I’m on whatever side my beautiful glorious Doctor Stephen Strange is on, by the way.

Having watched the new Avatar movie, I had a thought the other day of how Aang and Katara probably always had Tagah in the back of their minds when it came to raising Tenzin, and mostly regarding the harsh reality of how to reckon with the feeling of knowing that every other Airbender was slaughtered at the hands of other nations. To not become lost in that grief even if the anger is highly justified, and to forgive oneself for not being able to do it all and stop it all on your own.

But then, as well, the wonderful new aspects and possibilities of airbending, Aang teaching Tenzin how to fly in pairs by bending air around eachother, I bet it was so cathartic for Aang to finally be able to do that again. Being able to articulate that even without their people there physically, they’ll always be intrinsic to their element and their lives in the wind.

I have. Many thoughts about how the Cloudbabies grew up, specifically Tenzin in this instance.

I’m trying to read some Kya x Lin fics for multishipper funsies and I keep seeing this odd pattern in some of these fics that Tenzin or even Katara would be like. Super homophobic and totally against it? Anyways, I exit out of those fics so fast because mmmmmmmm yeah no thanks, hugely disagree with you on that one.

Matter of fact, Tenzin and Katara make the wlw cake for the two of them, I watched them bake it together, soooo

Back in the day, I would see this idea that Tenzin only ever wanted kids to keep the airbender lineage going and no other reason.

Which is kind of crazy to me because that man was SUCH a dad, like it was painfully obvious that he not only loves his kids to the sky and back, but he’s got such an instinctive drive to be a father. If all Tenzin cared about was having airbenders running around, he’d have acolytes lining up to do the job.

If anything, the conversation should be about how Tenzin more instinctively follows his mother’s methods of family structures. Air Nomads typically didn’t have family units, the kids were sent away to be raised communally by the monks and amongst eachother. Aang and Tenzin clearly adopted a more Water Tribe-based style of raising a family in a unit. This isn’t to say that there’s no communal raising, because obviously Tenzin and Pema are comfortable with the acolytes helping to care for their babies, which is the more Air Nomad-based family style. But I actually love that Tenzin unconsciously adopts his Water Tribe heritage in the way he goes about having a close family and those attachments.

Needless to say, simply watching the episode where Ikki runs off, and instead of Tenzin yelling at her, he gently asks to join his daughter in her tea party with the baby bisons and allows himself to show a side that he reserves pretty much only for his kids. Like I’m sorry, this is a man who has always wanted kids, regardless if they were airbenders or not, and it shows. I also like the idea that Tenzin was always way better interacting with kids than he was with adults growing up, and that out of his siblings, by farrrrrrr he was the one who wanted to be a father.

I love that the Gaang’s road to being grandparents is pretty much just Tenzin and Suyin multiplying like rabbits, and Izumi just having her one and done deal at like age 20, like I can imagine everytime Tenzin or Suyin get a call or visit from family it’s just “oh yeah that’s our newest kid, we got another on the way though, how are you?”

That being said, I actually like the concept of Tenzin and Suyin relating to eachother in terms of parenthood and navigating their complicated relationship with Lin, who they both did hurt and both having to reckon with that choice in the past to willingly or unwillingly hurt her.

In the same vein, Lin being able to relate to Bumi and Kya who also likely shared her disinterest in having kids of their own as well as their firm desires to follow their own chosen set paths and careers is nice too.

What I like about the Gaang’s kids, that group of Bumi, Izumi, Kya, Tenzin, Lin, and Su, is that there’s potential for alot of really compelling relationships between them that TLOK never went too much into, allowing people to kind of fill in the blanks. For example, Bumi and Izumi probably being close because they’re the oldest of them all, yet I can see Izumi and Tenzin actually relating to eachother alot in terms of having responsibility and an impossible amount of pressure put on you from birth simply because of who you were born to, and who you eventually have to lead. In that way, I actually think Tenzin is his most honest growing up with Izumi out of all of them simply because she’s the only one who would even somewhat understand his exact situation and vice versa.

Meanwhile, you have Bumi and Kya who can obviously relate to eachother in their fears of not being good enough and being terse about what they see as Tenzin’s rose-tinted lenses of Aang as a father, even if they all clearly loved eachother, those feelings can still exist and fairly so. Relating to Lin as an older sibling who feels a tension with their youngest sibling as well.

Kya probably understands Suyin’s more freedom-desiring lifestyle, while Bumi and Lin can connect with having to be responsible for the lives of those that work and serve under them.

It makes for really fun character studies and platonic and sometimes romantic relationships. I’ll post my in-depth headcanons on how I think the Gaang 2.0 interact with eachother one day, I promise. I do love all of them though, they’re all great.

Know what would be cool? I was thinking how like we see branching abilities other elements get, like seismic sensing Toph does, or the swamp-benders using waterbending but with the water in plants. I like the idea that for airbending, a possible ability they could have is like vocal mimicry. Since our voices depend on the way air flows, I love the idea that airbenders in particular can produce an incredible range of sounds and voices.

It’s also a reason why I like to think both Aang and Tenzin have lovely singing voices too, because they have such control over their breathing and the way air flows through their bodies. But I also love the idea that they both can also be frighteningly accurate when imitating other people’s voices or animal noises or mimicry in general. Airbenders using whistles or calls or tones to communicate over long distances would be super cool too.

Just on my random headcanons brainworm session.

And see, I am immune from all ship wars and conflict in the ATLA and TLOK fandoms because

1. I like nearly every single main/important side character in both shows, so these weird Aang vs Korra conflicts do not affect me, I do not pit two icons against eachother.

2. If there’s two ships in a ship war, too bad, I’m making all 3 of them date. The only asterisk is of course no siblings, duh, ew, I would never. But I am an elite multi-shipper and poly-shipper, so I always win. If anything, I actually vastly prefer polyamory between main character groups of 4 or more.

3. If I see character bashing and just plain blatant misinformation, I’m not gonna entertain it! Yay! Even if it’s a character I don’t care for, I’ll happily avoid author-biased character bashing in content

4. I follow sexy people only (people who love their favorites more than they hate their least favorites in fandom spaces)

“Kataang this” “Zutara that” “Zukka that” “Sukka only” “Maiko sucks wah wah” “ew Tokka”-

Anyways, this is Katara and her boyfriend is Aang and Aang’s boyfriend is Zuko and Zuko’s girlfriend is Mai and Mai’s girlfriend is Suki and Suki’s boyfriend is Sokka and Sokka’s girlfriend is Toph and Toph’s girlfriend is Katara and-

Like ya’ll should know me by now oop.

Tenzin gives me the energy of someone who has to visibly force himself not to cuss like a sailor because it would be heavily against what he’s trying to represent, but boyyyy when that dam bursts and he lets it all out, he’d win the gold medal in the cussing olympics. He WILLLL hurt your feelings if you push that button, do NOT push that button

Nothing humors me more than this absolute crashout of a man having to push his temper down surrounded by absolute idiots on that council, he’s stronger than me, I’d make Tarlokk and that Raiko guy cry on day one, like Tarlokk why are you in my house??? Fuck off???

i will never stop writing essays in my tags when i make posts, they’re very important