My soul is being torn apart by nostalgia right now.
I don't know if it's because I forgot to take my meds last night, or if I would be truly distraught even hopped up on happy pills, but there is something deeply disheartening about the entire situation with Paramount and the new avatar movie.
I, personally, never would've gotten to watch it either way. I'm poor, and not paying for a new subscription. But I'm not going to watch the leaks, either. Not until the film comes out properly.
They weren't going to even release it in theaters, and now I truly doubt they ever will, no matter how hard we push. Watching the leaks and sharing them and whatever else isn't the 'Fuck you' to paramount that you think it is. It's just ensuring that they don't invest in Avatar Studios again, and plummeting the likelihood that we will ever get more ATLA content.
Tophs original voice actor has even spoken out about it. Fuck paramount, 100%, but we're fucking over the artists and voice actors as well in the process. Even if they've already been paid for the work they did, we are depriving them of future paychecks and respect.
Is it our fault? No. It's paramount and their incompetence. But we are perpetuating the problem.
Hear me out, I'm not finished.
Imagine this. We spend the time rewatching the original series. The whole thing. Every episode.
Make new content for the original series. Art, edits, fanfics, and whatever else. Make OCs, be cringe, I don't care.
Blow up the original again.
It likely won't help the paramount issue, but it will occupy our own minds in the process.
I can't speak for legend of Korra. I never watched it all the way through, I found it extremely hard to watch knowing that almost all of my favorite characters were dead, and the universe I fell in love with was fundamentally changed by time and choices that seemed disingenuous to the characters. But I know that the last Airbender deserved a fourth season. And I know it helped shape me as a person.
Admittedly, I am now terrified to watch the movie.
I want to watch it so bad.
But now that I know for certain that this is likely the end of my favorite childhood show, for good... I think I'll cry. Seeing them grown up, and letting go of my own childhood experience and wonder at the same time. The voice actors are different, and I'm afraid the characters won't feel the same. That the world will feel out of place from the original series..
It is a wonderful thing when a part of your childhood grows up with you. And it is soured when you know that the possibility of it continuing to do so will be cut short, and you have no idea whether it will even live up to the source material.