popular hc that ty lee is related to the air nomads/ descendent of airbenders/ firenation/airnation mixed !!Spoilers!!
TW: Very long, messy rant!
The hc that Ty Lee is related to the air nomads, wether it be through descendants, immigration or mixed ethnicity is such an intriguing one. It open's up so many possibilities for angst and more lore.
(espicially since there isn't much lore/content for Ozai's angels beyond the og series and a few comics :/).
And there's so much evidence to support this theory, Ty Lee has a fighting style very similar to the air nomads that relies on agility, speed and evasion. She possess's extreme lower body strength and has amazing flexibility, before joining Team Azula she was a talented acrobat and she's extremely light on her toes (TWINKLE-TOES).
AND MOST NOTABLY, she is a master of chi-blocking, an ancient martial arts technique that use's pressure points in the human body to distrupt the flow of chi and immbolize the person's bending and temporarily stun them. Chi-blocking is an obsecure and "niche" technique, it was relatively exclusive to air-bender's.
None of the gaang knew what chi-blocking was until Ty Lee came along, this goes for the general society at the time because imagine how game-breaking it would've been for non-benders to learn chi-bending as a form of self-defence, they would've been way more helpful in terms of the 100-year-war.
Ty Lee not only knew chi-blocking, she was widely considered a MASTER of it. Which begs the question, how on earth did Ty Lee learn it, yet alone master it?
Now, because I'm biased I'm inclined to say that Ty Lee learnt it from her parents or relatives who were somehow related to the air nomads (I imagine it would've been taught amongst air nomads and passed down through generations) or that she learnt it through scrolls that were raided from the air nomads and was more inclined to it because of her air nomad descent, but you have to admit that's the MOST FEASIBLE THEORY.
However, the idea that she might've been taught through the Royal Academy for fire nation girls might not be so crazy as I imagine the fire nation might've interrogated the air nomads for information and forced them to teach them before they were wiped out.
Its hard to find a coherent conclusion about how chi-blocking was spread because most of the 100 year war is undocumented in ATLA except for the major points.
But I think if the fire nation did gather this information it would've been much more common-place, especially since the fire nation army HATED seeing other bender's bend in colonies and explicitily banned it.
Yet in the ATLA universe, Ty Lee is the only known person who can chi-bend (aside's from in the comic's when she teache's the Kyoshi warriors the method)
Not to mention how physically similar Ty Lee looks to Aang, LIKE LOOK:
THEIR FACE MODEL'S ARE BASICALLY COPY PASTE
ITS THE SAME FUCKASS SMILE AND EYES I'M TELLING YOUUU
ALSO THE OUTFITS?? (too lazy to drop them in here because you can't fucking adjust the image size on tumblr ahghghghg). THAT'S TOTALLY SMTH A FEMALE AIRBENDER WOULD WEAR.
There's so much more I could mention to support this theory but i'll move on to the POSSIBILITIES
So Ty Lee isn't canonically confirmed to be related to the air nomads, but it hasn't been DENIED yet either.
Imagine if Aang knew? Would he have pro-created with Ty Lee? Probably not because he love's his wife Katara sm but if it meant that their children would have more airbender roots?? Something for the Ty Lee x Aang shippers to think about ig. I don't personally ship it but I guess I can see it since they both have bubbly, kind and extroverted personality's.
There's so much more I want to say but I'm EXHAUSTED. Maybe tommorow.