>>113033
>Normally, being stuck in a metal suit while facing guys who throw fire would simply lead to hot metal and painful burning of the person inside as the metal absorbs and retains the heat.

I remember we had a discussion about this here sometime after the finale aired. That part always bugged me, too. But your speculation here

>But this is metal from a Fire Nation ship. It stands to reason that such metal would be strongly heat-resistant, lest a stray blast of fire cause the wrong piece of metalwork to overheat and cause damage.

is now my head-canon. Thank you. I think we also discussed that maybe Toph could control the temperature of the metal to some degree (unlikely) or that the fire blasts didn't have time to heat the metal much because they were just quick, short bursts (a little more likely), but your theory is better.

Bending multitasking comes naturally to Toph seeing she really is constantly bending every second of the day in a really subtle way. She's basically flexing her bending muscle 24/7

>>113033
I've never gotten why people would think that Fire Nation metal is super fire-resistant - it's not as though real life metals become superheated after brief moments of exposure to fire, either, so expecting FN metal to as well has always struck me as odd.

Though, FN metal does seem stupidly easy to break. That, in my opinion, is a far more appropriate thing to be wondering about in regards to their metallurgy skills.

>>113048
>Though, FN metal does seem stupidly easy to break.
They're probably using iron instead of steel.

>>113050
Doesn't explain why Zuko can cut through chains with no difficulty in the 'Blue Spirit', why June's pet can rip off a massive chunk of the deck of Zuko's ship in 'Bato of the Water Tribe' or why such massive dents are left in the ships when that one guy starts throwing hammers around in 'Siege of the North'.

I get that iron's weaker than steel, but damn, FN metal is like paper half the time.

>>theory

Such an abused little word.

>>113143
And what word, pray tell, would you have used instead? Or are you just being a douche for the sake of being a douche?

>>113150
there are plenty of synonyms, so sorry it made a boo-boo in your feelings

>>113044
That, I think, is also part of why she's such a prodigy and was able to go toe-to-toe with Bumi, who was a full century her senior in both age and experience - she had honed her skills through literal constant use, unlike others.

>>113165
Are you one of those "said is dead" people?

>>113143
>>113165

Don't be a pedantic asshole about things, man. This isn't a science course.

>>113180
training a lot over a short time is just as good if not better than training occasionally over a long time.

>>113050
I don't know--the way Toph described her metal bending when she first worked it out as actually bending bits of rock inside the metal made me think it must be steel she was bending, or at least some sort of alloyed metal, rather than pure iron. And we saw in Korra that even accomplished metalbenders can't bend pure metal, like that Platinum thing.

>>113738
Your word choice confuses me here, but if you're suggesting that cramming a lot of practice into a short time period would ever be better than doing the same amount of practice frequently but over a longer time period, you're wrong on that one. As far as internalizing and retaining knowledge and/or skills go, repetition/frequency is far more effective than intensity. That's why you speak your native language better than you do foreign languages you study later in school even though almost no one has studied their native language as intensely as they've studied foreign ones.

It's a moot point in the case of Bumi/Toph though--Bumi may not practice every second he's awake the way Toph does, but given that he's been doing heavy-duty bending for like ten times as long as she has been bending, the fact that he gets less practice on a day to day basis is irrelevant. They've both had plenty of time to internalize a lot of Earthbending skill.

I suspect that if it were down to 112 year old Toph versus 112 year old Bumi (or whatever their exact ages were), there'd be no contest though. Toph would win that one for sure.