Darta

I feel like she would either be a fairly sad musician or a emo/rock musician (this one especially when in connection to the flying opera company because of the whole underground nonconformist criminal gang thing).

ALSO

Like her face paint would translate so well into the makeup already present in those scenes.

the only hint of pop i would accept out of an AU from this is if it was kind of a mix with Kpop demon hunters

Family time with horse stance

Throughout The Rise of Kyoshi, Kyoshi convinces herself that her value lies in what she can endure for everyone else. In one of her most vulnerable moments, she immediately replies with, “Yun would have been much better,” because she still sees herself as a replacement. A substitute. Someone who took the life that should have belonged to someone better.

Rangi won’t let her think that way.

She doesn’t comfort the Avatar. She comforts Kyoshi.

“You, Kyoshi! Not the Avatar, but you!”

That line gets me every time because it cuts straight through Kyoshi’s self hatred. To Kyoshi, the Avatar is what matters. To Rangi, it isn’t. She doesn’t love the title or the power. She loves the awkward servant girl she grew up with.

But then, the line that completely reframes their relationship:

“The Avatar can be reborn. But you can’t. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

The world needs the Avatar. Rangi needs Kyoshi.

I also love that the emotional climax of this scene isn’t actually their first kiss. It’s everything that comes before it. Rangi spends pages trying to dismantle Kyoshi’s belief that she only exists to suffer. That peace and happiness are things meant for everyone except her.

And ultimately tells Kyoshi that she deserves peace. A home. Teachers. Protection. To be loved. And when Kyoshi brushes those things off, Rangi’s response is essentially, I wish I’d done a better job, because you should have only ever known love.

That’s why the kiss hits so hard. It doesn’t happen because they’ve finally admitted they’re attracted to each other. It happens after Kyoshi finally says:

“I do feel loved.”

For perhaps the first time in her life, Kyoshi allows herself to believe that she is worthy of love simply because she is Kyoshi, not because she is the Avatar.

When we first meet her, we’re seeing her largely through Yun’s eyes. Of course he doesn’t like her. She’s an incredibly harsh teacher, who expects perfection, and constantly pushes him to be better. To Yun, who’s carrying the pressure of being the Avatar, she comes across as cold and unforgiving.

But then there’s the scene where Jianzhu wants Yun’s feet cut.

People often use that as evidence that Hei-Ran is just as awful as Jianzhu, but that’s not how I read it at all. She hesitates. She doesn’t seem comfortable with it. The scene feels more like she’s being pulled along by Jianzhu’s authority than enthusiastically agreeing with him. Jianzhu dominates that entire group for years, and even people who disagree with him struggle to push back. I think this sets up their relationship the entirety of book one, where Jianzhu manipulates her throughout, while lying to her at every opportunity.

I think it’s important to note all throughout book 1, she is in conflict with Jianzhu. She berates him, gets frustrated with him and even at one point that’s her hair down because she feels she has lost her honour following him.

Even when we hear about Hei-Ran’s conduct in Agni Kais and the allegations of unjust killings, I don’t think the novels present it as straightforward evidence that she’s evil.

Rangi is visibly upset when it’s brought up because, even within Fire Nation culture, those accusations cross a line. If I’m remembering correctly, one of the victims was even a member of their own family. But Rangi’s reaction also makes sense because honour is central to her worldview. She was raised to believe that discipline and honour were paramount, so the idea that Hei-Ran may have acted dishonourably is what truly unsettles her.

To me, that scene says less about Hei-Ran being irredeemably evil and more about how seriously Rangi takes the Fire Nation’s ideals. If anything, it highlights the tension between Hei-Ran’s fearsome reputation and the more nuanced person we actually come to know throughout the novels.

Even Kelsang, arguably one of the most compassionate characters in the series, committed horrific acts. He destroyed fleets of ships, drowning countless people in the process, and was even shunned by many fellow Air Nomads because of it.

Jianzhu is obviously the one who goes too far, but even some of his actions began with understandable intentions. His campaign against the Yellow Necks wasn’t born out of random cruelty. It was driven by a desire to bring stability to a world without an Avatar. The problem was that he became convinced that the ends always justified the means.

That’s what makes the older generation so compelling. None of them are spotless. Hei-Ran, Kelsang, and Jianzhu all made decisions that cost lives because they believed they were protecting the world during a time when there was no Avatar to keep the balance.

But the main shift in how I see her, is when we get Kyoshi’s perspective in book two.

Suddenly Hei-Ran feels like a much more rounded character. Yes, she’s still strict. Yes, she’s emotionally distant. But she’s also shown to be honorable, despite her mistakes. And deeply committed to her duties, while also genuinely caring in her own way. A lot of that is because Kyoshi gets to see her as Rangi’s mother, not just as a teacher.

I also think people forget that Hei-Ran changes. Once Jianzhu is gone, she isn’t trying to force Kyoshi into his impossible vision of the Avatar. She’s willing to accept Kyoshi for who she is, even if she doesn’t always agree with her or her methods. She also apologises for her behaviour to Kyoshi expressing remorse as to what she did to her and Yun.

She’s not a warm or nurturing person, and she’s definitely made mistakes, especially with Rangi, but that’s very different from being a bad person.

To me, Hei-Ran is one of the more interesting adult characters because she’s flawed without being villainous. She’s a product of Fire Nation culture almost. She’s an example of discipline over comfort, of duty over emotion and of strength over softness. Those values make her a difficult teacher and a complicated mother, but they don’t make her evil.

I think the contrast between Yun’s and Kyoshi’s perspectives is intentional. Yun sees the teacher who constantly pushes him. Kyoshi gets to see the person behind that. Neither perspective is wrong, they’re just incomplete on their own.

like if Jesa was a nymph and Hark was a mortal human or something like that

the Sei`naka 100% gives vampire though

" I was machine-"

My babys, and all the potential these two had and AGRHHHHHHHH

Kyoshi’s first reaction to Lao Ge’s teachings is disgust. She immediately compares the pursuit of immortality to Jianzhu’s obsession with control. To her, trying to escape death feels unnatural, like believing you’re more important than everyone else. Lao Ge’s response is interesting because he completely reframes what “immortality” even means and makes her question her world view.

He explains aging as entropy: the body slowly falls into disorder. His technique is simply keeping the body “clean, neat, and tidy”, not frozen, just continually repaired by bending.

Then Kyoshi points out what seems like the obvious flaw:

“You’d have to decide what version of yourself you’d be stuck as, forever.”

And Lao Ge basically says: Exactly. That’s why you can’t. Then says:

“Those who grow, live and die. The stagnant pool is immortal, while the clear flowing river dies an uncountable number of deaths.”

He’s arguing that the worst kind of immortality isn’t endless life. It is refusing to change. A stagnant pool never changes. It is “immortal” because nothing about it dies. But it’s also lifeless. A river is constantly losing its old water. It “dies” thousands of times every day, yet it’s alive because it never stops changing.

So Lao Ge’s philosophy isn’t “live forever”. It’s: If you’re going to live forever, you’d better become a different person over and over again.

Ie: Your body stays ordered. Your soul never stays the same.

That’s why I don’t think Kyoshi suddenly wakes up one day and decides, “Actually, immortality sounds great.” I think she eventually realises that longevity doesn’t have to mean clinging to life. It can mean having more time to change not just the world but yourself. It’s more time to learn and more time to fix mistakes. More time to protect people.

Ironically, the Avatar is already someone who experiences this on a cosmic scale. Every Avatar is literally a continuation of the previous one, but none of them are the same person. The Avatar Spirit survives because it is always becoming someone new.

Kyoshi’s longevity almost feels like an extension of that idea. She doesn’t remain the same Avatar for two centuries. She becomes someone else again and again. The Kyoshi who dies at 230 is not the same Kyoshi who met Lao Ge. Which is exactly Lao Ge’s point.

Maybe immortality isn’t about refusing death. Maybe it’s about allowing parts of yourself to die so that the person who continues living is wiser than the one who came before. That’s a philosophy Kyoshi could accept later in life. Not because she feared dying but because she refused to stop growing.

And honestly, I think the fact that she eventually chose to end her life makes sense. Lao Ge was trying to teach her: immortality is only meaningful while you remain like the river.

And the tragedy of Kyoshi is that by the end of her life, she had carried the world’s burdens for so long that she may have felt herself becoming something harder and less human than the girl who first met Lao Ge. Not just hardened, but desensitised, so repeatedly exposed to death and violence that the weight of it stopped effecting her like it once did. She was more…stagnant.

And if that’s true, then choosing to let go wasn’t a rejection of his philosophy but the opposite. It was a recognition that when even death no longer moves you, when it ceases to feel like something sacred, then you risk drifting into a stillness far more dangerous than mortality itself. And stepping away becomes an act of reclaiming the humanity that “immortality” had gradually worn down.

Air jaill ( seconds before horse stance punishment)