Triple Threat Podcast

Anonymous asked: You guys and alot of other people talk about blood bending as if its a hard thing to learn and only a few people know it. But its my theory that all water benders who were trained in the art of healing already know it but just don't realize. I believe blood bending is just a reverse engineered healing technique. But idk what do you guys think?

The thing to remember about specialized bending arts is that there is no single, “true” derivative. Waterbending has healing, bloodbending, and plantbending. To answer your question directly, the answer is yes I do agree. All three derivatives involve manipulating both water and chi inside of another creature. (If you’re wondering why I say chi, ask yourself why it should be harder to move water in an animal than a plant—or why healing can repair damage—water is the medium but chi is what’s really being controlled). None of these styles are immediately intuitive to someone simply pushing or pulling tides, but as a master begins to think critically they reach similar conclusions in the North (healing), South (bloodbending), and Swamp (plantbending).

Not all specialties survive, and some of them are just too dangerous. Both lightning and combustion involve manipulating your own chi while firebending. Lightning asks you to separate your positive and negative chi before releasing the resulting energy by firebending. Combustion is pushing a large amount of energy through a single chakra point. Both could be considered specialties, but combustion is just too dangerous and will probably be lost to time, whereas lightning has become the most common specialty of them all.

Like metalbending, combustion required a handicap to originally figure out. If she were not blind, Toph wouldn’t have focused so much on “seeing” through earth and therefore wouldn’t have had the sensitivity to metalbend. Similarly, Combustion Man had to be born with a wide open Third Eye chakra which basically limited him to funneling large amounts of firebending through a single, explosive point. I’m sure he could have taught others how to do this, just as Toph taught people who could see how to metalbend, but the results would have been disastrous for just about everyone involved.

TL;DR There are no limits to how many specialties a bending art can have. All of the existing specialties are somehow related (healing/blood/plant = external chi control, lightning/combustion = internal chi control, metal/tremorsense = sensing). Some specialties will be forgotten (combustion), some will be discovered (metal), and some are discovered at different times in different ways (healing/blood/plant).

—Lucky Lu the Earthbender

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Anonymous asked: what do u think of blood bending ???

Great question, I’m sure Lu and Dar Will want to add,

Blood Bending is the kind of technique that really make me sympathize with the Equalists.  Hama uses to terrorize an innocent small town, and Katara does it to exact punishment on the Admiral she falsely believes to have killed her Mother.  It is a power that throughout the show has been abused by every person that has used it.  In a city run by a bending elite and bending gangs, blood bending would represent the ultimate fear of a non-bender: to be completely powerlessness.  

It will be interesting to see how and if blood bending is used in LOK.  Lightning and Metalbending are now somewhat common techniques, whereas in Avatar they could be done by only a handful of people.  Two of the most powerful benders in the show, Jeong Jeong and King Bumi, never did any Lightning or Metalbending.  That being said, Bloodbending is inherently malicious, and it seems unlikely to me that Katara would have shared that technique with anyone.  

Some Korra Fans believe Tahno can Bloodbend, but I am not sure how he would overcome the full moon limitation, or how he would have learned the technique.  If he could, it would certainly give Amon a reason to go after him, which we know from the promo that he does.  We’ll probably find out Saturday so stay tuned.  Thanks for the great question.

—Beau the Firebender

Bloodbending is just another example of Big Water Tribe Government messin with our lives. They wanna heal you, then they wanna control you. Stick with rocks kids. I don’t even like Metalbending. No one should be able to bend my toaster.

—Lu the Earthbender

All you Waterbenders out there, these two idiots are the perfect example of what happens when we go from being the communal, balanced style to the aggressive, dangerous one. You can’t box us in!

I understand that there is a sinister side to Bloodbending — using humans as meat puppets isn’t exactly sweet — but I take issue with the idea that Katara would somehow find it “wrong” to teach it to Korra.  Forbidden techniques are the exact ones that should be learned, so that your disciple doesn’t find themselves on the receiving end of them.

What a cool image, if one full moon Gran-Gran Katara takes Korra aside, with one stoic looking White Lotus dude.  “Tonight, Korra, I will teach you something I wish I didn’t have to.”  BAM.  Why would she only teach healing?

Honestly, the only scenario I can imagine Bloodbending come up is if Amon tries to take Korra’s bending away by full moon.  I doubt he knows about it, so it could catch him by surprise.  And that would MOS DEF get Korra to reach deep into her bag of tricks.

—Dar the Waterbender