ATLA Lightning Bending and Speed Revision

So I was away from this community while the ATLA verse got downgraded to Supersonic+ again. However, the thread ressponsible for this was still inconclusive on the verse's speed and much of the information used to rebute them being lightning-timers ignores a lot of what we had discussed in the thread upgrading them. So I think it's important to open up this conversation again for the sake of getting a more conclusive result. I also think there should be a note on their profile or proper page to explain why the ATLA characters are their current speed rating, similar to other often-debated ratings, in order to avoid repeating things like this.

Personally, even after reading the new thread, I would still put most of the major characters of the series as lightning-timers (though a calc would obviously be needed to figure out the specific speed). Let me break this down in a way that considers arguments I've heard on the new and old thread -

Thesis: Lightning-bending uses real electricity so those dodging it should scale to that speed as their reaction speed.

Evidence:

1. All other Elements in ATLA are real

Firstly, keep in mind that element-bending in the ATLA-verse consistently uses the real element. Real fire, real water, real earth, real air, real ice, real sand etc.

Yes, some forms of bending are described as the bender using their usual element to pseudo-bend something else (using the water in a plant's body for plant-bending, using tiny bits of unpirified earth in metal to metal-bend etc.) but they all still involve the real thing (real plants, real metal etc.) just manipulated through secondary means.

So if anyting, we should assume that lightning-bending uses the real element like all the other bending styles until proven otherwise, rather than the opposite.

2. Iroh's explanation for it is similar to that of real electricity

The process of lightning-bending is described by Iroh as this: "The energy is both yin and yang; positive energy and negative energy. Only a select few firebenders can separate these energies. This creates an imbalance. The energy wants to restore balance and in a moment the positive and negative energy come crashing back together. You provide release and guidance, creating lightning.".

This is a very similar explanation to the scientific explanation for electricity . Just apply the concept of positive/negative energies coming together to the attraction between positive protons and negative electrons and how the bender provides release and guidance to the way current electricity works. It's not a perfect description but much of that can be attributed to how people in ATLA are more spiritually aware than scientifically aware .

3. Lightning Redirection works on natural lightning

Iroh can use lightning redirection to redirect real lightning. While calcs have shown he could've done this at a much slower speed than the lightning, the very fact he can redirect real lightning using the same technique he uses to redirect lightning-bending shows us they have the same properties. Iroh explains lightning redirection works because it's specially taylored to the lightning's properties(implied to be Azula's lightning in his explanation) but he uses it to redirect both natural and bender lightning, meaning they must work the same way.

4. Lightning Redirection can stop your heart

It's both told and show in the show that if a bender's lightning is conducted through the heart while it's being redirected, it could damage the heart. Because of this characters are told specifically to avoid the heart while redirecting lightning . Bender lightning conducting through people's bodies and stopping their hearts are things real electricity is also well-known to do.

5. Lightning benders can conduct electricity into machinery and redirect the electricty from it

It's shown in Korra that lightning benders can power machinery by sending lightning into it . They can also conduct and redirect electricity from machines, such as when Mako used it against a Mecha Tank (Couldn't find footage of that fight on youtube, but it's mentioned on the ATLA wiki). Both of these are further evidence that bender lighting and real electricity have the same properties as lightning benders manipulate them interchangeably.

All examples of lightning-bending being reacted to:

These were the ones I found. I tried avoiding examples that could be interpreted as aim-dodging. There's also some examples in the comics which are considered 100% canon, but I've yet to read the last few volumes before updating the list.

- Zuko redirecting Ozai's lightning (Season 2 Episode 11). He moved his arms after it had been fired.

-Zuko redirecting Azula's lightning (Season 3 Episode 20). He realised it was aimed at Katara instead of him, ran and moved his arms to catch it only after the it had been fired.

- Katara blocking Azula's lightning with water (Season 3 Episode 20). The water moved after the lightning had been fired.

- Aang redirecting Ozai's lightning (Season 3 Episode 20). He landed on a pillar and moved his arms after it had been fired.

- Amon dodging Zolt's lightning (Season 1 Episode 3 of Korra). He only dodges out of the way after it was fired.

- Amon dodging Mako's lightning (Season 1 Episode 12 of Korra). He only noticed Mako was attacking him and dodged after it had been fired.


Rebutal #1: Lightning-bending takes too long too charge, so dodging it is more like aim-dodging and it shouldn't count as reaction speed

This rebutal doesn't take into consideration that this is very much a case-by-case thing. There are plenty of times in the ATLA/Korra series when bending (including lightning-bending) takes a while to be produced , while other times it's almost instantaneous . What matters is that the calc we use for reaction against lightning doesn't imply aim-dodging, which the first example wouldn't anyway since Zuko runs and moves his arm once the lightning has already started to travel.

Rebutal # 2: The characters were supposed to struggle against the Yuyan archers, so how can they dodge lightning when they can't dodge arrows?

I see this way too often and there's a number of things wrong with it. Firstly, Aang was sucessful in dodging all their arrows, only getting caught when he was caught off-guard or couldn't see them. Secondly, there are plenty of verses out there with archers (even normal human ones) who shoot arrows far faster than their real-life counterparts so the speed of the arrows could be questioned just as much as the speed of bending. Thirdly, the Yuyan archers are said to be known for their stealth and precision and it's implied this is why they were hired to capture Aang (nothing to do with speed). The official ATLA website claimed "The Yuyan Archers were used for very stealthy missions where precision and accuracy were vital for success", and Zhao says "Their precision is legendary. The Yuyan can pin a fly to a tree from a hundred yards away without killing it", when deciding he should hire them to catch Aang.

But most importantly, you have the fact that you're using a singular event from a single episode of the first season (when the characters were weaker) to prove that a phenomenon that happens multiple times throughout the series in sepperate seasons and even sepperate shows with different characters is an outlier. If anything the arrows (provided they travel at the same speed as normal arrows and that they managed to hit Aang, which they never did anyway) are the outliers here.

Rebutal #3: How can the characters dodge lightning when they struggle to dodge *insert throwing weapon here*?

The speed of said weapon would drastically depend on the power and speed of the thrower. A kunai thrown by a Naruto character is obviously far faster than one thrown by a real-world human and the same applies to other verses, like ATLA, where "normal" humans showcase superhuman feats commonly (such as Ty Lee jumping ridiculously high).

Rebutal #4: How can the characters dodge lightning when Korra struggles to dodge an explosion?

She never really struggled. She was likely caught off-guard by seeing an explosive barrel in the room she just entered, instead of Aiwei, who she was chasing down at the time. We see her looking suprised at the explosion before blocking it , hence accounting for her late reaction to it.

Refutal #5: How can the characters dodge lightning when they struggle against slower elements?

There's no substantial evidence that lightning-bending is far faster than any all other kinds of bending. In fact, when describing it, Iroh mentions how it has great power and precision compared to normal fire-bending but never speed.

It's certaintly animated to look faster and I don't doubt it's one of the faster bending styles out there but it's never shown to be a significant difference. Ignoring it would be no different than ignoring a speed feat because that verse has shown seemingly slower attacks too.

I agree with this.

I will highlight this thread for further input.

I find myself generally agreeing witht his. The more I think about the Yuyan Archers argument, the more I realize it's kind of shakey and could be used to downgrade virtually any series that use non-futuristic weaponry.

Agree with this 100%

I think it makes enough sense, to be honest. Really, the fact that redirection works on natural lightning should have been enough to justify this whole thing in the first place, even if they don't 'catch' the lightning on-reaction.

I'm all for the upgrade. It's running on better logic that its detractors would have it seem.

I also think that this seems to make sense.

I agree with this also.

Agreed 100%.

I also agree with this

Too many variables [EXPLOSION]

I agree with this as well

rejection of some results








Sorry for these being mostly incomprehensible but english isn't my native language and my notes wouldn't be in english.
This is Chauvenet's criterion (a method of rejecting results in experiments) and i'll use it to give an example of an outlier.

What does this have to do with this thread?

Let's find out:

Let's take an imaginary sample of speed feat results.

10 Subsonic(+) feats of mach 0.5 and 1 MHS+ of mach 1000.

The arithmetic mean (AM) = 1005/11 = 91.36

Then i'll find the Standard deviation (SD)SD = 301.36

╬╝ = |AM - the suspicious value|/SD

╬╝ = |91.36-1000|/301.36

╬╝ = 3.015

now from the table we find the value of P(<╬╝¤â) which is the probabilty of a meassurment to be closer to the AM than the suspicious value.For ╬╝ = 3 that probability is 99.73% at this point the professor that mayde these notes didn't even include detailed information for ╬╝>3 because it's so likely for this to be an outlier.

Then we find P(>=╬╝¤â) = 1 - ╬í(<╬╝¤â) = 0.0027

After that we multiply that result with the number of meassurments to find the value u, if u<0.5 then the suspicious value is rejected as an outlier.The u of this specific sample is 0.0297 which is definiterly an outlier.

The result is pretty much the same if i assume that we have 6 mach 1000 feats and 1 subsonic feat for each episode.

What does this mean generally?

Should we not accept sudden high increases because they are mathematically outliers?

Well yes and no.

A big part of the evaluation procces should include the actual context, something that is so easily forgotten by almost everyone.

For verses like Bleach where superspeed and things like blitzing are essential parts of its story outliers are easier to accept.

But ATLA's characters are literally portrayed as being peak humans.There are hundreds of instancies where they move at normal human speed.

Not to mention that i don't agree wth their lightning being accepted as MHS+.You can easily calc its speed on different occasions and i bet the result would never be MHS+.There was a calc on narutoforums that puts Azula's lightning at mach 12 and we will simply disregard calcs (again) to choose a method that is basically personal opinions.

Wasn't Irohs Lightning calced at not even being Mach 1?

If this thread was a smooth car ride, Gwyn's post just grabbed the steering wheel and drove the car off the road ;-;

I have a few points to bring up here:

1. Cinematic Time is a thing. What seem like 'typical human' speeds to viewers are rarely ever that slow in the context of the action itself, especially in the case of more fantasy-based works.

2. A lot of characters exist with low movement speed and far higher combat/reaction speed. Which leads me to...

3. Many characters who are supposedly 'peak humans' have blatantly superhuman feats. Big-time examples of this: Golden Age Guts, Batma (multiple versions of him, even), Hawkeye, Lady and even Jotaro Kujo. (who was literally portrayed as being a teenager who could have died from being shot in the head in the very first chapter of his storyarc, and yet he walked off getting the crap beaten out of him by the strongest Stand of Part 3)

I'm not saying that ATLA being MHS+ doesn't seem ridiculous overall, but this sort of thing is hardly unprecedented in any sense of the word. I'd even go as far as to say that 'lightning-timers in ATLA' is more reasonable than most of the examples I just gave in Point #3.

EDIT: Also, this would hardly seem like an outlier when you consider both the point about natural lightning and the fact that (according to the story itself IIRC) lightning redirection existed long before any of the characters were actually shown using it.

MrKingOfNegativity sums up my thoughts on it pretty well.

I agree with the original post 100%. The Avatar characters being supposedly Peak Human is meaningless when they have several blatant Superhuman feats.

I honestly agree with King here. Who would this scale to?

My question got ignored...

I'm highly certain Irohs feat plays a huge part in this and it was called at, IIRC, not even Mach 1. Is a re-calc necessary?

My apologies Gwynbleiddd, but it seems like more people agree with the initial post.

I also agree with the OP.

Unfortunately, i've to agree with Gwynbleiddd.

Math doesn't lie.

I'll going to agree with Gwyn too: If the only MHS+ feats exist due that attack having that speed, and there several moments when characters having troubles with lower speeds (like projectiles), then the most likely is that those attacks aren't fast as real lightning.

Except his math is a false equivalency.

His argument is "They aren't MHS+ because there's more feats in which they aren't." However, this isn't what an Outlier in fiction is.

Literally any character ever is going to have more less impressive feats than impressive feats, that's what makes the good feats impressive in the first place.

BUT, that doesn't make the impressive feats outliers. Because every time there is a fight involving Lightning bending, the characters are shown capable to react to it. Thus, it is not an Outlier, but a consistent display of speed in fights involving Lightning.

If there was only one instance of Lightning dodging and in every other fight the Lightning was depicted as being much faster, THEN it would be an Outlier.

As it stands, it isn't. It's consistent.

I also agree with Gwyn.

Antoniofer said:

I'll going to agree with Gwyn too: If the only MHS+ feats exist due that attack having that speed, and there several moments when characters having troubles with lower speeds (like projectiles), then the most likely is that those attacks aren't fast as real lightning.

Click to expand...

Occam's Razor. The OP proved that Lightning bending involves realistic lightning with real properties of electricity. Thus, no reason to assume that it isn't moving at the speed of lightning.

If we tried "calculating" lightning with any fiction, we'll probably never get MHS+ results.

Same with light and it not being lightspeed.

I am leaning towards Matthew's and The Everlasting's interpretation, given that this is our standard practice for determining statistics. We generally go by the higher feats.

To provide another example of what I mean:

Spider-Man no doubt has far more feats that range from Supersonic to Hypersonic than Massively Hypersonic+, and that makes perfect sense. Spidey is depicted as dodging bullets literally every other issue.

Does that mean that MHS+ Spiderman is an Outlier? On a purely robotic and math based analysis, yes.

However, that analysis ignores context and the understanding that we aren't dealing with precise equations.

MHS+ Spidey isn't an outlier because one of his primary villains, Electro, has a poweset entirely based around electricity, and in almost literally every time they fought over 50 years of comics, he has dodged his lightning.

Same thing with Avatar, Everytime there's a lightning bender they are never treated as hundreds of times faster than everyone else. Not an outlier, just fiction not being 100% consistent because it never is.

Especially considering Spidey's decades long history you can't it to be 100% consistent

Was more or less part of my point as well.

As far as 'lesser feats nullifying greater ones' goes, refer to the bit I said earlier about Jotaro walking away from a bloodlusted beatdown from The World. If we only go by Jotaro's weaker showings, or the implication that he's 'merely human', then that makes both the strongest Stand in Part 3 and its vampiric user weaker than razors, bullets and knives. (Since it's actually been implied numerous times that Jotaro can be killed by all of those)

Same with Guts in Berserk's Golden Age Arc. He was injured by normal humans wielding swords numerous times in that arc and even came close to dying in a fight with 100 or so normal, everyday men. Still doesn't change the fact that he took a beating from Wyald's Apostle form and walked afterwards.

To be fair I did bring up some points once that a lightning benders Lightning doesn't have all the real properties of lightning. Specifically regarding Mako and Ping-Li from Korra.

Also why are comparing other verses again? I thought we weren't supposed to do that.

Not really 'comparing' verses here. Just bringing up examples where using the weaker feats instead of the better ones would be illogical.

Which I also believe to be the case here.

kukui, fictional lightning doesn't need to have all the properties of real lightning to be accepted. Just a few properties is enough. Nevan's lightning from Devil May Cry is accepted simply because it is stated to be electricity and comes from miniature clouds.

From the OP, Avatar lightning has way more properties and evidence of being real lightning. There's no reason to assume it isn't.

Also, several of the reasons (4 out of 5) why this lightning is real lightning doesn't describe lightning at all: electricity itself can stop the heart, that isn't nothing special from lightning, similar way with redirecting electricity.

Also, MHS+ seems to be consistent cuz that speed was assumed so.

Antonio, lightning IS electricity. They share properties. By seeing that a lightning attack has the properties of real life electricity, we can accept it as real Lightning. And the speed which is assumed is the speed of Lightning.

Just because the word "electricity" is used doesn't mean it's man made electricity; it can still refer to real lightning. Anyway, Avatar's lightning does show more properties of real lightning than DMC does, so it is real lightning. Bolting from Fire Emblem was also treated as real lightning despite it being magic, because it was both stated to come from a cloud and shared similar properties of lightning. So I still strongly agree with the OP here and Matthew.

But electricity is not necessary lightning. You need to prove that this is lightning (cloud-to-ground) showing properties of these lightnings, no showing properties of electricity, that is redundant, we already known that this is electricity.

And since giving that speed to that attack (what makes it lost their priority) appears to contradict the other feats, we can assume that speed so.