lygrim:

joanhello2:

It is canon that many of Megamind’s inventions were designed by Dreamworks to look as if they’d been cobbled together from junk. At the same time, it is common (although not universal) fanon that Megamind is rich because how could somebody that brilliant not figure out how to get rich? These two are not contradictory.

IRL many illegal mind-altering drugs with high street value are actually quite easy to make. Any third year undergraduate chemistry major can do it. All they need is the right equipment and ingredients, all of which also have legal uses and are sold on the open market. So the law requires that sellers of that equipment and those ingredients report all sales to the relevant government agency, along with the identity of the buyers. When they see one buyer accumulating everything necessary to make one of those drugs, they figure this person is in the process of setting up as a dealer and they put that person under surveillance.

In the Megaverse, where supervillains exist, the government of course has a similar policy regarding the equipment and supplies needed to build basic evil inventions. So Megamind has to get those by stealth. I imagine him and Minion disabling the security cameras at junkyards and scrap metal buyers, helping themselves to what they need, then leaving cash on the counter to pay for it all because he want those businesses to survive so he can go to them repeatedly. Later, after he makes his connection in Romania and can get all his equipment and supplies new, he still hangs onto the old stuff because he has become sentimentally attached to it. Also, because he finds maintenance boring, he doesn’t bother fixing damage unless it directly impacts either functionality or presentation. You know that dent on the chest plate of Minion’s gorilla suit? Megamind could fix that in an hour or two, but he doesn’t because he always has something more important or at least more interesting to do. (Although now that I think about it, it could be that Minion wants a scar because it makes him feel tough and dangerous.)

I read this this morning and I’d like to add a counterpoint. I agree that when you’re a supervillain, particularly one with a focus on evil devices and feats of engineering, certain materials that are vital to whatever you’re doing are going to be difficult to come by through legal official channels. I would not necessarily think, however, that the materials and tools that are currently regulated in real life would not be much different from things that would be regulated in the movieverse. The things that are dangerous here are going to be dangerous there for the same reasons, even if extraordinary individuals can subvert and abuse unexpected materials. Most people are not going to be able to access, for instance, a Cold War-era submarine. Or the means necessary to produce nuclear fusion. Or massive quantities of ketamine. But on that note, there ARE people who can procure and move ketamine by and for illegal means, and they’re either clever enough to not get caught or they don’t make it. 

What I’m trying to say is, while I believe he’s intelligent enough to avoid detection if he wanted, I don’t think Megamind would care if he was on a government watchlist. Even if it WAS for attaining the massive amounts of fertilizer required to make a bomb or synthesize meth (not that he did either of those things; it ended up on the Scott’s lawn. All 10 tons of it. ‘Because their grass was looking a bit sad’, was his answer when Roxanne got the chance to ask.) He’s a criminal mastermind who happens to be an alien with blue skin and a giant head that’s been labeled as a menace since he was what, 6? He’s a known evil, there’s no need to be shy about illicitly breaking into a factory to steal the tools he needs to do his own machining, especially when he can gloat about it loudly and publicly. 

Which brings me back to the question of ‘then why, if he’s such a clever boy, does his stuff look like junk when he has the means to make polished, NICE objects of destruction?’

My thoughts are that he grew up in a prison. He grew up INVENTING in a prison. If Necessity is the mother of Invention, then Invention’s twin in this case is Resourcefulness. He made himself a weaponized trike out of his BINKY and license plates. He made a bomb out of blue paint and chemicals from a class supply closet. I’m sure he could use better materials if it was a priority for him, but I don’t think it is. I think he has a compulsion to use what’s around him, find new uses for old things and fit broken parts into his finished whole. Something about the idea that he’s the kind of guy who spends the Witching Hour of a Wednesday morning in a junk yard looking for a carburetor from a 1982 Chevy C10 because it’s perfect for the Flaming Wheel of Death Mark 2 is rather charming and extremely comfortable. That he would rather use the things around him and pour all his energy into molding them into a shape they were never intended to be. Maybe that’s what feels like home to him. Also there’s something to be said for the fluidity and spontaneity of using found materials, especially when it comes to a manic approach to the creative process.

Holy shit this got long. TL;DR I will stan the Megamind that lovingly upcycles junk into tools of mayhem forever and ever amen.