RUFIOOOO!

;___;

 

This. The voice sounded waaay too young for the character's appearance. It was noticeable enough that it kind of ruined the end scene for me.

 

Well, Jinora, Tenzin's eldest daughter, is ten which is only two years younger than Aang was at the start of the first series. Also, remember that the Tenzin Gyatso (the monk who was like Aang's father) was able to take on like a hundred firebenders during Sozin's comet, so its not exactly a stretch that 3 airbender kids are completely badass.

Also:

Spoiler

Lin could really have used Skysword and Boomerang today

 

Episode was full of win and I hope

Spoiler

Lin learns the Equalists style of fighting so she can kick them in the face a few times

I thought you guys were exaggerating the voice of the General but then I heard it and I was like 'This dudes balls haven't dropped and hes a general?'.

Seriously off putting.

 

So like, interesting take on Amon's bending-takeyawayey thingy.

For people who don't like tumblr:





Now, let's apply that to the context of Amon's abilities...



Anyway, speculation on my part from here on out. Maybe everybody's a bender or at least has some extent of latent bending capability and... it just has to do with if your sixth chakra is open or not?

Genetics determines what type of bending talent you might be capable of - you can't get a firebender child from a line of airbenders, unless there was a firebender somewhere in the ancestry somewhere. Or something like that.

Then something to do with the energy in your body - if your energy is aligned properly, you'll be able to access your bending. So if your energy isn't aligned... you can't bend. So, this is the 'illusion of separation' - benders and non-benders are one and the same, and that the conflict of Korra between those with abilities and those without is just an illusion, one that Amon is eager to perpetuate.

So what Amon is doing could be him 'closing' the sixth chakra of benders to render them in the exact same state that non-benders are in, energy wise. It's not flowing. The jujubeans aren't making mojo because they can't roll. If this is the case, it sets up a delightful plot arc in which Korra gets her bending taken away (the sequence has been in a trailer or two), and has to figure out how to get it back - and the answer could lie in realigning her energy, and opening her chakras one by one, just like Aang did to master the Avatar State.

Or something like that.

 

If that's the case could there be a way to make non-benders into benders?

I don't like that idea.

 

I am cool with this, it makes sense.

 

Not without substantial training, I don't think. And we do see a huge variety of talent in terms of bending anyway. Building on my earlier post, I'd compare bending to musical talent.

Everybody has SOME degree of musical talent. It could be utterly abysmal (hello tonedeaf or rhythm-insensitive people), or it could be at a virtuoso level of talent from the getgo, or anywhere in between. But people who are too scared of expressing themselves or are uncomfortable with performing wouldn't be able to play music, even if they might have had the talent for it, just as people with horrible musical skills can be extremely expressive and emotive. And then there's the matter of the musicians having had training or not.

So, in this analogy, musical talent is bending talent, actual musical ability would equate to actual bending ability, training is training, and the ability to express or perform would be analogous to the chakra being open or not.

Shitty analogy is shitty, but I think it gets the point across.

 

My memory of those episodes is kind of hazy, but if I recall correctly, Aang was training with the guru to open those very chakras.
http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/The_Guru
So they were closed and he was still bending. Now the analogy used in the episode was that the chakras were like 7 pools of water, and the 'blocks' were like algae that slowed the flow of energy between them.

You could take this to mean that chakras start out semi-blocked, and can be unlocked or blocked out entirely. However, in the same episode, Aang blocks the 7th chakra (located at the crown of the head, btw), preventing him from accessing the avatar state. When he left the area, he had gained no significant power boost nor did he become any better at bending with 6 chakras completely unlocked. He also didn't lose his ability to bend with the 7th entirely blocked.. So from what we know about the chakras from that episode, I think it's a safer assumption to say that they don't affect bending.

But they could just retcon that.

 

It was fun to speculate though! :>

 

At the very least this thread has inspired me to watch the original series again, which I have on a hard drive somewhere...

 

Admiral Zhao is Lucius Malfoy.
Ozai is Luke Skywalker
Sozin is Hellboy

Did I just blow your fucking mind?

 

Wat. Da. Fuq?

 

Jason Isaacs
Mark Hamill
Ron Perlman

 

I was merely stating my incredulity, Mr Khan.

 

Mind = blown. Never would have guessed Mark Hamill for Ozai's voice actor.

 

I think you're getting the seventh and sixth chakras confused. The sixth deals with illusion as lutris's gif says and its entirely viable that this chakra is the one that's blocked when someone's bending is taken away by Amon.

But the seventh chakra, which is above the sixth, deals with a person connection to the wider, spiritual cosmos and their understanding of their place in the world. This is why Aang couldn't slip into the avatar state when this chakra was blocked because he didn't fully comprehend that he is not wholly "human" or of this earth. He is essentially a demigod and he needed to accept that he can't fully involve himself in the world like a real human. This is what was stopping him from going all kung-fu action glowy-eyed Jebus whenever the fuck he wanted.

The situation is the same with the sixth chakra. If Amon is blocking the chi flow from the sixth chakra to the ones below he is essentially breaking the connection between a persons awareness and their own body, disabling their ability to visualize, control and guide the energy within their body, which is the very basis of all kinds of bending.