Finally got around to watching The Legend of Korra

Watching episode 4 omg Korra and Mako have such chemistry and tension but Korra and Bolin are so cute and sweet and omg what are these feelings I am feeling right now

 

You DO realize that most of the fights so far have been within the constraints of a city right? Or against chi blockers with no bending ability at all? Probending has it's own rules to prevent people from getting thier **** wrecked, it makes perfect sense; you can't have judo expert in a boxing ring.

It's been one hundred years.
With the fire nation not a complete dictatorship anymore, their secrets have obviously been revealed to the public. People have probably been taught how to lightning bend from an early point in life. Just like how they're are ten times more metalbenders then before because the technique has brought down the line and more refined.

Ummmmm
We've only seen Tarrlock fight twice throughout the entire series.
the first time he flooded an entire room of equalist and froze them
The second time he created a bubble of water and proceeded to Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken blocks of ice out of it.
And we have NO explanation as to why he can bloodbend without the moo but there's obviously going to be an explanation otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned it during the fight.

 

Still weak even when not in city setting. Those robots, for instance, should have been easy to take for characters of those ages and purported skill level. Honestly, the city setting does explain most of it but it doesn't excuse that it is still for the most part uninteresting fights. If they can't replicate the old feeling, come up with something just as awesome not some watered down ugly looking shit.

Other than that, I'm gonna disagree. Just because the Fire Nation's empire dissolved doesn't mean that the few masters that knew lightning bending just taught everyone. Additionally, just because a master is willing to teach doesn't mean people are able to learn at all. Zuko couldn't learn. Normal soldiers and officers couldn't learn otherwise they would have because it's stupid to waste a military advantage like that and as Nazi's they wouldn't have done that. So an average person cannot lightning bend in the 75 year ago timeline. Why is everyone suddenly so much more emotionally stable and talented? Also, metalbending is also only used by specially trained individuals with a direct line to the creator, not filthy casuals.

Willing to accept Tarrlock argument barring the fact that the flood wasn't a solo act.

 

Lightning bending was a family secret. When word got out of it people knew that it was possible, the challenge was finding out HOW to do it. There's no mention that the lightning bending we see is brought about by the same technique that was used by the elite within the fire nation. There are different ways to achieve the same result, who's to say that commoners simply didn't develop their own path to lightning bending?

How so?
The robots were specifically MADE to combat against them, they were unbendeble by the metalbenders and they were generally an unknown force that nobody knew about. The equalist know everything about the benders but the benders know next to nothing about the equalist and their methods of fighting as they are not used to witnessing non-benders stand on equal ground to benders. It's no surprise that they were baffled by the robots who essentially defied what they have been taught.

 

Those two teaching Azula were never confirmed as related, were they? I also want to point out that it's nearly impossible that in 75 years it'd go from one familty to ****ing everyone. Martial arts just don't spread that fast because of how long it takes to teach people. It's also patently impossible that can be developed for everone else independently. Techniques that take generations to develop developed by people that don't even know it exists in one generation, multiply this event by at least a thousand and you've got the situation they've given us. Also, they aren't masters and there is no war so no reason to develop new techniques at all. It's blind leading blind here. It's why martial arts are worthless in most of the modern world.

Lift robots up on rock platforms and drop them. Crush cockpit with rock. Flip robot upside down with rock to crush cockpit. Any number of general antirobot options. Unless they traded metalmedning for earthbending. Also, Tenzin is a chump and hasn't done anything yet. I feel like the tanks seemed like more of a legit threat and these are just kinda big unwieldy looking toys. It's more a problem with them putting this style of mechs in I guess.

 

Wasn't the room they were in made out of something besides earth?

 

It was still bendable since it'd have to be metal. They mentioned how rare the robot metal is so you just end up trading bendable rock for bendable metal. My argument remains basially the same.

 

If in 75 years an entire city can be built that encompasses people from every nation in the world and can even develop factories and automobiles then I don't see why it's unlikely for teachings to be shared amongst the community of republic city.

The internet used to be exclusive to only the military and was very limited. As people learned more about the internet and what it's capabilities were people began to develop their own methods and developments and within the span of 30 years, the internet was available to the public through the use of home computers and was more advanced then what the military had spent years keeping a secret and developing for themselves.
Very rarely do things that are exclusive to a certain amount of people STAY exclusive to a certain amount of people. People naturally want to have access to those things and will find ways to work around the pre determined rules and make their own. It's no surprise that most people can lightning bend as people have probably been spending years attempting to find a way lightning bend. And there's no way to know if the lightning bending that we are seeing is of the same caliber of the lightning bending that Azula and Iroh were capable of.

1. General curiosity. People want things for themselves so they will strive to obtain it somehow
2. Those factories seemed pretty reliant on lightning benders
3. One of the lightning benders we have seen was a criminal so it's no stretch to say the he's developed his own technique for the sake of intimidation.

The mechs had grapple hooks that could attack them from afar. They had no way of defending against these hooks as it would come down to either get electrocuted by the wire or dodge it and allow the robots to attack immediately again.
Crushing the cockpit would kill the pilots.

 

If you are not going to read it, then do not respond to it.

I think we can take a few things away from the events in the series. This last episode (Episode 8) especially has a lot of interesting factors that parallel with real-world events.

Spoiler

Firstly, Tarlok proposed that not only equalists but all who associate with them should be treated as threats and put under surveillance if not arrested. This parallels the passing and recent extension of the PATRIOT act in the United States. See below:

Second, both Tarlok and the US are increasing trespass laws and arresting those who gathered to protest these actions and treating them as terrorists as well. It is hard to deny that the US police have been brutalizing and arresting protesters under terrorist charges while the media demonizes them without evidence since long before the Occupy protests.

Third, they are both cutting power and increasing surveillance. An obvious parallel can be found in the SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA initiatives, as well as a proposed bill that allows the President to shut off the internet in a state of emergency. That last one never happened, but the fact that they even proposed it should be appalling.

Fourth, citizens are being entrapped by being provided with materials for terrorism and then being arrested for having them, into indefinite detainment. I found several actions that Tarlok has taken very fishy and possibly related to this, from the Cabbage Corp. deal to the chi blocker training ground under the restaurant.

Fifth and most importantly, they have both instituted an extension of the law stating that those charged with terrorist related actions or suspected of being affiliated with terrorists will be held indefinitely without trial until they feel the terrorist threat has passed. This extension already passed in the US back in December in the form of a stipulation under the NDAA of 2012. The words used by the police chief in this episode are almost an exact match to the words Obama said on the subject.

Given how central the political aspect has been to the story so far and how easily and well it parallels with recent events in the US, I am beginning to think that they are trying to open some minds to political events and a swift rise into a militarized police state. At the cost of character development, maybe, but it is lining up a lot.

 

I love how you bring the US into this lol.

 

Republic City has been an allegory for the United States the whole time; I thought that was obvious enough. Even the name reeks of US influences. A center for freedom, a place of peace where everyone can live in harmony. Benders of all types, and non-benders too.

And then the curtain is pulled and you have mafia involvement, a police force that shuns vigilantes, and a counsel or congress of corrupt politicians. The illusion of grandeur, and the reality soon after. Calling it a republic while power is really in the hands of a few.

It fits perfectly.

 

I just found it funny how you brought the US by comparing Turdlok with it lol.

 

Martial arts are so much slower than technology, especially when technology can be fueled by what is basically magic. Even a genius trained from birth takes at least 10 years to reach even the lowest level of Master. Since I'm assuming few to no geniuses since NPCs are not genius level ever we have to assume each of them takes at lest 20 years to master a martial art. Also, in a given class maybe a tenth of them actually get to be masters at all. So that means you get a maximum of 3 full generations of students and one in process. If we account for class size you should only have several thousand people worldwide who have a shot at knowing this. That's also a really short amount of time and because of the almost dogmatic nature of many schools they frequently pass down traditions rather than create new content to begin with. You even see Master Yuu's earthbending academy in the first series as an example of this. He's considered a great teacher but does ****all for his students in terms of actualy teaching. That's not to mention difficulty level. They make it seems like it's as easy to pick up as a pound of cabbages, it shouldn't be. Just knowing how to do it doesn't make you capable. Historically, martial arts take more than a hundred years to completely alter and develop, they've sped up the clock far far too much here. It's straining suspension of disbelief at best and an outright inconsistent at worst.

Faulty comparison. Physical skillsets and mental skillsets don't work at the same speed. While I believe it would spread, the extent of it is unfeasable. Let's remember that these people have no conception of bending anythign other than the core elements. Lightning bending is not common enough for these nobodies to even know about it. They're not gonna happen upon it without being genius level and I assume no geniuses among NPCs. So they probably haven't been working towards this goal in reality. And even if they were, it has emotional and mental requirements. Those can't be fulfilled by just anybody. So that narrows who could do it period even if it was a solved bending. The scale seems to be much smaller, but my whole point is that martial arts spread slowly and this wouldn't happen. People don't just say, "Hey wanna learn my secret move that gives me a one up on all you?" No, they keep that **** a secret and cut off people's hands if they try to steal the secret scroll. Not everyone is gonna be all sharing is caring about this.

1. No. Just no.
2. Factories would have been coal or firebending powered before hand. Something must have changed here that isn't being told. Since they had a system in place until lightning bending became more popular this wouldn't have workeed out so it was a result rather than a cause.
3. Criminals and thugs shouldn't be able to learn something with an emotional requirement because they are unstable. That was a mistake on their part.

Okay yeah, kids show. Still, grappling hooks don't make them invincible against counterattacks since each unit had at least two people against it allowing for so many more options. There are tons of better ideas than 'let's tug on them and see what happens, it's not like we didn't all get tazed last episode or see the stun batons earlier in the season.' I should have at least been a fight not a total curbstomp.

@Makaze: stop stealing my thunder.

 

Im in Jube's side with this one.

 

I see both sides of the argument, but I am leaning toward Jiku's because it feels like bending has become a lot more common and lot more watered down. Instead of actually making the others stronger, they make them faster and give them the element of surprise. The benders are weaker and the fighting is focused more on the bodies of those involved than any kind of creative or stylized fighting. We have yet to see a school or training facility other than the Air temple and the chi blocking thing under the restaurant, so until all of that is explained we can assume that everything cool about Avatar has been sacrificed for modernism and parallels to real circumstances in the United States.

Weakness on the good side seems almost manufactured simply to give the impression of helplessness, while benders should be anything but helpless. This far in, we should see some hope and someone of extreme and game-changing strength, unless the creators are setting it up to be a full-scale dystopia.

 

I feel like the creators do, too.

 

Developing the internet is both a physical AND mental skillset.

We haven't seen it outside of republic city

That explains the Sandbenders
and the Foggy Swamp style
These two tribes were fairly well known around the world which means that people were perfectly aware that things outside the core elements could be bended.

Remember how I said it spread because people learned that it existed?

You don't have to be a genius to KNOW about lightning bending
And I've already stated that there is no sign that the lightning bending we see the civilians of republic city use is the same lightning bending that we saw Azula and Iroh use, there could be limitations to this style of bending or advancements that separate it from traditional style.

Once again, see the "this probably isn't the same lightning bending that we've previously seen" just like Amon's spirit bending is not the same as Aang's.

The Last Airbender showed that people has plenty of knowledge of several different fighting styles despite living on opposite sides of the world. This was partly due to the fact that most people that weren't firebenders were against the firenation and there were tons of rebel factions. It's not uncommon for people within rebel factions to share skills with eachother. The only techniques that were relatively unknown to all were firebending techniques and once the fire nation fell it's not unbelievable that people wanted to know all about what the fire nation family was like and other dirt that they could dig up on the empire that was oppressing them for years now.

Amon and other chi blockers have clearly shown that lightning bending isn't all that special nor gives much of an upper hand.

And there are some that will
and the ones that will are probably gonna be more vocal about it.

That's not much of an argument.

You just called Azula mentally stable
Also criminal and mentally unstable don't always go hand in hand.

 

Not in the same way learning to make your movements precise, powerful, effective and fluid is. It requires years to get down basics and many more to be ready to learn advanced tech. It's like, you have to be an expert at everything to advance martial art but you can more easily combine skills across tons of people to create an internet. The two things are just not comparable.

I will concede this point only because you're right.

Sand is part of the core element, it's a different style and application but it's the same bending. Like you learn to pick up a rock and you know how to pick up sand. But controlling sand's everchanging shape requires a different way of doing it. Metal on the other hand you need to learn a new tech to bend. The same thing applies to swamp style.

I remember you never giving a reason why.

Not my point.
This is a far more palatable theory, but it has nothing backing it up. It is simply a possibility without anything to support or deny it so far. I prefer to work within established rules if possible so I'm not going to be able to argue against you any further than this on this front.

Again, we'll see later or not at all.

They had thousands of years to spread their styles before the war even started. It's only natural that there could be so much knowledge out there. Republic City had only 75 to gain its styles. Also, the Fire Nation still exists. Only the empire collapsed. There is still a fire lord so their government hasn't undergone a massive reconstitution or anything. There's actually no reason they'd start releasing absolutely everything.

Think of it like this: It is special to know how to properly and consistently execute a one inch punch. But it is no stronger than a normal punch and it still loses to a guy with a gun. So that example doesn't affect my argument. Just because a technique is difficult to learn and very special to know doesn't mean it's gotta be a game changer.

Again, no matter how vocal anyone is, I'm going to say the timeframe isn't enough for them to solve it themselves and them spread it without a radically different technique arising as you keep citing as a possibility. Possible but unproven and still unlikely.

There really shouldn't be a need for one given my entire argument has been that it is not possible and therefore shouldn't matter if someone wants something or not.

When I said stable, I meant someting more like consistent, calm and focused. It was a poor choice of words. Alright, not all criminals are criminally insane, but gangsters are all to a point antisocial sociopaths. If that doesn't please you, we can additonally say that lighting is supposed to be without aggression or ego and we all saw hat boy was nothing but aggression and ego.

 

Still agreeing more with Jube on nearly every point.

And in my personal (and possibly/probably flawed) opinion, the fighting is a lot less elegant and refined so far because nobody's in a war right now. There's no reason to learn how to fight so well when there's no real conflict, and the only conflict I've seen so far with the new series is with the Equalists, and I don't know how long that's been going on. And Pro Bending is about beating the other team ASAP, not making a pretty show (at least, the objective is supposed to be that)

 

You're right about the top half. People do usually get weaker in peacetime.

However, probending, like any other sport is about nothing but putting on a show. If you end it quickly or efficiently you aren't putting on a show and if you're not putting on show you aren't selling tickets and when you're not selling tickets you're not making money and if you're not making money you aren't doing your job. That's all there is to it.