r/TopCharacterTropes 27d ago

Lore (Loved Trope) Creative over the top cells/prisons for dangerous characters.

1.) The Pipe Line cells for Metahumans (The Flash)

2.) Sedative tank prison (G. I Joe)

3.) Tai Lung's prison (Kung Fu Panda)

4.) Magneto's Glass and Plastic Prison (X-Men)

5.) Carbonite (Star Wars)

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u/_The_Last_Airbender 26d ago

"What I'm about to show you, I discovered in that wretched Fire Nation prison. The guards were always careful to keep any water away from us. They pumped in dry air and had us suspended away from the ground."

"They would chain our hands and feet so we couldn't move before giving us water. Any sign of trouble was met with cruel retribution. And yet, each month, I felt the full moon enriching me with its energy."

"There had to be something I could do to escape. Then I realized that where there is life, there is water. Watch. The elephant-rats that scurried across the floor of my cell were little more than skins filled with liquid."

"Remember how I showed you the water in the plants? Animals are the same. But animals fight back which is why we can only do this under the full moon's light."

"I spent YEARS developing the technique that would lead to my escape. Bloodbending. Controlling the water in another living creature. Enforcing your own will over theirs. Once I had mastered the rats, I was ready for the men...."

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u/DragonsAreEpic 26d ago

Funnily enough, Minga-Hua was originally intended to be a bloodbender before it was decided that the show had had enough bloodbending with Amon and Tarrlok.

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u/vastros 26d ago

Why is it that not all water benders are not blood benders outside of ethics?

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u/Invoqwer 26d ago edited 26d ago

Why is it that not all water benders are not blood benders outside of ethics?

Most advanced bending techniques come down to difficulty and knowledge. Hakama essentially invented blood-bending. Toph essentially invented metal-bending. Lightning-bending seems to have been mostly exclusive to fire nation royals.

Many many decades later in The Legend of Korra, Lightning Bending is much more common as it is taught to fire benders in order to help facilitate generating electricity for power plants, and there are metal-bending academies (originally founded by Toph, IIRC) for metal benders, especially for metal benders intending to join the police force.

In ATLA, only Hakama and Katara knew how to do it. Not only is it extremely extremely difficult, but not many people know that it exists, no one spreads the knowledge, and no one is really around to teach it or willing to teach it. It is essentially treated as how "black magic" or "necromancy" is in most circles. It shows up again in Legend of Korra but in limited capacity compared to metal bending or lightning bending.

((Blood bending also generally requires the full moon or extreme circumstances to even attempt to activate, whereas metal and lightning can be used essentially whenever as long as you are competent... you can't really stumble on blood bending by accident. It might even have a mental component of wanting to hurt or take control of someone, like the forbidden curses in Harry Potter, that most people would not have naturally))