The Legend of Korra/Headscratchers

Is the first part of the title "Avatar" or "The Last Airbender"?

The latter appears in the official trailer, but it makes no sense. Could it have been an error?

• You can blame James Cameron for that. He got lawyer-happy when he found out his precious "avatar" title was already being used by someone else.
• Is that a fact (that James Cameron threatened to sue them over the title of this cartoon, not the live-action film?), or a theory?
• Take your pick. The possibility of a lawsuit brings financial risk with it, since win-or-lose a lawsuit would be very expensive. Best to just avoid the issue altogether and move on.
• Is it a fact that there was no official lawsuit, but they changed the title to be on the safe side, or is that just a theory?
• Apparently, Nick's application of trademark for Avatar: The Legend of Korra had an underwear company lawyer up, too, because apparently one of their lines is called "Avatar" or some shite. Basically, it's a combination of James Cameron and some underwear company being Attention Whores, as Avatar is a pretty popular series.
• Marketing difficulties related to trademark filing/clashing: confirmed.
  • How can you trademark the word Avatar? Not only did the original series start using it 5 years before the movie did, but Avatar is a religious term isn't it? From Hinduism? So how can it be trademarked?
    • The same way studios can trademark Glee and The Big Bang Theory. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe trademarks are divided by industry, area, and use. James Cameron's Avatar and Avatar: The Last Airbender are both television/movie media, so they probably feared running into problems there. You could probably set up a line of inflatable pool toys or a resturant with the name "Avatar" as long as they didn't feature Airbenders or the Na'vi. The Legend of Korra might be able to get away with it, since "Avatar" is pretty generic, but lawsuits are expensive even if you win. Or possibly, they may not fear lawsuits at all, and just want to avoid confusion for audiences.
    • "Marketing difficulties related to trademark filing/clashing: confirmed", "Or possibly, they may not fear lawsuits at all, and just want to avoid confusion for audiences." These are contradictory statements.
    • And doesn't address the fact that the cartoon was already using the word in its title for years before the movie, so obviously its sequel should have the right to keep using it.
    • It's a sad, old world, but having a right and having the resources to defend that right are two different things. Cameron basically has a bottomless purse that he could use to hire an army of lawyers. As others have noted, even if Nick has a case, it could still be too costly to make it worth their while to defend themselves from a lawsuit. So it makes sense that they'd prefer to avoid the problem altogether.
• As of the two new trailers that confirmed the premiere date as April 14th, the title (in the US) will be The Legend of Korra, and Avatar:The Legend of Korra internationally.
• Contrary to popular belief, the law never got involved on this. Cameron and Nick mutually agreed on the changes because they figured confusing the audiences was a bad idea.
  • Which begs another question: "How can anyone get the two confused? Ones about giant blue cat aliens, the others about Asians with Elemental Powers, do Bryke and Cameron really think that their fanbases are severely mentally handicapped?
    • Again, I believe it's mostly for the sake of clarity. If you say you're a fan of Avatar, either one, you're always going to have to explain which one you mean. With Legend of Korra, there isn't that confusion.

Toph's husband/lover?

Toph's daughter also has the last name Beifong? Unless there was some cultural precedent in-story involving women using their birth surnames when married, Toph would either have to be a single parent or she and the father just must have not found marriage appealing and never bothered before moving in together. Any mention of this?

• There has been no mention whatsoever of who Chief Beifong's father is, much less what his relationship with Toph was. In fact, Bryan went so far as to pretend he couldn't hear the fans at SDCC screaming at him about it. It's possible that calling her by the name Beifong was just a way to identify her as Toph's offspring without giving us the father's name. Alternatively, he might not have had a last name at all. Think about it: who else in the original show had one? Not even Zuko and Azula were given full names. Last names might have been a fairly recent culture addition.
• Maybe the distribution of last names is not about who's the man, but whose family is more powerful/rich. The Beifongs are extremely wealthy and influential, so the person who marries her marries into her family rather than her marrying into his.
• Bear in mind that the Beifong family is EXTREMELY wealthy and prestigious. Factor in that Toph is an only child, and you can kinda see why they would want her husband to marry into their family, and not the other way around.
• Maybe she married her paternal cousin?
• While the Earth Kingdom is heavily Chinese influenced, the creators have taken bits and pieces of other East Asian cultures to create the various cultures in Avatar. And in Real Life there is cultural precedent in Japan for men to take their wife's name if she's of a higher social class so it could exist in the Earth Kingdom... at least theoretically.
  • Considering that is also prominent in Chinese culture (for a guy to take up the family name of his wife if said wife came from a very prominent family, it's highly probable this is what happened) just another sign that the createrd did do their research.
• I don't agree that "Toph would either have to be a single parent or she and the father just must have not found marriage appealing" are the only options. Toph could have been homosexual, and she and her partner could have adopted a baby or used some way of conceiving available to lesbians. If this sounds far-fetched, consider that Toph fits the profile of a young Butch Lesbian quite well. Though of course, this being an American kids' show, sadly there's no way they could use this kind of a plot element even if they wanted to.
  • Your theory sounds far-fetched because... it pretty much is. She had a heavily-implied, nearly canon interest in Sokka. Very unlikely that she could have been a lesbian. She is also more along the lines of Tomboy Princess, Rebellious Princess, or even Cute Bruiser than Butch Lesbian. Adoption and alternative methods of pregnancy are fairly recent practices in our world, so it is doubtful that such means could have existed in the world of Avatar. The country of the show's creation has zero relation to its content; such ideas just wouldn't make SENSE in context.
    • Many young homosexuals have interest in the other gender before settling on an homosexual identity; this is because the world has taught them that girls should like boys, and vice versa. (Just a few decades ago it was not uncommon for homosexuals to go into a heterosexual marriage because of social pressure.) And even though Toph has elements of Tomboy Princess and Cute Bruiser, those qualities are not inherently heterosexual, nor do they exclude anyone from becoming a Butch Lesbian. Many of the (pre)teen girls who will later grow up to become butches have some feminine qualities alongside masculine ones (just like Toph), because society encourages femininity in all girls, and because at that an early age they haven't yet formed a "full" butch identity. Also, adoption is hardly a "fairly recent practice", it's been around at least since the beginning of written history. It's perfectly possible that Lin was, for example, an orphan whom Toph adopted, giving her the Beifong family name in the process.
    • Also, the only evidence for Toph's canon interest in Sokka is the scene where she accidentally kisses Suki, thinking she's Sokka. Maybe it wasn't an accident after all, and Toph merely used the supposed confusion caused by her blindness as an excuse to kiss Suki.
    • A. That's WMG and contradicts how embarrassed she is over it, and B. not the only evidence. Sokka's Master has Toph blushing about Sokka when he comes back.
    • Regardless, it's perfectly possible she had a crush on Sokka, but later on realized she was gay, which, as mentioned above, is common occurence in the lives of young homosexuals.
  • You forget her attempt to insinuate herself on a mission with Zuko and complaining that others get to spend time with him. Also, realize that it's actually a persistant issue in disability circles that women with disabilities are either presumed sexless or lesbian by default, often because practical considerations of mobility and the need to loudly and frequently assert oneself to care assistants precludes "performing femininity," so instead we develop "masculine" behaviors. (Skirts can mean tripping. High heels are more trouble than they're worth, etc) In particular, some 19th century blind women were pathologized into only being allowed Romantic Two Girl Friendships, which were then used as evidence of emotional stuntedness. In modern contexts, even bisexual and femme lesbian disabled bloggers write of the struggle against immediately being labelled "butch," because they don't code as feminine. Heterosexual ones don't even get to code as "bridal." From a disability perspective, Toph's genderqueer presentation also allowing for something other than butch lesbianism is a feat in itself, even given that in other contexts heterosexuality is deeply overrepresented in media. Does anyone remember the growth of ATLA fan theories that she'd die, or never have a boyfriend?
    • You seem to forget that Toph wanting to team with Zuko had nothing to do with emotions. Remember what she said: "Everybody else has gone on life-changing missions with you! It's my turn!" She wanted to go with Zuko because everyone else came back with epic tales to tell. Not because she was crushing on Zuko (or anyone else).
    • While you make good points, you seem to be mixing up real-life experiences of disabled people with the experiences of a fictional disabled character as if the two were totally interchangeable. Based on the evidence we have, the only masculine quality of Toph that undeniably results from her blindness is her not wearing shoes. Also, I don't think feminine, heterosexual blind women are so rare in fiction that Toph being represented as anything else than a butch lesbian is a "feat in itself". It's also worth noting that many blind characters in fantasy and other non-realistic fiction have an "extra sense" that helps them observe their surroundings (Toph has this, Daredevil has this, Psylocke of Marvel Universe had it before she was given artificial eyes, etc), so their representations are different from representations of real-life blind people to begin with.
• Alternatively Toph could have simply decided she was keeping her original family name or her daughter could have taken her mother's name.
• Viewers are Morons
• I think this quote fits the situation best:

The Doctor: Amelia, from now on I shall be leaving the kissing duties to the brand new Mr Pond.

Rory: No, I'm not Mr Pond. that's not how it works.

The Doctor: Yes. it is.

Rory: ...yeah it is.

• Most people in the Avatar world don't have surnames. Only aristocratic Earth Kingdom families like Toph's, and the Sato family that will be in Korra, do. So if Toph's husband didn't have a surname, then of course Chief Beifong inherited her mother's surname.
• Originally Chinese surnames were matrilineal. But even if they drew from later patrilineal Chinese culture, if Toph married into another surnamed family, it would not be unheard of for her husband to take her name if it had greater status, particularly if he was not a firstborn son, and had no burden to carry on his family name.
• Plus, it's Toph. who's gonna tell her she has to change her last name?
  • I would SO love to see someone try.
• There's also the possibility that it's as the OP mentioned, and Toph was a single parent. It wouldn't be out of character for Toph to never get married and scratch her itch with a boyfriend every now and then, including when she decided she wanted a daughter and heir. (Obviously, they can't say this on a kids' show, but it could have been left open for this reason.) For those who subscribe to the "Toph was gay" theory: Toph having a female partner wouldn't preclude boinking a guy to have a baby. (Personally, I imagine Toph as bisexual and not having a permanent partner in her life.)
• Perhaps she is a widower? Maybe he died of an illness, or maybe he died protecting Toph or something.
• The real headscratcher is why this section even exists, considering Toph is one of the few people to have a last name meaning Lin having the same last name indicates absolutely nothing at all!
  • Seconded. She would get Toph's name by default.

Why don't the Equalists just learn how to bend?

Bending is like a form of martial arts in the world of Avatar. Heck, remember the arc in the original series where they met Toph? There was an earthbending teacher that offered lessons for money, just like any karate teacher that's in it for the business would. There are even scrolls with instructions on how to bend in them.

• The TV series has made it pretty clear that elementbending is a skill one innately has. The lessons and whatnot are only meant to hone the abilities a bender already has. Sokka wouldn't be complaining about being the only one in the group who can't bend if he could just take a couple lessons.
• Per the above, this is the reason the Avatar is so special. If one could just learn whatever element they wanted, there'd be no need for an Avatar because anyone could do it.
• While OP was oversimplifying, his question is still valid, and actually something I felt that was never addressed. It seems like, while bending is an innate skill you're born with, someone at some point LEARNED how to bend, either from Dragons (fire) Badger Moles (Earth) Flying Bison (Air) and, um...the moon (water). I kind of assumed that one would have to be highly spiritual and possibly do some kind of weird spirit magic thing to do so, but unless those are just creation myths (which i guess is possible, but it doesn't feel like "no, bending is just a genetic quirk that some humans have and some humans don't" would be the answer in a universe with spirits who actively participate in world events) i feel like the answer needs to come in this series. it would be cool for a non-bender to bust there ass and somehow come up with a way to learn bending. it would be even cooler if someone learned a totally new element from a different animal/celestial body (though for the life of me i can't think of one that wouldn't fall into the previous 4).
  • It's combination of innate and learned. Oma and Shu learned to earthbend by mimicking the Badgermoles, for example, but not everyone would have had the spark to be able to do so. Apparently once the four elements were established it solidified the rules for future generations and led to the Avatar Cycle; energybending pre-dates the Four Nations and the Avatar. I suppose it's possible that you could have a group of non-benders try to learn from a scroll and one of them turns out to have had the latent ability all along, but it wouldn't be common, because with the bending arts being known quantities now, the potential for bending obviously tends to be recognized for what it is at a young age, hence all the young benders.
  • Just because someone at some point initially learned to bend from an external source doesn't exclude the possibility that the ability has innately been there all along in the people of the world. For example, a child can learn about his/her cultural, genetic heritage and then proudly carry on the traditions, but it doesn't mean that heritage wasn't there in the first place. In simpler terms: maybe the ability to bend was already there, and the "discovery" was just the push to get it going.
• Bending is definitely innate. Scrolls and tutors exist to teach the skills and spiritual connection you need to be really good at it. Just think about this: First of all if anyone could learn to bend then when the Fire Nation was a military state it would have turned every citizen into a firebender. Secondly we've repeatedly seen competent child benders, Meelo is both too young and too inattentive to have learned complex martial arts from his father, Korra learned to firebend and earthbend before she was likely to have been exposed to either and long before she could have started training.
  • Anyone can learn how to bend actually. It just takes high spirituality. Before The four bending arts, there was spirit/energy bending, the bending of one's and other's energy. To do this, one must be pure (what type of pure isn't stated) and Balanced. In other words, one must have a high spiritual state. From this one bending, the other arts developed, and then the four nations developed from this as well. There was one nation that stayed with this high spirituality approach, the air nation. The point of this is that due to the high spirituality of the Air nation, they were able to ALL be air benders. No other nation reviled the levels of the Air Nomads in terms of this. This also explains how Amon learned Energy bending. He said the spirits talked to him, thus he (if telling the truth) seems to be very spiritual as were the people before the nation's time.
    • If anyone could do it, then Pathik would be a bender. For that matter, the Air Nomads would have figured out the energy bending thing a long time ago. It's not just spiritual, and never has been.
    • If "high spirituality" was the only factor that Korra would be the most useless bender ever rather than a master of three elements. There's blatantly a selection process that occurs before birth. We've seen lots of unspiritual benders and no non-benders who later became benders thanks to spirituality.
• It could also be a case where bending is dependent on the local spirits, not a person's genetics, like if a spirit is persent when a child is born they can chose to "bless" them with the ability of bending whatever element the spirit is associated with. It could also explain how Amon had the potential to spirit bend and said he was taught it by a spirit or why only one of the identical twins in the first series could bend and the other could not.

Conversely why do the Equalists bother taking people's bending away?

Bending is a martial art and the Equalists seem to have their own super-awesome-ninja-like martial art which has proven effective against bending. The Equalists might as well train all non-benders in that martial art and level the playing field rather than building a giant machine that can chi-block every bender in Republic City (That could be their plan, right?).

• Because you can't train all non-benders to be awesome ninja chi-blockers. Besides, one-on-one a chi-blocker has an edge. Scale that up to an army and the chi-blockers are going to lose badly. When the benders have a lot of targets to hit, they're going to do much more damage.

Why does Katara still have her necklace?

Considering she has an adult daughter - named after her mother no less - wouldn't it have made sense for her to pass it on, as it was bequeathed down to her?

• It's entirely possible that her daughter received her own from the man who married her, since you know, those necklaces are 'betrothal' necklaces. Since Aang technically wasn't Water Tribe, he might not have made one for Katara when they got married and so she kept hers, knowing that her daughter would one day receive one of her own.
• That, and betrothal necklaces are explicitly a Northern tradition. Don't forget that Katara had no idea what her necklace symbolised until Yugoda mistook her for being engaged in the North Pole. She didn't even know her grandmother came from the North Pole to begin with. To Katara, the necklace is a memento of her mother and nothing more.

The "Balance Patch" that is the Law in Republic City

• The Avatar is a focal point of balance towards goodness and the right choices in the world at large, which includes the city. Because of this, and the major role she plays in restoring balance and order to the world as they are fated to do, they are given a great deal of leeway. This is no longer the case, and that severely gimps Korra's overall effectiveness for very pedantic reasons. Benders should have the right to defend themselves, as should non-benders. So I'm not entirely seeing the law as helpful or beneficial to the long-run to the city, much less to her job. They would only serve to get in her way.
  • That worked back in the old days. In an industrialized nation, Korra's antics are nearly as harmful as helpful, and she is not omniscient. The police are there to cover what she can't, which is basically everything except the occasional random incident.
    • Of course, but if they are putting their foot down and preventing the Avatar from doing what the Avatar does, they're as much a threat to the balance as they could be a help. I'm not speaking about stopping mafia here-which Korra, as the Avatar and a lot of precedent behind her from Kiyoshi and Aang, should be allowed to do-this can get much worse; what if they decide that restoring balance would cause too much instability within the city?
    • If Korra's keeping with the law, which should be entirely reasonable, then they have no reason to object. Tenzin could also extend some political protection if he needs to.
    • Um, where's it ever said that the law prohibits bending in any way? Or that benders can't defend themselves? The problem with Korra's actions in the first episode is more that she wrecked up the street, and that she was acting as a vigilante, not just that she was acting as a bender or the Avatar.
    • Precisely. Tenzin and the White Lotus may be sitting on museum pieces, but if Korra were allowed to inflict property damage at her own vigilante discretion, she'd deplete their operating budget in a matter of weeks...heck, the lack of Hero Insurance could be mined for a subplot.
    • It's all part of the deconstruction that is going on. As of now, there is no need for Avatar-involvement. Having Korra wreck the place is not necessary. It's an era of peace. I am sure that as the plot progresses, there will be a need for Korra to act as the Avatar to the world. But as of now, there isn't.
  • This is hilarious. Its exactly the sort of political insanity that probably exists in the setting. The crime wasn't "bending" (though benders might well think of it that way) it was "blowing up other people's stuff and attacking the police". You shouldn't get away with destroying buildings just because you happened to do it with superpowers. I imagine that's exactly the mentality that has Equalist sympathizers scared.
    • I wouldn't be surprised to see merchants whose property she destroyed at an Equalist rally in the future, given that the reason anyone pays protection money is out of fear for their lives and livelihoods. Ironically, Korra may have done by accident what the Triple Threat Triads threaten to do when they go unpaid, and as a result some struggling business owners might just find themselves looking for a nice bush to sleep under.
    • The perfect opportunity for the return of the Cabbage Seller!
    • Actually, Tenzin said that he would pay for the damages.

How badly Korra got owned at Pro-Bending

• Korra is a Master of Water Bending and the Avatar besides so why does she get beat on so badly? Pro-benders stay light on their feet and use smaller, quick attacks. Did no one ever use these before? Did benders never think of speed as an important factor? Were all the people in Last Airbender moving in slow-mo? I'm sorry but 12 year old Aang defeated whole troops of soliders of veteran soldiers but Korra, who is older and stronger, can't defeat a couple of athletes? Having only a small amount of water to bend with never slowed Katara down. And the small ring size wouldn't effect Toph who was quite an imobile fighter. It makes Korra and the Avatar look weak.
  • Korra is a Dojo-trained fighter thrown into the UFC ring. She has literally missed out on the development of an entire new mixed-arts school while training in highly scholastic, traditionalist forms while isolated in a compound, under no real-world threat, while Katara and Toph experienced free-form no-holds barred threat-of-death combat in the real world. Despite this, after only one match she's an Instant Expert, and starting to beat three on one. This is weak?
  • Korra's been playing in Training Mode all her life. Then she tries to fight a bunch of guys who are literally professionals. Of course she's going to lose.
  • Agreed with the two previous posters, and I'd add that Korra was also handicapped by not being used to moderating herself. As Episode 1 demonstrated, Korra favors raw power over finesse, and close-quarters combat. Pro-bending doesn't allow that behavior at all. It's a tactical game, one where you have limited resources and must fight from a specific distance to your opponent.
  • Aang had the advantage of airbending which absolutely nobody knew how to combat. The soldiers he was fighting were also unlikely to have had experience fighting benders. Remember the Fire Nation had been in charge for about 100 years by that point with most non-firebenders shipped off the concentration camps.
  • No benders probably didn't thinking of pro-bending style attacks. Much like the real martial arts they're based on the TLA bending styles are strongly rooted in philosophical teachings that are passed down from teacher to student. Note that Tenzin's problem with pro-bending is not that it's dangerous or violent but that it strips away the spiritual side of bending that is so important to him.
  • To clarify even further, Korra isn't losing in the first match because she's weak; she could beat all three of her opponents at the same time effortlessly. She's losing because she doesn't know the rules, and either accidentally breaks them, or concentrates on them so much that she can't concentrate on the fight itself.
  • This is all but explicitly pointed out when Korra blasts somebody out of the ring with ease, but is slapped with a penalty. Her success in Pro Bending is partly about her bending skills, but also about her ability to play within the rules and work with her teammates. Aesop anybody?
  • Well, which kind of bending is all about being light on your feet? Airbending. What is Korra really bad at? Airbending. Funnily, Korra is learning the exact opposite of what Aang learnt: When Aang learnt earthbending, Toph told him repeatedly to widen his stance. Korra is told that her wide stance slows her down. Also, remember the episode with the Blue Spirit? Two guards were talking about how the airbender is extremely fast, and one of them said that it was just Fire Nation propaganda. Cue Aang running past them at top speed. Not to mention that Korra is the "face stuff head-on" type, which Aang wasn't. Under usual circumstances, she'd block the attacks with ease. Look at how she fights. She jumps right into the attack of her opponent, which she can't do in the pro-bender matches. And even though she was born in the water tribe, I'm not sure how right it would be to say that waterbending is what she's best at. After all, even from young age, she's relied on three elements, which probably gave her many advantages, but also gives her the disadvantage of relying too much on the other two.
  • I don't think the issue is really that. Compare Mako's 3v1 victory to Korra's 2v1 assaults. Mako was able to hold his own because he was concentrating on evading attacks, whereas Korra was concentrating on blocking them. It goes back to the lesson of the episode; be the leaf. When Korra stopped trying to meet force with force she stopped getting owned. Also, I'm not so sure that Tenzin's qualm with pro-bending is merely it's lack of spirituality, it appears that pro-bending suffers from a lack of strategy that an airbending master might find repugnant. Think about it, waterbenders should be able to fulfill and amazing role as supporters to their team. Ensnaring opponents, shielding allies, creating veils of fog to mask ally attacks, but it seems they're only allowed to slap water at the enemy team. To be fair, we've only seen this sport in one episode and I'm sure we don't know all the rules to it, but the fact that we've seen four different waterbenders compete and none of them thought of any of these tactics makes me suspect it's in the rules, which really makes pro-bending seem like a hollow shell compared to the traditional styles of bending.
  • Their limitations are part of the rules. Just as Mako isn't just throwing constant streams of flames, waterbenders can't bend giant amounts of water or change its state. Earthbenders are just stuck using those little disks. Part of what makes it fair is limiting their skillset.
  • If one wants to have a sense of just how powerful a waterbender Korra is, just consider her very first move in the match, where she effortlessly lifted up her opponent with a giant wall of water and tossed him off the side. Which of course, was against the rules. The rules are specifically designed so that one can't just abuse overwhelming power to win.
    • Additionally, pro-bending's rules make sense for modern urban combat in a way that the traditional bending Tenzin is familiar with doesn't. What happens when Korra goes all-out against those thugs in Episode 1? She causes a crapload of collateral damage, like when she ripped up the street to attack that getaway car. Pro-bending's tactical fighting -- emphasizing small, discrete elemental attacks instead of big powerful ones -- minimizes collateral damage while still taking out your enemy. Which is something the city's authorities might want to encourage via the sport, considering what happens if, say, someone accidentally damages an underground gas main while earthbending. If you look at it from that light, pro-bending isn't a hollow shell of the traditional styles, it's just a necessary adaptation to Republic City's urban environment.
  • Tenzin's dissapproval of the Pro-Bending is likely to stem from the fact that the sport uses Bending simply as means to an end, rather than a part of spiritual lifestyle.
  • Episode 6 shows Korra is definitely no slouch in a straight-up fight. The problem is, of course, she's often either playing a sport with rules and limitations (pro-bending), or gets ambushed (episode 4).
  • "And The Winner Is..." shows us quite clearly moves that are illegal in Pro-bending, and many of them are moves that Korra(or any bender in a fight, for that matter) would use. For example, two benders are not allowed to combine attacks, sustained attacks(shooting water like a hose or fire like a flamethrower) are disallowed, and Waterbenders cannot restraing the opponent with Icebending. When all's said and done, Pro-bending is not a combat sport proper. It has elements of it(knockouts, ringouts), but it's mostly about zone control, like American football. Think of it this way: an Olympic wrestler would probably have a hell of a tackle in the football field, but he's not gonna be suplexing anybody.
    • I can back this up. My former martial arts instructor used to tell us that it was extremely easy for a mixed martial artist to beat a boxer in a match because boxers are extremely predictable in their movements. They may be good at boxing, but a mixed martial arts match is an entirely different fight with different rules. Just because you have mastery in one thing doesn't mean you can pick up something related and be an instant master in that too. There's alot you have to learn/re-learn.
• Also, lets just face it, the combat is much more realistically portrayed in Korra than it was in the original series. None of the teenaged heroes are as powerful as their adult, veteran counterparts, one or two chi-blockers are a significant threat even to the main protagonist and there is simply no such thing as a One-Man Army.

Another question about bending genetics

I didn't see this in the At LA headscratchers page, and since it relates to characters from legend of Korra, I'd thought I'd post it here.

Okay. We know that bending is one part genetic and one part spiritual. We know that if, say, An Earthbender and a Waterbender had a kid, that kid would be an Earthbender, a Waterbender, or neither. We can see that in Aang's kids - a Waterbender, an Airbender, and a non-bender.

So here's my question; can Kya, Aang's Waterbending child, have kids that can Airbend? I was always under the impression that the type of bending is partly determined by the culture you were born into, so what does that mean for second generation children of mixed families? Does the fact that Kya had an Air Nomad father mean that she has a chance, if only a slight one, of having an Airbender, or does the fact that she's a Waterbender mean it's impossible for her to have Airbending children?

And for that matter, what about Bumi, Aang's non-bending child? We know that you don't have to be a bender to father one, so does that mean that Bumi has the exact same odds of having an air/water/non-bender as his parents? Does marrying a Waterbender decrease his chances of fathering an Airbender? What if he married a Firebender or an Earthbender (supposing he's married at all, of course)? Or to make things really crazy, suppose he married a non-bender who's parents were Earth and Firebenders. Does that mean their kids could be any element, including none of the above!?

• Genetically speaking, a bender/non-bender would have that specific trait as the dominant one, with the other possibility being recessive. If the airbending trait is recessive, it would have to be recessive in both parents for it to manifest in the child (implicitly, this would explain Katara being the offspring of two non-benders). They can't have airbending kids, not without some serious squick.
• I'm inclined to think that the general Bending ability is hereditary, but which Bending style a person learns is dependent on the environment. Raise a Water Tribe child with Bending talent from birth in an Air Temple, and I suspect you'd get an Airbender, not a Waterbender.
  • If it were that simple, wiping out the Air Nomads would not have been a solution to the Avatar cycle. Aang being the last Airbender is never treated as anything other than a concrete fact. If a Water Tribe couple could just bonk at an Air Temple and turn out an Airbender, it wouldn't be so serious.
    • That wasn't the point I was making. What I meant was that the Bending ability is genetic, but the Bending styles are cultural. Remember that people originally learned them from observing various animals and the Moon. It wouldn't matter if somebody was raised in an abandoned Airtemple because there'd be no-one to raise or teach the child to become an Airbender, but on the other hand, if you put a baby with Bending talent to close proximity with Skybisons from birth, they might figure out Airbending on their own.
    • It wouldn't be the environment so much as a combination of how they're raised and their own personality. It's more likely that just the ability to bend is genetic and recessive, but which element you are is a separate, dominant allele, and you need both to bend.
      So, if you have Aang and Katara's kids. Aang is an Airbender, with his bending gene bb, and his element gene Ax. Katara, as a Waterbender, has the bending gene bb, and element Wx. So they have kids, who are all going to have bb. But of the element gene, you'll have one with AW, one with Ax (Tenzin), one with Wx (Kya), and one with xx (Bumi). Alternatively, Tenzin is AW, and in that case it randomly "sides" with one or the other--turning it into AA, which would explain why all of his children are airbenders.
      Alternatively, it might be tied to the XY chromosome, so that any male children will have the father's element, while any female children will have the--wait, no. Mako and Bolin rule that out.
    • I think it has more to do with the culture and the spirituality around them rather than the actual place. If two waterbenders bonked at an airtemple and had a kid, they'd still either be a waterbender or a nonbender because they've only experienced waterbending and water tribe culture. However, if those two waterbenders bonked in the middle of the Fire Nation, and their child was consistently exposed to Fire Nation culture and surrounded by firebending (more so than their water tribe heritage), then I'd say that it's possible that that kid would end up a firebender. They couldn't create more airbenders because the genocide destroyed everything that composed the air nomads, not just the people, but their books, stories, spirituality, and everything else that made up their civilization as well.
  • Don't forget the possibility that bending might not be a simple recessive/dominant trait, but more complicated. Most real traits are controlled by a variety of things such a poly-genetics, promotor regions and environment. Throw this all together and it might not be so easy to predict.
    • This is most likely the case, as an episode in the first series showed a set of identical twins where one was an earthbender and the other was a non-bender. Since identical twins have the same DNA, other factors are likely involved in determining bending ability.
• Before the Air Nomads were wiped out, they were 100% Airbenders, because they were the "most spiritual" nation. What that means hasn't been explained further to my knowledge.

Seventy years later and there are only five Airbenders in the world?

...Three of whom are children and the fourth is the Avatar? Not a single bender emerged outside of Aang's bloodline or the Avatar cycle? Really?

• Five Airbenders known to the world, anyway. Maybe there's a kid out there with Air Nomad ancestry (or the bending gene and an Airbending disposition, or however it works) who's amusing his village blowing wind at people, and no one's connected the dots and informed Tenzin yet.
  • Well, Aang was the last one for a reason. If they could just emerge, then this storyline would have been pointless. Also, the sixth airbender is about to be born.
  • If there were any descendents of the Air Nomads they would have emerged during the 100 years Aang was frozen. One can assume the Fire Nation was thorough in their genocide and/or the Air Nomads were fairly insular.
    • I imagine that if there were any survivors and descendents, they would just stay hidden on account of, you know, the concerted effort to wipe them off the face of the planet.
  • It's also established, time and again, that bending is just as much a discipline as a genetic thing. If there's no one to pass on the teachings, it's gone forever. For comparison, when the Commie Nazi Khmer Rouge were kicked out of Cambodia, you could count the number of people who knew how to perform an ancient type of ballet on one hand. Everyone on Earth is, theoretically, capable of performing this dance, but if there's no one left to show you, how are you going to know the moves? Scrolls burn and people die.
    • That's the point: In the the decades Aang was alive and active, only one Airbender - his son - emerged? For that matter, that son and his family are the only ones in the world who live the traditional Air Nomad lifestyle? This Troper finds that statistically implausible. Hell, even with dead languages, someone is still studying and learning it.
    • Most dead languages haven't had a whole nation trying to hunt down anyone who might have spoken that language, starting with a concerted effort to wipe them all off the face of the planet.
      The Fire Nation was, apparently, very thorough.
    • I has been proven that a culture didn't need to have benders for someone with bending potential to learn the art, Katara was completely self taught in the benderless Southern Water Tribe before Aang showed up, but all air nomads were air benders so when all the air nomads were wiped out there wasn't anyone left with the potential to air bend because unlike the other nations they never had anyone with a "hidden potential" for bending that could be passed down.Only Aang could continue the legacy and of the three children he had with Katara Kya was a waterbender and Bumi couldn't bend so only Tenzin was comfirmed to be able to continue the line. Apparently any children Kya or Bumi had didn't inherit the ability to airbend.
• In the episode, "A Leaf In the Wind," we see that Tenzin and his family aren't the only ones on Air Temple Island. I assume that at least some of them are learning airbending. It probably doesn't come as naturally to them as it does with Tenzin's kids.
  • They're presumably not benders (as bending's been pointed out above to be a mix of genetics and spirituality), but at the very least they can help preserve the remnants of Air Nomad culture, as well as the airbending teachings themselves. Even if the airbenders remain rare for a few more decades, the Air Nomads are certainly returning.
• However implausible it may be, the series itself does sort of answer this on its own. Its an established fact that all Air Nomads are born benders naturally through sheer level of spirituality amongst its peoples; so one would be correct to assume that Aang would automatically have airbending children. However, perhaps his intermarriage caused a hiccup in the lineage. It's not a jab at Katara mind you, a powerful master Waterbender, but because she didn't have the same innate understanding and enlightened spirituality of her husband (which is NOT to say she wasn't spiritual, just not the same level) it took a little bit (two kids in their case) for the kink to work itself out. Case in point, Tenzin and Pema's children; after Pema wholly embraced the Air Nomad culture - and all the spiritual focus it demands...all of their children (thus far) are natural Airbenders. Mind you, this works only if Aang really truly was the last Airbender post genocide, which all hints from the series seem to support, as well as that one simply can't find a Sky Bison and learn Airbending as it was originally founded.

Misc.

• Why did Korra stop Naga from stealing food from the food stand, but immediately tried to procure something to eat without payment? Stealing was probably the lesser of two evils, but trying to buy something without any money was just as foolish.
  • "Lesser" of two evils? I'd say that asking first is better than stealing. In any case, the point was most likely to subtly show Korra's reckless personality to the audience; she most likely remembered she didn't have any money the moment she was asked for payment.
  • Well, maybe she thought that everybody would give her food because she's the Avatar, but the old lady drove her away before she could play that card. Don't forget, Korra is insanely sheltered and probably never had to worry about food or a place to stay.
  • As mentioned above Korra was provided with everything she needed by White Lotus so she has no concept of money and its value. (It was also common with Real Life royalty who could see the big picture (state economy) but were helpless in small since they never had to personally buy their everyday needs.)
  • Also, the next course of action Korra takes is to fish. Most likely, it never occurred to her that there would be rules against hunting because the South Pole is too harsh to avoid it.
• Korra thought the fish-from-a-lake was hunting/fishing, not stealing.

How does Pro-Bending work in terms of how much of an element you can use?

It seems like Earth has an inherent disadvantage, where the Bender can only pick up one or two discs at a time. Waterbenders could pull the entire channel of water to attack, like Korra does when she knocks that guy over the side. Fire, as in the previous series, is based entirely in the strength of the Bender, so they could theoretically be a dozen times stronger than the Earthbenders with their single discs.

• Waterbenders and firebenders can only use short bursts, no more than a second or so, and waterbenders are limited to the channel in their zone. Korra broke the rules in more ways than one with that first shot. Earthbenders, by comparison, can use as many of those little discs as they want.
  • Where is is stated that they can only use small bursts? Mako does some pretty significant hits in his 3 on 1 moment. Definitely more fire than the other teams Firebender was using, at least. Also, Korra only pulls from her channel. It's just a lot of water. Much more mass than those discs.
    • The official rules of pro-bending state that bursts longer than 1 second can't be used.
  • There is a limited number of the discs, though, meaning they can use them as frequently as they want, provided they don't run out.
    • There could be hundreds of those discs in the reserve; it's unlikely that they ever run out in the course of a single match.
    • Correct me if I'm wrong because I can't check right now, but didn't the one of Fire Ferret's opponents run out of discs during the second episode? I think there's a set number of discs available per game or round.
    • Are you referring to the "out of juice" comment? I think that this rather meant that they basically got tired, not that they don't have any materials any more.
    • Addendum to the disc comment as well, it looks like during the demonstrations of the rules and explanation of game mechanics vid put up, its stated that there's a loading mechanism not unlike a disc launcher gun loaded a plenty of the discs. It didn't specify how many but sounded like there was probably more than enough to not worry about it going dry.
• There's also the idea that highlighting these differences is not so much a glitch as it is a feature, a deliberate showcasing of the tactical differences and limitations each bender has for the benefit of the game.
• I'd say that all the elements have inherent disadvantages. For instance, the natural instinct for a water bender would be to throw a curving torrent of water that knocks an opponent sideways (probably why Korra tried this first). But the rules say that they can only knock opponents off the back of the ring, forcing water benders to concentrate on straight and direct attacks. Earth benders are limited to moving small disks of earth at a time, whereas in the real world the entire landscape is their weapon. And of course fire benders can only throw a small amount of fire at a time (probably for safety reasons, i.e. to prevent collateral damage), which goes completely against the normal fire bending orthodoxy of overwhelming force. Even air benders would seem to be at a disadvantage. Recall that Aang's typical air bending tactics involved a lot of movement, typically making long circular dodges on currents of wind. But in pro-bending the competitors are confined to a small field which limits their range of movement.
  • Additionally, the game emphasizes the ability to push one's opponents around and off the ring. Fire doesn't provide as much knockback as earth and water. It appears that the availability of each element is inversely proportional to how dense/solid it is
• Officially, the fire- and water-benders can't use more than a second or two of their attack-types. They are limited in size of attack to a degree [blast of water, medium-sized stone slab] but not supply [maybe supply a bit, but the size of the stadium and the mechanisms of the slots mean running out is hard to do]. That is the heart of the sport - efficiency of technique, efficiency of supplies, restraint, and teamwork. It's like a minimally-spiritual Air-bending training session for other benders.

Why are benders so afraid of having their bending being taken away by Amon?

What's the big deal? All that happens is that you won't be able to bend anymore, and yet they treat it as big as death. The procedure is probably painful or scary, but in the end how is having you're bending being taken away dangerous at all?

• The people that bend have learned how to use it to work and fight. This is their livlihood. Imagine losing a limb. Now imagine that your job required working with that limb. Get it now?
  • Oh, don't worry, we'll just cut your eyes out. All that happens is that you won't be able to see anymore!
  • Except the ability to bend is more like a superpower than a body part. Losing a leg would make your life immeasurably harder. Losing the ability to bend would make you...normal. Benders don't actually need their bending to do their jobs (except the pro-benders) it just makes their jobs easier. I mean, think of it this way. Imagine a man fell in some nuclear waste and developed x-ray vision. He uses this power to become the greatest surgeon in the world. Then he gets accused of using his x-ray vision to look through women's clothes and a judge orders him to get a simple, completely non-life threatening operation that would do nothing other than remove his x-ray vision. So now he's gone from being a super-surgeon to...a perfectly normal surgeon. Is being brought back down to normal really such a great tragedy?
  • It is when you've lived your whole life since early childhood that way, and what do you mean? Imagine the devastation if he were to hit the metalbending police force. How would they know what to do? The waterbender healers in hospitals? This society's logistics are built around privileging benders.
    • Is it? Undoubtedly there are benders who make important contributions to society, but there is no evidence (so far) that they are the backbone of Republic City. The metalbenders aren't the only law enforcement. We can clearly see evidence of perfectly normal police who presumably arrest criminals in perfectly normal ways. In fact the metalbenders seem to be an elite force sent after bender criminals, so taking away everyone's bending would make them unnecessary. We've seen no evidence whatsoever that the healthcare system in Republic City is reliant on waterbenders. As of Episode 3, the closest thing we've seen to a bender-based infrastructure is that scene where we see firebenders shooting lightning into machines to power the city. But there's no reason to believe society would collapse without them. Lightningbenders are a minority among firebenders, who are a minority among benders in general, and benders in general are (probably) a minority in the Avatar-verse. It's highly unlikely that an entire city could be critically dependent on a minority of a minority of a minority. Especially given the level of industrialization we've seen in Republic City. If they can build motor vehicles they can build generators to do the exact same job as those lightningbenders.
      
      Just to be clear, I'm not saying benders should have their bending taken away from them. Especially not against their will. Even if it's completely painless and harmless, it's still a violation of their human rights. What I am saying is their reaction to the idea is a little over the top.
    • Their reaction is in no way "over the top". It is an integral part of who they are, a fact of their life. It's like being able to smell or see. It's cutting away an aspect of their identity. Even if you don't take it that far and just treat it as a skill, it would still be horrible. If you had a natural talent for chess, for example, and played it your entire life (it doesn't matter in what context) and suddenly lost that ability, would you honestly feel anything less than crushing depression at being rendered unable to do something that for so long you took for granted? The answer to that is no. Trying to treat stealing bending as anything less than something horrible is absurd. Ozai earned that punishment, and look at him after the fact. He was a broken man when that finally set it.
    • Ozai was broken because he was a bending supremacist who lost the ability to bend (as well as a massive war that he very nearly won). It would be like a white supremacist being magically turned into a black man. The thing he thinks makes him better than everyone else is now gone, so of course he broke down afterward. But most benders are not like that (or at least we've seen no evidence that they are). Taking away their bending would be unfortunate, but it's not like they've had one of their eyes plucked out. Being upset is understandable. Treating it like you've just been made a quadriplegic is over the top and overreacting.
    • It is hardly overreacting. You're just trying to diminish its importance. It is not like superpowers, which only a select few have. It's not like it's some acquired ability, because it's innate. Bending is a fundamental part of any bender, the essence of who they are, and losing it would be every bit as terrible as being unable to walk or see.
• You assume that bending is like superpowers. But it's not "Cosmic rays gave me fire-powers", it's something you've had and been living with your whole life. As an example, imagine what would happen to Ron if he would lose any access to magic and magical items. He would be utterly lost and handicapped.
  • "You assume that bending is like superpowers." It's not just "like" superpowers. It is a superpower. It's a superhuman ability that goes beyond what humans can normally do. Just because benders are born with it doesn't make it any less of a superpower. As for your example, the problem is that Ron Weasley lives in a totally different world where the ability to use magic is not only commonplace but essential. The Wizarding World in HP is a society totally dependent on magic that exists almost completely separate from muggle society. Ron would not only be unable to function in the Wizarding World, he would be unable to function in the muggle world as well because he has no idea how it works. This is not the case in the Avatar-verse. Benders and non-benders live in an integrated society and which could probably function just as well if everyone was a bender or if no one was.
    • "Superpower" implies rarity or unnatural origins. Bending is neither. Ron fits with the Avatar world because a bender would automatically default to bending as a means to make a living, and having that taken from them would leave that bender struggling to compensate. It would be an awful thing.
    • Bending may be a superpower from the perspective of a non-bender, but for a bender it would be no more a "power" than walking or opposable thumbs.
• Imagine your entire life being capable of doing something. Something simple, something you'd never even second-guess or think "I wonder how life would be like without that?" It feels inherent. It's a part of who you are. A portion of your life is dictated by this capability. It's part of your culture, it can protect you from harm, provide you with a way to make a livelihood, and make you feel powerful and/or fulfilled, like you have a purpose. This simple and inherent capability that you've lived most of your life with. Suddenly, it's gone. It's been ripped away from you by a person in a mask who thinks of you like a bunch of evil creatures. He has henchmen with rods that can electrocute you and have studied in an artform that can paralyze you. You are now even less guarded. You've had your armor stripped away, and these people who have felt repressed and express resentment towards you now have the UPPERHAND on you. You're going to be horrified. The thing you've been living with that you used as your main form of defense has been removed and now the people who have a personal vendetta against you are above you offensively. It might not be the mere idea of losing their bending, as much as the capabilities of the group capable of doing it on top of that violation of their human rights that horrify them. Something that's a part of who you are is being taken away, and the people who hate you for having it now have a serious edge in their battle against you. You've been violated in more ways than you'd ever imagined having to deal with (part of your soul being ripped up or blocked off) and now these people who hate you can paralyze you, tie you up, zap you with volts of electricity, and take over your government. How many of you honestly believe Amon will merely present equality, rather than allowing the non-benders to unleash their resentment and vengeance upon them? While it may just be added propaganda, if it's to be believed, his family was killed and his face mutilated by a firebender. He has every reason to antagonize them, rather than merely bring them down to the same level.
  • You say all that like benders would dissolve into blubbering puddles of jelly unable to so much as wipe their own noses if their bending was taken away. But we've seen no evidence that benders are that reliant on their bending abilities to function. If you're a firebender who suddenly can't bend anymore, you're still a reasonably fit human being. You can still work. You can still recreate. You just have to do it the same way everyone else does. Would it be upsetting? Sure. But it's not like your soul has been sucked out.
    You do make a good point that Amon's endgame after he takes away everyone's bending probably isn't true equality. But if that was the message the writers intended they didn't get it across very well. The main message seemed to be "OMG he can take away bending for good THAT'S HORRIBLE!!1" Except...it's not that horrible, in and of itself.
    • Except, yes it is, very much so. It's taking away, forcibly, a facet of someone's life that they've come to see as innate. It's a part of who they are. It's every bit the extreme violation the show presents it as, and to treat it as anything less is to make light of their suffering.
• Another I just thought of, is that deep down the benders know that the Equalists are right in a few respects. Benders are aware of just how much more defenseless and downcast they are without bending. That's pretty horrifying in and of itself. Not only do the Equalists prove that they're right by making benders realize what they have to go through on a daily basis, they also resent benders and can target them specifically.
• "Is being brought back down to normal really such a great tragedy?" you ask. To which I say, "Aren't non-benders the real freaks? Born deaf and dumb to the fundamental forces of nature and their spiritual undercurrents, blundering through life with only their physical bodies to provide for themselves, reduced by the cruel accident of birth to comforting each other with the silly notion that they're the default template for humanity, and that inflicting your birth defect on the rest of us is an act of goodness." (In other words, we shouldn't let our real world position color our perception of what's "normal" and not in-universe for humans there. A good argument could be made that either benders or non-bender are the "normal" ones, or that the term applies to both group.)
  • You seem to be forgetting one thing; Nonbending is the default state of humanity in the Avatarverse. We don't know the specifics of the Energybending Era, but what we do know is this: that art was lost completely to humans, there was a long period with no bending at all, a small collection of people from each nation studied nature to learn to bend the elements and eventually passed it on to others, and even in the current timeline the bender-to-non ratio is quite firmly in favor of the nons except for the element Air. Bending is far from a rare mutation, but it is hardly the norm for the majority of the population at large, just wanted to let everyone know.
• It is as big as death, maybe even bigger. Bending to those with the ability is like seeing, hearing, or walking is to us. The avatar world, no matter how similar to ours, is not like the world we know. We can't fully appreciate how important bending is to benders because we know it's not real. But to them it is real; it's not a superpower that exists as an extension of their bodies; it's a part of them and a part of life has always been there. Imagine a maniac in a mask blinding you or cutting off a body part and telling you that you deserve it.

"Hey, you have legs and we don't! How dare you walk around when other people can't. You use you special ability to walk to take all the good jobs, gain representation in politics, and bully us. We should cut off everyone's legs in order to gain true equality."

• • "Bending to those with the ability is like seeing, hearing, or walking is to us." No it isn't. Becoming blind, deaf, or unable to walk is a handicap (and a major one) because human society is built primarily to serve sighted, hearing, and walking people. Losing one or more of those abilities restricts your ability to function in society. Losing the ability to bend, even if you've enjoyed it all your life, does NOT restrict your ability to function. If you're a firebender who makes money by shooting lightning into power generators and you suddenly have your bending taken away, you can still get any number of other jobs. In fact since benders seem to be extremely physically fit by definition, they would still have more opportunities than most.
    Your point about the Equalists' Tall Poppy Syndrome is valid, however that's a different argument. The OP's original point was that the benders are acting like not being able to bend anymore is akin to being murdered.
    • Yes, it is. If everyone in the world had superpowers, the same superpowers in fact, then to lose that would be treated as nothing less than the loss of something just as vital as walking or seeing. Losing that ability would require someone to learn a completely different skillset just to adapt. A man who loses the use of his legs could get another job, but if his previous job was one that required a lot of walking around, that's a major change in career. Same thing here.
• So a lot of tropers have been arguing that it is a big deal because it is like losing something that was always there, removing one's identity, one's ability to realize their place in life. I agree with this line of thinking, however as the conversation shows, there are still those who don't so let me phrase it this way: balance. The Avatar exists in order to reset balance to the world once it goes out of whack. That's why Ozai had to be stop. Not only did he exterminate an entire race of people, attempt to do the same thing to another race of people, and enslave all those in between, he was trying to create a world in which those born with the Fire element reigned over all those who didn't. That is NOT balance in the slightest. In a similar vein, Amon is trying to take away other's bending, to "level the playing field". However, that too is not the right balance. Benders exist for a reason, they are the ones that are more connected to the spirit world, to nature, to the very essence of the world around them. Amon removing them would create a world that does not understand itself, or its roots. The human world would lose its connection to the vast spirit world. Before Amon coming, the world wasn't balanced either because people were forgetting that their ability is a gift from nature and connected to nature. That was why the world became so corrupt in the first place, with people abusing their powers. However, the world after Amon won't be any better.
  • This also makes sense thematic wise. Aang was trained to connect to the spirit realm from the beginning. He was so connected that one of the main conflicts he faced was reconnecting with the demands of the secular world i.e. killing Ozai for the greater good of the world. In the end, he learned how to reconcile both sides by de-powering Ozai. Korra, on the other hand, lacks the spirituality that Aang possessed. She is completely immersed in the world around her, shown by her joining a sport that uses bending for entertainment. What she will need to do is find a way to reconcile her secularity with the spirituality she needs to possess in order to be the Avatar. The Avatar is the bridge between two worlds; Korra needs to start making a connection to the spirit world.
• Upon re-watching episode 3, it occurs to me that the OP was overstating the issue. Almost none of the characters seem to treat losing the ability to bend like being killed or having a limb chopped off. Mako seemed hardly affected by it at all. Once he got his brother out of danger he pretty much put it behind him. Bolin was pretty spooked by it, but that's understandable since he had just been kidnapped, tied up, and taken to an unknown location by people who would probably be just as happy beating him to death and leaving him in a ditch. Tenzin seemed more afraid that this could cause more and more non-benders flock to Amon's cause, leading to a dangerous power shift in Republic City.
  In truth the only character who seems to see losing the ability to bend as serious as losing one's life is Korra...which makes perfect sense. We're talking about a girl who has essentially been told every day of her life that her bending abilities make her the most important person in the world. She's lived for years in an extremely isolated environment where her ability to bend is not only her most important attribute but her only important attribute. Her entire life she's been training to do exactly one thing: be the Avatar. And without her bending she can't possibly be the Avatar. In Korra's case Amon wouldn't just be taking away her bending. He'd be taking away her entire reason for being.
• Exactly. It's a part of who they are, just like walking is a part of who we are. Cutting them off from bending is us like cutting off both your legs, and telling you that you deserve to be crippled.
  • And the guys who actually lost their powers. It's pretty significant when you get hit by the energybending and lose your ability to use it. I'd say it's a bit like being a hearing person, but becoming hearing impared. You can still get around without any difficulty, still talk and learn to read lips to communicate, but you can never appreciate music the same way, or hear a loud noise behind you. To lose the bending ability means you lose touch with that spiritual side of the world, and it'd be pretty damn terrifying. So maybe it's not the same horror as dying, but you don't want to lose that power.
  • It gets even worse for people who depend on bending for their livelihood. Firebenders get paid to shoot lightning into generators, you have police forces who rely on their bending, there are pro-bender athletes, and there are probably other jobs that can only be done by benders. If a firebender works at the power plant shooting lightning into generators and he loses his firebending powers, he loses his livelihood, affecting not only him but anyone he has to take care of.
    • You know what happens in the real world when someone loses an ability they rely on to do their job? They get a different job. But whereas a person who loses his legs would have extreme difficulty functioning in the real world, a former bender would have...not much difficulty at all. They couldn't get paid to shoot lightning into power generators but they could still do every single job that a non-bender could do. And to be perfectly frank, the fact that so many people would compare not being able to shoot fire out of your fingertips with not being able to walk is offensive to me.
      • Imagine spending a decade learning to become a surgeon, only to develop a hand tremor. You're still able to function in every day life, but you can't be a surgeon anymore- ten years and $300,000+ in training and tuition down the drain. Yes, you can get a new job, but not something that will replace what you lost. You may have borrowed money and budgeted based on being a surgeon, only to find you are now only qualified for jobs that pay a third of what you were making as a surgeon.
    • But not everyone reacts like how OP describes. As one person pointed out above most people brushed it off, except Korra (who sees her whole purpose in life is to bend) and Bolin who got kidnapped. And it is scary, when you lose bending you basically become a second class citizen. Even a child who knows a little bending can manage to kill an adult who doesn't. The representatives in the city are representatives of the 4 nations (and might all be benders). The police force is made up of benders. The non-bender merchants we saw in the first episode were being oppressed by bending criminals. There is a whole sport devoted to benders. It's scary because you can't fight back against most benders unless you have training. Suddenly people are going to look down on you. In addition bending is something that is a natural part of life for some people, who practice and put effort into it. It may not cause them to not be able to make a living anymore, but it's like losing a car that you spent years working on,and then having it destroyed. So to summarize no it's not a death sentence, but it is a horrible experience and the benders are allowed to be scared at the prospect of having it taken away.
    • So far every non-Equalist who's seen or been told about Amon's power has been horrified, its a pretty universal reaction.
    • Imagine a boy wants to be a writer. He has the potential. He takes classes, trains hard, and becomes a great writer. He bases his life around his writing, getting a good job as a novelist, and supporting his family. Then someone takes away his ability to write. Can't support his family now. Can't live his dream. Those years he spent learning? Wasted. Yeah, he can get another job, but it was a part of his life for decades. For a lot of people, bending is a part of their life, and many have devoted time and effort to it, and it just gets taken away, and they're left at the mercy at the people they 'oppressed.'
    • How about people like Mako and Bolin? The only thing that's barely stopping them from living on the streets or working for criminals is their pro-bending. If it were that easy for them to get legal, non-bending jobs then they probably would've gotten them instead of turning to mob activity in the first place. If Amon had taken Bolin's bending then it's likely that the Fire Ferrets would be out of a job and forced into poverty and likely homelessness again (it seems unlikely they could still live off of Mako's job at the power plant considering it was treated as just being a little cash on the side), and it'd be even worse if Mako lost his bending too. And that's just two people out of a whole city of benders.
  • How about this for a real-life, personal analogy: I play the piano for a living. It's a combination of inherent ability (dexterity, ear, focus) and many years of training. It certainly isn't a superpower, but most people can't do it. In order to take this ability away from me, someone would merely have to break my fingers so they never healed fully-- even if they healed enough for a non-pianist to go about his/her life with no issues, I really need the full range of flexibility to keep not just my career but one of my primary enjoyments in life (which is why I had the focus to make it my career in the first place!). If that did ever happen, would I be able to get another job? Sure. Would I still undergo a major, MAJOR grieving process? ...Are you kidding me? I'd be emotionally useless for months. And if I was actually conscious while somebody restrained me and then deliberately broke all of my fingers for that exact purpose? "Blubbering pile of jelly" seems about right as a reaction to me.
    • This is also pretty much what happened to Doctor Strange. He was a gifted surgeon before he suffered nerve damage to his hands which meant he could never safely operate on anyone again. He didn't really recover from this until he found a new calling (or rather, the call found him) as the Sorcerer Supreme.
• Another way of viewing this as of episode 4: Think of the ability to Bend as virginity. While people are perfectly fine living without it, having it forcefully taken away can be a very, very bad experience.
  • Yeah, while the show obviously can't go there its pretty clear that removing a person's bending is basically spiritual rape. On top of that its an attack on the person's cultural identity that they can never reclaim and it forces them to find a new job (so far every bender we've seen who isn't a politician needs their bending to work).
  • I see it like this. One day someone pours bleach in your eyes. You have no permanent damage to your vision except you're colorblind^[1]. You can never experience the world the same way again.
    • This troper was confused at first, but not by the characters' reactions to the notion of bending being taken away, but from the act itself. What is so terrifying about it? This troper was expecting public executions, or beatings, or something. It reminded him of the copout that Aang took in the end of the first series, in order to have the show be acceptable for kids, a way to downplay violence for the network executives. But then this troper began to think. With the rapish scene with Korra, and some of these arguments, I think I understand now. Someone reaching into you and permanently altering you is a lot like forced castration or even rape. It won't affect your role in society afterward, but it is still disturbing and highly violating. My theory that for the characters in universe itself, it isn't the aftermath that is terrifying to them, but the act itself. It's like getting a tooth pulled. They're more afraid of Amon mind-raping and violating them than the repercussions afterward. It's more primal than logical. While getting a tooth pulled, or a vasectomy, or even castrated, shouldn't inherently cause fear in us, the pain and humiliation of the process, and the disturbing nature of the process itself is what causes the fear. So the fact that they seemingly overreact is actually what should be expected. So while some people have argued the other way around (the process is quick and painless, while the aftermath is crushing and life-altering and depressing) I think I see it the other way around. The act is painful, humiliating, confusing, and terrifying, while eventually they would get over the fact that they could no longer bend. What would you think if a sociopath with a ton of resources and dedicated followers could at his discretion have you kidnapped and then publicly violate a deep spiritual part of you? It's more hysteria, apprehension, and paranoia than anything. The fear stems from the fact that they DON'T know what it's like to be a non-bender, and the build-up of that paranoia, combined with Amon's sadistic methods of taking that away from them. If I'm right, then in my mind the way the show handled this not only redeems my initial judgments, but may just bump it up to fridge brilliance.
  • It's essentially rape. Rape on a spirtual scale, and the benders are being told they deserved it.
  • First it was not a "copout" in the original series, how could a thirteen year old pacifist ever really be comfortable to commit murder for any reason and we already saw various deaths on screen and heavly implied before hand. Energybending is easily comparable to a spiritual form of rape but if the process is painful why doesn't anyone ever scream or make a painful sound of any kind? Zolt didn't and Tahno seemed to just go into shock. What seems to scare benders most of all is the idea of living without their bending since Tahno sounded devastated when he told Korra that it was even after visiting "every healer in the city" he still couldn't bend. This is a form of rape which can take away something that they consider their very "Identity" is in extreme cases such as the avatar,or a pro-bending champ,or a crime boss with many bending enemies known for his primary skill, or even just a bender who only knows how to make an honest living through his bending. For them, regardless how "overeacting" some people may view it, Amon's ability to take away their bending with his own energybending is a fate worse than death, because it means he IS killing a part of who they are and they can't just "adjust and move on" after suffering something as traumatic as that.
• Personally, I compare it to having a talent. Like myself, I have a talent for drawing, i've had for it as long as I can remember. It's part of what makes me, me. I draw. Now, is it NECESSARY? is it genuinely important to my physical being? is my life completely halted if I never do it again? honestly, the answer to all of that...is no. I can do other jobs sure, and I can live a life fine without it. But ...I wouldn't be who I am today, if I didn't. If I were to have someone suddenly go...I'm not cutting off your left arm, but I am killing your ability to make pretty pictures with it! forever! Or for other examples, if you're an athlete- and you've been one for forever and suddenly it just vanished from you (but you still have all of your limbs and motor functions intact, you just suddenly can't do sports), or a mathematical prodigy who suddenly can't solve simple arithmetic. I'd be scared shitless. It's part of what I am, something that makes me unique if at the very least, to myself. I could understand having something like that happen to be a very frightening prospect indeed. Sure by OUR standards, they're superpowers...but not for THEM, no, for benders it's part of who they are, even if they're asses (in which case its deserved, but still). Remember, you can't look at something like this through our perspective in the real world, because in the world of Avatar this is something that's part of the very fabric of everything.
• The trauma of a former bender can be seen in this clip. He's clearly still trying to process the change and lost in his abilities.
• It's been stated before here, but having one's bending removed is akin to having one's talent and identity permanently altered. For example: Let's just say that there's this talented violin virtuoso. He's exceptionally skilled. He's had years of training and tutoring. He was even top of his class of some music college! But, let's just say that he gets into an accident that renders his hand completely useless. Now he can no longer play the violin.
• Also, what the OP seems to be forgetting is that bending has a spiritual component; what this means is that bending is literally tied up in a bender's being, it's an integral part of their identity and soul. Therefore, taking away someone's bending is to tear away, not something akin to a limb, but something akin to a piece of their very being. Amon isn't waving his hands and magically taking away Peter Parker's mutant ability to shoot webbing and climb walls; he's raping your soul and castrating it, and he's doing it in front of a jeering crowd who think you deserve it.
• Bending is not simply the ability to control the elements, it is the user using his spiritual power to bend them to his will(hence the name). When one's a victim of Energybending, one LITERALLY loses a piece of one's self. Look at the victims of it so far(Ozai, Lightning Bolt Zolt and Tahno). They're more than distraught, they're downright DEFEATED. They have literally had their very soul violated. This gives Energybending a much more urgent and sinister quality. I certainly can't see Aang ever doing it again. He only used it on Ozai because to him the alternative(killing Ozai) was even worse in his mind, but he can't possibly have not felt regret over it, especially since he actually made contact with Ozai's very essence when he did it. He sure as hell didn't teach it to anybody. If Amon's Energybending is legit, then him using it so casually takes on a whole other level of horrifying.
• This Troper thought of the whole conflict as basically a form of Intercision, with a person's bending (both spiritual and physical) being such an integral part of them it's essentially part of their soul. It's not like losing a limb, it's like losing a bit of who you are, a piece of your soul! Add the distinctly rape-y tones to the horror the Intercision subjects feel (remember Lyra's reaction in the first book!) and you have one utterly terrifying concept. Yikes.
• Remember that benders are born, not made. Though skill is accrued through training, the ability is innate. A bender probably knows he or she is a bender from earliest childhood. They have likely no conception whatsoever what it is like not to have the ability. To them bending is not some "superpower", it is a normal ability, and just because they can intellectual know that others do not have that ability, it doesn't mean necessarily that emotionally they wouldn't be terrified of losing it themselves. Some of them would very likely view it as a form of mutilation, others would certainly experience it like being crippled. For still others it might be a milder form of fear, the like fear of a world-class sprinter or athlete might have of an injury that prevents them from competing in their specialty anymore, even if otherwise they are still able to function normally (imagine what Peyton Manning might have been feeling in the early phases of his neck injury), and still others might not be all that afraid of losing their bending. It is enough for Amon's purposes that some benders are terrified of losing their bending. It doesn't have to be all.
• A lot of arguments are made that bending can't be equated to losing a sense like eyesight. Well, I couldn't disagree more. Bending isn't just an ability, it's also a sense, in fact, it's more sense than ability. I think the most obvious example is earthbenders... look at Toph, she 'senses' the earth, its vibrations, etc, and use their chi to influence it. Firebenders sense the sun's energy, on a metaphysical level, and use it to ignite their chi and ampligy and direct it. Waterbenders sense the tidal forces of the moon, and use it to help their chi thusly push and pull water. I'm not sure about airbenders, but a smiliar case could probably be made. Sure, it may not be a 'vital' sense, but we can't say that, none of us having them... but even if that is the case, suddenly being cut off from it would be a pretty scary thing... if more for the fact that they don't know what's it's like not to have these senses, and never have not known... if someone had ESP and was told that they were an oppressive monster and a freak, and that someone was going to take away that sense and ability from them, while a crows leered at the painful and humiliating process of it, that person would be terrified. Just because we aren't special and can't sympathize with the benders doesn't mean we can't empathize for what's clearly a violation of civil rights.
• How has no one brought up yet that taking away someone's bending is downright impossible? So far everyone's compared it to you losing your eyesight/talent/whatever or having someone break your fingers/chop off your legs. These people aren't just losing their bending though. Amon takes their bending away. Imagine if someone had the power to steal your eyesight. How does that even work? You don't lose your eyes in an accident, or get blinded by acid or a crippling disease, you have someone actively take away your vision through some spiritual process you don't even understand that is physically impossible. Absolutely no one other than the Avatar has shown to have an ability like this, and even then, there's only one real incident of something like this happening, which required the full power of the Avatar State. Now all of a sudden this completely normal man shows up with the ability to do the impossible: take away someone's bending. Even without the aftermath and feelings of the victim to take into consideration, most people's reactions to having their bending taken away would at some point require them to ponder just HOW this is even possible. And now that Equalists are beginning to develop technology that makes them superior to these now defenseless former-benders, becoming one of Amon's victims must be the most terrifying experience anyone in the Avatar world could possibly face.
  • Well... duh, that's kind of the point? That's why so many people wonder if it's the real deal. That's why Tenzin says that only Aang had that ability. It's a big part of the mystery surrounding Amon.
  • The first thing Tenzin says on hearing about it is, "But that's impossible!" But, apparently, it's happening repeatedly, and by all appearances is genuine. So it's clearly not impossible. Why would you expect people to keep going, "But that's impossible!" when they can and do see the evidence for it right in front of them on several occasions?
    • The point being made here was that we've made lots of arguments for why benders are afraid of having their bending away, but even if losing your bending wasn't that big a deal, the fact that someone is able to take their bending away using a method that up until now has been completely impossible but is still happening somehow, that alone should be more than enough reason for benders to fear losing their bending. Imagine what other "impossible" things Amon could be capable of.
• It's also possible to view losing bending similar to a person with an IQ of 130 getting knocked down to 100. Sure, you'd still be 'normal'...but it wouldn't be normal for you. You'd have lost something integral to your life and your identity, something that made your life better and let you have a greater impact on the world.
• First, it's a part of you. You are raised with it. Your techniques rely on it. Your philosophy is probably built on it. How you use it makes you you. Would you want it taken from you? Would you want this special quality that makes you different or unique ripped away from you? Would you want the people taking it away from you to be telling you that you deserve it?
  • Second, they are not just taking your you-ness but your soul. They have to reach into your mind, overpower your will, and dig it out. Reaching deep, very deep. Forcefully, inflicting much emotional and psychological pain.
  • Third, it would be used to establish your way of life. And then you have it ripped from you. Work directing lightning for a factory? Not any more! Mining for a living? Not any more! Healing the sick, injured, and abused? Not any more! And these are the obvious ones. Artisans would be more hard-pressed.
  • Fourth, the power is impossible so how could it be happening to you? Imagine that Superman crashed into your house, stared you in the eyes, blasted your hands off with his heat-beams, and spit in your face. Would you sleep at night, knowing that you are not safe. If he really wanted, Superman could kill you. But he's having his fun watching you suffer instead. But then you get boring so he crashes in while you are asleep and flattens your head like a pancake or smashes it like a pumpkin.
  • Fifth, from that...The only form of protection you had is now gone! Your family is doomed. You, who protected them, cannot protect them any more. Sure, you may have martial arts skills but they were to supplement the bending and your natural weaknesses were covered by the bending. You could be a safe distance away, giving more freedom and safety but now you need to go in close. Oh, and they can get weapons that can knock you out and even kill you so you don't want to get close on the chance that they have such a weapon. And these are just the basics of why losing one's bending is a 'fate worse than death' if not an actual death sentence.
    • If not being a bender is a death sentence for you and everyone you love its really hard to see Amon as the bad guy anymore...
      • It's not just being a non-bender, it's becoming a non-bender. Non-benders know how to survive without bending but benders don't. Someone who's born blind (think Toph) knows how to get around that, but someone who lived their whole lives relying on their sight then suddenly losing it would be totally lost.

The whole ultra fast progress

Yeah, I know, just a show, I should relax, but still, it have been what, around 50-60 years and they managed to go from ancient history with touches of steam punk to the 1920's. It stretches the willing suspension of disbelief a little, even with benders being a big factor on making the changes go faster. And not only there were incredibly fast improvements in the tech, but the societal and cultural changes were mind blowing for such short amount of time.

• Which isn't that different from the real world. The potential was there. An era of peace brought the means to capitalize on it.
• We went from 185X to 192X in Far East Wuxialand. Sounds about right.
• you're giving humans way less credit than we deserve, especially when you notice how much we've done in just 40 years. The reason the world hadn't changed sooner is a result of the strict divisions between nations. How slow would our development go if our own countries never interacted with each other?
• They had tanks, submarines, bombs, airships, trucks, a monorail, a GIANT FUCKING DRILL, elevators, and even jet skis in ATLA. The Fire Nation brought on a century-long war that kept most of the world in an industrial stasis, while they continued to innovate. The only area outside of the FN with technology like this, without the help of the Mechanist? Ba Sing Se. That is to say, the society that kept itself completely cut off from the rest of the earth kingdom, thanks to the influence of Long Feng, and presumably, the naivete or selfishness of the previous earth kings. The amount of evolution that the Avatar society went under makes perfect sense, after the war ended and Aang and Zuko presumably did *not* allow the machinery to be kept by only the elite of BSS and the militaries.
• Look at our history within the last 100 years. 1912, we were just beginning to grapple with motorcars, airplanes, and long-distance communications. All it takes is the right spark, and the right people together to send civilization full steam ahead.
• Also they have a massive collection of people who can manipulate elements, it's shown that some lightning benders generate power, so tht is free energy. Which means they don't need to bring in as much resources just to keep the technology going. Normal firebenders can simply boil water, and water benders condense it providing vastly more energy. So effectively they can use all thier resources on production, rather then fuel.

Changes in bending; Secret lightning? What's that?

Going back 60 years lightning bending was a secret ultra dangerous tech. Only Ozai and Azula were shown to consistently being able to use it. Come present day, oh, well, even a random crime boss can do it. In fact they use whole rows of lightning benders in the power plant to generate the city's electricity. Did they discovered a cheap and safe way to do it that don't risk instant death if they don't channel it correctly or something?

• Lightning isn't dangerous, it's difficult. You're thinking of lightning redirection, which can be fatal if done wrong.
• I don't think lightning was ever implied to be a secret technique.
  • It was. Only three people were confirmed to be capable of it in The Last Airbender. However, nothing stays secret forever, and it only takes one teacher to let masses learn the technique.
• Alternatively, maybe it was once illegal or taboo for anyone to generate lightning except the royal family. Before Iroh developed his secret redirection technique, lightning was a guaranteed one-shot kill ability. If there's no prohibition on non-royals using lightning in Agni Kais -- and while admittedly Azula wasn't in her right mind while battling her brother, Zuko himself was counting on her blasting him with lightning -- then what's to stop some ambitious quick-drawing admiral from KOing the Fire Lord in a duel using lightning if not some legal or social restriction? Before, lightning could be excused as just a really difficult technique that only top-tier benders could do, but now we know it's not. It's in fact common enough that Mako can get hired off the street to do some work at the power plan for a decent but not outrageous wage. So a legal/social restriction makes more sense pre-LoK, and by LoK's time those restrictions don't exist anymore for whatever reason. Like the United Republic having different laws and morals, or Iroh's redirection technique diminishing lightning's lethal potential, or just simple practicality in an age where electricity is widely used.
• Zuko co-founded Republic city and the influence of fire nation technology is rampant. His expertise in lightning as well as his more peaceful mindset as well access to minds like Sokka would have gone a long way into finding more appropriate uses for it, giving civilians a reason to learn it. It's connected to the change from spiritual to scientific. Lighting as a rare art to a source of energy.
• Just look at metalbending in comparison: it goes from exactly one user to an entire police force's worth in the same time period. Lightning is an already established subset of firebending; if metalbending can become that commonplace, so can lightning.
  • Especially considering that more people would have incentive to learn the ability as it became more needed. The power plants pay firebenders to shoot lightning into generators, and according to Mako, it's good money.
• Think of it like basic algebra in the real world. As a society advances and the free exchange of information becomes easier, arts that used to be limited to a select few become more common place.
• Whether or not lightning bending was ever a "secret" isn't really an issue. But... wasn't it previously implied to be so freaking difficult that it automatically signified a degree of mastery that the overwhelming majority of fire benders would never attain? If so, that it's now so easy to pick up as to be used by factory workers is a problem. The situation with metal bending is rather different, in that while the technique may have taken centuries to discover, there was never any implication that it would be particularly hard for Toph to pass on.
  • Things thought to be difficult once are not always necessarily so. Lightning, as it was taught in the Fire Nation before, came from the "wrong" teachings of using anger as strength. If the technique was refined and taught the Sun Warrior way, it would doubtless be easier to achieve the state of mind necessary to do it.
  • Things that used to be impossibly difficult became everyday matters as the society and technology developed. Once knowing how to read was practically a superpower, but now everybody is taught how to do it. It's only a matter of more focused, standardized education that allowed masters to teach large numbers of pupils for the first time, also without the traditional habit of keeping some techniques secret. And those pupils go on to teach even more people, and before you know it, what was once a secret, ultra-rare technique is available for everybody.
  • Another possibility is that NOT all firebenders can master lightning, but the teachings are there or available to the general public. Remember, in ATLA, Zuko had access to the way the technique was performed too, but was unable to control his own emotions enough to actually shoot lightning. This could be the case for regular citizens "now" as well--they might understand the theory but can't do it in practice. Mako says his job at the plant makes 'good money.' Presumably it makes good money because it's a difficult skill that not everybody CAN do, which means they'd pay extra to find firebenders skilled enough to supply electricity. Not at all unlike modern-day jobs that give employees with more experience bigger paychecks.
• One of the reasons why Lightning Bending was rare in ATLA was because the teaching of it was restricted. It was basically a secret taught only to the Fire Nation Royal Family, and jealously guarded. But at the end of ATLA, what happens? One of the world's greatest masters of Lightning Bending moves to the Earth Kingdom and sets up a tea shop in the capital city, and the taboo against teaching the technique widely probably falling by the wayside as a result of Zuko's reign (and the possibility that Iroh may well have simply decided to ignore such a taboo), and the prevalence of Lightning Bending by Korra's time would easily have been the natural consequence of Iroh deciding to freely teach it in a years immediately after the end of ATLA.

Mako and Bolin's apartment.

They are supposed to be poor, and barely make the ends meet. So how on earth do they afford the bachelor pad of dreams with huge open space, high roof and the best view in the city? Few people even from upper middle-class background could afford anything like that in Real Life, especially in a city like New York, which the Republic City remembers. Makes you think that they could move to more modest lodgings and actually get themselves decent savings in a few months.

• It was stated in Episode 2 that they live in the attic of the bending arena, doing odd jobs in exchange for living there. I'm not completely sure what rent was taken out of their winnings, but Toza (the man who threatened to turn Korra over to security) is their "landlord". It is a pretty sweet crib, though.
• However nice it looks at a glance, it isn't that good. Look at it objectively. It's just an attic. There aren't even any beds up there. They have to sleep somewhere else or on the couch. They have to be using the on-site facilities because there sure aren't any in that room. It has a heater, which is nice, but that room has to have shitty insulation. It must be cold as hell at night.
  • Indoor facilities weren't really a thing in the early 20th century even for majority of the citydwellers. Hygiene was a real issue until the 1960's or so. I'd expect things to be similar in the Republic City, though plumbing is unlikely to be featured in the show. I expect that the brothers have futons tucked somewhere for sleeping. But seriously, the space and the view alone would make it worthwhile to renovate the place to a proper apartment and rent it at top prices.
    • But even with a nice view, I doubt a lot of people would want to live inside the attic of a pro-bending arena. It would constantly be loud, not to mention all those bright lights might be annoying.
• They're staying at the Republic City version of a room at the YMCA. Not sure what the big deal is.

Bullying A Dragon

• Okay, so once again, there's that "We hate the people with superpowers!" plot going on. Now, I understand the concerns of the non-Benders, and I get that not every Bender is a good-hearted soul who won't abuse it, but here is my issue: With all the "Let's permanently block their ability to bend!" talk, you'd think that someone would say, "Hey, uh...let's not give them a good reason to hate us!" Especially if said person is the AVATAR (aka, the one who could turn Republic City into a smoldering wasteland if he/she so chose.) Are they just asking for Korra to find a reason to go apecrap on them and the city in general? Plus, don't they remember Aang? The previous Avatar who saved their collective asses from the Fire Nation? If they know she's the new Avatar (and likely the reincarnation of Aang) why are they pissing her off? Are they just trying to get her angry enough to go apeshit and Avatar-State the crap out of them and the city in general?
  • If i were an Anti-Bender? That is EXACTLY what i'd want. The Avatar using her godlike powers to slaughter a bunch of people? that's exactly the kind of press that proves every single thing that Amon is spewing. Martyrs make for good press. I'm willing to bet that this will be a plot point in future episodes, especially if Amon is smart enough to organize a situation wherein Korra goes Apeshit on some peaceful protesters.
  • A large part of the Equalist's rhetoric seems to be that people shouldn't have to live in fear of offending a Bender just because of what that Bender might do in retaliation. Amon's story paints a nice little picture of this, with his family being oppressed by a Bender, and then them all being killed when his father tries standing up to said Bender. The people of the city suffering under the gangs aren't going to think "Gee, let's try to be as inoffensive as possible and maybe they'll leave us alone", because they know that there is no possible way that that could ever work. With the way he presents it, Amon's power seems like it's a perfect 'solution' to the problem of Bending; i.e. "Standing up to the Benders will just get us killed, but this guy can take away their Bending, and so we'll have nothing to fear from them anymore".
  • And about Aang having saved them from the Fire Nation, the Equalist view is that a war wouldn't even HAPPEN if Fire Benders didn't exist to begin with, so the Avatar saving their asses would be unnecessary. It's a flawed point of view, sure, but one can see it working as propaganda.

Practicality of Amon's ability on a large scale

• Amon can de-power three benders in about as many minutes, and that's impressive, but there are millions upon millions of benders in the world. Amon is one man. Are the Equalists planning on rounding up the benders up gulag style, straping them to an assembly line, and carting them past Amon one at a time 24/7 so he can de-bend them?
  • He'll find out a way, and likely that involves teaching others how to de-bend people.
  • If he doesn't do that to start, even one or two select kidnappings or assassin-style infiltrations into prominent bender's homes to depower them would be a good kickoff to instilling terror in the bender populace and destabilizing government, generally.
  • Not to mention, there's no reason to believe he won't start encouraging his followers to round up and simply kill benders.
  • In all honesty, Amon depowering Benders one-by-one doesn't seem so outlandish, even if we assume that he can't teach Energybending or whatever process he uses to other people. Keep in mind that the reason it took him as long as it did to depower those gang members was because he gave them the chance to fight to keep their bending, presumably to make a more impressive demonstration of his power to the audience. If he stopped bothering with the fighting and just kept them tied up and possibly chi-blocked as well, he could probably disable three, four, maybe five people per minute. Having his followers line Benders up like cattle to the slaughter and then depowering them, one-by-one, would be time-consuming, yes, but its also dramatic and cruel, which seems to fit his character perfectly. On top of that, even if it would likely take years to fully enact, Amon seems willing to do whatever it takes. In short, yes, it would take a long time, but is it beyond reason, given Amon's characterization thus far? No.
    • But he only let Lightning Bolt Zolt fight to keep his bending. Bolin and the other benders weren't afforded that opportunity and just shoved in front of Amon after being untied so that he could take away their bending. It's clear from how long it took him to take away their bending that de-bending takes some time, but the point still stands. It would just take way longer.
      • Being untied and shoved in front of Amon = being giving the opportunity to fight (in the Equalists' minds, anyway). I think we saw some others try to fight him. Bolin was too scared.
  • Maybe his solution doesn't involve de-bending at all. However, there is no evidence (yet) that he's THAT evil.

Korra kind of sucks at fighting and so do Mako and Bolin

• A big has been made of how fast Korra has learned to bend the elements, how she takes problems head on as opposed to Aang and how she loves to fight. She's supposed to be a prodigy at the physical and martial sides of her duties... Yet so far I am seriously unimpressed. Not going all out against the cops in the first episode I can understand. But in the second her performance in the pro-bending match was woeful considering she was using her own element and wasn't fighting against master benders or greater odds. The third episode was even worse: Korra gets her butt kicked one on one by a lone chi-bender who handles her easily and only doesn't capture her for Amon because Nagga saved her. In the forth coming episode in looks like she gets whooped by Amon himself this time. I know he's the big bad and all but Aang never really struggled with Zuko and he was able to fight Azula at least equally from the start. Korra's performance in bending outside of the first episode has been pretty pathetic. The same applies to Mako and exspecially Bolin. Compared to Zuko and Toph their abilities are anemic at best. The way that stun-prod dude handled them was a total curb stomping. I really don't see Aang suffering these kinds of beatdowns.
  • Korra is a "prodigy" because her bending is powerful, but as has been sad, she lacks control, doesn't worry about strategy (leaving that up to others), and has trouble with the spiritual side of bending. Also, pro-bending isn't really fighting, it's a sport. The goal isn't to defeat your opponent with all your power, it's to defeat them by the rules (and yes, Mike and Bryan did make rules for it). As for the chi blockers, Korra was trained all her life to fight benders, with both her and her opponents being able to use their abilities until one of them (she) overpowers the other. But with chi blockers take away her only means of fighting, and have likely been trained for a long time in the ways of how to fight benders and render them powerless. Later, when she's aware of their abilities, she's much more competent.
  • Added to this, Korra's been trained in old-style bending, by sparring with old-style benders. She's never been in a real combat situation, and she's not at all used to the fighting styles that seem to be prevalent in Republic City. Remember Bolin's advice to her in the second episode--she has good power, but she's a sitting duck because she's using old-style Earthbending.
    As for electro-prod guy, you've got a trained, capable assassin taking on a couple of sports jocks. It shouldn't be at all surprising that he kicks their asses.
  • I'd also like to add something I noticed about Bending. With one or two exceptions I've seen, Bending is almost always ranged attacks. Once someone gets close, you're kinda screwed. I'd liken it to someone with a knife having an extreme advantage on someone with a gun if and only if they manage to close the distance before the gun goes off, and that's pretty much what the Chi-Blockers did. There's also the fact that Chi Blockers don't just take bending away, they also temporarily restrict movement. So, when you add all of it up: Korra isn't trained to Fight Chi Blockers. The Chi Blockers have a great advantage in close quarters. if they even manage to hit you, you're mobility promptly becomes shit so you can't fight conventionally. All things considered, Korra and Mako can count themselves lucky they didn't die in that fight.
  • Also, Aang didn't like to fight. He avoided conflict whenever possible, preferring to talk/work things out without the violence. This showed that you didn't have to beat the everloving crap out of someone in order to resolve conflict, which is often the stronger/most moral thing to do, even in real life. Korra doesn't get that. As stated above, she uses brute force...er, bending...in order to solve everything. This, as in real life, is not the best problem solving method and can even make things worse between the parties. Once she gets peaceful negotiating, her fighting (when all else fails) will be even more badass.
  • They've all been Worfed. During the first fight with the chi-blockers, Korra matched her opponent in speed until he (she? Friggin' masks) needed to block her chi. Then, she makes a big swinging motion with her arm that gets dodged (still reasonable, at this point). Then, she doesn't follow it up. She just holds her fist in the air like an attacker in an American Kenpo technique line, while Mook A put half of a dozen hits on her arm. The worst part though is when the mook attacks her leg. In order to do so, he dodges another attack from Korra, then bends over and starts chain-punching. Consider the position. He is kneeling, eyes on a low target (which is to say, head bowed), throwing strikes that don't have a whole lot of force behind them. Korra doesn't need to be a fighting prodigy to turn and drop the hammer on him. Given the skill she showed against that giant with the wrench later in the same episode, this is a bit unbelievable. With the chi-blockers, Bryke wanted to introduce them as a terrifying enemy, not unlike how they introduced Ozai's Angels in the original. Korra will catch up.
  • I don't think the Chi Blocking techniques are supposed to be happening in real time like that. More likely, time slowed down for our benefit while the chi blockers did their thing. Korra isn't actually just standing there, it's artistic license so we can see what's happening.
  • You're forgetting that this is the first time Korra encounters Chi Blockers. As in, she didn't even know they existed. She's just discovered there's people agile enough not only to counter her bending but also to disable it? I'm actually surprised she didn't freak out. And remember that even the Gaang had problems with Ty Lee the first time they encountered her. I'm sure she'll get better with time. As for Mako And Bolin, I think that's precisely the point, to remark how different they are to the previous generation. They are not supposed to be expies, nor personality or power wise. They aren't the Fire Prince or a girl who learnt her moves from the original benders and can feel the vibrations of the earth. They are just two street urchins who have tried to make their best with whatever they've got. I think it's pretty unfair and pointless to compare them to Zuko and Toph. They're just different.
  • This is nothing new, it pretty much sums up what the previous poster said. When fighting someone you ideally want to be too far outside their range or too far inside their reach for them to hit you which works as the advantage of the Chi-Blockers; Bending only seems effective at a range since if you attack an enemy who's too close you might deal damage to yourself. Chi-blockers, we've seen, are very fast and would probably be able to get inside the radius where bending would be disadvantageous to the Bender with minimal damage. Under regular circumstances this wouldn't be a problem since benders seem to prefer to stand at a distance and open fire and Non-Benders are too afraid to attack them they would never have been taught to fight an opponent at close range.
    • I don't think that Mako or Korra sucking holds water, but I will not say the same about Bolin. Surely this pro-bending episode helped, but this is also a modern and less-powerful form of bending compared to traditional, and even then he has proven to be a Butt Monkey quite akin to at least one James Bondage situation. Outside that one duel where he got to show his skill, Bolin really hasn't stepped up to the plate like his brother has save as a comic relief. What possible advantage does he add to Team Korra?
    • This MAY be deliberate. This Troper is under the impression that Bolin is supposed to be more childish and delicate than the Avatar and his brother. Not to mention, who was the Earthbender we saw the most in the original series? Toph. Since we are used to one of the best Earthbenders of all times, that invented her own fighting style, he seems even weaker. Hopefully Character Development will mend this.
  • It's not that they "suck" its that they're not used to real fighting. All of these characters are children of peacetime and they aren't trained to beat people in really, desperate, life-or-death combat. They're also fighting completely different enemies than the Gaang was. The Fire Nation army was made of normal soldiers or firebenders all with little to no experience with fighting benders. The chi-blockers are using a style designed to defeat benders and have tons of exposure to benders.
    • I support this in particular. The circumstances as they're presented this time around are vastly different in comparison to those presented to the Gaang. With the exception of a scant few (most prominently Ty Lee, Mai, and Jet) they fought benders (be it general mooks or the occasional elite force) almost exclusively, and they got to fight without the worry of watching for collateral damage; not to mention that Aang specifically had the advantage of being the sole master of a bending art no one had seen since the Air Nomad Genocide. And of course, considering it was wartime, they were prepared to kill if it came to it. As noted, Korra and her boys are stuck in a revolution during postwar peacetime, in a place chock full of civilians with loads of opportunity for collateral; and their primary opponents have been tailor made to fight them. If you single each one out even; Korra herself could probably handle herself decently well if she had a chance to really let loose (which is unlikely in this situation) but even then chi-blockers are something she was totally unfamiliar with, while Mako and Bolin although skilled benders- it's important to remember that they're skilled athletic benders not combat/warrior benders they both have options they could use but seemingly forget to and fight like they would in the ring (take Mako for example, he can throw lightning; and he never once considers to use it). No no, they don't suck, they're just ill prepared, for now.
  • It's not that Korra and her friends suck at fighting; it's that the bad guys don't, which is almost unheard of in fiction. The story takes place on a smaller scale, with fewer Mooks. If they were just as inept as the rank-and-file Fire Nation soldiers in the original series, there wouldn't be much tension, would there?

Does anyone else think that Amon's a hypocrite?

• He's the leader of the anti-bending faction, and yet he can energybend. Energybending is a form of bending...Hitler expy much? Once some mook figures it out, what will happen to him? Will they just ignore it or will there be a faction in a faction? It's definitely something to think about.
  • The badguy might be hypocritical? Gasp and alarm.
  • If it is energybending, then he is a hypocrite, but then we can't be sure it actually is. Only the Avatar should be able to do it. There's more to Amon than what we've seen. We need more answers to make a proper assessment.
    • There's nothing to indicate that only the Avatar can energybend. The ability was given to him by a Lion Turtle, who implied that people in the distant past had the ability.
    • Actually, the Lion Turtle flat out states energybending predates the Avatar circle, and the other four forms of bending. So Tenzin saying only the Avatar could do it was most certainly a misconception based on the fact the only KNOWN energybender ever (since there seems to be no recorded history from the times before the Avatar) was Aang.
  • I imagine he and his followers have an "ends justify the means" type of thing. They don't see themselves as hypocrites because they feel that unlike the water, earth, and fire benders, that they aren't abusing the power. But, yeah, that still makes them hypocrites, assuming that he even considers his ability a form of bending.
  • It's clear that what Amon and the Equalists are actually against is not bending, but benders abusing their powers to rule over and terrorize the common people, i.e. non-benders. However, they don't seem to think this problem can be solved by trying to get rid of the bad apples among benders, probably because they feel every bender has the potential to be corrupted by his power. Since all energybending can do is take away one's bending, it cannot be used to rule over non-benders, so Amon isn't actually hypocritical.
  • Whether Amon is hypocritical or not is yet to be seen. The Equalists definately believe that Bending itself is a bad thing that destroys the balance of the world and causes wars and discrimination, which is why it has to be removed from the equation to create true equality, but they don't seem to have established attitude towards the almost unknown Energybending. It's possible that Amon considers Energybending to be the true, "pure" form of Bending, a primal, uncorrupt state from which the "lesser" forms of Bending originate. If this is the case, then he wouldn't see himself as a hypocrite, but we still don't know enough to determine what his actual beliefs and motivations are.
  • It's not necessarily hypocritical. Just because we define it as a form of "Bending" doesn't mean that he has to (like the Vegetarians that eat fish, for example, don't view it as hypocrisy, but an exception with a reason.)But really, this is just a technicality. Energybending can't be used as an advantage over non-benders. If only Energybenders were left, there would still be equality.
  • It's worth to note that Amon might not be aware that energybending is a form of bending. After all, only four types - if not three, depending on how well known airbenders are - of bending are known, and whoever gives energybending can easily lie about it's nature, so...
    • I second the above and whether he's energybending or not (I actually vote not with the limited info we have) It should be noted that apparently in the original notes Bryke did for the series that I think appear in some back story book about the series' creation Bryke hadn't worked out exactly how Aang was going to resolve the Ozai conflict without killing him and used the placeholder of "A skill that only the Avatar could use." This likely belongs in WMG but I always thought that the reason the Avatar was the only one left who could energybend was because he was the only one who could actually recognize the lack of separation between the bending arts and meld the knowledge back into Energybending.
• Most likely neither Amon nor his followers consider it bending, and if you remember, so far nobody has called it that. Amon, and everyone else, simply refer to it as "the ability to take bending away", and Amon claims to have learned it from a spirit, much like Aang learned it from the lion-turtle. It's entirely possible that whatever spirit taught him didn't refer to it as bending, and may not have even told him what it really WAS at all, just taught him how to take someone's bending away with it. And yes, Amon is a hypocrite, because energybending is not inherent to the Avatar and can potentially be learned by anybody. But who has Amon taught? Nobody. Why? Because then he'd have to share his super-special anti-bender power. Just like every Communist dictator, Amon's all for equal so long as he's the most "equal" of them all.
• Amon isn't a hypocrite at all. His problem is with benders using their powers to control and harm others, particularly non-benders, not with bending as a concept. Energybending can't be used to hurt non-benders that we know of and he has been very deliberate in only debending people who he could reasonably assume were causing serious harm with their powers. There's no indication that everyone can learn energybending either, Tenzin was shocked when he heard that someone other than an Avatar was using it and Aang doesn't seem to have taught anyone to do it (unless Amon learned from Aang).
  • For one, if you were listening to the lion-turtle's explanation in the first series, energybending can absolutely be used on and by non-benders, since it predates all other forms of bending. It's just that for some reason the knowledge was lost (which is a whole other WMG); Aang being the Avatar wasn't what let him learn it, it was the fact that his teacher was a being ancient enough to even know about it in the first place. Secondly, it can most definitely be used to hurt non-benders, since "energybending" actually isn't the most appropriate term for what it does; "spiritbending", I think, is more accurate, since you're basically using your own spirit to bend someone else's. What Aang did to Ozai, and what Amon's doing to benders (assuming his ability is not something totally new) is using spiritbending to alter their spirit in such a way that they lose whatever qualities of their spirit allows them to bend, so it could very likely be used for other things (very terrifying, Fridge Horror kinds of things, actually). In fact, it pretty much HAS to do something aside from take away bending, since again, it predates bending. And finally, we have very little solid evidence of any of Amon's inner workings or true motivations. While he might genuinely believe in what's he's preaching, it could go either way; he could very well be targeting criminals and abusers of their bending for the simple fact that it's good publicity and he gets to portray himself as the hero, instead of a would-be dictator using anti-bending sentiment for his own gain (it certainly wouldn't be the first time someone used a despised scapegoat to seize power).

Why doesn't anyone learn some sort of defense against the chi-blockers?

• In the original series we had one person use this technique on a few people, two of whom had never had professional training (Katara and Toph) and one (Azula) who she took completely by surprise. Maybe there is no defense, but that ought to be said. Maybe this will be adressed, and some sort of defense can be constructed.
  • There is no defense. Pressure points can't be moved, nor can the effects of hitting them changed. The Metalbenders should be immune thanks to their armor, though, since the force of the blows won't get through properly.
    • It should be possible to develop a style specifically to avoid being hit. A master air or water bender would probably be very difficult to stop with chi-blocking if they knew what they were getting into.
    • Not getting hit isn't much of a style. The trick is fighting back without being being hit.
    • "Not getting hit isn't much of a style"? Isn't that a big part of what Airbending is all about? Remember the training with the swiveling gates? Aang certainly was good at avoiding getting hit in the original series (and Ty Lee never managed to chi-block him). And it fits thematically, seeing as Korra is still struggling with attempts to learn Airbending now.
    • As I said, not getting hit, in itself, is not much of a style. You need to be able to fight back. Aang never fought Ty Lee up close, and chi-benders are all about close combat. Just dodging isn't going to help unless Korra can do damage at range, too.
    • "Not getting hit" is a pretty good summary of the airbending style as a whole, actually. Airbending does not have any purely offensive moves.
• It should be said that the original does showcase how to fight chi-blockers...by relying on hand to hand combat. This was best displayed by Suki in The Boiling Rock finale. The trick here Is that most of the benders we've been shown seemingly either aren't versed in it (like Katara previously) or are capable but aren't quite good enough (Korra herself in this case; who is a capable close quarters figher but doesn't quite measure up).
• Chief Beifong comments in And The Winner Is..., that metalbender's armor blocks chi blocking, as justification for why they should defend against them, and they seem to be the only one with a solid defense.
  • Which led to a bit of Fridge Brilliance: The metal armor protects them from The Equalists' chi-blocking... but makes them doubly-vulnerable to The Equalists' shock weapons.
    • Which could theoretically be solved by making the armor as such that it forms a Faraday cage for the wearer. Or if the counter intuitive physics are a bit too much, have them use some non conductive padding underneath.
  • Related to the above: Why doesn't someone simply develop close fitting ceramic armor? Ceramics are generally lighter than metal so it wouldn't be too heavy, they're completely non-conductive so electricity is out and given the presence and abilities of earthbenders shaping and mass manufacturing the armor would be incredibly easy. A single solid plate for the chest and back and segmented plates for the sides of the chest, legs and arms would basically render a person immune to chi blockers. Slap a decent helmet on there and a bender could basically tank anything the average equalist could throw out. It wouldn't even have to be large, say a quarter inch thick. Just strong enough to deflect a single person's blows. With that in mind it could even be worn under clothes as a nasty surprise to any chiblockers. It would be pretty funny to see them do the whole elaborate series of punches only to have the person step back completely unfazed.
    • Aren't really durable ceramics a fairly recent invention? With all the acrobatics involved in bending simple pottery would break.
    • The composite ceramics used in things like tank armor and semi conductors are fairly new, yes. But silicon carbide, the stuff they make the plates in bulletproof vests out of, has been mass produced since the early 1890's. And all of this isn't accounting for cermets (Ceramics mixed with metals). There are many examples of those that are nonconductive, flexible, light and strong as well.

Why don't non-benders learn chi-blocing?

• And for that matter if the metal-bending police force is a special force for benders stopping thier ability would be a uch better idea. But if a substantial number of people learn to stop benders from abusing thier powers for a short term, and then can report them to the police, I would think that would address the problem, without interfering with the society's infastructure.
  • Why doesn't every real life person learn karate to stop muggers, or carry a gun for that matter? You should be able to see where this logic leads.
    • Having lived in a place where there was a firearm of some kind in almost every house, open carry was legal without a permit and CC Ws were issued to anyone who wasn't a convicted felon, and having personally trained in the martial arts, something that convinced me everyone should do it, I'm having trouble seeing the negative implications here. I'm kind of bothered that the non-benders in this show jumped from living in fear of the triads who abuse their power, to supporting a violent revolutionary who wants to rid the world of bending altogether. You would think someone would have simply said, in regards to the triads, " I don't want this to continue. Do you guys want this to continue? That's what I thought. Let's work something out." Then, get armed and organized.
    • You do realize that's exactly what the Equalists have done, and that it is emphatically a bad thing? There's a reason governments hire and train personnel to defend the public. The Equalists formed in response to exactly that sort of problem, but demonstrate how it, very easily, escalates to something worse.
    • Yeah, because this is how all organized crime fell in Real Life, right? Lets face it, in reality citizen militias have rarely solved any problems, at best keeping old ones from escalating further.
    • There's also the fact that even if armed militias and vigilantes are able to defeat their enemies, they have often by that point turned into the very thing they were trying to destroy.
  • Assuming the Equalist narrative about Republic City is true their membership (though obviously not all non-benders) is severely impoverished. The old, sick, starving, emotionally destroyed, and crippled don't make much of an army against people who can punch you across a football field. The limited pool of potential fighters ones would constantly be trying to make ends meet, leaving little time or energy to learn martial arts.
    • The task force bust in "A Voice in the Night" seems to imply that it may be illegal to learn chi-blocking in Republic City. (Of course, it could also just be that Tarlokk was overstepping his bounds in ordering the raid.)
    • The bust isn't about chi-blocking being illegal, it's about shutting down a training camp for insurgents who have publicly declared war on part of the population. It's not what they're teaching, it's why.
    • But it still sends a very violent and agressive message to non-benders; you are not allowed to defend yourself. Since non-bending methods of fighting seem to be rare and slightly elite, chi-blocking is probably the only option for non-benders who want protection. Violently assaulting arresting people for wanting a self-defence method is bad, no matter the intent. It just tells non-benders that Amon was right and the Council doesn't want them to fight back.
    • No, it sends the message that if you want to take the risk of training with the wanted criminals, you get what you deserve. Now, if they were shutting down a dojo that is being run with city approval, it'd be an entirely different story. This training area was meant to be a secret and is explicitly training soldiers. The only message it sends is that the city won't tolerate a growing revolutionary presence in its midst.
    • So? You are still illegalizing the only really effective method for non-benders to defend themselves (And there is absolutely no indication the government of Republic City allows dojo's to teach it), by doing so you are saying that Amon is right to oppose the city government as they are directly stopping attempts by non-benders to defend themselves.
    • There's no indication that it is illegal to be taught. The chi-blockers obviously learned from someone before they turned violent. I don't understand how you keep failing to grasp a simple concept. This is a training camp for insurgents. What part of that are you not understanding? It's not "free chi-blocking classes", it's "help overthrow the bending establishment." Would you join a terrorist group for shooting lessons, then act offended when you got arrested? Of course not, that'd be your own damn fault. If they want to defend themselves, they can take a class from people who haven't waged war on an entire section of the population. Seriously, stop trying to act like it's the material being targeted. It is nothing of the sort. It is the people doing the teaching and why that is under fire, and nothing more than that.
    • Amon's people are the only ones who teach chi-blocking (that we know of) and its hard to believe that any group teaching chi-blocking wouldn't be immediately grouped with them as a result. My real question is when it started being legal to take down Equalist cells, their advocate in the first episode didn't seem to worry about getting arrested.
    • Freedom of speech is a far cry from militarization, and Amon very recently declared war on bending itself. The training camp was training recruits for battle. The protestor is just talking.
    • The Equalists can argue, accurately even, that chi-blocking is a purely defensive despite all of Amon's rhetoric about a revolution (lots of real world countries have politicians who use that kind of talk without their followers being hunted down).
    • What they claim is can be used for doesn't change what they are using it for. They've already attacked several benders. Criminals or not, they've proven their intentions to be less than noble. That kind of spin-doctoring doesn't work for revolutionaries. Politicians can only get away with it because they have the clout. Amon doesn't have that.
    • Whether any of this is correct is probably beside the point. Anyone who is at all sympathetic to the Equalist position is going to see jackbooted benders taking away their constitutional right to bear electro-sticks, and Amon will be spinning it as exactly that.
    • I was under the impression that the camp was attacked because of the amon posters, indicating them as members of the equalists, not because they were learning chi-blocking.

Why don't benders learn chi-blocking?

Given the threat posed by Equalist chi-blockers, one would think that at least some benders might decide it is a good idea to learn the skill themselves. Even if there is no direct way of nullifying the effects, knowing what chi-points are being targeted and knowing the hand-to-hand techniques used to attack those points should help benders defend themselves in combat. And then there is the potential of combining chi-blocking techniques with bending. Think about the combat potential, for benders fighting other benders, of targeting chi-points from a distance, striking them with a stone or a small piece of ice, for example. It would be a great equalizer for a skilled-but-weak bender, who cannot move large amounts of his/her element. Think how effective it would be in the hands of the metal-bending police, with their combat tentacles, when fighting the bending gangster triads. Just imagine what a blood-bender could do with knowledge of chi-blocking.

• Most Benders wouldn't know Chi-Blocking any more than any other martial art because most Benders are civilians in this day and age. As for why they don't learn Chi-Blocking, the threat of the Equalists only really came out recently so learning Chi-Blocking would require a trainer (the only ones we know of being Equalists), and the requisite time it takes to learn a martial art, which is probably a fair bit of investment of time. The Metal-Bending Police Force should definitely be taught such things, but again that will take time to find Chi-Blocking teachers who aren't with the Equalists and then train them. There might very well be Chi-Blocking benders, but they're probably not well-known enough for them to be on Republic City's payroll.

The United Republic of Nations isn't very republican

• I'm using "republican" in the way that it's used in the US Constitution "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..." For the sake of clarity, I'll add Federalist no. 10, where Madison outlines the idea of a republic as I am used to using it. As far as I can tell, the government is chosen by the original four nations, not the people of the city. It's as if Wales was jointly governed by a representative of Ireland, Scotland and England. Such a government couldn't be called republican in any sense of the word, let alone the one I was thinking of. Now, it is true that no other government has been shown, meaning it is possible that the council is only in charge of Republic City. This led me to believe that it was the only game in town, and that the council is in charge of the entire nation.
  • The US doesn't have a monopoly on the term. Seeing as how we've only seen the one city, one can hardly say the identified form of government cannot be considered a republic.
  • I think your assumption of republic being "What the US defined it as is" is a bit of an oversimplification of a form of government that has had dozens of variants amongst them oligarchies very similar to the one in show. It should also be remembered that this government was designed for a different world than the one its in right now, back when the city was founded it made complete sense to have the city intended to be a melting pot be governed by representatives of each major group in the world, unfortunately this is now pretty obsolete as Republic City has developed its own unique culture.
    • I'm wondering what Republics you're thinking of that have oligarchies similar to the one on the show? The closest things I can think of would be Florence and Venice in the Renaissance. However, given that the Florentine republic included about a thousand citizens in its census for who counted as a citizen who could participate in government (circa 1500) and the Venetian aristocracy was abnormally large (which resulted in frequent problems of aristocratic poverty) and could could be bought into, I'm not sure they should count either since there is a big difference between around a thousand people sitting in a senate and five people ruling in a council. Remember, Venice's Council of Ten answered to a much larger senate and the Doge and Florence's Eight Saints were a war time necessity (and they were tax assessors).
• I don't think we know enough about it. Or could you clarify what doesn't seem republican to you? It doesn't seem to be a monarchy, so I guess republic in the meaning of "res publica" isn't so far off.
  • Republic as a term is far older than the United States, and even today it has numerous definitions around the world. At core it simply means a nation ruled by an elected council. The election does not have to be democratic as we understand it, nor does the position of electee have to be open for everyone. Pre-Imperial Rome was a non-democratic Republic, for example. The United Republic does seem to be a democracy however, though how it functions is unknown. It seems that the representatives have to include members from the four Nations, and that Benders are overpresented compared to non-Benders. Tenzin is an influential member in spite of the near-extinction of the Air Nomads, for example.
    • Tenzin's father was one of the founders of Republic City. He's probably doing it as a legacy thing, not to represent the almost non-existent Air Nomads.
    • Except that the Council, or at least its leaders apart from Tenzin consist of representatives of Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Southern and Northern Water Tribes. It seems fairly clear that the city is lead by the representatives of the four Bending cultures, even the near-extinct Air Nomads.
• I think the source of the confusion here is that we're assuming Republic City is an independent state, which may not be the case. It's possible Republic City is a kind of "neutral ground" that all four nations have limited control over. If this is the case, the representatives that control Republic city may very well be elected...by the total populations of the nations they hail from. So it's less like Wales being governed by representatives from Ireland, Scotland, and England and more like if everyone in the United States was able to vote for the mayor and city council of New York City.
  • So Republic City is basically Washington DC. Limited home rule and all that.
  • It's more like the Shanghai-that-Was.
• Republic in its most basic sense means "state without monarchy." The council is made up entirely (I understand) by representatives of monarchies. So I honestly believe that the creators did not know what the word republic means. It is a common mistakes, I remember a couple of occasions where Jorge Luis Borges made ​​the same mistake.
  • I'm sure they know exactly what it means. It means a state not ruled by a monarchy. It doesn't mean a state without any influence from any monarchies whatsoever. Republic City is ruled, as you said, by a council--not by a monarchy. That the councilmen represent monarchies doesn't matter.
  • Also, the council isn't made up entirely of representatives of monarchies. The Air Nomads most certainly aren't a monarchy, they don't even have a state of their own, and nothing indicates Tenzin is considered to be their "king". The reason he seems to be the highest authority figure among them could simply be because he's the oldest, most experienced Airbender alive. Historically the Airbenders appear to have been ruled by councils of elders, one in each Air Temple, but we don't know what their current system is. As for the Southern Water Tribe, while they have a chief, there's no canon evidence that he's their sole leader, or that the position of the chief is inhereditary; for all we know he could be chosen by a tribe meeting, or by some other democratic process.
    • If Tenzin gets to be one of the most powerful people in the world just because he's the best Airbender that would be a real problem. Nepotism is honestly more likely.
    • Being a council person in one city makes you "one of the most powerful people in the world"? Just because the series takes place there doesn't mean it's the most important place in the world.
    • But being the world's only Master Airbender probably would make you "one of the most powerful people in the world" by default.
  • Since when does "Republic" mean a "state without monarchy"? By that definition, fascist, democratic, anarchist, and theocratic governments would be republican. A better defintion of a "republic" would be a state with a mixed constitution, incorporating elements of democracy, aristocracy, and (elected) monarchy. By this definition, we could include Rome, Florence, Venice, and the US. France might be harder to fit, since it seemed to include only democracy and (elected) monarchy, as far as I'm aware. And, of course, this does not work as well for the 20th century when it seemed to become the fashion to style everything a "republic" regardless of its actual form. Also, keep in mind that I'm using the term monarch losely to refer to a small executive branch (like the consuls, Doge, Signoria, or president), the way Roman and Renaissance political theorists did.
    • You define the entire Western world as being ruled by monarchs? (because pretty much every nation has a president or prime minister)
    • "Since when does 'Republic' mean 'a state without monarchy'?" Basically since the term was coined in the classical world. Although modern developments have complicated the matter, that's still the most basic way to define the term, and essential to every other definition that incorporates other aspects. "By that definition, fascist, democratic, anarchist and theocratic governments would be republican." Yes. You treat these terms as opposed to either monarchy or republic while they aren't (except anarchism which is opposed to both). Iran can be described as a theocratic republic, Saudi-Arabia as a theocratic monarchy. The UK is a democratic monarchy, the US a democratic republic and so on. "A better definition ..." What follows is a pretty meaningless definition that has no descriptive purpose and no historical background. In general, people seem to be misled by the meaning of the word "Republican" in a US-American context, where it has a wider meaning, including rule of law, balance of power, democracy, equality before the law etc. and also carries a lot of historical and political baggage (there is a major party that derives its name from this word after all). This meaning comes from American history, not academic categorization of governments. And no, an elected head of the executive is not a monarch.
    • As to the idea of an elected head being a monarch, this is exactly how Polybius uses the term. Polybius defines Rome as a state with a mixed constitution, one that has elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He equates the monarchical elements with the consuls, an elected office with one year in office. I am doing the same (note: a prime minister is not a head of state but a head of government, and thus would not represent a monarchic element). The definition of a republic as a state with a mixed constitution also comes from Polybius's understanding - he holds up Rome's Republic as an example of government to be contrasted with the democracy of Athens and various principates. I would argue that in most of the greatest historical examples, a balance of powers is an essential aspect of a republic, as it was in antique Rome and renaissance Florence and Venice. Aristotle would seem to agree given that he considers a mixed constitution as an alternative form of government to monarchy/tyranny, aristocracy/oligarchy, and democracy. Now, Machiavelli does seem to include all non-principate states in the category of "Republic", but given his historical environment, where the only non-monarchic states had mixed constitutions, states like Florence, Venice, and Bologna, I would hesitate to agree with his assessment, given that his analysis of Rome and the classical world was often heavily colored by his experience of politics in his own time. You say that classically this is how a republic was defined, but I'm not sure which classical authors you are refering to. As I said above, Polybius and Aristotle did not make such a division. Plato divided his types of government much more broadly, defining five types of states based on the values of the ruler/ruling class (kallipolis, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny). To Thucydides, your division would not make sense, since part of his history is devoted to comparing the sort of governments Sparta and Athens had and to equate them as of the same sort would be counter to his efforts. Since the term, however, comes from Latin, we could look at Latin authors, but they tended to defer to Polybius and Aristotle on this matter. And if we are going to defer to the term "res publica", then even the Roman Empire would be a republic, since for the first century or so of its existence it was still called a "res publica". So, I do not see where your definition comes from, aside from perhaps Machiavelli or the French Revolution, neither of whom/which are classical sources and both of whom/which existed in periods where a more nuanced view was unnecessary. And as to theocracy - you said you can have theocratic republics and theocratic monarchies, but what would the bishopric of Rome be? A republic, given the prominence of the college of cardinals? A monarchy, given that it has a single head? Also, you seem to be lax on what a monarchy is - is it simply a state with a king? would a tyranny without a king be a republic? It would seem unfair to call Cuba a republic just because its head of state does not call himself king. It would seem unfair to call Sparta a monarchy just because its heads of state were kings.
• At the very least we can say that Republic City does not seem very republican. A ruling body of five people who represent only a "bending aristocracy" (my term) is much more oligarchic than it is republican. And since this small ruling body seems to make policy decisions without consulting anyone outside of themselves (there's no mention of having a vote in the senate on what to do about the rebel problem or what to do about terrorist threats), I feel it's safe to say that just these five are governing Republic City. So... yeah. Sounds like an oligarchy - more like the Thirty Tyrants than the Council of Ten.
  • That does fit within some definitions of Republic since those five are "the body of citizens entitled to vote", if they were elected to those positions in some way it fits most definitions. What Republic City is clearly not is a democracy, the general population has little to no say in the general affairs of government.
    • But size does matter in this. If you were simply going to say that a republic has a "body of citizens entitled to vote" a tyranny would be a republic where that body numbered one. The voting base needs to be broader than five, even if it does not have to include a majority of people. If you were to ask me to define how broad it needs to be, I would probably say at least 1% of the population. Though, there are other aspects of republic aside from having a voting base, namely the separation of powers - they tend to have at least an executive or executive body and a legislative body, but can also include bodies that propose legislation (like Rome's Senate) or various bodies that oversee economic or military concerns.
• People have used the word "republic" to mean a lot of different things over the course of history. It is a usefully vague term, almost to the point of being meaningless, in a fictional setting.

Why is Korra allowed in pro-bending?

Call me crazy but just for fairness sake I simply wouldn't allow the most powerful being in the universe to play a game that's based on your physical abilities. Just like I wouldn't allow Flash to enter the Olympics. While we're on the subject we're supposed to believe that a winning team with the Avatar on it had to luck into Henry Ford's expy to get sponsored? Unless the buy in is absurdly high I can't believe they don't have enough fans who'd pitch in to make something as stupid as the Team Avatar being to broke to go to the championship.

• The chief advantage Korra would bring is that she can bend all elements- which she's explicitly not allowed to do (I'm assuming that a sport is not going to trigger the Avatar State, and if something bad enough does happen to trigger it, then everyone probably has much bigger things to worry about than the game). Restricted to just waterbending, she's just a particularly talented bender, balanced out by her inexperience with the sport. As for the funds, the Fire Ferrets don't seem to have gone public with their financial troubles, and somehow riding on Korra's Avatar reputation to get cash seems out of character for Mako anyway.
• Well the last time an Avatar was kicked out of playing a sport he liked simply because he was the Avatar, he got depressed, ran away with his bison, and ended up frozen for 100 years while the world burned. Am I the only one who sees the irony is this question?
  • That's not why he ran away; they wanted to separate him from Monk Gyatso. Also, it was a bunch of 8-year-olds that wouldn't let him play the children's game that he invented; that just lead to him resenting being the avatar. Obviously, the adults on the regulation committee are much better at rationalizing.

Why doesn't Korra carry a water skin?

I get that firebending suits Korra's style of fighting, but she uses it extensively over her other two elements, and doesn't even have any way of carrying water with her to bend - outside pro-bending, I'm sure I can count the number of times she has manipulated water on one hand, and seeing as she IS Water Tribe, it stands to reason she'd carry a water skin as Katara did.

• She's the Avatar. She has other elements to fall back on. Waterbenders do that because they'd be defenseless otherwise.
  • also she might've picked up getting water from air.
  • Not to mention, despite being born a waterbender, Korra doesn't seem to have a particular connection to waterbending. Out of all the elements she's mastered she's used waterbending the least, even when near sources of water. When checking to make sure she could still bend she automatically used fire, as opposed to water or earth. It makes sense; her personality and style are agressive and forceful, which doesn't work as well with water. Same reason she struggles with airbending.
  • Original poster: I was going to say something that she isn't giving each element a balanced use, then it occurred to me that that may be the point - she's not that balanced a bender, seeing as she doesn't focus on the spiritual side of things. However, it would be cool to see the "water from air" thing given more uses.
  • Another thing to keep in mind is she's only been away from the south pole for, what, a couple weeks? She's lived her entire life in an environment filled with water and ice for her to use. The idea that she'd need to carry water around with her to use it probably hasn't sunk in yet. That and, as noted, she has other elements to fall back on. If Katara was caught without her waterskin, she was in big trouble. If Korra's caught without a source of water, she's still got plenty to work with.
  • Also, Korra prefers to overwhelm her opponents. Kinda hard to to with only like, what, a quart of water?
• Actually she does carry one. There is a waterskin attached to Naga's saddle, seen in episode three.

Why doesn't anyone use armor or padding?

It's pretty clear that chi blocking uses strikes to specific parts of the body. Why has no one, thus far, thought to wear any sort of protection over those body parts? ESPECIALLY someone like Korra, who has been taken down by Equalists more than once AND is a high-profile target?

• Look again. Tarrlok's entire taskforce, including Korra, indeed wear padded armour on the job. It's just that Armor Is Useless; maybe the important pressure points are in the areas of the body that can't be covered with too dense material without sacrificing vital mobility? Wearing armour in everyday life is incredibly uncomfortable and over time even physically debilitating. It's better to stay agile and learn not to be hit.
  • The task force units looked more fancy than useful. And note that, where they actually are wearing what could be armor, not a single Seperatist lands a blow, not even with their shock batons. And even assuming that the task force suits are armored... why didn't Korra wear it when going to confront Amon in "The Voice in the Dark." Of course, Korra was carrying a giant Idiot Ball during that part, so that might have been the point of not wearing it.
    • Either way, Ty Lee's chi-blocking worked fine on Earth Kingdom soldiers in the original series. Armor Is Useless, so better to preserve mobility.
    • However, in Episode 6, it's explicitly stated that the Metalbender police's armor is capable of blocking chi-blocker attacks, though they're essentially wearing plate armor.
  • It's actually a bit of Fridge Brilliance, since most bends need to be extremely mobile and need a wide range of movement in order to fully take advantage of their bending abilities. Heavy armor would merely impair their movements and therefore directly impact their bending ability.
• The Metalbending Police do wear armor that guards the chakras. That's why the Equalists also carry electro-sticks. That said, waterbending or especially airbending in armor is probably next to impossible unless you're skilled enough to bend by flexing your butt cheeks or something similar.

Why does the fandom consider non-benders to be the normal ones?

There's more than a whiff of Mugglecentrism to the idea that non-benders are 'normal.' Even in Avatar universe's pre-history, people still bent energy, only it was within each other rather than external elements. Bending is older than dirt. Saying that either benders or non-benders are the default state of humanity is unfair to perspective of people in-universe. We in the real world may not be able to bend, but their world has always had that ability. The sole exception I can think of would be prior to Omashu's founding, and that only applies to earthbenders. We don't know what went on with the other nations, or how abrupt the transition from energybending to elemental bending was. Even given that, modern elemental bending is interwoven into the fabric of global civilization and the various cultures.

• Because of mugglcentrism; most fantasy works portray magic as the minority, therefore this notion is translated into the Avatarverse. There's also the implication that benders are the minority everywhere but in regards to the Air Nomads, though since it is tied to spirituality, it can work both ways.

Why doesn't the Avatar State trigger when Korra is captured by Amon?

If the Avatar State is supposed to be a defense mechanism, intended to protect the Avatar when he or she is in mortal danger, why doesn't it activate at the end of "The Voice in the Night?" It certainly seemed like Korra was in danger of death, if not in the literal sense, then in the spiritual and metaphorical sense.^[2] She was also obviously in the throes of severe emotional distress, as her subsequent breakdown and admission indicate. Why then, when it would be most reasonable to do so, does the Avatar State not activate?

• 1) The Avatar State is a back-seat until a handle on the other elements is acquired. It isn't meant to be A defense mechanism but THE defense mechanism. Even more-so, if the avatar is defeated in it, bye-bye Avatar forever. If it activated every time things got stressful, that would be horrible. 2) Korra is not really spiritually active, instead relying on matter over mind. Since the Avatar State requires spirituality, it would be difficult for someone not spiritual to use it. 3) The most powerful emotion to activate it, barring spirituality, is anger. Korra doesn't restrain her emotions that much so it wouldn't be active that much - she might even be in a mini-avatar-state. Aang put aside his anger even when he was justified to be any amount of angry so he would go into it frequently as that emotion built and then exploded out.
• Aang's almost universally been angry when the Avatar State was triggered. Korra was frightened, but she was also trying to keep it in check. There's also Korra's lack of spirituality to consider. Aang was spiritual to begin with, which may have made his transitions more natural. Korra may be so grounded (so to speak) that she might not be able to access it without a really big push.
  • True. Remember how after she was captured she had those Aang flashes. Maybe it was the Avatar state trying to be triggered only she didn't/couldn't let it take over. She did seemed for a moment to think she was saved by Aang, which is exactly what would have happened if he would have taken control
• I think it would have been triggered if he'd tried to take her bending away. When Aang took Ozai's bending, their spirits were basically fighting. When Amon took Lightning Bolt Zold's bending, this fight presumably happened too. Or not, if we assume that his "energybending" is not genuine. The point is, though, that it takes a bit of time, it doesn't happen within a second. So before he'll be able to take away her bending completely, the state would be triggered and he'll be flying across the room. However, since he didn't even try, it wasn't enough to trigger the state.
  • This may well be one of the reasons he didn't do it - he wasn't sure if he would be successful if the avatar state triggered and he found himself in a battle of wills against the entire collective memory of all the Avatars that have ever lived (especially the last Avatar would actually knew energy bending, Aang). Far more effective to soften up Korra with some psychological manipulations.
  • Remember what kept Aang from going Avatar State for the third season? His chi was blocked by a locked chakra. When Korra's tied up, she's just been chi blocked. If the chi paths have to be opened and flowing for the Avatar State to occur, then it makes sense if being chi blocked would prevent it.
    • But Aang had specifically gone through a process that would leave him without the Avatar State if any of his chakra were locked. Far as anyone can tell, Korra has gone through no such process. We don't know for sure if chi blocking is enough to block the Avatar State from triggering. Which makes me wonder if a fully-realized Avatar could resist chi blocking?

Are the Equalists Right?

Although it's pretty clear that Equalist methods are pretty freaking awful, is their overall complaint all that wrong? It seems fairly clear that non-benders really are at a disadvantage in a world without bending, and we're seeing lots of hints that they're effectively second-class citizens (e.g., the council that rules the city is composed of benders, as is the entire police force). If you were a non-bender in such a society who found yourself effectively at the mercy of benders, politically as well as practically, wouldn't a message of opposing bender power have a lot of force?

• It's not exactly black and white enough that you can slap a right or wrong label on it, but Amon wouldn't have so many followers if he didn't make any good points. It's not exactly hard to imagine a person who can't bend feeling like they're not as good as those who can - the very first scene of the first series involved Sokka complaining about Katara being a bender, no doubt partially out of a little jealousy. Benders have more job opportunities such as the Earthbenders who pushed the trains and the Firebenders powering a generator. They probably even get paid a little more since Bending-only jobs would have a higher demand than the jobs that anybody could do. Nearly every sport or game we've seen thus far requires control of some element or another, most notably pro-bending which of course requires all three. So, yes, clearly a movement promising you that you are special despite the fact that you can't bend wouldn't have to go very far to find followers.
  • Jealousy is by far the smallest factor here. Fear is what is at play in Republic City. It is very deliberate that one of the first things we see during Korra trip through the city is non-benders cowering in terror from a group of bending criminals. It's childish to dismiss the Equalist agenda as "jealousy" when its a major plot point that they're actively being terrorized. Look at the raid in episode four, even for chi-blockers there is no defense against benders unless you attack them first (or massively outnumber them).
• Their overall complaint isn't completely wrong. The Triple Triads were shown to be abusers of their bending among other things, and left unchecked, as shown by Koraa's action in the first episode, can cause lots of property damage. However, simply removing bending is not the solution. I mean, for the sake of argument, let's say Amon's plans of completely removing bending from the world does happen. How sure are the people that no one will abuse whatever power they have, no matter how small it is? there still weapons like knives and swords. Or political and/or monetary powers. The main problem isn't bending being the cause of problems, as they are simply tools. The problem is the nature of people. Look at our own history and you'll see it over and over again. Guns don't kill people, the person pulling the trigger does. Elemental bending doesn't kill people, BENDERS do!
  • Amon would probably pose his solution as a way of creating meritocracy. No one is born with superpowers, instead they have to work to gain power.
  • Guns aren't a good example to use since the portion of society that is physically unable to use guns is very small. Not to mention that "bending doesn't kill people, benders do" is a pretty good Equalist rallying cry. Benders are killing them. Benders need to be stopped.
    • Benders also save them. Benders help them. Benders are their friends and family and loved ones. Because some people use guns to harm others doesn't mean that everyone who owns and properly uses a gun should have it taken away and incinerated into ash.
    • "Benders also save them" just drives the issue home. Non-benders are totally dependent on benders just to stay alive. That's a very bad thing. Debending is one solution to it, almost certainly the worst one given the tremendous econoic, spiritual, and human cost involved. Ironically Hiroshi is in a perfect position to end the problem without Amon's involvement. If his wife's death hadn't made him so hateful he could have sold mechs and shock-gloves peacefully. The most serious problem (that non-benders are powerless against malevolent benders) would be dealt with. Economic and social issue would remain, though.

How strong is Korra?

Think back to Aang. Within a year he had mastered all four elements, capable of performing jaw dropping feats at the drop of a hat, even without using the Avatar state, which is even more amazing when you consider that he was constantly on the move while learning. Meanwhile, Korra has been kept away in a stronghold where all she did was learn to bend, and the most we have seen her do is is flip a car in the air. Really, she hasn't done anything that your average bender couldn't do him/herself. How does that work out? It could be her lack of interest in the spiritual part of bending, but even so, you think she'd manage to pull something impressive off via brute force, considering she was bending three elements before the Order of the White Lotus came knocking.

• Aang's skills came from using bending in real-life battles and threatening situations. So far Korra has had few opportunities to hone her bending in such situations. Also, as someone noted above, Aang mostly exerted his bending in open air and on the countryside, where he was relatively free to do "big" bending moves. Korra has to operate in the limited space of a busy city, where she has less chances of doing big moves, unless she wants to risk causing collateral damage – something which she obviously wants to avoid, as her very first bending battle lead to her getting arrested for damaging property.
• Question for the OP: When have we seen Korra need to do anything big and impressive looking? The really huge feats of bending we saw Aang do were when he was in life or death battles, or had to stop something like a volcano. We've only seen Korra launch a car because she didn't need to level half the city to stop it.
  • True, I suppose. Well besides that, shouldn't she be a bit more knowledgeable about bending? For example, the earth armor that Aang was able to create shortly after learning to earthbend. It certainly would be a help against chi blockers.
    • From what, exactly, and when would she have the opportunity? She'd have to tear up the street just to do it, for starters. She didn't know who she was fighting the first time, and the second they ambushed her. She hasn't needed to use any big displays of bendings. And honestly, why are you complaining when it's only been four episodes? The biggest display of power in equivalent time in ALTA was Aang doing a waterspout. Have some patience.
      • I'm not complaining, I am enjoying the show and would do so even without those displays. I was just wondering about the difference in power.
• To answer the question literally, she's proven herself quite strong. Obviously she's a physical force to be reckoned with and her natural leaning to that allows for the three bending arts she does have down, to hit with a lot more oomph so to speak. Not to mention, strictly as an Avatar, she's by default stronger than Aang what with being to channel his power now along with everyone else, which we probably won't see until she hits that state, but the rules of the nature of Avatar make that solid. So yea, I can't attach a number per se but she is very powerful. It's only her circumstances that make it hard for her to display just how powerful she really is. As stated by everyone else, we'll get there. After all...she can't do a lot of power demonstrations under the restrictions of pro-bending...OR in the city lest she wants to tango with the Chief all over again.

Does the Avatar have to be "set" to be a bender to begin with?

Just wondering, is it possible for an avatar be the offspring of two non-benders?

• It is established that two non-benders can have a bender child, but it's strongly implied that a child has to be born a bender to be an Avatar. Korra is the only Avatar that we know of to have figured out she could bend all the elements at such a young age.
  • We have no idea whether either of Korra's parents is a Bender or not, at least as far as I've been able to tell.
    • They both are
• Whether the Avatar's parents both need to be benders has never been commented by Word of God.

What happens when a non-Bender dies?

The Avatar is explicitly reincarnated, and there is a Spirit World that I presume holds the rest of the dead people in some form or another, but bending is also a spiritual connection as well as a power. Non-Benders don't have that. So do they still end up in the same place as Benders when they die?

• The Avatar is a special case. Aside from animals, we've never seen a single human in the spirit world that wasn't an Avatar. It stands to reason the afterlife is all-inclusive, and Avatars are the ones being short-changed.
  • This troper figured that everyone was reincarnated, and only the Avatar has access to his/her past lives.

What if the Equalists have kids who are born benders?

It's established in the Avatarverse that there's always a 50/50 chance people are born benders (not counting the Air Nomads since ALL of them were born benders). Ever since the Equalists made their presence known it's bugged me that even they're all non-benders, they could likely have relatives and even offspring that are benders. I can only imagine being a child born a bender to have parent(s) who are fierce anti-benders. A bit of Fridge Horror sets in right there...

• I imagine it would unfold the same way it does in X-Men when an anti-mutant couple has a mutant child. Some of them will disown their bender children and throw them out into the street. Others will try to hide it and tell their kid never to use their evil bending powers, for fear of what the other Equalists will do if they find out. In fact I'd bet money that this very thing will be a plot point in a future episode.
• They could simply take the child to Amon for some corrective energybending.
  • Imagine the kid's reaction. You can bet there'll be an instance of one or more of these tropes: Why Couldn't You Be Different?, Have You Tried Not Being A Bender, The Unfavorite.. Then having the kid de-bended. If the parents have it done against their will...
• Eh. There has never been a bender born from two non-benders as far as we know. We've seen benders born from benders, benders born from one bender, and benders give birth to a non-bender. But never non-benders having a bender.
  • Katara. Neither her mother Kya nor her father Hakoda was a bender, remember? Katara was the last bender in her tribe.
  • As far as we know, neither of Toph's parents were benders, either.

Why did Amon have Korra almost killed in episode 6?

In the end of episode 4, Amon says he's not gonna kill Korra yet, he doesn't want her to become a martyr, he will save her for last. But in episode 6 the Equalists tie up Korra, Mako, and Bolin under the arena, no doubt under Amon's orders, even though they're about the blow up the whole place soon. If Pabu hadn't saved them, Korra probably would have died in the explosion. So, if just two episodes ago Amon didn't want to kill Korra and was gonna save her for last, why did he now have his men put her in a situation where she was likely to die?

• It's possible that this is in fact Foreshadowing to a rift inside the Equalists. The Lieutnant was responsible for tying Korra and the others up under the exploding arena. Maybe he doesn't agree with Amon's assessment that the Avatar should be saved for last. Though it also doesn't seem that the lower parts of the arena were damaged in the explosion; we never see Mako and Bolin hop in the water to save themselves.
• That explosion clearly wasn't a danger to Korra or her team. It goes off right above them and the underside isn't even touched. The explosion just took out the ring elevator. A hardened structure like that would take much more than the minor blast used to bring it down.

How do you get away with cheating for as long as the Wolf Bats did when the media isn't in on the scam?

The radio announcer could see that the refs weren't calling blatant fouls against the Wolf Bats: Offsides (okay, even the announcer missed that one, but you can clearly see one of them stepped over the center line in order to attack), Icing, Hosing, Illegal Headshots, all broadcast over the radio. The announcer may as well have said, "This match is rigged," to the entire city. People bet large sums of money on sports, and they would be livid to find out they've been cheated. The ticket sales and attendance would suffer because people would stop taking the sport seriously (think Pro-Wrestling). How do you keep this scam going for four years?

• Considering the announcer was blatant about the wolfbats cheating, but didn't reference earlier cheating and seemed genuinely surprised by the referee allowing it, its probable that they don't actually cheat as their regular strategy. It could be that they were scared of the avatar or wanted to enact some revenge for Korra scaring them with Naga.
  • They may have used a strategy of testing the referee's tolerance in their matches. Note how they started with small offenses. If in previous matches they get called on these earlier attempts, they dial it back, but if they don't get called they escalate until they do get called. It may well be possible that all experienced pro-bending teams do it, since every referee is probably different and has a different level of tolerance of borderline calls, and the matches stay fair because the calls are the same for both teams. The Fire Ferrets, being rookies, may simply have been to inexperienced to do this.
  • It's also possible that Amon had someone contact the Wolf Bats anonymously and tell them the judges were bribed; it was actually Amon who paid the bribes. The anonymous henchman could've just told the Wolf Bats he was representing someone who had bet a lot of money on their behalf. The Wolf Bats saw it as an easy chance to secure their victory, so they swallowed the bait. Amon's propaganda speech relied on the Wolf Bats cheating, so he had to make sure they actually did so.
    • Amon may not even have needed to contact the Wolf Bats at all. If he knew their style of play well enough, he could probably predict that they would escalate to blatant cheating if the referee allowed it, and he may have been counting on it.
    • It doesn't seem in line with Amon's character to "make" benders that are bullies. He punishes benders that are bullies just cause. His speech suggests this isn't the first time the Wolfbats have done this, and given how practiced they are, the possibility of them having cheated before is very high.
    • On the other hand, it is somewhat plausible that he knew the Wolfbats were bullies and put them in a position to prove it. Notice that Amon didn't mention the Fireferrets rallying valiantly without resorting to the same cheating. Kind of counterproductive to his message.
    • He does point out that the Ferrets were bullied, though. He compares the treatment of the Ferrets to how he believes benders behave on average. It's not really counterproductive to his message. "There are some good eggs" doesn't really defeat his argument that they're bad on the whole.
• Alternatively, while they do cheat, they don't do it quite as blatantly. The ref's "bad calls" in the first match are relatively tame. He made a couple of mistakes and someone might pass that off as bad judgement. When the Fire Ferrets stayed in the game, the Wolfbats had to go to increasing lengths to win, and that is what outed them as blatant cheaters.
  • The damage to the team the Wolfbats faced in the semi-finals implies that they cheat even when they don't really need to. (Especially the damage to their masks, which seems to have come from their 'mixing peddles into a water whip' trick)
• Another alternative is that it's all part of the show - the ref wasn't paid off, but the owners of the tournament deliberately rig it in the favour of the Wolfbats since they make good champions. They don't usually need to cheat, but the refs are instructed to look the other way on the few occasions they do, provided they can keep it relatively deniable. Their ridiculously over-the-top entrance is part of the whole showmanship thing they have going.
  • Unless you're talking about Pro Wrestling, competitors who cheat that blatantly tend to be unpopular. (Ex. Sammy Sosa's fall from grace, not from steroids, but from being caught with a corked bat.)
    • And yet the crowd still ate the Wolfbats up like candy when they won. The media just loves cocky assholes, their fanbases were secure.
      • Their cheating wasn't really very blatant. The hosing foul could be a judgment call, very few people would notice an earthbender bending a disc outside his zone, can spectators really tell if there's ice on the ring, the firebending headshots, the rocks in the water, none of these fouls could be spotted by anything more than a hardcore pro-bending fan. And while I'm sure there were more than a few angry fans in the stands that night, I'm not sure the laymen audience would have understood the nuances of all the rules of pro-bending.

Does Amon not know where electricity comes from?

Everyone can have a shiny new tazer glove once they're useless due to us removing the ability that fuels them. So come join the Equalists today!

• City power is generated by benders. Those gloves obviously use an independent power source, just like the Lieutenant's backpack.
  • Which of course leads to the next question: Why don't you just waterbend at the guys with lightning backpacks? Either they backfire and shock themselves, or they at least short out. Really it seems like kind of an easy win. Also it'd be interesting to see how these guys fight against real masters like Paku or Iroh from the original series. Dodging is all well and good until the guy is 40 feet in the air firing a tidal wave which then freezes instantly at you. All the new guys seem to be of the pro-bending school of "fire a small fist sized burst" style of fighting, which is exactly what the chi blockers counter.
    • Korra tried that. The Lieutenant had the advantage of surprise and beat her to the punch. If it happened, though, it could damn well kill him. Those gloves likely don't have the juice for a fatal blow, but that big rig of his would provide more than enough. There hasn't been another situation yet where waterbending was a feasible option for those under attack.
  • I bet Amon has his own personal coal-powered generator to power up his gloves, but once he gets rid of all benders, that can't provide for the whole city.
    • They can adapt, though. If power generation is possible on a small scale, it can be made to work on a large one.
  • It's in fact possible that most of the city's power is produced through mundane means, and the lightningbenders just provide emergency help when voltage drops low, or if there's a problem in the system. Remember that it doesn't take long to tire a Bender out in normal circumstances, so it would take an absurd number of lightningbenders to keep the city running 24/7.
    • The Welcome to Republic City flash game doesn't mention any mundane means being used at the power plants. Its entry on firebending makes it seem like an army of firebenders is providing for all of Republic City's electrical needs.

What happened to the spectators in the stadium?

We have a stadium full of excited spectators. In many cases, fans of sports teams are willing to literally kill you if their team loses. Why on earth, spectators stood still? We are talking about people who can shoot fire from their hands and they are watching their favorite team being tortured right before their eyes Are they so frightened by a lot of tasers that are not able to defend their team?

The second strange thing that happens is that when Korra ends her fight on the roof and back into the stadium there's nobody left. Is it possible to evacuate a building of that size so quickly? It's almost as if the writers were not sure what the hell to do with those people.

• Korra's fight lasts a while, long enough for everyone to pour out the exits. As for the behavior, they may not be at the "riot over a loss" stage of sports devotion.
  • Large buildings are also designed with lots of exits (which we know the arena has, the Equalists are shown getting through them). You can evacuate enormous stadiums in less than a minute. Still you'd think the Equalists would want witnesses.
    • They did. The audience was forced to stay there while Amon was giving his speech. Only when the Equalists were making their exit did the audience flee.
• The creators are Americans, we don't have deadly riots over sports as a regular occurrence over here. You're also underestimating how scared of the Equalists people are. Amon has spent a long time building up his revolution.
• Tenzin didn't join Lin and Korra in the battle against Amon, so I assumed he was helping to evacuate the crowd. Mako and Bolin may also have assisted; Mako would certainly have wanted to make sure Asami was safe.
• We aren't talking about a group of people who stormed the ring because they hated a team or something. This was a terrorist organization! Most people aren't going to exactly be leaping to try and take on a threat like Amon, especially when he can take away their bending so easily.
• How would they access the arena? If they just shoot fire from where they're sitting, they'd risk hitting the team members, not to mention other spectators. Maybe the waterbenders could have conjured a flood, but again, risk of injuring the team, not to mention that a coordinated attack would have been difficult, not to mention that the guys with the gloves would have stopped any such attempt in a second. And would you really like to be the one person that Amon singles out from the crowd? Also, don't forget the police force. Most likely, people relied on them and considered themselves safe. Once all policemen started dropping like flies, they probably realised that their chances aren't strong. ALSO, most of them probably don't know how to fight. Remember, it's a time of peace. I'd imagine that most of them are as capable as someone who's been to some self-defence classes. You might be able to fight off a mugger, but it's not exactly a case of Mugging the Monster.

The trio's escape in Episode 6.

So, the Lieutenant ties the trio, including 2 Firebenders, up with rope -- normal, average, every-day, chewable rope -- and doesn't bother to block their chi, given how Korra goes into action a minute or two later. They didn't need Pabu's help to escape at all. Why didn't Korra or Mako just burn their way out?

• Bending requires arm movements (unless you're Combustion Man).
• *COUGH*iroh*COUGH*bumi*COUGH*
  • Also Azula has been shown firebending with just her mouth.
• Those are super-badass masters. Most benders cannot bend with their face.
• But Firebenders can bend with their breath.
  • Sit down, with your back against something like Mako and Korra were. Look down, how you'd have to in order to breath fire on those ropes. Fire isn't a precision instrument. Burning hot enough to sever rope quickly is going to lead to you torching your own stomach and--perhaps more importantly--your own crotch. When the plan results in char broiling your own groin before you even make contact with the enemy, it's a bad plan.
  • Not if you were Avatar Roku, who could send an ultra large blast of fire that simultaneously blasted Zhao and his mooks, and melted metal chains off the Gaang without even the slightest scratch on their skin.
    • Avatar Roku is a special case, being an Avatar, having potential access to the combined wisdom and skill of the Avatar Cycle, and being a spirit at the time he took down Zhao.
• Except a) We see at the end of Episode 8 that Korra is perfectly capable of firebending with just her breath, b) Iroh demonstrated in the original show that he could superheat his metal handcuffs and cause immense pain to an earthbender captor with precisely zero negative effects to himself, so there are obviously some aspects of being a firebender that cause heat and/or fire to not be as much of a bother, and finally c) Zuko repeatedly demonstrated that controlling the intensity of candle flames was a form of exercise during peaceful meditation... moving absolutely no part of his body at all. Same thing with Aang when Jong Jong had him try and prevent the leaf from burning. Even Iroh did something similar just before the White Lotus began retaking Ba Sing Se, by causing a surrounding fire to expand just by inhaling and exhaling. Like he was flexing a muscle. The idea that simply restraining a bender's limbs somehow renders them completely helpless is just something they carried over from the original show because they need something to create a sense of drama, even though when you stop and think about it, it really makes no sense. Katara completely froze herself and Azula during the finale, yet somehow thawed just herself to move enough to chain Azula down. Given this, how would it ever be possible to restrain a waterbender in ice, like Paku did during the first season? Toph completely surrounded herself in metal, wearing it like a suit of armor, even though doing so should have made moving all but impossible. If she can do this it should not be possible to restrain her with anything made of metal, or earth. Despite this, she and Aang were somehow "captured" by the Dai Li. Aang even lampshades this in the episode where they meet the Earth King by floating the rocks they bound him with for a few seconds before going back to pretending to be helpless. It pretty much boils down to the writers playing fast and loose with their own rules and going out of their way to establish as little as possible so they can do cool things when they want to without having to explain themselves later.

How common will the new Mecha-Mooks that Hiroshi created be?

He's said that they're made of Platinum. Platinum isn't exactly a common metal, it's more valuable than gold. Considering how much platinum comprises the blast door that traps the heroes and the amount that comprises the mecha mooks, that's gotta be a sizeable chunk of Hiroshi's fortune.

• More valuable today. Think about this from their perspective. Platinum is probably dirt cheap in their world. They haven't advanced to the point where platinum's true value would be apparent. More pliable, impure metals would be in much higher demand, especially when metalbenders need it for equipment and such.
• There are two possibilities. Either platinum is more common in the Avatar universe, and thus less expensive, or earthbenders make mining far more productive than anything we can do in the real world. Meaning that the only reason the Equalists' anti-bender mechas are a plausible threat against metalbenders could be because of labor only earthbenders can perform.
• Even in Real Life platinum is more common than, say, gold. It's just needed in so many electrical appliances that it's price is higher. Since relatively few electronics still exist in the world, larger amounts would probably be just lying around, not yet seen as all that valuable by most people. In the 18th century plantinum was sometimes treated as little more than garbage, if you can believe that.
  • Platinum is more expensive than gold because its much harder to get at despite its marginally greater presence in the crust.
    • Even so, platinum used to be dirt cheap, to the point that counterfeiters used it to counterfeit gold coins (the counterfeit coins were gold plated, of course, since platinum looks nothing like gold).
  • In terms of abundance in the Earth, Platinum is nearly 100 times rarer than gold. The real issue is that platinum is weaker than normal armor armor materials like steel.
    • Weaker maybe, but as pointed out on the Fridge page it makes great armor against benders. It can't be bent by the metalbenders, has a high melting point to resist firebenders, and is resistant to corrosion by waterbenders. The weakness relative to steel will probably become apparent once the metalbenders wise up and start smashing the moving parts with rocks, though.
• Are we sure the stuff is solid platinum? Maybe they just have a shell a few millimeters thick that blocks the bending. Still hugely expensive but certainly less absurd.
  • Hiroshi Sato explicitly stated that the walls and mechas were all solid purified platinum, though that might just be him being a hyperbolic rich man.
  • A shell wouldn't block bending. The metalbenders would be able to sense the presence of impure metals and manipulate them.
• Aside from the rarity issue, pure platinum is actually a rather malleable metal, and wouldn't make very effective armor - any earthbender throwing a good sized rock should be able to at least severely dent the mechas. This may be a case of Did Not Do the Research. Alternately, the wall might have been pure platinum, but the mechas may have been using an alloy of platinum with another metal that was also pure. At any rate, Lin's ability to pierce the platinum armor with her metal-bended spikes (presumable iron/steel) is not surprising.
  • She actually just pierced the cockpit glass. However, from what I can see throughout the series, metalbending requires you to actually touch the metal or touch earth touching the metal(since you need to be able to find the impurities with echo-sense earthbending). A thin layer of solid purified platinum would be enough to stop that.
    • No, it doesn't. There are plenty of examples of benders bending their element without the need to touch it. Including Toph metalbending.
    • For the other elements, yes. But I don't think we've ever seen metalbending without touching it or touching earth touching it. Can you name a counter-example?
      • The metalbender police hemming in non-benders at the supposed Equalist rally with floating wooden barricades with metal nails riveted through.
      • Those rivets disappear half-way through the bending process, which could admittedly be an animation error, but the barricades also bent a lot further than a thick plank of wood should, so I just assumed those things were made out of painted rock.

Why were all these people killed by firebenders?

Supposedly, Mako and Bolin's parents, Amon's family, and Sato's wife were all murdered by firebenders. Other benders can be killers too, so why have the writers used firebenders for each of them? Something's not adding up.

• Probably simply because the previous generation was still suffering from the aftereffects of the 100-Year War, and because the United Republic consists of the former Fire Kingdom colonies. It makes sense that the Firebenders were the most common type of Bender in the region until the recent times.
• Firebenders can kill a lot easier, and cleaner, than other benders can.
  • Not really...creative benders could find plenty of ways to kill quickly and easily. A clever and malicious water bender could easily drown their opponent, and then take the water with them afterwards, leaving no evidence afterwards; no mess. Earthbending probably would be messier, but a rock at full speed applied to just the right spot on the head will still kill instantly. It seems strange that firebenders are still the only rampant killers these days...unless, of course, all the attacks are connected somehow.
    • Drowning takes a lot longer than killing with fire would, and it's doubtful every earthbender could kill so efficiently.
    • Or they could make a spear or a blade out of water. Ice can have sharp edges, and can cut with them (I should know, I cut my finger on a jagged piece of ice once)
    • Smashing people in the head with rocks is a vastly easier method of murder than causing them to die of severe burns. If Zuko had taken a fist sized chunk of stone to the head rather than a blast of fire he would have been brain damaged or dead rather than scarred.
    • Or maybe they just electrocuted them, given that lightning bending is so much more widespread these days. That would be the easiest and fastest method. Nobody said anything about using fire.
• You have to remember that Fire is the one element that is based almost entirely on offensive moves. Also Water and Earth while certainly can kill you don't strike fear into the hearts of people the way Fire does so Fire is the logical choice, not to mention there is still the stigma from 100-Year War as previously mentioned
• As a whole, Firebenders tend to be more aggressive and more prone to resorting to violence to solve their problems, since that's part of the philosophy of their training. Also, since the Fire Nation technically lost the previous war, and Zuko has made attempts to make it a more peaceful nation, you can bet that there are thousands of disenfranchised Fire Nation soldiers who were suddenly out of a job, and their bitterness carried on to the next generation.
• Seemed to me like foreshadowing. Chances are we'll find out at some later point in the show that it was the same firebender in all cases.
• I read a theory on a message board that in fact all of these murders are the work of a waterbender called Alfred Firebender, and he is just commonly referred to as A. Firebender.
• That's only three instances. It is not statistically significant.
  • If we were talking about real life then that would absolutely be the case. But this a story, and when events repeat themselves in a story it's usually for a reason.
    • The incidents are also removed from each other in time. Twelve years ago an unspecified number of Agni Kai Triad firebenders broke into the Sato mansion and killed Mrs. Sato. Ten years ago, a firebender mugged Mako and Bolin's parents. Depending on the veracity of Amon's statements, the incident that forced him to wear a mask could be anywhere from twenty to forty years ago. If the writers are attempting to lace these facts with any sort of meaning, they are burying it very deep indeed.

Just why did the Equalists leave their most important opponents for the last?

OK, maybe Amon wants to deal with Korra last, but why would his men leave a member of the Council, Chief of the Police and the Avatar lying on the side unguarded while ordinary officers were being loaded into trucks? They seriously didn't realize that this could only be a bad idea, even if no outside help did arrive?

• Whose to say they wouldn't have loaded those three? They simply hadn't gotten to it, yet.
  • They were left for the last, unguarded. Three most dangerous people in the whole group. Just how is this supposed to make sense?
    • Tenzin was tied up and unconscious, and the other two were also unconscious. They had also matter-of-factly lost to the mecha and were in a sealed room. They weren't going anywhere.
    • There were still a few Equalists manning mobile suits. If they got back up, they'd have to fight the suits again and in a weakened state. Plus, maybe Hiroshi and company just got cocky. They had just bagged the only living airbending master, the police commissioner, and Avatar.
    • And even then, Sato and the Lieutenant were still keeping an eye on them, since they managed to catch Mako and Bolin so quickly.

Can Metalbenders not Earthbend?

During the fight with the Equalist mechs, we see Korra earthbend to throw chunks of the floor at one mech. You would think a group of elite benders like Lin and the Metalbenders would've thought to earthbend to knock the mech off their feet or combo bend to throw giant chunks of floor at them. They don't (and seemingly forgot last week's lesson that their metal makes them easy pickings for the Equalists' shock weapons). Are Metalbenders so specialized that they simply can't do standard earthbending anymore? And this is a take that gets thrown into more confusion when you take into account Lin using her mom's trademark "bending as 'sight'" trick. So either we have a case of Crippling Overspecialization or an egregious case of Forgot About His Powers.

• They can. I wondered the same thing until I noticed that they bend a little earth at their feet to be able to pull the mechas. Not that it helped them much. Why they didn't just bend the earth under the mechas is beyond me. It would have been an interesting demonstration of not just the metalbenders' power, but also Korra's power. Here's the chance to do some destructive large-scale bending. From a meta pov, it was probably to set up Asami's character development.
• This may be a case of Fridge Brilliance. The police are specifically trained not to cause unnecessary collateral damage with their Earthbending, and stick to their metal whips and small, precise chunks of earth and metal. They're police officers, not soldiers, after all, and are expected to use nonlethal force if at all possible, and protect people's property, not destroy it.
  • Agreed. I expect that the next time Metalbenders, or at least Lin, face off against the mechas, they'll be better prepared and willing to take off the kid gloves, so the fight will be more even.
• The episode, "When Extremes Meet," confirms that yes the police can indeed earth bend.

How do ex-benders fit in Amon's worldview?

Tahno and Zolt (and the gangsters) are people who are despicable for what so this hasn't really come up yet but not every bender is like that. Once a bender who is a decent human being loses their powers how are Equalists supposed to treat them? Do they count as benders to be despised? Are they supposed to be welcomed?

• Amon calls them "purified". In other words, "you're one of us, now." Taking their bending sticks them on the other side of the fence. Now they have to survive as non-benders.

In episode 7, why did Hiroshi Sato plant the fake snitch that lead the police, Korra, and Tenzin to his lair?

Hiroshi admits that he planted the "repentant" Equalist worker who told Lin, Korra, and Tenzin about the lair under his mansion. But why did he do that? Just before this, Lin and Tenzin thought Korra had misunderstood the snippet of conversation she had heard, since no Equalist equipment was found in Hiroshi's warehouses. If Hiroshi hadn't set up the fake snitch, Lin would've given the investigation and Hiroshi could've continued working on his mechas. The only explanation I can think of is that Hiroshi wanted to deal with Lin, Tenzin, and Korra now, instead of waiting to strike them with the mechas later on, but what was the reason for this haste? It can't be that Hiroshi thought getting rid of the three would've stopped the investigation, since Lin obviously had told other cops about searching the Sato mansion, plus Lin, Tenzin, and Korra disappearing while they were investigating Hiroshi's possible involvement with the Equalists would've been really suspicious anyway. And it can't be that Amon told Hiroshi to catch them, because if Amon wanted to get the three at this point, he could've done it during his attack to the arena in the previous episode. So what exactly was Hiroshi thinking?

• He says why right after he wins. It was a test run. If you want to test your anti-bender mecha, you test them against benders. And if the police already suspect you, then who better to test it against than the biggest badasses in the city?
  • But if the mechas didn't work, the equalists would loose one of their major benefactor and any opportunity to improve and fix their new weapon. And if they worked but some of the people investigating Hiroshi's house didn't rely only on metalbending (like, say, Tenzin and the Avatar), the equalists still risked having an important ally arrested for nothing. If Hiroshi wanted to test his weapons, he should've just asked the equalists to kidnap one or two metalbenders, so even if the mechas failed the benders were still surrounded by chi blockers and couldn't expect back up. He didn't need the biggest badasses in town, just any metalbender.
    • But Hiroshi clearly knew the mechas were un-bendable, that's why he built an entire wall out of the same material. In order to see how the mechas would hold up in a real fight, he needs masters from each element. Tenzin, Lin, and Korra fit that perfectly. That was the point of the test-run. To see how much the mechas could withstand.
  • Also, while Lin and the police might've still suspected Hiroshi, it was implied that they would've given up the investigation for now, had he not lured them to his cave. So the Equalists would still have had more time to prepare for whatever they are planning to do. Attacking the chief of police while she's investigating you will blow you cover regardless of if you win or not. So either the Equalists are about to launch a full-scale mecha attack immediately after the events of episode 7, or Hiroshi is an idiot. I guess the next episode will prove which is the case.
    • Hiroshi says in the phone conversation that they were going to strike soon. They had to test the mecha, and at that stage failure would have been a colossal setback. Better to know your mecha work and eliminate some problem benders than risk your prototypes in the field. Kidnapping a couple metalbenders wouldn't cut it.
    • Extra planning time would not have helped the Equalists. Amon is using the choas and confusing to his advantage here. The Council and police force have only just realized what a big threat the Equalists are, they need a lot more time to plan how to combat them. The longer they wait to attack, the more organized their opponents will be.
• I think that Hiroshi and Amon thought it was only a matter of time until they found out what Hiroshi was up to after Korra overheard Hiroshi, so they decided to face them well-prepared. Possibly, the reason they wanted to take them to Amon was not (only) to de-bend them, but also to keep them from telling the public about the mechas. The disappearances could have been somehow traced to Hiroshi, but what to do without evidence?
• Maybe they just wanted to get all these high-status benders at one time, without police air support.
  • • They were sealed in a room full of armed Equalists, who have been shown capable of taking down all types of benders multiple times. Even if the mechas didn't work, they would still get taken down and incapacitated. Amon doesn't take gambles. He knows to only ever pick strategies that'll help him regardless of the outcome (exampe: threatening the pro-bending arena).

Was Aang ok with the statue?

That is, is a huge construction. Obviously must have required many public funds. Did not occur to him to say "No, please, that is way too."? Aang does not seem the type of person who spends public money on a huge statue of himself instead of a new hospital. The same applies to the temple. Aang had four temples perfectly good, and instead decided to build a new one.

• It was donated by the Fire Nation, so it's their money being spent, not the city's money. As for the expense itself, there are statues everywhere, of nearly everyone. Aang just got the big one. Plus there's a museum under it. Put in a tip jar for reimbursement. His construction of a new Air Temple is a matter of practicality. "Republic City is in trouble? I'll be there in three days." He's one of its leaders. He needs to stay close. Besides, the other temples are horribly dilapidated from a century of misuse, occupied by other groups in one case, and difficult to access for non-Airbenders, which at the time was everyone else.
  • The new air temple is also a focus for re-establishing Air Nomad culture and traditions, which would hopefully eventually lead to the birth of new Air Benders in the future.
• Also, given the fact that the training gates are stated to be 2000 years old, it's possible that the Air Temple there already existed, but was a minor one, and therefore wasn't mentioned in the original series.
  • Or they just moved them.
• It's called Avatar Aang Memorial Island. Do we know it was built before his death?
• Still find it hard to imagine the city council or the Fire Lord Zuko saying:

"Ok, projects in which we invest our money:
1) Children's Hospital.
2) Public Library.
3) Monolithic statue in the shape of my father / best friend.
Yes, number 3 is definitely the best option."

• • Those things aren't mutually exclusive. Besides, ever heard of the Statue of Liberty?
    • Right. It seems extravagant to use public money on monuments these days because public money is tight, but such wasn't always the case. The United States and France found Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, respectively, worthy of spending money on when they had the funds. It's fairly clear that Republic City went through an especially prosperous era near the end of Aang's life when they could afford to erect most of the fancy statues and public spaces, before falling into trouble with the rise of poverty and the bending triads. And I'm sure Aang did ensure that easy access to such things as libraries and hospitals was included in the city planning from the beginning.
    • Also remmeber this is a world where there are thoudsands (if not millions) of people capable of moving large ammounts of dirt/rock on their own, so maybe it was less of "we will sepatarte a third of our budged to build a Huge monumment" and more of "Hey we want to build a statue for Aang, you you guys bring a dozen of eath-benders hre for a few minutes/hours please", even if it was made of Metal, i could easily see Toph giving the metalbenders instructions of it "OKAY WEAKLINGS, IF YOU WANT TO BE PART OF MY POLICE FORCE YOU MUST BE ABLE BEND METAL, SO MAKE A HUGE STATUE OF TWINKLE TOES OR GO BACK WITH YOUR MOMMIES!!!"

Power Level Math does not work out at all.

So...thus far we have two Elite Mooks who defeat Mako + Korra in a straight-up fight. One Equalist Lieutenant who defeats Mako + Bolin in a straight-up fight before getting blindsided by Korra. And now, as of Episode 7, Asami can defeat the Equalist LT in a straight-up fight? How does that power differential even work? Sure, there was a "self-defense classes" handwave, but the LT would very likely have had just as much training if not more, and it's not like bending moves (being the exact same movements as several real-life martial arts) are much different from h2h combat when you remove the elemental part of it, so how exactly is Asami that much better than Mako, Bolin, or Korra at melee?

• The Lieutenant likely assumed that Asami was just a normal girl and would be easy to take down. She proved him wrong. Basically, when he fought Mako and Bolin, he was fighting for real. When he attacked Asami, he just expected to quickly incapacitate her in a single strike.
• Anyone can make the same motions as a professional boxer that doesn't mean they can actually fight like one. Mako, Bolin, and Korra know how to stop bending from hurting them not fists, the defenses are completely different.
• "Power Level Math" is an utterly, completely false premise, for a start. Unlike Dragonball Z, no, there is no definite scale that determines who will or will not win a given fight of any kind. There are any number of factors that will tilt the odds in the favor of one side or another in any kind of conflict, regardless of who they are. Just boiling it down to who's fighting doesn't mean a damn thing.
  Because the Lieutenant beat Mako and Bolin once doesn't mean he always will. Nor does it mean he will automatically beat anyone those two have beaten. All it means is that he beat Mako and Bolin once. Him getting KOed by Asami doesn't mean Asami is an unstoppable badass who's better than the rest of the cast; all it means is he got KOed by Asami.
• And lets not forget that the Lieutnant has been trained exclusively to fight against Benders, as indeed are Mako, Bolin and Korra. Asami, on the other hand, seems to be trained to fight against martial artists in general.
  • That was this troper's thought as well. The Equalists are specifically trained to contend against bending-style martial arts; of course they have an advantage over the cast's benders. But Asami has been getting general martial arts training from a very young age, likely from multiple different teachers--and probably from Equalist teachers, as well, since I see no reason Sato wouldn't want her to have a head-start on that for when and if she was ever brought into the fold. She probably has more sustained martial arts experience than a number of the normal Equalists. Beating the Lieutenant can probably be explained as a combination of his surprise, her speed, and possible unwillingness on his part to use especially harsh force against the daughter of the dude who just built you all these big mecha that are standing around.
• Asami attacked him with electricity -- something none of his other opponents were seen using against him. It was as effective when used against him as it was when he used it against the other opponents we saw.
• And you have to factor in that the Krew just isn't very good at actual combat. Spectator sport brawling? They're beast. Actual life-or-death struggle? They're meat.

Asami staying at Airbender Island?

Why? I mean, yes, her father's considered a criminal now, but wouldn't his assets go to her? Or at least the house?

• I guess she could stay in the mansion with Mako and Bolin, but maybe Tenzin and Pema could provide her with the comfort of a family that Asami no longer has, as her mother is dead and her dad turned out to be a criminal? Plus she'd just started to bond with Korra too, so maybe this whole surrogate family on Airbender Island would be better for her than just the three of them in the mansion? Not to mention that the Equalists may want revenge on her for being a non-bender who turned against her own father to protect benders, so she should be safer living in the same place as Korra and Tenzin.
• Option A = living all alone except for servants in a house the size of a mall that's not only full of memories of your dead mother and evil father but a known site of significant terrorist activity, in fact owned by a high-ranking member who has a knack for creating secret tunnels and rooms where who-knows-what could be going on and who-knows-who might show up = neither physically nor psychologically safe. Option B = living with friends, training and planning with them to end the war = safer, more enjoyable, and makes tons more sense.
  • Repeating the above, "a known site of significant terrorist activity". The police likely would have the mansion closed off until they could fully investigate all of it, knowing it already has at least one secret tunnel. Yes, she could stay at the mansion, but Asami would have to wait weeks until her father's dealings were fully investigated and she was actually allowed back into it.
  • As for money, Hiroshi's public assets are definately going to be frozen, and that probably includes Asami's trust fund, or whatever way her father used to treat her to luxury.
• Since I guessed that Hiroshi would be the suspected ally, I wondered for a while whether Asami would live with them or maybe get her own apartment somewhere in Republic City. I was quite surprised that the former happened, but it does make sense. She's probably in the top ten list of enemies, so she wouldn't be safe alone. And who could she hire to defend herself?
• Staying on the island is also a way for Asami to avoid the press.
• Seeing how Asami most probably isn't of age yet, she just might be legally unfit to hold/govern her father's assets even if they weren't frozen.
  • The age of majority in the Avatarverse is sixteen, and she's most definitely at least that old.
• In addition to all the above, with her father and who knows how many other collaborators who had/have easy access to the mansion still at large, Asami may not be safe staying alone there.
  • Pretty much. As far as we know, Hiroshi might want to take his daughter back, even if it has to be by force. If she stays on Air Temple Island, she has people to protect her.

Why did Shiro, the pro-bending announcer, get electrocuted by the Equalists?

According to Word of God, he was also a non-bender.

• Amon probably didn't want anyone's voice going out on the airwaves except his own.
• The Equalists are violent, ideological revolutionaries. Non-benders opposing their agenda would be the equivalent of class traitors and treated as such.
  • "If you ask me, a blood tratior's as bad as a mudblood."

Why did they not take out the mechas with more powerful Earthbending, or Airbending? They were all holding back except Lin.

They were in an underground bunker, the floor was all earth and some powerful earthbending moves like the ones Toph used would have sent the mecha into the walls or buried them in the ground, with enough force to knock out their drivers. A large boulder shot used in the last series could have smashed one of them to pieces. Air was powerful enough to rattle Sato's mecha and very powerful air blast/explosion or a cutting move like the one Aang used could have severely damaged a mech or toppled it. But since Airbenders always fight defensively, they never fight without inhibitions. Lin was devastating when it comes to fighting and was the only one who took out a mech, because she was really fighting to kill. It didn't occur to anybody but her that the Mecha's glass canopy is easily damaged. It appears that the metalbender cops are overly reliant on their cables and the Equalists took advantage of their weakness.

Doesn't it really seem like all the benders are holding back their best moves?

• I attribute it to surprise and not knowing what they were dealing with, so they stuck with the techniques familiar to them, then didn't last long enough to get their thoughts together and pull out the big guns. For example, Korra started out by throwing fire as she usually does. When that proved ineffective she switched to earth, but got taken out before she could do much with it. Next time they face the mechas they'll be better prepared.
  • There were a lot of them as well, and they had the heroes flanked. Big fancy moves are best suited to fighting a single opponent who's counter attacks you can closely guard against. As for Korra's firebending, that was stupid yes, but she always opens up with firebending. At least she quickly worked out that wasn't working very well. As for the metal benders, they're just not trained in those sort of moves. That's like training cops in anti tank weaponry, expensive and pointless.
  • I can buy them getting caught flatfooted by an unexpected enemy... But seriously, we've all seen footage of cops pulling out the stops when faced with that kind of firepower. That their training inhibited them to that degree in the heat of battle, in a place where cutting loose was not only justified, but mandated? In a situation where basic earthbending moves like pilar raising would've served them far better? Ruling on the field stands: Forgot About His Powers/Idiot Ball combo.
  • Oooooorrrrr, the cops just aren't very good at regular Earthbending on the fly. Their training might, in fact, be almost entirely metalbending, given how much they rely on it.
    Also, don't discount training. Do you know what training is really for? It's not just techniques and protocols. It's conditioning. It's training your body such that when your mind is scared and you're unable to think, you can keep acting on what has become instinct. I.e., when you're scared and facing something like those mecha, chances are that you are going to be doing the rote techniques that you've had drilled into you for years instead of getting creative and fancy. That is how armies have worked for pretty much all of human history.
    It's not Idiot Ball, it's people who have been trained for years falling back on that training when they're in a tense situation and borderline panicking.
  • You don't want to inadvertently cause a cave-in and wind up killing yourselves in the process. Earthbenders might be most dangerous underground, but they are also vulnerable to being buried with the enemy in the process.

Are we ever going to see Republic City call for help in dealing with The Equalists?

This would seem to be a situation tailor-made for a group of non-bender combatants to at least come in and consult with Republic City's law enforcement. Like, say... the Kyoshi Warriors (assuming they're still around, of course). For that matter, wouldn't word have gotten out about the Equalists by now, and the other three nations would've probably made inquiries about how they could help (if for no other reason than to keep the Equalist movement from spreading to their territories)?

• It's mostly a matter of politics and perception. The Equalists are the United Republic's mess, and having to call in foreign countries to bail them out of that mess would be deeply politically embarrassing. It would at the very least destroy the council's reputation, painting members like Tarrlok as failures. It would also run the risk of boosting the standing of the Equalists among the Republic's citizenry. Internal domestic disputes are one thing, but foreign troops would sharpen the battle lines: "The Equalists might be scum, but they're OUR scum."
• One has to remember that while the Equalists were being taken seriously they were not seen as something that couldn't be contained in the city, it was only in the last two episodes that they realized just how big of a threat the Equalists truly are.
• It is mentioned in the Welcome to Republic City interactive game that the Kyoshi Warriors are still around.

Are we supposed to believe benders are better people than non-benders?

Because that seems to be what the show is pushing for. Asami has been one significant non-bender who wasn't evil (Pema is pretty tangiental) whereas non-benders are apparently onboard with massive acts of terrorism due to nothing more than a few gangs on the streets and a few dicks in sports arenas. The conflict they tried to set up in the first few episodes falls apart when everyone who can't bend is over the top evil and benders are almost never shown doing bad things (the Triads in the first episode are the only benders we've actually seen doing something criminal).

• So smug snakes like Tarrlok and Tahno don't count as "bad?"
  • To be fair, those two are nuisances, not villains. The worst they have done is political mudslinging and sport-fixing respectively, which is hardly "evil" evil.
    • Not anymore. As of 'When Extreme's Meet', Tarlock is now Evil with a big fat capital E.
      • Tahno still didn't do anything wrong enough to warrant villain status though.
• 100 year war. That's one hundred years of fire benders abusing their power. Don't forget just how easy it is to kill someone with bending. Or extort them. There's a reason the revolution has followers.
  • Basically, the series and franchise as a whole has done a good job of showing that benders, like anyone else, can be real assholes. Just in this series, benders have killed Mako and Bolin's parents and Asami's mother and those three are main characters. It's not on-screen, but it's not exactly out of focus, either.
• In fact I'm hoping the writers dare to show how an extremism can lead to another. Something like the appearance of a violent group of benders who want to purify the city no-benders.
  • Personally, this is what might be happening as of 'When Extremes Meet', what with Tarlock cutting off power, enforcing a curfue, and basically accusing anyone who's a non-bender of being an Equalist conspirator and arresting them for interrogation. From This Tropers perspective, as of now, it seems like Tarlock is going to be of a 'Bender Superiority' train of thought, which is the almost-direct opposite to Amon's ('Bender's are scum who abuse their powers'). Or he could just be a simple extremist who believe that the end justifies the means, and sees nothing wrong in his treatment of non-benders as long as it gets rid of equalists in the end. Of course, We'll simpley have to wait and see.
• I don't think that's the case. Remember that the original series wasn't totally black and white. There were bad guys in the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe was sexist- yet those were the "hero" nations. Iroh, Zuko, Piandao, Joeng Joeng, Mai, and Ty Lee were from the Fire nation and they were all heroes in the end. The same can be said here: there are heroic benders and heroic non-benders; there are villianous benders and villianous non-benders. Also, you're overstating the issue. Gangs can be extremely violent and dangerous, especially if there are a lot of them and they have a powerful advantage over that averasge nonbender. Not all non-benders support the Equalists (Asami Sato? Shiro Shinobi?); Amon mentions that some nonbenders don't support the Equalists, Word of God states that the Protestor's parents are fine with benders, and Asami flat out states that being a non-bender does not mean being an Equalist (sympathizer). Overall the point Bryke is trying to make is this: what you do is more important than where you come from or what group you belong to; we all have the potential for good or evil.
  • The problem is that none of this bad stuff from benders ends up on screen. Mentioning that gangs are around doing bad things has much less emotional impact than watching Korra getting dragged into a darkened room by dozens of chi-blockers. There's obviously a conflict going on in the setting but the story is being told in such a way that sympathy can only possibly lie with benders.
    • They haven't just been mentioning it. In the very first episode we see for ourselves a group of benders trying to extort money from a (presumably non-bender) shop owner, threatening to burn his shop down if he didn't pay them.
      • As the OP said that has been the only scene with benders abusing their powers. We're more than halfway through the first season now.
    • Well, the protagonists are in large part benders, so of course the sympathy lies with them. But it's also true that neither benders or non-benders are being portrayed as monolithic forces of good or evil - to see it as an "us vs them" scenario is to make the same fundamental mistake as the Equalists. I think the compressed seasons compared to ATLA have hurt Korra's world-building; Bryke did the best they could to set up the conflict, but with only 12 episodes in the season they had to get things moving. Even so, it's there if you look that between the Triads, other benders lording it over non-benders, and the all-bender ruling council (only five people in that giant hall? What happened?), the Equalists do have a point about bender oppression and advantage. It's just as clear that Amon's revolution is an overreaction and that many benders would prefer a more harmonious society without undue advantages based on bending. Amon's methods are wrong, but so is his core point: that all benders look down on and oppress their non-powered fellows. Many do, but not all, so being a bender does not make you a bad person (nor does being a non-bender).
    • Responding to the above poster's part about not having enough episodes to to world-building: In my opinion, that's what fans get for complaining about filler. Even the worst fillers in the last series made the world and characters fuller (with the exception of The Great Divide).
    • Two things: One, it's still a kids' show, meaning as ambiguous as the conflict might actually be, they're going to skew it toward black and white, which means if the heroes are benders, they're not going to show a whole lot of badguy benders. Hell, in the original series, how long was it until we really got to see non-antagonist Firebenders besides Jeong Jeong? And he was made out to be a major exception.
      The other thing is, on some level they don't have to show Benders being oppressive, because the evidence of it is in the strength of the equalists--Amon isn't drumming up hundreds of people in support just by being persuasive. It must be a genuine issue for a lot of people. I'm betting if there's a second or third season, that's what they'll focus on.
• Don't forget that it is only about halfway into the first season. A common story-telling trick is spend some time setting up your audience's expectations going one way, and then, once your audience has gotten comfortable with that and come to accept that this is just the way things are in your fictional world, you pull the rug out and reverse it. The dramatic punch is much stronger that way if properly done, and it is an excellent way of dropping anvils subtly.
• Well, Tarrlok is established as a villain now.
• The problem with this black and white view is that it ignores the larger Avatar world. We know of bender oppression very well because we saw The Last Airbender. The Fire Nation and the Dai Li both used bending to oppress and control people at one time or another. We have also seen the Triad and we know of the people killed by “A Firebender” so clearly there is plenty of evil benders. If you look at just what we see in The Legend of Korra you are missing the point. Rule of Perception is at work. We are not seeing “the benders vs. the non-benders” we are seeing “The Krew, the Council, and the police vs. The Equalists.” They are two very different things. From what we have seen The Equalists probably number somewhere in the thousands but there are tens if not hundreds of thousands more non-benders in Republic City. The non-benders we are seeing are the one’s who are being the villains and the benders we are seeing (besides the Triad and now Tarrlok) are the ones acting as the heroes. We have seen non-benders who do not support the equalists and we have seen evil benders. We are just not seeing them much because they are not the focus of the story. In fact “When Extremes Meet” is basically an answer to this view by showing that Tarrlok is going too far and acting just like Amon with his military state response. Tarrlok arresting all of the protesters is treated as a horrible action because it is explicitly stated that not all non-benders are Equalists. We have a man who wants to remove all bending fighting a man who sees all non-benders as enemies. If there ever was any truth to the statement that we never see benders doing bad things it certainly doesn’t hold ground any longer.

Isolated upbringing equals Great Avatar?

Was Tenzin and the Order deliberately trying to raise Korra in the worst possible manner? The series seems to imply that she's been constantly confined by the Order for years and only taken to new places just to learn different bending styles. How was this supposed to prepare her for serious and complex issues human society has? In the first episode she clearly had no idea how to handle herself in the city. Were they training her with the expectation that she would never actually go anywhere and do anything?

• That was kind of the point: Tenzin and the White Lotus (save Katara) didn't think Korra was ready for the city and didn't want her to go. Katara (apparently) thought such things were best taught by experience and this was something she had to do on her own. And unlike Aang, Korra had no convenient way to travel to a big city and back again. (Southern Water Tribe: Ain't no cities) And unlike Roku, she wasn't practically an adult, living in a big city when she was tapped as the Avatar. Whether or not they were being too conservative with their approach, the White Lotus clearly intended to give Korra urban experience eventually.
• It was basically a bunch of people taking Aang's words entirely the wrong way. Half of the conflicts that arise in the first few episodes happen because Korra is so sheltered and inexperienced with people.
• I saw it the same way as parents who spoil their kids rotten. They want to keep her safe but at the cost of real world experience. I'm sure they had good intentions, but were just misguided.

Amon blimp

An airship is kind of a conspicuous getaway vehicle, how come nobody saw where it was heading? To a cop who just heard the attack on the radio, a giant unauthorized blimp coming from the direction of the arena should have looked suspicious.

• The officers inside the arena had been knocked out, and the officers outside wouldn't have been listening to general radio channels when guarding against a possible terrorist attack. Then, judging by how the ships were already on fire, it's very likely that Amon sent chi-blockers to take out the ships first, so that the airship wouldn't be stopped.
• I just went through the Welcome to Republic City thing on Nick.com, and discovered that the blimps are manufactured by Future Industries. It's certainly probable that Hiroshi Sato could have designed them so that there were secrets that only the Equalists would know, or even provide Amon with his own personal blimp.

The Main Cast seem pretty stingy in using their better techniques

Mako can shot off two lightning blasts in a row while standing on a speeding car, no-sweat. Why didn't he zap some Equalists before, like oh, say at the Arena, the mansion, Amon's demonstration, or while fighting the Liutenent or those two Mooks on the street in episode three? Also, Tarrlok can freaking Bloodbend, at anytime too it looks like, I'm sure that could be of use while on patrol. These guys have access to techniques considered to be unique or guarded secrets in the last series, but are common knowledge in their series, (Korra does show some knowledge of how Bloodbending works, implying Katara shared it with at least a few, they can at least use them more now that they are open to the public.

• Lightning bending, unless used at the power plant, is a killing technique that can't be countered unless you are a firebender. And considering Mako's personality and past he probably doesn't want to kill anyone. Notice how when he did uses it in "When Extremes Meet" he was aiming at the motorcycle not the rider. As for Tarrlok's blood bending, it's probably taboo and/or illegal to use it. Katara would never teach Korra how to use it and probably only warned her about it.
  • Tarrlok obviously doesn't want anyone else knowing he's a bloodbender. Notice how he makes sure everyone else is gone from the Council building before he begins the battle with Korra.
• Each time Mako's used lightning, he's had time to prepare. Lightning takes longer to warm up than firebending does. He wouldn't get many chances to use it in real combat. Even though he can generate non-fatal lightning (there are clearly five chi-blockers arrested in "When Extremes Meet", so he zapped the driver of the truck), he can't do it in an instant.

Okay I can't hold this back anymore...

But am I only person who thinks the antagonists are too effective? The heroes have virtually zero victories under their belts. That just makes this series too depressing and leaves me wonder why the good guys are even bothering at all.

• It's going to be hard to get a satisfying defeat for such a powerful enemy in three episodes. I really hope that either Amon or Tarlock lasts into season 2.
• Y'know that's kind of the point. Strong enemies who never seem to lose or back down is completely normal in fiction. The good guys bothering to stop them is the reason they're good guys. There's only twelve episodes and with such a restricted setting, conflicted characters and enemies at two fronts it's going to take a lot for the heroes to win. Anyway, the next episode implies Korra is going to work past her inner demons which would even the playing field a tad bit more.
• This is a short series. Thus, you can't have the plot structure of the original series where the balances of power and individual antagonists change several times over. Rather, you need to build up to a single, major confrontation in a three-act structure, much like a movie. We've had the buildup episodes in which the setting, the protagonists and the antagonists were introduced, and we've now moved to the greatest peril stage where the protagonists are brought down by the overwhelming enemy. From the structure so far I'd predict that the last three episodes will start feature Team Avatar starting to win, as they now know the full extent of the enemy's power, and may be able to play Tarrlok and Amon against each other, to boot.
  • I'd like to point out Legend of Korra originally had 12 episodes, then it got 14 more in production, along with option to renew for a 2nd season. But beside that, just look at this series: the co-creators have made virtually every moment awesome/heartwarming/funny/give us nightmares, and snuck some pretty dark stuff in, including an actual terrorist attack. This series is in good hands, and likely won't disappoint many, no matter what happens.
    • Just a little thing: the 14 more episodes are the 2nd season. This season's storyline will be completed in 12 episodes. Thus, it only has a single, tight storyarc, rather than the numerous overlapping arcs and standalone episodes of the original series. That's why the first third was devoted to introducing the setting and characters, the second third to the bad guys winning, and the final third presumably for the decisive battles where the good guys will ultimately triumph.

Where did Tarrlok learn to bloodbend?

Katara was the only one who knew the technique, and she would never have passed it on like that; if she taught anyone at all, it would be Korra, and I doubt that she did. (Also, Tarrlok is from the Northern tribe, so he probably wouldn't have learned it from her anyway.) From what Korra said, it's not completely unheard of, just very rare; again, Katara certainly wouldn't have spread it around. Did someone else just develop it on their own in the interim?

• The first bloodbender, Hama, was imprisoned by the Fire Nation and she invented bloodbending because she was desperate for power, which she needed to escape the prison. We already saw Tarrlok's ambition for power, so it'd really make sense if he were to practice bloodbending on his own because he wanted the power.
• That, and Yakone is implied to be a bloodbender, so the art was defenitely not lost.
• Maybe, one day in some pub in Republic city, one of Hama's victims told the story about how some freaky waterbender made him move around like a puppet. Someone overheard it and decided to try it out. I think it's one of those things where if you know it's possible, you can find a way to do it.
• Maybe the Ember Island Players uncovered Hama's story during their 'research' and worked it into their play. Once Bloodbending became common knowledge, any Waterbender with sufficient power could have independently developed the technique.
• Why not? The fundamental principle behind it is pretty simple. All it takes is for someone to observe that the human body is about 75% water and a villainous streak of insight to realize that it could be possible to bend a person's nerves and muscles by bending the water in them. More than one person could have figured that out. I mean it's not just the Japanese who made cool swords. The rest is all a lot of training. Eventually the bloodbender would become so powerful that they might not need the full moon at all. With even more skill they could bend even with their hands and feet tied (like King Bumi). Use a bicycle long enough and you can ride without using your hands.
• Also the Crescent Moon symbol on Yakhone's shirt is the same as the moon shown in the sky when Tarrlok drives Korra away. It's likely that Tarrlok is Yakone's son and he could have learnt it from him.

The ruling council of Republic City... Really?

A city of the size and importance of Republic City only as a five-member ruling council? Mayberry had more councilors than that! Not to mention there doesn't seem to be any non-bender on the council. That's a serious oversight in the best of times. And this is beside the fact that the members other than Tarrlok and Tenzin don't seem to have a collective spine between the three of them.

• I think that's kind of the point. The republic of nations was set up as the representation of an ideal, rather than as an actual, practical government. It symbolizes the nations coming together, so all the nations should get a representative. All nations should be treated equally, so they got an equal amount of representation (and Katara and Sokka probably insisted that they shouldn't be lumped in with the northern water tribe). I doubt anyone in the gaang actually considered any long-term consequences when they were organising the city. It's indeed a stupid way to organise a country, but it is one I can see the gaang, especially aang making.
• The size of the ruling Council is not unrealistic. The Swiss equivalent, the Swiss Federal Council is not much larger.
• Um...OP, that's the point. The Equalists aren't completely wrong. Everyone on the council is a bender, they're not elected officals, not to mention, since they're each from a different nation presumably most of them lived in that nation until chosen as a council member (the exception being Tenzin). They're bringing in values and opinions that may not work in a place Republic City. It's like if the Governor of Texas was from Alaska.
• Remember that Republic City is just that, a city, and it has inhereted its politics from three monarchies and the loose confederation of tribes in the South. Five people sharing ultimate descision making power is probably quite large enormous by their standards.
• In the flashbacks, City Hall is full of people, with Aang sitting at one of the lower tables, occupying no special place. In the current time, five people sit in the middle of the giant, conspicuously empty hall, with no one around, not even a secretary to record minutes. Something seems to have happened that drastically altered the structure of government after the city's founding.
  • Actually, it's more likely that the flashbacks are part of a trial. Specifically, Yakone's trial. The big room with the lines of benches that Korra threw Tarlok into before he started bloodbending? Yeah, it's that room.
• Did we ever actually get confirmation that everyone on the council is a bender?
  • Tarrlok's speech in The Voice in the Night wouldn't be as effective if his audience had contained non-benders.
  • And it's hard to imagine non-benders voting for the non-bender curfew law.

Why is there only one Earthbending councilor?

Much like the the WMG above, I also question why the council is set up the way it is. But for me I have to wonder why the earthbenders only have one representative? It is understandable why fire and air only have one. (Both have small populations.) And it is also understandable why the water tribes have two representatives. They are two nations and thus they need representatives from each nation. But the Earth Kingdom is a massive country with many different regions and probably the largest population out of all the nations. Plus, they even have a population of water benders (the swamp folks) and firebenders (those who came during the war and never left). You'd think they'd at least have two representatives like the water tribes?

• The Earth Kingdom is evidently still a kingdom, with a single ruler, so the representative is a representative of the Earth King.
  • The Earth Kingdom probably doesn't recognize any Earth Kingdom territory that wasn't reorganized into the United Republic of nations as a separate entity, and any would-be independent Earth nations probably don't have the strength or influence to get a seat on the Council, as they probably would be hedged out by the Earth Kingdom. The Southern Water Tribe meanwhile probably gained a huge amount of influence due to two of their members being major players in ending the war, allowing them to be independently represented.
  • Unlike the isolationist Northern Water Tribe, the South helped the Earth Kingdom during the war by providing it with a small but effective naval force. Perhaps the Earth Kingdom went quid pro quo post-war, repaying the debt by lobbying for the South to get a seat.
• Also the Fire Nation members who came and never left were formed into the United Republic of Nations, which Republic City was the capital of.

Pro-bending waterbender colours

This is a very minor point, but why do pro-waterbending waterbenders have a grey belt and head marking, rather than the blue which you'd normally associate with waterbending? You'd think that they'd want to keep grey available for when airbending populations have grown.

• They'd have to rework the entire game for airbenders. They'd have a huge advantage, even with short bursts of air.
• They look blue to me... not quite deep-sea blue, but still.
• They are the same shade of blue as the Water Tribe clothes.

Korra's visions and the Avatar State

Am I the only one who's noticed that Korra's visions occur at just that time where you normally expect the Avatar state to kick in? Every time she's knocked out flat - even in the flashbacks of Aang we see the Avatar State activate when he's put out of commission (or so it seems). In Korra's case, instead of an Avatar state kicking in, she gets her visions instead. What could be the reason for this?

• There are theories that there's something's wrong with Korra's Avatar spirit; this would explain why Korra can't go to the Avatar state, or learn how to airbend. If that's the case, the visions could be Aang trying to explain what the problem with her Avatar spirit is, and what Korra should do to fix it.
• I'd say it's because of her lack of spirituality. Or maybe there's something that needs to be unlocked? Maybe something permanent happened during that fight with Yakone.
  • It's heavily implied to be the result of her lack of spirituality. Remember, Aang was a very spiritual person, he was raised by monks in a highly spiritual culture. If kicking into the Avatar State requires some level of spirituality, which it likely does, it wouldn't have been a problem for Aang. Remember, the Avatar State is a state of being where the Avatar is suddenly connected to every single other Avatar at once, which means connecting to past lives.
• Do I need to remind again that Aang did not go into Avatar state every time he was losing a fight or was knocked out? He usually only entered it when his friends, especially Katara, were in mortal peril. No such thing has happened so far. There is no reason for Korra to have entered the Avatar state yet. But she is receiving messages from Aang, like Aang was receiving from Roku.

Was Korra planning on straight up killing Tarrlok?

What was Korra's endgame? If Tarrlok hadn't bloodbended her, that last blast of firebending was going to hit, very probably killing him, or at least doing some major damage. Even though Tarrlok threw the first attack, there were definitely going to be some repercussions. Also, for all intents and purposes, Tarrlok was disabled, since he had no water to bend. Why even throw that last attack on a helpless foe?

• It's possible. Avatar Aang was peaceful and preferred non-violent forms of confrontation, and couldn't even imagine killing a person, but remember, there were many Avatars who were perfectly willing to kill if it meant maintaining the peace and balance in the world. The Avatar is pressured with the duty to maintain peace and balance. There was obviously no reasoning with Tarrlok, and there was no peaceful way to stop him since he had so much power and influence.
• If not kill him, Korra certainly did not plan to leave on anything other than a brutal beatdown. You can hear it in her voice. She wasn't about to back down simply because he was helpless. The fact that Tarrlok had been pressing her buttons all day (or two) certainly didn't help.
• Rule of Drama. Tarrlok's bloodbending wouldn't have looked so "What in the world?" if Korra had just stood still or walked away. Your wonder what Avatar Kyoshi would have done in such a situation. Probably destroyed the whole building. Korra's a lot like her when it comes to cracking the whip, and hard!
• It looks to me that Korra was going to blast fire on Tarrlok's both sides to really scare him into submission. Korra is hot-blooded, but so far hasn't shown real killer instincts.
• Probably. It does make sense. Tarrlok has shown that he is willing to lethally attack Korra, so she can't exactly let him go. He has shown that he controls the police force, so she can't deliver him to the police. She probably doesn't want to drag Tenzin into this, so she can't bring him to airtemple island.

---

Back to The Legend of Korra

1. ↑ As in like a dog see only in black in white colorblind
2. ↑ Korra likely views the loss of her bending as something tantamount to death.