Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra both portrayed bloodbending as this wicked art that could only be used for evil, to the point of having the practice banned in Korra’s timeframe.  But… let’s not be too hasty about this.

Bloodbending is the ability to manipulate a person’s fluid-bearing organs, right?  Wouldn’t that kind of ability be a massive asset to a doctor?

Someone has a large wound?  No problem, bloodbending will keep them from bleeding to death.  Pneumonia?  We’ll bend that fluid right out of your lungs.  Heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, pleurisy… hell, it could probably even be used for completely non-invasive surgery, and applying something like Toph’s seismic sense to bloodbending would be even more effective than an MRI.

I’m just wondering if Aang was aware of the positive applications of bloodbending when he banned it, deciding that the risk of its misuse outweighed its benefits, or if he honestly thought no good could ever come of it.

That’s it, Book 2 of Korra needs to have a bloodbending doctor in it for the sweet, sweet cognitive dissonance.

I’m going straight to hell for this.

With Legend of Korra going ten kinds of fish-shaped lately, time to throw out some fish-shaped theories of my own on the goings-on of the Avatar world.

1. Korra’s visions aren’t flashbacks
They’re happening real-time, in the spirit world. Think about it. The three canon characters we see in the flashbacks are Aang, Sokka, and Toph, who also happen to be the three canon characters who are confirmed to be dead at this time. But wait, isn’t that other guy Yakone? Didn’t Aang fight him 42 years ago? Well, yeah, that’s the point. 42 years ago, Aang would have been 41 years old. 10 years younger than Tenzin is at this point. Does he really look 10 years younger than Tenzin in those visions? No, he reasonably looks like he could be 66, the age he was when he died, and the age he’d be in the spirit world. Plus, if this really was a flashback to some horrible event that happened 42 years ago, Tenzin was 9 at the time. You’d think he’d know about it.

2. Tarrlok is the moon spirit
Yue gave up her human life to the moon spirit and became the moon. So what did the moon spirit become? This may explain how he’s able to bloodbend without a full moon. The guy Aang’s fighting in Korra’s visions may be his astral side. He represents the Northern Water Tribe, which is where the moon spirit came from. The only weird thing about this is that Nick’s website specifically lists him as 37 years old.

3. Makorra is endgame
Simply because the writers wouldn’t devote that much time to giving those two at least a bit of fluffy interaction in every episode if they didn’t intend to do something with it. If it’s just one big shiptease, that’s going to amount to a lot of wasted time. But from a competent writing perspective, that also means…

4. Asami isn’t evil
If Asami turns out to be a bad guy, then that makes Mako’s choice way too empty. Korra getting the guy simply because his previous girlfriend turned out to be evil incarnate and he decided to fall back on her isn’t exactly much of a victory for her character. If she’s going to end up with him at all (and, honestly, I would be perfectly happy if she remained single, but again, that means lots of wasted time on shipteasing Makorra), then he needs to consciously decide she’s the better option based on equal merits, not because his hand was forced.

5. Amon is Koh
Because why not. The Faceless One is out trolling the Avatar like the good old days.

I uploaded a gif base of the “LOOK AT MY FERRET” image earlier, but there was some annoying artifacting around the edges that would likely make it difficult to use.  Therefore, here’s the Photoshop document I used with all the transparent frames, nice and clean:

http://wikisend.com/download/170572/pabu.psd

Because everyone needs a Pabu.

LOOK AT MY FERRET, MY FERRET’S AMAZING

I plan on going back and analyzing the first five episodes as well, but seeing as Episode 6 airs tomorrow, I figured I might as well throw some ideas out there and see how they pan out:

1.Something happened to Aang

I mean, he died, obviously, but how?  He was only 66 at the time of his death, and given that people seem to regularly live to be 100 or so in this universe, that seems awful young.

What we know is that Amon can take away people’s bending like Aang could, Korra has never been able to airbend, and when Korra told Tenzin about Amon at the end of Episode 3, his surprise seemed feigned, like he knows something.

Putting that all together, it’s possible that whoever Amon is, he stole or inherited Aang’s powers, to the point that they weren’t passed on to Korra, which is why she can’t airbend and has so far never reached the Avatar State.

2.Asami works for Amon

I know it’s already a popular theory that Asami is an Equalist, but my reasoning is different from a lot of what I’ve seen.  Asami hasn’t said or done anything to even hint at this.  And that’s just my point.  For a series that has been historically great at characterization, for some reason Asami has so far been given absolutely no motives for any of her behavior.  She was sidelined through almost all of Episode 5, the “relationships” episode, which is not something you do if she’s supposed to be a valid romantic interest.

The problem with this is that, so far, she’s been written merely as a plot device and hasn’t been developed any further than that.  She showed up at just the right time and had just the right resources to keep the Fire Ferrets in the tournament, and provided another node to the love polygon.  But beyond that… she doesn’t do anything.  And my faith in the writers leads me to believe there has to be a reason she hasn’t been given any solid integration to the team or real characterization other than being “nice”.

Then there’s the fact that she has no profile on “Welcome to Republic City”, nor is she included in any of the promotional images of the team, leading me to believe the reason for this is that she’s either such a minor character that she’ll be gone by the next episode, or that any real description of her character would be a spoiler.  If she does unceremoniously bow out quickly, then she really was nothing more than a plot device and I find that a bit infuriating.  So my hope that she has some connection to Amon is more out of the desire for her to be reclaimed as a character with tangible motives.  Like, she was a pawn and purposely hit Mako (“How could you not see me?!”) to infiltrate the team, she watches every match to learn their techniques, and hasn’t acted remotely suspicious so far other than being way too convenient, because the characters aren’t supposed to suspect her of anything, therefore the audience shouldn’t suspect her of anything.

Because that’s just more interesting than her being the disposable love interest.