Is Bending Genetic? — Avatar: The Last Airbender

my fellow americans on july 30th 2017 almost three years ago to the day i was gonna share a clip but uh nope made me cringe too much i made a promise to you the people to make a video on the complicated relationship between bending and genetics i did not deliver on that promise until today and yes the cute dog evie is relevant to the video who you should look at and love and like the video is bending genetic yes well actually no the real answer is always it did it it's complicated okay there are four parts to the answer one on the one hand there is clearly a hereditary component to which element you can get but hereditary does not mean genetic there's a reason that waterband is create waterbenders five being described firebenders and that everyone in world seems to know this in the comic the search daddy of zulu was looking for a wife ozai and he said the fire sages tell me that the pairing of the avatar's granddaughter with my own will yield a bloodline of great power one that would ensure my family's rule for centuries after i am gone the fire nation royal family here was known for marrying other powerful fire-bending families to ensure their bloodline remains strong the result being incredibly gifted benders like azulla and ira and ozai yokone ii was an incredibly powerful waterbender capable of bloodbending without a full moon and in the legend of korra this is treated as a clear explanation for why his two sons talk and noahtok can do the same and after the genocide everyone was pretty much on the same page that the air menders weren't coming back the creators even said as much aang is the last airbender so i don't think it's possible for airbending to spontaneously develop in the general population yeah we'll see how that ages mate it really is a wizard did it this is also why eng believes that only his seed can restore air bending to the world his loins hold the future of our people where we're going you won't need any pants likewise the craters have talked about how qatar and ang could only really have air benders water benders and non-benders people born with bending either have bending parents like haru or they presumably have a lineage like toff who comes from a powerful earth kingdom house we just don't see pure fire nation families having water benders did i just say pure like the pure fire nation race i mean i guess it's not far wrong there's a chance that bending will be passed on and there's a chance that it won't be in the cases of characters like boomi dmit or even described water bending as quote may be a recessive gene so they're clearly aware of genetic like components that decide which elements you can have in the first place so question answered right yes well actually no though it might appear genetic on the surface bending works by a fundamentally stranger system that does share some similarities with genetics so two bending is just as much spiritual as it is genetic but wait there's more it's even stranger than that the animats were known for their entire population being benders and this is not due to any rigorous eugenics that we know of we will create a pure endometries no supposedly their entire population were benders specifically because of their highly spiritual lifestyle the implication here being that spirituality either that of those who raise you or the environment in which you grow up can give you bending and we know that spiritual awareness can increase your powers checkmate atheists avatar was always religious propaganda air-bending skill itself relies on a spiritual understanding which is why aang was so gifted in it while korra was not now it is probably an in-world myth or misconception that all nomads were airbenders they were so aloof and far apart from the rest of the world but it stands in sharp contrast to earthbenders earthbenders are the rarest per capita with the smallest percentage of benders for their population and we also know that earth bending is typically the least spiritual of the four elements and before any of you keyboard warriors attack me in the comments this doesn't mean that there are no spiritual components characters like boomi clearly demonstrate a keen spiritual understanding but it is seemingly a less common part of how people practice earth bending i mean after all earth beaning is about being present in the physical world this correlation suggests that the spirituality of the place you're born in or family who raise you is a second component in determining whether you gain abilities both in whether you have them and it is possible that the smaller role spirituality plays in earth bending compared to air bending means that the earth element manifests itself in people less often that bending itself is a spiritual exercise what this means practically is that having a more spiritual lifestyle might mean your bending abilities manifest when they otherwise wouldn't and this is where we get into the weird lore headache that is harmonic convergence which happened at the end of season 2 of legend of korra and fun fact in the same cinematic universe as pacific rim [Applause] yeah no kidding either way harmonic convergence created a host of new airbenders one of which was here some people believe that those who gained air bending are the descendants of nomad survivors who fled the genocide and hid in the earth kingdom and that the energy released in harmonic convergence reawakened their air-bending genes now i don't really like this theory because it implies spirituality is a qualitative energy that you can measure and use and not the result of personal growth like a laser or something but in the case of zaheer i kind of like the idea that harmonic and convergence were like hey have you heard about zaheer oh i think the hair looks great on you i mean nice little no no i mean the guy over there pretty spiritual quotes good illuhima yeah oh i love guru me too oh what a classic oh he'd make a great airbender i mean there's no chance that he would threaten the lives of all of the new airbenders and possibly nearly cause a second genocide is there oh no what is the chances of that happening no let's make a minute there is some evidence to suggest that there is a personality component that for example if you could either be a waterbender or an earthbender then the one you express is the one closer to your personality for example marco is a lot more explosive and emotional in a fire bender while berlin his brother is a lot more patient a peacemaker and he inherited earthbending and cora though expressing earth fire and water from a toddler age could not express airbending till a lot later in life because her personality just didn't take to it but i actually think it's totally the opposite that learning your element reinforces certain character traits like patience with earthbenders but this is pretty loose evidence tenzin for example he struggles with spirituality and is really uptight yet inherited ear bending which is known for being relaxed flexible and spiritual if it is a component then it only sometimes plays a role but all of this this lore headache that we have conjured for ourselves is complicated by the beginnings episodes in season two of legend of korra i did a critique of them in this video linked up in the corner go watch it if you want to hear my full thoughts but whether you like it or not they're canon okay you can't just say hey legend of korra's not canon for me it is you don't get a choice in that and we know that the lion turtles were the original ones to bestow bending and take it away from humans when they returned from the wilds the answer is simple line turtles are expert geneticists who gene splice with their mind yeah this is them editing human dna mystery solved or maybe no aang also used this power to remove osirichones bending but yakon passed his abilities onto his kids anyway and also would just be really really stupid if the lion turtles were literally gene editing if you want to believe that go ahead i'm not buying it and all of this brings me to the most important component fluffy cute soft magic i've always seen bending as more spiritual connections though a little bit mysterious i think again sometimes we might not know it's more of what we don't want it to be we didn't want it to be like there is a lineage a royal family or something and these people can bend and then there's everyone else as non-benders people who never will some sort of caste system mike and i are more attracted to more of the flux type universe the only constant it's change variation that sort of thing we've always liked the idea of who will be a bender and who won't be to be kind of an ambiguous mystery even to the people in the avatar world fundamentally none of the hereditary spiritual or personality components are absolute they're not rules it's more what you call guidelines than actual rules though bending does have mostly consistent and predictable patterns that we can infer some quote rules from they're always a little bit flexible allowing for that ambit of creativity for elements to manifest in the way that best support the story we care about this kind of fits nicely with the line turtles being such ancient and unknown beings themselves in other words in this case a turtle wizard literally did do it [Music] i mean in the fortune teller there's a pair of identical twins one of which beans and one doesn't that's not genetic it's not spiritual and it's not personality based this doesn't break the universe and i think that sometimes people equate bad word building with not knowing everything or everything not fitting together with a neat little bow this just isn't true this is an example of avatar's more soft word building and the softer side of its magic system so yeah it's hereditary but it's also spiritual and more importantly it's just full of a little bit of possibility i think this quote from the creators when asked about whether bending is genetic sums it up best mike and i just got new puppies they're brothers they're the same mother and father same litter mike's dog can just sit in a crate and be as happy as a clam my dog loses all control who knows why these things happen they're beyond our full understanding because just remember when we wonder about these questions there's something left in that gap wonder [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 630,347

Rating: 4.9359679 out of 5

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, avatar, the last airbender, airbender, aang, zuko, netflix, korra, legend of korra, atla, lok, legend of, toph, suki, sokka, katara, waterbending, earthbending, bending, airbending, firebending, iroh, ozai, azula, bolin, mako, asami, genetics

Id: IeKBXQHBomA

Length: 12min 24sec (744 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020

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