#Air Nomad Ty Lee | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

comradekatara · 18 days

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do you have a masterpost of "ty lee comes from crypto-air nomad" posts? I'm fascinated by this idea and want to read everything I can but I can't find where it started 😭

i feel like this is a question better posed to @kyoshi-lesbians, who, at least in my book, is the leading expert in ty lee studies (among other things). that said, i can definitely synthesize the argument (and why i find it cogent and persuasive), even if i don't actually know from where the theory originated (but i'm sure that if you look up "ty lee air nomad you'll immediately be directed to an old reddit page or fan forum from years ago; it's a "theory" that goes way back).

firstly, ty lee's appearance is distinctly "air nomadic" in a way no one else's is. save for aang, of course. she and aang do bear an uncanny resemblance. everyone else in the fire nation has yellowish brown eyes, for example, while ty lee, like aang, has charcoal greyish brown eyes. and they also have similar (round and cute) facial features, similar expressions, similar vibes. similar dispositions...

ty lee does not "have the personality" of a ruthless fire nation soldier, despite acting as the princess's right hand who takes out more opponents than pretty much everyone else put together. ty lee acts like an airbender, flirty and flighty. her relentless optimism and goodwill and cheer is decidedly a mask, but it is a mask she adopts adeptly. even if she is performing, she nonetheless performs the "aang" function of her respective group.

ty lee presents herself as more spiritually attuned than other people in the fire nation, who outright disrespect the spirits and spirituality. her constant talk of auras is likely a calculated move on her part, as nearly everything is, to make her seem silly and trivial, because she thrives best when she goes underestimated. but her talk of auras also has to come from somewhere, and seeing as literally no one else mentions auras once throughout the entire show, ty lee's sources are clearly scarce.

ty lee also fights like an airbender. despite generally taking the offensive, ty lee nonetheless exhibits a graceful, acrobatic quality when in combat. she never kills anyone either, merely incapacitates them momentarily. and when she is faced with stronger than typical opponents, she usually relies on her skills as an acrobat by taking the aerial advantage. note her ability to jump incredibly high, such as in "the chase," or her ability to run along a moving cable wire in "the boiling rock." ty lee's skills go beyond merely being a good acrobat. she's incredible. and perhaps even exhibiting some latent airbending skills she inherited from her ancestors.

ty lee's air nomad ancestry coheres really well with her arc as a character. imagining that her family of genocide survivors hid in the heart of the fire nation and assimilated into the imperialist culture that sought to exterminate them makes her own role that much more impactful. there's already a beautiful parallelism to the fact that ty lee is an acrobat and performer who contorts herself to suit the desires of others and performs obsequious loyalty for her own survival, but an extra layer of depth is added if she's also assimilating into the royal court by reducing herself and hiding her true feelings and motivations, just as her family did.

i see ty lee's ancestors as having assimilated into the imperial core out of fear, but over the generations, genuinely being subsumed into fire nation culture, with the desire to social climb a natural extension of their patriotism. but there are also still facets of ty lee's ancestry, whether genetic or otherwise, that have remained in traces. the generational trauma, for example, definitely reflects why her parents had so many children. and the fact that she's constantly torn between two worlds, as a genocide survivor who also directly serves the imperialists who murdered her ancestors, represents her internal struggle as someone who desires freedom of expression and the choice to assert her individuality, but is also forced through circumstance into lying and deflecting and manipulating (which, to be honest, is also the air nomad way) for the sake of survival.

surviving is ty lee's number one priority, in a way it just isn't for mai. mai and ty lee both come from social climbing families (although i've always assumed that mai's family is far wealthier than ty lee's) but mai is also depressed and frustrated and bored out of her mind. and even though she was raised in a family that forced her to don a mask and reduce herself and perform a passive model of femininity, she also has no problem stating aloud how she's feeling and what her limits are (with the exception of when azula gives her a veiled command as a test, and mai has no choice but to obey).

mai has the privilege of knowing that the stakes don't really matter, which she all but states when she claims that she grew up in luxury and opulence, and always had everything handed to her. which isn't to say that she led a perfect, easy life. she wouldn't be as depressed and repressed as she is if there weren't factors actively harming her, but she still chooses to join azula by choice, even if it's really only the illusion of choice between two awful options, whereas ty lee has to be coerced through violence.

mai kind of has a "fuck it we ball" attitude and doesn't really seem to care about her own safety (if anything, she's more concerned with comfort), whereas ty lee would do anything to ensure her survival. and that kind of mentality illustrates how she differs from most of the fire nation elites, who were inculcated into imperial privilege and never really considered what prioritizing survival even entails (zuko learns that lesson the hard way). ty really exhibits the mentality of the genocide victim/colonized subject through her prioritization of survival in the face of what to mai is a problem, but to ty lee is an existential threat.

whether or not ty lee even recognizes that her desperate desire to live comes from a place of generational grief and trauma is another story, but i do think there is something to be said for the fact that descendants of genocide survivors can feel that grief as it has been passed down to them. i think ty lee feels it, and i think that it motivates her to do whatever it takes to live, because above all, she is a survivor. and even if she has to assimilate and manipulate and cut away every part of herself that's real and authentic and true, she will do it (until she doesn't). and that's also, incidentally, what makes her such a great foil to aang.

#i hope this answers your question!#anachronornis #asks #analysis #ty lee #maixtylee #aang&tylee #aang #mai #air nomad ty lee #i should make that a tag....#also river if u have anything add please feel free #i love ty lee she is the specialest insane girl she is everything

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punkeropercyjackson · 1 month

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"Katara should've been Zuko's endgame instead of Mai!She's his opposite in a complimentary way so they understand eachother better than anyone else and he obviously loved her and they're perfect together!"

Anywayyyyyy.......Katara is Aang's forever girl,Ty Lee is Zuko's perfect girl.Moving on!!

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kyoshi-lesbians · 9 days

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hi anon 👋 i'm not going to respond directly to that post (there's a lot there) but I will go into why I personally find ty lee & suki interesting!

the fun part of tysuki for me is that they would not get along at first. it would take time for both of them to trust each other and significant growth, especially for ty lee. (also, to note for this analysis, I interpret ty lee as having air nomad heritage and being aware of this in some way. that’s just sort of the base for any post-war imaginings I have for ty lee. an interpretation of their relationship where ty lee is not an air nomad is interesting for how it is a sort of microcosm of the decolonization and reconciliation that must take place after the war, but I won't delve into that.) what makes their dynamic compelling to me is suki’s justified distrust of ty lee and ty lee striving to become worthy of suki’s trust − because she would respect suki, who leads the warriors with love and compassion and without competition, unlike any group ty lee has been part of before (including the circus, the cruelty of which we see through the eyes of appa).

first step would be ty lee sincerely apologizing to suki for her role in the war. no matter the circumstances ty lee was operating under, she caused immense harm to the world and suki personally. ty lee may have earned the trust of the other warriors but suki wasn't there for that - that suki doesn't advocate to kick her out of the warriors is a testament to the level of trust between suki and her sister warriors, and probably the structure of decision making in the group as well (consensus or majority rule).

but as an ongoing practice, ty lee would struggle to let her guard down around the leader of a powerful warrior group, while some honest vulnerability is a part of what suki would need to trust ty lee after the war. their skills and personalities complement each other, but only after they understand the logic the other operates under.

as intelligent as ty lee is, as much as she can recognize and appreciate that the kyoshi warriors have a unique culture that is nothing like the fire nation, ty lee has been operating under (cultural) threat for her entire life in the fire nation and direct physical threat from azula for several years (childhood, with a break from her time in the circus, to being back under her thumb in more danger than ever.) her way of navigating the world wouldn’t completely change, but I do think it will take time, energy, and a lot of healing for ty lee to develop a ways of relating to people (other than mai) that are more emotionally honest and healthy.

but ty lee could. as a part of the warriors she would start using her people skills for group cohesion instead of solely her default state of personal protection (and, even more important to her, protection of mai). she starts to consciously consider it her social role/ responsibility within the warriors to manage the tense moments that come up in any large group − even a tight knit, disciplined sisterhood like the kyoshi warriors. once suki recognizes ty lee is actively choosing to do this for the group, only then does she fully emotionally accept ty lee as one of the warriors. suki (to her own surprise) even starts to rely on ty lee's perceptiveness for group dynamics during difficult situations.

however to suki's dismay, ty lee can read her too, including when suki is struggling but not showing it for the sake of the other warriors. initially suki would be deeply uncomfortable with this, offended even when ty lee attempts to support suki personally (how dare she question suki's leadership? suki is fine. she's a teenager leading an elite warrior group while reconstructing her village, their island, other towns in the earth kingdom, providing advice to the fire lord to maintain world peace, she's fine, she even got a full 4 hours of sleep last night. she doesn't need ty lee telling her to take a nap while ty lee takes over leading afternoon training) but suki grows to accept the support, eventually recognizing that she has a responsibility to her girls to take care of herself.

I'm oscillating on whether they would develop a leader/second-in-command type dynamic. it's a role ty lee could slot into comfortably, hopefully now in a healthy way. either way, the work they go through to trust and understand each other would, i think, create something beautiful.

and maybe, after some time (and a visit from aang) ty lee would open up about her heritage to suki. and suki, who as a kyoshi islander exists on the margins of the earth kingdom and whose home was destroyed by colonial powers, would understand. (this shared personal understanding is maybe the one thing that mai can't provide ty lee. and I think mai would recognize this and be grateful for the people in ty lee's life who can, like suki.)

ty lee wouldn't stay on kyoshi island forever… maybe a year or so before moving on to the most important mission for herself and the most meaningful she could do in the service of kyoshi: rebuilding the air nation with aang and her own family. but when she or suki need some rest or some fun, kyoshi island is just a bison ride away.

#next ty lee analysis i will go into how ty lee exists on the periphery in every single way . but for now….#tysuki #ty lee #suki #air nomad ty lee #<- tag has lots more if interested in that #asks #anon #also i turned anon asks back on for ya #not that i bite. but i get it 👍

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horroraceman93 · 3 months

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An overprotective Azula holding Ty Lee back from anyone would take Ty Lee from her.

That's a Femslash February 2024 Fanart all right!

#Femslash February #Avatar: The Last Airbender #TyZula #Ty Lee #Azula #Ty Lee x Azula #Azula x Ty Lee #Air Nomad Ty Lee #Femslash February 2024

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toni-d-b · 2 years

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@maileeweek2022 Day 5: Air nomad ty lee

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Original Characters, Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai (Avatar), Tenzin (Avatar), Aang (Avatar), Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Airbender Ty Lee (Avatar), Mailee Week 2022 (Avatar), Day 5: Air nomad ty lee, Airbending & Airbenders, POV Ty Lee, POV Mai Series: Part 4 of MaileeWeek2022 Summary:

Ty Lee and Mai have a daughter on Kyoshi Island. They watch her grow up to be all they could hope for, with a little surprise on top.

#mailee #mai #ty lee #atla #atla event #maileeweek2022 #maileeweek #atla fic #avatar the last airbender #air nomad ty lee

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firenationgurl · 2 months

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Can we appreciate comics Mai😌

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hanadoesstuffwrong · 2 months

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Thinking abt the air nomads:

What if, after the war, once the dust has settled a little, Aang goes back to travelling, hoping that maybe he can find at least some trace of surviving airbenders. As an added bonus, he gets to do more of the exploring and wandering that he had to put on hold.

Toph goes with him ofc. She only just got a taste of real freedom and it was overshadowed by ever-present impending doom. While she's on speaking terms with her parents, she isnt quite ready to be back under their roof on a permanent basis. The rest of the gaang have their individual homes and responsibilities that they get back to, though they join for the odd field trip or adventure when they can.

So anyway, they're touring all over the world and over the years they notice just how displaced so many people have become. EK citizens who barely escaped the blaze but lost everything; FN military now decommissioned with no idea how to carry on; people looking for a new start in the hard-won peace. Maybe it starts with Toph heading back to Earth Rumble, where a group of young runaways scrounge for cheap fights to make a little money.

At each turn they find more and more people with no homes to return to and no family to protect them; runaways escaping the roles the war forced them into. Gradually, Aang and Toph start to see that they aren't so different from themselves. They just want a new start.

So they decide to give them one. They clean up the temples and set up villages in the surrounding areas (helps to be master earthbenders), where people can arrive and stay as long as they need. Travellers and refugees pass through in droves, sometimes choosing to stay and rebuild their lives there, sometimes continuing in their wandering with a guarantee that they'll always have a place to return to should they have the need.

Over time, the lemurs grow in number and even some flying bison calfs (hybrids with a relative species maybe?), can be seen in the skies. Whenever the founders visit, it isn't the same but Aang feels a little more at home.

The first time someone asks Aang to teach him his philosophies, and expresses his desire to become a monk, how can he refuse? Maybe it's a former soldier, somebody who's done terrible things, looking for a path to redemption. So Aang teaches him, and then he teaches others. And though they may not be airbenders, they are as earnest and faithful as any nun or monk Aang knew before. The temples become filled with new faces: Firebenders, Earthbenders, Waterbenders and non-benders all wearing Air nomad orange and yellow.

Aang always feared that it would be his responsibility to have airbender children, and the idea of forcing that on someone he loved terrified him. Maybe that's why he waited so long before acting on his feelings for his best friend, his travelling companion, his fellow-village builder and temple-restorer. How could they have a truly happy relationship with this pressure hanging over them? He wishes he could be content with the new way of things that he and his friends have created. But he knows that he can't be the last airbender forever...

Nobody knows why some children can bend the elements and others can't. Is it blood? Is it blessing? Is it the land in which you're born? Or is it the simple allocation of fates decided by the values and norms you're raised believing in? Is it enough to be surrounded by the culture and beliefs of the Air Nomads? Nobody knows...

All they know is that nobody sees it coming when the six-year-old daughter of two non-bender villagers from the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe sends herself flying twelve feet into the air with a sneeze.

#oops it became a taang au how did that happen #i just think it wld be neat if the air nomads worked more like irl monks/nuns #not necessarily celibate but still made up of people who choose to follow the way of life #instead of the iffy implications of all monks/nuns having no choice because they were born airbenders #i dunno it's iffy to me #taang #my posts #atla #atla headcanon #do we need to rewatch Ice Age 2 ppl??#repopulation is not a good reason for two people to be together!#avatar: the last airbender #i do also think that given them being nomads the fire nation probably want able to wipe the air nomads out completely #bu they just had to survive in hiding/ in a very diluted form #maybe like the sun warriors do #airbender!Ty Lee my beloved #also wld reflect the themes of unity vs division well if there were more than just airbenders among the air nomads #like how a waterbender can be a ruler of the Fire Nation or a Firebender can run a tea shop in the Earth Kingdom #toph x aang #edited cos someone got upset at my introduction and while i reckon they were willfully misreading i didnt want anyone to misconstrue #to clarify -> any child of aang's wld be an air nomad but there's no guarantee they wld be an airbender #esp if he had a child with an earth or waterbender #and we see how this had a negative effect in canon #hope that clears things up xx

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theduckeminence · 4 months

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Yk a part of me wonders why the Fire Nation is often more explored and well-liked by the fandom than other nations like the Water Tribes or Air Nonads.

Like yeah, the Earth Kingdom has its fair share of interest among the fandom but my point still stands

I just wanna know why so many people gravitate more towards the Fire Nation than any of the other nations.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #water tribe #fire nation #earth kingdom #air nomads #aang #katara #sokka #toph #suki #zuko #azula #mai #ty lee #yue #iroh

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the-badger-mole · 8 months

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Do you believe in the “Ty Lee is an Air Nomad” theory? I think it would work with your thoughts on how Air Nomads treat non-benders.

"Believe" is the wrong word for it. I find the idea interesting, and I think it adds depth to Ty Lee's background and history, but do I think that was the canon intent? Probably not, but only because I don't think the writing team put that much thought into her. That being said, the lack of care given to her development means that pretty much anything goes, as long as the story is compelling enough.

#atla #ty lee #secret air nomad ty lee #THE YEAR OF CONTENT!!!!

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elijones94 · 5 months

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🌸 Is Ty Lee an air nomad? 🔥

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metellastella · 21 days

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It’s so funny to me that we got art of the grown-up Gaang so late after the series ended.

Because in those intervening years, I pictured Aang and Toph being small adults. I mean they’re both literally based on Chinese people (and Tibet).

So Toph would continue to be this force to be reckoned with, but look unassuming- the Pint-Sized Powerhouse trope, or Cute Bruiser.

And Aang would always be this dainty-looking airbender who was maximally enabled to fling himself in the air and flip and stuff

as it goes,

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease

A daring young man on the flying trapeze

His movements were graceful, all girls he could please

So now I’m reflecting on the fact that I’ve just written a passage that references almost-sixteen year old Aang’s ‘canon’ height, and reminiscing about when I wrote older!Toph as a moderately-muscly-but-still-small woman.

#atla fanfiction #adult toph #avatar the last airbender #zuko #aang love #aang stan #ty lee atla #enemies to lovers #toph x zuko #atla toko #tv tropes #headcanon #fanon #azulaang #aangzula #fire nation #earth kingdom #air nomads

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comradekatara · 1 month

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Can you share any thoughts/headcannons about Ty Lee's sisters?

i’ve talked before about how i think that aang would date one of ty lee’s sisters and it would really freak katara out because she’s terrified of ty lee and she thinks that nothing good can come from involving himself in that family. but aang is actually like best friends with her whole family because of their air nomad ancestry and he’s trying to get them all into embracing their culture more and teaching them about their heritage. and maybe even one of her sisters does have latent airbending powers (ty lee has like, very minimal airbending ability, but her sister can actually move the air and all that) so he’s just overjoyed to help her hone that skill.

also this isn’t really about her sisters but i think that the chi-blocking girl from the legacy of yangchen who gets relocated to yangchen’s air temple for her own safety is a distant ancestor of ty lee’s. not because ty lee like epigenetically discovered the ability to chi-block (if anything i think ty lee discovered it on her own) but because i just think that’s a fun intersection and i do feel like fc yee incorporated it deliberately. anyway back to her sisters.

one of them dates aang, one of them is an airbender (possibly the same one?), at least one of them is also gay (just, statistically speaking), and unlike what the stupid comics will tell you, just because they all look identical does not mean that they wear matching hairstyles and outfits. they definitely each have their own sense of style and a complex about being unique and distinguished in their individual field. if anything i think ty lee incorporates their insecurities into her persona during her confession on the beach because she knows firsthand that the desire to distinguish oneself runs rampant in their family. like she’s clearly exaggerating as a deliberate performance of vulnerability, but it does come from a real place, if only through borrowing the anxieties of her sisters.

one is an accomplished musician, one is an accomplished mathematician, one is an accomplished engineer, one in an accomplished artist, one is an accomplished poet, one is an accomplished architect, and ty lee is the accomplished performer(/acrobat/fighter/liar). she could also probably be good at all those things too if she put her mind to it, but they all tacitly respect one another’s boundaries.

they come from a family that cares about nothing more than entrenching themselves within the fire nation aristocracy, and so their parents never really cared about their wellbeing as long as they were excelling. and ty lee was particularly favored because she’s excessively charming and knows how to get her way in any situation, and also, of course, because she’s the chosen playmate of the princess.

the pressure to always be perfect and provide an “in” for her family gets to be too much for her so she runs away to the join the circus, and she kind of assumes that they won’t even notice because she left behind six identical copies, but they get really worried because what will happen to their family now that they no longer have a direct link to the palace? so they’re really relieved to hear that ty lee is once again working with azula after news of the coup on ba sing se reaches the fire nation. and then they hear that she betrayed azula and got herself imprisoned and they’re furious. they actively consider disowning her, but then they figure if she’s already in prison for life, why bother. but then a few months later, they learn that now she’s friends with the avatar and the new firelord, which is even better than being friends with the princess, so they accept her back.

not that she wants to go home, but aang has suspicions about her ancestry that he wants to confirm so he makes her take him to her house and introduces him to all her sisters and her parents. they all show off their various talents to aang because they’re so nervous to be meeting the avatar, but he’s literally impressed by every single one of them. any time any of them do anything he’s just like “wow that’s awesome!!!” completely sincerely. he thinks ty lee’s family is so cool and has dinner with them whenever he can.

after the war aang gets really intent on finding all the remnants of the air nomad legacy through tracking down the air nomad refugees whose families assimilated into other nations over the past century. and he and ty lee (and her sisters) embark on this really in-depth archival project to collect all the traces of her family and families like hers as a way to honor and commemorate their cultural heritage. ty lee learns a lot about her family and what they had to do to survive (and how that mirrors her own life). and even though it’s nothing like it was before, aang finds a community of people who want to reconnect with their heritage and piece by piece, he slowly rebuilds what was lost.

#the-wright #asks #ty lee #aang #aang&tylee #postwargaang #sorry this turned into aang central #but in my mind ty lee and aang are like this 🤞#which katara HATES btw #she’s like ‘couldn’t the air nomad heritage belong to anyone other than THE WORST GIRL ALIVE?????????’#and aang’s just like awww no she’s nice #to which katara is like that’s just what she WANTS you to think .#she’s fine w aang dating just NOT IN THAT FAMILY

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frost-queen · 2 years

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Zuko

• Have mercy, Oh fire lord (sis!R)

• Tickles that heals all

• My mortal flaw (LA) *waterbender!r

• My mortal flaw (LA) // part 2 *waterbender!r

• My mortal flaw (LA) // part 3

• My mortal flaw (LA) // part 4

Sokka

• A lie with good reasons

• Elements in harmony (LA)

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jasontoddssuper · 1 year

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Aang,Zuko and Ty Lee are 'every kind of lgbt all at once' characters like Link

@1clown1 @bharatanatyampercy @leo-thecactus @nogender-onlystars @panbelle @vambirezz @9ragonmew @moonage-gaydream @damienspinkshirt @southasianpercy @spellbook-gayboy @theultimatesagavan @the-omni-frog-tm @trans-pan-clown @kyojurolover @transtrophybf

#i said what i said!!!#atla geekery #aang #zuko #ty lee #aanglove #ty luko #please do not tag as any other ships #t4t ty luko #💌#letters from summer #link #tloz #group:the fire lord and the air nomads

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dragonbonecatacombs · 2 years

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the gaang is back together ^_^

#takes place during smoke and shadow era cause azula #and ty lee is embracing air nomad descentuon and her clothes are inspired by that #also this is my first time painting dark skinned people with watercolor so it’s a little doughy sorry #sokka #toph beifong #azula #zuko #aang #ty lee #mai #katara #avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar #the gaang #my art

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firenationgurl · 1 month

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As an only child I'm crying🫡

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