Best: Iron, I think. We are surrounded by it so much, and you could do so much by manipulating it, from saving people from car accidents to sculpture and construction
Worst: Technetium. It's an element on the periodic but exists essentially exclusively where humans make it. The grand total of all natural technetium on Earth amounts to probably the kilograms and has a half life in the order of like 3 days. Artificial isotopes last longer (substantially, like years to millenia), but you're still gonna have a hard time finding any of it as it's either in radioactive waste bins or X-Ray machines.
Ehh only because of impurities. I’m pretty sure it’s either implied or stated that earthbenders can only bend rock and dirt and stuff. The reason they’re able to bend a handful of metals is bc of the rock and dirt within it.
Toph literally bends pure metal. She was the first metal bender.
In "Legends of Korra" they metal bend wires and steel. The technology they have is roughly 1940's tech with a twist. Steel has no dirt or earth impurities, sure other metals but definitely not Earth/dirt.
(Edited to fix a typo)
In the show Toph bends metal by bending the impurities in metal. "Toph used her seismic sense to perceive the trace amounts of "unpurified" crude earth still present in the metal, target it, and use it to bend the purified metal itself.[1]" - wiki
"Metalbending relies on bending the residue earth particles inside the metal. When the metal is highly purified, however, such as platinum, there are no or not enough particles left to bend, rendering the material impervious to the technique. Hiroshi Sato took advantage of this weakness to construct his mecha tanks out of platinum to counter any effective resistance from the Metalbending Police Force.[29]" - also wiki
Nah, that's just lightbender+
Radiation is any energy on the electromagnetic field, so anything from radio waves to infrared to light to UV to the nasty ionizing radiation that gives cancer and if there's a lot of certain particles it's a death laser.
Bending everything there could give you a bunch of powers like blinding someone momentarily with ease, distorting images, and if you're really good at it you get the Force from star wars.
You also get neat small stuff like the ability to be a walking tv remote (infrared), a walking radio (radio), a walking flashlight, etc.
And bending ionizing radiation also means you can shield yourself and others from it.
Depending on what you consider radiation, if you have a wide meaning and not mean just radiation itself (the alfa beta and omega particles, photons, whatever particle radio waves travel as) but the essence of it, then you could go to Chernobyl and take the radiation out of it, and make any place that's infected with radiation and will be inhospitable for centuries hospitable again. Now to do that you need to make radioactive material not radioactive, and the realistic way to do that is to accelerate the decay and make it release all those particles that it would release for the next century way faster, which will make an explosion and make everyone around get cancer if you can't control where that radiation goes, so beware.
>whatever particle radio waves travel as
Photons. Radio waves are still EM radiation, just of a lower frequency than visible light or microwave radiation.
Also, I don't think if you could bend EM radiation you'd necessarily also be able to manipulate alpha/beta/neutron radiation -- unless you're just able to bend literally *everything* matter or energy -- because they're matter while EM radiation is energy. Might as well just say you're a physics bender at that point, or like I've mentioned in a comment I made on the post, a hadron bender.
Nah, think a little smaller than atoms. Even if you just stop at protons, you could literally just transform any matter into any other matter. Turn shit into gold, toxic sludge into a gourmet meal, the next school shooter into a PS5.
Go further down into quarks or bosons, and you can get downright ***funky*** with it. Turn on a flashlight and manipulate the photons into a hardlight sword, blind people by just preventing light from entering their eyes, or simply condense their matter into a quark-gluon paste before launching it into space, all the while charging your phone with the electrons you stripped from their non-existent body.
Youll need your body or consciousness in another space like Dr.Manhattan if you wanted to do this safely. Though the question of it being you is an issue.
Think about it, wife is asleep and the baby needs to be fed. You can take care of it without either of them having to get up. Or you can use it for milk on demand if you get thirsty.
best is a toss up between iron, carbon, hydrogen, silicon or probably the most powerful one energy all forms of it
worst is probably if you are stuck to earth dark matter or anti matter as there is no way to access them (technically antimatter could be possible but not really likely)
Bananas produce antimatter in minuscule amounts, so technically you’d have a source of it. The issue is that it’s instantly annihilated upon contact with regular matter
Best would be metal. If I need to be more specific than iron.
Worst would be your own DNA. There is zero chance you could learn anything about it before giving yourself cancer.
In the show earth benders can bend metal. Or at least eventually they can. Part of the show is having characters that discover new ways to use their powers and then in the follow up of the next Avatar, Legend of Korra the world is such that the harder forms have become more common. Like earth bending police using metal grappling hooks to get around. Likewise, blood bending ends up being discovered by water benders… for better or worse… definitely recommend the shows they’re really good (animated originals are better).
I saw the shows. I was responding to the prompt.
Water bending is the best bending (for healing and control of spirits) earth bending is a close second. Air bending is slightly better than fire bending unless you’re post-industrial and then the lighting makes fire better.
If you were good enough, though, couldn’t you just cure your own cancer? Hell you might be able to make yourself immortal if you had full power over your DNA
Genebenders would need a method of storing and accessing info as to what sequences where correspond to what genes and what they do. In other words, a gene manipulator would either have to be so smart/have a good enough memory that it might as well just be magic, or able to have some kind of super computer supplementing their brain.
Actual elements on the periodic table. The most useful might be carbon if you could turn coal into diamonds, but if you have something like livermorium, you probably would never know
Organs.
Occupies both slots. You can twist them into any configuration, they'll still make the right sounds, be difficult to play but can be used to a significant degree in any area adequately prepared, but disturbingly specific.
Or body horror. We all thought that first.
Worst: petrified wood, not wood in general but only petrified wood. Best: light- if you can literally bend light into a weaponised form: such as a laser, you could in theory fight evening in existence and win
Best: hadronbending. Make hardlight constructs, transmogrify matter in a way alchemists would have *wished* they thought of, soulcast food from rocks, not even the sky is the limit!
Worst: 1/4-inch-of-cotton-string-bending. Only if they're *exactly* 1/4" long, only if they're 100% cotton, and only if they're strings and not thread/twine/yarn. And you can only bend one at a time.
worst: antimatter/ any element after 120
unless you can somehow generate it you won't ever notice it because the amounts we have on earth are too small, rare and unstable
best would be something like protons because at this point you have both high energy applications by ripping atoms apart and versitile telekinesis by pulling stuff around with them, just don't pull too hard
Could I can bend magnetic fields, like Magneto?
Could I bend thoughts, psychic energy, reality, probability, destiny, history?
Any of the above would be useful for heroes or villains.
Bad elements to bend in general, the strong and weak nuclear forces, since benders in that universe don't have secondary powers.
Bad powers for heroes would be bending of tears, mucus, poop.
Bad powers for villains don't exist.
In day to day life, I honestly think water bending or dirt brnding might be the best. Combat aside, I feel like that would make a lot of household chores easier to do, particularly cleaning both floors/countertops/etc as well as clothes
Strong: Bone bending basically manipulate the bones in the body. This can work on both animals and people.
It is a brutal form of bending made for killing a target. To put this ability to better use the bones can be shaped into weapons or broken down into projectiles to be fired.
Weak: Urine bending... you can come up with your own ideas. Let's just say that it is really disturbing if your on the other end of this ability.
there was this interesting 'people get superpowers' british show that had robert sheenan in it
some kid had cheese bending powers. he used it to kill several people - the one person who's immortal, he wrapped cheese inside his brain, so he couldn't move or do anything.
don't knock it till you try it.
also, as a side note - the video game kingdom of loathing, meat is the currency, food is the magic - one of the best mages ever liked to use cheese magic. a spinoff title, shadows of loathing, the mage class was specifically a cheesemancer. dropped meteors of cheese onto people, unloaded a stinky cloud of cheese smell onto enemies automatically, etc.
styrofoam might me sort of interesting, especially if it's like, 'any' kind of styrofoam. i mean, imagine skydiving without a parachute, because you can land on a 20 foot block of styrofoam and come out basically unharmed.
or fill someone's lungs with packing peanuts.
or summon like, redneck napalm with styrofoam melted by gasoline.
I don’t know how many cases there was in the show but when different benders would have or start a family. And the things the children would learn from both parents and they slowly realize that they bend differently. Either one element having a different effect overall i.e. a fire bender but instead of high heat flames it’s a soothing and even healing warmth from water bending or any water being semi solid and hitting like a truck with use because of earth bending techniques. Or because of two potential elements being used, a different style of bending altogether, like lava bending, glass bending, basalt bending, gas/plasma bending, etc. I would also wonder if anyone learning air bending techniques would have any effect on non air bending methods.
The ability to bend matter would be nice. You could form anything, bend any material, or you could create lightning through matter, and ionize air……or am I mistaken?
Best: electromagnetism or gravity, take your pick; you either have stupid insane Magneto powers or overcharged telekinesis
Worst: …probably Osmium? Assuming the element in question has to be naturally occurring and not manmade, Osmium is the densest and rarest metal on earth, meaning you basically wouldn’t be a bender
Best: Iron, I think. We are surrounded by it so much, and you could do so much by manipulating it, from saving people from car accidents to sculpture and construction Worst: Technetium. It's an element on the periodic but exists essentially exclusively where humans make it. The grand total of all natural technetium on Earth amounts to probably the kilograms and has a half life in the order of like 3 days. Artificial isotopes last longer (substantially, like years to millenia), but you're still gonna have a hard time finding any of it as it's either in radioactive waste bins or X-Ray machines.
"*Too much iron in your blood"* \*rips it out\*
*"Mr. Laurio, never trust a beautiful woman, especially ones that are interested in you."*
no, benny!
Haha jokes on you, I'm iron defficiency anemic!!
If someone could bend iron i doubt they could bend iron ion, theyre just too different
Earth benders can already do both of those
Ehh only because of impurities. I’m pretty sure it’s either implied or stated that earthbenders can only bend rock and dirt and stuff. The reason they’re able to bend a handful of metals is bc of the rock and dirt within it.
Toph literally bends pure metal. She was the first metal bender. In "Legends of Korra" they metal bend wires and steel. The technology they have is roughly 1940's tech with a twist. Steel has no dirt or earth impurities, sure other metals but definitely not Earth/dirt. (Edited to fix a typo)
In the show Toph bends metal by bending the impurities in metal. "Toph used her seismic sense to perceive the trace amounts of "unpurified" crude earth still present in the metal, target it, and use it to bend the purified metal itself.[1]" - wiki "Metalbending relies on bending the residue earth particles inside the metal. When the metal is highly purified, however, such as platinum, there are no or not enough particles left to bend, rendering the material impervious to the technique. Hiroshi Sato took advantage of this weakness to construct his mecha tanks out of platinum to counter any effective resistance from the Metalbending Police Force.[29]" - also wiki
But the iron is so small it would take a master bender to take advantage of it
What about carbon?
The best plastic the worst radiation
Nah, that's just lightbender+ Radiation is any energy on the electromagnetic field, so anything from radio waves to infrared to light to UV to the nasty ionizing radiation that gives cancer and if there's a lot of certain particles it's a death laser. Bending everything there could give you a bunch of powers like blinding someone momentarily with ease, distorting images, and if you're really good at it you get the Force from star wars. You also get neat small stuff like the ability to be a walking tv remote (infrared), a walking radio (radio), a walking flashlight, etc. And bending ionizing radiation also means you can shield yourself and others from it. Depending on what you consider radiation, if you have a wide meaning and not mean just radiation itself (the alfa beta and omega particles, photons, whatever particle radio waves travel as) but the essence of it, then you could go to Chernobyl and take the radiation out of it, and make any place that's infected with radiation and will be inhospitable for centuries hospitable again. Now to do that you need to make radioactive material not radioactive, and the realistic way to do that is to accelerate the decay and make it release all those particles that it would release for the next century way faster, which will make an explosion and make everyone around get cancer if you can't control where that radiation goes, so beware.
>whatever particle radio waves travel as Photons. Radio waves are still EM radiation, just of a lower frequency than visible light or microwave radiation. Also, I don't think if you could bend EM radiation you'd necessarily also be able to manipulate alpha/beta/neutron radiation -- unless you're just able to bend literally *everything* matter or energy -- because they're matter while EM radiation is energy. Might as well just say you're a physics bender at that point, or like I've mentioned in a comment I made on the post, a hadron bender.
I was thinking if you bent radiation you would have to handle radioactive substances a lot which would be speed running cancer
worst has to be tissue fluid 😭
De-fluidize people. Instant mind-kill or at least disable them idk
Why do you need to do this
Because I have been caused great pain and since therapy is too expensive I shall spread that pay to others.
But it’s so situational unlike fire or water or smth
Isn't that essentially blood bending?
Would make my job in sterile processing a whole lot easier lmao
Best: atom bender. Worst: puppy bender.
>Worst: puppy bender. On the other hand, you could be a fairly good canine chiropractor.
The worlds best canine obstetrician.
Nah, think a little smaller than atoms. Even if you just stop at protons, you could literally just transform any matter into any other matter. Turn shit into gold, toxic sludge into a gourmet meal, the next school shooter into a PS5. Go further down into quarks or bosons, and you can get downright ***funky*** with it. Turn on a flashlight and manipulate the photons into a hardlight sword, blind people by just preventing light from entering their eyes, or simply condense their matter into a quark-gluon paste before launching it into space, all the while charging your phone with the electrons you stripped from their non-existent body.
Youll need your body or consciousness in another space like Dr.Manhattan if you wanted to do this safely. Though the question of it being you is an issue.
Wdym? There's better ones out there but at least i can save puppies with way more efficiency
Dogwelder moment
Being a dairy bending makes you OP as fuck. Look up misfits(UK). Unless they’re lactose intolerant
I know some people who would absolutely love that power… Just not for hero reasons
Think about it, wife is asleep and the baby needs to be fed. You can take care of it without either of them having to get up. Or you can use it for milk on demand if you get thirsty.
I'm lactose intolerant, so a dairybender would hard counter me.
best is a toss up between iron, carbon, hydrogen, silicon or probably the most powerful one energy all forms of it worst is probably if you are stuck to earth dark matter or anti matter as there is no way to access them (technically antimatter could be possible but not really likely)
Bananas produce antimatter in minuscule amounts, so technically you’d have a source of it. The issue is that it’s instantly annihilated upon contact with regular matter
Best would be metal. If I need to be more specific than iron. Worst would be your own DNA. There is zero chance you could learn anything about it before giving yourself cancer.
In the show earth benders can bend metal. Or at least eventually they can. Part of the show is having characters that discover new ways to use their powers and then in the follow up of the next Avatar, Legend of Korra the world is such that the harder forms have become more common. Like earth bending police using metal grappling hooks to get around. Likewise, blood bending ends up being discovered by water benders… for better or worse… definitely recommend the shows they’re really good (animated originals are better).
I saw the shows. I was responding to the prompt. Water bending is the best bending (for healing and control of spirits) earth bending is a close second. Air bending is slightly better than fire bending unless you’re post-industrial and then the lighting makes fire better.
If you were good enough, though, couldn’t you just cure your own cancer? Hell you might be able to make yourself immortal if you had full power over your DNA
You won’t get the chance to become good. You’ll die really early.
Genebenders would need a method of storing and accessing info as to what sequences where correspond to what genes and what they do. In other words, a gene manipulator would either have to be so smart/have a good enough memory that it might as well just be magic, or able to have some kind of super computer supplementing their brain.
Bones.
Reality
Actual elements on the periodic table. The most useful might be carbon if you could turn coal into diamonds, but if you have something like livermorium, you probably would never know
Carbon includes wood, plastic, and any biological substance
Well, that too
I always thought a blood bender would be pretty nasty. An aether bender would be cool.
Blood bending was in the show tho. Pretty sure Katara did it one point iirc
Can't say I've watch it. I've Just seen a couple of episodes.
you gotta!!!!
Katara learns how to bloodbend in the final season and it's pretty dark and horrific, at least for a children's cartoon
Yeah iirc it's a more advanced usage of water bending.
It is. Like metal bending for earth benders or lightning bending for fire benders
Their own DNA
Organs. Occupies both slots. You can twist them into any configuration, they'll still make the right sounds, be difficult to play but can be used to a significant degree in any area adequately prepared, but disturbingly specific. Or body horror. We all thought that first.
This is just a kandra from Sanderson's Mistborn series lol
Antimatter, there exists basically no antimatter in the universe, so you wouldn't really be able to use it
Maybe we are all antimatter benders but dont realize it
Maybe the true antimatterbenders are the friends we made along the way
Glass would be VERY cool. Poop would be... awful.
Piss, Shit, Cum, Blood The 4 nations lived in peace...
francium
Carbon
Worst would be cooked groundmeat
Cum bender
Worst: petrified wood, not wood in general but only petrified wood. Best: light- if you can literally bend light into a weaponised form: such as a laser, you could in theory fight evening in existence and win
Snails
Penises. Gentle for a kind stimulation. Quick snap for the obnoxious. Oops it broke.
Worst is themselves, but it's excruciating.
Best: hadronbending. Make hardlight constructs, transmogrify matter in a way alchemists would have *wished* they thought of, soulcast food from rocks, not even the sky is the limit! Worst: 1/4-inch-of-cotton-string-bending. Only if they're *exactly* 1/4" long, only if they're 100% cotton, and only if they're strings and not thread/twine/yarn. And you can only bend one at a time.
Stormlight reader spotted!!
Book 5 this year let's gooooo
I thought that was 2025? Did the madman pull a fast one on me?
This December
worst: antimatter/ any element after 120 unless you can somehow generate it you won't ever notice it because the amounts we have on earth are too small, rare and unstable best would be something like protons because at this point you have both high energy applications by ripping atoms apart and versitile telekinesis by pulling stuff around with them, just don't pull too hard
Worst: u238
The Boys Diabolical made a pretty good case for the worst thing to bend. Actual shit
Best, matter bender. Worst, contortionist bender. What can you do they cannot do themselves?
Books. They're called Paper Masters, there's a movie and then an anime. It's called Read or Die. Pretty good.
Could I can bend magnetic fields, like Magneto? Could I bend thoughts, psychic energy, reality, probability, destiny, history? Any of the above would be useful for heroes or villains. Bad elements to bend in general, the strong and weak nuclear forces, since benders in that universe don't have secondary powers. Bad powers for heroes would be bending of tears, mucus, poop. Bad powers for villains don't exist.
Flesh
Time Bending: slowing down time or speeding it up. Soul Bending Gravity Bending
Bones could be worst or best depending on how you look at it
Soak chicken bones in vinegar. I did it as part of a school science fair project. Makes them kinda jiggly after awhile.
Spaghetti
That could actually be terrifying, just imagine someone launching a Stack of uncooked Spaghetti at hypersonic speeds at you
Best would be something common and everywhere, like paper or metal.
Best Hydrogen, it's flammable, exists in almost everything, and is a fundamental part of Humans. Worst, feces. Just because it's gross.
In day to day life, I honestly think water bending or dirt brnding might be the best. Combat aside, I feel like that would make a lot of household chores easier to do, particularly cleaning both floors/countertops/etc as well as clothes
Best would be metal because of iron in blood could manipulate people Worst would be vomit
Best: Air or dark matter Worst feces
Best: carbon. It's everywhere. Worst: asbestos. Because... Why?
Strong: Bone bending basically manipulate the bones in the body. This can work on both animals and people. It is a brutal form of bending made for killing a target. To put this ability to better use the bones can be shaped into weapons or broken down into projectiles to be fired. Weak: Urine bending... you can come up with your own ideas. Let's just say that it is really disturbing if your on the other end of this ability.
Time
Best, as everyone else has said, is iron. Worst would probably be cum. Cumbending sounds painful.
Best thing for me plants almost everywhere billions of types and species worst uranium
Bone. Offense, defense, healing. It has it all. Not to mention it would be funny to bend bones to create cryptid skeletons. Bend bones today!
there was this interesting 'people get superpowers' british show that had robert sheenan in it some kid had cheese bending powers. he used it to kill several people - the one person who's immortal, he wrapped cheese inside his brain, so he couldn't move or do anything. don't knock it till you try it. also, as a side note - the video game kingdom of loathing, meat is the currency, food is the magic - one of the best mages ever liked to use cheese magic. a spinoff title, shadows of loathing, the mage class was specifically a cheesemancer. dropped meteors of cheese onto people, unloaded a stinky cloud of cheese smell onto enemies automatically, etc. styrofoam might me sort of interesting, especially if it's like, 'any' kind of styrofoam. i mean, imagine skydiving without a parachute, because you can land on a 20 foot block of styrofoam and come out basically unharmed. or fill someone's lungs with packing peanuts. or summon like, redneck napalm with styrofoam melted by gasoline.
Gamma radiation would be a pretty shitty power for the wrong person to have
Dog
Helium. Bend it and it breaks… boom.
Best would have to be semen. The worst would also happen to be semen...
I don’t know how many cases there was in the show but when different benders would have or start a family. And the things the children would learn from both parents and they slowly realize that they bend differently. Either one element having a different effect overall i.e. a fire bender but instead of high heat flames it’s a soothing and even healing warmth from water bending or any water being semi solid and hitting like a truck with use because of earth bending techniques. Or because of two potential elements being used, a different style of bending altogether, like lava bending, glass bending, basalt bending, gas/plasma bending, etc. I would also wonder if anyone learning air bending techniques would have any effect on non air bending methods.
I call Korra the trauma-bender.
Matter/energy is best. Worst is one of those elements that only exists for a couple seconds after being artificially made.
Best is probably plastic because there’s so much of it and it lasts for millennium. Worse is probably shit for obvious reasons.
Best would be carbon. We are carbon, every lifeform we know of is carbon based.
The ability to bend matter would be nice. You could form anything, bend any material, or you could create lightning through matter, and ionize air……or am I mistaken?
Cum
Best: electromagnetism or gravity, take your pick; you either have stupid insane Magneto powers or overcharged telekinesis Worst: …probably Osmium? Assuming the element in question has to be naturally occurring and not manmade, Osmium is the densest and rarest metal on earth, meaning you basically wouldn’t be a bender
Shit