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Thread: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
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2012-04-24, 04:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
And that's kinda the thing. The complete reliance on bending is a bad thing. The people of the avatarverse do need to start moving away from relying on benders.
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2012-04-24, 05:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
This is a bit of a case of the pot calling the kettle black. We've only seen Energybending happen once and that was the Avatar doing it to the most powerful firebender in the world who was under the influence of Sozin's Comet. For all we know, Energybending might look different every time, or at least when it's not done by the Avatar or on a Sozin's-Comet-influenced firebender.
That's like saying we need to start moving away from relying on electronic technology. Bending has long been the most valued skill in the avatarverse and has been a reliable method of powering technology. There never really seemed to be a reason to them to start moving away from reliance on bending. If a non-bender had trouble he couldn't deal with himself, he could just call upon the help of a bender to do it for him. Like how you call a plumber if your plumbing is broken and you don't know how to fix it yourself.Homebrewer's Signature | Avatar by Strawberries
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2012-04-24, 05:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
setting aside that earth bending jailers is an option. all the armies are primarily composed of non-benders. catapults, ballista, and other high power weaponry is available.
preventing tunneling is just a matter of proper surveying. it's just not possible to tunnel through certain ground.a tiny space dedicated to a beloved grandpa now passed. may every lunch be peanut butter-banana sandwiches.
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gnome_4ever:
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2012-04-24, 06:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
twice actually. first time was when the turtle-lion imparted energybending to Aang. the exact same greenish flashes happened even then. I'd say that something we actually see twice is statistically more relevant than watching Amon do his thing and not seeing anything happen visually which we've come to expect from bending... could it be a new and secret form of bending? possibly. is it energybending? unlikely.
we have no reason to believe energybending to change colours or "visual rendition" every time
1 because none of the elements work that way and that is a valid precedent as far as we know. there is no precedent that allows us to think otherwise.
2 because it would make things harder to understand to us the public, breeding confusion and inconsistency. this show is targeted towards children and is a cartoon. out of necessity it builds on visual consistency to make itself understood. bending is pretty much colourcoded for our convenience
3 because the only reason to even consider the idea that energybending comes in a variety of colours and forms is to force through the possibility that Amon is energybending in some misterious way that is inconsistent with what has been shown already.
sozin's comet amplified the range of firebending and that's it. it didn't bend reality. Aang has never had a personalised graphic rendition of any element he's ever bent. there's no reason to believe that if anybody else is capable of energybending, it should happen in a different colour. these are not lightsabers.
Occam's razor tells me that out of the two possibilities, energybending is not the right one.
for all we know, I'm on a horse.
how do you come to that conclusion?
tunnel, no.. bending..
bending the ground is pretty much the definition of earthbending. even metalbending happens because of tiny particles of ground mixed with the metal. tunneling underground is precisely what badgermoles do
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2012-04-24, 06:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
because not all ground can support itself. the mudd you find when you start digging near water, for example, simply won't hold its shape without substantial bracing if it can be done at all.
many areas with soft or brittle stone formations won't hold up if you try and bore through them.Last edited by thubby; 2012-04-24 at 06:49 AM.
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gnome_4ever:
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2012-04-24, 08:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
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2012-04-24, 10:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
My 2 cents on earthbender tunnelling:
The bender's mastery does correlate with the weight of the rocks being moved. We saw King Bumi strain when he was moving a particularly large chunk of rock.
Therefore, if the earthbender is tunnelling through unstable earth, and has to use pure earthbending to keep the tunnel from collapsing, he has to expend enormous amounts of his energy. So traditional earthbender tunnelling probably follow ordinary construction methods, so that the tunnels are self-sustaining and doesn't need constant earthbending energy input once it's constructed.
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2012-04-24, 10:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Pretty much this. The only thing resembling evidence of benders oppressing non-benders we've seen is the criminal organizations run by benders, which isn't benders oppressing non-benders at all, but simply criminals that you'd see in any society abusing their bending powers instead of weapons. Which would at most be an argument for a stronger or more active police force, not an argument against bending.
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2012-04-24, 10:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
I can infer some other issues,like employment. In that case it's less about oppression and more about practicality, if you need somebody to dig a hole are you going to hire the guy with a shovel or the guy with magic hole-digging kung-fu.
I can easily imagine non-benders becoming second class citizens, But I have yet to see any real evidence of it. The resentment against benders I can understand happening even without repression, but it's the difference between whining and a legitimate complaint.
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2012-04-24, 11:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
We also know from the extra info on the Korra interactive website that the megaphone guy has always seen himself as "oppressed", starting as a kid when he was "oppressed" by his parents. His word is not to be trusted, since he will systematically see everything bad or neutral that happens to him as another sign of oppression.
That said, the equalist movement does have a following, so regular people are seeing themselves as oppressed - maybe from something as simple as not enough jobs (and we know that there is a big undercurrent of poverty in liberty city from bush guy). A high unemployment always brings discontent, and if benders have an easier time finding good-paying jobs (see a pro-bender just walking into a power station and getting payed quite well for a few hours of lightning bending), then the non-benders will claim this is "an injustice".
Of course, removing bending powers is not going to give them any of those bender-only jobs, and they may not understand that those jobs are necessary. If they want to change that, someone first needs to come up with an alternative (possibly through bender enslavement, ideally through technology breakthrough), but these kind of movements tend to be strong on the ideology (benders out!) without ever quite grasping the consequences of their course of action were it to be successful.
Edit: ninja'ed by BRC. Damn my wordiness
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2012-04-24 at 11:04 AM.
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2012-04-24, 11:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
However we could make a case for a privileged class of benders as opposed to a ruling class of benders.
Who do you think gets paid better the metalbender cops or the (apparently) normal officier we've seen in the park? Economics would suggest the former rather then the latter even if on a unified pay scale would be higher up. Benders have a high-value inherent skill, they almost must from a statistical point of view be better off because they have greater opportunities open to them. Would Mako have been able to just "go get some work at the power plant" if he couldn't lightningbend?
For that matter... Pro Bending is the most popular sport anyone?
Ultimately the problem boils down to that one cannot have "equality" when a certain demographic is born with superior magical powers. And they are superior lets be clear, that there are ways to compensate for it does not change this. Though it will not surprise me if the show tries to claim otherwise.
Of course there's a long way to go for the show. The Equalists have already shown a capacity to play dirty themselves and we know few details of what they actually propose. Since they'e quite obviously the Communists will they be supporting for example the systematic killing of benders for crimes against equality. Or merely demanding all benders submit to what's essentially spirit rape courtesy of Amon.
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2012-04-24, 11:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Personally, I see them more as Luddites (pop culture Luddites, not the actual Luddites who weren't actually anti-Technology) than Communists.
The Equalists haven't gone from each according to his ability... as far as I can tell. In fact, they're taking away people's abilities.
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2012-04-24, 11:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2012-04-24, 11:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
it's true though, I too want a job playing in the NBA
it's an injustice that I can't only because I'm barely 5ft 7 and haven't been on a court in 10 years.
someone hand me a pitchfork a torch and a flag..I'm gonna occupy the local gym!
on a more serious note, bending does come naturally but efficient bending requires training and continuous practice.
a guy who gets paid more because he can produce 1000 bricks in an hour whilst his non bending colleague can only bake that same ammount over a couple of days is also a guy who has spent quite some time learning how to hone his bending ability to learn how to produce consistent quality and shape of bricks. in some ways, this is reflected in a higher pay.
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2012-04-24, 12:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Luddites were artisans angry that a machine had invalidated their centuries old skill while using cheaper unskilled labor. They proceeded to practice sabotage by wrecking textile machines. So I think anti-tech is no great mistake of pop-culture. Obviously they were really more concerned about their own livelihoods but then again so is pretty much EVERY social movement. Ultimately what is distinctive about word luddite is the fundamental conservatism, that something new should not be adopted because the way it has been is just fine.
More to the point though bending does not equal technology in particular because it is not new. Luddites and bending would be say the Guild of Earthbending Hole Diggers attempting to stop steam shovels which are more economical then their skills.
Communism by contrast saw itself as the coming revolution where the old forces of the world would be thrown off to create a new future. It was all about the new and empowering those underneath and shucking off the privileges of class. We already see this in their rhetoric about benders time being done. Also "economic equality" (without discusssing if their definition of it is valid) is at the very heart of the Communism.
Also... everything is China.
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2012-04-24, 12:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Whew. That took a lot of reading to catch up.
I followed this link and found something interesting. Scroll down to the diagram after the writer's argument and the screenshot there. Note the possible source of Amon's name. I wonder if this has meaning.
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2012-04-24, 12:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
That depends on your values of oppression. If you choose to define it so strictly that one needs valid violations of Godwin's Law for example then no. However like most words in the realm of politics there are many degrees especially if one talks about say "social oppression" for example.
And arguing over whether or not its oppression would be missing the point since it merely makes the Equalists guilty of hyperbole. And arguing for a purely semantic victory in a debate is just the sort of dirty trick you bending ponies would use to distract people from the rampant inequality benders force upon others.
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2012-04-24, 12:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Agreed that the equalists are closer to the socialist/communist movement of the early 20th century* that saw themselves as oppressed majorities by the privileged minority, except the privilege doesn't come from money but from bending - and there the equivalence breaks down, because where Marx though the money could be redistributed, no-one can redistribute bending - thus their insistence on removing bending (where you can't just "remove money", although some extreme idealists would say you can) - so maybe they are closer to the Anarchist movement (again, not an exact match - and a good thing, too. I like my fantasy shows to not just copy RL).
Where the show is going to take this will depend exclusively on how the authors want bending to work - if everyone can bend, and some people just don't put in the effort, then equalists are just being lazy (and thus they become unsympathetic, and reviled). If not everyone can bend, no matter how much they try, then either there is a technological breakthrough to make bending irrelevant in the modern world, or the only balance will come from chi-spirit-bending all bending away, or reverse-chi-spirit-bending everyone that desires bending so they can bend. Any of those alternatives would bring balance, and the authors could pick any of them. Finally, the imbalance could remain, and everyone could just learn to get along - historically, this is how these things usually work out. Or, of course, some other alternative I haven't thought of.
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* Not the same as the actual communist governments that were eventually implemented**
**Getting way too close to RL politics, I suggest we be careful hereInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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2012-04-24, 12:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Yes there's a need to be careful though there's a greater leeway on historical politics and we aren't per say debating the ideas themselve so much as assessing who's the best analogue.
With that in mind of course the comparison breaks down they all do, however don't let little details make you try to out clever yourself. Stories never sort that neatly into little categories. While there are elements one could draw to other movements its Communism that dwarfed them all for the time period in question.
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2012-04-24, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
You mean he's a chi blocker instead of an energy bender? As others have said, it's certainly in keeping with what we've seen and all his 'energy bending' is just smoke and mirrors.
I have noticed that Amon hasn't made any claim to being a bender of any sort - all he said was that he can take people's bending away, then Korra and Tenzin jumped to conclusions.
Given the possible source of his name (Amon is the Japanese name for the second most deadly pressure point on the body), it certainly supports it.
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2012-04-24, 01:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
So.....how does Tenzin have a flying Bison? Do they reproduce by budding or just live forever?
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2012-04-24, 01:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Aang found some more of a different breed hidden somewhere you can only get to by air.
I hoped this meant there's be some other Airbenders in the new series who lived up there with the Bisons, but sadly it was not to be.
I also don't know what happened to the rest of the found ones, since we've only seen the one that Tenzin uses.Piratebold-Bard by Elder Tsofu | Backer #121 of the Giantitp Kickstarter | My homebrew
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2012-04-24, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-04-24, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2012-04-24, 01:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
I've heard it too, and also I understand these bisons have different arrows. Image.
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2012-04-24, 01:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
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2012-04-24, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
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2012-04-24, 01:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
Speaking of Air Nomad culture, I've been wondering if the offspring of Tenzin's acolytes on the Air Island would have a chance to become Airbenders if born with bending potential, since they're apparently recreating the Air Nomad ways. But that brings us back to the "why are benders benders" discussion.
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2012-04-24, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Legend Of Korra: Will It Bend!
I like to believe that their kids could be Airbenders. In my head there is a rough cut off of puberty/adulthood for becoming a Bender through non-genetic means (though this has no backing in canon at all), so they'd be too set in their ways to develop it, but yeah, I want there to be more Airbenders besides just Aang's family.
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2012-04-24, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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