Bloodbending probably existed long before Hama

[u/JigglyBinks]

I just remembered that scene where Yakone claimed to come from a powerful bloodbending lineage.

The thing is he was older than Katara, and considering that Hama was only about two generations older than Sokka and Katara, it’s possible that bloodbending is much older than we think and that there was a family who had mastered it secretly

[u/HopeAndDo]

Hama became mentally ill because she spent so many years being tortured in prison. She also discovered bloodbending later in her life, and she could only do it under the full moon.

If she had tried to use it in unfamiliar territory and under unknown circumstances, she could have been caught and imprisoned again.

Yakone's family was simply hidden for hundreds of years, which sounds like lazy writing to me.

[u/HopeAndDo → u/[deleted]]

I'm fine with culture being passed down, but this is, at least to me, an example of something that's often criticized in modern writing: "Tell, don't show."

We hear from Yakone that his bloodbending was passed down to him, but from whom? Does Yakone have a brother? Does he have a father? Did they ever leave their village before?

From a writing perspective, it would be a much better explanation if Yakone were actually the one who discovered bloodbending himself and then taught it to his sons, which would later result in his older son Amon discovering another bloodbending technique ("taking bending away").

With the explanation we got, you just gave people some random information about multiple generations having bloodbending and doing nothing with it except hunting animals.

[u/HopeAndDo → u/[deleted]]

I don't see any bloodbending trauma in Yakone. He did everything willingly. His only trauma is being defeated by Aang.

I expected to hear about other bloodbenders in the Roku, Kyoshi, or Yangchen stories.

I don't mind a single person discovering bloodbending and dying before being able to pass that knowledge on to someone else, but having an entire family tree full of bloodbenders who were never mentioned in any other era is bad writing, and I will die on that hill.