Avatar fanon that kind of puzzles me

[sholio]

Herbs that suppress prisoners' ability to bend their element. This one comes up in a lot of fic, and ... I don't know, the first time I ran across it I just thought, huh, interesting idea, but about the twentieth time, I started wondering if there's some bit of canon to support this that I'm forgetting. Because it strikes me as actively counter to what we saw in the show itself -- there were quite a lot of episodes in which we saw prisoners and prisons, and it was pretty well established how prisoners with *-bending ability are dealt with. Earth- and water-benders are isolated from their element; firebenders are imprisoned in metal cages surrounded by stone walls, so they have nothing to burn (or, in groups, they're guarded by enough firebenders to counter anything they might try to do). For prisoner transport, they bind someone's hands and feet so they can't make the moves required to bend their element.

If they have a chemical way of suppressing bending, shouldn't they have used it at some point rather than using various physical work-arounds?

Comments

[jalendavi_lady]

Don't forget the coolers for firebenders.

If they did have a means to chemically suppress bending, why in the world did they use methods of maximum containment for fire and water that have a way of getting humans close to death?

And why on earth didn't Zhao drug Aang with it instead of using those chains? If I had a chemical method to stop someone from bending even if they broke free, and I had a twelve-year-old bender-of-all-elements to contain, I'd be breaking out the chemical instead of relying on chains.

Twelve-year-old who can't bend on a ship full of trained soldiers twice or three times his age? No way he's getting off the boat.

[sholio]

Exactly! It doesn't make logical sense at all, which makes it really odd to me that it's such a persistent recurring element in fic -- unless there is some part of the show that suggested the existence of such a thing, but I don't remember anything of the sort. Actually one thing I found really interesting on the show was how much creativity the writers (and through them, the characters) used in finding ways to render extremely powerful magic-users temporarily harmless.

[jalendavi_lady]

I haven't encountered it yet myself in the Avatar fandom, but there was a fad for a while in the Star Wars fandom of using Force-suppression devices as an easy way out of dealing with highly powerful Jedi.

I took part in that fad myself twice, and it really was most of the time just a way to remove the Force from the fictional equation, either by making a Jedi normal or by removing someone from being detectable by other Force-users (which was what my long fic playing with that concept did).

[sholio]

Yeah, there was a comparable situation in Dragonball Z fandom, with a handful of extremely powerful chi users who had to be somehow depowered or removed from the fighting in order to make the villains menacing at all (even canon started running into this problem, when it got to the point where the heroes were powerful enough to blow up planets).

I've been thinking about why it bugs me in ATLA, and I think it's something to do with the way that it's not used as a rare innovation or plot point, but just a background device to remove a sticky plot obstacle. It would be like if, say, Hama's blood bending had occurred at some point in season three as a common thing that waterbenders could do, and wasn't used thereafter. It would have left us going "... wait, why wasn't this mentioned before, and why wasn't it used in THIS dozen situations where it would have been useful?" And that's how the bending-blocking herbs make me feel -- I actually think you could make an interesting story out of someone actually discovering an herb that blocks bending (or an acupuncture technique, say, or another use for Ty Lee's chi-blocking) and make a story out of it. (Damn it. Now I want to write that story!)

[sholio]

Also, come to think of it, that scene in season one when Iroh's captors were going to crush his hands so that he can't firebend ... if they have chemical methods, there'd be no reason to do that other than pure sadism. It makes sense if it's the only way to unambiguously stop him from getting loose and killing them; but if there's a harmless alternative, it's just senseless torture ...

[torachan]

Yeah, that seems like one of those things that makes sense on the surface, so a lot of people latch onto it, but it doesn't fit at all with what we saw in the show.

[sholio]

Yeah, I didn't really think much about it the first time I saw it, but the more it kept turning up, the more it started to bother me -- it just doesn't make sense in terms of what we saw of prisoners and prisons on the show.

[ariadne83]

Yeah, that makes no sense. And it kinda makes me glad I'm not really in the fandom.

Now, if you used herbs to incapacitate someone via poisoning on the other hand...

[sholio]

Yeah, there are definitely several (rather Macchiavellian) ways of using drugs to render someone incapable of bending (which I have thought about somewhat; it's similar to the problem in DBZ fandom of rendering highly powerful energy users incapable of using their powers without killing them ...). Actually I think that would be much more interesting than the ever-popular theme of drugs that "take away bending" without otherwise harming a person ...

[jalendavi_lady]

Given how much of bending seems based on physical and mental control of oneself, I am now wondering what being constantly slightly drunk would do to benders.

(I am also wondering what a group of drunken firebenders trying to hold a barfight would look like.)

[sholio]

*giggles*

It's a damn shame that it's a kids' show and they're all underage, so we never saw any of the benders get drunk in canon! Zuko drunk would be hilarious (and possibly quite dangerous!).

This makes me wonder if the Fire Nation army has strict rules for alcohol and other mind-altering substances, on or off duty. It seems like it would be much more of a problem for them than for users of other elements, since they walk such a razor's edge with their element. (Actually ... do firebenders drink at all? We saw seedy bars and taverns in the Earth Kingdom, but I don't recall anything comparable in the Fire Nation ...)

[jalendavi_lady]

Considering how flammable alcohol is?

One of the theories of human combustion was once that being a heavy drinker - or currently sufficiently drunk - could lower someone's ignition point just enough...

(Cactus Bar fanart by ruftoon: Zuko, Iroh, Zhao, and Sokka, all drunk)

[sholio]

... wow, you have a point about flammable alcohol; I hadn't even thought of that!

Given the incredible amount of thought that went into the world-building in this show, it actually would not surprise me if they had gone so far as to think of that and take it into account in designing the Fire Nation's food- and drink-related culture. (I'm not saying they did. But I can definitely think of times we saw people clearly drinking alcohol in the Earth Kingdom, and nothing at all comparable to it in the Fire Nation ... and it actually seems like the kind of show where they might have thought about that.)

And thanks for the link to the art; that's very cute! Heh, and I keep thinking about drunk Zuko ... he'd probably end up as the most maudlin drunk EVER by the end of the evening ...

[ariadne83]

I think that would be much more interesting than the ever-popular theme of drugs that "take away bending" without otherwise harming a person ...

See, that trope would really annoy me for two reasons: first, canon is packed with characters who are kick-ass awesome but can't bend at all (as well as benders like Zuko who made the effort to be multi-skilled). Second, "take away bending without hurting them" sounds like a built-in excuse for ultra-woobie woe-is-me angst.

Maybe I'm too cranky to be deep in any fandom these days :-P

[sholio]

It's actually used more like a deus ex machina to make prisoners easier to handle -- basically to explain how someone like Azula can be easily imprisoned post-canon (I think she's the one I've most often seen it used for). Which, come to think of it, is why it annoys me -- it's not that I think it couldn't be used in a fic as an innovative way of controlling a bender, but it's usually very casual; the inherent assumption seems to be that it's widespread or common, and mostly used to remove an annoying story impediment. It's a writerly cop-out to avoid having to deal with the stickier situation of having a very powerful element-bender in a low-security prison situation (and like you point out, it also hinges on the assumption that someone without their bending is powerless, which is true of almost nobody on the show anyway!).

[ariadne83]

...

Right. Because they totes did that with Bumi...

Cop-out is definitely the word for it. If they want to do that why not focus on the mental aspect of bending? Instead of a herb come up with some sort of reconditioning or brainwashing that makes someone believe they can't access their power, leave them in high security for a year to see if your experiment worked, and then move them to a lower-security prison.

I mean, it's canon that they were able to capture Azula because she was mentally unbalanced (and I won't start rambling about the way this show deals with "crazy" people) so why wouldn't people explore/exploit that? Is it in the "too difficult" basket?

[fulselden]

Yeah, I think this fanon is largely (besides just being a matter of sloppy worldbuilding, as you say) a product of 'how do you solve a problem like Azula'.

Because frankly, if you envisage her as able to bend at anything like full strength while imprisoned, likely ways of keeping her incapacitated are all pretty brutal. So I think that writers don't want to do that to Azula, and, probably to a still greater extent, don't want Zuko to do that to Azula.

It's also worth noting that the one time they did have some kind of chi-enhancing tea show up (when they were trying to bring on the Avatar state), it was pretty much implied to be quackery, medically speaking, and only acted as a kind of super-coffee.

[ga-unicorn.livejournal.com]

It's called laziness. Seriously. I'm not into the Avatar fandom, but it's something I've noticed in a lot of fic - there's a canon explanation for something, but it's difficult to work around so they make up something easy to use. In this case it's herbs/drugs, which makes the more discerning reader go hmmm... if this was available, then why do all the other bad guys go to all the trouble to arrange these camps to isolate benders from their element?

I can handle a little of it, but when it starts to become fanon I start to get annoyed. I've run into canon roadblocks in my own writing and been tempted. I hope I've avoided temptation.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Avatar but from what you've said it sounds like fanon. It's either an idea a lot of authors liked and so latched onto, or the product of people who don't know the show very well so felt the need to fill in the blanks rather than research.

I dislike most fanon cliches because they get used to death (Ex. Zelenka's still) but despise them when they make absolutely no sense (Ex. John escaping the infirmary for no reason when he's still severely injured). In my current fandom there was talk about one character being claustrophobic even though A: it was never mentioned in canon except as a means of distraction and B: considering what the character does it makes no sense that he would be claustrophobic. However, this particular piece of fanon is getting nipped in the bud pretty quick.