u/First_Carrot6588

I'm currently rewatching the last Airbender since it was one of my favorite shows when I was younger. I remember, when I was little I didn't understand why fire benders could use lightning, i remember at some point the plot gives us an explanation based on the inner energy every bending use, but since I'm in the second book, I'm not there yet.

Anyways, in my early years of college, before getting into my psychology major, I took one year of physics and chemistry classes, of course my knowledge on both subjects is pretty vague and superficial but, on this rewatch the same question about fire/lightning bending pop up, and now I realized how good the worldbuilding and magic system is.

Going further to the "inner energy" explanation, its pretty reasonable that fire and lightning bending are linked, since all other bending gets to control some kind of concrete material (water, air, with the suspended particles in this, or rock) the fire nation bending is based on the control of a chemical reaction, in particular a radiation and exothermic one, what it's directly related with lightning being kind of similar to that.

I don't know if its already discussed in this subreddit, I just wanted to get those thoughts out of my head so I apologize in advance both for that and for my writing, clearly English isn't my native language.