#medical uses of bloodbending

[kiera-raelyn]

I feel like this gets back to Katara, specifically, not being allowed to have a dark side. And is also reflective of the narrative resistance to allow Katara to heal in the way she needs to. Like... Katara isn't allowed to have messy edges or feelings. She's punished by those around her when she does.

Other bending and its subforms are allowed to have complexity and moral grayness and still exist despite all that. But not this specific form of waterbending despite its profound potential for good. It arguably has greater potential for good and benefit to society than the other forms (like, seriously, do you realize how many women and children could be saved in childbirth, especially in a pre-industrial society, with that skill?!). But it somehow has greater risks for abuse than the other forms. How? I don't feel like there's a reasonable-to-life answer to that.

Which just leaves us with authorial reasoning. Narratively, what effect does all of the negativity surrounding bloodbending accomplish? It was a technique developed, so far as we know, by a woman of color (and later rediscovered by a man of color) that enabled her to escape the horrific conditions of her imprisonment (which had to have been worse than even what we were shown given the abuse, sexual and otherwise, heaped upon prisoners irl, but y'know, kid's show). She is vilified both for developing the technique and what she did with it later, despite the fact that both things were a result of the Fire Nation's attempt at genocide of the SWT. It reeks of "committing violence against fascists makes you just as bad as them" and I am not here for it. But then, Bryke has proven in various ways that they were not the right ones to address genocide and all its implications.

(Finally found the words to respond to this. It's been sitting in my drafts since June 24. All I needed was those last two sentences.)

Ok, but like, am I the only one who thinks that bloodbending isn’t bad? I see all of these posts about how brave Katara was to avoid bloodbending and how great of Aang it was to outlaw it and how it reflects poorly on the Zutara dynamic that she bloodbent in front of Zuko but like ???????????

NO bending is inherently bad????

No one gave two shits about airbending being used to suffocate the Earth Queen or Bolin fuckin LAVABENDING, aka able to MELT PEOPLE down to nothing. Those alternative forms of bending aren’t intrinsically bad, even though they COULD be used for evil.

The same technique for suffocating someone with airbending could be used to resuscitate someone who wasn’t breathing. It could be used to help a newborn baby breathe. 

Lavabending can be used just as much for environmentally-beneficial reasons as it can for mass destruction.

Hell, even lightning bending was fine in the ATLA and LoK universe, but somehow bloodbending isn’t?

Can you imagine how quickly their healthcare would’ve advanced if Katara had been given the opportunity to use her abilities the way she was meant to? Hama only used them for violence because she spent her whole life trying to SURVIVE. It was all she knew.

Katara is a CARING bender. Her healing bending would’ve gone up 11000000000 points if she had learned to incorporate bloodbending. She could’ve learned how to heal blood illnesses, mend bones, prevent frostbite,  mend actual tissue. Katara could’ve invented MODERN SURGERY.

But somehow HER form of alternative bending is the only bad one?

[mugentakeda]

the successful aftermath of the first ever (improvised) top surgery, invented by master katara of the southern water tribe and performed on fire lord zuko (circa 104 ag)

[allgremlinart]

The REASON Katara is so disgusted by bloodbending is because of the way she was introduced to it and how she was forced to take hold of a power she never WANTED in order to save the lives of Aang and her brother. Why she found bloodbending subsequently so disturbing was because the form it was introduced to her as was very specifically about superimposing your will onto someone else, violently, outside the conventions of combat as she knows it, and without their consent - we do not know what she would think of bloodbending as used as a medical technique because she was never exposed to bloodbending as used as a medical technique.

It is not out of character for Katara to be disturbed by what is basically a rape of willpower - someone like, say, Sokka might see it in more pragmatic terms and consider its usefulness, but she has always been his foil when it comes to issues like this - I think it's very believable that her deep empathy and initial negative emotional impression of bloodbending would put her off from experimenting with it more in the future.

Frankly, I agree that it would be cool to explore bloodbending more in a less "oh so scary and evil" way, but I stand by what I've said above on characterization. Also, from a meta level, Katara made bloodbending illegal because, like, waterbending would just be too OP otherwise. So there's that.

[kiera-raelyn]

Y'all are cooking over here and I am starving.

Ugh I will always love the concept of Katara using blood bending to revive Zuko after the last agni kai, mostly because it makes no sense to me that Zuko was able to bounce back so easily after being struck by lightning, but also because the way the show treats bloodbending is just odd to me. It was a defense mechanism created by a traumatized victim of some of the most devastating parts of colonization, and although I understand that Hama was supposed to symbolize the "bad parts" of waterbending and was important for Katara's growth in realizing that the world isn't entirely black and white, its still disappointing to me that the show never explored the gray areas of blood bending, especially since that episode was, as I stated above, about understanding the gray areas of the war. Katara using blood bending to revive Zuko would add so much to the last agni kai in demonstrating that she has truly realized that "good" and "evil" are relative concepts, and Zuko being saved by both a defense mechanism of a survivor of colonialism and a type of bending used to terrorize his people would have even added to his arc, as the narrative required him to save and subsequently be saved by the physical embodiment of everything his family sought to annihilate.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I have been thinking a lot about blood bending lately and why the writers decided to go with the storyline of it being banned. I personally do not think it should have been. Like any bending form it can be used for awful things or it could be used for great things (my first thought is always in a medical sense but I’m sure there are other uses). And then I started to wonder if part of why they did that is bc that storyline was connected to Katara more than anyone else, and maybe this was a way to sideline her/focus more on Korra and the new gang instead of exploring with the older characters along with the new ones. But I was wondering if you had any thoughts on it!

hi anon! Sorry for getting to your ask a little late. I was at music camp (okay it’s a professional development program for musicians but I think of it as music camp in an effort to remind myself to have fun) and it was a big challenge since I’m chronically ill and needed a whole apothecary of meds to get through it. (I’m fine now! But needed to pace very carefully before & after and therefore stayed away from Tumblr)

It’s absolutely weird to me that bloodbending is singled out in a world where people can literally steal breath from one’s lungs, but it’s even weirder to me that they had a whole “ban bloodbending” storyline and sidelined Katara, because like…in what world would Katara feel strongly enough about bloodbending to ban it, yet do nothing to enforce the ban? The only explanation that makes sense is that she banned it because she was so ashamed, and stayed away from all the stuff around Yakone et al because she couldn’t bear to be reminded of what she’d done. And like all interpretations of canon Katara in LOK, that is just horribly heartbreaking.

I don’t begrudge the creators for wanting LOK to be about the new generation and I don’t mind seeing the Gaang play second fiddle. But I do object to the creators putting Katara in these situations where she could something in her wheelhouse, that’s in-character with her skills and ambitions, that is in line with her cultural impact as a role model for girls…and then sidelining her. Yakone is a big example, obviously, but so is Katara’s lack of involvement in the Civil War, the Red Lotus kidnapping, etc.

Like you said, bloodbending is useful in terms of the medical implications, but I also think it’s a humane tool in battle as long as it’s only used to incapacitate and not control. I can’t think of many better ways of incapacitating an enemy without causing serious damage (it’s even more efficient than chi-blocking!). If a bloodbender can stop encroaching enemies in their tracks with a flick of their wrist — well, that actually seems more humane than freezing them into ice cubes, which is the go-to waterbender move. I mean, Katara stops Hama with bloodbending in The Puppetmaster; she doesn’t actually control Hama with it. It’s terrible to override people’s bodily autonomy and make them do things they don’t want to do, but that is a very specific use of bloodbending.

I do think, though, that Katara is not the type of person to recognize all the other potential uses of bloodbending unless someone prompts her, and unfortunately that person is not going to be Aang. It doesn’t help that Katara’s first experience with bloodbending is being stripped of her own agency; similarly, it becomes her go-to weapon when she encounters (she thinks) the person who made her feel the most powerless in her life. To Katara, bloodbending is about taking power from someone else…and on her own, she’s not likely to see other applications. Katara is an excellent fighter with a lot of raw power, finesse, and creativity, but she’s not actually all that in-tune with her element, and I think that’s another reason she was never very interested in healing in canon (Katara and waterbending could be a whole other meta). Katara would’ve been an equally excellent bender no matter which element she wields, unlike Toph and Aang, who are uniquely suited to their elements. Katara borrows a lot from the more aggressive forms of bending (fire and earth): grabs people with water tentacles, hits them with ice disks, overwhelms them with big waves. For all that waterbending is about going with the flow and using the opponent’s strengths against them, Katara doesn’t exactly exemplify that philosophy (unlike Aang, btw, who is more intuitive as a waterbender than she is; that is why he picked it up more quickly at the beginning). She addresses all her problems head-on and is more likely to meet them with raw power than anything else. If I were to guess her astrological placements, she’d be an Aries Mars, minimum, if not an Aries Sun as well (she’d be a Cancer Moon though…I have Thoughts on ATLA astrology lmao).

Anyway, all this to say: I don’t think Katara would’ve thought of the healing implications of bloodbending on her own, when she’s already been traumatized by it, and that’s pretty tragic tbh. I like the Zutara interpretation of Zuko inspiring Katara to think there are other uses for bloodbending (as a wielder of a potentially destructive element), but I think Toph could’ve had a conversation with her about other uses for bloodbending as well, since Toph is really creative with earth. Actually, I think Zuko or Toph or Sokka could’ve all had a conversation with Katara about coming to terms about doing things that one is not proud of & moving past them, but I guess Katara can only follow the rigid moral code of her Do No Wrong boyfriend. Anyway, LOK’s despicable treatment of ATLA’s female characters is nothing new, but Katara’s is the most obvious and egregious because she’s actually there. We have no idea what happened to Suki or Azula or Mai or Ty Lee, and what we do see from Toph is not great either (in what world would she retire to be lonely in a swamp when having her friends meant the world to her…). All the boys got to have cool fulfilling lives and all the girls who aren’t lost to history are sad sacks, thanks Bryke! On a non-sarcastic note, thank you anon for such an interesting question!

[psychologicalwarclaire]

Ninjago Team Medic Headcanons

Wu gave them all basic first aid training, and later taught them some more advanced techniques, but I think everyone has their own specialties.

Kai - Kai treats the serious injuries. He’s the only one who can cauterize wounds, if needed. But other times, he can splint broken or sprained limbs with ease. Kai is the closest thing the ninja have to an official medic. His protectiveness led to many sleepless nights watching videos ranging from treating muscle soreness, to burns, to CPR, to live surgeries. 

Jay - Good at treating injuries during missions, but is prone to… unorthodox methods. If you need something dealt with fast, he is the guy. Accidents in the junkyard and his time on the Misfortune’s Keep taught him how to quickly patch up anything out of almost any material. His methods of sloppy stitches, makeshift bandaging, or increasingly strange ways to prevent infections are temporary solutions, but they’ll keep you alive long enough to get real help. He’s always got fun bandaids stashed somewhere. But in terms of moral support, he’s your guy. Jay is a master of distraction, keeping the others either chuckling or groaning with his jokes while he or someone else works. When he gets very stressed, however, he’ll be dead silent as he treats the wound, looking on with a clenched jaw.

Nya - Nya is the best of everyone at traditional first aid. Before she was a ninja, she did a lot of the patching up after missions, so she’s got lots of experience. Nya is also so good at treating burns that it’s like her second elemental power; back in the day, her inexperienced brother had many blacksmithing accidents in the forge. It’s been established that she can’t access water inside of people’s bodies (cough, water in Jay’s lungs, cough), but if the blood is outside of you… It’s not quite bloodbending, but she can keep her team from bleeding out. She is also helpful during times of rest and recovery, keeping everyone drinking plenty of fluids and threatening them to take it easy. She’s an expert in heatstroke and dehydration because her stupid ninja forget to drink water on a daily basis. 

Cole - Cole’s big hands and strength make it difficult for him to treat delicate injuries like stitching someone up, but if you need a joint popped back into place or a broken bone set, he is absolutely your guy. Most of what Cole provides to his team’s wellbeing is emotional. He gives the best hugs. Kai and Jay utilize his calming presence when dealing with more… tricky wounds. Also: as mud is nature’s sunblock, he’s always happy to provide some to prevent his team from getting burned when they inevitably forget sunblock. 

Lloyd - Lloyd still believes in the magic power of bandages. For himself, and for others. Over the years he’s gotten better at recognizing when to use them and when more serious medical attention is required, but he’d still prefer not to have to deal with his injured team. In a situation where someone gets badly injured, usually Lloyd has many different problems to deal with and the other ninja are happy to take things off his plate instead of making him deal with a downed teammate. When it is up to him, he’s no medical expert by any means, but he’ll try his best. Occasionally, he’ll have to use his powers to combat some sort of magical ailment. 

Zane - Do NOT try and get Zane’s help with an injury. You think his ability to access any and all medical knowledge would be useful? WRONG. The guy sees one of his friends injured and practically shuts down. Dislocated joints? Broken bones? Heck no, he needs to leave the room. Catches a glimpse of blood? He is gone. Poor guy once almost started crying when Lloyd got a bloody nose. The whole situation is a mix of him hating to see his loved ones injured, and also being queasy over blood because he doesn’t have any. All those body parts that he doesn’t have are GROSS. The only thing he’s able to help with is diagnosing illnesses and occasionally pointing out concussions. Even then, it gets out of hand (“You have a mild cough? MY SOURCES SAY YOU HAVE FIVE DAYS TO LIVE.”) After treatment, however, he’s always ready to provide an instant ice pack and physical therapy. 

Pixal - Pixal is eager to help. Do not let her help. Her solution to almost everything-- whether it be a skinned knee or fractured wrist-- is amputation. She has spent years building so many backup prosthetics and just wants to be useful (“please let me implement my prosthetics, Kai, please! Lloyd would look so good with a robot arm!’). She knows hundreds of different options but she feels more comfortable working on machines, so what’s her solution? Cut it off, install a machine. That she can work with. Luckily, the ninja deal with both of the nindroids by having Zane keep her away, successfully distracting both of them from bloody situations. 

[dragonfoxandfound]

Kataang stan: zk's insinuate that zuko and katara would be perfect for each other because they like to kill people

Excuse me, what? Kataang stans are really just making shit up now aren't they? Please, show me the swaths of Zutara shippers fawning over the idea that these two love birds also love murder and that's why they're great together!!! 😍

I mean I really shouldn't have underestimated the depths of stupidty when that lovely gem was also accompanied by this:

Is it a little bit racist that people characterize one of the only dark skinned characters in the show as a violent blood bender?

First of all why are you tokenizing Katara?

What do you mean one of the only dark skinned characters? Kanna, Kya, Yue, Hama, Hakoda, Bato, Arnook, Kuruk, Ummi, Pakku, Piando, Hahn, Yugoda, Tho, Due, Huu, Sokka? Dark skinned characters make up a good chunk of the cast.

I guess you just forgot about them because the only time you ever care about brown people is when it relates to your petty ship bashing.

If it's racist to characterize a dark skinned character as a 'violent bloodbender' then by your logic Bryke is racist. They're the ones who made Hama, Yakone, Amon and Tarrlock - all dark skinned characters - into violent bloodbenders, right?

It's shortsighted and naive to decalare bloodbending as inherently violent and things like healing inherently good. It ignores the existence of medical violence and the fact that a healer is perfectly capable of weaponizing their bending by purposely healing someone in a horrificly wrong and painful way.

And it's pretty demeaning to Katara to characterize her as unable to distinguish between the right and wrong uses of bloodbending. Especially when she's perfectly capable of doing so when waterbending and healing.

[kiera-raelyn]

The lifesaving potential of bloodbending in medicine cannot be overstated.

Frankly, you can't convince me Katara didn't use it to save Zuko after the Agni Kai. She didn't have spirit water, which is indicated to be the only reason she was able to save Aang. Yeah, Zuko redirected some of the lightning, but not all of it. His heart probably stopped. Chi paths and energy manipulation aren't likely to restart it. But manually pumping his heart from the inside until it gets its own rhythm back? That would work.

Not to mention bloodbending's potential for curing at least some of the damage done to the people the Dai Li mindfucked. We already saw that waterbending healing had at least some small effect. Bloodbending could be used to greater effect.

This is what fanfic's for, though. Honestly, I wouldn't trust this sort of plot line in Bryke's hands. Especially because, as @burst-of-iridescent pointed out, Zuko would've been the ideal person to help Katara work through it. We don't see anyone else struggle and come to terms with the destructive side of their bending, despite the fact that literally all bending can be destructive. Ba Sing Se didn't hold General Iroh off for 600+ days because they had a big wall and tossed pebbles at his army. The airbenders, despite being pacifists, knew that it could be used to kill people directly (not just whoosh them off a cliff and let gravity do the rest). And waterbenders obviously were not shy about using ice to stab people with, and/or just straight up drown them. Yet Zuko's the only one who had to come to terms with that aspect of his bending. So, again, he's really the only person who can help Katara with this. But Bryke would die before they give those two anymore screen time together. To do so would threaten the self-insert babysitter romance they forced into canon.

i will always hate that katara never came to terms with her bloodbending. especially given that it’s a symbolic representation of her own “darker” side, the fact that she was never able to find the good in it and accept it as just another aspect of her element, instead outlawing and demonizing it forever, makes me so sad because it perfectly encapsulates the person she herself ended up as: the shallow, shining trophy wife on aang’s arm, locking away everything he didn’t want and was never able to understand to become his perfect, flawless forever girl for the rest of her days.

and it’s so much more frustrating knowing that zuko — who knows exactly what it feels like to wield an element that can be destructive and violent, whose own arc about the duality of fire would have made him the perfect person to help katara understand that there is no such thing as inherently good or evil bending, only the bender who makes it so — was right there! yet instead of letting them have even one conversation about it, we got bloodbending being villainized till the heat death of the fucking universe and katara left forever unable to accept the complexity of her bending (and metaphorically, the complexity within herself) even though she had the exact person she needed right at hand to help and support her through the process… god it just drives me mad

[mordaciousmurderer]

i wonder how katara resuscitated zuko after he was struck in the last agni kai. part of me thinks he didn’t die because when i went through frame by frame i saw that he still redirected the lightning it just went through his heart.

in my opinion, it would have made more sense from a medical/story standpoint if she used bloodbending to save him. with that amount of electricity we can assume that his heart just completely stopped. if we’re operating under the assumption that healing (as in the subcategory of water bending) simply just restores damaged cells then that realistically wouldn’t have done much to resuscitate him.

BUT! if she had used bloodbending to stimulate bloodflow then that seems like the perfect way to restart a heart in this universe!

although, if katara had used bloodbending to bring zuko back i think that would have uprooted a lot of the stigma surrounding bloodbending. the entire show, water bending was illustrated as a more passive form of bending. hama and bloodbending was introduced as a way to demonstrate the ‘evil’ within water bending.

in relation to katara, she’d undergone a lot of change and growth as a person. her maturity level has always been higher compared to the rest of the gang. so i can assume that she would recognize the potential benefit of bloodbending. true good and evil are subjective concepts so any form of any bending could become corrupt in the wrong hands. take the fire nation as an example! as the sun warriors taught, fire is a form of life and energy not just destruction. On the flip or “evil” side of that, the fire nation at that state had distorted the root of fire bending with hate and rage.

[ishipmyotp]

So I've had this question that I only now realized would be a legitimate ethical debate in the world of Avatar, which is: could bloodbending be permitted if it were strictly in a medical context? For example: if a patient is experiencing heavy bloodloss, bloodbending can be used to keep the blood in the veins and circulating as normal while the rest of/needed medical procedure can be preformed, blood circulation can be returned to reattached limbs, etc

[broadwaybalogna]

I saw this on my feed and was like: those words look oddly familiar… then I realized they were my words! So let’s debunk this!

#1. “how can you be a fan of atla or Katara when[…]” because I love her and she occupies every inch of my mind. It’s actually that simple, really. It might be because I stay up until 4 am thinking about her because I’m hyper fixated, or it might be because I make constant fanart of her, or maybe because I adore every fanfiction revolving around her, but who knows.

#2 (AKA what this is actually about).

A while back, there was a post made by (probably a mutual of mine) talking about the final Agni Kai and how it would have been medically impossible for Katara to heal Zuko just with her Waterbending, and instead offered the idea that she might’ve been able to do it with bloodbending! Given the life or death circumstances of what occurred, I believe it could have totally fit!

While this is just a headcanon, I think it’s able to show how there are both good and bad things that come with a power like bloodbending. It can be used to heal/create instead of destroy.

Now, that photo was taken mostly out of context, everything mentioned in the post is result of headcanons as none of it is canon. Of course, it may be hard to come to this conclusion had someone not seen the headcanon I was referring to, I have just personally internalized it and made it my own little canon.

#3. IF, say, the previous headcanon was false and we were working off of canon, I still think Katara could learn to embrace all parts of herself, even the “ugly” bloodbending side with Zuko.

Zuko personally saw Katara bloodbend in one of her worst moments, and didn’t judge her for a moment of it. Zuko, the person who had a whole journey revolving around how evil had good and good had evil. Everything is capable of disaster as well of creation. I don’t know how the conversation would arise, maybe one night Katara is distressed about her past with the subbending and Zuko assures her that there is always good to be done with something (even if it feels pure evil) and she spends time considering it.

THATS what I meant when I said it. Letting Katara heal her trauma instead of being haunted by it is something I love seeing.

[discordiansamba]

if aang had his choice of careers (which he doesn't, he's the avatar so that's his future 'career' already chosen) he'd just become a proper air nomad monk. but if he wasn't doing that, he'd probably end up being a zookeeper or someone who otherwise works in animal conservation.

when zuko was young, he thought his only option was to take over his dad's company. but now he has the option to choose for himself what he wants to do with his life and he... has no idea what he wants to do, actually. does he want to do something with theater? firebending? become a fire sage like lu ten and uncle? sorry uncle, he's pretty sure he doesn't want to take over your tea shop.

azula 100% wants to start her own company and make her father's a distant memory. katara wants to become a doctor. it's not uncommon for waterbenders with healing talent to become doctors. sokka's going to follow in his fathers footsteps to become chief of their tribe. toph wants to become a professional probender. suki plans to become the leader of the kyoshi warriors. ty lee plans to join the circus. mai quietly dreams of opening her own goth bookstore and coffeehouse.

modern au iroh, try as he might, cannot get his nephew into tea. this is because coffee exists and you know the fridge at home is filled with canned coffee that zuko drinks way too much of. he always has it black until he discovers he can mix in cayenne pepper into it. Everyone Hated That (except zuko).

much to iroh's distress, his niece likes coffee too. azula pretends she likes it black because it makes her seem more adult but in actuality it's too bitter for her. then she learns about the existence of Cold Brews and there's no going back from that. she is considerably more reasonable about her coffee consumption.

ty lee, yue, and sokka are fancy latte buddies. mai also drinks her coffee black (like her soul) but if you think she's going to set foot into a starbucks, she's going to kill you. independent coffee shops or bust. aang, toph, suki and katara prefer tea. they are officially iroh's favorite children.

(zuko will still drink his uncle's tea if he makes it. he was there for him a lot when he was recovering in the hospital. he guesses he can put up with his hot leaf juice.)

[thatoneguy56fanfic]

Honestly I think Katara made a mistake by banning bloodbending. Yes, it was abused by evil people. But so was firebending. And there’s a lot of potential benefits behind it, especially in the medical field.

Just imagine bloodbending doctors who could relieve clots without needing surgery, and surgeons who can stop a patient from bleeding out on the table. Or bloodbending EMT’s who could keep a seriously injured patient stable long enough to get them to the hospital. Or physical therapists who use bloodbending to help ease cramps and pain in their patients muscles. There’s so much that could’ve been done with it and I personally think that banning it did the world a disservice.

[sokkastyles]

I read that post you reblogged about Katara using bloodbending to heal Zuko during the final Agni Kai, and honestly I would have loved it if that happened too. I've mentioned before in a previous ask that I wish bloodbending had been explored more in the narrative, especially Katara's complicated feelings about bloodbending. This is going to sound a bit morbid, but I'm kind of wondering if, after the encounter with Hama, do you think Katara would be kind of hyperaware of the water flowing throughout her own body or anyone else's? Would she feel tempted to try bloodbending again? Even though the first time she had to do so was to prevent Aang and Sokka from hurting each other, so she bloodbent Hama, and she found the whole thing disturbing, there's a part of me that wonders if Katara would still have a bit of morbid curiosity about bloodbending anyways. I know this sounds like I want Katara's character to be a bit darker, but what I really want is for Katara to be allowed to have these thoughts or this type of curiosity without her being made to feel like she's a bad person for it. Idk if any of this made that much sense, but I'm curious to know, what are your thoughts?

Katara unconsciously being hyper aware of the water around her and in other people's bodies after Hama is something that has made itself into my fics. Because bending is depicted in atla as part of who the person is, and I think keeping a bender from bending is like keeping someone from being allowed to move their arms and legs.

And once Katara knows this ability exists, not just bloodbending but everything Hama taught her that goes with it, like how to find the water in everything, she will find it impossible to not have this completely alter her bending and how she sees the world.

And, like with firebending, it's not the bending itself that is bad, it's what you do with it.

I love zutara fics that include bloodbending, not just the dark ones, but something I've explored a little in my fics is how it makes her more aware of Zuko's body and heightens her physical connection with him.

Bloodbending can work as a metaphor for consent, because it's not that it's inherently evil to have that kind of knowledge of another person's body, but it's about consent and trust. I see no reason why bloodbending can't be used to heal the same way that medical knowledge can be used both to heal or to kill and torture. (I'm thinking of that particular analogy because I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer currently).

Like, I get that the show writers were trying to add complexity by showing the dark side of waterbending with Hama, but the thing is that while waterbending was always portrayed as good before, it was also portrayed in a very limited way. Katara is the last waterbender of her tribe, who had to learn on her own. "Some waterbending is bad, actually," isn't really a lesson she needed to learn, especially not from the only teacher she's ever had who can actually tell her about her own heritage. The unintended message is that Katara exploring a culture heritage that has been denied to her through war is bad, and it actually ends up limiting things instead of making them more complex. It's also another weird way the show dichotomizes combat waterbending and healing. Despite Katara gaining Pakku's respect, she is still getting the message from things like the Hama episode that using her bending for combat and not healing is wrong. The obvious solution is to make waterbending healing a form of bloodbending, and now that Netflix has made healing an actual learned bending form instead of something Katara is naturally good at, I have hope that this connection might actually be made. And this is a win win, because making healing a form of bloodbending actually achieves the complexity the original show was going for.

[bookdragonideas]

Healers are killers.

Katara doesn't know when she learns that. Maybe she's the first to realize. But healers are killers.

They have to be sometimes. When mercy is quick and painless, instead of drawn out suffering. But all to often its more of a choice.

Sometimes it's something completely different.

Katara knows how the human body works. She's helped her Grangran since she was small, and trained with the northern healers whenever she had a spare moment. She knows what muscles connect, where injuries are often found. The different ways a bone can break, and just how far you can wander into exhaustion before collapse. And she has seen, time and time again, just how far you can push a person to the brink of death before they fall off.

Humans are surprisingly durable. Until they aren't.

No one knows this better than a healer.

A man might break every bone in his body and still live to play with his grandkids. A single splinter can end a life or rob a person of their limbs.

For Katara it's a balance. And she likes to think that she uses the balance well. Water whips that only cause curable injuries. Never drowning enough to cause serious illness. Cuts that hurt but don't bleed enough to kill. She may not be a pacifist like Aang but she avoids killing when she can.

It's in the north when she first notices a twist of this balance.

Talking with the healers in the hut about herbs and the difference between North and South. A man came in with extensive injuries. But nothing that wouldn't heal in time. Until one of the other woman gave him the wrong medication, with a lethal dose.

Katara noticed, went to say something, thinking it a simple mistake. But Master Yagoda caught her eye and warned her off with a stern look.

Later she learned why. How the man had been injured. Who had injured him. No blame was cast. No voices questioned the death. And at the burial no one cried.

She had seen before, in the Earth Kingdom. Earth healers who treated everyone after a battle. Who would give Firebenders sleeping draughts they wouldn't wake from.

But that was different. That was war. That was enemies to dangerous to keep prisoner and a gentler death than execution.

This had nothing to do with the war.

Months later Katara stood above a woman who could have been kin. A trusted teacher turned monster. She sobbed in her brother's arms and deep down she wondered. How much blame lay in the war? Had Sozin never conquered would this power remained unknown? Or would it have made itself known somehow?

Years later when she fights another who claimed this twisted power she gets her answer.

Some evils cannot be blamed on the war.

She uses Bloodbending only a handful of times in her life. Mostly in desperation or defensive. Once in shameful anger, against a man wearing armor that reminded her of her mother.

And once in the dark of a small family's house. Where a newborn baby needed blood to flow more than Katara needed to restrain herself.

No one knew. Except for Aang, who she didn't keep secrets from. And Sokka who saw more than she gave him credit for.

But she knew.

She gave the wrong medicine to a mother whose half grown children cowered in fear. The children went to live with their cousins and learned to laugh again.

She failed to clean the wound on a man whose girlfriend was bruised and broken in a different way. He survived but she gained power over him for long enough to reconsider the relationship.

She healed Ozai, when Zuko asked. But if that healing only went skin deep? Well she had been distracted by helping Mai wrangle young Izumi. And Zuko never blamed her.

The two sides of her bending twisted alongside each other. A balance.

She interrogates a man who was involved in multiple kidnappings. She knows how far to push someone before they break. And afterwards she smooths a healing hand over tarnished skin. They find the children. And the man dies of unknown causes.

Some rebels attack Sokka and Zuko during one of their visits to the Earth Kingdom. If she hunts them down to deliver killing blows? She was just trying to capture them, no one can prove otherwise.

Bloodbending keeps getting rediscovered.

Katara teaches her students that you can heal someone with their own blood if the situation is desperate.

She watches as the the world changes, as old friends and family grow old and die.

Katara knows, as her own bones begins to ache, that some secrets do not remain secret.

She teaches what she can. Twists the narrative whenever possible. And sends a significant look to her newest prodigy as she gives a cruel man the wrong medicine.

Healers are killers.

This truth is far older than the war. It's a secret built into the very concept of the word. A balance every gentle healer holds.

Healers are killers.

But they are healers before they are killers. And Katara will do her part to ensure it stays that way.

Two years before she dies Bloodbending is announced as the newest form of Waterbender healing. Zuko and Toph congratulate her. Zuko looks sad. Toph looks serious. They understand.

Healers are killers.

In the next hundred years others will learn this too. Katara only hopes that they keep it a secret, as she did. She settles into her cozy home in her rebuilt tribe. She spends the rest of her life keeping the balance between the two sides of her own bending.

Healers are killers.

Katara has always been both.

[shanastoryteller]

hi! what are your thoughts on bloodbending in atla and it being framed as this "evil", morally corrupt form of bending? do you think it could have been presented in another manner and something that is capable of both good and bad?

well! it is a kid's show

but in meta-lly it would make sense for it to be used as a medical tool, which would be a cause for good. also it's basically like the nara shadowbending in naruto, which is a neutral thing in that universe

i think it's supposed to be framed as a loss of free will and violation of the body which is Very Bad and it's more Moral to just cut someone's head off

like most weapons, a group decides it's Very Evil when they fear that it'll be turned against them rather than their enemies. water tribes are, for better or worse, mostly isolationists. bloodbending is an elite skill that a water bender would have to practice on their own people to perfect, because no one else is around, and any tribe that has one is basically going to win any fight be default because no one wants to risk being hit by a nuclear warhead, so to speak

so i think the demonization of bloodbending is more practical than anything else