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I suppose as some may have a natural talent for bending while others would have to work extremely hard for it thus prompting them to just give up eventually after not seeing the results.

Katara meant that they learn from the moon, not acquire the skill. We learn from books, but if you give a dog a book he won't be able to read a thing. Make sense? You have to have the essentials first.

A live action movie is already well under way.

I think it's just a spiritual division. Compare it if you will to the triad and the yakuza. They come from similar backgrounds and perhaps have the same talent, but lines have been drawn mentally and physically by generations of division. Same with benders.

Stereotypes still exist, you know. And in the time period that the franchise is set in, it is men that predominately do most of the risk work and only a few women do battle (namely Katara, Suki, Azula, et al).

WWinnieF has it pegged. This is especially shown in Season 1, "The Waterbending Master", when Master Pakku refuses to teach Katara simply because she is a women. In the Northern Water Tribe culture, women were not fighters, they were healers. The same could be the case in the other cultures as well. (Only they're not using bending, as neither Fire, Earth or Air can heal.)

Hoover Dam! that's a good question.

I can buy. It would make sense that it just wouldn't even occur to a waterbender to make water hot. I still think it's possible for them to do so, but like you said, it could be an issue of waterbenders not being comfortable with the rapid movement that would be required to make heated water. There's a lot fluidity in waterbending movements, so yeah, i guess you're right.

_Flutterlight_ wrote:

If you think about it, we never see any bender other than Aang ever manipulate their opposite element equivalent.

Well, that's only 'cause Aang is the avatar and thus, is the only person who can manipulate other elements.

_Flutterlight_ wrote:

Katara never boils water, which would be the firebending equivalent of waterbending. But she readily uses already gaseous water and mud, the Air and earth equivalents for waterbending.

You've lost me with this one. mud is a mixture of dirt and water, that is why water benders can manipulate mud, it doesn't have a thing to do with the earth element. It's like how the swamp people manipulate pants... it's because there's water inside the plants, not because of any connection to earth, fire or air.

_Flutterlight_ wrote:

And you never see a Firebender bend steam either.

A firebender wouldn't be able to bend steam because steam is water. Temperature of water doesn't change it's chemistry, it's still water. Like your example with Toph, she (or any earthbender) can easily turn dust in a boulder as longs that particular dust is comprised of earth, and not dead hair and skin. Or your example about magma... an earthbender can easily move magma, this is something we witnessed when Roku battled the errupting volcano; he was using earthbending to do so, not firebending. Just because magma is hot, it doesn't change the fact that it's molten rock.

I just finished watching that episode Thursday (i had my own little re-watch party, lol) and that was not steam. What you saw was the visual representation of heat... sorta like what they do when Aang airbends; Aang isn't dustbending, its just how they show air on the show because otherwise it would just look like Aang is using telekinesis all the time. In this case, Sozin removed all the heat from the magma and it immediately turned into solid rock.

Like i said before, steam is water and firebender has no control over water in any form.

I forgot about that part... But what I was more getting at is she doesn't do something like actively bend the dust in a way that would also affect air. (Like creating individual streams of dust to manipulate in a way Aang would use Airbending for.)

ddendong116 wrote:

To address mudbending: the only reason Katara can control the earth in the mud is because she is moving the water particles in the mud, and the earth particles are trapped among the water. It would not work as a sieve unless, as shown in season 3: The Painted Lady, Katara is pulling the water one way and Toph is pulling the earth the other.

My argument was that if Katara had control of ONLY water, she would only have control of water, and any mudbending she tried to attempt would have resulted in the sieve effect you just described. This would be true because of the chemical properties of mud, which I described as being a heterogeneous mixture- meaning that the dirt particles are suspended in the solution, not dissolved.

Because of mud's chemical properties, Katara has to have SOME control over earth. It's an extremely limited control, but it has to exist because otherwise, she would not be able to bend the dirt particles in the mud. Any attempts on Katara's part to mud bend would have a similar result to her waterbending her bending water out of the sand in the Desert episode.

Edited on 05/03/2010 10:03pm
Edited 4 total times.

That wouldn't work. Katara's not manipulating one part of the water and having the rest of it move. Like you said, water is a compound, and that means that the hydrogen and oxygen molecules are bound together. Mud doesn't work like that.

In mud, the earth particles are not somehow chemically bound to the water particles. The earth part of the mud and the water part of the mud are two separate things. You can filter the earth out.

My argument is this: If Katara controlled water with her bending, and only water, then she would not have been able to mud bend. She would not be able to move the earth particles in the mud, because they are not part of the water. Therefore, she must have just enough control over the earth particles to keep them in the water, giving her a very minute power over earth.

MarWash wrote:

Think of it in terms of how waterbenders can bloodbend... a waterbender can move a person's entire body by taking control over the water the body holds; at no point is the waterbender manipulating the nitrogen, magnesium or any of the other elements that make up a human body. You can also think of it in the context of waterbenders being able to control plants... they're only moving the plants because of the water concealed inside the veins.

Well, blood's actually a heterogeneous mixture as well. It works in a similar way that mud does. Same for the liquid in plants, it's not straight up water. So my argument doesn't change.

MarWash wrote:

For example, a waterbender would be able to move a cup of tea across the table without separating the water from the phenol. Furthermore, if your estimation were true, when Katara's does bloodbending, the water would be ripped from the person body similar to how Magneto ripped iron from that security guards body in X-Men.

Um, actually, that matches my argument as to why Katara has to have some control over earth. If Katara controlled water, and only water, then that would happen. But if she had some minor control over earth, then she could manipulate the solutions as a whole, and nothing would be "ripped from the persons body".

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