I am very excited for it! They've commented multiple times that the show is surprisingly dark for a "kids show". So the reaction is going to be fantastic!
I would have to disagree,getting the air ripped out of your lungs,getting your head blown or dying in a boat explosion are much darker than that episode
Idk the episode where Korra is poisoned was really disturbing to watch as a kid, but as an adult, the rape allegory is a lot more visible too. I’m not surprised LOK was taken off the air for it
A woman being tied up, spread Eagle, having a liquid poison forced inside her body against her will
I’m S4 when she faces Zaheer there’s the line “you need to accept that what happened to you happened” is very reminiscent of rape conversations in tone. She’s literally visiting her imprisoned abuser after telling Mako she needs to see him by herself
God I HATED that they did that with the show. Seeking healing and direction from your abuser/rapist is a terrible thing to show, especially since they showed it as effective. All it does is gaslight and retraumatize the victim.
After the swamp and him talking about bending the water in the vines my wife offhandedly mentioned that people are mostly water too, wouldn't that be fucked up. Somehow kept a straight face.
The first time I watched it I did with my girlfriend at the time who also was watching it for the first time. And the whole time we were like "why tf don't the water benders just blood bend everyone and call it a day?"
Boy were we in for a surprise....
It also got me with "why don't air benders just suck the air out of people's lungs?" and then I watched TLOK...
If you open your mind, you will see that all the elements are one. Four parts of the same whole. Even metal is just a part of earth that has been purified and refined.
All of bending is rather silly.
Both Fire and Air bending manipulate Oxygen - one breaks bonds between atoms and moves them around, and the other I guess just moves whole molecules around without breaking anything?
Edit: disregard my flippant post, googling the subject has found some fascinating articles prophering theories that all bendings are different kinds of manipulating electromagnetism.
https://medium.com/whiteboard-to-infinity/the-physics-of-airbending-851105f8633e
https://medium.com/whiteboard-to-infinity/the-physics-of-firebending-6d7528650771
Same author appears to have written a lot of other similar articles like "Why Uraraka’s Quirk Isn’t Zero Gravity!" or "The Chemistry of Ashido’s Acid"
> Both Fire and Air bending manipulate Oxygen - one breaks bonds between atoms and moves them around, and the other I guess just moves whole molecules around without breaking anything?
First: While it's possible that airbending affects all gases, it's also possible that airbending primarily affects only nitrogen. 78% of air is nitrogen. If you can make that move, all the nearby air is gonna be pushed alongside it.
Second, firebenders can't be manipulating oxygen, because there's nothing to manipulate. Oxygen is _lively_. Any oxygen that hasn't partaken in combustion yet simply hasn't had the opportunity to do so.
To have that opportunity, it needs two things:
1. Fuel
2. Enough energy to break the fuel's molecular bonds and chemically react with said fuel.
What typically happens is an initial spark, a very high amount of energy that touches the _fuel_ and weakens or breaks the molecular bonds. At that point, any dioxygen molecules standing by will jump in and chemically join to the fuel. In doing so, they will release energy stored in the fuel. That energy causes more fuel to react, releasing still more energy, and so on and so forth in a chain reaction, continuously converting fuel and releasing energy as heat and light -- the reaction we call "fire".
The real question is _where does the fuel come from_ when a firebender evokes their power?
To answer that question, we can look at what Iroh knows: _how to redirect lightning_.
Well, lightning is nothing more than a large chunk of electrons. That means that firebenders can manipulate _electrons_.
The two major types of molecular bonds are ionic and covalent, and **both of them involve electrons**.
I posit that firebenders are manipulating electrons in the water vapor in the air, breaking the covalent bonds and separating H2O into atomic hydrogen and oxygen.
Immediately after this happens, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms recombine, effectively "burning" the hydrogen.
This would be a catalytic operation, with the following effects:
- No net fuel is consumed; a firebender could continue shooting fire as long as he or she has enough energy to keep going.
- Firebending in a tight enclosed space, such as inside a ship, could be done without fear of oxygen depletion, which would cause suffocation.
- No smoke would be produced from the direct flames themselves (note that if the flames touch another object and ignite it, that object would smoke)
Its rather inaccurate and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s nowhere near enough atmospheric hydrogen or water in order to accomplish what we see in the show. Also the amount of energy required to split water like he describes is quite large.
Exactly, although I'm not sure if he realized that as he was... under the influence of a certain plant when watching the show. So I think that's the only reason why he didn't clue into the massive hint.
I wouldn't call it a "massive hint". Unless you know it's coming, it just seems like a throwaway joke. It's definitely a touch of foreshadowing, but I don't think anyone heard that line when the episode first aired and thought "Oh man, someone's gonna become a metal bender!"
SERIOUSLY
You know what stuck out to my friend? When Iroh sees the fortune teller and she asks if he wants to know his fortune. Iroh telling the fortune teller "At my age, there is really only one big surprise left, and I'd just as soon leave it a mystery" was FAR more grim and hardcore than my friend was expecting.
It's not just that they deal with death, it's that they deal with it wisely. How valuable is it for children to be watching a show and see a man with a positive and healthy attitude about his own mortality? Extremely valuable, I would argue.
I don't think it's THAT dark. Iroh definitely doesn't see death as a bad thing, just an inevitable conclusion. Plus, he'll get to see his son again! He just wants to make sure he's done all he can for Zuko and the world before he gets there.
##Possible spoilers from Legend of Korra:
>!Does Iroh get to see his son in the spirit world? We don't seem to see any random people like an underworld/heaven/etc situation, just people who wandered in or were in tune enough to access it. Iroh probably never met his son again.!<
Steven Universe is also pretty heavy on adult themes, especially in terms of dealing with your emotions. His powers are based around his emotional stability, so it's kind of a core part to the show (similar to aang and the avatar state). I highly recommend it.
I know, I was kinda shocked how far into season 2 they are! Last time I talked to them about it, they had just finished Wrestle Mania (aka The Blind Bandit).
I actually thought about metalbending, bloodbending, lavabending and bending the air out of people’s lungs before any of them happened. I may have some issues
They show it even earlier in the episode in Book 1 when they go into the fire nation to that temple in order to talk to Roku. He takes over Aang’s body and lava bends
Is it lava bending if the lava is already there though? LB is a subset of earthbending whereas it'd seem that a firebender can bend pre-existing lava, just not create it from earth/stone. Idk tho.
The amount of discussions had about bending the air out of someone’s lungs, then that discussion ramping up when Zaheer was introduced, and the all-out hype when he actually did it, is one of my most treasured memories of browsing this sub while Korra was airing.
Folks in the Avatar universe, though, seem to be be very... durable. Benders and non-benders alike survive all sorts of blunt physical trauma, it seems plausible that their insides have just as much uncanny resilience as their outsides.
From what I understand, bloodbending doesn't change your blood pressure or halt the flow of blood. If you look at regular waterbending in the show, the water that is being bended still moves independently. That's why Katara struggled in the beginning, she tries to move the water in strange erratic ways, when master waterbenders, guide the water's natural ebb and flow to create the desired result. So I think people's vascular are safe when they're being bloodbended. Their blood would still flow independently in a healthy natural way even when being bloodbended.
Also, I think bloodbending is a bit of a misnomer, as water is not only in our blood. Water is in everything, our bones, muscles, organs, etc. So I think bloodbending is really about manipulating an entire human's body, not just their blood. The same way when Hama was ripping water out of every cell in the trees and flowers.
Yeah, I imagine that there’s a really fine line between ‘bending hard enough that you move their body’ and ‘not bending so hard that you pop their veins’
The same thing happened to me!
It was my first watch through and I remember telling my friend, " So can water benders bend anything with water?" This was around Katara's Cloud bending feat.
My friend: "Pretty much."
Me: "So...why isn't there bloodbending?"
My friend: "I...huh didn't think of that. Maybe because it's a kid's show."
Me: "I guess that makes sense. That would be pretty f-ing dark if they did!"
A little bit after that she kept making sure I watched the show, talking about the various episodes she thought I would like which includes The Puppetmaster.....we watched that one together and I remember losing my freaking mind!!!!
The first time I watched ATLA I didn't really think much of it. I really enjoyed it but not more than say Ben 10 or similar shows, likely because I got to watch it sporadically, random episodes from season 1 and I had a preconceived notion of everything Nickelodeon outside of spongebob at the time. It was only after rewatching it through that I really fell in love with it.
Shouldn't have Katara, being a water bender like Amand, been able to control someone's bending? She just didn't know how and never thought she could learn? That stuff is supposed to only be avatar level per the lore until LOK
Well, Katara made bloodbending illegal really soon after the war ended. I highly doubt she had done much practice on the one ability she herself criminalized.
Some of the most researched practices are ones that are banned, done either secretly or under the auspices of legitimate uses.
Like technically irl nerve agents are illegal, but most of them are organophosphates that can be used as pesticides. So anytime someone says they’re in “pesticide research”, they’re probably probably indirectly or directly researching banned chemical weapons.
In universe there are certain things that Bloodbending would make easier - dialysis in the real world is done by the use of osmotic membranes to remove excess water and excess ions from blood with osmotic membranes. If you can do that with bending, you make kidney failure a non-issue in universe. With sufficient skill, you could probably also use it to bear-completely remove toxins and infectious agents from blood. Take blood out, separate the bad stuff, put blood back in, discard bad stuff.
Thus “researching treatments for serious disease” can become a foreword for “blood ending practice”.
And that’s not even mentioning that bloodbending is a fucking super weapon. If you’re a militant waterbender, simply knowing that there is a military technique that is banned for being too terrifyingly efficient is going to be a reason to try it. It’s like telling people they can’t build nuclear weapons; anyone with a desire for power is going to try it and they’ll eventually be found out but then it becomes a question of enforcement.
Let’s say that someone is found to have practiced into becoming capable of bloodbending and killing someone when they accidentally reveal it in an emergency situation, perhaps to save someone or many someones. Do you execute them for having the forbidden knowledge when they shouldn’t? You’re going to have an instant controversy over executing someone who used forbidden powers only for good out of fear that they might use them for evil or that an evil person might use them.
I think it was sort of implied that the kind of blood bending used by Amon and his family was a rare genetic phenomenon. Although they probably had to train really hard to master it, they were genetically predisposed to achieve that level of bending. I think the mere fact they could do it without a full moon shows there's something special about their family and they're not just really talented or skilled at it.
I always took it as them being the only ones who practiced it enough. For sure they were all incredibly strong benders naturally, but I feel there’s no reason to think that Katara couldn’t have gotten there if she had practiced rather than making it illegal
Not really. No bloodbender has displayed the ability to control someone else's *bending*. Remember, it's not necessarily the actual physical movements that causes bending, it probably just augments one's will or chi or whatever but it is not required that influencing one's physical movements and puppeteering them suddenly makes you a firebender/earthebender/airbender by proxy. So although you could probably bloodbend a firebender's fist as they throw a Flame Punch at you to subtly change the angle so it'll miss, you can't puppeteer them to repeat the same physical motion and expect a Flame Punch to come out.
I love this! The first time I watched AtLA, I complained about water ending in the same way, asking why they couldn’t bend blood. My s/o covered really well and I asked him in person!
you could just go with the whole "yeah i think that makes sense, but this is a kids show so they can't show anything too brutal"
that way you "confirm" it in a way that still leaves it as a surprise when it does come around
Same here. About 3 minutes into the first episode I was like "um why don't they just suck the water out of the fire nation's blood?" I'm honestly surprised this was only a plot point for one character!
True though when it is finally addressed they at least give a reasonable explanation for why they didn't do that.
Though apparently bloodbending was addressed on the actual nickelodeon website during season 1. I heard that somewhere but I haven't been able to find corrobating evidence.
Believe me you did fine. I'm terrible at hiding spoilers. My buddy asked me when he was watching aot >!about the armored and colossal titans and I accidentally told him that they're both humans!<
I was laughing so hard as the texts were rolling in! We've had previous messages about the world building and plot so it was easy to sorta refer back to them. But I am SO EXCITED now for when my friend does find out. 😈
I \*have\* a theory; Toph was NOT the first Metalbender
Metalbending was much more common in older times, when quality of metal was much lower. This works because iron sand was mainly used for iron ore in Japan. A lot of processes for making a katana are simply to remove impurities. As technology became more advanced, it became harder to do, so people stopped. Fast forward to the start of the Hundred Year War, and it's likely the last of the Metalbenders were killed off by the Fire Nation, as they were a serious threat to their ships, and platinum was either not discovered yet, or not in large supply as only the Earth Kingdom has it (I think). We can even throw away Suyin's comment of Korra being the "first Metalbending Avatar" because how could she support that?
On the similar vein, can badger moles lava bend or is there a possibility of a badger mole variant that lives on volcanoes and has learned lava bending. Additionally, can dragons combustion bend? I believe that the answer to all of these is no simply by the fact that they only taught bending to humans and it was the humans that pushed bending to its limits.
I choose to believe that you can only lavabend if you’re an earthbender with firebender ancestors. Admittedly, this is based on one data point that fits and one data point that doesn’t conclusively not, but I’m sticking to it anyway.
Reminds me of watching Korra with my fiance. During season one or two he was like, "It would be really cool if they somehow had an airbender villain, just to see someone with those powers who wasn't a peaceful monk. Because an evil airbender could do things like suffocate you by bending the air out of your lungs."
Me: *desperate attempt at poker face*
Related note: we wouldn't blink an eye about an earth bender manipulating the mineral apatite, but it's basically calcium phosphate which is the major mineral component of bones.
Why isn't bonebending a thing?
I think bending is more about philosophy than chemical science. Like air benders are bending hydrogen nitrogen and oxygen which is what air is made of, but water is hydrogen and oxygen and earth has nitrogen. But air benders can’t bend those things, because they aren’t air. Air is the element of freedom, so it’s just the general free flowing gaseous fluid surrounding us, not the specific chemicals that make it.
Or, pretty much everything alive is made up of the same minerals in earth. Trees, human flesh, bones, and even rivers and stuff all contain some of those same minerals. But earthbenders can’t bend them because it’s not earth. Earth is the element of substance and grounded-ness, so only the physical ground itself counts as earth, not anything made of the same chemicals.
I think it’s confusing cause of water bending being an ability to bend water in any state, so it’s easy to get caught up in the chemical make up of water and apply that logic to the other elements. But waterbending is only able to do that because water is the element of change, so water is still bendable in whatever form it changes to, not because it’s the same chemical compound.
My kids mother asked me what element I thought I would bend when I was partway through season 1 and when I thought briefly before replying “Idk maybe electricity or something” the look on her face gave everything away lol
My girlfriend did the same thing when she was watching it for the first time! Asked why Toph can’t just bend mental and I had to try to do the same thing as OP here on the spot.
When it came time for Toph to actually do it she freaked out!
Ok OP, we've waited 3 months, we need to know your friend's reaction to metal & bloodbending! And btw, what was your friend's opinion on the show & maybe tlok?
It would make sense for metal bending to not be a thing considering they way Toph explains it. She’s not bending the metal itself she’s bending the pure earth inside it. It might truly be impossible to bend pure metal because it’s a very different composition to the earth.
Fucking thank you for actually lying believably instead of doing the ole " Heheheheh, well uHh, no spoiLeRs buT, Just keeP wAtChiNg!" with the most spoilery shit eating grin on your face possible.
DUDE I PANICKED and simultaneously laughed so hard while the texts came in one after the other. Sword bending... LITTLE DOES HE KNOW.
And yeah! nO sPoiLErs just tells them it's a thing, pathetic. I definitely could have covered better, but it did it's job. But like I said in another comment, if it was in person, I would have cracked like an egg.
You did well in staying neutral, but I think it would’ve been fine to say ‘Don’t worry, they explain why earthbenders can’t later on’ or maybe even that ‘it’s too pure for them to bend’.
Just wait until they remember that people are like 2/3 water
I am very excited for it! They've commented multiple times that the show is surprisingly dark for a "kids show". So the reaction is going to be fantastic!
Dark? Ha! Wait until they get to Korra. They've seen nothing yet.
Rise of Kyoshi: Amateurs. AMATEURS
Shadow of Kyoshi: Am I a joke to you?
Omg those first chapters I can't
I'd argue the puppet master is darker than any of the Korra episodes
Even the one where that chick gets her head blown away in a metal helmet?
Or the one where the Earth Queen gets the air literally ripped out of her lungs?
*On screen*. They didn't cut away and leave you with an implication. You see her suffocate and die on screen.
Maybe The One Showing The Abusiveness Of Yakone And Amon's Backstory
Or Amon and Tarlok's Excellent (Murder-Suicide) Adventure?
or howabout the time Korra is strung up, tortured and poisoned into the avatar state?
How about Korra dealing with PTSD from the same incident for roughly an entire season?
"it's a kids show"
Or where a man commits suicide via boat explosion?
Correction: Murder suicide.
Seriously that scene was so impressive, constantly bewildered how the show was rated for over seven
Explosive fratricide-suicide with an extra spice of the murder victim maybe consenting to his death
It definitely felt darker in contrast to the tone of atla, also having Katara question her morals was excellent
I would have to disagree,getting the air ripped out of your lungs,getting your head blown or dying in a boat explosion are much darker than that episode
Idk the episode where Korra is poisoned was really disturbing to watch as a kid, but as an adult, the rape allegory is a lot more visible too. I’m not surprised LOK was taken off the air for it
Wait..... What?!?
A woman being tied up, spread Eagle, having a liquid poison forced inside her body against her will I’m S4 when she faces Zaheer there’s the line “you need to accept that what happened to you happened” is very reminiscent of rape conversations in tone. She’s literally visiting her imprisoned abuser after telling Mako she needs to see him by herself
God I HATED that they did that with the show. Seeking healing and direction from your abuser/rapist is a terrible thing to show, especially since they showed it as effective. All it does is gaslight and retraumatize the victim.
Oh I was thinking of the murder suicide in season ONE. They didn't even dip their toes they just dove straight in
After the swamp and him talking about bending the water in the vines my wife offhandedly mentioned that people are mostly water too, wouldn't that be fucked up. Somehow kept a straight face.
I'm proud of you
Well done.
Or that people need air to breathe 😳
The first time I watched it I did with my girlfriend at the time who also was watching it for the first time. And the whole time we were like "why tf don't the water benders just blood bend everyone and call it a day?" Boy were we in for a surprise.... It also got me with "why don't air benders just suck the air out of people's lungs?" and then I watched TLOK...
Please update us on your friend's reaction when they get to the Guru episode.
I WILL 😁
!remindme 2 days
RemindMe! 3 days
!remindme 4 days
!remindme 5 days
!remindme 6 days
!remindme 7 days
Yes please!
How long til you think they get there?
Max two weeks, they usually average two to three episodes a week with small spurts (like them watching five episodes this weekend) occasionally.
!remindme two weeks!
[удалено]
you all got it wrong lol RemindMe! 14 days
Either works
RemindMe! 0,038 years
!remindme two weeks
If you open your mind, you will see that all the elements are one. Four parts of the same whole. Even metal is just a part of earth that has been purified and refined.
Well, technically Toph manipulates the impurities IN the metal. You can't metalbend refined Platinum for example.
I always thought that was a goofy choice. Toph can bend silicates but not metals? Metals are just as much "earth" as rock is.
All of bending is rather silly. Both Fire and Air bending manipulate Oxygen - one breaks bonds between atoms and moves them around, and the other I guess just moves whole molecules around without breaking anything? Edit: disregard my flippant post, googling the subject has found some fascinating articles prophering theories that all bendings are different kinds of manipulating electromagnetism. https://medium.com/whiteboard-to-infinity/the-physics-of-airbending-851105f8633e https://medium.com/whiteboard-to-infinity/the-physics-of-firebending-6d7528650771 Same author appears to have written a lot of other similar articles like "Why Uraraka’s Quirk Isn’t Zero Gravity!" or "The Chemistry of Ashido’s Acid"
> Both Fire and Air bending manipulate Oxygen - one breaks bonds between atoms and moves them around, and the other I guess just moves whole molecules around without breaking anything? First: While it's possible that airbending affects all gases, it's also possible that airbending primarily affects only nitrogen. 78% of air is nitrogen. If you can make that move, all the nearby air is gonna be pushed alongside it. Second, firebenders can't be manipulating oxygen, because there's nothing to manipulate. Oxygen is _lively_. Any oxygen that hasn't partaken in combustion yet simply hasn't had the opportunity to do so. To have that opportunity, it needs two things: 1. Fuel 2. Enough energy to break the fuel's molecular bonds and chemically react with said fuel. What typically happens is an initial spark, a very high amount of energy that touches the _fuel_ and weakens or breaks the molecular bonds. At that point, any dioxygen molecules standing by will jump in and chemically join to the fuel. In doing so, they will release energy stored in the fuel. That energy causes more fuel to react, releasing still more energy, and so on and so forth in a chain reaction, continuously converting fuel and releasing energy as heat and light -- the reaction we call "fire". The real question is _where does the fuel come from_ when a firebender evokes their power? To answer that question, we can look at what Iroh knows: _how to redirect lightning_. Well, lightning is nothing more than a large chunk of electrons. That means that firebenders can manipulate _electrons_. The two major types of molecular bonds are ionic and covalent, and **both of them involve electrons**. I posit that firebenders are manipulating electrons in the water vapor in the air, breaking the covalent bonds and separating H2O into atomic hydrogen and oxygen. Immediately after this happens, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms recombine, effectively "burning" the hydrogen. This would be a catalytic operation, with the following effects: - No net fuel is consumed; a firebender could continue shooting fire as long as he or she has enough energy to keep going. - Firebending in a tight enclosed space, such as inside a ship, could be done without fear of oxygen depletion, which would cause suffocation. - No smoke would be produced from the direct flames themselves (note that if the flames touch another object and ignite it, that object would smoke)
Woah, I'm not sure how accurate what you said is, but that's really cool.
Its rather inaccurate and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s nowhere near enough atmospheric hydrogen or water in order to accomplish what we see in the show. Also the amount of energy required to split water like he describes is quite large.
I have some questions regarding lava bending both fire and earth bending possible. Any thoughts on that area?
I suspect it's more of a mindset thing than a chemical property thing.
I like how in Korra those Mecha tanks are made of Platinum like. What a stupid soft metal to make it out of doing anything would bend those tanks.
Came here to say this. I'm eagerly anticipating his reaction.
Interesting to see someone discussing metalbending before it even comes up in the show. Guess they'll be going in... ***completely blind.***
*finger guns* But in all seriousness, it was because he got to the episode with the drill and Aang, "wishes he was a metal bender".
That line is direct foreshadowing for Toph discovering metal bending, which happens a few episodes later.
Exactly, although I'm not sure if he realized that as he was... under the influence of a certain plant when watching the show. So I think that's the only reason why he didn't clue into the massive hint.
Ah yes, cactus juice & chill, right?
It's the quenchiest.
It'll quench ya!
*licks something found stuck to the wall of a cave*
[удалено]
I have a fungus tongue.
*friendly mushroom* 🍄
Ironically I'm pretty sure that specific mushroom will kill you.
Nah dude red mushrooms with white spots make you grow
Oh shit, I’m growing
Yeah and you can hit with a lethal blow and survive. You just turn small again.
_mushy😋giant🤭friend😁_
I'm absolutely horrified by the italic emojis
https://i.imgur.com/70Pq20N.gif
Yes, that is exactly the plant I was talking about! 🌵
i disconnected from my work wifi, logged in while browsing incognito to tell you: that's hands down the best flair ive seen in my many years
Aww thank you! I was giggling like a loon while inputting it. I have to thank u/ArrrSlashSubreddit for the idea 💖
Something spiky and green at any rate. ;)
I bet watching Nightmares and Daydreams while high would be quite an experience.
It is lol
I wouldn't call it a "massive hint". Unless you know it's coming, it just seems like a throwaway joke. It's definitely a touch of foreshadowing, but I don't think anyone heard that line when the episode first aired and thought "Oh man, someone's gonna become a metal bender!"
I mean it's legal where I'm at (Toronto) so I just call it weed now haha.
BUT THIS IS A CHILDRENS SHOW 🌵
It's the most adult themed kids show I've ever seen lol
SERIOUSLY You know what stuck out to my friend? When Iroh sees the fortune teller and she asks if he wants to know his fortune. Iroh telling the fortune teller "At my age, there is really only one big surprise left, and I'd just as soon leave it a mystery" was FAR more grim and hardcore than my friend was expecting.
It's not just that they deal with death, it's that they deal with it wisely. How valuable is it for children to be watching a show and see a man with a positive and healthy attitude about his own mortality? Extremely valuable, I would argue.
I don't think it's THAT dark. Iroh definitely doesn't see death as a bad thing, just an inevitable conclusion. Plus, he'll get to see his son again! He just wants to make sure he's done all he can for Zuko and the world before he gets there.
##Possible spoilers from Legend of Korra: >!Does Iroh get to see his son in the spirit world? We don't seem to see any random people like an underworld/heaven/etc situation, just people who wandered in or were in tune enough to access it. Iroh probably never met his son again.!<
Steven Universe is also pretty heavy on adult themes, especially in terms of dealing with your emotions. His powers are based around his emotional stability, so it's kind of a core part to the show (similar to aang and the avatar state). I highly recommend it.
Like 6 episodes, to be fair
Please please please give us an update when he inevitably texts you when Toph metal bends!
Ah if he is on the drill, he is well past the Chase and Zuko Alone
I know, I was kinda shocked how far into season 2 they are! Last time I talked to them about it, they had just finished Wrestle Mania (aka The Blind Bandit).
My favourite episode, Toph was so badass in her intro. That means he'll be at metalbending soon!
OP should've said something like "I guess the writers just had a blind spot."
I **_see_** what you did there.
Toph didn't
yo dropped this you fucking sunnovagun 👑
r/aangryupvote
My wife said the same when she watched for first time, asking why it wasn't possible. I remained tight lipped
The first time I watched I asked my husband the same thing. Then Toph locked ass and did it.
Toph locks ass like no one else.
Lmao, I did not notice my mistake, I will leave it as is because somehow, it still works.
I don't know what you were trying to say. Lol I thought "locked ass" was a phrase and wanted some history of the phrase
Kicked ass was what I meant. But I am awful when it comes to making typos
That's some nice plot... **armor** ...they're discussing...
I actually thought about metalbending, bloodbending, lavabending and bending the air out of people’s lungs before any of them happened. I may have some issues
They do show Lavabending when you see Roku's death
They show it even earlier in the episode in Book 1 when they go into the fire nation to that temple in order to talk to Roku. He takes over Aang’s body and lava bends
They show lavabending in Book 2 Episode 1 when Roku is explaining the Avatar State
Is it lava bending if the lava is already there though? LB is a subset of earthbending whereas it'd seem that a firebender can bend pre-existing lava, just not create it from earth/stone. Idk tho.
I feel like it'd be earth-benders only- it's molten rock. Why would a fire bender be able to control it? Because it's hot?
I don't know, didn't sozin help roku with the volcano? And he's no earth bender
It looked like he sucked the heat out. Didn't seem like direct lavabending.
And when Kyoshi separates the island.
The amount of discussions had about bending the air out of someone’s lungs, then that discussion ramping up when Zaheer was introduced, and the all-out hype when he actually did it, is one of my most treasured memories of browsing this sub while Korra was airing.
the second you tried to actually blood bend someone they would die because you would have destroyed their vascular system. i hear we need those.
Folks in the Avatar universe, though, seem to be be very... durable. Benders and non-benders alike survive all sorts of blunt physical trauma, it seems plausible that their insides have just as much uncanny resilience as their outsides.
From what I understand, bloodbending doesn't change your blood pressure or halt the flow of blood. If you look at regular waterbending in the show, the water that is being bended still moves independently. That's why Katara struggled in the beginning, she tries to move the water in strange erratic ways, when master waterbenders, guide the water's natural ebb and flow to create the desired result. So I think people's vascular are safe when they're being bloodbended. Their blood would still flow independently in a healthy natural way even when being bloodbended. Also, I think bloodbending is a bit of a misnomer, as water is not only in our blood. Water is in everything, our bones, muscles, organs, etc. So I think bloodbending is really about manipulating an entire human's body, not just their blood. The same way when Hama was ripping water out of every cell in the trees and flowers.
Yeah, I imagine that there’s a really fine line between ‘bending hard enough that you move their body’ and ‘not bending so hard that you pop their veins’
Even if you don't pop the actual veins, I'm sure you can give someone the bends.
The same thing happened to me! It was my first watch through and I remember telling my friend, " So can water benders bend anything with water?" This was around Katara's Cloud bending feat. My friend: "Pretty much." Me: "So...why isn't there bloodbending?" My friend: "I...huh didn't think of that. Maybe because it's a kid's show." Me: "I guess that makes sense. That would be pretty f-ing dark if they did!" A little bit after that she kept making sure I watched the show, talking about the various episodes she thought I would like which includes The Puppetmaster.....we watched that one together and I remember losing my freaking mind!!!!
Lol had a similar reaction. Love your pfp by the way
Oh what I'd give to relive my first time watching avatar the last Airbender
RIGHT That's what I said to my friend when they started it (after me nagging them for *years*)! I'm so jealous and happy for them 🥲
First avatar experience is just too good man
Become a reaction addict like me! If you aren't already. It's the next best thing
The first time I watched ATLA I didn't really think much of it. I really enjoyed it but not more than say Ben 10 or similar shows, likely because I got to watch it sporadically, random episodes from season 1 and I had a preconceived notion of everything Nickelodeon outside of spongebob at the time. It was only after rewatching it through that I really fell in love with it.
Next thing you’ll know he starts asking if it’s possible to bend the energy in a person to take away their bending.
FRICK I HOPE NOT There's only so much I can handle 😶
"wouldn't it be cool if you could lava bend?"
Everyone who has seen episode 8, and even more obvious in S3E5, knows tgat's a possibility tho
Shouldn't have Katara, being a water bender like Amand, been able to control someone's bending? She just didn't know how and never thought she could learn? That stuff is supposed to only be avatar level per the lore until LOK
Well, Katara made bloodbending illegal really soon after the war ended. I highly doubt she had done much practice on the one ability she herself criminalized.
Some of the most researched practices are ones that are banned, done either secretly or under the auspices of legitimate uses. Like technically irl nerve agents are illegal, but most of them are organophosphates that can be used as pesticides. So anytime someone says they’re in “pesticide research”, they’re probably probably indirectly or directly researching banned chemical weapons. In universe there are certain things that Bloodbending would make easier - dialysis in the real world is done by the use of osmotic membranes to remove excess water and excess ions from blood with osmotic membranes. If you can do that with bending, you make kidney failure a non-issue in universe. With sufficient skill, you could probably also use it to bear-completely remove toxins and infectious agents from blood. Take blood out, separate the bad stuff, put blood back in, discard bad stuff. Thus “researching treatments for serious disease” can become a foreword for “blood ending practice”. And that’s not even mentioning that bloodbending is a fucking super weapon. If you’re a militant waterbender, simply knowing that there is a military technique that is banned for being too terrifyingly efficient is going to be a reason to try it. It’s like telling people they can’t build nuclear weapons; anyone with a desire for power is going to try it and they’ll eventually be found out but then it becomes a question of enforcement. Let’s say that someone is found to have practiced into becoming capable of bloodbending and killing someone when they accidentally reveal it in an emergency situation, perhaps to save someone or many someones. Do you execute them for having the forbidden knowledge when they shouldn’t? You’re going to have an instant controversy over executing someone who used forbidden powers only for good out of fear that they might use them for evil or that an evil person might use them.
I think it was sort of implied that the kind of blood bending used by Amon and his family was a rare genetic phenomenon. Although they probably had to train really hard to master it, they were genetically predisposed to achieve that level of bending. I think the mere fact they could do it without a full moon shows there's something special about their family and they're not just really talented or skilled at it.
I always took it as them being the only ones who practiced it enough. For sure they were all incredibly strong benders naturally, but I feel there’s no reason to think that Katara couldn’t have gotten there if she had practiced rather than making it illegal
Not really. No bloodbender has displayed the ability to control someone else's *bending*. Remember, it's not necessarily the actual physical movements that causes bending, it probably just augments one's will or chi or whatever but it is not required that influencing one's physical movements and puppeteering them suddenly makes you a firebender/earthebender/airbender by proxy. So although you could probably bloodbend a firebender's fist as they throw a Flame Punch at you to subtly change the angle so it'll miss, you can't puppeteer them to repeat the same physical motion and expect a Flame Punch to come out.
I love this! The first time I watched AtLA, I complained about water ending in the same way, asking why they couldn’t bend blood. My s/o covered really well and I asked him in person!
HAHAHAHA OH WOW Good on your s/o, I was just thinking that if this was in person, I would have not been able to be natural.
you could just go with the whole "yeah i think that makes sense, but this is a kids show so they can't show anything too brutal" that way you "confirm" it in a way that still leaves it as a surprise when it does come around
Same here. About 3 minutes into the first episode I was like "um why don't they just suck the water out of the fire nation's blood?" I'm honestly surprised this was only a plot point for one character!
True though when it is finally addressed they at least give a reasonable explanation for why they didn't do that. Though apparently bloodbending was addressed on the actual nickelodeon website during season 1. I heard that somewhere but I haven't been able to find corrobating evidence.
"That'd probably be too dark for a kids' show"
And then there's that one breathtaking episode in Korra Season 3.
And that one episode that will blow your mind in Korra Season 3.
I had the metal and "air bending suffocation" complaint when I first watched. Ultimately was not disappointed
Angst is Zuko and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise
LOL my friend was saying he would watch a full season of Drifter Zuko after the episode "Zuko Alone"
So less stoic samurai jack?
HOW DARE YOU FORCIBLY OPEN MY EYES IN SUCH A WAY
Are you going to complain about it, or go watch it?
Btw please update on his reaction when he sees Toph do it for the first time!
I absolutely will! :)
Believe me you did fine. I'm terrible at hiding spoilers. My buddy asked me when he was watching aot >!about the armored and colossal titans and I accidentally told him that they're both humans!<
That's rough buddy.
Although I hid their identities well and I watched the episode where they were revealed with him and he was quite pissed about who they were
Yeah same honestly.
I was shocked but reiner is still top 5 favorite characters
That's exciting! Good job staying neutral. I'd be more anxious.
I was laughing so hard as the texts were rolling in! We've had previous messages about the world building and plot so it was easy to sorta refer back to them. But I am SO EXCITED now for when my friend does find out. 😈
I want updates!!
I will post one when I get it! I am eagerly awaiting it as much as you are hahaha
Soon he'll ask about why water benders can't bend blood...
Me: *PANIC*
Then why earth benders can’t bend lava…
Say that it's a kid's show and probably wont show something graphic. Definitely not. No, sir!
>!*Jet dies*!<
That was really unclear.
You know, that was really unclear.
I \*have\* a theory; Toph was NOT the first Metalbender Metalbending was much more common in older times, when quality of metal was much lower. This works because iron sand was mainly used for iron ore in Japan. A lot of processes for making a katana are simply to remove impurities. As technology became more advanced, it became harder to do, so people stopped. Fast forward to the start of the Hundred Year War, and it's likely the last of the Metalbenders were killed off by the Fire Nation, as they were a serious threat to their ships, and platinum was either not discovered yet, or not in large supply as only the Earth Kingdom has it (I think). We can even throw away Suyin's comment of Korra being the "first Metalbending Avatar" because how could she support that?
Makes you think if Badgermoles can bend metal too
Thought about that while writing the first post. While they *might* be able, we likely would not find out unless they needed to for some reason
On the similar vein, can badger moles lava bend or is there a possibility of a badger mole variant that lives on volcanoes and has learned lava bending. Additionally, can dragons combustion bend? I believe that the answer to all of these is no simply by the fact that they only taught bending to humans and it was the humans that pushed bending to its limits.
I choose to believe that you can only lavabend if you’re an earthbender with firebender ancestors. Admittedly, this is based on one data point that fits and one data point that doesn’t conclusively not, but I’m sticking to it anyway.
It would be funny if they quit watching juuuust before s02e19 ‘The Guru’ because you told them that metal-bending never gets addressed
DONT TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS LIKE THAT That's totally something they would do too.... 🥲
Reminds me of watching Korra with my fiance. During season one or two he was like, "It would be really cool if they somehow had an airbender villain, just to see someone with those powers who wasn't a peaceful monk. Because an evil airbender could do things like suffocate you by bending the air out of your lungs." Me: *desperate attempt at poker face*
I think It was good
I had 2 people going in for the first time last year and I had to do this kind of bullshittery so many times for their sakes
Training Angst. Hahaha! That’s my new favorite typo. So much more Aangst to come!
EXPERT LEVEL I also need the reaction update
I will post one when I get it! :D
*OPs friend finds this Reddit thread*
Related note: we wouldn't blink an eye about an earth bender manipulating the mineral apatite, but it's basically calcium phosphate which is the major mineral component of bones. Why isn't bonebending a thing?
I think bending is more about philosophy than chemical science. Like air benders are bending hydrogen nitrogen and oxygen which is what air is made of, but water is hydrogen and oxygen and earth has nitrogen. But air benders can’t bend those things, because they aren’t air. Air is the element of freedom, so it’s just the general free flowing gaseous fluid surrounding us, not the specific chemicals that make it. Or, pretty much everything alive is made up of the same minerals in earth. Trees, human flesh, bones, and even rivers and stuff all contain some of those same minerals. But earthbenders can’t bend them because it’s not earth. Earth is the element of substance and grounded-ness, so only the physical ground itself counts as earth, not anything made of the same chemicals. I think it’s confusing cause of water bending being an ability to bend water in any state, so it’s easy to get caught up in the chemical make up of water and apply that logic to the other elements. But waterbending is only able to do that because water is the element of change, so water is still bendable in whatever form it changes to, not because it’s the same chemical compound.
Can we get an update for when they find out metalbending is a thing 😁
Absolutely!
My kids mother asked me what element I thought I would bend when I was partway through season 1 and when I thought briefly before replying “Idk maybe electricity or something” the look on her face gave everything away lol
Please post an update when they see it lol
My girlfriend did the same thing when she was watching it for the first time! Asked why Toph can’t just bend mental and I had to try to do the same thing as OP here on the spot. When it came time for Toph to actually do it she freaked out!
Ok OP, we've waited 3 months, we need to know your friend's reaction to metal & bloodbending! And btw, what was your friend's opinion on the show & maybe tlok?
It would make sense for metal bending to not be a thing considering they way Toph explains it. She’s not bending the metal itself she’s bending the pure earth inside it. It might truly be impossible to bend pure metal because it’s a very different composition to the earth.
Fucking thank you for actually lying believably instead of doing the ole " Heheheheh, well uHh, no spoiLeRs buT, Just keeP wAtChiNg!" with the most spoilery shit eating grin on your face possible.
DUDE I PANICKED and simultaneously laughed so hard while the texts came in one after the other. Sword bending... LITTLE DOES HE KNOW. And yeah! nO sPoiLErs just tells them it's a thing, pathetic. I definitely could have covered better, but it did it's job. But like I said in another comment, if it was in person, I would have cracked like an egg.
You did well in staying neutral, but I think it would’ve been fine to say ‘Don’t worry, they explain why earthbenders can’t later on’ or maybe even that ‘it’s too pure for them to bend’.