scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2ec77d.md

[BST] Legend of Korra just had Earthbenders bend Mercury, ruining my wonderful HSF-ied version of that universe. Help.

Post:

In my upcoming science!avatar fic, in which the Avatar-verse actually integrates bending with the level of technology shown in-universe, I had made it so Waterbenders bent H2O, Earthbenders bent SiO2 (sand is SiO2, metal has SiO2 impurities, and those green crystals are probably quartz), Airbenders bent N2, and Firebenders bend electrons. Yes, I had planned to munchkin that to the fullest extent, don't worry.

I want the universe to have laws (at least laws which are known to me, if not the reader). LoK just showed Earthbenders bending mercury. Is there any sensible rule by which platinum isn't bendable, but mercury and SiO2 (or some other compound present in both earth, sand, and green crystals) both are bendable?

This is pretty much the worst thing since "how the hell do you get something that looks approximately like fire without involving hydrocarbons or reducing agents" that I've faced in writing this. Please help me come up with a law, or I just might have to pretend this episode never happened!

Edit: Or I suppose you could also think of some earth-bendable substance that this poison might have been other than mercury.

Comments:

• u/alexanderwales:

  It's one of those things that I'm not sure you're going to be able to make work. It's clearly mercury, not just in form, but in the symptoms (though the volume was a little extreme). The platinum thing is also troubling, since you should be able to form unmetalbendable bonds out of any metal that's had the impurities refined out of it. So it's going to be difficult to be truly coherent if you want to involve actual physics instead of just having more vague rules in place (like the show does).
  
  On the other hand, this episode was some really great story-telling, and I think returned this show to the heights it hit during the original series. So I don't think it would be good to uncanonize it for your fic.
  

  • u/ishaan123:

    The current point-of-divergence is shortly after Aang defeats the Fire Lord and the events of The Search, of which the episode is downstream anyhow - though I'll certainly be using the characters and borrowing some plotlines.
    
    The inconsistencies with the mercury really do bother me. They went through *so much trouble* to clarify how metalbending wasn't really bending metal but manipulation of bits of earth stuck in the metal, despite how it would be really easy to just handwave and say that metal actually is Earth...in fact, up until today I was fairly certain that the writers had actually intended Earth to be SiO2 all along. But then, after *all that*, they just go ahead and let characters bend something which is all metallic down to the atomic level straight through Korra's bodily tissues in a manner that is completely impossible to explain via impurities, in total violation of everything set up prior. (And how do they even figure out that it's a metal poison in the first place?)
    
    That aside, I totally agree about this episode being amazing, both in story-telling and in execution.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      I'm not sure how canon it is, but I always thought that "sensing the impurities in the metal" was sort of metalbending with training wheels, and the true form involved actually bending the metal itself instead of the impurities. This is somewhat backed up by the show and the comics.
      
      Of course, in the show, their physics work differently, and I think the world is best understood as actually being composed of spirits and the four elements rather than trying to go reductionist - but that is probably not the story you're trying to tell.
      

      • u/ishaan123:

        Well, I think you're probably right because of the mercury bit, unless that was just oversight. However, I had the feeling that back when they were writing TLA they intended to stay with the impurities thing being necessary, especially because of platinum being unbendable.
        
        It doesn't need to be reductionist, but it *does* need to operate based on logical rules. (The distinction being, a logical but non-reductionist universe might have complex laws. "Conscious beings can bend elements to their will in X, Y, Z ways" is a law implicitly containing a lot of complexity, but it's still essentially logical").
        
        Bending and spirits aside, their physics seems *mostly* the same. They've got stuff like mercury and nitroglycerin and it seems to work the same way as it does in our world. I think the best way to model it is our world, but with an overlapping spirit realm from which stem *additional* laws.
        

    • u/anonymousfetus:

      Jinora says the poison is metal, so she probably spied on them before. Maybe avatar world mercury isn't our mercury? I mean, their world obviously has a lot more platinum. Also, don't be afraid to diverge from cannon rules.
      

      • u/TimTravel:

        A cannon is a weapon. Canon is that which is officially true.
        

        • u/Riddle-Tom_Riddle:

          [Tangentially relevant.](http://www.xkcd.com/1401)
          

          • u/xkcd_transcriber:

            [Image](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/new.png)
            
            **Title:** New
            
            **Title-text:** The nice thing about headcannnons is that it's really easy to get other people to believe in them.
            
            [Comic Explanation](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1401#Explanation)
            
            **Stats:** This comic has been referenced 50 times, representing 0.1612% of referenced xkcds.
            
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• u/EliezerYudkowsky:

  Declare that in your universe, the substance known as "mercury" contains silicon dioxide.  Or just that there was a bit of silicon dioxide mixed in to permit its movement (I don't know exactly what happened in the show).
  
  Or take the approach I did with Pottermore and declare that you follow canon up until the point published when you started your fic, but no more unless you feel like it.
  

  • u/philip1201:

    What happened was the following:
    
    > benders of indeterminate type bend ~3 liters of unusually reflective liquid (don't remember if it's completely opaque) towards Korra, placing it on her arms and legs
    
    > the liquid fully disappears, leaving the skin visually intact but causing Korra to gasp in pain
    
    > Jinora witnesses this in astral projection form
    
    > Korra experiences hallucinations, is forced into the Avatar State (natural defense mechanism of Avatars; power and skills increase, but Avatar becomes more animalistic and focussed on survival. Can apparently purge poison with focus)
    
    > Fight breaks out, Korra escapes. Korra experiences physical weakness, finally collapses because the fight means she can't focus.
    
    > Jinora calls a metalbender to remove the poison, saying the poison is metallic.
    
    > metalbender moves hands, the visually same liquid as before comes out of korra's mouth)
    
    > two weeks later, Korra is still confined to a wheelchair. Doesn't seem to move extremities, but it could be explained by the inherent simplicity of animation.
    
    Notably, waterbenders who have well-established healing powers (put water, preferably "pure", over an injury (indeterminate red sore spots, because kid's show). Focus. The water starts to glow and make a noise. Injury disappears), and "bloodbending" (capable of moving human bodies like puppets and causing them to float, without causing injury), but despite a waterbender being present neither were used.
    

• u/Empiricist_or_not:

  Why not go the simple route: it's states, dependent on a combination of the bonding energy or density of a substance at the molecular level, that determine what can be bent by a given style of bending.  
  
  What "can't be bent" is based on mental blocks society has taught, or some strange quirk.  
  
  Don't hand-wave it but find/make some good or suedo-physics that can be used in your head to explain why these substances are easiest to generate a macro scale quantum effect that is "bending" first sudo-science that comes to mind is that the a fractal pattern the brain/effect can map to and influence, (it helps as it means the brain isn't affecting molecules individually it's affecting a pattern it somehow corresponds with) and a bender's versatility is based on the level of variation they can apply the pattern. 
  
  
  **tldr**  Make it work for you, Ang is the way the physics says benders should be, because physical forces work on ally elements just to lesser and greater effects, benders can only do one style, because they have trained into it and you have to train to get brains to impose a quantum effect.
  

  • u/ketura:

    Yeah, solid, liquid, gassy, and plasma bending seems to line up pretty well.
    

    • u/ArisKatsaris:

      Waterbenders in the series can control ice, so I don't think it lines up.
      
      Even if you mean "states of the elements as they are in normal temperatures", that doesn't line up either, because mercury would then fall under water bending, not earthbending....
      

      • u/alexanderwales:

        Same with lavabending - you get into state change trouble.
        

        • u/Empiricist_or_not:

          I'm not a huge follower of avatar but that's why I went with state and densities. Also the unlerlying universality of bending would explain that these are extensions of the same pattern. I'd wadger it doesn't happen in the series but that you could have a water bender, a firebender, and a earthbender bend lava using diffrent mechanism. The earth bender might have trouble because they aren't used to having to impose stability when they want something to not move, and the firebender would have trouble because they are using the escaping plasma to guide it, and the water bender being challenged by how incredibly dense it is but that they could all do it, but its insanely hard if its not their traditional mapping.
          

          • u/ishaan123:

            >I'd wadger it doesn't happen in the series but that you could have a water bender, a firebender, and a earthbender bend lava using diffrent mechanism.
            
            It actually does happen. Firebenders can manipulate the heat within the lava, cooling and heating it. When they cool it, the heat appears to go out through their other hand, as if conducted through them. 
            
            They haven't been shown controlling its movement, despite frequently being in situations where that would be useful. Earth benders can bend the lava itself.
            
            In the sequel, which (i think) has been slightly more liberal with the extent to which they add additional fantasy elements in the middle of the plot, two earthbenders so far can heat earth into lava. Visually, it looks as though they're doing this by twisting it around until the friction gets it really hot, though that's open to interpretation.
            
            Nothing so far with waterbenders and lava, but both waterbenders and earthbenders can work with mud.
            
            In general, Avatar is actually fairly "rational" to begin with as far as kids shows go. They do generally explore the limits of the alterations made to the universe, and most of the little exploits you'd immediately think of do eventually happen.
            

• u/ulyssessword:

  I'd say the easiest solution is give each of them a set of 3 powers.
  
  Water Benders affect H2O, Na+ and Cl-
  
  Airbenders affect N2, O2 and CO2
  
  Firebenders may be a problem.
  
  Earthbenders affect Al(OH)3, SiO2, and Hg.
  

  • u/ishaan123:

    Not a bad idea, (although I'm not sure why waterbenders should be allowed to bend salt ions. Also, post munchkin that could potentially make waterbenders even more powerful than they already are.)
    
    I mean, I guess there is no reason why there shouldn't just be a weird quirk where Earthbenders can bend mercury, in addition to SiO2, and whatever those two things have in common that Earthbenders can bend both of them could be left a mystery (and I guess that having the characters wonder about this would be a subtle little jab at the canon for doing it that way). It's not very elegant, but reality isn't always.
    

    • u/zajhein:

      Why not give each bender a small range of things they can possibly bend due to how they manipulate things. 
      
      Most would be good at the basic particles you listed at the beginning, but others can branch out in their range to specialize in mercury and similar particles if they practice with them enough. The basic particles are easiest to learn to bend, and some are harder than others so only masters do, which would explain why some people don't know about it.
      
      You could leave their range of particles somewhat mysterious in case the show adds more in the future. It's not exactly perfectly rational, but you always have to give a little when explaining magic.
      

• u/Drazelic:

  I'm going to go rain on the parade a little and question the basic premise of trying to combine bending with modern chemistry in general. It feels a bit like a fake answer, to explain bending with 'it's because they can manipulate SiO2!', because that just shunts the issue from 'how can they manipulate dirt?' to 'how can they manipulate Silicon Dioxide?'. No real analysis is really given, it's pretty much the exact same equivalent of dropping 'because god' as the final answer to a question.
  
  This is a world where spirits exist and a spirit world exists somehow parallel to our own, which was somehow split apart from the real world at some point in the setting's past. I don't think it'd be too strange to postulate an alternate underlying set of physics that doesn't utilize our concepts of electrons and atoms and whatnot. Can't there be some sort of physics that involves spiritually-essential fundamental particles, like fundamental Water particles, or fundamental Earth particles, in the setting? It's not like elements are fundamentally complicated like minds are, they can still have particular properties that match their equivalents in the real world without having the same reasons for reacting the way they do as they do in the real world.
  
  From that standpoint, it's not hard to see why the metal would also be controllable by waterbenders. The liquid metal and water share the property of being liquid at room temperature and pressure, and I don't think it'd be all that irrational to worldbuild your story such that these properties are associated with a fundamental spiritual essence of water.
  
  This is all just a suggestion, of course. If you're going to work with explaining magic, though, explaining it by saying 'well it's because chemistry' doesn't always make for the most interesting or even realistic process. Modern knowledge of chemistry is merely the RESULT of the application of the scientific method to /our/ universe. The application of the scientific method to a different universe's physics may well yield- and ought to yield, in my opinion- completely different underlying mechanics of How Things Work.
  

  • u/ishaan123:

    > It feels a bit like a fake answer, to explain bending with 'it's because they can manipulate SiO2!
    
    But what is an "explanation", after all, but a simpler description than the one which existed before? 
    
    >I don't think it'd be too strange to postulate an alternate underlying set of physics that doesn't utilize our concepts of electrons and atoms and whatnot.
    
    No, you're right, it wouldn't be strange. But I cannot write the rules of that physics from the ground up, whereas I *can* borrow the rules of our current physics.
    
    You could make a really fun "soft" fiction with completely different rules, but the only way to make a "hard" fiction with an entirely new physics is to really write the physics and think through all the implications beforehand. The scientific method is a bit weird in a "soft" fiction because you're making up the physics on-the-fly and it's really tempting to just have the results be whatever is convenient for the plot.
    
    In my opinion, one of the things that make "hard" sci fi and fantasy fun to read and write is that you aren't allowed the flexibility to introduce plot elements willy nilly, because you have to have a fairly well defined world *before* you create a plot.
    

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