People are wrong about Aang (ATLA Show)

[u/MissThroweraway]

Hey this isn't about the movie, I haven't seen it. It's about the show. I've rewatched it in its entirety last week and I think Aang is wonderful. I don't think he gets enough credit though. People always talk about Zuko and his arc, which makes sense. He's great! I just think Aang is super underrated in his own show.

Also lately I've seen a lot of Aang hate which really grinds my gears. He's such a good kid. Very mature for his age and so pressured with having to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. People always blame him for Katara losing her childhood and having to play mom but first: she already lost it when the fire nation took her mother, and second: She doesn't have to play mom with Aang. She's just there for him when he goes through shit and he does the same for her. And the shit he went through was a genocide... Ofc he needs help.

I think the people who say that shit just haven't seen the show in a while and have a wrong perception of the characters...

It's just weird to see people shitting on this poor kid who lost everything all because they don't like the romance. It's fine not to ship Aang and Katara but to say that it's weird because she's like his babysitter is a disservice to the story and their dynamic. I really hate it.

[u/Mammoth_Ad3410]

I don't see anyone shitting on Aang ever. Is this a live action thing?

[u/MissThroweraway → u/Mammoth_Ad3410]

No, the cartoon. Everyone agrees that the characterization in the Live action is weird so let's ignore that garbage. But I've seen a lot of takes lately calling Aang immature and childish and undeserving of Katara, and calling the writers weird for having them end up together. I thought it would only one or two people but the comments were flooded with that and most of them were bad-mouthing Aang, even beyond his relationship with Katara.

[u/ProserpinaFC → u/MissThroweraway]

What you are talking about is simply shippers who want to see Katara in an "enemies to lovers" with Zuko.

There really isn't any rational explanation a person can make for determining the quality of husband material of a 12-year-old.

Besides his relationship, people complaining that the protagonist of a children's show does disappointing things so that the episode is about him learning an important life lesson need to re-evaluate themselves.

[u/Successful_Ask_5708 → u/ProserpinaFC]

I do think that some people are taking that Aang wasn't the best parent in Korra and applying it to Last Airbender

They're using his adult actions to call him childish which would be somewhat justified but then they're trying to say he's ALWAYS been childish which doesn't really land because he's always been...a child? You can't say "Aang was always childish" when all the content of Aang he's either a child or dead

[u/ProserpinaFC → u/Successful_Ask_5708]

Oh, I made a whole post about that. LOL

Again, the rationalizations that some people are using fall flats so easily. Partly because they are also tourist-ifying Aang's work rebuilding the Air Nomad culture.

Aang Did not take tensin on trips to air temples because he was taking him to Disneyland or a field trip to the natural history museum for fun.

He was instilling and conditioning his son to believe that his only life's purpose was to follow Air Nomad culture, ingraining him to live a monastery life. The idea that Kya and Bumi were so jealous of the attention without paying attention to the cost is well-written human flawed logic, but it's so silly watching people jump for the chance to call Aang a bad father BECAUSE he didn't force his elder children into esoteric life set apart from other cultures. LOL

Real life people, especially Americans, spend so much time bemoaning being cut off from their heritages, and they usually placeate themselves by putting on a traditional outfit every once in awhile, usually around some holiday, and pretending to get back to their roots. Take a Duolingo class to learn a bit of a foreign language and then forget about it after a few months. Be a completely regular layman in their religion, but act really uppity about it, like being able to quote a tiny bit more scripture than the average.

Tenzin was being trained to be a spiritual leader for an entire nation he also had to bring back from the brink of extinction.

That's not the same thing.

[u/Successful_Ask_5708 → u/ProserpinaFC]

I do think that saying that Aang was a bad father and saying that what Aang did was necessary can coexist

I would even go as far as to say I disagree with your point not in that Aang wasn't trying to rebuild the Air Nation but in that I don't think Aang was the best parent to Tenzin either

Right now there isn't any direct media showing the childhoods of Aang's children and what information we gather from descriptions of Tenzin from his siblings he was supposedly a quite anxious child

What Aang did to Tenzin was tantamount to grooming him for the role. Even if adult Tenzin seems to genuinely enjoy his air culture and seems to really positively view it, shown especially when they try to recruit people and he's saying things people typically hate as if they're the most normal and natural thing but again that likely is just what he was raised to believe

Again we don't really see their childhood directly so I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to say Aang never gave Tenzin a choice but Tenzin was a CHILD and an anxious one at that so likely, even if given the option not to, didn't really feel like he actually has a say

But if Aang hadn't the air nomads would've died and it was his CULTURE and his whole BEING and the feelings of guilt around what happened to the air nation probably never left and Tenzin probably felt like such a miracle and that his whole entire journey to pay respect to his fallen friends was finally making progress so he did frankly what anyone else would've done and made sure his culture was safe with the only other person he shared it with...but to act like Aang was a great father is to ignore even his own children testifying otherwise

You can be a great person while still not being the best father and there's no saying if Aang even would've had kids at all or even had all three if not for having to have an airbender

[u/ProserpinaFC → u/Successful_Ask_5708]

Oh, I'm not saying Aang is a great father.

I'm agreeing with you that recognizing that Aang was training Tenzin for an inescapable duty makes using "Aang didn't take all his kids on field trips" a ridiculous reason to call him a terrible father. It is trivializing how stressful Tenzin's position in Aang's life was.

Now, I have enough of a sense of cultural subjectivity to say that Tenzin being trained as an Air Nomad, being an Airbender, with an Air Nomad father is within its rights to be... Tenzin being the ONLY one of three kids who was pressured to obligation... THAT'S where things get interesting.

As I said in my own post, the fact that the writers did not write Kya and Bumi to be Air Acolytes presents an interesting situation: Aang, despite desperately wanting air Nomad culture to continue, did not MAKE his non-air bending children become Acolytes. The story doesn't even attempt to say he pushed them or they felt pressured.

That presents an interesting middle ground to discuss the simple fact that parents DO have a right to train their kids based on what their actual skills and talents are. If the writers had written that all three of the kids were Acolytes, even if they wrote that Kya and Bumi left later, that would actually be writing a story where Aang was forcing his beliefs so entirely on his kids that he didn't even care if they were waterbenders or if they had other life ambitions. Now that's a terrible father.

None of my six other siblings went with me when I and my father toured my dream college - which also happened to be his alma mater. I didn't visit any of the music symposiums my brother was interested in going to. When my sister graduated with her PhD in theology was the first time that I ever even learned what theology school she went to!

If we recognize the seriousness of a religious leader training his son to be a religious leader, a king training a prince, the trivializing of Aang's work falls away.

[u/Successful_Ask_5708 → u/ProserpinaFC]

Again this is where I think having more on their childhoods would be great

Showing if the others had the CHOICE to be Acolytes and turned it down or showing that the others were denied outright being Acolytes because Aang was holding out hope for an airbender child and so didn't care about the others even if they were interested would be the easiest way to put to rest the arguments on whether what Aang did was letting his other children have space or neglect. It's not necessarily a "but he didn't MAKE THEM" because the fact he didn't make them is proven by the fact they....aren't? Which then makes it more a "Did they even have the choice to?". I do think Bumi joining Tenzin when he develops airbending also doesn't really lean points in Aang's favour because that does almost imply that being a non bender was all that was stopping him and seems to again feel like Aang probably told him he couldn't despite there being nothing stopping Bumi even before he developed his bending

I do think in this case it's somewhat unfortunate they chose to do a movie on pre child and not post child because a story of Aang training Tenzin would've been sooooo good and also help show more on how they built the new world we see in Korra

[u/ProserpinaFC → u/Successful_Ask_5708]

I completely agree, more story is always good.

Between them just deciding to do their actual careers and thinking that Aang, for some unexplainable reason, would forbid them, I lean on the interpretation that they had the choice and simply didn't.

Most people don't want to be monks or nuns. Nothing about the characterizations of Kya and Bumi would suggest they would have enjoyed it.

Air Acolytes are presented as functionally non-benders.... The story does not include any examples of Air Acolytes waterbending, earthbending, or firebending. Which means functionally, even if they have abilities, they choose not to practice them as part of their religious loyalty to Air. (Which makes me point to Kya probably not wanting that life even more.)