It’s a common elemental theme we see across stories, fantasies, etc. It seems like it is an element that should be part of that pantheon but maybe there is a scientific explanation of why it isn’t? Or is it simply, they did not have enough understanding of it at the time those 4 were suggested.
The cloud was absolutely water bending. Aang used airbending to fly up, but collecting the water means you’re condensing the water vapor that is mixed with air and specifically moving the water into katara’s waterskin.
Also to respond to a couple other comments at the same time:
@[email protected] Yes, waterbenders can bend steam, and change it’s phase. In The Drill, Sokka breaks a pipe, filling the room with steam, to get an engineer with schematics to come. When he shows up, Katara flash freezes him in place, using the steam the had filled up that room.
As for air controlling any gaseous substance, I don’t think we have any idea if other gasses could be controlled by an airbender, but since “air” is a mix of a bunch of different gasses to begin with it stands to reason they could bend a number of different gaseous substances. And for waterbenders, probably just depends how much water is in that liquid. We know blood and perfume can be bent by waterbenders, at the very least.
@[email protected] Lavabenders belonging to earth bending makes perfect sense, as lava is literally molten rock. You yourself said “water can do ice and stuff since that’s just a phase change”, and that’s exactly what rock into lava is. The ability is pretty rare though, as I imagine it takes a lot more “power” to phase change earth than it does water, as it’s melting point is so much higher. Also, as Toph says, earth is a stubborn element, so it takes a very powerful bender to produce, or more often, an avatar. Metalbending is actually much easier for most earthbenders to learn, as lavabending was used by Kyoshi at least if not discovered earlier, but metalbending became much more widespread even though it was discovered hundreds of years later.
As for what does air get? Spiritual projection mumbo jumbo. Also vacuum creation.
There are other sub bending specialties too. Combustion (fire), sand (earth), healing (water), sound (air). So they all get a buncha extra stuff than just the base “bend your element”.
And now I have gone on waaaay too long about this.
How exactly ‘power’ of a bender is calculated? Like is it just training or you need to also have some kind of ‘understanding’ of the world and be spiritual enough?
Always appreciate someone who needs out about ATLA. I enjoyed the read and I guess I agree with you on the lava thing. Putting in context of the water benders being able to change the phases of water it makes more sense.
Man I wish I could rewatch ATLA for the first time again.