There must be at least a few people who have migrated from one nation to another, and among those, there must be some benders. Given this, you’d expect a minority in each nation to be benders of a foreign element, migrants and their bender descendants, but we never see these in ATLA. We have Jeong Jeong (The Deserter), but even he was in his own camp near a Fire Nation colony, and not in any Earth Kingdom settlement. And we have Hama, who isn’t as much a migrant as she is an escaped prisoner of war.
I don’t have any good headcanon to explain why there are no foreign benders, so my headcanon is that they’re out there, and that it’s a damn shame we never got to see one. It would have been cool to meet a random fire/water bender in an earth village, or even an air bender but without any of the culture for that foreign bending, as they have assimilated into their new Earth home (being 2nd+ generation to live there). Even cooler if everyone in the village knows about it and doesn’t treat them any different.
The Hundred Year War, near extinction of the Southern Water Tribe, and isolationism of the Northern Water Tribe likely resulted in those minority groups becoming smaller or even dying out by the time the show started. The comics do have an earthbender loyal to Ozai, though.
That the exotic bending we see if due to mixing races.
Lava bending is earth bending and fire bending. That’s why Bolin can lava bend, but his earth bending isn’t pure enough for him to metal bend.
Explosion bending is air and fire. Sand bending is earth and air.
I’m pretty sure this is just canon…
What? No, it’s never mentioned in the series at all.
Edit: after some reading, it seems that lava bending was originally only possible for avatars to do, as it required both fire and earth bending. It was later ret-conned into an earth sub-bending. One reason proposed for why Bolin can lava bend is that he is a very laid-back person compared to most earth benders. This would explain why he could never master the rigidity of metal bending and why flowing lava came more naturally to him.
That’s another possible explanation. I still like mine more, but still cool.
The retcon makes it seem like lava bending should be more common though. Like, you would think King Boomy would be able to lava bend, with his chill demeanor and philosophy.
There have been 3 non-avatars to do it, if you include the comics. Maybe, due to how dangerous it is, lava benders have a tendency to… remove themselves from history… the first time that they lava bend.
It also takes a bending style more like waterbending. Bumi probably had the personality for it, but Bolin was also already trained for fluid motions and a looser stance.
I mean we see sozin pull the heat directly out of lava. It stands to reason he could put the heat back into rock. And fire benders seem to excells at controlling heat sources.
My theory is that avatars can’t lava-bend. They can use earth and fire bending to move already existing lava or use air bending to cool lava, but they can’t create lava from cold stone like lavabenders can or freeze lava back into stone
Master Jeong shows a fire bending power that to my knowledge we never see another fire bender utilize. He extinguishes fire created by another fire bender. I think that his practice and control allow him to not only generate the molecular energy that ignites fire, but also siphon away molecular energy which is an entirely different skill.
That book two of Korra doesn’t exist
It’s sorta like the 2nd Thor movie. Fans would rather it not exist, butt it ends up having the biggest impact on the world in-universe.
My pointless head cannon: Aang the Bloodbender
Aang was good at picking up waterbending from just watching, even if not enough to be a master easily he could still do it. Aang totally picked up bloodbending, or at least thought he did. The idea is not hard to get to once you’ve seen the premise, and Aang both saw and felt the premise in the fight with the puppet master (blanking on her name).
So why doesn’t Aang seem to use it or even know it? Katara. Aang knows Katara wants the practice to end with her so he never tries it, never practices it, never even acknowledges it when he can avoid it.
But I would be surprised if there wasn’t at least one moment, one fraction of a second, where Aang didn’t look at the full moon and think, “I could. I won’t, but I totally could.”
Let me be my own critic here and point out the obvious: Bloodbending is a seriously advanced technique that takes a good amount of prior knowledge even for a master waterbender like Katara. Aang doesn’t have this prior knowledge. Also there are some techniques Aang just doesn’t bother with, like the swampbender’s plant bending, so he could have just ignored bloodbending.
But come on! The Avatar saw and understood arguably one of the strongest bending powers and CHOOSE to not use it out of respect for those around him? That sounds so perfect!
Even without Katara, Aang’s own philosophy as a monk really doesn’t mix with bloodbending, the way I see it. Aang would be more opposed to bloodbending than Katara. All life is sacred, he’s a vegetarian, and he refused to kill Ozai when literally everyone told him that’s what he has to do. I don’t think he needs Katara to be his moral compass.
That the entire Korra series was written by horny corporate virtue signalers with no actual moral values rather than the same team that made ATLA.
The entire world is just yucky and forcibly westernized for absolutely no good goddamn reason. The characters we get introduced to are shallow, narcissistic, and basic beyond belief. Instead of wanting to learn more about the world like I did with ATLA, I’d be right in the fuckin swamp next to Toph.
There was no fan service that I remember and bi people exist.
The Varrick was one of the more fun side characters out of both series. His old timey cockiness and immorality was really interesting.
Korra started off cocky and pampered, then got her ass handed to her time and time again, slipped into depression and came back.
The equalist movement was awesome and raised good points.
Zaheer was a cooler villain than most Aang villains.
Korra had its flaws but I thought it was enjoyable and rewatchable.
I had more problems with making horny teenager drama a focus of the early story than any sort of fan service. Also showing an emotionally abusive relationship as cute or funny is gross no matter how you cut it.
Further, I don’t think I can ever beat the dead horse of unnecessary westernization too much. Virtually ALL the conflict in the series is about the world struggling to westernize. Politics, social structure, technology, the whole fuckin cultural spectrum and it’s all psuedovictorian eurocentric TRASH. I loved all the subtle (and not so subtle) nods to all sorts of asiatic cultures and they threw it all away for cheap, overdone turn of the century cosplay.
The animation was good at least. The only part of the story that I enjoyed was the villain of the first season, but it didn’t hook me enough to watch the whole season…
