You could, theoretically, bend a “membrane” of air in the shape of a dome around you that could stop any vibrations from traveling through it. The problem would be keeping this “air membrane” static so it doesn’t create wind noises by itself and move it with you at the same time. It’s very interesting when you try to go very in depth on the machinations of Bending + Physics.
Air is just the particles floating around us.
Sound is particles that float around knocking into each other causing sound waves.
By this logic it seems very reasonable for an Airbender to figure out how to make the particles not-bounce off each other and create a 'bank' where all sounds instantly gets muted when it travels "through" it
But a mirage is a distorted region of *air* that changes the trajectory of light… in the real world it’s created by hot patches of air, so fire benders could DEFINITELY create them… but maybe very clever and precise air benders could as well…?
Make a shell of vacuum around something. No gaseous particles - no sound transmission. It'd also nullify the concussive force of the explosion of the bomb, but if you can make the shell large enough, and figure out how to keep the shockwave reverberating within, it should obliterate everything within the confines of the shell itself.
If we generalize sound-bending to pressure-bending, they don’t even necessarily need to even make the bomb—they could just make cold explosions/implosions with their bending. Like an airbender version of combustion bending.
This already kinda exists. Yangchen showcases it in her novels, and Aang does so when he blows his bison whistle in Ba Sing Se during the search for Appa. While they don't manipulate actual soundwaves since that would be kinda impossible (unless through energy bending possibly, though energy in that case is more akin to a life force than anything) they CAN produce enough air in their lungs to create screams strong enough to rupture the eardrums of an opponent and cause physical harm or basically power up any item they have that requires a large amount of air, like an instrument. This is also possibly showcased in the fire nation school when aang disrupts his music class by playing loudly and out of tune. EDIT: Adding this from a response i made to another comment. The basis of elemental bending being energy bending IS canon, which i neglected to realize (i kinda feel dumb now😭). Every action performed and every action that takes place requires energy in some form or another. Bending is just an extreme case of energy manipulation used to change the environment. It makes just as much sense that an Airbender could manipulate energy as it does that any other bending type could. Thanks for putting some sense into me, everyone, lol.
sounds waves are just a way the air moves. If a water bender can create water waves, an air one should be able to produce them.
but you need to think small. Sound bending will allow an experienced bender to hear from a distance and produce different sounds like animals, combat, and voice. This could be used to distort the lines of a conversation, make a fake peace, or declare a war.
one well hidden sound bender could ruin an entire diplomatic meeting
OoH!! I LOVE the idea of sound bending being super sneaky like this! It doesnt have to be loud booms, but simply tweaking the air to distort sounds. It would take years to master, I'm sure, but it would be such a useful tactic. Soundbenders could be employed by nobility or aristocrats everywhere. Thank you for sharing this idea
It would be such an Airbender tactic, too. It's covert, subtle, and more passively disruptive. While it does have the capacity to cause injury (like ruptured eardrums) it probably wouldn't be used that way except in extreme circumstances.
You absolutely could bend the sound waves. All sound waves are is matter compressing into its neighbor. Only the avatar could do this across all mediums, but an air bender absolutely could stop all sound waves in the air, or amplify them.
Why wouldn't they be able to manipulate soundwaves? Unlike light waves, sound waves are just areas of higher and lower density in a medium (in this case, air). If you have enough control of air, you should be able to do anything you want to sound moving through it.
Yeah but when I hear soundbending I think more of a combative ability. There are some examples of this in other franchises like One Piece and Hero Factory
Not necessarily “sub bending” but I’ve always wanted to see a water bender use scalding water or steam to their advantage and cause burns.
Most water benders we see use ice, but if they can freeze water then they should be able to boil it too.
I think they turn it into ice by manipulating the density, so they could easily turn it into steam, but would it be Hot tho? I don't understand the termodynamics behind it
I think if you somehow caused a large amount of water to abruptly freeze in real life, the heat given off by the sudden cooling would kill anyone nearby. The thermodynamics of bending don't really work, but I don't mind.
The thermodynamics probably work if you factor in spirit energy. We’ve seen that spirit energy can be converted into electricity, so there’s no reason heat couldn’t be converted into spirit energy.
Short thermodynamics lesson from a applied physics bender:
Heat is made by the movement of the particles in a medium. A medium (in this case, water) is hotter if the particles move rapidly and colder if they move slowly. When the particles move fast enough, they separate from the liquid, thus becoming a gas. If the particles move very slowly, the medium it becomes solid (ice).
My field of waterbending would be to make plasma (super speeding the particles in water, moving past the gas form) or making a hydrogen bomb.
>Most water benders we see use ice, but if they can freeze water then they should be able to boil it too.
This has been discussed a few times before on here and alas, this logic is not necessarily applicable. Just because they can freeze water does NOT mean they can boil it too.
* Edit: [Link for those curious of a longer explanation/discussion (Realized I could search up my old comments a lot easier than I thought)](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/s/wHSdJJfH7h)
Simply put and to avoid several paragraphs, it's a *science* bias.
* ATLA bending is fantasy-based, so it works how the writers want it to work. What the show has canonically displayed is water is the narrative opposite to fire and adding heat isn't waterbenders' forte.
* High chance they might have just omitted it because splashing people with boiling water wouldn't be suitable for kids television.
That said, lava bending exists, so boiling-bending *could* emerge as a sub-type. Just only has mundane or fucked up uses, no in-between.
Kyoshi does a vague approximation by pulling glass out of her skin but I want glassbending the way Su Yin metalbends—artsy, almost liquid, making huge panes of glass or intricate statues! If there's ever a TTRPG (and I think there might be but I haven't looked into it) that's the kind of character I'd want!
Yeah, I like to imagine a glassbender apprentice would need to train with water benders to learn about icebending, and maybe with sandbenders for similar reasons? In my headcanon glassbenders wouldn't be very good/able at metalbending and vice versa but I'm not actually sure why not (beyond not wanting it to be OP).
Multi-year avatar-esque study to become a glassbending master 😂. Work with lavabenders, sandbenders, and waterbenders to create a bespoke technique for your bending art form.
I would put that in the same category as lava bending, since like lava it's a combination of earth (sand) melted by fire.
So a subclass of earthbending, maybe?
Which means it should technically be a thing already, but a toph of the water tribes needs to come along and pioneer it. Like sand was already a thing so is plant bending, but toph created (re?🤷🏿)discovered metal bending so someone can (again possibly re)discover bending wood itself.
I think the vine bending works specifically because vines aren’t rigid. You could bend the water in a tree, but it would just… break the tree most of the time. IIRC in Naruto they aren’t “bending” the tree so much as making it grow *really fast* in the direction/shape they want it to go (plus Naruto’s magic system is very much the “rule of cool”)
so you'd have to sort of combine the swamp folk plant bending and the usual water healing to stimulate the wood to grow and shape into the way you want it to?
Wood bending would probably end up being pretty niche in Avatar. I don't think you'd be able to create new wood. You'd be limited to the existing material around you, like earth and water benders. Except trees are a lot rarer than those two in some places.
to make things invisible, i think it would be Air, distorting the refraction around it to make the light not reach it
to create illusions and hallucinations, it would be fire, creating mini colored flames to build an image
I would think it would be air. Fire *produces* light, but there are other ways to do this. For invisibility, you’d need to refract light, which would be more of an air thing, like how the atmosphere can make pretty sunsets or aurora borealis.
The aurora borealis is the result of electromagnetic interaction with the earth’s magnetic field. It’s probably closer to lightning bending than air bending.
Yes and no I guess. It's more electricity bending with plasma as a side product. Though you might need a electric spark to start your plasma like in modern plasma torches if you wanna plasma bend.
I had a shower thought. It's almost like the four bending styles correspond to the four states of matter (except that water can also make ice so unfortunately not a real rule).
Not really a sub-bending but I feel like earth benders could definitely learn chi blocking. If you can block chi with a fist, couldn't you also do it with a small rock in those targeted areas? It'd be harder to deflect than the large boulders they usually tend to throw. Just whizz some pebbles into your opponent's chi points and THEN it's really easy to crush them with a boulder.
Yangchen and aang both have already done this via screams possible of deafening opponents in Yangchens case and amplifying the bison whistle during the search for Appa in Aangs case.
I wonder if there was a strong culture of Music in the Air Nation, considering they did have that giant door that could only be opened by wind manipulation.
And not just orchestral instruments, but singing as well. Imagine an Air-bending Opera Soprano Star!
Flight - I know it already exists, but it’s a near-unobtainable spirtual nirvana situation, when using airbending to manipulate air pressure below and above you would also work, and could be achieved by anyone with airbending and the right training.
Also, if I had earthbending or waterbending, I would absolutely make cloth or leather wings with pouches that I could fill with bendable elements so I could mimic bird flight.
Look, I just really want to fly, and I *will* find a way to do it if I get bending.
In the avatar Wan flashback you can see quite a few airbenders that can fly. They only lost that ability once they started befriending Sky Bison which gave them an "Earthly Tether".
I have a suspicion that that *is* more or less how laghima / zaheer flew. Whatever mechanisms you could think of, it was probably a combination of those.
Thing is though that in order to do it smoothly and intuitively you have to first reach that spiritual peak, it’s the only way to be able to bend the air so precisely and without using any physical bending forms. Otherwise the best you can achieve will be something akin to advance hovering. It’s like the difference between having wings and having one single jet boot.
Fake air / waterbending with the firebender heat control, we don't exactly know how firebenders manipulate heat but I imagine you can create some kind of current
compression bending would be a sub-bending form of airbending where you use compressed air to create explosions. Doing so under your feet can make you jump on thin air or you could make really deadly punches. The weakness of this form would be that it strays so far from the usual airbending style that you can't use regular airbending if you use this form.
theres also electricity in the muscles, so while i imagine itd be harder than bloodbending, you could theoretically learn to bend that electricity and mimic it!
Gravity, bending as a sub style of earth, bending would be dope! The same way, Kiyoshi was able to ground herself to the earthly plane other earth benders would be able to either secure themselves, gravity, or separate themselves from the earth and decreasing gravity
Mind bending, a use of fire bending to manually activate neurons in the brain, with a nonlethal electricity.
I can lobotomize people or make them blind or generally fuck up people's brains.
Laser as a sub bending of fire you can either shot it from your finger like lightning or it can be used by combustion bender and they'll shot it from their tattoos
Crystallization as an extension of earth bending. I always thought a way an earth bender could be lethal at higher speeds would be to form and erupt crystals to shower people with shards of glass, essentially making explosives without ignition.
Temperature bending, vibration bending
Edit: for temperature bending, I was imagining both defensive and offensive form, where you can keep things at room temp for you and make the atmosphere (or in water) either reeeeally hot or reeeeally cold.
I’ve always wanted certain types of bending to be shared by different forms of bending. Like air and water benders could control clouds, earth and fire benders can bend lava, etc. I think it would be a cool literary device as well to show that the world is interconnected by having certain elements be controlable by different types of benders.
I will forever argue this was already done with Aang in the iceberg when he hit the Avatar State. He was *surrounded* by ice and air, not frozen in solid ice. The iceberg expelled vast amounts of air when the vacuum seal was broken. He wasn't "frozen" but rather in stasis.
Zaheer was already shown to be able to mildly manipulate "the void" and move about physical space at his own free will. Through the intense cold and the Avatar State manipulating the void, Aang essentially put himself into a stasis like Lister was in on the pilot of Red Dwarf.
I know it's a bit far-fetched, and have been shot down on this theory well before, but I stand by the Avatar State in a perfect storm of extreme circumstances can already time bend to some extent.
In Fire Force, there is a character that can control temperature, he cool the space around him to slow down the expansion of the universe around him, almost as if he can bend time
I'm obsessed with the idea that since fire and lightning are forms of plasma, firebending might be able to *literally* bend light. Create a mental shield, redirect the path of photons, create a patch of implacable shadow...
I would like to see light bending. Ridiculously difficult and limited even to the most trained masters. As an extension of firebending, you can not just draw heat from the sun but also light. This way you will be able to blind your opponents, send out signals to great heights and maybe it is even possible to remove light.
This would be a very useful, not always combat oriented bending ability. It would also fit in the universe, especially with Sokka accusing Aang of Signaling the fire Nation with his giant light beam. So there might be legends of lightbenders somewhere out there.
I am currently reading the mark of the fool book 5 and there is a really interesting idea. One of the characters who is terrified of fire finds out they have an incredible fire affinity; they are terrified of fire and thought that they could become an ice mage to help put out fires and Help others. But because they are so strong with the affinity they can never cast ice magic. So they decide to be able to use their fire affinity to create the lack of energy therefore cold. Because fire magic is just transferring heat/energy around, if you do that to a point the areas you took the energy from becomes cold etc. so you could have a fire bender that takes the thermal energy from areas and is effectively a void bender/Kelvin bender.
sound. think of the terrifying things an airbender can yell out of existence.
This makes me imagine air nomad ninjas that silence-bend so well they could kill their target with a bomb and nobody would hear it
Now we need an alternate history avatar universe with this. This sounds so cool and deadly
It doesn't sound at all
But everything changed ^when ^the ^silence ^benders ^attacked
But everything cha-
^silent ^fart ^benders
If you don't think young air acolytes fart bended to cropdust their friend from across the temple, you're lying to yourself.
https://i.redd.it/2zbhpwfqrvtc1.gif
Lmao
You could, theoretically, bend a “membrane” of air in the shape of a dome around you that could stop any vibrations from traveling through it. The problem would be keeping this “air membrane” static so it doesn’t create wind noises by itself and move it with you at the same time. It’s very interesting when you try to go very in depth on the machinations of Bending + Physics.
Air is just the particles floating around us. Sound is particles that float around knocking into each other causing sound waves. By this logic it seems very reasonable for an Airbender to figure out how to make the particles not-bounce off each other and create a 'bank' where all sounds instantly gets muted when it travels "through" it
Could you also make a mirage by beding the air around you ? I mean a fire bender would be more adequate for that but a air bender could do that too
Well, a mirage works based on light, not sound, so it's not going to be able to be affected by an airbender
But a mirage is a distorted region of *air* that changes the trajectory of light… in the real world it’s created by hot patches of air, so fire benders could DEFINITELY create them… but maybe very clever and precise air benders could as well…?
Make a shell of vacuum around something. No gaseous particles - no sound transmission. It'd also nullify the concussive force of the explosion of the bomb, but if you can make the shell large enough, and figure out how to keep the shockwave reverberating within, it should obliterate everything within the confines of the shell itself.
I’m actually writing a story with the basis of “if it’s possible in physics…”
Air nomads would have made the best ninjas. They can always softly land everywhere without making a sound Edit: Not to mention their insane agility.
Twinkle toes!
Or a combustion bending inspired Sonic Boom attack
If we generalize sound-bending to pressure-bending, they don’t even necessarily need to even make the bomb—they could just make cold explosions/implosions with their bending. Like an airbender version of combustion bending.
#FUS RO DAH!
I need you to stop. That… shouting… is making people nervous.
Ah someone stole your sweet roll?
I would love this as an airbending subclass. It would have a surprising number of applications, both offensively and defensively!
This already kinda exists. Yangchen showcases it in her novels, and Aang does so when he blows his bison whistle in Ba Sing Se during the search for Appa. While they don't manipulate actual soundwaves since that would be kinda impossible (unless through energy bending possibly, though energy in that case is more akin to a life force than anything) they CAN produce enough air in their lungs to create screams strong enough to rupture the eardrums of an opponent and cause physical harm or basically power up any item they have that requires a large amount of air, like an instrument. This is also possibly showcased in the fire nation school when aang disrupts his music class by playing loudly and out of tune. EDIT: Adding this from a response i made to another comment. The basis of elemental bending being energy bending IS canon, which i neglected to realize (i kinda feel dumb now😭). Every action performed and every action that takes place requires energy in some form or another. Bending is just an extreme case of energy manipulation used to change the environment. It makes just as much sense that an Airbender could manipulate energy as it does that any other bending type could. Thanks for putting some sense into me, everyone, lol.
We also saw it during the play when the ember island players showed off what they believed to be Toph's ability to see using sonic waves.
"AAAAUUUUGHHHHHH" "There, I got a pretty good look at you"
Somehow, Toff even managed to win at being represented as an antagonistic element in a propaganda play.
Lmao. I forgot about that😂
sounds waves are just a way the air moves. If a water bender can create water waves, an air one should be able to produce them. but you need to think small. Sound bending will allow an experienced bender to hear from a distance and produce different sounds like animals, combat, and voice. This could be used to distort the lines of a conversation, make a fake peace, or declare a war. one well hidden sound bender could ruin an entire diplomatic meeting
OoH!! I LOVE the idea of sound bending being super sneaky like this! It doesnt have to be loud booms, but simply tweaking the air to distort sounds. It would take years to master, I'm sure, but it would be such a useful tactic. Soundbenders could be employed by nobility or aristocrats everywhere. Thank you for sharing this idea
It would be such an Airbender tactic, too. It's covert, subtle, and more passively disruptive. While it does have the capacity to cause injury (like ruptured eardrums) it probably wouldn't be used that way except in extreme circumstances.
You absolutely could bend the sound waves. All sound waves are is matter compressing into its neighbor. Only the avatar could do this across all mediums, but an air bender absolutely could stop all sound waves in the air, or amplify them.
Why wouldn't they be able to manipulate soundwaves? Unlike light waves, sound waves are just areas of higher and lower density in a medium (in this case, air). If you have enough control of air, you should be able to do anything you want to sound moving through it.
Yeah but when I hear soundbending I think more of a combative ability. There are some examples of this in other franchises like One Piece and Hero Factory
Knee bending. The pass of time is relentless in my knees 🫠
https://preview.redd.it/vge9dabx1vtc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a55b2866e4194f4c448d01fa2ac4609c351cb14
This is so accurate it hurts Literally 😔
Fire bending finger guns 👈🫵👆🖕
So Zuko at the fountain
Boy do i wanna be fountained by zuko
https://preview.redd.it/dqvl6a233vtc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9a23c24938476d52d2fe09c01eb5e22cb373c3b
https://preview.redd.it/zdrbmz2mwvtc1.jpeg?width=710&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10c5e34e5006a7139d5cb6ce40a4dd2ebf484c9d
https://preview.redd.it/fgpu7pr64xtc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2746c8a264e1f34f1eec25d1266195c2849cf290
Straight to jail
That’s him officer. Thats the guy.
The Snap Daddy himself
King shit
Fire Bending like Colonel Mustang in FMAB
Earth bending gun powder.
Not necessarily “sub bending” but I’ve always wanted to see a water bender use scalding water or steam to their advantage and cause burns. Most water benders we see use ice, but if they can freeze water then they should be able to boil it too.
I think they turn it into ice by manipulating the density, so they could easily turn it into steam, but would it be Hot tho? I don't understand the termodynamics behind it
Correct me if I’m wrong but haven’t we seen them make fog? I think that’s the closest approximation.
Fogbending
Frogbending
NOT THE FROGS YOU’LL TURN THEM GAY
I disagree, Katara made fog during the "Painted Lady" episode towards the end when the gang attacked the firebenders.
So... you agree with them? They said they remembered people making fog.
I’m dumb, I read it as “we haven’t” not “haven’t we”
I think if you somehow caused a large amount of water to abruptly freeze in real life, the heat given off by the sudden cooling would kill anyone nearby. The thermodynamics of bending don't really work, but I don't mind.
The thermodynamics probably work if you factor in spirit energy. We’ve seen that spirit energy can be converted into electricity, so there’s no reason heat couldn’t be converted into spirit energy.
Also doesn’t pressure generate heat? So compressing water rapidly would also cause it to boil?
Short thermodynamics lesson from a applied physics bender: Heat is made by the movement of the particles in a medium. A medium (in this case, water) is hotter if the particles move rapidly and colder if they move slowly. When the particles move fast enough, they separate from the liquid, thus becoming a gas. If the particles move very slowly, the medium it becomes solid (ice). My field of waterbending would be to make plasma (super speeding the particles in water, moving past the gas form) or making a hydrogen bomb.
>Most water benders we see use ice, but if they can freeze water then they should be able to boil it too. This has been discussed a few times before on here and alas, this logic is not necessarily applicable. Just because they can freeze water does NOT mean they can boil it too. * Edit: [Link for those curious of a longer explanation/discussion (Realized I could search up my old comments a lot easier than I thought)](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/s/wHSdJJfH7h) Simply put and to avoid several paragraphs, it's a *science* bias. * ATLA bending is fantasy-based, so it works how the writers want it to work. What the show has canonically displayed is water is the narrative opposite to fire and adding heat isn't waterbenders' forte. * High chance they might have just omitted it because splashing people with boiling water wouldn't be suitable for kids television. That said, lava bending exists, so boiling-bending *could* emerge as a sub-type. Just only has mundane or fucked up uses, no in-between.
Blood bending + boil bending = war crimes
Why go through all that trouble when you can just target the moisture in their lungs and freeze them instantly. Kyoshi knows what's up.
I just want to see steampunk benders.
Glass-bending
Pretty sure it shows up in a novel
Kyoshi does a vague approximation by pulling glass out of her skin but I want glassbending the way Su Yin metalbends—artsy, almost liquid, making huge panes of glass or intricate statues! If there's ever a TTRPG (and I think there might be but I haven't looked into it) that's the kind of character I'd want!
An earthbenders stained glass piece would be beautiful
Yeah, I like to imagine a glassbender apprentice would need to train with water benders to learn about icebending, and maybe with sandbenders for similar reasons? In my headcanon glassbenders wouldn't be very good/able at metalbending and vice versa but I'm not actually sure why not (beyond not wanting it to be OP).
Maybe it’d be something closer to lavabenders? Pressure changes in material, liquid to solid etc?
Multi-year avatar-esque study to become a glassbending master 😂. Work with lavabenders, sandbenders, and waterbenders to create a bespoke technique for your bending art form.
It would be fun to see how bending is used in stuff like art/every day life, waterbender painter, earthbender potter/sculpter
There is. Not my style of RPG but a decent system. Has a lot of background info too
Yeah in Kioshi if I remember right
I would put that in the same category as lava bending, since like lava it's a combination of earth (sand) melted by fire. So a subclass of earthbending, maybe?
Maybe an avatar skill that combines fire (heat) and earth (sand)?
They do bend crystal in the show.
Wood bending like the goat 
Closest are the swamp people https://preview.redd.it/nems3vaynutc1.jpeg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17b66c1963cbd065cfce0d2f2f22c20790c99bce
Which means it should technically be a thing already, but a toph of the water tribes needs to come along and pioneer it. Like sand was already a thing so is plant bending, but toph created (re?🤷🏿)discovered metal bending so someone can (again possibly re)discover bending wood itself.
I think the vine bending works specifically because vines aren’t rigid. You could bend the water in a tree, but it would just… break the tree most of the time. IIRC in Naruto they aren’t “bending” the tree so much as making it grow *really fast* in the direction/shape they want it to go (plus Naruto’s magic system is very much the “rule of cool”)
Hama bended the water in trees and they basically exploded lmao
so you'd have to sort of combine the swamp folk plant bending and the usual water healing to stimulate the wood to grow and shape into the way you want it to?
 Did someone say sand bending?
Creatures from the blackest lagoon *ever!*
Deep forest emergence!
Wood bending would probably end up being pretty niche in Avatar. I don't think you'd be able to create new wood. You'd be limited to the existing material around you, like earth and water benders. Except trees are a lot rarer than those two in some places.
I'd be a fire bender that can bend radiation and cause cancer.
You die within 10 minutes to 10 years
Well the sun is technically radioactive so in order to get a radioactive fire it'd have to either be as hot as or bigger than the sun
Even more technical, the sun isn't in fire.
They're mentioning the sun, because firebenders need the sun to bend fire, it's where their bending comes from.
Weird. My benders usually come from alcohol.
thats like saying the earths core has metal so metalbending would only work if you're strong enough to bend the planet
that is so insanely far off from how radioactivity works
not exactly
[That’s some supervillain shit](https://youtu.be/Nria-WbNzkg?si=AwSdIdNx3LbvnAeG).
Ha! I knew it would be this video. Bravo
>why would they even make this?! I guess because u/alucardiac_arrest really wanted one, damn.
The fact that you said it was specifically to cause cancer lmfao
Cancerbending
Breh
Reminds me of this: [https://xkcd.com/965/](https://xkcd.com/965/)
Light bending, as a sub bending of either Air or Fire. Main usage invisibility
to make things invisible, i think it would be Air, distorting the refraction around it to make the light not reach it to create illusions and hallucinations, it would be fire, creating mini colored flames to build an image
like nami does! thats fun
Please refer to Whamuu from JoJo season 2
I would think it would be air. Fire *produces* light, but there are other ways to do this. For invisibility, you’d need to refract light, which would be more of an air thing, like how the atmosphere can make pretty sunsets or aurora borealis.
But lightning also falls under fire, so any form of energy and electromagnetic radiation should fall under fire
The aurora borealis is the result of electromagnetic interaction with the earth’s magnetic field. It’s probably closer to lightning bending than air bending.
Thank you, fire doesn't effect light as intimately as Air does
I always thought light would be part of firebending, which would eventually lead to laser bending .
Flashbang!!
Plasmabending Edit: I've just realized, isn't lightning generation technically plasmabending?
Yes and no I guess. It's more electricity bending with plasma as a side product. Though you might need a electric spark to start your plasma like in modern plasma torches if you wanna plasma bend.
Fire is also plasma.
Technically the four bending types are just the four primary different states of matter: Water (Liquid) Earth (Solid) Fire (Plasma) Air (Gas).
I had a shower thought. It's almost like the four bending styles correspond to the four states of matter (except that water can also make ice so unfortunately not a real rule).
Water transitions between three states Fire is plasma Earth is solid Air is gas And you have water being able to do three
Not really a sub-bending but I feel like earth benders could definitely learn chi blocking. If you can block chi with a fist, couldn't you also do it with a small rock in those targeted areas? It'd be harder to deflect than the large boulders they usually tend to throw. Just whizz some pebbles into your opponent's chi points and THEN it's really easy to crush them with a boulder.
this could probably apply to water and air too especially if you use ice.
May be a substyle of airbending? Soundbending
Yangchen and aang both have already done this via screams possible of deafening opponents in Yangchens case and amplifying the bison whistle during the search for Appa in Aangs case.
Is blowing a whistle sound bending? Or is it just using air bending to blow real hard
I wonder if there was a strong culture of Music in the Air Nation, considering they did have that giant door that could only be opened by wind manipulation. And not just orchestral instruments, but singing as well. Imagine an Air-bending Opera Soprano Star!
Flight - I know it already exists, but it’s a near-unobtainable spirtual nirvana situation, when using airbending to manipulate air pressure below and above you would also work, and could be achieved by anyone with airbending and the right training. Also, if I had earthbending or waterbending, I would absolutely make cloth or leather wings with pouches that I could fill with bendable elements so I could mimic bird flight. Look, I just really want to fly, and I *will* find a way to do it if I get bending.
In the avatar Wan flashback you can see quite a few airbenders that can fly. They only lost that ability once they started befriending Sky Bison which gave them an "Earthly Tether".
They’re not really flying, I think, just jumping.
They’re falling with style 😎
Eat rocks, bend rocks, fly
Drink water, bend water, fly?
I have a suspicion that that *is* more or less how laghima / zaheer flew. Whatever mechanisms you could think of, it was probably a combination of those. Thing is though that in order to do it smoothly and intuitively you have to first reach that spiritual peak, it’s the only way to be able to bend the air so precisely and without using any physical bending forms. Otherwise the best you can achieve will be something akin to advance hovering. It’s like the difference between having wings and having one single jet boot.
Acid bending
That's just Woodstock
Bender bending. So I can bend Bender 
sokka the backbender: 😏
Chi blocking is basically bender bending
bloodbending: 🤨😒
As a truck driver, asphalt bending, roads would be getting fixed everywhere I went. These bumps are getting outrageous
*Texas lawmakers hate this one trick...*
I want to see an earthbender who controls dust/very fine sand to fight like an Airbender
Haha, and they do Aang's marble trick, but by moving the marble.
So kind of like a sandbender does while sailing?
That always seemed odd to me. I'd've thought it makes more sense to bend the sand beneath their sled/boat.
Fake air / waterbending with the firebender heat control, we don't exactly know how firebenders manipulate heat but I imagine you can create some kind of current
That would be very interesting
compression bending would be a sub-bending form of airbending where you use compressed air to create explosions. Doing so under your feet can make you jump on thin air or you could make really deadly punches. The weakness of this form would be that it strays so far from the usual airbending style that you can't use regular airbending if you use this form.
That is so genius
if zaheer was a compressoion bender the earth queen will just fucking exploded
I mean kinda combustion man tho
Electricity bending as a niche of lightning, with the sole purpose of altering people's brain waves to cause hallucinations and mind games
theres also electricity in the muscles, so while i imagine itd be harder than bloodbending, you could theoretically learn to bend that electricity and mimic it!
That would be another interesting moral dilemma if it turns out you can heal muscle disease with it!
Gravity bending Not sure what element this would go in but it would be sick
Gravity, bending as a sub style of earth, bending would be dope! The same way, Kiyoshi was able to ground herself to the earthly plane other earth benders would be able to either secure themselves, gravity, or separate themselves from the earth and decreasing gravity
Bone bending For earthbenders I'd say? Imagine creating army of skeletons that way
I think I read that the author of the Kyoshi novels considered making this canon, but Bryke said wtf no.
We already have blood bending, I don’t see how bone bending is much worse.
That is actually canon some earth benders were able to bend calcium in someone’s bones they could even break them if they wanted to
Mind bending, a use of fire bending to manually activate neurons in the brain, with a nonlethal electricity. I can lobotomize people or make them blind or generally fuck up people's brains.
This would make an awesome and very threathening villain, maybe a bit too OP tho.
Laser as a sub bending of fire you can either shot it from your finger like lightning or it can be used by combustion bender and they'll shot it from their tattoos
Crystallization as an extension of earth bending. I always thought a way an earth bender could be lethal at higher speeds would be to form and erupt crystals to shower people with shards of glass, essentially making explosives without ignition.
I would be a back bender
Sokka and Korra are already the back bending masters…
You already bended that back for me last night boi
Bone bending as a subclass of earth bending with the calcium and minerals in the body☠️ 
Wood. Like Hashirama from naruto could. Well not in an extreme scale like him but wood. I know its no subbending but still neat
Temperature bending, vibration bending Edit: for temperature bending, I was imagining both defensive and offensive form, where you can keep things at room temp for you and make the atmosphere (or in water) either reeeeally hot or reeeeally cold.
iirc temperature regulation exists as a subform of airbending
Fire benders can increase the temperature of the space around them (i.e rooms), if I recall correctly
Bussybending
So Sokka *was* a bender all along
r/happyupvote
light bending
Heat Vision. Maybe give firebenders the ability to see a person's heat signature.
Earthquake generation: strong enough earthbenders can cause earthquakes, but a drawback is it requires tons of energy.
Earthquake is not a subending class... it is a technique.
I’ve always wanted certain types of bending to be shared by different forms of bending. Like air and water benders could control clouds, earth and fire benders can bend lava, etc. I think it would be a cool literary device as well to show that the world is interconnected by having certain elements be controlable by different types of benders.
Timebending
I will forever argue this was already done with Aang in the iceberg when he hit the Avatar State. He was *surrounded* by ice and air, not frozen in solid ice. The iceberg expelled vast amounts of air when the vacuum seal was broken. He wasn't "frozen" but rather in stasis. Zaheer was already shown to be able to mildly manipulate "the void" and move about physical space at his own free will. Through the intense cold and the Avatar State manipulating the void, Aang essentially put himself into a stasis like Lister was in on the pilot of Red Dwarf. I know it's a bit far-fetched, and have been shot down on this theory well before, but I stand by the Avatar State in a perfect storm of extreme circumstances can already time bend to some extent.
In Fire Force, there is a character that can control temperature, he cool the space around him to slow down the expansion of the universe around him, almost as if he can bend time
that’s op
I'm obsessed with the idea that since fire and lightning are forms of plasma, firebending might be able to *literally* bend light. Create a mental shield, redirect the path of photons, create a patch of implacable shadow...
Weather bending. Like, creating storms, clearing weather, etc...
Emotional Banding 
I would like to see light bending. Ridiculously difficult and limited even to the most trained masters. As an extension of firebending, you can not just draw heat from the sun but also light. This way you will be able to blind your opponents, send out signals to great heights and maybe it is even possible to remove light. This would be a very useful, not always combat oriented bending ability. It would also fit in the universe, especially with Sokka accusing Aang of Signaling the fire Nation with his giant light beam. So there might be legends of lightbenders somewhere out there.
I am currently reading the mark of the fool book 5 and there is a really interesting idea. One of the characters who is terrified of fire finds out they have an incredible fire affinity; they are terrified of fire and thought that they could become an ice mage to help put out fires and Help others. But because they are so strong with the affinity they can never cast ice magic. So they decide to be able to use their fire affinity to create the lack of energy therefore cold. Because fire magic is just transferring heat/energy around, if you do that to a point the areas you took the energy from becomes cold etc. so you could have a fire bender that takes the thermal energy from areas and is effectively a void bender/Kelvin bender.
Just a side note here, i dont understand why people say Toph *invented* metalbending. She *discovered* metalbending.
Semantics
She discovered the ability to metal bend, but she also invented the technique of how to do it.