#aang's parenting

[fanfic-lover-girl]

I know some ATLA fans defend Aang's parenting by saying he accepted Kya being lesbian. That's great. But would Aang have been as accepting if TENZIN, his golden child, turned out gay??? That's the true question here.

[woodlaflababab]

Currently amused by the idea that Aang is a delinquent. Forget punk or prep, he has tattoos, he's constantly destroying public property, he's encouraging kids to run away from home, he's homeless, he has no qualms about lying or stealing, has gotten into street fights, skips school, acts out in class, and he has canonically gone to jail and made friends with the criminals there.

Short of drug use, he is the textbox definition of a delinquent, he just hides it with how fucking cute he is.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

My parents got divorced and my dad started dating MrBeast and my mom took me to see an ATLA play and kept insisting Aang was a bad boy.

[bemnie]

ATLA POLYWEB!!! OH YEA

[laurrtte]

🤎💙

[sleepyzukka]

Yeah. More textposts.

silly little stuff I made 4 a friend :3

[wilcze-kudly]

People who claim that Aang was a terrible, abusive father to Bumi and Kya and that he never cared about them are so odd to me because like... did you guys not have like parents who work? Or siblings who connect with one parent more due to common interests?

Like kids interpret situations that are not about them as about them. Like when my dad had brain surgery and memory issues due to it and kept forgetting who I am, I thought he genuinely hated me. And I still talk about it in therapy lol. Cause that shit sticks with you, even though my father was always a kind man.

Or when my sister and my dad both obsess over their fave football team and I don't really have that much of an interest in sports but I still feela bit left out.(my father's West Ham obsession is tearing this family apart.)

Like. Loving, amazing parents make mistakes or accidentally hurt their children's feelings. Usually because they're dealing with their own shit. Flawed parents doesn't automatically equal abusive parents.

[ionlybleedbubbles]

[your-royal-momoness]

Air Nomad Monks, after Aang drops cakes on them: We assume you realize that this kind of idiocy will not be tolerated in this temple

Aang & Gyatso: is there any kind of idiocy you would be more comfortable with?

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Aang: How the hell did you two deal with Kyoshi? Kuruk: No idea what you mean by that, Aang. Yangchen: Nope, what do you mean by "deal?" You mean "interfere?" We're dead! We just watched her. Aang: Like, how were you able to stomach watching her???? Yangchen: Easy, with adoring stares. Kuruk: Did you see the way she handled that one politician? Ugh, beautiful. Not that I would know when it comes to dealing with such a thing, but it really was a sight. Yangchen: Oh no, you're right! It really was. Not how I would do it, but results are sometimes more important than the journey. There's more than one way to bake a cake! Aang: SHE KILLED PEOPLE! HOW COULD YOU STOMACH THAT?! Kuruk: Easy, I just ignored it. Aang: YOU WHAT?! Yangchen: You'd be surprised what closing your eyes and covering your ears can do for your conscious, Aang.

[yuttikkele]

oh my gosh zuko and aang have mirroring scars too. they’re gonna make me feel things guys

the BACK SCAR and CHEST SCAR from azula??? and aang’s scar on his foot and zuko’s on his face??

did the creators give up ANY chance to have them mirror each other?! goodness…

[punkeropercyjackson]

This is just me stating facts not tryna brag but with the male characters i grew up with and the ones i started stanning in adulthood it confuses me and pisses me off when fandoms go nuts and off the walls for guy characters literally just being decent men.Aang fell in love with Katara for her brown girl swag on SIGHT and put her as his number one priority constantly to the point he said 'Why would i choose cosmic energy over Katara?' with his whole chest zero hesitation,Percy Jackson worships every woman he meets and is a misandrist king and grew up a bully beater who got kicked out 6 schools by 12 because he wouldn't stop standing up for others and that stayed into the greco-roman mythos world too and is literally immune to gentrification(explicitly shown multiple times he's simply incapable of wanting to become a cop-i mean god)and pretty much adopted the series' first gay boy and darkskin black fem mc as pseudo-siblings and kids,Ichigo Kurosaki's introduction scene was him jumping a bunch of grown men at 15 for defacing a little girl's memorial and then comforting her ghost and he spent the whole series non-creepily obsessed with his pastel autistic girl love interest that has huge tiddies but never sexually harrased her and actually told off multiple characters for doing so and twins with Percy in that last point(but replace 'god' with 'Soul Society member'),Jason Todd pushed a guy off a roof as Robin for SA'ing a woman and killed a pedophillic teacher for abusing one one of his student's as Red Hood and instantly beefed with all his brothers EXCEPT the one who's the first EVER black Robin and instantly loved him instead and calls him a Robin no matter how much DC tries to erase him and roasts amatonormativity/cisheteronormativity and Hobie Brown is a femme afropunk who kills fascists and took in a homeless 16 year old trans girl who's abusive dad kicked her out for doing actual justice and always had the back of the 15 year old black boy who's the mc while also not faulting the aformentioned girl for the awful situation she was put in.My standards for male characters and even irl men to an extent reach the stars by now.So no i'm not gonna praise that nigga from The Little Mermaid or that motherfucker from Spy x Family or ESPECIALLY not any man written by Jane Austen.Y'all too easily impressed and it gives me secondhand embarrasment

[quillthrillswriting]

aang being a bad parent is CHARACTER ASSASSINATION and i won't stand for it. i just know that him and katara wouldn't be focused on just passing on bending, but the *teachings* and ideals of both of their tribes to all their children, regardless of bending status.

OR, aang and katara become parents and aang finds out that parenting is his proudest achievement, more so than stopping a hundred year war or holding the position of avatar

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Of all the battles he had fought as the Avatar, all the struggles through which he had prevailed, Aang thought that perhaps parenthood was his life’s true proudest achievement. He’d known from the moment Katara had found out that they’d be parents that she’d be a wonderful mother, but he’d be lying if he said that he had been entirely confident in his own abilities.

---

Despite the many hats he had to wear for work, he always made a point of coming home to Katara as much as he possibly could. What was being the Avatar for, if not to use his abilities to race home to the love of his life?

---

Their third child, Tenzin, had immediately been identified as an airbender by Aang. He told Katara that he could just feel it, he could see it in the way his son moved through the air , waving his hands as if the oxygen itself was a tangible thing he could touch. As Bumi grew up, it was clear that he would be much more calm and stern than his two rambunctious siblings, perhaps in an unconscious attempt to balance them out.

Aang taught him the airbending traditions the same way he continued to teach Tenzin’s siblings-  he brought the three, along with Katara when she could take a break from work, to the air temples to aid in their restoration. He taught Tenzin the airbending forms, but he taught him in a group, with his other two siblings. For Kya, the airbending forms were applicable to her own waterbending, and for Bumi, they were a way for him to better understand the flow of chi through the body and calm his energetic nature. 

---

“Do you think they’re going to turn out alright?” Katara asked, and both pride and nervousness were present in her tone. “Are we doing a good job?”

Aang smiled softly at her, wrapping his arm around her smaller frame. “For a couple with only one parent between the two of us, I think we’re doing alright.”

Katara’s only response was a laugh and a splash of water to his face from the water she carried at her hip. She carefully bent it back into the bottle.

“They’re doing wonderfully.” Aang looked into the courtyard, where Kya and Bumi were locked in the mud, Kya bending mud-balls and Bumi throwing them back at her, while Tenzin tried in vain to get between them. “We have beautiful kids, Katara. Beautiful souls, too. The air nomad culture will live through them. It doesn’t matter if just Tenzin is an airbender- what the nomads would have wanted to be passed on is their way of life .”

♥ check out the rest of the (completed) fic & my ao3 here! ->

[the-badger-mole]

Some Aang supporters just need to see the potential of Flying Dagger.

Y EEEEESSSSS! Aang and Mai stand need to embrace Flying Dagger. They make sense (at least temporarily). Imagine all the horrific adventures they could have together. Aang with a woman who has Katara's ruthlessness, but none of her compunction? Mai with a powerful man who she could manipulate through his ego? Who cares if they could actually last as a couple long term. The stories that could be told!

[seasideoranges]

idk if it’s just me but the whole “which atla kid in the gaang is the most mature” debates can get redundant and kind of exhausting at times. they’re kids. they’re multifaceted characters. they’re mature in some departments and immature in others. they have their strengths and weaknesses. also they’re kids lol.

[eponastory]

I know you most likely already realized this, but I was just thinking about Aang as a father in LOK, and realized something. If Katara ended up with Zuko and eventually had children together, Zuko would likely end up being a better father than Aang. Aang never even met his parents, and only had instructors as parental figures. They're like parents but mostly just in the way that a school teacher would be. But Zuko understands what good parents and what bad parents look like because he knows what his own parents are like. His memories of Ursa and Iroh would be his guide to what you SHOULD do for a child, and Ozai is an example of what you should NOT do. Zuko doesn't have the pressure of repopulating firebenders because firebenders aren't virtually extinct, so there wouldn't be as much (if any) pressure to pay unfairly extra attention to one child over the other. Zuko knows what it's like to be neglected by a parent that's supposed to love because of something you can't control. Aang clearly doesn't, hence why he neglected Bumi and Kya II in the first place. Zuko also has experience with Azula, and would know to recognize any bad signs of sibling jealousy and/or hatred, and put an end to it because he knows what bad sibling dynamics look like.

I feel like he would also be a better husband to Katara. He's not as naive as Aang when it comes to marriage; Zuko has the experience of growing up with two married parents, and would know what not to do. Katara would relax better because the distribution over who watches the kids would be more fair, as Zuko would give them ALL attention. While Aang made Katara jealous from always being around the Air Acolytes (in the comics), I feel like Zuko would not give polite attention to women who are rude to Katara/flirting with him because in the show, Zuko knows exactly how hurtful it feels for a romantic partner to flirt with/give polite attention to people who are obviously pursuers. Imagine being in an alternate dimension where Zutara was the main endgame couple, and we get to see their parental dynamics in LoK. There would probably be a flashback of Katara getting worked up about one of their children, and Zuko would ease her into calming down because he sees a solution that she didn't.

Aang's issues are more than he doesn't know. He is selfish by nature. Selfish parents aren't good parents. I know this for a fact. It's an endless cycle of 'It's your fault' or 'what about how I feel' every time you try to say something. It's not fun, and it's damaging. I can totally see Aang using this behavior as a way to get what he wants. As far as him being naive... yes. He is very naive and doesn't take anything seriously.

Like the war, for instance. He was only there for the last year of it. He wasn't born into the war like Zuko, Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Suki. They aren't naive. They know what war is like. Toph is the same age as Aang, and she is much more mature than he is. He's got this idea that killing anyone is bad, but he is responsible for a lot of deaths. Honestly, he has a kill count from the Fire Nation attack on the NWT, and a lot of people overlook that for some reason. Actually, the show overlooks it because Aang is the Hero, and it's okay if he killed people. So, when all is said and done, all of the things that he does afterward is overlooked too. It's a huge writing flaw with the show. So how does this translate to him as a parent?

It makes him a hypocrite.

Plain and simple.

He's so focused on reviving the Air Nomads that he has little knowledge on what they actually believed. What we are given is a few Taoist, Hindu, and Buddhist proverbs to go off of. Then, it's completely disregarded (disrespected as well) for 'Love'. This 'Love' is actually deep infatuation fueled by jealousy and possessive behavior. Which is actually frowned upon by the three religions mentioned above. It is a 'poison' to the spirit. And disconnects you from being enlightened (I think that is what the proverbs/scriptures are eluding too, if I'm wrong, please do not hesitate to explain, I'm super interested in cultures and eastern religions) or granted a place in Heaven (or their version of it). Letting go of all earthly possessions is common place in most religions. Aang does not do this. But I digress.

So, while there is the Nature vs Nurture aspect of parenting... where Katara does most of the Nurturing because that is how her character is written post-war and LoK. Notice how is said Written. Written by two misogynistic men who stripped her of a lot of her characteristics from the original run of the show. This is the problem. And it's the same with Aang. I can't take him seriously because he doesn't take any of it seriously. Especially with his children. He's not a serious character. He acts like he's serious, but he never really left the 12 year old boy behind to mature. Probably because in his fictional relationship with Katara, she enables him to keep doing what he always does. Which is to not grow. Relationships grow sour when the two people in them do not grow. It's not really about who grew up with parents at that point because it's the current parents that are the ones that should be to blame.

Now on to Headcanon space...

Zutara is a Headcanon ship. Did it almost happen? Oh yes I believe it did because the writing supports it heavily and Bryke's actions post show also scream 'lairs'. Sorry, but I have a pretty good Bullshit metor and Bryke set it off big time by their immature behavior.

But I digress.

Zuko grew up with a Narcissistic Sociopath as a Father and a Mother who was caught in the middle of a choice she was essentially forced to make. Ursa was also forced to forget her own parents never existed after she married Ozai. This is all canon, by the way. Her life before her marriage was great, but then it was taken away so she had nothing left but her morals and beliefs. However, while she loved both of her children, her influence on Zuko is essentially what made him who he is. Ursa didn't get to influence Azula like she did Zuko. Why? Because of Ozai.

Ozai pit his children against each other. This was apparently a Fire Nation Royal Family tradition because it sounds like Azulon did this with Iroh and Ozai as well. This kind of parenting style is abusive to its core. What Ozai did to Zuko isn't neglect... it's straightforward abuse and control. How do you make a child do what you want? You hurt them, or you take something away from them. Ozai both hurt Zuko and took away his home by banishing him. If Zuko wants to go back home, he has to find and capture the Avatar. It's that simple, but at the same time, it's also near impossible.

Flash forward to Canon Zuko and we see he has one child and he is a very loving father. Actually, he's the best father in the show. His experiences with growing up as the not so favorite child has made his choice to have one child easy. Probably because he and his spouse had a less than perfect relationship. This also may have influenced him to be protective of Izumi (as we can see he's still protective over her even at 90 years old) because of the loveless relationship his parents had. It was enough to damage him deeply when it came to relationships. This is likely also why he had trouble with Mai as well.

Headcanon space now...

Zuko loving Katara is what makes the difference here. Love is giving your partner the freedom to make their own choices and support them. As long as there is good communication, trust, and honesty. Something Maiko does not have, by the way. So it stands to reason that even with Nature Vs Nurture in the way of parenting, both win here. I'll tell you why Zuko's relationship with his parents here have no effect on why he would choose to have more children with Katara.

Because if written well, it's a very good relationship between them. We already know they work well as a team. The show gives us this. We know that Zuko absolutely cares about Katara. The show also gives us that. We also know they become lifelong friends. So why do they make great parents?

Because they rely on each other.

It has nothing to do with how they were raised individually, but everything to do with how they support each other narritively. They trust each other to make good decisions together. They rely on being honest with each other. They also communicate with each other. This by itself is the building blocks for a healthy and stable relationship. With that in mind, parenting is easier. There is no need to be afraid of becoming a bad parent because they hold each other accountable. It's a deep relationship. Having multiple children is easier because it is a loving relationship. There's no conflict besides the silly little arguments over simple things that happen all the time. It's just an overall healthy dynamic.

And that is what appeals to Zutarians.

While it was almost canon, I'm glad it isn't because Bryke would definitely not get it right. They tried to make Korra and Mako happen out of spite because they believe Zutara is toxic. It's not. Their children would turn out absolutely fine because Zuko would not change a thing about Katara. It's in the show. He doesn't try to change her because that's not his job. His job in TSR is to let her find closure. He offers it to her because he cares about her. Bottom line.

Anyway, I probably forgot what you said at this point because I just tend to go on and on, but I tried my best to stay on topic... ADHD is both a blessing and a curse.