#disclaimer; i haven't rewatched in a VERY long time this is just the shit i remember

[ladadee195]

Ladadee meets Legends of Avantris at Too Many Games 2024 (LONG POST read at your discretion)

I'm not one to write up a trip report cause I'm firmly in the "no one gives a shit." camp but for this I feel like people will get a kick out of my anxious distress over the past two days and I know those that couldn't make it would also appreciate it.

I knew a few months ago that when LOA said they were gonna be at TMG that I could go, its only an hour away from me. I'd gone to TMG back in 2019 to meet Brandon Rogers of Youtube and Helluva Boss fame and even then I didn't get HALF as nervous as I did the past two days. I was a shaking hyperventilating mess. Embarrassing, truly.

Friday was worse then Saturday.

First off, we'd barely parked in the parking lot when we see Andy casually strolling across the parking lot and get into his very nice red mustang, nice to see where the car vlogs happen!

By the time we got to the booth I could barely breath but I wanted to grab my free pin and say hi first. I want to disclaimer this by stating that I realize LOA tries really hard to make it perfectly clear that the Party and fam are regular people that work hard to produce their content and be successful at what they do without being celebrities or influencers. Logically, I know this and I respect the hell out of it. However my hyperfixated brain and general anxiety made it incredibly hard for me to remain CALM. Its really hard to remain calm when you've been watching them by yourself alone in your room hours upon hours and then suddenly there they are in real life before you, talking to YOU! How am I meant to be remain calm?

Anyway, I met Andy and Nikkie. Talked briefly with Andy and just generally embarrassed myself but he's so cool ya know and is probably used to it all things considered. I asked them both to sign my Cake Chad shirt, both we're happy to do so and I got a great hug from Nikkie. After that I cut my losses and decided to move on. Their meet and greet wasn't for a few hours and we were hungry. When the meet and greet came, I jumped in line to get a picture. It went really quick and I got no chance to really talk to them but they were super awesome and I love the picture! I knew they were TALL but god I felt like a hobbit.

The live show wasn't until 7:30 so we left the con to check into our hotel and relax for a few hours. It was a nice break and I finally got to breath. We returned to the con and got seats for the live show.

if you haven't already seen other's overviews or the whole video I wont spoil anything but it was SO good. I was so curious about what they could possibly do for a one shot but holy shit was that amazing. Its always interesting and fun to attend live shows with cheering and laughter and suggestive whistles. Gives one a sense of community you only ever get a taste of on here or discord.

Afterwards we went back to our hotel and rewatched the whole show on the live stream LOL

Saturday I was much calmer because I had a goal. Get the whole parties signatures and not be embarrassing.

We did a lot of waiting cause the con opened at 11 and again their meet and greet was at 3 but we managed to pass the time well enough and then we got back in line. An readers when I tell you how amazing it went!?? I was very proud of myself even though I was still nervous and shaky I did much better.

They all were super cool and signed my Hootise shirt. I still geek out thinking about it! But the best thing happened. Richie saw my Gideon/Kremy candy bead bracelet I'd made myself and legit forgot I'd worn for this exact reason. This is how that went. Richie: is that a Kremy and Gideon candy bracelet?

Me: YES!I forgot I had that on!

Richie: thats the best I gotta get a picture and show Mace.

I was DYING omfg. The two behind the ship SAW my ship bracelet??? still freaking out. I decided that I should have made ones for them. I convinced myself they wouldn't like them, I know better now for next time.

After they'd all signed my shirt I gave them my thanks and MAYBE acted a little embarrassing when I told them name and that I was already in the discord but as I said earlier they're so cool and awesome I doubt they noticed me being like that.

i felt like even though it was short I had a really good moment with them which is all I really wanted.

I regret a lot of things. Like the fact that I had plans on making them gifts but ran out of time due to me being sick like right up until Friday and being so nervous and scared and I acted only a little crazy. I know next time (PAXUnpluged in Dec?) I'll be much better prepared.

I hope those that cared to read this very long post enjoyed my little overview. Just remember even though you may be scared and nervous to do something, you still should cause you never know how great it might be at the end.

[thecoolerliauditore]

hey why does third life Cleo need to be put in the shredder ?

genuine question by the way, I don't think I have seriously thought about third life Cledubs ever

girl help I forgot I made that post so I was just staring at that first sentence for way too long like. does she.

but uh yeah disclaimer or whatever that on this blog specifically I tend to speak more hyperbolic and don't care to fact check myself because like 99% of the time I just write words and leave. I haven't necessarily like. looked back at any of my own posts a day or so later and gone "wow okay that's just incorrect" but I do acknowledge that like. I'm really letting the interpretation/headcanon lines blur over here at times and sometimes I'll just say shit. so yeah blah blah blah none of this is gospel everything with a grain of salt etc etc

anyway cleo in the life series in general drives me a bit insane because like 85% of the time they are really cool and awesome and funny and my favourite guy but then there's the 15% of time she shares onscreen in an extended conversation with scott smahor and she suddenly becomes like. genuinely the worst person alive to me I want her prosecuted jailed death penalty'd.

In third life specifically she makes an alliance with scott behind bdubs' back called the "widows alliance" which was based on a promised partnership after their respective partners (bdubs and jimmy) died before they did. Which is like. One of the things I am mad forever about people suddenly deciding everything is Silly when it comes to the guys doing horrible shit because what the fuck, man.

I guess there is an argument to be made for the level of seriousness on Cleo's side because unlike Scott we don't get any indication that she like. genuinely expects to outlive bdubs. And she could very much just be saying words for the sake of it or have yet to completely grasp the concept of "permadeath" (like many others) but I'm still mad. Very happy she ate shit and died right after Jimmy. I'm sorry women.

I would have to rewatch 3L from cleo's POV to say this with confidence but I would also like to add that from what I recall she was also somewhat? dismissive of bdubs the whole time even though a lot of the heavy lifting in their partnership was done by him. BUT in cleo's defense she was distrusting of essentially everyone in 3L and kept everybody at arm's length ++ I'm willing to attribute this more reflective of Cleo's running theme of being insecure in her own abilities than any sign that she thinks lesser of Bdubs specifically.

Post-3L Cleo is epic and awesome in Last Life as byproduct of the fairy fort being epic and awesome and even when she eventually joins GGG it's fine because LL!Scott is the only instance of Scott feeling human emotions in this series but ohhh my god DL Cleo is a whole beast of her own I could write essays upon essays on how DL Cleo is the worst guy ever this mf sets a little puppy dog on FIRE and no one ever mentions it I'm angry forever about it.

Everything limited life onwards is fine she chills out super hard about the not trusting people thing and limlife cleo specifically is really really funny even if she would still stab bigb to death with a kitchen fork if given the opportunity. Her relationship with Bdubs is pretty much un-weirded in my head I don't think they were like. Awful in 3L even I just think that Cleo has issues with relationships in general and self-sabotages alot due to her own insecurities and so she ends up doing alot of fucked up insane person things despite not really being. Bad herself if that makes sense?

Very very shy little endnote it's also like. Interesting to me that Cleo and only Cleo refers to the 3L Cledubs partnership as like. Romantic in any sense. Cleo uses terms like "husband" very generously so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here and say it means fuck all but idk idk something about the way Bdubs never reciprocates and instead assigns himself her son the next time they end up together is really funny to me.

Anyway yeah whatever. the shredder.

[bxckpills]

a nonexhaustive list of grievances @ netflix marvel’s defenders 

+ where the FUCK is ward?/???? why do we get nothing about him or joy?????

* * * * * * * this is actually small potatoes + something i can forgive on the basis of them not mangling my boy + keeping some stuff under wraps for IFS2 

+ speaking of joy, it’s unclear when in the timeline she hires jessica as a pi but i find it hard to believe that it was so far ahead of danny’s arrival that she didn’t send jess after him too. i know they always emphasize danny being her weakness or w/e but i feel like she definitely had his ass followed (especially after all the shit he pulled lmao) so why didn’t jessica know who he was and/or what he’s capable of?

+ there was just way way too much exposition + plot to cram into 8 episodes. 

+ because of this, a lot of things suffered writing-wise. characterization is the most painful of all these things. it seemed like just about every character was just a watered-down, fandom trope version of their former selves. danny was obnoxious(TM), all they let jessica add to the story was snark, madame gao was handled so badly tbh and matt oh my god my matty it’s like the writers came into this fucking hating him.

* * * * * * * * they tried to add depth--ie, danny’s hallucinations, luke’s struggle with being This Figure--but half the time it was so clunky and disjointed with the rest of it, it feels like there were two or three people writing this fucking monstrosity and frankensteining it together (no offense to dr. frankenstein intended)

+ please do not get me started on the above re; matthew michael murdock. 

+ this show just about killed my muse for him. *this deserves its own bullet considering how much time i used to spend on that blog, how much worldbuilding i did off of s2 only to have all of it(?!) 100% destroyed in front of me. i’m being so dramatic but i was so excited and it would have been so easy to not do me so fucking dirty. \

+ the matt/elektra storyline was so fucking convoluted it was painful. i feel like n/mcu was trying to hearken back to their great romance from the comics--which is fine when what they actually write isn’t so contradictory? matt and elektra were shitty to each other, i like elektra a lot but it wasn’t healthy for either of them? and to see none of that acknowledged + then have their relationship romanticized was just??????? 

+ i’m also so so so so so fucking over this ‘True Love Can Fix Anything!’ bullshit oh my god what is this, disney? ( ;) ) 

+ honestly how many more times are we going to be subjected to tv shows and movies involving graphic torture + abuse of women????? jesus h christ. 

+ that whole arc was fucking weak & unoriginal  tbh “we brought her BACK from the DEAD and BRAINWASHED her!!!!!!!!” (i’ll forgive it if it’s a comics thing, my comics knowledge is lacking)

+ i feel like our fearsome foursome needed to meet earlier to develop the chemistry they were low key promising us? even up until the end there was this......awkwardness lmao. but they had no time, i get that. 

+ why wasn’t matt just honest from the beginning?????/ what did he have to lose??????/ it’s pretty clear in their scene together that danny knew something was up right away, there’s no reason matt wouldn’t have said something to at least him. 

+ i’ll never fucking forgive them for not giving me the matt + danny friendship i deserve lmao but i digress. 

+ ALSO are you telling me that THAT’S how matt and foggy, iconic practically-married duo coming off of the worst split of their lives, are gonna reconcile?????/ THAT’S what we’ve been waiting literal YEARS for??????????? W E A K S A U C E . 

+ how is it that danny fought tooth and nail for rand but then doesn’t give a single shit about it later????? no wonder joy’s pissed. 

+ it’s like they just threw some darts at a board when it came to what developments are actually canon and which we’re gonna pretend never happened. 

+ why didn’t we at least get a frank cameo??????????/

+ in conclusion; i’m fuckin salty :( 

( pros )

+ marci stahl

+ matt in the nypd t-shirt

+ “are those shrimp?” “no those are pork, that guy’s got shrimp tho” 

@fcrgedbyfire & @punkwithametalarm because u asked, thank you for coming to my ted talk. 

[helioleti]

I've been rewatching ATLA several times lately and this time I especially ended up wondering a lot about Iroh and Ozai's past and characters in general. I just can't help but think it weird that Ozai is the ultimate trashbag of a humanbeing while Iroh ended up preaching harmony and peace. It just doesn't make any sense. These guys are brothers. They were brought up by the same parents, in the same fascist imperialistic nation, they were taught the same values growing up. You're trying to tell me the difference is that Iroh was destined to be the person he eventually came to be, but Ozai was just born evil? No, I don't think so.

I have two hot takes that I'm gonna elaborate:

1. Iroh had a guidance Ozai lacked

2. Ozai was the less favored son

(Disclaimer: I haven't read the comics yet so I don't know how deep they've already gone into this subject at some point. I'm trying to interpret and analyze the stuff that I got from the animated series only. If anything I say contradicts what has already been confirmed in the comics, feel free to correct me.)

Hear me out. Iroh wasn't born a saint. Everyone is aware of this, especially Iroh himself. He laid siege to Ba Sing Se for 2 years, costing the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom thousands of lives. Everyone knew that if the Fire Nation took over the capital, it meant almost ultimate victory for the Fire Nation. He even went as far as making a offhand sadistic jokes about burning the city to the ground in that letter to Zuko and Azula.

Iroh acknowledges it himself; He was a different man.

So what changed?

Yes, his son died. It broke and shattered him from the inside, making him drop all efforts to continue fighting in the war. To continue what had been his lifelong ambition, what he believed to be his destiny. He had a literal vision about taking over Ba Sing Se when he was a child, and that had been what he'd been pursuing ever since. But the death of his son managed to crumble all of that into nothingness. How is that possible?

Don't get me wrong. I think it's completely valid. I just don't understand how Lu Ten and Iroh could've had such a loving and caring relationship in the first place, when that's clearly something unusual among the royal family. Ozai burned and banished Zuko without a second thought, not to mention all the other shit he did to him growing up. Ozai didn't give two shits about Azula either, he only ever intended to use her as his weapon. Doesn't seem too surprising, if you ask me. Azulon didn't hesitate to demand that Ozai kill his own son if he wanted the throne. That's the man that raised Ozai, so it's just logical that Ozai learned that behavior and those values from his own father.

Even 9 year old Azula thinks it laughable that Iroh would fall apart at the death of his son. She is a child and this is how she thinks. The reason Zuko doesn't think like this is because he's had the guidance of his mother, unlike Azula. This is the kind of mentality these kids grow up with. They grew up with war and so did Iroh and Ozai.

So why was Iroh's relationship with Lu Ten so different? Where did Iroh experience the kind of compassion and love he passed on to his own son, that Ozai definitely didn't? People act on how they've come to learn, so where did Iroh learn to care about his son to a point that it made him give up on his lifelong ambition?

Let's review a very crucial information we have on Iroh and Ozai as siblings: They have a huge age gap.

Frankly, I'm guessing about 10-20 years. Looks more like 20 to me, but that could also be Iroh's greater amount of endured pain and war making him look older than he actually is. But no one can deny that an age gap is definitely there. Which can also indicate they had different upbringings, despite having grown up in the same family as brothers.

What does this mean? Well, that's just me theorizing now, but I can definitely imagine that Iroh had someone, a family member maybe, there for him who wasn't around or didn't care to be when Ozai grew up. There must've been someone there who gave Iroh emotional security and guidance throughout his upbringing. Who? That's up to imagination. A friend of the family? A friendly uncle? His own mother ((or father))? (The last two things worked out for Zuko in the end, didn't they?) Otherwise I can't really explain myself why Iroh had enough values to love the way he loved Lu Ten, while Ozai clearly didn't give two fucks about his children at any point in his life.

Iroh was the firstborn son, the one who had a vision very early in his life that his destiny was to take over Ba Sing Se. Probably the one who got to have a family member care about him enough to show him how to love.

(I like to point this out a lot because I find it very interesting, and very significant. Please A:TLA give us more info on Iroh's past!!)

Which brings me to my second take: Ozai was the less favored son.

Iroh was clearly a son to be proud of. He was a master firebender, the "Dragon of the West", if you will. He apparently had a vision as a boy that he'd conquer the most "impenetrable city" in the world. He probably lived up to his parent's expectations for his whole life, especially having no sibling to be compared to for a significant part of his life. He broke through the outter wall of Ba Sing Se during his siege. Yada yada yada, you get my point. He's the best son they could've wished for.

And Ozai? As far as I know, he barely even has any military achievements. Taking over Ba Sing Se was Azula's doing. While Iroh laid siege to the capital, he was at home chilling in the palace. He's the younger brother to an established hero and was never meant to be firelord. Now, I haven't read the comics for more info on Ozai's biography, but this man barely had a chance to live up to his parent's standards with Iroh as an older brother. If my theory is correct, Ozai also didn't have any person to provide him emotional guidance throughout his life. (*cough* like Azula)

The logical outcome is: infinite jealousy.

And when Ozai suggests to Azulon that he revoke Iroh's birthright to become firelord, this is Azulon's answer:

Azulon doesn't even hesitate to call Ozai out on his bullshit. He doesn't hesitate to take offense at the suggestion of betraying Iroh, and he even seems to care about Iroh's suffering. Not to mention that Azulon is overall annoyed with Ozai's request for an audience and sends the rest of Ozai's family away as soon as he can, to get whatever it is Ozai wants over with.

I could also mention the fact that Ozai tried to impress Azulon with his daughter's skills (Azula, even named after him) and the overall strained relationship these two seem to exhibit. It's obviously very different from Azulon's relationship with Iroh, if the way he talks about said man is anything to show for.

What if Azulon treated Ozai the same way Ozai treated Zuko? (Probably without the physical abuse, but you get my point.) What if this is where Ozai learned to treat a "useless" kid like shit, maybe also in a way to cope with how he was treated himself?

Getting deeper into the fact that Ozai is rather a loser compared to Iroh, without any big military achievements and without value for anything beyond that, this also explains a lot about Ozai's constant need to establish his dominance.

First; Becoming Firelord through radical manners (you know, killing his own son or killing his own father)

Second; Publicly burning and banishing his own son whom he considers a weakling, who dared to speak up in his war room. Doing this to have everyone know that he doesn't associate himself with weakness and that he will not ever tolerate any form of disrespect.

Third; The whole Phoenix King act. No one can tell me this isn't a madman's doing. This is literally to show off that he is the most powerful person in the world.

Ozai is so obsessed with proving himself and his superiority to everyone, including himself and probably Iroh too. This makes most sense if we consider that he probably lived in his brother's shadow for his whole life, ignored by probably every guiding figure he's ever had in his life, maybe even considered a laughingstock by his own father.

Perhaps this is also the reason Ozai didn't have any problem with Iroh accompanying Zuko in banishment. His brother, the hero in whose shadow he grew up, and his son, the failure he'd wanted out of the way for a long time already. It would erase Iroh's image that made him superior to him, once and for all. For himself and the world. I believe that branding him a traitor was the biggest satisfaction Ozai had ever experienced in his life.

I absolutely despise Ozai with every fibre of my heart, but it amazes me how ATLA continues to leave so much room for interpretation and explanation for a character as despicable as him. Writing this, even had me feel sympathy for him at some point. Feel free to disagree with me or add anything, I'm eager to hear everyone's thoughts about Ozai and Iroh's backstories because I'm geniuinely very curious.