Sometimes School does a good

A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.

But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here

Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.

Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:

But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:

likely the most famous picture of a Thanksgiving dinner ever painted and you see it all the time.

What you may not know is its actual title

“Freedom From Want” it’s a part of a series of 4, including this now famous meme

“Freedom of Speech” These paintings were illustrations of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech where The President laid out a vision that would become what the Allies were fighting for in WWII universal human rights that became a part of the UN charter.

So this homey American Thanksgiving scene was also a bold statement that no one in the world should go hungry

You've changed me and I've changed you. Permanently and inescapably and completely and nearly beyond recognition, certainly beyond being able to undo it or even knowing where to start, where to begin to untangle the twisted threads of our intertwined lives.

Was the change for the better? I'm not sure. The change has been too deep and too complete; i don't know who i am without you.

No, the pointed ears are still there. So are the just slightly sharper teeth in their hopeful smiles. In fact, they look exactly the way they do in the stories. Right down to the emerald green eyes.

“Excuse me,” he says, nervously clearing his throat. “Could you go over that for me one more time?”

“Certainly! We would like to apply to be foster parents.”

“Right…” The social worker looks anxiously from one of the couple to the other. “But…but you’re fae.” He really doesn’t know a way to be delicate about this fact.

“Oh you noticed!” the one on the right says. (The couple introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Peters, but he doesn’t remember who was who and as far as he is concerned their appearance gives him no clue whatsoever.)

“Well, yes,” he says uncomfortably. “And this being the case, I did wonder…”

The Mx. Peters (surely that can’t be their real name) on the left nods understandingly. “Of course, it’s quite alright, we do understand. But you see, the whole changeling thing doesn’t really appeal to us at all.”

“Taking care of a human child sounds wonderful!” their partner smiles brightly. “And we have plenty of room to love one or two more! But we simply refuse to give ours away, and that is regrettably a big part of the changeling business.”

“Your children?” the social worker blinks.

“Yes,” the parents beam proudly. “Two of them,” one of them adds. “A wee one of barely four summers and our eldest, who is nearly eight.”

The other smiles enthusiastically. “It is preferred for foster parents, is it not, to already have children of one’s own?”

The social worker pulls himself together. “Yes,” he says. “Yes it is.” Parents are parents, aren’t they? And if he forgets about the teeth, and the ears, and the intangible feeling that his carpet might start sprouting daisies, these two are giving off practically nothing but parent vibes.

“So you’ll consider us for the programme?”

He nods. “Yes, certainly, I will. Just—” He clears his throat. “We will need to visit your home fist, to verify your circumstances.”

“Of course!” the parent on the left agrees.

“That should be quite alright as longs as we remember not to offer refreshments,” their partner nods.

The social worker nods along and silently scribbles a discrete little note on their file. He is going to have to have a talk with his supervisor about this. And another thing—

“I will need your full legal names for the forms,” he says, looking up.

The two fae meet his eyes with silent stares.

He swallows. “…a legal name for the forms?”

It let out into a beautiful tree ringed meadow, and near the back was a charming little cottage.

As he stepped in one of the said, “Welcome into our home!”

This gave him some pause but he had admit it was very beautiful. “There’s certainly plenty of room to run around.”

He glanced down at his papers and reluctantly said, “Now, a major dilemma is that of feeding your foster children.”

They looked at him intently and waited for him to make a point.

Sweating slightly he said, “Anything they eat here, it will keep them here? Forever? That’s not ideal for this programme.”

“Oh!” Said one of the Peters, “They can’t eat inside the house. We plan to feed them outside, so that they can’t come to any harm by that.”

“You’ll feed the children outside? Every meal?”

“Of course!” Their smiles were huge and delighted.

“What do you plan to do if it’s raining?”

Their faces crinkled up in puzzlement, and finally the other said, “Well rain doesn’t fall outside, I shouldn’t think it would matter.”

“But we are outside…” he felt he was losing in some way to a tide of logic he didn’t understand.

“Ohhhh, I see the problem. Here, you are inside our home. Let’s show you the backyard.” And they turned at walked with purpose to the cottage.

They opened the door and gestured into a lovely living room, “This is our backyard. It’s outside, so our children will be comfortable and fed. We know keeping them in the backyard may seem inhumane to you, but we assure you we’ve made it very comfortable.”

His brain started to twist in a way he wasn’t used to, but as it stretched he could almost understand their logic. Their home was the meadow. This was their backyard, and it was outside the meadow. Even though it was obviously inside still.

“That’s. Very nice. It’s a very nice… back yard. And the food in the backyard is… safe?”

“Oh yes! We have a human ready to make deliveries for us.”

“It’s very…” he looked around, “clean.” And it was. There was omissions you wouldn’t have expected. In the corner was a copper wood stove, and he idly thought ah yes, no iron. He would have bet there wasn’t a single nail holding the place together.

The couch looked like it had grown up into a position and all the wood floors had an extra vibrant gleam to them. The furnishings and rugs all looked to be exceptionally fine and soft, made of materials he didn’t recognize.

In the corner was a collection of musical instruments. “We do hope,” said a Peters right by his ear making him jump, “that one of the children exhibits an interest in music.”

“We wouldn’t,” hastened the other to add, “force them. But it would be very lovely. We tend not to be very musically inclined you know.”

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Bulgaria - 35% Croatia - 45% Cyprus - 12% (!!!!) Czechia - 47% Greece - 27% Italy - 41% Latvia - 43% Luxembourg - 20% Malta - 11% (!!!!) Romania - 48% Slovakia - 47% Slovenia - 38%

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

OP also invented armsocks.

(adding your tags since I'm addressing them)

It’s polite, for one. Professional doesn’t need to mean elaborate—in fact, most professional emails are aiming to be as clear and concise as possible. (in english at least, I know some other languages have some very complicated and elaborate email etiquette)

Greetings and signatures also don’t need to be elaborate. I feel like lots of people overthink it and assume that professional emails need the whole “dear x, my name is x and I am writing this email to inform you about [topic], sincerely [my name and all my contact info]” shebang, when really it’s as simple as adding a quick greeting/signature and avoiding super informal slang.

Here’s an comparison using art commission inquiry as the topic, written with zero extra fluff:

Hi, Are you currently open for commissions? Thanks, [my name]

If I want to add a little more fluff, maybe I write:

Hi, I love your art and wanted to ask if you're currently open for commissions. Here are details of what I'm interested in. Thanks for your time! Thanks/best/etc, [my name]

Those are very short while also being more polite than an email that just says:

are u open for comms??

with zero greeting/signature and very informal tone. 

There’s still a person on the other side reading that email, and just like how being polite with a customer service agent on the phone will get you better results than being rude with them, sending a clear and professional email will have you taken more seriously by whoever is reading it. All 3 emails get the same point across, but the last one leaves a much worse impression. You don’t speak to your close friends the same way you’d speak to strangers, and it’s the same in text form. I get so many emails that are just abrupt questions, with not even a quick "thank you" either in the initial email or as a follow-up after I respond, because they ghost me as if I'm just a chat bot answering questions.

It took me ages to figure out they were treating writing emails like they were talking to a chatbot.

Now besides the obvious issues - I cannot help you if I spend the better part of three days trying to pull basic information out of you - these messages look like spam. More importantly, they can come across as a scam, and that makes it even less likely to get the problem fixed.

27 Dresses uses a number of screwball comedy conventions and it’s absolutely to the film’s benefit - however, I feel it could have benefited from following one convention even more closely. 

Screwball comedy introduced two key ideas that forever changed the romantic comedy (they actually introduced a bajillion, but for the sake of 27 Dresses I’ll highlight two): 1) the idea of the companionate marriage, and 2) the idea of the “green world.” 

You know that whole idea of “you should marry your best-friend?” Yeah, that’s straight out of the screwball comedy playbook. As divorce became more prevalent in the 1930s, and marriage becomes reimagined as something people do out of fondness rather than economic obligation, this paradigm is included in the screwball comedy. Some critics say that despite the strong heroine these films are ultra-conservative b/c they reinforce marriage, but this ignores that the 1934 production code actually forbid films from disparaging the institution of marriage, so what could they do? -- they could denigrate a type of coupling while holding up a more idea alternative. There’s of course more to how this developed, but that’s the bare bones. So, says the screwball, in a time you can choose to marry anyone, why not get married to the person who brings fun, companionship, and a sense of play into your life? Because the person you can do that with is most likely the person who understands your emotional needs and will support those as well. 

The screwball also made use of the idea of the “green world.” This is something that comes out of Shakespearean comedy, actually, but the screwball puts it to use in film. The green world is a space separate from the normal order and structures of society. In Shakespeare, this place is usually the forest (so many people escaping to the forest!). Screwball comedy establishes a green world which “derives its ‘magic’ from its relationship to childhood. The normal world’s tyranny stems from its rigidity, which has resulted in social (and economic) stagnation; this is counteracted by a resurgence of playful irrationality, often empowered by the move into the green world. The contrast between artifice and nature remains, therefore, but is recast as a contrast between dehumanising, urban existence and liberating, pastoral play” (Glitre 2006). 

What does this all have to do with 27 Dresses? For this movie, the conflict centres around Jane’s commitment to the rigidity of the marriage industrial complex and the expectations the “natural” world has for her as a caretaker. How do we break her free from this? We get her away from the ability to plan a wedding. We run her car off the road, strip away her cell-phone signal, put her in a rural bar. And once they’re in that bar, the movie’s green world, everything becomes about the sense of play between Jane and Kevin. They drink, they challenge each other, and they dance on a bar. 

Now, this is where 27 Dresses strays from the screwball - if they were to strictly follow screwball conventions, Jane and Kevin should not have kissed and they definitely should not have had sex. 

The green world in screwball is about establishing the bonds of friendship. It’s about play. It’s about establishing the rules of the world that the couple wants to live by. For example, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn have the playroom in Holiday. When he moves to maybe kiss her while in that space, she rejects him, because that’s not what the space was for. 

What’s the consequence of 27 Dresses making the green world a place where sex happens? Well, it now includes complicated issues of agency (as Jane is unaware of Kevin’s true identity) and it complicates what she is actually upset about. Is she upset that he slept with her? Is she upset about the newspaper article? Is she upset about the violation of their bond? If the film had eliminated the sex in the car scene, I think you would have felt the betrayal even more, because what was being betrayed was her sense of being seen by Kevin, no physical or sexual strings attached. They shared a moment where the reframed what they wanted from society, what they wanted from a friend, and they united in their sense of play. Including sex in the scene, I think, makes us forget that Kevin jeopardizes all of that and Jane threatens to lose all of that via his deception. 

In other words, without It Happened One Night, I don’t think 27 Dresses exists.

27 Dresses uses a number of screwball comedy conventions and it’s absolutely to the film’s benefit - however, I feel it could have benefited from following one convention even more closely. 

Screwball comedy introduced two key ideas that forever changed the romantic comedy (they actually introduced a bajillion, but for the sake of 27 Dresses I’ll highlight two): 1) the idea of the companionate marriage, and 2) the idea of the “green world.” 

You know that whole idea of “you should marry your best-friend?” Yeah, that’s straight out of the screwball comedy playbook. As divorce became more prevalent in the 1930s, and marriage becomes reimagined as something people do out of fondness rather than economic obligation, this paradigm is included in the screwball comedy. Some critics say that despite the strong heroine these films are ultra-conservative b/c they reinforce marriage, but this ignores that the 1934 production code actually forbid films from disparaging the institution of marriage, so what could they do? -- they could denigrate a type of coupling while holding up a more idea alternative. There’s of course more to how this developed, but that’s the bare bones. So, says the screwball, in a time you can choose to marry anyone, why not get married to the person who brings fun, companionship, and a sense of play into your life? Because the person you can do that with is most likely the person who understands your emotional needs and will support those as well. 

The screwball also made use of the idea of the “green world.” This is something that comes out of Shakespearean comedy, actually, but the screwball puts it to use in film. The green world is a space separate from the normal order and structures of society. In Shakespeare, this place is usually the forest (so many people escaping to the forest!). Screwball comedy establishes a green world which “derives its ‘magic’ from its relationship to childhood. The normal world’s tyranny stems from its rigidity, which has resulted in social (and economic) stagnation; this is counteracted by a resurgence of playful irrationality, often empowered by the move into the green world. The contrast between artifice and nature remains, therefore, but is recast as a contrast between dehumanising, urban existence and liberating, pastoral play” (Glitre 2006). 

What does this all have to do with 27 Dresses? For this movie, the conflict centres around Jane’s commitment to the rigidity of the marriage industrial complex and the expectations the “natural” world has for her as a caretaker. How do we break her free from this? We get her away from the ability to plan a wedding. We run her car off the road, strip away her cell-phone signal, put her in a rural bar. And once they’re in that bar, the movie’s green world, everything becomes about the sense of play between Jane and Kevin. They drink, they challenge each other, and they dance on a bar. 

Now, this is where 27 Dresses strays from the screwball - if they were to strictly follow screwball conventions, Jane and Kevin should not have kissed and they definitely should not have had sex. 

The green world in screwball is about establishing the bonds of friendship. It’s about play. It’s about establishing the rules of the world that the couple wants to live by. For example, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn have the playroom in Holiday. When he moves to maybe kiss her while in that space, she rejects him, because that’s not what the space was for. 

What’s the consequence of 27 Dresses making the green world a place where sex happens? Well, it now includes complicated issues of agency (as Jane is unaware of Kevin’s true identity) and it complicates what she is actually upset about. Is she upset that he slept with her? Is she upset about the newspaper article? Is she upset about the violation of their bond? If the film had eliminated the sex in the car scene, I think you would have felt the betrayal even more, because what was being betrayed was her sense of being seen by Kevin, no physical or sexual strings attached. They shared a moment where the reframed what they wanted from society, what they wanted from a friend, and they united in their sense of play. Including sex in the scene, I think, makes us forget that Kevin jeopardizes all of that and Jane threatens to lose all of that via his deception. 

In other words, without It Happened One Night, I don’t think 27 Dresses exists.

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

THE COMMON SENSE GUY. BASICALLY MADE BRAS. FOR LIKE 8 YEARS OF HIS LIFE COUNTING THE APPRENTICESHIP

When you realise that the system is set up like this because so much pressure is placed on exam results as the only metric of school success and frequently determine the amount of funding a school receives, which means that poorer schools which are frequently low-performing desperately double down on the teaching method above: 

When you realise all of this is supported by a Conservative government because they haven’t bothered to read any pedagogical research published in the last fifty years and think that school should be ‘hard’ in order to ‘weed out the clever ones’ because they can’t imagine a classroom functioning in a way other than the shitty private schools they went to in the 70s: 

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

oh 

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.

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.

- 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?