Is Bending Genetic? — Avatar: The Last Airbender

HIS LOINS HOLD THE FUTURE OF OUR PEOPLE. ~ Tim

They didn’t give Sokka bending cuz that would make him too powerful. He’s already a backbender and a sword master. But if he could actually bend the show would be called The amazing Sokka and his buddy Aang

I think the only reason Tenzin was so uptight and had a non-typical-airbender personality was how he was raised. He grew up knowing he was literally the entire future of airbending, with the weight of destiny and the expectations of his father, the Avatar himself, on his shoulders. There's a reason the air nomads didn't tell Aang he was the Avatar until he was like 10, and wanted to wait even longer. That kind of knowledge messes with a kid.

Remember that in the cannon Kyoshi's mother was a air nomad and a air bender But she separated herself from the nomads and spirituality as a whole, which made her air bending way weaker, to the point that she needed to use fans to help her bend air

"His loins hold the future of our people" "Where we're going we wont need any pants" is just such a perfect combination and makes me cackle endlessly

"...resulting in incredibly gifted benders like Azula and Iroh and Ozai." Zuko standing teary-eyed in the background Am I a joke to you?

I think Tenzen is only as uptight as he was ... because he was the only airbending master who had kid students, and tried to hold them to a high standard and being the only person who could instruct the avatar in airbending

3:13 I've always figured that all of the 'Air Nomads' were airbenders because they turned out children that couldn't bend. The temples themselves are kind of death traps waiting to happen for children that can't airbend to save themselves from falling to death especially when you consider all of the other kids running about that can throw mini-tornados when they get upset. Its not intentional eugenics but it makes sense from a health and safety point of view to leave non-bending children with the mother if fathered outside the Nomads or given up to a family with more flat living accommodations if the mother was a Nomad. Aang being twelve at the time of his freezing and having only lived in the male temples wouldn't have known about that and thus could be considered an unreliable narrator in that case and Ty Lee, the only other character in AtLA to have grey eyes, coming from the Fire Nation where one of the female temples was located makes sense.

At the end of the day the answer is "bending is a soft magic system" It was never intended to be quantified and defined in all aspects. It's a nebulous spiritual connection to the primordial aspects of the world.

“Honey, why is our baby a fire bender when we are air nomads.” Fire bender milkman: *Sweats profusely

Airbending is spiritual Earthbending is physical Waterbending is a spiritual action with your physical self Firebending is a physical action with your spiritual self

I like your answer, but hear me out: Epigenetics. Though this field of genetics is still very unfamiliar to us, long story short our body can activate or deactivate certain genes at times. For example the gene we use to make an enzyme that digests milk as babies gets turned off in some people, who become lactose intolerant, while in others it stays active, these people aren't lactose intolerant. The odds of this happening are influenced by your heritage, for example if one of you're parents is lactose intolerant you're more likely to also be. I think bending works much in the same way: Each element has a few genes connected to it and if one or multiple of your ancestors can bend it, it means you're more likely to be able to as well, just like with lactose intolerance. The only difference with lactose intolerance would be that in humans the bending genes would naturally be shut off not on, because babies can't bend all 4 elements. If you're ancestors have a "pre-activated" gene of sorts it might even allow you to bend as soon as you can mentally activate the power, so from when you're a child. However if you don't have anyone in your family, so you don't have one or a few pre-activated genes, you might still be able to learn to bend, because you're body "just" needs to activate one or multiple of the "bending genes". This might be done via the spiritual element you named, if you're "spiritual enough" more genes get activated and you become stronger. At the same time it also explains why Zuko, Iroh, Ozai and Azula are quite powerfull, they all have a lot of "pre-activated bending genes" thanks to their bloodline. This might be what happened en masse during harmonic convergence: Some type of enzyme got spread all over the continents of Avatar, and some people got a gene for airbending activated. This in combination with possible other activated genes would cause them to be able to bend air and this would make a few "random" people air benders. It even explains the avatar, hear me out: If these genes really did exist and they'd have to be activated for the bending to take place. Once they're activated they'd also make an inhibiting enzyme, a fancy word for something that stops other genes from working. This is why we never see a 2 or 3 element bender, only a 1 element bender and the avatar. In the case of the avatar it's possible that something big and "magical" like some sort of "will of the world" could activate a final gene that stops all these inhibiting enzymes, allowing the avatar to bend multiple elements at a time, this way causing there to be a single avatar who can bend all elements and "normal" benders who can only bend one. Now last but not least dragon turtles, how do they fit in here? The dragon turtles don't do genesplicing, that'd be quite dangerous and might even have a chance of killing people, what they might be doing however is activating the respective genes in the assigned benders until they return to hand back in their powers, at which point the dragon turtle turns them off again. This sounds quite hard to explain, but in reality it's kind of easy: They once again use enzymes. These enzymes would then activate the gene, but once the humans return the turtle gives of, or inserts, like a type of poison, another enzyme that then supresses the gene again. This way turning it on or off. The earlier mentioned "Avatar gene" might create similiar enzymes to this one that turns off bending powers that can resupress the genes and that'd explain why Aang can take away the bending powers of benders. So it is in part genetic, however in some cases you'll have to activate other genes and other circumstances could play a big role, even your spirituality. This could also explain how (twin) brothers can have different elements, or even one might have bending powers and another might not. They both have the same "pre-activated" genes, but they activated other "extra" genes causing different bending types So long story short I agree with your statement: "Is bending genetical? Well yes, but actually no." (BTW I have to stop here, because I'm making this up as I go and this thing is already way to long, if you're interested in this send me an e-mail [email protected])

My favorite thing about having only one of the twins bend is that it could also mean that every being has a different spiritual component that's inherently unique even if everything humans can measure they are 99% identical

Video Summary (Is Bending Genetic?): - Yes, but actually No - A Wizard did it - Its Spiritual - Its Mysterious - A Turtle Wizard did it

"My fellow Americans.." Wait a minute...

I always lowkey assumed that, like the monks that the air nomads draw inspiration from, that the air nomads were more of a commune than a tribe - that air nomads would go out into the world and have children with people of other tribes (or potentially other air nomads) and any children able to bend would be brought back to and raised in the temple as an air nomad, while any non bender children erm. Wouldnt be. The gifted are chosen and taken off to be trained, non benders live a normal non bender life as earth or water or fire nation non benders, children of two air benders would maybe be brought up in some separate location but were not properly considered air nomads because air nomads have to be able to bend by definition. This means that air bender children might have been born to non bender parents, since air genes would still be out in the population after the purge, but I assume they were killed if discovered by the fire nation (on the off chance they were the avatar, who was still missing), and regardless wouldnt have had any teacher in the ways of the air bender until aang got unfrozen.

My own headcanon/rationalization for random people being bestowed airbending after Harmonic Convergence was that those individuals were the new lifetime for souls lost in Ozai's genocide. Reincarnation is mentioned so much in both ATLA and ALOK, and the idea of souls or connections spanning across lifetimes is a recurring theme. The way I see it, the Air Nomads were indeed wiped out, but the souls of those people went on to new lifetimes, being reborn as new members of the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Water Tribe, etc. Eventually, those souls are affected by the Harmonic Convergence to express the bending ability the souls have always carried, just never able to express. This idea ties in with the relationship between spirituality and bending ability.

My crazy theory: The universe exerts a subtle pressure that tries to balance the number of benders of each element. The earth kingdom has the highest population, but the lowest percentage of benders, while the air nomads had the lowest population and the highest percentage of benders, and the fire nation and water tribes fall somewhere in between. Normally, this "pressure" still had to work within the confines of lineage (a direct line to that elements original benders), so there was no way for the universe to create more air benders without any air nomads. That's why Tenzin (married to a non-bender with no other elements to interfere) had all airbending children (I might be wrong about Rohan, I think it was kind of vague). The lineage rules lined up and the universe was able to exert it's pressure to try and balance out the benders by introducing more airbenders. Harmonic convergence changed the rules however, as the increase in spiritual energies in the world made it possible for the universe to enforce it's balance more directly. If any of the other bending population were super low at the time, I think it might have possible for seemingly random people to become those types of benders as well. It's just that airbending was the only type that needed that "boost" at the time.

3:44 "Avatar was always religious propaganda" Avatar IS my religion.

"Incredibly gifted benders like Azula, Iroh and Ozai" sad zuko noises