r/ATLA • u/JustAPerson_YesOrNo "Hello, it's Zuko here" • May 25 '25

Question What ATLA take make you like this?

Post image

Posting here bc mods are (not) mean

584 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

313 comments sorted by

View all comments

113

u/Sharo_colson May 26 '25

Metal bending is a duex machina. People actually thought/think this. They do this by Ignoring 2 key things. 1)the basics for what metalbending is bending your element inside a physical medium. Waterbending established early in the season with plant bending what is the most similar form of bending. 2)the explain how it works in vivid detail.Toph literally had to be blind and master seismic sense, to even learn it was possible.

32

u/Den_Nissen May 26 '25

Roku and Sozin also do smoke bending as well. A bit later in the series, but reinforces that there are other variant and subtype bending styles that aren't just the rigid 4 nations.

18

u/WEEEE12345 May 26 '25

AFAICT what Sozin's doing in that scene is redirecting the heat (similar to lighting redirection), not directly bending the smoke. In the animation it looks a bit like he's bending the smoke.

6

u/Sryeetsalot May 26 '25

Well roku is the avatar. Very possible it was just air bending

1

u/Sharo_colson May 27 '25

The point I was trying to make that no one seems to be focusing on though is that metal bending can’t be a duex Machina because the fundamentals for it and plant bending are virtually the same and we’re established