The air nomads don't get nearly enough love (or discussion) in fandom, so if you wanted to meta about *slides five dollars* I would love you forever. Thanks!
I don’t have a particular about the Air Nomads to haul out that hasn’t been said by people much more talented than me — about how them being underestimated or their (Aang’s) values being derided as weak in fandom reflects the perspective of the imperialist nation that wiped them about; about how their values of peace, fun, freedom, and childhood (even into adulthood) were the first to go in a war; about Aang as a forgotten ideal, etc. — however, as a brief one, perhaps:
We really don’t give Monk Gyatso enough credit. His character always reminds me a little of Gran Gran, in which we learn way more about him than I would ever expect to. (Like, in ATLA even the grandparent has a fleshed out backstory. God tier). Like, he was friends with Avatar Roku and Guru Pathik and tried out new, exciting airbending moves (glider surfing) just like how Aang invented the air scooter. Imagine how touched he was when the baby boy he’d been given to raise turned out to be his old friend in a new lifetime.
Like Monk Gyatso so clearly imparted the best of the monks’ teachings onto his boy and raised/loved Aang as his son, which is something that Aang knows in how he carries the monks teachings with him and has so much respect and love for them, but also how he looks at Zuko in Book One, when Zuko says this:
Z: This staff will make an excellent gift for my father. I suppose you wouldn't know of fathers, being raised by monks.
Like of all the parental figures in the series, if we’re going by percentages, Gyatso is the most consistently involved and healthiest parental figure for his charge. That’s not to say the other parents in ATLA are bad (except, obviously, for Azulon and Ozai) or that I’m blaming them for their absences/choices/deaths, but it is the truth. Iroh was largely absent in Zuko’s childhood as was Ursa; Toph’s parents abused her as well and were extremely unhealthily controlling & dismissive; Kya died and Hakoda left, leaving both of his children with massive issues about it.
Comparatively, until Aang woke up from the iceberg (I believe ATLA takes place over nine months in total?) and for 99% of the first 12 years of his life, Gyatso was a loving and active parent. People really tend to undersell Aang’s loss of his people, but I see almost no one ever talk about how he’s the character (outside of Toph) who’s lost a parent most recently, and a singular parent at all. Gyatso filled every main role for him in that way (as some of the other monks did, I’m sure, but Gyatso was number one). He encouraged Aang’s travelling all over the world to friends like Kuzon and Bumi, he was complimentary and good natured, and also fiercely loyal and protective.
He was willing to put his boy above the supposed needs of the world, even when the situation escalated. And while Aang was his old friend reincarnated, Gyatso is someone who always saw Aang first and foremost as Aang, not the Avatar.
Even when the elder monks were applying greater pressure and Aang was socially ostracized from his peers, Gyatso managed to keep his spirits up. He taught him Pai Sho (I will always believe that Aang is Iroh’s favourite person to play Pai Sho with post war, because he knows all the old styles / moves too). He trained him into a master airbender and a very sweet young boy.
And Aang ran away, not really knowing what he was doing (and certainly not where he would end up), not knowing that Gyatso was going to flat out refuse to let them be separated, because he loved him just as much. And then Gyatso finds out Aang has run away — which, as an Air Nomad with a sky bison, isn’t too terrible but still kinda scary, if only because Aang did so because he was so upset and would have said so in his letter, which must’ve torn Gyatso’s heart in two. First because Aang was so distraught to do something like that, and then Gyatso realizing that Aang thought Gyatso was going to let something like that happen, which is a terrible gut punch, because Gyatso was actively about to stop it. Then, the fear of his kid being out in an awful storm.
We don’t actually know how much time passed in between Aang running away and the Air Nomad genocide. It could’ve been days, weeks, or months. Did Gyatso go out on his own bison to look? Did he and the monks organize a search party? Did they come back day after day with nothing, and then had to conclude either Aang had successfully gone missing, or drowned at sea?
Did Gyatso cling to the hope that Aang was alive all that time, and as the Temples burned, and as other children died around him? As Gyatso’s own breath gave out?
Like I always get so emotional at this line in “The Storm” because
A: How could [the monks] do that to me? They wanted to take away everything I knew and everyone I loved!
in the end, the monks didn’t do that. The Fire Nation did.
So like, Aang sticking to his practices? The fun loving way he approaches travelling and his airbending? How Gyatso is always the direct face of Aang’s unimaginable loss? Aang reciting Air Nomad sayings that Monk Gyatso would’ve taught him? How proud Gyatso would’ve been of his son? Aang moving from a child’s Air Nomad’s shawl to a Master’s, complete with the necklace Gyatso wore, and for once entirely at peace with himself the way his father always wanted him to be, while also being safe and happy? That these are the robes he continues to wear even (presumably weeks) later in the Ba Sing Se epilgoue?
Fucking tearbending city, man
Side notes: It also shows that Aang and Gyatso were not afraid to critique the monks or their ways, or even go against them, when the verdicts seemed unfair. As well as Aang and Katara both having necklaces, ultimately, to remember the parent’s demise they discovered when they pushed aside a blue curtain. The importance of Aang’s staff (perhaps Gyatso carved it for him), his arrows, and his ceremonial robes.
They have such a beautiful, loving, tragic, and underrated relationship, and I will love them forever.
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