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.
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