#sound bending

[wingsfreedom]

This is so cool.

[turboacek-blog]

Airbending didn’t/doesn’t need subbending

Was just randomly thinking about how of all the crazy sub-bending styles from Lightning to Metal to Blood, how out of place spirit and flight is to me at least

Basically, ever since early ATLA things like sound, and pseudo-flying thanks to gliders were never sub-bending styles

At most, it’s like ice bending to water bending

Sound

So when people used to say sound bending as a potential sub style I understood but then I wondered what they meant as airbenders can already extend and project their voice to a great degree

Like even in the supplementary material avatar Yangchen has a scream that’s deadly which is still air-bending so I do not think people mean sound like banshee from X-men or echo echo from Ben 10

Maybe manipulating how things sounds like if Katara is talking to someone, Aang could manipulate it to make it sound like Toph? Idk

As things like sound attacks are also just “air” attacks in other media

Flight

Flight is a weird one where I think while I get why it's seen as sub bending it really should just be an advanced air-bending technique as it is just unassisted flying and it is not much different when they use their gliders

Even though it got criticized in the live-action Netflix version when Aang was moving around in episode 1 it's basically flying the sub-bending that people view differently

It just feels that like the flying Bison, they should be able to fly and not glide not some special sub-bending thing

Even in things like Wans episodes flying in a cloud which is presumably air bending made is just flying even if its considered “assisted”

Spirit Projection

This is the strangest one as while I think it's similar to spirit bending where if you need to connect it to one of them four elements sure give it to air

But projecting the spirit in general doesn't feel right to me to be an air bending ability

Like we know non airbenders can be spiritually intuned look at Suyins advisor (I forget names) and Iroh

Just feels weird as Spiritual connection and Air being connected doesn't make sense when you compare it to metal with earth and lightning to fire

Conclusion

The main thing that gives them an advantage over most styles outside that Air is everywhere is the ability to reduce wind resistance and manipulate to such great lengths and such

This what Aang to run and move super fast making a lot of air benders superhuman essentially

They're essentially superhumans with air manipulation sound and gliding/flight along with wind resistance giving them superhuman abilities from speed, agility, jumping, and some strength they don't need anything else I felt

I acknowledge them being the only one to not get a sub-element would be weird but I also like the idea that it's the most pure and complete element where it doesn't need more and just needs to be more skilled at it

Written Feb 25, 2024 clearing drafts lol

[anomenofdarkness]

Hey you. Stop scrolling and sit down

So this stuff. Based on amount of lateral elements alone, earth is quite possibly the objectively best element to be able to bend.

So, let's start by looking at how many lateral elements earth has. There's metal (obviously), lava, sand, seimic sense, crystal, possibly wood, theoretically bone. That's 7 lateral elements for earth. Now let's compare that to the other elements.

Fire has (possibly) 3. Lightning, combustion and, theoretically, mind control through bending neuroelectricity via lightning bending.

Air has 3. Levitation, sound and spirit projection.

Water has either 3 or 5 depending on wether or not you consider state shifting and healing elements (which im going to). Those elements are state shifting (obviously), healing (again, obviously), blood, spirit and plants.

So to tally up those scores we have

Earth: 7

Water: 5

Fire and Air: 3

So yeah.

TLDR: based purely on number of lateral elements/techniques Earthbending is objectively the best element.

Obviously this is far from truely the case though, as there's a lot more to it than just lateral bending options. This probably isn't a great post but i didn't wanna keep bothering my family with this rant so yall get it instead.

[theunseeabletruth]

Okay so I watched this and it made me cry like a bloody baby.