| TheDancingRat wrote: |
24 pages is a lot of muck to sort through. A lot of good points have been made and debated and evolved, but it's been hard for me to keep track of them all. Would you guys mind rehashing your main theory/theories again to catch us all up? I've thought of it this way: there are six primary interrogatives--who, what, when, where, why, and how. When it comes to Amon, we know the what (he's attacking the city and taking people's bending away), we know the where (Republic City), and we know the when (70 years after the last series). So the questions we've really been debating are "Who is Amon," "Why is he doing what he's doing," and "How is he accomplishing it?" So please, if you post a cohesive theory try to answer all 3 of these questions. Posting your ideas on just one or two of the questions will still be helpful too. |
I'll go first. I know I've been very vocal about the Bumi theory because I felt it was valid and no one was giving it a voice, but I'm gonna step back and support my preferred theory for a minute: Amon as a bloodbender.
Who is Amon:
I don't actually have a solid theory on who Amon is specifically. I believe he is human (not a spirit) and I believe he is a bloodbender, but I am strongly opposed to the idea he is Yakone. I could buy into him being Tarrlok's brother, but in my opinion we've seen very little evidence for this. My thinking is that any waterbender could potentially become a bloodbender if they are instructed in the art. Hama claimed she was the last bloodbender and passed her knowledge on to Katara, but I doubt Katara trained Yakone so clearly there was someone else out there.
I have a theory that master bloodbenders don't need the full moon. We know Hama discovered the method while being locked away in prison and deprived of water. She had to learn the technique over years of full moons manipulating rats. She "mastered" the ability enough to control the prison guards, but is she really a master at it? Katara was able to waterbend without any formal training at all. There was a huge difference in Katara's ability from the first episode until after she trained with a master. What if Hama's belief that bloodbending could only be accomplished during a full moon was just because she wasn't strong enough or skilled enough to do it without the moon's aid? Katara learned this from Hama and I got the impression she didn't want to use it too often after she was forced to. She used it against her mother's killer but that was a fit of extreme rage and how often does that happen? So Katara continued to believe it was true and never tested the preconception. It's a rare skill to begin with so everyone else just took Katara's word. I think that this practice was probably discovered by someone else who honed this technique to be more precise. If this is true, Yakone and Tarrlok's ability might not be a genetic miracle and might simply be a true mastery of bloodbending. Under this line of thinking, Amon could be any waterbender who found a bloodbending master.
I also think Amon is a bender because of the scene in "Out of the Past" where he chases Korra. When he leaps through the fog he is surrounded by a tornado of wisp that looked like bending to me. While I think it looked more like airbending, the rest of my arguments weighs heavier toward bloodbending and since it's already established both Aang and Katara could control cloud formations a waterbender could bend the fog just as easily as an airbender.
Why is he doing what he's doing?
I believe that Amon has 2 primary goals in starting a war between benders and non-benders and taking away peoples bending. The first goal is to take over the world, or at least Republic City. He's starting this war to cause political unrest between benders and non-benders and he's taking away people's bending to lower the morale of the benders and make himself a hero in the eyes of the non-benders. Once he overthrows the bending-centric government his non-benders will obviously establish him as their leader.
The hitch in this plan is the Avatar. The previous Avatar is the only person in modern history to ever take away a person's bending. Korra has never accessed the Avatar State but Amon figures it is only a matter of time and that with access to the Avatar State she may learn energybending. I believe that Amon has learned from Yakone's arrogance and plans to eliminate the Avatar from being a threat to him. Killing her will just reincarnate the Avatar into the next phase which is only a temporary solution. I believe his first plan is to block Korra's bending before she has a chance to take his away. I also believe that his bloodbending technique is a gimmick and that he doesn't think this plan will work. I think Amon knows that if the Avatar is killed in the Avatar state it will break the cycle and he's waiting for her to access it so he can end the threat forever.
How is Amon stripping people of their bending?
I believe Amon is using bloodbending to block the flow of chi in a person's body. Just like Iroh discovered a technique of redirecting lightning from studying waterbending, I think Amon has established a technique of "blood-blocking" from watching chi-blockers. I do not buy into the "advanced chi-blocking" theory because chi-blockers always use physical strikes to temporarily incapacitate their opponents. Amon never strikes his victims. He places one hand on their forehead and the other around the neck/back area. I've focused very intently on where he places his hands in each event--the one hand is always on the forehead with a finger resting on the same chakra Aang used against Ozai and Yakone. I believe this hand is a decoy to draw the eye, a classic illusionist routine. The other hand actually changes slightly. Usually it looks like it's on the neck, which I once thought was key since "amon" is actually the name of a real-world pressure point on the back of the neck. Sometimes his hand is lower on the back though, and if the neck was super-important I think the animators would have been given strict orders to make sure his hand is always there. I think Amon uses his other hand to do the slight movements required for his bloodbending technique and he uses his victim's body to cover his actual method from as many people as possible.
Bending has clearly been established to use the flow of chi through the body and this chi has been proven to be blocked by physical strikes in key locations. Bending is not nearly as affected by blocked chakras as accessing the Avatar State is since Aang was still fully capable of bending even while he could not draw on his past lives. I doubt most benders think about their chakras and have never had them blocked to the point of blocked bending so when Amon blocks their chi all they know is that they can no longer bend. Amon adds his propoganda and draws on Aang's precedent to conceal the true cause and thereby keep the benders permanently blocked.
Theoretically this blood-blocking technique could be undone through some sort of spiritual process, counter-blood-blocking, or maybe just a really focused massage. My main emphasis for blood-blocking is that the creators told us that a bender could use bloodbending to crush organs--something that has not openly happened in the show thus far. While it is an interesting tid-bit, most of the information the creators have allowed released has come directly into play in TLoK, and the show's been so compact that every scene has been expertly thought out. I don't think they would have told us that if it didn't come into play in the story at all. Amon could also potentially crush key points in the body to stop bending so completely that it cannot be undone. It's the bloodbending equivalent to severing all nerves in an arm to permanently block it's connection to the brain and render it limp. This would be a completely different technique than Aang used but is potentially just as permanent and effective.
There's no way to be certain until the show is over, so I'm not saying this is true and everyone else is wrong. This is just what I think has become the most cohesive theory. I still put stock in the Bumi theory and a couple others. I look forward to hearing your critiques of my thoughts and your perspectives on Amon. (If no one else beats me to it I'll probably make a Bumi theory post in a day or two)
