2012-06-11, 08:18 PM
Polantaris Wrote:Lightning Bending was uncommon 80 years ago, and was likely kept as a royal secret in the Royal Family. No one outside of the Royal Family could Lightning Bend (that I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong).
Metal Bending was thought impossible until Toph mastered it. The only reason she discovered it is because she was blind, and could sense the Earth inside of the Metal. Once that was determined, it was just a matter of teaching others to take advantage of the small amount of Earth in the metal as Toph had. It wasn't that people had tried and failed, it was that people thought it was impossible so they never tried.
We don't know that Amon is Spirit Bending. It is only assumed because he is taking away bending. Someone else mentioned that his stance and hand placements differ from when Aang Spirit Bent. Also, Aang learned Spirit Bending from a Lion Turtle. It was an unknown secret, and it could easily be that Amon ran into a similar situation that Aang did and learned it a similar way...or simply by watching Aang...or by travelling to the Spirit World much like Iroh did, and learning it from the Spirits themselves.
Spirit Bending as a deus-ex, while may not be the best thing they ever did either, wasn't breaking known facts. We have 70 episodes of Avatar that show that Benders aren't as powerful as Yakome. The only way to get nearly that powerful is to be the Avatar. You have the most powerful Benders in the entire world and none of them came close to that. Hell, without the Avatar State he could even take out Aang, who should be beyond a master of Water Bending, AND still take out 100+ people in that court room. It just doesn't make sense. Spirit Bending doesn't take everything we knew about the Bending Arts and throw it out the window, it was it's own Art altogether. This is an established Bending Art, magically going from "Once a month super power that can control a few people" to "Whenever you want control entire rooms and cities." It screams bullpomegranate.
Well, he wasn't able to take out Amon, so it shows that blood bending has some weakness, although we're not sure what at this point. Amon probably knows how to counter it (which everyone in the trial obviously didn't.)
Edit: As an afterthought, Combustion Man doesn't break any "established bending rules?"
Hell you're kind of lop-siding it. You're saying that undiscovered knowledge doesn't break "established bending rules," yet you declare massive blood-bending outside the full moon "breaking them" while it could be very well that it was just undiscovered knowledge. I mean I agree it'll be very stupid if your average waterbender could do it and there's no counter, but we've already seen two ways you could break it, not to mention the two people who could do it can't bend anymore, so it should be fine.