kindaokaymaybe

heyo

Rita / she/they / vegan🌱 / 🏳️‍🌈 commissions are open! Obsessed with THG and Midnight Mass, make art for both occassionally

736 posts

LOK Got Lightning Bending Wrong.

LOK got lightning bending wrong.

LOK got every kind of bending wrong. This is a really good in-depth meta on it.

The very distinctive moves that ATLA built for the different types of bending all got much more blurred together.

Or how can the armless chick move water when waterbending is so based on arm movements? 🤷🏼‍♀️ (I could go on and on)

The specialized, higher forms of bending were suddenly accessible to everyone (like all the cops of Republic City being metal-benders) except when they weren’t (Bolin). But then became accessible again with no explanation (Bolin lavabending).

I also liked in ATLA that Aang did not get automatically access to all specialized bending - as far as we know he couldn’t heal or do metalbending (?)

I get it that Korra was supposed to be a much more fighting-based and less spiritual Avatar, and also she trained the elements at the appropriate age, not at 12, but still it would have been nice to see her struggle a bit more with certain types of bending (I know she struggles with Air a bit).

Yes, lightning was a prime example as well - i don’t mind it that Mako had it - he was a pro-bender after all - but it would have been cool if they showed us a bit how Mako and Bolin managed to get so good being orphan street kids (and Katara’s story in ATLA showing that raw talent was not enough).

I also never understood how Mako could bend lightning while mostly paralyzed by Amon at the end of Book 1, not being able to move his arms. The circular movements were the basis in ATLA.

I would have been delighted to learn more about the development of bending, but we didn’t get much in the way of new world-building - more like: hey this would look cool, it doesn’t matter if it makes any sense.