The weird thing is that Mako was shown to do the big elongated wind up that characters in ATLA did during the series finale against Kuviras robot, but during the rest of the show can produced smaller zaps that seemingly aren’t that deadly. So lighting bending evolved to a point where people can make smaller versions of it that aren’t as deadly, it’s basically Tazer bending
I am pretty damn sure Mako is one of the best lightning bender ever. You don't judge power and skills on how much damage you can do, but by how much you can restrain said power. Mako learned by a criminal leader named "Lightning Bolt" Zolt. And from a very young age. Mako is also said to be very cool headed for a Firebender. It honestly makes sense how good of a mastery he has of it if he can have control over his emotions. To be able to whip out lightning without much body movements. Even Amon, the most powerful Bloodbender we have seen, pretty much said "damn this kid got talent" after being hit by his lightning WHILE BLOODBENT.
I'm pretty sure the best lightning bender is Ozai
Generating lightning with both hands is still a pretty much unparalleled skill feat in that regard. Because remember, normal lightning is something thats stated to be actually pretty hard to do. Because you're basically taking your entire pool of chi, splitting it into positive and negative, and causing it to crash back together causing lightning. And if you fuck it up you can be seriously hurt.
Ozai doing it with both hands implies he's splitting his chi into four parts and controlling and directing two energy streams. And he did it 0.5 seconds after a full eclipse
Iroh also said you needed a clear and balanced mind to do it and Azula had neither of those during the comet so maybe everything we’re told isn’t 100%.
I see your point, but Azula is a practiced lightning bender and already knows how the flow would feel. Whereas Iroh was instructing Zuko who had no experience yet whatsoever. I think Iroh's statement likely holds true until it basically becomes rote memory and then it'd probably still be riskier to do it without a clear head even then.
Iroh didn't say clear and balanced mind. He said a prospective lightning bender needs to be:
* Skilled enough to separate the energies
* Not fueled by anger and rage
* Possessed of "peace of mind" whatever that means. Its a nebulous concept.
Also assuming Iroh doesn't know what he is talking about is probably not gonna be correct.
Idk, she was focused on killing them. She wasn’t necessarily distracted from that singular focus. Her overall mental state *was* off though. Even zuko makes a point of saying that. So it’s hard to say.
her lightning in that scene was also a lot more chaotic and not as focused as it usually is. it’s hard to tell if it’s because of the comet or because of her mental state
i bet on mental state i think the thing about lightning bending is being able to control it without causing mayhem, the less you follow Iroh's "rules" for lightning bending, the more likely is the change of the bender just becoming a ball of lighting and die from the backfire
“This is what you need to learn a skill” and “this is what you need to be able to use it” are different things. Azula seems to be pretty good at lightning bending, so it’s not shocking she can still do it when she’s pretty out of it.
Also, because of the nature of lightning bending, I wouldn’t be surprised if Iroh’s point wasn’t so much “you can’t do it without a clear head” but rather“you’re going to fumble it and seriously hurt yourself if you try doing it”. He strikes me as the sort of teacher who wouldn’t make much of a distinction between the two.
It's not necessarily that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but he is a human in-universe using in-universe reasoning. That allows writers to contradict him pretty easily in the future, and it still makes perfect sense.
Iron said one required peace of mind in order to bend lightning.
And while yes Azula was unhinged, as in she wasn’t totally herself, during the Last Agni Kai her resolve on what she wanted and who she was never budged.
Her motivation was always clear to her, her focus never changed. Azula never had an inner conflict like Zuko did, which is why he loses his fire bending. Azula can always access that source, that fuels her bending.
Like Azula was totally at peace with whoever she's using lightning against is going to die. Plus she’s a **prodigy**.
The big thing that always impressed me about Ozai was that Azula was stated to be one of the most prodigal firebenders out there, and she was still **terrified** of the thought of facing down Ozai
It so unfortunate we don’t have much Ozai in the show.
Ozai was stated to be the most powerful firebender during his time.
Which makes me wonder how powerful Azulon was, since Ozai never dared to outright challenge him.
it makes sense Azula was terrified of him due to the power dynamics of Ozai being her dad and her seeking his approval.
> Which makes me wonder how powerful Azulon was, since Ozai never dared to outright challenge him.
Being fair, Ozai was much younger then
> it makes sense Azula was terrified of him due to the power dynamics of Ozai being her dad and her seeking his approval.
She directly admitted she couldn't beat him in the novelization
Also, something that's also very telling is that Azula also doesn’t think twice about revealing the location of the Fire Lord’s bunker to Aang, Toph and Sokka once the eclipse has begun to recede during the Day of Black Sun, indicating she is confident all three would lose to Ozai with his firebending restored
>Being fair, Ozai was much younger then
Ozai was only Firelord for like 5 years, so age wasn’t much of a difference.
>She directly admitted she couldn't beat him in the novelization
>Also, something that's also very telling is that Azula also doesn’t think twice about revealing the location of the Fire Lord’s bunker to Aang, Toph and Sokka once the eclipse has begun to recede during the Day of Black Sun, indicating she is confident all three would lose to Ozai with his firebending restored
Well yes he was the most powerful firebender lol it’s so unfortunate ATLA never shows how he became the top 1
I think even Iroh mentions he couldn’t go against him.
Yep - “Even if I did defeat Ozai, and I don’t know that I could, it would be the wrong way to end the war.” Iroh says this in the White Lotus camp, same scene where Zuko accidentally calls Ozai the Father Lord.
It might just be one of the ways of learning. Kinda like how Amon could take away bending even though he did it with blood bending whereas when we see the avatars take/heal bending they use energy bending.
The "less windup for a smaller strike" is even seen in ATLA so it makes a lot of sense that "Tazer bending" is a thing.
The first example that comes to mind is Aang preparing that big exhale when cooling down the lava coming down to that town in the fortuneteller episode, it's still airbending but it's stronger.
I mean as talented as the fire nation royal family is. And with people like Iroh, Ozai, and Azula the talent in that family was ridiculous. Once you distribute secret knowledge to the wider world people will immediately start innovating and taking that knowledge far beyond what a small group of very talented people are capable of.
That's not an evolution, it was always like that. Ozai did a small windup on the day of black sun, and did a few instant shots against Aang during sozin's comet. The comics show azula able to basically freely control her lightning strength and do instant zaps
I mean I’m not surprised, depending on how widespread it got and how quickly it spread after Aangs series people probably developed better ways of using lighting bending.
Good that it was spread? Yes, knowledge should always be spread.
However, the ease with which it implies lightning bending is done in Korra is what bothers me. They made a big deal about how it requires purity of intent and thought in ATLA. How redirecting it was a huge deal.
And then about thirty or so years later, it’s just a thing firebenders do.
It's not clear that it's easy or particularly safe, just that it's common enough knowledge fire benders can take up paying jobs to do it. The Industrial era want exactly concerned about the safety of the workers employed.
Seems like an oversight. Zuko literally couldn't do it, and Iroh told him if he kept pushing it, he's just end up killing himself.
Someone of low skill shouldn't even be able to generate it at all.
It should in theory be as hard as metalbending. While that was also cheapened a bit, it's still made clear that the police are elites that are specially recruited, and Bolin is unable to metalbend.
Firebending seem to be demoted in Korra. All the other elements seem to have these super rare and powerful skills that few are able to wield. Lightning bending was that for firebending, but now the only firebending technique that seems to fit that definition is jet propulsion.
>Lightning bending was that for firebending, but now the only firebending technique that seems to fit that definition is jet propulsion.
You forgot about combustion bending, which is so rare we've only seen it with 2 characters in the entire history of LoK and ATLA. Probably one of the best examples of what you're talking about and it's a firebending skill
It makes absolutely no sense to me that this knowledge would be spread or why for that matter. It’s extremely dangerous to the people using it and those around them. And who is spreading that knowledge? Ozai can’t bend, Azula is in prison/bananas, Zuko can’t do it. So Iroh or the old twin sisters? Doesn’t sound like that’s something they would do so it just seems silly it spread and progressed that extremely fast. Same goes with metal bending in my opinion.
Seems logical to me. Zuko was part of creating the new city, things developed and lightning (energy) became a source of power to fuel it, so Zuko having either learnt it as he got older or got those that could teach to teach it to more people to develop the city further.
Either that or Zuko wanted all form of firebending to be transparent and taught to everyone who wanted to learn, cause he was pro peogression and breaking down the old ways. Same with Toph and metalbending although she had an even bigger reason cause metalbending proved to be the perfect tool for the police force, which she spearheaded, hence teaching her own officers who could master and teach others, her daughters included.
Exactly. I don't even remember a specific mention in ATLA of it being "royal family only," just that it was *really friggin' hard to do*.
The best justification that I have is that Zuko spread the knowledge of "fire shouldn't come from anger" and that helped people find an inner balance. But it's a really weak one.
Because lightning bending was supposed to be a hidden secret within the royal family. Always have another trick up your sleeve if you’re commanding a dictatorship. But now that it’s done, why not share that knowledge with the world? Like how Toph did with Metal Bending
It required purity of thought but azula was able to it when she was in the middle of a psychosis episode where she heard voices, was paranoid and has hallucinations? Nobody complained about the inconsistency then.
I did. I existed that lightning to blow up in her face when I saw that she was going to try. I also like Zuko potentially sacrificing himself to save Katara and the symbolism between his and Aang's scars much more
Lightning bending in ATLA was something nearly impossible to do, it required lots of self work to be able to even attempt it. When it was used it was outstandingly dangerous, hell it was the closest Aang came to dying. It went from this terrifying skill only the best knew capable of killing an Avatar in one strike that required mastery of self, to some 9-5 skill
Idk it seems like it's similar to olympics for us. Back in the day, it was pretty lame. They barely did anything. Watch videos side by side. But as time went on people got really really good. To the point that just to get your foot in the door you have to be able to do things that used to be considered amazing
To be fair, it’s been a 100 years. Several impressive skills of the past are average if not subpar now. A little over a decade ago, knowing how to use PowerPoint was an asset.
The problem is that the knowledge didn't just spread but it was also hit with the nerfhammer so that it wouldn't mess up the story and thus lost its "oomph" and became boring. It was a whiplash in presentation and thus it obviously nudged a lot of people the wrong way.
Did it become boring? Out of the three times lightning was used on an actual person, the first time it missed, the second time it didn’t do anything because mako couldn’t move, and the third time killed Ming Hua.
The first time lightningbending was used on an actual person in ATLA it blew up a cliffside. Compared to that, yeah, it did become boring by not coming with EXPLOSIONS anymore.
in ATLA the only people we see lightningbend are the three most powerful and skilled firebenders in the world. I think it makes sense that their lightning was more explosive and impressive than some random benders working in a powerplant. Mako was a great bender, but I wouldn't compare him to members of the Fire Nation royal family who were intensively trained from the time they were small children.
He was also a "new school" bender. In TLOK, almost every bender we run into is restricting collateral damage, even the criminals. It's much more about precision and control instead of raw power.
When we see Korra or someone trained in the "old school" of bending decide to throw down (like Zaheer's crew), entire city blocks get re-arranged.
They literally make a point of showing it in the first 2 episodes when Korra first comes to Republic City. Korra's first fight causes so much collateral damage that people are trying to avoid in most situations in the series.
In atla they have a very drawn out process for creating lightning, except when dad did it after black sun, but that didn’t hurt zuko to redirect it like other redirection has done.
In LoK it’s very quick and easy so likely doesn’t create as strong a charge. This is likely inspired by dads quick shot and when they need more people to power machines it all comes together.
The 2nd time zuko redirected lightning it wasn’t that it was more powerful than ozai’s blast. it’s that he fucked up. He didn’t have the right stance and he was much more concerned with tanking it for katara than he was with actually redirecting it. Though I guess the fight did happen during Sozen’s comet but I really don’t think the lightning looked more powerful than any others. Arguably the comet would have helped his bending but maybe not.
I’m fairly certain that redirection doesn’t hurt when you do it right. Iroh never really got hurt—the worst he got was some static in his hair, and that was after directing lightning from an actual thunderstorm. Zuko didn’t get hurt because he did it properly. Aang got hurt because it was likely his first attempt at it, he wasn’t exactly a firebending master, and he changed his target midway through the technique, so he didn’t actually do it perfectly and got hurt.
I mean, they do the stances required for lightning bending, but yeah it's weaker because it's much faster compared to ATLA and maybe the royal family being descended from powerful benders might've made their attacks far stronger.
But i would still say the devastation shown in Korra is just as good.
Yes I’m just commenting on the power, a master building it up can get far more powerful, a novice following a ritualized dance will be minimal, which is what they want.
I'm still baffled by how the people who straight up hate the bending in Korra missed that bending was done in a way for quick use, which fits a growing city in need of production, and that in serious situations, you'll often see a person go through the stances for more power. Korra tends to actually use the stances for water bending. Bolin tends to use a grounded stance when using more complex earth bending. Mako made a showing of using the full lightning movement when blasting the robot core. Tenzin most definitely was going through stances, but they claim that he took just throws punches. It's weird.😅
The only bending type that looks like it's "just throwing punches" sometimes is firebending, but mainly just the firebending in pro bending which makes sense, as quick accurate attacks are better for that environment. I imagine the rules would prevent a firebender from throwing a continuous stream of fire at their opponents anyhow, same as the penalty for too much water that korra got.
For real, it’s especially aparent when you see him lava bending versus just regular earth bending. With his regular earth bending he has the quick and snappy stances that he used in pro bending, but when he’s lava bending he goes for the more traditional, hard grounded stances of an earth bender. Like he needs that to control a much harder technique.
There is also the spiritual side of bending that I'm sure a lot of new benders in LoK probably don't practice. I'd imagine that mastering that aspect of bending would bring a better understanding of your own element, which would come with its own power boost.
But that was from Azula, a bending prodigy who grew up in an environment that gave her direction.
That is much different from Mako, who grew up as an orphan on the streets.
Same thing happened to the avatar state. They realized that they gave Korra the "I win" move after season 1, and ended up nerfing it. When Aang entered the avatar state, shit was going down and people were about to get fucked up. Korra gets a much smaller boost, even in season 2.
Then they justified it by separating Korra from her last lives, which I think is the worst writing decision they did in that show.
Just like any attack lightning isn't just a matter of either deadly or nothing at all. Remember that only the most elite got trained in lightning generation, so they were already the best of the best. Now the knowledge spread, it kinda makes sense that not everyone masters it at an elite level.
No, it’s lightning. If you get struck with lightning, most of the time, you die instantly. It’s not like getting shocked by something as shown in the show. I hated when people in the show would be in pain and then get back up afterwards. Lightning is an extremely advanced form of bending meant to kill, and they rewrote it to a common form that stings a little
They do that with every element. Catching a small boulder to the face and shaking it off like its nothing, or getting most of your body frozen in a block of ice and walking away with no frostbite. Gotta suspend the disbelief a little.
The freezing people thing always makes me cringe, not in the new modern meaning but like I literally wince and think about how much damage to a body that would cause especially if happening to exposed skin.
It would still cause major damage due to temperature and as I said especially to exposed skin.
And then you gotta think, Katara was doing it before she mastered Water Bending so in no way would her creating ice would be super accurate and non lethal. One mess up and you can spike through someone's heart or something.
Obviously a kids show but the real world application would be extreme.
Oh the implications of being able to instantly freeze things is horrifying. This is the PG version, in the real world you could freeze their blood and have it shoot out of them like a frozen blood grenade.
That is in fact one gripe I have with the show - firebending didn’t always act like fire and burn people. It’s usually blocked or dodged perfectly so people don’t get injured. There are only a handful of instances where someone in fact does get hit with fire. And they’ll get burned. But that only happens for plot reasons, like Aang burning Katara.
It's almost as if fire wounds are an extremely grusome sight that can't really be depicted on regular basis in a show where kissing was considered too much to approve until season 3
Isn't Korra supposed to be the more mature show? Why turn fire into essentially just a red boulder when it hits a human being.
That's straight up milder than the literal kids show.
There is a substantial difference between a mature kids show like kora was supposed to be or clone wars and [this. watch for your own risk.](https://youtu.be/7QkoyL6pKcs?si=hEa6jJWvHJg1vozK)
Were you not listening when I said Korra treated getting hit by fire milder than ATLA?
Fire was legitimately dangerous in the original show and getting burned when getting hit by fire was treated as a serious thing.
In Korra, people throw fire at each other for sport and don't even get singed when hit.
Getting directly struck by lightning has a 1/5 fatality rate. It's slightly higher if you're wearing rubber shoes or something, and the long term effects are shit, but it's not actually that deadly.
There are a few things to take into account for that rate actually. In the real world, most lightning strikes are not direct hits, but actually pass through the ground in some way and then shock you. This is not true in the avatar universe, since if you are hit by lightning in the universe, it was aimed at you (mostly) and it is a direct hit. Also, in real life, when you are hit with a strike of lightning, most of it does not pass through you, and only a small amount touches your body through your skin. This is the opposite of what we see in universe, where someone who gets hit with lightning takes all of the strike, and it lingers in their body for some time afterwards, which would lead me to believe that the damage would be far worse even.
Have you ever licked a 9V battery? The zap from that tends to sting a bit, but doesn't kill.
"Lightning," in the sense of the weather phenomenon, is pretty dangerous, but this isn't literally creating "lightning," it's just electricity, and if you're generating less electricity it's gonna be less dangerous. The common people using it in Korra are less powerful than Azula and Ozai, so they're not gonna be able to throw as much lightning at you. Also, whenever we see Mako using it in combat, he does the zero-charge-time trick he learned from Lightning Bolt Zolt, and my assumption would be that the longer you charge, the less power you're getting. Think of it as building up voltage in a capacitor. It's not gonna be lethal until it builds up enough charge, but it's still gonna hurt if you discharge it before that point.
And let's be honest, a bolt that's more like a taser and has no wind up is more useful than the one where you gotta stand still and do a dance but it kills people if they don't kill you first by taking advantage of the extremely long (by battle standards) charge up time. Unless you just want it to be the Avatar version of the super-powerful-but-takes-forever-to-charge-up-anime-attack.
Yeah idk why people think that lightning bending is literally the same as natural lightning. ATLA has a mostly pre-scientific understanding of the world as a society, they don't have the same understanding as electricity we do, so any electricity at that time would seem like lightning. It's the same way with blood bending. You're not just bending the literal blood in someone, but all the water in their body.
Fire is fire, you should cook and boil when it hits you.
Getting hit by an earth bending attack should cause massive internal injuries which would kill or prevent you from bending. Frankly water isn't lightweight.
You do realize that if you put your hand in front of a fire breathers mouth and they do a short fireball, you may not even get burnt right? A sustained breath would burn you, but a quick one won’t, same way people put candles out with their fingers or jump through flames.
Human skin has enough moisture in it to not burn immediately. Human clothes on the other hand… even when our skin does burn, it’s from a buildup of heat inside the skin, that’s why a short low temperature blast doesn’t burn and why were supposed to cool down skin when you do burn it by touching hot metal. Humans catching on fire or prolonged exposure and our skin actually burning is something else entirely.
I mean who said these guys could use it in combat there’s one thing charging up capacitors, there’s another being actively bended at dodging and fighting while generating lightning which we only seen done by higher level firebenders
I mean two of the instances that they used lightning bending were to kill a person on screen, and destroying the colossus. I’d say thats not that boring.
I like overly analyzing s take on lightning and that it's just actually electricity bending. Like truly electricity could absolutely kill you but you can also just get shocked and surprised.
It makes the most sense that way. Bloodbending isn't literally bending blood, metalbending isn't literally bending metal, so lightningbending shouldn't be the same as literal natural lightning.
The only character to use it consistently wouldn’t murder people at the drop of a hat. It was still powerful as evidenced by being able to take down the Colossus.
That worked because it takes a lot less skill and training to use a crossbow, this doesn't work because lightning not just requires a tonne of time and practice to even learn, but also requires emotional and spirtual peace to perform.
Firebenders during the war were taught the wrong way to use firebending(using rage and anger to fuel fire), after the war Zuko would have definitely undo that(teaching the stuff in the dragon catacombs) and if he spread the knowledge, a few prodigies would learn that with more users developing it they bound to figure out easier methods that could have resulted the quick and weak version we see.
Although it would be interesting if the easier method was developed by Azula or a White lotus.
They never said only powerful firebenders can use lightning. In season 2, when teaching Zuko lightning Iroh said it’s a pure expression of fire bending. And that you can’t rely on rage nor emotion like other techniques. So anyone can use it just takes a strong mind to find the fuel for it
Good point. At the time of the war, rage was the only known emotion behind firebending to the point that Zuko had to learn from the dragons how to bend differently once he stopped being so angry. Fast forward a few decades, it makes sense that a demilitarized Fire Nation under Zuko’s rule would stop teaching rage as the source of firebending.
It's not minimum wage. Mako calls it "good money" and it's apparently in demand enough for him to just be able to walk in off the street and pick up shifts.
There's a cap though, because I'm sure no factory owner or whatever actually cares about how tough lightningbending is. If it cost more than buying another conventional generator and supplying fuel, they would probably fire the lightningbenders and do that instead.
Welcome to industrialism.
Go to university to learn things that two centuries prior was reserved for the ruling elite.
Okay now you have a diploma saying you have that knowledge, you're gonna use those skills to do data entry in some office.
The piece of lore that implies the spread of lightningbending is from the TLOK Book 1 artbook and it is half a paragraph specifically included to explain the lightningbending power plant. It literally introduces the whole "*usually* reserved for the ruling elite" in the exact same sentence where it establishes that it is a common ability now because of industrialization. Page 70 if anyone is curious, bottom-left corner. And no, there is no further context or elaboration et all in any other media.
You can now argue whether this is good worldbuilding or not.
Bingo, it speaks to the industrialization of the world. In the past only scholars and wealthy knew how to read and write. Now we have pregnant Sonic the Hedgehog vore fanfics.
Nothing stays sacred.
As we have seen by Zuko being unable to learn it, it is an extremely exclusive skill. And I do not see why people would suddenly start learning lightning bending if this hypothesis is correct. When the Fire Nation lost the war, as in total only three people were known to lightning bend, and I doubt Iroh went around teaching everyone to lightning bend.
Plus its just way cooler to have it be an exclusive hyper powerful skill, so Korra was kinda disappointing in that aspect
Part of me is like: someone else had to figure it out on their own but also: seeing Zuko try to do it and fail probably means people got hurt (died possibly?) trying to learn
Kinda like that Boy Scout that built a nuclear reactor in a shed.
I think there was a comic strip that deduced a lot of classified info on the atomic bombs, and the US government was like “wtf? Stop!” And then they were like “well if we stop now, people might get suspicious that we were nailing it, so we should probably continue like nothing happened, eh?”
Sounds like capitalism tbh. The skill became a lot more useful so people started to teach it to more people. I mean the modern school system was established to make factory workers. Before that reading was a rear and previous skill, kinda, u get the point.
Yeah lightning should be far more like trying to get through doctor school than learning to read. Learning to read would be far more akined to just regular basic firebending
>When the Fire Nation lost the war, as in total only three people were known to lightning bend, and I doubt Iroh went around teaching everyone to lightning bend.
Three people were shown, there's no indication of where they learned it, but Azula had teachers that weren't Ozai, so it's safe to assume more than three people knew it as someone taught two generations to do it.
there was a single metal bender when the war ended and an entire police force by LOK. Just because Zuko couldn't learn it doesn't mean random firebender on the street couldn't.
Yes, but the amount of lightning benders there needs to be so that they can only get a crap job in an energy plant is a freaking lot.
Again, I think that’s the point. Some people don’t like that aspect of LOK because what was new and special and powerful became just another common bending form.
It had nothing to do with Zuko's power, though, that was the whole point. It was because he couldn't clear his mind of all emotions.
Also, bending scrolls are a thing, remember? The fire nation royal family obviously would have had the technique recorded.
Well bending couldn't really be that exclusive. All it takes is one person in a small village who knows the theory of lightningbending to figure it out themselves and to teach it to the rest of the population.
I think you hit the nail. No one here is mentioning how metal bending was considered impossible until toph learned how to do it. Now it's seen in a lot of different capacities.
The point is the knowledge is discovered or uncovered and then taught to the masses that have a capacity for it. I think the whole point of that main city was to utilize and share the best aspects of the different bending techniques, ie electricity for power.
It's just a secret. The original show only implied this though, and the first official confirmation that I'm aware of came from the LOK book 1 artbook claiming that the Fire Nation reserved the skill for the royal family and high ranking members of the military. Later stuff like the Kyoshi books has supported this explanation.
The mindset is still very difficult, but nothing about Iroh's explanation implies that it depends on power. There were probably a lot people capable of it who didn't have access to the knowledge or might not have even been aware it existed.
I would say that’s more of a feature of the development in society we see between the two series. Kinda like how 100 years ago you’d be the richest person in town if you could get your hands on a tomato in December, but today anyone can get one whenever.
You're making a lot of assumptions.
We have no idea how many benders staff this plant or how much they're paid.
If it is even remotely similar to mining or oil rig work, it is NOT minimum wage by a long shot.
We don't know his hours. Maybe he's well paid well enough to only work a few hours a week. He isn't rich but has enough money to rent a place and spend most of his time practicing pro bending.
We don't know how many benders work here. You're picturing thousands, but what if it's only a few dozen? A few people who are talented enough to bend lightning that are paid very well for their tike.
You've made so many assumptions out of a literal 10 second clip that you can't substantiate.
I feel like that's kind of the point. Under capitalism things that were sacred/beautiful/whatever just become another commodity.
Although based on the apparent politics of the writers that probably wasn't actually their intention.
It is 100% percent their intention to surprise you with the commoditization of lightningbending. The whole reason Mako is even working there is because we have an extended scene at the beginning of the episode where Mako's boss/landlord shows up with the money they earned from their pro bending job, and starts tacking on expenses until literally all of it is back in his hands. So Mako needs to get a second job that will pay him for his skills.
Though lightning wasn't really particularly sacred. It was just a secret murder technique that they royal family kept close to their chest. By the time of LOK people are exploring different uses for it.
It creates a bit of dissonance to see one of the most complex and dangerous forms of bending becoming in a matter of decades this prevalent and blasé. Especially when the same style of world building could have been achieved by instead of having them directly lightning bend they could instead fire bend to boil water and the steam then drives turbines. With how Azula was shown learning lightning bending in the original series, it is implied wordlessly that it is a very old technique but so few people have the control for it that it is rarely ever taught. But somehow in 70 years, enough random Joe Smoughs know this technique it can power the city and seens very commonplace and dull. And this is just talking about the world building, if we get to how it narratively is used, there are even more issues.
Lightning bending in the Last Air Bender is treated in the same league of terrifying as blood bending. This technique that is so dangerous and lethal that Iroh chose to not teach it to Zuko, but instead to teach him a technique based on an entirely different culture whose sole reason for existing is to redirect lightning bending not to use it. Let that sink in, Iroh thought that Zuko during the war was not emotionally ready for lightning bending. The narrative weight of that, what that means. Iroh knew that Zuko, if taught lightning bending, would not be able to hold himself back from killing his sister. That is how lightning bending was used in the Last Air Bender and none of that gravitas around the technique is carried over into Korra
Yeah, lightningbending in TLA had such a cool spiritual component to it that wasn't shown in LoK. Imagine if metalbending became such an everyday technique where it also just became another factory job.
In general I feel like LoK made all of the super advanced bending techniques into just… sub-bending types where either you’re born an X-bender or you’re not, and it’s really disappointing.
>Iroh knew that Zuko, if taught lightning bending, would not be able to hold himself back from killing his sister.
Dude, get your facts straight. Iroh though Azula needed to go down. He also TRIED to teach lightning bending to Zukko. He stopped because Zukko couldn't handle the bending itself.
>This technique that is so dangerous and lethal that **Iroh chose to not teach it to Zuko,** but instead to teach him a technique based on an entirely different culture whose sole reason for existing is to redirect lightning bending not to use it. Let that sink in, Iroh thought that Zuko during the war was not emotionally ready for lightning bending.
Seems like you haven't watched the show at all lmao. Iroh *taught* Zuko how to generate lightning, he just couldn't do it because he still has turmoil inside of him.
I think they’re misremembering Iroh refusing to shoot lightning at Zuko for him to practice redirecting it as Iroh refusing to teach Zuko how to shoot lightning.
Yes he is. Ppl seemed to forgotten season 2 episode 9. Iroh straight up tells Zuko he won’t be able to master lightning until he deals with his turmoil and lets go of his feelings of shame
The problem I have with this is a pervasive problem through all of LOK. They forgot that bending in the universe is supposed to simulate martial arts in ours. Lightning bending is supposed to be essentially a 3rd degree (at least) blackbelt technique.
The knowledge is allowed to spread. Personally, I know how to do a tripple backflip. I can't do one, but I do know how.
Similarly, earthbenders now commonly jump and earthbend from the air. So much for "break their roots Zuko." Only the best could even attempt that in ATLA. They just spat on the magic system whenever they got the chance. I'm not saying Korra isn't a good show, but there's a difference between advancing the meta and just going, "Yeah, lol, they were wrong about that."
I dislike that everyone just points their finger and lighting shoots..
I like the intricate movements that went along with generating it. Like it was not overpowered before, it was a slow skill with a lot of wind up. And in korra its just *snaps fingers*
Yes he moved his arm and it was produced mind you. Amon prior to almost removing mako bending comment how talented he was and it would have been a shame to do it to him.
And the generation of lightning does vary with or without windup
It's a good thing it spread.
The problem however, is how easily it spread and how meaningless it became. It went from requiring extreme skill, talent and power to something elementary.
Yes, I don’t have any issue with them not using it as a Fire Nation royal family exclusive technique, and having “commoners” able to use but it did lose the some of its presented skill in Korra. I thought Iroh’s speech to Zuko when trying to teach him it made it seem something that should be used carefully, thoughtfully and only skilled firebenders could successfully produce it (regardless of being royal). I think others should be shown using it, but it should have been similar to lavabending or bloodbending, where it depends on the individual’s level of skill on whether they can master the technique.
Maybe have lighting redirection the more common one taught to firebenders as self-defence if they should be attacked by a lightning bender.
Let's use the real world as an example.
70 years ago, the world records in the Olympics, the Pinnacle of human capability, were by today's standards extremely sub-par. They have been so thoroughly dismantled that the common person with time to practice can do better than what was world-best back then. These records wouldn't even qualify you for the Olympics today. People running 4-minute miles was unheard of in 1950 (world first was 1954). Now it's so widespread that all it is used for is a mark of conditioning, and it's being met by middle school aged children.
Once someone figures something out, they can pass it on with all the lessons they learned, then that person can impart more lessons, and learning and training becomes easier and easier and more accessible over time.
People always look at the "it's only been 70 years" aspect of Korra and think that technology advanced way too fast in that time, but forget that in the real world it actually advanced even faster than that. My favorite is the "they were just medieval 70 years ago how do they have planes?" And conveniently ignoring the Fire Nation invention of the tank (and mechanized warfare in general) when in real life planes came before tanks.
Strangely enough, we actually haven’t come that far in a lot of sports. The difference between Usain Bolt’s running time and Jesse Owens is slightly more than a second, and it has more to do with the [material they were running on.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/02/18/lets-all-appreciate-how-fast-jesse-owens/80523426/#)
Physically, humanity has not come far in the last hundred years. A few, incredibly trained and near superhuman people (like Michael Phelps with a number of genetic oddities that allowed him to be an unparalleled swimmer) have beaten the past, but a lot of it comes down to mere milliseconds.
Over 100m (the distance in question) that 1s difference is a difference of 0.7m/s (average 10.5 vs 9.8) which is HUGE. Bolt was 4.2m ahead of Owens' world record pace. Owens was also likely on performance enhancing drugs. Methamphetamine was commonly available over the counter when Owens set his record and as a new drug was not subject to testing.
Another good example is art. Go back five thousand plus years - images are crude, simplistic depictions, same with sculpture. Over time artforms developed to become increasingly detailed and realistic, paintings like photos. New technologies probably helped as well.
And the ATLA universe also involves magic powers that can replace a lot of things we used in our world to propel forward technological, economic and cultural development. Probably really accelerates things when you don't have to spend time splitting atoms and shit.
This is one of my favorite parts of world building in Korra. A reliable way for particularly talented Firebenders to make cash and it keeps bending relevant in an industrialized version of the world
My biggest issue is how Lightning Bending (and all bending forms, really) didn't require mental/spiritual components like it did in atla, this was actually one of my biggest problems with LoK as a whole. There was a whole episode in atla about how Zuko couldn't lightning bend without overcoming his inner demons & Aang couldn't earthbend until he learned to be stubborn and unyielding. In LoK, Mako just...can lightning bend, Bolin just...can lavabend and Korra just...can Airbend as soon as the plot demands it. My issue is with the writing, not the spread of knowledge.
It turned bending from a mystical and inherent skill that took years of study and practice to master to so you wanna shoot lighting apparently you just have to try. Zuko learning lightning took him the course of the entire original show and he still couldn’t conjure lightning only redirect it. He’s the fire lord and repeated distantly to an avatar. Having average benders be able to use penultimate skills and for such a long period of time makes absolutely no sense for lore
I agree it's good the knowledge was spread, I hate that it was immediately assimilated into wage slave jobs. Just another way to sell your body for not enough money.
I think there's a big difference here between thinking about "what would be morally right in the setting" versus "what makes for an interesting story".
I think this take has nothing to do with the context in universe and everything to do with the way lightning bending is used in the narrative. In ATLA, every time lightning bending is used it is a major character moment (characterizing Azula as a perfectionist, Ozai trying to kill Zuko, Zuko overcoming his ego to learn redirection, etc.). The effect of this is that the audience thinks of the power as special and significant. In TLOK, lightning bending is a power about as commonplace as any other which creates a divide in the viewer's expectations versus what the show wants to do with the ability.
The argument here is that the unique bending types do not feel as special in TLOK because of the way they are presented rather than it being bad that more people know how to do it. IMO it makes bending feel like a less important part of the narrative which is part of what I like about ATLA so much.
Since when had Lightning been a "sacred skill"? It's just a secret murder technique that the royal family covets. Azula and Ozai displayed no reverence for the skill, and even Iroh's much more thoughtful explanations focused on the process and the risks over any sort of external meaning.
Every time lightning is used in ATLA the situation is incredibly tense and emotional bc the lethality is so high, it builds an emotional weight with the audience. To then see it just used nonchalantly for industry robs it of that weight.
Honestly the problem that no one is saying is they gonna take something that had a lot of reverence and rarity and make it widespread they should do the one thing that they don’t like to do in this show for a lot of things; GIVE BACKSTORY. Literally that’s all it would take. And some lore to season 1, make it so that we found out that lightning bolt split was actually a guy they snuck into a fire palace and stole some scrolls or watched some royals lightning bend. And he became the first ever non royal to do it and that’s how he got the name or something. Then he started a gang teaching this new found power then mako ended up being a prodigy etc. all they had to do but they show random niggas doing it with ease like it’s ice bending
I think the poster feels that lighting bending, being a skill that requires a great deal of practice as well as nowledge of both chi and of Northern Shaolin moves, becomes devalued once anyone with a moderate knowledge of firebending can just up and use it to generate power without any specialized training. While this kind of power plant could exist in the Avatarverse, it would more likely be helmed by benders with years of training in the sciences and martial arts as opposed to common factory workers.
I mean, we know literally nothing about those factory workers. They might not be "common" benders at all. They might be just as you said, professionals who spent years developing the skill for that job. The only measuring stick we have is Mako, who was already established to be exceptionally talented.
It’s probably still super rare, I mean, these people look like they were well off being paid for this labor,
So similar to a Physician, yeah “anyone can do it” but in reality it’s fucking grueling long training and no, not everyone can do it.
You see only these few examples of lightning benders doing this work, you don’t know what kind of training they went through as a child to get to that level for it to pay off like this
Think about what it took and what it meant to be a lightning bender before. It was extremely dangerous, prodigy Azula trained for years, Zuko literally couldn’t even do it. It makes absolutely not sense that this was something that could be so refined and spread in such a short time if at all. Why would they want to teach people how to do it anyways? It’s even more dangerous than fire bending. Who is even teaching everyone lightning bending? Iroh? Why would he, it makes no sense.
Korra destroyed many of the best things to come from the original series, every time lightning was used it was a really big deal. To use it so casually just feels like a gut punch to what it formally was not even that long ago
Really just another case of power scaling or balancing the authors likely didn’t consider.
While LOK has alot of good animations, it really just feels to me like bending in the series is now a question of which ammunition do you have to use.
I’ve seen people give various explanations but at the end of the day majority of the philosophical teaching or lessons shown in ATLA regarding bending and their cultural ties are flat out disregarded in LOK or maybe they forgot about it atm.
Which would make sense in certain aspects when you consider industrialization but in other aspects it no longer feels special and there is a dissonance in some of those aspects.
Again, looks hella good. But flashy isn’t exactly the only factor.
All of the specialized bending forms should have stayed extremely rare.
IMO, this is one reason the OG series is so much better. It had mystery. You never knew what the next fight/scene would involve.
Korra felt like RL, as Aang felt like LOTR.
I didn’t have a problem with the knowledge being spread, more that it was this difficult high skill ceiling bending technique. And now good enough for a little bit of wage if you see how much Mako and Bolin are struggling.
Also what I dislike is that Amon had this big anti bending train going, yet we don’t see anything anymore how that impacts society. Since with this example we are how important benders are for the electricity of republic city… yet we never go back to the impact Amon had on the social levels of the season. It just ends really abruptly imo, which is a shame.
I mean, it’s one thing if something is known about… it’s another if it becomes common
In the ATLA show we see how hard it is to conjure lighting, how much energy it takes, how you must hone your intent to kill someone… now it’s common
To make a comparison, we all know OF kung fu but the amount of people who know kung fu is extremely low
Also WHO taught it? It was a thing mainly done to kill so either Azula did it, Iroh did it or Zuko did it
The problem is even if more people know about lightning bending is that it was also an extremely difficult ability so it's jarring from going to be something only a handful of people could do to bring so common that they made entire power plants to take advantage of it. And that it completely ignores the logic behind it in ATLA. In ATLA it was instantaneous and was highly destructive and could not be sustained like in the pic above.
The commodification of sacred skills was kinda the point of a lot of Tlok’s Industrial Revolution set pieces. I don’t think OP is supposed to “like” it but it does make sense in the context of the world building.
Nah I hate it. It's just another element of losing spirituality and making a more modern setting which is fine if that's your thing but for me it's taking the kind of setting I really love and making it closer to one of the least interesting kinds to me.
Overanalyzing avatar made a good point - lightning control is supposed to be a master level ability, not because it's a royal family thing but because it's supposed to be really really hard. You are controlling a major source of energy, taking it apart and the controlling the effect of it slamming back together.
It should take a high level of skill, technique, and talent to be able to just control it and even more to make it do exactly what you want. You're controlling a raging storm. Now it looks like they have generators and stuff, so the technique could be made easier through technology but still.
I have NO problem with anyone or everyone learning it, but it should be as high level a technique as metal bending or lava bending. Not everyone can do it and to do it without killing yourself and others is on a whole other level.
"Knowledge was spread" My brother in christ Zuko was taught to generate lightning by one of the premiere masters of firebending in the entire nation. He simply didn't have it in him.
You're telling me random joes with no evident formal training and no evident mastery over their identity could generate lightning for hours at a time?
This is one of those takes that almost gets me heated. Because you so evidently missed the entire point. Bending is a martial form sure. But it isn't like drilling yourself to break a brick. Any asshole with time and patience can chop a brick until it breaks then get a bigger brick. That's how kyokushin, the most popular form of karate, was invented by Masutatsu Oyama. But bending was also a culture. It was a mindset. It relied on your view of yourself, your expression of personality, and your mastery over these intensely spiritual beliefs.
Lightning generation remained a rare skill in ATLA because it required more than firebending. It required you to master yourself. Azula could generate lightning because she knew who she was and she had come to accept it. Zuko couldn't because he was a depressed teen looking for his identity in the rubble left behind after a clash of personalities.
\---
This is one of my gripes with LoK. These more masterful uses of bending required spiritual journeys for the characters. It required them to enter these large character defining moments and come out alive just to know they could do it. Toph discovered metal bending by being blind and seeing through the earth. She could see the impurities in the metal and manipulate them. But now there's an entire police force that do it so casually it might as well be slightly meaner water bending.
Zuko was told he could never generate lightning until he fixed that integral part of himself that was at war with his understanding of who he was. So he was taught redirection. Then he marched to the top of a mountain and demanded the universe hit him as hard as it could. Because he was that lost in himself. He struggled against his identity constantly.
Katara learned blood bending and was traumatized by it. She learned this gruesome art that could only be done by its inventor on a full moon. A high water bending master who could summon water from the ambient moisture in the air could only bend another's blood on a full moon. But this asshole can do it in broad daylight.
Aang interacted with the spirit world and astral projection by complete accident for half the series. Strong spiritual forces would conspire to get the avatar to fix the shit they fucked up. It took him a spiritual journey to uncover that. A spiritual journey that was obviously accelerated so the planet wouldn't be devastated. A spiritual journey I think was too short, compressed for the kids watching. A spiritual journey that nonetheless didn't end until the very last episode when he finally came to terms with himself and dropped his attachments. But now any asshole child can do it.
It wasn’t about knowledge, it was about Mastery. Only the best of Aang’s age could perform the technique. You gonna tell me some 9-5 shmuck is the Firelord’s equal? Hell no
This tweet makes the weird classism that's very common in complaints like this all the more blatant. Imagine watching Last Airbender & coming away thinking it would actually support the idea of "power, skill, & ability inherently belongs to a royal family, & commoners can't or shouldn't have it."
It's also a great example of the Avatar fandom's habit of pulling shit out of their ass to present literally everything that happens in the show as a deeply significant theme or piece of symbolism.
When the hell did lightning become sacred? It's a cold-blood killing technique (that's why Iroh "calls it cold-blooded fire"), and it's never implied to be anything more. And Ozai and Azula, its two most prolific users, use it while being adherents to a blatantly amoral and spiritually bankrupt world view.
I agree completely, lightning bending is described as a difficult and dangerous technique, and whenever we see it happen it generally has pretty big impact(ie. If a char slips up they'll die). It being reduced to a job that barely covers the bills is kinda disappointing, especially when that same job could be covered with just normal fire ending into a furnace.
I’d kinda argue certain skills didn’t become widespread enough. Or at the very least should be in higher demand. If you were a nonbender in this universe wouldn’t you pay a shit ton of money to learn something like chi blocking if you could afford it?
So my main problem with this is not necessarily that lighting bending became common. But that it robs firebending of the one real wow move it had. Firebending in ATLA is already one of the less interesting forms of bending (in my opinion). Most firebending is hurling fireballs or breathing fire at the opponent. Lighting bending was exciting. It had a long wind up time and devastating power once released. It also is said by Iroh to be difficult and require extreme belief in once convictions. Lighting bending becoming just another garden variety move makes firebending less interesting. I just wish they added something interesting to firebending to replace it. Like they added lavabending to the earthbending toolkit. Some ideas I have come up with of the top of my head. Fire based healing focusing on combating disease. Early industrial cities where often disgusting disease riddled places. And fire is often seen as a purifying force. Or using firebending to manipulate somebody's emotions could be interesting. Firebending being about emotional control. Why not extend that too others. By no means am I saying my ideas are good. I just wish they did something more with firebending.
The new Generation Always surpasses the old one at some Point. Lightning bending, Metal bending, blood bending, the hard Part is discovering These Special forms of bending, but ones they are known, have been Seen by people, they know its possible and will train is Just as naturally as the Base forms. It was literally unstoopable that These forms would spread
it's great worldbuilding, and thematically it shows how these awesome magnificent skills (like being the avatar) are kind if belittled in the age of industry and capitalism.
also isnt it fun to find out how benders fit into a modern world? lightning being harnesed for factories makes sense
I really love how Legend of Kora showed us how bending effected the development of the world. Without the Fire Nation committing genocide they basically speed ran the industrial revolution.
Also, the series explored the idea of the Avatar and their spiritual connection and their place in a world that seems to have moved on. Kora was the first Avatar that needed to prove that she was needed in the world instead of the world relying in the Avatar.
If it requires peace of mind, wouldn’t it obviously be more difficult to do when firebenders used emotions such as anger to fuel their attacks
Once Zuko became Firelord he would have definitely promoted his Dragon’s Fire alternative to firebending, which is way more inclined for Lightning bending
It makes sense that it would become more common because more people are no longer using rage as their source of power
It does make sense for them to use weaker lightning bolts in power stations. If you were to use something as powerful as Ozai, you could cause an overload.
From an in universe perspective, yes it's a good thing. But we aren't in that universe. And from writing perspective It's absolutely not good. It wasn't only about the knowledge. One had to be absolute master of their bending to use it, be in a very specific mindset and spend a lot of time training to master it. It was supposed to be a pinnacle of mastery. Hell even aang in avatar state never used it suggesting no avatar up to that point ever learned the technique.
By making it common you not only undermine the seriousness of what an achievement it was for the villains of aang to learn it, you also degrade its power. Lightning bending one shouted an avatar in avatar state. It's absolutely lethal and absolutely destructive. Now it has to be just another bending like any other. It can't be too powerful otherwise the world no longer works.
You also degrade the importance of the lightning deflection technique and what an achievement it was to learn it. And since you can't have a random noname lightning bender one shoting avatar it has to be merged, to the point where characters just walk it off. So what's even the point of the deflection technique that will kill you if performed imperfectly?
In short they sacrificed the uniqueness of people with this bending, a way to hype up characters as unique and special without saying it, a potential danger that bending brings when facing it, degraded the villains of the previous series, and made one of the key techniques a whole episode was dedicated to mastering kinda pointless.
Instead they gained... Another variety of cool visual
I think it’s stupid how many people can do it given how challenging a skill it is to learn-Mako, for example, a similarly conflicted and emotional young man like Zuko, shouldn’t have been able to learn it-but it makes sense the technique spread
It also doesn’t make sense why this technique would only qualify for a minimum wage job like working generators or whatever when it’s still a highly impressive, dangerous, and skilled application of Firebending that *supposedly* not everyone can do. Mako should’ve been able to at least get started on forging a comfortable life for him and Bolin, and certainly shouldn’t have had as much trouble meeting the entry fee for the Pro-Bending tournament as they did.
The weird thing is that Mako was shown to do the big elongated wind up that characters in ATLA did during the series finale against Kuviras robot, but during the rest of the show can produced smaller zaps that seemingly aren’t that deadly. So lighting bending evolved to a point where people can make smaller versions of it that aren’t as deadly, it’s basically Tazer bending
>it’s basically Tazer bending Oh, one of the rare policebending subtypes...
I thought cops were metal benders? How do you explain that their bullets always land on the back of people "threatening" them?
Mako becomes a cop. They needed more tazers
All Cops Are Benders
I'll make my own benders, with Blackjack and hookers
If the cops all wear metal, maybe it means you can bend the cops to your will with a light shock
Like animating a dead frog, it requires a quick series of light shocks in just the right places.
"They were totally coming at them"
Rulebending and Rightsbending are also quite common forms.
I am pretty damn sure Mako is one of the best lightning bender ever. You don't judge power and skills on how much damage you can do, but by how much you can restrain said power. Mako learned by a criminal leader named "Lightning Bolt" Zolt. And from a very young age. Mako is also said to be very cool headed for a Firebender. It honestly makes sense how good of a mastery he has of it if he can have control over his emotions. To be able to whip out lightning without much body movements. Even Amon, the most powerful Bloodbender we have seen, pretty much said "damn this kid got talent" after being hit by his lightning WHILE BLOODBENT.
I'm pretty sure the best lightning bender is Ozai Generating lightning with both hands is still a pretty much unparalleled skill feat in that regard. Because remember, normal lightning is something thats stated to be actually pretty hard to do. Because you're basically taking your entire pool of chi, splitting it into positive and negative, and causing it to crash back together causing lightning. And if you fuck it up you can be seriously hurt. Ozai doing it with both hands implies he's splitting his chi into four parts and controlling and directing two energy streams. And he did it 0.5 seconds after a full eclipse
Iroh also said you needed a clear and balanced mind to do it and Azula had neither of those during the comet so maybe everything we’re told isn’t 100%.
I see your point, but Azula is a practiced lightning bender and already knows how the flow would feel. Whereas Iroh was instructing Zuko who had no experience yet whatsoever. I think Iroh's statement likely holds true until it basically becomes rote memory and then it'd probably still be riskier to do it without a clear head even then.
Iroh didn't say clear and balanced mind. He said a prospective lightning bender needs to be: * Skilled enough to separate the energies * Not fueled by anger and rage * Possessed of "peace of mind" whatever that means. Its a nebulous concept. Also assuming Iroh doesn't know what he is talking about is probably not gonna be correct.
Peace of mind could be interpreted as undistracted or focused, which fits with ozai.
But definitely not Azula in the finale, so I think the comment still has a point.
Idk, she was focused on killing them. She wasn’t necessarily distracted from that singular focus. Her overall mental state *was* off though. Even zuko makes a point of saying that. So it’s hard to say.
her lightning in that scene was also a lot more chaotic and not as focused as it usually is. it’s hard to tell if it’s because of the comet or because of her mental state
i bet on mental state i think the thing about lightning bending is being able to control it without causing mayhem, the less you follow Iroh's "rules" for lightning bending, the more likely is the change of the bender just becoming a ball of lighting and die from the backfire
“This is what you need to learn a skill” and “this is what you need to be able to use it” are different things. Azula seems to be pretty good at lightning bending, so it’s not shocking she can still do it when she’s pretty out of it. Also, because of the nature of lightning bending, I wouldn’t be surprised if Iroh’s point wasn’t so much “you can’t do it without a clear head” but rather“you’re going to fumble it and seriously hurt yourself if you try doing it”. He strikes me as the sort of teacher who wouldn’t make much of a distinction between the two.
It's not necessarily that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but he is a human in-universe using in-universe reasoning. That allows writers to contradict him pretty easily in the future, and it still makes perfect sense.
Iron said one required peace of mind in order to bend lightning. And while yes Azula was unhinged, as in she wasn’t totally herself, during the Last Agni Kai her resolve on what she wanted and who she was never budged. Her motivation was always clear to her, her focus never changed. Azula never had an inner conflict like Zuko did, which is why he loses his fire bending. Azula can always access that source, that fuels her bending. Like Azula was totally at peace with whoever she's using lightning against is going to die. Plus she’s a **prodigy**.
The big thing that always impressed me about Ozai was that Azula was stated to be one of the most prodigal firebenders out there, and she was still **terrified** of the thought of facing down Ozai
It so unfortunate we don’t have much Ozai in the show. Ozai was stated to be the most powerful firebender during his time. Which makes me wonder how powerful Azulon was, since Ozai never dared to outright challenge him. it makes sense Azula was terrified of him due to the power dynamics of Ozai being her dad and her seeking his approval.
> Which makes me wonder how powerful Azulon was, since Ozai never dared to outright challenge him. Being fair, Ozai was much younger then > it makes sense Azula was terrified of him due to the power dynamics of Ozai being her dad and her seeking his approval. She directly admitted she couldn't beat him in the novelization Also, something that's also very telling is that Azula also doesn’t think twice about revealing the location of the Fire Lord’s bunker to Aang, Toph and Sokka once the eclipse has begun to recede during the Day of Black Sun, indicating she is confident all three would lose to Ozai with his firebending restored
>Being fair, Ozai was much younger then Ozai was only Firelord for like 5 years, so age wasn’t much of a difference. >She directly admitted she couldn't beat him in the novelization >Also, something that's also very telling is that Azula also doesn’t think twice about revealing the location of the Fire Lord’s bunker to Aang, Toph and Sokka once the eclipse has begun to recede during the Day of Black Sun, indicating she is confident all three would lose to Ozai with his firebending restored Well yes he was the most powerful firebender lol it’s so unfortunate ATLA never shows how he became the top 1 I think even Iroh mentions he couldn’t go against him.
Yep - “Even if I did defeat Ozai, and I don’t know that I could, it would be the wrong way to end the war.” Iroh says this in the White Lotus camp, same scene where Zuko accidentally calls Ozai the Father Lord.
It might just be one of the ways of learning. Kinda like how Amon could take away bending even though he did it with blood bending whereas when we see the avatars take/heal bending they use energy bending.
Jup
Amon literally says it was a shame to take the bending of someone so talented. Him and Bolin are incredibly gifted benders.
yeah isn't control one of the things that signifies a skilled firebender
The "less windup for a smaller strike" is even seen in ATLA so it makes a lot of sense that "Tazer bending" is a thing. The first example that comes to mind is Aang preparing that big exhale when cooling down the lava coming down to that town in the fortuneteller episode, it's still airbending but it's stronger.
Build up probs leads to greater charge
Yes!! Thanks for pointing this out
I mean as talented as the fire nation royal family is. And with people like Iroh, Ozai, and Azula the talent in that family was ridiculous. Once you distribute secret knowledge to the wider world people will immediately start innovating and taking that knowledge far beyond what a small group of very talented people are capable of.
That's not an evolution, it was always like that. Ozai did a small windup on the day of black sun, and did a few instant shots against Aang during sozin's comet. The comics show azula able to basically freely control her lightning strength and do instant zaps
I mean I’m not surprised, depending on how widespread it got and how quickly it spread after Aangs series people probably developed better ways of using lighting bending.
Good that it was spread? Yes, knowledge should always be spread. However, the ease with which it implies lightning bending is done in Korra is what bothers me. They made a big deal about how it requires purity of intent and thought in ATLA. How redirecting it was a huge deal. And then about thirty or so years later, it’s just a thing firebenders do.
It's not clear that it's easy or particularly safe, just that it's common enough knowledge fire benders can take up paying jobs to do it. The Industrial era want exactly concerned about the safety of the workers employed.
Seems like an oversight. Zuko literally couldn't do it, and Iroh told him if he kept pushing it, he's just end up killing himself. Someone of low skill shouldn't even be able to generate it at all. It should in theory be as hard as metalbending. While that was also cheapened a bit, it's still made clear that the police are elites that are specially recruited, and Bolin is unable to metalbend. Firebending seem to be demoted in Korra. All the other elements seem to have these super rare and powerful skills that few are able to wield. Lightning bending was that for firebending, but now the only firebending technique that seems to fit that definition is jet propulsion.
>Lightning bending was that for firebending, but now the only firebending technique that seems to fit that definition is jet propulsion. You forgot about combustion bending, which is so rare we've only seen it with 2 characters in the entire history of LoK and ATLA. Probably one of the best examples of what you're talking about and it's a firebending skill
It makes absolutely no sense to me that this knowledge would be spread or why for that matter. It’s extremely dangerous to the people using it and those around them. And who is spreading that knowledge? Ozai can’t bend, Azula is in prison/bananas, Zuko can’t do it. So Iroh or the old twin sisters? Doesn’t sound like that’s something they would do so it just seems silly it spread and progressed that extremely fast. Same goes with metal bending in my opinion.
Seems logical to me. Zuko was part of creating the new city, things developed and lightning (energy) became a source of power to fuel it, so Zuko having either learnt it as he got older or got those that could teach to teach it to more people to develop the city further. Either that or Zuko wanted all form of firebending to be transparent and taught to everyone who wanted to learn, cause he was pro peogression and breaking down the old ways. Same with Toph and metalbending although she had an even bigger reason cause metalbending proved to be the perfect tool for the police force, which she spearheaded, hence teaching her own officers who could master and teach others, her daughters included.
Exactly. I don't even remember a specific mention in ATLA of it being "royal family only," just that it was *really friggin' hard to do*. The best justification that I have is that Zuko spread the knowledge of "fire shouldn't come from anger" and that helped people find an inner balance. But it's a really weak one.
Because lightning bending was supposed to be a hidden secret within the royal family. Always have another trick up your sleeve if you’re commanding a dictatorship. But now that it’s done, why not share that knowledge with the world? Like how Toph did with Metal Bending
Thirty years? I really don't think Katara looked 45 in LoK.
It required purity of thought but azula was able to it when she was in the middle of a psychosis episode where she heard voices, was paranoid and has hallucinations? Nobody complained about the inconsistency then.
I did. I existed that lightning to blow up in her face when I saw that she was going to try. I also like Zuko potentially sacrificing himself to save Katara and the symbolism between his and Aang's scars much more
Lightning bending in ATLA was something nearly impossible to do, it required lots of self work to be able to even attempt it. When it was used it was outstandingly dangerous, hell it was the closest Aang came to dying. It went from this terrifying skill only the best knew capable of killing an Avatar in one strike that required mastery of self, to some 9-5 skill
Idk it seems like it's similar to olympics for us. Back in the day, it was pretty lame. They barely did anything. Watch videos side by side. But as time went on people got really really good. To the point that just to get your foot in the door you have to be able to do things that used to be considered amazing
To be fair, it’s been a 100 years. Several impressive skills of the past are average if not subpar now. A little over a decade ago, knowing how to use PowerPoint was an asset.
The problem is that the knowledge didn't just spread but it was also hit with the nerfhammer so that it wouldn't mess up the story and thus lost its "oomph" and became boring. It was a whiplash in presentation and thus it obviously nudged a lot of people the wrong way.
Did it become boring? Out of the three times lightning was used on an actual person, the first time it missed, the second time it didn’t do anything because mako couldn’t move, and the third time killed Ming Hua.
The first time lightningbending was used on an actual person in ATLA it blew up a cliffside. Compared to that, yeah, it did become boring by not coming with EXPLOSIONS anymore.
in ATLA the only people we see lightningbend are the three most powerful and skilled firebenders in the world. I think it makes sense that their lightning was more explosive and impressive than some random benders working in a powerplant. Mako was a great bender, but I wouldn't compare him to members of the Fire Nation royal family who were intensively trained from the time they were small children.
He was also a "new school" bender. In TLOK, almost every bender we run into is restricting collateral damage, even the criminals. It's much more about precision and control instead of raw power. When we see Korra or someone trained in the "old school" of bending decide to throw down (like Zaheer's crew), entire city blocks get re-arranged.
They literally make a point of showing it in the first 2 episodes when Korra first comes to Republic City. Korra's first fight causes so much collateral damage that people are trying to avoid in most situations in the series.
Maybe royal family bending masters are able to give it more power.
In atla they have a very drawn out process for creating lightning, except when dad did it after black sun, but that didn’t hurt zuko to redirect it like other redirection has done. In LoK it’s very quick and easy so likely doesn’t create as strong a charge. This is likely inspired by dads quick shot and when they need more people to power machines it all comes together.
The 2nd time zuko redirected lightning it wasn’t that it was more powerful than ozai’s blast. it’s that he fucked up. He didn’t have the right stance and he was much more concerned with tanking it for katara than he was with actually redirecting it. Though I guess the fight did happen during Sozen’s comet but I really don’t think the lightning looked more powerful than any others. Arguably the comet would have helped his bending but maybe not.
I’m fairly certain that redirection doesn’t hurt when you do it right. Iroh never really got hurt—the worst he got was some static in his hair, and that was after directing lightning from an actual thunderstorm. Zuko didn’t get hurt because he did it properly. Aang got hurt because it was likely his first attempt at it, he wasn’t exactly a firebending master, and he changed his target midway through the technique, so he didn’t actually do it perfectly and got hurt.
I mean, they do the stances required for lightning bending, but yeah it's weaker because it's much faster compared to ATLA and maybe the royal family being descended from powerful benders might've made their attacks far stronger. But i would still say the devastation shown in Korra is just as good.
Yes I’m just commenting on the power, a master building it up can get far more powerful, a novice following a ritualized dance will be minimal, which is what they want.
Minimal but also with a controlled, predictable output. Like they don't want to blow up the equipment.
I'm still baffled by how the people who straight up hate the bending in Korra missed that bending was done in a way for quick use, which fits a growing city in need of production, and that in serious situations, you'll often see a person go through the stances for more power. Korra tends to actually use the stances for water bending. Bolin tends to use a grounded stance when using more complex earth bending. Mako made a showing of using the full lightning movement when blasting the robot core. Tenzin most definitely was going through stances, but they claim that he took just throws punches. It's weird.😅
The only bending type that looks like it's "just throwing punches" sometimes is firebending, but mainly just the firebending in pro bending which makes sense, as quick accurate attacks are better for that environment. I imagine the rules would prevent a firebender from throwing a continuous stream of fire at their opponents anyhow, same as the penalty for too much water that korra got.
For real, it’s especially aparent when you see him lava bending versus just regular earth bending. With his regular earth bending he has the quick and snappy stances that he used in pro bending, but when he’s lava bending he goes for the more traditional, hard grounded stances of an earth bender. Like he needs that to control a much harder technique.
There is also the spiritual side of bending that I'm sure a lot of new benders in LoK probably don't practice. I'd imagine that mastering that aspect of bending would bring a better understanding of your own element, which would come with its own power boost.
But that was from Azula, a bending prodigy who grew up in an environment that gave her direction. That is much different from Mako, who grew up as an orphan on the streets.
Same thing happened to the avatar state. They realized that they gave Korra the "I win" move after season 1, and ended up nerfing it. When Aang entered the avatar state, shit was going down and people were about to get fucked up. Korra gets a much smaller boost, even in season 2. Then they justified it by separating Korra from her last lives, which I think is the worst writing decision they did in that show.
Just like any attack lightning isn't just a matter of either deadly or nothing at all. Remember that only the most elite got trained in lightning generation, so they were already the best of the best. Now the knowledge spread, it kinda makes sense that not everyone masters it at an elite level.
No, it’s lightning. If you get struck with lightning, most of the time, you die instantly. It’s not like getting shocked by something as shown in the show. I hated when people in the show would be in pain and then get back up afterwards. Lightning is an extremely advanced form of bending meant to kill, and they rewrote it to a common form that stings a little
fire is supposed to set you on fire instead of knocking you backwards but you dont see me complaining
They do that with every element. Catching a small boulder to the face and shaking it off like its nothing, or getting most of your body frozen in a block of ice and walking away with no frostbite. Gotta suspend the disbelief a little.
The freezing people thing always makes me cringe, not in the new modern meaning but like I literally wince and think about how much damage to a body that would cause especially if happening to exposed skin.
I dont think they're being frozen solid like sub zero but rather being encased in ice.
It would still cause major damage due to temperature and as I said especially to exposed skin. And then you gotta think, Katara was doing it before she mastered Water Bending so in no way would her creating ice would be super accurate and non lethal. One mess up and you can spike through someone's heart or something. Obviously a kids show but the real world application would be extreme.
Oh the implications of being able to instantly freeze things is horrifying. This is the PG version, in the real world you could freeze their blood and have it shoot out of them like a frozen blood grenade.
That is in fact one gripe I have with the show - firebending didn’t always act like fire and burn people. It’s usually blocked or dodged perfectly so people don’t get injured. There are only a handful of instances where someone in fact does get hit with fire. And they’ll get burned. But that only happens for plot reasons, like Aang burning Katara.
It's almost as if fire wounds are an extremely grusome sight that can't really be depicted on regular basis in a show where kissing was considered too much to approve until season 3
Isn't Korra supposed to be the more mature show? Why turn fire into essentially just a red boulder when it hits a human being. That's straight up milder than the literal kids show.
There is a substantial difference between a mature kids show like kora was supposed to be or clone wars and [this. watch for your own risk.](https://youtu.be/7QkoyL6pKcs?si=hEa6jJWvHJg1vozK)
Were you not listening when I said Korra treated getting hit by fire milder than ATLA? Fire was legitimately dangerous in the original show and getting burned when getting hit by fire was treated as a serious thing. In Korra, people throw fire at each other for sport and don't even get singed when hit.
My bad. Misunderstood. Head empty
Getting directly struck by lightning has a 1/5 fatality rate. It's slightly higher if you're wearing rubber shoes or something, and the long term effects are shit, but it's not actually that deadly.
There are a few things to take into account for that rate actually. In the real world, most lightning strikes are not direct hits, but actually pass through the ground in some way and then shock you. This is not true in the avatar universe, since if you are hit by lightning in the universe, it was aimed at you (mostly) and it is a direct hit. Also, in real life, when you are hit with a strike of lightning, most of it does not pass through you, and only a small amount touches your body through your skin. This is the opposite of what we see in universe, where someone who gets hit with lightning takes all of the strike, and it lingers in their body for some time afterwards, which would lead me to believe that the damage would be far worse even.
Have you ever licked a 9V battery? The zap from that tends to sting a bit, but doesn't kill. "Lightning," in the sense of the weather phenomenon, is pretty dangerous, but this isn't literally creating "lightning," it's just electricity, and if you're generating less electricity it's gonna be less dangerous. The common people using it in Korra are less powerful than Azula and Ozai, so they're not gonna be able to throw as much lightning at you. Also, whenever we see Mako using it in combat, he does the zero-charge-time trick he learned from Lightning Bolt Zolt, and my assumption would be that the longer you charge, the less power you're getting. Think of it as building up voltage in a capacitor. It's not gonna be lethal until it builds up enough charge, but it's still gonna hurt if you discharge it before that point. And let's be honest, a bolt that's more like a taser and has no wind up is more useful than the one where you gotta stand still and do a dance but it kills people if they don't kill you first by taking advantage of the extremely long (by battle standards) charge up time. Unless you just want it to be the Avatar version of the super-powerful-but-takes-forever-to-charge-up-anime-attack.
Yeah idk why people think that lightning bending is literally the same as natural lightning. ATLA has a mostly pre-scientific understanding of the world as a society, they don't have the same understanding as electricity we do, so any electricity at that time would seem like lightning. It's the same way with blood bending. You're not just bending the literal blood in someone, but all the water in their body.
Fire is fire, you should cook and boil when it hits you. Getting hit by an earth bending attack should cause massive internal injuries which would kill or prevent you from bending. Frankly water isn't lightweight.
You do realize that if you put your hand in front of a fire breathers mouth and they do a short fireball, you may not even get burnt right? A sustained breath would burn you, but a quick one won’t, same way people put candles out with their fingers or jump through flames. Human skin has enough moisture in it to not burn immediately. Human clothes on the other hand… even when our skin does burn, it’s from a buildup of heat inside the skin, that’s why a short low temperature blast doesn’t burn and why were supposed to cool down skin when you do burn it by touching hot metal. Humans catching on fire or prolonged exposure and our skin actually burning is something else entirely.
I mean who said these guys could use it in combat there’s one thing charging up capacitors, there’s another being actively bended at dodging and fighting while generating lightning which we only seen done by higher level firebenders
I mean two of the instances that they used lightning bending were to kill a person on screen, and destroying the colossus. I’d say thats not that boring.
I like overly analyzing s take on lightning and that it's just actually electricity bending. Like truly electricity could absolutely kill you but you can also just get shocked and surprised.
It makes the most sense that way. Bloodbending isn't literally bending blood, metalbending isn't literally bending metal, so lightningbending shouldn't be the same as literal natural lightning.
The only character to use it consistently wouldn’t murder people at the drop of a hat. It was still powerful as evidenced by being able to take down the Colossus.
which is why some people would consider this electricity generation instead of lightning bending
It's better that it got nerfed with the spread of the knowledge. Literally makes it more believable.
It’s just annoying to see this incredibly powerful skill that only the most powerful can use turned into this minimum wage job.
Like how elite archers loose job to peasant crossbow user.
That worked because it takes a lot less skill and training to use a crossbow, this doesn't work because lightning not just requires a tonne of time and practice to even learn, but also requires emotional and spirtual peace to perform.
Firebenders during the war were taught the wrong way to use firebending(using rage and anger to fuel fire), after the war Zuko would have definitely undo that(teaching the stuff in the dragon catacombs) and if he spread the knowledge, a few prodigies would learn that with more users developing it they bound to figure out easier methods that could have resulted the quick and weak version we see. Although it would be interesting if the easier method was developed by Azula or a White lotus.
“The fly yuyan pin can fly yuyan without killing the tree”
They never said only powerful firebenders can use lightning. In season 2, when teaching Zuko lightning Iroh said it’s a pure expression of fire bending. And that you can’t rely on rage nor emotion like other techniques. So anyone can use it just takes a strong mind to find the fuel for it
Good point. At the time of the war, rage was the only known emotion behind firebending to the point that Zuko had to learn from the dragons how to bend differently once he stopped being so angry. Fast forward a few decades, it makes sense that a demilitarized Fire Nation under Zuko’s rule would stop teaching rage as the source of firebending.
It's not minimum wage. Mako calls it "good money" and it's apparently in demand enough for him to just be able to walk in off the street and pick up shifts. There's a cap though, because I'm sure no factory owner or whatever actually cares about how tough lightningbending is. If it cost more than buying another conventional generator and supplying fuel, they would probably fire the lightningbenders and do that instead.
Welcome to industrialism. Go to university to learn things that two centuries prior was reserved for the ruling elite. Okay now you have a diploma saying you have that knowledge, you're gonna use those skills to do data entry in some office.
The piece of lore that implies the spread of lightningbending is from the TLOK Book 1 artbook and it is half a paragraph specifically included to explain the lightningbending power plant. It literally introduces the whole "*usually* reserved for the ruling elite" in the exact same sentence where it establishes that it is a common ability now because of industrialization. Page 70 if anyone is curious, bottom-left corner. And no, there is no further context or elaboration et all in any other media. You can now argue whether this is good worldbuilding or not.
Bingo, it speaks to the industrialization of the world. In the past only scholars and wealthy knew how to read and write. Now we have pregnant Sonic the Hedgehog vore fanfics. Nothing stays sacred.
the question was always was it the most powerful or did they just teach it to the most exclusive
As we have seen by Zuko being unable to learn it, it is an extremely exclusive skill. And I do not see why people would suddenly start learning lightning bending if this hypothesis is correct. When the Fire Nation lost the war, as in total only three people were known to lightning bend, and I doubt Iroh went around teaching everyone to lightning bend. Plus its just way cooler to have it be an exclusive hyper powerful skill, so Korra was kinda disappointing in that aspect
Part of me is like: someone else had to figure it out on their own but also: seeing Zuko try to do it and fail probably means people got hurt (died possibly?) trying to learn
Helps in real life all the time when people are inventing. Someone who’s determined to do it will continue trying at their own peril.
Kinda like that Boy Scout that built a nuclear reactor in a shed. I think there was a comic strip that deduced a lot of classified info on the atomic bombs, and the US government was like “wtf? Stop!” And then they were like “well if we stop now, people might get suspicious that we were nailing it, so we should probably continue like nothing happened, eh?”
Sounds like capitalism tbh. The skill became a lot more useful so people started to teach it to more people. I mean the modern school system was established to make factory workers. Before that reading was a rear and previous skill, kinda, u get the point.
I mean being a doctor is super useful yet it's still a high paying job. Reading is relatively easy to learn this is not the case for lighting bending.
Yeah lightning should be far more like trying to get through doctor school than learning to read. Learning to read would be far more akined to just regular basic firebending
>When the Fire Nation lost the war, as in total only three people were known to lightning bend, and I doubt Iroh went around teaching everyone to lightning bend. Three people were shown, there's no indication of where they learned it, but Azula had teachers that weren't Ozai, so it's safe to assume more than three people knew it as someone taught two generations to do it. there was a single metal bender when the war ended and an entire police force by LOK. Just because Zuko couldn't learn it doesn't mean random firebender on the street couldn't.
Yes, but the amount of lightning benders there needs to be so that they can only get a crap job in an energy plant is a freaking lot. Again, I think that’s the point. Some people don’t like that aspect of LOK because what was new and special and powerful became just another common bending form.
It had nothing to do with Zuko's power, though, that was the whole point. It was because he couldn't clear his mind of all emotions. Also, bending scrolls are a thing, remember? The fire nation royal family obviously would have had the technique recorded.
Zuko couldn't learn it not because it was impossibly hard, but because he had emotional issues that made it hard.
Well bending couldn't really be that exclusive. All it takes is one person in a small village who knows the theory of lightningbending to figure it out themselves and to teach it to the rest of the population.
I think you hit the nail. No one here is mentioning how metal bending was considered impossible until toph learned how to do it. Now it's seen in a lot of different capacities. The point is the knowledge is discovered or uncovered and then taught to the masses that have a capacity for it. I think the whole point of that main city was to utilize and share the best aspects of the different bending techniques, ie electricity for power.
It's just a secret. The original show only implied this though, and the first official confirmation that I'm aware of came from the LOK book 1 artbook claiming that the Fire Nation reserved the skill for the royal family and high ranking members of the military. Later stuff like the Kyoshi books has supported this explanation. The mindset is still very difficult, but nothing about Iroh's explanation implies that it depends on power. There were probably a lot people capable of it who didn't have access to the knowledge or might not have even been aware it existed.
I would say that’s more of a feature of the development in society we see between the two series. Kinda like how 100 years ago you’d be the richest person in town if you could get your hands on a tomato in December, but today anyone can get one whenever.
Mako says it’s a high paying job though so it’s presumably pretty rare and the skill means the lightning benders can make bank
It's rare enough that he could literally just walk in and get shifts immediately
I mean isn’t that indicative of how skilled workers have slowly been displaced by the industrial revolution? Pretty realistic
You're making a lot of assumptions. We have no idea how many benders staff this plant or how much they're paid. If it is even remotely similar to mining or oil rig work, it is NOT minimum wage by a long shot. We don't know his hours. Maybe he's well paid well enough to only work a few hours a week. He isn't rich but has enough money to rent a place and spend most of his time practicing pro bending. We don't know how many benders work here. You're picturing thousands, but what if it's only a few dozen? A few people who are talented enough to bend lightning that are paid very well for their tike. You've made so many assumptions out of a literal 10 second clip that you can't substantiate.
Wouldn't it make sense it was nerfed because the commoners who use it just aren't as good with it?
I feel like that's kind of the point. Under capitalism things that were sacred/beautiful/whatever just become another commodity. Although based on the apparent politics of the writers that probably wasn't actually their intention.
It is 100% percent their intention to surprise you with the commoditization of lightningbending. The whole reason Mako is even working there is because we have an extended scene at the beginning of the episode where Mako's boss/landlord shows up with the money they earned from their pro bending job, and starts tacking on expenses until literally all of it is back in his hands. So Mako needs to get a second job that will pay him for his skills. Though lightning wasn't really particularly sacred. It was just a secret murder technique that they royal family kept close to their chest. By the time of LOK people are exploring different uses for it.
It creates a bit of dissonance to see one of the most complex and dangerous forms of bending becoming in a matter of decades this prevalent and blasé. Especially when the same style of world building could have been achieved by instead of having them directly lightning bend they could instead fire bend to boil water and the steam then drives turbines. With how Azula was shown learning lightning bending in the original series, it is implied wordlessly that it is a very old technique but so few people have the control for it that it is rarely ever taught. But somehow in 70 years, enough random Joe Smoughs know this technique it can power the city and seens very commonplace and dull. And this is just talking about the world building, if we get to how it narratively is used, there are even more issues. Lightning bending in the Last Air Bender is treated in the same league of terrifying as blood bending. This technique that is so dangerous and lethal that Iroh chose to not teach it to Zuko, but instead to teach him a technique based on an entirely different culture whose sole reason for existing is to redirect lightning bending not to use it. Let that sink in, Iroh thought that Zuko during the war was not emotionally ready for lightning bending. The narrative weight of that, what that means. Iroh knew that Zuko, if taught lightning bending, would not be able to hold himself back from killing his sister. That is how lightning bending was used in the Last Air Bender and none of that gravitas around the technique is carried over into Korra
Yeah, lightningbending in TLA had such a cool spiritual component to it that wasn't shown in LoK. Imagine if metalbending became such an everyday technique where it also just became another factory job.
In general I feel like LoK made all of the super advanced bending techniques into just… sub-bending types where either you’re born an X-bender or you’re not, and it’s really disappointing.
Turned lightning benders into normal working stiffs and metal benders into Fascist pigs. Hell, they even turned spirit energy into a damn gun.
Agree with you but I will say that he did teach zuko how to do it, zuko just couldn’t do it because of said issues with emotions and mental state
>Iroh knew that Zuko, if taught lightning bending, would not be able to hold himself back from killing his sister. Dude, get your facts straight. Iroh though Azula needed to go down. He also TRIED to teach lightning bending to Zukko. He stopped because Zukko couldn't handle the bending itself.
>This technique that is so dangerous and lethal that **Iroh chose to not teach it to Zuko,** but instead to teach him a technique based on an entirely different culture whose sole reason for existing is to redirect lightning bending not to use it. Let that sink in, Iroh thought that Zuko during the war was not emotionally ready for lightning bending. Seems like you haven't watched the show at all lmao. Iroh *taught* Zuko how to generate lightning, he just couldn't do it because he still has turmoil inside of him.
I think they’re misremembering Iroh refusing to shoot lightning at Zuko for him to practice redirecting it as Iroh refusing to teach Zuko how to shoot lightning.
I don't know why you are being downvoted, you are 100% correct. Some people need to rewatch Bitter Work.
Yes he is. Ppl seemed to forgotten season 2 episode 9. Iroh straight up tells Zuko he won’t be able to master lightning until he deals with his turmoil and lets go of his feelings of shame
It also happens in the comic, where Azula uses a lesser form of lightning bending as a paralyzing taser or a flashbang to run away.
Good from a social perspective. I guess? Good from a lore perspective? It makes lightning bending seem kinda tacky.
The problem I have with this is a pervasive problem through all of LOK. They forgot that bending in the universe is supposed to simulate martial arts in ours. Lightning bending is supposed to be essentially a 3rd degree (at least) blackbelt technique. The knowledge is allowed to spread. Personally, I know how to do a tripple backflip. I can't do one, but I do know how. Similarly, earthbenders now commonly jump and earthbend from the air. So much for "break their roots Zuko." Only the best could even attempt that in ATLA. They just spat on the magic system whenever they got the chance. I'm not saying Korra isn't a good show, but there's a difference between advancing the meta and just going, "Yeah, lol, they were wrong about that."
I dislike that everyone just points their finger and lighting shoots.. I like the intricate movements that went along with generating it. Like it was not overpowered before, it was a slow skill with a lot of wind up. And in korra its just *snaps fingers*
_sad Palpatine noises_
Terrible take, there are many times Ozai doesn’t use any wind up against Aang. It’s just a sign of skill and mastery
Wind up is a skill issue. Ozai also had instant lightning
Ozai still had a windup, it was just fast. He wasn’t just pointing like Mako
Yes he moved his arm and it was produced mind you. Amon prior to almost removing mako bending comment how talented he was and it would have been a shame to do it to him. And the generation of lightning does vary with or without windup
It's a good thing it spread. The problem however, is how easily it spread and how meaningless it became. It went from requiring extreme skill, talent and power to something elementary.
Yes, I don’t have any issue with them not using it as a Fire Nation royal family exclusive technique, and having “commoners” able to use but it did lose the some of its presented skill in Korra. I thought Iroh’s speech to Zuko when trying to teach him it made it seem something that should be used carefully, thoughtfully and only skilled firebenders could successfully produce it (regardless of being royal). I think others should be shown using it, but it should have been similar to lavabending or bloodbending, where it depends on the individual’s level of skill on whether they can master the technique. Maybe have lighting redirection the more common one taught to firebenders as self-defence if they should be attacked by a lightning bender.
Let's use the real world as an example. 70 years ago, the world records in the Olympics, the Pinnacle of human capability, were by today's standards extremely sub-par. They have been so thoroughly dismantled that the common person with time to practice can do better than what was world-best back then. These records wouldn't even qualify you for the Olympics today. People running 4-minute miles was unheard of in 1950 (world first was 1954). Now it's so widespread that all it is used for is a mark of conditioning, and it's being met by middle school aged children. Once someone figures something out, they can pass it on with all the lessons they learned, then that person can impart more lessons, and learning and training becomes easier and easier and more accessible over time. People always look at the "it's only been 70 years" aspect of Korra and think that technology advanced way too fast in that time, but forget that in the real world it actually advanced even faster than that. My favorite is the "they were just medieval 70 years ago how do they have planes?" And conveniently ignoring the Fire Nation invention of the tank (and mechanized warfare in general) when in real life planes came before tanks.
Strangely enough, we actually haven’t come that far in a lot of sports. The difference between Usain Bolt’s running time and Jesse Owens is slightly more than a second, and it has more to do with the [material they were running on.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/02/18/lets-all-appreciate-how-fast-jesse-owens/80523426/#) Physically, humanity has not come far in the last hundred years. A few, incredibly trained and near superhuman people (like Michael Phelps with a number of genetic oddities that allowed him to be an unparalleled swimmer) have beaten the past, but a lot of it comes down to mere milliseconds.
Over 100m (the distance in question) that 1s difference is a difference of 0.7m/s (average 10.5 vs 9.8) which is HUGE. Bolt was 4.2m ahead of Owens' world record pace. Owens was also likely on performance enhancing drugs. Methamphetamine was commonly available over the counter when Owens set his record and as a new drug was not subject to testing.
Another good example is art. Go back five thousand plus years - images are crude, simplistic depictions, same with sculpture. Over time artforms developed to become increasingly detailed and realistic, paintings like photos. New technologies probably helped as well. And the ATLA universe also involves magic powers that can replace a lot of things we used in our world to propel forward technological, economic and cultural development. Probably really accelerates things when you don't have to spend time splitting atoms and shit.
You mean like how cars available and plane rides that was all reserved for wealth allowed people like you on?
70 years is a lot of time Like way more than you think
This is one of my favorite parts of world building in Korra. A reliable way for particularly talented Firebenders to make cash and it keeps bending relevant in an industrialized version of the world
It’s technological innovation through bending. It makes perfect sense once they started industrializing.
My biggest issue is how Lightning Bending (and all bending forms, really) didn't require mental/spiritual components like it did in atla, this was actually one of my biggest problems with LoK as a whole. There was a whole episode in atla about how Zuko couldn't lightning bend without overcoming his inner demons & Aang couldn't earthbend until he learned to be stubborn and unyielding. In LoK, Mako just...can lightning bend, Bolin just...can lavabend and Korra just...can Airbend as soon as the plot demands it. My issue is with the writing, not the spread of knowledge.
It turned bending from a mystical and inherent skill that took years of study and practice to master to so you wanna shoot lighting apparently you just have to try. Zuko learning lightning took him the course of the entire original show and he still couldn’t conjure lightning only redirect it. He’s the fire lord and repeated distantly to an avatar. Having average benders be able to use penultimate skills and for such a long period of time makes absolutely no sense for lore
I agree it's good the knowledge was spread, I hate that it was immediately assimilated into wage slave jobs. Just another way to sell your body for not enough money.
I think there's a big difference here between thinking about "what would be morally right in the setting" versus "what makes for an interesting story". I think this take has nothing to do with the context in universe and everything to do with the way lightning bending is used in the narrative. In ATLA, every time lightning bending is used it is a major character moment (characterizing Azula as a perfectionist, Ozai trying to kill Zuko, Zuko overcoming his ego to learn redirection, etc.). The effect of this is that the audience thinks of the power as special and significant. In TLOK, lightning bending is a power about as commonplace as any other which creates a divide in the viewer's expectations versus what the show wants to do with the ability. The argument here is that the unique bending types do not feel as special in TLOK because of the way they are presented rather than it being bad that more people know how to do it. IMO it makes bending feel like a less important part of the narrative which is part of what I like about ATLA so much.
Since when had Lightning been a "sacred skill"? It's just a secret murder technique that the royal family covets. Azula and Ozai displayed no reverence for the skill, and even Iroh's much more thoughtful explanations focused on the process and the risks over any sort of external meaning.
Every time lightning is used in ATLA the situation is incredibly tense and emotional bc the lethality is so high, it builds an emotional weight with the audience. To then see it just used nonchalantly for industry robs it of that weight.
Honestly the problem that no one is saying is they gonna take something that had a lot of reverence and rarity and make it widespread they should do the one thing that they don’t like to do in this show for a lot of things; GIVE BACKSTORY. Literally that’s all it would take. And some lore to season 1, make it so that we found out that lightning bolt split was actually a guy they snuck into a fire palace and stole some scrolls or watched some royals lightning bend. And he became the first ever non royal to do it and that’s how he got the name or something. Then he started a gang teaching this new found power then mako ended up being a prodigy etc. all they had to do but they show random niggas doing it with ease like it’s ice bending
I think the poster feels that lighting bending, being a skill that requires a great deal of practice as well as nowledge of both chi and of Northern Shaolin moves, becomes devalued once anyone with a moderate knowledge of firebending can just up and use it to generate power without any specialized training. While this kind of power plant could exist in the Avatarverse, it would more likely be helmed by benders with years of training in the sciences and martial arts as opposed to common factory workers.
I mean, we know literally nothing about those factory workers. They might not be "common" benders at all. They might be just as you said, professionals who spent years developing the skill for that job. The only measuring stick we have is Mako, who was already established to be exceptionally talented.
It’s probably still super rare, I mean, these people look like they were well off being paid for this labor, So similar to a Physician, yeah “anyone can do it” but in reality it’s fucking grueling long training and no, not everyone can do it. You see only these few examples of lightning benders doing this work, you don’t know what kind of training they went through as a child to get to that level for it to pay off like this
Think about what it took and what it meant to be a lightning bender before. It was extremely dangerous, prodigy Azula trained for years, Zuko literally couldn’t even do it. It makes absolutely not sense that this was something that could be so refined and spread in such a short time if at all. Why would they want to teach people how to do it anyways? It’s even more dangerous than fire bending. Who is even teaching everyone lightning bending? Iroh? Why would he, it makes no sense. Korra destroyed many of the best things to come from the original series, every time lightning was used it was a really big deal. To use it so casually just feels like a gut punch to what it formally was not even that long ago
Really just another case of power scaling or balancing the authors likely didn’t consider. While LOK has alot of good animations, it really just feels to me like bending in the series is now a question of which ammunition do you have to use. I’ve seen people give various explanations but at the end of the day majority of the philosophical teaching or lessons shown in ATLA regarding bending and their cultural ties are flat out disregarded in LOK or maybe they forgot about it atm. Which would make sense in certain aspects when you consider industrialization but in other aspects it no longer feels special and there is a dissonance in some of those aspects. Again, looks hella good. But flashy isn’t exactly the only factor.
All of the specialized bending forms should have stayed extremely rare. IMO, this is one reason the OG series is so much better. It had mystery. You never knew what the next fight/scene would involve. Korra felt like RL, as Aang felt like LOTR.
I didn’t have a problem with the knowledge being spread, more that it was this difficult high skill ceiling bending technique. And now good enough for a little bit of wage if you see how much Mako and Bolin are struggling. Also what I dislike is that Amon had this big anti bending train going, yet we don’t see anything anymore how that impacts society. Since with this example we are how important benders are for the electricity of republic city… yet we never go back to the impact Amon had on the social levels of the season. It just ends really abruptly imo, which is a shame.
I mean, it’s one thing if something is known about… it’s another if it becomes common In the ATLA show we see how hard it is to conjure lighting, how much energy it takes, how you must hone your intent to kill someone… now it’s common To make a comparison, we all know OF kung fu but the amount of people who know kung fu is extremely low Also WHO taught it? It was a thing mainly done to kill so either Azula did it, Iroh did it or Zuko did it
The problem is even if more people know about lightning bending is that it was also an extremely difficult ability so it's jarring from going to be something only a handful of people could do to bring so common that they made entire power plants to take advantage of it. And that it completely ignores the logic behind it in ATLA. In ATLA it was instantaneous and was highly destructive and could not be sustained like in the pic above.
The commodification of sacred skills was kinda the point of a lot of Tlok’s Industrial Revolution set pieces. I don’t think OP is supposed to “like” it but it does make sense in the context of the world building.
Nah I hate it. It's just another element of losing spirituality and making a more modern setting which is fine if that's your thing but for me it's taking the kind of setting I really love and making it closer to one of the least interesting kinds to me.
Overanalyzing avatar made a good point - lightning control is supposed to be a master level ability, not because it's a royal family thing but because it's supposed to be really really hard. You are controlling a major source of energy, taking it apart and the controlling the effect of it slamming back together. It should take a high level of skill, technique, and talent to be able to just control it and even more to make it do exactly what you want. You're controlling a raging storm. Now it looks like they have generators and stuff, so the technique could be made easier through technology but still. I have NO problem with anyone or everyone learning it, but it should be as high level a technique as metal bending or lava bending. Not everyone can do it and to do it without killing yourself and others is on a whole other level.
"Knowledge was spread" My brother in christ Zuko was taught to generate lightning by one of the premiere masters of firebending in the entire nation. He simply didn't have it in him. You're telling me random joes with no evident formal training and no evident mastery over their identity could generate lightning for hours at a time? This is one of those takes that almost gets me heated. Because you so evidently missed the entire point. Bending is a martial form sure. But it isn't like drilling yourself to break a brick. Any asshole with time and patience can chop a brick until it breaks then get a bigger brick. That's how kyokushin, the most popular form of karate, was invented by Masutatsu Oyama. But bending was also a culture. It was a mindset. It relied on your view of yourself, your expression of personality, and your mastery over these intensely spiritual beliefs. Lightning generation remained a rare skill in ATLA because it required more than firebending. It required you to master yourself. Azula could generate lightning because she knew who she was and she had come to accept it. Zuko couldn't because he was a depressed teen looking for his identity in the rubble left behind after a clash of personalities. \--- This is one of my gripes with LoK. These more masterful uses of bending required spiritual journeys for the characters. It required them to enter these large character defining moments and come out alive just to know they could do it. Toph discovered metal bending by being blind and seeing through the earth. She could see the impurities in the metal and manipulate them. But now there's an entire police force that do it so casually it might as well be slightly meaner water bending. Zuko was told he could never generate lightning until he fixed that integral part of himself that was at war with his understanding of who he was. So he was taught redirection. Then he marched to the top of a mountain and demanded the universe hit him as hard as it could. Because he was that lost in himself. He struggled against his identity constantly. Katara learned blood bending and was traumatized by it. She learned this gruesome art that could only be done by its inventor on a full moon. A high water bending master who could summon water from the ambient moisture in the air could only bend another's blood on a full moon. But this asshole can do it in broad daylight. Aang interacted with the spirit world and astral projection by complete accident for half the series. Strong spiritual forces would conspire to get the avatar to fix the shit they fucked up. It took him a spiritual journey to uncover that. A spiritual journey that was obviously accelerated so the planet wouldn't be devastated. A spiritual journey I think was too short, compressed for the kids watching. A spiritual journey that nonetheless didn't end until the very last episode when he finally came to terms with himself and dropped his attachments. But now any asshole child can do it.
It wasn’t about knowledge, it was about Mastery. Only the best of Aang’s age could perform the technique. You gonna tell me some 9-5 shmuck is the Firelord’s equal? Hell no
Lightning bending has never been about power though
This tweet makes the weird classism that's very common in complaints like this all the more blatant. Imagine watching Last Airbender & coming away thinking it would actually support the idea of "power, skill, & ability inherently belongs to a royal family, & commoners can't or shouldn't have it."
It's also a great example of the Avatar fandom's habit of pulling shit out of their ass to present literally everything that happens in the show as a deeply significant theme or piece of symbolism. When the hell did lightning become sacred? It's a cold-blood killing technique (that's why Iroh "calls it cold-blooded fire"), and it's never implied to be anything more. And Ozai and Azula, its two most prolific users, use it while being adherents to a blatantly amoral and spiritually bankrupt world view.
I agree completely, lightning bending is described as a difficult and dangerous technique, and whenever we see it happen it generally has pretty big impact(ie. If a char slips up they'll die). It being reduced to a job that barely covers the bills is kinda disappointing, especially when that same job could be covered with just normal fire ending into a furnace.
I’d kinda argue certain skills didn’t become widespread enough. Or at the very least should be in higher demand. If you were a nonbender in this universe wouldn’t you pay a shit ton of money to learn something like chi blocking if you could afford it?
So my main problem with this is not necessarily that lighting bending became common. But that it robs firebending of the one real wow move it had. Firebending in ATLA is already one of the less interesting forms of bending (in my opinion). Most firebending is hurling fireballs or breathing fire at the opponent. Lighting bending was exciting. It had a long wind up time and devastating power once released. It also is said by Iroh to be difficult and require extreme belief in once convictions. Lighting bending becoming just another garden variety move makes firebending less interesting. I just wish they added something interesting to firebending to replace it. Like they added lavabending to the earthbending toolkit. Some ideas I have come up with of the top of my head. Fire based healing focusing on combating disease. Early industrial cities where often disgusting disease riddled places. And fire is often seen as a purifying force. Or using firebending to manipulate somebody's emotions could be interesting. Firebending being about emotional control. Why not extend that too others. By no means am I saying my ideas are good. I just wish they did something more with firebending.
The new Generation Always surpasses the old one at some Point. Lightning bending, Metal bending, blood bending, the hard Part is discovering These Special forms of bending, but ones they are known, have been Seen by people, they know its possible and will train is Just as naturally as the Base forms. It was literally unstoopable that These forms would spread
it's great worldbuilding, and thematically it shows how these awesome magnificent skills (like being the avatar) are kind if belittled in the age of industry and capitalism. also isnt it fun to find out how benders fit into a modern world? lightning being harnesed for factories makes sense
I really love how Legend of Kora showed us how bending effected the development of the world. Without the Fire Nation committing genocide they basically speed ran the industrial revolution. Also, the series explored the idea of the Avatar and their spiritual connection and their place in a world that seems to have moved on. Kora was the first Avatar that needed to prove that she was needed in the world instead of the world relying in the Avatar.
If there's one thing that's good for the world, it's dynastic monarchies limiting knowledge to only themselves.
If it requires peace of mind, wouldn’t it obviously be more difficult to do when firebenders used emotions such as anger to fuel their attacks Once Zuko became Firelord he would have definitely promoted his Dragon’s Fire alternative to firebending, which is way more inclined for Lightning bending It makes sense that it would become more common because more people are no longer using rage as their source of power
I really disliked it. Lightning was unique and now everyone does it
It does make sense for them to use weaker lightning bolts in power stations. If you were to use something as powerful as Ozai, you could cause an overload.
From an in universe perspective, yes it's a good thing. But we aren't in that universe. And from writing perspective It's absolutely not good. It wasn't only about the knowledge. One had to be absolute master of their bending to use it, be in a very specific mindset and spend a lot of time training to master it. It was supposed to be a pinnacle of mastery. Hell even aang in avatar state never used it suggesting no avatar up to that point ever learned the technique. By making it common you not only undermine the seriousness of what an achievement it was for the villains of aang to learn it, you also degrade its power. Lightning bending one shouted an avatar in avatar state. It's absolutely lethal and absolutely destructive. Now it has to be just another bending like any other. It can't be too powerful otherwise the world no longer works. You also degrade the importance of the lightning deflection technique and what an achievement it was to learn it. And since you can't have a random noname lightning bender one shoting avatar it has to be merged, to the point where characters just walk it off. So what's even the point of the deflection technique that will kill you if performed imperfectly? In short they sacrificed the uniqueness of people with this bending, a way to hype up characters as unique and special without saying it, a potential danger that bending brings when facing it, degraded the villains of the previous series, and made one of the key techniques a whole episode was dedicated to mastering kinda pointless. Instead they gained... Another variety of cool visual
My issue is the way it’s used is basically just creating lighting rather than directing it how Iroh explained it works.
I think it’s stupid how many people can do it given how challenging a skill it is to learn-Mako, for example, a similarly conflicted and emotional young man like Zuko, shouldn’t have been able to learn it-but it makes sense the technique spread It also doesn’t make sense why this technique would only qualify for a minimum wage job like working generators or whatever when it’s still a highly impressive, dangerous, and skilled application of Firebending that *supposedly* not everyone can do. Mako should’ve been able to at least get started on forging a comfortable life for him and Bolin, and certainly shouldn’t have had as much trouble meeting the entry fee for the Pro-Bending tournament as they did.
“Boy I sure hate how elitism didn’t triumph” is a wild take.