I went looking for Gyatso!Lives fanworks, and came up empty-handed. This seems wrong, so I thought I’d share some of my ideas for how a Gyatso Lives AU could work and hopefully spark some interest. Feel free to adopt and modify any of these prompts. Credit isn’t necessary but I would appreciate a link to anything made along these lines so I could appreciate it.
It should be obvious but there are major spoilers for Avatar the Last Airbender below the cut.
The first way I could see this would be just the slightest canon divergence at the beginning. When Gyatso gets to Aang’s room and figures out that he ran away, he tries to follow him. This would mean Gyatso isn’t at the temple when the Fire Nation attacked. Some ideas for what happens after that:
Gyatso works to write down Air Nomad philosophy and culture to preserve it for Aang and other avatars in the future
Gyatso helps other Air Nomads who escaped go into hiding
Gyatso becomes a Grand Lotus
The other way I thought of has a little more canon divergence. If Gyatso walked out on the other elder monks early, he might have caught Aang before he left and they could have left together. That could continue to be an AU where Aang doesn’t get frozen and instead fights the war from the beginning, but I like the idea of Gyatso somehow getting frozen for 100 years with Aang and Appa. Some ideas for that AU:
People getting confused and thinking Gyatso is the avatar since he fits what they’re expecting
The Gaang having an actual adult traveling with them
BUT the Gaang still having most of the same adventures because I feel Gyatso likes to teach by experience and throwing pies
Aang avoiding most of his moral crises because there is an adult who will actually listen to him and his concerns
But probably still having a small moral crisis since Gyatso is the kind of person to say you need to figure some things out for yourself
In a lot of ways, Gyatso could be the Gaang’s version of Uncle Iroh. Wise old person who cares about them and travels with them but still lets them make mistakes and come to their own conclusions about the world.
