#i’m thinking a lot about katara being shown as a natural healer even though we later see that it’s a learned discipline

[zukosdualdao]

i’m too tired to put it into words but i’ve been thinking a lot recently about how certain KA shippers make arguments that really feel like they’re built on a foundation of gender essentialism without even realizing it. but also i think that’s directly because there’s some gender essentialism baked into the show they haven’t examined.

[crescentmoonrider]

Regarding bloodbending

A viper-lizard’s tales, my long-running fic, has recently reached a chapter I was really anticipating, namely Katara discovering bloodbending on her own (or well, it was Jet’s idea because when isn’t it, but still, no Hama). And that got me thinking about the practical aspects of bloodbending, and about the way it is treated in the show.

The following will be my thoughts on the matter

(Note : bloodbending as developped in canon will be spelled as such, while the subset I explore in Viper-lizard will be spelled blood-bending. Canon includes both the A:tla and LoK shows, but none of the supplementary materials because I am not familiar with these.)

So. Bloodbending.

In canon, no form of bending is presented as “naturally evil”. We get to see airbending used for play and music and baking, waterbending heals and is used by the Northern Water Tribe to allow for transport inside their city, much like earthbending is used for postal services in Omashu, and firebending... well, firebending gets dragons, I guess. Let’s blame it on the war and their militaristic society for now, because that is a whole other discussion.

No form of bending is naturally evil, and their subsets and various usages aren’t either... that is, with one single exception.

Bloodbending is universally understood as a “bad” form of bending. That is true in A:tla, where it was developped under extremely painful circumstances and used for terrible purposes afterwards. Where Katara’s learning of it is painted as terrible for her, and where the only time she uses again is when she is closest to becoming, in the words of Aang himself, “like Jet”. Not exactly a good path to follow, then.

In LoK, this becomes even more obvious, as Katara has bloodbending outlawed, and the two main antagonists of Book 1 are bloodbenders. Yes Tarrlok is a main antagonist too, fight me. Again, the circumstances surrounding the act of learning it are traumatic, again it it only used for nefarious purposes. With now the added horror of taking one’s bending away, an ability until now only demonstrated by the Avatar and used with a lot of caution.

What, then, makes bloodbending so unilaterally evil, in a show that is usually so nuanced ?

I have seen people arguing that bloodbending could also be used for healing, and as such outlawing it was a terrible idea, a thought that resonates a lot with my own headcanon that Hama was a master healer and was therefore more likely to think of the possibility of bending blood in the first place (coupled with an intimate knowledge of anatomy that would no doubt help a lot).

I have also seen one reddit thread arguing that the reason bloodbending is so evil is because it is a metaphor for rape, because of the loss of control it causes and the trauma that seems to surround its practice, and found that it made a lot of sense.

The way I implemented it in my writing was something of a middle ground.

See, chi plays a very important role in bending. It’s what allows bending in the first place, yes, but some forms are even more closely related to this concept. See, for example, the way firebenders create their own flame. In the same vein, water healing is probably highly affected by it too through its relation to life, even if it can only heal injuries naturally (as shown in The Painted Lady, when Katara has to steal medicine from the factory in order to be able to heal the sick).

Chi is life energy. It flows around the body following specific paths, in which there can sometimes be clots that result in a diminished flow, and sometimes even stop that flow. Chi is, in many respects, very much like blood.

Back to bloodbending. The way this form of bending is presented in canon, we only see it used to manipulate one’s body or, in Amon’s case, to block one’s chi. (While the method isn’t explicit, it is clear that this is what happens, otherwise taking someone’s bending away would be impossibe.) We now have a connexion between the two, stronger than it just being bending.

In my interpretation, bloodbending bends one’s blood, yes, but by doing so it also goes against the natural flow of chi in the body. And that is where things get bad. Chi is life energy, disrupting it is guaranteed to have negative effects on the victim. And perhaps even more than that, lasting consequences on the user.

Push and pull, remember ? The basics of waterbending. If you use your own life energy to pull at someone else’s, what do you think could happen ? My guess is on it pulling back. Bloodbending is about control. Absolute control. But it being absolute, it affecting something that really, really doesn’t want to submit, can only mean the push and pull it must exert has to be extremely strong. And, following the previous guess on an action-reaction phenomenon, so will that reaction.

My understanding is that prolonged or repeated use of bloodbending poses an enormous strain to the bender’s mind, but that strain can probably be felt (partially) just from some minor bloodbending. 

If I had to give specific consequences... dissociation. Obsessive thoughts, sometimes associated with compulsions. Patterns. Those are also commonly (though not always all of them) found in reactions to trauma, and the obsession part is the most coherent with canon (getting revenge, purging the world from bending, gaining power and control). Hama also exhibits very specifics patterns in regard to her obsession, though these are mostly linked to the restrictions bloodbending knows in A:tla. The dissociation is mostly here because I believe bloodbending affects the user’s emotions on another level than the obsessive one, and I couldn’t think of a better term. Compulsions often go hand in hand with obsessions in disorders (but not always), hence why I included them in this (sometimes).

I also thought of compulsions as a disruption of control, which is a very important theme in bloodbending. Dissociation would then be an effort to keep control over one’s emotions as a reaction to the other effects.

So, bloodbending is bad because it affects chi badly, and that in turn has some heavy consequences on the bender.

But I did say I was taking a middle road.

I talked, in the previous part, about canon only ever using bloodbending to manipulate one’s body. But what about, quite literally, blood ? Flowing blood, blood that you can see, even blood that isn’t in someone’s body anymore.

This is where blood-bending comes into place (remember, the spelling of these two is different).

The way I conceived this in A viper-lizard’s tales is this : bloodbending can, in A:tla times, only be used during a full moon. Blood-bending doesn’t have this restriction.

Bloodbending is absolute control. Blood-bending is, at most, partial control.

If used on spilled blood, blood that isn’t in contact with the place it comes from anymore, then blood-bending is a simple matter of waterbending. Slightly harder, but only very slightly, because of the remants of the owner’s will/feelings/thoughts - anything personal transmitted by chi. But there is no direct contact between the two life energies, no disrupting the natural flow of chi, no absolute submission to go with absolute control.

It is, much like every other form of bending, morally neutral, with no intrinsic damaging consequence for either the bender or the owner of that blood.

Blood-bending used on an injury is closer to canon, but not quite the same. Because the focus is on external blood, the control is lesser, and as such only the injured limb can be manipulated. Still, the push and pull is much stronger than for spilled blood in this case, as there is a flow of chi to be disrupted in order to gain control, and there is therefore a feeling of something pulling back at the bender, though weaker than in the case of bloodbending. 

Consequences for the person whose blood is bent are also existing, but more limited than for bloodbending.

While I am at it, I’m going to talk about healing, and why it doesn’t have the same kind of negative lasting effects. Within the theory I developped here, these negative consequences are a result of disrupting the natural flow of chi, of infringing on someone’s will, in a way. Healing, on the other hand, goes with the flow, and simply helps out a little.

(I tend to see the combination of water healing and medicine as an application of osmosis, therefore slightly different from the healing of injuries.)