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If you haven’t seen Wish yet and you love Disney, do not go see it. I am telling you now. It is ripping out the hearts of the Disney movies you love and then waving their corpses around as if celebrating those hearts.

I’ll explain why, again: the message of Wish? Awful. Anti-Disney.

But they've been doing this for a long time. Saying one thing with their movies, and saying another with their PR and Disney Parks Soundtracks.

I'll explain.

Main Idea of Disney's Wish (and the You Are the Magic theme park song and merch): "The power to make your wishes come true is in you."

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Most Disney Movies' Idea on How to Have Wishes: "Do what's right, (trust a higher power) and something even more wonderful than what you wished will happen."

Don't try to argue with me about this. You have to look underneath the slogans and the sweater designs and the song titles to what the stories actually support to acknowledge this.

Because you can’t say “do what’s right” has power unless you answer the question “who gets to decide ‘what’s right?’” (Which, coincidentally, is a question Wish brings up and then doesn’t answer.)

Audiences of Disney used to accept that wishing on a star was much like prayer; there’s something you long for, and it’s out of your hands, but you wish for it and you do what you know is right in the meantime. And you’re not crushed, you’re not downhearted, because somewhere in your mind you trust that the combo of those two things—wishing on a higher power and diligence to do what’s good—will be what makes your wish come true.

Trust in a higher power—COMBINED WITH:

—diligence to do what’s good.

The Blue Fairy (higher power) gave Geppetto his wish specifically because he had demonstrated commitment to do good, whether he got what he wanted or not. The Fairy Godmother (higher power) gave Cinderella her wish specifically because she kept on being kind and good to low creatures like mice and wicked stepsisters, whether she got what she wanted or not.

Do you know why that combo (higher power + diligence to do good) is impactful? Timeless? Important?

Because it’s selfless. You want something, but you’re not going to sacrifice doing the right thing to get it. You’re not going to focus so hard on making what you want a reality, on your own, that you miss out on things that could be more important than what you want. And, you’re not so self-focused as to believe that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

Jeez, that’s the whole point of The Princess and the Frog!

Tiana wishes to have her own restaurant, and she believes that only her own hard work will grant that wish. She misunderstands her dad’s advice before he dies. She isn’t willing to trust a higher power combined with her own diligence to do good—she only trusts her own ability.

It’s not until she realizes that Ray, the character of faith, was right all along that she learns—what she wished for was too self-focused. It wasn’t complete without love. Something bigger than herself. And getting that was never going to happen just based on her own hard work.

But you know what? It was never going to happen just by a “higher-power” flavored shortcut, either. Because Facilier offers her her wish if she’ll just trust him, no hard work needed. But what does she say?

Trust in a higher power + diligence to do what’s right = selflessness, and getting more than you could have ever wished for. And if your wish is selfish, doing those two things will change your wish into something selfless.

More examples? Get ‘em while they’re hot, in case Wish made you forget, just like the current #NotMyDisney executives have forgotten, what real Disney wishes are for.

Belle wishes to have adventures in the great wide somewhere--but when she's imprisoned and that chance is taken from her it's not reversed because she worked hard to make her wish come true. It's granted because she gave up her wish for her father: she just did the right thing, regardless of her wish. And in the end, she does get what she wished for, which is adventure in an enchanted castle...and much more, because she gets true love, a throne, and a castle full of friends.

How about the One Who Started It All? The one Wish is failing to pay genuine tribute to?

Snow White wishes for someone to love her, and he does--but when they're separated, she does not exercise power to make The Prince come back to her. Instead, she loves who she can where she’s at—the Dwarfs. In the meantime, she has faith that he will keep his promise, and that pure trust in a higher power outside of her control is a big contributing factor to why the Dwarfs come to love her, and learn from her...and in the end, even more than she could've wished happens. He does take her to his castle, but she also has seven new friends who also love her, and the Queen is dead. And she didn’t need to use “the power in her” to work harder and get it done. She just needed to not focus so much on herself at all.

How about a male main character? One who’s wish starts out selfish, but after learning to wish on a higher power and be diligent to do the right thing, gets more than he could wish for?

Aladdin wishes to be somebody different (somebody he believes Jasmine could love, somebody who lives in a palace and is respected and “never has any troubles at all.”)—but doing everything in his own power for that wish proves that it was selfish all along; so he switches to doing the right thing, regardless of if his wish comes true, and he gets even more than he could’ve wished. He gets real love with Jasmine, he gets his friend Genie, and he gets to be free from feeling “trapped” because he doesn’t have to hide who he is anymore.

Or Simba?

Simba wishes to get to do whatever he wants as King—but when Mufasa dies and he’s convinced it’s his fault, it isn’t for that wish that he goes back to Pride Rock to confront his past and his Uncle. It’s because he had an encounter with a higher power—his father—that helped him to realize his wish was selfish all along. He gives up the selfish wish, and he goes back to take his place as king, not so he can do whatever he wants, but so that he can take self-sacrificial responsibility that comes with ruling. And because he just does the right thing, finally, he gets more than what he wished for.

How about something more recent? Zootopia.

Judy wishes to make the world a better place by proving she can be what she wants to be and catching bad guys—but when she tries to make her wish happen on her own, in her own abilities, she fails and is forced to realize that she should’ve been looking for help by understanding “bad guys,” like Nick. It’s only after she humbled herself, admits she’s wrong, and changes her wish from “proving I can be what I want and catching bad guys” to “proving that understanding each other makes the world a better place” (much less self-focused) that her wish comes true—and so much more. She does make the world a better place, and she does get to catch bad guys, but she also gets to befriend one who was a good guy all along, and become all-around more effective at her dream job.

This is how Disney always has been. Because it’s at the heart of good storytelling, and even life (not to get too dramatic.)

The power is not in you. Because it’s not about you. Self-sacrifice, faith, and doing the next right thing regardless of if you get your heart’s fondest desire is what makes more than just your wishes come true. And there has to be belief in a higher power to make that message powerful.

But Wish?

Not only is it bad at showing instead of telling. Not only is it lazy and soulless.

But it’s characters rip the Star out of the sky and say “don’t wish on this. Wish on yourself, to get what you wish for. You don’t need a higher power. You don’t even need to sacrifice to do what’s good—whatever you do is good, because you are the one doing it.”

That is wrong. That is not true, and it is not powerful. There’s no sacrifice in focusing on or placing your trust totally in yourself, and it undoes every good thing Disney has done up until now.

And it undoes it on the 100th anniversary, and it flaunts Easter eggs of the very things it’s undoing.

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Leave it to mundane secular errors to foil your romantically evil plans.

(We are HARD AT WORK on developing our original comic, Your Prisoner! You can peek at it's production, and even get early access to posts like this on our Patreon!!)

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It's snowsquid weather~

(Hey! This art is available as a coloring page on our Patreon and Kofi!)

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an ENTIRE masquerade theme are you KIDDDINNGGG it feels like this fest was MADE for us, SO EXCITED!!!

[Hey! This art is available as a coloring page on our Patreon and Kofi!]

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you know he's going to TRY-

Wasa-B should not be in the Keyblade graveyard.

Why does he look like he’s going to try and 1v11 the guardians of light.

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It's sweater weather!!!!

[[This art is available as a coloring page on our Patreon AND Ko-fi!]]

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I'm in pain

I can only read “dogs” and only see anything in one other. I see nothing in any other.

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Your very best friends~

[[This set is available as a coloring page on our patreon!]]

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Wish this were me

I found this quote from Diana Wynne Jones (Author of novels Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air) on her time at Oxford when she had C.S. Lewis and Tolkien as professors and I thought I couldn't relate to Jrrt any more than I already did but I've been proven wrong.

"[C. S. Lewis] was just a marvelous lecturer: he made the dullest topics absolutely shine. He lectured in the very largest of lecture halls, which was a huge “L” shape, and it was packed, with people standing in the aisles, even early in the morning. Everybody drank it in. Obviously a whole lot of people took this away and thought about it, and began writing - mostly for children because in those days you couldn’t write fantasy for anyone else.     Tolkien was a different matter. He was just a kind of eminence grise and a legend. You couldn’t hear him lecture. He worked at not letting you hear, because he wanted to go away and finish writing The Lord of the Rings. So he had the very smallest lecture room. First of all it was packed out, so he spoke with his back to the audience and mumbling. Unfortunately he was talking about - meditating on, really - what a plot is like and how it mutates into other plots, and this I found so fascinating that I went back the next week as did one other person. And this meant that he couldn’t stop lecturing and still get the money, which apparently in those days you could if no one turned up - it was a dreadful racket, really. He could have given just the one lecture and then been paid for a term if we’d all stayed away. But this other person and I attended diligently week after week, so he was forced to go on meditating about plots mutating, and what I could hear was fascinating, because he was busy with the really large orchestration of the latter part of The Lord of the Rings at the time. But all I retain is a sense of how marvelous the way plots work is. That was all I got out of it, but I kept going in case I might understand a bit more next week - let alone hear a bit more."

    (Quoted from “Interview with Diana Wynne Jones, 22 March 2001, conducted by Charles Butler.”)

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Comm for @sanitizedsubject to celebrate the DLC ayyyyy this concept was SO COOL and i LOVED MAKING THIS THANK UUUU

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You know... like 'dead fish'.

[[High-res poster version and a coloring page version can be found on our patreon and ko-fi!]]

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Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

William Faulkner

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Seen a couple posts on the dashboard lately about writing with ADHD. So, for the ADHD and neurodivergent folks who like writing but struggle sometimes… check out StimuWrite.

You can set it to make little sounds as you type (or leave them off), and emojis pop up in the corner. You can change the background, dark and light themes, set your word goal, and it gives you a percentage and total word count at the bottom. Though it’s more meant for getting a draft written up, so it doesn’t have spell check or anything like that. You’re meant to just copy and past what you write here into Google Docs or Word or Scrivener or whatever else you use and go from there. Honestly love it when I’m struggling to get words down, though. And apparently there’s an update now for StimuWrite 2?👀

Anyways, give it a try if it looks like it may help. It’s currently name-your-own-price.

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Custom card for @ask-the-3nss 's Coral!! SO PINKITY!!! ((Tableturf card comms are still open, too!))

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It's time to follow the leader! But which one? The members of Deep Cut need your backup to determine who comes out on top in this great battle of the band!

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refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

pdfdrive.com

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What do you think of Octavio's music?

"The stuff I've heard is really good! He gets kindae protective o'er it, but what he lets me hear is great! There's a reason why he was the DJ at his sisters and my own weddin', hehe."