Talk:Bending arts/@comment-72.191.35.111-20120304071618/@comment-4888161-20120401051709

Yes and no. Genetics DO play a part. They would HAVE TO because you need to have heritage from the right nation. A person born from a family that is decended from the Fire Nation would not be able to bend any other element. The two exceptions are if the person's faimily is multiracial (has decendents from multiple nations), and of course if they were the Avatar (which is a spiritual reincarnation of all four elements). As I said before, all of it adds up as factors.

So because your heritage has to be from the right nation in order to bend that corresponding element, lineage must matter at least on some level. It doesn't guarentee the person will be a bender, just that they have the possibility to become a bender of that element. And in multiracial families, it is possible for them to become one of multiple types of benders.

Of course other factors go into it, but that's part of what I said before. Lineage and gene's are only a part of it. And we still don't know enough to predict it, as Bryke said that in the interviews you quoted that they wanted it to remain a mystery. So if it is a mystery, than you have no way to legitimately say I'm wrong. The only reason I can even prove lineage matters is because (with the exception of the Avatar) it has been prven that benders must be from the corresponding nation. But since we know that, it must matter on some level.