Elemental bending as shown in Avatar the last airbender. You can also choose Korra ones.
I would choose anything but airbending.
Genderbender
You called??
the most advanced form of bending, my you are a bold one
Earthbending would allow you to perform construction at immense scales. Not only that but earthbenders get magnetisation not just to metals but to any type of rocks too.
Earth Bending is both Underrated and overpowered. Literally all of the ground beneath you is something you can use! Also can chuck it for artillery
I think I would get firebending. Why? It’s so closely related to passion and emotion it would have to be my bending power. That’s it really.
Its also the only bending power that bends from within, not anything around you. So your level of power is determined by personal discipline and mastery, while being able to be used in all environments.
Waterbending for sure. Even without all the Korra additions (I can write a whole essay probably why I don’t like Korra lmao), I do still think water is well, fluid. It’s flexible and has many uses.
And I always liked the dark ocean blue colour so yeah.
Probably water, because it’s the most useful for incapacitating people in the first series canon (bloodbending). If you could manipulate molecules, either water or air would definitely be the best
I’ll go with airbending because the airbenders instill personal traits I consider important. Also I’m not living in the poles wtf
airbenders are cool…
But airbending is meh. But you can kinda fly and also force choke.
I don’t want to kill or hurt people with magical powers lmao
…
you do get an appa so I will concede
“Who wouldn’t want a giant bison as a best friend.”
exactly
There were some good moments in that show
some
My chao in SA2 (before I broke my laptop) are called Appa, Momo, Pabu and Naga 🥰
beautiful
💅
What if it was an evil tyrannical Queen stealing from her subjects and generally being a giant ultra b*tch? Cause I would definitely be down to pull the air from her lungs and watch that kind of person suffocate. Just saying.
Honestly? I thought it was LoK trying to be edgy. Like “woah, seeee? air bending can be used to kill too”. Yeah, no shit. Way to miss the point of the air nomads.
I will sooner die than use magical powers to kill a monarch. God gave us the guillotine for that shit [PARODY SATIRE]
“Why didn’t Aang kill the fire lord???”
Do you not understand themes in a story? Is every story as shallow as “stab bad guy” to you? SMH
Fire, so I can burn a US flag the moment I see one 😎
Absolutely based answer
Electricity bending as shown in Korra. Probably the most useful for modern society.
Honestly they all have their purpose in society when you think about it.
Earth (tied with water for #1 most useful imo)
- Basically free structure building. Like any structure almost.
- End homelessness by having homes everywhere.
- Landscaping and farming implications.
- building roads and bridges
- Metal benders to boot. Even better for structure building and any other metal working. Easy Magnet production AND FUCKING TRAINS removed.
- Added bonus if earth benders would be able to separate soil pollution
- Also hurling boulders gotta be pretty fun
Water
- Free housing as well if you like the cold (I do)
- Water scarcity is a big deal and waters can probably purify water. In fact it’s probably more likely water benders could help with environmental polution more than any other bender. Even taking it from soil through ground water.
- Healing is pretty baller. No surgeon would want to operate without some water healer backup and most all water benders can learn it.
- Got that magic “calm down angry spirits from killing everyone” ability.
- Never have to worry about drowning
- Bloodbending, while super rare and hard to do is super powerful and I bet could have amazing healing pote trial if used right.
Fire
- Can cook whenever
- Can actually be better firefighters than water benders cause they can just quell the fires straight up without need for water though probably takes lots of concentration.
- Fire benders are shown to be able to diagnose illnesses better than water benders and have their own healing abilities. Just not as versatile and easy to learn as water healing.
- Lightning benders would basically drive the world as it’s essentially free, clean energy.
Air
- uhhhhhh idk you get a cool Bison pet?
- In all seriousness though air benders probably the most in touch with nature and philosophy. So from a spiritual sense that has it’s purpose they were based off Budist and Taoist monks. I’ve followed the Tao for a few years and it’s a great philosophy. Even if you don’t live by it just understanding it is great.
- Can fly so that’s always cool
- I bet a bunch of air benders could work together to change weather patterns to bring rain to drought stricken areas, move rain out of flooding areas, stop tonadoes and other natural (storm based) disasters.
- If air benders could pull polution out of the air that would be amazing. Maybe not like CO2 and stuff but like, smog and particle pollutants might be possible.
- Also I’m sure they could be of use in certain industrial fields. Diverting air through pipes and machinery and stuff. Idk.
This is incredibly detailed
but now you must choose
Probably Earth cause I like to build things and farm and stuff. I am a creator at heart. Let me make houses, farms, roads. Things to help people. Metal bending would be a bonus if I could master it. Lava bending would be pretty cool but also is super rare. That and idk what you could use it for other than as a weapon which isn’t why I want to Earth bend.
I’m so torn.
- waterbending means I can heal and also bloodbend
- firebending is cool and you can lightning bend
- airbending is so acrobatic and floaty I love it but I ain’t shaving my head
- earthbending leads to metal bending which has the coolest stance movements and also lava bending
firebending is cool and you can lightning bend
(Picture me infodumping like an annoying nerd)
Actually in the original series “lighting bending” is extremely rare and seen only in the royal family. Which means that this is not a skill many people would have and therefore-
Fair, i always thought it was more tied to pure focus hence azula going out her way to master it by obsessively practising it tying into her whole perfectionist vibe blah blah blah.
In Korra Mako learns to lightning bend but we don’t speak about Korra because it was garbage.
Imo Korra wasn’t bad it just wasn’t as re-watchable like ATLA. It got gimped because Nickelodeon is run by a bunch of morons. They only approved a single season of the show even though the writers asked for multiple to make a full story like ATLA. So they had to make the first ark self contained. Then Nick came back approving yet another single season. It wasn’t till after that they approved multiple seasons which gave us 3 and 4. Even then I think it was better than it gets credit for. No ATLA for sure but then that show is actually perfect.
I dunno, for me they repeatedly showed their lib takes by demonising every form of remotely leftist adjacent ideology and constantly apologised for anything adjacent to the current status quo.
The characters I adored and I loved so much of the show but so much of it felt tainted by the brain rot takes of the show on any of the bad guys ideologies which I thought should have being explored and influenced korra’s growth as the avatar.
Korra is in an industrialised city/world at this point, so we get a “democratic” city where the president constantly holds onto power and leverages that power and the power of the aristocracy to continue to perpetuate inequality despite it being brought up through characters backstories and the homeless we see in the show and that’s never addressed and is considered essentially fine and acceptable despite korra highlighting it several times.
The equalists where imo a ham-fisted lib take on social justice and leftist ideas. The show demonstrated inequality legitimising the arguments of the non benders then apologised and defended that inequality through Korra and when non benders tried to push for more rights they are demonised in the show. Amon is imo a parody of any revolutionary leader and considering this came from an American company i don’t think its unfair to guess what they got their inspiration from and tried to parody. Like if they’d had Korra genuinely learn about the inequality and the failings of the current system and work to fix that I’d have enjoyed it but instead it was “revolutionaries bad” also token evil bad guy because their goals were genuinely understandable so fuck it here’s the most evil character we can think up to make sure you don’t sympathise with them. No nuance.
The “anarchist” guy (while I’m no anarchist) again got a lib treatment by them essentially unfairly parodying anarchist thought through a maniac who again wanted to address the failings of the current status quo and because that would actually be a genuinely sympathetic side in the show they again made him wacky and ludicrously evil to force the viewer to hate him and his ideology when again they could of had korra learn and understand his view points and work to fix the failings while stopping him.
Kuvira and her uprising against the earth kingdom monarchy was imo a very bad faith take on China and the ccp and again they make her a stupidly evil character to justify Korra fighting her despite the fact that kuvira trying to remove a monarchy and bring in a new age for the earth nation is a totally sympathetic goal. Again instead of Korra recognising that monarchies are bad we have the show apologise for and rehabilitate the ridiculous earth kingdom royal line while getting help from the “president” of Republic city to install a new king that is controllable and kind to the aristocracy of Republic city.
Maybe the reason none of that got explored is because as you described, they couldn’t plan ahead for the subsequent seasons (which i didnt know tbf) and we’d have seen more nuance and growth from Korra regarding the world and systems she lives in but I just feel like it was a load of Americans going “communism and leftism is stupid compared to our glorious capitalist democracy so let’s use that as inspiration for all the baddies” and it felt very low key propaganda but maybe I’ve read WAY too much into it.
It was like a marvel movie before marvel movies is I guess what I’m saying.
And all I’d been told was “omg asami and Korra get together at the end” and I was hyped to see some lgbtqi+ representation only for the last scene to be them holding hands going into a portal despite the insane amount of tease and foreshadowing that final season had towards it. Felt very gay baiting without stepping over a line and upsetting the Christians because they could do the whole “just good friends” thing and that wound me up vs say she-ra where they unapologetically had catra and adora kiss. I dunno yeah it was a “different time” but I loved the feminist takes in ATLA so it’s not like that show wasn’t scared to make a point and korra by comparison felt empty and “safe” for consumption by comparison.
Lightning bending definitely exists to show the difference between Zuko and the rest of his family. But I thought it was implied this is a “royal bending skill” and I don’t seem to be the only one who does.
The power plants in Korra are powered by lightning bending and it’s portrayed as dangerous work done by industrial laborers and not royals. I think it’s a safe conclusion to assume that the royals opened lightning bending schools to teach non-royals so they could perform this labor. While lightning bending is depicted as rare in ATLA, I think it’s more due to it being very destructive and the Fire Nation wanting a strict control over the knowledge to protect themselves from insurrection.
Also after the events of the ATLA show, the comics continue the story and Toph opens a metal bending school. Metal bending is portrayed quite frequently in Korra in contrast to ATLA where the only metal bender was Toph (who is the sole metal bender in the world at the time). So I’m not sure if any specialized skill is inherently rare, just controlled by access to knowledge.
Nah, in Korra many well trained fire bender could lightning bend. They even have lightning bender stations at power plants to add extra juice to the cities power grids. The key to lightning bending was kept secret for only the highest in society. Once Zuko and Aang come to power they teach it pretty openly. It’s not super common but not a super rare thing anymore. Same with mental bending. The rarest are still things like blood bending because they made it illegal and lava bending. Breath bending is the rarest though. One guy could do it in over 100 years and he was a psychopath anarchist that would have humanity living in huts fighting over each other berries because that’s the extent of anarchists ability to create a society.
Honestly?
Earthbending.
Don’t know what the hell I’d do with airbending or firebending.
Otherwise, waterbending seems useful, but eh.
it is not eh, waterbending can heal
I know.
Earthbending is solid tho
get it?
I can leave now
You may.
It’s a toss up between waterbending and earthbending because of healing and construction. I’d love to be able to mend people on the fly, but being able to construct literal metal buildings is nothing to scoff at either. Kind of the choice between being a doctor and building the hospital haha.
Water, I’m kinda bad at swimming :っ(
Easy, earth bending to build people’s homes. Patrick’s home in SpongeBob comes to mine with all the sand furniture.
This. End homelessness. Next best is water for healing and also water is more important than even food.
I always liked Aang’s Earth Training. It looked like it required you to be precise and controlled. I think the ability to lift up Earth doesn’t help me very much but idk I might find uses
