I suppose the most straightforward and general answer to this is: understanding is a process, and alchemy is from a much earlier stage of that process than chemistry and electricity.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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more importantly, why is wood not in the four western elements? Wood fucking rules
Because ancient people are dumb.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Lightning is part of Firebending.
In Chinese culture its actually: 金木水火土
There is apparantly 5 elements. And Metal (金) and Earth (土) are separate elements. In this universe Toph Beifong is not an Earthbender, but can only do Metalbending. Lolol.
There should be a 电 （Electricity）
Funny how Air isn't even in the Chinese version of the elements, so:
金木水火土电 and 气
Metal Wood Water Fire Earth Electricity Air
7 Elements to conquer the world?
Might as well just pull up the periodic table lmao.
The Greeks knew of electricity, knew of static shocks and lightning, but since the only thimgs they could apprise of it was that it zapped you and made noises, they must have assumed that it was something secret.
Zeus's lightning bolts must have been hammered together of billions of those tiny zaps you get from sheepskin and amber. The blacksmith that can weld lightning must be a deity, all in all it is too great a subject for mere mortals.
And then Ben Franklin came along and slew Zeus and stole his lightning.
I now I use Zues' power to read your words from great distances. Take that, puny god.
Electricity is pretty much just very directed fire if you think about it in a sorta abstract way.
Thats why ATLA was objectively correct that fire benders could also handle lightning.
maybe fire in classical alchemy is more like energy than just fire. I wonder what other elements are if you extend that logic to them
The problem is heat energy/fire would kinda get all the cool shit. Like lava was given to the earth benders in LoK and I always felt that didn't make as much sense as fire benders having access to it.
Air, water and earth all just have the one thing that really makes much sense. Water can do ice and stuff since that's just a phase change for the element they control but what do earth and air get?
If water benders can bend blood then at advanced levels Air benders should be able to create vacuums. Suck the air out of your lungs, make the water in your blood boil from the pressure change.
At the same level Earth benders should be able to bonemeld. Reshape your bones while you're using them.
Zaheer did exactly that to the earth queen, killing her, and nearly killed Korra the same way. So yes, airbenders can do that.
You're getting into the problems with the magic system of the ATLA universe when taken to its extremes.
If you really let them all go hog wild people wouldn't be fighting in a combat sense but more in a instantly kill you kinda way. I can see why they stopped at lightning for a kids show. The blood bending was already a bit extreme and I am still a bit surprised Nickelodeon let that happen.
matter for earth, not sure about air. this kind of falls apart now :x
matter for earth, not sure about air.
Maybe the ability to separate the nitrogen/oxygen/carbon dioxide and direct them? That would be cool and could make up for it. Just straight suffocate someone with the air around them?
They actually show that at some point.
Air controlling any gaseous substance and water any liquid would have been cool. By the way can waterbenders bend steam? Or change phase from ive to water to steam?
In the desert episode Aange did water bend a cloud into a bottle or something, right? I always thought that was water bending. There's also this mist that they make in this White Lady episode, I thought that was also Katara?
Yeah like another comment said there is evidence of air benders collecting moisture from a cloud so I don't really know. Then again maybe he was water bending? He did know how to water bend by that episode.
Mostly because the only real exposure to electricity the people who came up with the "classical" elements had was lightning. I'm sure they experienced static electricity from time to time, but they probably didn't associate it with lightning.
From their perspective, lightning is a very brief moment of extreme light, then maybe a fire if they can actually see the impact site. So it seems a lot more closely related to fire than we would suppose.
maybe there is a scientific explanation of why it isn’t
Nothing about the "classical elements" is rooted in what we would understand as science today. It was just people making guesses about how the world around them worked without the rigor of the scientific process. It was little more than wild speculation.
Exactly. I think the elements fire, air, water etc are from the presocratics and they did not have any concept of electricity yet.
Well, static electricity has been well known and well documented since ancient times... that is about the same time as people started talking about fundamental elements.
I guess they just didn't consider it important enough.
(And yeah, they didn't know lightning is the same thing.)
Maybe they just didnt know what electricity was. Maybe it was lumped in with air and/or fire.
I think it was lumped into fire. Since lightening does cause fire in nature. Moreover, I think fire stood for heat as well since fire is pretty much the only way to naturally heat something
Friction can just get fucked.
Duh. Rubbing things together releases their own internal fire
Give me alchemy, give me wizardry
Give me sorcery, thermatology
Electricity, magic if you please
Master all of these, bring him to his knees
I master five magics
-- Megadeth, Five Magics
I mean, what is "Aether" in a historical/classical context? Would that fit?
Edit: I guess not. Aether seems to be more like...'dark matter' or 'gravity' than electricity.
Electricity was invented some 7000 years later.
Shortly before we taught little rocks to think.
Because electricity isn’t an element, it’s fairies. That’s why when there’s a short you see smoke: it’s really the fairies escaping the wires.
It’s a combination of fire and air, possibly just fire
In antiquity people probably considered it a form of fire since anything struck by lightening tends to burn or at least get extremely hot? Or possibly they saw it as some combination of wind and fire maybe?
not sure what stories and fantasies you like reading, but most elemental magic systems i know of usually contain electricity as one of the elements. mostly a manga reader here.