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Iâve seen a lot of people say that bloodbending canât be all that bad compared to, say, setting someone on fire, and I think itâs worth pointing out that characters only seem to bloodbend when theyâre in a bad place mentally. Itâs a technique that gets used whenever someoneâs feeling 1) angry, 2) sadistic, 3) frightened, or 4) all of the above, and⌠You know, technically you could use bloodbending to rescue kittens from trees if you wanted, but it doesnât bode well when the technique seems linked to a negative emotional state.
On that note, Iâm going to infer that bloodbending feels bad. Katara and Tarrlok are both pretty angry characters (oneâs a survivor of genocide, the otherâs a bundle of rejection issues), and yet theyâre both repulsed by it. So I would like to assume that bloodbending feels a lot like⌠Hmm, getting your own way by using excessive aggression at the expense of others, maybe. It might feel good at the time, and you might get a weird sociopathic kick out of it, but in your quieter moments, if you have any shred of decency or self-awareness, youâre going to be like, âWow, Iâm a narcissistic asshole and my actions were  unnecessary, and Iâve just made the world a worse place by behaving like a festering ballbag of a human beingâ.
So I like the idea that Katara outlawed bloodbending not because itâs particularly damaging to other techniques, but because the use of it seems to encourage something sordid and nasty in its practitioners.
You know how firebending can be fuelled by anger? I tend to run with the idea that bloodbending is driven by fear and the desire for control. Itâs megalomaniacal, but not in an uncomplicated, pleasurable âboot stomping on a human faceâ forever kind of way, more in a âyouâve hurt and/or frightened me and I want to reverse this power dynamicâ sort of way, so thereâs a bit of uncomfortable vulnerability to it.Â
Or: itâs not a 'pull the legs off a bug because you canâ kind of evil. Itâs more a 'hurt people and break things because you feel small and you want to be acknowledgedâ kind of evil.
And, from the victimâs perspective: while I donât think anyone would particularly enjoy being set on fire/pelted with rocks/frozen to a wall, being bloodbent must feel especially humiliating. Our bodies are the first things we have any measure of control over, and the majority of people react badly when their bodies go haywire in some way. Also AtLA/LoK is full of characters who are martial artists, so theyâre accustomed to having a lot of physical control over themselves. Bloodbending might seem especially unpleasant to them because itâs the sort of technique that can render years of training and self-discipline completely useless.
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