file folder x

[wastelesscrafts]

hi! this is embarassing but i'm trying to learn how to embroider, and i wanted to ask: how many threads are we supposed to put in the needle hole? i wasn't sure wehre to find this information...the tutorials show one thread but the thread from the embroidery spool is so big and won't fit when i try to thread it through the fabric :(

How many embroidery floss strands

It's okay, we all have to start somewhere.

A lot of us feel like everything we do has to be perfect on our first try, but that's just not realistic. It leads to us feeling embarrassed about messing up, and then giving up altogether.

Mistakes are an important part of learning any skill, and so is asking for help when you run into trouble.

And you know what? Asking questions you're embarrassed about is really brave, so good job on sending this ask in the first place!

Embroidery floss:

Most embroidery floss consists of six separate strands. (This may vary depending on which type you use.)

(Image source) [ID: a bunch of green embroidery floss looped around a plastic tag labelled "320", lying on a white piece of fabric. One of the floss threads has been loosened up, showing the different threads it consists of. Text: "needlenthread.com".]

By having multiple strands at your disposal, you can choose how many to use. Using all six will give a bolder look than using just one strand. It's kind of similar to drawing: lines made with a big marker will look different than those of a fineliner.

(Image source) [ID: six short lines in stem stitch embroidered in light blue floss. Each line is numbered from one to six, indicating how many strands of floss were used per line. Text: "How many strands of thread to use? stitchfloral.blogspot.com".]

And just like how a fineliner or a bold marker will result in different effects, the amount of strands you use will effect what your embroidery looks like.

(Image source) [ID: two sets of an embroidered red and yellow flower paired with a green leaf. The set on the left has been embroidered with six strands of floss while the set on the right has been embroidered with only one strand of floss. Text: "© Sarah's Hand Embroidery".]

How many strands to use depends on the look you're going for and the fabric you're working on.

How many threads?

So, how do we decide how many strands to use? Ask yourself the following questions:

What visual effect do you want to achieve? A bold design, or something more delicate?

How much thread do I have? Can I afford to use six at the same time, or should I use my floss sparingly?

Do I want my embroidery to lay flat on the fabric, or do I want something raised?

Do I want to work fast and bold, or slow and detailed?

What's the most comfortable amount of strands to work with for me personally?

What's my fabric like? Can it handle six strands, or would that result in damaging it? Does my thread count match the needle I want to use?

Which amount of floss is the most appropriate choice for the stitch I'm using?

If you're unsure, try your stitch and strand combination on a scrap of spare fabric first and see what it looks like before tackling your project. Make sure to use a needle that's appropriate for your fabric and thread, too.

(Image source) [ID: four cross-stitched blue hearts on white canvas. Each heart is labelled one to four and was stitched with a different amount of thread, resulting in different fabric coverage.]

Conclusion:

How many strands to use depends on your project, your design, and your fabric. It can be hard to choose how many to use at first, but this is something you get a feel for the more you practice.

For more information, check out these strand guides by Needle 'n Thread, Crewel Ghoul, Sarah's Hand Embroidery Tutorials, Stitch Floral, and Better Cross Stitch Patterns.

[glossynympheteyes]

this movie is so fucking creepy jesus fuck

[dumpster-king]

It’s by Tim Burton, what did you honestly expect?

[porcelainandgold]

Actually, it’s Henry Selick, who was the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The book was written by Neil Gaiman, though, and is far…far….worse.

[whatpunkin]

Sorry, I’m about to geek the hell out.

The movie is captivating, but the book is twenty kinds of terrifying, even now, ten years after I first read it. As disturbing as the movie may have been to some, the things Selick added really serve to cushion just how horrific the story really is.

First of all, the character of Wybie does not exist in the book. Coraline is facing all of this nearly alone, with her only help coming from the sly comments of the cat, a warning from the circus mice, and the stone given to her by her neighbor, presented with no comment but that it “makes the unseen seen.”

Second, the Other Parents are never quite as warm (and, dare I say, normal) as they are in the gifs above. They’re described as having paper-white skin and the Other Mother’s hair is said to move on its own, and her long, red, claw-like nails don’t ease any uncertainty that she is absolutely, positively up to no good. The first time Coraline meets them, they (and the rest of the Others) seem to be playing roles (for whatever reason, Coraline does not seem to pick up on this), like they all know what to say and what to do and are simply waiting for Coraline to make her move in their terrifying play world. This is shown to be partly true when the Other Parents tell her they know she’ll be back soon after she refuses the buttons - this time, to stay.

Third, the Other Mother commits atrocities that really should not have been in a book for anyone not fully grown up. She physically deforms the world around Coraline to slow her progress in their game beyond any mild traps the movie portrays, and, instead of turning the Other Father into the wandering pumpkin-thing seen in the film, she simply ceases to use him and throws his body away in the cellar, leaving him to rot with whatever bit of sentience he has left. She begins to lose her touch, as Coraline gains the upper hand. Her world doesn’t just become a nightmare - it falls apart completely. No creepy but oddly cool bug furniture here, just the house that now appears to be a child’s drawing. Whatever the Other Mother is (a beldame, but something tells me she’s much more ancient and powerful than that), she does not give half a hump about what she has to do to ensnare Coraline. Destroy the supporting characters of her twisted creation? Done. Allow herself to be dismembered to ruin Coraline’s life in the normal world? Not even gonna bat an eyelash.

On a final, personal note, imagine eight year-old me, ignored by my parents, absorbed in the story and identifying with Coraline from the start. Imagine me finishing this bloodcurdling book and immediately thinking of my basement, where there is still a locked door that my grandmother swears up and down is nothing more than a storage room, but has not once in my (or my mother’s) lifetime unlocked.

Can you see why this book still scares me?

[hematite2]

Fun fact I learned from seeing neil gaiman speak: when he first wanted the book published, his editor said it was too scary. He suggested she read it to her young daughter, and then decide. So she did, and her daughter wasn’t afraid, and it was published. Years later, Gaiman was sitting next to that daughter at an event and told her this story, and she said “oh I was terrified I just didn’t want to tell my mom”.

Coraline WAS too scary to be published, but exists anyway because a girl lied to her mother.

[petrichormeraki]

[feyariel]

@neil-gaiman, is this true about the publisher’s daughter?

[neil-gaiman]

It was my literary agent, Merrilee Heifetz who read it and said “you can’t seriously expect this to be published as a children’s book.” So I suggested she read it to her daughters. And she called me back a week later and said “They love it and they weren’t scared at all. I’ll take it to Harper Children’s.”

A decade later, at the Opening Night of the Coraline musical, I was sitting next to Morgan, Merilee’s youngest daughter, and told her how her not being scared had made the book happen. And she said “I was terrified. But I needed to find out what happened next. So nobody knew.”

So, yes.

[space-trash-princess]

This website can be toxic at times, but the fact that people can just tag Neil Gaiman to get his input, like a sorcerer invoking a benevolent spirit, is definitely a bright spot.

[memewhore]

[nattousan]

THIS IS SO OVER THE TOP HELLO??? WHO ARE YOU???

[filefolderx]

That's amazing

[pitbolshevik]

i love gaboon vipers why do they move like that

[pitbolshevik]

me when im walking

[corvidable]

[spleen9000]

@catadromously how could you leave this important comment in the tags etc.

[doodle-dog-diary]

That’s the truest thing about this creature that anyone has said, ever

[therealraewest]

A guy just came to my house while I was home alone to ask if I was single why are men like this

[therealraewest]

Okay y'know what I’m gonna soapbox for a hot minute

When I was in high school, a man who I’d thought was the parent of a school friend followed me out to the grocery store parking lot greenhouse where I worked. It was dark, and late, and it was me, alone, in a chain link enclosure with one exit and a register full of cash. He called me up to the fence and asked if I wanted to get dinner, or go dancing. I was scared and shaking and told him no several times, and he only left when I falsely said I had a boyfriend. I was very aware that if he were to come over the fence, or just wait at the exit until I eventually had to leave, I could do nothing about it.

When my hair was very short, a hairdresser sent me to the barber’s side of the store so they could get the back of my head with clippers. The barber followed me out to my car to ask me out afterwards. I was very aware that we were the only people in the parking lot when it happened, and that the lot itself was tucked behind the building with no clear visibility to the road.

Today, a man I’ve met once made it very clear he knows where I live, and used that knowledge to express a romantic interest. If he ever decides that he’s unhappy with how I responded, he knows where I live. He knows what my car looks like. It is impossibly easy for him to determine when I’m home alone, and now I have to live with that knowledge.

Every woman I know has at least one story like this. My roommate had to be escorted to her car every night when she was a waitress, in case some man was waiting for her or a coworker’s shift to end.

If the person you want to ask out cannot physically run away from you when you are asking, YOU CANNOT ASK THEM OUT. You cannot ask someone out if they are at work. You cannot ask someone out if you’ve followed them to a remote/unoccupied/enclosed area. You cannot GO TO SOMEONE’S HOME UNINVITED to ask them out. You are not being romantic. You are not “taking initiative”. You are terrifying the person you want to woo. If they say yes, it is not because they want to, it is because they are terrified of what might happen if they say no.

I’m so tired of being terrified by men who think they’re being romantic.

[blackjackgabbiani]

“Every woman” you say. Do you personally know every woman in the world? Don’t presume to speak for others, and don’t make this a gendered issue either.

[therealraewest]

Actually every woman in the world is in one big group chat and they’re all telling you to fuck off

[stereden]

In response to @blackjackgabbiani, allow me to quote one of the best poems I’ve ever read.

This Vote Is Legally Binding

by @tkingfisher

In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphones…

Someone always says it, whenever it comes up: “I guess I’m just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!” Well. Yes. It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote all us women and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone ever again. This vote is legally binding. Yes, of course, all women know each other, the way you always suspected. (Incidentally, so do Canadians. I’m just throwing that out there.) We went into the women’s room at the Applebee’s at the corner of 54 and all the others streamed in through the doors into that endless liminal space, a chain of humans stretching backward heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites, Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child. We sat around in the couches in the women’s room (I know you’ve always been suspicious of those couches) and chatted with each other in the secret female language that you always knew existed. Somebody set up a console– the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart and Cleopatra never learned to lose and a woman who ruled an empire that fell when the Sea People came and left no trace can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument. Eventually we took the vote. You had three defenders: your grandmother and your first-grade teacher and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody. Your mom abstained. It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks that have been kept under the couch in the Applebee’s since the beginning of recorded time. And then we went back to playing Mario Kart and Hoelun took off her bra and we didn’t think about you again except that I had to carry this message. So anyway good luck with that it’s just as you always said it was. Hush now, no talking

hush.

[copperplatebeech]

Reblogging for that poem especially. Thpft yup.

[tiersup]

Okay blackjackgabbiani can’t read for shit, op said every woman that she knows, not every woman on planet earth.  But also this has happened to me to and I can’t stand it. 

“If the person you want to ask out cannot physically run away from you when you are asking, YOU CANNOT ASK THEM OUT.” are words to live by and I wish more people respected this. In my experience it be Strangers that do this; acquaintances that don’t know your favorite color or birthday or hobbies and never will after that nonsense.

[rcmclachlan]

Turns out, 2000 was 20 years ago. Which is odd, since 1980 was also.

[rhube]

The thing Gen-Z really needs to understand is that no one older than them is ever going to be able to estimate time correctly because the Millennium.

The Millennium will always be Not That Long Ago. Everything since the Millennium will always be, in some sense, ‘new’.

It just broke us, OK? It was too big and we’ll never quite be able to deal.

[lrgcarter]

Was the real millennium bug inside us all along?

[jenroses]

yep.

[porcupine-girl]

I think at least part of this is that pop culture has gotten such a longer shelf life over the past 20 years.

You can listen to a Top 40 station now and hear a song from 10 years ago easily, even songs from the 80s or 90s on special occasions (which might just be the Nineties at Noon or whatever every single day).

A Top 40 station in the 80s? Played the current fucking Top 40 and that was it. You were lucky if you heard a song that was one year old, definitely never ten. I was born in 1979 and heard almost no music from before I was born until high school or college. If you wanted to hear anything older than a year, you had to listen to a classic rock (late 60s to 70s) or oldies (50s to early 60s) station. There was nothing earlier than that on the radio.

A restaurant was playing What a Feeling, from 1983. 28 years before my son was born. That’s the equivalent of hearing a song from 1951 in the late 80s, which just did not happen. Even for an oldies station, it was hard to find anything that old.

VCRs were just getting big in the mid-80s, but there was a limited selection of videos you could buy (or even rent) for them. Most video rental stores didn’t bother to stock TV shows, it just wasn’t worth it. (Few shows were even released on VHS.)

So you could generally watch recent movies and “classics” but if you were looking for some random movie from the mid-70s - that’s only ten years previous - you were mostly out of luck. Imagine looking for a movie from 2006 right now, and you can find maybe the top-grossing ones and a few that won Oscars, but Night at the Museum? The Devil Wears Prada? You’re shit outta luck. That’s what it would have been like looking for movies from 1976 in 1989.

So for those of us who grew up in the 80s and early 90s, pop culture had a hard limit of about a decade, if that. By the late 90s, the internet was good enough that music was starting to stretch that, but you still couldn’t really get video through the internet and DVDs were still catching up in terms of what was available. You didn’t really get entire seasons of TV on DVD until the early 00s - the first season of The Simpsons, which aired in 1989, wasn’t released on DVD until 2001.

Anyhow, I think that’s why a lot of older millennials and Gen Xers are having trouble wrapping our heads around the idea that the year 2000 was almost 20 years ago. Because we grew up in a world where if you heard a song regularly, or watched a movie or a TV show that wasn’t late-night reruns, it had probably been released within the past 5 years, and almost definitely within the past 20. Our brains haven’t quite gotten used to hearing a new song followed by a 30-year-old song on the radio and not just being able to find any decade-old movie at will but seeing gifs of decade-old movies almost daily. Our brains think that means those things must still be new.

[lostmind3]

I have never heard anyone explain it so clearly before. And I LIVED it.

[randomslasher]

That’s a really great break down! My radio station plays “hits of the 80s, 90s, and now!” and like…even that, you’re saying “now” encompasses everything that isn’t the 80s and 90s which…yeah, that’s legit how it feels to us. There was the 80s, there was the 90s, and there’s now. And now isn’t that long, it’s just…now. But “now” is actually 21 years??? It doesn’t feel possible.

I watch a lot of movie reviews and breakdowns on youtube and when someone says “that’s just how we were back in the early 2010s, it was a different time” or “this movie that came out in 2005 was formative to my childhood” it breaks my brain just a little. And I think everything in this post is exactly why. How could 2005 have been your early childhood, when it’s just part of “now”? How could the early 2010s be different times when they’re also just part of “now”?

I’m intensely relieved to know this is a universal thing and not just my own inability to move forward. I also figured it was something that happened to everyone as they aged, but now I’m thinking the unique circumstances of the Millennium, the evolution of media availability and the shelf life of pop culture may have made this a uniquely “Gen X/Millennial” experience. This is really fascinating, thank you for the explanation!  

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

Some of it’s tech, but also the Telecommunications Act of 1996 resulted in an orgy of media mergers, buyouts, and market domination.  It’s one of the big reasons you’re still hearing the same shit on the radio now that you were in the late ‘90s, or can flip between any/most of your area’s genre stations and hear practically the same playlist on all of them–something like 4,000 radio stations just got straight up bought out in the immediate aftermath, and it hasn’t gotten any better since.

Like I just can’t listen to the radio much anymore.  Songs I got sick of before I graduated high school are going to come up 2-3 times on the way to the grocery store and back, no matter what local hard rock station I pick.

And the thing is that really big companies in general are risk-averse.  Once you’ve basically captured the audience, there’s no incentive to innovate at all.  There’s only so many broadcasting hours per station/movie screens per theater.  The companies want to keep using the same formula they’ve already got, that works well enough, and fuck you if you want something different. 

If a band starts to fall out of fashion, plug a band that sounds a lot like them into the line-up instead.  Reboot the franchise you’ve already got the rights to.  Keep the show running for 17 seasons if at all humanly possible, and make sure you have a spin-off or a similar format with the same cast ready to go as soon as the last one wraps.  Release the umpteenth remaster/director’s cut/theatrical release of that film/album.

Eventually, yeah, the mass culture landscape winds up without any clear landmarks and we feel like those poor assholes in a Twilight Zone driving past the same creepy hitchhiker over and over again no matter how hard we stomp on the gas or how far we drive off our route or how impossible it gets that every single local hard rock station is playing fucking “Wicked Garden” in the year of our dark lord 2021.

[sosuperawesome]

Dragons / DIY Patterns

Crafty Intentions on Etsy

[anxietyproblem]

[itscolossal]

Earth’s Rotation Visualized in a Timelapse of the Milky Way Galaxy by Aryeh Nirenberg

[akiyty]

[drst]

This messed me up.

[bestie-gor]

We really do just be on a rock without a fucking clue huh

[sosuperawesome]

Sea Stained Glass on Etsy

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

this is maybe the funniest thing i’ve ever seen

[landsword]

ok but the whole reply-

[gorgoroth-deactivated20220130]

??????

[ketamie]

wwidshdhgfbdbhfjnsdsjdsnnfcdbhvfghbdnjdkmsd

[997]

maybe he just gets it

[clish-moved-deactivated20210119]

“If you are not attracted to an individual, because the individual has a trait, that’s okay”

[ruffboi-mags]

1) This is a very good twitter thread.

2) the notes are full of terfs (in part bc OP put it on terf tags intentionally) and it’s gross af but it makes a damn good blocklist

[iamshadow21]

Reblogging the good stuff from Laura Kate Dale, the gay autistic transwoman gamer we deserve.

[crossdreamers]

Finding love as a transgender person

Marianne Oakes has shared an amazing collection of transgender love stories over at GenderGP. 

Here are a few of them. 

Marianne wrote:

The myth that trans people struggle to find love is damaging to our future generations, if trans youth or worse still, their parents believe this, then the impact can be loss of hope. My experience is pretty much like all the lovely comments here, let’s stop the myth, xx

More here!

[fred-erick-frankenstein]

These stories help so much. Not just because of the trans people find love just like everyone else, which is an important message on its own, but because there are some stories of other people who didn’t know since they were kids and this is so fucking reassuring!!!

[filefolderx]

I met my partner online through their blog and didn't know their gender for months, because it didn't matter to me and tbh I enjoyed getting to know them as a person before learning those kind of details about them. When it eventually came up in conversation and they told me they were genderfluid, it made perfect sense and fit perfectly with what I knew of them already. We've been together for 4 years now ❤️

[thewindowofthesummerhouse]

loputyn

[luisonte]

Hueco hay

[finnsbronco]

Best corner cabinet design I’ve seen.

[homopower]

[nastr0nd]

…that is so cool, except for the 7am staggering awake and bursting into tears if I couldn’t open these.

[evilyisme]

MY WHOLE DAMN LIFE.

[silverhawk]

honestly tho that scene in the incredibles where mr. incredible sees the names of all the old super heroes that used to be his friends / that he knew from Back in the Day and how every one of them has been killed by syndrome is such a chilling scene for so many reasons 

like for one, everyone he knew is dead at this point and has been killed on the same island he’s at now and two, its heartbreaking bc that means that almost every hero wanted to try out being a hero again despite the laws against it and wanted to try and help someone out and relive their glory days, only to be straight up murdered like fuck that scene is just so fuckin intense

[allthesebees-deactivated2019070]

[marisatomay]

[theladyspanishes]

I think the core of that scene for me is, when you’re insane like me and you go through it frame by frame, you can work out that Gazerbeam defeated the omnidroid twice - the only super we have enough information to confirm did so. I always wondered about his body in the cave, how and why he got the password… But it makes sense. This thing goes haywire, gets an upgrade, and goes haywire again? He must have been hella suspicious! So he does what any good superhero would do - tries to get to the bottom of what’s really happening on Nomanisan Island. During the process he’s clearly caught and wounded but has just enough time to get himself somewhere he can leave a final message, just praying that the next super to come along will find it and break the cycle. Gazerbeam is my hero.

[xxxtictacion]

Incredibles 2 has a lot to live up to

[thatgirlwithanopinion-deactivat]

All of this and…

I’m just realizing that the name is No Man Is An Island???? As in, everyone needs someone to depend on and connect with, no one is ever completely alone or should act all on their own.

[swan2swan]

Also Gazerbeam probably has X-ray vision–so he not only survived long enough to defeat the Omnidroid, he had the ability to see Syndrome entering the password.

[animagix101]

Holy guacamole! I should pay more attention, I don’t think I got any of that stuff!

[frognonbinary-deactivated202412]

does anyone think about the fact that now mr. incredibles has to live w/ the fact that all his friends getting killed by syndrome could have been avoided if he had just been nicer to syndrome from the beginning

[breefolk-hates-staff]

^I was thinking that from the beginning reading this and was shocked it went through so many comments before anyone pointed that out.

Syndrome waited until his machine was almost ready to go before asking Bob to come to Nomanisan. He also was surprised to find out that he was married to “Elastigirl”, which means he likely built his list and went through everyone else before finally deciding it was time to kill Bob.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Also, Syndrome literally didn’t find Bob until the start of the movie. He found Frozone and was stalking him. If Lucius hadn’t hung out with Bob, then Frozone was going to be the next one lured. There’s literally a scene of Mirage realizing that the guy in the car with her target is Mr. Incredible. He wasn’t going through the list, he was stalking and finding every former Super he could, luring them to the island, and then killing them, for the sake of improving his robot. Finding Bob was just a happy accident, and Syndromes obsession with him meant that upon finding a bot that could beat Bob, he figured he’d hit perfection and was ready.

and like, let’s be real here in the intro Buddy was crossing the line the second he showed up, Mr. Incredible mentioned he’d been very nice to Buddy, via signing a ridiculous amount of autographs and doing pictures and stuff, and that he was not going to risk a childs life as a sidekick (albeit in less words). Buddy literally showed up by breaking into his car, and then stalked him all evening until he was arrested. That’s disturbingly obsessive behavior, there’s no amount of niceness that would stop Syndrome, it was an impossible situation. No amount of nice was going to appease Syndrome, the second he faced any sort of rejection from Mr. Incredible he was going to lose it and go supervillain. After his arrest he should have gotten put into therapy, but yknow, set in like. the 50′s. so it makes sense he fell through the cracks when the cracks were a goddamn canyon. Don’t victim blame Mr. Incredible.

[kiokushitakaa]

reblogging for the last comment because blaming mr incredible for the deaths of his comrades is honestly such a weird take and i dislike how it’s framed as “fact” when it’s not. it’s syndrome’s fault and syndrome’s fault alone. full stop. he murdered them because he was selfish, entitled, and obsessed with mr incredible to a fanatical degree.

[link-the-feral-anon]

You know what’s really great

In the beginning when Mr. Incredible says, “Go home, Buddy. I work alone.” He’s holding up Bomb Voyage

In Syndrome’s flashback, he’s looking down on him, no bad guy in sight

Do with that info what you will

[torskunj]

oh 

damn

[the-trinket-fairy]

This is such good analysis, but it’s also worth mentioning the difference between these two scenes which, supposedly depict the same thing. In the first, Bob is clearly busy, trying to keep his eyes on Bomb Voyage (a fantastic supervillain name!!!), so he is distractedly telling Buddy that he is busy and that he doesn’t need help. The lighting is realistic, and although he is CLEARLY fed up with dealing with this obsessive and toxic fan, he keeps an even tone and doesn’t snap at him.

In the flashback, it’s a different scenario completely!! The lighting is all focused on Bob as if he’s under a spotlight and it is only the two of them. Bob’s pose here is also ridiculously condescending. He has his hands on his hips like a superhero and is looking down at Buddy with contempt and scorn. In addition, when he turns to leave, he dismissively waves his hand as if saying “Get out of here.”

It’s also interesting to note Buddy’s position here. His arms are extended either in worship or as an expression of all he has to offer in this relationship. He sees himself as a victim because he thinks he gave all of himself to Mr Incredible, just got him to reject him.

It’s also amazing to me how much Buddy’s suit is a reflection of himself. Everything from the black and white color scheme representing his black and white way of thinking, to the huge S because here only thinks of himself.

Bob’s suit, however, is blue. In addition to being associated with a calming and rational thought process, I think it’s also to represent that he’s on the side of the police. He’s not here for his own glory, he’s essentially working as an extension of the police force

[littlewitchlingrowan]

Also, let’s not forget when Bob is catching Bomb Voyage and trying to keep Buddy from yeeting himself towards almost certain death, he’s on his way to his own wedding.

That makes two things abundantly clear:

Bob doesn’t have an aversion to working with other people. Remember when he runs into Elastigirl earlier in the day? She reminds him not to “forget”, and he promises he won’t. They were standing over a thief they ended up accidentally nabbing together, or so we thought. They bantered back and forth about working alone, yet they nabbed that thief so seamlessly, you’d think they’d done it before. Then you find out later, Elastigirl is the woman at the altar. Making it clear that they had to have worked together, very frequently, enough to end up trusting each other to the point that they revealed their secret identities and had a romantic relationship outside of Super work, culminating in literally marrying each other. Bob is more than fine with a partner because he married his.

The other is that, Bob is trying to protect Helen. She may be more than capable of handling herself, as she flirtatiously reminds Bob on the rooftop just hours before their nuptials. But the one thing that’s priceless to the Supers are their secret identities. With Syndrome following Bob begging to partner with him, it puts Helen in danger. A fanatical fan like that can end up possessive, meaning once Syndrome discovers her, could see her as a direct threat stealing “his” position working with Bob. And because he obviously has a knack for following people undetected (he was right on Bob’s heels all over a huge metropolitan city for literal hours), he could very well stalk Helen, discover her secret identity and expose her in order to eliminate her, putting her directly in danger. Bob isn’t an idiot, he knows working with this kid doesn’t just put this child in danger, but also his own wife and their identities. It’s better to say he works alone and let this kid down as gently as possible, hoping to finally shake him off for good so he can work in safety and peace.

Which leads me to my next point. Blaming Bob for all his friends getting killed is buying directly into Syndrome’s revisionist history of Bob “rejecting” him. Remember, if Syndrome hadn’t shown up to Mr. Incredible busting Bomb Voyage, none of the ensuing chaos with the bomb on the rocket boots getting dropped on the train tracks and blowing them up, causing Bob to lose Bomb Voyage, then forced to stop a speeding train, resulting in the passengers getting injured, the attempted suicide being thwarted which injured the guy, and everybody suing Bob for it, ultimately culminating in the Super’s fall from public grace and forced retirement. All of those consequences are because Syndrome refused to listen to Bob and meddled in dangerous affairs, making everything indescribably worse. If he had never showed up, none of the above would have happened and Supers would have never been forced into retirement, meaning none of Bob’s friends would have been lured from said retirement by Mirage and Syndrome’s private contract offers which resulted in their deaths.

[fuck-philip-banks]

this post got SO much longer AND better

[khyann]

Not sure if this matters by now but

[korben600]

A couple of things:

- The reason Syndrome found all the other supers first (including Frozone) was because Bob kept getting fired from his jobs, forcing the government to wipe his existence from multiple companies and forcing his family to move each time that happened. He unintentionally saved his family by forcing them to relocate so often.

- Two of the biggest differences between the two versions of “go home, Buddy” is the focus, and length. In Mr Incredible’s version, “Go Home, Buddy” is a midpoint, a random event that just happened to stick because it was weirdly specific, and it was right before the important parts. The attempted suicide, train crash, and wedding are much more important because those were more important to Mr Incredible (since the first two ended the superhero movement, and the last was his wedding). Buddy, on the other hand, only flashes back to “Go home, Buddy”. Which is weird because Buddy almost died later that night from a bomb on his cape, and he almost killed dozens of people on a train by dropping a bomb on them, and because of that, he was indirectly responsible for the death of supers. All three of those things should be much more important to Buddy, but it’s a sign of his psychosis that the one thing he remembers is not Mr Incredible saving his life, or his life being in danger, but instead Mr Incredible rejecting him. Buddy was unstable, and an extremely unreliable narrator who edited out massive chunks of his own story to better justify his hero syndrome.

- Also, on a more sobering note, some have brought up how Incredibles 2 seems a step down from Incredibles 1, and while that’s arguable, there’s some related bits in there I’d like to mention. You know how there were a slew of superhero’s in the movie for when they made superhero-ing legal again?

Notice anything funny about that lineup? Anything at all? Okay, here’s a hint then. How many of these heroes were working before heroes got banned? How many of these new heroes are from Mr Incredible’s era?

Answer: None.

Frozone, Elastigirl, and Mr Incredible are the only ones who were active before the ban, or more specifically, were left from those active before the ban.

Think about it, Elastigirl was on the news basically continuously, there was a UN declaration on supers, any super left who had even been five degrees of separation away from Elastigirl back in their heyday would’ve come up to talk to her and her movement. But when Elastigirl was brought in to meet other supers, she didn’t know any of them.

And it’s not like she and Bob were loners who never interacted with anyone, look at their wedding day, it’s packed to the gills with capes (and possibly some secret identities too):

So…what happened?

Syndrome happened. This isn’t just some serial killer picking people at random, Syndrome systematically wiped out an entire community of people, arguably, an entire generation of supers, since Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack seem to be the only kid-supers in existence.

That’s why Elastigirl is so emotional when she’s introduced to these new supers, she thought her people, barring her family and Frozone, were wiped out by Syndrome. And in a way…they were.

Nobody’s left from her era of superheroics. None of her old friends survived. It’s just her, Bob, and Frozone left out of what was once a thriving, vibrant community. All those bright lights snuffed out because some kid couldn’t handle being rejected but his hero.

- Honestly, this allegory kind of brings to mind the AIDS crisis and the gay community. A “syndrome” almost specifically targeting a subset of the population with a flair for dramatic outfits and superheroics, picking off members one by one until the population is decimated. The members of the community have to intervene themselves to slow/stop this “syndrome” because the government, which was supposed to protect them, is unaware of, or is blatantly ignoring the crisis until it starts hurting the “normal” community. Because of this “syndrome” there’s just this gap in this community, where an entire generation is just…missing…with the few survivors having to counsel the new, untouched generation, and helping them achieve widespread support and acceptance they could only dream of.

- Side note: I just realized something. Take a look at Syndrome’s kill list:

And take a look at that wedding shot again.

Anyone look familiar?

If it’s to hard to tell, at least four of the people Syndrome killed were at Bob’s wedding.

Mr Incredible wasn’t watching supers getting killed, he was watching his friends getting killed. People he trusted enough to share his secret identity with people he trusted enough to share his wife’s secret identity with. Hell, our poor boy Gazerbeam got a front row seat with Edna and their NSA agent that’s usually reserved for family only.

And that’s bad enough, but something else occurred to me, Bob and Helen clearly haven’t been keeping in close contact with their superheroic friends, Bob asks Frozone if he’s been keeping in contact with Gazerbeam, implying they haven’t talked in a while.

Additionally, Bob’s life, and the superhero community’s life, went tits up basically immediately after his wedding night. So if there was any point for them to stop talking with other supers, it’d be then.

So what does that mean?

It means, in all likelihood that when Mr Incredible looked at that list of dead friends and superheroes, he realized with growing horror that, his wedding?

The happiest point of his life?

That was the last time Mr Incredible saw his friends alive.

[isa-ghost]

[razzleberryjam]

Also like to point out that in the scene where he’s seeing all of his friend’s and their identities exposed and that they’ve been killed, he IMMEDIATELY in shock and horror realizes that elastagirl could be a target and SEARCHES her super identity. The relief on his face when he sees that she’s unknown is honestly so raw. Incredibles, both of them, are just absolutely stunning films.

[ygmtwr-atrus]

It might be worth pointing out that there’s a difference between authorial intent and character perspective.

Just because we all know it’s victim blaming to hold him in any way responsible, or even if HE knows it’s victim blaming, that isn’t going to necessarily stop him from wondering what he could have done differently or even feeling responsible despite knowing better. Pointing out that emotional chord isn’t necessarily agreeing with it.

Survivor’s guilt is also a thing, and it can be incredibly complex and take many forms.