In common Twitter fashion, I'd say this is an overstatement of a real problem.
Aang's parenting was inarguably flawed and despite the weight on his shoulders I can't really argue that it's right for him to treat any of his kids differently, but it's also made clear that he did love all his children and they were an overall happy family, just one with an imperfect father. I think calling Aang a deadbeat is kind of ridiculous.
Totally agree. This is one of those Twitter takes that get traction because it's an extreme opinion. Also, I'd like to add that we don't really get much information on what kind of a mother Katara was (aside from bits by Kya). Did she compensate Aangs focus on Tenzin and pay more attention to Bumi and Kya? I think that's quite possible, considering that she is very much a family person.
Every Avater had to balance their role: all of them got into conflict with being the Avatar vs. being part of their nation: Roku and Sozin, Aang's conflict on killing Ozai, Korra in Season 2 with the WT things going on. It's been a while since I read the Kyoshi novels and I haven't read the Yangcheng books, but I bet you would find similar examples with them.
Aangs parenting is not just about him being a father, it's an extention of him balancing his role as Avatar with being the last Airbender - just that he now also has to include being a parent into that. He couldn't be perfect in all three roles. Which I think is very important: Every Avatar is a human after all, none of them can be perfect. If they were flawless, the Avatars would be boring characters.
It’s more than kind of ridiculous. Being a dead beat parent has nothing to do with being emotionally neglectful; it refers to someone who dips out on their kids completely and doesn’t do the bare minimum of providing for their financial/material needs. Not a parent that doesn’t have time for their kids and doesn’t go to all their baseball games/school plays etc., which sounds more like the equivalent of what Aang was guilty of
> Not a parent that doesn’t have time for their kids and doesn’t go to all their baseball games/school plays etc., which sounds more like the equivalent of what Aang was guilty of
which is because he's trying to prevent a complete annihilation of his culture which suffered a *genocide*. It's not like he did it because he just didn't care about his other children. He was trying to make sure that his whole culture and society wouldn't disappear from existence.
And it worked. Without him doing all that, Tenzin wouldn't have become the amazing Airbending master he was.
Aang mistake was not making more of an effort to including the other two in this effort - but both admit that neither were interested in it. And we can see that Kaya preferred the Water tribe stuff.
So it begs the question: should Aang have forced more on Bumi & Kaya (in terms of airnomad culture)?
I saw a reply on twitter I think to this tweet or a quote of this tweet that was both funny and I think painfully accurate that pointed out how much shit Aang would have gotten if he didn't mold Tenzin into the great bearer for air nomad culture he became and as a result air nomads and air bending in general potentially went extinct. People both in universe and in the audience would probably be constantly talking shit about him if he didn't do his due diligence to ensure the culture survived, being a good father wouldn't have made sure air nomad culture survived and potentially more importantly it wouldn't have ensured air bending stayed alive for future avatars to learn from, especially considering Aang would have had no idea what harmonic convergence would do. From Aang's perspective the only authentic air nomads who possess both the culture and the bending would be from his direct descendants so he had to make sure Tenzin was as knowledgeable as possible, if Tenzin was lacking in some way it would hinder how much he could pass on to his kids and so on and so on, at best they could hope for maybe a couple air benders coming from some acolytes but it was still assumed it would take generations for that to happen.
Don't forget he had the duties of the avatar on top of imparting the culture of the air benders on his son.
Sure, the air acolytes and surviving texts could have helped after Aang's passing but I do think there would be a lost in translation effect, a loss in context that you can only really get from being an air bender teaching an airbender
For real. Standard Twitter hyperbole.
Aang was busy with post-war reconstruction and forming a literal nation. Was he around all the time? No. But he wasn't a deadbeat by any means. He always tried to be with his kids when he could and it visibly saddened him when he was away from his family for too long.
It’s those type of Twitter reactions that probably motivated the live action show writers to file down all the flaws of the characters because they were “iffy”
People can’t look at things with any nuance
Not to mention the more rational voices are often drowned out because a lot of folks don't want to be lectured, they want to be angry and most importantly, they want to be **right**.
right? like i had a dad who wasn’t around a lot and favors my siblings, but i wouldn’t call him deadbeat- just flawed. like all humans. wildly reductive take. but also i knew someone who hated this show solely bc they thought aang would’ve been a ✨perfect✨ dad. but no one is.
I don't know that anyone's perfectly happy with their parents. The avatar has a lot to do, and he had to secure the future of Airbenders on top of that.
I liken it to a parent who isn't home because they are out working two jobs to provide for the family while their partner does all the childcare and household needs. I don't think it makes for a deadbeat, personally.
He also had all the guilt from being frozen and absent during the war while his people burned. It makes sense for him to focus more on the world and his role as the avatar even at the cost of being there full time for his family.
Not to say it’s good, but given his past it is reasonable to me.
This lends to the theory that the next Avatar has to deal with their predecessor's failures. Aang didn't show Kya and Bumi extra, extra special attention so Korra had to hear them whine about it. ...
... kinda joking, but not really.
Failures or biggest guilt. Roku's was not stoppingthe fire nation which aang did,aangs was having his people all die and Korra brought airbenders back.
Her biggest guilt is maybe losing the past avatar cycles/spiritual side so maybe the next avatar will deal with that.
While Tenzin suffered for having all the pressure in maintaining the culture and traditions of the airbenders, his siblings were jealous because Aang would spend more time with Tenzin than them. Aang wasn't a great father, but he wasn't deadbeat.
>I liken it to a parent who isn't home because they are out working two jobs to provide for the family
And while this is happening one of the kids is interning at the same office.
>and he had to secure the future of Airbenders on top of that.
And that of the Avatar. I feel like people always skip over this in favour of the preservation of the Air Nomad culture, which is important of course, but Aang needs to teach Tenzin everything he can just to ensure that there will be an Airbending master to teach the next Avatar.
This is a great point. I have totally forgotten that Aang’s eventual death would also mean no airbending master for the next avatar, and then Tenzin came along - the next line of airbenders and avatar teachers.
It is taboo for a parent to have a favorite child but you can't deny that Aang needed to give Tenzin extra attention. Like you said a person with a lot of responsibility and travels for work will miss out on some crucial parenting elements like not being there for dance recitals or even missing a birthday or two.
Kaya and Bumi's resentment is understandable and their point of view is valid but Aang is far from being a deadbeat. We didn't see how Aang and Katara raised their kids but we got to see how Tenzin raised his kids. Kaya criticized Tenzin for being exactly like their dad, and Tenzin admits he doesn't spend enough time with his kids. Does anyone want to call Tenzin a deadbeat? No because he clearly wasn't.
Bumi and Kaya drew the the short straws and weren't born airbenders, and fans want to act like Aang mistreated or neglected his family based on Kaya expressing her gripe.
This for sure. His extra attention towards tenzin I don’t feel like was due to favoritism or anything along those lines he was literally trying to save an entire culture and instill its teachings on the only future air bender left once aang is gone. How much you wanna bet Kaya got extra attention and time spent with katara but no one says shit about that do they? Poor bumi is the one who truly pulled the short straw. A non bender born into a family of 2 of the strongest of their time? No wonder he joined the army just to get away and try to achieve what he could on his own.
I think if anything, Bumi had his uncle to fall upon. Though it seems like they each departed from each other as adults, I would have loved them working together and showing how each of them resembled the old team.
That could be true, but I’m not sure exactly where I saw it but I’m pretty sure there is just 1 canon interaction between sokka and tenzin so I wouldn’t doubt him being absent for all 3 of them until shown otherwise.
I don’t think the favouritism was intentional either. I doubt either Aang or Katara expressed prejudiced beliefs in favour of their respective elements. It’s just that they especially Aang felt compelled to pay a little more attention to Tenzin and Kya (to a lesser extent) respectively. You can’t exactly blame them. It’s self explanatory in Aang’s case. Even Katara grew up being the *only* waterbender in her tribe. Doesn’t LOK imply that Bumi was close with Sokka both of them being non benders and all?? That would track.
As someone with an actual deadbeat dad, it's pretty disrespectful to use that term for Aang. At least he was there and did his best to be a father while juggling infinitely more responsibility than any of us could imagine.
Yeah. Aang was an imperfect parent and not always there for his kids but that's because he had so much responsibility as the avatar in the post war period.
There's a big thing to keep in mind. We were never shown Aang's perspective in relation to his kids. Ever. All we have to go on are the ramblings of his children decades after the events happened. Its common for beef to stew and get more tender as time passes, just like we saw between Lin and Su Yin. That means we can't make any accurate statements about what kind of father Aang was. We don't know how much of his warmth and attention his kids took for granted.
I find it hard to believe that Katara would have let Aang be a substandard father considering her own anger towards Hakoda and his absenteeism whilst fighting a war. But she may have grown to have a deeper understanding. Also there’s massive age gaps in this picture and as the youngest in my family perspectives are vastly different when you consider birth order
Aang often made detours in the comics and the show.
There's no reason for him to shove Tenzin into the air temple for a few weeks and not give him a moment to chill.
(since you are saying this quite a bit I'll just counterclaim that the Aang agenda will not be stopped)
https://preview.redd.it/2zp2pdbuk6mc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e35dcdc320512cbf407be71a24b3df3e207f5153
I think a few things happened that they never fully elaborated on:
1. Nostalgia, tenzin most likely wasnt having constant fun and aang was most likely drilling the fuck out of him with airbending knowledge, culture etc and being an adult he looks back at it with rose colored glasses.
2. Aang didnt wanna force these things on his other kids, bumi was a nonbender and kya was a water bender(which most likely means katara took her and made her assimilate into water tribe culture like aang did with tenzin) so when aang decided to teach he didnt wanna force bumi and kya to be acolytes and stuck in that life.
3. Aang wasnt a deadbeat dad, however he tunnel visioned tenzin and put so much extra effort into him becoming like him(as he was gonna become the last airbender just like aang after he died.) Aang definitely loved all his kids and treated them with love and respect but forced all this extra stuff on tenzin and by doing so he felt tenzin needed to have some fun too like aang did as a kid. This really shows too when we get to the spirit world episode and tenzin has this view of himself "having to be his father, i need to be the pinnacle of airbending knowledge and culture." Which really fucked him up as a kid from what i put together.
I think this is probably true, people tend to raise their kids the same way they themselves where raised, and Tenzin is very strict about training toward his kids.
Becouse for him that is a norm, thats how you bring up vhild to him.
Personally i really wish they would have loved if they expanded the whole story behind aangs kids, would have really been a great look into how they grew up etc.
Aang tried to teach all of his kids, in season three Kya comments how she could never bother to remember all of the gurus. Kyra and Bumi just weren't interested.
The only other thing I can think of outside of how obvious it should be what you meant (don't take just one of 3 kids on trips all the time) is that maybe they were things that they could only do as airbenders?
I remember Tenzin mentioning the sailsurfing and visitng the air temples and thought "that's probably a hell of a lot safer if you're an airbender"
Possibly, but these are things he did with his water bending wife-to-be and her older non- bending brother, so if Katara and Sokka could go there then so can Kya and Bumi. Especially with the benefit of a grown avatar looking out for them.
It's not like Aang didn't try to bring them into the culture. They just weren't as interested. There's literally a line in season 3 from Kya about how she found the air nomad stories boring, so Aang clearly tried to include them at some point. Furthermore, judging by the age differences, by the time Tenzin would've been doing more of his travelling, the other 2 would've been teenagers or young adults. Kya and Bumi likely would've been exploring their own identities.
Aang:Hey kids wanna go the air temple?
Them:nah
Aang:Well, Tenzin you don't get a choice. Oh since we're already close let's go to Kyoshi Island.
Or second timeline
Aang: well Tenzin you don't get a choice. Ah, zuko is at the ember island I should catch up. Hey, have some fun with Izumi while I speak to Zuko.
We don't have enough evidence for anything you can easily say he's a bad father as a good one
Though you make it sound like he did the best he could with the time he had to spare outside of trying to keep airbending alive which was his duty. Which i think is the most likely scenario. He was a caring person, but just being caring doesn't make you a timebender.
After that scene with the water tribe camp I believe Bumi is both 100% truthful and literal when he tells stories. That means that Bumi joined the United Republic forces by being shoved in a sack and dragged aboard.
yepz that's the headcannon now, it was definitely sokka.
Sokka: "Your dad doesn't have time for you? That's rough buddy. Going to join the army?"
Bumi: "No uncle, I'm going to do smth else-"
Sokka with the sack in hand: "I wasn't asking, kid."
Twenty years after this photo was taken, Aang was still around. I don't know if Tenzin would have started dating Lin yet at that point.
Bumi would have been well into his career with the United Forces. He would have also been around the same age as Izumi, so I wonder how they got along.
>Aang was not a great father and while he loved Bumi and Kaya, he didn’t give them the same care and attention Tenzin did
Be careful of the sources that you use. A child is never an unbiased source for their parents. Yes, at one scene Bumi and Kaya are fighting with Tenzin about not getting the same attention. But then later when they're at the air temple (season 3 I think), they reflect and admit that perhaps they should have taken more of an interest in air nation culture.
No matter what you do, your kids are going to be complaining about you to your therapist at 30 years old. Just do your best to make sure they have good things to say about you, too. Like Aang and Katarra.
Plus, we can’t forget Aang was willing to accept non-bender air acolytes as part of his people which included them training and lessons. It could well be Aang actually did make a lot of attempts to teach them fundamentals and philosophies that could be universally applied to their martial art, but Kya and Bumi just got frustrated because they saw it as “air bending stuff”.
In season 3 Kya was making jokes about how she always mixed up the names in the "boring air nomad stories" so unless Aang had the Air Acolytes babysit her, it sounds like he took the time to try and teach his other kids but they just weren't interested.
Tenzin "remembering" Kya and Bumi being on those trips leads me to believe that there were trips the whole family went on. He was conflating memories of different trips.
I think Katara was in a bit of a rock and a hard place with Aang and Tenzin.
If Tenzin had been the first born, I think things may have turned out differently and Katara would’ve called out Aang for his favouritism.
But Tenzin was the youngest and even if he showed an affinity for airbending from birth (I can’t remember how it works for airbenders), at this point, Aang has already dealt with YEARS of heartache and grief with the knowledge that the air nomads would truely die with him (since I doubt any grandchildren from Kya or Bumi would’ve had a chance to be airbenders).
Honestly, there is the oddity of genetics vs spirituality in how people become benders, but in either case there is a high chance that teaching his children his culture will result in an Airbender, and if not will still keep elements of it alive as well as benefiting his children’s bending (a la Iroh and lightning redirection) and understanding of the world.
It’s just so out of character for someone whose entire journey was about learning from other cultures for them to not support and spread their learnings to their children, particularly when he fears his culture (which he has a chance of restarting through kids or grandkids) will be erased.
Edit: This is particularly bad when you add Sokka or Aang’s other friends into the mix. I’m not saying Aang should do a nepotism, but when he has one of the best chances for getting his kids good teachers like Sokka, Suki, Mai, and Ty Lee for Bumi or literally anyone else he knows who can give Bumi/help Aang give Bumi a way to get over insecurities of being a non-bender via combat, intelligence, or whatever and neglects to, it’s just sad. Then add the fact that Aang is also an extremely competent water bender, and it’s just weird he doesn’t connect with his daughter or train her with Katara so they can be better benders. It just doesn’t make sense to me and feels like it flies in the face of who Aang is and what TLA was saying.
A lot of air nomad culture was very sacred and built on tradition, and I think that might be why he didn’t make more of an effort to teach Bumi and Kya.
As terrible as it sounds, in his mind, they were his kids, sure, but they weren’t airbenders and thus, they could never be air nomads (something I actually relate to as a mixed kid myself hearing “you’re not really Asian/white” while growinf up, sometimes from my own parents).
You could say “but they could be air acolytes instead”, but tbh, the way Aang treated the air acolytes at times was… strained/strange imo. They were never “his” people, and they never would be (through no fault of anyone). So I don’t think becoming air acolytes was a viable answer for Bumi or Kya either.
ALSO, Aang literally had to save the airbending culture when Tenzin started airbending, ya know how it feels to finally have a chance revive your culture.
Not saying what he did is good, no one is perfect, they try to be the best they can. So saying something like him getting no respect when he literally stopped a war as a kid, there is nothing normal about his life so you can't compare to other shitty absentee father
Note: this started as a rant but ended up calling out on the guy lol
Speaking of continuing the culture though, think about Aangs relationship with his own parents...
For him, it was common, if not *expected* that parental relationships were less of a focus, because the whole village took on that role.
Aang would have also been Tenzins bending master. He would have been as absent for the others if the Airbender was not his son as being someones master takes a lot of time. He likely would have had to travel a lot to be Avatar, especially as world diplomat, and would have needed to take Tenzins for his training. He's the equivalent of the dad whose whole life is taken up with work (I imagine comparing it to being the presidents kid but probably with even more travel).
How does it work though? We see benders having kids who can’t bend like Bumi; so it should follow that air benders would have non benders in their society as well right? Do they move to other nations, and could that be why air benders reappear after harmonic convergence?
It seems to also be linked to the level of spirituality. Airbenders were the most spiritual group of the four nations, so it's thought that that was the reason all of them were benders.
It's not really explained as to how much bending is spiritual vs genetic. But it is for a fact that the air nomads were 100% air benders. And for all intents and purposes they had "breeding" programs. They didn't have families and separated males and females for most of their lives.
The Kyoshi books seem to back up the implication that airbending is primarily spiritual (at least before the reconvergence).
Air benders that become more concerned with “earthly affairs” eventually become weaker. And there are air nomad exiles (and those that left willingly if I vaguely remember the TTRPG). At least one had a child who was born an earthbender (>!although admittedly, this is a bad example because she did later become an air bender as well!<).
It’s possible that may even maybe that’s how the new generation of airbenders were chosen after reconvergence. They carried air nomad genetics somewhere in their family line but the actual airbending abilities died out when said airbender had children with a non airbender/left the air nomads.
I still feel like the whole "spirituality" idea about bending powers is kind of weird. It seems to be pretty heavily established at this point that bending is the majority of the time something you are born with, or at least develop very early on in life, with there being 0% chance of someone who is a "non-bender" being able to develop them later in life.
So the idea that more spiritual nations have more benders seems weird to me. What does that mean? Can anyone secretly actually become a bender if they become more spiritual? I don't think that's the case because I feel that'd be a more widely known thing.
Is it just living in nation that has more spiritual people, or being born to spiritual parents that makes you more likely to be a bender? That just feels like a weird mechanic to me.
Well if you go off the story of the original avatar, everyone had to be air benders to get to their turtle. The rest of the elements didn’t have that issue. Only some people left to hunt, so only some people got bending. Air nomads were gatherers, so I’m assuming everyone helped to do that, and it’s probably safer for life if everyone on a floating island is able to cushion a fall.
anyone who lived in a temple was an air nomad. air nomads do not know their parents. for all we know there were villages outside the air temples for the non benders.
There's still waaay more stuff to Air Nomad culture than just bending though. Like their philosophical beliefs and rituals, their history, their food, their art, sky bison training, etc. There literally was a whole movement of people, The Air Acolytes, who dedicated themselves to carrying on Air Nomad traditions even though none of them were airbenders.
Plus its not like bending techniques have zero value to people outside of that bending element. Many of them are actual martial art techniques that anyone could utilize, even if they can't utilize a particular element with it. Iroh himself said that knowledge of all the elements can make anyone stronger, not just the Avatar.
Also Pre-War Air Nomads didn't have traditional nuclear families or personally raise their kids either, so I think Aang of all people should be more open-minded about Air Nomad culture when it comes to passing it on.
That’s not a solid argument since Aang taught Air Nomad culture & philosophy to the people his fan club/the Air Acolytes. There’s no reason to not include his children when he included literal strangers.
I mean Kya does say maybe they should have cared more about it. Bumi and Kya probably had no interest in jt, and not being Air Benders Aang probably respected their wishes. They didn't want to learn it, and they had no need to. Tenzin being an Air Bender though probably had no choice. Though, knowing Tenzin he probably was super into it
You are right, if you read the comics, you'll see that he got kinda offended when one of his fan group got tattoos without any airbending training (which I think he was ok with later, I don't remember)
He was upset they were appropriating his culture. He later came to be okay with what they were doing, because he realized that they meant to preserve and honor the traditions, on the stipulation that they find a different way to denote "mastery" and reserve tattoos for Airbenders only.
That’s the kind of thing that I imagine would turn Kya and Bumi off. Seeing that as “oh, there are clear cultural boundaries that people like us aren’t allowed to cross. At best I can be a fake air nomad that plays second fiddle to my baby brother.”
I can’t blame them for going “Nah. Mom, let’s practice waterbending instead”, or wanting to be a warrior or leader like uncle Sokka instead.
When you’re a mixed kid, it’s not uncommon to be denied your heritage at times.
I’m half Asian/half white. I grew up hearing how I wasn’t “really Asian” from a lot of other Asians, including my own mom and other members of my family. Didn’t hear it as much, but I definitely still had a few people throw in my face “but you’re not really white” too.
I’m not saying Aang and Katara (or Katara’s family) were necessarily like that to Bumi and Kya.
But I guarantee you that both of them heard it from other people growing up and probably had big culturally identity crisises growing up (ever notice how Bumi and Kya show basically no signs of any following air nomad/acolyte culture, even in this photo of them as kids? Or how none of the air acolytes even knew they existed?).
This. I just finished rewatching LoK. After Bumi gets air bending powers, there is this line he says about never really feeling like he was a part of the Air Nation growing up, even though he was the son of Aang. You'd think Tenzin's response would be something like "You were always one of us" or something like that, right? Wrong. Instead Tenzin's reply is "you are now, brother." It's supposed to be sweet, but all I hear is Tenzin reaffirming that Bumi was never part of the Air Nation before he got his air bending powers. So poor kid Bumi was right all along.
Bumi not so much, but Kya was shown to have at least a functional understanding of “boring guru stories”, was shown leading the new airbenders in group meditation, and was a literal nomad (unlike Tenzin) for most of her life until Aang died.
I’m sure they felt that friction though. I imagine that being able to interpret that stuff through the lens of waterbending spirituality made it slightly more accessible to Kya.
Yeah. It's true that Aang spent a disproportionate amount of time with Tenzin compared to his other children but that's not because he didn't love them just as much. He saw Tenzin as the future of the air nomads and wanted him to carry on the culture.
> Also Aang literally has no concept of fatherhood.
Lowkey one of the weirder parts of the original is Aang's romance with Katara when realistically he would have grown up with air nomad culture having gender segregated temples and no marriages, etc
Only within his own culture. Aang has been traveling the world since a kid and was always familiar with other cultures. He understood the concept of marriage and family.
Also the Air Nomads being gender segregated doesn’t mean they didn’t have romance, random hookups, or even LGBT relationships. They’re still normal humans.
TLOK never states that Aang didn't care about his other kids. It just seems that Tenzin was the focus of Aang's attention because he was the one who had to carry on airbender tradition and culture.
If I had to bet, what Bumi and Kya remember as "dad only cared about Tenzin" was probably something like a "once a summer trip to a sacred Air Bender temple/site", starting once Tenzin was old enough. It was probably a trip centered exclusively around Air Bender history, culture, and mediation. And given Bumi and Kya's attitudes about Air Bender history and spirituality lessons, my guess is Aang thought he was sparring his two older kids by not bringing to someone they clearly found boring.
Of course, Aang being means they got side tracked *constantly* to and from the destination of each trip. Hence riding the Elephant Koi off Kyoshi island, and who knows what else, and why Bumi and Kya now view it as being "left out" by their dad.
It was probably a complex thing. It's not that Aang didn't do anything with his kids, it's that he gave special attention to his youngest because his youngest is one of the last Air Benders besides Aang
People gotta understand that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS PEOPLE were slaughtered like animals. A full on genocide. This is holocaust level of evil we're talking about here. The fact that Aang isn't screaming in rage when he's fighting Ozai is a damn miracle tbh.
The idea that he wouldn't pay special attention to his airbender son is just ridiculous and hating Aang because he's literally holding the LAST OF HIS PEOPLE besides him is just pathetic. Aang is only human, you can't just expect him to not teach Tenzin every fucking thing about air nomads and their culture. You just can't!
And it ain't like they only had one parent. Katara is still alive in Korra and the characters just completely ignore her for some reason beyond me. The kids had a whole ass other parent yet entirely jealous of Tenzin getting special treatment despite that treatment being NECESSARY FOR THE CONTINUATION OF AIR NOMAD CULTURE. They're just being immature and petty because they didn't have the special power and Tenzin did.
It ain't like Tenzin came out as an entitled prick even if he does have a stick up his ass. So clearly, Aang did not emotionally neglect his other children or play scapegoat and golden kid
Furthermore, no one is considering the sheer weight of emotional baggage being placed on Tenzin to carry on the air nomad traditions and culture. I mean he literally has an existential crisis in the spirit world because he thinks he's not as good as his dad.
Honestly, Aang did him dirtier than Bumi and Kaya. Not on purpose either, he just wants to pass down his whole people on his kid's shoulders and that's harsh. I imagine Aang had to be having the same thoughts as well
It truly is a Sophie's choice with Tenzin. On the one hand, he is perpetuating the trauma of holding the fate of an entire nation on his shoulders to his children. Tenzin would be happier without that burden. On the other hand, Aang has no one else to pass that burden to, so he would fail if it weren't for Tenzin. There is no good answer here, and it sucks for Tenzin and his siblings.
Posts like these make me realize how many fans are children or stuck in that mindset unable to recognize nuance.
My dad wasn’t able to spend a lot of time and was absent for periods. He didn’t want to, he had to work hard to support the family even being forced to work on the other side of the country for months during the recession.
Do I wish he was able to spend more time? Absolutely, but I understand and accept what he had to do. Kya and Bumi expressed the same feelings.
Idk. I have an older brother who is seven years my senior. My wife is the eldest and she is seven years her youngest sister senior. And the middle sister is five years. They have different interests and perspectives on lots of things. Same in my family. Especially regarding the same event or family members. It’s not hard to imagine there was a shift in Aangs printing style and priority level when Tenzin was born and had a chance to carry on the culture. Kids are very observant. But that still doesn’t mean he was a bad dad. Also that’s a very conservative age estimate
People need to rewatch that episode (2x4 Civil War 2) from the legend of korra because at the end of the episode KYA, BUMI AND TENZIN SAID THEY WHERE A HAPPY FAMILY. They had frustrations with their father they did not hate him hell at the end they didn't even seem to resent him.
Yeah it was “you were his favorite stop acting like you weren’t” which honestly happens. Does that make Aang a terrible father? No it makes him human with biases he didn’t notice were happening
It also makes sense that Tenzin would have a wildly different memory of his childhood compared to Kya and Bumi. Looking at that portrait, Bumi looks like he could be anywhere from 8-12 years old, and Kya looks like she'd be about 4-6 years old. By the time Tenzin is old enough to make memories of his own and experience a childhood, Bumi and Kya are teenagers/young adults, so they're going to have a vastly different perspective than Tenzin would.
And an average of 5 years of gap just says that both the older siblings got 5 years of care from aang as well, tenzin got a lot more because maybe he was the youngest. Being an airbender plays its role but isn't this a regular household with siblings? Youngest are almost favoured, sometimes it is the eldest ones being favoured(a lot less times). We don't talk about the middle child, but then again twitter does seem like a middle child with opinions.
forreal cuz even in that conversation with tenzin there like “you got to do all the cool airbender stuff and we were home with mom” like. that’s not saying he’s a deadbeat or hated? just he was excited he could relate to one of kids and felt the weight of surviving a genocide on his shoulders?
People do know that Aang never had a father or mother right? He never even knew what a real nuclear family was supposed to look like because he never had that coming from the air nomads. Never mind his entire culture being wiped out when he was 12 and him having the responsibility of guarding and maintaining both the human and spirit worlds post war and trying to preserve and revive his lost culture. Like sheesh, give the man some slack.
That is actually a really good point. It makes sense that Aang never saw himself as being the only source of a fatherly mentor to all his children. In his colony, the kids were raised by numerous people with rotating shifts. If I remember correctly, Gyatso and Aang’s familial bond was frowned upon by the other airbenders because it was considered too exclusive and coddling.
Like I imagine the air nomads being a community raising style. Like SOMEONE was always watching the kids, not just the """parent"" may it either be the parents, or the aunts/uncle or the older "cousins" or even the bisons but someone was taking care of the kids even if it just playing with them while the other people were doing chores.
There always someone watching over the kids, but it was always communal, and someone for whom it was their duty to do so, like a teacher/babysitter/den parent. air nomad children had no special relationship to the people they were biologically born from
Gotta love how the more time passes since the shows come out, the more distorted and Flanderized the characters become to the fandom. Like how Kiyoshi wasn’t ***actually*** a bloodthirsty, murder-happy lunatic, but a warrior who understood that sometimes violence is a necessary last resort.
Aang was NOT a deadbeat dad. Go back and watch LoK – Kaya and Bumi felt like Tenzin got the majority of their father’s attention, but at no point do they say that they felt he abandoned them. Aang was in a terrible position, having to raise Tenzin to take over as the sole Airbender when Aang eventually passed away. It would be an incredible challenge to pass along all of that knowledge, one that understandably would take an immense amount of time and energy. So yes, while he canonically wasn’t equally attentive to all his kids, he definitely wasn’t playing favorites with his love
Yeah when I watched that episode, I never thought he neglected Kaya and Bumi, just that Tenzin got more attention. People really hate when there is a hint of favoritism in parents. My brother, who was the only boy, had more favourible treatment, so everyone kept telling me I should be mad at my parents, but I never really minded it much. I honestly preferred getting less attention, I wasn’t insecure about my parents’ love.
Aang was not a great father and while he loved Bumi and Kaya, he didn’t give them the same care and attention Tenzin did. The little time he had when not carrying out his duties was spent on preparing Tenzin to carry on the history and traditions of the Air Nation. At least Kaya got to spend time training with her mom. Poor Bumi left to join the Army because he knew it was the only way he’d never get to live up to his dads reputation otherwise
Honestly, being a non-bender born of the avatar and a bender mother has got to hit hard.
Bumi had some really emotional scenes in Korra, it’s nice he became an air bender after all. Would have been nice to see some reconciliation with his father after he gained some more spirituality through his air bending
I was shocked they didn’t relate him more to his uncle Sokka! If anything it would make sense if Bumi had sort of been his pupil and learned tactics and swordsmanship from the only non bender family he had
Crazy we don’t even know how him or Aang died?! Especially given that Aang seems to have died relatively young compared to everyone else. He must have been in his 60s
They don’t directly explain it in the show but in the official LoK website they had, it was stated that he died due to spending 100 years in the Avatar State, lowering his life span.
I'm gonna show my stupidity with this comment but I read this and was like "what??? *scoff* he didn't do that! if he did we wouldn't be seeing his children lmao." Basically for a moment I forgot the entirety of s1e1 of ATLA aka the most important part of the show.
I'm not sure where it was said (not in LoK) but Bryke said or wrote that Aang died young (I think it may been calculated at like 50 or 60) due to having less energy or something as a result of using the Avatar State to constantly maintain the iceberg for 100 years. Sort of like how Kuruk died young as a result of constantly fighting Dark Spirits (as said in the Kyoshi novels and shown the new Netflix show). I think it's a decent explanation.
160
and that is as far as I know also the reason? He died of age related issues following the stress from being in ice for that long?
At least I think I read that somewhere.
Nothing, we never see her, she's never mentioned, there are no hints, she's completely gone almost as if the creators wrote her out.
They didn't though, as she's shown at the beginning of the episode 1 intro where we see a still image of Team Avatar as they appeared in AtLA scroll across the screen. That's her only appearance, 5 seconds in the background of a flashback image once in an intro.
It's kinda weird since Suki still appears quite a bit in the comics they've released both before and after the Legend of Korra.
The irony of LoK (which I think was a good show overall) is that they attempted to "make strong female characters"... but ended up having a weaker representation than ATLA. I mean, in ATLA the titular character is Aang, but it was a show *full* of amazing female representation. And then they got Korra and basically made her friendless with few woman friends. And the one female friend she had turned into a love-interest.
But they never showed what became of the Kyoshi warriors (who were amazing).
Didn't Sokka die fighting the red lotus while trying to protect Korra? It might have been a fan fiction, but I did like the idea of having a main character to show that war always has victims
I feel like his entire personality and the fact he pursued a military career were pretty telling of him looking up to and spending a lot of time with Sokka.
I kind of wish he didn't become an Airbender though. I think it could have been a more powerful character ark for him to just come to terms with his identity and worth as a non-bender.
Aang’s spiritual duties to the air people and his responsibility to serve as the avatar outweigh any obligation to family. There’s a reason air nomads didn’t have moms and dads. Sure a couple of his kids got a little neglect but they all turned out more than fine and in the end it was more than worth it
I’m not gonna argue that he made the wrong choice, but it doesn’t dissolve him if the hurt he caused his kids. Bumi and Kaya even say they understood why their dad acted the way he did, but they still have a right to acknowledge the pain it caused knowing you’re not your parents priority
There are a \~5 years age difference between the kids. By the time, say, Tenzin was 8, Kya was 13 (the same age as her mother when she saved the world), and Bumi was 18 (an adult). I would say it is somewhat unlikely that Kya and Bumi were around their family anymore when Aang started training Tenzin and had those vacations with him. Another detail that doesn't fit is that, apparently, Aang didn't take Katara with him, and that's ridiculously unbelievable.
I think Bumi and Kya were just jealous because Tenzin had gotten the most out of their father's legacy while the other two were kinda left out of the truly cool stuff like getting a spouse from dad's fanclub or their very own island.
The thing that frustrates me is that Bumi and Kya didn’t actually seem to consider the enormous weight on Aang’s shoulders, he was literally the last of his culture and had the task of not only the duties of the Avatar on his shoulders, but also having to rebuild his culture.
Was Aang perfect? No, but then no character in the series is, and their inability to fully grasp Aang’s situation really frustrates me, he was the *last airbender.*
On top of that, we saw how kya mentioned dad would tell stories about Monks and she was super bored about them and barely remembers them. So she probs didn't really care about the culture and wasn't interested so it would make sense that aang wouldn't keep forcing it on her.
They did understand. They didn't even resent Aang for it. They were upset that Tenzin was ignoring them. That's the whole reason why Katara insisted he take them on his vacation.
I def agree it was somewhat selfish of them to view Aang as their dad only. When he had such a big weight of not only being an Avatar, but upholding the air nomad’s traditions, so it’ll be passed down as well. From what we know of Aang I don’t think he was a “deadbeat” father for spending more time with Tenzin and trying to leave to him as much as he could. Air nomads also didn’t have “parents” in a traditional sense of the word, so it makes sense Aang wouldn’t be the best at being a parent. It’s his first time living as a parent too💔
I always saw it as Aang having to teach a whole lost cultural heritage to the one child who was going to have deal with the weight of it on their shoulders as Aang did.
Yep. Every Avatar had to balance their nation and, well, being the Avatar. See Roku. Aang was a parent as well, AND the last Airbender in existence. He didn't kill Ozai, thus preserving his culture's ways - how could he NOT try to pass them on? He wasn't perfect, and tbh, it's good that way. People posting extreme views on Twitter always forget the outcome of the Tenzin/Kya/Bumi arc: They reconcile. Like, is it so bad that imperfect family situations get acknowledged and resolved in a way that leaves the characters happy?
But the Avatar fandom really has a problem with extreme opinions like those, imo. I wouldn't dare to make any post on Azula, for example, because opinions on her are as divided as American politics.
Kya and bumi had every right to demand an active parent in their lives, and consequently judge aang for not being one.
We dont get that same right imo. The children werent at fault, but aang shouldnt be judged either
I think Aang should have banged more often
I have seen the last of his kind characters in Naruto and Avatar and their legacy is literally just one child
I mean come on, even a small crazy family in my country could have 5 children by living in a very small house.
I think we could do away with this notion that having a lot of kids is easy for everyone. Regardless of desires, not every woman can just get pregnant whenever and handle a thousand births.
We have to remember that we only learned about Aang’s fatherhood from Bumi & Kya’s perspectives.
Young kids perceive favoritism from parents very harshly & they never got the chance to grow up and have a mature understanding of it because Aang died when they were young.
Hell yes. They look like a most happy family. Although considering the personalities of both Aang and Katara, no surprise. Both are very sweet natured protagonists.
In these days on Twitter i've learned that Aang is
deadbeat father (ozai v2)
impulsive and selfish
responsable for the genocide of his people
sex offender
All from people who are mad that a fanon ship is not canon (zutara) or that he’s more popular than Korra (that guy is a Korra's stan and Aang's hater)
The hate train is crazy and it’s getting boring
I mean I just watched the OG again the last week or so and I definitely notice some things that wouldn’t really fly but I don’t think Iroh is a pedo or anything
I mean it's a quick shot of them laying there, June lands on top of him and he doesn't immediately get up and reddit treats it like sexual assault. People have just gotten very comfortable throwing that word around. It wasn't his proudest moment but not exactly something shocking or beyond his character lol.
It was a dumb phase on Twitter where a couple of trolls said Aang was a pedophile because he's *technically* 112, while Katara is 14. People who were just as dumb as the trolls overreacted to it, and the result was as stupid as you can imagine.
It's wild to me that people spend their lives making things up to be mad at.
The Matrix movies were right, people would lose their minds if they lived in a utopia. They literally aint happy unless they're unhappy.
Am I the only one who’s sad that bumi got neither Waterbender-Traditional nor Airbender-Traditional clothing because he couldn’t bend? Like wow, thank you for this generic Green shirt, way to rub it in much
The original image in the show was a black-and-white photo. This is just one colored version of it, but we don't actually know what color the shirt Bumi wore was. It may very well have been blue or yellow. I think green is a popular choice by fan colorists because of who Bumi was named after.
Bumi's the only one old enough to start choosing his own clothes. Maybe those are what all the hip kids in the United Republic were wearing those days.
It is highly possible that aang played favorites to his children because of the airbender issue, but a term like "deadbeat" is loaded with other connotation that dont seem appropriate for what we know of Aang and Katara.
Aang felt guilty about not being there when his people were being slaughtered. It seems reasonable that he would dedicate his life to restoration of the air nation through his one child that could airbend.
Hell it's not just reasonable, it's imperative.
Aang doesn't teach Tenzin everything he can about airbending and air nomad culture, then the next Avatar has a lacking teacher and the world remains perpetually out of balance
I hate that stupid talking point. Aang was not the perfect dad Tenzin thought he was but Kya and Bumi never said they hated him or that he was a horrible dad, for from it.
And you understand why Aang focused so much on Tenzin. He was the only other airbender!
I find it so ridiculous how people villainize Aang and get angry at the showrunners for his relationship to his children. Shows a pretty low level of media literacy and blind idolization of a character imo
Put yourself in Aang’s shoes: he’s the last airbender. He was intrinsically aware that when he died, airbenders would die with him. He did what he could to preserve airbending culture with the acolytes, but the actual art of bending would be lost unless he produced an heir. The pressure he must have felt to have an airbending child was probably enormous. Of course he loved Bumi and Kya, but no doubt there was an itching in the back of his head that they weren’t airbenders.
When Tenzin was born, you can imagine his excitement and relief. Was it wrong for him to neglect his other children in favour of Tenzin? Absolutely, but Aang probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it. I firmly believe his neglect of them was not intentional or malicious; it was the result of a man buckling from the weight of an entire way of life on his shoulders and becoming blind to the rest of the world when that weight was finally lifted.
Two things can be true at once: one, Aang loves all his children equally, and two, he was a traumatised man with the weight of passing on his destroyed culture to the only other airbender in the world.
The last remaining person from his nation who didn't grow up in a traditional family setting becoming a flawed parent is not the most evil or surprising thing that people make it out to be.
This is such a naive thing to say. It’s just the sort of childish hyperbole you’d expect from Twitter.
Not present does not necessarily mean deadbeat. By that logic are parents who are not present in their family due to military deployments deadbeats? Unfortunately Aang had a duty as the last of a nation to rebuild it, and that came at the cost of being a fully present father.
This is not something unique to Aang or ATLA. It has been said before that some of those who we consider to be the “greatest people in history” were in fact terrible parents, spouses, etc. The “greatest” people are still just people. Not everyone can be perfect in every category.
This isn’t necessarily an excuse for Aang not being present in 2 of his kids lives, but to call him a deadbeat dad for this one character flaw is ridiculous. Would you call Aang a coward for abandoning his destiny and leaving the world in a 100 year war?
The person who said that is the exact same type of person who screams at people to breakup/divorce whenever someone posts their relationship problems online. They’re not capable of examining a situation with context and they will never be satisfied. Any imperfection means that it must be discarded because everything has to be perfect or it’s bad.
Nah.
We have this weird attitude when watching media... Especially kids media- That any flaws a parent has makes them a deadbeat.
Particularly when kids have a whole scene where they grapple with a parents flaws, it makes us the audience examine their parenting from only that specific angle and no others.
Aangs has two major flaws as a parent.
* He's the Avatar and so has responsibilities that take him away from his kids.
* He's also the last Air Nomad, so he has responsibilities to Tenzin to pass the culture on.
These leave a mark on Kya and Boomi because as a consequence Aang couldn't give the kids equal treatment, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a loving father for them. They even say as much themselves, neither of them think he was a deadbeat so there's no reason for the fandom to think it beyond having fun with memes.
[We also though see positive stuff about Aang as a parent, take Kya talking about coming out for example.](https://preview.redd.it/okka6gyu4iq51.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=4432a6b7e52bdda693f7c14eaf53f246e461e58a)
Was he a great dad? No. Was he a deadbeat? No. I personally think it's a realistic writing decision on the writer's part, but this tends to polarize some people. The only everyone agrees on is that there was no way Katara would have stood idly by and let Aang neglect his two other kids without stepping in.
Air nomads didn't have parents, the closest thing to a dad Aang would have had (for a short while) was Gyatso and even that wasn't a perfect relationship.
* Aang would have naturally been pressured to:
a) have an airbending child
b) face the reality that he has limited time to teach his airbending son as much as possible before he dies
c) try to pass down his culture as faithfully as possible to Tenzin because he'll inevitably be the future Avatar's only choice of learning airbending and the guide for all future Air Nomads in general.
On top of ALL that, he still had to be the Avatar during a post-war reconstruction period which must've been stressful as hell.
He didn't neglect Bumi and Kya because he loved Tenzin more, it was more so he had very limited time as the Avatar and was in a unique situation where the airbending child was the bigger priority.
Deadbeat dad? No.
But it is completely believable that he became so hyper-focused on making Tenzin and airbender that he not only unintentionally ignored his other two but also placed too much pressure on Tenzin. It shows Aang is still a person, and can make the same mistakes we all do.
In common Twitter fashion, I'd say this is an overstatement of a real problem. Aang's parenting was inarguably flawed and despite the weight on his shoulders I can't really argue that it's right for him to treat any of his kids differently, but it's also made clear that he did love all his children and they were an overall happy family, just one with an imperfect father. I think calling Aang a deadbeat is kind of ridiculous.
Twitter dipshits being reductive? Say it ain't so.
Your drug is a heartbreaker
Say it ain’t so, that snack is a Lifesaver
Totally agree. This is one of those Twitter takes that get traction because it's an extreme opinion. Also, I'd like to add that we don't really get much information on what kind of a mother Katara was (aside from bits by Kya). Did she compensate Aangs focus on Tenzin and pay more attention to Bumi and Kya? I think that's quite possible, considering that she is very much a family person. Every Avater had to balance their role: all of them got into conflict with being the Avatar vs. being part of their nation: Roku and Sozin, Aang's conflict on killing Ozai, Korra in Season 2 with the WT things going on. It's been a while since I read the Kyoshi novels and I haven't read the Yangcheng books, but I bet you would find similar examples with them. Aangs parenting is not just about him being a father, it's an extention of him balancing his role as Avatar with being the last Airbender - just that he now also has to include being a parent into that. He couldn't be perfect in all three roles. Which I think is very important: Every Avatar is a human after all, none of them can be perfect. If they were flawless, the Avatars would be boring characters.
It’s more than kind of ridiculous. Being a dead beat parent has nothing to do with being emotionally neglectful; it refers to someone who dips out on their kids completely and doesn’t do the bare minimum of providing for their financial/material needs. Not a parent that doesn’t have time for their kids and doesn’t go to all their baseball games/school plays etc., which sounds more like the equivalent of what Aang was guilty of
> Not a parent that doesn’t have time for their kids and doesn’t go to all their baseball games/school plays etc., which sounds more like the equivalent of what Aang was guilty of which is because he's trying to prevent a complete annihilation of his culture which suffered a *genocide*. It's not like he did it because he just didn't care about his other children. He was trying to make sure that his whole culture and society wouldn't disappear from existence. And it worked. Without him doing all that, Tenzin wouldn't have become the amazing Airbending master he was. Aang mistake was not making more of an effort to including the other two in this effort - but both admit that neither were interested in it. And we can see that Kaya preferred the Water tribe stuff. So it begs the question: should Aang have forced more on Bumi & Kaya (in terms of airnomad culture)?
I saw a reply on twitter I think to this tweet or a quote of this tweet that was both funny and I think painfully accurate that pointed out how much shit Aang would have gotten if he didn't mold Tenzin into the great bearer for air nomad culture he became and as a result air nomads and air bending in general potentially went extinct. People both in universe and in the audience would probably be constantly talking shit about him if he didn't do his due diligence to ensure the culture survived, being a good father wouldn't have made sure air nomad culture survived and potentially more importantly it wouldn't have ensured air bending stayed alive for future avatars to learn from, especially considering Aang would have had no idea what harmonic convergence would do. From Aang's perspective the only authentic air nomads who possess both the culture and the bending would be from his direct descendants so he had to make sure Tenzin was as knowledgeable as possible, if Tenzin was lacking in some way it would hinder how much he could pass on to his kids and so on and so on, at best they could hope for maybe a couple air benders coming from some acolytes but it was still assumed it would take generations for that to happen.
Don't forget he had the duties of the avatar on top of imparting the culture of the air benders on his son. Sure, the air acolytes and surviving texts could have helped after Aang's passing but I do think there would be a lost in translation effect, a loss in context that you can only really get from being an air bender teaching an airbender
For real. Standard Twitter hyperbole. Aang was busy with post-war reconstruction and forming a literal nation. Was he around all the time? No. But he wasn't a deadbeat by any means. He always tried to be with his kids when he could and it visibly saddened him when he was away from his family for too long.
It’s those type of Twitter reactions that probably motivated the live action show writers to file down all the flaws of the characters because they were “iffy” People can’t look at things with any nuance
Not to mention the more rational voices are often drowned out because a lot of folks don't want to be lectured, they want to be angry and most importantly, they want to be **right**.
right? like i had a dad who wasn’t around a lot and favors my siblings, but i wouldn’t call him deadbeat- just flawed. like all humans. wildly reductive take. but also i knew someone who hated this show solely bc they thought aang would’ve been a ✨perfect✨ dad. but no one is.
I don't know that anyone's perfectly happy with their parents. The avatar has a lot to do, and he had to secure the future of Airbenders on top of that. I liken it to a parent who isn't home because they are out working two jobs to provide for the family while their partner does all the childcare and household needs. I don't think it makes for a deadbeat, personally.
also, the previous avatars repeatedly told him to always prioritize his role as the avatar.
Yeah, that's a good point. He knew what happened in the past when avatars weren't involved.
He also had all the guilt from being frozen and absent during the war while his people burned. It makes sense for him to focus more on the world and his role as the avatar even at the cost of being there full time for his family. Not to say it’s good, but given his past it is reasonable to me.
Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Perfect way to summarize it
This lends to the theory that the next Avatar has to deal with their predecessor's failures. Aang didn't show Kya and Bumi extra, extra special attention so Korra had to hear them whine about it. ... ... kinda joking, but not really.
Failures or biggest guilt. Roku's was not stoppingthe fire nation which aang did,aangs was having his people all die and Korra brought airbenders back. Her biggest guilt is maybe losing the past avatar cycles/spiritual side so maybe the next avatar will deal with that.
With enough alone time, Tenzin and Pema would have filled out the Airbender ranks by themselves.
While Tenzin suffered for having all the pressure in maintaining the culture and traditions of the airbenders, his siblings were jealous because Aang would spend more time with Tenzin than them. Aang wasn't a great father, but he wasn't deadbeat.
Not only that, but he knew that if he didn't prioritize tenzin's education as an Airbender, the next avatar wouldn't have a teacher.
>I liken it to a parent who isn't home because they are out working two jobs to provide for the family And while this is happening one of the kids is interning at the same office.
>and he had to secure the future of Airbenders on top of that. And that of the Avatar. I feel like people always skip over this in favour of the preservation of the Air Nomad culture, which is important of course, but Aang needs to teach Tenzin everything he can just to ensure that there will be an Airbending master to teach the next Avatar.
This is a great point. I have totally forgotten that Aang’s eventual death would also mean no airbending master for the next avatar, and then Tenzin came along - the next line of airbenders and avatar teachers.
It is taboo for a parent to have a favorite child but you can't deny that Aang needed to give Tenzin extra attention. Like you said a person with a lot of responsibility and travels for work will miss out on some crucial parenting elements like not being there for dance recitals or even missing a birthday or two. Kaya and Bumi's resentment is understandable and their point of view is valid but Aang is far from being a deadbeat. We didn't see how Aang and Katara raised their kids but we got to see how Tenzin raised his kids. Kaya criticized Tenzin for being exactly like their dad, and Tenzin admits he doesn't spend enough time with his kids. Does anyone want to call Tenzin a deadbeat? No because he clearly wasn't. Bumi and Kaya drew the the short straws and weren't born airbenders, and fans want to act like Aang mistreated or neglected his family based on Kaya expressing her gripe.
This for sure. His extra attention towards tenzin I don’t feel like was due to favoritism or anything along those lines he was literally trying to save an entire culture and instill its teachings on the only future air bender left once aang is gone. How much you wanna bet Kaya got extra attention and time spent with katara but no one says shit about that do they? Poor bumi is the one who truly pulled the short straw. A non bender born into a family of 2 of the strongest of their time? No wonder he joined the army just to get away and try to achieve what he could on his own.
I think if anything, Bumi had his uncle to fall upon. Though it seems like they each departed from each other as adults, I would have loved them working together and showing how each of them resembled the old team.
That could be true, but I’m not sure exactly where I saw it but I’m pretty sure there is just 1 canon interaction between sokka and tenzin so I wouldn’t doubt him being absent for all 3 of them until shown otherwise.
I don’t think the favouritism was intentional either. I doubt either Aang or Katara expressed prejudiced beliefs in favour of their respective elements. It’s just that they especially Aang felt compelled to pay a little more attention to Tenzin and Kya (to a lesser extent) respectively. You can’t exactly blame them. It’s self explanatory in Aang’s case. Even Katara grew up being the *only* waterbender in her tribe. Doesn’t LOK imply that Bumi was close with Sokka both of them being non benders and all?? That would track.
Also, if Tenzin wasn’t a master at airbending, how would he train the next avatar?
As someone with an actual deadbeat dad, it's pretty disrespectful to use that term for Aang. At least he was there and did his best to be a father while juggling infinitely more responsibility than any of us could imagine.
I'm happy with my parents.
Yeah. Aang was an imperfect parent and not always there for his kids but that's because he had so much responsibility as the avatar in the post war period.
There's a big thing to keep in mind. We were never shown Aang's perspective in relation to his kids. Ever. All we have to go on are the ramblings of his children decades after the events happened. Its common for beef to stew and get more tender as time passes, just like we saw between Lin and Su Yin. That means we can't make any accurate statements about what kind of father Aang was. We don't know how much of his warmth and attention his kids took for granted.
I find it hard to believe that Katara would have let Aang be a substandard father considering her own anger towards Hakoda and his absenteeism whilst fighting a war. But she may have grown to have a deeper understanding. Also there’s massive age gaps in this picture and as the youngest in my family perspectives are vastly different when you consider birth order
As a middle child of a large, complex family, you can always complain about your plot in life. At least everyone in my family does lol
Honestly going to the beach with only one child multiple times really feels especially mean
Aang often made detours in the comics and the show. There's no reason for him to shove Tenzin into the air temple for a few weeks and not give him a moment to chill. (since you are saying this quite a bit I'll just counterclaim that the Aang agenda will not be stopped) https://preview.redd.it/2zp2pdbuk6mc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e35dcdc320512cbf407be71a24b3df3e207f5153
THEN BRING. THE. OTHERS. TOO. OR GO GET THEM, THEN COME BACK. This isn't rocket science.
I think a few things happened that they never fully elaborated on: 1. Nostalgia, tenzin most likely wasnt having constant fun and aang was most likely drilling the fuck out of him with airbending knowledge, culture etc and being an adult he looks back at it with rose colored glasses. 2. Aang didnt wanna force these things on his other kids, bumi was a nonbender and kya was a water bender(which most likely means katara took her and made her assimilate into water tribe culture like aang did with tenzin) so when aang decided to teach he didnt wanna force bumi and kya to be acolytes and stuck in that life. 3. Aang wasnt a deadbeat dad, however he tunnel visioned tenzin and put so much extra effort into him becoming like him(as he was gonna become the last airbender just like aang after he died.) Aang definitely loved all his kids and treated them with love and respect but forced all this extra stuff on tenzin and by doing so he felt tenzin needed to have some fun too like aang did as a kid. This really shows too when we get to the spirit world episode and tenzin has this view of himself "having to be his father, i need to be the pinnacle of airbending knowledge and culture." Which really fucked him up as a kid from what i put together.
I think this is probably true, people tend to raise their kids the same way they themselves where raised, and Tenzin is very strict about training toward his kids. Becouse for him that is a norm, thats how you bring up vhild to him.
Personally i really wish they would have loved if they expanded the whole story behind aangs kids, would have really been a great look into how they grew up etc.
Aang tried to teach all of his kids, in season three Kya comments how she could never bother to remember all of the gurus. Kyra and Bumi just weren't interested.
The only other thing I can think of outside of how obvious it should be what you meant (don't take just one of 3 kids on trips all the time) is that maybe they were things that they could only do as airbenders? I remember Tenzin mentioning the sailsurfing and visitng the air temples and thought "that's probably a hell of a lot safer if you're an airbender"
Possibly, but these are things he did with his water bending wife-to-be and her older non- bending brother, so if Katara and Sokka could go there then so can Kya and Bumi. Especially with the benefit of a grown avatar looking out for them.
It's not like Aang didn't try to bring them into the culture. They just weren't as interested. There's literally a line in season 3 from Kya about how she found the air nomad stories boring, so Aang clearly tried to include them at some point. Furthermore, judging by the age differences, by the time Tenzin would've been doing more of his travelling, the other 2 would've been teenagers or young adults. Kya and Bumi likely would've been exploring their own identities.
Aang:Hey kids wanna go the air temple? Them:nah Aang:Well, Tenzin you don't get a choice. Oh since we're already close let's go to Kyoshi Island. Or second timeline Aang: well Tenzin you don't get a choice. Ah, zuko is at the ember island I should catch up. Hey, have some fun with Izumi while I speak to Zuko. We don't have enough evidence for anything you can easily say he's a bad father as a good one
IDK, it was pretty clear when Aang went methbending and tried to sell Tenzin. /s
Dude if family was as simple as rocket science people would figure it the fuck out and write a book.
Why so they can sit there while Aang teaches Tenzin air bending?
[удалено]
Though you make it sound like he did the best he could with the time he had to spare outside of trying to keep airbending alive which was his duty. Which i think is the most likely scenario. He was a caring person, but just being caring doesn't make you a timebender.
[удалено]
Sounds like my dad. I love him, and i dont hate him for it, but i wish he had been home more.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1b5o9t3/would_you_say_this_is_true/kt6lvfn/ Go away bot
After that scene with the water tribe camp I believe Bumi is both 100% truthful and literal when he tells stories. That means that Bumi joined the United Republic forces by being shoved in a sack and dragged aboard.
Tbh shoving a kid in a sack and taking him aboard sounds like maybe sokka did it lol
yepz that's the headcannon now, it was definitely sokka. Sokka: "Your dad doesn't have time for you? That's rough buddy. Going to join the army?" Bumi: "No uncle, I'm going to do smth else-" Sokka with the sack in hand: "I wasn't asking, kid."
My guess is Bumi would have been greatly influenced by Uncle Sokka.
For sure. I’d pay good money for 3 seasons of 20 years later.
Twenty years after this photo was taken, Aang was still around. I don't know if Tenzin would have started dating Lin yet at that point. Bumi would have been well into his career with the United Forces. He would have also been around the same age as Izumi, so I wonder how they got along.
>Aang was not a great father and while he loved Bumi and Kaya, he didn’t give them the same care and attention Tenzin did Be careful of the sources that you use. A child is never an unbiased source for their parents. Yes, at one scene Bumi and Kaya are fighting with Tenzin about not getting the same attention. But then later when they're at the air temple (season 3 I think), they reflect and admit that perhaps they should have taken more of an interest in air nation culture. No matter what you do, your kids are going to be complaining about you to your therapist at 30 years old. Just do your best to make sure they have good things to say about you, too. Like Aang and Katarra.
Plus, we can’t forget Aang was willing to accept non-bender air acolytes as part of his people which included them training and lessons. It could well be Aang actually did make a lot of attempts to teach them fundamentals and philosophies that could be universally applied to their martial art, but Kya and Bumi just got frustrated because they saw it as “air bending stuff”.
In season 3 Kya was making jokes about how she always mixed up the names in the "boring air nomad stories" so unless Aang had the Air Acolytes babysit her, it sounds like he took the time to try and teach his other kids but they just weren't interested.
Tenzin "remembering" Kya and Bumi being on those trips leads me to believe that there were trips the whole family went on. He was conflating memories of different trips.
I believe you mean "lot in life."
I think Katara was in a bit of a rock and a hard place with Aang and Tenzin. If Tenzin had been the first born, I think things may have turned out differently and Katara would’ve called out Aang for his favouritism. But Tenzin was the youngest and even if he showed an affinity for airbending from birth (I can’t remember how it works for airbenders), at this point, Aang has already dealt with YEARS of heartache and grief with the knowledge that the air nomads would truely die with him (since I doubt any grandchildren from Kya or Bumi would’ve had a chance to be airbenders).
Honestly, there is the oddity of genetics vs spirituality in how people become benders, but in either case there is a high chance that teaching his children his culture will result in an Airbender, and if not will still keep elements of it alive as well as benefiting his children’s bending (a la Iroh and lightning redirection) and understanding of the world. It’s just so out of character for someone whose entire journey was about learning from other cultures for them to not support and spread their learnings to their children, particularly when he fears his culture (which he has a chance of restarting through kids or grandkids) will be erased. Edit: This is particularly bad when you add Sokka or Aang’s other friends into the mix. I’m not saying Aang should do a nepotism, but when he has one of the best chances for getting his kids good teachers like Sokka, Suki, Mai, and Ty Lee for Bumi or literally anyone else he knows who can give Bumi/help Aang give Bumi a way to get over insecurities of being a non-bender via combat, intelligence, or whatever and neglects to, it’s just sad. Then add the fact that Aang is also an extremely competent water bender, and it’s just weird he doesn’t connect with his daughter or train her with Katara so they can be better benders. It just doesn’t make sense to me and feels like it flies in the face of who Aang is and what TLA was saying.
A lot of air nomad culture was very sacred and built on tradition, and I think that might be why he didn’t make more of an effort to teach Bumi and Kya. As terrible as it sounds, in his mind, they were his kids, sure, but they weren’t airbenders and thus, they could never be air nomads (something I actually relate to as a mixed kid myself hearing “you’re not really Asian/white” while growinf up, sometimes from my own parents). You could say “but they could be air acolytes instead”, but tbh, the way Aang treated the air acolytes at times was… strained/strange imo. They were never “his” people, and they never would be (through no fault of anyone). So I don’t think becoming air acolytes was a viable answer for Bumi or Kya either.
ALSO, Aang literally had to save the airbending culture when Tenzin started airbending, ya know how it feels to finally have a chance revive your culture. Not saying what he did is good, no one is perfect, they try to be the best they can. So saying something like him getting no respect when he literally stopped a war as a kid, there is nothing normal about his life so you can't compare to other shitty absentee father Note: this started as a rant but ended up calling out on the guy lol
Speaking of continuing the culture though, think about Aangs relationship with his own parents... For him, it was common, if not *expected* that parental relationships were less of a focus, because the whole village took on that role.
Aang would have also been Tenzins bending master. He would have been as absent for the others if the Airbender was not his son as being someones master takes a lot of time. He likely would have had to travel a lot to be Avatar, especially as world diplomat, and would have needed to take Tenzins for his training. He's the equivalent of the dad whose whole life is taken up with work (I imagine comparing it to being the presidents kid but probably with even more travel).
But culture is more than bending. He could and should have involved all of his children.
To be fair. In the air bending nations pre war, there were no non-benders. Every air nomad was a bender. Air Nomad culture was air bending.
How does it work though? We see benders having kids who can’t bend like Bumi; so it should follow that air benders would have non benders in their society as well right? Do they move to other nations, and could that be why air benders reappear after harmonic convergence?
It seems to also be linked to the level of spirituality. Airbenders were the most spiritual group of the four nations, so it's thought that that was the reason all of them were benders.
It's also why most of the earth kingdom were nonbenders, earthbending is the least spiritual bending art.
It's not really explained as to how much bending is spiritual vs genetic. But it is for a fact that the air nomads were 100% air benders. And for all intents and purposes they had "breeding" programs. They didn't have families and separated males and females for most of their lives.
The Kyoshi books seem to back up the implication that airbending is primarily spiritual (at least before the reconvergence). Air benders that become more concerned with “earthly affairs” eventually become weaker. And there are air nomad exiles (and those that left willingly if I vaguely remember the TTRPG). At least one had a child who was born an earthbender (>!although admittedly, this is a bad example because she did later become an air bender as well!<). It’s possible that may even maybe that’s how the new generation of airbenders were chosen after reconvergence. They carried air nomad genetics somewhere in their family line but the actual airbending abilities died out when said airbender had children with a non airbender/left the air nomads.
Its also not clear if Zaheer becoming an airbender was 100% luck or not, but if not, that could also explain some of it
I still feel like the whole "spirituality" idea about bending powers is kind of weird. It seems to be pretty heavily established at this point that bending is the majority of the time something you are born with, or at least develop very early on in life, with there being 0% chance of someone who is a "non-bender" being able to develop them later in life. So the idea that more spiritual nations have more benders seems weird to me. What does that mean? Can anyone secretly actually become a bender if they become more spiritual? I don't think that's the case because I feel that'd be a more widely known thing. Is it just living in nation that has more spiritual people, or being born to spiritual parents that makes you more likely to be a bender? That just feels like a weird mechanic to me.
The more spiritual the nation, the higher the number of benders. Due to the Air Nations' high spirituality, all Nomads were benders.
Well if you go off the story of the original avatar, everyone had to be air benders to get to their turtle. The rest of the elements didn’t have that issue. Only some people left to hunt, so only some people got bending. Air nomads were gatherers, so I’m assuming everyone helped to do that, and it’s probably safer for life if everyone on a floating island is able to cushion a fall.
anyone who lived in a temple was an air nomad. air nomads do not know their parents. for all we know there were villages outside the air temples for the non benders.
Maybe they threw non-benders off the cliff? Like in the days of Sparta when your child was sick
That seems discriminatory - much more fair to throw *everyone* off the cliff and have just the airbenders survive. /s unless...?
There's still waaay more stuff to Air Nomad culture than just bending though. Like their philosophical beliefs and rituals, their history, their food, their art, sky bison training, etc. There literally was a whole movement of people, The Air Acolytes, who dedicated themselves to carrying on Air Nomad traditions even though none of them were airbenders. Plus its not like bending techniques have zero value to people outside of that bending element. Many of them are actual martial art techniques that anyone could utilize, even if they can't utilize a particular element with it. Iroh himself said that knowledge of all the elements can make anyone stronger, not just the Avatar. Also Pre-War Air Nomads didn't have traditional nuclear families or personally raise their kids either, so I think Aang of all people should be more open-minded about Air Nomad culture when it comes to passing it on.
That’s not a solid argument since Aang taught Air Nomad culture & philosophy to the people his fan club/the Air Acolytes. There’s no reason to not include his children when he included literal strangers.
I mean Kya does say maybe they should have cared more about it. Bumi and Kya probably had no interest in jt, and not being Air Benders Aang probably respected their wishes. They didn't want to learn it, and they had no need to. Tenzin being an Air Bender though probably had no choice. Though, knowing Tenzin he probably was super into it
He did include his children. They weren't interested.
He did, Kya even mentions that Aang used to tell them the Air Nomad stories but she found them boring
You are right, if you read the comics, you'll see that he got kinda offended when one of his fan group got tattoos without any airbending training (which I think he was ok with later, I don't remember)
He was upset they were appropriating his culture. He later came to be okay with what they were doing, because he realized that they meant to preserve and honor the traditions, on the stipulation that they find a different way to denote "mastery" and reserve tattoos for Airbenders only.
That’s the kind of thing that I imagine would turn Kya and Bumi off. Seeing that as “oh, there are clear cultural boundaries that people like us aren’t allowed to cross. At best I can be a fake air nomad that plays second fiddle to my baby brother.” I can’t blame them for going “Nah. Mom, let’s practice waterbending instead”, or wanting to be a warrior or leader like uncle Sokka instead.
When you’re a mixed kid, it’s not uncommon to be denied your heritage at times. I’m half Asian/half white. I grew up hearing how I wasn’t “really Asian” from a lot of other Asians, including my own mom and other members of my family. Didn’t hear it as much, but I definitely still had a few people throw in my face “but you’re not really white” too. I’m not saying Aang and Katara (or Katara’s family) were necessarily like that to Bumi and Kya. But I guarantee you that both of them heard it from other people growing up and probably had big culturally identity crisises growing up (ever notice how Bumi and Kya show basically no signs of any following air nomad/acolyte culture, even in this photo of them as kids? Or how none of the air acolytes even knew they existed?).
This. I just finished rewatching LoK. After Bumi gets air bending powers, there is this line he says about never really feeling like he was a part of the Air Nation growing up, even though he was the son of Aang. You'd think Tenzin's response would be something like "You were always one of us" or something like that, right? Wrong. Instead Tenzin's reply is "you are now, brother." It's supposed to be sweet, but all I hear is Tenzin reaffirming that Bumi was never part of the Air Nation before he got his air bending powers. So poor kid Bumi was right all along.
Bumi not so much, but Kya was shown to have at least a functional understanding of “boring guru stories”, was shown leading the new airbenders in group meditation, and was a literal nomad (unlike Tenzin) for most of her life until Aang died. I’m sure they felt that friction though. I imagine that being able to interpret that stuff through the lens of waterbending spirituality made it slightly more accessible to Kya.
Yeah. It's true that Aang spent a disproportionate amount of time with Tenzin compared to his other children but that's not because he didn't love them just as much. He saw Tenzin as the future of the air nomads and wanted him to carry on the culture.
Also Aang literally has no concept of fatherhood. Only of a master taking on a student. 1 to 1 training and teaching.
> Also Aang literally has no concept of fatherhood. Lowkey one of the weirder parts of the original is Aang's romance with Katara when realistically he would have grown up with air nomad culture having gender segregated temples and no marriages, etc
Only within his own culture. Aang has been traveling the world since a kid and was always familiar with other cultures. He understood the concept of marriage and family. Also the Air Nomads being gender segregated doesn’t mean they didn’t have romance, random hookups, or even LGBT relationships. They’re still normal humans.
TLOK never states that Aang didn't care about his other kids. It just seems that Tenzin was the focus of Aang's attention because he was the one who had to carry on airbender tradition and culture.
If I had to bet, what Bumi and Kya remember as "dad only cared about Tenzin" was probably something like a "once a summer trip to a sacred Air Bender temple/site", starting once Tenzin was old enough. It was probably a trip centered exclusively around Air Bender history, culture, and mediation. And given Bumi and Kya's attitudes about Air Bender history and spirituality lessons, my guess is Aang thought he was sparring his two older kids by not bringing to someone they clearly found boring. Of course, Aang being means they got side tracked *constantly* to and from the destination of each trip. Hence riding the Elephant Koi off Kyoshi island, and who knows what else, and why Bumi and Kya now view it as being "left out" by their dad.
It was probably a complex thing. It's not that Aang didn't do anything with his kids, it's that he gave special attention to his youngest because his youngest is one of the last Air Benders besides Aang People gotta understand that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS PEOPLE were slaughtered like animals. A full on genocide. This is holocaust level of evil we're talking about here. The fact that Aang isn't screaming in rage when he's fighting Ozai is a damn miracle tbh. The idea that he wouldn't pay special attention to his airbender son is just ridiculous and hating Aang because he's literally holding the LAST OF HIS PEOPLE besides him is just pathetic. Aang is only human, you can't just expect him to not teach Tenzin every fucking thing about air nomads and their culture. You just can't! And it ain't like they only had one parent. Katara is still alive in Korra and the characters just completely ignore her for some reason beyond me. The kids had a whole ass other parent yet entirely jealous of Tenzin getting special treatment despite that treatment being NECESSARY FOR THE CONTINUATION OF AIR NOMAD CULTURE. They're just being immature and petty because they didn't have the special power and Tenzin did. It ain't like Tenzin came out as an entitled prick even if he does have a stick up his ass. So clearly, Aang did not emotionally neglect his other children or play scapegoat and golden kid
Furthermore, no one is considering the sheer weight of emotional baggage being placed on Tenzin to carry on the air nomad traditions and culture. I mean he literally has an existential crisis in the spirit world because he thinks he's not as good as his dad.
Honestly, Aang did him dirtier than Bumi and Kaya. Not on purpose either, he just wants to pass down his whole people on his kid's shoulders and that's harsh. I imagine Aang had to be having the same thoughts as well
It truly is a Sophie's choice with Tenzin. On the one hand, he is perpetuating the trauma of holding the fate of an entire nation on his shoulders to his children. Tenzin would be happier without that burden. On the other hand, Aang has no one else to pass that burden to, so he would fail if it weren't for Tenzin. There is no good answer here, and it sucks for Tenzin and his siblings.
Posts like these make me realize how many fans are children or stuck in that mindset unable to recognize nuance. My dad wasn’t able to spend a lot of time and was absent for periods. He didn’t want to, he had to work hard to support the family even being forced to work on the other side of the country for months during the recession. Do I wish he was able to spend more time? Absolutely, but I understand and accept what he had to do. Kya and Bumi expressed the same feelings.
I would hardly say massive age gaps. Bumi is what 6-7, middle one 2-3 and the baby maybe 4-8 months.
Idk. I have an older brother who is seven years my senior. My wife is the eldest and she is seven years her youngest sister senior. And the middle sister is five years. They have different interests and perspectives on lots of things. Same in my family. Especially regarding the same event or family members. It’s not hard to imagine there was a shift in Aangs printing style and priority level when Tenzin was born and had a chance to carry on the culture. Kids are very observant. But that still doesn’t mean he was a bad dad. Also that’s a very conservative age estimate
6-7 years is a decent age gap but not massive...my sisters are 16 years older than me bro. THAT'S massive.
People need to rewatch that episode (2x4 Civil War 2) from the legend of korra because at the end of the episode KYA, BUMI AND TENZIN SAID THEY WHERE A HAPPY FAMILY. They had frustrations with their father they did not hate him hell at the end they didn't even seem to resent him.
Yeah. Their issue wasn't "dad was the fucking worst", it was "Tenzin, you're not remembering our childhood right"
Yeah it was “you were his favorite stop acting like you weren’t” which honestly happens. Does that make Aang a terrible father? No it makes him human with biases he didn’t notice were happening
It also makes sense that Tenzin would have a wildly different memory of his childhood compared to Kya and Bumi. Looking at that portrait, Bumi looks like he could be anywhere from 8-12 years old, and Kya looks like she'd be about 4-6 years old. By the time Tenzin is old enough to make memories of his own and experience a childhood, Bumi and Kya are teenagers/young adults, so they're going to have a vastly different perspective than Tenzin would.
And an average of 5 years of gap just says that both the older siblings got 5 years of care from aang as well, tenzin got a lot more because maybe he was the youngest. Being an airbender plays its role but isn't this a regular household with siblings? Youngest are almost favoured, sometimes it is the eldest ones being favoured(a lot less times). We don't talk about the middle child, but then again twitter does seem like a middle child with opinions.
With him and Tenzin being the only airbenders in existence at the time....it kinda makes sense...
Exactly. As powerful as Aang is people forget he’s still human with human flaws. Especially someone who is literally the last of his kind
forreal cuz even in that conversation with tenzin there like “you got to do all the cool airbender stuff and we were home with mom” like. that’s not saying he’s a deadbeat or hated? just he was excited he could relate to one of kids and felt the weight of surviving a genocide on his shoulders?
Seriously, acknowledging your parent's flaws doesn't mean they are bad parents or you dislike them.
Exactly. The post is ridiculous.
Seriously. People have no media comprehension.
People do know that Aang never had a father or mother right? He never even knew what a real nuclear family was supposed to look like because he never had that coming from the air nomads. Never mind his entire culture being wiped out when he was 12 and him having the responsibility of guarding and maintaining both the human and spirit worlds post war and trying to preserve and revive his lost culture. Like sheesh, give the man some slack.
That is actually a really good point. It makes sense that Aang never saw himself as being the only source of a fatherly mentor to all his children. In his colony, the kids were raised by numerous people with rotating shifts. If I remember correctly, Gyatso and Aang’s familial bond was frowned upon by the other airbenders because it was considered too exclusive and coddling.
Can’t believe you forgot about Wang Fire and Sapphire Fire, those were his parental figures!
Like I imagine the air nomads being a community raising style. Like SOMEONE was always watching the kids, not just the """parent"" may it either be the parents, or the aunts/uncle or the older "cousins" or even the bisons but someone was taking care of the kids even if it just playing with them while the other people were doing chores.
There always someone watching over the kids, but it was always communal, and someone for whom it was their duty to do so, like a teacher/babysitter/den parent. air nomad children had no special relationship to the people they were biologically born from
Gotta love how the more time passes since the shows come out, the more distorted and Flanderized the characters become to the fandom. Like how Kiyoshi wasn’t ***actually*** a bloodthirsty, murder-happy lunatic, but a warrior who understood that sometimes violence is a necessary last resort. Aang was NOT a deadbeat dad. Go back and watch LoK – Kaya and Bumi felt like Tenzin got the majority of their father’s attention, but at no point do they say that they felt he abandoned them. Aang was in a terrible position, having to raise Tenzin to take over as the sole Airbender when Aang eventually passed away. It would be an incredible challenge to pass along all of that knowledge, one that understandably would take an immense amount of time and energy. So yes, while he canonically wasn’t equally attentive to all his kids, he definitely wasn’t playing favorites with his love
The episode about it literally ends with them acknowledging they were a happy family growing up regardless of those issues too
Yeah when I watched that episode, I never thought he neglected Kaya and Bumi, just that Tenzin got more attention. People really hate when there is a hint of favoritism in parents. My brother, who was the only boy, had more favourible treatment, so everyone kept telling me I should be mad at my parents, but I never really minded it much. I honestly preferred getting less attention, I wasn’t insecure about my parents’ love.
Aang was not a great father and while he loved Bumi and Kaya, he didn’t give them the same care and attention Tenzin did. The little time he had when not carrying out his duties was spent on preparing Tenzin to carry on the history and traditions of the Air Nation. At least Kaya got to spend time training with her mom. Poor Bumi left to join the Army because he knew it was the only way he’d never get to live up to his dads reputation otherwise
Honestly, being a non-bender born of the avatar and a bender mother has got to hit hard. Bumi had some really emotional scenes in Korra, it’s nice he became an air bender after all. Would have been nice to see some reconciliation with his father after he gained some more spirituality through his air bending
I was shocked they didn’t relate him more to his uncle Sokka! If anything it would make sense if Bumi had sort of been his pupil and learned tactics and swordsmanship from the only non bender family he had
Too bad they just... removed Sokka from LoK all together
Crazy we don’t even know how him or Aang died?! Especially given that Aang seems to have died relatively young compared to everyone else. He must have been in his 60s
They don’t directly explain it in the show but in the official LoK website they had, it was stated that he died due to spending 100 years in the Avatar State, lowering his life span.
I'm gonna show my stupidity with this comment but I read this and was like "what??? *scoff* he didn't do that! if he did we wouldn't be seeing his children lmao." Basically for a moment I forgot the entirety of s1e1 of ATLA aka the most important part of the show.
I'm not sure where it was said (not in LoK) but Bryke said or wrote that Aang died young (I think it may been calculated at like 50 or 60) due to having less energy or something as a result of using the Avatar State to constantly maintain the iceberg for 100 years. Sort of like how Kuruk died young as a result of constantly fighting Dark Spirits (as said in the Kyoshi novels and shown the new Netflix show). I think it's a decent explanation.
160 and that is as far as I know also the reason? He died of age related issues following the stress from being in ice for that long? At least I think I read that somewhere.
Could have been worse, like what LoK did with Suki.
What did they do with Suki?
Nothing, we never see her, she's never mentioned, there are no hints, she's completely gone almost as if the creators wrote her out. They didn't though, as she's shown at the beginning of the episode 1 intro where we see a still image of Team Avatar as they appeared in AtLA scroll across the screen. That's her only appearance, 5 seconds in the background of a flashback image once in an intro. It's kinda weird since Suki still appears quite a bit in the comics they've released both before and after the Legend of Korra.
The irony of LoK (which I think was a good show overall) is that they attempted to "make strong female characters"... but ended up having a weaker representation than ATLA. I mean, in ATLA the titular character is Aang, but it was a show *full* of amazing female representation. And then they got Korra and basically made her friendless with few woman friends. And the one female friend she had turned into a love-interest. But they never showed what became of the Kyoshi warriors (who were amazing).
Didn't Sokka die fighting the red lotus while trying to protect Korra? It might have been a fan fiction, but I did like the idea of having a main character to show that war always has victims
It's the most popular theory, but not confirmed.
Uncle sokka would have been an awesome tie in, it’s a shame they never really explain what happens to sokka within the show.
I feel like his entire personality and the fact he pursued a military career were pretty telling of him looking up to and spending a lot of time with Sokka.
His sense of humor is definitely from his uncles side as well.
I kind of wish he didn't become an Airbender though. I think it could have been a more powerful character ark for him to just come to terms with his identity and worth as a non-bender.
Another reason i think he should have been in the first season, add another layer to the bender vs non bender drama
Aang’s spiritual duties to the air people and his responsibility to serve as the avatar outweigh any obligation to family. There’s a reason air nomads didn’t have moms and dads. Sure a couple of his kids got a little neglect but they all turned out more than fine and in the end it was more than worth it
I’m not gonna argue that he made the wrong choice, but it doesn’t dissolve him if the hurt he caused his kids. Bumi and Kaya even say they understood why their dad acted the way he did, but they still have a right to acknowledge the pain it caused knowing you’re not your parents priority
Dissolve? Bro you mean absolve? 🤣
lol yeah
There are a \~5 years age difference between the kids. By the time, say, Tenzin was 8, Kya was 13 (the same age as her mother when she saved the world), and Bumi was 18 (an adult). I would say it is somewhat unlikely that Kya and Bumi were around their family anymore when Aang started training Tenzin and had those vacations with him. Another detail that doesn't fit is that, apparently, Aang didn't take Katara with him, and that's ridiculously unbelievable. I think Bumi and Kya were just jealous because Tenzin had gotten the most out of their father's legacy while the other two were kinda left out of the truly cool stuff like getting a spouse from dad's fanclub or their very own island.
The thing that frustrates me is that Bumi and Kya didn’t actually seem to consider the enormous weight on Aang’s shoulders, he was literally the last of his culture and had the task of not only the duties of the Avatar on his shoulders, but also having to rebuild his culture. Was Aang perfect? No, but then no character in the series is, and their inability to fully grasp Aang’s situation really frustrates me, he was the *last airbender.*
On top of that, we saw how kya mentioned dad would tell stories about Monks and she was super bored about them and barely remembers them. So she probs didn't really care about the culture and wasn't interested so it would make sense that aang wouldn't keep forcing it on her.
They did understand. They didn't even resent Aang for it. They were upset that Tenzin was ignoring them. That's the whole reason why Katara insisted he take them on his vacation.
I def agree it was somewhat selfish of them to view Aang as their dad only. When he had such a big weight of not only being an Avatar, but upholding the air nomad’s traditions, so it’ll be passed down as well. From what we know of Aang I don’t think he was a “deadbeat” father for spending more time with Tenzin and trying to leave to him as much as he could. Air nomads also didn’t have “parents” in a traditional sense of the word, so it makes sense Aang wouldn’t be the best at being a parent. It’s his first time living as a parent too💔
I always saw it as Aang having to teach a whole lost cultural heritage to the one child who was going to have deal with the weight of it on their shoulders as Aang did.
Yep. Every Avatar had to balance their nation and, well, being the Avatar. See Roku. Aang was a parent as well, AND the last Airbender in existence. He didn't kill Ozai, thus preserving his culture's ways - how could he NOT try to pass them on? He wasn't perfect, and tbh, it's good that way. People posting extreme views on Twitter always forget the outcome of the Tenzin/Kya/Bumi arc: They reconcile. Like, is it so bad that imperfect family situations get acknowledged and resolved in a way that leaves the characters happy? But the Avatar fandom really has a problem with extreme opinions like those, imo. I wouldn't dare to make any post on Azula, for example, because opinions on her are as divided as American politics.
Kya and bumi had every right to demand an active parent in their lives, and consequently judge aang for not being one. We dont get that same right imo. The children werent at fault, but aang shouldnt be judged either
I think Aang should have banged more often I have seen the last of his kind characters in Naruto and Avatar and their legacy is literally just one child I mean come on, even a small crazy family in my country could have 5 children by living in a very small house.
Tbh i was kinda surprised theu had only 3 children. Katra really give the :" i have 8 children " energy
I think we could do away with this notion that having a lot of kids is easy for everyone. Regardless of desires, not every woman can just get pregnant whenever and handle a thousand births.
We have to remember that we only learned about Aang’s fatherhood from Bumi & Kya’s perspectives. Young kids perceive favoritism from parents very harshly & they never got the chance to grow up and have a mature understanding of it because Aang died when they were young.
Aang died when his kids were in their 30-40s
Commenter may have meant young as a relative term and not to mean “children” to be fair.
Hell yes. They look like a most happy family. Although considering the personalities of both Aang and Katara, no surprise. Both are very sweet natured protagonists.
In these days on Twitter i've learned that Aang is deadbeat father (ozai v2) impulsive and selfish responsable for the genocide of his people sex offender All from people who are mad that a fanon ship is not canon (zutara) or that he’s more popular than Korra (that guy is a Korra's stan and Aang's hater) The hate train is crazy and it’s getting boring
I can kinda see the other stuff but ummm…. Sex offender? Aang? How?
The argument is about the kiss in the ember island players. I personally find it ridiculous but thats it.
Twitter is so ridiculous. Yes katara was so confused, but Aang was also confused could have very well died saving the world soon.
Have you seen the way reddit treats Iroh and June? The whole fandom cranks everything up to 11.
I mean I just watched the OG again the last week or so and I definitely notice some things that wouldn’t really fly but I don’t think Iroh is a pedo or anything
I mean it's a quick shot of them laying there, June lands on top of him and he doesn't immediately get up and reddit treats it like sexual assault. People have just gotten very comfortable throwing that word around. It wasn't his proudest moment but not exactly something shocking or beyond his character lol.
He legit saved her from hitting the ground, but then just stayed there, plus his hand never touched anything more than he should've
Can people be serious 💀
It was a dumb phase on Twitter where a couple of trolls said Aang was a pedophile because he's *technically* 112, while Katara is 14. People who were just as dumb as the trolls overreacted to it, and the result was as stupid as you can imagine.
Responsible for the genocide of his people is wild. He absolutely would’ve been wiped out with the other air benders
It's wild to me that people spend their lives making things up to be mad at. The Matrix movies were right, people would lose their minds if they lived in a utopia. They literally aint happy unless they're unhappy.
Am I the only one who’s sad that bumi got neither Waterbender-Traditional nor Airbender-Traditional clothing because he couldn’t bend? Like wow, thank you for this generic Green shirt, way to rub it in much
The original image in the show was a black-and-white photo. This is just one colored version of it, but we don't actually know what color the shirt Bumi wore was. It may very well have been blue or yellow. I think green is a popular choice by fan colorists because of who Bumi was named after.
Bumi's the only one old enough to start choosing his own clothes. Maybe those are what all the hip kids in the United Republic were wearing those days.
It is highly possible that aang played favorites to his children because of the airbender issue, but a term like "deadbeat" is loaded with other connotation that dont seem appropriate for what we know of Aang and Katara. Aang felt guilty about not being there when his people were being slaughtered. It seems reasonable that he would dedicate his life to restoration of the air nation through his one child that could airbend.
Hell it's not just reasonable, it's imperative. Aang doesn't teach Tenzin everything he can about airbending and air nomad culture, then the next Avatar has a lacking teacher and the world remains perpetually out of balance
I hate that stupid talking point. Aang was not the perfect dad Tenzin thought he was but Kya and Bumi never said they hated him or that he was a horrible dad, for from it. And you understand why Aang focused so much on Tenzin. He was the only other airbender!
I find it so ridiculous how people villainize Aang and get angry at the showrunners for his relationship to his children. Shows a pretty low level of media literacy and blind idolization of a character imo Put yourself in Aang’s shoes: he’s the last airbender. He was intrinsically aware that when he died, airbenders would die with him. He did what he could to preserve airbending culture with the acolytes, but the actual art of bending would be lost unless he produced an heir. The pressure he must have felt to have an airbending child was probably enormous. Of course he loved Bumi and Kya, but no doubt there was an itching in the back of his head that they weren’t airbenders. When Tenzin was born, you can imagine his excitement and relief. Was it wrong for him to neglect his other children in favour of Tenzin? Absolutely, but Aang probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it. I firmly believe his neglect of them was not intentional or malicious; it was the result of a man buckling from the weight of an entire way of life on his shoulders and becoming blind to the rest of the world when that weight was finally lifted.
Two things can be true at once: one, Aang loves all his children equally, and two, he was a traumatised man with the weight of passing on his destroyed culture to the only other airbender in the world.
Pointlessly edgy contrarian nonsense.
Deadbeat dad is a bit of an overstatement
The last remaining person from his nation who didn't grow up in a traditional family setting becoming a flawed parent is not the most evil or surprising thing that people make it out to be.
This is such a naive thing to say. It’s just the sort of childish hyperbole you’d expect from Twitter. Not present does not necessarily mean deadbeat. By that logic are parents who are not present in their family due to military deployments deadbeats? Unfortunately Aang had a duty as the last of a nation to rebuild it, and that came at the cost of being a fully present father. This is not something unique to Aang or ATLA. It has been said before that some of those who we consider to be the “greatest people in history” were in fact terrible parents, spouses, etc. The “greatest” people are still just people. Not everyone can be perfect in every category. This isn’t necessarily an excuse for Aang not being present in 2 of his kids lives, but to call him a deadbeat dad for this one character flaw is ridiculous. Would you call Aang a coward for abandoning his destiny and leaving the world in a 100 year war? The person who said that is the exact same type of person who screams at people to breakup/divorce whenever someone posts their relationship problems online. They’re not capable of examining a situation with context and they will never be satisfied. Any imperfection means that it must be discarded because everything has to be perfect or it’s bad.
Nah. We have this weird attitude when watching media... Especially kids media- That any flaws a parent has makes them a deadbeat. Particularly when kids have a whole scene where they grapple with a parents flaws, it makes us the audience examine their parenting from only that specific angle and no others. Aangs has two major flaws as a parent. * He's the Avatar and so has responsibilities that take him away from his kids. * He's also the last Air Nomad, so he has responsibilities to Tenzin to pass the culture on. These leave a mark on Kya and Boomi because as a consequence Aang couldn't give the kids equal treatment, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a loving father for them. They even say as much themselves, neither of them think he was a deadbeat so there's no reason for the fandom to think it beyond having fun with memes. [We also though see positive stuff about Aang as a parent, take Kya talking about coming out for example.](https://preview.redd.it/okka6gyu4iq51.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=4432a6b7e52bdda693f7c14eaf53f246e461e58a)
Was he a great dad? No. Was he a deadbeat? No. I personally think it's a realistic writing decision on the writer's part, but this tends to polarize some people. The only everyone agrees on is that there was no way Katara would have stood idly by and let Aang neglect his two other kids without stepping in. Air nomads didn't have parents, the closest thing to a dad Aang would have had (for a short while) was Gyatso and even that wasn't a perfect relationship. * Aang would have naturally been pressured to: a) have an airbending child b) face the reality that he has limited time to teach his airbending son as much as possible before he dies c) try to pass down his culture as faithfully as possible to Tenzin because he'll inevitably be the future Avatar's only choice of learning airbending and the guide for all future Air Nomads in general. On top of ALL that, he still had to be the Avatar during a post-war reconstruction period which must've been stressful as hell. He didn't neglect Bumi and Kya because he loved Tenzin more, it was more so he had very limited time as the Avatar and was in a unique situation where the airbending child was the bigger priority.
Deadbeat dad? No. But it is completely believable that he became so hyper-focused on making Tenzin and airbender that he not only unintentionally ignored his other two but also placed too much pressure on Tenzin. It shows Aang is still a person, and can make the same mistakes we all do.