Rewatched Star vs. the Forces of Evil to get reinvested for the third season premiere, so I got back into Starco. But I already talked about that one.
So the trailer for the Hey Arnold! movie coming out this fall dropped at Comic Con, and I took that as my cue to rewatch Hey Arnold!. And I have been so back into Arnold/Helga. You guys. Oh my God, you guys. This ship is like, one of the defining ships of my life. It was never my OTP, but it was close sometimes. Helga's mean to Arnold, sure, and that's not ok, but she still cares about him so much. Her obsession with him is... well, it's unhealthy in some ways, but her feelings for him are also her inspiration and an important part of herself. And in spite of everything, they really do go together perfectly. Arnold's a dreamer and a humanitarian, and Helga has the soul of a poet. They're both sensitive and deeply introspective people. He makes her a better person, she grounds him and looks out for him. I want to see them as a couple so. bad. Helga's had a rough time in life, with her parents being so neglectful, and Arnold's a really empathetic person. So you know he'd care about her so much and do everything he could to be there for her. Ugh, seeing this movie, seeing the two of them finally get together, after all these years... it's going to be a dream come true! Literally-- I've had occasional dreams about the movie happening over the years, but I never thought it actually would!
On a related note, I always related a lot to Helga. I wasn't used to seeing characters my age portrayed as experiencing the same intensity of emotion I did. Sure, it was shipping for me, but it still felt similar. Shipping was an important part of myself, and it felt beautiful to me, but I didn't think other people would understand. It was kinda the same for Helga: her feelings were often played for laughs, but other times the audience was supposed to sympathize and take it completely seriously. It showed me that it could be both: weird, obsessive, and embarrassing, but at the same time, beautiful and sympathetic. I've never forgotten the episode "Helga on the Couch," where Helga finally ends up spilling the beans to her new counselor, Dr. Bliss. She goes into detail about her love for Arnold and how she expresses it, and then she says, "I guess I'm pretty sick, huh?" But Dr. Bliss tells her that no, she's not sick, she just feels things very deeply and expresses herself in creative ways. That left a huge impression on me. To this day... I still have feelings for someone who doesn't feel the same way, and it can feel obsessive and pathetic... But when I feel that way, I remember that line, and I remember how Helga was portrayed as someone sensitive, intense, self-aware, and poetic. If I'm like her, that's fine by me!
Hey Arnold! is a wonderful show that impacted a lot of people. If you ask me, it's right up there with Steven Universe and Avatar: the Last Airbender. It's great in a different way from those shows, but... I love it to death. Obviously.