

On avatar the last air bender, how does the earth-bender work ?

For example if they use their bender to control earth/ground, like making a
wall using their bender, does it make an empty room below the wall ?

Does it make the ground unstable or possibility of erosion ? In my mind, the
earth/ground is like a puzzle that, or am I wrong ?

Here some demonstration:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/26e7Xm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/26e7Xm.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FSwkCm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FSwkCm.png)

Or when they trying to close the pit from the result of their earth bender
ability, does it make more complicated ?

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LmRTAm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LmRTAm.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N42l1m.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N42l1m.png)

Relevant video on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23x00x4WcHw),
watch at 1:20 - 2:05


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avatar
How does the earth-bender's ability works?


With the exception of some aspects in _fire bending_. All bending abilities in
avatar work under the premise of manipulating the {%insert element here} that
already exists.

An example of this is in the water benders drawing moisture from the air, or
better yet, the way _blood bending_ was explained. It is said to be possible
because a persons blood contains water (the bender cannot simply create water
from nothing).

This is also why water benders like to carry around waterskins. In earth
bending it is less obvious since there is earth everywhere, but there are a
number of episodes where they are stranded somewhere away from their element
and become somewhat handicapped.

Whether the ground becomes unstable after earth bending would be entirely up
to the bender themselves, although I would say there is such a thing as "best
bending practices" where they would learn to use the existing earth in a way
that doesn't deteriorate the structure.

It does not have to create a mirrored empty space like the image of a puzzle
you are imagining, but if the bender wanted to they certainly could! Instead
they would perhaps use a smaller depth of the earth spread out across a larger
space along the caves wall/floors to create their new earth wall.

This would result in the existing space in the cave expanding, its just
unnoticeable because of how spread out it was. The point is that there are
soooooo many earth bending styles shown that although we can confirm that they
**must** use existing earth, we can not confirm _how_ any potential bender
would use it because everyone bends a little differently! The large wall would
indeed require to be made out of existing earth, however as a nation-wide
project I would say that it is fairly self explanatory that they would have
collected earth from a place that would not make the entire ground unstable.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UAlcF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UAlcF.png)

Edit for linkable reference:

The [Prison Rig](http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Prison_rig) is a perfect example
of this. The fire nation constructed this prison to hold earth benders and the
reason it works is because **it is made entirely out of metal and is miles
away from any rock or earth so the earth benders have nothing to control**.
Thus, it is canon that earth benders must use the existing earth to
control/manipulate. The way they escape this prison [Book 1, Episode
6](http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Imprisoned) also confirms this point. The
entire reason the last fight I am showing in the picture below was dramatic is
because the earth benders had just the small amount of stolen coal to use in
their fight.

[![Epic
Fight](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jl5QG.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jl5QG.jpg)

_side note: avatar is no anime :P_


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answer


While it is correct that earth and water benders can only really manipulate
material that is already there, I assume, because of the fact that rock is so
dense, that an earthbender could extract rock from the ground, making the
ground a little less dense as they do so (Leaving little tiny holes in the
ground) and use the rock for whatever they want.


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