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Keys, Bells, and Cat

@catamaranthenonnewtonianfluid / catamaranthenonnewtonianfluid.tumblr.com

they/them if you're confused, you're correct if you did rp on a niche as hell proboards back in the early 2000s that no longer exists but I'm PRETTY sure was prefixed wildfreeflame with zero cohesion, any kinda character was fair game, hit me up cause there was only like four of us and y'all were cool as heck and I don't have a lot of other options in terms of contact haha
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rolling badly is something that can be so good for developing your character, actually 

like I say this wholeheartedly, just absolutely fucking up and beefing it and having to roleplay with that is really good for forcing your character to grow from the image you had of them in your head to an actual living, breathing, fully realized creation that you can really inhabit. 

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doomed by the narrative but not to death. doomed to survive. doomed to stay alive inside the story. doomed to never escape the narrative, not even through death. you are allowed no exit. there is no way out for you and there never was. you couldn’t die if you wanted to. the narrative has a hold on you and it won’t let go. death is too sweet a doom for you. the story has something much worse in mind. there is no way out.

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geekdawson

one of the more valuable things I’ve learned in life as a survivor of a mentally unstable parent is that it is likely that no one has thought through it as much as you have. 

no, your friend probably has not noticed they cut you off four times in this conversation. 

no, your brother didn’t realize his music was that loud while you were studying. 

no, your bff or S.O. doesn’t remember that you’re on a tight deadline right now.

no, no one else is paying attention to the four power dynamics at play in your friend group right now.  

a habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every little detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight….it’s all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age. 

Here’s the thing: most people don’t do that. I’m not saying everyone else is oblivious, I’m saying the over analysis of minor nuances is a habit of abuse. 

I have a rule: I do not respond to subtext. This includes guilt tripping, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, etc. I see it. I notice it. I even sometimes have to analyze it and take a deep breath and CHOOSE not to respond. Because whether it’s really there or just me over-reading things that actually don’t mean anything, the habit of lending credence to the part of me that sees danger in the wrong shift of body weight…that’s toxic for me. And dangerous to my relationships. 

The best thing I ever did for myself and my relationships was insist upon frank communication and a categorical denial of subtext. For some people this is a moral stance. For survivors of mentally unstable parents this is a requirement of recovery. 

This post has helped me so much I’m glad I’ve come across it again

It has honestly saved some of my relationships and it could have saved others if I had taken it to heart earlier

It’s how I approach all new relationships, and I’ll state this outright to be clear

I can’t stop myself from overanalyzing initially, but I have regularly stopped myself from obsessing over or acting on my overanalyzing

Thank you so much for making this post

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I think a very important unwritten piece of locked tomb canon is that corona and ianthe are absolutely both writing home regularly to mummy throughout the entire series - not with any helpful plot points or anything, they just want pocket money. Their mother, hatefully running a planet that she also hates, has the knack of silently wiring pocket money in an incredibly nasty and hurtful way - despite not accompanying it with a note or anything - just a sort of careful psychic warfare involving timing, amounts of money, the transfer service, etc.

(Although at at one point she asks if one of them has Babs, or if he’s dead or what. Corona ghosts her and ianthe texts back “who”)

Anyway, breaking off your meeting with god or the rebels or whatever because mummy has just sent you $465.73 in THEE bitchiest possible way

the idea that one moment Mummy and Daddy Of Ida receive official condolences from the Emperor Undying, the Kindly Prince of Death, the Necrolord Prime that both their daughters and their cavalier have tragically died during their glorious pursuit of Lyctorhood, look here are their coffins isn't this sad :( and then like an hour later a note flutters in from Coronabeth all "mummy dearest please forward my pocket money to this address, xoxo your favourite child" is, as the kids say, sending me

this is exactly it.their psychic waves of triangulation and nastiness already transcend death, truth, spacetime & etc. so it’s completely unreasonable that the secret spacebase of the emperor undying not receive a shipping container of ianthe’s shittiest party dresses and half used makeup , spitefully packed. Yes of course we know she’s dead it’s very unfortunate (many such cases) she’ll definitely need her half used makeup from her ‘thought I had deep winter mystique with a light spring skintone’ era in the afterlife. mummy x

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the genius of megamind (beyond the obvious genius ofc) is that it's superman parody actually presents a genuinely unsettling depiction of the "hero" that I like wayyy better than "what if superman was evil" or "what if superman was wrong"... it's "what if superman didn't care"

I wouldn’t say he “didn’t care” more like he was burnt out

He played the role since he was a child and now is in his what 30s? 40s?

He knew there was never any real danger with Megamind in charge so decided to pursue something that’s a passion and doesn’t come naturally easy to him

but it was still a dick move

One of the things that always jumped out to me about this reveal is that it implies that Metro Man was also the very first person to recognize that MegaMind wasn’t really evil. He knew his nemesis wouldn’t actually hurt anyone if he won, he knew that this universally reviled pariah never really had any more choice than he did.

The rest of Metro City treats MegaMind like a real, sincere, serious threat once he’s unopposed, and it takes them a while to learn otherwise. But Metro Man? He’s not surprised to see him and Roxanne working together, he doesn’t act like there’s any kind of threat beyond his cover being blown. He wastes no time in coming clean once the cat’s out of the bag. He’s been working with this guy all his life. Besides his own mental health, I get the impression that he also recognized that this would be good for MegaMind too.

I just really love how in a superhero pastiche that asks “Is the villain really so bad, and the hero really so good?” the answer is “no, but that’s okay”. It’s okay that Metro Man isn’t a paragon. It’s okay that he has to take care of himself. It’s okay for him to step down and live his own life. It wouldn’t be okay for him to leave people in danger, but it’s pretty clear he knew he wasn’t doing that.

And it carries to the end. MegaMind becomes the city’s new protector, but it’s clear that he’s still got some issues to work through, and he’s getting help working through them. He’s got a support network, he’s willing to put in the effort, but he’s not the shining paragon Metro Man was believed to be. And he doesn’t NEED to be that paragon. He’s still good. He’s still protecting people. And he’s not alone in it.

God, there’s just so many shitty “Superheroes would have character flaws too, and that’s why they’d actually suck” deconstructions floating around, it’s nice to see a story that acknowledges that no one can live up to that kind of role, but that’s okay!

megamind once again proving to be the best modern superhero movie

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