#go go (co) connect!!

[nenoname]

still love how the book starts out with stan beating up the statue and taking ford's discarded one dollar bills and then ends with stan completely destroying bill and ripping up money just to spite him

[soulmvtes]

sitting at the window of a beautiful sunlit cafe drinking yorkshire tea in front of a tree whose leaves are turning brown and orange after a long week... i am soo back

[millidew]

sometimes a family is you, your girlfriend, her husband who's also your boyfriend, your mutual son and his electric rat, a mr. mime, and a baby

[intuitive-revelations]

It's one thing adding Classic Who (!!!) and the other spin-offs given all of New Who is already on iPlayer, but adding audio descriptions and sign language to apparently everything is wild!

I assume this implies the same things are going to be on Disney+ internationally too? Would make sense to apply the same work on both platforms.

(Although assuming they brought all the features on there too, I assume they'd do sign language again, for both BSL and ASL? I've never used Disney+ so no idea what accessibility options look like on there.)

[slavhew]

best part about watching a movie is making an au with your (and friend's) ocs

reference imagesssss

[raiiny-bay]

before & after :-)

[dailykugisaki]

Day 331 | id in alt

Kugisaki looking for curse bindings on people my beloved.

[lord-squiggletits]

I'm not normally a "fuck canon" kind of person but it's still wild to me that JRO said via word of god that Pharma's red rust plague wasn't designed for Tarn. Like what the fuck. Tarn trapped Pharma into a blackmail deal to give him free tcogs for his transformation addiction and Pharma designs a plague that activates on transformation and you're gonna try to tell me that Tarn wasn't in Pharma's mind when he made it like that? How can you NOT write that into your plot when the connection is so obviously there? I guess it would've meant writing Pharma as more of a vengeful mech seeking punishment for his captor and not as an insane selfish doctor, and I guess that just wasn't what we were after.

[mishkakagehishka]

Feminism lost its teeth since capitalism and the patriarchy co-opted it let's be real. But nobody wants to think about how being a feminist (and feeling """morally superior""") is much easier when you can say every choice you make is a feminist choice bc you're a woman than if you actually had to change your lifestyle in a way that goes against society and its expectations/norms to actually fight against the patriarchy.

[emblazons]

i’m about a month late to the ffvii rebirth fanfare but i saw your study/shot comparison for the ending while scrolling through some tags and was really curious to see if you had come up with any more conclusions since then! i just finished it a couple days ago and still reeling from it and have been enjoying hearing people’s thoughts about what the heck they think is going on. obvs cloud is not ok, but i’m still trying to decide just how much of what we’re seeing is due to his sanity going out the window and how much of it (if any) is aerith actually speaking to him and/or sephiroth messing with him. the way he tells the rest of the party to not look up at the sky though and none of them see what he sees, just clues them all in to the fact that he isn’t entirely all there anymore. a collective very concerned side-eye lol. somebody help him pls.

!!! oh friend, you're in a TON of luck: I actually started a few different commentaries on how I saw the ending on this weeks back, but didn't post them because I got distracted by other fandoms? I'm more than happy to share them though—not as developed as they could be, but some congealing of where my mind went upon finishing the game and rewatching the gameplay.

forewarning: FFVII ending spoilers + a long af post lmao

So I wrote this on my twitter (where I go to see things only on twt lol) the other day because of a bunch of concepts were clarified by the Ultimania + translators, which kinda sums up where my thoughts are:

Which...yeah. As I see it: as of the ending, Aerith is in fact dead in our current world (the one of the player narrative). How I see it, she's died in our primary timeline—though likely "alive" in the same way Zack is in some other timeline, in addition to her connection to every "universe" through the power of her connection to the planet as the last Cetra.

The white whispers (which represent Aerith/the will of the planet) as well as the “confluence of world” colors we see with Sephiroth are all around when Cloud supposedly “sees her alive" during the classic death scene—

—an indicator that the event itself was the "confluence" Sephiroth was trying to achieve, with Cloud experiencing several versions of it due to his own connection to Sephiroth/the lifestream/his fragmented mind. We see this both in what Sephiroth says around the event itself....and also the contrasting experiences of our party with what Cloud sees in the moment (+ through end of the game).

As I see it, Cloud’s consciousness by the end of FFVII:R-II is fully fractured; throughout both Remake & Rebirth he is already seeing visions affected by Sephiroth’s influence on the planet (the black whispers, the way hooded men and thin air turn into Sephiroth before his eyes)—and now, during the “confluence of emotions / worlds / reunion” mentioned (Aerith's death), Cloud’s already broken mind is slipping further into seeing “the middle space” of the worlds joined and prepared for destruction by Sephiroth in real time, rather than following the timeline of events in the world we play—a la the post that inspired your ask. :)

All that said: the reason he’s seeing Aerith (not just sensing her the way Red does in his own Lifestream connection) is because she’s a Cetra, and now (in death) the embodiment of the positive!Will of Gaia across worlds—so because of Cloud's connection to that "middle space" / ability to traverse different versions of reality because of his connection to Sephiroth, Cloud is interacting with her presence…despite it not being there for anyone else.

It’s also why he can see the sky split no one else can.

ADDITIONALLY:

The Aerith we see fight alongside Cloud in the final battle and the one we see walking around everyone as Cid fixes the plane…that’s the spirit of her person (think the Aerith of Advent Children). Aerith didn’t live this game—her spirit can communicate because of Sephiroth's successful confluence, though she’s ALSO "alive" in the same way Zack and Biggs are to us: aka she died in the world she was in but still exists in others, which Sephiroth confirms/explains both when Aerith pulls Cloud into another “doomed” world—

when he’s trying to manipulate Cloud in the Lifestream—

and when you’re fighting Sephiroth alongside Aerith in the void during the final battle (after she’s died).

Even so, Aerith “living on” as the last Cetra/the spirit of the planet + someone with access to multiple worlds through the "reunion" means she’s now as able to infiltrate Cloud's ongoing visions as Sephiroth is...and is likely trying to keep him even somewhat present despite his clearly fractured mind.

I think that’s implied repeatedly by through the hollow Holy Materia (implying both Aerith is no longer “there,” but still present + that cloud himself is now hollow)—

—and why/how the Black Materia (Sephiroth) is still manipulating him and very much driving his fractured thoughts, visions and actions.

As for the rest of the party: it's because no one but his “vessel-connected-to-Sephiroth” self (+ now dead-but-living-on-in-the-Lifestream Aerith) has any idea what he learned about worlds in the Lifestream that what’s happening to Cloud is lost on everyone (and why they look painfully concerned), and also why spirit!Aerith repeatedly gives him reminders to 1) not listen to Sephiroth and 2) focus on finding himself again.

All that said: because Cloud’s actual self is already slipping away from our present game TL by the second half of the game, it will have to be retrieved and rearranged—which we know will happen in game 3 (assuming you know the original FF7 plot where Tifa rearranges him in the Lifesteam) but that has to be changed from “Cloud finds out about Zack and finally cracks" because Cloud already knows about Zack in some capacity by the middle of Rebirth.

I personally think this sets us up for a really interesting resolution in that Tifa is going to probably have spirit!Aerith’s help putting Cloud back together in the Lifestream in game 3—and that she will likely play a bigger part in helping Cloud “find himself” in his own world again because it’s been made more apparent that she’s a full consciousness in the Lifestream/able to affect multiple worlds now because of Sephiroth completing the first step in his plan. That's more just hopeful on my part going into the next game than something rooted in analysis though.

But yes! those are my thoughts! I hope this gives you (more than a little) something. Feel free to ask if something isn’t clear though lol this was like 4 different half-done drafts combined 😂 Regardless, ty so much for the ask / giving me a reason to post them!

[rinmemesuoka]

Kabru's Tormentous Nightmare has been keeping me entertained for days tbh. Wow it's such a positive change for your stifling helicopter mom to be making connections and building relationships with people her own age, maybe now she--hm? huh? what do you mean it's captain mithrun.

[all-this-happened-more-or-less]

If I had a nickel…

[jq37]

Please let us know if you solve this mystery!

OK! It’s the end of the year so let me compile everything I was able to come up with (with the help of everyone I dragged into this–you know who you are and thank you and I’m sorry). 

To anyone who’s just seeing this and doesn’t have context, in November, right before the movie Wish came out, I made a longish post questioning who Allison Moore was (which, incidentally, is the first post that comes up when you Google “Allison Moore Disney”).

The reason I was curious about who this random writer is is because she’s credited as one of the co-writers of Wish, Disney’s 100th Anniversary Feature Film BUT she has no obvious experience writing for animation, children, or fantasy when everyone else on the main team has credits on stuff like Frozen and Encanto. I thought it was bizarre that there would be someone so green on a project so big so I went digging. 

Here’s what I learned:

(1) Moore wasn’t originally announced as being attached to the project. Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, and Fawn Veersunthorn were all mentioned when the project was officially announced in Sept 2022 (for example). Moore was not. And you’d think they’d mention the *co-writer*, right? You don’t start to see her name until a year later in Sept 2023 when the trailer dropped (for example). So it seems like she was brought onto the project later. Of course, this could just be a normal quirk of the industry or something I’m misinterpreting, but I think it’s worth mentioning. 

(2) Moore seems to have a lot more credits in stage writing than she does in screenwriting. I wasn’t able to 100% confirm it until recently (I’ll get to that in a second) but she’s written a bunch of plays and it seems like this is where she has most of her bona fides. 

“Allison is the recipient of two Jerome Fellowships, two McKnight Advancement Grants and the Bush Artist Fellowship.”

That sounds fancy. But it still doesn’t say “Top Choice for Disney Anniversary Movie” to me. That’s not a statement on writing quality. I haven’t read/seen any of her plays. It’s about the subject matter. Look at some of these synopses:

None of that really screams Disney. Which isn’t to say people can’t have range. George Miller wrote all the Mad Maxes but also Babe and both Happy Feet. But if I was hiring someone for a really big project, I wouldn’t want that project to be their first attempt at expanding into that genre. 

(3) This isn’t actually inherently important but she was on an episode of Nailed it. That’s where this picture comes from:

She won the first round and the game ended in a three way tie for the first time in the show’s history. 

The only reason this is noteworthy in the larger scale of things is that, until very recently, this was one of only two places online you could see Allison Moore talking. The other is this very short interview on the red carpet during the premiere. 

There’s nothing in that interview that explains anything. It’s mainly her talking about how it was fun working on the movie and how good the movie is. 

Honestly, good for her for not being Extremely Online, but it really felt like I could get a bit of a handle on everyone else who’d worked on this project in a high profile way but not her. Which is part of why I started down this rabbit hole to begin with. There was nothing to show where she might have had a connection or an interest or anything that would connect the dots. 

For reference, Fawn (who was one of the Directors and story writers) has the kind of resume that I was expecting Moore to have when I initially Googled her:

Smaller jobs on other kids/animated movies (Hop, The Lorax, Despicable Me 2), some storyboard or art work on other Disney stuff (Frozen, Moana, Zootopia, Ralph), and then a big break (Raya and Wish). Based on my understanding of the industry (and I know a fair bit because it’s one I’m interested in professionally) that’s a very typical track to get to the writing side of animation.  

A couple of people speculated that Moore got onto the project in a mentorship capacity. Now, I’m a Black woman who writes fiction professionally when I’m not on this hellsite (affectionate) with the rest of y’all. That means I have firsthand experience with what mentorship looks like in writing–both official Diversity and Inclusion type mentorship and more organic “Let me take you under my wing” type mentorship. I have *never* seen anyone get a job this high profile at the jump just due to mentorship alone. Going from zero to Disney’s 100th anniversary is kinda insane. This wasn’t some B project or something. It was a Big Deal Project. And this is Disney so they could have hired basically anyone they wanted. So you have to assume this was an active decision someone made and not just a thing that happened for lack of options. But in all my searching, Moore wasn’t mentioned except to just say she wrote the screenplay with Jennifer Lee. It was just the baking show and the Youtube clip.

Until today.

(4) I’m going to preface this by saying this doesn’t actually answer the question in a big AHA! way, but it is the only interview I’ve seen about Wish from Moore besides the red carpet clip.

On December 15th, Moore gave this interview with the San Antonio Current.

I stumbled across it while searching for a different piece of information and eagerly clicked to see what she had to say after three weeks of silence after the movie dropped on November 22.

Here are some highlights:

-In high school she was a theater kid and thought she wanted to pursue acting. 

-I college she did playwriting and eventually she got her MFA from Iowa (which has a weirdly great MFA program btw, and also, this interview is how I confirmed she was the playwright Allison).

-When she started on the theater track at her college, she told them she was a playwright so she could study that too even though she’d never written a play before. So it sounds like Wish isn’t the first time she’s just jumped into a new thing without experience. You have to respect the hustle.

But this is the most important line in the interview because it’s like, an answer and a non-answer all in one. She’s asked, “How did you go from writing plays to writing for TV and film?”

And her answer is, “I had a whole career writing for theater, and then when my son was born, I realized I needed to make more money, so I started pitching for TV. I worked in television for about a decade. In the midst of working in TV, I continued playwriting. That's how I got on the radar at Disney.”

Which kind of sidesteps the most intriguing part of the question? Like, first of all, it’s not 100% clear if she means her playwriting or her TV writing caught Disney’s attention. I’m guessing playwriting, but I could be wrong. Secondly, who is “Disney” in this situation? A Disney recruiter? A Disney director? Did Jennifer Lee see a production of Slasher: A Horrifying comedy while passing through Texas and think, “Her. I want her to be my co-writer on this children’s film.” And what did she do to impress them so much that they right away put her on the the *Anniversary Project*? Like, I know I keep harping on this but I can’t stress enough how big of a deal this is. It’s hard enough to write for just your average sitcom or little movie. To just jump on something this big is baffling. I obviously don’t expect Disney to be justifying their every hiring decision publicly but, usually, when someone is doing something like this, it’s very obvious why they were chosen and, even with this sliver of explanation, it’s still frustratingly opaque. And with the strange post hoc timing of the interview (seriously, doesn’t promotion usually happen PRE movie release?) It almost reads like an interview that exists because someone realized the lack of any online presence was weird. 

(5) When she was a kid, Allison Moore had a crush on Fox Robin Hood. That’s not at all important to the mystery, that’s just information she volunteered during the interview and that I’m now sharing with you. So when you search her name now, the top results are me wondering who she is, her IMDB, and her talking about how she liked Fox Robin Hood's little hat. Which isn't a LOT of information, but it’s more than we had before and that’s something.  

[uku-lelevillain]

when lockwood and co

meets ghost files

[blastlight]

every so often i think about how if i ever make a post or something that blows up, i'll immediately be harassed en masse by people claiming i'm a zionist

[charmac]

Hi! Do you have any thoughts on Mac and Mrs. Mac’s relationship? I find the whole McDonald family dynamic so interesting, but especially after season 16/frank shoots every member of the gang I’ve been fascinated by those two. You always have such impressive, well thought out answers!

Thank you!

I do have a lot of of thoughts regarding Mac's upbringing, especially in terms of his relationships with his family and how they clearly affect his current-day relationships and misconceptions of love, but I'm not sure I've really fleshed that out so, great question.

First of all, I have a gripe with Frank Shoots Every Member of the Gang, as it really insanely retcons Luther's age. Mac Kills His Dad established that he was 59 at the time, which would have made him a teen when he had Mac. Shoots establishes that Luther's dad served in WWII and wrote him letters during that time, which means he had to have been born before 1945, and would have been at youngest in his 30s when Mac was born. It's not like it's a huge issue, but it does change some previously-thought dynamics. (Though, the fact that they weren't younger-cast in A Sunny Christmas does better-align with the idea that they were in their 30s when they had Mac.)

There was/is always kind of the vibe that when they were together, pre-Luther going to jail, Ms. Mac did really love Luther and vice-versa, and Mac was more kind of like a by-product of unprotected sex more than he was a part of the family. (I mean, they named him after the Hamburger Clown). Luther clearly love(d) him as the idea of having a son, someone who could carry on his bidding and his name, but doesn't love him as the child he actually has. I think Ms. Mac didn't love him as the idea of a son and doesn't love him as the child she has, and never did. BUT she did love Luther, and Mac observed that as a young kid, his parents loving each other but neglecting him. Looking at Christmas, we can kind of assume the order of anything in Mac's childhood home was Ms. Mac > Luther > Mac. So for his early development he was kind of sidelined, saw no love from his parents toward him, but did see love between his parents (in a definitely not healthy way, as it goes).

We know in the deleted scenes of Sunny Christmas that Mac's dad is going to prison probably right after the events of the video tape... I honestly think it's reasonable to assume that Mac's screaming that woke up the residents of the house they were robbing might have been probably was what led to Luther being arrested (with whatever warrants he had hanging over him catching up with him once he had been detained). So, does Ms. Mac blame her son for her husband being locked up for the next 25 years? Probably. She didn't even want him, didn't care for him, and then his obnoxious behaviour was their downfall.

Back to Shoots, I did really like it for what it gave us in terms of (Char)Mac childhood lore. I think it definitely wasn't a shock for them to drop the cigarette lighter line, but it was a hit to the chest for me. Everything I kind of assumed before, re: didn't want or care about having a child equated to strictly-neglectful, Mac clawing for the love he saw his mom give his dad, now with his dad gone even more-so, and being brushed off, now escalated to retaliation in response to Mac failing to be brushed off. Sometimes the dismissive, grunting and not moving from your chair approach just doesn't work on a hyperactive little bastard like Mac, sometimes you have to make him shut up by giving him something else to fuss over. I think Ms. Mac probably hoped that would be what breaks through his skin, makes him realise she doesn't love him, but Mac only sees it as a warning, a pause, a try-again-later, mom's just in a bad mood.

Presently, what we see of Ms. Mac is almost always the same: completely indifferent. Shrug, cough, I don't care at all about you. Mac's a serial killer? Yeah. Mac's dead? Ok. You're gay? Meh. She'll fuck with him though, sure: your dad is actually Dutch. You wanted these letters that meant something to your father? I needed toilet paper. Who cares. She doesn't love him, never has, never will, and Mac has no ability to understand that.

Based on his upbringing and the past 20 years, I think he has a complete misunderstanding (and at this point inability) to recognise and understand what love is, mostly because of his mother. Because she just, doesn't love him, never did, but Mac thinks that parents have to love their children, that's a fact in his mind. If he has a mom and a dad they do love him, they have to, especially when he was a little boy, right? His dad loves him, he's just in jail so he can't show it, but his mom is here. And mom did love dad, he remembers that, he saw it, so he just has to make himself known, she can love him too because she's capable of it and she's his mom. He loves her, he says it over and over, she never says it, but she just doesn't see him because she's busy, working, or making a home for him, or just for some reason she's not paying attention... So love for Mac is fighting neglect, love is refusing to be ignored, love is pestering over and over because if you can get away with your bombardment without a finger being raised, without being scored by a cigarette lighter, they must really want you to continue... they must be waiting for you to really prove yourself before they show or admit their love for you. There are people in his life who have to love him, it's like a law, so they'll admit it as long as you keep asking, keep making yourself known, keep trying to prove yourself... and if it comes to the point where you're getting burned, stop for a minute, take a step back, and reevaluate how (or when) you can try again...