbending without airbending masters.

• The air bending demographic will remain extinct, since Avatars don't pass on the ability to bend elements besides their "native" element to their children. Note that none of Roku's descendants could bend anything but fire.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 5:37:35 PM

I agree that there's a difference between Raava creating one airbender to be the Avatar and an airbending society coming back but weren't we originally discussing what would happen to the Avatar Cycle if Aang/all the airnomads died?

eta: Korra's block on airbending is specific to her and her personality, she had the wrong mindset. If raava reincarnates in someone with a very airbender personality they'll have a better chance of learning it. Especially if they study the remains of the culture ala Red Lotus leader guy whose name escapes me right now.

eta2: Essentially I think there are 3 options, they could go with:
1) There are no air nomads for Raava to reincarnate into. Avatar line is broken.
2) Raava continues reincarnating with a 3 element cycle. Avatars get airbending have no masters for it.
3) Raava reincarnates and for air nomads reincarnates into the closest thing they've got. i.e) the kind of people that would be empowered by harmonic convergence. Destiny slaps her in people suited to be granted airbending on a one-off basis. Again they'd be limited by lack of a master, and be very difficult to identify as the Avatar.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 10:52:14 AM

The point is, the Avatar cycle wouldn't bring back an airbending population. Yes, by definition of what the Avatar is, the next Avatar would technically be an airbender. But the airbender demographic represented by Air Nomads would still be gone.

The Cycle would still continue between the remaining nations.

Edit:

This of course assumes Raava doesn't take the successful genocide of a whole bending people to be a sign that the world is irreversibly broken and decides to end the Cycle to fuck off back to the Spirit realm.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 5:50:50 PM

Yeah, I'm not arguing with about the society. It wouldn't bring them back, I agree.

I'm not sure why you're insisting the rest of it has to work on your theory though. As I edited in above, there are others possibilities.

We don't actually know if the people empowered by Harmonic Convergence were even distantly related to the Air Nomads of the past. It's possible — especially since Bumi was one of them — but never confirmed. It may have just been completely random.

And besides, they'd still technically be born among the demographics of the three nations even in that situation. The Harmonic Convergence empowered airbenders were all originally non-benders born among the three major demographics.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 5:56:09 PM

It have been people who were related to airbenders, it might have been people with the psychology of an airbender or it could indeed have just been random. Raava's reincarnation could follow the same pattern.

But regardless, it's also interesting what effect it would have the Avatar to have nothing but historical references for their airbending powers. How much could they learn from their past memories? They seem to insist on having mortal teachers. Roku strong armed Jeung Jeung into teaching Aang rather than do it himself. There's obviously a lot of value in a real teach to correct your mistakes and so on that relying on memories of other's teaching.

They'd still have full mastery of air via the Avatar state. The episodes with Guru Patik suggest you could master the avatar state without mastering all four elements first. So they might end up with some conscious control and mastery of Airbending but it wouldn't be done 'the right way' which is of importance in the Avatar Mythology that you shouldn't take these short cuts or do things out of order.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 11:24:36 AM

It's another fundamental part of the Avatar Cycle that the prospective Avatar needs to learn the bending forms the old-fashioned way. Korra being a prodigy who could bend three out of four of the elements as a kid might have actually caused more problems for her down the line. Though a bigger problem was that she was trained in an isolated compound for years, making her rather Skilled, but Naive when she first arrived at Republic City.

It's arguably more important for an Avatar to learn about the various different peoples' cultures and their philosophies than just their bending forms. Roku's journey for example probably made it easier for him to immediately reject Sozin's White Man's Burden pitch for imperialism.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 6:29:10 PM

Just learn the old fashioned way, by watching the Sky Bison. It worked for Toph and Badger Moles.

The problem with that is sky bison were also genocided. tLoK had some herds preserved by rogue Fire Priests but a hypothetical Avatar in a timeline where Aang was killed in the genocide wouldn't have access to them until after the Fire Nation War as concluded.

Come to think of it, Aang had a similar problem learning firebending. While firebenders obviously weren't extinct, firebending teachings had become corrupted with anger. So much so that Zuko couldn't firebend due to losing the rage that drove it previously.

Fortunately, the dragons and the original sun worshiping culture that sheltered them weren't actually extinct, so Aang and Zuko were able to learn from them.

Edit:

On a different note, the stuff about Unanimity mentioned on the Dawn of Yangchen page is a bit inaccurate.

It's not only about the first combustion benders. The Unanimity project was about the shang cities figuring out anything that would give them the power to break free of the nations' authority and be their own independent power. They tried a few things, though combustion bending was the only real success.

• They were the first ones to actually attempt lavabending via harsh training and experimentation with earthbenders. This idea fizzled out since the earthbenders all died.

• They used stolen Air Nomad acupuncture manuals and non-bender "volunteers", and eventually came up with the first chi-blocking techniques. They also used those "volunteers" to perfect the brainwashing techniques seen later in Ba Sing Se.

• The brutal and dangerous training with firebenders led to the first three combustion benders.

Come to think of it, Dawn of Yangchen really liked making references to techniques we'd see in media set later in the timeline. Yangchen even uses a technique similar to Zaheer's asphyxiation bubble to defeat the combustion benders.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 6:59:23 PM

I'm sure there are other ways to learn airbending. Hell, people airbend by accident, that's how those new airbenders were found in the first place.

Also, considering airbending is just martial arts with superpowers, any regular martial artist teacher would do in a pinch to figure out the basics.

Harmonic Convergence airbenders highlight the limitations of being self-taught.

Even Zaheer could only get so far on his own despite immersing himself in surviving Air Nomad lore. He's utterly schooled by a genuine Airbender master.

A future Avatar knowing they can airbend was never in question anyway. As I repeatedly stated already, by definition an Avatar can bend all four elements.

But they'd never be able to achieve the mastery they could have had with formal training from Masters who came from a culture that practice airbending for generations.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 7:52:09 PM

Yeah but on the other hand one of Aang's and Tenzin's chief advantages is no-one's had to fight an airbender in 100 years and they've forgotten how.

In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king. They wouldn't be up against airbending masters.

it's open question if true mastery of all elements is needed or just a decent level of proficiency (which Aang had come the comet and really did take a short cut in that the lionturtle gave him energybending))

—

And on a tangent if past non-air nomad avatars truly mastered airbending I wonder if any of them assimilated to the point of getting arrow tattos.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 12:57:38 PM

An Avatar without any airbender masters would have to learn everything from scratch on their own. At best they'd try to adapt the other bending forms into airbending.

And they'd still never be able to restore an airbending population on their own. As I said, they can't pass on the potential to bend other forms besides their "native" one, assuming Roku is any indication.

It's pretty clear that Aang by the end of his series hadn't fully mastered all four elements by the time he faced Ozai. But fully training up firebending wasn't an option given Ozai's plan to burn the Earth Kingdom. And it shows — fire is the bending Aang uses the least during that fight.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 7:57:22 PM

No-one that I can see is arguing that Avatars can repopulate airbenders as a whole, am I missing something? I'm not sure why you keep revisiting the point.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 12:57:13 PM

Because this whole thing started with people saying the Avatar cycle would bring back air bending on its own. I am saying it wouldn't, even if the Avatar themselves would still be able to airbend.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 7:58:39 PM

Ah, no, we didn't?

I think I started this speculating on what would happen to the Avatar cycle if the Air nomads were successfully genocided and we speculated Raava could give airbending to someone she reincarnated into. Not bring back the whole culture?

No, people were specifically arguing the Avatar Cycle would cause an "Airbender Avatar" to spontaneously appear.

Which makes zero sense. By definition all Avatars can already airbend.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:05:07 PM

Yes but an Airbending Avatar is an individual person. Not airbenders as a whole people.

But again, the Avatar Spirit already gives the Avatar all four elements anyway. There's no such thing as an Airbender Avatar, or a Firebender Avatar...there's just the Avatar.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:07:35 PM

I don't see the relevance of that point?

From one point of view it gives them the three that they don't already have naturally from being born in to the nation.

Like you're arguing it will keep rotating through the three remaining peoples, others are speculating to keep the balance it will find the closest thing it can get to an air nomad and use them for 'air'.

There's really no definitive answer to be gain from the show, since it never happened.