megajubbly replied to your post and said:
I think I would've thought fire bender initially for Billy, but earth definitely makes sense given that he's Korean. Ugh please do them all!!
I toyed with a few different ideas for him, but ultimately I couldn’t pass up the idea of metalbender Billy. Imagine how fucking terrifying that would be. You piss him off and suddenly everything is knives. Every piece of metal in a ten yard radius? Now a knife.
I’m still trying to pin down the others. Most of this was conceived of in conversation with @thrillingest (and @lolisyn, but she hasn’t seen the show; shoutout for putting up with our excited babbling anyway).
Obviously for metalbending to be relatively commonplace, it needs to be Legend of Korra kind of era. So that in mind, we’re thinking:
Sam is an ex United Forces officer who’s now in the Republic police force. Earth Kingdom originally, not a bender.
Vasquez is a waterbender and kind of a big name in the city’s underworld (he might have technically maybe figured some things out about bloodbending, but trust him, they deserved it).
Red: Southern Water Tribe, probably, but we haven’t got hugely into fleshing him out yet
Faraday is a Republic City kid with enough of everything to not be readily identifiable as any of the Four Nations, but apparently there’s enough Fire Nation in his blood for him to be a Firebender. He’s trying to make it in pro bending, and is forever annoyed that he does’t have the ~inner zen~ to lightningbend successfully
Billy, as mentioned above, is a metalbender. Grew up in Zaofu, left as a teenager because he was bored as hell. Probably also into some dodgy underworld shit.
Goody: also ex-UF, now busy being the full-time traumatised trash fire we all know and love. Fire Nation, not originally a bender, but we were playing around with the idea of hitting him with post-Convergence surprise airbending
Horne lives peacefully with the bagermoles. No-one is actually sure if he’s an earthbender or not.