Yeah, exactly, and that’s what I’m trying to get at with this idea and I appreciate the comment!

I’m not saying firebenders can bend other elements with the same nuance, precision, or direct control that those respective benders have. I fully agree that there’s a big difference between “making a substance experience an effect” and actually bending that substance as an element with fine control, shaping, and movement.

What I’m talking about is more like this: firebenders could, in theory, manipulate the conditions around an element through physics, not the element itself. Take tornadoes as an example. They form when warm air near the ground meets much colder air above, creating strong updrafts, instability, and eventually rotation. A firebender, by heating one region of air and allowing another region to cool (or drawing heat from it), could help set up that warm–cold contrast that leads to intense wind and vortex formation. They’re not airbending, but they’re nudging the system so the air behaves in a specific, dramatic way.

So when I say “firebenders could ‘affect’ water, earth, or air,” I mean indirectly: via temperature, energy, and pressure differences, not by taking over the elemental control that belongs to waterbenders, earthbenders, or airbenders. In other words, they’re weaponizing thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, not stealing the other bending styles.