Avatar Speed Downgrade

[LordXcano]

I was under the impression that the explosion timing was an outlier. We have 2 Mach feats in the series, one being the explosion timing and one being Mach 13 lightning. Problem is that those are the only feats of that speed in the series.

As an example of a few anti-feats:

• Korra is absolutely motionless to the Spirit Beam, even in slow motion, this same beam takes several seconds to cross this distance

• Lightning bending taking about 2 seconds to cross about 4 ship lengths

• Another example of the Spirit Beam's slowness, it takes 3.25 seconds for it to cross this distance, even assuming that hill is a true mountain the beam would only be Mach 1.65. Although given that a real mountain height would make these buildings over 38 meters tall it's likely less than half that

• Lightning bending taking a few seconds to cross maybe 40 meters

• Aang being nearly absolutely still to an explosion once it goes off

Addressing a few points against this:

Korra missile timing: Both in and out of water these missiles are clearly subsonic, even in 1977, many years after the roughly 30s-ish time Korra is set in, torpedos were still only 102 m/s, and that was with a bunch of time to accelerate.

Combustion Man's supersonic beams: Most of the evidence for these being supersonic is that they have both rings and cracks associated with them, the problem with that is that they are not there because of speed. As seen here, here, and here the beams make both the rings and cracks before they are even fired, meaning that both of those are just properties of the bending itself, not its speed. In addition, Aang is barely able to get out of the way of the clearly subsonic beam despite having a massive head-start.

In addition to all of this I know for a fact there's an episode with multiple examples of arrow-timing being an effortful feat for Aang, and another episode where he even gets pinned to a wall because he wasn't fast enough to dodge. I'll try to find these ASAP.

 

[AidenBrooks999]

Well, just because "looks slower" it means that it is

Maybe is slow for their perspective

 

[LordXcano]

Well, just because "looks slower" it means that it is
Maybe is slow for their perspective

Circular logic. You can't use the 1 feat of lightning timing being fast to prove that every other instance of lightning timing is actually fast, especially when there's several other instances of subsonic speed.

EDIT: As an example of what I mean, here are two more instances of clearly subsonic lightning bending. Meaning that, out of just the things I've listed, there are 4 examples of subsonic lightning bending speed (one of which even has Aang fail to properly react to it on multiple ocassions) and just one example of supersonic lightning speeds.