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TM25 on 20 October 2013
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insomniac17 said:
TM25 said:

@ insomniac the lion turtle told Aang that in the era before bending the elements humans bent the energy within themselves, which we never saw here, so I personally consider the energy bending cheap in both seasons.

Though I do agree with the principle of energy bending existing. I just had a thought though we were told on several occasions that humans learnt bending from other sources namely the moon, dragons, sky bison and badger moles. We can either consider this a retcon or a genuine expansion of this universes intrinsic lore.

He said "we" bent the energy within ourselves. We probably menaing the Lion Turtles. And they stopped doing that after the avatar came into being, because they weren't needed to protect humans from spirits anymore. Regardless, while you could say that it pushed the problem back (aka, Lion Turtles OP, nerf plz), at least the Lion Turtles have done this kind of thing before and so it's not out of the blue that one could give Aang energy bending.

Oh I don't have a problem with the lion turtles having the gift or ability to bestow, my criticism is how it was handled.  I would have preferred some forshadowing (I'm not aware of any other than the Library episode mentioning Lion turtles if there is could you let me know), I feel like Iroh for example could have mentioned something or an avatar conversation.  Energy bending suited Aang's nature no doubt I just wish it had been established a little sooner is all.  

For Korra it would have done her good I believe to have spent a few episodes with just the airbending, for some reason I loved Wan's comment about how the elements felt different.

I think that it fits in with what we know. Wan learned firebending from the dragon still. Before, he was just sort of flinging fire around willy-nilly. He didn't learn the proper bending technique until the dragon taught him. We saw this contrast after he learns from the dragon and meets the hunters, whom he has no troubles getting rid of. I think that this could hold true with the other elements as well. The Lion Turtles gave people the ability to bend, but they still had to learn how to control the power. It's a bit of a workaround, but... eh.

No I agree bestowed by the turtle and refined by the embodiments of the elements is more than fair, we certainly don't know which came first.  Dragons could easily have taught firebending to the turtle and vice versa, it's fun to speculate regardless.