Avatar: The Last Airbender

M84. Admit that you were wrong about lava being a liquid.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 27th 2024 at 12:05:29 PM

Well, if you search "Is lava a liquid?" you get various answers ranging from "yes", "no", "sort of" from various sources so it doesn't sound concrete to me. Either way, it's not something worth arguing about.

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 27th 2024 at 7:26:12 AM

The same way Water bending covers both solid and liquid water, Earthbending covers all kind of Earth. Solid rock, malleable earth, lava, everything.

Think about it, to even make lava you have to heat up earth somehow. Water bending cannot do that.

Yes it can. Using Earthbending to melt rock into lava is exactly the same as using Waterbending to melt ice into water.

I agree with Redmess, Lavabending definitely seems more like Earthbending with Waterbending principles than it does anything else.

The same way waterbenders never used earthbending styles to move ice, the reverse should also be true for earthbenders with lava. Toph bended mud and she didn't use water bending principles for that.

So I wonder if, like Toph before him, Bolin would be teaching lava-bending to the general public, or if it would be too dangerous. But then again, lightning-bending is mostly used for electricity nowadays, so who knows.

I'm sure there would be very useful applications for it, so probably yes. I bet Varrick or Asami could come up with something.

I guess it could be used for construction maybe.

It would be a great mining technique. You could just liquify the rock and let the ores separate out of it.

That is if it is something that can indeed be taught, it may be like combustion bending and the psychic bloodbending in that you need to be born that way (Or be the Avatar) to ever be able to do it.

Edited by lycropath on Apr 27th 2024 at 10:20:57 AM

Katara could learn it without any apparent history, which suggests it can be taught. As for combustion bending... That's just weird. I don't know what is up with that. They might as well be mutants as far as the show depicts them.

Combustion bending can be taught, but the training is super dangerous. The Unanimity Project killed all but three of the fire benders they used to figure it out.

Regular blood bending can be taught. I pointed that out earlier. But psychic blood bending is still a rare and powerful ability.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2024 at 1:44:10 AM

Katara can learn regular bloodbending, Yakone and Amon had a unique "psychic" technique that they could do so during the day without actually moving and even their ability to bloodbend without the use of the full moon is considered something that isn't possible outside their bloodline.

Edited by lycropath on Apr 27th 2024 at 10:48:07 AM

The Unanimity Project also tried to teach lava bending. Unlike with combustion bending, they failed. They got all of their earth bender test subjects killed.

What's the Unanimity Project? Where did you get that from?

I took that the only three that survived are are the rare type of person like P'li and Sparky Sparky Boom Man that are born able to achieve it rather then the methods of training being anything other then a barbaric way of trying to force people to do what is likely impossible for most.

Its a plot from the Yangchen novels.

Edited by lycropath on Apr 27th 2024 at 10:51:51 AM

I saw it on the wiki, and it seems my mutants comment was not that far off, with the whole "secret human weapon program" thing.

Barbaric is putting it mildly. They basically drowned the test subjects, chaining them deep underwater. Then they either figured out how to channel the pressure on them into explosive force to escape or they died horribly.

The lava bending “training” wasn’t any better. They dunked the earth benders into a volcano to force them to lava bend for their lives. But none succeeded.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2024 at 2:04:40 AM

Oh yeah, the concept for the Red Lotus in the first place was that it was four people with very aberrant bending that is impossible for normal people to do. Ming Hua wound up more normal (In a Toph-like Disability Superpower way) because they didn't wanna reuse bloodbending after the Amon twist though.

... I feel like there are better ways to teach that.

Anyway, I think Lavabending and Combustionbending are probably the two most dangerous bending styles. Period. So teaching them would have to be done very carefully.

And their practical uses outside of combat are limited. There isn't much terraforming or demolition you could do with Lavabending or Combustionbending that you couldn't do 1000 times less dangerously with regular Earthbending.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Apr 28th 2024 at 2:03:33 AM

In the Yangchen books, ||Combustion bending|| was more for terrorist attacks.

Yes the Unanimity Project was the Shang cities’ attempt to create living weapons that would give them the power to rebel against the world’s governments.

Said project was also the origin of chi blocking and brainwashing techniques. And yes, their methods in developing those were just as inhumane.

So yeah, combustion bending was originally developed as a weapon of mass destruction. See, the power of combustion bending is amplified considerably when multiple combustion benders combine their efforts. We have already seen just how dangerous a single combustion bender is. Imagine that multiplied several times over.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2024 at 8:27:41 PM

They were also trying to look into lavabending for Unanimity (which makes sense, as it's as destructive as combustionbending), but unlike everything else it didn't produce results.

... well, didn't produce results that we know of. There's a like 400 or so years between the events of Legacy and Sun's appearance in the Metelbending Academy graphic novel, so in theory it is possible for some successful unanimity lavabender to have existed (and possibly make it a while considering how earthbenders can live a long-ass time) or to pass on what they learned, but that's just getting into WMG talk

Edited by jdeo1997 on Apr 28th 2024 at 9:09:47 AM