Avatar

SO THIS PLACE IS REALLY FOND OF "OPTIONAL" TITLES

@megamindyelling / megamindyelling.tumblr.com

THE FORMER MASTER OF ALL VILLAINY DOESN'T THINK TITLES ARE OPTIONAL / AVATAR BY @INFINITEABYSSOFART
Avatar
reblogged
Avatar
nientedal

Hello, I binged a bunch of your Megamind fics last night (best mistake of my life 🥲). But since I'm not an old Megamind fan, or even an old fan of yours, I don't really know how did you come up with the bird-like singsong language headcanon and not sure where to look for answers either. Megamind with gills headcanon is pretty intuitive, but this? Tell me more, please ~

Thank you for your work. Megamind is a masterpiece, but even DreamWorks couldn't begin to explore all the implications of the story.

Avatar

Omg I love this question, thank you for asking! And I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed my writing 💙👽💙 I hope you can nap today!

The short explanation is simply that the way I see it, if Megamind's species can live underwater, the language spoken in his culture of origin cannot work the same way our languages do. The primary mechanics of human languages, air flowing out through our mouths, will not work for an aquatic species unless their language is bubbles. So I needed something else, and...I like birds a lot. When I wrote Swansong (I think Swansong was my first fic in which Megamind speaks any Punktsyk), I honestly wasn't thinking about it very much, except "birds whistle and chirp, and so do dolphins and whales, so Megamind sounds like birds and dolphins and whales."

The long explanation of how I got to the fully-developed headcanon for his language as I currently write it is below:

Avatar
Avatar
florianflux

Ensemble “Blue Blood”

Historically inspired couture ensemble, made from soft black leather and intense blue lamé. This outfit consists of an S curve underbust corset, matching bra, a fishtail skirt and leather bolero jacket.All items feature custom-designed lasercut motifs, carefully arranged to follow the curves of the body and match up at the seams.

The bolero jacket is also decorated with quilting around the collar and hems.

Royal Black Couture and Corsetry (x)

gimme gimme gimme. I love this. -Miss Miasma

Megamind would make Roxanne wear this and slam her so hard

Hell, I’d wear it

!!!!! !!! !!!!!! !! !!!!!

Avatar

FRIENDS, I AM SQUINTING VERY HARD AT THIS ADVERTISMENT I JUST RECEIVED

WHAT ON EARTH

SO, WE HAVE...A HAT, A CPR DUMMY MOUTH (?), AND...UM.

WELL NOW, WHERE...WHERE DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT'S...INTENDED...TO GO? WHAT IS IT...FOR?

WHO IS IT FOR? I DON'T THINK I'M

AH

I REALLY DON'T THINK I'M THE... INTENDED AUDIENCE FOR WHATEVER THAT IS

EDIT: OH IT'S A FISHING LURE, HOORAY

Avatar

I need. Adult sized playgrounds. I did rock climbing for a bit until I got injured and chalk gives me sensory ick anyway, I did trampolining as a kid, but that's not enough really its not the same its too Sports coded. I need to go to a big softplay and run around with my friends and get into social bonding fights with other people there. I need to go play on the swings. I think it would be good for society generally if there wasn't a cutoff age on Going To Play on the proprioceptive stimming machines and hurtling benevolently and haphazardly into things. Running around used to be so Fun. I don't wanna do rock climbing again even a fraction as much as I want a jungle gym yken? I don't wanna swim laps I wanna play on the big floating inflatable obstacle courses and go down the flumes and it's much harder to do that as an adult

Avatar

Next time transphobes call trans healthcare "experimental" you can show them this

Avatar
alexseanchai

penicillin was first discovered in 1928; vaginoplasty is less experimental

ibuprofen was first discovered in 1961; phalloplasty and HRT are less experimental

Adderall was first applied as an ADHD treatment in 1994; puberty blockers are less experimental

Avatar
Avatar
harmalite

CLADISTICS ruined my life

Avatar
aquaticpaleo

yall joke but this is actually a serious conundrun with cladistic-based classification

The choice is this: 

Birds are reptiles 

Or crocodilians (and probably turtles) ARENT 

That’s it, that’s the choice 

Avatar
shadybacon

What if Bird and reptiles are two different things that came from the same thing

Nope 

Because you can’t group (lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians) without also including (birds) 

So if you don’t want to include birds in reptiles then you have to leave out some things we’ve called reptiles 

birds are dinosaurs though, full stop. we’ve already defined what a dinosaur is and it includes birds. but reptiles isn’t really defined so much as thrown against a wall angrily. 

But don’t turtles and alligators have more in common with modern reptiles than modern birds have in common with modern reptiles? I’m not trying to contradict, I’m trying to understand. Mammals and reptiles have a common ancestor as well, but we do not make them the same group.

It’s not about having things in common. It’s about common ancestry, which is how we classify animals in light of extinct species, which defy trait-based classification. 

And, the common ancestor of [lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians] by definition is also the common ancestor of birds. It is NOT the common ancestor of mammals. 

So, either we decide that Tuatara Lizards and Snakes are the only reptiles, or we include birds as reptiles. Or we just decide reptiles are no longer a thing. 

don’t throw reptiles against the wall? please? some of them are small and delicate. you could hurt them.

Avatar
virovac

Basically, unless we’re maybe talking massive horizontal gene transfer, everything is still part of the group that came before it. 

You are technically a fish.

Avatar
haltraveler

IIRC the fish thing is so frustrating that scientists have decided fish is just not real cladistic grouping at all

Avatar
aethersea

hey could we go back please to the bit where the closest relative of Birds is Crocodiles? bc I am alarmed

Well, technically they’re equally-closely related to crocodiles, alligators, gharials and tomistomas. As archosaurs, they’re all descended from small reptiles that looked something like this 

The two main groups of archosaurs are the Pseudosuchia, or crocodile-line archosaurs, and the Ornithodira, or bird-line archosaurs. Both groups were massively diverse in prehistory, with the Pseudosuchia dominating most land-based niches in the Triassic, and the Ornithodira, especially the dinosaurs, doing the same during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. However, most of them have been wiped out due to the Triassic and Cretaceous mass extinctions, leaving them each with only one surviving clade: Aves, the true birds, and Crocodylia, the semiaquatic, ambush predators like crocs and gators. 

This entire post sums up everything we’re not allowed to mention in our Vertebrata classes because the last time someone started that argument they had to break up a fistfight.

Avatar
knitordeath

I’m just hung up on the humans evolving from fish comment.

Like, we evolved from tiny tree-climbing squirrels. To the best of our knowledge.

…which evolved from tiny tree-climbing reptiles

…which evolved from amphibians

…which evolved from fish.

*runs in ten minutes late with a plucked chicken* BEHOLD A LIZARD

you could have left the feathers on this time tbh

It was already plucked. They just STOLE IT from philosophy 101.

Every turn on this post has been a left, but somehow it hasn’t hit itself, and instead just spiralled outwards like some Ancient Greco-Roman floor design, enveloping taxonomy Tumblr in chaos.

Avatar
emi--rose

May I recommend the book “why fish don’t exist” by Lulu Miller

May I recommend

the book “why fish don’t exist”

by Lulu Miller

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Also fun fact! There are bird hipped dinosaurs and lizard hipped dinosaurs.

Guess which ones birds are descended from

Avatar

“I’m not going to do the thing because I don’t view it as important.” Conscious decision made of your own free will.

“I want to do the thing because I view it as important, but trying to get myself to do the thing creates the same reaction as trying to put my hand on a hot stove would.” ← Executive dysfunction, a physical health problem that doesn’t answer to your own free will.

“Trying to get myself to do the thing creates the same reaction as trying to put my hand on a hot stove would. This must mean I don’t actually want to do the thing and I’m just tricking myself into thinking I do.” ← No, that’s still executive dysfunction, but you’re having brainworms about it.

Avatar

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

Avatar

OH HO HO

I SEE WHAT HAS HAPPENED. SOMEONE HAS SOLD OUT. OR IF THEY HAVEN'T YET, THEY'RE GOING TO.

HMMMM I AM GOING TO HAVE TO SEE WHAT ROXANNE CAN PUT TOGETHER IN TERMS OF PROJECTED PUBLIC RESPONSE TO ME BUYING A "SOCIAL MEDIA" WEBSITE. I AM TOLD BUYING "SOCIAL MEDIA" WEBSITES ON A WHIM IN ORDER TO CHANGE THEM TO YOUR BIZARRE PERSONAL SPECIFICATIONS WITH NO THOUGHT TO BRAND OR PURPOSE IS ALL THE RAGE THESE DAYS. WELL AT LEAST I WOULD HAVE A PURPOSE IN THIS HYPOTHETICAL ENDEAVOR AND IT WOULD BE THE EXTREMELY SIMPLE PURPOSE OF PUTTING MY STUFF BACK WHERE IT WAS.

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.