u/CamilaCazzy

Like I often do, I've been wandering down some decades-old internet rabbit holes from back when Book One: Air was still being released, especially with some posts here on this very subreddit. Despite never been into the Avatar franchise as a little kid, it gave me a sort of nostalgia. In one of these threads, people were chatting about the possibility of whether Amon could've actually been in the backgrounds of LOK, watching the main characters from afar. After all, no one had ever seen his real face without the fake scar, and given how he seems to be skilled at altering his appearance, there is a chance that he could plausibly disguise himself as an ordinary bystander for a moment. Plus, he still would've needed a day off from all the serious stuff, given how he's so busy with his political movement all the time.

Then the users began to joke about how they'd be interested in a "Tales of Ba Sing Se" type episode, except showing Amon/Noatak hanging around Republic City as an ordinary guy, as no one knows who he really was. Here, it shows him as a more vulnerable person, just like how Iroh was humanized with his mourning of his dead son. It would also definitely reveal lots of details about his inner life that we never saw before, since so little about him was definitively known about until the end.

As someone who's adored the dude for years, this idea just makes me oddly happy. Even though I certainly appreciate Amon as a mysterious, brutal, unknowable figure with powers that nobody could explain, it also tears at my heartstrings so much when I see him emotional. I would be interested in seeing him with a sense of humor, to prove that he still has it in him after all those years of radicalization. Basically, anything to see him happy, I guess.

What would you think of such an episode?

Right now, I'm going on a rewatch of all my favorite old videos from PhantomStrider that I used to watch religiously back when I was a kid. All the nostalgia has come back from those good old days, and I still appreciate them about as much as I did at 13 years, when I was watching from my phone during lunch or at the back of my car going home. One of my favorites among those videos was the one about the worst animated mockbusters. It even made me compelled to watch "A Car's Life" on YouTube, as he did say that it truly had to be seen to be believed. (I still look back fondly at that too lmao.)

You might know the stereotype, as the likes of Video Brinquedo are seen as making their mockbuster movies look as superficially similar to other famous animated movies to deceive old relatives or teachers who accidentally buy them at the DVD stores. Fortunately, the trick didn't work, and these studios ended up fading into infamy anyway. Back when I was young, I myself never watched these mockbusters, but I did remember watching Mars Needs Moms in elementary school. We all hated it, and the boys and I were shitting on Milo all throughout. It was glorious hehe.

How about you? Did you ever see these animated mockbusters when you were young? And what were your trippiest memories of them? This is just a light discussion, so feel free to joke around.