What humans do.
Nov. 22nd, 2014 10:01 pmI'm always disappointed that the Avatar francise and fandom - both The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra - don't get much into how bending feels. Not just things like Toph's seismic sense or her ability to tell if someone's lying, an airbender's sense of the wind's flow around them, or even a metalbender's ability to perceive the faint traces of earth in the metal.
I mean more things like how a waterbender's shifting their element from solid to liquid, or liquid to gas, changes their perception of it. Or if bending snow requires a different sort of control than water. If bending snow has anything in common with sand-bending, how that feels within the bender's head and hands. What happens inside their head of a waterbender or an earthbender who's bodily cut off from their element and then returned to it. How that feels. Does it grow distant and faint, or is it something that simply shuts off? When is it cut off entirely?
What's required of lavabending. How that differs from sandbending, or metalbending, how speaking to and working with the element is changed based on its mutable properties while still remaining earth. Much as lightningbending is still bending fire, only a different form thereof. Firebending the only bending discipline that comes from within the bender - when they bend fire outside of themselves, what's called upon for that sort of bending instead.
Airbenders are capable of constantly perceiving their element, and can't be fully cut off from it within the physical world. In the spirit world, benders can't bend unless they've bodily traveled there; how does an airbender's awareness change in that set of circumstances? Do other bending disciplines have lessons on working with limited resources that simply can't apply to airbenders, who operate on an all-or-nothing scale?
This is the sort of thing comics and cartoons are perfect for: the illustration of radical perception differences which can't be communicated within other mediums, not without breaking the bank or someone's brain. And it disappoints me that this is a rare case where fandom isn't doing anything with this rich, untapped vein of story possibilities.
I mean more things like how a waterbender's shifting their element from solid to liquid, or liquid to gas, changes their perception of it. Or if bending snow requires a different sort of control than water. If bending snow has anything in common with sand-bending, how that feels within the bender's head and hands. What happens inside their head of a waterbender or an earthbender who's bodily cut off from their element and then returned to it. How that feels. Does it grow distant and faint, or is it something that simply shuts off? When is it cut off entirely?
What's required of lavabending. How that differs from sandbending, or metalbending, how speaking to and working with the element is changed based on its mutable properties while still remaining earth. Much as lightningbending is still bending fire, only a different form thereof. Firebending the only bending discipline that comes from within the bender - when they bend fire outside of themselves, what's called upon for that sort of bending instead.
Airbenders are capable of constantly perceiving their element, and can't be fully cut off from it within the physical world. In the spirit world, benders can't bend unless they've bodily traveled there; how does an airbender's awareness change in that set of circumstances? Do other bending disciplines have lessons on working with limited resources that simply can't apply to airbenders, who operate on an all-or-nothing scale?
This is the sort of thing comics and cartoons are perfect for: the illustration of radical perception differences which can't be communicated within other mediums, not without breaking the bank or someone's brain. And it disappoints me that this is a rare case where fandom isn't doing anything with this rich, untapped vein of story possibilities.
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