Fire Nation Central

#Late-Draft's ATLA complete series Most art will be part of my series of expanding/adjusting the canon to what I think would perfectly align with the narrative and enhance the themes. This is like additional content to the episodes, and in some cases heavy edits of episodes. Example would be that I think the Order of the White Lotus plotline has been extremely rushed and it didn't land as well as it should. There's also the fact that Zuko and Iroh never directly discussed anything about the war and that's not even the consequence of ATLA being restricted as a "children's show" - see The Avatar State episode. Work in this tag will be darker and more mature than the show itself. Examples in this category: Zuko freeing Appa comic All Fire Nation worldbuilding posts fall into this category as well, filed under #fire nation tag

#Last Air Keyholder AU Complete work on my ATLA sci-fi AU, which is an entire story that doesn't follow closely the beats of the original but has the identical emotional core and character development. Includes concept art, animations (hopefully an animated intro, for real), comics and perhaps I'll do it in a fanfiction format as well. The premise is that 1000 years in the future, the main characters are chased by villains through a huge metropolis while ancient Air Nomad technology lays dormant in the underground layers. Aang and his friends must find 3 other element key holders besides him to trigger the Harmonic Convergence, all the while avoiding Zuko and his entourage of Fire Nation rollerblade racers. Bending is used in combat and in enhancing your speed and technique in racing.

#ATLA social media AU Silly, non-committal snippets that are not meant to have underlying worldbuilding, these are just for fun and for exploring character dynamics. Everything is the same but characters have access to social media and they can't stop messaging each other.

So I never finished animating this but now I'd change several things. Anyway

Ok sure, I heard the story is pretty empty, perhaps vapid? This is not a rare occurrence in motion picture history which is problematic. An awful lot of effort and resources goes into animation, and it's a terrible shame when all of it is in the service of a lackluster and/or empty story. I want to use this moment to point out how important it is to write meaningful stories in a skilled way. Not to scare you, but to encourage you in pursuing improving your writing AND reading skills, because wonderful things can be made when we're educated and skilled. We need skilled and caring people in high positions. I know I'm preaching to the choir.

Now for the more concrete situation surrounding the movie - it was first set to release in theatres, then changed to just being on streaming services. I saw people who worked on it completely devastated by this change. It points to studio(s) not having faith that animation can earn $$$ (capitalist hellscape) but a lackluster story is part of the cause, this has to be pointed out. Animation is not a genre for kids, it's a medium and it's an uphill battle to prove this to a wider audience. I have friends who always skip even considering watching animated movies in theatres without even checking out what they're about and whether or not they're for kids.