Talk:Airbending/@comment-76.24.189.176-20120121100340/@comment-76.24.189.176-20120212083816

I didn't ignore them >.> I think maybe I'm putting it wrong. I'd tried to be more concise but I think the original point was lost and I still rambled some. Either way, all you have proven is that it isn't guaranteed. In actuality you have said nothing that outright proves it can't be done with unknown methods. See below:

1. The exhale was an example of how a firebender could directly put CO2 into a flame since you doubted it so much. We don't know if a firebender has other ways or not. I suspect it is likely, and you deem it unlikely. As carbon based lifeforms, I find it hard to believe that a human who could also firebend couldn't find some way to add plenty of carbon to their own fire if they were resourceful enough. But regardless, the exhale is an example even you can't deny that adds some level of carbon to the flame without even using the bender's surroundings. The flame could burn up a bit of the excess oxygen and then there would be carbon monoxide in the fire itself. Obviously a normal scale flame would be much too large, but a tiny flame in the palm of a firebenders hand could be scaled right to make it a carbon monoxide flame. This tiny flame would not be very practical, but if it could be done small scale there is likely a way to somehow do it large scale. At the very least the small scale version proves it's possible. So again, if the breath exhaled got into the fire, that changes its make up right there. And if an already started fire had carbon in it, a firebender could probably bend it without losing the carbon. So why wouldn't they be able to keep the carbon within their own fire? It would be part of the properties of the fire they are bending whether they created the fire or not. Remember that this is a much smaller than normal flame and brought to scale to be proportionately appropriate to a realistic exhale. It would obviously take an unknown method to do this completely and properly even in small scale. But if firebenders couldn't change the make up of their flames at all, then explain to me Azula's blue fire and all the different colored flames from the dragons. The oxygen levels and other things like hydrogen and carbon must vary from flame to flame, and firebenders must have at least some control in that. All of this is especially true if firebenders can bend fire on a "sub-atomic" level in any way.

2. Once the poison gas (carbon monoxide, etc.) is inside the flame, it can come from it as smoke and other gases would other flames varying on their composition. The firebender doesn't have to bend the gas itself. He is only bending the flame which contains the gas (that is now poisonous). The effect is reached if the gas is burned off from the specialized flame. It would likely be more effective in closed areas, or effect people near the flame attack. Either way it doesn't matter as the firebender does not even have to bend the poison gas (which we can debate if it's possible or not all day but have no confirmation either way). So long as it can come from his/her flames, some effect would be realized in the release of poison gas from fire.

3. Smoke is at the very least possible for a firebender to create. It has nothing to do with water vapor. It has everything to do with the fire. The fire that didn't catch only left smaller amounts of smoke, so that may be why you don't remember it. But the fact that even a trace amount of smoke came from the fire means that, at the very least, firebenders can create smoke on a small scale even if it's indirectly and a result of their flames. Again if small scale is possible, so should a larger scale at least in some way. Different kinds of flames might produce better results. For instance, a fire with a lot of carbon in it might do well as you yourself said smoke has a lot of carbon in it. If they can even create enough smoke, they don't even have to bend it to say use it like a poison gas in closed spaces, or use it as a smokecreen. Just a couple examples of smoke's potential effect with just its creation and not even bending.

4. Even if firebenders can't create smoke directly, or even indirectly from a directly made flame (which they definitely can), they can get smoke fairly easily. Even if the argument is whether they can make enough smoke or not, they can get plenty from there surroundings. Going back to your example of water vapor, we see the versatility of heat. Now you might remember how firebenders can use heat to create water vapor (or steam) from water. They need water to already be there, and they can't bend the water or the steam. But they can bend heat to boil the water into a gas vapor. A firebender could also use heat to create smoke. So much in a habitable environment burns with enough heat. This isn't even counting things that catch on fire. Anything that burns creates smoke, so you can see how easy it would be in most situations for firebenders to at least use the surrounding resources to get plenty of smoke in the air. They can then combine that pre-existing smoke with their own made fire (by simply putting their fire in the same place as the smoke), thus changing the composition of such fire into a poison flame with plenty of carbon in it. They can then manipulate that flame into a poisonous one and then pretty much use it like normal fire. This would be a form of poison firebending.