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

Check out our last episode! http://tmblr.co/ZwGGLvLNBUJH

Anonymous asked: So this is going to be kinda long , but your podcast made me think of some things. In pro bending they don't freeze people and that does not male any sense because it is a type of water bending that is not fatal( unlike the lighting) so why can't they use it? Also , Aang was the on;y one who could take peoples beding away right? So, I am calling it now ether Aang thought his non bender son how to do this , or Aang died, allowing Korra to be born, hen he comes back, realizes the inequality

Hey Anon, I had the same question early on until I watched the official description of the pro-bending rules on Korra Nation. Essentially, there are different rules for safety. Earthbenders are restricted to only bending the clay discs, and aren’t allowed to changed their shape or break them into shards. Waterbenders can only access water from below the ring (not the pool below), can’t turn it into ice or mist, and can only stream it at an opponent for up to 10 seconds. Similary, firebenders can only stream fire for 10 seconds. Specialties like lightning and metalbending are obviously off the table, and it’s unclear if the average person even knows what bloodbending is.

Them’s the rules!

—Lu the Earthbender

http://korranation.tumblr.com/post/19586633139/bryan-konietzko-creator-of-a-tla-and-the-legend

hazzardman asked: I believe Korra may learn to unlock bending potential in nonbenders or even create multibenders. I see the potential for dual or even triple benders is that with the mixing of the diffrent bending cultures people can have two diffrent bender types as parents like Tenzin. Because I question why exactly is he not a water bender instead, after all Bolin and Mako are diffrent benders but are brothers So it seems bending capabilities are unpredictable when in last airbender it seems blood. Thoughts?

It would be interesting to see if energybenders could give back bending as well as take it away. This could be a cool end for Korra’s spiritual journey: first airbending, then the spirit world, and finally energybending.

I don’t think we’ll see multi-benders because it would diminish the Avatar, and muddle the themes of the show. Metalbenders and bloodbenders prove that you don’t need multiple bending abilities to do incredible things. On the other hand, the show has consistently shown us that sometimes abilities are lost (energybending) and sometimes they are discovered (metalbending), so it’s in the realm of possibility.

Lastly, it seems that mixed families can produce different types of benders, but you only get one. It’s like real-life genetics. Sometimes kids get red hair, and sometimes black hair, but you don’t see them get both on different parts of their body (no Rufio). In the case of Tenzin, he was born an airbender like his father, but his sister Kya is a waterbender and Bumi is a non-bender. He also turned out light-skinned like his father, but Kya and Bumi are dark-skinned like their mother. As a mixed-race person, this rings very true to my experience. Good job, Bryke.

—Lu the Earthbender

PS Check out our second episode, which is up now! http://tmblr.co/ZwGGLvL6rSRx