Avatar: The Last Airbender

that's true, but it's not like we're ever given any indication that they used to worship something, or that anyone in the other nations besides the NWT worship specific spirits

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 23rd 2024 at 4:15:08 AM

Can earthbenders keep a rock airborne that they are standing on?

Didn't Bumi do it in the finale? A huge chunk with all the WL on?

It's an interesting question. On the one hand, they can clearly lift rocks many times their own weight and size and have them float. On the other, it does have a quality of "you can't lift yourself, no matter how strong you are" to it.

And since Earthbending is, in part, levitation by another name, the question is perhaps, can someone levitate themselves?

Edited by Redmess on Apr 23rd 2024 at 12:40:49 PM

Ah, I checked and I was wrong. Bumi just moves a huge boulder across the ground but it stays in contact with the ground.

Likewise, Toph rides a huge mound of liquified earth at the end of Book 2 but again what she's bending remains apart of the Earth.

Isn't she bending an arch of liquid earth, rather than levitating it?

Makes sense. Earthbending is all about being rooted to the ground.

I'm guessing maybe an Earthbender could fly on their own rocks, but we've never seen it because your average Earthbender doesn't want to seperate themselves from their own element like that.

And airbenders might sue for demarcation if they started flying around on rocks.

I think something like that would probably lean too far from the very kinetic nature of bending.

All but the most powerful benders still have to incorporate physical movement in their bending. "Psychic" bending represents a whole different level.

• Bumi bending rocks despite being suspended in the air just by twitching his face is probably the most mundane example. It still highlights his mastery of earth bending.

• Avatar State shenanigans like what Aang did in the final battle with Ozai fit the bill too.

• The Comet-empowered Ozai himself at one point conjures a ball of fire in the palm of his hand. Even he seems surprised he could do that.

• Speaking of fire bending, combustion bending is also more mystical than regular fire bending and it's also way more difficult and dangerous to master.

• The psychic blood bending of Yakone and his sons, with Amon / Noatak's being the most powerful of the three.

• The weightless true flight Zaheer rediscovers after shedding his earthly attachments.

Edited by M84 on Apr 24th 2024 at 11:32:11 PM

It feels weird that Zaheer is the first airbender to discover true flight, or that that is not a thing some Avatar had already discovered. That's what you get when new shows start inventing cool things that make sense for the setting that the previous writers hadn't thought of.

He didn't discover it. (eta: in the sense of inventing it from scratch which may not be what you mean.) He found about it from scrolls of ancient airbenders.

It comes with some pretty harsh prerequisites and airbenders can get pretty close to the same effect with gliders or glide suits.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 25th 2024 at 10:04:06 AM

I guess it's not hard to abandon all earthly attachments when you are in prison for life.

Hence why I at least said "rediscovers". True flight wasn't something Zaheer invented, it was old knowledge that Air Nomads forgot. Possibly on purpose since that level of detachment isn't really healthy.

Air Nomads also wouldn't have needed that kind of flight since they had the original air benders, the sky bison, who could perform that kind of flight naturally.

Um, no. It was the death of P'Li that gave Zaheer the final push needed to cast off earthly attachments. He still had earthly attachments the whole time he was imprisoned before he gained air bending.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 5:45:49 PM

Oh sorry, you did say that. I missed your post and was concentrating on Redmess's. You're right.

This is going into WMG headcanon, but my guess is that the past air benders were inspired by the sky bison and learned air bending forms much the way past earth benders took cues from the badgermoles and past fire benders learned from the dragons.

Some of them then started trying to replicate the sky bison's utter defiance of gravity. Guru Laghima would eventually figure out that to fly like a sky bison, you need to think like a sky bison. Which means you gotta shed all those pesky earthly attachments that come with being a complicated human being and think more like an animal that doesn't really give a shit.

And while it worked, the practice eventually fell out of favor because even the Air Nomads, as spiritual as they were, found the level of detachment needed to achieve flight to be too heavy a price to pay. It's part of the inherent struggle of Air Nomad society — the balancing act between the spiritual and the physical worlds. Achieving true flight tilted them too much to the spiritual and isolation from the rest of the world.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 6:04:24 PM

That doesn't really track with Appa's behaviour, though. Appa clearly cares about and is very attached to Aang.

Not on the same level as humans though. It's like how Zaheer is still capable of caring about things and others to some degree even after shedding his earthly attachments.

It's what Aang might have been like if he had actually fully abandoned his love for Katara to master the Avatar State.

Not that when the two were separated, while Appa tried to reunite with Aang too Aang took it a lot worse than Appa. Aang became far more aggressive and hostile when he lost Appa.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 6:30:53 PM

Appa was also specifically Aang's spirit bound companion animal, like Roku and Fang or Korra and Nala. Then again, the Kyoshi novels make it clear that sky bison tend to bind specifically to one person as a companion.

For airbenders, I also wonder if there was a degree of 'why would we need to?'. If they have gliders and bison, then the difficulty of achieving true flight might outweigh the benefits, sort of how most people with stoves and microwaves don't know how to start a fire with friction from sticks.

Plus Wan's even older nimbus trick.

There must be a lot of potential for specialized airbending arts that are going to come out in the future.

As far as "psychic" bending goes, there's also Ming-Hua, who is able to make water whips and tentacles despite having no arms.

Well, technically waterbending is already psychic, isn't it? I mean, they are bending water tentacles and throwing icicles and whatnot all the time anyway.

I don't think Ming-Hua's bending is really all that special, it's just a novel application of the same waterbending other waterbenders were already doing.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 25th 2024 at 11:22:15 AM

Ming-Hua doesn't have special abilities. She just works with her disability the same way that Toph works with her blindness regarding bending. Sure, she doesn't have arms, but she can train herself to master phantom limbs and soon gains the ability to have multiple, long, and useful arms.

Originally, she was supposed to be a bloodbender... but it was deemed too close to Amon already.

Well, I think Toph's ability is a bit more special. Other earthbenders don't really seem to make use of it at all, far as I can tell.