Talk:Airbending/@comment-76.24.189.176-20120121100340/@comment-76.24.189.176-20120212034136

^ Light as a source is an interesting theory for firebending. It wasn't where I was coming from though. We do not know for sure that or what I said is true. We haven't seen enough. But we certainly have no proof it isn't possible for any of what I said. Until we know more, smokebending, poison gas, and poison flames are a possibility for firebenders. I'll prove it below:

Did you get the part about breathe control being important to firebending, probably as a result of oxidizing it to increase the flame intensity? How else would breathing be important for firebending? If they relied solely on the unchanging amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, there would be no reason breathing would help firebenders. It does not mean they are airbenders, as airbenders can use breath for their purposes as well as firebenders can for theirs. It just means that firebenders need to control oxygen through the breath or they would probably not be able to control fire to the extent that they do.

But we don’t breathe just oxygen. WE ALSO EXHALE CARBON DIOXIDE. The 2 things that make it up are carbon and oxygen, and same with carbon monoxide except you need less oxygen per carbon, thus you get CO instead of CO2. Therefore, we already breathe out the two materials needed for carbon monoxide. That’s huge. And if firebenders do truly use breathing to help oxidize their firebending, they should in theory be able to "carbonize" fire with a different sort of breathing as well. You use some of the oxygen for the flame, and the oxygen that's left combines with the carbon to make carbon monoxide and is put in the flame. If carbon monoxide burns off from the flame, you have a poison gas coming from fire, and possibly even a poison flame.

There was however a second way. This way was solely about smoke. To create an understanding in my last comment, I compared it to heat. Fire is very hot, but firebenders are proven to be able to control heat without the fire. Therefore we can assume it's likely possible that a firebender could specialize in pure heat (without the fire) and create/use specialized heat techniques. Firebenders tend not to bother much with heat as it seems to be more practical to simply bend the flames in most situations. The same can likely be said about smoke. It is probably more practical in most circumstances even to use raw fire as a smokescreen then actual smoke. But firebending has left some smoke behind in certain situations without anything catching fire. This proves that it is possible for a firebender to create smoke on some level. I theorized that a firebender who specialized in smoke could likely learn to control it better, create more of it, and even use it separate from the flame the same way firebenders can with heat. And if it is true that firebenders can oxidize their firebending with breathe control, then a specialized firebender should be able to use the carbon your body naturally exhales to do the same for poisonous gas (or carbon monoxide) AND smoke. You said yourself smoke was mostly carbon. That proves that if my theories of effecting fire with breath are correct, the small amounts of smoke firebenders have been seen creating (albeit often from the flame) is likely possible to be able to be improved into a better technique. Thus smokebending would be born. The smoke by itself would be a poisonous gas, and might be able to affect the flame in the inverse way that carbon monoxide could possibly come from their fire.

The final thing was about two elements sharing a sub ability. I meant airbenders and firebenders might both be able to use poisonous gas the same way waterbenders and earthbenders do with mud. Mud proves two different elements can share a single sub ability, although air would have much less use for it because of to vacuums, and airbenders would be much less likely to discover it in the first place. Firebenders might not be likely to discover or need it either, but a unique firebender would be far more likely to discover how to do it than any airbender. Roku died from poison gas because there was no known method of bending poisonous gas for airbending or firebending. The same would have happened to any Avatar with metalbending before Toph discovered it. They can bend earth but still would not be able to bend metal because they would have to learn how to do it first. They can't learn if no one is known to have figured out how. And if it turns out benders can’t make poison gas/flame, then we can always wait until they invent cigarettes! XD