#reasons I can't watch tales of ba sing se

[concernedbrownbread]

Saw THE leaves from the vine tree and started laughing like a maniac cause I'd cry otherwise

[crowcaws]

I've had some thoughts brewing ever since I finished NATLA, and watching Friendly Space Ninja's review of PJO really brought up a lot of feelings after sitting on it for a month so I'm going to try and articulate those thoughts here.

It's very interesting this fixation on the "word of god" and its involvement making or breaking a screen adaptation, to the point where you get unwavering devotion when a creator is on board, and outright disdain when a creator isn't on board. Both are completely reactionary takes that are unhelpful, especially when adaptations can be, sometimes, excellent without their original creators involved, and awful (cough fantastic beasts cough) when they are involved.

Regardless of whether or not NATLA was bad (it wasn't, it was just fine) I love that people are going "HA I bet Netflix regret losing BRYKE!" as a sort of gotcha, as if Korra didn't prove like a decade ago that Bryke are not infallible screenwriters. As if those same people, when the show was first announced and Bryke were on board, didn't even think to consider that Bryke are just two of the writers that made a great show.

Because fandom has a problem where it doesn't actually care or consider if the original creators are a good fit or not, if their involvement will harm the adaptation or help it, or if their recent work is still up to scratch with their original work. Fandom just wants a security blanket in the form of a name on a credits list, to the point of almost cult-like devotion that makes or breaks their opinion of content before it's even released.

This devotion is how you end up with fans doing logical backflips when their perfect book accurate Percy Jackson adaptation that "Uncle Rick" promised is now changing a bunch of stuff for not very good reasons, and now they have to either do mental gymnastics to justify questionable choices or admit that Rick can be wrong.

Percy Jackson had Rick Riordan on board and that series, let's be honest here, was just fine too. It wasn't groundbreaking, it did not surpass the source material on most points (I say most because all that Sally content was inspired) and fell short in a lot of ways that have been outlined by critics more articulate than I. Some of that, I suspect, was due to Rick's fixation on this adaptation being the antithesis of the 2010 movies to the point where it feels like they refused to let the show be fun and colourful in parts where it should have been. His involvement, as a book author delving into screenwriting, cannot be proven to have been more beneficial than if he had simply consulted and set boundaries and left it at that.

And of course Joanne is a fuckwit. But even creatively, you can't tell me that the fantastic beasts movies were better for her meddling.

But back to PJO and NATLA: I genuinely feel like we got very similar end products with both shows. An underwhelming foray into live action adaptation that suffers from too few episodes and disappointing characterisation save for a few standout roles (In this case, Sally, and Zuko and Iroh), and some problems aside that each show varies on, but ultimately still delivers something entirely and completely watchable. Percy Jackson has at least a tiny bit better characterisation overall, but cannot hold a candle to the fight choreography and special effects in NATLA (partly because in PJO they had a bad habit of cutting away or writing out every time anyone was mean to do something heroic or actually fight.) And yet you cannot speak a bad word about PJO, but NATLA is torn to shreds.

Back to NATLA and the Bryke: Almost nobody, in this whole time from the NATLA announcement to airing, has made comment on the absence of Aaron Ehasz, who was not involved with Korra either. They were happy to celebrate when Bryke was involved, and mourn when they departed, but you should have been mourning Aaron this whole time, if anyone. Aaron wrote Tales from Ba Sing Se, if you weren't aware. Arguably the most memorable episode of the Last Airbender, so emotionally rich and captivating that even hearing the instrumentals of that song in NATLA brought me to tears.

So why wasn't Aaron's absence ever felt? Well, that is because the fans saw "original creators" in headlines and ran with it without question as a sure sign of victory (and then failure when Bryke departed). Because fandom doesn't really care WHOSE name is in the credits, fandom just wants that sense of security -- and it's a false sense of security, because Annabeth and Katara both still ended up gutted of their depth at the end of the day. The presence of Rick didn't save Annabeth any more than the absence of the ATLA writers doomed Katara.