The Last Airbender thread ***SPOILERS***

[IslaKariese]

*ear twitches* ...Lavabending?

[Victin]

Molten stone, right?

[Guyshane]

Yea go look at the trailer again there's a shot of a guy blowing the ground open with lava and later another shot of Mako and Bolin dodging molten rocks while they're underwater

[Victin]

Yea go look at the trailer again there's a shot of a guy blowing the ground open with lava and later another shot of Mako and Bolin dodging molten rocks while they're underwater

Which one, I can't watch the second one because I'm not in the US.

[Guyshane]

Oh, right. Can someone get a screen capture for Vic? I'm on my phone right now.

[JRPictures]

Here's a non-geoblocked version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0UBbzeFc74

The scene with the magma is around 0:50

[Dryunya]

Airbenders

have me frothing at the mouth

I'm starting to think the Airbenders have an innate foam-inducing aura.

[IslaKariese]

I'm starting to think the Airbenders have an innate foam-inducing aura.

*blinks* ...Okay, I did not make that joke on purpose, I swear!

[Guyshane]

*le gasp*

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/06/20/ ... ium=social

[Endless Sea]

The greatest thing.

[Endless Sea]

Double-posting to confirm that yes, this is in fact the greatest thing.

[Anura]

I think I'll wait until I've seen it before making any judgements.

[Guyshane]

So...That was a hell of a start to the new season.

[IslaKariese]

It is quite a bit to wrap your head around, ain't it? These mysterious new criminals, the new airbenders, the motherf*cking vines, the fact that Zuko somehow got himself a dragon and made himself even more of a badass than he was at the end of the main series... I've got tingles.

[Guyshane]

Well personally I think that dragon looks an awful lot like Ran (The red one was Ran, right?) from The Firebending Masters.

[IslaKariese]

Well personally I think that dragon looks an awful lot like Ran (The red one was Ran, right?) from The Firebending Masters.

Yes, but those dragons were huge. Much bigger than this one.

[Pixelmage]

So, I've finally gotten around to catching up... And I gotta say, Ba Sing Se is still as screwed up as ever. .-. In fact, it's probably more screwed up than ever. >_<

On the lava bending however... It isn't lava bending. At least, strictly speaking, the dude could manage the lava shuriken by spinning the rocks really really fast to ignite the air around it by means of friction. You'd get a fire-earth effect that's to all intents and purposes a lava-like thing, but it isn't actual lava bending until he makes something bigger out of it. ">_>

Anyhow, I can't wait to get away from Ba Sing Se.

[Endless Sea]

I figured it was more like manipulating the earth to become liquid, like waterbenders can turn water solid.

[Pixelmage]

That's also a valid explanation, actually. Though form the animation I'm pretty sure he was spinning it really fast. If he can just melt it, using a spinning telekinetic shuriken wouldn't be such a great idea and he'd probably be better off lashing out with a magma whip. Which would be more in line with the other synergies in the series.

Take said water benders freezing water: Their moves and the ice behavior overall is extremely similar to earthbending. They use almost the same forms between Ice Pillars and Stone Pillars. Same with the Air and Fire arc forms which are very similar in both bender movement and area of effect.

The Lava Shuriken flowed a lot like the Dai Li gauntlets, which is essentially high level earth forms, which is why I don't think state manipulation is quite the right answer for it.

And in another sense, it does make consistency with the system that's shown so far about the more high level bending techniques being about understanding the rules rather than just being special:

Blood Bending comes from realizing (and accepting) that blood is also a liquid. The swamp benders didn't bend the plants themselves so much as they moved the water inside the vines, which appeared to be actual plant bending but wasn't.

Then there's Lightning, which is a critical point for Fire Benders, being a very focused pin-point ignition that arcs out.

For earth variations, there's metal which is denser and harder to manipulate, so it takes a more focused effort to pull it off. Much like the lightning to fire.

And then there's the sand benders who use several fine-grains of earth in forms that are light and a lot like air bender gusts. The fact that they're either air bending the sand or earth bending it to create gusts is obvious enough because they use wind sails to navigate the desert. So really, whether they're an earth or air sub is not clear to me.

Another aspect is that we now know that the elemental power originally was bestowed upon them by the Lion Turtles. This makes me doubt a little bit about the origin story of Omashu, but hey, myths enhance the truth anyway. So that's understandable.

But it also makes strange that there would be so many one-off special cases if the "advanced" forms were not restricted by knowledge / creativity and training plus skill. And to me, that makes more sense because Metal would have been a very unique skill of Toph, but she was able to teach it forward and in the time lapse between TLA and LoK, Lightning which was an extremely rare skill among Fire Benders turned into a source of power used to fuel the steampunk revolution that occurred in the setting. Mako's first on screen job was lightning-charging in a power plant, after all.

Then again, I might be reading too much into it. Point is, can we get away from Ba Sing Se now? Forever? Pretty please?

[Anura]

Makes me sad that Airbending has no advanced form. Soundbending would be pretty awesome.

[narrativedilettante]

Take said water benders freezing water: Their moves and the ice behavior overall is extremely similar to earthbending. They use almost the same forms between Ice Pillars and Stone Pillars. Same with the Air and Fire arc forms which are very similar in both bender movement and area of effect.

[...]

Then there's Lightning, which is a critical point for Fire Benders, being a very focused pin-point ignition that arcs out.

Lightning also explicitly uses Water bending forms, as Iroh teaches Zuko that he adapted his technique from studying Water benders.

Having now caught up myself, I have to say that the magma bending is... yeah, not something I would have described as magma bending. The way people were all excited about magma bending I pictured a big underground scene with lots of Earth benders all manipulating the molten core of the earth. So what I saw was pretty disappointing compared to that. =P

But then, the scene in my head could still show up at some point in the future, so I'll hold out hope.

[Victin]

Makes me sad that Airbending has no advanced form. Soundbending would be pretty awesome.

... I'm now picturing Shockwavebending in my mind.

[Tohrinha]

Makes me sad that Airbending has no advanced form. Soundbending would be pretty awesome.

We also haven't seen all that much of airbending yet. For all of Avatar, the only one was bascially an apprentice. So I'm still hoping for one to show up.

[Pixelmage]

Makes me sad that Airbending has no advanced form. Soundbending would be pretty awesome.

We also haven't seen all that much of airbending yet. For all of Avatar, the only one was bascially an apprentice. So I'm still hoping for one to show up.

For all of TLA we saw one apprentice on Air, and up to now on LoK we only had Tenzin, who obviously only learned what Aang could teach. But now that new air benders are spawning, we might get to see someone being unusual with the skills. *agrees with Tohr*

On some unrelated thoughts... I was thinking about the meaning of the ending of season 2. See, Rava died. But, true to the exposition during Wan's flashback she was reborn inside Vaatu. Now, thanks to Genora's help, Korra could pull Rava out and kill Vaatu; effectively flipping the board.

As for Genora being able to help? I think it's likely that she received a shard of Rava's power by being at Wan's statue during the solstice. Which would explain why she got the spiritual link to Rava in the first place.

Now... Convergence is over, but Vaatu is no longer imprisoned. He was cleansed by Giant Blue Korra, which means that, since we know Rava is still alive, Vaatu is also alive again inside Rava, therefore, inside Korra. What happens when the next convergence comes and the two forces are both inside the same Avatar, whoever it might be? ^_^

But, well before that can happen, wouldn't Vaatu's influence tip the powers of the Avatar in some ways? Since the Avatar is not a pure light force anymore, but rather hosts both order and chaos... I catch scent of potential shenanigans concerning the duality inside the new Avatar.

Either way, Rava died once. So Wan's line of Avatars is gone. Korra is effectively the first Avatar again... And new people are Airbending.

My thoughts on the new air benders popping spontaneously all over the place? Lineage and spirit immortality. See, much like Rava and Vaatu balance each other, such that one is reborn inside the other after each cycle, the four elements came from the Lion Turtles... And while they were sustained by lineage, not every heir would connect with the parent's element: We have non benders, after all. So, what I was thinking is that, in general, the elements balance themselves in a four-fold symmetry much like Rava and Vaatu balance each other in dual symmetry. But since the living air benders were all but wiped out, that element was lacking, but while it would naturally regrow itself, the portals were closed so the power couldn't actually flow into the physical world.

Now that the portals are open and the spirits can cross over, the elements are aligning themselves again, so why the seemingly random new air benders? Lineage. A ten thousand year long very convoluted family tree of descendants of the original air benders. Sons and daughters of non-benders that hail from air bender settlements from a time even before the air temples existed. While originally these people's connection to air was too faint to manifest itself, the sudden influx of of spiritual force into the physical world is awakening their powers. Evidence being Bumi. He's son of Aang so there's absolutely zero question that he's tied to air, but not a manifested water bender like his sister, so he was a high-affinity empty-vessel of air spirits that now has acquired the power of the element.

As for old Zuko's dragon: Spirit dragon? I mean, the spirits can manifest in physical form. Maybe the living dragons are mostly gone, but it's not impossible that spiritual ones might be around and Zuko just managed to befriend one. Particularly more likely to have happened after the convergence, but we don't know for how long Zuko's been riding a dragon for the cool factor, so it's hard to figure this one out.

Case in point, can we get rid of Ba Sing Se already? >_<

[IslaKariese]

So, I've just been on a string of recent Korra episodes since Rwandan wifi isn't very useful for videos and streaming, but I'm liking what I see. It almost seems as though they're working too hard at keeping multiple plot threads going, though. Not always, but some scenes are only a few seconds long, leaving me to wonder what was the point of that?

Still, we're learning some very interesting new tidbits. For one, Toph's still alive. I wasn't sure, since there were plenty of past mentions of her as the world's first Metalbender and the founder of Republic City's police force, but we only ever had confirmation of Katara and Zuko still being around. I'm not sure about Sokka, but I think he's gone, too. It's nice to know the Blind Bandit is still wandering the earth, even if we don't see her.

Hell, the whole frigging metal city of Zaofu is badass, so points to Suyin for that.

As for Soundbending, I sincerely hope so. Or something like it, at least. I'm not sure about Lightningbending, but Bloodbending and Metalbending were both made by benders in a situation that required them to use what they had at their disposal in a desperate situation. They were created by people who knew they had no other option than to break the rules, especially in Toph's case as it may have been a fact that every living body contains water, but it was taken as just as true that metal was too refined for Earthbenders to use.

Thanks to Tenzin's adventures with the new Airbenders, we're getting a closer look at some of the nuances that make up the art, and it's becoming more likely that someone creative and quick-thinking, like Kai, will make something new out of it. I really do hope they take it in that direction.

Also, Jinora with Airbending tattoos!? *girlish squeak of excitement*